by john | Feb 27, 2011 | Real Life, Travel, Writing
Last night Suzy and I went to see Hayseed Dixie at the Neighborhood Theatre, and the boys were rockin’, as always. We had decided to blow it off, but at the last minute, an actress from the show Suzy’s working on (The Princess Bride for Citzens of the Universe) called us to see if we were still going, and since I’d managed a long nap in the afternoon, I said “fuggit, let’s roll.” So I threw on my cowboy boots, my Cross Canadian Ragweed (RIP to one of my fave Okie bands) and we headed out to drink cheap beer and yell WHOOOOO at a bunch of bluegrassed-up hard rock covers.
If you’ve not ever seen Hayseed Dixie live before, I’ll pause while you cruise on over to YouTube and check out the madness.
You back? Okay, good. Well, the Hayseed Dixie boys were all that we expected them to be, but the surprise of the night for me was the opener, a little band from Charleston called Sol Driven Train. These guys were awesome! They were kinda like what you’d get out of a love child of OAR and Little Feat, plenty of hot percussion, cool horns and just generally fun, bouncy boogie. I bought both their CDs before we left and am looking forward to rocking out to them as I drive south tomorrow afternoon.
Yep, headed back to the ATL after being down there all week last week. I’ll be at our open house for the new office Tuesday, then the Southeastern Theatre Conference Wednesday through Saturday, heading home on Sunday morning. Or early afternoon at least. I’ll try to update the blog at least a couple times through the week, because I do have some awesome books I want to spotlight, and I’ll have a guest post on Nyx Book Reviews at some point this week. Celine over there is giving Hard Day’s Knight a review, and she’s letting me do a spot on character development as well.
Got the proof in for the print edition of Back in Black, and wasn’t exactly thrilled with it. There were some hefty pagination and header/footer issues, but I think I have those all resolved and have ordered a new proof. Hopefully that can get going quickly and I can get hard copies in hand before the Charlotte ComiCon on the 20th, but if not I’ll have plenty of copies of Hard Day’s Knight and The Chosen with me. The ebook of Back in Black is moving a few copies, but it hasn’t been the meteoric rise that I’d hoped. So get off your collective asses and go buy a book! 🙂
As we wrap up February it looks to have been a decent month, with almost 90 total books sold. That’s going to be my best month sales-wise to date, although not as strong monetarily because of the price drop on Hard Day’s Knight. But with things moving steadily along, maybe next month I break 100 units delivered! Still not quit my job money, but almost enough to buy a tank of gas at today’s prices!
by john | Feb 22, 2011 | Travel, Writing
Before I get into the beginnings of my RoundCon update, I have BIG NEWS!
Back in Black is now available for purchase! If you’ve enjoyed the first volume of the Black Knight Chronicles, this one is sure to please. It’s even more ridiculous than the first adventure, with vampires, fairies, trolls and a dragon! Yes, a dragon! And for the first time ever, my vampires sparkle!
Don’t worry, they get over it.
So go to Amazon and get your copy now. If you don’t have a Kindle, go to Smashwords and get your copy for other formats. And if for some reason you haven’t picked up Hard Day’s Knight yet, get off your ass! It’s only a buck!
Now – RoundCon –
Back at the day job after a fun weekend at RoundCon 25 in Columbia, SC. It was nice to sit on panels all weekend with “real” writers and pretend to be one of them/us/whatever. I met some great folks, sold almost enough books to cover my food tab, and generally had a great time, so I’ll try to share my impressions of all that briefly here.
First – the people. Sean organized a very fun Con, even if there was a lot of competition for people on that particular weekend. He’s working on that for next year, though, and I think he and his team have a great event going. This was the first year they’d ever had a Creative Track, which consisted of half a dozen panels with myself and the other writers at the con. We had small audiences, but they were very appreciative and having the same couple of faces in all the panels throughout the day really did give us as writers the chance to bond with our readers a little, which was great. Listening to the other folks on the panel, they saw it as a welcome change to other cons they’d done, where the rooms were so packed they couldn’t really get a sense of the audience, and didn’t often have that chance to make a personal connection. For me, it was fun to be on a panel and not have to be the expert. Like I mentioned in one of our discussions, in my day job I’m one of a very small number of people in the world who do what I do. So if I’m on a panel, I’m an expert. It’s just how it goes. But here I was able to sit back and soak in a bunch of knowledge from the ladies I was on panels with.
Yeah, ladies. I was the only guy writer there, which I loved, because what’s better than being surrounded by a bunch of saucy, sexy writer chicks? And these girl are good at their craft, lemme tell you. I’ve already finished one of the books I bought this weekend, and I’ll be picking up the rest of the series as budget allows. Here’s a rundown on my co-panelists –
Faith Hunter – The official bio goes like this – Faith Hunter, fantasy writer, was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. Her Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy series-Bloodring, Seraphs, and Host-feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic, alternate reality, urban fantasy world. These novels are the basis for the role playing game, ROGUE MAGE. The Skinwalker series, featuring Jane Yellowrock is taking off like a rocket with Skinwalker, Blood Cross, and Mercy Blade.
Under her pen name Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers, and is tweaking a screenplay with a co-writer. As Faith and Gwen, she has 21 books in print in 26 countries.
The unofficial bit would have something to say about how charming and funny this chica really is. I had a great time getting to know her and her Renaissance Man this weekend.And seriously, get your ass over to Amazon and get her book, Skinwalker. It rocks!
Misty Massey – Misty Massey is the author of Mad Kestrel, a rollicking adventure of magic on the high seas from Tor Books. She has short stories in the recent anthologies Rum and Runestones and Dragon’s Lure. When she’s not writing, Misty studies Middle Eastern dance and is a member of the Beledi Beat dance troupe. Kestrel’s Dance, the second volume of Kestrel’s exploits, is in production, and Misty is currently working on a Weird Western novel. Misty is one of the featured writers on the Magical Words blog (magicalwords.net).
Misty was probably born in the wrong time, because I could totally see her as a pirate wench packing her own saber and pillaging the high seas with a bottle of run in hand. Oh wait, I’ve already seen her with a bottle of rum in hand!
Kalayna Price – Kalayna Price is the author of the Alex Craft Novels, a new dark urban fantasy series from Roc, and the author of the Novels of Haven from Bell Bridge Books. She draws her ideas from the world around her, her studies into ancient mythologies, and her obsession with classic folklore. Her stories contain not only the mystical elements of fantasy, but also a dash of romance, a bit of gritty horror, some humor, and a large serving of mystery. She is a member of SFWA and RWA, and an avid hula-hoop dancer who has been known light her hoop on fire. To find out more, please visit her at www.kalayna.com.
I just got started on the first Alex Craft book this morning, and am loving it so far. Her heroine is so wonderfully fallible that you can’t help but fall in love with her from the very beginning of the book. And seriously kids, when was the last time you saw a writer that was really as cute as her pictures?
Elysabeth Williams – Elysabeth Williams is the author of the paranormal/historical romance, DEVIL IN A RED KILT and the steampunk historical adventure, THE ELECTRIFYING EXPLOITS OF THE ENGLISH THREE. A retired LARPer turned avid WoW addict, Elysabeth lives and plays in the suburbs of Atlanta with her husband and two kids and two birds and two, no three cats. When she’s not writing, playing or chasing small children, Elysabeth likes coffee. Lots of coffee…oh. and sweet tarts.
I knew I was going to like her when she said one of her books was a Steampunk Charlie’s Angels. I was right, she’s a doll. Haven’t started the book yet, but if I can judge by the cover, then YUM!
So give these fantastic writers a minute of your time, and check out what I learned at RoundCon!
by john | Feb 17, 2011 | Writing
So the question of how much to sell my book for is a pretty constant one among indie writers. We don’t want to devalue our work, but we don’t want people to think we’re gouging them, either. We don’t want to race for the bottom, but we want to find the sweet spot for pricing that maximizes revenue and doesn’t leave any sales on the table. Some folks do very well with a $4.95 price point, some folks do well with a $2.99 price point, and some folks are moving a ton of books at $.99 each. If you read a bunch of indie writer blogs, all this pricing hoo-ha will be old news to you and you’re probably tired of hearing us whine about how hard it is to figure out where to price our books. I can almost hear some of you now – “just put a price on it and get it out there! The market will figure itself out!” But it won’t. Since I am the market, I need to figure out at what price point my books will maximize my revenue.
So let’s look at the different pricing tiers. I’m going to use Amazon numbers, but the rest of the sites are close. For an ebook of $.99 (the minimum price you can set on Amazon) to $2.98, the royalty tier is 35%. That means that if I sell a book for $.99, I get $.35. Not much, right? But it’s actually pretty good in the publishing world, where royalties typically hover in the 8-15% range.
Some months ago, Amazon introduced a 70% royalty tier (I think it was after Apple did the same thing, but I didn’t have any books out when this happened, so I might be wrong about the cause & effect). For books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, the author gets 70% of the sale price. This is HUGE. This means that for an ebook that sells for $2.99, the author gets $2.00! I know, still doesn’t sound like much money, but it’s close to what that author would make on a $25 hardcover in the traditional publishing world.
So this lead to a bunch of authors who were selling books at $.99 or $1.99 moving their prices up a hair. And it set a line in the sand for some people mentally who thought that anything under $2.99 was “devaluing” your work, because the writer was on a lower royalty tier. This thinking has been shifting for a while, as more authors play with pricing and find success at different levels. One theory that seems popular is to price the first book of a series at a lower intro price,to get the readers hooked on a series, then go to the higher royalty rate with the subsequent books.
Since I happen to be working on a series, I kinda love this idea. Hard Day’s Knight has been floating along selling about one book per day for a while now, not really gaining much momentum but not losing me anything either. But since Back in Black (I’ve dropped the Blue) is almost ready for release, I decided to do a little tweaking. So yesterday, with no fanfare, no FB messages, no blog or message board posts, nothing to announce the change, I dropped the price of Hard Day’s Knight to $.99.
And sold 8 copies. Now I need to sell 6x as many copies at $.99 as I was selling at $2.99 to make the same money, because my royalty is so much lower. But if I can continue to sell 8x as many copies, and it can serve as a lead in for the other books in the series, then we might have something. And really, even if I sell 6x the number of copies and stay revenue-stagnant, the book is getting out there more and I can develop a wider fan base.
So if you haven’t bought your copy of HDK yet, now’s a good day.
by john | Feb 13, 2011 | Real Life, Travel, Writing
On account of I’m le tired.
Almost done with the second proof of Back in Black (and Blue), and the more I type it, the less I’m nuts about the title. So do you guys have any suggestions? The criteria are – must reference a rock song and must use the word Black or Knight in the title. Leave me a comment if you have a better title for a snarky-funny vampire book that fits those criteria.
Georgia Thespian Festival was fun, I got to meet some nice folks and get an idea of the scope of the educational theatre scene in the state. I was blown away by the fact that over 3,000 people registered. That’s a whole bunch of little actor-kids. With that many actor children in one place, there were certainly a whole lot of show tunes abused over the course of the weekend. Think of it as twenty episodes of Glee running all over a convention center and a hotel, all at the same time. And I’m the token straight boy in the middle of it.
And in two weeks I get to do it again.
SETC is one of my favorite shows that I attend each year, because I got my job through the conference. This is the 17th conference I’ve been to in a row, going all the way back to 1994 in Savannah. I’ll be teaching three workshops at this year’s conference, or at least leading three panels. One is on Things I Wish I’d Learned in College, focusing on the important life lessons we learn AFTER we get out of school. Another is on how to take care of a lighting system and what to do when it breaks, and a third is a new products seminar for lighting equipment, where all the vendors get to show off their wares. It’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll be in the bar every night networking.
Yeah, that’s what we call it. Networking.
Sunday Spotlight is probably moving to Mondays, because I get more readers during the week anyway, so I’ll try to be back tomorrow with a little more focus.
by john | Feb 10, 2011 | Writing
Because I shot myself in it!
Well, not me, really. But another independent author has been garnering all sorts of attention, and not the good kind, for her response to a review her book received. Apparently the book was given an unfavorable review, and the author took to her blog. Now that’s one thing, and I’m certainly in the “it’s your blog, write whatever you want camp.” But the author named names, and called the reviewer unprofessional and took exception to the fact that her review was not objective.
There are a couple of things here that are not good for the author. First, reviews kinda have to be subjective! They are the opinion of the reviewer, not fact. For example, The Chosen is 206 pages in paperback, that is an objective statement. Were I to say that The Chosen “is an example of all that is good and joyous in fiction,” that would be a subjective statement. Fortunately, I don’t have to say that – a reviewer already did!
But that is her subjective opinion, and while I happen to agree with her, I can’t change the fact that her review is subjective, as are they all.
The bigger faux pas that the author made in this case, and I am going to avoid bringing any further embarrassment down on her by not linking to her post, is that she went after the reviewers personally. This is beyond unprofessional, which is oddly enough one of the things that the author accused the reviewer of being, it is also brutally stupid.
Most people that review books on the Internet do it because they love to read, they might get a few free books out of the deal, but they give their time away in exchange. And for this writer to bite the hand that feeds her not only screws her with this book and this reviewer, but also screws her for future books and a bunch of other reviewers.
I’ve gotten a lot of reviews in my life, mostly in theatre. Of course the good ones make you feel great and the bad ones sting, but you just have to suck it up and move on. You can’t go around bashing reviewers because they give you a bad review. It’s kinda like trying to have sex with a jackrabbit – you end up frustrated, and the jackrabbit gets pissed off.
by john | Feb 9, 2011 | Real Life, Writing
Hell if I know! This is one of those weeks where it gets to be hard to remember what town (or state) I’m in on any given evening, and you really get confused because the hotel room last night had the bathroom in the other direction and now you just peed on the air conditioner at 3:30 in the morning, and trust me that is NOT something you want to explain to the front desk at checkout.
Theoretically speaking, of course.
Sunday I flew to Wisconsin for some work training, and got home Tuesday night a little after midnight. It’s now Wednesday and I’m in Atlanta, because I thought driving for 4 1/2 hours today was about all I was good for, rather than the 6+ it would have taken me to get all the way to Columbus, GA, which is where I’ll be heading tomorrow for the rest of the week. Then I get home Saturday night (or Sunday late morning) and we go to take my parents out for their collective birthdays (Mom today, Dad Saturday). I also have some additional work travel next week, but that’s all day trip stuff, nothing overnight.
And then there’s a Charlotte Writers’ Club meeting next week, with novelist Heather Newton, and then off to RoundCon next weekend! Hopefully the folks there will be able to look up from their d20s long enough to buy a few books. If you’re in Columbia, stop by and say hello!
Just got the site update to the Charlotte ComiCon site, which now lists me as an official guest, and I’m very excited about that. I used to buy comics from Dave when I was in college, so now that I can be a guest at his show, that’s pretty cool. He runs a very nice little show with some amazing deals on comics, so check out their site and stop by on March 20th if you’re around Charlotte.
Alright, I’m off. Just a quick post tonight before I get to proofing Back in Black (and Blue). Gotta get that rolling for the March release date!
