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Apr. 28th, 2016 03:24 pmEditing is haaaaard. /whine
I discovered last night that Barbara Hambly has a new Ben January short story out AND a new story for her Bride of the Rat God characters. (Which, incidentally, is my other favorite of her books, besides the Ben January ones, even though almost no one has heard of it. It feels slightly dated now, especially the "cursed Chinese artifact" that MacGuffin-fuels the plot, but it's still a delightful little slice of 1920s Hollywood. It was the first of her books I ever read, back in the early '90s, and I'm thrilled she's still interested in writing in the 'verse.)
There's an interesting economics lesson in this, though. When she first started writing these and selling them off her website, a number of years ago, I didn't bat an eye at paying $5 a pop for downloadable PDFs that I had to read on the computer. Her prices haven't changed, but now that ebooks are big and there's an accepted pay scale for them, it feels weird to pay $4.99 for a novella-length story. I'm still happy to buy them and support her, but it's just interesting to me, because several years ago it felt perfectly reasonable to pay $5 for a self-published short story, and now there's a different price scale in effect, and I'd only expect to pay a buck or two. An object lesson in the dangers of undercharging, perhaps.
Anyway, I've already read the Ben January one and it is a delight as always. Looking forward to the other.
I discovered last night that Barbara Hambly has a new Ben January short story out AND a new story for her Bride of the Rat God characters. (Which, incidentally, is my other favorite of her books, besides the Ben January ones, even though almost no one has heard of it. It feels slightly dated now, especially the "cursed Chinese artifact" that MacGuffin-fuels the plot, but it's still a delightful little slice of 1920s Hollywood. It was the first of her books I ever read, back in the early '90s, and I'm thrilled she's still interested in writing in the 'verse.)
There's an interesting economics lesson in this, though. When she first started writing these and selling them off her website, a number of years ago, I didn't bat an eye at paying $5 a pop for downloadable PDFs that I had to read on the computer. Her prices haven't changed, but now that ebooks are big and there's an accepted pay scale for them, it feels weird to pay $4.99 for a novella-length story. I'm still happy to buy them and support her, but it's just interesting to me, because several years ago it felt perfectly reasonable to pay $5 for a self-published short story, and now there's a different price scale in effect, and I'd only expect to pay a buck or two. An object lesson in the dangers of undercharging, perhaps.
Anyway, I've already read the Ben January one and it is a delight as always. Looking forward to the other.