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Archive for the ‘Ebooks’ Category

Two Releases!

Ok, they aren’t quite NEW releases, they are more re-releases in new formats, but  worth announcing I think.

First up is a fantasy novelette that is a retelling of the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon.  This first appeared in the anthology Once Upon a Quest, but now you can get it in its own ebook.

When her twin brother sacrifices his freedom to save their starving family, Lina embarks on a quest through a magical forest to save her twin and restore their family.

You can read West of the Moon for less than a dollar! Get it for Kindle HERE. Or for B&N Nook HERE. Or iBooks/Apple HERE. Or Kobo HERE.

The second not-exactly-new release is a complete volume collecting all six Gryphonpike Chronicles novellas. Now you can read the adventures of the cursed elf, Killer, and her ragtag band of adventuring friends. It’s out now in ebook and trade paperback (which makes a great gift for anyone over age 10, by the way).

Get the completed Gryphonpike Chronicles for Kindle/Paperback HERE. or for your choice of Nook/B&N or iBooks or Kobo by clicking HERE.

Happy reading!

 

That’s Right. Balancing the Scales is Here!

The wait is over! For real!

Read the final book in The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series:

Get it on Kindle Here.

Get it at iBooks/Apple Here.

Get it at Google Play Here.

Get it at Kobo Here.

Get it at B&N/Nook Here

And if you are sad that this is the final book, don’t be! There is still Harper’s Tale coming at some point this year, plus the next Urban Fantasy series I’m working on is already on pre-order for October and will be featuring Alek’s sister Kira! So you don’t have to leave Jade’s world just yet.  If you want to pre-order Bad Moon on the Rise (Six-gun Shifters book 1) go HERE for Kindle and HERE for iBooks or Kobo or B&N.

Happy Reading!

Musings on Income

(Author note: if you are waiting on book 7 and couldn’t care less about nitty-gritty of the dark inner workings of being a pro writer, skip this post.  For you peeps- book 7 is over half done and still on track for release in next couple months. I apparently might have pneumonia, but I’ve wrestled that beastie and won before, so I hope it won’t slow me down too much.  Happy New Year, eh?! But no fear, Boss Fight: Samir (ie Magic to the Bone) is on its way).

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For everyone else… have some random thoughts and some numbers:

Income, especially in American culture I guess, is a touchy thing. Among writers and other creatives, I think it can be even touchier. This business is so uneven and so subjective once you hit a basic threshold of quality. Which is why I always choose to define “good book” as “book multiple people want to read enough to pay money for” and leave it there, because every other measure runs into problems of taste and opinion.

Some writers do share their income. Many choose not to. I think both are making the decision that they are comfortable with, however, I super appreciate those who share. For the same reason I watch certain books and how they do with readers, I also watch various author careers. It’s all data that I might be able to apply to my own career, to my own books, to help me better deliver great books that people want to read and to find the best avenues to get those books into reader’s hands.

I’ve noticed though that there’s an odd gap in the numbers being shared, and chatting with a few others I am not the only one who has noticed. Authors starting out, both trad and indie, seem to share more often than long-time authors. Same with authors (long in the biz or not) who are making less than six figures. Then the gap appears as you see some authors who make very high six or into seven figures sharing. Where are the betweens? I know they exist in the professional fiction writing world, because I know quite a few of them personally. But they don’t share.

Many, I assume, don’t share because they aren’t comfortable talking numbers outside private groups. After all, in the end it is nobody’s business but the tax people and yourself what you make, and that’s cool. Many of us are raised to never discuss money, though from dealing with various unfair work situations and seeing relationships dissolve over financial disputes, not discussing money can sometimes be a poor choice. But when you work for yourself? It’s a decision you have to make for yourself.

I imagine others don’t because six figure income is this funny limbo place. You are making money, good money, but you aren’t making enough to feel untouchable (especially not when the tax bills come due, weeee). Publishing is a very volatile field. You can sell thousands of copies of one book, release the next, and watch the pennies trickle in. One change at a vendor or a mix-up in a computer system somewhere, and you can lose tens of thousands in the blink of an eye. There’s no “made it” or coasting available at almost any level of publishing that I can see until you hit the upper echelons where you have more money than JK Rowling (okay, probably nobody has more than she does in publishing, but you get my point).

This is stuff I’ve been thinking about as I read blog posts by awesome people like Jim C Hines and Kameron Hurley. Posts such as theirs, posts by others like JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking, and John Scalzi, and surveys like the one Tobias Buckell did back in 2005 helped me figure out what paths to take, what careers to look at, how to navigate things and what expectations to have. I’m a firm believer in more information is more better.

For that reason, I used to share numbers. I still do pretty openly at conventions and if people ask. But when I thought about writing a post after reading Jim Hines’ summation of his year, I balked. Why? Because this year was super successful for me and I fall into that limbo place now. I worried that writing this post would cause backlash, people saying “oh she doesn’t deserve that” or “she’s just bragging” or “her books aren’t that good” or “she’s just an outlier” or whatever else people say when green-eyed monsters come to live in their brains. Professional envy is a real danger in creative endeavors, I’ve witnessed it first hand multiple times and almost fell prey to it myself once in a general way (I quit writing short fiction for a while because I felt like I’d never compare to people who seemed to work less hard than I did, but thankfully I got the fuck over that hang-up).

But you know what? Data is data. I might be in the fragile limbo where income could be zero next year (if I don’t stop getting sick, that might be my reality, sigh), but I’m going to share numbers. These are a combination of a ton of work/study finally paying off and the support of the best readers anyone could ask for, with a dollop of luck thrown in (like the whole e-book revolution happening while I’m still alive to enjoy it, for example).

Titles published in 2015: 2 (plus one three book omnibus of previously published work)
Paid Titles total under this name: 17
Free titles: 7 (one of which was paid for half of 2015 at .99)
Short stories sold to anthologies in 2015: 4

Books sold in 2015 (including audio and print): 106,661 (approximate)
Income earned from ebooks/audio/print: $257,293
Income from multi-author bundles/Misc: $4,048
Income from anthology sales/royalties: $1,690
Total earnings 2015 (paid in 2015): $263,031

Want to see what a totally uneven career looks like? I quit my job in 2009 to start pursuing being a writer full time. I made one short story sale for a flash fiction piece that year, earning 18 dollars.  2010 income is a short story sale and the tiny beginnings of my foray into ebooks. Baby steps while I learned how to write (I wrote and submitted 39 short stories in 2010 alone, plus a novel).

Here’s the graph of my career so far:

chart of earnings by year
And here’s a pie chart of how my earnings for the year divide out between indie, trad, and multi-author stuff, because who doesn’t like pie?

2015 earnings by type
So… to sum up, I had a fantastic 2015 income-wise. Health-wise and stress-wise, it was awful and I’m ringing in 2016 with another bout of pneumonia, so who knows what my writing schedule will be like but I ain’t gonna quit. I will keep on writing, and working to make every book something I am proud of and that people want to read for as long as I’m alive to do so. That’s pretty much all any career writer can ask for, I think. Maybe I’ll have crazy numbers to post again this time next year, or maybe I won’t, but if I can get more good/healthy days and more books written than in 2015, I’ll consider 2016 a win.

And as anyone I’ve ever gamed with can tell you, I’m all about winning 😉

Orycon Schedule & Book Signing

Okay. Now that book six it out, I can blog about something else. Yay! 🙂

Just a quick note about book 7: it will be out hopefully by end of March, 2016. I’m already working on it and barring more health issues (which at the moment I seem to have a handle on), it will NOT take as long as book six. Thank you all again for your patience!

Other news!

I’m signing books at Powell’s Books Cedar Hills location in Beaverton, OR at 4pm (until about 5:30-6pm) on November 22nd!  I have ten shiny copies of Thicker Than Blood that will be for sale that day. So if you want it, or want the full signed set… show up on time! Or just come say hi, or just come to Powell’s because that bookstore is amazing.  I’ll be giving out free dice!

I’ll also be doing panels at Orycon, the Oregon Science Fiction convention in Portland, OR this coming weekend, Nov. 20th-22nd.

Here is my panel schedule:

Fri Nov 20 3:00:pm
Fri Nov 20 4:00:pm

I Quit My Job to Be a Writer! WHAT HAVE I DONE?

What the full-time writing life is like, how to stay focused when you’re all by yourself, the realities of making a living via the written word, and techniques for forcing yourself to get dressed and leave the house.
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Fri Nov 20 4:00:pm
Fri Nov 20 5:00:pm

I’ll Be Watching You…

From vampire assassins to wizard private eyes to undead thugs, crime has been mixing it up with fantasy for years. What is it about crime, noir, and the paranormal that’s so appealing? Also – what are some really good titles?
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Fri Nov 20 5:00:pm
Fri Nov 20 6:00:pm

How to Jumpstart Your Novel’s Sales

Your self-published book’s sales have plunged. How can you revive them? Will a new cover make a difference? What about targeted advertising? Publishing tie-in short fiction? Appearing in multi-author bundle? Or should you learn to stop worrying and get writing the next book in the series, or even start a new series?
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Sat Nov 21 12:00:pm
Sat Nov 21 1:00:pm

Revision: Path to Better Writing or Way to Never Finish?

Endless revisions can kill good writing, but everyone says polish your work. Besides, the first draft is usually bad, right? How to navigate through the apparent contradictions without going crazy.
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Sat Nov 21 3:00:pm
Sat Nov 21 4:00:pm

Hybrid Vigor: Choosing Both Traditional and Self-Publishing

Don’t believe the True Believers on both sides of this non-existent divide: you can be both a traditional AND a self-published writer. Learn how to let the project choose the path.
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Sat Nov 21 4:00:pm
Sat Nov 21 5:00:pm

How to Write a Series

Where to start, and how long of a series you can (or should?) write. How to make it interesting, different, and hopefully successful, and stay in love with it.
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Sat Nov 21 5:00:pm
Sat Nov 21 6:00:pm

The Magic Goes to Eleven

Defining Magical Systems. Magic is not to be trifled with as far as a reader’s concerned. Discuss how to give your characters powers–but not too much power–and how to keep internal consistency.

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Hope to see some people there!

Justice Calling Free!

I’m turning 34 in May. For my bday, I decided to put Justice Calling free for 34 days to celebrate. I also shaved my head. I get weird around my birthday, what can I say?

Anyway, if you haven’t tried the 20sided Sorceress series yet or have friends who haven’t or something… free book! Just for May though, then I’ll probably make it cost a whole $0.99 again. *grin*

Links are here:

(For Amazon click here)

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Hunting Season is Alive!

New release day! Book 4 in The Twenty-Sided Sorceress series is live on all sellers!

Description:

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. Nothing more…

Demon hounds. Celtic legends coming to life. Angry druids.
Just what gamer and sorceress Jade Crow needs to help her days feel complete. All her hits will have to be crits to get out of this one as enemies and friends collide and the lines between the two blur.

Hunting Season is the fourth book in The Twenty-Sided Sorceress urban fantasy series.

Get it on Amazon here.

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