by john | Feb 6, 2018 | Business of publishing, Writing
It’s awards time, and the following books are eligible for recognition from the Hugo and/or Nebula Awards. If you are an eligible nominator, and would like to nominate one of these works, here’s the list of eligible publications by Falstaff Books from 2017 –
Novels – Amazing Grace – John G. Hartness
Fireheart – John G. Hartness
Novellas – Into the Mystic – John G. Hartness
Frost & Filigree – John G. Hartness
Cold as Ice – John G. Hartness
Mason Dixon, Monster Hunter – Eric R. Asher
Mason Dixon and the Wampus of Reeds Spring – Eric R. Asher
Spells, Salt, & Steel – Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin
Tweety & the Monkey Man – J.D. Blackrose
Caitlin Kelley, Monster Hunter – Theresa Glover
Of Shade and Soul – A.G. Carpenter
Of Flesh and Bone – A.G. Carpenter
Gods & Monsters: A Shadow Council Archives Novella -S.H. Roddey
The Depths of Time: A Shadow Council Archives Novella – James Palmer
Calling All Angels – John G. Hartness
Devil Inside – John G. Hartness
Angel Dance – John G. Hartness
Running with the Devil – John G. Hartness
Souls Collide– J.D. Blackrose
Souls Fall– J.D. Blackrose
Souls Rise– J.D. Blackrose
Souls Unite– J.D. Blackrose
Short Stories – Jazz City Blues: A Quincy Harker History – John G. Hartness
Aubrey Campbell – Desert Gods (Lawless Lands)
Matthew J. Hockey – Railroad (Lawless Lands)
Seanan McGuire – Pixie Season (Lawless Lands)
David B. Coe – Lost Words (Lawless Lands)
Laura Anne Gilman – Boots of Clay (Lawless Lands)
Jo Gerrard – Trickster’s Choice (Lawless Lands)
Gunnar de Winter – To Hear a Howling Herd (Lawless Lands)
Pamela Jeffs – Cards and Steel Hearts (Lawless Lands)
A.E. Decker – Bloodsilver (Lawless Lands)
Nicole Givens Kurtz – Belly Speaker
John G. Hartness – Walk the Dinosaur
Barb Hendee – The Time Traveling Schoolmarms of Marlborough County
Margaret S. McGraw – Rainmaker
Jeffrey Hall – Out of Luck
Novelette – Faith Hunter – Wolves Howling in the Night (Lawless Lands)
Edmund Schubert – Calliope Stark: Bone Tree Bounty Hunter (Lawless Lands)
Dave Beynon – The Stranger in the Glass (Lawless Lands)
Jake Bible – Rollin’ Death (Lawless Lands)
Hugo Only – Best Editor (Short Form) – Emily Lavin Leverett
Best Editor (Short Form) – Melissa McArthur Gilbert
by john | Oct 18, 2017 | Appearances, Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Travel
Last time I talked about Industry Cons, like World Fantasy Con, World Horror Con, RWA Nationals, and other pro-centric cons. The greatest benefit of these cons is often the networking, as they are light on fan attendees and heavy on pros. They can be a great place to make or renew relationships, to meet people who can have a real impact on your career long-term, but you should never go into a conversation with someone just thinking about what they can do for you. That’s not networking, that’s being an asshole. Real networking, the kind that will actually do something for you, is relationship-building, making friends, being genuinely interested in what people are saying and doing, because people are generally pretty interesting. You will get more out of the favor you do for someone else than you ever will from asking for a favor. So just go hang out with people, meet them, and be nice. That will come back to you in spades over the long haul.
But this isn’t a blog post about networking, it’s a blog post about fandom cons. What I refer to as fandom cons are the heart and soul of science fiction and fantasy cons all over the US and the world. These are the small to mid=size cons that aren’t run by some giant media or entertainment company. They are cons with anywhere from 200 to 5,000 people in attendance, and they are generally non-profit organizations run by volunteers, or sometimes a very tiny paid staff. Usually people are paid in badges, hugs, and pizza.
These are honestly my favorite type of convention to attend, because they press a lot of buttons for me as far as things I enjoy doing. Fandom cons usually have a fair amount of programming, from panels and games to discussions and workshops. Being a pompous ass that I am, I love being on panels. When I’m feeling gracious about myself, which is most of the time, I tell myself and the world that I enjoy panels because it gives me the opportunity to pontificate and scratches the itch that I had when I used to want to be a teacher.
Don’t worry, I got over that one when I realized that my reflexive response to stupid statements by people in authority is to say “Go Fuck Yourself” loudly and often. I decided that reflex wasn’t conducive to a long teaching career, so I should either learn to shut my cake hole or look for a new career path. I chose to not shut my cake hole. Pretty much ever.
But anyway, fandom cons. They have a bunch of panels, and usually a dealer room or author’s alley, or some other opportunity for me to set up a table and sell books. So I get to sit on panels with people who are much smarter than me, make a few dick jokes, and then sell books after. Or maybe I get on a panel with people where I make valid points about the at hand and participate in a lively discussion. Or dick jokes. Either way.
Why do you want to be on panels? Shouldn’t you just rent a table in the dealer hall and sell books all day, every day? Well…remember Uncle John’s First Rule of Sales? Of course you don’t, because I almost never refer to myself as Uncle John (although I am an uncle, have been for 40 years at this point, and I have a lot of grey in my beard, so I may just begin referring to myself as such) and I’ve never codified this idea into a “rule,” at least not in writing.
Uncle John’s First Rule of Sales – People buy shit from people they like.
I know. Rocket science, right? Well, that’s why this is all free, and real sales courses cost a fuckton of money. I just realized that I swear more in blogs that I write while listening to Jason Isbell. He’s a goddamn genius, and frequently Wendig-level profane.
But the point of this is – if you’re on panels, you get to show off your sparkling personality o everyone in the room, and you get to show off what a smart writerly motherfucker you are. Don’t spend too much time talking about your book, though. That looks dickish, and like you’re just there to sell shit. You kinda are, but you are also there to answer the questions the moderator and audience bring to you. So unless your book really relates to the question, don’t mention it.
So yes, you want to get on panels. You want to get on panels, and be witty, or funny, or brilliant, or charming, or dazzling, or professional, or whatever pieces of all of those that make up your shtick. Then at the end of the panel, remind the audience that you have a table in the dealer room, or you have books in your briefcase, or you’re doing the Broad Universe reading at 7PM, or whatever. Give them a reminder to come see you, and to bring money when they do.
Fandom cons are also great places to make solid connections with people way up the food chain from you. Typically a small (500-3,000 attendees) will have 1-2 “name” guests, who get their hotel and travel paid for. These folks are usually award winners, best sellers, legends in the field, or all of the above. I’ve done very small conventions with Guests of Honor such as Rachel Caine, Joe Haldeman, Timothy Zahn, Ben Bova, Patrick Rothfuss, and many more. The size of the event and the fact that you’re there as a guest as well gives you a level of access that may be greater than most folk. And some folks just like hanging out. I sat in the bar listening to Joe Haldeman tell stories for several hours one night. I’d never met him before, and I was just an attendee at the con. I bought my badge just like every one else. George R.R. Martin is well-known as a lover of room parties, and a few years ago at ConCarolinas GRRM was in one room talking to fans at a room party, and in the room next door David Weber was chatting with fans at a different room party!
This does not happen as often at huge cons. It’s just harder to find folks. But that, as well as the ability to hang out with people in the bar or restaurant and get to know them, can create long-lasting friendships. There’s a group of 40 or so writers that endured what we often refer to as SweatFest, the year the FandomFest AC broke in Louisville, Kentucky in July. It was godawful. It was the hottest thing I think I’ve ever put up with. But I met some people that I have done business with ever since, and some of them are my dearest friends. Those kind of stories are why we do the fandom cons. They become a badge of honor, and a shorthand that people use to refer to events, and the relationships forged while sitting at a table next to someone in a deserted dealer room may not pay your hotel bill for the weekend, but you can certainly make some lifelong friends.
Just a few people that I met for the first time at Fandom cons –
Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, Emily Lavin Leverett, Sarah Joy Adams, Gail Z. Martin, David B. Coe, A.G. Carpenter, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Allan Gilbreath, Andrea Judy, Bobby Nash, Edmund Schubert, Natania Barron, Michael G. Williams, Tally Johnson, S.H. Roddey, Alexandra Christian, Kalayna Price, Rachel Caine, Laura Anne Gilman, Seanan McGuire, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Mike Stackpole, Eric Flint, Dr. Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Timothy Zahn, Barbara Hambly, john Scalzi, Robin Hobb, Ernie Cline, Jim C. Hines, Cat Rambo, Kimberly Richardson, and the list goes on for hours. Some of these people I’ve hung out with, some I’ve published, some have edited with me, some have edited me, some have bought my books, some have sold me books, but every one of them I first met at a little fandom con.
That’s why I go to fandom cons. Because I meet amazing people.
by john | Sep 25, 2017 | Business of publishing, Writing
Not really. But I have begin referring to myself as “Simon Cowell of small press publishing.” If you’d really like to see why, you can go check out the finalists of Son of a Pitch, an online query contest that gets things read by actual publishers. My pal Samantha, she of the menopausal superhero novels asked me to participate, so I read the 20 finalist queries, and the 250-word samples they submitted. Out of the finalists, who had been winnowed down through two previous rounds of judging, I requested three submissions.
Despite the rapidly growing size of our Falstaff Books catalog, I’m not an easy sell. Let’s be honest, most stuff gets rejected before it gets to me. We have multiple acquiring editors reading submissions at Falstaff, and they have to like it before it gets referred to me. Then I have to read the book and like it enough to put it into one of our very limited novel-length publications slots. Then I have to converse with the author and come to terms with them on a contract. Then they’ve sold a book.
But I’m the bottleneck. Probably 80% of submissions that come in are rejected before they get to me. I take less than half of what comes through our acquiring editors, and only about a third of what comes to me directly.
Yes, there are way to bypass the acquiring editors (the slush pile). Here’s how – meet me face to face and pitch me. I do open pitch sessions at any convention that will let me, but the downside to getting face time to pitch a publisher at a con is that it’s in front of a room full of people and you get my critique of your pitch right there on the spot. If you can stand it, come to Atomacon in November, I’m doing a 9AM Saturday morning pitch session. So now you have to pitch me in front of people, AND I’ll be pissy because it’s early.
I won’t really. By 9AM most day’s I’ve already been working for at least an hour.
We did one of these at Congregate in July, and one of the authors there is in the queue for a contract already. So it works.
But I’m not nice. I try not to be rude, but I really do channel my inner Simon Cowell. Now I never watched him on American Idol, but I’ve seen him on America’s Got Talent, and Simon is the tough judge. Not because he’s a dick, although he puts on that front to attract viewers. No, he’s the tough judge because he’s in the business of making money. He wants to turn records into dollars, just like I want to turn books into dollars. So if you show up with a half-assed pitch, or trying to pitch an unfinished book, I’m going to bounce you off the stage as fast as Simon will. But if you show up with something that you’ve obviously put a lot of work into, and you’ve researched our press, and you’ve done all the right things before you get there, then I’ll probably ask you for a submission.
Then the book has to be ready to submit, and it has to be awesome, but those are steps 2-27 of selling a book. First you have to get past Simon. And only about a third of the 20% that actually gets to me make it to contract.
And I accept a LOT more books than most publishers. So get your shit ready before you submit!
by john | Sep 12, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Yeah, it might seem like an odd question for someone who runs a small press to ask, but bear with me.
It is easier now than it has ever been to make money self-publishing. There are more ways to dissect the market, more tools to create and distribute a quality product, and more people making a solid living self-publishing their own work than ever before. So why would you want to work with a publisher? Particularly a small press, which might not be able to do anything better for you than you could do yourself.
I teach classes on this shit. I’ll be teaching this very thing as a workshop at Penned Con in St. Louis at the end of the month. That workshop is about choosing a path to publication, and it dissects the decision-making process about going indie, small press, or shopping a book to agents and then New York. Since I’ve never sold a book to a Big 5 publisher, or any other press that doesn’t accept unaccented submissions, I can’t say a whole lot about that.
I know, it’s never stopped me before. 🙂 It won’t this time, either. Don’t worry.
But for today, let’s look at the reasons you might want to use a small press publisher over self-publishing.
You don’t want to learn how to do all that shit.
There’s nothing wrong with that as a response. I’ve been at this for seven years and I still can’t design a decent cover wrap. Hell, I can barely design a serviceable cover at all. But I do know how to hire those people. But there are parts of the process that are non-writing related that you have to learn when you are a publisher, whether you are the entirety of the client list, or you have dozens of writers in your stable. You need to learn how to build an ebook, how to create a cover, how to create a cover wrap, how to navigate ISBNs, deal with CreateSpace, deal with Ingram, find an audiobook producer, navigate ACX, upload to Amazon, get the book listed on all other ebook distribution sites, and make decisions about pricing, exclusivity, and all sorts of other market factors.
That’s a lot of shit. If you have a family and a day job, you might just not have the bandwidth to learn all that shit, no matter how intelligent you are. My buddy AJ Hartley is a hell of a writer. He publishes with several big houses, and has had quite a successful career to this point. He also has a day job and a kid to raise, and his wife has a thriving career as well. He should never self-publish (I’m sure he’s glad to hear this, since he also has never wanted to), because he has too much other shit going on in his life. It’s all I can do to get him to send out his newsletter. 🙂 Love ya, buddy.
So not wanting to learn how to do all the things a publisher does is a perfectly valid reason to give up part of your royalties. Conversely, if you are very interested in how the sausage gets made, selling one book or one series to a publisher and following it through the creation and distribution process can also be a great way to learn.
You want to learn to be a better writer.
This is why Bell Bridge Books publishes The Black Knight Chronicles. I have often said that I consider working with Deb Dixon and Bell Bridge to be my MFA writing program, with a fair side of editing classes thrown in. I couldn’t have learned as much in five years of college as I did in the two years we spent taking the first three Black Knight books apart and rebuilding them. Every book I do with Deb, I learn more about story, pacing, plotting, building a series, and writing good, tight fiction. I sincerely hope that someday some of my Falstaff authors say the same thing about their work with me and my team. If you’re not learning, you’re pushing up daisies. So if you can find a bunch of people who you like working with that will help you grow in your craft, then the amount of money you “lose” by working with a publisher is insignificant in comparison to the increased earnings you’ll see down the road.
Let’s also be clear: I 100% made more money on The Black Knight Chronicles with Bell Bridge than I would have on my own, even if I had stayed 100% indie and pushed books out as fast as I can. In addition to the education I’ve gained, getting a Kindle Daily Deal feature several times sure doesn’t hurt!
You need a confidence boost.
It’s a tough world, and a lot of the time it feels like nobody is on your side. A good publisher will always be on your side. Sure, the interest is also partially self-serving, since you selling more books makes money for both of you, but that’s not a bad thing. I’m a fan of enlightened self-interest. It’s a motivation that I understand. So I try to be a cheerleader for my authors. I suck at it, so I usually give them a little Simon Cowell-style tough love and then bring in somebody else to be all huggy, but I try. But whenever you get down, and think it’s too much and you should give up, having a publisher behind you gives you at least one person who really wants you to succeed. And they believe that you can. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have wasted the ink sending you a contract. And they sure as hell wouldn’t have spent time editing your work, and building a cover, and doing all the other shit that we do. Even if we don’t put any money where our mouth is as far as an advance, we do put a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears into making every book the best it can be. That’s another thing that a publisher does – we spend a fair amount of time as career counselor and cheerleader for our authors. Because a happy author is a productive author. And a productive author writes better.
There are a ton of people out there who’ll tell you why you don’t need a publisher today. And everything they say is correct.
But I don’t need a Krispy Kreme doughnut, either. Like, ever. But damn, a lot of times I want one.
by john | Jul 12, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books
You’ve heard me say it – write more shit.
You’ve heard a lot of people say it – write more shit.
You’ve heard people more famous and touchy than me say it – write more shit.
But sometimes you might need to hear somebody say this, too – Slow the FUCK down!
Last week I saw a guy post something to a FB group that I’m a member of about his new book being basically dead after 30 days, because it’s no longer “new” in Amazon’s algorithms, and should he make it permafree to bring in readers, or just ignore it and keep trying to write the next book in the series to get that out there in the next few weeks.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Y’all, stop the goddamned presses. A book doesn’t die at a month old. Shit, some books don’t even find any kind of audience traction until several months into their life, or maybe a year or more. Let’s think about this for a second – if you like a band or musician, and you happen to not notice that they have a new album out the first couple of weeks that it’s out, does that mean you’re never going to buy that album? No. It means that you’ll grab it when you notice it.
Books are like that. Ebooks are especially like that. Y’all, indie writers have been bitching for years about trad pub working on a produce model and only giving a book 90 days to succeed before they pull all promotion of it, because that’s how long a bookstore can shelve a book before they have to pay for it. NOW you want to stop promoting a book after 30?
Look, I get it. You want to jam a bunch of work out there so your name stays fresh. Listen, I’ve been a proponent of publishing a bunch of stuff fast for a long time. That’s probably why I have so many damn titles out there. But that doesn’t mean that I give up on my babies after the initial rush of sales is over. I still promote (albeit less strenuously) The Chosen, which is the first book I ever wrote and self-published! That book is seven years old, and still makes me money.
Not much, don’t get me wrong, but for the five minutes I spend promoting it, the $50/month that book makes me is pretty good for a seven-year-old book.
No, it’s not much, but how much money did you earn off your second-grader last month? Right. I win.
For a less extreme example, let’s look at Calling All Angels, the Shadow Council novella I released in January. That book has been out for six months now, and the gild is definitely off the lily as far as any newness goes. I send out a tweet each day about the book, which cross-posts to Facebook. I do that with most of my recent releases, and I spent about an hour each weekend setting that up. So we’ll say I’ve spent an hour on that book specifically in the last three months, being generous.
It has earned me well over $600 in the past three months. That’s a pretty good rate for an hour. it’s not terribly specific, because I just don’t feel like digging through all the KDP reports to get the Kindle Unlimited earnings for the book, but in the last 90 days, it’s earned $450 in sales, so I feel safe assuming it’s earned at least another $150 in page reads, just eyeballing the chart.
Do I spend a lot of time flogging that book? No. Do I spend any money promoting it? No. But I don’t spend any appreciable money promoting any of my books. I probably spend less than $200 per month on promotion, and most of that is on Mailchimp, Hootsuite, and Instafreebie subscriptions.
So I guess my point is, and let me be very clear in case anybody misses it, because I don’t want to spend my afternoon explaining myself – THIS IS NOT A MOTHERFUCKING RACE. There aren’t prizes for flinging the most poo against the wall. There’s no blue ribbon for releasing the most shitty books and finally selling a fuckton of one of them in the first week it’s out. You’re building a goddamn career, not pulling a jewelry store smash-and-grab.
Don’t get me wrong – you still need to write fast. You still need to publish more than one book every three years. You almost certainly need to publish more than one or two books every year to build a career. But you do not have to throw a book out there, then immediately abandon it a month after it’s published just because the shiny wore off and Amazon’s computer doesn’t help you anymore.
For fuck’s sake, these tips are things to help you promote your awesome books, not ways to game the fucking system to force you into this rapid-fire shit-slinging like meth-addled monkeys at the zoo. Yes, you get a boost from the search algorithms when your book is new. That doesn’t mean give up when that help goes away, that just means work harder. It means be smart about how you spend your money. If you’re going to spend money on promotion, time it to coincide with when the system is working for you, don’t just give up when it starts to work against you. And shit, it’s not even that it works against you, it just ignores you. Okay, so you don’t get to exploit the search box anymore. Maybe you should, I don’t know, WRITE AWESOME BOOKS AND GROW A GODDAMN FAN BASE instead of trying to game the fucking system in some ludicrous get-rich-quick scheme.
So yeah, if you want to jump on a bandwagon, then go for it. Hop right on, write a book and forget about it after a month. But if you want to build a career, you don’t abandon your shit right after you make it. It takes time to grow a readership. Years, even. So write faster, but slow down.
