Readers of my blog, let me fill you in on a little secret: my novel isn't doing so hot. Until recently, I hadn't sold a copy since January, so I decided to change things up a little and drop the price. Right now, Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity is selling at Amazon for a dollar.
It's been effective in the least effective possible way: I've sold one copy since the price drop. It was a minor little morale bump, but hardly what I was looking for. At this point I need to either pour some money into proper marketing and advertising, or throw my hands up, stop worrying and focus on the next project. Given my financial state right now, it looks like it will be the latter.
WEEKLY PROGRESS
The Lightless Labyrinth: 1,200 words (33,788 total)
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Marvel Comics from 1965
What I've Been Watching:
Game of Thrones season 4
What I've Been Playing:
The Game of Dungeons (aka dnd)
Showing posts with label Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
The Lightless Labyrinth and My Writing Weaknesses
As I write The Lightless Labyrinth, I'm constantly reminded just how different it is to Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity. The genre is different, the tone is different, the themes are different, and the writing style is different. Jack Manley was something that I consciously approached as an "easy" first novel. I planned it in such a way that it played to my strengths, or at least my strengths as I perceive them. The Lightless Labyrinth is not structured that way, and I'm realising that in many ways it's pulling against the type of thing I would naturally write.
I'm going to run through some of the things that I feel are weaknesses of mine, that The Lightless Labyrinth will cover.
It's serious. I have a tendency in my work to go for flippancy and humour wherever possible. Jack Manley, at its heart, is a loving parody of bad sci-fi and pulp adventure. The Lightless Labyrinth has some attempted humour in dialogue, but it's a much darker work than I usually attempt. The story of a young warrior delving into the underworld to retrieve his father's corpse isn't really going to be a barrel of laughs, is it? I'm attempting to explore some genuine themes, whereas Jack Manley was mostly a process of trying to amuse myself at the keyboard every night, and hammering the result into shape later on. I'm finding The Lightless Labyrinth much more mentally taxing to write.
It gets into the protagonist's head. Anyone who has read Jack Manley might have noticed that at no point do I get into the characters' heads. (Okay, there is one bit, but that was me getting metaphysical.) The Lightless Labyrinth is all inside Jonn Greywood's head so far, and what I've discovered is that I'm much more comfortable conveying feelings and emotions by describing actions and body language. Getting inside my protagonist's feelings doesn't come naturally to me.
It has some female protagonists. Speaking of things that don't come naturally, I have a tendency to shy away from female characters. It's not something I do on purpose, it just seems to be where my natural storytelling instincts go. Jack Manley only had two female characters, and while I tried to give them strong roles Im not sure how well I succeeded. The Lightless Labyrinth is panning out in such a way that I have two female characters that will become protagonists. I'll be telling significant portions of the story from inside their heads, and I'm a little scared of it. I haven't reached the point where I need to write these scenes yet, so I don't know how well I'm going to do.
It has a lot more description. The descriptions in Jack Manley are sparse. The book has a conscious focus on action above all else. The descriptions of scenery are kept to a bare minimum; I tried to include just enough for each scene to function, so as not to bog down the forward momentum of the plot. The Lightless Labyrinth, however, is all about setting. Its right there in the title of the book, and it's the kind of story that needs atmosphere and scene-setting. As much as it's my instinct as a writer to "skip to the good bits", I need to slow down and paint the word picture. I'm already fairly sure that I'll need to go back and beef up some descriptions in the second draft.
There are too many characters. I kept Jack Manley tight in terms of characters, but in The Lightless Labyrinth I probably let myself sprawl out a little too far. I wanted to cover as many fantasy archetypes as I could, and that probably led me to include too many. On the other hand, a book like this really needs characters that I can kill off. I'll be able to thin the cast out and split some characters off into groups soon, but so far I think it's a little too crowded. I'll need to go back and beef up the presence of some of them, because I know that there are characters that I've barely touched at all.
That's all I could think of for now, but I could come up with more if I put my mind to it. I find it helpful to think about what my strengths and weaknesses are, and whether I'm avoiding certain types of stories that I find uncomfortable to write. The Lightless Labyrinth is certainly a more difficult work than Jack Manley was, and I feel like I'm stretching myself as I write it. I also think that, if I pull it off, it's going to be a better book. Only time will tell, I guess.
PROGRESS SINCE LAST POST:
The Lightless Labyrinth: 1,080 words (32,588 total)
In my defense, I've been ill.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Marvel Comics from 1965
What I've Been Watching
Game of Thrones season 4
WWE Extreme Rules (and a load of other wrestling in general)
What I've Been Playing
The Game of Dungeons (aka dnd)
I'm going to run through some of the things that I feel are weaknesses of mine, that The Lightless Labyrinth will cover.
It's serious. I have a tendency in my work to go for flippancy and humour wherever possible. Jack Manley, at its heart, is a loving parody of bad sci-fi and pulp adventure. The Lightless Labyrinth has some attempted humour in dialogue, but it's a much darker work than I usually attempt. The story of a young warrior delving into the underworld to retrieve his father's corpse isn't really going to be a barrel of laughs, is it? I'm attempting to explore some genuine themes, whereas Jack Manley was mostly a process of trying to amuse myself at the keyboard every night, and hammering the result into shape later on. I'm finding The Lightless Labyrinth much more mentally taxing to write.
It gets into the protagonist's head. Anyone who has read Jack Manley might have noticed that at no point do I get into the characters' heads. (Okay, there is one bit, but that was me getting metaphysical.) The Lightless Labyrinth is all inside Jonn Greywood's head so far, and what I've discovered is that I'm much more comfortable conveying feelings and emotions by describing actions and body language. Getting inside my protagonist's feelings doesn't come naturally to me.
It has some female protagonists. Speaking of things that don't come naturally, I have a tendency to shy away from female characters. It's not something I do on purpose, it just seems to be where my natural storytelling instincts go. Jack Manley only had two female characters, and while I tried to give them strong roles Im not sure how well I succeeded. The Lightless Labyrinth is panning out in such a way that I have two female characters that will become protagonists. I'll be telling significant portions of the story from inside their heads, and I'm a little scared of it. I haven't reached the point where I need to write these scenes yet, so I don't know how well I'm going to do.
It has a lot more description. The descriptions in Jack Manley are sparse. The book has a conscious focus on action above all else. The descriptions of scenery are kept to a bare minimum; I tried to include just enough for each scene to function, so as not to bog down the forward momentum of the plot. The Lightless Labyrinth, however, is all about setting. Its right there in the title of the book, and it's the kind of story that needs atmosphere and scene-setting. As much as it's my instinct as a writer to "skip to the good bits", I need to slow down and paint the word picture. I'm already fairly sure that I'll need to go back and beef up some descriptions in the second draft.
There are too many characters. I kept Jack Manley tight in terms of characters, but in The Lightless Labyrinth I probably let myself sprawl out a little too far. I wanted to cover as many fantasy archetypes as I could, and that probably led me to include too many. On the other hand, a book like this really needs characters that I can kill off. I'll be able to thin the cast out and split some characters off into groups soon, but so far I think it's a little too crowded. I'll need to go back and beef up the presence of some of them, because I know that there are characters that I've barely touched at all.
That's all I could think of for now, but I could come up with more if I put my mind to it. I find it helpful to think about what my strengths and weaknesses are, and whether I'm avoiding certain types of stories that I find uncomfortable to write. The Lightless Labyrinth is certainly a more difficult work than Jack Manley was, and I feel like I'm stretching myself as I write it. I also think that, if I pull it off, it's going to be a better book. Only time will tell, I guess.
PROGRESS SINCE LAST POST:
The Lightless Labyrinth: 1,080 words (32,588 total)
In my defense, I've been ill.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Marvel Comics from 1965
What I've Been Watching
Game of Thrones season 4
WWE Extreme Rules (and a load of other wrestling in general)
What I've Been Playing
The Game of Dungeons (aka dnd)
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Jack Manley on Smashwords
One of my goals for 2014 was to get Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity published on Smashwords. I accomplished this weeks ago, but for some reason I never got around to mentioning it on here. It could have been during one of my hiatuses, or it could just have been a general lack of excitement on my part. As important as it was to get my book out on some more platforms, it kind of paled in significance to its very first publication on Amazon, so I wasn't quite as gung-ho to share the news with the world.
For those who don't know, Smashwords is an e-book distributor that takes your work and gets it out there on a heap of different platforms. Basically, if it ain't Amazon, Smashwords covers it. I'll admit that I didn't do as much research on how the site works as I did with Amazon, so I'm pretty hazy on how they pay royalties and the like. But I do think they provide a valuable service; if it wasn't for them, I dread to think of how many different ways I would have had to format the book.
As it was, the formatting for Smashwords was a bit of a nightmare. It's understandable; they need a file that can be readily converted for use on a lot of different devices. It makes sense that they ask for very specific formatting, but the process really was a bitch.
I followed the instructions provided, which recommended going for what they call the "nuclear option": cutting and pasting my novel into Notepad, then back to Microsoft Word. What this did was get rid of every little bit of formatting that had already been done on the file, to make it easier to go through step-by-step and configure the document to the Smashwords specs. Most of it was simple, if a little time-consuming: setting page margins, paragraph settings, etc.
My biggest problem came when I tried to format the indents at the start of my paragraphs. I had originally done this with two whacks of the spacebar, but Smashwords instructed me to set it up as part of my paragraph settings. To fix this I went through and erased every instance of a double space in the document. The problem was that I also used a double space after every full stop, and those got erased as well. I tried to solve this problem with the Find/Replace tool, adding a single space after every full stop. This in turn caused problems with my dialogue, particularly where a full stop was followed by a quotation mark. It was a long series of problems followed by solutions followed by more problems, and took me a few nights to properly sort out. I even had to read the whole damn book again (one thing that writer never tell you is how many times you'll have to read your book over; it can get pretty excruciating).
Nevertheless, it's up, complete with a spanking new cover design. Check it out!
PROGRESS THIS WEEK:
The Lightless Labyrinth: 2,080 words
I was on track for a cracking week, until some personal stuff came up and derailed me completely. That's going to happen; life won't ever stop kicking me in the nuts, I'm afraid.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:
What I've Been Reading:
The CRPG Addict blog by Chester Bolingbroke
The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching:
Wrestlemania I
Resurrection
What I've Been Playing:
The Dungeon (aka pedit5)
Rogue
The Dungeon (aka pedit5)
Rogue
Monday, March 24, 2014
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest 2014
About a month ago I submitted Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Every year Amazon opens this contest to 10,000 entrants, with the grand prize being a $50,000 publishing deal. With that on offer, as well as a host of very good smaller prizes and no entry fee, I would have been a fool not to enter.
The contest is judged in a series of five rounds. In the first round the judges read the author's pitch for every entrant, and narrow the field down to 400 in each category. (There are five categories in the contest: general, mystery/thriller, sci-fi/fantasy/horror, romance and young adult.) In round two they narrow it down again, based on a 5,000 word excerpt. Round three narrows it down further based on the entire manuscript, and so on until there's a winner in each category and an overall Grand Prize Winner.
Alas, I didn't make it to the second round. I'm not particularly upset about it; rejection is part of the game, and I feel that you have to learn to take these setbacks well if you're ever going to get anywhere. Not only that, but I also have to figure out why my entry didn't make it.
Unfortunately, that answer is all too obvious: I totally half-arsed the pitch. I put literally zero effort into it, simply grabbing my back cover blurb and calling it a day. There's a thread over at the forums for the contest in which people who made it to the second round are posting their successful pitches. I plan to spend some time going over those, and trying to come up with something better for next year.
Because yes, of course I'm going to enter again next year. I failed this time around, but that's okay. It's time to keep writing, keep creating, and plan for my next attempt. Like I said, I'd be a fool not to.
PROGRESS THIS WEEK:
The Lightless Labyrinth - 2,794 words
This is easily my best total since I started this blog, and made my resolution to write every day. For the first time, I actually did that for a whole week, and the results show. Even though I had one day where I only wrote 84 words (blame my interrupting wife!), I think I knocked out a respectable total.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:
What I've Been Reading:
The CRPG Addict blog by Chester Bolingbroke
Tarzan the Terrible by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
The Walking Dead season 4
What I've Been Playing:
Rogue. Looooooooots of Rogue.
The contest is judged in a series of five rounds. In the first round the judges read the author's pitch for every entrant, and narrow the field down to 400 in each category. (There are five categories in the contest: general, mystery/thriller, sci-fi/fantasy/horror, romance and young adult.) In round two they narrow it down again, based on a 5,000 word excerpt. Round three narrows it down further based on the entire manuscript, and so on until there's a winner in each category and an overall Grand Prize Winner.
Alas, I didn't make it to the second round. I'm not particularly upset about it; rejection is part of the game, and I feel that you have to learn to take these setbacks well if you're ever going to get anywhere. Not only that, but I also have to figure out why my entry didn't make it.
Unfortunately, that answer is all too obvious: I totally half-arsed the pitch. I put literally zero effort into it, simply grabbing my back cover blurb and calling it a day. There's a thread over at the forums for the contest in which people who made it to the second round are posting their successful pitches. I plan to spend some time going over those, and trying to come up with something better for next year.
Because yes, of course I'm going to enter again next year. I failed this time around, but that's okay. It's time to keep writing, keep creating, and plan for my next attempt. Like I said, I'd be a fool not to.
PROGRESS THIS WEEK:
The Lightless Labyrinth - 2,794 words
This is easily my best total since I started this blog, and made my resolution to write every day. For the first time, I actually did that for a whole week, and the results show. Even though I had one day where I only wrote 84 words (blame my interrupting wife!), I think I knocked out a respectable total.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES:
What I've Been Reading:
The CRPG Addict blog by Chester Bolingbroke
Tarzan the Terrible by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
The Walking Dead season 4
What I've Been Playing:
Rogue. Looooooooots of Rogue.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The Proof Copy
Last Monday I received the proof copy of Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity
from Createspace. It was a big surprise to get it so early. I ordered
it on Wednesday September 4th, and it arrived on the 9th. Keeping in
kind that it had to be delivered from America to Australia, that is some
prompt service. I paid for the fastest shipping, because there was no
way that I could wait two months for the book to get here, and it was
money well spent. This what the book looks like below:
On the whole I'm pretty happy with how it looks. It is unmistakably a book with designed by an amateur, but I am okay with this. I am an amateur designer after all, and I've tackled this project as something of a control freak; for my first book, I really wanted to do everything from soup to nuts. It's a minor problem, and did little to dull the giddy thrill I got when I first opened this bad boy up. It's one thing to have my book for sale in the digital ether, but quite another to hold it in my hands and rifle the pages.
I'm super-keen to approve the proof and get it up on the Amazon store, but instead I have to exercise patience. There are things to be checked. I have to make sure that the page numbers are all correct, and that the headers are formatted properly. The whole book needs to be scoured for errors, which is going to take a few days at least. I have already found a few, which is galling. How did they escape my notice the first thousand times I read through it? Never mind, there's nothing for it but to roll up my sleeves and get back to work perfecting the print and digital versions. It seems that I have work to do on Jack Manley yet.
WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON
The Lightless Labyrinth, my second novel, proceeds at a good clip. I'm nearly 8,000 words in, and I feel like it's coming together. The biggest concern I had was with the sheer number of characters to introduce: there are nine main characters, six of lesser importance, and about a dozen extras milling around in the first chapter. It really is a lot of people to get in there, and I had doubts about my ability to introduce them all organically. On the other hand, with the story I'm telling I see no logical way to leave them out.
One thing working in my favour is that I'm using a lot of archetypal fantasy characters. There's a knight, a thief, a barbarian, a sorceress, and other such fantasy stereotypes. It's not an original set-up by any means; I'm taking the standard Dungeons & Dragons subterranean delve and trying my best to wring a damn good story out of it, and to do that I'm using archetypes. What I've found is that this helps me introduce the characters without using a flood of names. I could introduce Artis, Beren, Garath and Myrio all at once. But I know that I have trouble keeping up with names at the beginning of a book, and I doubt that I'm the dumbest guy to ever pick up a fantasy book. So I'm introducing them instead as the thief, the priest, the knight and the swordswoman, archetypal descriptions that I feel stick in the mind better. The opening scenes are interspersed with flashbacks in which the characters explain their reasons for wanting to enter the Lightles Labyrinth, and thereafter I use their real names. The characters are introduced at the start with easily-defined roles and labels, and I intend to gradually flesh them out and move past the stereotypes into more interesting territory. That's the plan, anyway.
Using labels instead of names could get clunky, of course, and it still hasn't helped me with introducing my lesser characters. Still, its the best solution I've hit upon so far, and I think it's working well.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
Grammar Essentals for Dummies by Wendy M. Anderson
The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons
Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks
Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani
Despicable Me 2
The Neverending Story
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
On the whole I'm pretty happy with how it looks. It is unmistakably a book with designed by an amateur, but I am okay with this. I am an amateur designer after all, and I've tackled this project as something of a control freak; for my first book, I really wanted to do everything from soup to nuts. It's a minor problem, and did little to dull the giddy thrill I got when I first opened this bad boy up. It's one thing to have my book for sale in the digital ether, but quite another to hold it in my hands and rifle the pages.
I'm super-keen to approve the proof and get it up on the Amazon store, but instead I have to exercise patience. There are things to be checked. I have to make sure that the page numbers are all correct, and that the headers are formatted properly. The whole book needs to be scoured for errors, which is going to take a few days at least. I have already found a few, which is galling. How did they escape my notice the first thousand times I read through it? Never mind, there's nothing for it but to roll up my sleeves and get back to work perfecting the print and digital versions. It seems that I have work to do on Jack Manley yet.
WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON
The Lightless Labyrinth, my second novel, proceeds at a good clip. I'm nearly 8,000 words in, and I feel like it's coming together. The biggest concern I had was with the sheer number of characters to introduce: there are nine main characters, six of lesser importance, and about a dozen extras milling around in the first chapter. It really is a lot of people to get in there, and I had doubts about my ability to introduce them all organically. On the other hand, with the story I'm telling I see no logical way to leave them out.
One thing working in my favour is that I'm using a lot of archetypal fantasy characters. There's a knight, a thief, a barbarian, a sorceress, and other such fantasy stereotypes. It's not an original set-up by any means; I'm taking the standard Dungeons & Dragons subterranean delve and trying my best to wring a damn good story out of it, and to do that I'm using archetypes. What I've found is that this helps me introduce the characters without using a flood of names. I could introduce Artis, Beren, Garath and Myrio all at once. But I know that I have trouble keeping up with names at the beginning of a book, and I doubt that I'm the dumbest guy to ever pick up a fantasy book. So I'm introducing them instead as the thief, the priest, the knight and the swordswoman, archetypal descriptions that I feel stick in the mind better. The opening scenes are interspersed with flashbacks in which the characters explain their reasons for wanting to enter the Lightles Labyrinth, and thereafter I use their real names. The characters are introduced at the start with easily-defined roles and labels, and I intend to gradually flesh them out and move past the stereotypes into more interesting territory. That's the plan, anyway.
Using labels instead of names could get clunky, of course, and it still hasn't helped me with introducing my lesser characters. Still, its the best solution I've hit upon so far, and I think it's working well.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
Grammar Essentals for Dummies by Wendy M. Anderson
The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons
Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks
Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani
Despicable Me 2
The Neverending Story
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Pre-Publication Preparations
As shown in my post from a few days ago, I'm publishing my first e-book
on Sunday. I haven't been writing anything else in the lead-up to this;
getting Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity up to scratch
has been my sole focus. I want to unburden my mind of it before I
embark on another novel, and to be honest I'm daunted by the idea of
working on something else. I just spent eight years working on and off
on the same thing, so it's a little hard to switch gears, you know?
The process of getting the book ready hasn't been as difficult as I had feared. I designed the cover myself, with a minimum of fuss and (most importantly) no expense. I even designed the thing using MS Paint, which has got to be against some kind of law. What can I say, it's the only image manipulation program that I can wrap my head around.
The editing process has been pretty time-consuming, I'll admit. Officially there have been seven drafts, but in reality it's probably double that. I didn't get the book professionally assessed, but I did get some professional feedback from some editors after it won second prize in a competition. Mostly I went with my own instincts based on that feedback and the feedback of some trusted associates. The final draft bears only a mild resemblance to my chaotic first draft, so at least I can say that I put a lot of work into it, regardless of the final result.
I've read in various places that an e-book writer should not design their own cover, or do their own editing. I'd love to have gotten some outside help, but unfortunately money has been very tight for me lately. It wasn't an option, so I knuckled down and did the work on my own. I'm also something of a control freak when it comes to my own stuff; I'm actually happier to have done my own cover design, and I think the result is great. I guess I'll know in a few weeks time if anyone else agrees.
Aside from the writing, the hardest part of the process so far was getting my tax sorted out. As an Aussie trying to sell my wares through an American company, I am subject to the IRS taking their tax cut from my earnings. I could have ignored it and let the IRS take 70% of my profits, but luckily there's a tax treaty between Australia and the USA that cuts this significantly. All I had to do was fill in a form and apply for a US Tax Identification Number. Then apply for the treaty. Two forms doesn't sound like much to fill in, but I am a dunce when it comes to accounting and finances. It was hard going, with a weeks-long before hearing back to find out whether I'd filled out the damn things correctly. So far everything seems to be legit, and I am clear to do business in the US. Still, there's always that element of nervousness when it comes to the IRS...
The last few nights I've been doing research on marketing and pricing. The current consensus seems to be that $2.99 for e-books is the sweet spot, so that is what I will probably go with. It's also the point where Amazon's royalty rate jumps from 35% to 70%, which works in my favour. As for marketing, my budget is zero. I'm okay with this, because what I've been reading suggests that the effects of paid advertising and publicity on sales is virtually zero. I always suspected that any sales bump from paid advertising wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of the ad, so I'm fine with ignoring that option. For the moment my promotion will remain here, on Facebook and on Twitter, and I'll try not to spam any of those too hard.
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN DOING
As my job affords me a lot of time on my own with a minimum of human interaction, I listen to tons of podcasts and audiobooks. Since I discovered librivox.org I've been getting through a lot of audiobooks, taking the chance to sample some supposed classics. Currently I'm slogging my way through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
I say slogging, but that's not entirely fair. When the book focuses on the mysteries surrounding Captain Nemo, and the efforts of the three main characters to escape their captivity on the Nautilus, it's rather good. The problem comes in the chapters that focus heavily on the "wonders of the undersea realm". Beware any chapter that is named after a sea or an ocean, because you're in for page after page of descriptions of fish.
It reminds me of a story I wrote when I was ten. When it came time to describe the Black Wizard's army, I literally named every evil creature from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Terrible stuff, but I had an excuse: I was ten. I suppose that Jules Verne has an excuse as well, because part of the whole point of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an exploration of the awesome stuff that's in the ocean, exotic fish included. It makes for bloody tedious reading, though.
Moby Dick was much the same. There's a lot of fascinating material in that book, and a masterful command of language, but it often gets side-tracked with the minutiae of whales and whaling. There's a whole chapter devoted to listing the books that have illustrations of whales, and discussing the accuracy of each.
The thing is, I can see where all of this is coming from. People in 1850 didn't have TV (no shit Sherlock). How would most of them know what a whale looked like? Books would be the only possibility, and Herman Melville used that to provide his readers with the most accurate depiction he could, pointing the reader to specific volumes for the most accurate depictions.
Older books and stories tend to have too much description and exposition for modern audiences; just listen to the constant complaints about the dialogue in Silver Age comics. Or my complaints about classic works of literature. No doubt there are examples of stories that did exposition badly even at the time they were printed. Just as some stories that seem over-expository now were perfectly pitched for the audience back then. I suppose the lesson I have to learn is to think about this stuff, and where it's coming from, so that I can look past it and take the good elements from those stories.
For my own writing, I need to think about my audience and what needs to be explained and described for them to understand the story. Jack Manley is quite terse, which is something I did on purpose. I didn't do long descriptions, because I wanted the book to be about action. If it's not necessary to move the plot forward, I cut it out. I took a similar tack with exposition. Alternate universes are central to the book, but I didn't bother explaining the concept. Modern audiences are savvy, they know about these things. But if I was writing, say, Moby Dick for a modern audience, I wouldn't include the lengthy descriptions of whales, or talk about books with whale illustrations. There are photos now, and videos, and aquariums. I would keep all the stuff about whaling ships, though, and harpooning, and how the whales are carved up once they've been caught; chances are very high that a modern reader doesn't know that stuff. So what I've learned today (and it's not exactly a profound lesson, but it is an important one for any writer) is to know your audience, and what they do and don't need explained.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrence Dicks
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Listening To
Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii
The process of getting the book ready hasn't been as difficult as I had feared. I designed the cover myself, with a minimum of fuss and (most importantly) no expense. I even designed the thing using MS Paint, which has got to be against some kind of law. What can I say, it's the only image manipulation program that I can wrap my head around.
The editing process has been pretty time-consuming, I'll admit. Officially there have been seven drafts, but in reality it's probably double that. I didn't get the book professionally assessed, but I did get some professional feedback from some editors after it won second prize in a competition. Mostly I went with my own instincts based on that feedback and the feedback of some trusted associates. The final draft bears only a mild resemblance to my chaotic first draft, so at least I can say that I put a lot of work into it, regardless of the final result.
I've read in various places that an e-book writer should not design their own cover, or do their own editing. I'd love to have gotten some outside help, but unfortunately money has been very tight for me lately. It wasn't an option, so I knuckled down and did the work on my own. I'm also something of a control freak when it comes to my own stuff; I'm actually happier to have done my own cover design, and I think the result is great. I guess I'll know in a few weeks time if anyone else agrees.
Aside from the writing, the hardest part of the process so far was getting my tax sorted out. As an Aussie trying to sell my wares through an American company, I am subject to the IRS taking their tax cut from my earnings. I could have ignored it and let the IRS take 70% of my profits, but luckily there's a tax treaty between Australia and the USA that cuts this significantly. All I had to do was fill in a form and apply for a US Tax Identification Number. Then apply for the treaty. Two forms doesn't sound like much to fill in, but I am a dunce when it comes to accounting and finances. It was hard going, with a weeks-long before hearing back to find out whether I'd filled out the damn things correctly. So far everything seems to be legit, and I am clear to do business in the US. Still, there's always that element of nervousness when it comes to the IRS...
The last few nights I've been doing research on marketing and pricing. The current consensus seems to be that $2.99 for e-books is the sweet spot, so that is what I will probably go with. It's also the point where Amazon's royalty rate jumps from 35% to 70%, which works in my favour. As for marketing, my budget is zero. I'm okay with this, because what I've been reading suggests that the effects of paid advertising and publicity on sales is virtually zero. I always suspected that any sales bump from paid advertising wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of the ad, so I'm fine with ignoring that option. For the moment my promotion will remain here, on Facebook and on Twitter, and I'll try not to spam any of those too hard.
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN DOING
As my job affords me a lot of time on my own with a minimum of human interaction, I listen to tons of podcasts and audiobooks. Since I discovered librivox.org I've been getting through a lot of audiobooks, taking the chance to sample some supposed classics. Currently I'm slogging my way through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
I say slogging, but that's not entirely fair. When the book focuses on the mysteries surrounding Captain Nemo, and the efforts of the three main characters to escape their captivity on the Nautilus, it's rather good. The problem comes in the chapters that focus heavily on the "wonders of the undersea realm". Beware any chapter that is named after a sea or an ocean, because you're in for page after page of descriptions of fish.
It reminds me of a story I wrote when I was ten. When it came time to describe the Black Wizard's army, I literally named every evil creature from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Terrible stuff, but I had an excuse: I was ten. I suppose that Jules Verne has an excuse as well, because part of the whole point of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an exploration of the awesome stuff that's in the ocean, exotic fish included. It makes for bloody tedious reading, though.
Moby Dick was much the same. There's a lot of fascinating material in that book, and a masterful command of language, but it often gets side-tracked with the minutiae of whales and whaling. There's a whole chapter devoted to listing the books that have illustrations of whales, and discussing the accuracy of each.
The thing is, I can see where all of this is coming from. People in 1850 didn't have TV (no shit Sherlock). How would most of them know what a whale looked like? Books would be the only possibility, and Herman Melville used that to provide his readers with the most accurate depiction he could, pointing the reader to specific volumes for the most accurate depictions.
Older books and stories tend to have too much description and exposition for modern audiences; just listen to the constant complaints about the dialogue in Silver Age comics. Or my complaints about classic works of literature. No doubt there are examples of stories that did exposition badly even at the time they were printed. Just as some stories that seem over-expository now were perfectly pitched for the audience back then. I suppose the lesson I have to learn is to think about this stuff, and where it's coming from, so that I can look past it and take the good elements from those stories.
For my own writing, I need to think about my audience and what needs to be explained and described for them to understand the story. Jack Manley is quite terse, which is something I did on purpose. I didn't do long descriptions, because I wanted the book to be about action. If it's not necessary to move the plot forward, I cut it out. I took a similar tack with exposition. Alternate universes are central to the book, but I didn't bother explaining the concept. Modern audiences are savvy, they know about these things. But if I was writing, say, Moby Dick for a modern audience, I wouldn't include the lengthy descriptions of whales, or talk about books with whale illustrations. There are photos now, and videos, and aquariums. I would keep all the stuff about whaling ships, though, and harpooning, and how the whales are carved up once they've been caught; chances are very high that a modern reader doesn't know that stuff. So what I've learned today (and it's not exactly a profound lesson, but it is an important one for any writer) is to know your audience, and what they do and don't need explained.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrence Dicks
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Listening To
Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii
Friday, August 9, 2013
Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity
Jack Manley - soldier, adventurer, traveller of the Wild Multiverse and veteran of the All-Worlds War - has quit. After years of endless fighting he has seen too much death, and taken too many lives. But an interdimensional emperor known only as the Warlord has pledged to destroy Jack Manley for his crimes, and even Manley is not certain of his innocence. With the might of thirteen Earths at his command, the Warlord is a danger to all of reality, and Jack Manley must fight through soldiers, dogs with guns in their mouths, manticores, the dreaded annihil-apes and more before he can face him. It's cover-to-cover pulp sci-fi action adventure, as Manley battles his enemies, and confronts his bloody past. The Warlord is coming, and only death can stop him. But how can Manley defeat him without sinking back into a life of blood and destruction?
Coming to the Amazon Kindle store on Sunday, 18th August 2013.
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