Category Archives: publishing

Statshot

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In the Shadow of Angels has been on the market for over a year now. It hasn’t been the runaway success that I hoped it would be (yet knew it never would), but I have sold a few copies. Reviews have been trickling in over that time, but I’ve taken them with the figurative grain of salt. Tonight, I took a moment to take a few screenshots to put together in this little statshot post.

amzFirst up are the Amazon reviews. The reviews have been very positive, but also very hard to come by. This perplexes me. When you finish reading the book on your Kindle, it automatically asks you to leave a review on Amazon, but very few do. I’ve sold (actually given away mostly) over 300 copies of it on Kindle, but only landed 9 reviews so far. That seems terribly low, but I’ll take a handful of good reviews over a ton of shitty ones any day. Amazon reviews are like the holy grail for indie authors. There is no single piece of advertising I can do that is more valuable than Amazon reviews Continue reading Statshot→

New look for In the Shadow of Angels

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After much deliberation, a tremendous amount of input from friends and family, and countless hours, I’ve come up with a new look for In the Shadow of Angels (pictured here is the print version of said cover):

angelsPrint

However. this cover came about slowly and evolved much over time. Just for fun, I’ve penned up a bit of a retrospective on the cover design. Click through if you’re interested to see it Continue reading New look for In the Shadow of Angels→

Excerpt from an email with a friend

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I haven’t posted anything here for a while and I really should have. Good Intentions released on Audible last week and I didn’t properly promote or advertise it. You can also pick up In the Shadow of Angels on Audible, and, of course, both are also available on Amazon. Don’t want to spend any money? Contact me and maybe I’ll throw you one for free.

That’s the end of my shameless promotion. That is, in a nutshell, my problem with this whole writing thing. I enjoy writing, but I’ve found that I loathe the amount of promotion necessary to generate any sales. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to change that about myself. I’ve never been the type to jump up and yell, “Look at me!” I had always hoped that the first person who read the story would do that for me, but if it was that easy, everyone would be a successful writer.

In a recent email exchange with an online friend (whom I first met when he filled out my contact form. Try it out, I answer them all), my response to one of his questions perfectly captured my current state of mind about the whole writing as a career thing: Continue reading Excerpt from an email with a friend→

A failed experiment

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Back in June, I uploaded In the Shadow of Angels to Smashwords. When I did so, I wrote a bit about why I made that decision, but it basically came down to two things: 1)Smashwords is much more indie author friendly than Amazon and 2)Smashwords’ interface is significantly easier than Amazon’s when it comes to finding a specific genre of book that is the length and price you are looking for. I still absolutely stand by those two assessments.

Having said that, I have since made the decision to remove my books from Smashwords. Continue reading A failed experiment→

Good Intentions is now available for preorder

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Good Intentions is now available for preorder on Amazon. Part One of Brian’s Secret, Good Intentions tells the story of Brian’s relationship with a young woman named Cassie. Unfortunately for me, the cover synopsis is still in production and my simple description does it very little justice. Why not take a shot and order it anyway?

I have received several pre-sale reviews of the book (two five stars and one four star) which were very flattering, but contained little substance. Continue reading Good Intentions is now available for preorder→

The Telephone

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Against my better judgement, I’ve published The Telephone on Smashwords. I’m not publishing it on Amazon because they don’t allow for free distribution, and this isn’t the type of thing I would be comfortable charging anyone for. It’s a simple story that’s only about 3,300 words. I wrote the story partially for my own amusement, but really it was more about working with my image editing software to see if I could create a compelling cover. Continue reading The Telephone→

In the Shadow of Angels audiobook

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An In the Shadow of Angels audiobook is now in production. I’m currently working with Neal Arango to produce the audio version. Neal has a number of audio production credits, and I really liked his portrayal of the primary characters in his audition tape. I’m quite excited to hear his voice bring my characters to life. Production should be completed by the beginning of September, with online store availability shortly thereafter. More details on specifics, including purchase links, will follow as they become available.

Without getting into too much detail on the minutia of it, I need to release a revision of both the print and eBook versions as part of this process. Changes to the text will be very minor (I’m moving a portion of the front matter to the back of the book so the narration will immediately jump into the story). However, since I am releasing a revision in all formats, I’ve worked with the designer to modify the artwork to address some issues readers have brought to my attention since the release.

The new front cover art is below. The back cover and spine are also getting updates as part of this process. The current version of the book will be out of print in a few weeks. If you are interested in getting a copy with the original cover art and spine, you should do so now.

in the shadow of angels audio mod

Curse modern technology!

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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.