C. Litka's Blog, page 29

Books I Read in May (Part 1)

With this post, I'm moving my weekly post to Wednesdays for no particular reason except to brighten your hump day.

Having read, or at least sampled, nine books in May so far, and with more than 3,000 words to say about them, I'm going to divide my reviews for May into two posts, starting with these first four books. Stay turned for my reviews of Hackly Hammet's Payment on Delivery, Gavin Chappell's On Hadrian's Secret Service, Richard Townshend Bickers' The Sands of Truth, Catherine Cole's Murder at the Manor, Malcolm Archibald's Windrush, and maybe more, coming in early June.

The Barista’s Guide to Espionage: An Eva Destruction Novelby Dave Sinclair C+

To described as amishmash of Stephanie Plum and James Bond would not be too far offthe mark. Ms Eva Destruction is more competent than Ms Plum, with amuch more action packed, James Bond movie style plot, but it hassomething of the humor of a Stephanie Plum novel. Though in the caseof Janet Evanovich’s novels, Ms Plum is the first person narrator,and thus she has a bit more character than Ms Destruction. The plot was too much over the top to take at all seriously. However, if youlike fast moving adventure stories with rich and powerful villains, lots of banter and innuendo, you should like this book very much. It alsoexplores the question of does the end justify the means, as well as love, andfeminism.

Interestinglyenough, Sinclair seems to set his books either in the near future or in analternate universe. Out of time began in 2024, and this one concernsthings like a Russian civil war, that do not, yet, exist. This beingthe second Dave Sinclair book I’ve read I can say that he’s agood writer. His books are just not quite my cup of tea, or I’dgrade them higher. Like Out of Time, this is a free book, the firstbook in his Eva Destruction series. I have one more of his free firstbooks, Kiss My Assassin, the first Charles Bishop book (who alsoappears in this book as well.) I liked Out of Time better, but Iexpect I will like the Charles Bishop book as well. We’ll see.

The Left HandedBooksellers of London by Garth Nix C-

Yes, yet anotherurban fantasy book set in London. I’m a sucker for books set inLondon. I believe that put a hold on this book at the library becauseof a mention by one of the booktubers I watch. It became available,so I put a pause on my “thriller” reading. It was... okay fora self-published book. You know, lots of alarms and excursions withnondescript, but not bad writing, and a hard to believe fantasypremise. This is, of course, a left handed compliment, if its acompliment at all, since this isn’t a self-published book. It isa traditionally published book that reads like a bog standardself-published book, fine in its way, but without any literaryaspirations. It doesn’t hold a candle to say, the gold standards ofLondon fantasy, like Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman or the Riversof London series by Ben Aaronovitch. While this book has plenty ofimagination, way too much, in fact, I found nothing in the writing orthe characters to be very engaging.

Briefly, thepremise, as far as I can tell, is that there are humans with variousmagical powers, i.e. the booksellers in the title, though there areboth right and left handed, as well as both handed booksellers whosejob is to keep an ancient magical menagerie – goblins, fairies, and other made up stuff, I think, in check, one way or another. Even though Iswear fully 2/3rds of this novel is an explanation of how everythingworks, it just seems tossed together. There doesn’t seem to be anysort of logic in the magic, despite all that explaining. Anything goes. The story features a young woman who comes to London to attenduniversity and to search for the father she never knew. She seems tohave ties to the fantasy realm via this unknown father. In thissearch, she quickly comes in contact with a sinister magical creatureand through it, the booksellers of the novel. Together with thebooksellers, who have their own reasons, she set out to search forher father and encounters magical events and beings in this quest.There is also a very lame romance thread in the story as well. Theaction moves along, between the long stretched of explanations andmusings...

The books suffersbadly from what I see as the great fault of fantasy; if you allowmagic in a story, the author can do anything they want, because, youknow, it’s magic. The author can get their characters into anysituation you can imagine, and get them out again just by pulling outa new magic trick out of their hat. As a reader, you just have to goalong with it.

This story had onemore annoying characteristic; it played the Ready Player Onegame of tossing in all sorts of factoids about this story’s timeperiod, 1983. I get annoyed when an author peppers the narrativewith random factoids likely gleaned from a search on wikipedia and whichstick out like sore thumbs because their inclusion seems to be an attempt to use them as "world-building,since they do not seem organic narrative of the moment. I complainedabout this in a Victorian mystery novel I read recently. In thiscase, the author would take time to name the best sellers in thebookshop window when they walked into the bookshop, or the music onBBC 1 during a car chase, or whatever. Out of Time did thisfor 1963, but at least in that book the narrator was from 2024, sothat his noting of the differences made sense within the story.

So to sum this bookup, if you like urban fantasy, I suppose it is fine. I found it, atfirst, as I said, okay, but as it went on, the magical world seemed to be invented in the moment and the story a series of random magicalincidents, interspersed with lots of explanations, all of which did notactually tie the magical world together, with the bonus annoyance of a shower of factoids about 1983 London.

Lonesome Doveby Larry McMurtry DNF 90% (½ way through Part 3)

I must confess thatafter reading the first two books in this sagas, Dead Man Walk andComanche Moon, I was not looking forward to reading theoriginal book in the saga. I had, however, a little hope that itwould be something a bit different. Indeed at the start I was hopefulthat it might turn out to be an entertaining book, more to my taste.But alas, that was not the case. It soon became just like the firsttwo books; an overly long book consisting of a main plot linesupplemented by sketches and vignettes of variousintelligence-challenged characters who do foolish and stupid things over and over again until they meet their sticky endings.

McMurtry’s writingstyle is to assemble a cast of dim witted characters and then hopfrom head to head between them, filling multiple pages withdescriptions of their mundane thoughts. These are descriptions of their thoughts, mind you,not any actual internal dialog, and thus, they all read pretty much alike.This descriptive of  thoughts can run on and on for pages just to tell thereader that the character is scared, or cold, confused, just wants toget away... ad infinitum. And yet, despite these extendeddescriptions, the reader is often left without any clear idea whythese characters do the foolish things that the do that eventually gets themdead. And this sketchiness extends to the main characters’ thoughtsand motivations as well. Why go to Wyoming? A whim? People getting killed on the whim of their employer,,, Not much to be admired about.

In addition to all the dim-witted people,McMurtry also takes you into the minds of a variety of very cruel andviolent people who graphically abuse, rape, torture, and murderpeople, including the dim witted ones we sort of get to know.Essentially McMurtry writes “grimdark westerns”. After readingthese books, one is left with the idea that the Texas of the lasthalf of the 1800’s was entirely populated with dumb people andvicious murderers, sheep and wolves. It seems that some things never…oh, never mind.

I fond a great dealof tedium, unpleasantness, and little joy in reading this book. As Iwent along, I found that I began to skim and skip tedious sections ofboring thoughts as well as scenes of graphic violence in a hurry tofinish this book. I spent $5 on it, after all, and it wassupposed to be a masterpiece. In the end, however, I reached thepoint in the book, about ½ way through the Part 3 of the book whereMcMurtry kills off the likable character inthe book, except the pigs, and so I had no one to care about anymore and called it a day. Despite the praise this book gets, it isclearly not my type of story, which after reading the first two booksin the saga, came as no great surprise, though, as I said, I hadhopes... I won’t be reading the last book in the saga, which soundslike just more of the same. If I ever get the urge to read a western again, I’llstick to Zane Grey.

The Aeronaut’sWindless by Jim Butcher B

This was a goodadventure story set in a vast city tower, one of many – each one anation. The surface of the earth is apparently wilderness and hauntedby something. I guess. I had expected a more nautical adventure, whatwith the title and cover illustration, but 4/5th of thestory takes place within the tower city. I have no great complaints,save for the fact that I get quickly bored by battles and fightscenes, of which there are a number of in the story. Most peoplelike them, so that should be a selling point for many. At least theydid not run on for two chapters like the barroom brawl Brandon Sanderson had in his The Alloy of Law that I read and reviewed last fall. This is the first book of theseries, but the second has been long delayed, though I gather that itmight be released late this year. I will read it when it becomesavailable. I am sure Mr. Butcher will be overjoyed to hear that.

Books I Read April 2023 (Part Two)

 

This is the second installment of the books I read, or tried to read, in April 2023. There were nine books altogether in April, seven of which I completed.

Out of Timeby Dave Sinclair B-

I had a reason tohave a look at the top 100 free thriller-espionage books on Amazonthis month – my book, The Girl on the Kerb was as high as #5on the list. So while I was there, I decided to pick up a few, justto see what an actual espionage thriller reads like.This is the first one I read, and surprisingly, it had a SF premise, thatbeing that a black MI6 agent, Atticus Wolfe, from 2024 finds himselfback in 1963 as a result of a “terrorist” that he was attemptingto capture, setting off some sort of time-bomb (a pun) device.

AtticusWolfe is knocked out in the time-blast and awakens in the 1963hospital. Because of his MI6 ID in his wallet, a contemporary MI6agent is called in. Wolfe convinces this agent that he has some how traveled back in time, showing him his cell phone and smartwatch.This agent recruits him for M16, but for fear of disrupting the time lines, keeps his time-traveling aspect secretwith forged paperwork saying that he was a transfer from NavalIntelligence. As I mentioned, Wolfe is a black man, so he faces theprejudices of the day as well as the snotty attitudes of the upperclass employees of the MI6 of that day. Because he is an outsider, he is given the task of finding a possible mole in the organization,and collects a team of similar outcasts, a woman, a gay man (still acrime in England at the time) and a young man who operated theelevator. In addition, Wolfe is still concerned that his appearance ischanging history, as he knows of no incident in the history of theMI6 of his time to explain his appearance or the current mole situation.

I thought it waswell written with an engaging lead character. While the time travelaspect was interesting twist, but the gee wiz, I can’t do thisbecause it hasn’t been invented yet, and all the cultural references struck me, as someone who wasactually alive in 1963, as little too much wikipedian, i.e. cherry pickingfacts of the era from wikipedian articles. Still, there were aspectsof the story I really like, along with others that I felt were a bitover the top, and may not have made sense. Now, having just readRaymond Chandler, where the same thing can be said, I can only saythat I read Chandler for his writing, and can forgive him for hisplots. I can’t say the same for Sinclair, but in his defense, Ihave a feeling that the parts I thought were a bit over the top wereprobably the expected tropes and story beats for this type of story.In any event, we’ll see as I picked up half a dozen freethriller-espionage books, including two more by Sinclair; all thefirst book in a three book series.

Goliath, A RyanMitchell Thriller by Richard Turner DNF 8%

Another free title, this time in the free Thriller-adventure list. By page 14 the body countexceeded the page number. And if that wasn’t enough, in an openingscene set in 1931 he writes “...had ensured that all the majormedia outlets throughout the country…” “Media outlets.”Nothing bumps me out of the story more than using modern lingo instory set in the past. Between the body count and the hokey, tropey writing, DNF.

A Book of Truths,A Mui Thriller Book One by Ty Hutchinson C

Another freethriller-adventure book. A story with a combination of a first personnarrator, Mui, a 14 year old girl who has been trained to be anassassin, combined with a third person parallel story about a bookused as a courier of secret information that people are being killed forwhich all gets tied together near the end. It read like a B grade storyuntil the D grade ending. 

The more I think about it, the more I'm disappointed by the book. First because everything was too convenient for theauthor. But I’ll get to that in a moment. The first thing that youneed to know is that this is only the first of seven books featuringthe Mui, a 14 year old assassin in training, so that the mystery ofthe deadly book isn’t solved. The second is that the protagonist,Mui is a cold blooded murderer. Not my cup of tea. But going beyondthat, I found it really hard to suspend my disbelieve about thestory. The narrator, Mui, is supposed to be a 14 year old girl, I guess so that the series can use the boarding school trope. Mui is said tohave spent her first 12 years training to be an assassin in a remoteAzerbaijan mountain with a secret set of assassins, until her mother,also a retried assassin, (who has her own series of books) finds her andtakes her to Greece and a small hotel she now runs. There sheinteracts with the natives until she’s sent to the boarding schoolin California. Everywhere she goes she seems to be speaking, andbeing understood, in English like a native speaker, as does her bestfriend Nanuli, a girl from a small village at the base of themountains in Azerbaijan, (with an internet connection that allowedvideo calls). Really? How did she, and her small village friend learnEnglish? And if the assassins all spoke English, how did her friend,and how did she learn Greek? She shipped off to San Francisco, andseems perfectly at home in a big American city, shopping apparentlywith credit cards… In short, save for the backstory, she’s acting like a like an American girl several years older than her actual years. Itseems to me to be a cheat to give your character an exotic background for astory, and then ignore all the implications of it. Not for me, but ifyou don’t think to hard, and don’t care about rooting for a coldblooded killer – who wants to be a cold blooded killer for hire – then this is not a bad book, and you will have a lot more stories toenjoy.

The Black TonguedThief by Christopher Buehlman B-

Another fantasybook. For someone who doesn’t like fantasy, I’m certainly readingenough of them these days. I forget what inspired me to put this onhold at the library, but when it became available I downloaded it andread it. Not a bad book. It is a first person narrative with anengaging rouge, the title character, and is written with a lot of witand humor. Plus it is a quest story, and though the stakes are high,there is no all-powerful black veil of pure evil threatening theland. It is also the first of a series, but does have a fairly closedplot. So we start with an A rated book. What are its characteristicsthat knocked it down to a B-? First, being a fantasy, you can haveyour magic do anything, and use it for the hero pull some magic out of his or her hat to get out of any situation. And the author did. Idon’t like that, I can’t help but think its sort of cheating.Second, and this one is on me, I’m a rather impatient man, andreader, so that with too much elaborate world-building lore, history,and politics the author includes, I can get a little impatient to get on with thestory. You need that for a fantasy, but a lot thrown in without context, can be a bit overpowering. And, without apology, I tend to skim or skip over battle and fightscenes, songs and poems, which this story had manyinstances of. In some cases, needlessly so, I thought. Indeed, there was oneinstance where one chapter ends before the fight, and the next opens after the fight so that we know theresult, any yet, the author takes us back over the entire fight. I skippedthat entirely. In short, I found the story well written, maybe just alittle too elaborate, too magical, too violent, and simply too long to give it more than a B-  I'd also knock off points for that extremely cheap looking and ugly cover, but it wasn't likely the author's fault. I hope.

Next week, yet another book review post; Part One of the Books I Read in May. I'm reading a lot of books these days since I am not writing anything at the moment. When I am writing, I like to keep my head clear of other stories, so I do not read much, if anything, while I am writing my own. 

Books I Read in April 2023 (Part One)

With nine books to talk about, my complete book review post for April was running over 2K words, soI decided to split it into two parts, one today and the rest nextweek.

I also wanted totake a moment to comment on my reviews. First, as a reviewer, Iusually only give the sketchiest outline of the plot. Plot details are notwhat I’m looking for in a review – I’m looking for thereviewer's impression of, and opinions on, the book. And that’s what I attempt to give you; I focuson the parts of the story that I have opinions about; what worked forme in the story and what didn’t. To be honest, I find what didn’twork more interesting to write about than what did. Indeed, it seemsthat if I have nothing bad to say about a book, I might not say much at all, i.e. see my review of The Big Sleep – my “A”grade says it all. I guess that makes me more a critic than areviewer. 

However, I understand, and I’m sure you do as well, thatyou and everyone else are entitled to your own opinions. My opinion isno better than yours or anyone else’s. I know what I like and whatI don’t – and I have a feeling that my view may well be too narrow a view in general.Perhaps, as a writer, I tend to judge a book on how the craftis practiced at a level of detail that readers don't care about. In any event,just because I don’t like a book doesn’t make it a bad book.Indeed, I’m sure that all of the books I read enjoy good ratingsfrom readers, so don’t take my word as the last word. I mostlywrite my reviews to amuse myself, and hopefully you.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas Translated by Lowell Bair  C

I hate to admit thatit’s taken me 73 years to get around to reading this book. In mydefense, I watched the 1974 movie, I think. What can I say? It’sthe classic story of historical fiction set in 1625 and follows thecareer of one D’Aragnan as he seeks to make his fortune as asoldier in the service of the King of France. He meets, challenges toduels, and subsequently makes friends with the three Muskteers,Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in a fight with soldiers in the serviceof Cardinal Richelieu, the power behind the throne of Kind LouisXlll. It is a story filled with humor, daring do, and politicalintrigue for three quarters of the story. Then it becomes the storyof Milady de Winter, known as Milady, an evil temptress in the employof Cardinal Richelieu in England. I found this last quarter of thenovel tedious and unpleasant. It reduced my rating for the novel froma B to a C. I will just add that Cardinal Richelieu is my perfectexample of an antagonist in fiction – a great man working for acause that can be seen as worthy, just not from the view of theprotagonists.

The Lost Historyof 1914 Reconsidering the Year the Great War Began by Jack Beatty  DNF 22%

A history of eventsin Germany, Russia, Great Britain, etc. that if they had played outdifferently, might have prevented those countries from going to warin 1914, and thus, preventing World War One from happening, at leastas it played out in history. A good idea. Unfortunately, the approachBeatty took in explaining this premise was examining each of the countries in such a shotgunscattering of events, personalities, and background histories foreach significant event of that country that it made for a confusing mess of a book. I found itnearly impossible to follow, in that neither chronology or logicalstorytelling seemed to have been followed. Political histories arefull of people and positions, maneuvers and timelines, results andspeculations, which can be daunting, even if presented clearly.Beatty seemed to be striving for a popular history, featuringhistorical celebrities and incidents, but they are presented so haphazardly as toleave me confused, disheartened, and suspecting that the eventsdescribed were not, in fact, quite as pivotal as he suggests. Indeed that thewar was, in fact, preordained.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler  A

The classic PhilipMarlowe novel with the famous Bogart and Bacall movie based on it. The storyconcerns the two daughters of one very ancient but rich old man andblackmail. At least to begin with. As with all Chandler novels, things get very (if not too) intricate. Chandler is one of my heroes when it comes to writing. (Side note: I love the covers of this edition of Chandler's works. This is the ones I own.)

Treasure Islandby Robert Lewis Stevenson  B

It looks like I’mfinally getting around to read all those classic adventure stories thatI should’ve read decades ago. I’ve had this book on my shelvesfor decades. I may’ve picked it up to read to the kids when theywere young. Who knows? My copy was a small, 1946 edition printed forschools, I think, as it has art plus stills from the MGM movie withJackie Cooper and Wallace Berry (boy, did I draw those names out ofthe distant past). In the back there is a photo and bio of theauthor, short blurbs for his other books, a line drawing of the ship,and a glossary of nautical terms and well as “Topics for WrittenWork,” like “Tell in detail how Jim Hawkins spent the first 100pounds ($500) of his treasure.” There are 17 other topics to choosefrom if you don’t want to do that one. As for the story, heck, youknow it. I have Kidnapped on the shelf as well…

Kidnapped byRobert Lewis Stevenson  C

I did not care forthis story nearly as much as I did for Treasure Island. Ifound it rather tedious reading, in fact. Set in Scotland some yearsafter 1746 revolt against English rule, it tells a tale of a youngman who may, or may not, be entitled to a fortune under old Englishlaw as the only son of the oldest son. The estate, however, iscontrolled by his miserly uncle. The uncle tries several ways ofgetting rid of him, lastly by having him kidnapped to be sent across toAmerica as sold as a slave. A series of events prevents this, withthe ship coming to grief in the western islands of Scotland. The restof the story concerns a trek across the highlands of Scotland in thecompany of a wanted follower of Bonnie Prince Charles. A study ofhighland characters, thought the main characters failed to click withme. And it had a very strange ending. I had to look up an onlineversion just to make certain that my book wasn’t missing a page.

Next week: Out ofTime, by Dave Sinclair, Goliath, by Richer Turner, ABook of Truths by Ty Hutchinson, and The Black Tongued Thiefby Christopher Buehlman. Stay tuned!

Eight Years as an Author/publisher -- a Report

 

It was a very good year.

My eighth year as anauthor/publisher was my best ever. And there's no mystery why. However, let’sstart with a glance at the sales numbers for each book. Audiobook sales inparentheses, total sales in bold. And then we'll talk about the whys.

Sales for the year from May 2022 to April 2023

Book Title / Release Date

Year 7 Sales

Year 8 Sales

Total Sale To Date

A Summer in Amber

23 April 2015

407

452      (488) 
940

9,163

Some Day Days

9 July 2015

371

468      (598)
1,066

5,677

The Bright Black Sea

17 Sept 2015

979

1,360   (895)
2,255

17,050

Castaways of the Lost Star

4 Aug 2016

Withdrawn

Withdrawn

2,176

The Lost Star’s Sea

13 July 2017

947

783      (780)

1,563

9,479

Beneath the Lanterns

13 Sept 2018

754

431      (672)
1,103

4,649

Sailing to Redoubt

15 March 2019

858

625     (543)
1,168

4,358

Prisoner of Cimlye

2 April 2020

728

581      (678)

1,259

2,864

Lines in the Lawn

8 June 2020

30

32

145

Keiree

18 Sept 2020

611

637      (583)

1,220

2,414

The Secret of the Tzaritsa Moon

19 Nov. 2020

1,056

782      (634)

1,416

3,572

The Secrets of Valsummer House

18 March 2021

858

894      (692)

1,586

2,709

Shadows of an Iron Kingdom

15 July 2021

1,231

751    (1,299)

2,050

3,281

The Aerie of a Pirate Prince*

29 Sept 2022

737      (291)

1,028

1,028

The Girl on the Kerb*

30 March 2023

2,745     (45)

2,790

2,790

A Night on Isvalar

(Amazon exclusive – all $ sales only)

23 sold

18 sold

41

Total Year Sales

* New releases.

8,853

Year 7 Total: 51,902

19,524 

of which were 8,198 audio

71,396

Revenue: Amazon: $128.24  Overdrive: $2.67    Total $130.91    Expenses: $90 (approx.)

ForComparison, Past Yearly Results

6,537Year One, 2015/16 (3 novels released)

6,137Year Two, 2016/17 (1 novel released)

6,385Year Three, 2017/18 (1 novel released)

8,225* Year Four, 2018/19: (2 novels released) * includes astrange 1950 books sold in one day on Amazon that they say iscorrect. It would be 6,275 without that strange day's sales.

8,530Year Five, 2019/20 (1 novel released)

7,484Year Six, 2020/21 (2 novels released, 1 novella, 1 children's shortstory)

8,853 Year Seven 2021/22 (1 novel, 1 novella)

19,396 Year Eight 2022/23 (1 short novel, 1 novel)

TheComplete Yearly Reports

Year1: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-window-to-self-publishing.html

Year2: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2017/05/two-years-of-free-books.html

Year3: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2018/05/3-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year4: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2019/05/four-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year5: https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2020/05/five-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year6:https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2021/05/six-years-in-self-publishing.html

Year7:https://clitkabooks.blogspot.com/2022/05/7-years-in-self-publishing-report.html

Sales % by Venue

Comparingthe sales split between Amazon, Google, and Smashwords (including Apple and B & N)

                     Year5 (2019/20) Year 6 (2020/21) Year 7 (2021/22) Year 8 (2022/23)

Amazon                40%                     35%                    21.5%                 24%

Smashwords         40%                     39%                    18%                     9%

Google                  20%                     26%                    60.5%                 67%

My Publishing Business

As always, I should note that I am an amateur writer. I write for the pleasure of it. I am, however, a professional publisher. As a publisher my focus is readership, rather than revenue. Nevertheless, I have shown a profit every year. To avoid the expense, risk, work and bother of advertising, I price my ebooks and audiobooks at cost,($0) whenever possible, and rely on Amazon's non-U.S. markets for my profit. The results of this approach speak for themselves.

This Year's Highlights

Google continues to be my dominate sales channel and would have beeneven without adding audiobooks last April to the mix. I'm very glad I jumped in when I did, even though at the time Google suggested that the tech was best suited to non-fiction. Google has since added the option of having different characters speak in different voices, a feature clearly aimed at fiction, so their auto-narration tech has likely improved in the past year. In any event, I’m happy to report that the ratings for all my auto-narratedaudiobooks are every bit as good as their ebook version. 

Besides adding audiobooks, I think Google dominates my sales as a result of my world-wide affordable price and the fact that many people read ebooks and listen to audiobooks on theirphones. The Google Play Store is theapp, game, ebook, and audiobook store built into several billion Android phones, and it's likely the first stop for many ebook and audiobook readers using Android phones.

The surprising successof my 2023 novel, The Girl on the Kerb was the icing  on the cake this year. Ithad been sitting around for nine months while on submissionto Gollancz, a U.K. SF publisher. When theypassed on it I released myself it in late March and early April. It did fine, but nothing special onSmashwords and Google, but after selling 16 copies at $3.99 onAmazon, Amazon price-matched the free price in its U.S. store, amere 5 days after it wasreleased. With that price cut, itssales started to take off, selling something like 240 copies in the following week, a rate I haven't seen in years. I have noexplanation for this, save that I released as a thriller-espionage and a thriller-adventure novel rather than as SF novel. It seems to have sold well enough for Amazon’s legendary algorithms to kick in and they began to promote it on Amazon in some manner all on their own, the result of which was two or three years worth of sales in a month. Without The Girl on the Kerb, Amazon sales would have closely matched Smashwords sales as they have for most years. Ideally I hope the success of the book will bring in some new readers for all my books, but I don’t expect it tofundamentally alter my business.

This year's other release, in September 2022, was The Aerie of a Pirate Prince, thefourth book in the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure series.It is doing just fine. That series has been selling well for me, with Shadows of an Iron Kingdom doing strangely well in Japan for a time. With it and The Girl on the Kerb, I released two books within a year, making it a very good year on that front as well.

As I mentioned in last year’s report, I had entered a book in the Self Publishing Science Fiction Contest. It yielded one nicereview and no appreciable sales. I will not be continuing thatventure, though, having missed the deadline for thefar  more popularfantasy version of this contest last year, I will try again to getBeneath the Lanterns entered into it next week.

Allthoughts of getting traditionally published are gone. I had fun exploring the experience, but it simply confirmed that I like publishing - and owning - my own work too much to sell anything down the river, like you must in traditional publishing.

I've also abandoned any idea of getting my books into bookshops, as I realized that I would likely have to become awarehouse/distributor of my books if I wanted to go that route.I don’t see any profit for the expense and bother that would involve.

LookingAhead to Year Nine

On 1 May I released the first of four omnibus versions, this one featuring the four novels of my Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventures into one ebook to be sold exclusively on Amazon. I am targeted these omnibus versions primarily at the non-U.S. market where Amazon does not price match my free prices. It is a way of offering more affordable books for the foreign market without altering the list price of the standalone books. The initial release price will be $.99 and in the following months settle at $2.99.  Over the next year I plan to bundle and release all my books in a total of five omnibus versions. I'm not expecting a ton of sales, butin the spirit of leaving no stone un-turned, I'll give it a try. 

As for new projects, I am working on the third and final book in theTropic Sea Stories series, APassage to Jarpara. It's slow going, but I'm maybe half way done with the first draft. I have it tentatively scheduled asmy 2024 novel. I am also toying around with an idea for a portal fantasy novella. I don’tknow if that will go anywhere. It hasn't so far. I've nothing else on the creative back burner. I find that story ideas and new plots are hard to come by these days.

I expect to post a new blog post every Friday as has become my custom.

Dave,at http://artifacslibros.vzpla.net/index.html?i=1has offeredto translate into Spanish TheBright Black Sea, The Lost Star Seaand the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventures. Ifall goes well, they willlikely be available on his website in late Summer 2023. Havingmy work available in Spanish is rather exciting.

Since thiswas clearly an exceptional year. I don’t expect my ninth year to come close to equaling it. Sales will certainly fade. They always do. In any event, I expect audiobooks will make up close to half of my sales, whatever it is. But this assessment is nothing new. Rereading my seven other reports, it seems that every year ahead looks grim for one reason or another, but we continue to plug along. I expect to do that for my ninth year in the business as well. In short, stay the course.

The Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure Omnibus

 

The Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure Omnibus that includes all four novels in this series is now available world wide exclusively on Amazon for the low, low price of $.99 USD Seeing that two books in the series are priced at $2.99 each, this is a bargain wherever you live. The $.99 price is a limited time special, so act today. Do not delay! Or whatever.

The Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventures Omnibus is a special editionthat includes all four novels in the series.

The series featuresthe adventures of Rafe d’Mere, a former Patrol tech, now a spaceerwho wants nothing more than to travel about and experience thehundreds of worlds of the Nine Star Nebula. He is, however a computersystem savant, who, while growing up, hacked, explored, and retainsin his head the ability to access the most secure computer systems ofthe Unity, the governing body of the Nine Star Nebula. If theauthorities knew what he knows, he would no doubt have his memoryerased. And if any criminals should discover his secret, they woulduse him ruthlessly. In short, he has a very dangerous secret to keep.

The Secret of theTzaritsa Moon

Onthe passage to Fairwaine, Rafe’sswiftresponse saved the Tzaritsa Moon froma catastrophic explosion.However, the explosionwas deliberate, part of a pirate prince’s plan to keep the shipfrom arriving in Fairwaine orbit. And when it did, thanks to Rafe,the pirate prince was not happy.Rafe decidedthat he neededto get clear of the Tzaritsa Moon and get very lost on Fairwaineuntil things cooled down. But,indoingso, he crossed orbits with a thief. Agirl with a pretty face, whomay, or may not, havebeena covert agent of the Patrol. She was rather evasive onthat point.But she was determinedto discover why the pirate prince wanted the Tzaritsa Moon destroyed.And Rafe found that he couldn’t resist helping her to do so. Shehad a pretty face.

TheSecrets of Valsummer House

Muchto Rafe d’Mere’s delight and alarm, Lieutenant Vaun Di Ai returnsto Pine Cove. This time as an intelligence analyst “on a fieldtrip” with strict orders to avoid trouble. So what can go wrong?Add to the mix, the arrival of a likely illegal robot for an unknownbuyer, a mysterious lady, and the possibility that the pirate princeof the criminal Seven Syndicate may actually reside somewhere nearPine Cove, and you have a potentially explosive situation. The typeof situation that you would not want Lt Di Ai anywhere near, if youvalued a quiet life. Or your life.

Shadowsof an Iron Kingdom

Thisthird installment finds Rafe d’Mere and Vaun Di Ai on a new planetbut, as usual, in danger. The planet of Ironlode is the privatepreserveof a clan of wealthy industrialistswho have a strange taste in societies – aGothic inspired throw-back society with primitive technology, ruinedcastles, and some not-so-mythical legends. Like werewolves. There’scrime a’foot in the Iron Kingdoms, but they don’tappreciateDi Ai and d’Mere pokingaround looking for it.And they’re willingto take deadly measures to insure that they don’t find anything –but death.

TheAerie of a Pirate Prince

Severalyears later, Rafed’Mere is the systemsmate aboard the Rendezvous Moon along weith his his companion CrowKee when one of the cargo containers they are delivering is hijacked.He finds himself reluctantlyaccompanya determined Captain Sing and a carefree Chief Engineer Red Rew downto the planet of Teire intenton trackinga hijacked cargo container. It’s Rafe however, who finds himselflooking down the barrelof a darterheld byone of the Alantzia’sinfamous pirateprinces. Once Again.

C.Litka writes oldfashioned stories withmodern sensibilities, humor, and romance. He spins tales ofadventure, mystery, and travelset in richly imagined worlds, with casts of colorful, fully realizedcharacters. If you seek to escape your everyday life, you will notfind better company, nor more wonderful worlds to travel and explore,than in the stories of C. Litka.

Launching The Girl on the Kerb (Part 2)

 

In part one of Launching The Girl on the Kerb, I talked aboutmy decision to launch this title as athriller-espionage/thriller-adventure novel and why it was releasedin a somewhat staggered schedule So how did it fare?

The Amazon paperbackversion was released on 11 March and sold as expected – none,except for the author copies I ordered for myself and my other betareaders. On that same day I also set up the ebook release date for 6April on Amazon.

On 30 March theebook version was released on both Smashwords and Google, and theaudiobook version on Google. Between its release and 5 April it sold57 copies on Smashwords plus 2 ebooks and 7 audiobooks on Google.Though a pale shadow of what sales used to be like upon release onSmashwords, it was neither unexpected or discouraging. Selling books for meis a marathon, not a sprint.

Things shook outdifferently on Amazon, as you can see from a glance at the chartbelow. Amazon decided to match the free price on other stores after only five days,on 11 April. I had no input into that decision, though, of course, Iwelcomed it, readership being my reward for writing. Indeed, untilthree or four years ago I used to email Amazon and point out to themthat my books were free on the other sites and ask that they reducetheir price to match those prices. I stopped doing this since most ofmy books were free, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. Now I letAmazon do as it pleases.

So how exactly did it all shake out? A glance at the chart at the bottom will tell the tale. So what are my takeaways from the experience?

1. First is a given.It is much easier to sell a book for free than at any price, which iswhy I sell my books for free when and where I can. I value readershipover revenue.

2. Concerning thefirst bump in sales after Amazon dropped the price; I think those 274copies through 17 April were more or less organic. Organic in thesense that Amazon wasn’t pushing them, though my wife said that shereceived an email announcing my book. I didn’t. I have somethinglike 215 followers on Amazon, who get notices of a new release.Perhaps many of them picked it up when it was free. That said, Istill have no explanation for why my sales took off as fast as theydid – no other book I have ever released ever sold that many in so short of time, atlease in the last several years. The only difference I can point tois the speed at which Amazon dropped the price and the fact that Ireleased the book in a category other than SF. I have to believe thecategory is significant.

3. The first 274sales were strong enough by 14 April to land my book in the top slot5 on the 100 Best Sellers (Free) list for Thriller-espionage, andnumber 7 in the Thriller-adventure list. Genres seems to matter. I’vehad SF books on the free 100 bestseller list and never seen saleslike this.

4. On April 15 itseems clear that these sales were strong enough to kick in thelegendary Amazon algorithms, the only explanation for the explosionof sales on 15, 16, and 17 April. We’ve often read that you shouldkick start your sales upon release to catch the attention of Amazon’salgorithms which then will pile on and promote sales all on their own– for free. This appears to be the case with The Girl on theKerb.

5. I don’t know ifmy cover helped or hindered sales. It was certainly different fromall the rest of the books on the list – see the screen shot above.However, since all a potential reader sees is the cover before theydecide to click and read the blurb, it certainly played a role, oneway or another.

6. I think this isan exceptional event, and I doubt that it will significantly alter mysales on Amazon going forward, though ideally it will give me some newreaders who will go on and read some of my other books. However, since none of my other books arethrillers, I don’t expect that number to be very large. Time willtell.

7. Even as a onetime event, it’s still three years worth of sales within a month.It’s a gift horse whose teeth I'm not inspecting.

8. My bottom line:it pays, as both a writer and a publisher, to experiment, as I did inthis case with genre category.

As I posted yesterday, Thursday,27 April, marked the eighth anniversary of the release of A Summerin Amber, my first published novel. Next week I will break out mysales numbers for my eight year in publishing, as I have done every year. It was a good year. In fact, the surprising success ofThe Girl on the Kerb was just the icing on the cake. Staytuned.

Eight Years Ago Today...

Eight years ago today I released my first book, A Summer in Amber. I had been working on it for three or four years prior to its release, along with the books that would become The Bright Black Sea and Some Day Days. It was inspired, in part, from watching the first two seasons of Downton Abbey on Netflix, with its premise of a romance between a commoner and the daughter of an aristocrat, with a bit of the Scottish stories of John Buchan tossed in. I thought I could do the romance better, and setting an Edwardian story in the future would not only save me a lot of time and grief trying to get Edwardian details right, but I could avoid the inevitable war that would soon follow. Avoiding the real world, while at the same time telling old fashioned stories set in the future, is a pattern I have followed to this day. 

It is interesting for me to think back on all the alternative story lines I considered while planning and writing this novel. There were many. My original idea was to make it something of a mystery concerning a scientific discovery by scientists who had taken up residence in the estate during the Storm Years. And then much more of a thriller with the stealing the invention by a ruthless competitor at the heart of the story, but I found that I wasn't a thriller writer. (Or am I? Stay tuned), Instead, I settled on a "what I did over my Summer Vacation" story, and the rest is history.

Launching The Girl on the Kerb (Part 1)

The Cover of a Cozy Thriller

Last week I talked about my new appreciation for my role as thepublisher of my work. This week I am going to continue along thoselines, talking about the launch of my new novel, The Girl on theKerb.

(Edit – I’mnever in any danger of writing anything too briefly. I waffle on andon, and I do so here as well. I had intended this to be a single piece,but after including everything I thought I needed to include to fullyexplain the launching of the Girlon the Kerb, I found the word count approaching 1000 words,and I hadn’t even reached the actual launch yet. It was only thenwhen I decided to split this report into two parts. Seeing that Ihave nothing else in mind to write about, save my April book report,it was an easy decision.)

First, somebackground. By the time March had rolled around, I had learned enoughabout traditional publishing to decide that I didn’t want to sellmy story to a traditional publisher. This was easy to decide, since Ihadn’t been asked. However, the thought of losing effective controlof my work, just stuck in my gullet even though I had no expectationthat Gollancz would actually buy it. Still, I promised myself to waiton their rejection before publishing it myself. It was part of thegame I was playing. They had said that the process would take 6 to 9months, and March was the ninth month… I had only to wait it outbefore I could consider my promise kept.

Nevertheless, Idecided to cheat. Just a little. Given my feelings about traditionalpublishing, I felt safe, on 11 March, to put the ebook version of thestory up for pre-order on Amazon for a 6 April release. Beingslightly superstitious, I always releasing my books on a Thursday,and that was the first Thursday in April. I told myself that I couldcancel the pre-order if the impossible happened and I changed mymind. I then took a step further. Not wishing to wait until mid tolate April for my author copies of the paperback book, I quietlyreleased the paper version of the book on 11 March. Almost no onebuys paper copies of my books, so I figured it hardly counted as arelease.

As it turned out, Ireceived my rejection from Gollancz on the 24th of March.I know of several writers who passed this first process, and hadtheir stories go on to the second round consideration – that wouldtake another three months. Oh, the hoops publishers put poor writersthrough – because they know any writer will do just about anything,and accept just about any deal, to get published.

With nothing holdingme back, I decided to release the Smashwords and Google ebook andaudiobook versions on the following Thursday, 30 March.

My next decision waswhat to release The Girl on the Kerb as. As in what categoryor genre it would be slotted under. Using the freedom andopportunities afforded by being my own publisher, I decided torelease The Girl on the Kerbas something other thana science fiction novel.

There as a number ofreasons for this. The first being that during my time posing as anaspiring traditional writer, I discovered that though I could findagents who said they were willing to take on science fiction, whatthey really seemed to be looking for was fantasy. Indeed, I watchedan interview with an agent who confirmed this, saying that publisherswere far more anxious to find fantasy than SF. That suggested to me that SF wasn't all that hot. And even in author publishing, fantasy outsells SF by a fair amount.

Still, there are a lot of author published SF books on Amazon, but much ofit is military SF in one guise or another. Military SF is the largestsingle category, but when you consider that Space Opera, FirstContact, Alien Invasion, as well as Adventure all usually featurewars of some sort, that’s more than half of the SF titles. Thissuggests that military SF in its various guises is what most AmazonSF fans want to read. Since my story isn’t military SF, releasingit as SF would mean that it would likely only appeal to my usualreaders. Which is fine… But if I could find some way to find somemore readers...

A second reason fornot releasing it as SF is that over the last couple of years I’vehad my own personal epiphany. I’ve had to admit to myself thatdespite considering myself a SF fan almost all my life, after readingSF blogs and watching SF YouTube videos, I've come to realize that I really don’t like mostSF stories. On any list of 100 great SF books, I may’ve read, ortried to read, 17 of them. Of course, I’ve slotted almost all of mybooks into SF, because they are all set in the future, and most onother planets. But that, in part, is due to sheer laziness on my part; itmeans that I don’t have to do the research needed to write a storyin real places at real times, I could just make up things as I goalong. But thinking about it, is the setting what really matters? What if Ireleased it in accordance to its plot rather than its setting?

If I wanted to findnew readers, and as a publisher, I do, it seemed to me that I wouldhave to offer something new to find new readers. I had tried thisbefore, writing and releasing Beneath the Lanterns as fantasy without, I must admit, any great success in breaking into the fantasy market. However, I’m hoping to rectify that this year… butthat’s a subject for another post. Still, I had to believe that  it was worth trying again. In this case, I decidedto release The Girl on the Kerb based on its plot, by listingit as an espionage novel instead of a SF novel. I figured I could dothis, just as long as I made it clear in the blurb that the story wasset in the far future, i.e. they were getting an espionage novel witha SF twist.

Having decided onthis course of action, I discovered, when setting up the book, thatespionage novels are not a separate category. Rather, they are asub-category of “thrillers”. This, I must admit, gave me a bit ofa pause. I hadn’t written a thriller. Or at least, I didn’t thinkI had. Though not being a reader of thrillers, I couldn’t say oneway or another. Perhaps there are such things as “cozy thrillers.”Well, if not, I guess I’ve gone and invented them with The Girlon the Kerb. In any event, I decided to go with “Thriller –espionage” and double down with “Thriller – adventure” forits category/genre. No mention of SF at all. Nothing ventured,nothing gained.

So how has it gone?That’s next week’s subject. Stay tuned.

Omnibus Editions

I find the publishing business, both traditional and independent, tobe interesting. Since I've been paying more attention to traditionalpublishing lately, I’ve come away with one important takeaway. I nowconsider myself an author/publisher rather than a self-publishingauthor, or an indie-publisher. I write stories. I publish stories.They are two jobs. I do them both. And except for scale, mypublishing business is not all that much different from whattraditional publishers do, save that I care lot more about the booksI publish than most traditional publishers do for most of their books these days.

I’ve been apublisher for eight years. My publishing business model is prettyunique, in that it prioritize sales over revenue, fun over work,and yet makes a very small profit every year. I've alwlays been looking for waysto improve sales – efforts that traditional publishers don’tbother with. I have updated all my books many times to correcterrors. I’ve revised the text a little in some of my books to improve them. I’ve released all my books with different covers. I have tried differentprices as well. And I’ve tried new technology, like audiobooks,when I had the chance. I haven’t tried going allin with Amazon, and I don’t plan on trying that.

But what I haven’tdone so far is to focus any efforts on my Amazon offerings outside ofthe U.S., where by and large, Amazon does not price match my freebooks. This summer I plan to address that oversight by offering omnibus editions of my books at special prices exclusively on Amazon. In the U.S. where most of my books are free on Amazon, this won't be a big deal, but for foreign sales, it will allow me to offer my books at discount prices, without changing the list price of my current offerings. Not that it would matter, save that I set the list price as a mark of quality with the price then discounted on Amazon.

To begin, this May I plan onreleasing an omnibus edition of my four book Nine Star NebulaMystery/Adventure series, priced at $.99 for the first month or two before raising it to $2.99. This omnibus version will actually work acrossall the Amazon stores, since two of the books in the series are stillat list price of $2,99 in the U.S. store, so the $.99 or even $2.99price will still be a deal in the U.S. store.

After that, I willcreate a Lost Star Stories Omnibus edition that includes bothThe Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star’s Sea. I hopeto price it at $.99 for the first month, but I think that Amazonmight have some limits on the word count for $.99 books, so we’llhave to see how that goes. It too will go up to $2.99 after the firstmonth or two.

Next up will be my two near future books, A Summer in Amber, and SomeDay Days, packaged as a Before and After the Solar StormsOmnibus. Since I’m currently writing a third and final TropicSea story, I’ll let that omnibus version slide until 2024 when itwill be complete. Finally, late this fall, my Post Solar AgeOmnibus, including Keiree,Under the Lanterns, and The Girl on the Kerb willbe released.

I don’t expect this program to generate a lot of revenue. However, more than half of my sales on the other platforms come from outside the U.S., so that offering editions of my books at very special prices might move the needle a little on Amazon as well. Or not. We'll see. "We'll see" seems to be the moto of the publishing business.

The Girl on the Kerb is now FREE on Amazon

 

Amazon, all on its own, has reduced the price to The Girl on the Kerb to FREE, matching its price everywhere else - without me asking them to. Price changes like this on Amazon are out of my control, so pick up your copy now, while the getting's good.