A Self Publisher Markets and John Scalzi’s latest

This self publishing gig isn’t as easy as it’s cracked up to be.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” you mutter.

There is a world out there willing to give advice, but how good is that advice for your situation?
Who knows?

I can only tell you what works for me…and what doesn’t.

With some success last month, I once again threw myself into the marketing fray. Since I had extra funds in the marketing budget, I decided to advertise two places during my KDP Select free book week.

Robin Reads has been getting buzz lately as an upcoming site still reasonably priced. For $20, I got the number one spot. That was sweet. My criticism of Robin Reads as a reader is that I haven’t figured out how to select out the genres I prefer, so every day I get a list of all types of books which is a pain to page through. I’m not into steamy romances or zombie thrillers…but many readers are.

However, as an author and advertiser, I received fourteen hundred downloads in one day (9/19) for my anchor book, Caught in Time. Not great, but better than I expected for the price. Now usually, a program like that is immediately followed by retail sales of other books in the series.

Crickets.

Added to Robin Reads, I spent $70 at Freebooksy for one day (9/21) where I have had great success, so I was rubbing my hands together in excited anticipation. I got almost a thousand downloads that day. So, over two thousand plus free downloads.

Retail sales? Crickets.

April Aasheim author of The Witches of Dark Root,  reports good luck advertising on Facebook. I’ve been reluctant to try. Anyone having good luck with that?

Meanwhile, The Fussy Librarian sent this out in their newsletter. I thought it interesting. It talks about an article that claims paperback sales are picking up and Ebook sales diminishing.

Seriously? I find that hard to believe. My sales are mostly in EBooks, although paperbacks are readily available.

http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=1fa68a8fb20ec8a1817392970&id=a8f7a5bbb8&e=d0ae4f54e9

This week I’m suggesting a favorite author. John Scalzi is deeply entrenched in traditional publishing in many forms: hardback, paperback, iBook, audio, short story serials etc. He recently came to Powell’s again to promote his new book The End of All Things.

Now there’s a catchy title. It’s available in hardback for $24.99…thank you, big publisher (TOR)…or free at the local library, no taint involved in the free price.

This science fiction soap opera takes place in The Old Man’s Universe, meaning in the universe of his John Campbell Award winning book, Old Man’s War.

True to form, Scalzi does something different. Humans have expanded into space, only to find it populated with thousands of alien species. The Colonial Union formed to protect humans but kept Earth ignorant of aliens so as to provide colonists and soldiers by using consciousness of old people in repurposed bodies.

Many of the alien species threatened by these superhumans formed their own alliances called the Conclave.

Then Earth found out it was being used and got angry. It stopped providing experienced conscious minds and bodies. Without Earth to provide bodies for fighting, the Colonial Union found itself in trouble.

Unbeknownst to the Colonial Union, bitter infighting and politics now threatens to tear the Conclave apart.

The first story of the book is told by the sole survivor of an ambush on the ship the Chandler. A mysterious splinter group known as the Equilibrium has been secretly pitting the Conclave and the Colonial Union against each other. This secret third faction is made up of individuals from the different groups who plan to overthrow all other contenders. While all on The Chandler and any escape pods are ruthlessly killed, Rafe Daquin, recently hired as third pilot on the Chandler, is allowed a consciousness in order to pilot the ship, but he is separated from his body and reduced to operating as a brain in a box.

So your narrator for the first section is a brain in a box who tells the events of the attack and how he thwarts his enemies working without a body.

The second part of the book tells events from the point of view of Hafte Sorvalh, the second most powerful individual in the Conclave, or the advisor to Tarsem Gau, the Conclave leader. This story is political theater at its best and Scalzi is a master of clever dialogue. Subtle nuances of behavior by politicians during a Conclave Congress reveal that this powerful body of aliens has its own problems, and act more like humans than most imagine.

The third section brings in favorite character Harry Wilson from the other books in the series who thwarts an Equilibrium attack and interrogates one of their leaders in an attempt to unravel their plans. This section reads more as a spy thriller.

Scalzi admits to frantically trying to finish writing on time and missing deadlines as he travels around for signings and marketing. It makes the book choppy. You can imagine him writing a section, dusting off his hands and sending it in.

Still…

I enjoy Scalzi’s interesting science and clever dialogue. He makes reading science fiction both fun and enlightening…

And that’s the way it should be.

Fresh Science Fiction and Holiday Sales

The results are in…Are holiday bazaars a good place to sell books at Christmas?

The answer is NO!

Maybe if you had a targeted non fiction book such as one that explored the local area, or highlighted a certain hobby…

But even then, I would say, probably not.

http://kriswrites.com/2011/04/06/the-business-rusch-promotion/ recently wrote a blog that confirmed this conclusion. (Wished I had read it before I signed up) She is a well known prolific Oregonian author writing under several pen names, depending on the genre her book falls into. I have mentioned her before in recent blogs, so check her out.

She said that even when she attended a cross genre book signing event, success wasn’t strong.

Best results for her came at the recent Powell’s book signing last November when thirty popular science fiction writers cozied up around a table directly after the close of Orycon. (Local science fiction/fantasy convention) People came specifically for the books and to meet their favorite science fiction authors. They loaded up.

Even then, she and her husband, Dean Wesley Smith, went for the reunion with old friends, rather than any staggering profit.

So, that marketing avenue investigated and crossed off.

I may, however, attend the Northwest Publishers Convention here in Portland in July. Anyone coming there is coming to buy books, not holiday trinkets.

And I won’t freeze to near death.

I did have time to read a very interesting new scifi book this week called The Humans by Matt Haig. It uses a concept I have thought about myself and have explored a bit in my next book.

The story is about an alien that comes to Earth and assumes the form of Professor Andrew Martin, a famous mathematician who makes a break through discovery on the Reimann Hypothesis that would advance civilization light years giving them immortality and a disease free existence. The leaders of the Vonnidorian civilization feel the humans are not ready for the advances it would bring, so they want to obliterate all traces that would lead anyone to it.

Our alien protagonist is put to the task.

It lands on Earth and assumes the body of Professor Andrew Martin after others have abducted and killed the original. The alien finds himself living in a dysfunctional family whose son has been ignored and the wife put second to the Professor’s most important career. Feelings are bitter and estranged.

His job is to find out who knows about the discovery and erase all knowledge of it by killing them, using his extraordinary alien powers. These powers  enable him to control bodily functions, such as stopping a heart or influencing human thoughts.

Of course, he gets caught up in the lives of the individuals of his family and his fellow mathematicians. What at first he judges as contemptible and ugly, he grows to understand and value.

A very interesting book with comments on what it means to be human as an alien mind stumbles around trying to make sense of our world.

As an example: He leaves his supposed son a list of ninety-seven thoughts on his computer. Number seventy-four says, “A quark is not the smallest thing. The smallest thing is the regret you will feel on your deathbed for not having worked more.”

A quirky book of laughs, pathos, philosophy and action that most will enjoy.

Man and Beast

Recently two books came to my attention that deal with the mingling of humans and beasts. With the coming of Halloween where people adorn themselves in bizarre outfits and prowl the streets like animals, I thought these two unique and edgy new novels would be perfect for my blog.

The first is The Melding of Aeris by an astounding new author, D. Wallace Peach. It tells of a blasted world slowly recovering from science gone wrong. Scientists tinker with drugs to cure diseases and discover Pathway, a distillation that enables the grafting of skin across species.

Soon rich women are smoothing down soft animal fur on their shoulders like epaulets or admiring serpent skin as elegant as black lace over their arms and chest. Men embed the razor teeth of sea-beasts into the bones of their forearms and cover their backs with wolf pelt to enhance their appearance.

Then they bear children, and the next generation arrives as monsters; creatures created from the vanity of their parents.

Aeris, child of such altered parents, hides in shame in his father’s castle covered by serpent skin and hideous to gaze upon. He longs to look human.

However, his father is rich and uses his influence to get him human skin. Happy at first, Aeris soon learns the dirty secret of the murdered flesh he wears. The Bestiary where the animals are cultivated to supply the parts, the Alchemary where the various vials of distillations are kept, all are part of a secret underground operation run by certain powerful people.

Horrified as he discovers the existence of the black market of flesh and animal parts, Aeris joins a ragged rebellion of misfits to destroy the Pathway drug and bring down the Alchemery at all costs.

And the cost is great. Personally.

Well written, with a nice romance, a unique story and lots of action, I enjoyed The Melding of Aeris a lot.

The second book is reminiscent of the Island of Dr. Moreau. In Halfkinds by Andrew Vu, science has also advanced to the extent that the intelligence of certain animals has been elevated so they can use language and live in human society. But all humans are not happy with this arrangement.  The story opens with a prostitute that has raised a family of halfkinds in secret…and then is discovered and murdered. Her “children” flee in fear.

Told from the first person point of view, various viewpoints of the halfkind family are unique and different as each member of this strange inter species family struggles to survive and tell his perspective. They are hunted by an inter species team led by Simon Trevor and although various members of the family group care about others, there is still dissension and betrayal from within the family itself as they run and hide from outside killers.

I found it strange to be in the first person viewpoint of a half frog, half human.

Not to mention the lion and others.

Normally, this would not be a book I would read. It did contain the thoughtful concept of: if you don’t have a chance for a fair life, should you be brought into the world in the first place? It also portrayed a far future where intelligence across species has been enhanced significantly.

This is the first book of a series. I looked at several reviews as I wasn’t a fan, but a number of people really enjoyed the twists and turns in the plot while others didn’t like it at all. So, I finally decided at least to mention this very different story.

So, you’ll either love it or hate it.

But Halloween is approaching, where bizarre beings haunt our streets and sidewalks during the dark of night and beg on strangers’ doorsteps to feed a candy addiction.

Trick or Treat.