Quisling’s Heirs and Quisling’s Foes by 60 Guilders
At our most gracious hostess’ request, I have updated Dorothy Thompson’s “Who Goes Nazi?” for the present. I confess myself inadequate to the task, but she told me she’d have to do it if I didn’t, and she’s got enough on her plate.
There are times when one wonders who would collaborate with an invading regime and who would not, or who would gleefully take up the whip hand themselves. In a world where there are reds to the left, browns to the right, terrorists and dictators in front, and bureaucrats behind, simplifying it down to one ideology just won’t cut it. So we’ll be discussing two more basic philosophical schools: those who wish to have slaves and masters, and those who wish for there to be neither.
Imagine yourself, at a reception held by a Mister John Boddy, the only person…
Life among the orcs is hard. So difficult and ubiquitous is brutal labor among them that “Veth oruk”/”Work is” is their most common greeting. When Elara, princess of the elves is captured and enslaved by them that is the life she must learn to live, a life of hard, unremitting labor with no hope of rescue.
Work is.
Sample:
Elara, at eight years of age the heir apparent to the throne of the elves of Talen, had just finished reciting the names of the trees of the Greenwood when the alarm bell began to clamor. She jumped from the bench and began to look around.
Dorian put a hand on her shoulder, “Patience, Princess. Let us see what the trouble is first.”
The door to the garden burst open and Corinbar dashed in. “Dorian, they need you on the wall. Princess, come with me.”
“Trouble then?” Dorian picked up his sword and buckled it about his waist.
“Orc war party. They hit several farmsteads and are heading this way.”
Dorian nodded. “Taking the Princess to the keep?”
“That was her father’s charge to me.”
“Then I’ll accompany you as far as the wall,” Dorian said.
“I have told the King,” Corinbar snapped as he scooped Elara up to his hip, something only one of her bodyguards would dare, “that this garden needs to be inside the walls but he insisted on keeping it out in the forest…tradition.”
Once through the garden gate and out of the garden’s walls, Elara saw people streaming up the road toward the keep.
“This way!” Corinbar turned away from the road to dash through the woods.
“Where are we going?” Elara asked, her head pressed against Coninbar’s shoulder.
“The main gate’s too crowded and I need to get you inside now,” Corinbar said. “They’ll open a sally port for us.”
“I smell smoke,” Dorian said from behind them. “Elm, Ash, and Oak! They have fired the forest.”
“They are close then,” Corinbar said as he sped up, far faster than Elara’s young legs could have propelled her.
Elara buried her face in Corinbar’s neck. Why did the orcs have to attack now, while her father was away? Why did they…she suppressed a shout as Corinbar stumbled, then stumbled again. She looked up to see his face twisted in agony.
“Forgive me…Princess,” he said as he sank to his knees. “Dorian!” His arms went slack and Elara tumbled to the ground.
“Come, Princess,” Dorian grasped her arm roughly in his left hand and hauled her to her feet. In his right, he held his drawn sword, which blazed with the elf-light.
Elara stared at Corinbar as he fell forward onto his face. Two ugly black arrows protruded from his back.
Before Elara could begin to run with Dorian, a dozen orcs appeared from the trees. Two, armed with bows, let fly at Dorian. Dorian’s sword flicked out and both arrows fell broken to the Earth. In that moment, the other orcs were upon them. They piled on Dorian while one of their number fell on Elara. For a time she could see only hair and muscle, and then the orc climbed off of her and pulled her roughly to her feet.
The fight was over. Dorian lay bleeding on the ground, as did several of the orcs. The remaining orcs bound her; tight ropes cut into her wrists, then a bag covered her head and she was roughly lifted across an orc shoulder.
“Why?” She cried softly to herself. “Why are they doing this?”
#
And endless time of running later, the orc dumped Elara on the ground. Someone pulled the bag off her head. She struggled to a sitting position.
She saw that they were in a narrow ravine. Her woods-trained eyes spotted orcs at the top of the ravine, peering outward. Guards, she supposed. Another orc dug a small pit while others gathered wood, inspecting each piece before selecting or rejecting it.
Still other orcs stretched ropes between trees and pulled. They removed cloths from their packs and staked them over the ropes, forming low, wide tents.
While one of the orcs started a smokeless fire in the pit, the others spread forest litter over the low tents. Elara drew a surprised breath. From the ridges above, those tents would be invisible against the forest floor.
One of the orcs squatting at the fire stood and turned toward her. As he waddled in her direction, Elara could not take her gaze from the knife and bowl in his hands.
The orc squatted next to her as Elara sat, eyes transfixed on the knife. The orc raised the knife point first between them, then twisted it, giving Elara a clear view of the gleaming brightness of its tip from all sides.
The orc turned the knifepoint downward and stabbed into the bowl, coming up a moment later with a chunk of meat. He held the meat out to Elara. “Kurok.”
Although she was very hungry, Elara turned her face away.
“Kurok!” the orc repeated.
Elara shook her head ‘no’.
The orc set the bowl on the ground, then his hand darted toward Elara’s face and grasped her by the nose, pinching off her breath. Elara struggled for a moment, but the orc would not relinquish its hold. It drew her in closer and shoved the meat toward her mouth.
Elara kept her mouth closed as long as she could but with her nose pinched closed, she soon had to open it to breathe. The moment she did, the orc shoved the meat into her mouth and released the hold on her nose.
She spat the meat out at him.
Pain exploded against her right cheek as the orc slapped her. He dipped another piece of meat out of the bowl and held it out to her. “Kurok. Kurok olf.”
She ate. The meat was dry and tasteless, but filling. When she had eaten all the meat in the bowl, the orc poured water from a skin into the bowl and held it out to her. She drank.
Once Elara had finished with the crude meal, the orc rapidly undid the knots binding her legs and pulled her to her feet. The rope that had bound her legs was converted to a tether. A slip loop in the end went around her neck and the rope ran down her back and under her tied wrists, before leading back to the orc. The one time she tried to struggle, the orc gave a quick jerk on the rope caused it to close painfully around her throat, then release. She did not repeat the attempt.
The orc half circled Elara. The rope he held ran from his hand, around her waist and to her back. A slight tug showed that even from this direction, the rope could cut off her air if she resisted. The orc started to walk and Elara, having no choice, followed him out of the camp, down the valley of the ravine. Once out of sight of the camp, the orc stopped. Elara looked up at him but he just waited.
With a start Elara realized what he was waiting for. She couldn’t, not in front of an orc. But if she didn’t, she would soon foul her clothes.
After a short inward struggle, she did what was necessary. It seemed to take a long time.
#
That night they put her in one of the tents, still tied, where she drifted between fitful sleep and groggy waking. In the morning they fed her again, more meat and some kind of spongy bread, took her out to relieve herself and left her under the guard of one of the shorter orcs while they struck the camp.
Finally, they packed the tents and ropes away and extinguished the last coals of the fire.
“Azg!” the orc guarding Elara said.
“Azg, yourself,” she said, looking up at the orc.
The orc grasped her shoulder and pushed. “Azg.” He pulled at rope that poked from his pack. “Azg shek tak gorug shet.”
“I don’t understand you! I don’t speak orc!”
The orc stared at her for a moment, then walked a few steps. “Azg.” He pointed at her. “Azg.”
Tears welled up in Elara’s eyes. “I don’t want to ‘azg.’ I want to go home. Can’t you let me go home?”
The orc waited while she cried, terrible in his patience, then pointed at her once more. “Azg.”
Sniffling, the last of her hope dying within her, Elara walked.
For three days they walked, each night’s stop being a repeat of the first one. On the fourth day, before the sun had reached its zenith, they reached a narrow sinkhole. At the rim of the sinkhole, iron spikes protruded from the rock. To these the orcs tied ropes, the free ends of which they dropped into the dark.
Elara barely had time to scream as one of the orcs wrapped a hairy arm her around her waist, grabbed one of the ropes, and leapt into the darkness. Her breath caught in her throat as they fell, stifling her scream. The rope hissed and smoked as it slipped through the orc’s hand. She kept expecting him to let go of the rope and the two of them to plunge to their deaths but, instead, their descent slowed. By the light of the dwindling circle of sky above them, Elara could see the other orcs descending other ropes.
A yelp burst from Elara’s throat when the orc carrying her hit bottom with a painful thump. He released her and she sat on the damp stone floor and moaned. It was dark. The only light came from the sinkhole far above them. She could see that they were in a cavern, but its size was lost in the murk.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Are you going to kill me?”
The orc bared his teeth and pointed. “Azg.”
Tears running down her cheeks, Elara got up and tried to walk in the direction the orc had indicated. She had not gone three steps before her foot caught on a rock unseen in the gloom and she fell, bruising her cheek painfully since her hands were still tied.
The orc grunted and grabbed her arm with a calloused hand, a hand still hot from the descent down the rope, and pulled her to her feet. She could then feel his hands working at her wrists. Shortly, the ropes around them fell free. The orc stood back and pointed again, “Azg.”
Untied now, Elara could possibly run, but where could she go? “Azg,” she said and walked in the direction the orc had pointed.
Just a real brief note that I’ve “pulled the trigger” on the release of my latest novelette “Oruk Means Hard Work”. It should be available soon in the Kindle Store. As always, I have made it available for free under Kindle Unlimited. I’ll do a longer blog post later, with a sample and link as soon as I see it available.
In some recent discussion I have seen, I became aware that a person with whom I have a peripheral connection (he ran a website I followed) has killed himself. No need to name the person. And if anyone comments, no need for guesses as to who it might be. Who it was doesn’t really matter to this post. What follows is a slightly edited version of a post I wrote on my old blog after Robin Williams’ death:
The death of Robin Williams has led to a lot of discussion among my friends on FaceBook. One of the things that has got a lot of discussion is the topic of suicide and suicide prevention.
First, let me say that I am not a trained counselor or suicide prevention specialist. We had some instruction on that back when I was in the Air Force and my own experiences may give me some insight but that’s all I have to offer. Perhaps for someone it will be enough.
A number of people have expressed some anger from the aspect of “think of how you’re hurting the people left behind.” Sometimes that helps, but sometimes… Well, from my experience, from “suicide prevention” materials I studied in the AF, and from people I’ve talked to, a person who’s suicidal can generally go one of two ways. In one, they just don’t believe that anyone cares, or that people would be better off, that their death would be a relief to the folk they leave behind. The other direction is that, yes, they know they’ll hurt people. But they’re still suicidal so now they feel guilty about the pain their death would cause, which makes them feel worse, which makes them more suicidal, which makes them feel more guilty, which….
In neither case does “think about the people you leave behind” serve as a useful approach to take.
Suicidal people often do think about the people they’re leaving behind, and the thought makes their feelings of depression worse. They are mistaken. On an objective level what they’re thinking is wrong. And on some level they may even know that. But their thought processes are messed up by the same issues that cause the depression in the first place.
Now sometimes, “think about the people who care about you” can help but you do need to remember that both of the above are very common reactions. Does that mean that there’s no way out? Of course not. A lot of it depends on how far one has gone down the path before intervention. I’m just pointing out one of the elements of depression is ones perceptions and emotional reactions are all screwed up. “Think about the people you’d be leaving behind” is generally not a good approach for a person who is deeply depressed and suicidal and is quite likely to make the matter worse.
One of the problems, and one of the defining points of going from “depression” to “suicidal” is the belief that it won’t pass, that you will never be happy, or anything other than miserable, ever again. You might “know” on an intellectual level that it’s bogus, that it will pass, but you feel, down inside, that it’s forever, that you don’t even have one happy day ahead of you. You might know better, but you don’t believe it.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t approaches that do help. Probably the simplest, and surprisingly quite effective is to just be there, be stubborn about leaving. Frequently a depressed person will try to drive you away, thinking in their depression that they’re doing you a favor by doing so, that they’re not “worthy” of having friends or family around. Let them talk about whatever.
And sometimes, it means medication either temporarily to get out of the current cycle or possibly permanently. When I had my bad episode the first doctor to prescribe antidepressants for me said that because of the severity of my depression I’d probably be on medication as a prophylactic measure for the rest of my life. As it happened I found something better, far better, than medication (since the medications that worked for me had certain side effects that negatively impacted “quality of life” and also put some extra stress on my marriage–you can make your own guesses; I’m not going to say more here). I found that for me (not saying it would work for everyone, or even anyone, else) that getting involved in “outdoorsy” activities like hunting and fishing (hiking, less so), cleared things up in a way that none of the medications ever did.
But the combination of medication and counseling got me out of that very bad period. And the thing that my friends and family did that helped the most was get me into that counseling and to a doctor for the medication.
And, yes, I know that the two paths I described before are not “either/or”. It’s also “and” because I managed to feel both of them at once, mutually contradictory or not. (I did mention that depression screws up your thinking, right?)
Another thing that isn’t very helpful is to ask a person why they’re depressed.
When you try to answer that question, your “reasons” sound silly to yourself. And so you feel bad for being depressed over such “trivia”. This results in feeling even worse.
That’s one of the problems. Everything is so backwards from what a non-clinically-depressed person thinks.
However, the ones who really deserve a bitch-slap are the ones who sneer at “suicide attempts” and “depression” as a “ploy” for attention. While that might happen sometimes, the “cry for help” is generally not a “ploy”. If they’re crying for help via the means of doing something potentially lethal to themselves (unlike, say that scene near the beginning of Earthquake where Liz Taylor’s character dumped a bunch of sleeping pills in the toilet and pretended to have taken an overdose).
If they’re going that far, then that “cry for help” is because they really need help.
Even a half-ass suicide attempt which is highly unlikely to work means a person really needs help. Really.
For that matter, even a faked suicide attempt is a pretty serious cry for help, and may well be a first step toward something more serious.
This is a low-carb recipe. As I explained in the old blog, in addition to being diabetic I have a very busy lifestyle so I don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen. Nor do I have a lot of money to spend on eating out. However, I like good food. Balancing these issues is always a challenge. So I’m always looking for, or experimenting with, low carb recipes that I can prepare in bulk ahead of time. Usually I’ll make a batch of something over the weekend and eat it over the course of the week–something for breakfast and something else for supper (lunch, at work, is a different proposition).
For this one, I doubled the recipe and cooked two dishes simultaneously. With some sides, this gave me eight suppers. If I had to do it again, I’d probably increase the amount of garlic. What can I say? I love garlic.
Ingredients
2 lb chicken, boned and skinned (I use the bagged bagged frozen chicken from the grocery store, thawed)
1 lb cauliflower florets
salt and pepper
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 tbsp finely minced garlic
1 cup heavy cream
2 tsp xantham gum powder
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese.
Preheat oven to 350 (F)
Spread the cauliflower in the bottom of a 2 qt casserole dish. Top with the chicken pieces. Place the casserole with the cauliflower and chicken into the oven for 30 min.
While the chicken and cauliflower are backing, melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion turns transparent.
Add the heavy cream, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the cream comes to a simmer.
Reduce heat to low and whisk in the xantham gum.
Cook over low heat for a few minutes, stirring nearly constantly, until the cream mixture thickens. Set aside.
When the chicken and cauliflower have finished baking baking, remove from the oven, but do not turn the oven off.
Pour the cream mixture over the chicken. Use a large spoon or rubber spatula to spread the mixture over the chicken.
Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese over the top.
Return to the oven. Bake for an additional 15 minutes.
A black man is shot while assaulting a police officer. People riot.
“Right to protest” people say.
Another is killed while resisting arrest over a tobacco tax violation. People start blocking traffic and more riots.
“Right to protest” people say.
A man that many people do not like is elected President. People riot, block traffic, assault supporters of that President.
“Right to protest” people say.
A gay conservative seeks to speak at a college campus.
More riots getting the college to rescind the invitation to speak.
“Right to protest” people say.
Well, here’s the problem:
There. is. no. right. to. protest.
I know, this is a surprise to many people, but it’s true. There are a number of rights we have, but none of them are “to protest”. They can be used for protest but simply “protesting” does not exist as a right separate from these other rights. The closest to a right to protest is the right to petition government for redress of grievance. You can tell government what you think it’s doing wrong and ask it to do something to fix the problem.
Instead of a right to protest you have rights to Free Speech, Free Press, and Peaceable Assembly. You can use these rights to protest. You can use them to say you think everything is fine. You can use them to say you think Rutabagas are better than Strawberries. (Weird, but “De gustibus non est disputandum.”)
You do not have the right to destroy (let alone steal) private or public property even if you call it protest.
You do not have the right to hinder people going about their lawful business even if you call it protest.
You most certainly do not have the right to assault people even if you call it protest.
“Protest” is not license for criminal behavior, not matter how strongly you feel about the thing your protesting.
Now, some people will bring up the idea of “civil disobedience”, of Gandhi’s “Salt March”, of Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus, of the Boston Tea Party.
But note the important factor in each of those, and other examples. In each, the law they were breaking was one they themselves considered unjust. The Sons of Liberty did not go burning their neighbors’ fields because they considered the tea tax, imposed on the colonies without the colonies having any representation in the taxing body (British Parliament) was unfair. Their disobedience to the law was directed specifically to the taxed tea with an absolute minimum of other damage–indeed when they broke a lock on one of the ships to get access to the tea they later replaced it.
Similar with Gandhi’s Salt March. It was considered unjust that the Indian people were forbidden from making their own salt, from the ocean waters on their own coast, without having a tax imposed by the British. So they marched to the sea to make salt.
And Rosa Parks. The law requiring certain citizens to move to the back of the bus in favor of others was unjust. So she simply refused to move to the back.
The Boston Tea Partiers did dress up like Native Tribes in their protest but that fooled nobody. Membership in the Sons of Liberty was pretty much an open secret. And they were invoking either the British government backing down or retribution on their heads–either of which would underscore the unjustness, as they saw it, of the law they were violating in protest.
Gandhi’s marchers also knew they were subject to that law and that enforcement of it would highlight how unjust, as they saw it, it was.
Rosa Parks knew she was subject to arrest. And she was arrested.
This is civil disobedience, direct and deliberate violation of unjust laws. It can be a very courageous act since it invokes punishment for the violation specifically to show how unjust the law is. And if you’re wrong about people rising in outrage against the law you believed was unjust, you still end up facing the punishment.
See the difference between that and seeking anonymity in a crowd, wearing masks, and breaking laws that have nothing to do with whatever the subject of the protest might be? Such violation of the law does not show anything to be unjust. It merely shows that the “protesters” are rabble, seeking only their own gain rather than serving any true cause whatever rhetoric they might spout.
The best such “protesters” can hope for is a general breakdown of rule of law in which chaos a few strong individuals might benefit at the cost of loss and blood for the masses. At worst you get a government crackdown which does nothing to rally people to your side because your actions demonstrate that you deserve that crackdown. In between are various levels of misery for various people that do nothing to further your high-sounding ideals.
Perhaps you hope for that breakdown of rule of law and, in the chaos to follow, you will come to the fore and take power. However, consider, in such cases the people who start that kind of revolution rarely if ever are the ones in charge at the end. The “idealists” who start the revolution are the first up against the wall, even if their side wins and the people seeking no more than their own personal power and wealth become the ones to rule.
Long ago, in the dim recesses of prehistory, there were some of TV shows that I’d seen then that largely vanished but somehow remained stuck in my consciousness.
First, we have The Avengers. No, not the superheroes but, well, if coolness is a super power…
In the initial episodes, mostly lost, Patrick McNee in the role of John Steed was the assistant to Dr. David Keel played by Ian Hendry but as the series progressed the roll of John Steed took increasing importance. A strike cut short this first series and when they resumed John Steed took center stage, he was assisted by Dr. Martin King (Jan Rollason) and Nightclub singer Venus Smith (Julie Stevens), but what really changed the dynamic of the show was Dr. Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman). Gale soon became Steeds regular partner.
Steed himself saw a transformation during this time, changing from a more typical tough guy to a suave, charming British Gentleman, full of sang froid.
In 1965, the show was sold to ABC which provided the budget to start shooting on film rather than tape. This era also saw the introduction of Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel.
This is when I started seeing them. It was only years later that I even knew that there were earlier partners for John Steed. The “Emma Peel years” pretty much sum up my memories of the series. As the series progressed episodes featured science fictional themes with villains who were mad scientists and their plots being the problem they had to solve.
Eventually, Rigg left the series to pursue other interests. I know that’s often a euphemism for “fired”, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
The show was a lot of fun. And, to my great delight I found that the Emma Peel episodes are collected and available from Amazon:
Another show from my childhood, one of a slightly later vintage, was UFO. In the first episode Colonel Ed Straker, of the US Air Force is the only survivor of a UFO attack. We jump forward ten years and he’s the commander of an SHADO–the Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization.
I took this show a lot more seriously as a youth than I can today. The creators had some strange ideas of how the future would go, from the mesh uniforms worn by their submarine crew (Skydiver) to the tight jumpsuits worn by female personnel in both the Earth headquarters (secretly located under a film studio) and the moonbase. to the purple wigs that were part of female uniforms on that moonbase. The vehicles show the influence of the producers previous “supermariotmation” programs such as Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds. Kind of depressing that they thought we would actually have the capability for routine flights to the moon (in at least one episode in addition to SHADO’s moonbase, there was a commercial facility) by 1980.
Still, I very much enjoyed the series, enough that I remembered it years later despite rarely if ever seeing it in syndication. And on rediscovering it recently, I found that it is still eminently watchable, episodes often having a delightful darkness without going into the outright depressing. This is a war with casualties, where one is often having to scrape together the best out of a bad situation.
And the series is available on YouTube:
The third I’m going to discuss today is The Champions.
Three agents for an international espionage organization named “Nemesis” crash in the Himalayas. There, they are rescued in secret by a hidden civilization that heels them and also, unbeknownst to them at first, bestows on them the epitome of human capability, strength, speed, and even limited psychic powers.
The series revolves around them using their abilities to complete their missions for Nemesis while keeping their abilities secret both from the people they oppose and their own bosses.
Look, I grew up on superhero comics so this was more of the same to me. Why they’re keeping their abilities secret may not make a lot of sense. Those people in the Himalayas may not want their existence revealed but wouldn’t these people’s first loyalty be to the people they work for? Still, roll with it.
On discovering the series later, I don’t find it as good as I remember. It hadn’t aged as well as the others. Not something I’d “binge watch” these days but I can still spend a pleasant fifty minutes or so on an episode. And it, too, is available on YouTube:
There you have it, three TV shows from my youth and childhood that stuck through me through the years well enough so that in the modern age of Internet Video I was able to track them down. The Avengers has aged very well indeed, in my opinion. UFO, not quite as well. The Champions, the least of the three but at least retains enough nostalgia value that I still find it watchable.
Elise Hyatt’s (Sarah Hoyt) third in the adventures of Dyce Dare (Candyce Chocolata Dare–after much arguing between her father and her then-pregnant mother would name their expected daughter, they reconciled in a candy store and…) is another fun romp.
Dyce is getting married. Her boyfriend, police detective Cas Wolfe asked and she said yes. And while taking a break in wedding planning, Dyce turns to her main source of income, refinishing and reselling used furniture. A table she’s working on puzzles her. It seems to be made of hardwood but is refinished to look like cheap pine, and badly refinished at that. So she pulls out the belt sander her fiance had given her as a present and lets it rip, cutting a trench through the surface because she was not expecting how powerful the sander was.
What’s that under the horrid finish? Oak? And…are those bloodstains?
And, Dyce being Dyce, she cannot leave it alone. She’s off to track down the source of the table wondering if maybe the bloodstains mean another murder.
In the meantime, her fiance, Cas Wolfe, is investigating a series of arsons in empty houses and apartments, including one where a body was found.
Her ex-husband’s wife says that her son is ill and asks to keep him after the time demanded by the joint custody agreement only Dyce discovers that her son is in perfect health.
And then her parents keep coming up with more and more outre ideas for Dyce’s wedding. And strangers start demanding she stop looking into the background of that table and its mysterious stains.
Don’t expect deep philosophy in this book. Don’t expect angst and hand wringing. Instead expect a fun romp, enough threats to keep things interesting, and a delightfully involuted mystery. Recommended.
In another forum I received a complaint about the pricing of one of my shorts. Obviously, it was more than that person was willing to pay. But, here’s the thing. There are reasons for pricing at certain points.
When publishing an ebook using Kindle Direct Publishing there are two “royalty levels”: 35% and 70%. In some cases the royalty is determined by things like whether the book is exclusive to Amazon. However one important factor is the selling price of the book. To get the 70% royalty the book has to be priced at least $2.99.
So, if I price a book at $2.99, I get a 70% royalty. That means for each book I sell, I get $2.09. At $1.99 I only get a 35% royalty and, thus, get $0.70 per book. I would have to sell three times as many books at the $1.99 price point before I’m making more than I do at the $2.99 price point.
At Amazon’s lowest price (aside from free promotions) each book nets me $0.35 and I would have to sell just under six times as many copies to before I’m making as much money as I am at $2.99.
Generally speaking, I have found that the lower price does not lead enough increase in sales to justify accepting the lower royalty rate.
That said, I do sometimes go with a lower rate. In particular, when I have a series which includes several shorts I will pick one short to set at $0.99, the lowest price Amazon permits, as a “first taste is cheap”. This allows readers to check out my writing and the series to see if it might be for them. They can decide whether another book, even another short, provides as much enjoyment as half a six-pack of really cheap beer (of the “love in a canoe” variety), or maybe one or two better beers.
As examples, here are a couple of my “first taste is really cheap” stories.
From my science fiction FTI Universe:
Emergency Medical services on the Moon present new challenges, not all of which come with the territory. Kristine is an EMT in the Lunar Ambulance Service. Budget cuts and inadequate equipment make it increasingly difficult for her to do her job. William Schneider is finding that some of his subordinates have ideas of their own, ideas contrary to the corporate philosophy he is building, ideas that lead to shortcuts and trading lives for money. They find themselves riding their problems on a collision course to avoid disaster.
From my fantasy series “Knights of Aerioch”
Baroness Talisa leads the last few surviving members of her household through the mountains in the dead of winter, fleeing the changeling hordes that have destroyed the kingdom. In that world of white and gray she stumbles on an oasis of green, a garden, sacred to Treva, goddess of the wild things of the world. There, Talisa encounters the enigmatic guardian of the place who possesses great and mysterious magical power and who claims Talisa’s life as forfeit for trespassing in Treva’s Garden.
Life among the orcs is hard. So difficult and ubiquitous is brutal labor among them that “Veth oruk”/”Work is” is their most common greeting. When Elara, princess of the elves is captured and enslaved by them that is the life she must learn to live, a life of hard, unremitting labor with no hope of rescue.
The Writer in Black 