Category Archives: Blatherings

Is There a Right or Wrong?

Posted on October 19, 2011 | 5 comments

Jenny Milchman, all around great gal, has posted yet another insightful piece on the controversy surrounding the success of or potential world domination by Amazon.com [Amazon: E-volutionary or Reinventing the Wheel?]. Her post stemmed from yet another article in the NYT on the subject [Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal]. The response below is what I replied on her blog, but thought it deserved repeating.

I love what Amazon has done for the industry on both sides. I’ve shopped at Amazon for years and have loved its convenience. As for the publishing side, they have opened up new doors for so many writers and readers. They have offered a brighter shade of legitimacy to those not published by the legacies. The only problem is, booksellers don’t seem to get that it is not all or nothing. I know many booksellers think Amazon is the cause of them losing business, but I have said this before and I will say it again: lack of customer service is what drives business away, along with higher prices.

It is not Amazon’s fault it has more money to buy books at a lower per unit price. It is their good fortune to have that capital. What I have noticed over the last decade is that so many (not all by any means) indie booksellers have gotten angry at the industry that is shifting and growing around them, and have almost given up. They don’t offer the old-fashion kind of CS that takes them away from their desks/counters to lead a person to the book they are looking for. They don’t have time to be pleasant when someone comes in at the last minute before the store closes. And in so many cases (from my personal experiences) they are unwilling to carry, or even special order books from authors and publishers they “don’t like or support.” I cannot even count how many indie stores have refused to carry Echelon books or host our authors, or even special order because they don’t “consider” us a real publisher. {{insert colorful expletives here}}.

Things change and Amazon does so well because people simply don’t expect those things from a web site. Log on, get your stuff, log off, wait for delivery. No grumpy salespeople, no waiting in lines, nobody ramming their overloaded basket into the small of your back…over and over…and no traffic. They are very small prices to pay for not getting them in hand immediately. Most of us are okay with that if it saves us money.

Don’t dis Amazon because they are successful. You still have a choice. Don’t like what they do or how they do it, don’t shop with them. It’s pretty simple. But don’t make them out to be bad guys because they are good at what they do.

5 Comments

Posted in Blatherings, Business, Just for Fun, Writing

The Games People Play

Posted on October 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

Some days you just get off to a funky start. Someone posted a link to my book on Freado and I ended up playing a game of Hangman (Ten most romantic movies) and then ended up creating a Hangman game on my own. Check it out.

http://www.freado.com/hangman/game/746/the-best-of-steampunk

While you’re at it, I am the guest interviewee at the Blog of Michael Ventrella. You can check it out at:

http://michaelaventrella.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/interview-with-author-and-publisher-karen-syed/

And then you can have a super duper day!

Ah, and buy my books so I can have a super duper day.

Same Feeling of Being Right at Home (Bookstore Spotlight by Carolyn J. Rose)

Posted on August 17, 2011 | 1 comment

Readers and writers in and around Cover to Cover Books in Vancouver, Washington, are so fond of the store that many of them pitched in to help owner Mel Sanders unpack, reshelve, and alphabetize 450 boxes of books rescued from a fire in the fall of 2010.

They turned out to pay back favors given. Over the years Mel has gone the extra mile to support area authors, providing a venue for the Vancouver Writers Mixers and the Ghost Town Poetry Open Microphone evenings.

They turned out because so many small businesses—and so many bookstores—are closing and they wanted to insure that Cover to Cover would have a good start in its post-fire location. (6300 NE Saint James Road, Suite 104B, Vancouver, WA, 98663)

They turned out in solidarity because Mel is also a writer. She’s been published in Under the Rose, a Norilana Books anthology of the fantastic, and in various e-books.

They turned out because Mel brews up some terrific espresso, because Smedley the bookstore cat loves company, and because Cover to Cover has comfortable chairs, and a cheerful ambiance, even on cold and rainy days.

Finally, they turned out because it was another opportunity to get together and talk about books, to browse through books, to breathe in the scent of books.

Cover to Cover has about 20,000 books—new and used—on the shelves. Every time I visit I find books I haven’t seen before—books Mel bought at estate sales, books brought in by book scouts, books taken in trade from customers. Every time I visit, no matter how high my to-be-read pile, I buy books.

Mel displays books by area authors, including all nine of mine. She also provides opportunities for writers to discuss writing craft and launch their latest projects. I plan to be there soon with copies of my tenth work, a suspense novel called An Uncertain Refuge, and the eleventh, a love story set in 1966 called A Place of Forgetting, and due out this fall.

Website: www.covertocoverbooks.net

Twitter: www.twitter.com/C2Cbooks

Phone: 360-993-7777

E-mail: mail@covertocoverbooks.net

Carolyn J. Rose is the author of ten novels. She grew up in New York’s Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, and her hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking. Surf to www.deadlyduomysteries.com to learn more.