Milking Goats

Letter to our paper

"If the Dominion Post considers milking to be "unskilled," I invite your staff to try it with any of my goats."

--Heather March of Featherston (a charming village in Peter Jackson's Wairarapa).

Island of the Lost an Amazon Kindle bestseller

Price counts

Island of the Lost, published by Algonquin in 2007, did well in hardback, getting many rave reviews and a film option, but never made it into paperback. This was because the publisher launched it into digital format instead.  Over the years since, this eBook has done pretty well, being regularly rated at between 10,000 and 25,000, with occasional forays into the low thousands. It has always been one of the top sellers in nonfiction categories such as "New Zealand" and "Ships."



Suddenly, however, it zoomed, first through the triple digits, and then into the top one-hundred list. Currently, as you can see, it is sitting at # 79, and is number one in Social History.

Why this abrupt popularity?  It is all to do with price, I found.  For some strange reason, it was discounted to $1.99 for the day.  The price reverted to its old $11.99 this morning, but still it is highly rated. (And it is still $1.99 as a Nook book on B and N.)

So how do I capitalize on this?  I've published my second castaway book, The Elephant Voyage, with absolutely no fanfare at all, being far too busy for such essential things.  Reducing the price is an obvious move.  But what next?  And what does it portend for my fifth Wiki Coffin mystery, The Beckoning Ice?

Wine sails into Denmark

The BBC hails eco-friendly wine shipment

From Fiona Graham

On a warm summer's day in August, Danish wine merchant Sune Rosforth took delivery of 8,000 bottles of wine that had arrived from France.

From the offices of financial institutions flanking the quay, workers looked out at something that had not been seen in central Copenhagen for many years.

The ship that had brought the wine from the Breton port of Brest was a 32m-long brigantine called Les Tres Hombres.

Mr Rosforth's company, Rosforth and Rosforth, supplies restaurants in Denmark with organic and biodynamic wines.

Moving wine in a more eco-friendly fashion was something he had been talking about for some time with an Anjou wine producer who was also a skipper, but the plan had originally been to use canal barges.

"One day he called us to tell us that there was an opportunity to get the wine finally shipped by a boat, but it was going to be a sailing vessel," he says. "So we said, 'Fantastic, let's go!'"

The Tres Hombres set sail in 2009 from Amsterdam and has been shipping cargo ever since. It also gives land-lubbers the chance to sign on as part of the crew for a fee.

The wine shipment was planned with their business partners, the sailing freight transport company TransOceanic Wind Transport (TOWT). The company works with a small fleet of sailing ships, and provides buyers with a means of tracking the journey the goods take.

It's not some sort of adventurous poetic revival of 19th century technology, on the contrary it's something that is definitely addressing energy transition at sea," says TOWT founder Guillaume Le Grand.
The maritime industry is estimated to produce 3%-5% of global carbon dioxide emissions - making sailing very attractive to the organic and eco-friendly sector.

But as the price of oil rises, so does the cost of traditional cargo options.

This has led to research into alternative fuels such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a slowdown in the speed at which cargo freighters move at - a practice known as slow steaming.

For Mr Le Grand this all adds up to opportunity.

"Until 10-12 years ago, most of the ships were crossing oceans at about 20 knots average speed. Now they're going down below 15 knots," he says.

"[The Tres Hombres] crosses the ocean at 8 to 10 knots. It's not something that's ridiculous in terms of speed."

Great review of Beckoning Ice

From Historic Naval Fiction

Review: The Beckoning Ice by Joan Druett

Details

Created on Monday, 24 December 2012 00:00

By David Hayes

The Beckoning Ice is a mystery novel and, as you would expect from award winning historian Joan Druett, an extremely well written nautical novel as well. The plot of a great mystery novel must twist and turn and be totally unpredictable until the final pages and this is fully achieved in a hard to put down narrative.
Druett has created a great detective in Wiki Coffin with a complex family background which enables him to be the outsider when the plot demands it and it's good to see a new book in the series after a lengthy gap. He is half-Maori, half-Yankee "linguister," who also serves as the fleet representative of American law and order for the United States Exploring Expedition.
The story is set against a background of their work in the area of Cape Horn and when a sealing schooner hails the brig Swallow with a strange tale of a murdered corpse on an iceberg an investigation begins. The rivalries of the officers of the various ships lead to there being plenty of suspects for Wiki to investigate.
Combining historical and nautical accuracy with a fast paced mystery thriller has produced a marvelous book which is highly recommended.

Milestones for Goodreads

 

Personally, I find goodreads almost as hard as Librarything to navigate, but it's obvious that the fault is mine, because the figures in the infographic above are really impressive.

 

Congratulations, goodreads!

2013: the year of the comets

The name that will be on everyone's lips by the end of this coming year is ISON

The Independent reports that a visitor from space is arriving fast, and at the end of November will become our biggest star.


At the moment it is a faint object, visible only in sophisticated telescopes as a point of light moving slowly against the background stars. It doesn't seem much – a frozen chunk of rock and ice – one of many moving in the depths of space. But this one is being tracked with eager anticipation by astronomers from around the world, and in a year everyone could know its name.

Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations – brighter even than the full Moon.

Remarkably Ison might not be the only spectacular comet visible next year. Another comet, called 2014 L4 (PanSTARRS), was discovered last year and in March and April it could also be a magnificent object in the evening sky.

2013 could be the year of the great comets.
 

Fifty Shades heads list of unwanted gifts

IN THE past if you received an unwanted Christmas present you would throw it in the trash, or if you were brave enough, you re-gifted it.

Now, there is another option.  All over the world online second-hand sites have been flooded by people offloading their – sometimes wacky or worrisome – burden for cash.

In the United States, one person from Merrylands rejected a car – a Rav4 manual all-wheel-drive – they received, and on Christmas Day put an ad on eBay to sell it, with a starting bid of $14,500. At the other end of the price scale on eBay was a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch men’s cargo jeans ”[size] 36 unwanted XMAS Gift” selling for $39.99, plus $16 postage.

In Britain, a poll has named the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy as the present absolutely nobody wants, while DVDs of the Olympics and how to lose weight lag behind as second and third.  (How anyone could be tactless enough to give someone a DVD of how to lose weight has me utterly mystified.)

In New Zealand, the site TradeMe has been inundated with offers to get rid of unwanted gifts, ranging from a mouth phone to a signed copy of Pam Ayres's memoir.  Embarassing lingerie choices feature large. Someone sold a $1000 Air New Zealand travel card for $727 because of "personal circumstances."

Other unwanted presents included an All Blacks shirt, a mosaic Kiwiana mirror, a mini guitar and amp, printer, lingerie, a baby blanket and a Star Wars game.

Interested in bargains?  Google "unwanted Christmas presents."

  

Amazon's crackdown on reviewing

Can Amazon reader reviews be trusted?

Just recently, I noticed something peculiar.  I was getting emails from amazon.com asking me to rate books I had bought recently.  And, once I succumbed to hitting five or whatever stars, I was then coaxed into writing a proper review.

I rather liked this (though I found it odd), because I haven't been able to post reviews on amazon.com for many months, on account of a glitch in the amazon.com works that no one on their side of the great internet divide could fix, and was certainly beyond my amateur ability.

But lo, by answering the amazon.com email, I could post a review.  Hurrah. So I did it.

Evidently encouraged by this, they then asked me to rate yet another book--one that I had bought three years ago.  This seemed odder than ever, but it was a great book, so I embarked on another review.  The glitch took notice and took over again, but at least I got half it posted.

So what is going on with amazon.com and reader reviews?

According to a commentary by David Streitfeld in the New York Times (December 22, link in the header of this post), amazon.com are sort of cleaning up their act.  There have been too many author-friendly reviews, it seems, meaning five-star reviews posted by authors' friends and family, along with similar raves by mysterious gadgets called "sock-puppets."  So these are being removed in wholesale fashion.  Unfortunately, a lot of genuine reviews are being swept along in the tide -- and who is to say that your lover or your son is not a genuine fan?  Not to mention a fellow author who knows exactly how hard it is to get a book noticed?

This apparently self-destructive move by the amazon leviathan seems to be in response to a reader-led movement to get rid of unreliable reviews.  A prime target is Harriet Klausner, reviewer extraordinare, who flips through seven books a day, and posts a rave review if she has reached page 40 without dying of boredom.

As Streitfeld writes, "The dispute over reviews is playing out in the discontent over Mrs. Klausner, an Amazon Hall of Fame reviewer for the last 11 years and undoubtedly one of the most prolific reviewers in literary history.

"Mrs. Klausner published review No. 28,366, for “A Red Sun Also Rises” by Mark Hodder. Almost immediately, it had nine critical comments. The first accused it of being “riddled with errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation.” The rest were no more kind. The Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society had struck again.

"Mrs. Klausner, a 60-year-old retired librarian who lives in Atlanta, has published an average of seven reviews a day for more than a decade. “To watch her in action is unbelievable,” said her husband, Stanley. “You see the pages turning.”   

"Mrs. Klausner, who says ailments keep her home and insomnia keeps her up, scoffs at her critics. “You ever read a Harlequin romance?” she said. “You can finish it in one hour. I’ve always been a speed reader.” She has a message for her naysayers: “Get a life. Read a book.” ...

"Ragan Buckley, an aspiring novelist active in the campaign against Mrs. Klausner under the name “Sneaky Burrito,” is a little weary. “There are so many fake reviews that I’m often better off just walking into a physical store and picking an item off the shelf at random,” she said."       

Former Reserve Bank governor epublishes a thriller

Economic pragmatism by day, thriller-writing by night

Alan Bollard, novelist

Back in September 2010 I warmly reviewed an account of the economic crisis from a top-man-in-a-small-country point of view.  Called Crisis, it was co-written by Alan Bollard, who was governor of New Zealand's Reserve Bank, and the very expert author and oral historian, Sarah Gaitanos (also see my review of her terrific biography, The Violinist).

Crisis, unsurprisingly, went on to become a bestseller.

As the pages reveal, during the stress of the near-collapse of economies, Alan Bollard watched cricket to relax.  Well, that's what he told Sarah Gaitanos.  Now it turns out that he was penning a novel as well.  He enjoyed the publication process, it seems, because he made sure that the novel made it into ... well not exactly print, but as close as a self-published Kindle book can be.

The Amazon blurb for the book says Bollard “wrote this novel while he was Governor of The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, struggling through the Global Financial Crisis by day, and novel-writing by night”.

The synopsis:

It is wartime. Adam has been shot down on a bombing raid and incarcerated. He may be a quiet and unassuming man, but he is a technical wizard and he isn’t going to let the barbed wire hold him back. After liberation, he and his crew find themselves caught up in the early days of the Cold War: hunting Nazi sympathisers, confronting threatening Soviet forces, enjoying seedy Berlin night clubs, and meeting a mysterious German woman.

 

Back in London, Adam and his new bride May try to rebuild their lives after war. But it is grey and cold, and life is rationed. However Adam has some very big ideas, and they take him through crises in Whitehall, a rocky marriage, a return to Berlin, and an evolving spy drama.

One would think that the man who is the soon-to-be chief of the APEC secretariat would be busy enough -- but there it is, and with his name on it, too.  And all Indie authors should be celebrating.  If an economic genius sees a promising future in the booming world of ebook publishing, then he is confirming how they all feel.

Most expensive books of 2012

AbeBooks’ Most Expensive Sales in 2012

Casino Royale
by Ian Fleming

I love these lists of really, really pricey sales, whether in books, paintings, or bric-a-brac.  I wonder why people put out so much for these lovely old objects.  Because they love them, or to put away as an investment.

Naturally, I hope it is the former.

ABEBooks has put out their biggest sales of the year, price-wise, and the commentary follows. (What they didn't mention is that Louisa Alcott brought in the big money, too.)  Hit the link to see more, by category.

Our top 25 sales from 2012 illustrate the broad nature of rare books. There are modern first editions of iconic books, significant religious and theological works,and pioneering books of science and discovery. Our most expensive sale was a copy of Johann Bayer’s 1603 celestial atlas with 48 lavishly illustrated tables portraying the constellations identified by the Greeks and a 49th table showing 12 newly discovered constellations – it sold for $47,729. This was the first star atlas to cover the entire celestial sphere, and introduced a new system of star designation known as the ‘Bayer Designation.’

The second spot is occupied by one of the most successful media franchises in history, James Bond. When Ian Fleming first put pen to paper and wrote Casino Royale in 1953, there was no way he could have imagined the enduring popularity of 007. This inscribed first edition of Casino Royale sold for more than $46,000 and would grace any rare book collection.

In third place is Franz Kafka’s novel Die Verwandlung (aka The Metamorphosis), which sold for $30,000.The original German edition is highly sought after because of Kafka’s ability to deliver unexpected impact at the end of his sentences. This effect has been difficult for English translators to replicate so the original German script is essential for Kafka collectors.

In addition to the top 25 overall sales, you can also discover the most expensive sales in various categories including children's literature, art, science, poetry, and others.