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Posts Tagged ‘self-publishing’

Of Bushels and Lamps

Posted in Creativity, Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing, tagged , , , , , on 13 Oct 2022| 2 Comments »

“Has John read your books?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? You guys talk about books all the time.”

“Well, sure. But not about my books.”

The above snippet of dialogue is verbatim from this past weekend, and it is Exhibit A in the case of Why I Absolutely Suck at Marketing.

In general, I do not know which of my friends have read any of my books. Yes, there are some exceptions to this—beta readers for a certainty, those who’ve expressed an opinion about a title—but if pressed, I know of only eight people who have definitely read one (or more) of my titles. And two of them are dead, so I’m really down to only six. That small list gets longer if I include people who I know have bought my books; but have they read them? One acquaintance told me flat out that she bought my books but did not read any of them, so I don’t take equate purchases with readers. 

Why am I so in the dark on this topic? Because it is how I was raised. And it’s also my nature.

A big lesson of my youth was, “Don’t show off.” My father was insistent about this. “You have talents,” he would tell me, “but don’t get cocky, don’t show off, because there’s always going to be someone out there who’s richer or smarter or more talented than you are.” The subtext, coming from the grandson of a charcoal burner (yeah, it’s a real occupation), was essentially “Pride goeth before a fall.” Humility, my dad felt, consistently won over more people than braggadocio. 

This fit well with my introverted mien. I have absolutely zero desire to “show off” and put myself in the spotlight (this blog notwithstanding), so self-deprecation and “hiding my lamp under a bushel” aren’t second nature; they’re first nature.

As a result, there are people who know me who don’t know that I’ve written nine novels (and counting). I don’t introduce myself, saying, “Hi, I’m Kurt. I’ve written nine novels. Heard of me? Want to read one?” In this age of self-publishing, being an accomplished novelist isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. Folks who learn of my bibliography might smile and nod, but the look in their eye betrays their unspoken reservations about the probable quality of my work.

None of this is to say I’m not proud of my books—I am—but there are just too many variables to the “Hi, I’m a writer” gambit. Nearly 20% of Americans didn’t read any books in the past year (print, e-book, or audiobook), and about half of the population has read fewer than six titles (and which ones do you think they’re going to buy? Mine?). Then there’s genre-preference, with “historical”-anything being at the low end of the popularity scale (and my stuff all being “historical”-something or other). Taken as a whole, there is absolutely no reason for me to expect that anyone I know is going to enjoy my books; the odds are simply against it.

Marketing is essentially nothing but “Look at me!” show-offery, and that is totally antithetical both to my attitude and to my nature. So, I suck at it.

However, this whole cover redux journey I recently began is nothing but marketing. Sort of. So, I’m a little conflicted. And a little anxious about the whole idea.

Still gonna do it, though.

k

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What Price Vanity?

Posted in Books, Hi Tech, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 06 Oct 2022| 5 Comments »

This has been a week of ups and downs—society, family, health, the future—and, to be honest, right now I’m on the down-side of it. So, fair warning.

In last week’s post, I admitted that my Fallen Cloud Saga needed new covers. This led to other considerations about fixing some of the content (e.g., typos, minuscule factual errors, and one extremely overwritten prologue), but primarily I spent this week focusing on the covers. I scanned sites and services. I downloaded several apps. I contacted artists whose work ticked a lot of the project boxes. Also, realizing how it’s been a long while since I formatted content for a novel, I solicited advice on the state of play as regards the best formatting tools for books (print and digital).

Sadly, rather than this activity working to ratchet up my enthusiasm, the reverse has happened, and the Black Dog has come to visit.

The reason? The costs.

Artwork, software, hardware, I’d need to license/commission/purchase/upgrade almost everything, and for what?

For vanity?

Brass tacks: Money spent refurbishing the covers of my Fallen Cloud Saga will never be recouped. The idea of making them more attractive to the passing eye and thereby increase my readership is, of course, a real and possible goal, but the money spent will not be earned back, not when taking past sales into account. Then, I have to add in the cost of decent formatting software. Everyone swears by Vellum, but it’s Mac-only, and it isn’t cheap, so I’d need the software and either a Mac-mini or a subscription to macincloud (and I loathe subscription-based software models). Alternatives to Vellum, like Atticus, have their adherents, but as with most charts that compare the enthusiasm coefficient of Apple-heads vs Windows-thralls, the Mac comes out orders of magnitude above.

So, in large part, it comes down to this: How much am I willing to spend to indulge my vanity?

My wife, bless her, has encouraged me to recast the discussion in several ways.
—I’m not buying covers, I’m buying artwork (something we’ve done plenty of times in the past).
—This would finally raise my Fallen Cloud Saga to the state I’ve always wanted it.
—Software and hardware could be used for future projects, as well as all my other titles.
—If she’d asked for something similar, I’d have already written the check.
. . . and the kicker . . .
—”I’ll be mad if you don’t.”

I’ve never been good at spending money on myself, at least not beyond a the cost of a good bottle of whisky. This, though . . . it’s different. Where a bottle of whisky is sipped into extinction, a professional presentation of the entire Fallen Cloud Saga would be something I would enjoy until the day I die, even if no one ever bought another copy.

Vanity? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it’s love, love for the saga I spent years creating, the love that drove me to write the fifth and final book even after the publisher had dropped the project, the same love that is shared by a small but ardent group of readers. It’s not something I owe myself or those readers, and it may not be something we even deserve.

It is, though, be something we would all enjoy.

Isn’t that enough?

Onward.

k

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Post-Signing Reevaluation

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on 29 Sep 2022| 5 Comments »

Last weekend’s author-signing event went surprisingly well, but it was not devoid of lessons to be learned.

I say “surprisingly well” only because of my standard introvert’s dis-ease when facing the public, plus the fact that this was my first signing event in nearly a decade. The fact that I sold any books (and to strangers, no less) was also a surprise. Admittedly, we spent that revenue on books from other authors/artists at the event, but let’s be honest: I don’t do this for the money.

Another entry in the “went well” side of the ledger was using Square for accepting payments. When you consider the fact that a week before the event I had no way to accept credit card payments, Square was an excellent choice. Fast, easy, with a top-notch app and high-confidence from customers, I was able to set up an account, enter my inventory, and get a card reader with a few days to spare. I was also prepared to use Venmo and PayPal, but they weren’t needed, as every customer was very comfortable with using Square.

Aside from these plusses, though, there were a few negatives.

First, I need a “pitch” statement. The author at the next table, J.P. Barnett, was able to sum up his books in a single sentence. (“Two college roommates chase monsters instead of going to class!”) While I’m sure this oversimplified his work, the pitch gave potential customers a quick way to know if his books were something they might enjoy. To be fair, all of J.P.’s books were from the same series, so he only needed One Pitch to Rule them All, whereas my books vary in content, style, and genre. That’s just an excuse, though; hearing J.P.’s pitch and watching his customers’ immediate comprehension of what lay before them showed me the value of a pithy catch-phrase.

I also learned that even though we all say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, we all most definitely do. To that point, I had to admit that the second edition covers for my Fallen Cloud Saga were not doing the job (even though minimalism was all the rage a handful of years ago). By far, the busier, more eye-catching covers on my table got the most attention.

The third lesson was that, if you have a series, bring more copies of Books One and Two. I foolishly brought an equal number of all titles, thinking (wrongly) that people would want to buy the whole series. With one exception, what they did buy was just the first in the series. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense; I’m an unknown quantity, and who wants to lay down cash for a series that they might not want to finish. Luckily, I didn’t run out of “first in a series” books, but it was a near thing.

Each February, Page Turner Books puts on a big signing event, which draws about six hundred sf/f readers, all eager to browse and find new authors. That’s about five times the traffic we saw on Saturday, and I’m seriously considering taking a table. There’s a lot of work I need to do, though, based on what I learned.

As I said, my motivation to participate is not financial. I want more readers rather than more bucks, so as long as I cover my costs, I’m happy. Watching people evaluate my titles, noting their reaction to my (admittedly) long-winded descriptions, and then seeing them walk out with one of my books under their arm, well, that’s the point, for me.

Onward.

k

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Old Friends and Free Books

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 18 Nov 2021| 2 Comments »

A week or so ago, I had a hankering to spend time with some old friends. We’d been out of contact for fifteen years, and I felt it was time to reconnect, to catch up, to share stories. So, for the past week, I’ve been hanging with Alain, Bronwyn, Wrdisten, Boduos, and the rest of the gang from old Breizh.

In other words, I re-read The Ploughman Chronicles, my 9th century historical high fantasy series.

And we had a blast. Literarily speaking, that is.

In the year AD 880, much of Europe was on the cusp between the old/pagan and new/Christian worldviews, and Brittany itself (where the series is set) was in open revolt against the expanding Carolingian Empire, so there’s a lot of historical intrigue woven into the books. Added to that, though, is an even greater intrigue between our world and the fabled Summerland, the land of the Fey, which lies beyond the Veil. Now throw in a prophecy, that there will come a man who will travel between, and master the power of both the line magic of the Veil and the earth magic of the sleeping gods.

For me, though, it is the characters I love most. I mean, they’re so . . . individual, so quirky, each with a distinct manner, their own way of speaking, and with motivations that are set (and revealed) in layer upon layer.

These books are not your usual high fantasy; I can’t think of another series that even comes close to it. Sadly, this series got no love from my agent—perhaps precisely because it isn’t your usual high fantasy—so they never had much opportunity to get shopped around. Also sadly, when I decided to publish them myself, my editing skills weren’t as sharp as they should have been, so I had to contend with the odd typo (and I really hate typos, especially when I’m the one who let them get into the final product).

But here’s where y’all come in.

You see, I love these books, even more so after my re-read, and I want to share them with you.

So, from now through Monday (November 22), the Kindle versions are free. You can find them both on this page at Amazon.

Download them for free, get the reading app for free, and (I hope) fall in love with them, for free.

Paperback versions are still available, of course.

So go, enjoy; tell a friend; hell, tell an enemy, I don’t care. I just want to share them. And if you like them, write a review. If you don’t, tell it to my agent; I think you’ll find a receptive audience there.

k

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Poems and Spreadsheets: From the Edge

Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged , , , , on 30 Sep 2021| 7 Comments »

You knew this was coming (either that, or you haven’t been paying attention): From the Edge, a collection of poetry and vignettes, is now live on Amazon! W00t!

In putting this together, I encountered needs that never arose with my novels. Primary among them was the concept of a coherent theme, and right behind that, organization. These aspects were new to me, as with novels they’re just part of the package. Here, though, I was making a whole out of things that were never written as parts of a whole, so theme and organization suddenly took on new importance.

Sure, I could have just collected “poems I like” or “things I wrote in chronological order,” but I wanted the whole to have something to say, as a whole. This goal proved quite a challenge, though, since none of these pieces was written with the others in mind.

The first task, naturally, was to winnow the hundreds of pieces I’d written since the late ’90s into a manageable pile. Immediately I divided them into “Maybe” and “No” piles, a process I repeated, each time with a more exacting eye. Eventually, I had an “Almost Yes” pile of eighty or so pieces, all poetry and short poetic prose that would fit on one or two pages.

Next was to distill from these a theme. This was difficult, and literally kept me up at night. Eventually, though, it became clear that many dealt with a transition, and from that the concept of liminality became prominent. The title, I felt, should evoke that concept, and after trying out many of those, I settled on From the Edge, as in: from the edge of the century, the edge of the continent, the edge of patience, the edge of life, from the edge of a transition from one state to the next.

Then I needed to make a final cut and organize the pieces and here I fell back into true to geek-boy form. I put the pieces in a spreadsheet, analyzed their content, and determined a meaningful structure.

Yes, seriously.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds (or so I tell myself). Many of the pieces had a “seasonal” component, reflecting a certain time of year. Each one also carried an “emotional weight,” and I didn’t want the reader to be hit by (what I felt were) several hard-hitters in a row. Topic was a factor; just as I didn’t want three heavy poems in a row, neither did I want having three “nature” poems bunched together. Finally, the length had to be considered, both (again) to avoid clumps of longer works, but also (and more importantly) to ensure that the works requiring two pages could be read without breaking the flow by turning the page.

The result is a selection of nearly fifty pieces, from winter to winter, exploring the nature of transition and transformation.

Or, at least, that is the intent.

The last decision I made was to break with one of my guiding principles and only offer this in hardcopy. Presentation has a greater impact on poetry than on prose, and I spent many (many) iterations getting the font, format, and layout just right. If I were to adapt the book to a digital format, most of that would be lost, so, sorry-not-sorry, you won’t be able to read these in Arial or Times New Roman on your phone. Want to read them? You’ll have to go old-school.

So, From the Edge is alive and has been released into the wild. Go catch one (if you can)!

k

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Editing Power

Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged , , , , , on 09 Sep 2021| 2 Comments »

Editing is hard.

Editing a work you love is very hard.

Editing a work you love and that carries great personal weight is more than very hard. It’s an emotional maelstrom, pulling you deeper with every pass, dragging you farther into the vortex of its intensity, capable of drowning you at any moment.

And poetry—my poetry—carries great personal weight.

Which is why I’ve been a spiritual shipwreck this week: I’ve been editing a collection of poems and vignettes, gleaned from my writings of the past two decades (and a bit more). Some of them have appeared here; many have not. All are, for me, distillations of power, and each one—be it a three-line haiku, a twelve-line sonnet, or a 43-line piece of free verse—is surrounded by a nimbus of context that exists only in my heart.

Nothing I write can be as powerful to a reader as it is to me. This is the nature of writing: it is an imperfect means for the transference of memories and emotions and thoughts, but it’s the best means we have. Naturally, you do not know why I wrote a particular poem, but I certainly do, and editing it, reading it over and over, even if it’s only a check for proper capitalization, even if it’s to ponder a comma at line’s end versus a period, I must perforce relive the moments, the weeks, sometimes the years that surround that poem’s inspiration, which means I must also relive the grief, the joy, the anger, the frustration, the ineffable beauty that I hoped to have captured in the amber of my words.

Despite this psychic exhaustion, I’m chuffed about this little project, as it is, in some ways, a turning point. Where I used to present myself solely as a writer of novels, this is my way of acknowledging that, as a poet, I’m not displeased with my work, and that, in this regard at least, I’m still growing as a writer.

Proofs will come in tomorrow’s post and I’ll get a chance to see how well my editing and layout skills have served me. I’ll also get yet another chance to read—this time with a proofreader’s eye—the four dozen pieces I’ve chosen for this collection.

And then, most likely, I’ll sit in the evening’s fading warmth, sip some wine, and think of something new to write.

Already, I have some ideas.

k

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A Font of Good News

Posted in Creativity, Writing, tagged , , , on 02 Sep 2021| 3 Comments »

I’ve been yearning for some good news because, let’s be honest, it’s been a week of achingly bad news.

Hurricane Ida, on steroids from climate change, ravages the southern and eastern seaboards. Misery stalks the streets of Afghanistan. Massive wildfires burn in the Sierras, spreading a smoky pall of devastation. The “Texas Taliban” imposes their own flavor of sharia law (it might be a different holy book, but it’s the same playbook). And the moral incongruity of preferring to commit assault rather than wear a mask, and preferring to take a horse dewormer after contracting COVID than to take a proven vaccine beforehand, continues to the march across our nation.

Personally, I’ve been swinging between depression and white-hot outrage, all with a big side serving of helpless futility.

To counter this (and to stay relatively sane), I’ve been focusing whenever possible on pleasant things.

One of those is the font called Doves Type.

(more…)

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