"I've a nasty feeling this one isn't going to fly. I love the look, the feel, the weight of it, and I can see how an unpublished writer might find Lulu very alluring. But this route to paperback westerns for the future does seem to demand too huge an act of faith from too many followers. The book may be a "cracker", as more than one person has said, but is it worth $15 plus shipping?"
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The price is simply too high but there's something we can try here - all us western fans together, without spending a penny - and I say we can do it. You see if the price is brought down to make the book more attractive to readers then I'm sure the book will get the success it deserves. The Lil series is a favourite with readers.
Some months ago author, Chap O'keefe gave the Archive the rights to a full novel of his that had once sold in hardback with Robert Hale LTD. The novel, The Sheriff and the Widow is still available to read via the right hand sidebar of this blog.
Now I want to repay the favour and get the new paperback noticed - what I'm asking is that anyone who has an Amazon account sends an email asking if the book will be available. Request it by title and ISBN - 978-1-4092-8943-2 . No one need spend a penny but if Amazon list the book then it will be interesting to see at what price they offer it. The author has taken the lowest royalty rate to try and bring the price down but Lulu are not budging.
So let's do this, join together and get the book listed. And not only Amazon but hit the Book Depository with those emails too.
So think of this for a trial run for the next Wild West Monday -
And coming up on the Archive next week will be a mega Wild West Round-up with new of all the latest wonderful Black Horse Westerns, some film news, details on the new Lawman TV series and many items of historical news.
3 comments:
Done - and mailed Waterstone's and W.H.Smith. Also ordered this book into the library yesterday.
As for cost - well that's a state of mind.
I have also asked for the book
Anthony
That will be much appreciated, not just by me (and Lil!), but by everyone who ever wondered whatever happened to the slim, action-packed paperbacks we once knew and loved. If we want to make BHE Books even a small success, they must be available at a price people are prepared to pay.
But here's a very relevant quote from Lulu:
"While we do offer ISBNs for books published through us (which means that your book can hypothetically be ordered through bookstores), print-on-demand economics prohibit large discounts that bookstores require to stock books. Bookstores depend on the economy of scale available to large publishers and print distributors. Bookstores are only going to buy Lulu books when they are special-ordered by customers. The Web is a terrific way to sell books, as Amazon.com has demonstrated."
Well, it seems like we "niche" fans of westerns must demonstrate it again.
Gary reminds us about the BHW that was run here as a free serial, which I was only too glad to facilitate. However, that can't be done too often, I'm afraid. Once publishers/writers start giving their content away on the Net on any large scale, no one will pay for it. Newspaper publishers have discovered that to their cost. They now have the dilemma of trying to push the genie back into the bottle as we flit from one free news site to another!
I also welcome Jack's comment. Think of the cost of a CD. An investment magazine to which I subscribe points out that as a blank, the disk may be worth worth $1-2. "But if it has a new-release movie on it then it's probably worth $30, or a copy of Microsoft Office might make it $100. It it's commercial software, say, to run a hotel, it might be worth $10,000 or more."
The "intellectual property" creates the value.
We have to adopt the state of mind that tells us a book we'd like to read is more than a couple of dollars' of paper and card glued together.
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