FREE Gay E-Book
Update: Evidently, Twitter has suspended the account of the man with two penises…read more below.
Excuse the bad title of this part of the post, but I do these things for specific reasons. And this month I’m putting the e-book, The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance, up for free on certain web sites. I’ll leave it up for free from now until Valentine’s Day. It’s an interesting, naughty book, with interesting stories by some very excellent authors, and I first posted about doing this indie project almost one year ago. It took a long time to get this book executed from that post last January until the day I released it in September. And there’s also a three-story trilogy in the book that I included because it had a New Adult feel to it.
In any event…you can read more about The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance at the link above. I posted often about it last year. And below are two web sites where you can find it for free.
Allromanceebooks.com
Smashwords.com ( I love the way Smashwords does it: “Price: Free.” )
I would love to have put it up for free on Amazon, too, but they require a three month exclusive for me to do that and I typically garner more attention at the other web sites I linked to above.
2014 Publishing Predictions
I think this will probably be my last post about publishing predictions until 2015 unless someone really comes up with something spectacular that has the potential to disabuse a previous staple in publishing…like there will be no more print books produced after 2016, or something outrageous along those lines. And that’s because most publishing predictions tend to repeat themselves and we all wind up either yawning or rolling our eyes thanks to self-indulgence and bloggers being too presumptuous sometimes. I’m guilty of doing this myself and I’m not pointing any fingers here either. But at least I know I’m guilty of this. Not all bloggers are that honest with themselves.
First, there are Joe Konrath’s predictions for 2014. I’ve linked to them before but in case you missed them I’m doing it again because these predictions are more oriented toward indie publishing and authors who are all out there going it alone. And like him or not, there’s a reason why Konrath has so many followers. You can get there from here.
Second, here’s a list of 2014 predictions by blogger, Jane Litte, of Dearauthor I’m linking to because they tend to be more reader oriented. One prediction in particular is interesting at the end of the post. She suggests small digital first publishers will begin to either shutter completely or merge with other publishers, and that’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while. When small digital first Loveyoudivine.com went out of business last summer I was left with thirty homeless e-books. I’d worked with LYD for many years and I didn’t want to see those books just vanish forever. Thanks to the fact that I had already indie published several titles and I knew what I was doing I re-released all the LYD books through Ryan Field Press. In doing this I was able to price the books lower and sell more than I’d ever sold when they were up for sale at LYD. I think the fact that I released them in volume helped, too. Other authors I know have made the same claims to me in private. At one time small digital first publishers were only competing with themselves. But now they are competing with indie authors who can, and do, price lower, and big publishers who are now sensationalizing on all the things e-book pioneers have been doing for the past ten years. Basically, it is what it is, and I worry about small digital first publishers now more than ever.
Third, self-published author, Hugh C. Howey, wrote a post I enjoyed and even though this isn’t so much a publishing prediction I think it’s interesting because it talks about self-publishing and using the word “indie.” Most predictions I’ve read, even though I’m not linking to everything right now, have mentioned they think “indie” authors will continue to rise, sales in “indie” books will continue to rise, and we’ll all start referring to self-published authors as “indie” authors without even thinking twice about it. I remember just a few years ago that if you even suggested a self-pubbed author was an “indie” author comment threads would go wild. At this point, I don’t think most people even care anymore it’s become so common.
The thread asked if we shouldn’t drop the “indie” label and just think of ourselves as authors. I’m going the other way. I use the word indie a lot, but I try to remember to use the word self-publishing. Why? Because I’m damn proud of what I do.
I agree with Howey. I use both terms here often and I also use self-publishing on purpose.
Fourth, this next article is titled, Nine places to look in 2014 to predict the future of publishing. This one is a little more complicated and if you’re not that into publishing as a business you might want to just skim over it. But number six is interesting, where they discuss literary agents.
6. Literary agents have been dabbling with publishing for the past several years since ebooks and POD have made it possible to do it without inventory or an organization. Agencies have started publishing operations (E-Reads, Diversion, Rosetta) and many more have brought on the expertise to give authors help with digital services (Curtis Brown, Writer’s House). Publishers have expanded into author services with speaker’s bureaux, but, so far, none has thought to add literary agenting services except for the time-honored practices of selling rights (foreign, paperback, book club), which was part of their publishing process. Might a publisher either create or ally with a literary agency to create a way to “own” an author’s entire career? If one tried this in 2014, it wouldn’t come as a total surprise.
You can read them all here.
And that’s about it for this year, at least from what I’ve seen.
My only prediction is that the Lambda Literary Foundation will finally see that by not allowing digital books to enter the Lambda Awards they are living in the dark ages and that there are, indeed, many excellent digital first only books out there that are just as legitimate as a tangible print book. I have a feeling I’m wrong about this prediction and it will take much longer for the LLF to recognize e-books. But we can hope.
James Franco; Doubledickdude
I don’t know what it is about this guy, Doubledickdude, that brings out the artistic side in me, but since I posted about him last week I’ve found him on Twitter and on Facebook. And this next article gets into the more medically oriented explanations about the guy’s condition.
A still-unidentified man with the medical condition, diphallia, has presented his package to the world with a few photos and let me just say this about that: it (or they) is mighty bizarre to look at (NSFW: Photo 1, Photo 2). And by gosh, I am no prude. But he seems to have a full-fledged wanger going left and another going right connected at the base. Note: the image is not for those who ever want to have a normal night’s sleep again. But also keep in mind that the distance from the image to steady Jay Leno fodder for weeks and maybe months to come (John and Lorena Bobbitt, anyone?) is quite short. As in non-existent. Ditto his cyber-name—the double-dicked dude. Ditto his claim of bisexuality which takes on new meaning and possibilities given the equipment.
You can read more here. I had no idea there is a condition where a woman can have a double vagina.
Doubledickdude is on facebook, here. James Franco has already become part of the discussion, too.
And there’s even an open letter in The Village Voice to James Franco about the guy with two penises.
Let’s get through the superficial reasons first. This magical male unicorn (er, twonicorn?) is anonymous, which I estimate will last about another week. But here’s what we know about him so far: he’s sex-positive, brave, bisexual, and in a committed relationship with a man and a woman who’ve given him permission to cheat — but only with you.
You can read the rest of the letter to Franco, here.
Side note: it was actually a straight male friend of mine who told me about this guy with two penises.