Beware the Crutch

Recently I saw a post on a writer’s forum giving a link to an online tool which allowed the self-published writer to quickly add up their sales figures on their Amazon reports. There were lots of positive replies on the usefulness of the aforementioned online tool, because it meant you no longer had to add the numbers up yourself.

Hang on a minute …?

You need an online tool to add up a string of whole numbers? While I’ve come across a lot of evidence to suggest a brain isn’t always a requirement in the world of self-publishing, in general I’ve found that mine is usually sufficient enough for this task, often with the help of the fingers on one hand, or occasionally both on a good month. And if you’re one of the lucky ones who sells in the kind of numbers that might take more than few seconds to easily calculate, then there’s always that trusty tool known as a calculator. Most computers have them, as, often, do desks, drawers and pockets.

The paragraph above might come across as being a little condescending, but be assured it was meant to be tongue in cheek. However, this online tool is a simple example of a writer’s crutch.

Of these, the self-publishing writer should beware.

I see lots of posts on forums by self-published authors wanting programs to help them do things. “How do I keep track of sales/chapters/characters?” Um … Excel? Or failing that a pen and a piece of paper?

I see a lot of writers talking about a program called Scrivener. I don’t know what that is, but apparently it’s a computer program that organizes the hell out of your novel. Personally I’m happy with an old version of Word and a simple Excel spreadsheet, but even that is a crutch. A computer is a crutch to make life easier for writers who used to write on a typewriter, which was in turn a crutch for a writer who used to use a pen, which was a crutch for carving something on a rock, itself a crutch for your mouth, which was a crutch for your heart, which is where stories truly come from … whatever, you get it.

Just to clarify, I’m not trying to belittle Scrivener or those who use it or any other specialist writing program. I know far better writers than me who swear by it and sooner or later, if it’s as awesome as I’ve heard, I’ll probably be using it myself. However, as a noob starting out on a writing career today who has already decided to start self-publishing as soon as heavenly possible (which is probably too soon) then you could do worse than working with a pen and a pad of paper. Many moons ago that’s what I did. You’ll connect with the words a whole lot better and when you start out that is the only thing that is important.

My point is that you should beware over-reliance on something that makes your job easier. When you’re starting out on the quest to write as well as you can, you shouldn’t concern yourself with how to make it look pretty, or how to organize it neatly. Right at the very, very beginning, you shouldn’t even worry about plot. You should concern yourself with the WORDS AND THE WORDS ONLY, because if your words are awesome all the rest will come together in time.

The biggest crutch I see self-publishers leaning on is the editor/proofreader. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use them because I strongly believe that you should – but knowing that an editor is waiting to correct your crappy grammar or your poor spelling is no excuse for not striving to get your book perfect before it is seen by anyone else. The old analogy that you can’t polish a turd is appropriate here – an editor might be able to round a turd into a more uniform shape so that it appears somewhat more like a mud pie … but it’s still a turd, and shame on you for sending it to them – for leaning on your crutch – in the first place. You should never have let it out of your sight in that condition.

I used to do proofreading on the side, but I gave up because people were sending me the kind of junk I would be embarrassed to allow off my computer and expecting me to fix it up into a quality book that people would want to pay money for. I molded a couple of mud pies, but that was the best I could do. Then, surprise, surprise, aforementioned turds later appear on Amazon with five-star reviews from friends and family and the evil beyond all evil, the paid-for review service. So it looks great, and it sounds great. But what has really happened is that turd has been allowed to get all the way to the reader before it’s been flagged as a turd, but by then it’s too late, your turd is in the hands of someone with the power to smash your sales into smithereens, simply by pointing out in a nicely worded one-star review what you should have realised long before you self-published it that what you have on your hands is nothing more than a turd. All those fake reviews are like a paper umbrella – it’ll protect you from the rain for a while, but sooner or later the rain is going to break through and then you’re going to get drenched. But whatever, it’s each writer’s personal choice. There is a school of thought that self-published writers can “grow up in public” as it were, improving their craft with the public as the ultimate judge. Each to their own, but as a shy, fragile kid who’d been pushed around a bit at school I know without a doubt that had I self-published those novels I wrote at 18 and 19 in the form they existed in then, I would have got deservedly hammered by reviewers, and that would not have been good for me. It would not have been good at all.

But, whatever. Each to their own. Personally I don’t enjoy getting punched in the face, either in real life or on the internet, not until I’ve developed a chin to take it.

It says a lot about a writer who leans on crutches too much. First and foremost a writer is an artist. After he (or she) has created something worth selling he then becomes a businessman. Review that phrase “worth selling”. This is the key. It is your responsibility to produce something worth selling. After you have done that it’s perfectly acceptable to get someone else to give it a shine and then put it into a nice packet ready for sale. But don’t cut corners or those corners will reappear sooner or later to bite you in the ass.

Beware the crutch. We all use them, but know that you’re using them and always strive, where possible, to do without them as much as you can. You’ll be a better writer for it.

That is all.

Chris Ward

April 17^th 2013

Submitting to Magazines - Why and How to do it

During my self-publishing adventures I’ve come across a lot of people who are trying to get a slice of the ebook pie through publishing only novellas and short stories. While these can be just as difficult to write, the shorter form is often seen as being less of a time investment than full novels, simultaneously giving the author more visibility. They are also popular with people who don’t have the time to write regularly or for long periods, or who don’t enjoy spending two years on each novel.

A lot of people I’ve come across are publishing short stories and novellas on Amazon at a furious pace, but is it the only option? For every Wool (which was originally a novella) there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of short pieces selling a handful of copies a month or less.

Disillusioned? Maybe, but unlike novels, which are notoriously hard to sell, short fiction can be a lot easier to market, and although you might not become a superstar, there are still gains to be made.

Prior to self-publishing, I spent fourteen years submitting and occasionally selling stories to magazines. Just to prove it, here are a few of my publications –

The Substitute in Prenumbra Sports and Games Edition

Ms Ito’s Bird in Weird Tales 352

Ovid’s Legacy in Flagship (the pic on the front is from my story!)

Going Underground in Noctober 

Feeding the Gulls in Written Word (pretty salty about this one because I never got paid, but it was like $15, so whatever)

 My claim to fame!

Self-publishing a short story can occasionally be profitable, but more often than not it’ll sit there in cyberspace doing nothing. Also, you can never be quite sure whether it’ll take off or not. So much depends on the title and cover. For example, after my rights returned to me from Weird Tales (after a year, I think, although magazines will buy various rights from 6 months to 2 years), I published Ms Ito’s Bird on Amazon as an individual short story. In roughly ten months it’s sold … wait for it … ONE copy.

 

There it is about halfway down ... see it? And the third picture down

is from my story! :-)

When I sold it to Weird Tales I made roughly $160. At the time that was more than half of my entire revenue from eight years of trying to sell short stories. And that was just the money - nothing else I have ever achieved in writing EVER has given me the confidence in my work that that sale did. Conan the Barbarian was serialized in that magazine. Getting in Weird Tales is big time.

Getting back to the cold hard cash line, there’s money to be made from selling short stories if you’re good, but here’s a few common pitfalls to avoid.

Noob Mistake #1 – Posting your story publicly and then expecting to sell it later

I see a lot of authors posting works in progress on their blogs, Facebook pages, Goodreads, forums, etc. If you ever have plans of selling that story to a magazine, this is a really bad idea. You can get away with it on a private forum or in a crit circle that requires membership to access, but anywhere it’s available publicly through a search engine it counts as being published and therefore you’re relinquishing your first world publication rights, which is what magazines will buy. Pull it down before you submit it and make sure it's got no cyber footprint. If it can still be available online it is effectively worthless. You might be able to get $5 here or there as a reprint, but any chance of selling it to Fantasy & Science Fiction for $600 is gone right away.

And trust me, the big magazines will check. Google is a powerful thing. And they won’t just search by title (otherwise you could just change it) but by chunks of text.

Noob Mistake #2 – Ignoring the guidelines

“Send us clean sci-fi with no sex or violence towards animals.” So, you send them a horror involving a serial killer who likes to have sex with elephants, just in case they want to make an exception … nope. Here comes another rejection letter. Guidelines are there for a reason. Perhaps if you’re Stephen King you could get away with it, but otherwise forget it. Trust me on this, I’ve broken them all and regretted it. The exact same goes for deadlines. If a magazine gives you a date to submit by, or says on its guidelines page that its currently closed to submissions, then it means it. Don’t waste your time by submitting anyway.

Noob Mistake #3 – Submitting to more than one magazine at once

Check in the guidelines to see if a magazine is okay with “simultaneous submissions”. This means they’re happy for you to submit elsewhere at the same time. If they don’t like this (and the guidelines will say), then don’t do it anyway. Nothing could be more awkward than having two magazines accept your story and you having to tell one of them you’ve changed your mind because its been accepted elsewhere. This kind of thing doesn’t make you any friends. Particularly at the top magazines, a lot of the editors generally tend to know each other. Of course, if a magazine is okay with sim-subs, then go for it. Be courteous though and notify the other magazines if one accepts you.

Noob Mistake #4 – Responding to Rejections

Don’t do it. Ever. Whether it’s a form letter, an “I’d rather kill myself than read any more of your crap” type letter or a “wow this was awesome but not quite awesome enough” type, just don’t respond. The editor really doesn’t care what you think. Nine times out of ten you’ll get a form rejection, but if you get comments then read them, apply them if necessary, and move on. Don’t bother to thank the editor unless they write like a page of notes (unlikely). If they gave you comments then they probably gave them to twenty other writers, and if they have to open twenty “thanks for your comments, love, random unknown” emails every day they’ll quickly stop writing them and start sending form rejections instead.

If you get an acceptance, however, then of course you should respond.

Where to submit?

You could search in Google or Yahoo, but its far easier to just use a listing site. For the most part I write speculative fiction (fantasy/horror/sci-fi) so my primary resource is Ralan. Another good once, which includes mainstream magazines, is Duotrope Digest (although I notice you now how to pay a subscription - it was free back when I was using it). There might be others, but these are pretty much the only two I used.

Now, it’s just a matter of opinion, but for anyone planning a career in writing I personally think it’s a waste of time to submit to magazines offering only exposure/token or minimal pay, basically anything less than 3c/word. I spent years submitting to and being published by tiny little magazines, and I used to get really excited, even though only six people were every going to read it, the editor, me, and the four other writers included in the same issue. I had this grand idea that I would sell novels if I only got enough exposure in small press magazines.

There are a number of flaws in this plan:

1.      No one reads small press magazines except the editor, the included writers and (if you’re lucky) your family and friends.

2.      They’re not very prestigious.

3.      Most of them are run by other unknown writers so their judgment on what is good is negligible at best.

4.      They tend to fold/disappear without warning, sometimes shutting down the website completely, so that there’s no record of you ever having been published there.

5.      They don’t always pay you or send contributors copies, regardless of what they might promise. In short, they're incredibly unreliable.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Some small press magazines are well run, always respond personally and actually pay you. They're very much in the minority though, in my experience.

However getting into a pro/semi-pro magazine is a different. For starters, the money is actually decent if you’re prolific and sell frequently. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction pays 6 – 9c/word. On a 5000 word story that’s $450, which would pay my rent for a month, and they accept stories up to 25,000 words. At 5c/word that's $1250, also known as decent pay. Plus, people actually read big magazines and they have prestige. The year I was in Weird Tales it won a Hugo Award for best semi-pro magazine. In the genre fiction world that’s a big deal. I wasn’t even on the cover of the magazine I was published in but Ann Vandermeer, the editor at the time, sent me a photo of the trophy and a note of thanks for being in the magazine. That was almost as awesome as being published in it.

Getting in a small press magazine might count as a “publishing credit”, and for years I collected them with pride, but getting in a major magazine can make you famous.

How likely is it that you’ll be accepted?

That depends on how good you are and how well your fiction fits with what the editor wants. You need to write well. If you suck, you probably won’t sell anything, which is why I’d suggest only submitting your best stuff and keeping the rest for self-published anthologies, but to be honest, if you suck you won't sell anything if you self-publish either and would be better off spending your time practicing (see my previous post about how to sell ebooks). Also, with the big magazines they’re trying to make money. If you’re a bestselling writer they’re far more likely to accept you than if you’re an unknown. However, they all frequently publish new writers because part of what they’re about is finding new talent, but your work needs to be outstanding. For that reason it also helps to keep it shorter. If you’re an unknown its way easier to sell something of 2000 words than something of 10,000, because they can slot you neatly into the back third of the magazine while saving the bulk for big name writers. In general I keep my stories in the 2000 to 6000 range. In general, though, even if you’re good, expect a lot of rejection. My average overall was about 10 rejections per acceptance, but that was for small presses. For major magazines it was more like 150-1. Those odds might not be for everyone, you have to make the decision based on how good you think your stories are.

Also, it’s worth remembering that everything the magazine selects is the editor’s personal choice. You might have written an outstanding story but it wasn’t quite what the editor wanted, so you get a form rejection. Don’t give up. Have confidence in your work and submit it somewhere else.

Is submitting to magazines a good idea for you?

That depends on what kind of person you are. For starters, you need to patient. While some magazines will get back to you within a couple of days, others will take months. Even now I get the odd rejection letter/email show up and it’s been more than a year since I submitted anything. And even if it is accepted, it might be a year before it's published. That's just the way the industry works; its very different to being published by a traditional publisher. In general, the bigger the magazine the longer you'll wait for publication. However, the bigger the magazine, the less likely they'll fold suddenly. I had no less than three pro sales never show up because the magazine - usually some ambitious small press - folded before the first issue ever reached print. THAT is frustrating ...

Also, be aware of the costs. While most magazines now allow email submissions, a few of the big ones still require paper copies. This can get expensive if you submit a lot, so make sure you think you’ve got a real chance before doing it.

It helps if you have a lot of stories. Waiting on one story can be frustrating. At one point I had over 40 stories out for submission at the same time so they were all coming and going. Keep all the info in a spreadsheet. Unless a magazine says otherwise, give them about six months. If they don’t get back to you, check they received your submission and also check they haven’t folded. This was something I found frustrating with the small presses – I’d wait several months for a response, go to the website and find the magazine had shut down. Sometimes they don’t even say why, they just go inactive. This is why Ralan is such a good site – it regularly checks for inactivity and a site that isn’t responding is moved to the Dead Markets page.

So, to summarize (because I’ve prattled on for almost 2000 words on this …!), if you’re consistently producing high quality short stories you could consider it as an option. Be aware of what it takes, though. You’ll go through a lot of frustration, but there is money to be made and prestige to be gained if you’re successful. And if you do sell something, you'll get your rights back within a year or so anyway so you can still self-publish it in the future.

As always, comments/questions are welcome.

Chris Ward

April 5^th 2013

Goals, goals, goals ... OR ... How to motivate yourself

I generally write this blog for readers of my books (and anyone else who wants to follow the madness) but I've recently had a few indie authors get in touch with me and one thing I've found that many people have in common when they start out is issues with movitivation.

Just as a disclaimer - I'm a lazy bastard. Doing something hardcore like getting up at 5 a.m. in mid-winter to write for two hours before work just isn't going to happen. In general I'd much rather surf Facebook or mess around on YouTube than be productive. I'd been scrapping around for years writing a book here and a book there without ever really getting anywhere.

On the 24th of January 2012, I entered the world of self-publishing for the first time with a short story called Forever My Baby. I was five days shy of my 33rd birthday, and after fifteen years of collecting rejection slips from agents and publishers I decided to give it a crack on my own.

I had seven novels and roughly eighty short stories already written, in various states of repair. I knew that I couldn't just rely on the backlist, though, I would need new material.

When I first pressed that self-publish button I was hellbent on eventually making writing my career. I knew I had the talent - I'd sold thirty odd short stories to magazines, two of them professionally, and Tube Riders came within a whisker of getting an agent - but whether I would have the dedication and the business sense to get anywhere on my own was another thing entirely.

Prior to self-publishing, my writing motivation was at an all time low. In 2011, for example, I wrote perhaps 20,000 words. That's nothing.

When I first started self-publishing, I concentrated on getting out the backlist, a few short stories, a collection, and then Tube Riders in March. The rest of the time I spent doing things like playing around on Twitter and emailing bloggers. In June I decided I needed new material.

Since June 20th last year I've written 325,000 words. It would probably be a lot more but for the last month I've done nothing but editing.

That's the equivalent of three full novels, or roughly a novel every three months. There are guys I know writing a novel a month but those are God-like levels. Three to four novels a year is a pretty solid output for an average mortal like me.

How?

It's an easy answer - goals.

I have dozens of little goals, and each one of them is important, but I don't want to talk about me, I want to talk about what you - the starting out writer - can do to motivate yourself.

The first and foremost rule of setting goals is to keep them attainable. Set yourself stupidly difficult goals and you'll spend all your time frustrated.

As example of a bad goal - last November I was feeling all confident so I took on NaNoWriMo. I took it a step further - I tried to write a 50,000 novel from scratch while carrying on with all my other stuff.

It was a bridge too far.

I started out okay, but a week in my computer broke. I lost 10,000 words, most of them on my NaNo. I started out again, but it just wasn't to be - I had another computer crash and lost another 5000. You guessed it - that was my NaNo. I tried a third time but my motivation was done and I quit. And all the while I was wasting time trying to force myself to rewrite a novel that I was force-writing in the first place, I lost ground on all my other stuff.

Big mistake.

Keep your goals simple.

Wordcounts

Wordcounts are the easy one. If you struggle to write 1000 words a day but can quite easily get 600 - 700, set your goal at 500. That way, you'll easily attain it and you'll feel good about yourself. If you set your goal at 1500 and you only make 1200, even though you've actually achieved more, you'll feel like you haven't.

Make a big spreadsheet, and every time you start a new work in progress, put it in and keep a daily tally of the wordcount. Don't limit it to daily, either - have monthly and yearly targets plus targets for each work. If you're like me and usually have five or six different WIPs on the go all at the same time, you'll find that you'll always be within 100 - 200 words of one target or another. Keep pushing to get that extra 100 - 200 words down and then you'll see another little target to aim for. I can easily get 2000 words down by aiming for these little targets.

One other little thing that I cannot say often enough - if you can't touch type, LEARN. It's the one single most useful skill I have. People tell me my writing has really good rhythm - that's because I can type it almost as quickly as I think it. If you're plodding away with two fingers doing ten words a minute - get a program off the internet or take a course. You won't regret it. It takes time to learn - after doing a course in my final year of school - I spent six months with a tea towel draped over my hands while forcing myself to use the correct fingers for each key. It was brutally frustrating, but so, so worth it. So, one more time LEARN TO TOUCH TYPE. Don't um and ah, and mutter about how difficult it is when you start out ... JUST DO IT. Trust me on this ...

Publications

Once you've started publishing, set publication goals. Remember to keep them realistic. For example, in 2012 I published 21 items - two novels, one short story collection, two novellas, one novel split into three and a bunch of short stories. My aim for the end of 2013 is to hit 40. I just published item number 25 and I have nos 26, 27, 28 and 29 in the can and ready to go. It'll be a push but with a handful of short stories I should make it. My target for 2014 will probably be 50 - by the end of next year I'll have a lot less backlog and will be relying mostly on new material. Remember - as a self-published author you're not just relying on only new material - you can bump up your publication count by creating packages or bundles. For example, if you have ten short stories, there's no reason why you can't have two collections of five, an omnibus of ten, and then each story individually, all at different prices. Remember, this is business. I don't agree with ripping people off but what you're doing is offering purchasing options while increasing your visibility. Buyers choose whether they want to buy something. As long as your description accurately matches what they're buying, you're not doing anything wrong.

My goals are pretty high but I consider them attainable. Remember to set your own - for example a short story every two months, or a novel every six months, or one novel and two short stories a year. Keep your targets within what you are confident you can achieve.

Marketing Goals

You can pick and choose what these are, depending on your preferred forms of marketing. If you use Facebook a lot, then you can aim at building up your number of likes. I'm currently aiming for 500, mostly by using Facebook ads to target possible readers and then engaging the people that join up as much as possible to make them stay ... for a comprehensive breakdown on how to use Facebook for marketing, study and memorise every word of this excellent post by a good writing buddy of mine, John Daulton. That is the blueprint to using Facebook as an author.

Twitter, also is another one that authors often use. I'm not a big fan, but setting follower goals or tweet goals can be useful. Personally I've had little success through Twitter, mainly because I hate it, but some people swear by it.

Goodreads is my favorite place on the net for marketing. There are tons of things you can do there - set up groups, run events, giveaways, all sorts. One stat I keep an eye on and try to improve is how many users have my books on their to-read shelves. You can get on loads of these by doing paperback giveaways. My target for 2013 is 2000 unique users. Currently it's 1082, but I should make it if I do perhaps one giveaway - of a single book at a time - every two months. This is one of those things that you won't see an immediate sales bump for, but it's part of visibility and its that whole "speculate to accumulate" thing. I currently put about 80% of what I earn into marketing and book stuff - covers, formatting, editing, proofreading.

When you start out, it's best to concentrate most on writing rather than marketing. This post by the very successful thriller writer Robert J. Crane basically sums up why. In short, if you write a book that someone likes, you want them to have a bunch of others to choose from. It's possible to blow up and be a bestseller with one book, but it's rare. You're far more likely to have steady success across ten books.

Sales Targets

My personal favorite - this is where you get the cash. In theory ... Again, be realistic. If you have just one short story out you might be lucky to make a sale a month. I've been there. I have shorts out now that haven't sold a single copy in six months.

As always, keep them reasonable. Of course, when I published Tube Riders last March, I was hoping to have sold 10,000 copies by the end of the year. It didn't happen - but that doesn't mean it won't sell 10,000 this year, or next year. However, putting your money on a sudden boom like this is unrealistic. They happen, but not often. It's far better to look at your overall trends and aim for a gradual improvement as you put your books out.  By August or September last year my target was a sale a day - and it was a struggle, but they gradually came (mostly from hammering Amazon free promos). This year my aim is 100 sales/month. I've managed it four months in a row, mostly through endless free and bargain book promos, some of which are costing me money. Again, speculate to accumulate. If you're a real writer you're in this for the long haul - building up repeat customers over time is of paramount importance.

Long Term Goals

So, what do you want from all this? Do you want to be a pro, or do you just want to make a bit of cash for a year or two? It's all up to you, of course, but again here's another opportunity to set targets.

Mine, of course, are huge. I started this just shy of my 33rd birthday and my goal is to be doing this for a living by the time I'm 40. Seven years. In the interim, my three year goal is to be making $500 a month. I'm currently making about $200, although most of that is going back into the business. I'm not getting rich yet. Still, got to start somewhere ...

As always, look at what you think you can achieve, and keep your goals realistic. I know writers who've been able to quit their day jobs within six months, but out of half a million or so self-published writers that really is like being struck by lightning. It might happen, but it probably won't, so plan according to what you think is attainable.

Well, my hands are getting tired from typing all this, and I apologise for not being one of those bloggers who breaks up blocks of endless text with cute pictures - I could put some book covers in but I think you've seen all those already ... I hope some of you out there find this useful. Feel free to add any comments or link to this blog anywhere you like and if I think of any more information to add I'll update the blog as I get to it. Most of it is pretty basic stuff but you're building your career from the ground up after all ...

Chris Ward
March 23rd 2013

Tube Riders free promo early results

The Promo

I previously ran a free promo on Tube Riders in October that saw it reach #76 overall in the free rankings with just over 3700 downloads in the US and another 600 or so elsewhere.  The result was roughly 60 sales/borrows (I count borrows in with sales as I receive more or less the same amount of payment for them) over the following month, before it fell off a cliff at the 30-day mark.

In the previously seven months Tube Riders had sold roughly 30 copies, so a bump of 60 was significant for me, even though my highest number in a 24 hour period was just 4.

I scheduled my next free run for December 20th to 22nd, hoping that my book would hit the Also-bought lists on Amazon around Christmas Day (last time, I had maybe just one sale in the 48 hours post-free).

My promo was again moderately successful, getting picked up on one biggish site (Freebooksy, the same as last time) and it shifted 3300 copies overall, just over 3000 of those in the US.  I'm fully aware that a book such as mine has only limited mass market appeal - it isn't in the romance genre, doesn't feature good-looking vampires or angsty teenagers, for example, plus there is a scary guy on the cover - so it's unlikely to ever go really high up the free lists.  Still, it topped a couple of genre lists (including one in Germany) so I was relatively happy although not expecting a big post-free sales peak.

Factors against me were -

a) I had less downloads than last time

b) ebook numbers are growing by roughly 1000 a day

c) it's Christmas, and more people than usual will be doing promos

The Results

After Tube Riders came off promo I was hoping for about 20 to 30 sales over the coming month.  Possibly a couple more because of Xmas.  However, after just under four days I've already beaten the total from the whole of October.  Considering that up until December 22nd I'd sold 12 copies total in the whole month, that is a significant bump.  I've reached my highest rankings ever in both the US and the UK.

Obviously Christmas has played its part.  However, considering there must be far more books all vying for the same sales, in addition to the fact that I gave away less than last time, my ever-analytical mind has turned to considering other possible factors that may or may not have had a significant impact.

a) obviously it's Christmas

b) Tube Riders has more reviews than before - 13, compared to 6 when it did its last free run.  The more reviews there are the more popular a book appears to be.

c) Some of the reviews are negative.  I don't really worry too much about reviews because everyone is entitled to their opinion and reviews are not really for me but for other readers, but I think a couple of negative reviews actually provide a bit of balance.  I'm always suspicious of a book that has ten or twenty straight five-star reviews.

d) I had already given away a bunch on a previous promo so perhaps they were logged into the system somewhere, giving it a higher bump this time around.

e) it's dark and cold outside and the book has a scary cover.  I don't know, but I seem to get a lot of sales around midnight!

f) I've kept the price the same.  Last time I juggled it a bit - moving it up to $5.99, putting it down to 0.99c for a bit.  This time I've kept it at a steady $3.99 in the US and whatever that translates to elsewhere.  I'm pretty much an unknown writer, however I think anything less makes it look cheap for what it is (it's 600 pages) while anything more would cause people to hesitate longer.  I don't know.  It's selling at that price so it's staying at it for now.


I can't prove or disprove any of the above, and I won't make any predictions on future sales.  What it does do is give me confidence in knowing that with enough visibility there are people out there that will buy my book in decent numbers.  I'm certainly not giving up the day job any time soon but as I intend to publish many, many more books over the next few years this is certainly a stepping stone in the right direction.

CW
27 Dec 2012

The Tube Riders - Free promo 20th Dec - 22nd Dec

Tube Riders news

Back in October I issued The Tube Riders as a Kindle free promo on Amazon, shifting just over 4300 copies and taking it as high as No.1 in free sci-fi, No.2 in free fantasy, and No.76 overall.  If you missed out last time you have another opportunity to grab a free copy of this future masterpiece.

Read it, enjoy it, and if you like it tell your friends.  The sequel, The Tube Riders : Exile, is a little over half finished and  I'm currently shooting for a summer 2013 release.  I could push it through quicker but I don't like to rush these things.  Part three, and so far what I'm considering the final part, The Tube Riders : Revenge, will be a sci-fi epic on a scale you've not seen before.  Trust me.  It's already part drafted and it's just monstrous.

I'm not planning to extend the series beyond three volumes for the simple reason that there is other stuff I want to write, and I'm not one of these writers who strings a series out just to get readers to part with their money.  There will be three books, all will be long, all will be non-stop action.

However.

It's a big story.  There will likely be other Tube Riders stuff at some point.  I'm currently working on a spin-off novel, titled either Tube Riders : The Hunters or Tube Riders : Contraband, depending on what day of the week it is.  This features an almost entirely different set of characters, some of whom will feature in part three.  The plot is a lot darker (oh, how I love dark plots!) but it will probably be essential reading before you read part 3.  And one last thing - it's epic.

So, back to what I was talking about - Tube Riders is FREE from Dec 20th to Dec 22nd.  Tell your friends, tell people you don't like.

Get a free copy of Part 2

And one last thing.  I love reviews, but while they're not so important to me (I know the book is awesome already!) they're very important for visibility, attracting new readers and generally becoming successful.  Therefore, I have a little preposition for you.

Anyone who writes an honest review of Tube Riders on Amazon can have either a free ecopy of Tube Riders : Exile when it's released, or a free ecopy of either The Man Who Built the World or Ms Ito's Bird & Other Stories.  Take your pick.

Let me just emphasize the word HONEST.  I'm an honest writer and I like honest readers.  As long as your review is genuine then I'll quite happily send you a copy, even if you don't like the book (however, if you don't like it you probably won't want a free copy of part 2) and you only give me a star or two.  If you just write "this books sucks, now give me a free copy of part 2", I'll likely tell you where you can stick your free copy.  However, write a genuine opinion and you get a free book.  Tell me why it sucks.  That's it.

So, one more time:

Write a review of Tube Riders on Amazon and get a free ecopy of Part 2 or a free ecopy of one of my other longer works.  To prove you've done it, send an email to thetuberiders at gmail dot com.  That's it.  I'd love to offer paperbacks but I'm poor, so this is only for ebooks, sorry.

And here's that badass cover and the link -

 

FREE DEC 20th - 22nd

And don't forget to sign up for the New Releases mailing list so that you'll know when the next book comes out.

Okay, over and out.

CW

17th Dec 2012

10 Tips for New and Busy Writers

Okay, I was giving some tips in a forum the other day and thought I’d write them all down in one post for people to reference.  These tips will mostly be useful for beginning writers, busy writers or those who just can’t find the muse, but maybe there will be some info in there for pros to agree with as well.  Of course, these are just my opinions, so you can take them or leave them as you see fit.  I hope that everyone will find at least a couple of things useful.

1.    Kill the internet

Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it, just do it.  I defy anyone who claims they can write well with an internet connection on the same computer.  If they can, they’re a stronger-willed person than me because I really can’t.  I’ve written 125,000 words since I killed the internet on my wife’s old laptop in mid June and adopted it as my main writing computer.  Some of you retired/stay at home/machine-gun writer folks might think that’s nothing, but that’s my most productive period EVER, plus, with working full and part time, looking after a wife and cat, rocking out in a band and managing a cricket club, I rarely get more than an hour or two to write per day.  I can directly correlate the last time I was heavily productive to the last time I had a computer with no internet on it.  That was seven years ago.  That’s an awful lot of writing I didn’t do in exchange for mostly useless web browsing.  I may live to regret it, or I may have pulled it back again just in time.  If you like the internet, have two computers (in different rooms).  But one more time, if you like writing, kill the internet.  No talking.  JUST. DO. IT.  No excuses either, no “Well, it’s my only computer and I need the internet …” whiny type things.  Save it.  You don’t need much power to write.  You can pick up a secondhand 512MB laptop with Word 2003 for less than $100.  Then all you need is a cheap flash drive to transfer your work to your power machine when you want to publish, format or do any of the other stuff.  No excuses.

2.    Stop watching TV

How much do you enjoy watching those chat shows, soap operas, game shows, football matches?  You’re allowed to watch some TV, of course, but have a think about how much you actually watch because you’re interested in the program, and how much of what you watch is just boredom browsing.  Stop doing the latter, and stop doing it right now.  All the other things I could say about this are covered in point 1.

3.    Value that fifteen minutes

One for the busies, this.  So, you’ve got some stuff on after work that you just can’t get out of, and when you get back you’ll be tired, but do you have time to jump on to the computer for fifteen minutes before you go out, or just before you go to bed?  How about before you eat breakfast?  You don’t need to set aside an entire evening to write.  Fifteen minutes before work, when you get home and before you go to bed, and you’ll have 1000 words a day down.  And that is three novels a year.  Some people might say that you can’t get into a story that quickly, but the fact is, that doing it a little and often will keep the plot fresh in your mind throughout the day.  You’ll find yourself thinking about scenes while you’re at work, or lying in bed, or in the pub with your mates, and when you jump into that short fifteen minute session you’ll find you have so much more to write.

4.    Set goals/targets, and push yourself to stick to them

I’m a killer for deadlines/targets.  I literally can’t work without them.  Back in June, I decided, based on a blog I read, to try to write 52 short stories in a year.  I set up a spreadsheet to keep track of everything and then got to work.  That quickly morphed into 1000 words a day but I stuck to it.  It’s very important to set goals within your means, though.  1000 words a day is easy for me.  For others it might be 3000, or just 500.  Set a goal well within your limits and then every time you beat it you’ll feel like you’re cruising and anything else you write during that period will be a bonus.  I wrote 57,000 words in the third month of my challenge, but I didn’t increase my target because I’d be pushing myself too much and there’s nothing that kills motivation more than failure.  Regardless of what my final tally is, at the beginning of the next month I just add another 30,000 words and get to work trying to top that.

5.    Don’t overcomplicate things

I read a lot of posts asking about the best writing software and filing programs to keep notes, particularly from new writers.  That often says to me that people are looking for shortcuts to getting the work done.  You should write with as little distraction as possible, and, particularly at the draft stage, just get those words down.  I use Word to write, then an Excel spreadsheet to keep note of the major characters and what happens in each chapter.  I usually don’t do this until I’ve finished the first draft, though.  Again, different things work best for different people, but I find if I’m spending too long typing details into Excel I lose track of the story.

6.    Plotting is your friend, but don’t overdo it

Stephen King is the most famous advocate for not plotting your books in advance, but while I love his writing his books tend to ramble on and he’s not well known for great endings (I’m not dissing him – I’d kill to be half as good!), but particularly when you’re a newcomer it’s always useful to have a general idea of where you want the story to go.  When I write, I’ll generally write a couple of lines down for each of the next four or five chapters so that when I come to the page I know more or less what I want to happen.  Quite often I go off on a tangent or things change, but there is nothing worse than sitting down and not knowing what is supposed to happen in the remainder of a scene.  Again, plotting is something you can do in your head on a bus on the way to work, or in a notepad sitting quietly beside you on your desk at the bank.

7.    When “in public” as it were, act professionally at all times

Okay, this is not so much about the craft but is something that has frustrated me a lot recently and is rife in self-publishing.  When you put your work out there for people to buy, you cease being an anonymous person typing on a keyboard and you become potentially a professional writer.  Therefore, you should act like it.  This involves complaining about reviewers and starting arguments with other writers on internet forums (or in public, but at least the rest of us don’t have to read it then!).  If someone slams your writing – particularly your mechanics (grammar, spelling, word choice, etc) see it as a free lesson.  Take a good look at what you do and see if you can make it better.  So many people think self-publishing is a way to a quick buck.  It’s not.  Even apparently overnight successes had to learn their craft.  You have to too, there’s no way around it.  Don’t start talking about getting someone to ghost write it, or search for a really good editor to rewrite your paragraphs, learn how to do it yourself.  Editors and proofreaders should be painting your house, not trying to build it from a jumble of bricks you’ve dumped in front of them.  Read grammar books if you have to, but most of all read other novels and think about the flow, the sentence structure, the way the dialogue works.  Then get back to work on your own stuff.  Don’t thank the reviewer or bitch at them, because their review is not for you, it’s for other readers.  That doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it.

And on starting arguments – just don’t.  Self-publishing is not a school playground, it’s not about jostling for the first go on the slide.  If you’re childish enough to pick arguments with complete strangers because they sell more than you or you think their book sucks and yours doesn’t but no one buys it or whatever … get lost.  Go back to school, learn some maturity and come back in five or six years when you’re ready to try again at acting like a professional.  And if someone starts coming after you, just leave.  Internet forums are not the world, they’re just places where people hang out and shoot the shit.  I used to be a member of an English teacher’s forum and I got into a couple of minor disagreements with the long termers who liked to shoot down all the enthusiastic newcomers and I got tired of it.  It became immediately apparent that I would never win, yet the arguments were encroaching on my thoughts at other times of the day when I wasn’t anywhere near the forum.  So I left (without one of those egotistical, “I’m leaving!” announcements, I might add), and I haven’t posted in the two years since.  Every now and again I pop in to see if there’s anything useful, and around the occasional post with some interesting information there’s the same stuff going on, the old timers shooting down the newcomers, the occasional mouthy newbie getting dragged into a flame war, and I’m glad I don’t participate.  It’s not worth the effort.  I have better things to do.  So, don’t be a dickhead.  It’s a complete, utter waste of time, and at best you won’t win any friends, while at worst people will start spreading your real identify and try to trash your books.

8.    Learn to touch type

Okay, enough about decorum, back to the craft.  You might think that you can type well enough with two fingers, but unless you’re a virtuoso you probably can’t type that fast, relatively speaking.  I learned to touch type at school and it is probably the most useful skill I ever learned.  According to this speed typingtest I can type at 70 words per minute without any errors.  Yeah, so I’m a badass, but I only average about 30 wpm when I’m writing, because obviously I’m not just copying, I’m thinking as well, or rewriting sentences.  If you’re typing less than 20 wpm you should really think about learning to touch type.  You can get free online programs to help you and it’ll really help you make use of those little fifteen minute sessions mentioned earlier.  Be aware that it takes time to learn – even after doing a course at school it took me six months of forcing myself to use a touch typing style when I wrote before I could do it without looking.  It was hard, but so, so worth it.

9.    Have several WIPs on the go at the same time

A lot of people won’t agree with this, but I find it really helps when I get stuck on something to have other works in progress I can go over to.  I have I think six current WIPs, and while I have my favorites I keep everything on a spreadsheet now so that I don’t forget about anything.  Quite often I’ll take an hour and have an update, doing ten minutes on each one, aiming just to get another 100 words or so.  Quite often one will take over and draw me in, but that’s no bad thing.

10.   Be patient

Rome – nor any other city – wasn’t built in a day.  Your book might be an overnight success, but I can guarantee you won’t write it, nor even learn to write well, overnight.  Practice, practice, practice, write, write, write.  Then repeat.  Then, after a minimum of a couple of years – more like four or five – you’ll be writing at a standard that won’t get trashed if you self-publish it.  Neither should you rush your WIPs.  Having deadlines is all well and good, but a book takes time to write itself, to iron out all the creases and fold itself up nicely into something wonderful.  Give it time.  Don’t write when you’re too tired.  Don’t write when you’re drunk.  Don’t write with the TV on in the background (okay, guilty, but it’s the wife watching it and I live in Japan so I can’t understand most of it anyway).  Let your writing breathe, be patient, take your time.  You’ll be better off for it in the long run.

Right, this little post has stretched out into a 2000 word tome, so it’s time to put it to bed and get on with some creativity of my own.

Thanks for reading (if you got this far!) and I hope you find some of these tips useful.

CW

24 September 2012