Part eight: Nouns and Taglines. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Nouns.  Not all nouns are weighted the same, but each noun you introduce into your blurb is one more piece of information your reader has to remember and keep an eye on.  The more nouns you have in your blurb, the heavier it gets, the harder it is to keep track of and the easier it becomes to lose a customer.

Science fiction and fantasy suffer the most from noun bloat.  This usually comes from the fact that they contain names that are unique to that series and are often times hard to pronounce.  The more familiar customers are with the nouns you use the less effort it takes to keep track of what's going on.  Take a look at these examples:

District Attorney, Travis Jones, has been invited to the Governor's Ball in upstate New York.  Little does he know, the Secret Service is bugging his apartment and his girlfriend works for the CIA.

Ether Empath, Wyveller Malchi, has been invited to the Praetor's Terrene in the Magelenic Core.  Little does he know, the Royal Shadow is bugging his pod and his cortege works for the PLG.

Both of these say the exact same thing.  The first example is pretty easy to follow.  We are familiar with all the nouns used.  The second example is much harder to follow or understand what is going on.  Again, each noun carries a certain weight.  If we continue these starter blurbs and add in plot, conflict and another character, one of them is going to be too heavy for the customer to carry and they will drop it by clicking the back button.  The blurb is too heavy to buy.

It's not uncommon when an author asks for advice on their blurb for me to comment on the noun overload.  It's a mistake I see when they try to just cram in as much as they can, because they don't know what to focus on.  Another issue with nouns is that many authors introduce us to them, but then ignore them.  In the forgotten land of Westcheerios....  Then the rest of the blurb has absolutely nothing to do with Westcheerioes or why it's a forgotten land.

In conclusion, limit your nouns.  Make sure the ones you do use are relevant to the story you are trying to get a customer to buy.  Remember, the job of the blurb is to get the customer to buy.


Taglines.  Many rookie authors go for taglines or catch phrases when tackling their blurbs.  The problem with them is that they require vast exposure and popular culture to work.  May the Force be with you.  I'll be back.  Fifteen minutes can save you fifteen percent or more.  In almost every situation, a tagline isn't going to work for a self published author because of the lack of massive exposure.

Another shortcoming of a tagline for a book is that authors often pull some witty line from their book that they are proud of and try to show it off.  In reality it's irrelevant, distracting and you can tell the author tried to force the blurb around it.

My second novel.  I had a nice tagline.  It was fairly relevant, catchy and set the mood.  Everything a tagline should do.  But I cut it, it wormed it's way back, got cut again and then I found the perfect little spot for it.  Here is the blurb again.

Branded as an outlaw for his daring rescue of the aerial warrior Angela, Kail finds a new home for his magic abilities in a gearworks mining town. There people are willing to help Kail and his group as they too hold no love for General Therion’s advancing airship armada.

As devastating losses mount, the Eternal Gateway reappears, and the fight for its control is rekindled. Kail and his allies know the Gateway cannot fall into Therion’s hands if they are to prevent a dark future foretold in prophecy. With little resources left, word of a possible key to victory reaches Kail and Angela, but it risks their best chance to seize the Gateway on the temperament of one volatile mage and a man immune to magic.

Through time the Gateway returns a burned and unforgettable face; Xavier Ross has the knowledge of what is to come and lashes out at Kail and Angela for choices they have yet to make. He who controls the Gateway controls time, even death, and Xavier knows at the end of time lies the beginning of vengeance.


Were you able to find it?  It's the last part of the last sentence:  "At the end of time lies the beginning of vengeance."  In earlier versions I started the blurb with it.  It was very hard to let go, but there ended up being a place for it.  As for using them in your blurb, my recommendation is to avoid them like the plague.  Very rarely does a dedicated tagline work.  Even the one I used is no longer a tagline, but I was able to embed it into the blurb.

Taglines and catchphrases are totally awesome for Twitter.  Even without the social requirements to make them work.  They work there because the medium of Twitter demands short catchy dialogue.

Take a moment and browse the top 10/100 lists on Amazon.  Take note of how many use taglines or catch phrases and their impact on pushing your mouse to the buy button, or if they are even relevant to the rest of the blurb.  If you find a blurb that doesn't excite you, count the number of different nouns.

Part seven: Passive blurb vs Active blurb. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Writing is an art, publishing is the business of selling that art.  When you are marketing your book, there are active advertising and passive advertising.  Your Amazon landing page is an example of passive marketing.  It has your beautiful cover, your snazzy blurb and people can surf the web and wander past at their leisure.  Your not actively driving traffic to your book.  An active marketing situation would be when you tweet about your book, a newsletter or email goes out to people that includes your book, or you're running a paid ad.  In simple terms, you are actively trying to drive traffic to your book.

Now why after spending all the time to get this far into writing the perfect blurb would you need a different one?  The one you have is perfect isn't it?  Have you tried tweeting a blurb?  I think I have a set of snazzy blurbs, but they won't twitter.

Advertising websites and their mailing lists.  I recommend you sign up for a few of them and begin to see how they present books to potential customers.  Some do a really good job like Bookbub.  Other websites...  Not so much.  You may find your book crammed between a "How to Make Your Own Creamed Corn" and "Taboo Erotica".

Many self-published authors haven't taken the time to analyze their landing pages.  Amazon (and others) have a wealth of information about your book once a customer has clicked.  Genera is clearly displayed on the left in a searchable tree layout.  Below your blurb is the ranking and possible top 100 lists your book is in.  There is a string of other books that are similar to yours.  All of this helps a customer quickly with a glance to identify if they are looking at.  When you start to advertise.  All of this extra information is stripped away.  You're left with only the cover, and what few lines for a description the advertiser gives you.

Many of the established recommendations on how to write blurbs go out the window in these situations.  Normally you wouldn't put in your blurb: "Sky Mages is a Time Travel Steampunk Fantasy filled with magical fights, airship battles and second chances."  (horrible example I know).  But that might be all the room you get in that e-mail blast.  So how do you write a custom blurb for active advertising when you can't use your existing one?  Distill it down.  Lean on the other asset that is in the ad, the cover.  Break all the rules if you have to as long as you keep the one rule of a blurb in mind.  It's job is to get the customer to buy.

Example Tweet blurbs may look something like this:
A thousand years ago, Angela made a choice and died.  Now the last of her kind she gets to choose again.
There is no room for magic and prophecy in Kail's life, but one woman's arrival from the ancient past shatters that.
Airships, check. Magic, check. Time Travel, check. Destiny, check. Sky Mages, check. The saga begins with the Gateway of Time.

A single paragraph example for an email advertiser:
A thousand years ago, Angela is recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy.  Now the last of her kind she might get a second chance if she plays her part.  Kail lives in a world of airships and industry.  Magic is forgotten and Angela's arrival shatters his perception.  General Therion can pervert magic and he wants what Kail doesn't even know he has.  A birthright of magic and the secrets of the Gateway.

Be aware and be prepared to have shorter versions of your blurb ready when you need them.  Don't try to whip up a shorter blurb five minutes after you just paid for an ad spot somewhere.

Part six: Rising tension or tropes? Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Rising tropes is the best I can come up with to replace "rising tension".  Not every book is an action adventure or thrilling drama.  After helping several other authors with their blurbs, I would tell them that they need to raise the tension.  A lot of times they had trouble with it because their book doesn't build what most people would consider tension.  Take a comedy for example.  The rising tension would be the string of events that just get more absurd as they go on.  Like a Rube Goldberg Machine.  Or in the case of a romance, they thought I was talking about sexual tension between the characters when there really isn't any.  In other words, as you write your blurb, each step needs a rising action of some sort.  Tropes work well for this because it serves double duty in your blurb to help the customer identify what your book is about without actually telling them.  I'll go deeper into this in the Do's and Don'ts.

Tropes in many writing circles seem to have a bit of a bad rep.  I'm not saying that you need to write books with tropes in them, but tropes are universal identifiers when it comes to stories.  It's not a romance book if there isn't a happy for now/ever after ending.  And you can't call it a western if there are not six shooters and cowboy hats.

When it comes to writing your blurb one method to help with making it better is to identify not only the genera but also the themes of your book.  This can be hard to do with your own work if you just sat down and wrote your story and didn't outline or storyboard first.  Once you have the genera and themes.  Take a moment to see which of these will best lend themselves to the rising tension/tropes.

I write Steampunk Fantasy.  Both of these have identifiable tropes.  Reoccurring themes in my trilogy include: second chances, struggle of life and death, coming of age and the circular logic of time travel.  I chose to use my themes to raise the tension in my blurbs over the genera.

Here is a quick look at Book One again before I pick it apart for rising tension.

A thousand years ago, Angela was born into a race of warriors with the ability to fly. Recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy, she travels through the Gateway to a mechanical future dominated by airships on the edge of war. Now the last of her kind, Angela has been promised a second chance at life, if she plays her part.

Kail has a simple life, and it doesn’t include magic and forgotten prophecies. Magic ruled for centuries, but as it died out a new industry of alchemy and machines rose in its place. After Angela arrives bruised and battered the military follows bringing enemies that Kail didn’t know he had.

As the last of the vanguard mage class, General Therion can pervert magic to do unspeakable things. He wants what Kail possesses at any cost: a birthright of powerful magic that also includes the secrets of the Gateway. If Therion can seize what Kail has, he would have sweeping control over time and even death.

In the first paragraph, it clearly steps up in tension for Angela.  I introduce her, she dies, goes to the future, she is the last of her kind and her only out is if she does as she's told.  Each sentence raises the stakes.  Paragraph two and three do the same thing.  Here is ordinary Kail.  Magic and prophecy?  A beat up time traveling girl?  Now the military and bad guys want him?  It's ramping up pretty quick for our hero.  Therion's paragraph is the same,  he's bad, he does bad things, he wants what Kail has and he's going to top it off with control over time and death.

So back to your own blurb.  Does the tension level rise?  Does it ramp up and identify what the customer expects to get out of your book?  Can they quickly identify what your book is about and if it's what they are looking for to spend their money on?  Does it leave them on the edge of their chair with a desperate need to click the buy now button?

Part Five: More blurbs in a series. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

The further you get into a series, the more the recommendations of how to write a blurb start to fall apart.  When your at book seven of Harry Potter, do we still need to be reminded that Harry is a wizard and there is a bad guy out to get him?  The answer is a resounding yes you do.  Unfortunately this is one of the areas where traditional publishing fails to mentor us as self-published authors.  Traditionally if the earlier books don't sell well, you don't get sequels.  The business model is also different here.  Publishers at this point are not relying on the blurb to sell the book.  They now rely on the series and author's name to carry the book.  Unfortunately the reality is that most self-published authors will never get to this stage.  Go to your bookshelf or to Amazon and look at the traditionally published books that are more than a couple of books deep in the series.

Back of Twilight:Breaking Dawn.  No blurb at all.  Same with a Robert Jordan Wheel of Time book.  No blurb at all.  A Dan Brown book?  No blurb, just a back jacket filled with zingy one liners by people paid to endorse the book.  It just boggles my mind that they do this.  It's so short sighted that they can't write a blurb for a book that might find a new reader twenty years after it was written who has no idea who the author is.  The few series books that still have a blurb all suffer from lazy writing.  I plan on getting to that in the do's and don'ts post.

I'm going to pick on my own blurb again for this.

Kail’s magic and Angela’s ancient weapon skills are all that stand against General Therion’s airships bearing down on Silverton.  Therion begins to force his way through time, and his power and control get stronger with each intrusion through the Gateway.  Its secrets come at a price as earthquakes and rips in time tear across the world.

Raised in a dark future, Alyssa and her wisp use the Gateway to cheat a one way trip back in time.  All futures have been gambled in a desperate attempt to seize control from Therion, but one man, refusing to honor his promise of allegiance, chooses to seek retribution instead.  Alyssa is forced to ask for help from those she was told to avoid at all costs, her parents: Kail and Angela.

Witnessing the burned man murder again, Camden vows to hunt down and put an end to Xavier Ross.  As Camden begins to piece together who Xavier really is, he finds out just how unspeakable the man has become.  Following the trail to the southern jungles, it becomes clear where Xavier is headed, and both men know that it will all begin, and it will all end with the Gateway.


This one was really hard for me to write.  It's the last book of this set.  There are lots of characters and lots of story lines that get wrapped up.  I can't spoil any of the series and I have to catch new customers at the same time.  But now I have to convince them to buy not just this book, but all the ones before it.  With that, you have to set your own internal expectations correctly.

I opted for three sets of character-conflict paragraphs.  I remind existing readers that Kail is a mage.  Angela has the fighting skills and she's the one from back in time with the word: ancient.  Let's not forget evil General Therion doing evil things.  Even if you haven't read anything else, you can still figure out what the gateway does and why it's central to the story.  For an opening paragraph for a sequel, I feel this nails it pretty good.

Second paragraph, I lean on my cover for help.  This is paragraph has the cover characters on it.  Its an extremely busy paragraph as well.  Almost every character is in this paragraph, the gateway, conflict, themes, plot, setting, the works.

I spent a lot of time on this blurb.  Several revisions, complete rewrites, you name it, I probably tried it with this blurb.  If this was a blurb for a stand alone or first book,  I would recommend the author to scrap it.  But were not on book one,  this is book three and the final book of a series, so we get a bit of a pass.

In the final paragraph, I have a new character, Camden who has his primary conflict with Xavier.  Several times I was advised to cut this out of the blurb all together.  Ultimately it's up to you as the author to decide what you want to include in the blurb or not.  I decided to leave Camden in because a third of the book is Camden hunting down Xavier.  This is where the reader gets to put all the pieces together.  I had to put it in there.

Each one of these paragraphs in their own way could stand for a blurb.  Is this the best way for a sequel blurb?  Honestly I don't know, but I believe it's alright here.  There is a saying out there: "The worst a good blurb can do is nothing, but a bad one will cost you sales."  I don't believe that this blurb hurts my sales.  The other people and authors I worked with during this time also didn't know.  The available experience on a deep in series book and final book in a series for blurb writing is pretty sparse.  It's also one of the main reasons I chose to blog about it.

Again, I have keywords in the blurb that reference to the imagery of the cover and words in the title.  There are characters in these active poses a customer is reading about.  The title is right there in their face, reinforcing what it is they are reading in the blurb.  I have setting, themes and plot in the blurb.  I'm honestly amazed at how much you can get in two-hundred words if you work at it.

I don't have any spoilers that ruin earlier books.  Some might say that having Alyssa show up spoils Kail and Angela getting together.  But I disagree on grounds that the story isn't about them having kids.  If you look at all three blurbs together it becomes pretty clear that the story revolves around the gateway time traveling device.  The attempt to control life and death.  The dream of getting a second chance, making a different choice.  Each of these themes is present in all three of my blurbs.

If you have read this far into my blurb writing series, odds are you were searching for blurb writing help.  Most self-published authors don't even think about the blurb until they are uploading their book to Amazon and the box labeled "description" is staring in their face.  If this series has accomplished anything I hope it's that you understand what the blurb's job is and why it's so important to put the time and effort into writing the best one you can.

If you need additional help with blurb writing.  I recommend joining the community in the writers cafe at KBoards.com

Part Four: Blurbs for books in a series. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

If you found writing blurbs for your first book to be difficult.  Wait until you get to the sequel.  The blurb for your sequel has to do the same job as the first blurb, but it also has to do more and has more restrictions on what to avoid.  The blurb still has to do it's job by convincing people to click the buy now button.  But it pulls double duty because if it's a new customer, this blurb has to convince them to find and buy the first book as well.

Next you have to remind existing customers what was going on, but you can't spoil book one's story in the process.  You have to balance leaning on the events of the earlier book and focus on the new books story.

In the sidebar to the left, I have three fairly attractive covers.  I have no control over what cover a potential customer may come across first, or which one they my decide to click on for the first time.  It may even take all three covers viewed at various times before someone clicks one.  If a new customer's first click is not on book one.  The blurb can't be too confusing for them to follow.  It can't spoil earlier books.  It still has to engage and hook them to where they want to seek out book one.  This is probably the hardest juggling of words a self-published author will have to write.

Lets take a look at my second Sky Mage novel.  Again, I am going to include the cover because I strongly believe that every part of your book needs to fit and work with each other part.

Branded as an outlaw for his daring rescue of the aerial warrior Angela, Kail finds a new home for his magic abilities in a gearworks mining town. There people are willing to help Kail and his group as they too hold no love for General Therion’s advancing airship armada.

As devastating losses mount, the Eternal Gateway reappears, and the fight for its control is rekindled. Kail and his allies know the Gateway cannot fall into Therion’s hands if they are to prevent a dark future foretold in prophecy. With little resources left, word of a possible key to victory reaches Kail and Angela, but it risks their best chance to seize the Gateway on the temperament of one volatile mage and a man immune to magic.

Through time the Gateway returns a burned and unforgettable face; Xavier Ross has the knowledge of what is to come and lashes out at Kail and Angela for choices they have yet to make. He who controls the Gateway controls time, even death, and Xavier knows at the end of time lies the beginning of vengeance.


I opted for a character-conflict-conflict format for my sequel.  In the first paragraph I re-introduce Kail, Angela, and Therion.  Unlike the first blurb, I don't need a sweeping grand intro.  This is how I lean upon book one.  For new customers, I still have interesting and unique identifiers tied to each character.  Aerial warrior Angela, Kail finds a home for his magic and the obvious villain, Genreal Therion.

The second and third paragraph is all conflict.  This is where you really need to shine for the new customers who haven't read the earlier books.  Is what you present here going to be interesting enough to get them to find book one?  For return customers, is this going to convince them to part with more of their money?

Let's pick apart this blurb.  Cover and title.  The only change in the title is the word Ember.  The rest is this guy with fire and he's got some clear attitude.  I have the clockwork and gears at the bottom for the steampunk setting.  Remember, the cover is your only visual marketing tool for your book.  Use it.

The very first word of this blurb is branded.  This is my fire word to match the fire word in the title: Embers.  There is also fire on the cover so I am leaning on that visual as well.  Gearworks mining town: setting and also draws on the gears in the cover.  Airship Armada: more setting and genera definition.  Gears, clocks and airships.  We have the Steampunk nailed down.  If you read the first paragraph again.  It's a pretty simple paragraph, but it's a very busy paragraph with it's message.

The second paragraph, rekindled is my fire word for the title and cover.  Again leaning on the cover.  I also remind existing customers about the time travel gimmick that is the Gateway.  I also show what the gateway can do in this blurb and it all leans on the title as well: of Time.

This is also an important paragraph because it has all the legwork to convince new customers to find book one.  I feel that I did an acceptable job here with explaining the time traveling gateway. I present the stakes and what's on the line and I have an interesting twist with foreshadowing a mage fight and a guy who is immune to magic.

In the last paragraph, if you haven't picked out the trend is the word: burned.  Xavier is also the character portrayed on the cover.  In my earlier post I talked about starting the blurb with Angela because she was on the cover over Kail.  Honestly, there just isn't a way for me to do that with book two.  However, when the customer finishes reading the blurb, they get everything they see on the cover.  I feel this pulls together well.  With this also not being the first book, you get a little more wiggle room on your blurb.  The Embers cover was almost used for book one.  It was in a dead heat with the one I used based upon customer feedback.  In the end, as good as it is, it just wouldn't work as the cover for book one.

As with book one's blurb.  This blurb is laced with theme, plot, and setting.  Your cover, title and blurb should be able to let the customer know exactly what they are going to get.  In a later blog post, I will go over some of the do's and don'ts of blurb writing.  One of the don'ts is listing what your book is by talking directly to the customer.

Part Three: Writing your blurb. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Part one and two have been theory and conception.  In this part, I am going to take my blurb and rip it apart as a learning tool on writing blurbs.

A thousand years ago, Angela was born into a race of warriors with the ability to fly. Recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy, she travels through the Gateway to a mechanical future dominated by airships on the edge of war. Now the last of her kind, Angela has been promised a second chance at life, if she plays her part.

Kail has a simple life, and it doesn’t include magic and forgotten prophecies. Magic ruled for centuries, but as it died out a new industry of alchemy and machines rose in its place. After Angela arrives bruised and battered the military follows bringing enemies that Kail didn’t know he had.

As the last of the vanguard mage class, General Therion can pervert magic to do unspeakable things. He wants what Kail possesses at any cost: a birthright of powerful magic that also includes the secrets of the Gateway. If Therion can seize what Kail has, he would have sweeping control over time and even death.


I went with a Character, Character, Conflict format.  The conflict just happens to be another character, but that is fine.  Even a gimmick or inanimate object can be a character.  The Starship Enterprise, or the Stargate can be a character.

Kail is my main character.  I don't start the blurb with him where in most situations I would recommend you do.  However he's not on the cover so I start with Angela.  This is one example of how I lean on the cover.

When you introduce characters, you MUST make them interesting and engaging.  I shake my head at how many authors introduce us to bland, boring, cardboard cutout characters.  If you re-read the first paragraph about Angela, I have a girl from a thousand years ago, who can fight, who can fly, who died, who time traveled and now is the last of her race scraping for a second chance.  Damn if that isn't an interesting character, I don't know what is.  Sure beats "Red-headed Angela helps train and guard young mage Kail."

Under-paid high-school teacher quits job to make meth to pay hospital bills.  I doubt Breaking Bad would have done well with that description.

I can't stress enough how important it is to have engaging characters.  If you do it well, you don't need a gimmick tagline or hook.

In paragraph two, I introduce Kail.  He's the main character of the trilogy.  After Angela's introduction, I went in the opposite direction.  It's minimalist compared to Angela's epic intro.  Kail is our blank slate.  He's our Luke Skywalker who hasn't had a life on the run and a bounty on his head like Han Solo or a banned senator on the run like Leia.  Kail is the character that we follow through the trilogy and get to see grow, develop and change.

I feel this worked well and in the second half of the paragraph, I link in Angela and begin the setup for the conflict that is paragraph three.

In paragraph three, we have our bad guy, he does bad things and it explains why this matters to our characters and it doesn't spoil our book.

Next I want to go over setting.  Each paragraph of my blurb, I have woven in the setting of my book.  Mechanical future, Airships, edge of war.  Paragraph two has Magic, alchemy, machines, military.  And paragraph three has, magic, (general) military title, and time travel.  I prefer to weave the setting through my blurbs, but there is nothing wrong with a dedicated paragraph for setting in your blurb.

Now let's take a moment and go over some of the nitty gritty parts of the blurb.  The blurb, title, cover combinations.  Here is the cover and blurb again so you don't have to scroll up.

A thousand years ago, Angela was born into a race of warriors with the ability to fly. Recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy, she travels through the Gateway to a mechanical future dominated by airships on the edge of war. Now the last of her kind, Angela has been promised a second chance at life, if she plays her part.

I use a lot of words that describe the cover and title.  "A thousand years ago."  This goes with the word "Time".  "Angela," girl on the cover.  "Race of warriors," sword in hand.  "Ability to fly," goes with the word "Sky."  Gateway is repeated in the blurb to match the title.  "Mechanical future," goes with the word time and the gear/clockwork on the cover.  "Airships," goes with the word Sky and the image in the background.

If I go back to the movie trailer analogy, the cover is the only visual element you have for a book.  They really need to match.  Both the cover and blurb get stronger this way.

Kail has a simple life, and it doesn’t include magic and forgotten prophecies. Magic ruled for centuries, but as it died out a new industry of alchemy and machines rose in its place. After Angela arrives bruised and battered the military follows bringing enemies that Kail didn’t know he had.

Again, Magic in the blurb, mage int he title.  Centuries is a time word.  Industry and machines match the metal hoop and clockwork.  Angela is here again, drawing back to her image on the cover.  The last sentence draws upon the cover as well by letting us know that there is going to be a lot of action in the story and the girl on the cover looks ready for it.

As the last of the vanguard mage class, General Therion can pervert magic to do unspeakable things. He wants what Kail possesses at any cost: a birthright of powerful magic that also includes the secrets of the Gateway. If Therion can seize what Kail has, he would have sweeping control over time and even death.

Mage and magic match the title.  Gateway is repeated as is the word time.  Every paragraph draws heavily upon what a customer sees in the cover.

The cover by itself is good.  The blurb by itself is good.  Together as a whole, they are much better than separate.

There is much much more to writing a good blurb than writing a product description or following the example on the back of a book on your shelf.

Part Two: Constructing your blurb. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Now that understand that the blurb's job is to convince a customer to buy our book.  We now have to construct the second most important part of your passive marketing strategy.  The book's cover is the most important part of selling your book.  If a customer doesn't click on your thumbnail sized cover, they will never see your blurb.   Your blurb won't even get a chance to do it's job.

Step one:  Identify your main character.  Identify your plot/conflict.  Identify your setting.  But SB Jones, I have more than one main character.  No you don't.  One of these characters is reacting, growing and changing as a character in reaction to the other.  That is your main character.

Many authors can't identify or describe their own books.  It's like asking a parent who has a 30 year old son/daughter to describe them in a few short sentences.  Do you talk about them in broad strokes or try and cram in all the minute details of their life?  Remember part one?  We need to get customers to click the buy now button.  If your describing your son to someone in hopes of seeing them settle down, taking about how they wet the bed isn't going to help.

If you still struggle with what the blurb is supposed to do.  Hop over to YouTube and watch the movie trailers for this year's blockbusters.  These are exactly what your blurb is trying to do.  Get people excited about your book so they have to click the buy now button.

Step two:  Outline and structure.  We need to take a few minutes and look at some technical aspects of your blurb.  Amazon and other retail websites limit the display area for blurbs.  Amazon keeps it down to 4000 characters, but what you really need to watch out for is number of lines.  If you have a large five paragraph blurb with four blank lines in-between.  Your blurb will get cut off and a customer will have to click a link to expand out the blurb.  Anytime you put a click between the customer and the buy now button.  You WILL lose sales.  Some retailers only give you a line or two before they cut it off, so you really need to remember this.

https://supervillainsomeday.wordpress.com/tag/blurbs/

This link is a collection of good blurb writing articles.  When it comes to plotting your blurb.  You need to setup your characters, your conflicts and your setting.  Like the movie trailers, often they will start with the main character talking while at the same time they are giving you the setting.  Vin Diesel's scratch voice, while you see fast cars, big explosions and crazy stunts.  Then it shifts to the conflict and you see other stars, quipy one liners, more explosions and rocking music until at the end of two and a half minutes you are standing with a fist full of dollars yelling "Take my money!"

That's what your blurb has to do.

At minimum.  You should have a character, conflict blurb structure.  Other structures include character, character, conflict.  Or Setting, character, conflict.  There are any number of workable paragraph structures for blurbs.  The genera is also important.  What works well for a Star Wars blurb isn't the best for a Rom-Com.

My personal preference is a Character Conflict structure and I weave in the setting.  I also leverage the most important marketing point of my book in my blurbs: the cover.

Part One: What is the job of the blurb? Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

I re-branded my Gateway Trilogy earlier this year.  It was a transition that took about six months to complete.  Editing, New Titles, New covers, New Blurbs; the works.  Most of this re-branding was work I paid someone else to do.  The blurb however I did on my own.  I spent almost an entire month working on three blurbs.  This involved dozens of rewrites, hours of research and weeks of bouncing the results off of other Authors and volunteers for feedback.

Today I want to explore the blurb writing process and my goal is to condense down what took me a lot of time to understand in my own effort to pay it forward for all the help I received.

First question:  What is the blurb?
This is an easy answer to a question that every author seems to know, but in reality don't understand at all.  When you upload a book to Amazon, Amazon calls it the "description" and asks you to describe your book.  They then recommend that you look on the back cover of other books for examples.

If you're like me, the first book I picked up off of my shelf, the back cover had no description.  It was covered in truncated quotes by people and marketers that what lay inside was "stunning",  "author name does it again".  A couple of books later I found one that had a description.  It wasn't very good so I kept looking until I had about six books with decent descriptions.

I tried following some of the styles, but each blurb I came up with for my own books just looked crappy.  A few self-help web pages later and I started to develop a theory about blurb writing.  This stems from an earlier concept that I believe in that writing is an art, but publishing is the business of selling that art.  Selling is completely different than creating.

My new question is:  What is the job of the blurb?
Many may jump back to the first answer.  It describes the book.  This is where the common thinking is wrong.  The job of the blurb is to get a customer to click on the "buy now" button.  To help explain how I got here, we need to take a quick look at the customer buying experience.

In a book store, the buying experience is completely different from buying online.  You have new shiny books up front to catch your eye.  Better sellers on the shelf sit with the cover facing out and older books if they are even present, only have the spine facing you.  The cover of the book is still king.  It's what catches your eye.  It's what has the authors name on it.  It's what instantly tells you the genera and what the book is probably about in a single glance.

Next if you pick up a book, you might glance at the back, but odds are it's just got the same "this book is stunning... again" chop quotes that every other book has.  So you get to thumb through it.  Feel it in your hands.  You can tell how long it might take you to read it because you can see how many pages there are.  All of this factors into your choice to buy a book or not.  Buying an e-book...  You get none of this.

The e-book buying experience is night and day different.  You have a cover, that is the size of a large postage stamp.  That's it.  If your cover catches someone's eye, they get taken to your books landing page.  Here they are presented with a lot more information.  A larger sample of the cover.  Prices, format, reviews and your blurb.  But the MOST important part of your landing page is the "buy now" button.

Up front and center of the landing page is your blurb.  It has only one job.  Getting the customer to click the buy now button.  Anything else the customer clicks on is one click that is not spent on buying your book.  Now that you understand the difference in buying experiences, treating your e-book blurb like the back jacket of a print book is flawed.

Creating a blurb that says your book is fun filled, action packed and if you like this other series, you might like this one too, is the wrong way to approach writing your blurb.

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.