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Books are like zucchini.

Imagine this: You’ve set aside a nice corner of your garden to grow some zucchini. You’ve never grown zucchini before and overplanted. You’ve got zucchini growing everywhere. The neighbor keeps tossing it back over the fence. The freezer is full of shredded zucchini. You’re actually searching epicurious for a new chilled zucchini soup recipe.

You need to sell your zucchini. You can’t go to your local grocery store- they have their own buyers. The local restaurant owner looks at you like you’re mad. You can’t set up a zucchini-ade stand in the front with the kids. You need a market.

So someone reminds you of the local farmer’s market. You go and rent a space for $20 and set up a table. And you wait. You Sit and do some people watching. Over there is the local herb farm. They’ve got gift baskets. Hey- There’s that restaurant owner selling homemade soup from the back of his van- you know the van with the graphics on it advertising his restaurant. That’s not fair. You can’t sell any zucchini, so you end up giving a lot of it away at the end of the day.  And next week, you’ll be back with some more, but you’ll be better prepared.

It used to be simple. Writers used to sell to agents and editors. There was no “Market.” This was like selling the zucchini directly to the restaurant or grocery store. Agents and publishers were the gatekeepers making sure the product was fresh for the consumer. They were easy to find: Go to the library, Check out ‘Writer’s Market: This year” or LMP and start searching. Look at the wirter Magazine and avoid the Book Doctor and Vanity Press scams. Send out your work, wait several months and then sob uncontrollably into your pillow after you’re rejected. Repeat.

Those days are gone. These markets don’t exist. Swallowed up by conglomeration or the internet, fewer and fewer publishers are buying unpublished writers. Heck, fewer and fewer publishers are buying proven writers.

You’ve still got a product to sell and you still need a way to sell it. So new markets have sprung up. Amazon, Smashwords and the rest allow you to sell directly to the consumer from the e-quivalent of an open air stall. Anyone can walk by and see your product, and choose to purchase.  Yeah it’s tough, and yeah you’re competing with professionals. But it’s becoming the only game in town. To get an editor to look at your work, you have to prove you can sell it first. It’s not a Catch-22. It’s just up to you.

So Here’s a list of Markets where you can start selling your work:

• Amazon Direct Publishing- The 80 lb. Gorilla. this is where you go first.  Why? You’re kidding, right?
• Pubit!- The 400 lb. Gorilla. Barnes and Nobles site. The nook seems to be here for the long haul, and it’s bringing your brick and mortar with it.
• Smashwords- the 200 lb. Gorilla, As an aggregator, gets your work out to multiple stores at once. Sony, Kobo, Aldiko, B&N, Apple and more. Also offers coupons. all for the same 15% cut your imaginary agent would get.
• Google Books- Google’s primary business ain’t books, and it shows.
• iBookstore- Still Not Easy.
• Scribd- Get your short works out here.
• Wattpad- I’ve never been impressed with Wattpad. It strikes me as a bunch of highschoolers publishing fan fic. But look at how many people use it. Oh, And there’s this author who has 13 Million reads on Wattpad. I Can’t afford to ignore this anymore. Can you?
• Goodreads- The FB of readers. Look, iOS has 40 million devices in use. FB has 800 Million.But you know how they don’t market reading as the  primary use? There’s a reason for that. Goodreads is nothing but Readers and Authors shouting over each other. It’s fun and just what you need.

Hi. I’m Dale Cozort, guest blogger.

I recently had a science fiction novel called Exchange published by Stairway Press, a small independent publisher. I previously self-published a book of Alternate History scenarios called American Indian Victories. I’m going to talk about how I’ve incorporated open source and free writing tools into my writing and promotion process, and then talk a little about the resulting book.

How did I use open source and free writing tools to write and promote those books? First, I do most of my plotting in Ywriter, which is free, though apparently not open source. I like the structure of YWriter, and use it to develop characters and locations as well as the plots themselves. I do most of my writing these days using Write or Die (see the links section for the online version). I set it for twenty minute sessions and try to write 450 words in those twenty minutes. Most times I don’t quite make it, but I come close. I like writing in a series of sprints because it keeps my inner editor in check while I write. It works well for me. I’ve written over 80,000 words for each of the last three NaNoWriMo months.

I do have a website at www.DaleCozort.com. It’s partly for promotion and partly for my alternate history essays. I started out using NVU as my HTML editor, then switched to Kompozer. Both are open source, as is Filezilla, my FTP program. I use Scribus, an open source desktop publishing program, to create newsletters for promotion, and use Gimp and sometime Pinta for the graphics work. Once in great while I even find a use for TuxPaint, the open source kids’ painting program. A free e-book program called Calibre helped me help the publisher debug a couple of glitches in the e-book version of Exchange.

I’m sure I’m missing some open source tools I use from time-to-time, but those are the big ones. I could do all of those jobs with proprietary tools, but the cost of keeping them all current would be prohibitive. I hate to admit it here, but while I do sometimes use OpenOffice, I usually use Microsoft Word because my work standardized on it and I need to be able to support people using it.

So what about the resulting book? What is Exchange about? It’s set in the near future. Our reality is experiencing a series of Exchanges. Basically, with three hours warning a town-sized chunk of our reality switches places with a same-sized chunk of a reality with no humans but a lot of fierce animals. The two chunks stay in the wrong reality for a week or two, then snap back where they belong. If you wander off the Exchanged chunk and stay there, you’re stuck in the other dimension.

It’s an interesting concept because you end up with an empty world that should be infinitely exploitable, but is surprisingly hard to exploit. You can’t get enough resources into an Exchange zone in three hours to make a viable colony in the other reality, and international agreements prohibit governments from sending people across on the piece of the other reality that has been our reality for a week or two. The agreements are backed up by international observers and the fact that Exchanges can be detected all over the world, so other countries know when and where one is going on.

A big concern: diseases and vermin spreading from the alternate reality to ours. The military and National Guard send teams to protect anyone they can’t evacuate and keep animals from the other reality from getting to our. They also send autonomous solar powered drones into the other reality so they can radio back information if they get within radio range of another Exchange.

That’s just the background. The story itself pits computer guru Sharon Mack against some very high odds as she tries to get her kidnapped daughter back from a group of crazies who want to settle in the other reality with no preparation. That means she goes up against fierce predators, escaped convicts, a marauding street gang and a cult, not to mention an ex-husband. They say to make your characters struggle, and I certainly do that.

If you have any questions about open source or writing or Exchange feel free to ask. I’ll check back every once in a while and would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Gotta share the “Simpsons” The Book Job” Episode while it’s up on Hulu:

Here’s a little scene-setting prologue I’ve been waffling on. Obviously it needs some work ( Ugh. Passive tense. It’s.) but I think it’s just going out the window. It doesn’t do anything in the book at all. If it gets cut, that’s the three out of the first five chapters I’ve cut as throat clearing.

The Bull Torosaur trotted along the creek bank and up over the edge to the plains. The wind stung his eyes. He lifted its snout to sniff the cool fall air. Winter was coming: the scent of dry grass and sage was carried on the breeze, along with something… else. It had been a cool summer, and it seemed to the old bull that things were slowly changing. The rest of his herd snorted and stamped behind him. A few of the cows had trotted past him: They knew where he was headed. He snorted and broke into a short gallop. It was important to be in front, to keep an eye out for the predators. It has been alive for most of a century and it had led the herd for most of the last two decades. Over the last few years though, challenges to his leadership had become scarce. There were only a few bulls left in the herd who were big enough and smart enough to challenge him, and most had already been defeated. He snorted. In a few years, as he weakened in old age, maybe. Maybe he would lose, and be able to go lie down in the green grass for one last time.

The herd came to a cut in the prairie and began moving parallel to it along a straight line. The Bull pushed to the edge of the herd and stopped. This was once not here. This was new. This was one of the things that was changing. The bull sniffed the air again. No scent of predators, but this was dangerous. He crossed over the cut and bellowed. The herd swerved, the older cows already following him, the rest taking a few tentative steps but wanting to continue in the direction they were going. The great machine slowly changing gears.

He crested a small hillock and stopped. Still no scent of danger, but this was the most dangerous time. His herd, his family, was crossing over the cut. Several of the younger Torosauri were balking and had to be goaded over the unnatural boundary by the older members. Some of the calves had broken out in a run and were playing, chasing each other, their mothers bellowing disapproval. He scanned the horizon, looking for trouble. There.

Off in the distance a black plume of smoke rose. The old bull knew this predator. It wasn’t like the old ones. It didn’t cull the old and the lame, it didn’t grab a calf and leave. This one was new, and it left death in its wake.

He bellowed in panic and turned, building momentum off the top of the hill and breaking into a gallop. The nearest cows and bulls sensed the panic in turn. They began to scream and call, urging the rest of the herd across the cuts before the monster was upon them. A low, rolling thunder began to build as the herd stampeded.

From the monster came a high pitched, shrill cry of triumph and it was upon them. It’s powerful body catching those animals closes to the cut in the earth and hurling them sideways, their backs and necks broken. It was a serpent, larger than any the old bull had ever seen. It moved unnaturally fast, scales undulating underneath its body with a rhythmic chugging. Steam and smoke pored from its head.

But the worst was yet to come. The Old bull knew from experience that the monster was infested with stinging insects. He had the scars along his back to prove it. As the head of the beast past him, he could hear the noise of the insects. There was a sharp crack, then another. The cow to his left fell, her neck geysering blood. The air was swarming with the insects now- sharp cracks from the back of the serpent and the buzzing of the insects as they past overhead.

The bull had been lucky so far. He had lived through this many times before, had protected his herd first as the ground changed beneath them and the monster’s course was laid in by its herd- the small, upright parasites that gathered along its route. He had protected his herd as the monster came, kept it away from the tracks it made as they made their yearly migration.

He couldn’t take it anymore. He had watched as his herd had shrunk. As other bulls and their clans had disappeared over the years. Once, his kind, and the others, the Ceratotops, the Triceratops, the great Brachiosaurs, had blanketed the plains. But each year there were less, and now he was one of the last. He roared and changed direction, closing the gap between him and the monster. He could smell the oily slick scent it gave off- something cold and mineral like. Not like an animal at all. He lowered his head and leaned into the monster, then punched, his shoulder slamming into the hard sides of its body. This was what he wanted. This was the challenge he was waiting for. Not some young bull after the cows, but this monster. To knock it off it’s rails, to leave it screaming and writing in the dirt, bloody and broken. The monster rocked, but didn’t leave its trail. He slammed into it again, and again, falling farther behind along its body.

Eventually, the serpent past him, the bright red of its tail fading off into the distance. The bull stumbled along the track, then sank to his knees. He could feel the blood along his shoulder, but there was no pain. He senses the herd crowding around him, but he was ready to sleep now. He had challenged the monster and lost.

The age of the dinosaurs was ending

 

In the club car, The Journalist from Chicago had put down his binoculars and had taken up his coffee cup again.

“Do they often attack the train like that?” he asked his companion.

The old soldier lowered the dime novel just enough for the journalist to see his eyes. He glanced out the window, then back over at the little man who insisted on interrupting him every few miles.

“Nope. They Didn’t before. But then, I reckon they didn’t have to when there was more of them.”

He went back to reading. The journalist glanced back out the window.

“Magnificent beasts. Just Magnificent. When get to Kansas City, I’ll make sure I get a pair boots made from some skin. Just gotta have some to be a real westerner, you know.”