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Archive for the ‘Ebooks’ Category

Refined Cunning Plan

Okay.  After thinking about it a lot and discussing things with some other people, I think I need to refine my plan.  Because of what I already have out, and my writing schedule for the rest of the year, there’s really no way to pull off my dueling genres experiment in anything resembling scientific fashion.

So I’m morphing the plan.  One of the things people constantly try to bring up as a point against putting up ebooks is that there will soon be too many on the market and no one but people with huge marketing dollars behind them will be read.  I have a few things to say about this.

One: Soon? Really? There are hundreds of thousands of ebooks available for Kindle.  There are millions of paperback books available as well through Amazon and other retailers.  Soon has happened. I think it happened a while ago (maybe before I was born in the paperback world).

Two:  How do readers find books now? Word of mouth. Reviews. Search terms and product tags. Etc.  Advertisements aren’t very high on the lists I’ve seen about how readers find things to read.  Putting up a shit load of good books will probably also help, since each one becomes a gateway, a chance for a reader to find you and like your stuff enough to go looking for more.

I tested the waters in ebooks with a few short stories in a genre I don’t write much in (literary) under a name that I don’t use except on legal documents (and now that I’m married, not even those).  No promotion, no history, nothing.  Those stories still outsell my SF/F stories every single freaking month.  Seriously.

But still, anyone following this blog will know that my numbers aren’t exactly buying me more than groceries.  They aren’t covering the rent yet.  SF/F isn’t a popular genre (especially not science fiction, sorry guys. We’ve got like what, 7% of the fiction market?).

So I’m morphing my experiment.  I’m going to try to test two things with one stone, so to speak.  I’m going to write three pulp-era length novels (60-70k words each) and put them up under a pen name that I’m not going to tell anyone about (well, other than my editor and my cover guy- for obvious reasons).  I will let them sit until Jan. 2013 and then report the results.  The reason I’m waiting until 2013 to report is that I don’t think I’ll have time to write the three books until Jan or Feb 2012, so I’d like to give them at least 6-8 months on the market.  So the experiment is put off a little, sorry.

But the good? news is that I’ll still be writing and releasing novellas in the SF/F genres and in Romance, just on a slightly different timetable than my previous experiment.

In other news- one week until Clarion.  Maybe I should think about packing?

I Have a Plan

A cunning plan. How cunning? You could tie a tail on it and call it a weasel. (Yes, I’m sort of quoting Black Adder. I’m that old.)

As I’ve been watching my sales and reading about the sales of others in this brave new e-book world, I’ve noticed some interesting trends.  I’ve watched people promote their little hearts out and then cry about no sales.  I’ve watched people stick up what I like to call “ugly” books (bad cover, bad blurb etc) and cry about no sales.  I’ve watched books I would think were the slightly better-looking cousins of “ugly” books sell like crazy.  I’ve watched books that were actually “ugly” books in disguise sell better than things I thought were actually worth reading.  I’ve watched as my literary short stories under a name with zero internet profile out-sell my SF/F titles 5 and sometimes 10 to 1.

Basically… no one knows what will sell and why.  We’ve got the four principles that Konrath and others go by: Good Book, Good Cover, Good Blurb, Low Price.  I’ve seen plenty of titles with the magic four sell very few copies.  Maybe they will be slower to take off, maybe those writers need to just keep at it and good things will happen (what one might call the DWS principle.)  I don’t know.

One thing I would add to the above however, is “write in a popular genre”.  Now, one might argue that good writing will find an audience, and I believe that.  But would you rather aim at an audience of thousands, or hundreds of thousands?  Does genre really matter?  It’s hard to say.  Mystery and Romance are very popular genres, but there are also a ton of books written in those genres  (Romance on Kindle has more books than Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror combined).  Chicken, egg, right?

But hey, what would be the point of experimenting in this awesome new world if I couldn’t run some tests.  So here’s what I’m planning:

I’m going to write ten novellas (20-30k words each).  Five in SF/F and five in Romance.  When all ten are done (by end of September, hopefully), I’ll stick them all up online at the same time, for the same price.  I intend to do zero promotion of the titles for six months (other than mentioning them here so that people will know when the experiment goes live).  I would say that the Romance ones would be at a disadvantage since they won’t be under the name that has an internet presence, but my lit fic doesn’t seem to suffer from being under a pen name so I’m going to rule that the name doesn’t matter (it isn’t like I’m anybody anyway).  I will do my best to make sure each novella has an awesome cover, a great blurb, and is of course an awesome book.  And then I’ll sit back and watch and see how the numbers do.

My prediction, right now? The Romances will out-sell the SF/F titles 10-1.  That’s my early prediction.

See? Isn’t this new world fun?  All kinds of crazy experiments to run! *grin*

May Summary

May was tumultuous for me.  A lot of things happened (like depressingly turning 30) and I had a lot of difficulty adjusting my writing schedule to deal with my husband’s sudden unemployment (he was laid off at the end of April).  My writing nose-dived (as you’ll see from my stats below).  I was just getting into the groove again and finding some momentum when I lost my Grandfather yesterday morning.  I found out he was going rapidly downhill (he’d been sick, then was much better, then suddenly very sick again) on Sunday and managed to finish my novel but not much else this weekend.  I feel sad and a little scattered.  Hopefully I’ll be able to just write through this and keep momentum up (I didn’t write at all Monday or yesterday).

Anyway, here’s the stats for May.  In the ebook world, it was a pretty good month.  I sold over twice the number of copies in May as in April, though not for twice the monies.  Here are the numbers:

Ebooks sold: 84

Stories sold (trad publishing): 1

Novels sold(trad publishing): 0

Writing monies earned: 80.11 (all from ebook sales)

Words written: 19879

Ebooks released: 3 short stories, 1 short story collection

Novels finished: 1

Race score: 39

It’s interesting to see the progression of sales as I get things up.  I’m pretty much a total unknown, but if I held off from putting things online as some advise, I’d be missing out on hundreds of dollars.  I’m broke enough that 20 bucks a month extra makes a difference.  50 bucks? That’s a week or more of groceries. 80 bucks? That’s groceries and the phone bill.  My sales might be tiny when compared to people like Hocking, Locke, and Konrath, but they are growing.  And it is money that comes from work that didn’t sell, for whatever reason, to magazines and trad publishers.  Work that readers enjoy, but yet would have been tucked away in the proverbial trunk in the old world of publishing.

Want to see how sales build for an unknown?  Here’s my stats so far:

July 2010- put up 3 literary short stories under a name that has no publishing history (not that I had any name with history anyway) and sold- 3 copies

Aug 2010- took down one of those 3 because I sold it to a magazine, so 2 stories up- 4 copies

Sept 2010- (2 short stories up)- 3 copies

Oct 2010- (2 short stories up)- 4 copies

Nov 2010- (2 short stories up)- 2 copies

Dec 2010- (Put the sold short back up when rights reverted)- 12 copies

Jan 2011- (released an sf collection under Bellet name, so collection + 3 shorts)- 17 copies

Feb 2011- (released an sf novella, so that plus collection + 3 literary shorts)- 18 copies

March 2011- (released fantasy novel, +collection, +novella, + 3 literary shorts)- 39 copies

April 2011- (novel + collection + novella + 3 literary shorts)- 34 copies

May 2011- (released 3 more shorts, 2 fantasy, 1 literary, + novel etc)- 84 copies

What will June hold? No idea. I just released a second short story collection, this time all fantasy stories.  I might have some romance novellas ready under another name to go up by end of June, but that will depend.  So far growth is steady and as long as that continues, I’m happy enough.  After all, groceries and phone bills paid are nothing to sneeze at.

And in final bright news as I go into June, my Kickstarter project to help fund Clarion is now funded.  It won’t cover all of Clarion, but it certainly helps take a lot of burden off me.  I am super thankful to everyone who made the project funding happen and I will write you all amazing stories at Clarion, I swear.  I hope that “Souvenirs from Other Worlds” will be my best work to date once I’m finished with it (and Clarion, after all, the whole point is to go learn to be an ever better writer).  So thank you, all of you.

New Stuffs and a Sale

I am pleased to announce that I have sold a short story titled “Nevermind the Bollocks” to the new monthly anthology series Digital Science Fiction.  The story should be out in their second installment, so sometime this summer I think.  This is my fourth pro-rate sale and, counting reprints, my seventh overall sale in the two and a half years I’ve been doing this.  I hope this is a sign that between the books I’ve been studying, the workshops I’ve been doing, and the writing practice itself, that I’m still growing and improving.

I also have finally posted a collection of fantasy short fiction, which is will be available soon on Kindle and Nook and is already through the new, streamlined Smashwords grinder.

Here’s the cover:

It includes eight of my fantasy stories.  More information can be found by clicking on the picture or you can get it directly from Smashwords by going here.

As for writing, well, I’m doing better. The novel is literally one working session away from done.  I’m dropping my better half off at the airport today and then I’ll have almost three full days to get work done with zero social distractions.  My top priority is to finish the novel and then finish the story I owe for the Mirror Shards anthology.  Then it’s on to outlining the sequel to A Heart in Sun & Shadow and getting some other short fiction done as a warm-up to Clarion.

Speaking of Clarion, I’m starting to get excited and nervous about it.  As we get ever closer to the start date and things begin to get sorted out like travel plans and housing, it feels more and more like this isn’t something abstract.  And hey, at this point I don’t think I got in on an administrative mistake, since no one has corrected it yet.  My Kickstarter project has only five days left, but it is pretty close to getting funded (only a few hundred left!) so I’m hopeful that the money will come through.  The outpouring of both financial and emotional support by my friends and my fellow writers has really touched me.  I thank all of you and I’m going to work my ass off at Clarion to make sure I don’t waste this opportunity.

So that’s what is going on with me.  Lots of work, not a whole lot of blogging, sorry.  I’ll do my usual monthly round-up next Tuesday (e-book sales have been pretty good to me this month, yay).

Two Sales and an Interview

It’s nice to have good news for once coming in multiples.  Most of the neo-pro writing life is being told no in varying ways, over and over and over.  It’s good to hear a yes on occasion.  It’s even better in pairs *grin*

So. A couple sales to announce.  First is a reprint sale of my story “No Spaceships Go” (originally appeared in Daily SF in Dec 2010).  The wonderful people at Scape– The e-zine of YA speculative fiction loved it so much they want it even though they don’t normally do reprinted fiction.  So soon it will be available there as well.

Second sale is an as-yet-untitled story for the anthology Mirror Shards: Exploring the Edges of Augmented Reality (Volume One) being edited by my writer friend Tom Carpenter at Black Moon Books.  The anthology is open to submissions until July, so get on it if you have an augmented reality story idea.

And finally, another interview for my indie-publishing side (I’m like the Hybrid Author of Doom here I guess) is up on Indie Reads.  You can find the interview here.

Whew. Now back to the grind.

March in Summary

This month was terrible for writing.  Terrible.  Good things happened (like getting accepted to Clarion) but in general, I failed it hard.  The high point besides Clarion is that I’m selling more and more ebooks every month.

Here are my pathetic stats:

Words written: 21,648

Stories sold: 0

Stories finished: 1 (and a few starts)

Novels finished: 0 (almost one! Soon!)

E-books money earned: 42.86 (almost double last month, yay!)

New e-book projects finished and released: 1

So that’s that for the month. April will be better.  I have three romance novellas to write, a handful of short stories to finish, and a week-long intensive workshop on Character Voice to attend (that’s going to kick my butt, but everyone who has taken it says that it pushed their fiction to a whole new level and that’s what I’m always looking to do).

Quickie Update Again

Hey, I’m in the middle of finishing up my Writers of the Future Q2 story and putting the last couple of chapters of the first Pyrrh novel together. So that’s why it has been quiet around here.

There will be more Clarion news soon, I’m working on a couple projects that I’ll be offering up to help fund my crazy workshop adventures.  Until then, I leave you with an interview about my fantasy novel A Heart in Sun and Shadow by the awesome David Wiseheart and his Kindle Authors blog:  Find the interview here.

So…more later this week. Meanwhile, back to work!

101 Ways to Get Me to Clarion

Okay. So as pretty much anyone reading this blog knows, I’m a full time writer.  A neo-pro full time writer, which means that writing income is spotty at best.  My wonderful husband pays the rent (and health insurance) but we live on the line between broke and poor in order for me to have the time to work on my craft and build my writing into a real career.

So now I have an amazing opportunity to pursue another learning experience that will help build my career: Clarion.  Clarion is not free, however.  I have to pay the workshop fee (no word yet on scholarship monies, I applied though, so hopefully I’ll hear something soon) and I have to get airfare to go to San Diego and home again six weeks later (airfare shouldn’t be too bad, since I live in PDX.  I am fortunate not to be someone coming in from the East Coast or overseas).  We’ve been saving some money, but if I have to pay the full Clarion tuition fee plus airfare, I’m doomed.

I won’t let doomed stop me.  It’s a state I’m used to.  But I will take (non-illegal!) suggestions for how to raise money quickly.  Be as zany as you want.  I’m willing to try anything that doesn’t break the law or compromise my personal health or safety (or anyone else’s, for that matter).

I also have some e-books for sale.  Please consider getting one if it catches your interest or recommending them to others who might enjoy science fiction or fantasy.  Here’s the link: http://overactive.wordpress.com/read-my-fiction/

So how about it, blog readers? What suggestions for making money quickly do you have for me? Bring it on in the comments.  Let’s see if we can get to 101.

First E-published Novel

I took the plunge fully now.  My first full novel is available as an e-book (Amazon doesn’t have the buy button up yet for some reason, but that should fix itself in a day or two hopefully).

Description:

In an ancient Wales that never was…

The twin brothers Emyr and Idrys are cursed to live as hounds; Emyr by night, and Idrys by day.  The twins believe they will be trapped this way forever until they meet the fierce and curious Áine, a changeling woman born with fey blood and gifts struggling to fit into a suspicious human world.
Áine unravels the fate of Emyr and his twin as all three of them fall in love.  To free her lovers from the curse, she embarks on a journey to the realm of the fey where she confronts her own unique gifts and heritage. Ultimately, she must decide where her heart truly lies and what she’s willing to risk to get what she desires most.

The novel is only 4.95 and is available for Kindle , for Kindle: UK,  Nook, and at Smashwords (and 50% off there until the 12th of March).  The print version will be available soonish.

If anyone wants a review copy, please let me know!  izanobu AT gmail.  Thanks.  This is exciting and scary all at once!

February Wrap-up

Short month, went quickly.

I started, deleted, started again, and didn’t finish a novel this month. But I’ve solved how to finish it and now need to start over one final time. This annoying process underlined how important having the right point of view in a book really is (the POV issues were what was stalling me out in the middle, thankfully I figured that out before giving up forever).

Words written this month: approximately 72,000
Words discarded/deleted this month: about 34,000 (this number will GO AWAY next month. Seriously going to stop doing that. Seriously)
Ebook earnings: 22.75 (just slightly less than last month, yay!)

For March, I’ve got two novels to go up as e-pub. I need to get on the POD/Createspace thing and learn how to do that and get print copies out. I’m also going to start the sequel to a book while working on the SF novel (now that POV issues are solved). I’m behind on the Write one/Sub one challenge, so I’m going to try to get seven or eight stories done this month as well to catch up. And I’d like to finish one of the romance novellas. I’m debating on waiting until all eight are done to start putting them up, but we’ll see. I might wait until I have three or four, then start putting them up every couple weeks.

Meanwhile, today I’m going to be approving copy edits and generally taking it easy. Just got back from an amazing week of workshops and really need a little brain break before I start writing for the week.

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