J.A. Pak: The Writing Blog

So I decided to take the plunge and experiment with KDP Select. For those of you who don’t know what that means…well, who really does? KDP is short for Kindle Direct Publishing and now they have this thing where if you publish your ebook exclusively with them for three months, you get to do a promo for your book all by your little self. Oh, also, Amazon customers enrolled in that Prime thing can borrow the book for free. Some writers swear they’ve sold tons of books signing up for KDP Select. Other writers don’t see the point. What I wanted to know was “Does enrolling actually get you better publicity?” As a test, I offered my short story “The Stone Garden”. I didn’t advertise at all. Got two books sold in three weeks. And absolutely no Prime member borrowed it (you get paid every time the book is borrowed). So, my answer was “no”. Time to do some promo. KDP Select authors have five days in which they can offer their books for free. Yes, a measly five days. I offered my book for free this morning and am now getting a strong stream of downloads. And not just from the US, but also UK and Germany. Lesson: Amazon customers like freebies (well, who doesn’t?). Question: Why doesn’t Amazon let its writers do their own promos all the time?

The Stone Garden

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Julien Breton, light calligrapher. Light as in photons. This guy actually does calligraphy in the air and captures it. How cool is that! And like Xu Bing, he fuses two different languages, Arabic and French.

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It’s official. So Easy To Love has been crowned Chick Lit for Smart Chicks.

To read a really lovely review of So Easy To Love, please click here!

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I’ve put up a Shelfari page for So Easy To Love. There you’ll find things like list of characters, favorite quotes, etc. Hope you check it out!

Oh! There’s one for Seal Skin as well!

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This is strictly for word nerds. And maybe science nerds. The Wall Street Journal wrote about an interesting scientific paper this last weekend. Published by a group of physicists, the paper examined the scanned books in Google’s collection and came up with some interesting facts:

More than half the language is considered dark matter (language not in dictionaries).

The death of words has increased while the birth of words has slowed.

Words have only 30 to 50 years to make it.

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I’ve put together a Pinterest board for all the movies mentioned in my novella So Easy To Love. Just click here!

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Every year AWP hosts a popular conference and book fair for writers and independent presses. I’ve never been, but I hear it’s a great way to meet writers and learn about the indie scene. At this year’s book fair, Kartika Review and Lantern Review teamed up to produce beautiful miniature broadsides with poems and micro stories on them. The broadsides are a little like business cards and they were given away at the the fair in exchange for donations or writing tasks. Now that’s a clever idea! Luckily, one of my tea poems was featured on a broadside. I don’t have a card with me, thus no photo, but here’s the poem.

the unfurling
     of tea leaves
celadon greens
     awaking from sleep

My thanks to Kartika and Lantern!

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Figures are trickling in for my So Easy To Love Feb free promo offer (ebook only) and I’m astonished. I sincerely thought the book would be mostly overlooked. Sony Reader users are even buying the book at full retail. Sales going strong for Seal Skin and Act of Creation & Other Stories as well. Thanks so much, everyone, for your support!

(BTW, B&N is still offering So Easy for free. Have no idea when they’ll update the price so, Nook users, get it while it’s still free!)

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Just came upon this interesting article in the NYT: In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books. In short, Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, has decided to archive as many paper books as he possibly can. Why? Because we might need them again.

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Carter makes a surprising announcement: “I think I’m going to try out one of those online dating services.”

“You got a good pic?” Kirsten asks.

“No. Not anything recent anyway. Thought I’d take some new photos. You guys wanna help me take some shots?”

Carter has one of those professional cameras with extra big phallic lenses and Kirsten goes nuts snapping photos. We go all over town, shooting Carter from front, back, all around. He even takes his shirt off, doing Adonis shots. All those hours at the gym has made Carter’s muscles very, very happy. Back home we scrutinize the pics. Kirsten finally says, “I think this is it.”

It’s perfect. The photo looks exactly like Carter, only with shitloads of va va va voom.

“You look hot, Carter,” I say.

“I’d reply to that,” Kirsten says. “And it’d be short and simple: Dear Ethan, bring a condom.”

We scream with laughter.

It was a good day.

(This is an excerpt from So Easy To Love, available free as an ebook at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and iTunes store until the end of February. A paperback version is available at Amazon.)

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