My writing week 3 (27)

Hi all,

Ebook prices seem to be tumbling downwards on Amazon. For the past few months I have regularly checked the Kindle bestseller list just before I write my weekly blog post and noted about 30% of the top 100 bestselling Kindle ebooks where selling for $2 to $3.50, with three or four ebooks free. Three weeks ago 29 were free, today 39. There has also been a shift to books costing $2.95 - $3.50, from five or six to 16 this week. Today, like last time I looked, I saw no $2 ebooks, which used to be the medium price.

About half the free ebooks were out of copyright classics. I had a look at some of the others and they all had over 20 reviews and most of them positive, so why are the authors giving them away for nothing? I will have to do some more digging.

I have never heard the word masturbation used so many times in eight minutes as it was used on the latest episode of the Tuesday Book Club. They were talking about Tim Roth book Portnov's Complaint written in the 60's, when wanking seemed to be a popular topic. The panelists all seemed to like the book.

Booked my motel accommodation for Aussicon 4. I plan to get down there the day before to register and avoid any first day queues. I will be there for all six days, so I hope there is plenty going on. No program has been released yet.

I finished writing a couple of articles for an online magazine and emailed them this morning. I hope to get a writing contract for an article a month. I have not written many magazine type articles before (a few for writing courses) so I am not sure whether my writing will be in sync with what the editor wants - even after reading many of the other articles on the site.

I only did a bit of redrafting of a novella I have been working on, so close to the end. Hopefully next week I will be reporting that I have completed the second draft, edited it and sent it off to be critiqued. I also hope to have finished reading the remaining two novellas nominated for the Hugo awards. They have all been darn big novellas - averaging about 100 pages.

Graham.