Photo by Jenny Tzanakos

Rona Altrows writes fiction, essays and plays. Key In Lock is her second collection of short fiction. Her earlier book, A Run On Hose, won the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction. Her work has been published in Other Voices, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review and many other Canadian magazines. Altrows will serve as the Calgary Writer In Residence, Canadian Authors Association, Alberta Branch from fall 2010 to spring 2011. She is a past Writer in Residence for the Calgary Public Library and for the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society. A firm believer in supporting her fellow writers, she, along with Lori Hahnel, co-created and co-organizes an annual celebration of the writing process called Writing In The Works. Altrows teaches creative writing workshops and edits works of fiction and non-fiction. She and Naomi K. Lewis are currently compiling an anthology on shyness.

J. J. Steinfeld is

a fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island. He has published two novels, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Pottersfield Press) and Word Burials (Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink), nine short story collections, the previous three by Gaspereau Press — Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized?, Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown, and Would You Hide Me? — and two poetry collections, An Affection for Precipices (Serengeti Press) and Misshapenness (Ekstasis Editions), along with two short-fiction chapbooks by Mercutio Press, Curiosity to Satisfy and Fear to Placate and Not a Second More, Not a Second Less, and two poetry chapbooks, Existence Is a Hoax, a Woman in Fishnet Stockings Told Me When I Was Twenty (Cubicle Press) and Where War Finds You (HMS Press).

Over 200 of his short stories and nearly 400 of his poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over 40 of his one-act and full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States, including the full-length plays Acting Violently, The Franz Kafka Therapy Session, and The Golden Age of Monsters, and [many] one-act plays….

(taken from http://www.ditchpoetry.com/jjsteinfeld.htm)

When I saw that Notes for Monday, Recliner Books’ first release, was number ten on Calgary’s best-seller list, I was elated.

Writing In The Works 3

Back for a third great year!

Five Calgary writers read from
• books in progress
• books coming out soon
• books on the prowl for publishers

Readings by
Faye Reineberg Holt
Elaine Morin
Jane Cawthorne
Donna Sales
Judith Galbraith

Emcee – Rona Altrows

Thursday, May 20th
7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
Memorial Park Library
1221- 2nd Street S.W.
Calgary

Free event

RSVP on the Facebook page: http://is.gd/bCyjJ

"It was here a second ago!"

A big thank-you to everyone who submitted to the contest. Unfortunately we did not receive enough submissions to make the contest viable. To those of you who did submit to the contest; your manuscript will now be considered for publication.

Why are people willing to spend a fortune on a device (ipod, kindle, etc.) but refuse to spend anything on content (music, ebooks, etc.)?

There are many potential answers.

1. Gadgets are marketed more effectively.
2. Intellectual property can be shared more easily. You could copy a song for a friend but you couldn’t copy a computer.
3. A gadget is reusable until it breaks but a book, or even a song, has a much more limited life.
4. Content is (sometimes) improperly priced so it becomes more convenient to download than to purchase.

These are just the top four answers that come to mind after thinking about it after I posed the question on Thursday night. What lessons can content producers and content providers learn from those answers? The music industry and the movie industry has already gone through a lot of what the publishing industry is facing and I think the experience of the music industry is especially relevant to books so I will focus my attention on the lessons learned from the mp3 revolution.

Let’s look at each answer respectively and see how it relates to ebooks.

1. Gadgets are marketed more effectively.
   1. For two reasons I believe this will always be the case. First of all there are fewer platforms (gadgets) than there will be content. Second of all, gadgets cost a lot more so there is a lot more capital available for advertising. Consider the average cost of an ipod right now. You could pay as little as $62.99 for an ipod shuffle or as much as $395.99 for an ipod touch, putting the average cost at $229.49. What is the average cost of a book? ~$15.00? Now I know what you are thinking, what are the margins for an ipod compared with a book. I thought about going into a long, drawn out discussion about the margins of a book, but suffice it to say; margins are measured in percentages and are likely ~40% for both the book and the ipod (for the sake of argument, though book margins are far from universal and Apple generally achieves higher than average margins on their products.) When you consider that Apple has sold approximately 250 million ipods and 40 million iphones, you can imagine a substantial marketing budget. So for those two reasons, gadgets will always be marketed more effectively than the content they deliver. But keep in mind, when evading a bear you don’t have to outrun the beast, only the person beside you.
2. Intellectual property can be shared more easily. You could copy a song for a friend but you couldn’t copy a computer.
3. A gadget is reusable until it breaks but a book, or even a song, has a much more limited life.
   1. I think the answer for number 2 and for number 3 is the same, so I will address them both simultaneously. There isn’t much anyone can do about this, you can go down the DRM path, but Orwellian DRM protection will result in a backlash. Instead of fighting with your potential customers, authors and publishers need to produce the highest quality story, as well as story-telling, editing, formatting, and marketing of their content. If you can’t convince people to buy your product (and you’ve priced it properly–that is an important caveat) then that’s your fault, not theirs.
4. Content is (sometimes) improperly priced so it becomes more convenient to download than to purchase.
   1. This is a job for publishers, and I think we have two choices: change our prices or change how the public view our prices. When someone goes to Amazon.ca and purchases an ebook for $10.00–actually, I just tried to do that right now. You can’t buy an ebook from amazon.ca, you have to visit amazon.com for the “Kindle Books” section. In any event, if someone goes to amazon.com and buys an ebook for $10.00 many of them believe that all of it goes directly into the publisher’s pocket. Whose fault is that? If a publisher can’t explain their prices…I think you know where I am going with this. If a publisher can’t convey why they charge what they charge then the prices need to reflect that inability. Another problem with convenience and prices: there isn’t an itunes for ebooks…yet.

In conclusion, I think the lessons we publishers need to learn from the lessons of digital music and digital movies are:

1. Quality. Start with the best product possible.
2. Transparency. Today customers can interact with companies much more easily than they ever have before, and if you choose not to join in these discussion, your customers will think you are hiding something.
3. Marketing. Market your quality product. This is a whole discussion in and of itself, especially for a small press in Canada.
4. Availability. Make your product available to as many people as possible.

Please, join in the discussion, we welcome your comments. Thanks for reading.

John Ballem and Recliner Books entered into a publishing agreement for Mr. Ballem’s thirteenth novel in mid-December last year. We at Recliner Books were very sad to learn of his passing on January 9, 2010 and it is with great solemnity and respect that we will continue work on the manuscript which will be published April 1, 2010. The novel will be titled Murder on the Bow and, like many of his novels, is set in Calgary.

As more information becomes available I will post it on this website.

For those of you who didn’t know John, here is an article from the Globe and Mail: Calgary lawyer wrote mysteries and books about oil and gas

Recliner Books will be at 100 Wines (Calgary) with Barb Howard’s Notes for Monday, participating at a Writers Guild of Alberta event. The WGA describes the event:

Give the perfect gift this year—a personally-signed book paired with a matching bottle of wine!  Join us for a holiday celebration featuring a complimentary wine tasting, book sale, three short readings and an opportunity to relax and socialize with friends.  Thirty books will be showcased and all the authors will be available to answer questions and sign books.

Here are the details:

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

7:00-10:00pm

100 Wines

1109 Olympic Way SE

Free admission / Open to the Public

Please RSVP by December 7 to swarwick@writersguild.ab.ca.

Venue, map & parking info : www.davidwalkerwines.com

Hope to see you there!

So I was hoping to post some pictures from the launch here but no such luck. I’m still holding out hope that someone out there has pictures they will send to me and when I get them I will post them here.

On Monday, November 2, 2009, we launched Barb Howard’s Notes for Monday at the Ironwood Stage & Grill. The turnout was spectacular!

Notes for Monday also topped Pages in Kensington’s best-seller list for the week of November 8, 2009.

If you haven’t yet picked up your copy, you can get it at Pages or you can order it through this website. If you do order your copy through ReclinerBooks.com we will ship it to you for free.