I’m now entering a second 90-day period with KDP Select.  I suspect this will be the last for me.  The experiment has been worth it, in terms of getting my work into the hands and minds of new readers.  Giving away many free books kept my books high up in the rankings for a considerable period of time after the free promotion ended and significantly increased my visibility and, more significantly, my sales.

However, with the advent of Amazon’s new ranking algorithm, that advantage has come to an end.  There is no longer a 1-1 ratio between books uploaded as freebies and books sold.  Therefore, your book drops in the rankings quickly as soon as your promotion ends and there is no rebound effect.  The law of diminishing returns…

As I said, KDP Select has been a valuable promotional tool because it made my books visible, i.e., discoverable, to the casual reader.  This is no longer true.

Therefore the value of enrolling in Amazon’s KDP Select program has just been nullified for me.  If I’d known about the change in algorithm before I enrolled for a second 90 day period for all my books, I wouldn’t have bothered.  Instead I’d have made my titles available via multiple outlets, as I did before the advent of KDP Select.

I figured it was too good to last.  But then, most things are.

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Two of my works on Amazon are free for the next five days (beginning 2/9) – for everyone with a Kindle.  Both are quick reads and very different.

Is It Spicy? is a short story.  I have a lot of those ready and waiting to be formatted.  The Artist is a quickie – an erotic short.

It is my pleasure to offer both books to you and your friends.  Hey, why do we write anyway?  To be read!

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Today I’m featuring a guest post by a young man who has worked in both mom and pop bookstores and Big Box Bookstores. He’s also a book appraiser. For those of you who want to hear more, Dan can be found over at The Reign in Maine.

Welcome to my world, Dan.

Is Amazon killing bookstores? It’s a question on many minds after an Amazon offer this last weekend awarding people who scanned books at their local bookstores, comparing the prices there to Amazon’s, with a 5% credit towards a purchase, while at the same time reminding them that they could order the book far cheaper online.

The answer is yes.

Before you go storming the Amazon castle with pitchforks and torches, know this; Amazon isn’t doing it alone, and it’s not Amazon’s fault.

Also know that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Books, and writing, are very much like living organisms. They have evolved from wedges on clay to images on papyrus, from characters to alphabets, from hand-copied manuscripts to printed and bound books. At each stage the printed word never died, never went away, never ceased to be relevant. The ebook is next in the evolutionary stage of writing, and like each previous stage, it will change the way we approach books.

People love bookstores, me more than most, but brick and mortar bookstores have been disappearing from under our noses for years now. Box stores have taken from us the mom and pop bookstores as readily as they have neighborhood groceries, tailors, novelty shops, and the like. We haven’t cared because, frankly, shopping at a big box bookstore is so very much more rewarding. The stock is far better, prices cheaper, and the big box bookstores often staff the same snobbish, elitist, book nerdy folks who would have been working in the dusty overstuffed independent store, had it still existed, so your desire to have your reading list mocked was also fulfilled.

But now, suddenly, we worry. Ebooks are poised to kill off local bookstores entirely in a quick, and bloody coup. Ebooks and ebook readers have created the biggest revolution in reading since Gutenberg, and just as moveable type sent scribes into a panic, operators and customer of independent bookstores fear for their lives.

Sorry guys, the war is over, you never had a chance.

But what does all this mean to us book readers? I’ll tell you what it means. It means that millions more books are available to us now; and the prices range from very affordable to very free. It means that thousands of classics, books in the public domain, money that until recently went directly to the publisher, are now a click away at no cost at all. And the best part is; we never even have to read them. They can sit on whatever device we use, along with hundreds of others, just waiting to be opened.  If we don’t open them, instead of wasting shelf space, the books exist in an electric ether, neither here nor there, out of sight and out of mind until we’re ready to read them. It’s a very natural progression, from the writer’s brain to the computer’s brain with no messy paper and ink in between.

It also means that every author, all those tireless typists who can’t get agents or publishers to even take their opus out of the envelope, can now share their work with the world and let the public decide what can and can’t make money. It means instead of spending your savings at Kinko’s and hoping that your local bookstore will take a work on consignment, you can now simply upload your book to any ebookstore you’d like and just sit back and wait for the royalties to roll in.

You see, unlike music and movie producers who are more than happy to pass whatever shit crosses their desk onto the consumer (Battleship the movie anyone?) and then complain that they aren’t making money because of piracy, publishers have grown increasingly narrow when deciding what gets published. These days, unless your book is full of vampires, or in the case of romance, barrel-chested time-travelling Scottish vampire ghosts, getting your book published is more difficult then dividing up the Holy Land. Stores like Amazon have changed the way books get from the author to the consumer, forcing publishers to change as well, benefiting both ends of the production line.

So yes, stores such as Amazon, like a logging company in a spotted owl habitat, are turning bookstores into an endangered species. Your local bookstore is being crushed under the eglacier of the ebook ice age. But before you put on your black veil and mourn the end of bookstores (while secretly hoping for a quick funeral service so you can get back to the new riveting book you downloaded on your Kindle of course) you should also know that brick and mortar bookstores will never truly be dead.

Books, physical books, are too much a part of our psyches to completely disappear. New bookstores, even entities like Barnes and Noble, won’t be with us much longer, but used bookstores will continue a furtive existence in the dark, musty corners of big cities and small towns all over the world. There will always be just enough people who desire the mildewed smell of yellowed paper, the brittle texture of an aged page, and the unmistakable feeling of warmth that holding a book in your hands brings. No one wants to pay ten bucks to experience that with the new Dan Brown when they can download it for seven (still too much if you ask me), but people will always treasure that old Kurt Vonnegut, or Tolkien, Joseph Heller, J.D. Salinger. These books, and books like them, will never translate into e-form, not entirely, and there will always be a need for bookstores to cater to the people who desire the complete book experience.

So yes, you will see bookstores close their doors, but there will always be one, somewhere, if you look hard enough. And in the meantime, appreciate what businesses like Amazon have done for books. We have more access to more literature than at any other point in history and it’s not thanks to local, independent booksellers, but innovators like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other cutting edge stores that have permanently changed the way we read.

Thanks, Dan.

***A little bit of my own business. Yes, this is the spot for the Stuff Your Stockings blog hop. Leave me a comment to enter for a copy of my SFR, Captured. Here’s the link for major swag:  http://thebloghopspot.com/event-page/

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What’s up with my books?

Captured has come out in print on Amazon!  Yay!  This makes me really, really happy.  I can’t wait to get my own copy.  There’s something about seeing a book, holding a book, smelling a book, opening a book that just feels good!

http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Publishing-Classic-Rachel-Barrett/dp/1606018582/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275021374&sr=8-2

The book can also be purchased for your Kindle, if you’ve got one!  http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Siren-Publishing-Classic-ebook/dp/B00371V7WO/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Beauty and the Feast is a bestseller on Fictionwise and all it’s outlets.  This so takes me by surprise!  I’m in good company – Tessie Bradford and Desiree Holt – author friends – are there with me.  http://www.fictionwise.com/topstories.htm

It’s also available for Kindle.  http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-and-the-Feast-ebook/dp/B003NX70QS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1275021641&sr=8-2

SusiSunshine over at the Geeky Bookworm invited me to post for her anniversary week – you can win an e-copy of Beauty and the Feast or Captured or My Everything.  http://thegeekybookworm.blogspot.com/2010/05/guestpost-by-julia-rachel-barrett.html Susi will be announcing the winners on Sunday so you have plenty of time to leave a comment!

So…coming soon with Resplendence Publishing:  Daughters of Persephone, Book One Exile and Book Two Return.

Coming with Siren:  Anytime Darlin’ – my favorite romance-suspense.

Ya’ll have an excellent weekend!

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Prescript:  Captured is out in print on Amazon!  OMG!  http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Publishing-Classic-Rachel-Barrett/dp/1606018582/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274500727&sr=8-2

My baby girl is flying home tonight.

You know how it is.  I love my kids so!  They are my greatest achievement.  I always knew I wanted kids, the husband was optional.  Got a good one despite myself.

Anyway, she’s coming home after having two flights canceled out from under her and since she’s flying from the East Coast, she won’t have eaten for hours -  maybe a pack or two of peanuts.  So…

I put together a cheese plate with Petite Basque, Gorgonzola Dolce, and Brillat Savarin, sliced melon and muscat grapes.  I quick cooked some asparagus, roasted a couple gigantic purple artichokes – still trying to decide if I want to stuff them with crab.

I’ve got fresh bread and I’m baking our favorite chocolate sheet cake – my great gramma’s recipe.  Oh yummo!

I think I’ll chill a bottle of Prosecco.

You all have a wonderful weekend!

Oops!  Here’s the recipe:

Melt two sticks of butter with one cup of water and 4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder.

Mix together 2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda.  Set aside.

Beat two eggs, mix with 1/2 cup buttermilk and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Pour melted chocolate mixture into dry mixture.  Stir in liquid mixture.

Spray a rectangular cake pan with nonstick cooking spray.  Preheat oven to 350′.  Pour in batter.  Bake 35 minutes.  Remove.  Let sit ten minutes and frost.

Frosting:

Mix together 1 stick butter, 6 tablespoons buttermilk, 3 heaping tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 box powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Enjoy!

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