Category Archives: kindle

I got my first (and possibly only) royalty check payout from sales of the novel today. I curse modern technology that I didn’t actually get a check that I could frame. It’s much harder to frame a direct deposit. But, that’s $3.36 I didn’t have before! Of course this was never about the money, if it was, it would be positively depressing. Since I like being depressed, here’s some napkin math on the numbers:

Mostly to make this number bigger, I’m going to theoretically pay myself minimum wage for time spent working on the novel. I would estimate that I worked an absolute minimum of 200 hours on the book -including writing, re-writing, editing, and research. So at minimum wage, that would be $1610 (if I worked at a McDonald’s for $15 an hour, that would be a cool 3k. goddam Obama). So:

$1610 Labor
$350.00 Cover Design
$350.00 semiProfessional editing
$250.00 Purchased copies of book
$100.00 Shipping supplies
$171.86 Postage (so far)
$255.00 Advertising (so far)
_________________________
$3086.00 Total

– 3.36 Royalties
_________________________
$3082.64 Total

– $20.00 One person sent for postage, but I haven’t yet (and probably won’t) cash it
__________________________
$3062.64 Total

Do it for the love of the game, kids!

Even discounting the 1610 in ‘labor’, there is still a fairly significant chunk of out-of-pocket for this project (about $1400, but I know I am missing expenses in my list). I knew there would be going in, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. The fact that the book is now in the hands of about fifty people, and the kindle version has been downloaded by over 300, is more reward than money would be (although it would be nice if they weren’t mutually exclusive). Now if I could just get some of those who have read it to review it on Amazon and Goodreads in the Kindle version and/or paperback, it would really be a shot to the old ego.

In the Shadow of Angels is being offered for free on Kindle today. The free offer ends at 11:59pm (PST) 3/16/15, so take advantage of it now! The kindle page is right here.

In the Shadow of Angels has officially been published. Publishing date: Friday, March 13th. It is so fitting for me.

It will be several days before the print version is for sale on Amazon, but if you really want a print version before anyone else gets it, you can order it directly through the publisher.

The kindle version is already available through Amazon, which seems odd to me. It is a print on demand book. They should be able to just add a tab right to the page with the Kindle version, but whatever. If you’re interested in the Kindle version, you can pick that up right here.

It is a bittersweet moment for me. On the one hand, I am pleased that it is now available for someone to theoretically purchase. On the other hand, I expect that reviews of it may be too critical for my liking. And while it is nice to think that I can just shrug them off and say, “Well how about I review your book then, asshole?” (here assuming that they have not written a book), it is much more likely that it will simply crush my spirit and I will give up on writing forever. It’s like Dad always said, if at first you don’t succeed, just give up.