'Wreak ruthless retaliation...'

All this week Crooked Cat Publishing is offering three thrillers for a bargain e-book price each of 99p/$1.07 or thereabouts. The thrillers are The Carbon Trail, The Prague Papers and Vengeance Wears Black.

Today, we’ll look at Vengeance Wears Black which is the second in Seumas Gallacher’s series about Jack Calder, an ex-SAS man who is now a security specialist. The first in the series is The Violin Man’s Legacy and the third is Savage Payback.

The books are fast-paced, constantly moving plot driven action tales. Already, Seumas has a large and loyal following that look out for his next Calder escapade.

 

Blurb:

Jack Calder and his former SAS colleagues in the specialist security firm ISP are saved from certain death when an ex-Gurkha friend is killed while smothering a deadly grenade thrown into a lunchtime Chinese restaurant in the West End of London. They learn that murderous turf wars are raging between Asian Triads and Eastern European mobsters vying for control of international fiefdoms of drug smuggling, people trafficking, prostitution and money laundering.

An unexpected visit from the highest levels of international law enforcement offers Jack and the ISP team a means to use their black operations skills to wreak a ruthless retaliation against the drug lords.

Unlikely partners emerge in their onslaught against the gangs as the warring criminal factions threaten an unholy alliance to repel them.

The pursuit spins across Europe, Turkey and North Africa before a final reckoning.

Sample Amazon reviews:

Vengeance Wears Black is definitely a man’s thriller. Written with spare prose, but enough to give you a good idea of the characters and their emotions, the book provides lots of action with hardly a pause for breath. Not to say that a woman reader wouldn’t enjoy it -- there are lots of handsome characters.

…

The world, generally, is a good place but there are those who despoil it. Jack and his fellows at ISP are the ones who see that those despoilers receive the justice they deserve. If you want your world in more shades of grey and moral complexity thick as molasses, look elsewhere. If you want a taut, well executed action story, you could do far worse than to give this a go.

…

Set on an international stage the story provided well-fleshed out characters, suspense and details aplenty to make it very believable. Definitely engrossing from first page to last.

…

For anyone who likes their reading material fast paced and no nonsense, this is definitely for you!

…

This is not only part of a series, but a standalone book as well. Jack Calder's undercover team are brilliantly drawn characters, who you wholly believe in with a cracking plot that spans continents. I particularly liked the fact that the author explores his characters, their foibles and their flaws, so you really get to know them, whilst still moving the plot forward, because if a character has flaws, you can be sure the bad guys will exploit them! If you like action, adventure and spooks then this is a thriller you won't want to miss.

Amazon COM here

(30 reviews!)

Amazon UK here

(42 reviews!)

 

 

 

Special offer riding high

I'm presently busy with work in progress, Cataclysm, the third in the 'Avenging Cat' series of crime adventures (see below). 

So I thought I'd mention this bargain I've just noticed on Amazon Com. The pricing has nothing to do with me; I presume it's the publisher or Amazon who does this; my royalty will be miniscule, but if this increases the readership, all well and good - the book has been written to help writers, after all, not to make millions (as if!)

WRITE A WESTERN IN 30 DAYS -  'which is useful for all genre writers, not only western scribes' say reviewers! - with plenty of bullet points...!

#63 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Publishing & Books > Authorship

http://www.amazon.com/Write-Western-30-Days-Bullet-Points-ebook/dp/B00D6E3T6O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1431351392&sr=1-1&keywords=Nik+Morton

Other books in the 'Avenging Cat' series are:

 

Catalyst - available now

Catalyst, a person that precipitates events.

That's Catherine Vibrissae. Orphan. Chemist. Model. Avenging Cat. She seeks revenge against Loup Malefice, the man responsible for the takeover of her father's company. An accomplished climber, Cat is not averse to breaking and entering to confound her enemies.

Ranging from south of England to the north-east, Wales and Barcelona, Cat's quest for vengeance is implacable. But with the NCA hot on her tail, can she escape the clutches of sinister Zabala and whip-wielding Profesora Quesada?

Catacomb - due out in June

Catacomb, a subterranean cemetery: a place where ancient corpses are found – or new ones are dumped…

After their recent success in Barcelona, both Cat and Rick continue their vendetta against Loup Malefice and his global company, Cerberus, penetrating the lair of Petra Grimalkin in Nice.

But death stalks the pair, as do the dogs of law from the NCA, Basset and Pointer.

Cat’s trail of vengeance next leads to the Cerberus health food processing plant in the Maghreb…  She puts her skills to good use in Morocco where she again confronts the psychotic killer, Zabala.  From the exotic streets of Tangier to the inhospitable High Atlas Mountains, danger lurks and a deadly ambush awaits…

The e-book wars

Some of my books - poets' corner

 

The continuing skirmishing between Amazon and certain book publishers is in the news. There are opinions from those affected – authors, booksellers and publishers, yet there’s an elephant in the room that seems to get ignored.

The big publishers price their new e-books too high, doubtless knowing that the fans of the best-seller authors will buy regardless, thus boosting their profits.

The business model quoted in a Sunday paper gives us this example:

Printed book

40% of cover-price goes to the retailer, such as Amazon, or bookshop.

60% goes to the publisher (two-thirds of which goes on production (paper, printing, pulping unsold books, transport) [doesn’t mention warehousing], with 5-10% of the price going to the author.

E-book

30% to Amazon

70% to the publisher with 17.5% of the cover price going to the author.

That’s the simplified model, anyway.

Obviously, some of these percentages will differ, depending on the author and the publisher agreements. But the principle probably holds. Bottom line is that publishers and retailers are in a business and need to make a profit.

Producing a book has a lot of costs attached, though not mentioned specifically in the example above. For instance, editing, page format setting up (should be minimal in the digital age), cover design, marketing (if any).

So, let’s assume the publisher is justified in getting 40% (two-thirds of 60%) for print, which includes paper, printing, etc. That still means 20% is left over for – the author? No, the author gets 5-10%, if he or she is lucky. So some percentage (10-15%) is sort of floating somewhere… Maybe that’s the publisher’s profit? Hmm…

Now, for the e-book, there are no paper, print, delivery, warehousing, pulping, and transport costs. So why does the publisher get 70% of the cover price?  If the author gets that 17.5% (many don’t get nearly as much), that means the publisher gets 52.5% and Amazon gets 30%. If the publisher doesn’t spend on print, paper, printing etc for this version, then that 40% is ‘unclaimed’ by any process for the e-book model. Of course, subsumed within though not quoted must be the editing, layout, setting up, cover design, marketing… which is necessary for the print book anyway. So if, as is usual, the majority of books from the publisher are both print and e-book, those costs are already accounted for in the print model so shouldn’t be deducted from any percentage in the e-book model. Yes, setting up an e-book requires additional work, but it’s fairly basic and cannot account for that 40% slice. Whatever way you cut it, the costs of producing an e-book are negligible and don’t warrant the high price.

 
There is probably something else at work here. If the price of the e-book was lowered to a realistic level, then that might affect print sales. At present a new hardback and e-book are only about $5 apart in pricing (a hasty straw poll on the B&N site). People who prefer print books will be content to pay that extra; but they might baulk if the difference were greater. So it could be argued that the artificially high e-book price is to protect the sales of the hardbacks.

Whatever side of the fence we sit on, I suspect that authors – the originators, the people who effectively create the books – are unlikely to see percentages improve in royalties any time soon.

[This view concentrates on the big publishing conglomerates, not the independent presses who quickly grasped that e-books sell better if priced low. Certain assisted-publishers/vanity publishers tend to price their e-books as high as the big publishers’ model, thus denying their writers a viable outlet.]

 

‘Absolute steal’

No, this post has nothing to do with Jack Absolute (see Friday’s Forgotten Book here). It’s simply a comment from a reviewer in one of our local newspapers here in Spain, The Coastrider.

The review is for Spanish Eye, 22 short stories about Leon Cazador, private eye, ‘in his own words’.

There’s a received wisdom that short stories don’t sell and aren’t read these days. One aspect of this is as the reviewer, Paul Mutter, explains, ‘A particular difficulty with short stories is that they are exactly that – short. All too often they can be over before they have really begun, leaving the reader somewhat frustrated.’

Happily, although Mr Mutter isn’t too keen on short stories, he enjoyed this collection – ’22 individual stories … are absolute little gems. The pace of each is perfectly judged to reach its conclusion at just the right time and in just the right way.’

He concludes, ‘Not only will the tales appeal to general lovers of short stories but in particular those with experience of living in Spain will I’m sure feel a certain resonance with these stories. My only regret is that there aren’t more of them… Leon Cazador deserves some much longer tales…. Obtained through Amazon as a paperback for £4.99 or for download as a Kindle edition for £1.99 and it is an absolute steal at that price.’

The review is here (click on the image and you'll get the full readable text):

Thank you, Mr Mutter. Your review is very much appreciated. And yes, more tales are planned, including a full-length adventure. A new Leon Cazador story is featured in the Crooked Cat's Tales (UK) here and COM here - 20 stories from Crooked Cat's authors - also at a steal of a price!

 

 

 ***

 

Spanish Eye,

featuring Leon Cazador, private eye in 22 cases
is  published by Crooked Cat Publishing
and can be obtained from

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

My e-book initiation

Compared to many, I joined the e-book revolution rather late. I have a private library of over 4,000 printed books – many thousands more were consigned to charity shops when we moved to Spain. I like to see them on the shelves. And, let’s be honest, the majority of titles aren’t on the bookshop shelves more than a couple of months, so you need to buy when you find them. I know that this attitude has been negated somewhat by the remarkable availability of books on the Internet. Yet I still like browsing bookshops of all kinds, hoping to find that nugget I’ve been seeking for years, or coming across a useful reference tome.

About a quarter of my home library

I started with a Kindle for PC on my desktop and soon realised I needed the real thing for its portability. Serendipity knocked and as I stepped down as Chairman of the Writers’ Circle, the members kindly clubbed together to buy me a Kindle.

As the Editor in Chief of Solstice (2011-2013), I found this Kindle invaluable. I converted submitted MSS to PDF and loaded them on my Kindle and read the submissions away from the computer and email interruptions.

Of course there’s nothing like holding your own printed book in your hands. That’s a special feeling. Any of my e-books that haven’t been printed yet, I create and print a DVD cover and insert it into an empty DVD case; this is then stowed on my bookshelf, physical evidence of my book’s existence. When the book is printed, I remove the DVD case from the shelf.

The first time I ordered an e-book through my Kindle, I was impressed. What I like is that any e-book I order from Amazon.com (all non-UK orders have to go through .com and not .co.uk), once I’ve read it I can remove it from my device and it resides in the Archive at Amazon. I can call it back to my Kindle at any time.

I’m not impressed with the fact that 99c books bought through Amazon end up costing a lot more – about $3.40 due to taxes; though the read is usually still a bargain.

And, unlike most print publishers, e-book publishers will accept novellas and even single short stories. In the old days, action and adventure stories had a market in men’s and weekly magazines, but that’s long since been closed. Indeed, several popular male writers of the sixties and seventies started with magazine stories. Now, e-publishers may provide an outlet for that material. As long as the standards don’t slip.

And that’s the downside of e-books - the proliferation of self-published books. There’s nothing wrong with getting a book self-published, so long as it has been properly edited. Sadly, many e-publishers pay scant attention to editing. I know, even mainstream publishers are guilty of howlers these days. A Clive Cussler co-authored book mentions the Royal Army, presumably assuming that since there’s a Royal Navy and a Royal Air Force, it must be right! And that was in hardback, not e-book. Danielle Steel’s The Ring has at least 35 typos, after which I stopped counting. So sloppy editing isn’t just the province of e-book publishers. Granted, some things always tend to slip through, no matter how many edit passes you make. I’ve invented the editor’s curse: readers spot the things you missed, but don’t notice all that you do because it’s invisible.

 
As the saying goes, everybody has a book in them – but for the majority that’s where it should stay. The e-book revolution has made it too easy for dross to get published. It was bad enough with the countless vanity publishers whose editing was generally abysmal, but now it’s worse. I’ve reviewed a few vanity/assisted published books in my time and to be fair I believe that both Matador and, in particular, Pen do serve their clients well.
 
Because an e-book can be produced relatively fast – as compared to the mainstream lead-time of eighteen months – there’s a tendency to rush the work out. This undue haste should be mitigated with quality control constraints.

Not surprisingly, one type of e-book has undergone a remarkable surge in popularity – the erotic novel. Where somebody might have baulked at reading an erotic paperback in public, they have no inhibition about reading one on an electronic device. Brown wrapping paper has probably seen a drop in sales.

 
And in this information age it’s quite likely that people who wouldn’t dream of reading a print book – I read a book once, why read another one? – might be drawn to e-books because they’re onscreen and digital. In the old days, you had your purchasers of hardbacks and of paperbacks, often separate individuals; now you can add to the mix purchasers of e-books.
 
Of course, e-books don’t suffer from broken spines, spilt liquid stains, page discolouration and mould. They remain pristine. There’s another plus: no shelves to dust.

E-books are not demons or replacements for books. They’re another outlet for creative writing. As before, the reader needs to beware that not all books will live up to their promise on the blurb.

 
Where once I didn’t see the relevance of e-books, now I can accept them as yet another method of reaching readers.

***

My e-books are:

Blood of the Dragon Trees (Crooked Cat Publishing)

Spanish Eye (Crooked Cat Publishing)

Write a western in 30 Days (John Hunt Publishing)

Bullets for a Ballot (BTAP Publishing)

Death is Another Life (Solstice Publishing)

When the Flowers are in Bloom (Solstice Publishing)

 

 

BULLETS FOR A BALLOT – AND STILL VOTING!

My book Bullets for a Ballot was published as an e-book in March 2012 and, surprisingly to me, is still picking up review comments. This is thanks to David Cranmer, I suspect, offering the book at a bargain price. David created the two main characters, Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles in the short story ‘Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil’ featured in the anthology A Fistful of Legends I edited in 2009. At the end of 2011 he commissioned me to write a novel about these characters; other writers were also being given this opportunity. I was flattered and honoured and started to plot-plan a storyline. I had to be aware of what had already been written as well as salient facts in the Cash Laramie ‘bible’ – i.e. dates of birth, first kill etc.

This might be a good time to address a couple of issues that were raised in a few reviews. There are two instances of adolescent sex – neither gratuitous and the plot to a certain extent hangs on both. Neither is depicted graphically or for titillation. Yet they brought comment. I wasn’t surprised; yet a western, if it’s going to be truthful to its period, must depict what happened at that time. While we rightly deplore it, children as young as twelve were sold into marriage, or into bordellos, and young boys became men able to shoot and kill and do what men do at an early age. It isn’t salacious, it’s a fact – it’s history. Furthermore, having decided on my plot, I was constrained by two dates – Cash’s date of birth and the successful woman’s suffrage in Wyoming, Cash’s home state.  To balance the criticism, others were comfortable with it – ‘Loved Cash’s backstory’, for example.

 

I was aiming at a western tragedy tale and happily this was picked up on by a number of readers. As one put it, ‘I've been trying not to give anything away but this is a very exciting tale - with a bitter-sweet ending.’ While another reasoned, ‘…Bullets for a Ballot follows Aristotle's idea of a Greek Tragedy…’ Not that it was all serious – there are some puns to be groaned over, and allusions to a famous 1953 novel - and one reviewer almost spotted this.

When your book is published, in many ways it ceases to be your property. (As a writer for hire in this case, that is doubly true, as the rights belong to David). It has to go its own way – and stand or fall by the comments and opinions of the readership. Few writers do it for fame or big money, they do it to be read – and that’s where feedback is invaluable.

Reviews are wonderful. Any review is good, if it shows that the reader has actually read the book. Naturally, a particular storyline or set of characters may not appeal to all readers – that would be most odd. We all bring our prejudices, whether good or bad, along with expectations when we begin a book. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, they say, though I’d prefer to think that the opinion would be informed.

On Amazon.com the book has (to date) 17 five-star reviews, 3 four-stars, 4 three-stars, and 3 two-stars.

On Amazon.co.uk it has 6 five-star reviews and 1 four-star (six of these are the same as seen in Amazon.com).

On Goodreads the reviews break down to 5 five-star, 4 four-star, and 2 three-star; 1 one-star! (Again, some of these reviewers are repeats)

With regard to movies, when I read some critics’ reviews, I often wonder if we watched the same film! So it is with book reviews. A 3-star review says it was ‘a quick read – maybe I read it too quickly’ while a 2-star comment states ‘the book drags – didn’t even get halfway…’ You clearly can’t please all the people all of the time.

Another says, ‘A simple and basic plot although rather predictable, it's an interesting enough story…’ while another states, ‘The characters in the book were interesting. The story kept moving with unexpected twists and turns…’ You pay your money and make your choice.

A 3-star reviewer says, ‘Could definitely tell the author was a male.’ Another 5-star reviewer stated, ‘Morton should be commended for giving us an action-packed tale which also contains an undercurrent of feminism. I'm sure you'll agree that it's a western that's hard to put down.’ And a 4-star reviewer: ‘It was great to see a genuine female character in a setting where it easy to ignore them.’ I hasten to add that the reviewer who realised I was male stated she would read my work again - her 3-star review says, ‘…Would read this author again, think he has great storytelling ability.’

It’s always pleasing when a book receives a lengthy review, and this book has garnered several; one particular entry concludes, ‘Morton's pages share with L’Amour’s the authentic feel of western adventure and the relentless, irresistible narrative drive. I don’'t know another author with Morton’s range of time and geography. (Try his A Sudden Vengeance Waits for an exciting crime story set in contemporary England). But wherever he goes, he carries a torch for justice and a talent for pulling the reader into a compelling story.’ [A Sudden Vengeance Waits is now out of print, alas!]

And another long review says, among other things, ‘It is the characters and the settings that make a Western, ultimately they are set in a time, that no person currently living has a reference point for, other than what they have read in other books or seen in movies. Therefore to bring to life something without tangible direct history is an art, and Nik Morton is a master artist in this instance. From the taste and smell of the old west to the feel of the era violence, this is another five-star adventure for Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles… The tale unfolds, as page by page, Cash Laramie is relentless in his pursuit of justice. We learn more about the Marshall, as this story reveals more of the man's character, who he is and why he is driven to do the work of a lawman. The story also exposes just how the west was run, where principles are all very well, but where money also speaks, as do more baser urges.’

I’m not inserting excerpts from these reviews to bolster my ego, but to illustrate that here we have fine examples of informed and considered opinion in reviews. In my own reviews I strive to do that for fellow authors; because authors are readers too.

 

In the final analysis, like all writers, I hope to entertain readers and possibly supply occasional insights into the human condition along the way, and the readers must be the judges and their verdict is what ultimately matters. So be it.