Online Book Review

Online Book Review Readers,

Today, I am happy to bring you an original interview for the Online Book Review with author Edward C. Patterson. Mr. Patterson is a veteran of indie publishing with a dozen online books available and a huge internet and online following for his books, writing, and articles. His latest series, the Jade Owl Legacy is available as an online book from Kindle, Mobipocket, and Smashwords.com. We are pleased here at the Online Book Review to hear his insights.

Thanks, Edward, for joining us. And thanks to everyone for visiting us here today at the Online Book Review.

–Stacey Cochran

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Tell our readers about your Jade Owl Series of novels.

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: The Jade Owl Legacy series is a five book series, of which the first three books are published. It’s an epic fantasy combining modern day elements with historic Chinese elements. They are blended together with fantasy and some unusual characters. The setting is in San Francisco and several points in China and follows the adventures of a band of China hands who try to figure out the secret of a long lost relic, a Jade figurine that was reportedly commissioned by the Empress Wu of the T’ang Dynasty. As it turns out, this is just the surface of the secret, because the figurine — the Jade Owl, has a will of its own and orchestrates a far-flung adventure for Professor Rowden Gray and his band of Sinologists. The work was inspired by my own background in Chinese History (I have an MA and doctoral credits from Columbia University) and my penchant to develop characters from the diversity pool. It’s a fast paced page-turner that hopefully readers will wish to never end. Since I still have two more books to write in the series, they might just get their wish. (Just kidding).

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: You’ve been writing creatively pretty much your whole life. What is it that motivates you to write? What is it that has driven your creative output all these years?

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: There is something musical and enchanting in words. They sing to me and I respond. That they can be sewn together to bring characters to life, to paint scenery and express ideas just mystifies me. Always has. The Cherokee say (and I am Cherokee) that words are “leaves in the wind” that once committed to paper sail from place to place and tell the world their tale. Scattering the leaves will share my imagination across time and space. I focus on building a kingdom of words and invited just one reader to take the oath of citizenship and to pay it forward to populate this literocracy to the borders. The power of words creates fiction — that is, I tell lies to express what I perceive to be the truth. This is what drives me to create. I’ve been telling these lies since I’ve been eight years old and now I’m sixty-two. I confess it freely. No lie.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Where did your interest in China and Chinese history begin?

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: My mother encouraged me to read Pearl S. Buck, who actually ill represented China and Chinese culture. However, the novels are powerful and kept my interest. Then, in college, I majored in History — first Japanese History, and then Chinese. I became obsessed with China, especially the Imperial Period. By the time this ran its course (never really has), I engaged in writing a dissertation on the restoration of the Southern Sung Dynasty (which soon became a novel on the same subject some 37 years ago — the recently published The Academician). My own travel in China (with my mother) was a supreme adventure, which was captured in various ways in The Jade Owl Legacy series.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Tell us a little bit about “Are You Submitting Your Work to a Traditional Publisher”? I love the cover, by the way.

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: Thank you. The cover is a funny thing, you know — a typewriter sailing into an Iceberg — my visual representation of where I feel the Traditional Publishing Industry is heading. I wrote Are You Submitting . . . (RUS for short) as a give back to the Indie author community. The community is so supportive. I had published eight books by that point and wanted to encapsulate my views on the subject and provide a guide to those who were still struggling to Indie publishing. I also wanted to delineate the differences between Indie authoring and self-publishing, because there was a stigma with the term “self-publishing.” And there should be, because so many people publish without taking the full responsibility for all the steps that assure that readers get the best possible product. Just because an author eliminates the middle people does not make the tasks those individuals perform go away. The author needs to take those tasks up and do them better and with more diligence than the traditional publisher. I was blogging and threading the same information again and again, so much so that I thought that the little book would be a good reference point. I even threshed it out with craft articles on the novelization process and revising novels. I did not expect the overwhelming positive response the work has received. I still regard it as a give back to the community and offer it for free most of the time in ebook and at the lowest possible price in paperback with only a $ .06 royalty. It might not make me rich, but it does make me feel all the richer.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: You’ve published your books in a number of online ways: Kindle, Mobipocket, and Smashwords. How do the sales of these three compare to one another and how do you make folks in these three different communities aware of your work?

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: Kindle is King (or Queen, as I would prefer). The majority of my new reader acquisitions have been via the Kindle. I sell one paperback for every fifteen Kindle sales. However, I feel it is important to have a POD version of a book in all its ISBN glory. I get few sales on Mobipocket (although this French subsidiary of Amazon has a wide distribution arm). I believe the reason for this is that, unlike Amazon.com, their search and retrieval engine is not marketing driven. Amazon pushes out to its readers. Its marketing engine will do more for your title than you could possibly think of yourself. Mobipocket and Smashwords are requirements, in my opinion, but much like maintaining your own website. Pure website sales are generally thin and comparable of having your books sold by small publishing sites — small scale. Amazon is the place to be and on the Kindle. Smashwords, however, has advantages also. My sales there pick up whenever they have a sale (there’s one going on now). However, Smashwords supports a wide range of formats and if you want your ebook on the Sony Reader, it’s a good bet.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: You are admittedly a huge fan of the Kindle and have been an owner since 2007. What changes does Amazon need to make to make their reader more universally accepted?

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: I am a big fan of the Kindle. What gave you the hint? In fact I believe that the Statue of Liberty may be holding a torch in one hand, but the other thing she holds close to her breast is . . . a Kindle DX. I think price is an issue for most prospective Kindle consumers. I also, from my own experience, find the DX to be more attractive than the K1 or K2. I am the first American author to do a book reading using the Kindle DX (just two days after the release) and at that event there was as much interest in my DX as there was in my book (drat it). People that scarcely have noticed my Kindle 1 go out of their way to ask for a demonstration of the Kindle DX. The price still chills many people. However, all the little finery items that users weep for (folders, color, and pigs that fly) are to me less important than getting the product down to a “peoples” price. Amazon has got their ideal Kindle in the DX. Now they need a $150 price. That said and done, the DX is worth every nickel of what I paid for it. I am content with the 900 items (6,000 plus titles) that I tote around like some mini Library of Congress.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: What are your thoughts regarding online books and today’s emerging writer?

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: I encourage writers to write and, if their book is ready for prime time, to publish. Statistics state there’s some 100,000 titles published annually in the US, so a tidal wave of new unknown authors won’t make those that are out there less new or more unknown. This industry is not one that has competition. For every book a reader selects, there isn’t a loser among the non-selected. The winner is the reader. Yeah! Readers not only have a wider and more cost-effective selection of titles, they also have more power than the old fashion acquisition editor does. In traditional publishing, the first obstacle for authors was getting through to that great rubber reject stamp wielding editor who sat in a room filled with in-boxes and slush piles. Now, it is the reader that commands the success of an author. If the readers embrace a book, regardless of quality (some things never change), it’ll take off. Buzz is more important than cocktail meetings at Sardis. Bookshelves in Barnes & Noble are a side dish, while Oprah’s couch is a lottery ticket. Emerging writers must do something that they may not have even considered before, but they must now consider it. They must write a novel that engages a reader (just one) enough that that reader will return to your next book and tell someone else about your work. It’s a mighty obligation. With Indie publishing we no longer have that rubber stamp of rejection. We have the indelible public label of an Amazon reader book review. Five stars or one-star, it is more rewarding or damning than any rejection letter a writer can hang on the proverbial wall of shame and regret.

ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: What changes do you think we’re likely to see in how books are distributed, bought, and sold over the next 5-10 years?

EDWARD C. PATTERSON: We see it now in the Kindle. The complete Dickens floating through the air in sixty seconds over whispernet. I remember toting my twenty-volume Dickens home on the New York City subway over a four-day period. (It’s now in public storage). Brick and mortar bookstores are dwindling and diversifying, although coffee has always been popular in book shops. POD is also changing things. The old POD schemes, where authors contracted with self-publishing and vanity houses for exorbitant prices, are crumbling because once printed, price controls put these books on-line (rarely on shelves) for outlandish prices that left the books unsold. New POD arrangements like CreateSpace have no up-front charges and permit an author to lower their prices considerably to compete with traditionally published titles. They may not fly off the shelf, but they stand a chance of moderate sales. The Jade Owl in paperback lists through CreateSpace at $15.45 (598 pages). Comparable size books using other POD and marketing methods run between $25.00 and $30.00. So I take only a $1.00 royalty. I want readers not dust collectors. I believe that over the next decade book distribution methods will continue to allow authors to control their pricing, and mass distributors like Amazon will win, if they haven’t won already. Is it all rosy? Well not for authors who are in it to make money. Virtual distribution forces prices down, so to authors who want to make money, I suggest a career selling Ginzu knives.