Please ignore the "omnivoracious" blog address. It is for someone else entirely. It got there in my signing-up confusion, and I haven't figured out how to rectify the situation.
I was born in 1944. In 1990 married Clifton Alfred Hoyt for a fourteen-year honeymoon on a financial shoestring. Then he developed sCJD and after a valiant struggle of over a year, died Nov. 4, 2005. The date of my own death remains in the realm of future history.
Two pieces of juvenilia were self-published under the pen name Frances Lauren. (Do NOT confuse with the current author Lauren Frances. I chose “Frances” for my father, Frank – for Francis – J. Karr, and “Lauren” for one of my favorite saints, Laurence the Deacon.) Today, BAR SINISTRE can be found on various sales websites, at prices that would have gladdened my heart fifty years ago; a search on POTPOURRI, however, even with the author’s name, seems to turn up nothing of relevance, at least on the first page.
I find that various websites are saying that I also write under the name "Irene Radford." THIS IS A MISTAKE. The confusion might be natural, for Irene's legal married name happens to be Phyllis Karr. We are namesakes by complete coincidence, and she chose to publish under the name Irene Radford in hopes that the confusion would NOT arise. We once tried to collaborate on a novel -- thinking it would have looked delightful: "By Phyllis Karr and Phyllis Karr." But through nobody's fault, the scheme fell through -- our philosophies of storytelling seemed too far apart. Ironically, at least one otherwise wonderfully perceptive reviewer of AT AMBERLEAF FAIR falls into the unintentional trap of mistaken identification. But ALL my mature novels and all but one or two of my short stories have appeared under the byline Phyllis Ann Karr, and those one or two short stories under the pseudonym "Gregory Remington."
Back about 1970, I swore off ever self-publishing again after "Potpourri" and "Bar Sinister." But the computer age has changed things considerably, and in 2021, having backlogged Wildside Press with more material than they can probably work into their schedule during my own remaining years without slighting the rest of their highly commendable output, and seeing that a year after publication on either Amazon or Smashwords the works should be again available for inclusion in a Wildside Megapack, I adopted self-publishing by means of the computer as my new hobby. Don't depend on this author's page. Do a shopping search on my name. (Some of the other items such a search turns up on Amazon's page along with "The Ring of Tumboni" dumbfounds me.)
Issuing THE RING OF TUMBONI in four e-volumes was my earliest foray into this fascinating new hobby. Thus, there are clumsinesses in them, which I think are mostly smoothed out in the “Complete in One Volume” edition, which I strongly recommend if you like to keep your books in your computer files and read them onscreen. After heavy laboring on the pb and hardcopy editions, I seem to have snagged on a format that looked fine on the computer preview, but trimmed off the pages numbers on at least some of the copies. I tried to rectify this by submitting a revised computer format, and, not yet being perfect in this game, haven’t yet figured out how to simply update an earlier edition, so issued a new pb. But – perhaps Amazon KDP glitched here – a popup screen at the end of the process urged me to start “my pb edition now.” This must have been KDP’s error for “hardcopy,” but I assumed it must have been the hardcopy I had just done, and followed up with yes another pb! Now there seem to be three pb and two hardcopy editions available from Amazon! All with identical contents, aside from the page numbers or lack thereof. And I’m not sure how to withdraw any of them without endangering the others. So take the least expensive that has a cover with a reddish background through which a wavy design wends roadlike.
Why a Jane Austen title leads the Amazon line-up of my books mystifies me, but I can't see how to delete it -- that secretarial job seems to be up to Amazon. It's true that among my pre-computer era publications was a novel based on Austen's LADY SUSAN; but it is NOT Austen's work, and the volume pictured is clearly an edition of the Venerable Jane's own pieces. While I much enjoy and admire Austen’s work, I confess to being more of a Savoyard than an Austenian. DANGEROUS PERSUASION, the middle (and shortest) novel of my “Robin Murgatroyd Trilogy,” has Sir Ruthven coping with his week as Bad Baronet of Ruddigore by fleeing to Bath, where he interacts with Catherine Morland and Anne Elliot.
Jan. 10, 2024:
It has been asked: "Why set the prices so low? Wouldn’t I make more money by setting them higher?"
Maybe. Sometimes higher prices actually attract buyers, on the principle of “You get what you pay for.”
But maybe not. I have always tried my darndest to tell good, solid, interesting stories; an in my own opinion, I think I’ve succeeded rather often, and most of my stuff is pretty doggone good. But no doubt all earnest writers feel this way, and more than half a century has taught me that my books lack the popular appeal of bestsellers. Nor can I afford either the cover art or the publicity campaigning that might attract more readers. Most likely the few dozen readers I have happened to pick up one of my books in an idle moment and liked it well enough to try another. I’m guessing that such readers look first at the title and author, at the price only if and when they decide they want to buy it.
So I rather think that my sales might actually fall a little if I set higher prices. And what good a higher profit per book if it comes along with fewer total sales? This whole hobby of self-publishing is rather like stuffing messages into bottles and tossing them in the ocean. Now in my old age, I’d rather get as many bottles as possible into the water than gamble on a higher profit per bottle.
I know too well what it is to want – really want – a particular book, and be unable either to afford it or to borrow it from a library. At least some of my readers may have pockets no deeper than mine. I’d like to do what I can to help them get my books.
Also, while it’s like a single droplet trying to swim back up Niagara Falls, I’d like to do what infinitesimal little I can to keep inflation ever so little within bounds.
That’s why I set my prices almost (not quite) as low as Amazon will let me.
I’d like to remark here that, through some confusion in forms and things, one of my pieces got into the wide world under two variant titles. "Karr’s Ruddigore Book" is the identical text as "Ruddigore Newly Edited and Annotated by Phyllis Ann Karr." As with my titles in general, however, the pb and hardcover editions may well have gone through one further auctorial polishing after the Kindle e-editions.
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