Adventures in ePublishing

2012 edition of Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour now available!

2012-03-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

I havewritten a new edition of my do-it-yourself guide Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour. You can buy it for just $2.99.

Itincludes the following improvements from the previous version:

Restructuredchapters are in bite-sized chunks, making it easier for you to stop when youneed to.

Compatiblewith my upcoming guide, Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours. You can cleanup and tag your novel in Word, then use that Word file in both the Kindleprocess and the Nook process. It will save you some time this way if you wantto publish on both devices.

Italics,bold, and underlined text support. Instructions on how to do a global find andreplace to add appropriate code to all italics, bold, or underlined text inyour novel. It's now easy to convert such text to the code required by Kindle!

Templatecode for cover page, title page, table of contents, dedication page, chaptertitle pages, acknowledgments page, about the author page, and books by the authorpage.

Coverimage and other images. Instructions on how to add the cover image to yournovel. And also how to add other images to the rest of your novel.
Link to dedicated forums for all the formatting books! Formatting Forums!

Here'swhat the formatting of your enovel will look like after using this guidebook:

Fulltable of contents of the 2012 edition:

Chapter1: Do not buy this book if...

Chapter2: Why you should buy this book

Chapter3: Introduction

Chapter4: Why are there other editions of this guide?

Chapter5: Isn’t this book the same as Derek’s other formatting book?

Chapter6: Why not just sell both sets of instructions in one guidebook?

Chapter7: Contacting Derek

Chapter8: What your book will look like

Chapter9: How long will this really take?

Chapter10: Tools and files you’ll need

Chapter11: What else you’ll need – patience!

Chapter12: Instructions and conventions

Chapter13: Overview of the entire process

Chapter14: Show file extensions in Windows Explorer

Chapter15: Download the template HTML file

Chapter16: Save your novel files to the working folder

Chapter17: Replace the placeholder text in the template

Chapter18: Include a dedication page (or not)

Chapter19: Include a clickable table of contents (or not)

Chapter20: Overview of cleaning up your Word document

Chapter21: Delete the front matter from your Word document

Chapter22: Remove double spaces from your Word document

Chapter23: Remove blank lines from your Word document

Chapter24: Clean up italics leaking between paragraphs

Chapter25: Clean up bold text leaking between paragraphs

Chapter26: Clean up underlined text leaking between paragraphs

Chapter27: Overview of replacing Word formatting with code tags

Chapter28: Replace the & (ampersand) character with XML code

Chapter29: Replace greater than and less than characters with code in your Worddocument

Chapter30: Add paragraph tags to your Word document

Chapter31: Fix problems with bulleted lists

Chapter32: Fix problems with numbered lists

Chapter33: Tell Word to use straight quotes instead of curly quotes

Chapter34: Fix lonely paragraph close tags in your Word document

Chapter35: Delete extra paragraph tags from your Word document

Chapter36: Add code for centered paragraphs

Chapter37: Optional: Add carriage returns

Chapter38: Add tags for all the italic text

Chapter39: Add tags for all the bold text

Chapter40: Add tags for all the underlined text

Chapter41: Replace other special characters with code

Chapter42: Optional: Add more images to your novel

Chapter43: Tell Word to go back to using curly quotes

Chapter44: Done editing the Word doc

Chapter45: Copy chapters from Word document into the HTML file

Chapter46: Replace chapter titles with formatted chapter titles

Chapter47: Paste your acknowledgements into the HTML file

Chapter48: Paste the about the author section into the HTML file

Chapter49: Edit the Books By This Author page

Chapter50: Optional: Add page breaks

Chapter51: Done formatting your ebook!

Chapter52: Compress your book files into a zip format for upload to Kindle KDP

AppendixA: Efficiency shortcuts in Windows

AppendixB: Efficiency shortcuts in Word

AppendixC: Troubleshooting

AppendixD: Kindle formatting resources

Beforebuying the new guidebook, you might want to consider the following reasons NOTto buy it:

· Donot buy this book if you are happy with the automated conversion provide by theKindle Direct Publishing site. If you like the results you get from theconversion tools, you don’t need this book. I found that the conversion toolsresulted in some strange formatting behavior with page breaks and line breaks,among other things, which is why I prefer to use the method explained in thisbook.

· Donot buy this book if you already own Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour2011 Edition. If your copy of the book does not indicate an edition, then youhave the 2011 edition. The 2011 edition still works, but the 2012 edition hasinstructions on a few more things, and is compatible with my other book FormatYour eBook for Nook in Four Hours. So, if you're happy with the 2011 editionand don't want to worry about Nook, then don't buy this book. If you want toput your book on both Kindle and Nook, then you should get this book and theNook book.

· Donot buy this book if you want a comprehensive explanation of Kindle formatting.This book is a precise, non-comprehensive step-by-step guide to formatyour ebook for Nook in ONE way. This book does not tell you every detailof Kindle formatting, nor does it explain why things are done. This is not aclassroom textbook. This is a rigid method for formatting your ebook in ONEway. If you pay attention and know a bit about coding, you could figure outadditional options, but that is not the purpose of this book. The purpose ofthis book is to get your ebook formatted as quickly as possible with very fewdecisions to make on your part.

· Donot buy this book if you don’t want your future ebook to be formatted like mynovel The Elemental Odyssey. I usedthese instructions to format that novel. So, go download a free sample from Amazonand see if you like the page, paragraph, and text formatting enough to haveyour book look the same. If you don’t, then don’t buy this book.

· Donot buy this book if your novel has tables or lots of lists. This book explains how to format novels withbasic text (including normal, italics, bold, and underlined). This guide alsotells you how to format numbered and bulleted lists, but it is a laboriousprocess, so if you have lots of lists it’s probably not a good idea to use thisguide. This guide does not include instructions on how to format tables.

· Donot buy this book if you only use Mac. This book does not explain how to doanything on the Apple Mac or any other operating system besides Windows. If youonly have a Mac, do not buy this book. I’m a PC user, and so this book does notsupport Mac. If you don’t feel comfortable self-converting these instructionsfrom PC to Mac, do not buy this book.

· Donot buy this book if you are not comfortable using Microsoft Word. Theseinstructions assume you are using Word. If you aren’t, you’ll need to know howto do the same things in your word processor.

· Donot buy this book if you are not comfortable renaming, copying, and movingfiles in Windows Explorer.

· Donot buy this book if you are not comfortable doing Find and Replace in a texteditor (such as Notepad or Microsoft Expression).

· Donot buy this book if you can’t follow step-by-step instructions, in order.

· Donot buy this book if you are easily frustrated by complicated, boring work.Manually formatting your book is a chore. If you put a quotation mark in thewrong place, it could mess things up. If you are easily frustrated bycomputers, coding, debugging, or boring repetitive formatting tasks, do not buythis book. Instead, you should use the conversion tools or hire a professionalto do the work.

· Donot buy this book if you only want to upload your book to your own personal Kindle.This book tells you how to publish your book to Kindle for other people to buyfrom the Amazon website. If you just want to upload your book to your own Kindle,you don’t need this book. Check your Kindle user’s guide to learn what ispossible.

Does the old edition still work?

Yes, the 2011 edition of the guide still works. So, if you like it, you don't need to buy the new edition. But, you get a lot of new options in the new edition, so you might like it better.

If your copy of the guide doesn't indicate what edition it is, then it is the 2011 edition.

PS:Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours will hopefully be published within afew weeks. It will be available at an introductory price of $6.99, because it was so difficult to write. ;)

Guest post: Successful author says be prepared for change

2012-02-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

Here’s another guest post from another author, TyJohnson. He’s a step up from the likes of aspiring authors like me: he’sactually earning enough to work full-time as a novelist! Congrats, Ty! I’mguessing all my readers are looking forward to that day. I know I am.

Fantasyauthor Ty Johnston is touring the blogosphere this month to promote his newe-book novel, DemonChains. His novels include City of Rogues, Bayne’s Climb and Ghostsof the Asylum, all of which are available for the Kindle, the Nook and online at Smashwords. Tolearn more about Ty and his writing, follow him at his blog tyjohnston.blogspot.com.

I’vebeen writing fiction for more than two decades and I’ve been an indie writerfor going on three years, which is a longer time than some. None of that makesme an expert or a guru, nor does it mean I’m rich and famous. You won’t see myname listed among the stars of indie publishing. But this is how I make myliving nowadays, which makes the wife happy because the bills are paid and Iget to stay home instead of going to an office somewhere.

Still,I’ve been around long enough and feel I’m experienced enough, that I can offersome little advice to fellow indie authors.

Onepiece of advice I feel today’s fiction writers need to hear is, “Always stay onyour toes.”

Whatdoes that mean? That writers need to be prepared for change.

Therehas long been a tradition that fiction writers can write and that that’s allthey have to do. That tradition is a lie. Even before digital publishing,writers had lots of work besides simply writing. There were editing andformatting, then query letters to be written, contracts to be considered,literary agents and publishers and editors and sometimes intellectual propertyattorneys who needed attention. There were conventions to attend, anthologiesto edit for editor pals, communications with fans, slush to read for a friend’smagazine. It could go on and on. And again, all that was before digitalpublishing came along.

Today,indie writers are just as busy as traditionally-published writers, maybe evenmore so. I won’t go into the lengthy laundry list of things that canlegitimately take up an indie author’s time, but let’s just say there is a lotto do other than writing.

Whichbrings me back to my point: Writers need to be prepared for anything. Part ofthis means writers can’t stick their head in the sand and ignore the rest ofthe world, especially the publishing world.

Everythingis in flux in this business, especially in this day and age.

Writerswho think they are immune are fooling themselves. Digital technology combinedwith today’s economy are bringing about daily changes in book publishing, bothin the traditional business and for indie publishers.

Anindependent who ignores those changes will soon find him- or herself not onlybehind the times, but backpedaling to retain their readers, to be published, tobe noticed.

I’vebeen vague so far, but what kind of changes am I talking about?

Well,for instance, there’s the new KDP Select program that allows Amazon Kindleauthors to give away their e-books for free up to five days during athree-month period. To some this might not seem like that big a deal, but KDPSelect is already bringing about change in the publishing industry. If nothingelse, all those free e-books have brought some upheaval to the Amazon rankings,not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Another thing KDP Select has done isit has caused many authors to pull their books from other digital publishingsites because Amazon demands exclusivity for the months an e-book is enrolledin the program. That means thousands upon thousands of e-books are temporarilynot available for e-reading devices other than the Kindle. There are both goodand bad arguments for all this, and here I’m not voicing an opinion, but let itbe said this is the kind of change I’m talking about.

KDPSelect is just one example, and the most noticeable recently, of developmentsthat can affect indie authors. Technology, legislation, the market, all canhave an effect. If we don’t keep up, we risk losing out. We could lose sales,readers, fans ... and possibly a career.

Idon’t mean to scare anyone. I don’t mean to sound all doom and gloom. But indieauthors need to pay attention nowadays. We are not just artists, but alsoentrepreneurs. We need to watch our world as it spins, or it will spin awayfrom us.

Derek:Thanks a lot, Ty! And good luck with the latest book!

Is 99 cents the best price for your ebook?

2012-02-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

Over the past yearI’ve been doing some experiments with pricing for my ebooks. I’ve collectedabout 15 months of data on it and I thought I’d share it with you.

I have priced mycyberpunk novel, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance at 99 cents, $2.99, and $3.99 (that's about 35 cents, $2.00, and $2.70 in royalties, respectively). Thechart below shows the daily royalties at each price since the 11/23/2010publish date.

As you can see thereis some significant fluctuation.

I priced the book outof the gate at $2.99 (about a $2.00 royalty), and it slowly built up sales to 9copies a day, or $18.

After a few weeks ofthat peak, I decided to experiment with dropping the price and see if I couldimprove my Amazon sales rank. I dropped the price to 99 cents in late February2011. You can see the significant drop off in royalties.

However, the lowerprice did result in a stead and steep increase in number of units sold. OnApril 25, I hit a record daily sales of 126 units, earning $44. At this point, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance hit #333 in the Amazon Best Sellers rankings, and Iwas in the top #10 of a couple genre lists.

I decided it was timeto raise the price and see if I could benefit from that good rank. I raised theprice back to $2.99 and you can see the stratospheric increase in royalties onMay 27 to $140! Excellent! My plan was working.

The increased salescontinued through May (I earned $2,289 for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance in May).

However, the AmazonSales genre rankings worsened, and the book dropped out of the top 20 lists. Idecided to lower my price again to try to stay in the genre top 20 lists.

I dropped the priceback down to 99 cents on June 9. You can see the deep decrease in royalties.

Unfortunately, my plandid not work. The novel continued to decline in sales. I was at a loss toexplain this. Was it a Summer slump, altered Amazon ranking algorithms, theAmazon $2.99 sales? Whatever the cause, my sales never recovered.

I kept the 99 centprice for the rest of 2011, hoping to see a resurgence. But that was to no avail.Even Christmas sales didn’t help much.

So, I decided to raisethe price up to $3.99 in January 2012. As you can see in the chart, royaltiesjumped up quite a bit. For the 33 days before the price increase, I made an average of $2.12 per day. For the 33 days after the price increase, I've made an average of $6.07 per day.

So, what’s the bestprice?

I think 99 cents mightsometimes be a good price to help you improve your sales rank so that when yousubsequently increase your price you can sell more units.

But I don’t think 99cents is always the best price. You have to play around with it. If it’shelping your rankings, it might be a good idea. But if not, raise that price!

You should also go over to Lindsay Buroker's blog and read her recent post on this exact same issue: Ebook pricing: Why 99 cents might be a mistake for you.

January 2012 sales report

2012-02-06T08:19:00.000-08:00

January was my 16th monthselling ebooks.

I sold 484 copies of 8different titles. Without counting the freebies, my sales volume decreased byabout 17% from December.

On the other hand, myroyalties increased by 28% from $721 to $925. This is mostly due to a 168%royalty increase for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. I raised the price from 99 centsto $3.99 and I’m making a lot more money. I’ll talk about that later this week.

Average sales per daydecreased from 18.3 (not counting freebies) to 15.6. Average daily royaltieswent from $23 to $30.

I also have some data onthe KDP Select program. I put Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour in theprogram and I’ll report on it later.

Beware self-publishing your books using iBooks Author

2012-01-24T10:56:00.001-08:00

Anyonecurrently using iBooks Author or contemplating doing so should go read this article,"Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement”, on The Ed BottReport on www.zdnet.com.

Inshort, the EULA for iBooks Author says you can’t sell manuscripts that youcreate in iBooks Author for anything else other than Apple (even if Apple won’tsell your book).

So,all that work you did to format your book for iBooks Author. Nope. Can’t usethat file to submit to anything else.

The new self-publishing author process (guest post by Jay Cannon)

2012-01-20T22:26:00.000-08:00

JayCannon is a coworker of mine and he's another aspiring author. I thought it would be great to lethim tell you about his new novel, The Euclidian: When Worlds Collide, and theprocess he went through to self-publish.

Herehe is:

I amhonored to be able to post this blog on Derek’s site. Derek was of greatassistance to me in helping me understand the self-publishing process. He alsopointed me towards resources that helped me get my book ready for publication.

The Idea

The ideafor the book came to me about thirty years ago while on a flight from Stockholmto Dallas. There was no flight entertainment and I ran out of material to readso I started daydreaming about a kid hitting a tennis ball against the wall inan alley. Then a little alien shows up being chased another alien with a gun.The kid uses his tennis balls to knock the gun from the alien’s hand save thesmaller alien. Below is how the scene came to life in my book:

Theguard grabbed the ambassador by the collar and dragged her into an alley. Picoslipped off and hid behind some bags of refuse in the alley. The guard silentlyand aggressively searched the ambassador’s body for Pico, going through herpurse then the pockets and lining of her coat. In frustration, the guardangrily shoved the ambassador against the wall where Pico was hiding forcinghim out into the open. The guard spotted Pico and pulled out a weapon to killhim, but the weapon was knocked from her hand by a tennis ball. She looked tosee where the ball came from just in time to get her sunglasses knocked fromher face. She turned to retrieve her weapon but Morgan launched another volleyand knocked the weapon into the street. The guard ran into the street and infront of a passing police car.

Figure 6. Morgan saves Pico from assassin

Thecar screeched to a stop and two policemen jumped out. The guard grabbed her gunand took off running down the sidewalk toward the ambassador’s apartmentbuilding. One of the policemen fired a shot at the guard but missed his target.They chased the guard and followed her into the building in time to see herenter the elevator. As the elevator door closed behind her, the ambassadorstumbled into the lobby. “My apartment is on the third floor!” she said.

“Thanks,”said the policemen in unison and they headed up the stairs.

Theygot to the third floor just as the elevator arrived and stood in front of thedoors with guns drawn. A flash of light slipped through the seams of the doors,then the doors opened and the elevator was empty.

Writing the Book

Istarted the book around November 2009. I spent evenings, weekends, plane tripsand bus rides updating a set of journals with content for the book. A yearlater I believed I had it finished. The book had just over 50,000 words. Thenone fateful day I went to a talk by Greg Bear who was discussing his sciencefiction book HullZero Three. During the talk he stated that a book with only 50,000 wordswasn’t truly a real book. A book should have closer to 100,000 words to betaken seriously. My books have closer to 80,000 words.

Thatjust depressed me. There I was facing the daunting task of trying to double thesize of my book when I had poured all my ideas into it. I took some time awayfrom the writing and hung out with my friends. Having a few drinks with myfriends Euan gave me an idea for adding an assassin to my book. I also added aroad trip, which is an idea I got from a vampire book I was reading. A yearlater I was just over 100,000 words and ready to publish.

Preparing Book forPublication

I sentthe book to several friends to get their feedback. My son was the only personto respond with feedback. That is one thing I would warn people on. If feedbackis important, select people that you know will send feedback. I incorporated myson’s feedback and then went through chapter by chapter to try to cleanupconsistency issues and remove some of the explicit sex. Sometimes late at nightafter a few drinks some ideas may seem worthwhile, but in the light of day youwonder what you were thinking.

Afterupdating my manuscript I sent it to a professional editor to clean it up. Henot only looked at spelling and grammatical errors, but addressed continuityand feasibility errors. I hired an artist to do my cover art and a graphiccompany to create illustrations inside the book. Understand that artists cannotsee inside your head. So the artwork won’t be a perfect reflection of what yourthink they should be. Allow plenty of time to review and redo the artwork.

Onceyou have the artwork done getting someone to professionally format yourmanuscript for the various electronic and print formats you want to supportwill be well worth the cost. The person that formatted my book also formattedmy cover which combines your cover, artwork, bio, book description and ISBNwith barcode.

Thatentire process took me about two months. I used elance.com to find theillustrators and found the other people from Derek’s website. You will need tohave a PayPal account to pay people. Idecided to create two version of my book. One with images, violence andsexuality; and one without. The storylines are still the same, but I thoughtparents might want a version for their young kids.

Selecting Sites toSell my Book

Amazon.comis the number one place to sell books. I used Kindle Direct Publishingto create the Kindle e-books and CreateSpaceto create the paperback. I also used Smashwordsfor the other e-book versions. Oddly enough Smashwords sold the most copies inthe first week.

Marketing the Book

To getthe word posted information about my book on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Isent emails to everyone I know. I created display ads for Facebook and Google. Iam running this ad atthe Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue, WA. I’m hosting a book launch party at Black Bottle to spread the wordabout my book. I’ll event be selling some there. I had to get a U.S. employer IDand Washington State licenseto do so.

Conclusion

Writingthe book and getting it to market was a huge effort, but well worth it. I hopeto continue to write books as it is greatly rewarding.

Derek says: Thanksfor letting us know how you went about self-publishing, Jay! I’d love to hearhow your marketing efforts go.

Goodluck on the book!

And ifyou’re reading this, why not help out a new author and buy his book?

Where Magic Reigns published!

2012-01-16T17:09:00.000-08:00

I justreleased Where Magic Reigns, Book 2 of the Tales of Zura series for Amazon Kindle!

Now youcan continue to follow the adventures of Kyle Morgan, Jürgen Schmidt, SusieFive Eagles, and Veeksha Das as they learn more about the magical alien racesthat abducted them in book 1.

Exceptnow they aren’t on Earth any more. They have to survive on a hostile alienplanet!

Bookdescription

Aftertheir harrowing adventures in The Elemental Odyssey, four twelve-year-olds findthemselves on a strange alien world. No grown-ups, no park rangers, nopolicemen, no soldiers. They are utterly alone and at the mercy of the furiousperils that teem in the jungles of Zura.

Asthey flee across soaring islands in the sky, Kyle Morgan, Jürgen Schmidt, SusieFive Eagles, and Veeksha Das meet several different kinds of Zurans. But thesearen’t the familiar and furry creatures that invaded Earth. These are scalyreptiles, small and large, but all hungry.

Unfortunatelyfor the kids, on Zura humans are made out of food.

About82,000 words or 366 pages.

Buy it on Amazon for $3.99.

Besure to read the first book in the Tales of Zura series, The Elemental Odyssey,available at a discounted price, before reading Where Magic Reigns.

Praisefor Tales of Zura Book 1 – TheElemental Odyssey

“YAFantasy brims with Originality” – SD Beallis

“NOT aclone of the "standard YA story".” – Kevin O’ Mclaughlin

"suchan awesome adventure book." – JMBrady’s 10-year-old son

“Ifyou are a fan of YA fantasy, or you are looking for an alternative kind offiction, I recommend Elemental Odyssey unreservedly. I'm looking forward toBook 2!” –TonyL

“Theyoung adult fiction genre is a bit crowded of late, it’s nice that Canyon herehas got a fresh take on it.” – Jerald Wegehenkel

“…iwant to thank the writer Derek J. Canyon for writing a unique blend of magic andtechnology” – Amit

Buyit on Amazon for $2.99

December 2011 sales report

2012-01-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

Decemberwas my 15th month selling ebooks. I have sold a total of 13,397 books (about 300given away free) and earned over $12,200 in royalties.

Thismonth I sold 583 copies (plus 300 given away free) of 7 different titles. Withoutcounting the freebies, my sales volume increased about 10% over November.

Myroyalties increased from $612 to $734.

Averagesales per day increase from 17.7 to 18.3 (not counting freebies). Withfreebies, sales per day were 28.5.

I'm starting to see a correlation in the graph from Oct/Nov/Dec 2010 and Oct/Nov/Dec 2011.If you look at the monthly royalties chart above, you can see that the yellowline has the similar incline across those months. A slight increase from Oct toNov, and then a greater increase from Nov to Dec. Will January show the sametrend? We shall see.

On thedaily unit sales chart you can see the massive spike around Christmas time.That’s when I put a couple books up for free. Derek’s Rhyming Riddles #1 wasfree for one day (and downloaded 96 times), while Derek’s Rhyming Riddles #2Christmas Riddles was free for 4 days (and downloaded 201 times).

Wasthis free giveaway a success? I’ve only sold a couple dozen more copies of theRiddle books so far, but I’m hoping as people get through the freebies they’llcome back for more.

I’llbe releasing the sequel to The Elemental Odyssey in a week or so. I’m veryinterested to see if my first full-length sequel will buoy the sales of theprevious book.

Amazon now accepts advertising! Can you advertise your book there?

2011-12-28T16:26:00.000-08:00

For awhile now I’ve been hoping that Amazon would let self-publishing authors payfor cost-per-click advertising on the Amazon Kindle Store search result andcategory list pages. It would be a good deal for both the author and Amazon.

Authorscould pay to get greater exposure in exactly the place they needed it. Whatbetter place to advertise than in the store that sells your books? The obviousanalogy to this is the big cardboard standees that publisher pay to put inBarnes & Noble and other brick and mortar stores. Why do you think JamesPatterson and others sell so many books? Might have something to do with thehuge standees stacked with his books right inside the door of the bookstores.Publishers pay big bucks to B&N for that prime real estate.

Amazonwould also benefit from such selling ad space to authors. Authors would be directly paying Amazon$$ to get people to buy more stuff from Amazon! It sounds like a racket, doesn’tit? But it’s actually a good deal.

So, Iwas quite happy to see ads start appearing on Amazon, and I quickly clicked thelink to learn more.

Amazonis supporting two different advertising services: Product Ads and Display Ads.

Unfortunately,product ads are not allowed in the Books category, so that’s no help toauthors.

Thatleft Display Ads. Amazon has very little information about Display Ads on theirweb page. But there is a contact us link, which I immediately sent an inquiryto.

Unfortunately,the response (from Adzinia Display Advertising) provided requirements thatclearly disqualifies self-publishing authors from participating in Amazonadvertising. The two pertinent points are:

1. “…due to the volume of inquiries we receive, we are unable to respond to emails from private email accounts (e.g. @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com), and can only respond to requests from appropriate agency or client business email addresses”

2. “The minimum campaign spend for Display Advertising with Adzinia is $25,000”!!!

Gaaaah!

That's about 100 to 1000 times more than I'm able to spend. How about you? Got a spare 25 large laying around to sell your $3 book? You'll only need to sell 12,500 copies to recoup that expense.

So, myhopes were shattered, at least for the time being.

Twelve Worlds charity donation for 2011

2011-12-27T13:59:00.000-08:00

As ofOctober 31^st, the Twelve Worlds anthology has sold approximately 191copies, resulting in author royalties of just under $385 (author royalties arepaid out 2 months later), which I’ve just donated to Reading is Fundamental.

Incase you didn’t know, the author royalties from Twelve Worlds go to Reading is Fundamental, the nation’s largest nonprofit children’s literacy organization.

So, ifyou want to read 14 speculative fiction and fantasy stories from new authors,you should pick up a copy of this book. It’s only $2.99, and about $2 of thatgoes to charity.

FREE book just in time for Christmas: Christmas Riddles

2011-12-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

To celebrate Christmas I'm giving away my second riddle book for free! Derek's Rhyming Riddles Book #2 Christmas Riddles can be yours for ZERO dollars! If you like riddles or just want to support this blog, you should zip on over to Amazon and download it. Do it now so you can puzzle your family over Christmas dinner! This is a limited time offer, so don't miss out!

If you like the riddles in book #2, then you can also buy book #1 and book #3. I certainly won't object. ;)

Big publishers losing dominance of Amazon Top 20 genre lists

2011-12-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

KevinMcLaughlin has a good analysis of the major/small press vs self-publishedebooks on Amazon’s Top 20 genre lists. Very interesting reading, which youshould definitely check out.

Basedon his data, I’ve created a graph showing the profound dominance ofself-published ebooks in the genre lists.

Headon over to Kevin’s post to read his astute analysis.

Just in time for Christmas! Christmas riddle book!

2011-12-19T11:08:00.000-08:00

Yep,another riddle book. I wrote a bunch of riddles while on vacation, including abig red sackful themed for Christmas!

InDerek’s Rhyming Riddles Book #2 Christmas Riddles, you’ll find another 60riddles to puzzle through. The answer for every single one has something to do with Christmas. Here are just a few samples:

Riddle#1

Visiting your house with a star in my cap
Boxes at my feet already in wrap
Bracelets abound
Tinsel all round
Flip the switch to make everyone clap

Riddle #28

Gaggling on the ground
Wedging far above
If you take a gander
He’s the one we love

Riddle #57
Christ in a manger
Outside your home
Joseph and Mary
Displacing your gnome

So, ifyou like riddles, rhymes, trivia, crossword puzzles, word games, or Christmas,you should get this book. Not only will you get the answers to the threeriddles above, you’ll also get 57 more riddles, all with answers andexplanations.

You can buy it for Kindle on Amazon for $2.99.

Derek's Rhyming Riddles Book #1

2011-12-14T07:55:00.000-08:00

When Iwrote my young adult action adventure novel, The Elemental Odyssey, I includedseveral rhyming riddles. I’ve always loved riddles (ever since reading theHobbit as a child), and I thought that having a few in a book about a dangerousquest would be cool.

One ofthe readers of The Elemental Odyssey, one of the shuttle drivers for Microsoft,enjoyed the riddles in the book and suggested that I write an entire book withnothing but riddles. It didn’t take me long to agree with him that it was agood idea. I’d love to find a book with nothing but rhyming riddles in it. They’rekind of like poetic crossword puzzle clues, and I’ve always enjoyed crosswordpuzzles.

So, Ispent some time on our vacation creating a bunch of riddles, and Derek’sRhyming Riddles Book #1 is the first batch. In it you’ll find 60 new, originalriddles.

Hereare just a few examples:

Riddle#1

Colorsclinging, colors falling, colors on the ground

Emptybranches, pumpkin patches, night is sooner found

Applecider, back to school, harvest queen gets crowned

Costumesworn, treats dispensed, ghosts and ghouls unbound

Riddle#29

Theymake up a sentence

Someknow how to leap

Methuselahhad hundreds

Ripspent many asleep

Riddle#58

Tinylittle bowls

Filledwith many eyes

Windowsto the world

Throughthem one spies

If youcan’t figure out the riddles, you should buy the book! if you like word games, crossword puzzles, or even poetry you might find this book provides a bit of entertainment. I hope you enjoyfiguring out the riddles as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Youcan buy Derek's Rhyming Riddles Book #1 for your Kindle on Amazon for only $2.99. That’s just 5 cents ariddle!

Guest post: Joshua P. Simon

2011-12-09T07:43:00.001-08:00

Just like me, Joshua Simon is another aspiring author hoping to build an audience on ebook readers for his novels. He's about one year behind me in his journey, having just released his first full length novel: Rise and Fall. It's an epic fantasy with magic and battles, so if you enjoy that genre you should definitely check it out. For this guest post, Joshua has supplied an excerpt from the book, which will no doubt get you hooked on the tale!

Here's Joshua:

I am humbled and excited to be swapping posts withDerek. He is someone who I’ve both looked to for advice and information inself-publishing and have enjoyed his work as an author. In fact, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance was myfirst ebook purchase. Thanks, Derek, for the opportunity to share my work withyour readers!

Although Derek and I currently write in differentgenres (I’m writing an epic fantasy series), I feel we share some commonalityin the tone our works. One of the thingsI liked about Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance is the bleak world sprinkled with bitsof humor and levity. I personally findmyself drawn to those sorts of stories. Within fantasy, I often cite Glen Cook, Robert E. Howard, George RRMartin, and Joe Abercrombie, just to name a few, as influences on me..Naturally, the stories I write have the same grit as the stories I love toread. At least I hope they do!

Currently, I have two published works. One is a short story titled Warleader. The other is my first novel titled Rise and Fall which I released on December 1^st 2011.

The short story acts as a prequel to one of threemain plot threads in my book Rise and Fall. Several of the charactersintroduced in Warleader are featured in Rise and Fall. Since Rise and Fall isthe most recent release, I wanted to make the first chapter available toDerek’s readers.

In short, Rise and Fall is about an ill-prepared queen, a soft-heartedmercenary, and a crippled warrior struggling as a kingdom falls and an empirerises. For a more detailed description click here.

Here is an excerptof Rise and Fall: Book One of the Bloodand Tears Trilogy:

A deafeningsilence filled the inner courtyard. Massacred bodies with faces frozen in fearand despair covered the space once home to beautiful gardens. Nothing stirredexcept for the five High Mages fanning out amongst the motionless forms, eachsearching for a sign of life. The smell of burnt flesh enveloped Amcaro andworked its way into his nostrils and robes. More than two dozen royal guardslay dead, joined by half as many servants—charred husks against the white stonefloor.

Standing amidthe devastation, Amcaro’s mouth hung open in disbelief. “One Above, how didthis happen?” he whispered.

After feelingthe immense wave of sorcery, he and the only other mages powerful enough toteleport had arrived from afar. He wanted to help search for survivors but hecouldn’t turn his attention away from the woman before him. Her beautiful faceunrecognizable, her body blackened, there was no denying that the dark redremnants of her robes belonged to one of their order, a High Mage. She was oneof only seven in Cadonia. Amcaro felt his gut tighten at the realization thathis former pupil, Fei, was dead.

His thoughtswandered back to the time she first approached him at the age of eight, wantingto be his apprentice. Many thought I waswasting my time when I accepted a student so young. But they didn’t see thepassion in her eyes, the eagerness, and the yearning to make something of herlife. Now those eyes that were once so full of life are empty. Would shestill be alive if I denied her request all those years ago?

“Master!” Acusshouted from across the courtyard. “Come quick.”

Amcaro jumpedat the voice, and like the other High Mages interspersed throughout the openarea, scrambled toward Acus who held a body in his arms. Closing in, he saw thefigure was that of a boy, no more than fourteen. The boy grasped at Acus’srobe, pulling the High Mage down to his face. His body convulsed betweenwhispers and then relaxed. His hands fell away. Acus’s paled face told Amcarothat whatever he had learned, it was not good.

Edali, themost gifted healer among them, fell to his knees and checked the boy over butAmcaro knew the effort would be wasted. The boy was dead. Edali confirmedAmcaro’s thoughts with a slight nod, eyes sullen, distant.

“Well? Spit itout, Acus. Did you get anything?” asked an impatient voice.

Amcaro turnedto his left and scowled. Rhindora was tall, homely, and stout. By appearancealone, she was the most intimidating mage of the group. She did little tointimidate Amcaro who gritted his teeth. “Show a little compassion.”

“We’ll haveplenty of time for compassion after we learn what happened here, Master. Wehave yet to move past the inner courtyard,” said Rhindora.

“Although Idon’t agree with her tone, she’s right. One Above knows what awaits us withinthe castle itself.” Essan ran fingers through his thick blond hair as he lookedover the lifeless form that Acus still cradled.

Amcaro openedhis mouth to respond but was cut off.

“It wasNareash,” said Acus.

“I knew it!”said Rhindora pacing about. “I never did trust that snake.”

Amcaro lookeddown to Acus, whose bald head was still bowed over the boy’s body. “Is thatwhat the boy told you?”

Acus finallyset the boy down and slowly rose to his feet. “Yes.”

“Well, therewere rumors among the peasants about the King being manipulated,” said Edali,standing in turn and wiping the dirt from the bottom of his robes.

“And do wejust take the gossip of peasants as fact now?” asked Essan, throwing his shortpudgy arms into the air.

“The boy sawNareash,” said Acus.

“Was he sure?How do we know it wasn’t someone or something else he mistook for Nareash?”said Essan.

“Look at thisplace,” said Rhindora, picking up speed as she paced. “Look at Fei. Who else but Nareash could do this? Don’t letyour friendship with the man cloud your vision.”

“My friendshipwith Nareash has nothing to do with it. I just find it hard to believe that theman we grew up with could do all of this.” Essan spread his hands wide. “He’snever shown this kind of power before. It doesn’t make sense.”

“The boy toldme a few things before he died. Together with other bits and pieces we’vepulled together I think I have an idea of what happened,” said Acus. “Over thelast couple of days, several suspicious deaths among the staff left many uneasyin the castle. Those who died were all near an open flame that seemed to takeon a life of its own. They were all vehemently outspoken against Nareash,spreading discord among the rest of the staff. After their deaths, most otherswho were dissatisfied with Nareash stayed silent except the mother of CaptainMarc of the Royal Guard. When she died under similar circumstances, the captainwent to the king who acted as if nothing was the matter. In secret, Marcconvinced many of the guards and staff to work with him to overtake Nareash.”

“And there itis,” said Essan. “Nareash was falsely accused and then attacked. He acted inself-defense.”

Edali shookhis head. “Wake up, Essan. Look at the path of each sorcerous attack. Most ofthese people, especially the servants, were running away.”

Amcaro rested a hand on Essan’sshoulder. “This is not easy on any of us but I know you see the truth here.”

Essan startedto argue again but shook his head. Shoulders coming forward, he seemed to loseany desire to put up a fight. “No sense in putting it off then. We must rein inNareash. Rhindora...” His voice trailed off as he faced where the woman waspacing only moments ago. Seething andred-faced, he added, “That brainless woman.”

Amcaro turnedto the sound of great double doors closing on the opposite end of the square.Essan was stalking toward the doors when Amcaro called out, “Essan, wait!”

Essan halted.“Wait for what, Master?” He pointed toward the doors. “You know those two havealways hated each other. This is exactly the justification she needs forsettling her own vendetta. We need to catch her before she does somethingstupid.”

“She’s alreadyaccomplished that. We will not make the same mistake as her or Fei by doingthis alone. We will stay together and go after Nareash with caution. He knowswe’re here and he will be ready for us. Let’s not give him another advantage byhaving our emotions get the best of us.”

“But Master,Nareash is not a match for you. Together, we have nothing to worry about.” saidEdali.

“Think, Edali.Look at this devastation. Nareash fought and killed dozens of armed guardsmenwhile also battling Fei. She may have been the least experienced among us, butshe was still a High Mage.” He paused. “And we still have yet to see the restof the castle. Something is not right.”

“All the morereason to hurry after Rhindora,” said Essan.

“No. I willnot risk our lives and the safety of the kingdom to run off recklessly afterone so careless. She is on her own. Now isn’t the time for emotion to get inthe way of judgment.”

Amcaro noticeda few looks of displeasure from the others but none said a word. The magesreadied themselves, preparing sorcery that could be unleashed at a moment’snotice. Once finished, Amcaro led the way to the massive oak doors. Althoughgrand in dimension, the craftsmanship was more impressive. On the face of each,carvings showed key events from Aurnon the First’s conquering of Thurum, andthe settling of Cadonia. And there atAurnon’s side throughout all his accomplishments stood Sacrynon. Not justallies, but friends as well. A great king and a great high mage stood side byside, working together, earning the adoration of the people. Amcaro shook his head as he compared thecarvings to the present day. Whathappened between you, Nareash, and Aurnon the Eighth?

Amcaro and theothers entered the vast common hall of the castle. Large wooden rafterssupported the ceiling and from them hung dozens of singed banners. Five bannersdominated the ceiling, greater than all others, emblazoned with the seals ofCadonia’s dukes. Smaller hangings surrounded each of the five with their ownunique seals representing the lords within each Duke’s province. Aurnon theFirst had designed the ceiling himself, believing that a king should always bemindful of those who serve him. “Theneeds of the people should be above the wants of the king,” he often said. Agreat man. Too bad the meaning of your design was lost on many of yournamesakes.

Amcaro’s eyesdrifted past the bare walls, focusing instead on the four long tables at theroom’s center where servants of the castle would have their meals. Benches wereoverturned. To the left and right were the round tables used for members of theRoyal Guard or the rare guest. Wisps of smoke drifted up from the broken andsplintered remains of the chairs that would normally encircle them.

Just asbefore, smoldering bodies covered the scene. Contorted into misshapen forms,their number more than tripled those littering the courtyard. If not for thearmor or the blackened swords in their hands, it would be impossible to discernthat the figures were once members of the Royal Guard. As it was, many of thebodies were barely recognizable as human. One body in particular caughtAmcaro’s eye. Belonging to a servant, the lifeless form crouched, frozen, underone of the center tables. There was no mercy for even one as defenselessas you. Nareash what has happened to you?

Essan took astep forward, eyes still taking in the carnage. He spoke so quietly, Amcaro hadto listen hard to catch his words. “There must be over a hundred guardsmen inthis room.” Turning to Amcaro with a look of disbelief he continued, his voicerising. “Just between here and the courtyard alone, half of the royal guard is dead.Nareash has lost his mind. There is no other explanation. Has anyone been leftalive?”

Somber, Amcaroanswered, “We should assume the worst.”

Both magesturned as Edali dashed through the hall. Edali maneuvered toward the table onthe far end of the room, opposite the doors. Unless the king extended a specialinvitation, only the royal family and its closest advisors gathered in the backof the hall. Acus was a step behind,weaving in and out of the wreckage.

“What do yousee?” Amcaro called out.

“It’s theking! He’s somehow unscathed by the devastation around him,” said Edali as hereached the opposite side of the room.

Essan andAmcaro made their way toward Edali and Acus. Amcaro, last in line, saw what theothers had noticed; a plump man lay on his side in light blue robes. His backwas to the advancing mage, but there was no mistaking the round shape and thesalt-and-pepper hair visible through the top of the man’s clothing. A gaudycrown still sat crooked on his head. Amcaro came to a sudden halt. This isn’t right.

Edali bentdown to examine the king. Acus kneeled on the ruler’s other side.

One Above!

“Don’t touchhim!” Amcaro called out, realizing the danger. His words echoed throughout thehall but were a moment too late.

As Edaliturned the king over to check his condition and perform the healing arts, aball of fire engulfed the mage. He flew back, landing on the remains of aguardsman. The fire burned with such ferocity, the air in the room thinned.

Amcaro watchedAcus repel the exploding fire. However, the sorcerous attack distracted himfrom noticing the jeweled dagger in the king’s pale right hand. The king’schubby arm arced across his bulky frame with surprising speed and the daggeropened Acus’s throat. Blood pulsed onto the floor.

Amcaro reached out with aninvisible hand, and pinned the king’s arms at his sides. The overweight rulerstruggled to break free, but the king was no match for the mage’s power. Aftera moment he relaxed in the unseen bindings, an emotionless expression on hisface.

Essan rushedover to Acus’s side to assess the damage caused by the king’s attack. There wasno sense in checking on Edali. As the fire slowly subsided, Amcaro could seethe mage was no more. The crackle of burnt flesh made Amcaro flinch. “Is Acusalive?”

Essan closedhis eyes and his hand clutched Acus’s throat. Blood oozed from between hisfingers. “No.”

That one wordexpressed so many meanings. Sorrow for losing a friend, frustration for notacting sooner, desire to change places, emptiness that will never be filled—butof all things it spoke of hate.

Amcaro took adeep breath, steadying himself. “I know what you’re thinking. But now isn’t thetime to allow our feelings to cloud our judgment. Edali and Acus did just thatand so did Rhindora by running on ahead of us. One Above knows what hashappened to her as it seems she continued without even checking the hall. Suchcarelessness will lead to our death too, Essan.”

“I am wellaware of the situation,” said Essan in a tight voice, his chin resting on hischest.

Amcaro sighedand shook his head. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Essan lookedup and turned to the king. “Is this truly the king?”

Amcaro staredat Cadonia’s ruler, sorrowful. “It is his body, but his mind is no longer hisown.”

“How is thatpossible? I thought mind control was just a myth from old.”

“No, it’spossible. It is a dark path with many dangers—which is why I never taught it toyou or anyone else. Mind control carries many risks since each person’s mind isunique. Over time it will turn the victim into what you see before you.”

“Then whowould have taught Nareash?”

“I don’tknow.” Amcaro paused, studying the blank face of the king. “This man will neverbe more than a risk to everyone he comes in contact with.”

“Then we haveno choice.”

Amcaro lookedover to Essan and nodded. His eyes returned to the king and then a moment laterthe man collapsed to the ground next to Acus, as lifeless as the bloody HighMage.

Amcaro stoodfor a moment, thinking. I was here only acouple of months ago when the castle was bustling with life. Now only an eeriestillness remains. How could I have missed the signs? How could Nareash comeinto such power and keep it hidden from me? Amcaro straightened, mouth tightening as he composedhimself. “Come, we mustn’t tarry here any longer.”

Amcaro headedtoward a lone staircase in the hall, near the arched doorway to the kitchen.Essan followed close behind, matching his master’s stride.

** *

Nothing passedbetween the High Mages as they ascended the stairs to Nareash’s personalquarters. They climbed slowly, pausing at the top of each flight to step overanother group of felled guardsmen; many still held unfired crossbows in theirhands. Neither of the High Mages bothered checking the rooms on each floor.Amcaro knew they would be filled with more horror, but empty of the man theysought.

During thelast two flights of stairs, Amcaro checked over several spells he preparedafter leaving the common hall. He felt Essan do the same as they approached anopen doorway. Amcaro glanced back at his friend and saw worry and dread beneathhis seething anger. We share the samethoughts, don’t we? I feel the power emanating from the room and I’ve not feltits like for some time.

They exchangednods. Amcaro was ready to climb the last step before the doorway when a voicecame from inside.

“Can we get onwith this already? I swear you two move as slow as a couple of oldcrones.”

The two magesleaped through the door. Bursts of light shot from their hands toward theirtarget, but the attacks seemed to have no effect as Nareash stood opposite themwearing a smug grin. When they realized Nareash had no intention of attackingthem, they ceased their attacks, remaining wary of their situation.

“Come now, Ihope that wasn’t the best you two had,” said Nareash. “Even Rhindora made astronger show.” He nodded to the floor.

Amcaro’s guttightened again at the loss of another of his former students.

Essan bentover to examine the woman’s body after an approving nod from Amcaro. No longerintimidating, she looked small and fragile. “She’s dead,” stated Essan in anemotionless tone.

“Of course,”said Nareash. “She tried to kill me.”

“Then why notattack us?” asked Essan.

As Essanprobed Nareash, Amcaro took in his surroundings. Nareash stood at the room’scenter, tall and slim with dark hair, his skin tanned bronze. His stance wasone of confidence, hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. The princessstood several steps behind Nareash. Elyse’s wavy auburn hair framed the fairskin of her face. Hands clasped at her waist, she wore a simple emerald dressthat accentuated her light green eyes. Ican feel your bonds, my dear. Nareash,is this your true advantage?

The room wasdeep but otherwise empty with very little in the way of furniture. Other than asmall bed and a simple desk near the window, there was nothing. Various booksand papers lay scattered over the floor in uneven stacks and piles.

Nareash shookhis head. “Our relationship is far different than the one I shared with thatfoul woman. I hoped we could come to an understanding.” Nareash flicked hiseyes toward Amcaro. “And, Master, without you all of this wouldn’t be possible.The last thing I want is to continue this senseless killing.” His eyes turneddark for a moment. “However, I will do what I must.”

Nareash’s grinbroadened. “You have yet to speak, Master.”

“Let theprincess go so we can speak in private.”

Nareashlaughed. “Elyse will stay.”

“Is she whatall this is about?” asked Amcaro.

Nareashchuckled. “What do you take me for, some teenage boy with a crush? She is easyon the eyes, but the only thing I care about is the power she’ll bring.Besides, you and I both know there is not enough sorcery in the world that canmake a woman love.” He sighed. “Women are just too stubborn.” Nareash turned tothe princess. “Isn’t that right?”

Elyse stoodmotionless as if unaware what had been said. But her eyes… she is still cognizant of her surroundings, thought Amcaro.

Turning backto the two mages, Nareash continued. “No, as you can see I have to settle forwhat she is. A beautiful woman trapped in her own mind, unable to let her mouthruin her appeal.” He paused before chuckling again, “Some would say the perfectwoman, no?”

“I don’t knowwhat you’ve become Nareash but you are not the friend I knew,” said Essan.

“Please, selfrighteousness doesn’t suit you. I would have tried to work something out with you at the very least, but like theothers it seems your lips are too firmly pressed against our Master’s rear todo anything other than what hedefines as moral.” Nareash then turned to Amcaro. “Isn’t that right, Master?”

Amcaro didn’tanswer, too busy searching for a solution to the situation.

“One Above, Iwill not be ignored by you.” The sleeves of Nareash’s robes separated revealinghis long spindly fingers. In his right hand, he held a short ivory coloredscepter.

In a softwhisper, Amcaro spoke, “Sacrynon’s Scepter.”

“They calledSacrynon the Mad Mage in his later years, right?” Nareash’s eyes drifted downabsently at the hollow cylinder in his hand.

While Nareashwas distracted by the scepter, Amcaro quickly looked to Elyse. If I could just get some sort of recognitionfrom her that she understands. There. Was that it? Yes dear, you do understand,unfortunately all too well. I hope that you’ll know what to do when the timecomes.

Amcaro’s eyesreturned to Nareash just as the mage looked up. “You don’t sound surprised thatI have it, Master.”

“I had mysuspicions after witnessing the destruction you caused. Still, I never imaginedyou would be such a fool! Don’t you understand that the implement turnedSacrynon into a lunatic?” He paused, “it affects you already, doesn’t it? Wheredid you find it? Aurnon the First took the scepter to Quoron four hundred yearsago, never to return. He was to destroy the abomination.”

“It affectsonly my power. And obviously, Aurnon the First failed. Imagine my surprise whenI discovered one of the most powerful weapons in the world used as a candleholder by a naïve king.” Nareash grinned. “I laughed for days. To havesomething so powerful and not know it, thatis truly madness. Who cares how it got there? I have it now.”

Withoutwarning, Essan lashed out at Nareash with blue tendrils of sorcery flowing fromhis hands. At such close range, the power would send most to the ground in agony. However, Nareash used the scepter to absorband nullify Essan’s attack. Amcaro joined in and together they sought tooverwhelm the deranged man they had once called a friend.

** *

Elyse’s worldwas void of sound. In the small room with her were three others and yet shefelt completely alone. Since discovering her father’s manipulation weeks ago,Nareash had kept her in a state where she was unable to communicate withanyone. She could not move, speak, nor even hear unless he chose to allow it.Mostly, the High Mage gave her only sight, generous he had he said in givingher anything at all. The only proof Ihave of existence is watching life go by around me.

Today sherealized that the shred of mercy Nareash had granted her was the cruelest thingof all. She had watched the High Mage burn and murder all she held dear. Anyoneand everyone fell under his wrath and she was the sole living witness to it. Atfirst, she was thankful she could not hear the cries of despair, but withoutthat distraction she was more attuned to the expressed anguish in each victim’sface as it twisted in pain.

And she wasunable to look away.

The silentscreams still echoed in her deaf ears, the images forever etched into hermemories. During the ordeal she prayedceaselessly to the One Above. She prayed for just one moment free of constraintto help them. Maybe I could have usedthat moment to shout a word of warning or even whisper one of comfort. No doubt I would be dead as well, but isn’tdeath better than this?

Now the samescene repeated itself before her eyes, only the actors were different. Elysewatched in bitter anguish, helpless again as the last two people able to stopher nightmare lived their last moments. She knew they would die just as all theothers had today. Even Amcaro, a man she thought of as more of a father thanher own looked doubtful about the task before him. If the resolve of one as powerful as him falters, then what hope do Ihave?

Elyse watchedthe interaction between the High Mages with fascination. Nareash opened hissleeves, revealing the hollow cylinder in his hand. Essan’s reaction was one ofconfusion, coupled with fright. ButAmcaro seems as if he expected it. Whatever it was, she understood itsimportance to Nareash. I haven’t seen itout of his hand since he first started carrying it, back when the whisperingsof my father’s manipulation started.

Elyse focusedon Essan who seemed to regain his nerve. She watched the High Mage’s facetighten. He is ready to attack. OneAbove, help them please. She looked back to Amcaro. He’s looking at me! He must know that I can’t respond. Elyse’s eyeslocked on Amcaro’s for a moment, his eyes flicked to the white object inNareash’s hand and then a moment later met her eyes once again. I…I know what you want. The High Mage’sjaw clenched for a second, nodding his head ever so slightly, the movement sosmall anyone other than the intended person would miss it. He knows…that I know. He wants me to help, but I can’t do anything likethis…

Essan lashedout at Nareash, the power vibrating through Elyse’s body. But Nareash didn’teven flinch. The wand glowed and the flames hoping to engulf the magedissipated without any ill effect. Undeterred, Essan attacked again and again,now alternating with Amcaro. From what Elyse could tell, their attempts werelittle more than a bother to Nareash. With the slightest of gestures, Nareashstruck both High Mages at once, knocking them off of their feet. The derangedmage threw his head back and although she was deaf, Elyse knew he was laughingas he approached the fallen men. Notagain. One Above, please don’t leave me so helpless.

Nareash liftedthe wand and pointed it at Essan who began to writhe in pain. Amcaro attemptedto stop the attack, but a wave of Nareash’s other hand blocked the effort.Amcaro tried once again, but this time Elyse saw that his eyes looked at herand not at Nareash. Elyse’s body tingled, starting in her limbs and then movingto her torso and head. To her surprise, she felt the weight of her body afterbeing unable to do so for weeks. She heard Nareash laugh. Amcaro’s eyesreturned to Nareash and Elyse understood what happened.

“Master, I never expected it to be this easy,”said Nareash. “I didn’t even feel your last pathetic attempt to stop me. And tothink I once admired you.” He paused. “Master.” He said disgusted. “I have noMaster.” The scepter hovered over Amcaro now that Essan’s body lay still.

Elyse’s eyesdarted about the space looking for something that she could use to stop the madman. Her gaze finally rested on the simple desk in the room where a thin knifelay. I’m to attack a High Mage with aweapon more suited to clean one’s nails. No matter, I’d rather die than live asbefore. She reached, her body almost forgetting how to respond.

Elyse creptacross the room, moving as fast as she dared. Her body screamed with every stepand her heart pounded in her chest as she moved her stiff limbs. She wascertain he would hear her clumsy movements, and any second Nareash would turnto her, trapping her once again in an invisible cell, this time not even withsight to keep her company. Amcaro feebly attacked in two consecutive bursts offire but Nareash brushed them off as if they were no more than dust on hisrobes.

“You aredone,” said Nareash in a solemn tone.

The scepterbegan to shimmer and the air thinned. Recognizing the urgency, Elyse leaped andsank the thin blade deep into Nareash’s shoulder. The High Mage screamed as thewand flew from his hand, just as Amcaro released a concussive blast of his own,filling the room with blue light. Nareash tumbled backward, sent sprawlingacross the room and Elyse was thrown into a corner.

After a momentshe slowly opened her eyes, realizing as she sat up, groggy, that she was theonly person moving. She scurried over to Amcaro who was face down on the floor.She turned him over. “Master Amcaro, please. You must wake up! Master?”

“I’m here,dear,” said Amcaro through shallowed breaths.

“Oh, thank theOne Above, you’re alright.”

A thin smileformed on his face as he tried to speak, interrupted by a coughing fit, bloodspraying from his mouth. “Hardly. I’m dying.”

“No, youcan’t. You saved me. You stopped Nareash. My father’s dead. Everyone is dead. Ineed you. I don’t know what to do.”

“What do you mean?You will rule your kingdom.”

“But I can’t.I…”

“You needn’tworry,” said Nareash.

Elyse whipped her head around. On the far sideof the room, Nareash staggered to his feet.

“I am morethan capable of ruling without you.” He turned his eyes to Amcaro. “And Master,I spoke too hastily of you. Even now you teach me a valuable lesson in acting.Quite convincing. Still, you left yourself in a less than ideal position indoing so.” The High Mage limped across theroom, arm hanging at his side.

Watching hiscrooked path, Elyse realized that he was not walking toward her and Amcaro butinstead to a stack of fallen papers. Barely visible underneath laid an ivoryscepter.

Elyse doveacross the floor an instant before the hobbled mage had time to react. Shecrawled back as Nareash came forward and slapped the cylinder into Amcaro’soutstretched arm.

Elyse sawNareash begin to glow as he readied an attack. He screamed. “No!”

A burst ofself contained energy shot from the Scepter and struck Nareash. When the energydissipated, Elyse mouth dropped open, eyes welling in relief. Nareash, hertormentor, was gone. Obliterated.

Elyse returnedto Amcaro’s side. He gasped for air.

“Rest, Master.You’ll be ok.”

With a worriedlook and eyes wide, he tried to speak, “He…He…” and another coughing fit seizedhim, taking control of his body.

“Please, rest.He’s gone, but you’ve weakened yourself further, you need to stay calm.”

Amcaro triedto speak again, this time between breaths, his chest rising with each word.“No…too weak…listen…to me...the Scepter…tell no one…show no one…Nareash…” Asharp intake of breath and then his chest relaxed.

“No. I need you.Please.” Elyse’s words trailed off. She knew her pleas were worthless. One Above, help me. She sat on thefloor, head in her hands as tears held in for weeks flowed. She wept foreveryone, the servants, the guardsmen, the High Mages, Amcaro, and even herfather. But most of all she wept for herself. She was alone again.

** *

If you liked the excerpt, I hope you will considerchecking out the rest of the story at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, orSmashwords. The current price is only$2.99

For more information on me and my current works,please also feel free to visit my blog at www.joshuapsimon.blogspot.com.

Thanks again for the opportunity Derek!

Derek: No problem, Joshua. I hope you have very good luck with your novel. As I've said before, you'll need some patience and luck, and discipline to write more good books. I'm interested to see what kind of sales you experience over the next year, since you're doing pretty much what I did: short story followed by related novel. Good luck!

Guest post: Tony Lavely

2011-12-07T20:47:00.001-08:00

Ithought I’d give some other new authors an opportunity to tell you aboutthemselves and their work. Tony Lavely contributed a great story to the Twelve Worlds anthology, and you should definitely check it out. But, you should alsocheck out Mercenaries: A Love Story, which Tony describes below. He alsoexplains a bit of his journey as a new e-publishing author.

Here’sTony:

I justself-published my first book, the first in a two book series, Mercenaries: A Love Story, and Derek offered me the opportunity to guest blog in his space. Wow!I thought. That’s great... if I can figure out something interesting to say.

Mercenariesstarted long ago as a short story written to convince my talented then teen-agedaughter that writing wasn’t all that hard - even Dad could do it. Idon’t think my effort motivated her significantly at the time, but it did me.

Iwrote off and on, all fiction and mostly fantasy until the mid 2000’s. Ofcourse, as in my day job I managed people in a technology environment, I alsohad a fair amount of business oriented writing to do, and I was honored towrite the first several drafts of the VITA 46 standard. (It has gone throughmultiple rewrites since.) As a manager, one of my frequent complaints was myguys’ and gals’ writing ability. Or perhaps, it was reading ability theyweren’t using. Even email should be read through once it’s written – beforehitting SEND – to see what liberties have been taken with language this time.That’s a rant for a different day; Derek didn’t invite me to share my datedcomplaints with you.

Morerecently I was RIFed, and unable to find other employment, so I pulled some ofmy earlier work out. I joined critters.org to both read other authors’ work,and have them read and crit mine. I metDerek through another critter, Edward Cote (Violet Skies), and was allowed tojoin with them and eleven other authors in putting together the Twelve Worlds Anthology.

Ifound each one of those authors to be talented, opinionated and helpful beyondbelief. Derek did a whole bunch of grunt work getting the project off theground - I hope that’s on your resume, Derek – and all of us benefitted frombeing involved. But I digress.

Istarted reading Derek’s blog and came to the realization that not only couldI self-publish, I should. For me, it’s the right thing to do. And with Derek’sexample, and lots of others that I’ve found since, it’s possible to do. Just acouple weeks ago, I made it happen. After hours and hours of reading, digestingand implementing my readers’ suggestions, and more hours and hours researching,editing and polishing, I pushed the “Publish” button at Smashwords, and I was published.Of course, it took three times to fix stupid mistakes I found in looking overthe published editions, but once I got to that point, I was able to go toAmazon and get through their process, too.

Formechanics, I bought and read Derek’s seminal work, Format Your e-book forKindle in One Hour, and followed his instructions. While I used Scrivener’sexport to rtf and export to mobi to generate the files I published toSmashwords and Amazon respectively, Derek’s book gave me a good, nay excellent,understanding of what was happening and a feeling for how to handle the littleconfusions that arose in the process. Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide wasas helpful and I had no problems with the Meatgrinder process – though thetable of contents took some deviant handling before success.

One ofthe other benefits of working with the Twelve Worlds group was the introductionto Les Petersen, who did the cover for the anthology. I liked it, and Les waseasy to get hold of, and pleasant and easy to work with. I detailed the processon my blog. If you have need of a talented and responsive artist, I recommendhim fully.

Ipurchased Scrivener not for the exporting capability, but for theorganizational help it provided. The export capability was a nice bonus. Myonly complaint so far is that I can’t put spreadsheets in the Reference folder,and that’s a pretty small complaint. Having lost Word when I upgraded to MacOSLion, I now use Open Office for docs that have to look like Word, and so far,it’s worked quite well.

I putthis in mostly for any readers who haven’t yet made the leap; all you prosalready know. It’s not easy, but it’s easier than the prep work is. I think thebiggest thing to overcome is the certainty (in your mind) that you’ll fail.After all, who would want to buy a book I wrote? How stupid would thatbe? It’s possible, but unlikely (he says hopefully, still awaiting sale 1).

As faras the story:

Mercenaries: A Love Story Book One

A teenager saving hundreds from slavery?While Beckie never thought about it, it’s the role she takes in this two bookseries. Jamse, a mercenary (who doesn’t follow quite all the rules), didn’tthink about it either. In book one, she is kidnapped (with her brother), andthen eighteen months later, with Jamse’s help, she and her best friend becomeexotic dancer bait, getting the slaver to reveal himself. It’s quite a schoolvacation for two girls from Minnesota, but they don’t get to sight-see much ineither London or Rome. While Jamse is motivated by the billions of euros in theslaver’s vaults, Beckie finds her passion in freeing trapped girls and stoppingthe fiend. She gets that chance in Book Two.

Mercenariesin draft form filled over 200K words. Since its genesis was three short storiesI had originally titled The Abduction Trilogy, it split nicely into threeparts, and after Beckie, one of my main characters told me she wasn’t going tostop at the end of the third story, she needed resolution, the draft ended withfour parts. Rather than release them as four novellas, I chose to package themin two books, with two parts in each one. I don’t know any way to test whetherthat was a good choice or not. It reduces by half the number of things I havepublished, but takes the reader through more of the plot arc in Book One, whichI thought was important.

Duringthe critting and beta reading, the word count of Book One went from 98,000 to71,400. I mourned the loss of all those words, hard fought... and unnecessaryto the final story! Cutting those 25,000 or so words eliminated sub-plots whichon reflection, added little to the reader’s experience. But they weren’twasted; I learned more about my characters as I wrote them. And I learned moreabout the story as I removed them.

I amin the process of editing and responding to beta reader comments on Book Two.On my own, I haven’t recognized any opportunity to cut the word count (or plotcount!). But my faithful readers will give me advice, and I may even take it.

Thisis a key thing for writers to remember: our readers, whether critiquingpartners, beta readers, reviewers, friends or family, make suggestions. It’sincumbent on us to evaluate those suggestions honestly. Do they improve thestory I want to tell? That’s the question to ask. (Of course, when friends andfamily are involved, other factors may come into play!) As I said, I mournedthe loss of the plot that I removed. But on consideration, I agreed with thesuggestions that the detail in Cari’s story did nothing to advance Beckie andJamse’s story. So, I saved off a version and renamed with a new version number,then went in with an axe and cut, cut, cut.

Tosummarize (finally!): Self-publishing is not as difficult as it seems. Helpabounds for almost any question or problem you face. I can’t being to tell youhow unlikely it is that you’ll be the first with a particular issue. Write thestory you want to write. Avail yourself of any assistance you get to tell thatstory. If you’re a writer, you probably are willing to share your experiences;let us know your successes, and ask if you feel a little help would make iteasier.

Goodluck to you.

Derek:Thanks for describing your journey, Tony! You’re well on your way to publishingsuccess. Now it just takes patience. Yes, you’ll need luck. But you’ve shownthe discipline to actually publish, and that’s a huge first step. One that allthe other aspiring authors out there should strive to emulate.

November 2011 sales report

2011-12-06T07:43:00.001-08:00

November was my 14th month selling ebooks. I have sold a total of 12,777 books and earned over $11,400 in royalties.

This month I sold 529 copies of 4 different titles. That’s a increaseof 3% from October. My 6 months of decreasing sales has finally ended (or atleast paused)! Whew!

My royalties also increased from $595 to $602.

My average sales per day were 16.5 in October and 17.6 inNovember.

I sure am glad to see sales leveling off, finally. I expectDecember sales will increase at a good pace for numerous reasons:

1. Standardholiday sales increases.

2. Lots ofnew Kindle users thanks to reduced Kindle prices

3. I’mpublishing Where Magic Reigns in a couple weeks.

4. I’mpublishing three additional books in December (secret project, I’ll post aboutthese later)

So, I figure December will be a good month for sales. I’llbe quite pleased if I hit the 1,000 sales mark for the month.

Cover art draft for Where Magic Reigns

2011-11-28T09:21:00.001-08:00

Igor Kieryluk did the great cover art for both my full-length novels (Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance and The Elemental Odyssey). Now he’s working on the cover for the second Tales of Zura book, Where Magic Reigns.

Here is the initial draft. Not all of the elements are in it yet.

Looks great! And I know it will be even better when Igor completes it. What do you think? Wondering who that is with the flaming hand and the dark staff? You’ll have to buy the book to find out.

Joel Palmer has finished editing the book and I just need to get some time to integrate those edits. Hopefully, I can have that finished next week.

I haven’t posted very frequently recently, but I’ve been distracted by work and a very enjoyable vacation, among other things.

I’ve been working on some guest post exchanges with a few other writers. If you’re one of those writers, I apologize for not posting your posts yet. Soon, though! I just have to figure out when to write my guest posts!

Self-publishing or legacy publishing? Show me the hypothetical money!

2011-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

I havea year’s worth of sales data to assess the results of my self-publishingefforts. I thought it would be a fun exercise to compare my actualself-publishing revenue results with a hypothetical legacy publishing contract.That is, assume that I could have gotten an agent and publisher.

Let’s takea look at my full-length novel, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance, because I have the mostdata on it.

DeadDwarves Don’t Dance Actual Self-Publishing Results

Iself-published Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance in November 2010.

I havespent $1,550 on editing, cover art, and advertising.

I’vegrossed about $5,347, for net royalties of $3,797.

DeadDwarves Don’t Dance Hypothetical Legacy Publishing Results

Let’ssay that I was incredibly lucky and got an agent and publisher back in November2010. I don’t think that’s too likely, because I was an unknown, untestedauthor with a cyberpunk novel, but let’s just say it happened.

Let’salso say I got an average $5,000 advance.

Thepublisher absorbs all the expenses, so my only expenses are my agent’s cut of$750.

That leavesme with $4,250.

Let's compare!

So, ifmy hypothetical scenario actually happened, I’d be doing a bit bettermonetarily if I had gone with legacy publishing.

Ofcourse, it’s possible my book wouldn’t even be for sale yet, since it can take6 – 18 months for a publisher to get a novel on the shelves.

Knowingwhat I do now, would I go back in time and instead pursue an average publishing deal?

No.

Myhypothetical scenario makes a major assumption that I do not think is remotelylikely.

Thecyberpunk genre is not a popular one, and I don’t think most publishers wouldeven give it a look. I expect that, had I struggled in the query lettercarousel, I would not have found a publisher yet. Look at Joe Konrath. He had500 rejections over many years before he found a publisher, and he was writingin a popular genre. I believe that I would still be searching for a publishingdeal, and collecting a growing pile of rejection postcards.

In thefar more likely hypothetical scenario, my legacy publishing career would stillbe spinning wheels with $0 in advances.

So, I’mstill happy I self-published. As I publish more books, I think I’ll be evenmore happy.

Areyou happy self-publishing?

October 2011 sales report

2011-11-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

Octoberwas my 13th month selling ebooks.

Isold 513 copies of 4 different titles. That’s a decrease of 27% from September.

Myroyalties also declined from $748.73 to $595.23.

Myaverage sales per day were 23.5 in September and 16.5 in October.

So,I’m still seeing a steady decline in sales, same as the last several months. I don’thave much more to say that I haven’t already.

I’mlooking forward to see how the release of Where Magic Reigns impacts sales ofThe Elemental Odyssey. Where Magic Reigns will be the first full-length novelsequel, so I’m hoping to see some improvement in sales for TEO.

I'm mentioned in the Wall Street Journal

2011-10-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

Reporter Jeffrey Trachtenberg called me a couple weeks ago for a short 15 minute interview. I actually survived the editor's scalpel and made it into his article: Secrets of Self-Publishing: Success.

Thanks a lot for giving me the opportunity to be in your article, Jeff!

My first year as a self-publisher!

2011-10-17T19:04:00.000-07:00

Wayback on September 30, 2010, I published DeadDwarves, Dirty Deeds to Amazon Kindle. Thus began my adventure into digitalself-publishing.

Sofar, I’ve published a total of 5 books (which you should all go buy, of course;):

DeadDwarves, Dirty Deeds – 99 cents, 4-star average rating. A trilogy of grittycyberpunk stories that lead up to the next book…

DeadDwarves Don’t Dance – 99 cents, 4-star average rating. A gritty cyberpunkstory about a genetically engineered dwarf mercenary seeking redemption in 22^ndcentury Atlanta. Lots of action, violence, high-tech and low-life. If you like1980s action movies, you should like this.

FormatYour eBook for Kindle in One Hour – 2.99, 4.5 star average rating. A Do It Yourselfbook to help you format your ebook as quickly as possible so you can publish toKindle.

TwelveWorlds –$2.99, 4-star average rating. An anthology of science fiction shortstories by 14 new authors. A great deal for $2.99, plus the author royalties goto Reading is Fundamental, the nation’s largest literacy charity.

TheElemental Odyssey – 99 cents, 5-star average rating. A fast-pacedaction/adventure story about four 12-year-olds who are abducted by magicalaliens and taken on a perilous quest around the world. Also available inpaperback for $14.99.

Over myfirst year, I’ve sold a combined total of 11,735 copies of my books and earned$10,278 in royalties (not counting $368 for Twelve Worlds).

I’vespent $4,935 in expenses, for a net revenue of $5,324. A tidy sum!

I’dhave to qualify that as a success. It’s certainly a promising start to awriting career.

I’mpleased that I decided to self-publish instead of startup the query lettercycle again. The chances of getting an agent or publisher in this environmentare slim and the fate of publishing companies is questionable. Self-publishingwas the right choice for me. Is it the right choice for you? That’s your call.

Hereare some things I’ve learned in this time:

Salesare inexplicable. Why does one book sell more than another? Is it genre,release date, price, cover, blurb, advertising? All of these impact the salesof course, but how do you optimize each for maximum sales? Good question!

Paidadvertising doesn’t seem to work. I’ve conducted numerous experiments with paidadvertising, spending more than $500 over the past year. Unfortunately, I havenot seen any significant increase in sales from these efforts.

Summerslump? As you’ll see below, I’ve had a decline in sales that seems to coincidewith the summer months. I don’t know if this is a recurring seasonal event, butI’ll find out next year.

Genresdo not cross sell. My cyberpunk books have sold over 9,200 copies. But when Ireleased my young adult action adventure novel, TheElemental Odyssey, it did not get any boost in initial sales from thosefans. It seems that cyberpunk fans are not interested in YA action/adventure.Not terribly surprising.

Writebooks in a series. My two books in the same series (DeadDwarves, Dirty Deeds and DeadDwarves Don’t Dance) account for 9,363 of my 11,735 units sold. There isalso a direct correlation between sales spikes and slumps between these books.This tells me that one strategy is to only write books in a series so that youcan maximize sales.

Diversifygenres? I wrote my young adult action adventure novel, TheElemental Odyssey, to diversify and try to capitalize on the Harry Potterfans out there. I think I may have been premature with this effort, as saleshave not progressed as well as my cyberpunk books. This could be because notmany kids have ereaders yet. This will probably change this Christmas as AmazonKindle and B&N Nook are now under $100. Also, the Potter books arereleasing soon in e-book format. I expect a LOT of kids to ask forKindles/Nooks for Christmas, which will greatly increase the e-audience for myYA books. I’ll have the sequel, Where Magic Reigns, published in December,which puts me in a good position for the holiday season. I’m crossing myfingers and hoping that this strategy will work.

Writemore. Unfortunately, my day job as a technical writer consumes a lot of mybrain power. I often do not have the energy to come home and write even more.This is unfortunate, as it is plain that the more books an author hasavailable, the more they cross sell each other. If I wrote fiction full time, Ithink I could publish 3-4 novels per year. As it is, I expect that I canpublish 1-2 novels per year. Unless one of my books really takes off, it’lltake me 5 or so years to build up a portfolio large enough to start consideringfull-time novel-writing.

Nowfor my charts:

Therate of my sales decline is slowing, which is a relief. I hope that is an omen of things to comefor my other books.

I’mexpecting an uptick in sales over the holiday season. Hopefully...

Guest post: Michael Kingswood

2011-09-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

Ithought I’d give some time to another new author to relate his journey intoself-publishing. Michael writes in multiple genres (hard sf, fantasy, post-apoc, horror, etc.).

Here's Michael:

WhenDerek asked me to write a guest post on his blog, I was surprised and a bitflattered. This is the first time I’vedone a guest post, so I’m pretty psyched.

I’mpretty new to the writing scene. I’vealways been a big reader, but writing? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong,even though I’m an Engineer and a Navy guy, I’ve written a lot of things overthe years: essays, reports, technical procedures, briefings, letters, blogentries, you name it. Various peopletold me I was a good writer through the years, and I once or twice thoughtabout writing fiction, but never did anything about it.

Theclosest I came was in online role-playing games called multi-user dungeons, orMUDs. They were text based, so when theEverquests and Worlds of Warcraft of the world became popular, they lost mostof their players. But I’m a guy who grewup playing Zork and other Infocom text-based games, so I was instantlyattracted. Plus, since they weretext-based, the role-playing was very intense and cool, and really was justlike writing a story, or to my way of thinking at the time, like playing aD&D game. My favorite MUD was calledA Moment in Tyme, and it was set in the Wheel of Time universe. I’m a bit of a Robert Jordan fanboy, so thatwas wicked fun. I spent many hours overthe span of five or six years role-playing swordfights and other things with mywarder character, and political intrigue and magic with my Aes Sedaicharacter. I was disappointed as thenumber of active users slowly dwindled to virtually zero. And then I stopped logging in also. What was the point with no one else there?

Istill have the logs of those role-playing sessions. Looking back at it now, I realize I waswriting fan fiction all that time, though I didn’t think of it that way.

A fewyears passed, and every now and then I’d be reading a good book or somethingand think something along the lines of, “How cool would it be to be RobertJordan?” When he died in 2007, I wassaddened for his family’s loss. But I’lladmit my first thought when I heard the news was, “Oh no, now the story willnever be finished.” I felt bad aboutthinking that right off the bat, but it’s the truth.

WhenBrandon Sanderson was tapped to finish the Wheel of Time, my first thought was,“Who the hell is that?” I quickly foundout. And then a bit later, I discoveredhis Writing Excuses podcast. For atleast a year, I listened to that podcast, at first to get to know who he was,and then later because their discussions of how the writing process and the writingbusiness works was fascinating.

Butstill I didn’t do anything.

Atsome point in this time period my sister finished a book. Then she got an agent! Holy cow, I thought, she’s got it madenow! Well maybe not, I’ve since come tolearn. I was proud of her, but also felta bit shamed, because she’d done something that I’d halfway thought about doingseveral times, but never had.

Solast summer, I sat down and wrote a chapter. And did nothing with it.

Then,for some reason, over Christmas I blew the dust off, threw out most of what I’dwritten, and started over. This time Ididn’t stop. By the end of January, Ihad 17,000 words or so written.

Atsome point in January I decided if I was writing a book, I’d better figure outhow to get it published. I recalled aWriting Excuses episode about agents, where they discussed Dean Wesley Smith’s“Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing” post where he took on the generalmythology surrounding agents. That postwas one of the first blog posts I ever read about the business of writing. I devoured the rest of that series.

Then Ilooked for more, and I found cool indie writers like Derek, Aaron Niz, J EMedrick, and others. Reading about whatthey were doing, and in particular seeing Derek’s openness with his process andhis numbers, gave me encouragement that I could do this thing.

And soI did.

It’sbeen a good first year so far. I have abit over 150,000 words written, and more to come. My novelette, Passing in the Night, got anhonorable mention from the L Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. It, along with several of my short stories,is for sale in all ebook outlets. DeanWesley Smith is letting me come to one of his writing workshops in thespring. And best of all, I finished my firstnovel, Masters of the Sun. It just wentlive earlier this week.

MASTERS OF THE SUN

Tenyears after the Troubles that ended civilization as we currently know it,isolated settlements of survivors have resumed trade and are beginning torebuild. In the small settlement of Glennville, Jack Simmons lives as a hunterand trapper with his friend and mentor. Haunted by and unable to move beyondthe lingering pain from his losses during the Troubles, he nevertheless hasfound a measure of contentment. But when the trade caravan brings word of amysterious and mystical threat in the west, he finds himself thrust on anunwanted journey to discover the source of this threat and how to counter it.

Fast paced and action-packed, Masters of the Sun is the story of one man'sperseverance in the face of adversity and of the rebirth of magic into acrippled world.

Masters of the Sun grew out of a question I debated with one of the other officers onmy submarine while we were on deployment a few years ago: if modern societycollapsed completely, and no modern tools could be used anymore, how long wouldit take for humanity to regress to the stone age? I think it would be very quick, less than ageneration. Depressing, but true, Ithink. How many people know how tosurvive in the wild, let alone run a forge?

Overtime, that question morphed, and I began to wonder what if someone during thecollapse of civilization learned how to really work magic? What would happen then?

Youcan read my vision of what might happen in my book, available on Amazon, Barnesand Noble, and Smashwords (and in a few weeks on the Smashwords premium distributionchannels: Apple, Sony, Kobo, and Diesel). It’s just in ebook for now, but at some point in the near future, once Ifigure out how to do it, it’ll be out in trade paperback as well.

Thanks,Derek, for what you do here in your blog, and for your hospitality.

***

Thanksfor telling us about your journey as a writer, Michael. I, too, spent manyhours with roleplaying (Dungeons & Dragons, Twilight 2000, StarFrontiers, Harn, Deadlands, etc.) and I agree that it is a great way to nurtureimagination and writing. With several books out you’re well on your way to a goodincome boost, and probably an eventual writing career.

Now,everyone should go check out Michael’s books!

Amazon Kindle Bestsellers Rank and daily sales

2011-09-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

I don’t claim to know how Amazon determines the Bestsellers Rank of my books. Common theories include some algorithm that includes total number of books sold, number of books sold in the past X days, number of books sold in the past y hours, sales of other books, tag activity, page view activity, movement of the asteroid Ceres in relation to the constellation Orion, and so on. Apparently, Amazon also changes their algorithm from time to time. So, if you’re selling 20 books a day and getting into the #4000 range one season, you might sell the same amount next season but barely break #8000.

However, I do keep pretty meticulous sales data for my books and I can try to correlate the number of units I sell to the Amazon Kindle Bestsellers Rank.

Here’s a chart of my best-selling book, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. The top graph shows daily unit sales, and the bottom graph shows sales rank.

As you can see, there’s a pretty direct correlation between my spike in sales and my better sales rank. One day in April I sold 126 copies of the book and achieved my best sales rank of #333.

These days, I’m selling between 10 and 20 copies a day, and my sales rank fluctuates around #5000 to #9000.

You can see that around the beginning of March I was also selling around 15 copies a day, and my rank was around #5000.

Even at the current #8000 rank, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance is showing up in the top #100 for a couple genre lists (Kindle SF High Tech and SF High Tech). Unfortunately, not in the top #20, which is the sweet spot to be in because your book shows up on the first page of the list.

I hope this helps you other writers get a feel for the relationship between daily sales and Amazon Bestsellers Rank.

August 2011 sales report

2011-09-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

August was my 11thmonth selling ebooks.

I sold 877 copies of 4different titles. That’s a decrease of 27% from July.

My royalties alsodeclined from $1,066.97 to $866.89.

My average sales per day were 38.9 in July and 28.3 in August.

If sales continue likethey have for August, I should gross about $12,500 in 2011. Down a couple thousand from my estimates a couple months ago, but still quite nice.

Alas, I don’t likeseeing those lines on the charts heading down. However, there is only one thingI can do, and that’s keep writing.

I’m working diligentlyon Where Magic Reigns, the sequel to The Elemental Odyssey. I'm on the 3rd draft now, should be on 4th this weekend. My plan is to haveit published before December so I can take advantage of all the Harry Potterfans getting ereaders.

I’ll probably takeDecember off from writing, as I’m doing a good job of burning myself out onWhere Magic Reigns over the past couple months.

Starting in January, I’llget going on the sequel to Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. I’ll be very interested tosee how the sequel to my bestselling book does in 2012.

Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance: the SONG!!!!!!

2011-08-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

In case you haven’t read the book, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance is set in the year 2134 when a wide variety of neohumans are genetically engineered to serve humanity. One type of neohuman is the dwarf, designed for dangerous, difficult jobs such as mining, volcanic research, Martian colonization, and warfare.

A strong theme running through the books is the prejudice that neohumans (also called gennies) must endure. While gennies free humans from many difficult or dangerous jobs, they are also hated by some. Most humans don’t think they deserve the same rights.

The bigotry in the world has resulted in a song titled Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. There are a few lyrics of the song in the book, and a reporter even interviews the imprisoned drummer (BangBang Bangster).

I put the song, lyrics, and drummer in the story just to add flavor for the grim and gritty world. I was quite surprised when musician Jeff Shields emailed me a little while ago to say he was creating a song based on my book Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance!

He had a rough cut that he sent me and it sounded cool and appropriately futuristic. I sent him some more of the lyrics that hadn’t made it into the book and he went to work.

Now you can hear what Earless is humming in the first scene of the book! Of course, just like it says in the book, the lyrics are kind of unintelligible, but the song certainly gets across the anger and grit of the fictional universe.

<p><p><a href="http://kleptonaut.com/album/dead-dwarves-dont-dance">Dead Dwarves Don't Dance by Kleptonaut</a></p></p>

Click here to visit the Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance single website, by Kleptonaut.

If you like the song, why not donate a dollar or two to help out independent musicians? Kleptonaut is an independent band with a couple other songs available. Check them out!

About Kleptonaut

The band Kleptonaut includes Jeff Shields, Wilcox Televance, and Garrett Xian.

I asked them for an interview and they readily accepted:

DJC: How did you guys form Kleptonaut?

Jeff: Kleptonuat has been just me, but this incarnation of the band was assembled just for this song. I haven't seen Wilcox in more than 20 years. I was briefly in a high school band with him. I briefly was in Wilcox and company's high school for his high power cover band (Rush, Yes, Metalica, Van Halen, Pat Benatar,). We won battle of the bands that year, but I'm not sure if it was our playing or as I've only heard recently a rumour of my brother stuffing the ballot boxes. So I just recently got in touch with him via Facebook and approached him with the idea of this crazy song.

Wilcox: I'm a NYC based producer. I'm knee deep in the city's club/dance scene, so 'Dwarves' seemed a good project to collaborate on. I thought the idea for the song was so crazy it just might work. Or fail miserably. I was up for either.

Jeff: Wilcox's stuff is great. When I heard how clean and frosty his beats were and that he was using the same software as me, I suspected working with him might elevate my often chaotic music into something tasty, even downright delectable. I was in a college band with Garrett. When I decided I needed a vocalist with the powers of David Bowie, I sent Garret this long explanation of what we were up to but interestingly enough he was only able to read a small indecipherable portion of the message as he didn't realize you had to scroll through the message in facebook.

Garrett: When I showed up to his house I had little to no idea what the ju ju bees he was talking about.

DJC: Can you talk about how you created the song? We collaborated a bit on the lyrics, but then you took them and exploded them into a finished song. Who did what for the instrumentals and vocals?

Jeff: I added some to the lyrics you sent me, mostly I wanted some more rhymes, but I tried to take my cue from the world of your book. I originally recorded some rough tracks and sent them to Wilcox, who then worked on it.

Wilcox: It was a Band 2.0 thing, you know collaborating virtually. We all met while lost in corn maze and found we had mutual love of fields, games and vegetables.

Jeff: Wilcox made up the bit about the corn maze... Anyways Wilcox magically transformed the song into punk rock disco from hell, but it was a bit too evil (http://soundcloud.com/kleptonaut/utra-evil-2nd-draft-dead). So Wilcox and I decided to dial it back and I recruited Garrett. I added some more music. Garrett came up with the vocal melody and I sent it to Wilcox.

Garrett: This was a musical experiment unlike anything I had ever done before. I walked into Jeff's studio having only listened to the rough mix a few times. He handed me the words and we talked about doing it either in an incongruous, high-toned, Morrisseyesque style or something a bit more toward Peter Murphy. The first take (a la Morrissey) was a little off, so we went dark. I wrote the melody in basically 2 takes, and that's what you hear.

Wilcox: And then I messed with a bit more on the second go round. Dropped in some bass, mixed in some of Jeff's evil vocals, straightened up the chaos and put a few dolops of color splash, you know to keep it properly seasoned. And Voila, DDDD. Now you have a modern twist on the future-punk/neo-goth sound done with the post-power trio lineup. Beats, bass, regurgitated vocals, guitars in a blender, with dash of synth to taste.

Jeff: Aren't you glad you asked?

DJC: What advice do you have for other indie musicians?

Jeff: Do it for love, money, or fun.

Garrett: More cowbell.

DJC: Just imagining the grim protagonist of the novel, Noose the genetically engineered dwarf mercenary, dancing disco like John Travolta is a hoot! How did you come up with the idea for the cover?

Jeff: The characters who are singing the song are evil, nasty pieces of work. I didn't want people to take what they are singing seriously. In the book the song is just a backdrop for the hero, Noose, so I wanted to bring the hero to the foreground of the album cover. So, in a sense, Noose is getting the last laugh on these jerks. The jerks on the cover are us.

DJC: Do you have any other creative endeavors you’d like to talk about?

Jeff: I just finished two sci-fi themed albums, which are at www.kleptonaut. com. The song Dead Dwarves Don't Dance, is a departure for all of us, but we tried to make something that fit into the fictional world of your book. I'd like to recruit both of these guys to do something in the future, but who knows what.

Garrett: Whatever's next, I'm in!

I’d like to thank Jeff, Wilcox, and Garrett for creating this awesome song. It’s really cool that my creative efforts inspired other artists to further expand the Dead Dwarves universe!

Now head on over to their music page and buy the song!

Twelve Worlds SF&F anthology report

2011-08-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

On April 16^th thirteen other independent authors and I released a science fiction and fantasy anthology titled Twelve Worlds. It has 14 different short stories for a total of 80,000+ words. The author proceeds from sales will be donated to Reading is Fundamental, the largest literacy charity in the US.

It’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords for $2.99.

When it was released several contributors blogged about it and found some people to do online reviews.

We didn’t spend any money on advertising.

We’ve sold 158 copies so far.

You can see the initial spike when all us authors bought a copy, but after that it’s been pretty consistent over time at around 1 copy sold a day on average.

I’m surprised that the book isn’t doing a little bit better. With 14 different authors blogging and telling friends I would have thought we’d have more than a couple sales a day.

It’s clear that people are not finding Twelve Worlds. It’s not in any top 100 lists. This is the same problem my YA book, The Elemental Odyssey, is facing. People aren’t finding the book so they can’t buy it, and because people aren’t buying the book others can’t find it.

Starting this month I’m conducting another advertising experiment, this time for The Elemental Odyssey. I’m spending $500 over two months to get 400,000 ad impressions on a website that I believe is pre-disposed to be interested in my book. I’ll give a report on this experiment in a couple weeks.

If the advertising for The Elemental Odyssey works, then it might be worth it to find a similarly targeted advertising venue to market Twelve Worlds. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Stay tuned!

And if you haven’t bought Twelve Worlds yet, why not give it a try? 14 stories for $2.99 is a great deal!

July 2011 sales report

2011-08-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

July was my tenth month selling ebooks.

I sold 1200 copies of 4 different titles. That’s a decrease of 13% from June. That’s two months in a row of sales decline, but at least the rate of decline is slowing.

My average sales per day were 45.9 in June and 38.7 in July.

My royalties also declined from $1,312.41 to $1,059.91.

If sales continue like they have for July, I should gross about $14,500 in 2011. Still a tidy sum!

But what could be causing my declining sales?

My DeadDwarves Don’t Dance novel is still rated at an average of 4.5 stars on Amazon (86% positive ratings). So, it’s not losing sales because of bad reviews.

I’ve sold a total of 6,381 copies of Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. There are millions of ereaders out there, so I don’t think I’ve reached the limit of the cyberpunk fans.

Could it be a Summer sales slump? That’s possible, but my sales rank is also slowly worsening. If there is a Summer sales slump, shouldn’t my relative sales rank remain the same?

I think the primary reason for the sales decline is the two ebook sales that Amazon ran recently. With all those new books at 99 cents to $3.99, lots of people probably didn’t go searching for other books.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can figure out exactly what’s causing it. But is there anything I can do to turn around the decline?

I could try some advertising, but that didn’t work for me before.

I don't have thousands, or even hundreds, of dollars to spend on a huge marketing campaign. So, that leaves my fans. If you’d like to help you can do a couple things:

1. If you've read and enjoyed any of my books, you can post a review on its Amazon page.

Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour review link

Dead Dwarves Don't Dance review link

Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds review link

The Elemental Odyssey review link

Twelve Worlds review link

2. If you’ve read and enjoyed any of my books, you can add tags to the book. Just visit the pages below and check the boxes that you agree with, or add new tags

Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour tags link

Dead Dwarves Don't Dance tags link

Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds tags link

The Elemental Odyssey tags link

Twelve Worlds review tags link

Both of these things can help my books move up the best-reviewed list and some of the search and tags lists.

I’m not sure if this will help ranking or sales, but I’ll report back next month with results.

Thanks!

Finished first draft of “Where Magic Reigns”

2011-07-31T21:46:00.000-07:00

I thought I wouldn’t make it by the end of the month, but today I finished the first draft of Where Magic Reigns, the sequel to my young adult action adventure, The Elemental Odyssey.

July was my marathon writing month. On July 1^st, the manuscript was at 36,702 words. Today I finished the first draft at 86,043 words. That means I wrote over 52,000 words in one month, a significant record for me, especially since I had my 40+ hour/week technical writing job at the same time.

I spent 42 hours writing over the month, so an average of 1,192 words per hour. My best hourly rate was 1,557 words.

Of course, the story is in a state that I like to call the “ugly first draft.” Not something I want anyone else to read, that’s for sure. My first drafts are always like that because I have to get the story done, not done perfect. I find that if I struggle over every word and phrase in the first draft I'll never get the first draft done. Therefore, I try to power through, concentrating only on plot and information. In subsequent drafts I'll fix up the all sorts of things. I have over 100 comments in it, each one requiring some kind of change or specific improvement to a word, passage, or plot point.

For The Elemental Odyssey, it took me 120 hours to do the 2^nd through 7^th drafts, which went to the editor.

My next goal is to hand off Where Magic Reigns to the editor in October. That’ll be a stretch, but I’m hoping I can get it done.

The cost of translating an ebook into German or Hindi

2011-07-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

In his latest post, Joe Konrath mentions the grand opportunity that new ebook markets will create for us authors. Amazon recently opened their German website (and my Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance book already has a nice review there!). The Indian Amazon page will open sometime next year.

There are many English speakers and readers in both Germany and India. However, to fully exploit those markets, translation into German and Hindi would obviously result in more sales.

Both my novels have German characters and the kid’s book also has an Indian character.

The Elemental Odyssey has Jürgen Schmidt, a twelve-year old boy from Kaiserslautern. It also has Veeksha Das from India. Both are vacationing separately at Mt. Rushmore and both get abducted by magical aliens for an exciting adventure around the world.

Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance has the mercenary antagonist Bernd Buhl, who causes some problems for Noose the genetically engineered dwarf mercenary.

In a perfect world, I would get both books translated into German, and the kid’s book into Hindi.

However, I don’t know how much such a translation would cost.

I quick Bing search gave me some English to German translation rates. Anywhere from 7 to 13 cents per word.

Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance, about 74,000 words, from $5,000 to $10,000!!!

The Elemental Odyssey, about 96,000 words, from $7,000 to $12,000!!!

OUCH!!!

And that’s just for German.

For Hindi, one quote for translating the Elemental Odyssey was $20,000!!!!

Unless there are MUCH cheaper translation services out there that I’m just not finding, my books won’t be translated any time soon.

Sure, it would be nice to get in the ground floor of two new markets. But I don’t have the sales numbers to support it.

What this means for me

Unfortunately, my books will only be available in English for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, there is still a market for English books in Germany and India.

What this means for you

If you’re just starting out like me, I doubt you have enough revenue to sink $5,000 into translations. If I were you, I’d concentrate on writing more books in English. When you start making a hundred grand a year on your books, then look into paying someone to translate a book. It might be worth it.

FOR TRANSLATORS

If you know of any translation services (for English to German or Hindi) who give free quotes, let me know. I’d like to get more data to determine if 7-13 cents is reasonable.

Writing and the rejuvenating power of reviews

2011-07-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to finish the first draft of my next novel by the end of July so I can do revisions in August and September and hand off to editing in October.

My goal is to get the book published (ebook and POD paperback) in time for Christmas. Why Christmas? Because ereader sales are going to take off thanks to prices under $100 and a bespectacled kid named Harry Potter.

I expect JK Rowling’s impending ePotter empire to spur holiday ereader sales to previously unheard of levels. And the best part of this is, for me, most of the new users will be kids and YA fans – the target audience for the Tales of Zura, my YA action/adventure/fantasy series.

After those kids devour the Sorcerer’s Stone in two hours, they’ll need something else to read on their shiny new Kindles, Nooks, and so on. Hopefully, they’ll find The Elemental Odyssey and its sequel Where Magic Reigns.

On average, I wrote about 1 hour and 45 minutes per day so far this month. Last week, I wrote for a total of 16 hours. I think that’s a record for me during a work week.

In the 17 days I’ve been sprinting to get the first draft done, I’ve written 32,544 words. The draft is now up to 67,002 words.

This has been a struggle. It’s not easy to find the creative energy to write a couple thousand words every day after spending the workday doing brain draining technical writing.

But, as Lone Watie said, “endeavor to persevere”*.

13 days left in July, and at least 3 more big things have to happen in the book. First draft will probably end up close to 100,000 words. 13 days to write 33,000 words. It’s going to be photo finish.

Some things that help rejuvenate my creative energy are the nice reviews The Elemental Odyssey has been getting. Even though sales haven’t taken off yet, I do have 5 invigorating reviews up there, plus Scott has posted about it (and Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance) on his blog. Thanks, Scott!

I thought I’d mention a few quotes from the reviews that I particularly appreciated:

S Kjerland

“…I found it hard to put down.”

“I highly recommend this book to kids over age 10 and adults who want a fun read.”

SD Beallis

“YA Fantasy brims with Originality...”

“…I couldn't wait to get back to it when I'd put it down…”

“…a fun journey of discovery…”

“…an entertaining adventure story…”

JK Wegehenkel

“The young adult fiction genre is a bit crowded of late, it’s nice that Canyon here has got a fresh take on it.”

TonyL

“An entertaining, action filled story.”

“The characters are the defining element of this story. The four kids are not stereotypes, in fact they seem extraordinarily well drawn, and they always act the way the character should, based on what we know.”

“…filled with unconventional but well-paced action in atypical settings…”

Thanks to everyone who reviews my books!

And to everyone else, if you like any author, my advice is to go give them a nice review, telling them what you enjoyed from their books. It does wonders for motivation and might help the author get another book out quicker for you to read!

The slush pile is dead! Long live the slush pile!

2011-07-09T14:50:00.000-07:00

Two more self-publishing authors, Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, just landed a $ix figure/4 book deal with Harper Collins. You can read about it here.

There have been other examples of publishers signing self-publishers, most notably Amanda Hocking.

I say congratulations to anyone who achieves enough success self-publishing to attract the attention of a publisher! I’m not going to pontificate the royalty calculations on these deals. That balancing decision is the job of each writer based on each specific contract.

But I am going to pontificate on this budding strategy of some publishers to sign successful self-publishers.

Right now publishers are swooping down from the skies to snatch up successful self-publishing writers. No one expects this kind of behavior to stop and why would it? If a publisher sees someone selling tens of thousands of copies of their book in one month, that’s undeniable evidence that there is demand for their book.

Up until the self-publishing ebook revolution, the main way publishers or agents could find successful new authors was by digging through their slush piles or getting tips from trusted friends and colleagues.

And even if they pulled something they liked from the slush pile, there was no hard evidence that it would sell once published. It was just a guess. They hoped it would sell, but only after it hit the shelves would they know.

Then along comes ebook self-publishing. Agents/publishers now have a resource of hard facts to help them determine if a new author can sell: Amazon sales rank.

I’ve read that agents don’t enjoy combing through their slush piles. Out of a hundred query letters, how many do they request samples for? Five? And from a hundred samples, how many do they make offers to? Not many.

So how long will it take for agents to bypass their slush piles entirely and only scour the Amazon/B&N/etc. self-published authors for their next client?

Right now only the very successful edge cases are getting publishing deals. Authors selling tens of thousands of books a month. How long will it be before agents start approaching authors selling 5000 books per month? 1000?

How long will it be before agents don’t need to go through their slush piles because they can be more successful searching through the top 100 books in the genres they represent?

Why would anyone want to toil through hundreds of query letters? Instead, an agent can browse the self-published ebook lists, check rankings, read samples, read reviews, check the buzz on Goodreads, Shelfari, and any of the other ebook forums that exist and will soon exist. That is a wealth of verbatim reader comments and sales data that is not available from a slush pile.

It will be the trailblazing agents who recognize all of that wealth of information as guideposts to their next successful client. Eventually, more and more agents will do the same.

The agency slush pile is dead! Long live the Amazon ebook slush pile!

The title for this blog was obviously a premature exaggeration.

I don’t think the agency slush piles will die off any time soon.

But I do expect them to become the exception rather than the rule for agents to acquire new clients. Eventually, most agents will demand proven ebook sales before they look at your novel. Who knows when the tipping point will arrive?

The new slush pile will be the Amazon category top 100 lists and its equivalents.

Are you ready to take advantage of it?

Writing report

2011-07-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

Between June the 26thand July 3rd, I’ve been very disciplined and spent at least one hour each weeknight, plus at least 4 hours each weekend, working on the sequel to The Elemental Odyssey. In that time I’ve written 15,000 more words. Woot!

Unfortunately, I also discovered that I didn’t like act two of my outline, so I had to re-plot it.

My goal is get the sequel published before Christmas to take advantage of all the new YA readers who will be getting an ereader for the Harry Potter ebooks.

In order to achieve this I have to write at least 10-12k words each week to get a first draft complete by the end of July. Then I’ll take about a month or two of rewrites, handing off to editing no later than October.

Well, that’s the plan, anyway.

June 2011 sales report

2011-07-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

June was my ninth month selling ebooks.

I sold 1378 units of 4 different titles in June. That is a decrease of 43% from May’s sales of 2406 units. This is my 3^rd highest selling month on record. But this is also the largest monthly decrease I’ve seen yet. I’ll examine the causes further down.

My average sales per day were 77.6 in May and 45.9 in May.

Unfortunately, my royalties also decreased for the first time in 9 months:

My royalties decreased from $2913 in May to $1320 in June. That’s a 55% decrease! Ouch.

What caused my sales decline?

Back in March I lowered the price for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance from $2.99 to $0.99. This resulted in a significant increase in unit sales and royalties.

On May 9^th, I raised the price for this ebook from 99 cents back to $2.99. Unit sales declined but royalties shot up through the roof, making May the best royalty month I’ve had.

I watched as unit sales declined and my Amazon ranking worsened to around #3709. I finally decided to lower the price back down to 99 cents on June 9^th. Since that time rankings and sales have been very slowly improving, but not enough to help out June sales.

I think three things might be slowing down the recovery of Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance:

1. Book buying slows down in the Summer? I’ve read on another blog that Summer sales decline. Can anyone else confirm that? I would think that Summer-time would mean more time for reading fiction.

2. Amazon’s big price reduction on 600 titles to $2.99 or lower for Big 6 books. This pushed a lot of self-publishers out of the better sales rankings.

3. Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance has peaked and is now going to settle down to lower plateau of sales.

All of these reasons are just guesses, of course. It’s probably too early to give much weight to reason #3.

Now the good news

Gross royalties are up to $7,555 for the last 9 months. If sales continue as they have for the year, I’ll gross around $14,800 in 2011.

Profits from my epublishing endeavor now stand at $2,956 over nine months.

Two books have made profits: $3,222 for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance and $2,065 for Format Your Ebookfor Kindle in One Hour.

And some not so good news

This was my first month both my unit sales and royalties declined. I still earned more than $1,000, but it was a disappointment. An inevitable event, but still not something I’d like to repeat in July.

Dead Dwarves, DirtyDeeds is still in the red by $18. It should start turning a profit in July.

The Elemental Odyssey is still in the red by $2,312. This is the book I’ve spent the most money on and it’s the only book in paperback so far. I think it has the potential to be my best-selling book, but it’s only sold 37 copies so far. It needs to find its audience. I don’t think that many young adult readers have ereaders yet. I’m hoping that when the Harry Potter books come out in ebook form that they will cause a holiday spike in new Kindle/Nook/etc. purchases. Then, when kids have finished reading Potter, they’ll need another adventure. Hopefully some of them will try out The Elemental Odyssey and the sequel, Where Magic Reigns.

What this means for me

I believe that I left the price for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance at $2.99 for too long. I should have lowered it before my category ranks fell out of the top 20.

I also need to get more books out in the series. It is imperative that my readers have more to buy. I’m currently working on my YA sequel, which should be out for the Christmas buying season, but immediately after that I’ll be writing the sequel to Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance.

What this means for you

There are dangers with price experimentation. If you leave your book at the a higher price point for too long, its rankings could worsen to a point where it’s very difficult to regain those valuable top #20 category ranks.

My advice is to raise your price when you're in the top 10 of some category lists. Then lower it again when you hit rank #17-20 in the categories. I think it is very important to stay in the top 20 for at least a couple categories. That keeps your book on the first page of those lists! Prime real estate.

I earn an extra $10 on Day 1 of JK Rowling's self-publishing announcement

2011-06-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

Joe Konrath has a good post and discussion going on his blog about JK Rowling announcing that she'll be self-publishing her Harry Potter series in ebook format.

This announcement has boosted UK sales of my book How to Format Your Ebook for Kindle in One Hour 350%-700% today.

In the UK I usually sell 0-2 books per day.

Today, I've sold 7 copies in the UK.

So, thanks a lot JK Rowling! You've already earned me an extra $10. :)

And, self-publishing authors everywhere should thank her. This is nothing but good news for all us epublishing folks.

Dreaming up character names: Susie Five Eagles for The Elemental Odyssey

2011-06-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

The following post has some minor spoilers for The Elemental Odyssey. If you want the full unspoiled reading experience, please go read the novel first. Then come back to read this post.

The names that I dreamed up for the four kids in my novel were carefully selected. Each is related to one of the four elements in some way, giving readers a (sometimes obscure) hint about what the kid would encounter in the story. I'll talk about Jürgen Schmidt, Kyle Morgan, and Veeksha Das later. In this post, I’ll talk about how I came up with the name Susie Five Eagles.

I’ve played role-playing games for decades. I started with the Dungeons and Dragons blue book, moved on to subsequent versions of D&D, Star Frontiers, Twilight 2000, Traveler, Harn, Gamma World, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Deadlands (my favorite), and more.

At one point my gaming group* was playing d20 Modern in a paranormal investigation campaign. Think X-Files but with a lot more shooting. I created a character named Johnny Five Eagles – a tough, Native American petty criminal trying to survive the mean streets of Seattle. I think the name Five Eagles was a reflection of Ten Bears from The Outlaw Josie Wales (one of my favorite movies).

Anyway, I really loved the name Johnny Five Eagles**. Alas, that d20 Modern campaign did not last very long, but the name has always been in the back of my head.

Fast forward a few years. I’m working on the concept for The Elemental Odyssey. Deciding on plotlines and characters and such. I knew I wanted Johnny Five Eagles in there. But, I also knew I wanted two young boys and two young girls to be the main protagonists. Turns out that plot leaned toward the two boys being German and American.

So, I had to make one of the girls a Five Eagles. I played around with a lot of first names, but finally settled on Susie. I think it has the same pleasing sound as Johnny Five Eagles.

Obviously, Five Eagles is a name related to the element of Sky (my version of the Air element). I wanted her first name to relate to Sky as well. But I chose and fell in love with Susie before I could determine if it had any relation to sky or air. Turns out it was a bit of a stretch to find such a connection. Susan is of Hebrew origin and it means lily. In florigraphy, the practice of using flowers to send coded messages, the white lily can mean “it’s heavenly to be with you” and the yellow lily can mean “I’m walking on air”. Both of these fit with my sky element. Whew!

I had the name and now I needed the character. Each of the four kids in the novel is twelve years old, and three of them are vacationing at Mt. Rushmore. I figured one of them should live nearby, so Susie’s home is the Lakota Sioux reservation where she lives with her parents. She’s very curious, competitive, and loves the outdoors. She’s hiked all the trails in the Black Hills and is the bravest of the kids in the story. She’s not as well-read as Veeksha, nor as well-travelled as Jurgen. She has, however, invented her own hiking food: the Susie Snack!

Susie Five Eagles was the first and easiest name that I came up with for the kids. The others were a bit harder, and I’ll talk about them in future posts.

*By the way, my gaming group makes a cameo appearance in The Elemental Odyssey as soldiers.

**And I still had to use Johnny Five Eagles. He’s the first character introduced in the story, Susie’s brother and a park ranger at Mt. Rushmore who has an unfortunate encounter with one of the aliens.

Free ecopies of The Elemental Odyssey

2011-06-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

I finally have my paperback up online and I think it’s time to start trying to promote my new book.

So, if you send me an email at derek@derekjcanyon.com and promise to review The Elemental Odyssey on Amazon and Smashwords, I’ll send you a coupon to get the ebook for free from Smashwords!

If you have a blog or website and review the book there, I’ll thank you in the acknowledgements section of the sequel.

Of course, if you want to buy the ebook (99 cents here) and/or paperback($14.99 here) and review it, it won’t hurt my feelings.

Description:

There are many fun and exciting things to do in South Dakota: hike the mountains, see the monuments, explore the caves, watch the wildlife. But what’s not on the travel brochures is getting abducted by magical aliens!

While vacationing at Mt. Rushmore, twelve-year-old Kyle Morgan and his new friends, Jurgen Schmidt, Susie Five Eagles, and Veeksha Das, are hauled on board a strange alien ship and forced to help the animal-like Zurans!

Whisked around the world on a perilous quest, the children solve riddles to find mystical elements for their fierce captors. Scheming against the aliens, the military, powerful elementals, and even each other, the kids must escape before the Zurans can complete their mysterious mission.

About 96,000 words, 396 pages

The Elemental Odyssey paperback now available!

2011-06-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

And you can get it for $14.99 on Amazon!

Click here to buy it!

There are all sorts of fun and exciting things to do in South Dakota: hike the mountains, see the monuments, explore the caves, watch the wildlife. But what’s not on the travel brochures is getting abducted by magical aliens!

While vacationing in the Black Hills, twelve-year-old Kyle Morgan and his new friends, Susie, Veeksha, and Jurgen, are hauled on board a strange alien ship and forced to help the animal-like Zurans!

Whisked around the world on a perilous quest, the children solve riddles to find mystical elements for their fierce captors. Scheming against the aliens, military, powerful elementals, and even each other, the kids must escape before the Zurans can complete their mysterious mission.

396 pages

Cover art by Igor Kieryluk.

How I design my ebook covers

2011-06-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, an ebook cover is the first bit of advertising you have. Your ebook cover is a billboard to advertise your story. It’s also like a movie trailer, except it’s a static image. Would a movie studio run a trailer of one scene from the movie? Not usually. Trailers usually give you a smattering of what to expect in the movie. Can we do that in our ebook covers? I have tried to do so.

In the rest of this post I’m going to explain my cover strategy and how I designed my covers for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance and The Elemental Odyssey.

As a disclaimer, I’m providing this advice for non-famous authors. If you’re famous, your name should be the most prominent item on the cover. But, for those of us who are unknown, I think my strategy might work.

The biggest advice I have is about the actual artwork, so I’m going to save that for last. First, I’ll talk about the title and author text.

The Title

Actually choosing a title is beyond the scope of this post. Of course, you should pick something catchy and appropriate for the story, if possible.

For title layout, here’s what I attempt to accomplish:

1. Title is legible in thumbnail size.

2. Title color contrasts the artwork behind it.

3. Title is in a font appropriate for the story.

Here are some examples of good and bad use of titles. Click on the pic to see them in thumbnail size. Notice how the title is illegible in many of them. I’ll let you decide which are good and which are less so.

Be sure to experiment with a LOT of fonts. I have hundreds of fonts and I’m constantly collecting more. When I choose one for a book I usually mock up at least a dozen on the cover (from a candidate pool of dozens).

Sometimes a font won’t work in standard format, but it will in bold. Always check the bold version.

To make your book seem even more professional, use texture, shading, and other tricks on your title. I haven’t done this yet because I don’t know how. I’d like to improve The Elemental Odyssey title to be something more than just black text. Maybe someday.

Author name

Your author name does not need to be legible in thumbnail size. It would be nice if it was, but there is no way a customer is going to see the thumbnail size of your ebook cover without also seeing your name in text directly beneath it. So, unless you’re famous, keep your name small so people can see more of the cover art.

Most of the same rules apply to author name as applied to title:

1. Author name doesn’t need to be legible in thumbnail size. It can be, but not required.

2. Author name text color contrasts the artwork behind it.

3. Author name is in a font appropriate for the story.

The Artwork

The cover is a billboard for your story. You’re paying good money for an artist to do the cover. Be involved in the creation. You know the story better than anyone, you should decide the content of the cover art. The artist should follow your guidelines and be willing to iterate with you.

1. Find an artist that you love.

2. Don’t have a lot of empty space on the cover. The top of the book should have room for the title. Don’t put anything important up there. Ditto for a smaller space at the bottom for your name.

3. Don’t clutter the artwork.

4. Make the cover interesting. Make it something someone would want to look at for more than two seconds. This means detail. You don’t need a lot, but a bit is nice. Customers who pause to examine a cool cover will also check out the rest of the book page.

5. At least one object on the cover must be recognizable in thumbnail size.

6. Unless you have an awesome idea for a one-concept cover, make the cover a montage of 3-4 concepts.

7. Use the foreground, midground, and background to full effect.

8. The cover must be cool. If you look at your cover and don’t think “that’s cool” then don’t use that cover.

Those are the basic rules I use when designing my covers. Here is a more precise strategy for the actual art content and how I implemented them for my current novels:

1. Foreground depicts the protagonist or other important character. This foreground character is recognizable in thumbnail size and has evocative detail. This can be equipment, expression, body language, or more.

2. Midground depicts other character(s) with some action suggested. Not necessarily recognizable in thumbnail size.

3. Background depicts the setting. Not necessarily recognizable in thumbnail size.

Here’s how I came up with the design for my two novels with Igor Kieryluk, the artist:

Dead DwarvesDon’t Dance

Foreground: The main character, Noose, is large and in the foreground. Even in thumbnail size you can get a good idea of what he is and what he’s doing. He has some good detail, such as futuristic guns that suggest science fiction and attire that suggests a hard-boiled detective atmosphere.

Midground: The name of the dance club, Stiltzkins, in bright neon. which ties in nicely with the title. Three other characters from the book are in front of the club, shooting at Noose. This reinforces the action implied by Noose’s pistols.

Background: A flying police car, implying criminal activity. A skyscraper with dirigibles flying around it. Both of these imply a futuristic setting.

Title: Thick, gritty font easily legible in thumbnail.

Author name: Same but smaller font. Doesn’t block any important art.

The Elemental Odyssey

Foreground: One of the primary aliens, a raccoon-man named Bozabrozy. Since the story is about a group of aliens coming to Earth, I decided to use one of them as the focal point instead of the protagonist children. He’s got some detail, such as his magical blue potion and pouches.

Midground: The four children in the story. American Kyle Morgan, German Jurgen Schmidt, Indian Veekhsa Das, and Native American Susie Five Eagles. The detail here is their attire, body language and expressions.

Background: Mt. Rushmore is the setting for the first several chapters of the book. The flying ship is also very important in the story, and its odd design (four sails) is something that I wanted to depict.

Title: The font is kind of fanciful and implies swashbuckling, of which there is plenty in the story. Igor also left me a bunch of open sky up there, enough to put the title and the series information.

Author name: Thanks to the fog and blowing leaves/twigs, Igor has given me more room to put my name.

So, as you can see, I put a lot of thought into the composition of the covers. I don’t see a bunch of other covers similar to mine. Maybe because my strategy isn’t good? I guess I’ll find that out.

What do you think of my covers?

How do I market my ebooks?

2011-06-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

Short answer: this blog, more books, price, trading excerpts, Facebook, Twitter, author website, online reviews

Long answer:

I started my epublishing adventure back in late September 2010. My first full month of sales was in October, during which I sold 13 copies of my anthology Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds. I had been hoping to sell at least 30 in October, but that didn’t pan out. I was a bit disappointed.

In November I released my second book, a full length cyberpunk novel titled Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. I started paying for advertising on Project Wonderful, Bing, and Google. I also bought a sponsorship on Kindle Author. I spent about $240 in total on this advertising, and even though I was selling very few copies a day, I saw no obvious uptick in sales. By the end of 2010, I had sold 164 units. I decided to stop advertising because each click was costing me up to 80 cents with no way to determine if that resulted in a sale. Since I only make $2 per novel that was a high price to pay.

In January I released How to Format Your Ebook for Kindle in One Hour. It sold very well from the get go. I attribute this to my author following here on this blog. Without doubt, this blog helped sell HtFYEfKiOH. This is an obvious example of perfectly targeted free advertising. I already had a following of authors interested in epublishing, and I wrote a DIY book targeting them. Voila! Predisposed customers.

In March, I lowered the price of my Dwarf novel from $2.99 to 99 cents. It went from Amazon Kindle sales rank #6000 to #333 in about 6 weeks. In May I raised the price again to $2.99, and royalties tripled.

Also earlier this year I traded excerpts with John G. Hartness. An excerpt from my Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance went into his Hard Day’s Knight, and vice versa. We’re both now getting free advertising with each other’s fans. No way to determine exactly how many sales this results in, but it’s definitely not zero.

I’m also going to trade excerpts with Manley Peterson, between his Bloated Goat novel and my The Elemental Odyssey. I just haven’t had time to do it, which isn’t too bad since TEO hasn’t sold more than a couple dozen copies yet. Don’t worry, Manley, I’ll send you an excerpt soon.

I’ve also put excerpts from my own work into Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. This book sells anywhere from 27 to 90 copies a day, and every excerpt in there gets free advertising.

I have a Facebook account with 33 friends. I use it purely to announce blog posts and release information. I don’t use it for more than that. I’ve heard that some other authors use Facebook much more diligently, building their customer base by being very active. I just don’t like Facebook and so I can’t/won’t exploit that marketing avenue to its fullest extent.

I also tweet notifications about my blog posts and releases on Twitter. I have 58 followers. I know other authors use it for communicating and discussions. Keeping track of dozens of feeds and hundreds of tweets is way too much of a time sink for me.

Maybe I could generate more interest and fans by committing more time to Facebook and Twitter. Do other authors find these venues to be helpful? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve only had a couple interviews and reviews. I certainly appreciate these opportunities. These certainly can’t hurt. My hope is that they have resulted in at least some of sales over time. Unfortunately, I have yet to see any sales spike on the same day or soon after an interview or review.

I have received a couple free bits of advertising based on my blog post: The Keys to Epublishing Success. The German online magazine, Spiegel, mentioned me in this article. I saw a huge spike in blog visits from this. I was also mentioned in this article in the Huffington Post online. No way to know how many sales I might have gotten from these mentions, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

How exactly did my marketing efforts contribute to sales? I have no idea. What worked and what didn’t? Hard to tell. All I know is that the sum total of my marketing efforts has helped me sell over 7500 units and earn over $6200. My royalties have gone from $4.20 in October to $2913 in May. I must be doing something right.

So, what’s this mean for you?

Unfortunately, I can’t give you any concrete advice that will guarantee continued increases in revenue. There are way too many variables and all these marketing efforts are just a part of the story.

However, I can give you some advice on where you might want to commit your time for marketing:

Cover: This is the first bit of marketing prospective customers see. Pay for a great cover. Don’t skimp. Both Igor Kieryluk and Les Petersen are great artists and can do covers for under $1000. Your cover is your best marketing asset on Amazon. Make sure it’s great.

Description: Your description is the second bit of marketing prospective buyers see. Make sure it is really good. Find other books in your genre that are selling well and look at their descriptions. Emulate them.

Good book: If you wrote a poor book, it won’t sell. So, write a good book. This will get you good reviews, which will get you more customers.

Price: Experiment with price and keep each price constant for at least 2 months to see the impact.

Blog: definitely create a blog to give fans a way to connect with you. This is the largest non-writing time sink that I’m willing to commit to. Go read a few more author blogs to get an idea of what kind of content they concentrate on and then decide which you want to emulate. Or come up with your own style!

Author website: if you are comfortable creating a website then you should definitely create your own author website. If not, and you don’t want to pay someone else to create your website, use your blog as your website.

Facebook: Create an account on Facebook and at least use it to announce blog updates. If you enjoy using FB, then go hog wild. It can’t hurt.

Twitter: Create an account and tweet your blog updates. If you love Twitter, then use it to its full potential.

Trading excerpts: These are no-cost, minimal effort free advertising opportunities. Find authors of similar genres and ask them if they’d like to trade.

More books: The best way to make more money is to write more books. All your current fans are instant customers for your new books. Your fans will buy buy buy. Take advantage of their interest.

Online reviews/interviews: I haven’t gotten very many of these and I haven’t seen any direct sales impact. However, I certainly wouldn’t refuse to do an interview. Again, these can’t hurt. Even bad reviews might give you some exposure that could be helpful.

The Elemental Odyssey paperback proof

2011-06-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

I received the first proof for my paperback version of The Elemental Odyssey from CreateSpace.

The book is 6 inches wide by 9 inches tall by 15/16 inches thick. To give you an idea of the size, here is the book next to my spokesdog, Andy the Jealous Chihuahua.

What do you think?

The CreateSpace process has been pretty easy. I formatted the interior and cover myself with no problem. It just required some Photoshop ability.

I submitted the manuscript on Monday, they approved it on Tuesday, and I received the proof on Friday. Quite quick.

May 2011 sales report

2011-06-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

May was my eighth month selling ebooks.

I sold 2406 units of 4 different titles in May. That is a decrease of 20% from April’s sales of 3009 units. Sales for my 3 biggest selling titles declined. :(

My average sales per day were 100.3 in April and 77.6 in May.

Well, that doesn’t sound good at all, does it? But that’s only one part of the story. The other part is my royalties, which increased dramatically:

My royalties increased from $1454 in April to $2913 in May. That’s an increase of 100%.

This was because of my price increase for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. On May 9^th, I raised the price for this ebook from 99 cents to $2.99. This change reduced the sales of the novel, and I think also hurt the sales of my related anthology, Dead Dwarves, Dirty Deeds. The anthology rode the coattails of the novel on the way up in sales numbers, but also rode the coattails on the way down. Even so, total royalties increased for the month.

Thanks to the surge in royalties from Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance, I’ve now made more money than I’ve spent on epublishing. I’ve spent about $4100, but I’ve earned royalties of $6200. That’s about $2100 in profit!

If sales continue at a similar pace, I’m hoping to earn at least $15000 in gross royalties for 2012. That’s pretty good for my first year, and much more than the $3000 I was hoping to make when I started this adventure.

In the daily royalty chart below, you can really see the dramatic increase in royalties in May. For the last several days, though, there has been dramatic fluctuation. I’ll be interested to see if that calms down or continues.

I’ll keep the novel at the higher price throughout June to see how much sales continue to decline, or maybe they’ll level out. I don’t really have any guess about that yet. But, I’ll lower the price back down to 99 cents in July.

Stay tuned!

The Elemental Odyssey paperback cover

2011-05-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

I've been working on getting The Elemental Odyssey ready for Amazon's CreateSpace print on demand service.

Here's the current draft of the paperback cover. It'll be 396 pages, 6" x 9", priced at $14.99.

What do you think?

Pricing experiment update: Amazon rank

2011-05-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

Back on May 9^th I raised the price of my book, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance, back up to $2.99 after keeping it at 99 cents for a couple months.

While it was at 99 cents, it reached a best overall Amazon Kindle sales rank of #333.

It also got up to the top ten for a few lists:

#4 Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > High Tech

#8 Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Adventure

#12 Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction

Since I raised the price, my overall Amazon Kindle sales rank has worsened back to #1507, but it dips back into 900s frequently.

Sales continue to slowly decline and I’ll be interested to see when/if they level out again. In the meanwhile I’m still making more than double in royalties.

Stay tuned to see how it goes.

Other reports on the pricing experiment:

Pricing experiment: Is $0.99 a better price for an enovel?

Another pricing experiment: raising my Format book to $2.99

Pricing experiment update: after seven days

Pricing experiment sales rank update: after 10 days

Pricing experiment update: after 14 days

Pricing experiment sales rank update: after 20 days

Pricing experiment update: after 21 days

Pricing experiment: after one month

Pricing experiment: after 5 weeks

Pricingexperiment update: raised the price back up to $2.99