Stop Hitting Yourself

This past week has been an epic failure for my writing. I've written. . .get ready for it. . .6,000words. Tragic I know, especially when I should be pounding out roughly 1,500-3,000 per day. Damn you work and the need to make money! Damn you Project Management masters degree!

Seriously, though, writing isn't a career for me (yet) and so finding time to write in life is difficult. I'm not complaining, just stating fact. I find ways to write (. . .not at work, of course. . .if my boss is reading this). I mute the TV and bang out a few dozen words at a commercial break. I become a hermit and lock myself in my room for an hour. But word count does suffer due to other activities.
I wil work on this.

So this week's blog? More lessons learned from my adventure self publishing. It's ADVENTURE TIME! (Algebraic!)

Don't Be a (Book)Baby!
BookBaby.com was my leap into self-publishing. I thought, "What a great service! For just $99 I can get my book published as an eBook to Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and Apple! Gee golly!" And so I skipped along, my cheeks rosey, and handed BookBaby $99. . .to do what I can now do for FREE!

I'm really kicking myself in the ass on this one. It's not that they're a bad service, per se. They're not. The BookBaby team has been amazingly helpful along the way. My questions are answered in 24hours or less. They have an amazing site. They pay me the moment I hit my payment cut-off. But it's still $99 (or more) for things I CAN DO FOR FREE!

That's a huge lesson here. If you don't have to spend gobs of money on it, don't. If you can spend a fraction of the price using a service like e-junkie to distribute your books in PDF format, DO IT! That, and Amazon has the Kindle Direct Program, Barnes and Noble has the PubIt program, Apple has the iBook Author App. It's all FREE. Okay, yes, they do take a royalty from the purchase. But there is no upfront cost that hurts your wallet. That's the important bit.

Now, BookBaby has sweetend the deal by allowing people to publish to Kobo and Copia, and they have their new print service (I honestly don't know enough their print service to opine on it, so I won't). But CreateSpace has a pretty good deal for authors (have you seen Der Sternvolker on the Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million websites?). And watch, both Kobo and Copia may start offering services much like Amazon and B&N.

Now, if you so choose to use BookBaby, more power to you. They'll treat you right.
...but it's still $99+.

Pimp Yourself
Wait, no, don't pimp yourself. You're not a word whore! Or maybe you are.
Whatever.
What I mean to say is market yourself. And it can be done on the cheap! Facebook ads and Google AdWords are great advertising tools for very cheap. Bids for your advertisement to pop up can be as low as 5cents ($0.05). Budgets vary, but you can execute a very effective marketing strategy with these tools on the cheap.

But what's FREE?
A Facebook page for you as an author/your site. That's free. And getting your friends and family to 'Like' it is free. Because then other people see their 'Like', look at your page, and they 'Like' it. That is also free.
Creating a Sell Page for your print novel(s) to hand out to local book/comic stores with Microsoft Publisher/Scribus and Adobe Acrobat? This is free (Scribus is very free to download and use).
A Twitter account is free. Everyone has the Twitters! Follow other authors, publishers, agents, and stuff you like. I follow Woodchuck Cider on Twitter (I could use like ten Woodchuck Ciders right now).
A Blog account is free.
A YouTube account is free (although a digital camcorder isn't free, unless built into your computer). Microsoft Movie Maker is free. And there's a ton of stock music and images that are free online. You can make your own free advertisements!
Another great FREE thing: going up and talking to people about your stuff. Though comic/sci-fi/fantasy conventions aren't free, they aren't terribly expensive. Just stay local (ComicCon is definitely not free in any way shape or form...but if you can go, do so and network your little heart out). Book clubs are free. Business cards aren't free, but VistaPrint is $10 for 500 very nice, professional looking business cards. It's not free, but it ain't bad, either.

There are plenty of ways to market yourself for free, or for very little money.

Do Maths
I didn't do maths. That was bad. Want to see my cost v. profits so far?

Item                                         $
BookBaby service                   -$99.00
E-Book Profits                          $62.50
CreateSpace service                -$52.00
Book Profits                              $22.29
E-Junkie Subscription (to date) -$20.00
Total                                       -$86.91

That's bad. The red lettering and negative signs prove it.
If I were a multi-million dollar business I would not be too big to fail and my corporate empire would topple like a house of cards (Noooo!).
So do your maths. Make sure you can make a profit before you spend oodles of money. Then you won't be playing the catch up game (like me. . .shut up).

My action plan?
1) Stop spending money where I don't need to. Der Sternvolker will remain with BookBaby. I've already shelled out that money. But in the future I'm goin the free way. CreateSpace should be my only charges since there is no way to get a print service to print books for free. But I'll make sure there are profits to back that up.
2) Market like a boss without spending all the cash.
3) Write, write, write summore. . .to make more money (but mostly because I like writing. . .and money).

Self-Editing, or: How to Stop Worrying and Love Hitting Yourself
Self-editing is crucial to a good final draft/book. A lot of people are adverse to this. It forces them to analyze their work and admit it's bad. They're forced out of their comfort zones. They have to criticize themselves and improve. We, as human beings, are adverse to such stressors.

We must overcome that adversity and self-edit. Finished something? Drop it for 1-4weeks, then go back and look at it like it's not yours. Then DESTROY IT! Look at the grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Balk at the horrible dialogue and terrible word choice! Force yourself to change everything to "said" and "asked" ("Oh no!" he ejaculated).
Wash, rinse, repeat self-editing process.

I would recommend doing this at least 5 times. Five. Fuenf. Sanqe. Cinco.

And then give it to someone else to ravage. A new set of eyes can make all the difference. Maybe they see something that you didn't because your eyes are bloodshot from staring at a screen for endless hours trying to turn your
crap into a diamond. Just make sure it's someone compitent. Run has been given to the wife of a friend of mine who has a degree in english and such. More to follow on that.

That's all for now folks. I'll be out of town and returning Sunday night, so have a good weekend.

"So remember, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
- Red Green

Some Stuff, Some Things

Random post today to let you all know I'm alive and kicking - and writing.

First, I'd like to welcome my first blog follower: Thomas A. Bradley. Thanks for the follow, Thomas.

Next, I'd like to draw your attention to Barnes and Nobles and Books-A-Million, and the fact that the trade paperback of Der Sternvolker is available at both sites. I got all giddy when I saw that. By giddy I mean I peed myself. . .so if you have an extra pair of pants handy. . .

Next, if you head over to the RENEGADE DATA CORE site you'll see some amazing art from Nicolas Giacondino (Aerion the Faithful on DeviantArt). I commissioned Nic to draw up a short comic for me as a sort of foot-in-the-door to the comics/eComics part of RENEGADE DATA CORE. I hope to have more comics in the works soon.

And now I pose a question for you, dear readers: what would you like to see in future short stories/novellas/comics? What settings and characters do you want to read about?

I have a ton of ideas of my own that I'm working, but I'd love to get feedback from everyone.

Next time: more lessons learned in my self-publishing journey.

Until next time. . .

Book Release, Lessons Learned, and The Future

The book is released!! You can purchase your copy of Der Sternvolker in the Amazon Kindle Store, Barnes and Noble Nook Store, Apple iBookstore, or the Sony Reader Store.

It's been a long time coming to this point. I actually started writing the book over a year ago, and since then its gone through numerous changes. Originally the story took place only five years after the nuclear holocaust that destroyed Earth, and Peter and his crew were part of the Elysium League (like a futuristic Hanseatic League). Peter's father was the head of a major corporation, and Peter was cutting his teeth in the business before taking his father's place. The mercenaries were organic security, and the team was twenty strong. Peter even had a sort of side-kick - a fifteen year old youth whose family had been killed when a rogue European Union military unit razed his colony.

It grew from there. At first it was just going to be a series of short stories, roughly 4,000-10,000 words a piece. But as I wrote and developed the post-Earth solar system I decided I wanted to write a full novel. Peter and his crew changed again into merchant-warriors who forged economic alliances with colonies and city-states to increase the power and wealth of The Elysium League - and themselves.

The idea of the Sternvolk, German for Star Folk, came from several sources. Clan Sea Fox, formerly Diamond Shark, from Battletech was the first source. I always liked Clan Sea Fox for their unClan like, merchant ways. I thought it was amazing when almost the entire Clan moved into ships and began hopping around the Inner Sphere. I had never thought of that, and never read about it in any sci-fi.

The nomadic space peoples in Mass Effect intrigued me, and the idea of an entire culture jumping around space was pretty cool. In fact, the first solid title of the book was The Pilgrimage, and Peter set forth to find himself in the Solar System. In this iteration of the story, Peter and Amelia had been friends since early childhood, and Balder and his six-man team were selectively bred, genetically enhanced super-soldiers that served as the Community Fleet's main offensive force. The book started with Peter and his mercs exploring "Kirk Station", a long lost space station that had been rediscovered in the asteroid belt, and ended up being infested with the genetically altered, feral descendants of the original populace that had been turned into the guinea pigs for a mad scientist. Part of the story was that Peter was the descendant of a long line of Berserkers, and his uncontrollable rage would lead to a huge turning point in the story (and would also spawn the third book in a series). That idea died a slow, painful death because the whole kirk station incident was three chapters and I worked so hard on it. But I wanted the story to be more "believable" (as believeable as it can be. . .), so I hacked it apart and forged ahead. But this is where the final story formed from.

So now we have Der Sternvolker in all its eBook glory. Roughly 246 pages, over 80,000 words, and plenty of blood, sweat, and tears to forge it into a pretty darn good book if I do say so myself (and I do).

There's a lot I learned from this process. . .and a lot I missed.

When you purchase the eBook you will notice that I jump back and forth between calling Rickard's lands "D'Helion District" and "House d'Helion Territory". With all my editing I totally missed that. It SHOULD be "D'Helion District". So, lesson learned: don't just triple edit, quadruple and quintuple edit. Keeping running notes on stuff like that helps, too. This will be corrected in future stories.

Another point: when you publish through BookBaby you will notice that, when your book is ready to be published, you can see in your book details how long you'll have to wait for your book to appear in one of the online stores after BookBaby sends it to that vendor. Some, like Amazon, take 3-4 business days. Others, like Sony Reader, take 3-4 weeks! This is part of the reason that the book is not showing up in the Sony Reader Store yet. Word to the wise: send your book in 6 weeks prior to your publication date JUST to make sure.
"And what is in store for the future?" you may ask. Renegade Data Core is just spinning up and I have lots of ideas that I want to turn into full stories. In the next few months I will be churning out several short stories that will be sold for $0.99 on the site as PDFs. I plan to find an artist or artists and finally create a comic. And I'm already working on the next full length novel. If you read through all of Der Sternvolker you'll know who the next novel is about.

Also keep watching out for more artwork. I will be commissioning the talented Ganassa, and others, to turn my ideas into amazing works of art for your viewing pleasure.

Until next time. . .