It's been a while since my last blog entry discussing the world of self publishing.  I'll be honest, other things got in the way like new seasons of my favorite shows on Netflix and an overall vein of lazy.

There is something I wanted to bring to new authors attention.  It's something that gets repeated every month or two on other blogs and forums.  That question is what to write.  Often the answers to this question end up in the, "Write what you love," pile.  It makes sense; why would you write something you don't love?  The easy counter answer is, "Write what will make you money."  Yes the bah-humbug from those dinosaurs from traditional publishing.  They truly are sorry that your billionaire leprechaun meets unicorn shape-shiftier time travel children's book doesn't have a market.  And the entire love crowd will call you a sellout, a get rich quick scumbag, a hack and all kinds of nasty names.

I have said it before and it needs repeating.  Writing is an art.  Publishing is a business.  One sells the other, not the other way around.  Traditional publishers know this.  If you are going to self publish, you need to know it too.  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against someone trying to make a living off of publishing leprechaun unicorn books, but I do take issue with people who have their heads stuck in the sand, believing a lot of the self published crap that gets talked about and refuse to acknowledge that it really is all their own fault that their book isn't selling.

So when you sit your writer self down with your publisher self, you need to decide what it is you're going to do.  This is very important because it takes a lot of time to write something that is worth selling.  Even when that is done, it takes a lot of money and more time to get it edited, proofread, covers, formatting etc etc done before you even see a dime.  If you skip this meeting, you may end up with nothing.

Climbing the ranking ladder.  It sounds exactly like that.  Amazon is the big store right now.  They have some 50 million unique hits a day and the better your book's rank is, the more eyes will see it.  There are a lot of categories on Amazon these days.  Some of these categories are broken ladders, dud genera, and filter traps.  I write steampunk, I love it, I still am writing it with my new series (The War of Antiquities), but it's a dud genera.

As of this writing the number one steampunk book has an overall rank of 3572.  For many of us, that would be awesome.  But the reality is, it's dead.  Steampunk's parent genera is Science Fiction.  The number 100 book is ranked 1624.  The list won't show you any lower unless you browse Amazon a specific way and get off the best sellers list and into the searches or apply filters.

So even if you have the best steampunk book out there, you're not even listed in Sci-Fi.  This is a dead ladder.  Unless someone is specifically looking for steampunk books, they will never see it.  If they never see it, they will never buy it.

Going back to the book that is ranked 100 in Sci-Fi, we can also see that it's ranked number 20 in Dystopian and 31 in Post-Apocalyptic.  This book isn't even at the top of it's sub-genera.  It's not even on the first page of its sub-genre.  But it gets the visibility of general Sci-Fi, Dystopian, and Post-Apocalyptic.

These sub-genera's are not broken.  As these author's books climb the ranks, they graduate into higher tiered categories.  This gets more random eyes on their books.  More eyes mean more opportunities to make a sale.

You can buy your way out of the basement with advertising and clever marketing, but at the end of the day when your book slips back, it really has no fair chance of climbing out on its own.  When you have that sit down meeting with yourself and you are honest about your goals.  Put on your business had and realize that your great story just might not have a market but you might be able to turn the leprichaun into a sparkly vampire and the unicorn into Jack Bauer and find success with a paranormal thriller romance.  If you pick a broken ladder, be ready for a long hard climb.

Book signing at Barnes and Noble wrap up.

On April 6, 2013 I had a book signing event at Barnes and Noble here in Twin Falls, Idaho.  It was the second signing with them.  The first was shortly after the release of my first novel Requiem back in 2011.  I didn't have one for book two, Guardian but now that the trilogy is finished I set one up for it.

There are a lot of things that went on with this signing that I want to touch on for anyone who is interested in doing book signings.  I have done other book signings in the past other than Barnes and Noble.  When I first walked in and found where they had set up the table, I was nearly floored.  The signing was at noon and I was about ten minutes early, what I wasn't expecting were the people waiting, book in hand, for me to sign their copies.  It wasn't a big line, just two people, but it was a line none the less and they were waiting for me.  So right off the bat, I had four books signed and sold before I even had time to take off my jacket.

Right after that, I still had not had time to set up my display, a news crew from the local TV station showed up and thrust a microphone in my hand for an interview.  This was another first.  People waiting for me to show up and now TV.  They asked me several questions about myself, the books, the process I went through to finish them and what other projects I was working on if any.  The spot made the nightly news and you can read about it and see the spot on their website here.  http://www.kmvt.com/news/local/Local-author-releases-final-novel-in-sci-fifantasy-trilogy-201776831.html

After all that more than an hour had gone by and I was able to finally get my display set up and the book signing took on a more regular tone.  If you're not a superstar author with a blockbuster book, book signings can be intimidating.  From what I have been told, most signings don't do well especially for the "local author" types.  Often they sell less than five books and sometimes they don't even sell any.  I have had a book signing in a restaurant and sold 7 books, and I sold 9 at a flea market so I honestly have no idea how you could sell 0 at a book store, but I'm told it's not uncommon.

I had about a dozen people ask me where the bathrooms were after they entered the store.  I expected that from the last time I had a signing.  One lady barged into the store on a mission to ruin someone's day and found me sitting behind a table and demanded that I fix or replace her Nook.  After pointing her towards a manager she had some unkind things to say to me even after I explained that I was not an employee, but doing a book signing for my trilogy.  Even an hour later when she left, she gave me a nasty look on the way out.

The antique green tapestry I use for a table cloth received several offers for purchase.  This wasn't unexpected as it happened last time I had a signing, though the offers were not as high as the flea market signing was.  You can see it in the photo there of my display when I had it set up.  Note that it's missing in the TV interview.

I had a full set of postcards printed up for each book.  I used this promo item at my other book signings and have found it to be a successful way to promote the book to people who are hesitant in buying a new book they know nothing about.  I also took the whole trilogy and burned it to CD's in e-book format.  If anyone bought a book, I offered them the CD for free.  This helped sell several copies.  It's a hard sell to get someone on the spot to plop down $15 a book let alone $45 for a full set.  When people were told they got $15 worth of e-books for free, it was much easier to close the sale.  There were two customers who bought books from me that did not want the disk.  Their reaction was almost like I was trying to give them a disk of cancer or something.  They also let me know what they thought of e-books in general and their utter disdain for them.  I agreed with them as much as I could.  I personally don't buy e-books or even have an e-reader and still buy mine in physical form.  However, they are simply holdouts to the changing publishing world.  What they don't know is that in my three years of selling books, I sell and easy 150 e-books to every 1 physical book.  E-book's is simply where publishing is at.

One odd observance that I thought was noteworthy.   When I offered to sign a postcard for people who didn't buy a book. I asked them if they had a cover preference or what card they wanted.  Universally, everyone took the postcard for book two.  A couple of people opted for book one and no one took book three's postcard unless I just signed it and gave it to them without asking for their preference.  I still don't know why everyone wanted the card for book two.

One older gentleman spent about 15 minutes talking about Scientology.  I'm not sure if he was trying to convert me, or borrow money so he could join the church...  It reminded me of the Dell days when people would call support because it was a toll free number and they simply wanted to talk to someone.

When it came time to finally pack up and head home, I had sold out of book one.  Sold out of book two, and there were only a handful of book three left.  In total, 32 books were signed.  Most people picked up the first book.  Only four people picked up the entire set, and once book one was sold out, sales came to a halt, even with the CD that had them all.  Several people asked when the books would be in stock again, but from my experience, it's rare for anyone to remember to come back and buy one even if they took home a signed card or not.  It might be different this time with the number of books sold, cards handed out and the TV spot.

Now for the lessons.
If you have an introverted personality, book signings are going to be tough.  You have to be a salesman.  Simply sitting there hoping someone will see you and your books isn't going to work.  Having something to give to people is a must.  But it has to something they are going to want to keep and not toss on the floor, into a garbage bin, or shoved into the bookshelf somewhere for an employee to clean up later.  A lot of authors use bookmarks and when I talk to the people who work at B&N, bookmarks seem to be the least bothersome ideas.  They still get dropped and shoved into the shelves by people who don't want them but nothing like paper flyers do.  If you hand out 300 paper flyers and the employees spend the next week picking them up and out of other books, they are going to hate you.

Don't be this guy.

I haven't had any complaints about the postcards.  They are larger than a bookmark, made of heavy stock, look great and when a person sees me sign it for them it instantly gives the card a perceived value so they are not thrown away, littered, or crammed into the shelves.

The e-book on CD idea I feel was a success and I will continue to do that going forward.  It costs me nothing other than 25 cents for a CD and it helps sell books.  It would have been nice if they had a printed label with cover art or something instead of a memorex disk and a sharpie, but I don't have the equipment to do something like that and when I looked into services that offered them, the cost per disk was unreasonable.  $1.50-$5 a disk and order requirements in the low hundreds to thousands.

The only other advice I can say if you are looking at having a book signing is to engage as many people as you possibly can.  You are basically getting impulse buys so almost everyone is going to turn you down.  My first signing at B&N for Requiem sold 18 copies and it was a much busier day than this one was.  I averaged about one book sold for every 15 to 20 people that I managed to greet and engage.  That's about 5-7% sales rate, so don't get discouraged.

Pro's and Con's of Choosing to use Amazon's KDP Select program.

I've had the idea to write a blog post about the pro's and con's of being exclusive to Amazon as a self publisher for a while now and I have a small break in my writing to get it down.  I do have to add a disclaimer that these are my opinions and should no way be taken as an etched in stone way for you to do things.  Every author's experience with what works is different from another.  Luck plays a huge role in self publishing.  Also the speed of change can make this information inaccurate and obsolete and by the time you finish reading it, anything could have happened.

For those who are not familiar with KDP Select, it is a program that an author can choose to opt-in/out when they upload a manuscript to Amazon.  The benefits are five days out of each ninety day period that you can set the price of your book to $0.00 for promotional reasons.  Select also makes your title available to the Kindle Online Lending Library where Amazon Prime members can choose to download and read your book at no cost to them.  The author is compensated for these borrows from a monthly pool of money and it tends to average around the $1.80-$2.00 range per borrow.  The last major benifit to a book being in the Select program is that it allows an author to collect 70% royalty rates instead of 35% in the emerging markets that Amazon has been expanding since the launch of Select.  Namely, India, Brazil, and Japan.

The downside to select is the e-book version must be exclusive to the Amazon store.  This means you can't sell the same e-book or even portions of it on other web sites like Apple, Barnes and Noble or even your own website.  Now you can make available promotional material like blurbs, excerpts, or a sample chapter or two as long as it doesn't exceed a certain amount.  What that is, I can't tell you because I have not heard of anyone getting in trouble for this and there are different numbers being tossed out from 5% to 30% of your book.  However you cannot offer a short story for sale in other outlets and then include that same short in a bundled book that is opted in for select.  This works the other way as well.  You can't have a short in Select and include it in bundle on other sites.  The content has to be exclusive.  This does not apply to print options.  Print is a separate deal when it comes to KDP Select.  The other growing downside is that since Select has launched, all new markets default to the 35% royalty option instead of being able to collect 70%.  For most authors, these markets represent little to no income, but as time goes on, the list of restricted markets will grow as will their impact.


Exclusive with Amazon:
Exclusivity has some advantages.  Especially for new authors working with shoe-string budgets and Amazon offers some very nice perks.  First, they are the shark in the tank of fish when it comes to online publishing.  All other companies combined don't equal the amount of e-books sold compared to Amazon.  So when it comes down to where you're going to spend your time and money, it's going to be with Amazon.

When you get around to promoting your work, it's very beneficial if you have the ability to point everyone to the same place.  This means that every sale counts towards the same ranking, every review received is collected on one site.  If you're spread out among five or six different retailers, then your sales, ranks, and reviews are also diluted.  What's better?  A hundred sales split five ways leaving you book in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands on the ranks, or all one hundred sales on Amazon that puts you onto the top 100 genera lists where the discoverability of your book jumps explosively?

Accounting is simplified.  You get a check from one place, you manage your whole digital library from one dashboard, you deal with one specific file format.  At first these might not seem like they would be an advantage, but once you start branching out and one web site takes one file type, and another requires a third type, and finally in Apple's case you need to use a system running a mac OSX to upload your work, it quickly becomes a lot of work.  This compounds exponentially when you start releasing more books, or if you're going back to earlier works and adding back end material.  This will either cost you time, to learn how to create these file types, or increased costs to whomever you pay for formatting.

Free promotion days.  This is the honey for joining Select.  The ability to pre-schedule when your book will be available for free is arguably the most powerful marketing tool you will find.  The only other way to get your book free in any market place is by using a 3rd party distrubutor like Smashwords who has a negotiated thing with Barnes and Noble to make books free on their site, and Apple.  Apple allows for direct uploading and pricing $0.  Everywhere else you have to use some price matching scheme to get your book free and it is whimsical at best.  It can take weeks to months for a book to get price matched and it can take that long again for the price to revert.  In other words, you have lost control of your pricing.  There are horror stories out there of books stuck in free limbo because each website is price matching the other and none of them will change.  Having complete control of your pricing allows for you to effectively promote your book how you see fit.  You can change the price and it will instantly take effect, offer free days without worry and more.  This is a major benefit to deal with only one company.

KOLL.  I don't have much to say about the lending library.  When I have been enrolled in Select, the amount of borrows I received were negligible.  I had roughly one borrow per every 300 full priced sales.  I also price my books at $4.99 and receive $3.10 per sale and that's significantly higher than the $1.80+ that I would get from a borrow.  However I have read plenty of posts from authors who receive a considerable amount of revenue from borrows.  I do know that if you are offering your book for 99c. you will make much much more money per borrow than you would for a sale.  A 99c book will only bring in 35c in royalties.  Going from 35c to $1.80 is a five fold increase in royalties.  That's right you can get paid $1.80 when someone borrows a 99c book.  This could be where they are favoring the lending library over others.

So in summary, consolidation of payments, sales, rankings, and reviews.  One website you need to promote.  Complete and timely control over your pricing, increased royalties in new markets and a lending feature that can pay out significantly increased royalties in certain price ranges.  Last but not least, your on Amazon, no one is bigger.


Non Exclusive:
There are whole economic college classes that are dedicated to the dangers of exclusivity.  If Amazon is 60% of the market, why would you cut yourself out of the other 40%?  Each marketplace is it's own ecosystem.  If you don't thrive at Amazon, you may very well succeed at Barnes and Noble.  Also shopping demographics are different.  B&N dominates when it comes to the romance genres and erotica.  Apple...  I'm not sure what they dominate but a lot of authors report success from the iTunes Bookstore over Amazon and others.

The luck factor.  One of the driving factors for selling books is word of mouth.  It's not uncommon for a book to take off on one retailer, and it spreads to others as word of mouth kicks in.  If your only available on one website, you give up those chances to break out.  Mark over at Smashwords has released data that clearly shows books taking off at one website and having it increase sales across all platforms shortly after.  Each website also offers their own features and if you're not on their site, they can't pick you to feature you.  The more places you are, the more you increase your luck.

The market place is shifting.  Kobo and Apple are making significant strides in reaching out to authors.  Amazon's dominance is shrinking and the days of a dedicated e-reader are already gone.  Now its the time of the tablet that can do it all and e-reader apps.  Having a device exclusive to a vendor is dangerous.  Apple and Amazon saw this very quickly.  B&N seems to be a wait and see then follow years late kinda company that does not leverage it's one asset that none of the others have, a real bookstore.

Price matching is a very powerful tool for self-published authors to use if you're brave enough to accept its flaws.  Did your five free days on Amazon not produce results?  Too bad you're stuck for the 90 day period before you can try again.  Did it actually do well and your doing a happy dance with your 25,000 free downloads that resulted in hundreds even thousands of sales on your other books?  Good, but you do realize you will not be able to do this again in the next 90 day period right?  Those websites like E-reader News Today and Pixel of Ink won't feature the same books twice.  So your next 90 day promotion period is already guaranteed to suck.  I shudder when people have back to back promotion periods that do not perform well.  That's half a year locked into a program that leaves you with no other avenues to explore or new options to try.

If you have a book you're willing to offer for free, price matching can be your Ace of Spades.  Instead of 5 days out of 90 to get your book out there.  90 of 90 days it can be free.  And not just on Amazon.  Free downloads from Apple, Kobo, Sony, Deisel, Barnes and Noble and even at Amazon.  You can still submit your book to the promotional websites and if they don't pick your book among the thousands that are submitted, you can try again, and again, and again until they do.  You're not limited to the 5 chances Amazon gives you then your out of luck.  Luck is important and limiting it is bad.


Conclusion and advice:
Both Select and non-exclusive to Amazon have their advantages.  I have been a part of select for 15 months and have had excellent periods, and crappy periods.  Dealing with only one vendor has the advantages already stated but it has it's disadvantages too.

My advice if you're new to self publishing would be to go with Amazon's Select program.  It's the perfect playground to get your feet wet in the world that is self-publishing.  If it doesn't work out, just opt out.  90 days isn't all that long, but it can seem like forever if your books are doing poorly.  Two or three bad periods can really crush an author as their book fallows and due to the terms, there is little you can do but wait.  Many an author has given up from this.

Once you have a feel for things, start to branch out.  Test the other markets, you can always go back.  Several authors have a mix of books in and out of Select.  A strategy that is often used is to put a book in Select for it's first 90 days.  Capture those early reviews all in one place, have a free run to get it out there, then release it to the rest of the markets.  Or taking older books that haven't found an audience and give it the same Select treatment to jump start it again.

After two years of being self published, I will be opting out of Select.  Only Requiem remains and it's contract will expire at the beginning of March.  I have reached a point in my career where exploring new markets is something I want to do and now that the trilogy is complete, I can market it as a set instead of one or two books with an unfinished story-line.  I have a new series coming out shortly as well so it's the perfect time to try.

I hope you have found this information helpful.

What's new in the world of SB Jones

It has been a while since my last update.  I have moved most of my updating and customer and fan interaction over to Facebook.  There is a link to the Facebook page on the right there if anyone wishes to hit the like button there.

Well, 2013 looks to be an exciting year in my writing career.  I launched the third book of the trilogy on Christmas.  It has been an amazing experience to write one book and see it in print.  Completing a series is ten times as exciting.

Requiem also received a face-lift as well.  The new cover really brings the set together as a unit.  I also redid the interior layout to match the other books as well.  From book one to three, I went from knowing nothing about typesetting to a whole lot.  If anyone is thinking about getting their first book into print.  Learn all about typesetting before you take the plunge.  Take the hours, weeks, even months to get it right or hire it done.

This coming March marks a very pivotal change for me.  Requiem will be leaving the KDP select program and the trilogy will be released to other online retailers.  No more exclusivity to Amazon.  So now people will be able to buy the e-books from Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon.  Statistically this should increase the market exposure of the books by a significant amount.

March also marks the tentative release date of Book One of The War of Antiquities.  It is all finished and I am currently working on Book Two.  The War of Antiquities is episodic with the first six episodes completing Book One.  They will be released approximately a week apart with a month break after episode six before Book Two gets rolled out.

The War of Antiquities takes place twenty years prior to Requiem.  It is all of the back story that surrounds the primary villain, Therion, and his relationship with the main hero's father, Duke Falconcrest.  Several characters from the trilogy play major rolls including the Mastersons, Vincent, and maybe a cameo or two by our favorite time traveler, Mr. Eleazar.  Also sprinkled throughout are details about Bastiana's origins as well as the woman who can fly, Angela.

I am very excited about this series, and it has been very fun to write.  I also have an upcoming book signing event at Barnes and Noble.  I am curious how it will do now that I have a trilogy to offer vs. a single book.

How are your plans for 2013 shaping up?

Derailed and rebuilding the tracks.

At the start of January, I spent a week creating the most detailed notes I have ever written for a project titled "The War of Antiquities".  It made it so easy to write that in the first eleven days I had written around 43,822 words.  I think by anyone's standards, that is a pretty break neck speed, easily double what you need to finish NaNo.  "The War of Antiquities" takes place just after the war is declared over and will end at the prologue of Requiem.  It develops all of the back story and characters like Duke Falconcrest, Therion, Vincent, Rhonin and Rayne Masterson, as well as several other characters.  I project the series to finish somewhere around the 200,000 word mark, spread out over 22 short stories approximately 8,000-10,000 words each.  Currently the project sits with story 5 about half finished at 5,800 words.

So how did everything get derailed?  It's been about 3 almost 4 weeks and I haven't written anything of substance.  There were plenty of times I sat down, looked at my notes, fired up MSWord and just turned off the monitors and walked away.  It's not burn out, that I can assure you.  On Jan 11, my grandmother died.  She was the last of my grandparents to die and had been living near my parents at their place on the river where all of the photos I like to post come from.  She was in her 80's, but in fine health, so her death was pretty unexpected.  There are certain things in life that we tend to ignore or take advantage of and when something happens to them, everything else becomes a lesser priority.

Aside from spending time with the family, I had a lot of time to catch up on things I had neglected these last few weeks.  I read a couple of books.  I have read several times that authors say you should keep reading while you write.  I'll be honest and say that I hadn't read a book since I sat down and started writing Requiem back in March of 2010.  I also sat down and played some video games.  Another past time that I had ignored.  I picked up a copy of "The Old Republic" and chopped my way to level 50 as a Sith Juggernaut.  Reading, and playing a game with a very good story line feels like my creative writing gas tank just got refiled.  I look at my stack of notes that you can see in the photo and it's time to start writing again.  There is an excellent story that needs to be told.

SOPA PIPA, $1.70 a rental, current project update.

If you are not familiar with the Stop Online Piracy Act or it's sister bill Protect IP Act, then you should do some Google searches and familiarize yourself with them.  Especially if you are going to write and market your books for online sale and distribution.  On the surface I doubt you will find too many people who overtly support piracy when asked, so the supporters of these bills would logically conclude, and have advertised that everyone should support these bills.  Problem is these bills are not designed to stop anything, but give ultimate control and censorship of the internet to the government.  It gets even weirder, simply linking to an internet location that contains unauthorized (not illegal) copyright material makes you the villain.  This would be the same as the cops coming to your house to arrest you because you know someone who does drugs and where they live.

Another weird thing these acts would allow is for anyone to shut down the internet.  For example, if someone takes the cover of Requiem, links to or actually hosts the picture and writes a nasty article about my book and includes some excerpts they didn't like, I could claim that the copyright of my book and cover is being hosted illegally,  file a complaint, and let the retardation begin.  If the offending site is Blogger, not only could I get the blog pulled, but I could also get blogger shut down, and I could get Google shut down for linking to the blog.  I could also get every web site that ever hosted a link to blogger or the offending blog shut down like Twitter and Facebook.  So any other website or forum that anyone ever left a link to could be shut down.  Next, I could get Visa shut down for conducting transactions with these villainous websites.  I won't even get into the parts of the bills that would allow for DNS filtering by the government.  These are pretty extreme examples, but are exactly what would allow the government and any corporation with enough money to do.  It has absolutely nothing to do with stopping online piracy.  Copyright enforcement has always been the copyright holders responsibility, and there are already laws in place both domestic and foreign for you to use.  At least the white house came out and told these people to rewrite their bills or Obama is not going to sign them.  It makes me laugh that the supporters of the bills took this as a sign that they should be passed immediately.

We finally have the first payout of Amazon's lending library for KDP Select users.  $1.70 per lend.  I predicted a $1 a lend.  $1.70 is what we got and in my opinion is pretty damn high.  Amazon also announced that the January pool had been raised to a total of $700,000 to be divided among the lends.  This tells me a couple of things.  First is that the payout was lower than they expected so they want to raise it.  But if you look at all the naysayers who were expecting 10c a lend, a buck seventy was damn good and I haven't found anyone complaining about the $1.70 payout except for the guy who priced his book at $9.99 and is complaining about losing so much.  Then again, I put him in with the same people who can't understand why Amazon isn't paying them when they made their book free.  So my other conclusion is, there are already a lot of borrows for January and the extra $200k is to keep the payout near the same.  Remember, all of those Kindle Fire's sold at Christmas came with a month of prime and people have started to figure out what that means.  Regardless each month the payout is going to be different and every month, the Lending Library will be a hot topic.

I predict that we will see some changes to how much people will get paid per borrow.  For example a 99c book gets paid 35c if someone buys the book, but $1.70 if they borrow/rent it?  I don't see this lasting.  I fully expect there to be changes that limit the payout to match the royalty rate on cheap books, or at least limit to the retail value of the book.  So a 99c book would either get the same $$ as a sale, 35c or the retail value 99c.  This allows Amazon to have a higher payout to more expensive works, and people who opt in with 99c books make the full value of a sale, or even more.  I just don't see Amazon paying almost 5 times the cash for a borrowed 99c book than a bought 99c book.

Last week I said I would mention my current WIP.  Instead of barreling into the third book of my series, I am writing the prequel.  It's current working title is "The War of Antiquities" but I may change that because the setting is right after the war ends.  It revolves around Kail's father, Duke Falconcrest, and Therion, the main bad guy.  It also delves into other characters like Kail's mother, Therion, and Bastiana's origins.  The story is going to end at the prologue of Requiem when Duke is at the Mage Council and has his magic sealed and bound from him.  One of the things I am doing with this project is episodic writing.  If The Eternal Gateway trilogy were movies, The War of Antiquities would be a TV series.  So far I have outlined 22 'episodes' and I have written four of them.  The plan is to release each episode as a short story, and then offer discounted volume sets, and maybe a bound paperback with all of them.  Right now the average length is 9,200 words.  The shortest was 8,800 and the longest has been 10,100 words long.

I am finding that these are extremely simple to write.  In eight days of writing I have 37,000 ish words so far.  Its taking me two days of writing about 5-6 hours a day to complete an episode.  If I can keep my current pace, I should have the whole thing completed by the end of Febuary or early March.  The math is a bit crazy because it took me three months to write Requiem and six for Guardian.  They are the same length at 73,000 words, and here I am going to write 200,000 words in less than three months.  I may be deluded so we will see.

I contribute the ease and quickness of being able to write these to stepping up the level of detail in the outline.  Requiem's outline was a sentence or two per chapter,  Guardian had about two or three paragraphs per chapter.  Each episode of Antiquites has a page to a page and a half of notes.  Each scene is broken down and I would estimate there are 500-1000 words of notes per episode.  It flows a lot like a soap opera on TV.  25-30 little scenes between all of the players.  For Example. (warning, completely unedited)

Notes say:
Randoms traveling to Courduff by horse and cart.  Talking about trains and cant wait for them, refuges, one has powers, weak, Therion (unknown to reader) finds them and kills them.  Takes power.  Intro to focusing stones and bracer/wristband glyph to filter.

What was written:

“It will be a nice day when the train tracks are built,” Alice said after the last rut in the road bounced her on the cart’s seat.  “And faster,” she finished adjusting herself.

            “I’m not so sure.  Have you heard them?  I bet you can’t hear anything for a week after riding one, and I’m told the ride is worse,” Edgar said as the cart jostled both of them, emphasizing his point.  “Besides, the less people we see the better, remember.”

            “Yes, I remember,” she sighed.  “It seems like forever ago when we didn’t have to run.”

            Edgar nodded his head in response, splitting his attention to keeping the cart on the road and listening to Alice talk about better times before the war.

            Alice noticed a man standing next to the road ahead of them.  “Who is that?”

            Edgar’s mind quickly focused on the stranger, sensing nothing dangerous.  “I’m not sure, but I don’t sense anything,” he replied.

            Alice gave a knowing nod as Edgar continued the cart towards the stranger.

            “Hello,” the man said.  “Spare a ride?  I have been walking all day.”

            “Sure thing friend.” Edgar offered, nodding to the back of the cart.  “Can’t say it will be worth it though, been hearing complaints about it all day.”

            Alice flashed him an angry glare as the stranger jumped into the back of the cart and made himself comfortable.  Edgar shrugged and snapped the reigns, starting the cart down the road again.

            “Courduff?” the man asked.

            “Not quite that far.  Aldervale,” Edgar answered.

            “The right direction at least,” the man answered.

            Edgar screamed as he felt the hot pain in the center of his back.

            Alice shrieked after taking one look at Edgar.  The stranger from the road had his hand at Edgars back.  A jeweled bracelet covered in strange markings was glowing and foggy energy was being pulled out of Edgar and into the bracelet.  Jumping from the cart she ran down the road yelling for help.  She didn’t make it very far before the strangers magic hit her from behind.  Her last thought was, Necromancer, before her body was incinerated.




Requiem's notes would have said: Hook, kill someone.
Guardian's notes would have been something like: Hook, Therion kills someone, steals power.

The Best Week Ever. Payment Scheduling.

So how do you top the best week ever?  Sit down and write your next book, that's how.  My first two books, Requiem and Guardian sold a lot of books last week.  I won't lie, more books moved in those days than the last 6 months combined.  Requiem sold 134 books and received 40 borrows from Amazon Prime members and Guardian sold 39 copies with 8 borrows.  173 books and 48 borrows.  Borrows kind of have me scratching my head on where to fit them in the grand scheme of things.  People didn't buy the book, but I do get paid for each borrow.  So on the business end, it's like a rental.  One question I get asked a lot is "How many books have you sold?"  That used to be easy, right now about 112 books since June.  No one asks, "How many books were rented?" so i'm not sure if I should include them in my numbers yet, however there is actually a lot more because I quit trying to keep track of live sales because the reporting tools just suck and it became a whole lot easier to just record the numbers from the remittance statements.  So when someone asks how many books I've sold,  I tell them, "I've been paid for 112ish".  Also, I'm not going to pay taxes on money I haven't received yet either.

If you haven't published a book before one of the things you will need to get used to is the payment schedule of royalties and advances.  I won't go into traditional publishing, but I have read that they still mail checks out from England and if the row boat makes it across the Atlantic, you might see a check once a year if you managed to earn out your advance.  I use Lightning Source for print and Amazon for e-books.  Both are good and pay out monthly.  Both are bad because Lightning Source is three months delayed and Amazon is two months delayed. But it beats Smashwords pay out schedule of once a quarter.  Downside of delays is obvious. You don't get your money.  For example, back in November I had a sell out book signing at Barnes and Noble.  I have yet to see a dime from all of those books ordered and sold.  I should see it sometime in February.  Same goes for my best week ever on Amazon.  March will be the "Best paycheck ever" month.

Payment schedules get even worse when you add layers of distribution.  Smashwords pays 4 times a year remember.  They use Lightning Source for print.  So if the first week of January is your best week ever and I had sold hundreds of paperback books.  Lightning Source wouldn't pay Smashwords until April.  Smashwords would have just payed out for Q1, so you would have to wait till the end of Q2 for Smashwords to pay you.  Six months delay.  Ouch, I hope you didn't quit your day job because you finally started selling books.  The publishing forums are rife with posts and people claiming that Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Lightning Source etc are stealing their money, holding it hostage, blah blah blah.  But it's funny to read about and point at people who get upset from this because they stepped into a business they don't understand.

I am working on my next piece already.  Come Monday of next week, I will blog about it's progress.  If I maintain my word count, it should be done by the end of February.