Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Waiting on Wednesday....a laptop comes home... :)

okay folks.  I’m not really sure how this will turn out, but I can try.

My son bought me a laptop tonight (or rather Tuesday night).  We went to Walmart and didn’t really find any good deals.  Then we went to Best Buy – nothing I liked for the price I was willing to let him pay (lol), and then ended up a Office Depot.  I think he tricked me though.  The laptop I was looking at was a 4GB with 17.3 screen – a Toshiba.  Of course Office Depot was out of them - (seems to be the case when they have a good sale, they get sent only a few items to sell).  Well, my son goes off and comes up with another ticket with another laptop that had 4GB and 500 GB of some other type of memory (vs 300 in the toshiba).  It has a webcam, dvd burner, media reader – all the standards of a laptop.  It’s very nice.  But I tried to sign on to my blogger to blog but none of the formatting tabs are showing up…but then this screen pops up (seriously, now I don’t remember how I got this thing to pop up) asking me if I want to post through windows live- I take a chance and say yeah, sure..(really I clicked on the yes button) and LO’ behold!  there are some formatting buttons here.  It’s all a little confusing, but maybe I’ll get used to it.
Now to the Waiting on Wednesday part….

 I’m a little confused about these books and how they’re being distributed in the U.S.  Last time I checked for Suzanne McLeod’s novels (because I like to click her name on Amazon and see if they’re available in the U.S. yet)  I usually end up on Amazon U.K. for her second and third novels.  Her first has been released in April in stores over here, but as far as I knew, the others weren’t available yet.  Well tonight I looked up her name again and was sent to the Amazon U.S. page, which has all three of her novels listed.  ALL THREE.  It looks like the second novel (The Cold Kiss of Death) has been available since July of 2010.   Which is weird, because I checked..I’ve been checking (being obsessed with her books…really I wanted to buy one for a friend) and when ever I looked them up before ended up on the U.K. page.  It seems like the third book – The Bitter Seed of Magic will be available in November 2010.  It’s looking (so far, unless it’s a computer glitch) as if you can order it through Amazon – any Amazon page – U.S or U.K.  But if you search Barnes & Noble or Borders, all that shows up is The Sweet Scent of Blood. It’s not something that should bother me, except for …How does her publisher expect to sell books if they aren’t being offered through the other stores?  I’m not sure how that all works.  At any rate, they are all available online at The Book Depository, or Amazon.  In fact, The Book Depository has had them available ever since they were first published.  And I know for sure that the first two books are wonderfully crafted books, and based on that, it’s a good bet that the third book will be just as good, if not better than the first.  So all the above is a long and winding road type of way for me to say…
 
Suzanne McLeod’s third novel in the Spellcracker’s.com series is coming soon!  The Bitter Seed of Magic.  AND….I think she’s working on her fourth… :)

Now another book is also coming out, though not until January of 2011, but I’m looking forward to it.  It’s from another series that I’ve been enjoying – the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs.  I just saw the cover tonight on Barnes & Noble website – River Marked.  I think this cover is a trip. This is the only set of covers that I don’t mind when the cover artist is inconsistant with the look of the character from book to book.  The main thing about these books (just the covers, I’m not talking about the content) is that each cover has a different set, even a different AMOUNT of tattoos on the woman.  It’s so inconsistant, but at the same time the work is beautiful.  It’s been stated before, on Patricia Briggs’ website also, but the only tattoo that Mercy really has is a small paw print on her abdomen.  So the sheer amount and diversity of all the tattoo work on the covers is just awesome and wonderful in it’s inconsitancy. 

Note – I just double checked the book on the Hurog website and it’s listed as releasing in spring 2011 – just a couple months later…..Not sure what’s up with that – I think Amazon might be trippin’ a bit.

3 comments:

  1. Oh, can of worms, Mardel :-D. I'll try and explain as much as I know about it all :-)

    Sweet Scent is out in the US from Ace (the US publisher) and Cold Kiss will be out next year from Ace (in April) but the UK publisher still automatically lists books 2 & 3 on the US Amazon as well as the UK Amazon when they are published in the UK (and sells them if anyone buys them). Then once the US book gets listed on the US Amazon, the UK books get taken off! (which is all weird publishing/Amazon stuff. And yep, I'm not entirely sure how is works either, as I thought Amazon US wouldn't list any of my UK books once the US publisher had bought them, but they still seem to.)

    So, clear as mud really *g*.

    The main thing is that once the US publisher publishes the books in the US then they are cheaper and more quickly available for readers over there, and also distributed to all the bricks and mortar book stores, as well as the other US online stores :-).

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  2. Haha! It is clear as mud now! Thanks - lol. I've been wondering how buying from one country to another affects your sales counts, or if it all ends up counting as one huge sales figure. When you're as impatient as I am to read certain books, it's hard to wait until the U.S. publishers decided to print the books.
    At least I know when to pimp out your next U.S. release. I've been telling people about the Book Depository for buying books from overseas though.

    Whenever I go to Borders I look for The Sweet Scent of Blood to see how many there are on the shelf. Last time there was only one, which means the books are being sold. (woohoo!)

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  3. Yay! Thanks for looking :-) And it doesn't matter to me (or any other author) where anyone buys our books (so long as it's a legit sale) as every sale gives us a % (usually between 6 - 8% of the price)... just to throw a bit more mud at it *g*.

    Love and {hugs} for the pimping :-)

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