My novella, All Roads Lead to Pine Bush, will be free on Amazon for the next few days (until Friday). So visit Amazon and get the book free. The book goes free tomorrow morning and then on Saturday goes back to the regular price.
Tag Archives: Writing
The Evolution of Sales for a Self-Publishing Author
I recently spent some time analyzing how many sales I’ve had through Amazon. Keep in mind, this doesn’t count sales through other services (just Amazon). But what I discovered was kind of fascinating, because if you haven’t been paying attention to it, the information kind of sneaks up on you and tries to stab you in the back. Or at least jumps out from the shadows and says “boo!”.
For the record, I’ve been selling books on Amazon as ebooks since 2008. Granted, hardly a single one sold back then, but I was trying to sell one book (Thompson’s Bounty) way back then. Shortly after, Innocent Until Proven Guilty came along, and then a few years later, everything else sort of exploded into print. What’s interesting is that if you look at the numbers (and yes, most people know I’m a number crunching kind of guy), you’ll discover that in 2008, combined with 2009, I sold 9 copies of Thompson’s Bounty. And that’s it. In 2010, I sold 7 books, mixed between the first two I mentioned earlier. And then 2011, well, just kind of went nuts. I sold 181 books, spread out over 8 different titles. 2012 was a little less successful with 135 books sold. Strangely enough, 2013, of which we are only in June, has had 110 sales. Not counted were 77 sales that occurred just last month, so you can see that 2013 has already surpassed both 2011 and 2012, and we’re not even halfway through the year.
As for money, that’s increasing as well, which makes sense when you follow the number of sales.
The quandary for me in publishing has always been trying to figure out how to sell to more readers, or at least how to get readers to at least know my books exist. I wish I could say I’ve found the answer to that, but I haven’t yet. But I’m still searching, experimenting and performing ritual sacrifices to The Shania in hopes of figuring that out.
Anyway, not much of a post about the usual stuff, but as I rarely discuss the business side of the craft, I thought I would share this with you all (which by “all”, I obviously mean my two stuffed animals who make up my readership).
The book giveaway for The Ameriad
Last night, the book giveaway for The Ameriad finished on Goodreads. I’d like to think it was successful as 669 people requested the book, and now I have to send out 10 copies of it to the winners chosen by Goodreads. At the same time, 264 people added the book to their “to read” lists, although some of those people may have already taken that option before the contest, and there’s no guarantee that any of those people are ever going to read the book, as they may have just added it as a part of the contest. The interesting thing so far is that no copies have sold as a result of the contest SO FAR, which leaves me wondering about the usefulness of this marketing opportunity.
My next novel to be given away is Thompson’s Bounty: A Ship Out of Time, and it is at the very beginning of its contest at 50 entries and 16 people wanting to read it. Little by little, I’m wondering if this whole thing is even worth it, as the market seems very sided against a writer trying to make a living.
The Craft of Creating a World That Doesn’t Exist Yet
One of the few joys of being a writer, especially a science fiction/fantasy writer, is being able to craft an entirely new world. When I first started writing, one of the mistakes I used to make was just to create a generic world that seemed like it could have been any place and then kind of hope that people would gravitate to it like Middle Earth or some brilliantly constructed world like the ones you might read in a series like the Wheel of Time. Unfortunately, it took me some time to realize that it doesn’t do your story a whole lot of good if the land you create is generic and unreal. Unfortunately, it took me numerous stories to start to realize that it needed more than just a generic compass heading.
So, fast-forward a few years later, and one of the worlds I have been constructing for over a decade now is one called Reagul, which for a history lesson is a land that was terra-formed by an alien race and survivors of the Roman Empire were transplanted onto the planet in some elaborate experiment of social species interactions. In this land, magic exists in the guise of advanced science, taught by the founders themselves, and the people who grow up on this planet have knowledge of Earth, but over time begin to talk about Earth as more of a legend than something real.
But to do this, I needed an actual land mass that might make sense. So, years ago, this was the first drawing I created that was supposed to represent the main continent:
It was originally a pencil drawing, and it served as the ground work for a novel I wrote called Destiny, which was a revisit to the land of Reagul 3000 years after the inhabitants founded the civilization there, which if you equate it to our time line, means that it takes place about one thousand years in our future.
Over the last decade, I’ve been wanting to write the story of that land that occupied that 3000 years that I hadn’t yet discussed. So I started with a time line, and slowly incorporated a rudimentary outline to explain what happened over time. This was the birth of Sarbonn, the first great wizard of Reagul (and not ironically, the name of this particular web site where my blog is hosted). Over the years, I’ve written numerous short stories about Sarbonn so that he has become my one great story that kept being told over and over with more and more flesh each time he was revisited.
But the story of Reagul still hadn’t been told. And thus, I created The Tales of Reagul, which was a 400 page novel that built the foundation for where the first three hundred years of history might take place. And then a few years ago, I realized that even that story was more of an outline, which has propelled me to begin writing the trilogy that will fill in the gaps that this first story so desperately needed. In the next few months, the first novel of this trilogy will be released, called A Season of Kings.
As part of this project, I went through and started to flesh out more map-oriented information:
My latest addition to the project is to hire a cartographer who I hope can turn my weak attempt at a map into something solid, something that gives Reagul the respect it so deserves. I will keep you informed on the progress of this, as it has to happen before the first novel is completed.
The End of Teaching As I Know It
Last semester, I was teaching public speaking, and I started to notice how many of my students really weren’t interested in learning anything, but in just getting through the course. I’ve been noticing this a lot in my courses, although this is not new to me, as I distinctly remember mentioning this phenomenon a decade ago when I was teaching political science in a community college and remembered one of my students honestly asking me during a lecture: “Do we need to know this?”
Every semester, I seem to get one or two of those overly inquisitive souls in my classes that sort of makes things all seem worth it. That’s the student that reminds you of why you teach in the first place, because you realize that they want to learn, and you’re just the person to help them do just that. This last semester was no different as I had a few students who were scared to death of speaking in front of audiences, and I was able to teach them that there was absolutely nothing to fear, and they thrived as a result.
However, I also started to notice that as an adjunct professor, I’m constantly being treated differently than the full time professors. We obviously don’t get paid as well. Our jobs are often reliant on good student evaluations, which means being beholden to the whims of students who don’t want too much work. My office is shared with more people than I can count (and I can probably teach mathematics if I wanted to). And this last semester, they concluded a new contract that includes all sorts of “compromises” that adjuncts now have to acquiesce to in order to get that rock star pay we’ve been getting for so many years. You know stuff like more faculty evaluations, more hoops to jump through and a desire of the administration to add more administrative functions to the non-full time faculty.
So, this summer, I opted out of not teaching a summer class (which wasn’t that big of a deal considering that I’m 1 for 4 in attempts to actually get a class during the summer. But I’ve been asking for at least two classes every semester, which might help me survive on the measly wages they pay, but for some reason they can only ever give me one class a semester.
This leaves me thinking that I might not return to teaching when summer is over. Sure, I can use the fraction of money it pays, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible for my writing income to finally supplant this income I was receiving from teaching. So, for the first time ever, I’m probably going to stop teaching college courses.
For years now, I’ve been trying to land a full time community college teaching job, but it’s just never happened for me. Instead, everyone keeps offering me no benefit adjunct jobs. I guess they feel that there are so many of us out there that they don’t have to offer real jobs to any of us.
So, I’m going to take myself out of the pool. While I’d love a full time teaching job, I’ve practically surrendered myself to the realization that it’s probably never going to happen. And while I’m not 100 percent sure this is the direction I’m going to be taking, I’ve seen enough income rise through my writing that it just might be possible to do. I’m tired of being treated like a second class citizen in the academic community.
The Ameriad is free all this week on Amazon Kindle
My novel, The Ameriad, a humorous, mythological parody that re-tells the founding of America by the survivors of Troy, is going to be free all this week on the Amazon Kindle. You can access the page for this book here. This deal ends Saturday.
A paperback copy of the book is also being given out through Goodreads; actually, 10 copies are being given out free. All you have to do is sign up for the contest on Goodreads here. This contest ends at the beginning of next month.
Did I mention that both choices are free?
I should also point out that my novella, Mapping the Silence of Dreams, is now available on Kindle as well. It’s dark fantasy involving the dream sphere when a scientific team accidentally brings something back from our dreams. You can find it here.
Chris Penney interviewed me on the process of telling a story
Podcast 3: Creating Good Characters
Win a free copy of my new book The Ameriad
My new book, a humorous mythological Greek epic, called The Ameriad, is being offered for free at Goodreads. Just enter the contest, and you can win one of the ten copies being offered.
Go here for the contest.
