Well folks I’ve been sitting on these announcements for some time because I’ve been waiting for all the contractual paperwork to come through and then for the website to be updated, but here goes:
Cheyenne Publishing has picked up 9 new books to be published within the next year. Check out the all-new revamped Cheyenne Publishing website. I was lucky enough to snag two authors from Linden Bay Romance which was bought by Samhain last year. In addition to that, I also signed Hayden Thorne with a new YA historical with a German Christmas theme. Here is the list with the planned release dates.
Frost Fair by Erastes – August
Ransom by Lee Rowan (Royal Navy Series Book 1) – August
Winds of Change by Lee Rowan (Royal Navy Series Book 2) – August
Eye of the Storm by Lee Rowan (Royal Navy Series Book 3) – September
Speak Its Name: A Trilogy by Charlie Cochrane, Lee Rowan & Erastes – October
Walking Wounded by Lee Rowan – December
Home is the Sailor by Lee Rowan (All New Entry in the Royal Navy Series) – January 2010
Sail Away: A Trilogy by Lee Rowan (revised from Linden Bay version) – March 2010
The Glass Minstrel by Hayden Thorne – Fall 2010
And we have cover art for the August releases! 
Cheyenne Publishing will only be publishing the print versions of the former Linden Bay titles. To find out about the eBook versions please visit Bristlecone Pine Press.
For all you eBook lovers out there who don't have a Kindle device, The Filly is now available at Mobipocket and is also available at All Romance eBooks. These eBook versions have been published by Bristlecone Pine Press. Don't go there expecting to get a PDF of the book because Bristlecone doesn't deal with PDFs due to security issues. The mobipocket reader is a free download that lets you read eBooks on your PC, so now you have no excuses.
Well, I’m finally to the climax of Not to Reason Why. If it’s possible, this is part of the story I have most been looking forward to writing but at the same time dreading it as well. The battle scene is a logistical nightmare to write, and I’ve been freshening up on my research to prepare for it.
I almost never share work-in-progress, un-edited, but here are the last two paragraphs I wrote yesterday:
( A little peek, if you dare )
Author Mel Keegan has created this fabulous new wiki GLBT Bookshelf. Anyone can join for free, and once Mel has accepted you in, you can edit away! It's quite addicting, setting up an author page, adding your book into different categories, booklists and what-not. You do need a basic understanding of HTML code, which most anyone who runs a blog should have anyway. The only little catch is that the whole site is one big co-op and Mel will be running periodic advertising campaigns which all participants are expected to pitch in a dollar or two each time. But considering what a great resource it is and all the publicity it is capable of generating, I think a couple of dollars a few times a year is quite a bargain.
Tales from Lost Voices in Battle
This month for the very first time on Amazon, my monthly Kindle sales have eclipsed my print sales for "The Filly" I find this quite disheartening. I imagine it is because the number of people who now own Kindle devices has finally reached a point to seriously contend with print buyers. I know, it's the way of the future and it saves trees, but I like my print books!!
Now that contracts are in order, I am pleased to announce the novellas that will be included in the as-yet-untitled historical military anthology:
Blessed Isle by Alex Beecroft – 1790 British Age-of-Sail
Not to Reason Why by Mark R. Probst – 1876 US Cavalry
No Darkness by Jordan Taylor – 1915 British WWI
Our One and Only by E. N. Holland – 1944-1985 US WWII and aftermath
Hopefully we will select a title and get some cover art soon. The anthology will be published in January 2010 by Cheyenne Publishing and Bristlecone Pine Press.
I rarely go to movies anymore, as I prefer the comfort of my home theater, but every once in a while a picture comes along that we just can’t wait for on video. So we went to see “Star Trek” and loved it. It had a great sense of humor about the original lore, and was brilliant in poking fun at the clichés of the series and yet still managing such reverence to the franchise. The acting was great and the whole look and feel of the film was edgy. Casting was perfect as well, in fact to get the guy who plays Spock, did they clone Leonard Nimoy? And for all the die-hards out there complaining about the discrepancies, get off it because ( spoiler under the cut )I do wish they would have thrown in a wee bit of gayness just for kicks, since Roddenberry had promised to introduce gay storylines to the series before he died. For some odd reason the Star Trek Universe seems a bit devoid of homosexuality.
The deadline for submissions for the Historical Military Novella Anthology has finally passed. We were pleasantly surprised to receive quite a good number of entries. I won’t disclose how many or from whom. I do wish I could publish them all as there is some exceptional talent involved, but unfortunately there are only two spots to fill. I have a really good feeling that this anthology may do very well. It is such an exciting project to put together. Once the final selections have been made and contracts are in place, we will make an announcement with all the details.
I’m not going to start another rant. I’ll just respond with two small points. First, I am in agreement with Professor Shirky in that, as I have stated before, I believe that it was an honest mistake on Amazon’s part. Second, the call-to-arms, while it may not have been a completely fair indictment, did serve one useful purpose in that it brought to light some problems with Amazon’s cataloging practices that were not being resolved by individual author complaints.
And speaking of weird cataloging algorithms gone haywire, can anyone explain to me why Tower.com considers this book list to be Christian anthologies?
What this preamble is leading up to is that while I stand by my statement that I don’t believe that Amazon intentionally meant to de-rank all 57,000 titles caused by the “ham-fisted error,” it doesn’t change the fact that the policy quoted to me by their representative does exist. New evidence has been popping up as authors of gay and lesbian books now cite examples of Amazon de-rankings occurring as far back as January of 2008. Craig Seymour was the first author to speak up on Sunday and he posted a blow-by-blow account of his month long battle to get Amazon to reinstate his ranking.
Now, author of lesbian fiction Francine Saint Marie has told her story in a discussion forum. She makes a pretty good case for how there seemed to be a built-in filtering algorithm in the Kindle listing catalog that was de-ranking her books (she later surmised that it was based on keywords in her product tags) and Amazon representatives were clueless in how to defeat it.
Though the Kindle version of my book The Filly, never did get de-ranked and the word “gay” was used in several of my product tags, so you can take that for what it’s worth. There are still gay-themed Kindle titles that, like Francine’s, were unranked before this fiasco and are still unranked now. Strings Attached is a very popular title in paperback, so it stands to reason the Kindle version would be a big seller too and yet it has never been ranked.
What I’d like to know is why was there a “switch” that could be flipped in the first place, by a Frenchman or otherwise? (Why the heck was his nationality of any relevance? One doesn’t have to be well-versed in English to be competent in one’s job.) The answer seems obvious. Amazon has probably been experimenting with an automated way to filter out adult material and it back-fired with an over-zealous algorithm.
Furthermore, should adult material even be filtered at all? Why not either completely refuse to sell it or start a whole separate Amazon called AmazonBlue that warns customers they must be 18 to enter?
But short of doing that, the real question is how can Amazon feasibly execute their “we don’t rank adult material” policy? What constitutes adult material is a gray area. Didn’t Larry Flynt already fight that battle? With such a wide range of explicitness in literature, the burden of deciding what falls into the adult category would be nearly impossible. You would need an impartial ratings board akin to that of the MPAA to rate each and every book. Why don’t we just go back to the old days and let the Catholic Church make the decisions and then they can stamp “condemned” wherever they see (un)fit. I think you catch my drift.
Oh, and on a completely separate subject, I love Susan Boyle. I could listen to her sing with that sweet voice all day long.
It’s the day after and all I can say is wow. In the grand scheme of things it was just a small news item, really just a blip compared to Somali pirates and what not. But as it’s unlikely I’ll ever capture fame as a writer, this is probably as close as I’ll ever get to it. I actually had very little to do with it, yet my name has popped up quite a bit in the news stories about it. A very organized group led by Erastes started the #Amazonfail campaign on twitter pointing everyone back to my blog. As a result, I had over 400 comments to my blog, 35 LJers friended me, I was interviewed on the telephone by The New York Times and The Seattle Times. I got many mentions in various new sources over the web, I was linked to by Andrew Sullivan and Michelangelo Signorile. My name was shown on television on the Channel 4 news in the UK. My name and book was mentioned on OutQ news on Sirius/XM radio. I don’t deserve any of it. All I did was blog about what an Amazon representative told me was the reason my book was de-ranked, and it just so happened that the response was a blunder, but it was enough to start a furor.
Thank you to Motoko Rich from the New York Times, Amy Martinez from The Seattle Times, Erastes, Lee Rowan, Charlie Cochrane, and I mustn't forget Ashlyn D - I know it wasn't your fault dear, and finally my own little troll davenatts - I'll never understand why some people feel the need to smear themselves with honey and then parade around in a bear camp!
I quote Publisher’s Weekly, “There is no new adult policy.” A lie? The key word there is “new.” Not providing a sales ranking for adult material, a policy explained to me by the customer service rep, is actually an old policy. Evidence: Here’s a report from April 2008 that hints at the policy www.businessinsider.com
“A glitch had occurred in its sales ranking system” Is that the truth? Oh, you betcha. Though the glitch was most likely human error in that while attempting to find a lazy way to conform to the “old” policy of not ranking adult material, a horrible miscalculation was made and many not-so-adult books fell into the trap.
So my guess is, yes Amazon has a policy in place not to display the sales rankings of adult material, but no, they never intended for gay and lesbian material, per se, to be classified as “adult.” It’s a major faux-pas which I’m sure they mean to correct.
On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.” There was buzz, What’s going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books? Is it just a major glitch in the system? Many of us decided to write to Amazon questioning why our rankings had disappeared. Most received evasive replies from customer service reps not versed in what was happening. As I am a publisher and have an Amazon Advantage account through which I supply Amazon with my books, I had a special way to contact them. 24 hours later I had a response:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
Yes, it is true. Amazon admits they are indeed stripping the sales ranking indicators for what they deem to be “adult” material. Of course they are being hypocritical because there is a multitude of “adult” literature out there that is still being ranked – Harold Robbins, Jackie Collins, come on! They are using categories THEY set up (gay and lesbian) to now target these books as somehow offensive.
Now in fairness I should point out that Amazon has also stopped ranking many books in the "erotica" categories as well which includes straight erotica. But that's a whole other battle that I'll leave to the erotica writers to take on.
Now I could probably convince the automatons at Amazon that The Filly is YA and therefore not “adult” in the least, and I could probably even convince them to reinstate my ranking. But if they are excluding books just on the basis of being “gay” then by all means exclude mine too because I don’t want them just to reinstate the “nice” gay books, they need to reinstate all the gay books and if they are really going to try and exclude so-called “adult” material, then how come this has an Amazon ranking?
Here is a screencap of the case log from Amazon. Keep clicking on the image to make it bigger
************For everyone who has commented on my blog - Thank you very much. and everyone who has asked if they can use my name and link back to me. YES please do. Spread the word. Amazon will be beside itself in the face of all this fury!
*******UPDATE**************
Publisher's Weekly now has a story here, that an Amazon spokesperson claims this is all a glitch and they have no such new policy. My caselog is still active in my Advantage account with the response from customer service rep Ashlyn D. Also I'd like to point you to this blog of an author who received this same response from Amazon back in February. Amazon has some 'splainin' to do!
***********UPDATE #2******************
As of 8 AM this morning (April 13th) The Filly has had its ranking reinstated by Amazon. I also noticed Alex Beecroft's False Colors was reinstated as well. Many others are not, so they haven't fixed the "so-called" glitch as of yet.
*******FINAL UPDATE******************
Amazon has released a statement of apology stating that it was an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" that pertained to 57,310 listings. They also say that It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles. So it's over. Amazon admits they goofed, and I, for one, shall give them the benefit of the doubt and say I do not believe that there was any malicious intent. Case closed.
When it comes to book recommendations, I can't possibly have a higher opinion than I do for Tamara Allen's Whistling in the Dark. Here is my review at Amazon.com. For anyone out there who thinks my opinion actually counts for something, go and buy this book! I forgot to mention this in the review, but Lethe Press also did an outstanding job on the jazz-themed interior layout as well as a beautiful cover design. I've seen so many small press books with such shoddy interior layout, it's nice to find a publisher who makes the extra effort to give you a really professional, quality product. Bravo!
Lessons in Love by Charlie Cochrane over at Reviews by Ruth
Speak Its Name: Trilogy 111 over at Gay/Lesbian Fiction Reviews
and right here for Frost Fair by Erastes
Erastes’ third novel (second released but third written) may be short (about 40,000 words) but is certainly not lacking in content. ( Review of Frost Fair under the cut )
Writing progress on Not to Reason Why
I've finally chosen a title for my novella. For me, titles are the biggest source of grief in the whole writing process. Well, maybe the second biggest. The biggest would have to be the synopsis! Titles are such a pain that if I were required to come up with chapter titles, I'd probably end up shooting myself in the head. I usually kick around a few different "working" titles, but they are always just a little off. I actually think this one may stick.
( I'll reveal the title under the cut... )
I'm making good progress with my word count as you can see from the meter below. I also chose this new userpic icon to represent my novella. It is great to be writing again.
Starting with Custer of the West from 1967, ( Read more about how WRONG they got it )
By the way, one movie (actually a TV mini-series) I haven't been able to track down is Son of the Morning Star from 1991. If anyone has a DVD recording of this and would like to let my borrow it, I'd appreciate it. I'd even pay the shipping expenses.
This ties in with a Submissions call that my publishing company (Cheyenne Publishing) is putting out in a joint venture with Bristlecone Pine Press. We're looking for two novellas about Gay/Lesbian military personell in a historical setting. Be sure to check out the guidelines here.
I'd also like to announce that Cheyenne Publishing is branching out and through a special arrangement with Bristlecone Pine Press, is publishing the paperback version of L. A. Mischief by P. A. Brown. The book is a sequel to the successful L. A. Heat and will be available in April.
And finally here's a very thoughtful review of The Filly from Teens Read Too. Thank's Cat for the eloquent (and might I also add, balanced) review!
Here's my street on Christmas Eve. You can see they didn't even bother to plow for us - and yes my 2-wheel-drive car with no chains got stuck in the middle of the street! Thank God for a helpful neighbor who pulled me out.
And due to the foul weather mail service is delayed, meaning that the gifts we mail-ordered didn't make it despite the "guaranteed Christmas delivery." *Bah humbug, grinch grinch* Here's my mailbox that the Postal Service figured was too snowbound for delivery. Notice my lonely footprints in the snow, going out, ever hopeful to find something inside. (Me, that is... not my footprints)
Anyway I did get an early Christmas present - a blu-ray player, and I've been having a ball watching high-definition movies.
I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday, and a glorious new year with much success.
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markprobst- Mark R. Probst
- Cheyenne Publishing
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