Since Perigee is nearing the end of its 90-day Kindle Select period, this seemed like an opportune time to reflect on what I’ve learned so far about self-publishing.
(Crickets chirping)
Wow, it’s quiet in here… Continue reading “The View So Far”
Brazen Blogger Bait
This review, among other reasons, is why I’m a Sarah Hoyt fan even though I’ve yet to read her novels. Yeah, yeah, I know…but there hasn’t been a lot of time for reading other people’s work until very recently. I’ve likewise heard really good things about Ric Locke’s Temporary Duty and need to get off my @$$ and download a copy. I can only hope that Perigee merits similar praise from other writers at some point.
It’s immensely gratifying to read a traditionally published novelist who is not afraid to give a shout-out to an indie author. We could use a good deal more of that. It bugs me that associations like ITW and SFWA are closed to indie writers, except for an “associate” membership. In SFWA’s case, we appear to be shut out entirely. And judging by some of her other posts, maybe it’s just as well.
I get that there has to be some kind of standard, otherwise any schmuck who can pound out 300 pages of gibberish and have his first-grader cobble together a cover would be sharing equal status with names like DeMille, Preston and Child. But considering the rapidly-changing publishing landscape, shouldn’t there be some minimum sales threshold that would allow indie authors into the Cool Kid’s Clubs? Pick a number, it doesn’t matter to me…5,000? 10,000? And I would totally get excluding giveaway copies. That’s a marketing tactic, not a career plan.
A friend of mine who’s been quite successful in the Christian SF market once told me that the large majority of novels don’t sell more than about 1,500 copies.
Well, guess what? I’ve already passed that mark, and it doesn’t include the free promos used to goose sales on Amazon. Maybe I’ll just have to go and form my own club. As indie writers, we have a special responsibility to ensure our work is every bit as good as what comes out of the New York collective.
Assuming your book is worth reading, as writers we are all competing for readers in two fundamental ways: Name Recognition and Price Point. As a new indie author I have exactly zip in name recognition, which leaves me with pricing. This can be a tremendous advantage since it’s entirely under my control. I can respond to market trends much faster than any of the Big 6 ever could. But I can’t stress enough that we must put out Big 6-quality work, otherwise the indie revolution will end up being just another bubble.
I’m confident that a free market will sort that out. Nobody wants to buy crap, even for 99 cents.
It kills me to let Perigee go so cheaply, but that price seems to keep it moving. It won’t make me rich, but it has kept my own title listed among the ranks of Konrath, Clancy, and King. And right now, that’s pretty much ball-game. Build a reputation from the first book, and a career from all the rest.
Yes, I’m Still Here
Been busy finishing up the paperback version of Perigee and there just hasn’t been much time for anything else, at least if I want to keep my family relationships intact. I’m still figuring out the balance between work, family, writing, and marketing. Until recently, the latter concern didn’t really enter into my mind. But it’s a lot of work, more than I realized.
Fortunately, the work is paying off. It’s now #3 on Amazon’s “high tech SF” list and is getting some fantastic reviews. Much better than I’d hoped for, in fact. That’s probably every novelist’s biggest fear (even more than sales) is when those first reviews come in. So what’s the box score so far?
8 five-star, 2 four-star. Nothing lower. WOOT WOOT!
A few choice excerpts:
“…best darned “sci-fi” book I’ve read in years.”
“What a ride! This was an excellent read, I couldn’t put it down.”
“…a plain great story and great read. I didn’t put it down until I finished it.”
So yeah, maybe I’m tooting my own horn. However the sales numbers shake out, I will treasure these comments. They’ve all expressed exactly the feelings I hoped to evoke, which is not really sci-fi but more near-future technothriller a la Michael Crichton. I’m far more interested in stories about what could be achievable right now if someone just went and did it, instead of far-out Star Trekky stuff.
At least for reading, that is. For movies, I’m still eagerly awaiting the next Trek film. KAAHHNN!!!
PERIGEE for FREE
That’s right, everyone’s favorite four-letter word: F-R-E-E.
I’m running a promotion, today only, where you can download Perigee for your Kindle for exactly $0.00. They say stuff is worth what you pay for it, but in this case I think you’d be getting a whole lot of value for nuttin’. You can find all that high-value/low-risk goodness right here.
And for those of you waiting on the paperback version, don’t worry. We’re in final review right now and so far it looks excellent. But weird things can happen when a professional imports a Word file into more serious software, like italics and paragraph returns going crazy. That means a line-by-line edit of what will be about a 360-page novel. That’s a lot of headache-inducing work.
So here’s a shout-out to my cousin Suzanne’s company, Fresh Ink Foundry. She did a terrific job on formatting the e-version and is turning out a Big Publishing-worthy paperback.
So yeah, I’m working on it. We should still have it ready to go by the end of the month. In the meantime, enjoy the e-version. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle reading app from Amazon that works on iPads, PCs, and laptops.
As always, I humbly request that once you’re finished to please consider posting a review on Amazon. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!
UPDATE: The promo’s a little over halfway done, and Perigee just hit Number One on the Amazon Sci-Fi list! Okay, it’s the “free” side but I’ll take it. Hopefully this translates into actual sales tomorrow when the promo’s over. At least that was the idea. Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy!
The plug from Instapundit didn’t hurt either. Thanks Glenn!
PERIGEE News
If you have Amazon Prime, it’s now available via their KDP Select program. I appreciate the nice reviews recently posted, but more is always better!
I’m reviewing the master file for the paperback right now, so we’re still making progress and expect to have the dead-tree version out by month’s end.
In the meantime, I’m getting itchy to write the next one. The outline is settled and a few chapters are already finished. Most of the central characters from Perigee are involved, but in seriously different roles. Hint: recall that Ryan, Penny, and Simon are all retired military? That’s not going to last for long.
Oh yeah, it kicks @$$.
Nighty-nite…
The Indie Publishing Year
David Gaughran provides a great wrap-up of 2011 from the perspective of independent authors: The Self-Publishing Year in Review.
Here’s his introduction, but read the whole thing:
This has been a year of massive changes. Some of the older hands say that the business has always been this way.
However, I don’t think we are simply seeing another year of flux. Instead, we are witnessing a process unfold which will revolutionize publishing forever (or at the very least, the foreseeable future).
But hey, I could be wrong, and we might all be back querying – and fawning in the comments of agents’ blogs – by March.
I for one am praying that he is not wrong. I’m not much of a fawner.
The Long and Winding Road
Via Sarah Hoyt’s site, a new how-to series at MadGeniusClub: The Road to Digital Publication. Just based on the first installment, I’d recommend it to anyone contemplating e-publishing their work.
And for crying out loud, if you don’t take any other advice, take this:
Tabs – don’t use them. I repeat, do NOT use tabs. In the conversion from your word processing document to HTML, etc., you will lose them. Instead, go to your paragraph style box and choose first line indent. Set that indent somewhere between 0.25 and 0.33 (this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but those are my preferences. Anything larger looks odd on an e-reader).
If you’ve read this far, I’ll add a couple pointers of my own:
1. Spend the $40 on Scrivener. Do NOT use Word if at all possible.
2. Justify your margins. It’ll look so much better on e-readers, especially as readers adjust their own margins and font size.
3. When in doubt, refer to item 1 above.
Why I am an Indie Author
Now that Perigee is finally out there for public consumption, I had thought about posting a long essay about how the whole thing almost ended up in a drawer.
The always-worthwhile Passive Voice blog saved me the trouble with this link to a pitch-perfect essay by writer Anne R. Allen: Confessions of a Former Query Addict. A few choice excerpts:
There it was in my inbox on New Year’s morning—a positive response to a query I’d sent to an agent months before:“Your writing is delightful, and your characters are original and inviting. I would cheerfully read anything you wrote. I think you’re very talented…” I started to squee and do a happy dance.Then I read on. It was a no.
And this:
In September, I finally got that offer I’d been dreaming of for five years. Here was my big score–an offer of representation!But it came with an astronomical price tag. The agency wanted a total rewrite. Not an edit. A tear-it-up-and-start-over rewrite…
Not only was I going to have to give up the story I’d been aching to tell for decades, I was also going to have to erase my own personality: squelch all my Dorothy Parker snark to become Barbara Cartland-sweet.It took me three days, but I finally had to admit the price of that fix was too high.
What she said. Read the whole thing here.
This is the very thing that almost made me decide writing was a waste of valuable time. Thank goodness, then, for two things: the burning desire that just wouldn’t let go and the indie e-book revolution. The option that I wouldn’t even consider this time last year became the only path I was willing to follow.
Here’s to a Happy New Year, with happy new writing.
The End is Nigh
The end of 2011, at least. And if you buy in to the whole Mayan-calendar thing, then you probably should be spending what’s left of your retirement savings in anticipation of certain Apocalypse by this time next year.
Now that I’m published, my perspective on writing is beginning to change since I’m faced with the transition between finishing the @%$#! book and actually getting people to buy it. You know, that whole marketing thing.
Perigee has been for sale exactly one week now. Speaking for myself, that’s been a week blissfully spent not writing, thinking about writing, or fussing over the edits of my writing. I owed it to my family. And it’s been nice to not have a major project constantly gnawing at the back of my mind.
More to follow on that topic, but for now here are some great stories on the current state of publishing.
Digital Book World: Five Big Stories of 2011 That Will Bleed Into 2012
Emily Casey: Self-Publishing vs Sushi. Worth reading just for the Venn Diagram that explains much of what you see on bookstore shelves.
Bob Mayer: Ten Daring Predictions for 2012 from the Indie Author Trenches
Read and discuss amongst yourselves. A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
PERIGEE … On Sale Now!
A revolutionary spaceplane is stranded in orbit with no way home before the air runs out.
At hypersonic speed, Polaris AeroSpace has become the premium choice for rapid travel around the globe. When a veteran crew is marooned after a series of baffling malfunctions, they must try to stay alive knowing that help may never arrive.
As they struggle with dwindling life support and increasingly desperate passengers, their colleagues scramble to mount an audacious rescue. Racing against time, they will face shocking betrayals in a fight to save their friends and their company. As they unravel a web of industrial espionage, the truth will reveal itself to be worse than imagined. And one man will discover that escape may demand a terrible sacrifice.
PERIGEE is a novel of the next generation of travel in air and space. Look for it now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other e-book distributors.
Here’s the link, to make it easy for you: http://www.amazon.com/Perigee-ebook/dp/B006PNL48I/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324741340&sr=1-5
The Chiles Files 