Today, I’ve been interviewed by Ben Dixon and Sam Campbell, authors of the Red Dust series of zombie tales.
We talk a bit about writing and I share my contingency plan for a hypothetical zombie apocalypse, which involves this potential hideout and this zombie-proof vehicle, so drop by and say hello.
Send to KindleWell, to be honest it’s not such a new release after all. Instead, this is yet another standalone release of two of the crime shorts found in Murder in the Family for those who don’t want the whole collection.
Payback Time
You don’t want to owe a favour to the mafia, especially not when the boss himself comes to collect. But what could a simple hairdresser like Joe Martin possibly have to offer to the mob?
Gone
A travelling salesman vanishes, leaving behind a wife, two children, countless lonely housewives and his hat floating in a stream. But what really happened to Jack Bryce?
.
For more information, visit the Payback Time page.
Buy it for the low price of 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Casa del Libro, W.H. Smith, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance ebooks and XinXii.
More formats coming soon.
Send to KindleIt all started at Salon, when a writer called John Winters stated that he was a self-publishing failure and also likened self-publishing to masturbation, which naturally did not go down all that well with many indie writers. Never mind that Winters’ novel, a thriller called Murderhouse Blues, is uncommonly expensive for an indie published e-book and appears to have been published only two days before the article went live. Now two days is not a lot of time to decide you’re a failure, though maybe he revamped and republished his book.
At Terrible Minds, Chuck Wendig responds to John Winters and points out that self-publishing is not a “get rich quick” scheme and that you probably won’t be successful, if you don’t have some kind of network, platform or social media presence.
Chuck Wendig responds again, this time to Hugh Howey, and says that there is no one true way, but various paths to publishing success (or failure). Being Chuck Wendig, he uses a lot more expletives, though.
After a brief excursion to the Kindleboards, which he did not find too welcoming, Chuck Wendig posts about his adventure there and repeats his points why in his opinion indie is not always the best option for everyone. With this post, he actually lost me, because I have read that thread at Kindleboards (at least at the beginning – it’s a long thread, though Chuck left before I did) and with one or two exceptions, most posters were actually quite welcoming to Chuck, while still pointing out that as far as they were concerned, indie publishing was the best way for them. Which is only to be expected at a forum for self-publishers.
Now Kindleboards can be problematic at times and some posters drive me up the wall with their ultra-commercialist, “I’ll do anything to sell” attitude, as do posters dispensing craft advice that is basically regurgitated (and misunderstood) Strunk & White. Bonus points, if they sell editing services. But that said, Kindleboards is still full of helpful information for the indie writer. You just have to take it, like everything else, with a grain of salt.
Meanwhile, YA writer Susan Kaye Quinn responds to Chuck Wendig and says that she leans towards the philosophy of “indie publishing first” these days, even though there are cases where trad publishing is the better option.
A little bit before the Winters/Wendig/Howey exchange, another SF writer, Charles Stross, posted his reasons why he does not self-publish. In short, he feels that the things his publisher does for him are things he couldn’t do himself or outsource.
Now, Linda Nagata responds in a guest post on Charles Stross’ blog why she decided to self-publish (first backlist and then a new book) and why she feels it’s the best decision for her.
Meanwhile, at the Guardian, which has not exactly been a hotbed of pro-selfpublishing articles in the past, Alison Haverstock lists ten ways that self-publishing has changed the world for the better. This is a surprisingly good and even-handed article, particularly given the sniping and negative attitudes displayed in some of the posts above.
Send to KindleToday I am interviewed by fantasy writer Scott Marlowe at his blog. We talk about writing, inspiration, ideal readers, sockpuppets and whether the review system is broken. So come on over and say “hello”.
If you want to read previous interviews I’ve done around the web, the links are archived on the “Interviews” page.
Send to KindleIn the past few days, the online SFF community has been ablaze with debates and discussions about the various genre awards, most notably the Hugos and the Clarke Award. I got into the frey, mainly by linking to other people’s posts, as well and in return, the traffic on my personal blog shot through the roof.
My own posts on the awards debate are here, here and here.
If you’ve read all the posts and links, your head is probably spinning by now. However, among all the talk of whether the Hugos and other genre awards are static or changing, whether they are changing too little or too much and whether they are changing in the right direction, there is one huge change that everybody seems to have missed:
For there is a self-published novelette on the Hugo shortlist. The novelette is In Sea-Salt Tears by Seanan McGuire, who garnered a record-breaking five Hugo nominations this year, and it’s available in PDF format at her site. Initially, I thought that one of the nominated novellas might be self-published as well, but turns out that it was published by a new e-press. Still, a self-published story has been nominated for a Hugo in one of the fiction categories, which is a true first.
The Hugos are not even the only genre award whose hallowed gates have been stormed by indie writers. For the 2013 BSFA Award given out by the British Science Fiction Association does not just boast a technically self-published book among the nominees – no, that title has actually won in the short fiction category. The book in question is the novella Adrift on the Sea of Rains by Ian Sales. Listed as the publisher is Whippleshield Books, a micro-press founded by writer Ian Sales.
When I started indie publishing, I always knew that there were some things I was giving up such as a certain degree of validation*, the opportunity to join organisations like the SFWA as well as the chance at winning awards. In the end, I decided to do it anyway, because I’ve never been sure whether I want to join a writers’ organisation anyway (besides, I could still qualify via selling to pro mags), I don’t really care what people who never liked my writing in the first place think of me and awards, while certainly nice, aren’t that important to me. After all, I rarely bothered to enter contests, even if I was eligible.
Nonetheless, I’m pleased to see that self-published works have broken into at least two major genre awards. We’ll probably be seeing more of this in the future.
*Most of my old offline writing pals – even if all they’ve ever had published was a poem in a non-paying lit mag or a chapbook with a regional small press – clearly frown on self-publishing. Not that anybody has ever said so to my face, but it’s kind of obvious.
Send to KindleAfter one and a half years of indie publishing, I have finally hit number 1 in a subgenre bestseller list, for The Hidden Castle is a number 1 bestseller at Amazon France.
Alas, the sales numbers required to get there weren’t all that impressive. A single sale is all it took. Though I’m just above Jeff Vandermeer’s City of Saints and Madmen. What is more, I have finally cracked the French market. Now I only need to crack Japan, Brazil and Canada (on Amazon. I have had Canadian sales on Kobo) as well.
Send to KindleI’m currently in Halle on Saale (for what I’m doing there, see here) and just saw a news report about the opening of the Leipzig bookfair (which is currently taking place barely thirty kilometers from where I am and yet I cannot go) on the nightly news. And among other things, there was a quite lengthy segment about self-publishing. And remarkably – particularly considering that it was the rather conservative ARD – it was unbiased. There was no mention of Amazon KDP, just screenshots of some German self-publishing platforms, but then ARD has decided that Amazon is a hotbed of exploitation and NeoNazi activity (that dreadful TV report of a few weeks back that I did not dignify with a link). I don’t have a link for this report either, cause I can’t find it in the ARD mediathek.
The report presented two German indie authors, Anna Kaleri, a hybrid author who self-published a children’s book (and a journalist working for an ARD affiliate in her day job, it turns out), and Marah Woolf, a self-published paranormal romance author, who sold a for Germany staggering 70000 copies of her trilogy and just won the indie author award of the German book fair (there is one?). Ms. Woolf also has an active blog here. They also interviewed a member of the jury for the award, who offered a cautioning voice that many authors only sell a handful of copies per months.
Still, this was a very positive report (except for the curious omission of Amazon KDP or Kobo Writing Life or any platform anybody actually uses) and made me even sadder that I won’t get to visit the bookfair, even though I’m only thirty kilometers away.
Send to KindleMy historical short Under the Knout has hit the Amazon DE bestseller likst and as even No. 5 in the short fiction category, just above Paul Theroux, too.
In other news, I am pleased to report, that my steadiest non-seller, Whaler, which lasted fourteen months without a single sale anywhere, has finally sold a copy.
Send to KindleForbes has an interesting article citing a new study that 48 percent of all Amazon book purchases are made by people who search for a specific item and then buy it. Meanwhile, seventeen percent of purchases are made via the various top 100, bestseller and popularity lists, twelve percent via promotions and deals, ten percent via also-boughts and only three percent via browsing categories.
The gist of this is of course that the ever popular Amazon algorithm voodoo of trying to get ones book onto the popularity or bestseller or movers and shakers list (which are not the same thing, as the algorithm wizards are always quick to point out in exhausting detail) via free runs, booking ads at the big tastemaker websites like Pixel of Ink or Bookbub (which I for one have never visited nor even heard of before diving into the wacky world of indie publishing) and the like doesn’t work all that well. The Forbes article puts it as follows:
Self-published authors have limited resources for promotion and these figures show that you should focus not on trying to woo Amazon’s algorithm, but on building awareness outside of Amazon. Rather than hoping to gain traction within that 10 percent of people who pay attention to Amazon’s recommendations, or trying to crowbar your title into bestseller or top 100 lists, you should be focusing on building an independent fan base. No one can search for your books if they don’t know you exist.
Here is another response to the Forbes article and the original study from Melville House Books, a small press publisher. The gist of the post is the same as above, with some bonus anti-Amazon rhetoric thrown in. Though I don’t know what the author is on about regarding “Amazon’s steadily increasing fees for placement in things like Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought …”, because in my experience placement in the also-boughts happens automatically above a certain sales threshold, at least for indie authors. Things may be different for publishing companies.
The article caused a predictable uproar and flat out disbelief at places like the Kindleboards or the Passive Voice, because the practioners of algorithm voodoo were not all that pleased to hear that their tactics may not be all that effective. It doesn’t help either that some of the high priests of Amazon voodoo are rather aggressive in stating their conviction.
One example is this response by thriller writer Robert Bidinotto who calls the Forbes article “dumb advice for indie authors”. Now Robert Bidinotto’s experience is different from that of many other writers, because his novel Hunter was chosen for some kind of Amazon promotion as a special deal (which according to the study account for 12 percent of all book sales on Amazon) and he saw his sales soar as a result. Which is great for Robert Bidinotto. However, very few books are chosen for Amazon’s store-wide promotion. And Bidinotto’s book probably wouldn’t have been chosen either, if it hadn’t sold well enough on its own via word of mouth first. He is aware of this, too.
Now I don’t know anything about the methodology, sample size, etc… of the study, though the company that conducted it is apparently a respected UK media analysis firm . However, the results match the way I shop for books. Because most of the time, I head to Amazon to look for a specific book or author I heard about elsewhere.
I usually at least glance at those recommendation mails Amazon sends me (unless they are for shoes or clothing or other products I don’t buy online), but they either recommend books that already are on my to-buy list anyway or that I’m at least aware of or books I have zero interest in (just because I bought some books on English linguistics does not mean I’m even remotely interested in Hungarian linguistics, sorry). Occasionally, Amazon sends me mails recommending my own books to me, which is nice, but kind of pointless. Sometimes, Amazon actually manages to recommend a book that sounds interesting and that I haven’t heard about yet. Sometimes, I even buy it. If there is some kind of sale such as buy two English language books and get one free, I may look at the books on offer. But such sales are rare in Germany, because of the fixed book price agreement.
I used to browse categories, i.e. the top 100 and popularity lists, in the past, but I hardly ever do that now, because a lot of categories are clogged up with stuff I have zero interest in, e.g. just because I clicked on the SF category doesn’t mean I want to wade through umpteen Star Wars, Doctor Who and Warhammer books. When I click on romance, I don’t want erotica or yaoi manga or any other type of book that is related, but not straight romance. Besides, ever since I know how the popularity list, i.e. the order in which books in a given category are presented, is compiled, I pay even less attention to it than usual.
Regarding category and subcategory bestseller lists, I’ve been on them. Repeatedly. And the impact on sales was minimal. Sometimes I’d get a follow-up sale or two. Of course, it’s possible that the category bestseller lists I hit were simply too obscure to matter much. Considering the paltry number of sales it takes to hit e.g. the top 10 English language western books at Amazon DE, the list is almost certainly too obscure to matter much, unless a big fan of English language westerns just happens to be browsing during the brief time my book is on the list. What does occasionally garner sales is the new releases list. At any rate, there were a couple of times I had sales for a newly released book before I had even officially announced it. So whoever bought those books had to get them via Amazon’s internal lists.
As for the also-boughts, I never paid the slightest attention to those (except as a quick way to locate other books in the same series) before I became an indie author. Nowadays, I look at the also-boughts for my own books and marvel at some of the odder titles found there. Sometimes, I click on a book to check its also-boughts for my own book (though there’s no need to do that anymore, because there’s a neat tool to do it for you). However, I can count the number of times I bought something from the also-boughts of a book I enjoyed on one hand.
Send to KindleThe New York Times has an article about the renaissance of the short story due to the rise of digital reading. Since this is the books section of the New York Times, the focus is of course on literary short fiction, usually published in single author collections or as Kindle Singles. Lee Child and Stephen King are mentioned in passing, while the fact that short fiction continued to thrive in the SF, fantasy and horror genres is omitted entirely.
Instead, there is a lot of theorizing about how technological changes have influenced both the writing and the consumption of short fiction. I don’t really buy the alleged technological influence on writing (growing up writing text messages does not necessarily make you a better writer), though I have said before (for example in this interview) that e-books and short fiction are a match made in heaven, because the length restrictions of print publishing no longer apply in e-publishing. Besides, short stories are ideal to read during your commute or lunch break. And it’s great that the New York Times has acknowledged the trend, even though they missed most of it.
But what really struck me about the New York Times article was this quote by Tom Perrotta, who is not just a well known writer but also edits the current edition of The Best American Short Stories. While sifting through submissions, Mr. Perrotta made the following observation:
“I felt like the story form has started to loosen up some,” he said. “And I was intrigued by the fact that a number of the stories felt novelistic — they were not 20 pages, but 40, and had shifting points of view and complicated structures.”
Congratulations! Tom Perrotta has just discovered the existence of novellas. And yes, I am stunned that an author of Mr Perrotta’s reputation apparently has never heard of novellas or novelettes before and that he believes that short fiction cannot have shifting POVs and complicated structures. You don’t even have to go to novella or novelette length stories to get multiple POVs. For example, Honeypot, Loot and The Kiss of the Executioner’s Blade all have more than one POV and none of them is longer than 4000 words, i.e. firmly in short story territory. As for complicated structures, short fiction is actually ideal for experiments in structure, voice and form. I also wonder what gave Tom Perrotta the impression that one cannot have multiple POVs or complicated structures in short fiction. It’s probably received wisdom that was peddled in university creative writing programs or included in the submission guidelines of The New Yorker (Do they actually have submission guidelines? I have to confess I never checked*) in the 1980s.
For a completely different approach to writing short fiction, the SFWA website has a neat article by James D. McDonald comparing writing a short story to baking a pie. There’s a recipe for an actual pie, too.
Now I feel that the pie metaphor is somewhat overextended and that there are very few stories that are completely beyond salvaging, though salvaging a story that does not work can require an almost complete rewrite. But I do like the idea of literary comfort food ingredients.
*Turns out The New Yorker has very vague submission guidelines, though they do accept email submissions, which puts them ahead of several genre magazines.
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