Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Friday, June 29, 2012

I got bit by the vampire shark

Seems there's a skanky company in Hialeah, Florida called Any_Book that scours the web for books listed or about to be sold then adds them to its inventory at exorbitant prices and offers them for sale through Amazon as an after-market deal. Or pre-market; I'm not sure. They sell bibles and christian books the same way as they offer others -- "unknown binding" at 3-4 times the actual selling price...or, as in my case, 10 times.

Meaning all of my books are listed on their site and offered for sale through Amazon for well over $100 each. And they've been doing this for years, it seems. They used to be listed on abe.com -- a site where dealers who belong to the ABAA can list their inventory for people to peruse -- but got kicked off, a couple of times. I've found references to this as far back as 2007.

I don't get it...and what's worse, Amazon doesn't give a shit. Though maybe I shouldn't say that; I recently heard Amazon plans to charge publishers $100 per book to keep their listings up if they haven't sold a certain number of copies, so maybe that will get Any_Book de-listed. But it also means some of my books may get kicked off their listing, too, because they don't sell all that well. A couple have done above average but the rest are barely making a dent in the ether.

LD seems to be catching on as an e-book. I've gotten it mentioned in a couple of blogs, so far...neither one really suitable for work, to put it nicely. A few more are pending. My hope is it will catch on.

What little I did on OT, this evening, was maintenance -- seeing what names I have set up, who's who, what's what, where's where, that sort of stuff. Now that the story's beginning to take form, I need to know all this to keep myself from getting lost. It's already become quite a detailed piece of work, with a cast of characters all vying for attention. Last night, I wrote a get-together of a number of people who know Owen and they're comparing notes over steaming bowls of homemade chili, chips and beers out the wazoo.

Chaos keeps creeping closer as calamity careens and catastrophe calls, carrying claims of craziness and cretins.

(UPDATED NOTE: I should clarify -- "Vampire Shark" is how Any_Book was referred to by a member of ABAA, who was warning people about it in his blog.)

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