Late August, 8 and 49

This is the last week in August, which means to me and my family, birthdays and anniversary.

Tomorrow, the 29th, my younger brother Me Too, I mean Douglas, turns 48, then on the 31st, mine and Cheryl’s Eighth Anniversary, followed on September 1st by Birthday #49, and then on the 3rd by birthday 14 for Douglas’s middle child Brandon and the 4th by Cheryl’s younger brother Bill’s birthday.

When I grew up, because of the way Labor Day weekend happens to be the first Monday of September, my birthday would sometimes be closed. You could go nowhere because it fell on Labor Day and everything was shut down. Not very fun.

Last weekend we were away and I was not able to write Thursday through Sunday. We went off to my cousin’s wedding. Another event for celebration at this time of the month.

But right before leaving, an idea for a new project hit me:

Genghis Khan’s Rules for (Warriors) Writers

A look at the techniques to make you prepared for being published

in an age where the world of Publishing is beset

by the Horde of Writers who have learned these rules

The Genghis Khan project was finished in first draft today. I will do an excerpt when I release it rather than when today. I plan to go through the second draft this week, as well as the second draft of the 3rd Trolling book. I have renamed this to Trollings Pass and Present. The Bears wasn’t quite right, and there really is a Rollins Pass. Now it becomes a play on word on Past and Present

One of the things my research came up with though is how writers can be larger than life. We know Hemingway was. Did you know that Balzac drank fifty cups of coffee a day? I need to have some quirk or oddity that will become legend when i am gone.

I have done things that I think of larger than life, though I have not done enough. I have been places that others desire and wish to go to and have not had the opportunity to go to. But there is more I want to see. I have been places that I want to see again for I have a different perspective now then i had before.

Hopefully by the end of next weekend we will have a couple more books to put up for publication!

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August of 2011

The Shattered Mirror and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence are both published and selling at various outlets.

Both can be had in trade paperback. And they are both available as ebooks at as many of the outlets on the web as I can get them to. However, the only place anyone is buying them is Amazon for their Kindles? Why is that? Has Kindle really sold that many more units than other devices? Certainly there are more iPads out there then Kindle’s now.

I think it has to do with the storefront. The iBookstore needs a great deal of work to make it as user friendly to find what you are looking for as the Kindle. Or as Amazon where with the push of a button, you get sent your book. Perhaps the iTunes way of selling music does not translate to selling books. Well certainly with my books it does not. That is something that Apple really should look at. They get a piece of every book of mine they sell, through there store, and Amazon just got smart enough to deny them a piece of every book they sell to an iPad/iPhone/iPod user.

Apple used to not be greedy, but something has taken over in the C-Suite there and they make some pretty stupid statements that will stifle some growth instead of give us more power down here at the user level. The cut of 30% of everything sold seems to be part of it.

Should they get a distribution fee for magazine subscriptions? Should they have control over the info of that subscriber? Should they get a cut of a book that is purchased when I am looking at Kindle Reader on my iPhone?

Those points are whole philosophies. And well worth the discussion. Amazon sells a book for $10 promising $7 less a few pennies for the size of the file, to the author. They now have $3 for themselves, but that is exactly the 30% that Apple wants. If Apple wanted 30% of what Amazon share was, then I see that as something that was in the realm of negotiation. What is Amazon doing but giving a page or two to marketing of the book, and some bytes and electricity to delivering That is worth 70% of their 30%. Apple is providing the customer, always worth a finder’s fee. Typically 10% of the initial sale, which is right around that 30% of the 30% that Amazon was keeping.

The Last Bites Phenomena
As of this morning, my clear winner for sales for the month of August is Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence . In fact I am having the best sales ever and I have not really been advertising or twisting arms to generate these sales. I believe the Austenites of the world are finding my book and buying it. Mostly for their kindles. (Of 36 sales to date for August, 34 sales of my work are for the ubiquitous Kindle) I sell ebooks, or rather Regency Assembly Press sells them in 3 varieties, and I label them so:
A Taste
Last Bites
Complete.

A Taste is the first four chapters, Last Bites are the remaining chapters, a much bigger section of the story. Complete I hope is self explanatory. Last Bites, that part of the story without the first four chapters, is outselling the complete version four to 1 and, people are not purchasing enough Tastes to make up for what they are missing. I hope that my readers see that I have disclaimers and labels to show that there are 3 versions to purchase. I hope they will come and purchase the first four chapters.

It is a conundrum though. Will this turn readers off, or do they think that by avoiding those chapters they get into the action more quickly. I hope that any reader missing the first four chapters will come get them at the Kindle Page

Lord and Key
As June started, and July rolled along, and finally here in August, I had been prepping the two books above for publication, and also writing my newest work, which I call Lord and Key. My romance formula, but set in the time of Edwardian England, at the death of Edward and the knowledge that war may be on the way.

Never a pleasant thought, and certainly not something that rational men can always avert. That is part of the premise of my story. There are misunderstandings, as well as characters flawed and imperfect, all seeing if they can be in love, as well as prepare for what is to come. I finished the first draft last weekend and now have to move on to something else.

New Story
I pulled out Starship Troopers, the movie a few days ago and was thinking very much of what my next book was to be. I really have been thinking of a murder mystery set in 1990’s LA around a character who is a Magician. I had this great book in the 70’s about magic and that is one of the research items I think I need. But back to ST. I’m not ready to write the murder mystery just yet.

So with my Novella Short format, I thought of starting on my SCi-Fi Five, which I had planned to be what was being written at this time in any case. A gutsy Figther Pilot on his way to CAG. So a little Wing Commander, Battlestar Galactica and Starship Troopers. We’ll see if I can get this right.

New New Story thoughts and reflections
Sales of my Jane Austen sequel though have me thinking a little differently. Perhaps I should write some 40K word, $2.99 Austenite continuations to augment my sales. It seems to work.

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