Why I'll be back soon

As many of you know, since I've blogged about it a few times, I'm uhh ... kinda ridiculously busy at the moment. I don't have free time. This blog post is eating into time when I should be editing a short story for one of my internships.

I don't have time for blogging. I don't have time for writing. I don't have time for reading (unless it's a manuscript for my other internship).

The whole reason I decided to get into publishing in the first place was because of my love of the above things. I've decided something needs to change.

The thing is, I really enjoy both of my internships, and I get a lot of really good and valuable experience from them. The one part of my life that isn't making me happy at the moment is my job. Sure, it's in a publishing company, but... that's not enough.

Here's what I knew when I decided I was going to change industries: I'd have to start at the bottom, and I'd have to do some jobs I wasn't particularly fond of in order to get to where I wanted to be. What I hoped was that, while doing the jobs I wasn't fond of, I would get some sort of development, exposure to the types of jobs I wanted to do. Growth.

I'm not currently getting any of that in my job. The experience I get from my internships I value far more than what I get from my job (I don't want to be an administrator, I want to be an editor in a trade publishing company). But I can't keep doing it all.

So I quit my job.

From the 25th of May I will no longer be a publishing assistant. I will still be an intern at Entangled reading slush and writing manuscript assessments. I will still be an intern at Aurealis editing short stories and preparing the magazine for ePub. I love both of them. I will still be a student.

I will be a writer, blogger and reader again.

I'll be back!

E is for Energy & Exhaustion

On the way to work today I was complaining about being so tired all the time.

"But it's not like I go to bed late!" I said. "I just don't understand. I have no energy."

My friend, car-pooling buddy and fellow A-to-Zer Elise set me straight. "Sari, you're the busiest person I know. OF COURSE you're tired. Duh." Maybe she didn't say 'duh'. She's a bit too classy for that. But it was something along those lines.

And my response? "Oh yea." Duh.

In 2010 I was a banker and I wrote and blogged in my spare time. I was miserable. I came home every day feeling completely deflated and I was starting to hate life. BUT it was good for me because it made me really think about what I want out of life, and I realised that was not going to be found in banking.

I wanted to work with books.

Within four months of that discovery I'd moved with my (freakin awesome and supportive) boyfriend from Auckland, New Zealand, to Melbourne, Australia, and enrolled in a post grad course in publishing and editing.

And now? I am ...

   working full-time as a publishing assistant for Pearson,

      studying part-time doing a post-grad diploma in publishing and editing with four assignments to do at the

        moment,

          doing an internship for Entangled Publishing reading slush and writing MS assessments (usually

            a couple of MSS to read a week, sometimes more, sometimes less),

              doing another internship copyediting short stories for Aurealis (an Australian sci-fi and fantasy

                magazine),

                  aaaand somewhere in between all that finding time to read, write, blog and have a life.

Obviously some of those last few have suffered - lack of blog posts in the last while being exhibit A.

I want to make it clear I'm not having a whinge. I put my hand up for all these things - possibly got a bit overenthusiastic - and I enjoy them. But it could explain why I'm feeling so exhausted all the time.

The good news is, it's Easter! And I've taken all next week off work! Yay! I can't take time off from uni assignments and internships, but at least I'll have more time to get them done, and I like reading slush anyway. It's interesting! And like Heather, the editor I intern for, says, it's like having a bookshop in your inbox. :)



I still haven't figured out what bunnies have to do with Easter,
but this one is cute so I don't care.

Looking forward to feeling energised and more time rich during my holiday.



I you so busy you're feeling drained? How do you manage your time? Do you fit everything in that's important to you, or have you had to make sacrifices?

Asking Amazon to listen

Hi everyone, today I'm going to post something from my friend Sarah Billington, who can say this much better than myself:

As you know, independent authors put a lot of time and energy into our writing and we are so thankful for the opportunity Amazon provides for us to earn a living doing what we love. Except a lot of that living is stripped from us through bank charges for processing international cheques.

I was excited to receive my first two cheques recently, smallfry compared to some authors, one was for $17, the other for $56. Except my bank charges $25 to bank a single cheque.

For my $17 cheque, I will be paying THEM to bank it for me. If I choose not to cash in my royalties on that $17 cheque, it makes it nothing but a pretty piece of paper. A piece of paper that represents about 51 readers.

Of my $73 in royalties, $50 would go toward bank fees, leaving me with $23US (not that I can actually deposit the $17 cheque at all). BEFORE currency conversion to Australian dollars.

I am just one example. Other banks charge $40 to process international cheques. I have heard of another author whose country of residence will not process US cheques so they have to GO TO ANOTHER COUNTRY to deposit royalties.

Smashwords pays authors via PayPal so it can't be too hard for Amazon to do so, or update Amazon Payments so that international users can be paid that way as well.

It would also save Amazon money on international postage of cheques. Win-win, right?
I know and believe that Amazon cares about its authors and this step would help us all across the globe.

If you are interested in Sarah's message and would like to support the cause, please visit her petition here. And feel free to spread the word!


What are your thoughts in this? Do you think Amazon can be convinced to change? Do you think it's necessary? Are you a self-published author having a similar problem?

The e-book pricing conundrum. How much are they worth?

One of the biggest debates happening in the book world these days is: how much is an e-book worth? And what is that worth based on? How do we balance the reader’s loss in utility from not being able to touch or see or smell their book (all important if you’re a book lover) against authors’ income and publishers’ revenues? People still need to make money. If they’re not making money they’re not going to keep making books.

I come at this issue from two different perspectives: the reader, and the writer who also works in publishing. So far, I’m finding it very hard to merge these two perspectives. (Dual personalities of a writer’s brain come forth.)

The reader:

When you buy a traditionally published e-book you’re often paying close to the same price as you would for the p-book version. As a reader of both e- and p-books, I have an issue with this. I prefer p-books. I like to feel them. The smell of them. To look at them on my bookshelf even after I’ve finished reading them. If I have a choice, and the price is similar, I’m going for the p-book every time.

E-books, for me, are about convenience and cost saving. Add in the fact that, according to publishing consultant David Amerland, when you spend money on an e-book you’re not actually purchasing the book, only access to the book, why should I spend the same amount as I would to purchase, and own, a p-book?

The writer and publishing industry employee:

A lot of readers think the way I do about the costs of e-books. What they don’t realise is that, for a traditional publisher, there is very little difference between the cost of creating an e-book or p-book. Sure, e-books don’t have printing costs, but they do still have editing, design, marketing, author fees and a whole host of other costs associated with them. You might be surprised to know that the printing cost associated with a single book is usually only around a couple of dollars.

So the question is: how do the big publishers compete when consumers aren’t willing to pay what the publisher needs to survive? Throw in the likes of Amazon, who willingly forces the price point of e-books down so they can sell more Kindles and put competitors out of business (predatory pricing), and you’ve got the publishers in a sticky situation.

The only people meeting the market’s price expectations are self-publishers, who are able to sell their books at very low prices because they have almost no overheads. The market is happy (yay)! The publishers are not. Although whether the market is truly happy could be questionable. There are a lot of self-pubd works out there that wouldn’t know a second draft if it bit them in the bum, but that’s a post for another day.

Here’s a quote from author Stuart Neville that I think sums up the writers' perspective:

"I'm amazed that people are that cheap. Do they think a year of my life is worth less than $9.99? Do they really believe that 10 to 12 hours of entertainment isn't worth the equivalent cost of two or three coffees, or less than two beers?"

What are your thoughts on the e-book pricing conundrum? Do you have no problem paying close to the same price for an e-book as you would for a p-book, despite the perceived loss of worth? Or will you only buy self-pubd e-books and continue to buy p-books from the traditional publishers? I’m interested to hear where everyone else stands on this issue!