Category: Publishing

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Hit & Run Posting

A couple of quick hits here just to make sure the blog still has a pulse, and to encourage other writers. Here are two more recent signs that the “establishment” media is coming around to a grudging acceptance of the Brave New World of indie publishing.

Yesterday, NPR interviewed Mark Coker of Smashwords in a pretty much snark-free manner, but stand by for the obligatory follow-up with a big cheese at Hatchette publishing is supposed to happen today.

And today, the New York Times reports that Apple will begin highlighting indie “Breakout Books” on iTunes, which gives me one more thing to browbeat you guys about. Get out there and rate that sucker!

That is all. Carry on.

 

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APOGEE, Chapter 1

As promised, here’s the next round of Apogee sneak previews.

If ya’ll haven’t guessed, we pick up where Perigee left off: that is, with Art Hammond hell-bent on sending people around the Moon. The tech combines elements of Buzz Aldrin’s “lunar cycler” concept, Bigelow/Transhab type inflatable modules, L2 depots, and a few other things that I’ll try and surprise you with. The “LV” prefix before a ship’s name stands for “Lunar Vessel”, something I made up.

Hints and Spoiler Alerts: Remember that Ryan and Penny were both ex-military? That’s going to come back and bite them.

The excerpts posted here are from the first round of revisions. Details may change along the way, but the story arc and all that goes with it will not. Enjoy!

UPDATE: speaking of details…interesting how seeing something you’ve been looking at for months suddenly changes when you post it somewhere in a different format. There were some things about this first chapter that bugged me, so I’ve done a little editing. I think this flows a lot more nicely, hopefully you will too. Continue reading “APOGEE, Chapter 1”

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Tipping Point

2012 may be known as the year Indie publishing broke down the final barriers to general acceptance. This may be one of the biggest roadblocks to fall:

NY Times Critic Selects Self-Published Book Among This Year’s Top 10

A lot of writers have been of the opinion that a big-shot reviewer’s stamp of approval is the brass ring we needed someone to grab. I hope that’s the case, because there aren’t that many left. Consider what’s happened just in the past twelve months:

Literary merits aside (gaah!), there’s no denying that 50 Shades of S&M Grey pretty much owned the best-seller lists this year. A more worthy (IMO) example is Hugh Howey’s Wool, which didn’t do so badly itself after being published pretty much on a lark as I understand it. It’s very good – surprisingly good – in that I knew it was getting great reviews and selling well, but I was surprised at how emotionally powerful it was. Turns out he made the right move, as the movie rights have been picked up by Ridley Scott.

Personally, 2013 is going to be a big year for yours truly. Look for the Perigee sequel this spring, and a novella that connects the two books by next Christmas.

There – committed to them in public! Suppose that means I’d better get on with finishing them…

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Oh Goody

This explains a lot. Namely, why the voices in my head won’t shut up until I write their incessant babbling down on paper:

When the researchers looked specifically at authors, they found that they are overrepresented among people with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety syndrome, and substance abuse problems. Authors were also almost twice as likely to commit suicide as the general population.

Well, yeah. Spend years inventing a whole world inside your head, getting it into a readable form, and polishing it until every syllable flows across the pages like a rushing stream. Then you sweat blood whittling all that down into a three-sentence blurb and shotgun it out to agents and publishers, only to have them reject it. Sometimes rudely.

So you revise, edit, and do it all over again. Generally with better results, but still nothing that ends up with a publishing deal. Wash, rinse, repeat. Thank God for the rise of indie publishing, because a couple years of that query/reject/repeat cycle left me in a pretty sorry mental state.

At least now I have some control over the process and am making halfway decent money from my work. It’s still a hard slog, though. So if I don’t post anything for a while, it might be a good idea to send someone over to check on me.

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Live on Kobo

It wasn’t quite “pushing the easy button”, but it was mostly painless: Perigee is now for sale on Kobo.

I couldn’t get it to accept my ISBN numbers for some reason, and there’s no obvious way to link to reviews from Goodreads and other sites. More to follow as I figure it out…

UPDATE: Always helps to dig a little deeper in the user’s guide (duh). Finally got it to accept the ISBN, which will eventually link itself to Goodreads.

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Kobo Publishing: How Much Longer?

Some tantalizing details about Kobo’s self-publishing platform have hit recently, and it looks like they’re prepping their website for launch.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting this since hearing about it several weeks ago. It was supposed to be a done deal by now, but they’ve been sitting on it a bit longer to collect more info from their beta-testers.

Which is all well and good, but come on ya’ll…get on with it already!

If you’ve not heard of Kobo, think “Canadian Kindle” and you’re there. It’s also (I think) the most popular e-reader in Europe. So yeah, I’m anxious for this to get going so I can stop struggling with Smashwords’ “meatgrinder” conversion (a more appropriate label would be hard to find) and expand my audience. It’s never fun having to pick through every single line of a 400-page Word document, and is downright teeth-grinding when you’ve already got the $%#@! book in epub format.

Yep, it’s just sitting there on my hard drive. Oh, and on Barnes & Noble’s as well…

So hold on, Canadian and EU readers: one way or another, some bang-up stuff is coming downrange any time now!

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Just got the email from Kobo and they’re live. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Where Writers Go From Here

Via the Fantastical Andrew Fox: a far-reaching essay on the current state of literature (I’d say “publishing” but it’s so much more than that), where it’s going, and what it means for us ink-stained wretches who slave over our keyboards. It’s a long read but well worth it.

A couple of quick excerpts:

For the overwhelming majority of midlist writers, those without a history of best-selling books and those without a pre-existing “platform” of fame and public recognition, traditional publication by a large publishing house will be (and, for the most part, already is) a fading dream, a “winning the lottery” type of event. Most of us are simply going to have to do a whole lot more of the business end of things ourselves, if we hope to attain any presence in the literary marketplace. By the business end, I mean publicity, reader outreach, editing, and book design.

. . .

I think many writers enjoy helping other writers. I think this is so because writers were readers before they ever became writers, and thus learned to cherish other writers, and because writing is a solitary, lonely business and many writers hunger for a community of their fellow enthusiasts. I think as it becomes more and more crucial for us to assume greater responsibilities for the business side of our writing careers, it behooves the more successful among us to help our less fortunate, less resource-endowed fellow writers to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. Because we will benefit as readers and potentially as business people, and because creating community is a source of joy and fulfillment.

Yes. In a sense we’re all in competition with each other, but I don’t think most of us see it that way. Readers are always looking for good books, and they’re always looking for that one that hits the perfect notes – the one that makes the reader think “I must have this book”. Might be something of mine, then again it might not be. More power to ’em. Every single “name” writer I’ve been in contact with has been tremendously helpful, and I fully intend to follow in their footsteps. This is a tough business to break into, though it’s admittedly easier with e-publishing to a certain point…once your work’s out there, it’s all you, buddy. Be prepared to endure the slings and arrows, because we each stand or fall on our own talents.

 

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The Prodigal Son Returns

Admittedly that stretches the analogy too far, but it makes for a good headline at least. Hey, you’re here reading this, right?

If you’ve not read Boyd Morrison’s work (and I highly recommend The Ark), he was the first Kindle author to hit the big time with a legacy publishing deal. Therefore he’s been a major influence and inspiration – not to mention he writes really fun books where engineers save the day. Continue reading “The Prodigal Son Returns”

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