Michael also his his own blog at http://beatdownonline.blogspot.jp/ where you can go and hang out.
CW
7th Jan 2012
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Beat Down 3 - Badassaur now available
I'd just like to give a big up to my nine-foot tall alter-ego, the most badass action/comedy writer on the planet, Michael S. Hunter, who released a new novella today. Entited Badassaur!, it's possibly his finest book yet, with more bizarre twists and turns in the name of awesomeness than you can poke a whole DIY store's worth of sticks at. It rocks, it's badass, and it's just $1.49.
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
Plans for 2013
Happy new year everyone from me, Chris Ward, at A Million Miles From Anywhere. January 24th will mark one year in self-publishing for me and of course will see the big "reveal all" post about how well the first year turned out. However, prior to that I thought it would be interesting to focus on the future and think about a few plans for the coming year.
As of today, January 2nd, I have 21 items available on Kindle. These two lovely novels
as well as one collection, two novellas, Tube Riders in three separate parts and a bunch of short stories.
Obviously novels are the big sellers, and while I had hoped to have four online by December I failed, basically because I also have a day job, a wife and a cat to look after and novels take a serious amount of time to edit/format. However, because I was writing towards publication for fifteen years before I started self-publishing, I have A LOT of material in the can, and while some of it is junk (no modesty, it really is) and will never see the light of day, I have enough material that is significantly better than most self-published stuff I read to give me the confidence to eventually publish it. My aim by the end of 2013 is to have 40 items available, which shouldn't be particularly difficult, although probably twenty of those will be short stories.
I have four old novels that will most likely be published eventually, Possession, Hooks, Head of Words and My Perfect Life. Of these, Possession and Head of Words are in the best shape (and the shorter two of the four - Hooks is 193k ...) so I'm looking at a spring release for both of these provided they pass their screening tests.
After that . . . I'm working hard on Tube Riders 2, currently called Exile. The first draft is crawling along, but as of today is sitting at 97k. The problem is that I'm not naturally a series writer - in fact until I wrote the first Tube Riders book in 2009 I had a rule never to write sequels. I liked the first book so much that it's hard to bring the second up to the same level while maintaining the thread of story and the themes that are involved. I'm not one of these people who can churn out trilogy after trilogy, however a lot of indie writers cough up three-book "series" that are actually shorter than the first Tube Riders book on it's own. No wonder I'm not rich. Anyway, I'm tentatively hoping for a summer release.
In addition to this my worst kept secret is that I write comedy/action novellas under the name of Michael S. Hunter. These all come in at about 20k and I've released two so far with a third due this week and a fourth half written. I'm going to write five initially, then bundle them into an overpriced paperback/omnibus edition. I absolutely love writing it because it is just hilarious and I can do what I want in terms of story because in comedy anything goes. Vegetarian zombies anyone? And don't get me started on The Chicken Whisperer or Hell-Yeah-Dorado. The central character is a borderline immortal wrestler, but that's about it for the wrestling part except for some OTT fight scenes. Anyway, while I love writing it unless it takes off I can't really justify the expense of the beautiful covers (see them here). At the same time I've had nearly zero visibility for Part 1 so far. I've tried a couple of promos but it doesn't have any reviews yet so it won't get picked up anywhere big which is what it needs to kick off. However, there'll definitely be five episodes (and maybe a Christmas special ... there's SO much I could do with that!) and more if it starts to pay for itself.
Back to the mainstream stuff, I figure it's about time for another short story collection, so I'm going to put one out in the love/loss kind of vein. It'll be a mixture of new stuff and old stuff, so once I've chosen the stories it'll probably be up in a month or so. Also regarding short stories, I'm looking at getting a paperback done for Ms Ito's Bird and Other Stories. Hardly anyone ever buys it, but it's one of those things that needs to be done as part of building the brand. Audio books are another thing that's also on the horizon, but they cost a fortune to set up and when I'm selling hardly any ebooks let alone paperbacks, its really not worth the effort right now.
Looking much further ahead, I have a couple more projects in mind. One is the romance novel I'm working on. It's gone beyond halfway so will likely be finished at some point. It's a simple affair, but if I deem it worthy of publication it'll be under a pen name that I'll likely tell no one about in case it tanks. I've never written romance before so I don't know how well it'll stand up.
Beyond that, I'm also hopeful of finishing off my Tube Riders-related novella, which is also ticking along. I have a tentative plan to expand it into a short companion novel of around 80k, but it'll probably be winter before I get to it. After that I want to write another science fiction novel, based on an old short story, called Changing Sides. It deals with age segregation.
Okay, so more or less, here's my rough publication schedule for the coming year -
Spring -
Possession (novel)
Head of Words (novel)
Beat Down (as Michael S. Hunter, 3 novellas)
Together Alone: Tales of Love and Loss (collection)
Summer -
Tube Riders : Exile
Autumn/Winter
Tube Riders - The Hunter (short novel)
Beat Down Xmas Special (as Michael S. Hunter, novella)
In more general plans, I hope to write at least 500,000 new words and expand my social reach a bit, for example 1000 Facebook likes, etc. I'll probably fail miserably to make those targets, but we'll see. In the meantime, back to the writing desk ...
CW
2nd Jan 2013
As of today, January 2nd, I have 21 items available on Kindle. These two lovely novels
as well as one collection, two novellas, Tube Riders in three separate parts and a bunch of short stories.
Obviously novels are the big sellers, and while I had hoped to have four online by December I failed, basically because I also have a day job, a wife and a cat to look after and novels take a serious amount of time to edit/format. However, because I was writing towards publication for fifteen years before I started self-publishing, I have A LOT of material in the can, and while some of it is junk (no modesty, it really is) and will never see the light of day, I have enough material that is significantly better than most self-published stuff I read to give me the confidence to eventually publish it. My aim by the end of 2013 is to have 40 items available, which shouldn't be particularly difficult, although probably twenty of those will be short stories.
I have four old novels that will most likely be published eventually, Possession, Hooks, Head of Words and My Perfect Life. Of these, Possession and Head of Words are in the best shape (and the shorter two of the four - Hooks is 193k ...) so I'm looking at a spring release for both of these provided they pass their screening tests.
After that . . . I'm working hard on Tube Riders 2, currently called Exile. The first draft is crawling along, but as of today is sitting at 97k. The problem is that I'm not naturally a series writer - in fact until I wrote the first Tube Riders book in 2009 I had a rule never to write sequels. I liked the first book so much that it's hard to bring the second up to the same level while maintaining the thread of story and the themes that are involved. I'm not one of these people who can churn out trilogy after trilogy, however a lot of indie writers cough up three-book "series" that are actually shorter than the first Tube Riders book on it's own. No wonder I'm not rich. Anyway, I'm tentatively hoping for a summer release.
In addition to this my worst kept secret is that I write comedy/action novellas under the name of Michael S. Hunter. These all come in at about 20k and I've released two so far with a third due this week and a fourth half written. I'm going to write five initially, then bundle them into an overpriced paperback/omnibus edition. I absolutely love writing it because it is just hilarious and I can do what I want in terms of story because in comedy anything goes. Vegetarian zombies anyone? And don't get me started on The Chicken Whisperer or Hell-Yeah-Dorado. The central character is a borderline immortal wrestler, but that's about it for the wrestling part except for some OTT fight scenes. Anyway, while I love writing it unless it takes off I can't really justify the expense of the beautiful covers (see them here). At the same time I've had nearly zero visibility for Part 1 so far. I've tried a couple of promos but it doesn't have any reviews yet so it won't get picked up anywhere big which is what it needs to kick off. However, there'll definitely be five episodes (and maybe a Christmas special ... there's SO much I could do with that!) and more if it starts to pay for itself.
Back to the mainstream stuff, I figure it's about time for another short story collection, so I'm going to put one out in the love/loss kind of vein. It'll be a mixture of new stuff and old stuff, so once I've chosen the stories it'll probably be up in a month or so. Also regarding short stories, I'm looking at getting a paperback done for Ms Ito's Bird and Other Stories. Hardly anyone ever buys it, but it's one of those things that needs to be done as part of building the brand. Audio books are another thing that's also on the horizon, but they cost a fortune to set up and when I'm selling hardly any ebooks let alone paperbacks, its really not worth the effort right now.
Looking much further ahead, I have a couple more projects in mind. One is the romance novel I'm working on. It's gone beyond halfway so will likely be finished at some point. It's a simple affair, but if I deem it worthy of publication it'll be under a pen name that I'll likely tell no one about in case it tanks. I've never written romance before so I don't know how well it'll stand up.
Beyond that, I'm also hopeful of finishing off my Tube Riders-related novella, which is also ticking along. I have a tentative plan to expand it into a short companion novel of around 80k, but it'll probably be winter before I get to it. After that I want to write another science fiction novel, based on an old short story, called Changing Sides. It deals with age segregation.
Okay, so more or less, here's my rough publication schedule for the coming year -
Spring -
Possession (novel)
Head of Words (novel)
Beat Down (as Michael S. Hunter, 3 novellas)
Together Alone: Tales of Love and Loss (collection)
Summer -
Tube Riders : Exile
Autumn/Winter
Tube Riders - The Hunter (short novel)
Beat Down Xmas Special (as Michael S. Hunter, novella)
In more general plans, I hope to write at least 500,000 new words and expand my social reach a bit, for example 1000 Facebook likes, etc. I'll probably fail miserably to make those targets, but we'll see. In the meantime, back to the writing desk ...
CW
2nd Jan 2013
Saturday, 29 December 2012
Snowboarding!
Took a break from writing today to hit the slopes for the first time this year and the views were spectacular.
These are all from Suginohara, Myoko, in Nigata Pref, Japan. The first few are all from near the top of the gondola, looking out towards Shiga Kogen, I believe.
And then I started to use my Vintage Cam iPhone app! The big mountain on the right is Mount Iizuna (1917m).
A great day. Hopefully they'll be a few more before the season's out.
CW
29 Dec 2012
These are all from Suginohara, Myoko, in Nigata Pref, Japan. The first few are all from near the top of the gondola, looking out towards Shiga Kogen, I believe.
And then I started to use my Vintage Cam iPhone app! The big mountain on the right is Mount Iizuna (1917m).
A great day. Hopefully they'll be a few more before the season's out.
CW
29 Dec 2012
Wednesday, 26 December 2012
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
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
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
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Writing Update - Six months
I didn't post an update on November 20th (five months since the Great Reboot) mostly because around that time I had some computer issues and frustrations were getting the better of me. Unfortunately I've had a similar problem this month to go with lots of formatting issues with older work, so this month is the first I haven't actually hit my monthly target. In any case, here's a stats update on what I've written since June 20th this year.
It could certainly be worse. I missed my six-month target but 243k in six months is pretty solid going. However, in October I had been hoping to break 300k by now.
The biggest problem I have had is with flash drives. I learned the hard way to make sure I back up my work after breaking a flash drive in November. However that was just the start. I actually saved that one, but since then I've had two fail on me and while I've been backing them up more regularly I still lost a bunch of words both times, most notably on my effort at NaNo, which I lost TWICE. In hindsight, taking on an entirely new project for NaNo was a huge mistake, because I overestimated the amount of writing time I would have, plus I tried to push my boundaries by writing in a genre I wasn't familiar with. While this in itself was not a big deal, I spent a lot more time writing it than I spent on more familiar projects. It all started well, then I lost six thousand words. I rewrote it, then lost it again. That kind of bummed me out so I abandoned it, although the whole experience left me feeling a little burned out and it took time to get back the motivation I had previously had.
Then there was the formatting issues I had with the paperback for The Man Who Built the World. I struggled with it for weeks before finally outsourcing it and paying someone else to do it for me, which I should have done in the first place. The sum result was that I failed to get the paperback ready for Christmas, although it should be available shortly.
In other writing, I'm plot-knotted again in Tube Riders, although I'm working through it now. My novella series, Beat Down, suffered from the flash drive failures and I had to rewrite roughly 5000 words on part three, something that was very frustrating because it is very creatively spontaneous and I think a bit of the humour was lost in the rewrite.
Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with what I've got over the last six months. In addition, after reading a blog by a pretty successful writer which encouraged us to get as much product out there as possible because you never knew what would strike a chord with the reader, I went back and took a look at a really old novel, one called Possession, which I wrote when I was 19. It's little more than a straightforward horror story and I have never so much as reread it, but I found it was a lot better than most of the stuff I've read by indie writers so with a couple of solid edits it might be serviceable. So I've started to work on that as well as the edit for a book called Head of Words, which is a (very) black comedy/horror/thriller/thing.
Right, back to it. Have a good Christmas everyone, and I'd be happy to see any comments below. And just a reminder that Tube Riders is currently free, until the 22nd of Dec. Click the links in the sidebar and grab a copy.
CW
21st Dec 2012
| Name | Type | Word Count | Status | |
| 1 | The Ship | Short Story | 3793 | Finished - to edit |
| 2 | Take me Back with You | Short Story | 2528 | WIP |
| 3 | Take me Back with You | Novel | 35303 | WIP |
| 4 | The Lost Train | Short Story | 4352 | WIP |
| 5 | The Other Set of Feet | Short Story | 3749 | Finished - to edit |
| 6 | The Hunter | Novella | 18783 | WIP |
| 7 | Once We Were Children | Short Story | 2513 | Finished - to edit |
| 8 | The Assignment | Short Story | 8802 | Finished - to edit |
| 9 | Never Give Up | Short Story | 5111 | Finished - to edit |
| 10 | Clones | Short Story | 1323 | Edited |
| 11 | Beat Down 1 - Clones | Serial Novella | 19233 | Published |
| 12 | Sunfall | Short Story | 1271 | WIP |
| 13 | The Tube Riders: Exile | Novel | 90629 | WIP |
| 14 | Beat Down 2 - The Heist | Serial Novella | 18533 | Published |
| 15 | Beat Down 3 - Badassaur | Serial Novella | 19699 | Finished - to edit |
| 16 | NaNoWriMo 2012 | Novel | 3714 | WIP |
| 17 | Beat Down 4 - The Sneevla | Serial Novella | 4015 | WIP |
| 18 | Undelivered | Short Story | 358 | WIP |
| Started June 21st | Word Count | 243709 | ||
| Pages (300w/pg) | 812 | |||
| 6 month target (Dec 20th) | (183 days) | 250000 | ||
| Ahead | -6291 | |||
| Total | Month | |||
| One month tally: | 33598 | 33598 | ||
| Two month tally: | 62217 | 28619 | ||
| Three month tally: | 119253 | 57036 | ||
| Four month tally: | 180097 | 60844 | ||
| Five month tally: | 217500 | 37403 | ||
| Six month tally: | 243709 | 26209 | ||
It could certainly be worse. I missed my six-month target but 243k in six months is pretty solid going. However, in October I had been hoping to break 300k by now.
The biggest problem I have had is with flash drives. I learned the hard way to make sure I back up my work after breaking a flash drive in November. However that was just the start. I actually saved that one, but since then I've had two fail on me and while I've been backing them up more regularly I still lost a bunch of words both times, most notably on my effort at NaNo, which I lost TWICE. In hindsight, taking on an entirely new project for NaNo was a huge mistake, because I overestimated the amount of writing time I would have, plus I tried to push my boundaries by writing in a genre I wasn't familiar with. While this in itself was not a big deal, I spent a lot more time writing it than I spent on more familiar projects. It all started well, then I lost six thousand words. I rewrote it, then lost it again. That kind of bummed me out so I abandoned it, although the whole experience left me feeling a little burned out and it took time to get back the motivation I had previously had.
Then there was the formatting issues I had with the paperback for The Man Who Built the World. I struggled with it for weeks before finally outsourcing it and paying someone else to do it for me, which I should have done in the first place. The sum result was that I failed to get the paperback ready for Christmas, although it should be available shortly.
In other writing, I'm plot-knotted again in Tube Riders, although I'm working through it now. My novella series, Beat Down, suffered from the flash drive failures and I had to rewrite roughly 5000 words on part three, something that was very frustrating because it is very creatively spontaneous and I think a bit of the humour was lost in the rewrite.
Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with what I've got over the last six months. In addition, after reading a blog by a pretty successful writer which encouraged us to get as much product out there as possible because you never knew what would strike a chord with the reader, I went back and took a look at a really old novel, one called Possession, which I wrote when I was 19. It's little more than a straightforward horror story and I have never so much as reread it, but I found it was a lot better than most of the stuff I've read by indie writers so with a couple of solid edits it might be serviceable. So I've started to work on that as well as the edit for a book called Head of Words, which is a (very) black comedy/horror/thriller/thing.
Right, back to it. Have a good Christmas everyone, and I'd be happy to see any comments below. And just a reminder that Tube Riders is currently free, until the 22nd of Dec. Click the links in the sidebar and grab a copy.
CW
21st Dec 2012
Monday, 17 December 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 -
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 -
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
Sunday, 9 December 2012
New Covers!
As I get more and more adept at this whole self-publishing thing, I'm constantly trying to improve my products for my readers and to attract more. What I decided to do this week was update all my dog-eared old short story covers to nice new ones.
I have an external cover designer for my novels and while I wish I could do the same for my short stories they just don't sell well enough to warrant the expense and I hope that sooner or later they'll all be price-matched to free anyway.
However, I'm getting a lot better at using designing software myself, so this week I got new high res images for several of my shorts and gave them a bit of a tart up, so to speak.
Here are the results -
.jpg)
I have an external cover designer for my novels and while I wish I could do the same for my short stories they just don't sell well enough to warrant the expense and I hope that sooner or later they'll all be price-matched to free anyway.
However, I'm getting a lot better at using designing software myself, so this week I got new high res images for several of my shorts and gave them a bit of a tart up, so to speak.
Here are the results -
For my collection I just used the original image (okay, the second one - the first one was just a line drawing of a bird) but I sharpened the colors and added a bigger, clearer text.
Forever My Baby has a completely new cover as the old one was one of my last surviving screen-print-from-Word jobs (can't believe I used to do that!). I got a high res pic of a doll against a window and added a neon effect. All of these were done using Picasa 3 Creative Kit, which is a free program I downloaded for iMac. It's not the greatest program in the world but it's not too bad.
This is the original picture of the doll. Very different, don't you think?
I think I posted about Going Underground's new cover the other day, but here it is again. I think it looks awesome with the guy at the end of the tunnel there. Again, just some cropping and colour effects on the picture you see below -
.jpg)
A guy at the end of a tunnel...
Death Depends is the same picture but for some reason I had one with a blue tint kicking around, so I just put some new titles on it. You might notice that most of the fonts are the same - all part of branding! - in this case most of them are one called I Love You from Picasa 3 Creative Kit. Going Underground is something else (I can't remember) while The Cold Pools uses one called Steak(!).
Fallen from the Train is the same as before but with a bit different lighting and font.
Joyriders is just some different titling over a really cool picture of a city. I actually really liked the original picture and almost kept it, but this one is great. I get all these off www.pond5.com, by the way. The highest res ones are $10, although I sometimes use a slightly smaller one which is only $4. Smashwords' recommended cover size is 1600 x 2400 pixels so I resize all my covers to those dimensions now.
The Cold Pools too, is just a cropped picture with some text. I love the colours, and judging by how many free downloads I got during my first two days on Smashwords, readers like it too.
I have a couple more to do but I think these are a lot sharper. What do you think?
CW
9th Dec 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)