The snow continues, but a lot of it has melted. For the first time in two weeks, then hens came running out with their usual headlong greed when I appeared with a bucket of grain. Previously, the thick and unfamiliar snow had made them reluctant to spend any more time outside than absolutely necessary.
The snow should be gone tomorrow, and we’ll be back to normal Western Oregon winter weather — plenty of rain, occasional frosty nights, but daytime highs above freezing.
We have some pullet that need to be moved out of the brooder house. We kept them back due to the unseasonal snowfall. Other than that, things are pretty quiet.
I’m taking advantage of the holidays to prepare more books for publication. The second Tom Slade boy scout novel will be available in the next week or two, plus Amelia B. Edwards’ true-life travels in Egypt in the nineteenth century, “A Thousand Miles up the Nile.” (Amelia B. Edwards was clearly the inspiration for Amelia P. Emerson in Elizabeth Peters’ wonderful series of Egypt-themed mysteries.) And there’s even a novel of mine coming out soon. Stay tuned.
I Publish Books! Norton Creek Press
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Will you be putting the new books out in kindle format too?
I’m not planning on supporting the Kindle right away. Amazon isn’t handling Kindle in a very publisher-friendly manner. In fact, they’re being a nuisance in two different ways:
1. The Kindle’s ability to handle formatting is primitive. Basically, it’s a reader for mass-market paperbacks. It doesn’t even support tables. Some of my books require something more professional than this.
2. Amazon has set an expectation among its customers that, once they’ve paid Amazon a big pile of money for the Kindle, the publishers will offer books super-cheap. Amazon comes out ahead, the customer comes out even, and the publisher comes up short. Worse, the publisher gets an absurdly small cut of a too-low price.
So, while I’m sure all my books will become available in electronic form fairly soon, Amazon isn’t bending over backwards to whip up my enthusiasm.
Well I agree on the formatting problems. But the boy scout stuff should work fine. Plus if, as a publisher you request it that request will go with the other publishers who need more formatting. I know the textbook folks are talking to Amazon about improving the formatting options.
As to the price. As a reader I do think that the price of electronic books should be significantly lower than paperbacks or hardbacks. You don’t have all the paper, printing and shipping costs. Once you’ve done the formatting you can sell many copies at no additional effort or costs. Plus, according to Amazon, the publisher sets the price of their books in kindle format not Amazon. So you could set any price you want. However as a reader of kindle books I have a hard time going much above $10 for general reading (the boy scout books etc.) but for reference material (your farming books) I’d pay more.
FWIW The Dollar Hen is already available on Kindle.
The best way to get chickens to go out in the snow is to spread some straw. No need to shovel.
The straw trick works pretty well, I admit. But this time we were faced with snowfall over a fairly long period, so I decided to get the chickens used to snow rather than trying to make it so that they didn’t have to.