Tag Archives: Barnes & Noble

MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!! *

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Emergency, Loyal Readers!  A Sword Into Darkness has escaped the confines of the Amazon Kindle and has been seen getting some Nook-ie over at Barnes and Noble, but no one over there knows ASID like you or I do.  To them, ASID is just this mysterious stranger, perhaps there to increase the quality of their catalog, perhaps there to punch out the literary fiction bestseller, have its way with the romance blockbuster, and steal the children’s books’ lunch money.  They just don’t know how awesome and deserving a time ASID is, and I need your help to tell them!

So, if you’ve been waiting to get A Sword Into Darkness when it became available on epub, or you’re a die-hard Barnes and Noble supporter, or you love the Nook devices or apps, NOW is the time to buy and read and enjoy some hard SF, military sci-fi, space opera, technothriller adventure goodness!  (And then leave a review to let all the more timid readers know.)

Or if you’ve already read ASID when it was exclusive to Kindle (there’s about 15,000 of you, tee-hee!), and you want to share your experience with the purveyors of that Other Big Book-seller, then by all means, log into Barnes and Noble and leave a new review, Or, for those 171 reviewers who have given me an average 4.5 stars on Amazon, if you are an uber-fan, you can re-review me all over again for the competition (a forlorn hope, I realize).  Honest reviews are appreciated, effusive praise is adored.

ASID is also available on Smashwords now as well, but the file transfer and formatting over there is just NASTY.  I don’t recommend that one yet.  The use a file converter they call the Meatgrinder to turn your manuscript into an ebook, and it is notoriously un-user friendly.  I would pull it completely, but they offer dire warnings against doing that.  I’m trying to get the file fixed and replaced, but work/life has intervened, so I’ll get to it when able.  Soon, though.  I promise.

In other news, REMO has enjoyed modest sales over on Amazon Kindle Direct.  It’s been up for about a week, sold about a 100 copies, and until late last night, had not gotten any reviews.  Mr. Tom Walsh so loved “Dogcatcher Blues” that he left a little 5-star care package for me on that story alone!  Thank you, sir.  I’m so glad you enjoyed it.  But I do need more reviews there.  It is harder, I think, to sell people on an unknown author’s short story collection or anthology than it is to just sell ’em a full novel.  So:  buy REMO, read REMO, review REMO.  Purty please.

Aaaand, lastly, Baen Books has announced a new Fantasy Adventure Short Story contest to coincide with GENCON, so I’m a-gonna enter!  This will be my first try at fantasy in YEARS, but I think I have a good and unique story idea.  We’ll see if they agree!

Until later, Happy Reading, y’all.

* Yes, I am fully aware that this is posting on May 2, and not on May Day as originally intended.  Life — in the form of a 16 hour work day and a signing appointment at the car dealership THAT WOULD NOT END — conspired to upset my plans.  I am, however, committed to the bit, so please, just roll with it.

That First Step Into the Abyss Is a Doozy

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Hmmm.  I don’t know whether to be proud of myself or angry.

I’ve stuck to my “traditional publishing first” guns since day one, despite the advice of MANY.  Now, with the opportunities to achieve that waning, I . . . wavered.

I just spent the free time of the day reformatting the manuscript for ASID in order to conform to the Nook Press requirements.  Then I tweaked it, wrote a book description, filled in my metadata and publishing info, uploaded a cover, and voila!  A whole damn book, ready to publish.  And it was so EASY!  I wonder if Kindle Direct is just as smooth?  How does the trade paperback on demand thing work?

I can’t hit that Publish button yet though.  I still haven’t heard from Ace yet, and I do still have the ever-dwindling number of books ahead of mine in Baen’s let’s-give-it-a-deeper-look pile.

So how long should I wait?  How long would YOU wait?

 

Foolish Game

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Full disclosure here, but you’ll want to know this now before you get too invested:

I’m an idiot.

Not your standard “drooling on yourself,” “American Idol voter” idiot. No, I’m a traditionalist idiot.

I say this because that’s the only explanation I have when people ask me why the book I wrote isn’t on Kindle. That’s the way of things today, right? Amanda Hocking? Write a novel, post it to Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s sites, hit the market with the right idea at the right time, gather in a few million sales, then get picked up for dead-tree-book distribution and book tours from the major publishing houses. Everyone knows that’s the way the market is heading now, so why have I resisted jumping on the bandwagon to the future? Why have I resisted at least giving myself a shot at building some sales and a reputation?

Well, like I said, I’m an idiot. Big name writers whom I respect still warn against the New Model of publishing, pointing out correctly that for every Amanda Hocking, there are 100,000 also-rans who never sell to anyone other than their close friends and family. Go the self-publishing e-book route and you remove your book from consideration by major publishers and agents UNLESS you happen to strike it big on your own. Start out with the traditional publisher’s and agents’ slushpiles, push the convention networking angle, bide your time and grit your teeth for rejection, well, you’re at least up for consideration. And if it doesn’t work that way, you can still try out Amazon on your own afterward. Just not the other way around.

So, if I finished my book in 2011 and insisted on the traditional route, why am I still in it? It’s been two years! Surely I should be working up a Kindle or Nook edition now! Well, no. Again, because I’m an idiot. The publishing houses want exclusivity while they are waiting to reject your book, on the off chance that if they want it, another publisher hasn’t swooped in and bought it out from under them, thus wasting all the time they put in on it. So, none of what they refer to as “simultaneous submissions.”

And that’s where I’ve been for the last two years. A Sword Into Darkness has been languishing in the Baen Books slushpile for two years, not even looked at by an editor to be formally rejected, much less chosen. I’m not angry at Baen for that. They can’t help the size of their slushpile or the staff they have to go throught it. It would still make me ecstatic to be picked up by them. It’s just the nature of the game as they have set it up.

Well, I’m an idiot, but I’m not a damned fool.

Just prior to publishing this blog — and one of the reasons for its existence — is that I received an invitation to formally go with the New Model under the direction of some writers/mentors that have received significant rewards and sales by that route. I’m still weighing whether or not to totally go with that plan immediately, but I have decided to no longer play totally by the rules. So, last week, I made formal submissions to all the main publishing houses that are open to submissions without an agent (excluding Baen, who already has a copy in their pile). Between paper copies of the whole manuscript, submissions with just the first three chapters you see here, and electronic copies, four of the Big Six publishers have my book, along with an additional mid-list publisher. Five submissions which I will give about six months to respond. If they all reject it or just keep me waiting with no answer, I’ll go the New Model route. And, in between that time, I’ll work on getting an agent, publishing more shorts, writing Echomancer, as well as some other SECRET PROJECTS.

So, wish me luck, and don’t be surprised if you see my book for sale — in some format at least — by the end of the year.