Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 5
May 6, 2020
How to create an online bookstore
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Do you wish you could keep an online bookstore for your website so you can sell autographed books and a few pieces of branded merch? Maybe you’ve tried to do it before but can’t find a cheap or free option? I’ve finally found a solution!
Now authors can sell the books they have on hand (even take directions for personalization/autographs, etc) rather than just sending folks to amazon, or trying to tell people to email you and send money via paypal or venmo on your promise to send books.
Here’s what I found!
It used to be almost impossible to make a profit on your webstore. There were monthly fees, integration was difficult or nonexistent, and cost of simply doing business was very high. There were literally no cart-based shopping systems that I could find for free. I had gone a different method entirely and created a bookstub for each title on my website that would send browsers to my amazon listings and try to recoup amazon’s cut by affiliate links to the paperback and audible versions. That was quite a lot of work considering I’ve got like 30+ books on my site and what I use isn’t very high end (step up your game, Wix.)
Because everyone wants a cut of your author profits, or any other business ventures (I’m looking at you, IRS,) all of the services offering cart-based sales services charged for access to their platform. It’s reasonable for them to expect something, but also, by having monthly fees they’ve priced out folks who might only sell a couple books per year on a web-based sales cart. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like lighting my money on fire.
I’ve been a big fan of Square for a long time and use their services all the time for transactions at conventions, etc. I was in my account recently for something unrelated and checked to see if they had added an online selling tool… low and behold, they’ve finally got a free one! Someone finally got ahead of the curve and realized the sales-worthy pieces are upgrades for things vendors might want.
Finally, we have a basic tool to sell physical products in an integrated shopping cart. You can choose to add services that are paid which will retain email address, send ticklers for abandoned carts, and all of those other features which can improve sales efficiency, follow-up, and customer retention (which most authors already do to some capacity via a Newsletter.)
It has a cart, allows graphics and item descriptions, and allows you to customize the sales site. There are also SEO tools. Once your items are made available, you can categorize them so that people can sort your books (I did mine by series and might eventually add a category for fiction and nonfiction). Square has the ability to create gift cards, and these will also work on your store site.
To get started, go inside your Squareup.com dashboard, and scroll down to “Online Store.” It will log you in/sign you up for an account with Weebly. It used to be that Square offered a service like this, but then weebly wanted to charge fees. That’s not the case any more.
The Weebly interface is clean and intuitive, but only after you’ve gotten things set up. The Settings features (which you MUST be able to use properly) isn’t very good until the account is all set up. At least for me, it did not have a bunch of popups/requests to finish the walkthrough and it was a pain to find it (I think I was finally clicking into the Upgrade options to see if the whole “free” was really a lie and it was free to setup but you had to pay to use it… turns out that triggered something and finally allowed me to complete my setup.)
Why this is important is so that your account can calculate shipping costs. There is an upgrade/paid feature where this is automatic, but if you set weighted tiers and shipping costs, the cart’s checkout system will charge the correct shipping amount. You also need to set this so that your cart will charge the proper sales tax. If you don’t set this up, you will owe the government money next year for any sales made.
Once done you will have access to some neat paid features like coupons, abandoned cart responses, automation, marketing, etc. You may want to dabble with them if your store sees some success, but for now, you just want to get your items set up.
Click Items, Item Library, and then Add Item. You will want to do it this way rather than using the “Create Featured item.” I did it the wrong way first which is more like a “quick add.” In the end, I had to go back and add additional data through the Item Library so that it was complete.
When creating the item you can set what kind of item it is and what kind of payment you want (like Smashwords, you can set this to be a loose number and let customers pay whatever they want.) Enter a description, title, and pic. You can also set items for shipping, delivery, or local pickup and have a tax exempt option. Under the variations section, set your weight of the item; this way your shipping estimator will get you the rates you ought to charge. You can also set your inventory so that you won’t sell more than you have on hand which could come in handy if you only keep a low stock. Add your categories at the bottom and you are done.
I eliminated my clunky book listing page and instead linked my new bookstore page. It still features all my book info, but now books can be sorted by category, and they can also be purchased directly from me!
You can check out my store, which only utilizes the bare minimum of available tools, and then get your own… while you’re there, feel free to purchase a book 
February 25, 2020
February 11, 2020
February 5, 2020
1 Easy Hack for Authors to Increase Profits at Book Sales Events
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You’ve probably heard a bunch of others talk about why they write fiction in series, why you should write in series, or why standalones are bad ideas. While I’m not going to put anything down that might work for someone else, and I have a love/hate relationship with the series/standalone models, there is some wisdom I’ve been able to harness over the last year that has greatly spiked my sales numbers and I’ve discovered a little tweak that helps me maximize my profits while selling directly.
Here’s the skinny on why you should write in series, and how to make it earn you the most money…
If you’ve done any research into the topic you’re already familiar with read through rates. If you get a reader interested in your characters, they will want more. This is Netflix philosophy: let people binge your content. Let me throw out a hypothetical book. Here’s a rough picture of this in action:
Book 1: 100 sales
Book 2: 70 sales= 70% readthrough
Book 3: 68 sales=97% readthrough
Book 4: 65 Sales=95.5% readthrough
Your biggest drop off in the series scenario is between books 1 and 2. Readers might decide it’s not for them, and that’s fine. Not every story will vibe with every reader. As long as your content is consistent and quality, the drop-off between subsequent books should remain low keeping your readthrough rate high. (To calculate readthrough percentage, divide book sales by previous book sales and multiply by 100). Think of readthrough as the guaranteed percentage chance of a sale on the newest book. These numbers are speculative and readthrough will be different for different authors… but by book 4 you want to see something consistent without much drop off. (if there’s drop off, it might indicate problems with the writing.)
Getting to a third book in a series is more than an important milestone. Readers like to know that they will be able to binge content—the third book gives them consumer confidence and will help motivate the sale. People also like to buy in threes—we’ve been conditioned that way for decades by powerful media sources. Think of it: Star Wars, LotR, and many other films and books have created an expectation. Having three books out also gives you some metrics to look into. Collecting data is huge for independents so they can measure success. Data is unreliable if you don’t have enough of it, and measuring drop off isn’t easy until you have both a 3 book minimum and enough time on the market to actually gather and crunch numbers. In fact, having only two books and trying to look at just that data might discourage you… sometimes people wait to buy until the series is larger.
Craig Martell and Brian Meeks talk a lot on their websites and in author groups about rapid release formulas. An advisable strategy is to release three books in quick succession (as soon as a month apart, in fact) to harness amazon’s sales algorithms. This strategy encourages the binge readers. It would be a good idea to, right after the final book is released, launch a boxset as an ebook package… my specialty is mainly in face to face sales and I recommend also creating a print omnibus edition to sell at your live events.
Here’s why:
People love big books. There’s something that strokes a reader’s hubris when they are toting around a huge book. This might sound like a dick measuring contest… and it really is, on a psychological level.
People love a deal. Using creative pricing strategies, you can give people a good deal on buying all 3-5 books at once, which guarantees a readthrough of 100% for that sale (well, not readthrough, but buy-through, and we are concerned with selling this product. I don’t really care about reviews or sales ranks on my boxsets/omnibuses—I want those to sell in specific circumstances.)
eBook boxsets function as a “tripwire.” Mark Dawson talks about this in his workshop. If you have a boxset (it’s a good idea to link a print omnibus as the boxset’s print version on Amazon) inserted as a side-note in your email onboarding sequence, a few people might think, “I just got this first in series for free as a reader magnet, it looks good and I might as well pick up the whole set right now.” It’s made a bunch of sales for me that I might have otherwise missed.
They maximize your profits. I know some writers have said, “nobody wants to buy a $50 paperback,” and they’re right. At least when it comes to a first in series, but if they’re getting the whole series, they often jump at it. The one book I consistently sold out of last year was my omnibus collection on my fantasy series (I am creating them for my UF and SF series this year.) It is a $40 paperback. I bring 2-4 of them to sales.
Here is how I have my fantasy series priced, including my omnibus:
Book 1 print cost 5.14 (5.5×8.5” Cream paper)
sells for 16.99
profit $11.85
Book 2 print cost 4.81 (5.5×8.5” Cream paper)
sells for 16.99
profit $12.18
Book 3 print cost 5.91 (5.5×8.5” Cream paper)
sells for 16.99
profit $11.08
In order to motivate as many sales as possible, I have a deal at my table, buyers can get 2x for $30 or all 3x for $32 (this is the most productive way to push a sale: multiple book deals. It feels cleaner to sell them all for a flat $15, but it leaves money on the table according to both stats and personal experience. I’ve not found a difference in quantity sold between 16.99 and 15.00 for my price point, ie, I don’t lose the sales because I’m within the correct range for my price… now if I raise it to 18.99 I might start to lose sales.) If I sell all three at once my product cost is 15.86 and I make $26.14. Let’s look at the omnibus:
Omnibus print cost 10.79 (6.69×9.61” white paper)
sells for 38.99
profit $28.21
When a reader holds them side by side, the reader sees a price difference of a few dollars and for the same content. Despite being cheaper to produce, the author pockets an extra $2+ (and it’s also cheaper to ship, so you will see additional backend savings. If I ship 5 of each of those individual fantasy novels to myself for resale, s&h is $10.51 versus $5.95 for 5x omnibuses, pushing that difference to more like a $3 margin).
If you are planning to create an omnibus, there are a few things to remember:
Remain consistent with your branding. This book should look the same as your others in a series—use the same fonts, art styles, etc.
Have a good cover. Reusing elements from other series books, but not the same cover as that will cause confusion. You could put a static graphic in the back or thumbnails from the previous books; just don’t reuse the same cover from a different book
Size matters. Up to 8”x11” book sizes KDP Print has a max length of 828 pages for white paper and 776 for cream paper and there’s no price difference for larger formats in that range. Note the differences in my above examples—a larger book and color change was necessary to keep my book between 800-828pages).
Price your other titles strategically. Upping your current prices by .99 for single copies and then offering a multi-book discount will make you more money in the long term and will help provide the margin to create a discounted omnibus with maximized profit margin
A full table looks more impressive than the alternative. Impressed readers will think more highly of your content before even reading it and will be more likely to purchase something than a table that is sparse, and having different buying options is always a plus.
One final thing that helps with motivate a purchase is when a book is labeled “The Complete Series/Trilogy.” This goes back to consumer confidence. If your series is completed, say so. It will drive sales even further. What is the number one problem that fans have for George RR Martin? His Game of Thrones book series has not been completed and fans have been left hanging for decades. Readers get gun-shy of that happening to them—nobody wants to be left with an unresolved story, and Indies have often hooked fans and then disappeared from the scene, so creating confidence is very important. Some readers I’ve spoken with have admitted that they don’t buy from indies until they’ve seen at least three books in a series for this very reason.
Use these tips and make more money! If you like my content, I encourage you to follow my blog with the button at the top right… or even better, purchase a copy of the Indie Author’s Bible.
January 27, 2020
State of Writing
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New draft of Wolves of the Tesseract 3 is done
January 14, 2020
Why is My Mailing List not Growing?
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Are you unhappy with your growth? Do you request newsletter swaps with other authors and have them rejected or ignored? Maybe you get accepted into group promos but nobody ever clicks to signup off of your swaps or your efforts? I may have some answers for you.
I’ve talked about my usage of Story Origin before (it’s like BookFunnel, ProlificWorks, etc.) You don’t need to have been around for very long to know that mailing lists are an author’s best friend. Many times have I said, “I wish I would have started my mailing list two years before I did, or even 6 months before my first book launched had I known the benefits.”
Maybe you’ve been working hard to acquire new members for your list and discovered the hard part: how do you get actual numeric growth? In roughly 10 months I’ve generated 3,369 new contacts via Story Origin, which is not superhuman numbers and I only sent my Newsletter once monthly, at mid-month. I also did not join more than a half dozen or so every month. After half a year I also started promoting and organizing my own group promos. In 2020 I hope to shift to 2x newsletters per month.
Below are the do’s and don’ts I’ve come to learn while being a regular SO user and group promo organizer.
First of all, if you haven’t started with an email newsletter, you really really really need to get Newsletter Ninja. It is a very easy read and talks about things like why to write one, what to talk about, and many other things. You might be thinking, I don’t have time to write a billion emails every day: you don’t have to. There are many ways to automate the system. (When someone joins my NL, they get a welcome, an email with a freebie/hook/cookie/reader-magnet. They get a few automated, timed follow-ups engineered to introduce me and my writings to them and a special offer/tripwire [an invitation to purchase boxsets or exclusives which many people snap up.] I only write my monthly newsletter, though I plan to change that, soon.)
What to do:
1. Make sure to have data organizers can see. Use the NL planner which shows CTR, subscriber count, link click rate, etc. This is handy for a couple reasons: it gives promo organizers data they can see, demonstrates your familiarity and willingness to engage with the SO systems, and also reminds you to send those newsletters on dates that you’ve already established. I know I can be forgetful and run my life by a system of reminders, phone alerts, and google calendar. The StoryOrigin system will remind you to send your NL if it’s slipped off your radar.
Do pre-work to get subscribers onto your list in advance and have your NL already going. It might seem like cyclical reasoning: how do I start my newsletter when I don’t have any subs? First, make sure you have an automated NL [also called an onboarding sequence] and your first couple months of NLs written [or at least have some topics picked.] Second, go get some subs. It would be preferable to get at least 100 subscribers before you start asking to join promos. This is not a hard and fast rule, but you are asking other authors to share their network with you, and those writers have worked hard to build it—there is an expectation to reciprocate. Before I got started with StoryOrigin I was pursuing subs in other pay-to-play sources. It was comparatively expensive, but it helped me hit the ground running. Here’s what I did in my first and second attempts.
My first attempt flamed out. I added anybody who I could: friends, family, readers, people I got to sign up at book signings, etc. I only had one book back then. I got up to about 64 subscribers. Hardly anybody read my NL and virtually nobody interacted with it. I flamed out as an author and checked out for about six years and let the whole dream die when the traditional publisher was bought out and shuttered. The whole NL system was a drain on me and counter-productive because I hadn’t really figured out the what/why/who of it all. I’d also done so many things wrong that I was doomed from the start… it was like trying to take a cross country road-trip in a jeep firing on 5 cylinders, no headlights, and only 3 tires. Yeah, it only started by rolling it and popping the clutch, but the drivers’ side door sure looked nice! I learned a lot (pick up The Indie Author’s Bible to learn all about the right way to take this crazy author-journey.)
Attempt number two:
a. automate my onboarding sequence (I copied Mark Dawson’s method after taking his class) and jot down a list of interesting things to write about for my first few months.
b. get some initial subscribers by targeting readers for sign-ups via Facebook Ads and running ads consistently for at least 3 months. I generated close to 300 subs (plus another 200 or so that never clicked a single link and would up soon culled from subscriber base due to inactivity.) I tried to average around .30-.65 per new sub. After culling the subs who turned out to be duds I spent about a buck per user.
c. I also tried some other services such as Voracious Readers to build followers (VR readers had good responsiveness, FB subs had poor responsiveness, and other services such as SFF Newsletter Swaps, Book Bonanza sub builders, etc. had responses somewhere in the middle—it’s not just about getting numbers, but getting quality readers: 25 readers with a 75% open rate and a 20% click rate is better than 75 readers with a 15% open rate and 5% click rate.)
d. When I joined SO I had about 400 readers to begin with. I had something to offer in return: I had a system in place. Think of it as an initial buy-in at a poker game.
–I want to point out here that while I came with a few hundred readers, regularly culling your newsletter subs list is important to trim the fat (in the above point C. I mention effectiveness… after about 6 months I hit my max sub list for free services via Mailchimp and so I spent 2 months playing with culling my list to keep my readership effective since I knew I’d soon start having to pay for every email I sent. I discovered that I wound up cutting about 80% of those hard-fought and paid for FB subscribers and many of the others from other services, too. Why use a service like Story Origin? Because to become exposed to them, they already prove themselves be interacting with authors’ email systems: they come pre-vetted (they sign themselves up after seeing you from a shared collab promo or on a Swapped Newsletter. By their nature they have already proven themselves to be a higher quality user.)
Connect with other writers who you have things in common with or are where you want to be. Remember: we are not just connecting with other authors’ platforms, we are connecting with those authors.
“Please sir, may I trade you for a slice of your cake?”
“What do you have to offer?”
“You can lick my cheese wrapper.”
It doesn’t have to be an equal trade, but don’t offer garbage/nothing in return for a slice of someone else’s labor. I often get requests for direct NL swaps (not a promo join, but a direct book mention rather than a group landing page) from people with 6-350 subs. I usually say no. if you are asking an author to share their much larger platform with you, connect with him or her first. I have done swaps with authors who have only a few hundred subs compared to my several thousand. However, I have only ever done that when I’ve gotten to know those authors through social media, private emails, etc. If I like your stuff (has a solid cover, reviews, ranks, cover copy, etc.) and I have a short conversation with you (it especially helps if you stroke my ego… heck, I’m human, too,) I am much more likely to share your book with my platform.
USE THE PROVIDED TRACKING LINK! Do not forget this. You can always click back into a promo to retrieve it in SO in case you’ve forgotten or lost it. (SO will also email it to you when you’ve been accepted into a group promo or been granted a swap request.) If a promo ends and you had 0 tracked link clicks, it’s going to look suspicious. As an organizer, when I see 0 clicks received from a promo partner I’m not saying that they didn’t share the link to the promo… but I’m pretty certain of it. That will make me reluctant to accept them into a future promo and if it happens more than once I’m definitely ignoring all future requests. This is a business and we are all professionals
Get honest feedback on your covers. When I started the above “attempt #2,” I had just come off of a series of major changes to my books. I have several series that I write and I paid two different artists to re-do all of my covers (each took a different series). One was a trilogy (plus story magnet), the other was a SF series with 6 books in series (1 unreleased until a year out.) It cost some money, but I got discounts for multiple covers and an added benefit of having them all appear well branded with similar themes and elements. I also picked up a book on writing cover copy and had revised all my book descriptions so that they were hooks/sticky and engaging. Here’s why you’re here, you wonder why you’re not getting new subs or having promo adds or swap requests ignored: your covers suck. I’m not an asshole (ok. Maybe I am,) but I’m a realist. And I tell you that your covers are awful because 1) I’ve seen them and they make me cringe, and 2) my covers also used to suck and I’ve seen how much benefit there is to be gained by revising covers, ad copy, and admitting that while I think I’m a great author, I’m only a mediocre artist at best.
A nonprofessional cover is easy to spot. When I tell promo peeps that I want professional covers only, I mean it (for reasons I’ll discuss below). Discount premade covers by actual pros are fine, so are a million designs from hustlers on fiverr… but pulling in a stock photo and slapping a cover on it in MS Paint isn’t going to cut it.
Here’s the rub—in the time that I’ve grown my list by well over 3,000 new subs, I’ve seen many of the same old covers from a few repeat offenders. Because the lists display subscriber count to promoters I have watched some of those numbers and seen them only grow very minimally (most have hovered around a couple hundred and barely grown in the same amount of time.) I’m not saying that I’m some kind of newsletter building guru (again… kindof an asshole) but I took some early criticism to heart and decided to invest my very small author budget in the right things and ask for honest feedback so that I can improve rather than stagnate. I was not happy where I was and I think I can do better than where I am… to that effort I am constantly honing my craft. I don’t want to be just, “that guy who wrote a few books,” I want to be, “that well-known author.” I can’t do that if I settle for half-assed covers. (also my physical sales have improved by like 300% after cover revisions, which means they’ve definitely paid for themselves already.)
And now, what not to do:
I. Don’t join every single promo that you see. There is a certain kind of broad-net-casting logic to joining every promotion, whether or not you fit the genre or abide by the promotion creator’s rules. Hoping to catch a few morsels with the wrong kind of bait isn’t going to ever be effective. Yes, you might catch a few random fish, but you will never learn how to fish or what makes them bite… also, you might get chased out of a number of lakes for using illegal, unwise, or over-fishing practices.
DO NOT fail to share. I mention this in point #4 above. Sharing with the tracking link is literally the only obligation you commit to when you swap/join a promo. Everything else boils down to best practices and good advice. I cannot stress this enough. If you forget to share and fess up I’m likely to forgive it once, but this is a matter be professional and taking this business serious. Some of these promotions are about generating sales and KU reads (that means they are meant to directly generate money) and when those participants don’t share they have actively reduced the effectiveness and dollars generated. Seriously, it’s the only thing you MUST do out of all the rest.
III. Don’t come into a promo with barely any subscribers and then be upset when people don’t want to swap with you. Granted, this is a system to promote growth and I have often included folks in promos who have only 1-15 subscribers, but you can’t forget that there is a sharing nature to it all. If this was a potluck for strangers to meet each other and you show up empty handed, it’s not unreasonable if the host asks you to go pick up a bucket of chicken from KFC. See No. 2 above.
Failing to read the promo-rules will get you in trouble. For example, I don’t want rippling abs and romance covers on my promos. Those are not the sort of books I write and it’s not a good fit for any of my promos. It’s fine if you have the bodice-ripper, but the majority of readers are not going to cross over from one genre to the next. It looks like wasted effort for the promoter to add titles outside of expectations for his or her readers, or worse, it alienates some of them and actually loses subscribers. Those rules are in place for a reason. Remember that there is a thread of commonality within group promos and an even more specific kind of requirements are likely for NL swaps. If your book is beyond the requirements, they might actually do harm rather than good if the promoter includes your book. I have turned down 10,000 sub applications because they were the wrong cover type or wrong genre for a promo. I’ve worked too hard to build my list to begin putting the wrong sort of person or book or author in the mix.
Speaking of covers, don’t fail to obey genre norms. I know sexy-covers sell, but make them artistic sexy and not NSFW unless they are erotica or romance. I hate getting promo submissions that have ripped abs or suggestive/sexy-time covers and then I read the blurb/copy and it’s a fantasy or space opera. If the cover screams romance/erotica and it turns into a bait & switch high fantasy, reviewers will blast you with 1-star reviews (and savvy promoters like myself will remember you and your book and be sure to ignore future requests—breaking this rule hurts all the books in a promo because it alienates readers. A group promo is like a block of nice houses in the suburbs… a single meth-house in the middle of the block is going to affect property values on the whole subdivision. Don’t let your book be a crackhouse; get a new cover and obey the readers’ expectations. I promise, your sales will improve and your NL subs will increase.)
Finally, don’t put up a crappy graphic for the promo banner if you are hosting a promotion—and don’t fail to share the graphic by opting for a text-only link when you share. We are a graphically stimulated society: make the artwork good and make sure you use it push clicks (statistics prove that people will click a banner link more often than they will click a text link).
I know this has been a very long post, but I hope it helps you work some kinks out of your current systems or get your feet under you if you are starting out. Story Origin has been the primary way I have been driving traffic and subscribers to my list. It has also been a close second in driving dollars for sales.
December 16, 2019
State of Writing
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Success! I have finished Wolves of the Tesseract 3! I completed the epilogue last night at about 11pm. It still needs a lot of polish and I made numerous notes for scenes I need to add or places and characters I need to revise/add/inflate before I even put the story down, so I’ll try to do some of that over the next couple days so I can put this story away for a few months and come back to it in the new year.
What I’m really happy about, though, is that I completed two stories in two months, like nanowrimo, and then double nanowrimo. I began Gunslinger of Dystalgia on October 15 for my first book and then launched the very next day into The Architect King and burned through another 90k words to complete it by Dec 15.
No celebrations. No fanfare or banner waving on sites like 20Booksto50K… just the pride of doing it. Now, somebody buy or review, dangit 
December 10, 2019
Holiday Idea: Autographed Books
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With the holidays coming up, I wanted to remind you that books make great gifts! I do have a stock of paperbacks and I am totally willing to sign it to whomever you want if you want to pick up an autographed copy (send me a message and I can make it happen–but do it quickly to account for holiday shipping time).
You can check out all of my titles on my amazon author page here:
December 9, 2019
State of Writing
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Hey friends! I haven’t posted a State of Writing in about a month, (it’s a weekly ordeal for me on Mondays.) I wanted to spend every scrap of time writing through November. And it paid off!
I didn’t officially participate in Nanowrimo. Between huge year-end promotions, a book launch, and the actual writing, I just didn’t need one more thing to have to update. That said, I did write a book in November: I completed the second installment of my unreleased series about Merlin’s secret rings. I think The Gunslinger of Dystaslias is around 50-60k words in its first draft. But wait, there’s more! I kept on writing and launched directly into Wolves of the Tesseract: The Architect King which will complete the series. I’m a little over 63,000 words right now and hope to finish the book in less than two weeks (about 30k more words to go or so!)
I’d keep blogging, but I gotta get back to writing!
December 6, 2019
Critical Feedback on 50 Shades of Worf
I paid a for a critique service to get me some feedback on 50 Shades of Worf and got a few pieces I can use in marketing. I don’t plan to use the below review of the book, but I found it gratifying on another level. One of the reasons authors write is to change the world, to make it better by causing people to think, and this reviewer picked up on a piece within the book.
While I usually try to weave some kind of moral threads into the fabric of my book, I didn’t really try with this one. I just wanted to make a fun book that my fellow nerds could enjoy reading. apparently, some of my do-gooder-ness came through anyway as spotted by this reviewer, Charles Remington. Maybe it was easier for him to spot it since he was definitely not my target audience, which led to quite a different filter which he read it through.
Christopher D. Schmitz’s 50 Shades of Worf follows the adventures of police officer Moses Farnsworth. A self-confessed geek, his desk is littered with plastic Marvel Comic heroes and figures from the world of fantasy. Finally plucking up the courage to seek promotion and take the detective exam, he is surprised to pass with flying colors. He is even more surprised to find himself partnered with Rick Diego, a tough, experienced cop still grieving the loss of his long-time partner who was deliberately crushed by falling machinery during a drug bust. It is not long, however, before it becomes apparent why this mismatched pair has been partnered when they are assigned to protect an actor from the Star Trek series, who will be launching his new film project at TrollCON, a local conference for fans of the genre. But Rick Diego is determined to bring the killers responsible for his partner’s death to justice, and as they embark on their joint mission, Diego soon realizes that, somewhat incredibly, the murder of his partner, TrollCON, and those involved in the funding of the new film are connected. Having no knowledge of the people, practices or etiquette of these conferences, Diego depends heavily on his new partner’s knowledge and expertise to help him to blend in. Together, the unlikely pair manages to muddle through a sometimes dangerous, sometimes baffling, sometimes scary, but often hilarious investigation.
I must admit that my knowledge of the type of conference described in 50 Shades of Worf was as vague as that of Officer Rick Diego, and I found myself looking up terms like cosplayers, furries, and bronies. However, I am pleased to have learned a lot about the outlandish world these eccentric characters inhabit. Perhaps this passage from the book, in the words of Officer Farnsworth explaining the conference to Rick Diego, could shed some light on the subject: ‘Not everybody is good at life. For people who don’t feel like they fit in, Fantasy helps them escape those bad feelings. We’re not stuck on the outside anymore. We’re finally important… and I honestly believe that everyone feels like that at some point in their life.’ In the end, I felt that the additional research was worth it. I enjoyed the book and it opened up a world which, being a sci-fi fan but located in the wilds of Scotland, I knew very little about. Schmitz has imbued his narrative with loveable characters and a great deal of fun. A fine read for geeks and non-geeks alike.
50 Shades of Worf
A back-alley brawl between the furries and the bronies.
Deadpool cosplayer keeps stealing all the erotic pegasus artwork.
Someone used a necronomicon to open a tentacle portal in the men’s room.
Two cops must go undercover at a comic-book convention to stop Wil Wheaton’s murder. You’ll love this buddy cop comic-comedy if you love Discworld, Hitchhikers Guide, or Bimbos From the Death Sun.
Check it out here:
https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/8705a392-fcb9-11e9-b3dc-5fabe5bfea32
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