C. Litka's Blog, page 66
April 4, 2016
The Long March
It is going on seven years since I started writing The Kiss of the White Witch. More than a half of million words in print later, I've come to the end of this long march with the release, this past weekend, of versions no. 3 of A Summer in Amber and The Bright Black Sea, and version no. 2 of Some Day Days,the definitive versions of these books.
The improvements are extensive enough to warrant updating your current copies if you can.
I wrote my books on what is now, an eight year old Mac mini with a now out of day OS and an out of date version of LibreOffice. It's always pilot error – the old version of LibreOffice didn't type the typos – they're all mine. But somehow, I swear, it seemed to find fewer of them than newer versions did. Anyway, between pilot err and a less capable program, typos got overlooked. I then made the mistake of making revisions after proofreading. Lessons have been learned the hard way.
Last fall I bought a $150 Windows laptop, loaded the newest version of LibreOffice on it and ran A Summer in Amber and The Bright Black Sea through the spell checker of the newer version which picked up many typos that the previous version seemed to have overlooked. At the same time, I also read through and slightly revised The Bright Black Sea. And yet, some typos evaded capture.
Fast forward to this past weekend. My little laptop came with a free 1 year subscription to Microsoft Office. Being familiar and happy with LibreOffice, I hadn't bothered to activate this feature until last weekend. I then spent the weekend running all three books through Word's spelling and grammar features, correcting things like extra spaces, double words, punctuations, adding hyphens to words, correcting correctly spelled words in the wrong places, and a few misspellings. (Or at least it disagrees with the current spelling. For example, Word doesn't like "strongroom", suggesting it should be "strong room" though both seem to be right.) With this review, I've reached the limits of what I can do to make my books as typo-free as possible. These, then, are their final versions, though, as always, I welcome and will correct any mistakes pointed out to me by my readers.
So we've reached the end of the long march. What's next?
At the moment I'm halfway through the second draft of The Lost Star's Sea. This is the draft where I reconcile what I wrote in the beginning with what I wrote later on. Often I don't know where the story's going until I write it, so this second draft is the first time I know how everything works out, and can make any changes necessary to insure everything hangs together in the complete work. In addition, I enhance the dialogue, characters, and descriptions, since I tend to only sketch some of that in the first draft where I'm more concerned about getting the story down than fine tuning it.
When this second draft is done I'll move it over to my laptop and do all the subsequent drafts on that machine with it enhanced spell checker features. Hopefully these drafts will only involve making sentences clearer and sounding right. There' a hundred ways to say anything, and on any given day, one way may sound better than another, so it's sort of a moving target. Eventually, however, you have to settle on one way. When I've settled, I'll run it through MS Office and make all the suggested corrections. Only then will I print it out for my proofreader. And then, after making all the corrections that comeback from proofreading, and only those corrections, the story should be ready for release. I'm currently planning to release it early in Sept. 2016, a year after the first Captain Wil Litang volume.
Looking ahead to 2017's novel, I'm thinking it'll be a stand alone adventure story set in a world much like our own, but differing in details, sort of an an alternate-world/fantasy story. The main characters look to be arcane-archaeologists – folks who dig up and attempt to decipher the fragments of a series of long dead civilizations lost in myth. It will be set in a time period something like the first half of our 20th century. Right now it's looking like a wartime espionage story – has one side discovered an arcane weapon powerful enough to rule them all? – but heaven knows, that may well change a dozen times between now and whenever the next story is written.
A third volume of Captain Wil Litangs adventures is also planned, but I'm in no hurry to write it. Not only do I not have a clue as to how things turn out, but I'd like to hold off and see how many potential readers it might have. It makes more sense to write books that may attract new readers than to write books that only focus on one sub-set of readers. Indeed, I wrote The Lost Star's Sea only because I had the idea for it halfway through writing The Bright Black Sea and steered that story towards it, so it needed to be written.
Coming up next, early in May 2016 I will issue my first annual report on self-publishing. All the numbers, for each of my three books to give everyone an insight into the realities of self-publishing, and the potential and limitations of offering works for free.
The improvements are extensive enough to warrant updating your current copies if you can.
I wrote my books on what is now, an eight year old Mac mini with a now out of day OS and an out of date version of LibreOffice. It's always pilot error – the old version of LibreOffice didn't type the typos – they're all mine. But somehow, I swear, it seemed to find fewer of them than newer versions did. Anyway, between pilot err and a less capable program, typos got overlooked. I then made the mistake of making revisions after proofreading. Lessons have been learned the hard way.
Last fall I bought a $150 Windows laptop, loaded the newest version of LibreOffice on it and ran A Summer in Amber and The Bright Black Sea through the spell checker of the newer version which picked up many typos that the previous version seemed to have overlooked. At the same time, I also read through and slightly revised The Bright Black Sea. And yet, some typos evaded capture.
Fast forward to this past weekend. My little laptop came with a free 1 year subscription to Microsoft Office. Being familiar and happy with LibreOffice, I hadn't bothered to activate this feature until last weekend. I then spent the weekend running all three books through Word's spelling and grammar features, correcting things like extra spaces, double words, punctuations, adding hyphens to words, correcting correctly spelled words in the wrong places, and a few misspellings. (Or at least it disagrees with the current spelling. For example, Word doesn't like "strongroom", suggesting it should be "strong room" though both seem to be right.) With this review, I've reached the limits of what I can do to make my books as typo-free as possible. These, then, are their final versions, though, as always, I welcome and will correct any mistakes pointed out to me by my readers.
So we've reached the end of the long march. What's next?
At the moment I'm halfway through the second draft of The Lost Star's Sea. This is the draft where I reconcile what I wrote in the beginning with what I wrote later on. Often I don't know where the story's going until I write it, so this second draft is the first time I know how everything works out, and can make any changes necessary to insure everything hangs together in the complete work. In addition, I enhance the dialogue, characters, and descriptions, since I tend to only sketch some of that in the first draft where I'm more concerned about getting the story down than fine tuning it.
When this second draft is done I'll move it over to my laptop and do all the subsequent drafts on that machine with it enhanced spell checker features. Hopefully these drafts will only involve making sentences clearer and sounding right. There' a hundred ways to say anything, and on any given day, one way may sound better than another, so it's sort of a moving target. Eventually, however, you have to settle on one way. When I've settled, I'll run it through MS Office and make all the suggested corrections. Only then will I print it out for my proofreader. And then, after making all the corrections that comeback from proofreading, and only those corrections, the story should be ready for release. I'm currently planning to release it early in Sept. 2016, a year after the first Captain Wil Litang volume.
Looking ahead to 2017's novel, I'm thinking it'll be a stand alone adventure story set in a world much like our own, but differing in details, sort of an an alternate-world/fantasy story. The main characters look to be arcane-archaeologists – folks who dig up and attempt to decipher the fragments of a series of long dead civilizations lost in myth. It will be set in a time period something like the first half of our 20th century. Right now it's looking like a wartime espionage story – has one side discovered an arcane weapon powerful enough to rule them all? – but heaven knows, that may well change a dozen times between now and whenever the next story is written.
A third volume of Captain Wil Litangs adventures is also planned, but I'm in no hurry to write it. Not only do I not have a clue as to how things turn out, but I'd like to hold off and see how many potential readers it might have. It makes more sense to write books that may attract new readers than to write books that only focus on one sub-set of readers. Indeed, I wrote The Lost Star's Sea only because I had the idea for it halfway through writing The Bright Black Sea and steered that story towards it, so it needed to be written.
Coming up next, early in May 2016 I will issue my first annual report on self-publishing. All the numbers, for each of my three books to give everyone an insight into the realities of self-publishing, and the potential and limitations of offering works for free.
April 1, 2016
Price Matching Or Not
Wouldn't you know, just as soon as I decide not to obsess about things like sales and reviews, and only check in once a month to record my downloads, Amazon does something unexpected, unexplained, and unannounced. On March 9th it stopped discounting one of my books, The Bright Black Sea so I discovered it listed at its full $3.99 price instead of free.
Unlike Smashwords and the ebook stores it distributes to, I'm unable to list a book on Amazon priced at "Free". It must be $.99 or more. Amazon can, at its discretion, discount the price of a book to match prices with other ebook stores, something they have very kindly done for all my books, once I call this to their attention. (At least in the US – world wide they sell them at list price. Except when they don't. A Summer in Amber is free on Amazon UK, though the other two books are not. I have no idea how this all works.)
I don't know why they decided to stop price matching The Bright Black Sea. My preferred price is free, for many reasons, including my desire, as a new writer to reach a larger readership.
The question now is what should I do? I could contact Amazon again and point out that they're being undersold? Should I reduce my price back to $.99, and see what they do next? Or I should let things ride for a while and see what happens? Well, letting sleeping dogs lie is one of my guiding principles, so I'm just going to leave things as they are for now. When I see authors selling 50 page novellas for $4 or $5, I don't feel bad selling a 800+ page novel for $3.99, even if it has several typos.
I don't like that some people are paying for a book (even at a bargain price) that they could download for free elsewhere. However, I promise that all my royalties from the sale of The Bright Black Sea will go into a mason jar and when it's full enough, I'll use that money to hire a professional proofreader. There's over $10 in it right now. However, since the proofreading bill for The Bright Black Sea would run between $6,500 and $9,800, it may take a while.
Unlike Smashwords and the ebook stores it distributes to, I'm unable to list a book on Amazon priced at "Free". It must be $.99 or more. Amazon can, at its discretion, discount the price of a book to match prices with other ebook stores, something they have very kindly done for all my books, once I call this to their attention. (At least in the US – world wide they sell them at list price. Except when they don't. A Summer in Amber is free on Amazon UK, though the other two books are not. I have no idea how this all works.)
I don't know why they decided to stop price matching The Bright Black Sea. My preferred price is free, for many reasons, including my desire, as a new writer to reach a larger readership.
The question now is what should I do? I could contact Amazon again and point out that they're being undersold? Should I reduce my price back to $.99, and see what they do next? Or I should let things ride for a while and see what happens? Well, letting sleeping dogs lie is one of my guiding principles, so I'm just going to leave things as they are for now. When I see authors selling 50 page novellas for $4 or $5, I don't feel bad selling a 800+ page novel for $3.99, even if it has several typos.
I don't like that some people are paying for a book (even at a bargain price) that they could download for free elsewhere. However, I promise that all my royalties from the sale of The Bright Black Sea will go into a mason jar and when it's full enough, I'll use that money to hire a professional proofreader. There's over $10 in it right now. However, since the proofreading bill for The Bright Black Sea would run between $6,500 and $9,800, it may take a while.
March 1, 2016
The Lost Star's Sea – Vol. 2 of Wil Litang's Adventures (Fall 2016)
The Lost Star's Sea takes up Wil Litang's story directly after his ill considered return to the Pela. In it he finds himself alive, but castaway in the floating islands and the endless sea of the Archipelago of the Tenth Star. Ill luck or good? It could go either way, but one thing seems all but certain – if he can stay alive long enough, he'll likely have to find a new life in the Pela. However, the "if he can stay alive" part looks very iffy indeed, between a deadly foe, fierce dragons, primitive, savage peoples, pirates, bandits, and beings so strange that they defy explanation.
The Bright Black Sea was my riff on the space operas of the golden age of science fiction. The Lost Star's Sea is my riff on the old planetary adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack Vance, and the like. As with The Bright Black Sea, it is rather like a jazz version of an old show tune – familiar, and yet very different, with it's own tempo and style, turning a familiar old standard into something new and unexpected.
Style-wise, it follows the pattern set by The Bright Black Sea – an episodic adventure that takes the reader to new islands of wonder in the company of Wil Litang and the good friends and interesting companions he meets along his way. Once again it is a good long novel, likely ending up 170K to 175K words long and is complete in itself – drawing to a close with no major cliffhangers, but with the promise of more adventures ahead. Ideally it'll eventually have a companion Pela volume, The Endless Sea, but even if all goes well, that title is unlikely to appear for some years down the line. Truth be told, I know exactly one thing you'll not know once you read The Lost Star's Sea, and I don't know what it'll mean. Indeed, I haven't a clue as to what happens to Litang after the ending of this volume.
The complete first draft of this story is complete. The hardest part is astern. Now I'm putting it aside for a month or two before returning with a fresh eye to it to work it into its final form over late spring and the summer. If all goes well, The Lost Star's Sea will be ready to be released late in the summer or early in the fall of 2016.
New Prices on Amazon
A brief note. I've raised the "list price" of my books on Amazon from $.99 to $1.99 for Some Day Days, $2.99 for A Summer in Amber, with The Bright Black Sea is now listed for $3.99. This is merely a marketing experiment, not a change in policy. I publish my books to share, not sell.
Pricing is a business decision. However, some people view prices as the appraised value of the book. So as an experiment, I've raised my list prices to increase the "appraised value" of the stories for anyone with this view.
And just to make my philosophy of writing and publishing clear, I write and publish for fun, not for profit. I publish to share my stories with readers of similar tastes, and enjoy it when they do. I also like the sense of accomplishment that bringing a long project to completion brings. I can assure you that I'm leaving very little money on the table in doing this. I plan to publish on this blog a full report of my first year in the self-publishing world with a complete accounting of how each book performed, so that both readers and any other self-published author can get a glimpse into the rather myth-filled world of indie-publishing.
Pricing is a business decision. However, some people view prices as the appraised value of the book. So as an experiment, I've raised my list prices to increase the "appraised value" of the stories for anyone with this view.
And just to make my philosophy of writing and publishing clear, I write and publish for fun, not for profit. I publish to share my stories with readers of similar tastes, and enjoy it when they do. I also like the sense of accomplishment that bringing a long project to completion brings. I can assure you that I'm leaving very little money on the table in doing this. I plan to publish on this blog a full report of my first year in the self-publishing world with a complete accounting of how each book performed, so that both readers and any other self-published author can get a glimpse into the rather myth-filled world of indie-publishing.
February 23, 2016
Updates
Just a quick note to mention that I've uploaded minor updates to all three books. I'd done this last month for the Kindle editions and have now updated the Smashwords versions as well. Just a few small typos and largely inconsequential changes. I will continue to update any book so as to eliminate any remaining mistakes as I find them or you point them out to me.
In addition, I tinkered with the categories for A Summer in Amber and Some Day Days. I don't write my books "to market", which is to say that I don't identify a specific type of story and then write my story as a close imitation. I write my stories just to please myself, so my books tend to fall between the cracks when it comes to genre. For example, while I've always considered A Summer in Amber to be a steampunk story, even if it's not set in pseudo-Victorian England, it doesn't have clockwork robots, air ship pirates or zombies, and thus lacks many of the cardinal features of the usual steampunk novel. The upside of this is that I can describe my novels in various ways. For A Summer in Amber I've replaced "science fiction adventure" with "science fiction apocalyptic", since it is set in a post-apocalyptic society, even if it also lacks many of the cardinal features of that genre as well. In a similar vein, I've moved Some Day Days to straight up "literature" and "new adult romance" from science fiction and romance, which it probably was a poor fit for anyway. Really, it's a story that's hard to fit it into any specific genre, so I can pick and choose and still justify any I do choose. I'm curious to see what, if any these moves have on downloads.
It's closing in on one year since I started this experiment. I've been very pleased with the result – thank you, dear readers! – but truth be told I didn't have any great expectations, so that bar was modest going in. I am planning to post a complete report of how my books did in their first year – all the numbers and such – early in May (2016) so that my readers and any other indie authors that might look in can see the results of my experiment of releasing three free books in a year with a business plan that solely consisted of releasing them and waiting for lightening to strike. (Which, by the way, isn't a business plan.)
Currently I am working on the last part of The Lost Star's Sea and hope to have the first draft of that novel done within the next several weeks. My fantasy novel idea is slow to take shape and being cooped up in the house by winter is simply too productive of a time for writing to waste trying to come up with a story. It's prime time for writing, so I'm writing the story I do know, though I keep bumping up to what I don't know while I push the story to its ending. It changes several times a day. As usual, I know the ending, it's just getting there that's work. Stay tuned.
In addition, I tinkered with the categories for A Summer in Amber and Some Day Days. I don't write my books "to market", which is to say that I don't identify a specific type of story and then write my story as a close imitation. I write my stories just to please myself, so my books tend to fall between the cracks when it comes to genre. For example, while I've always considered A Summer in Amber to be a steampunk story, even if it's not set in pseudo-Victorian England, it doesn't have clockwork robots, air ship pirates or zombies, and thus lacks many of the cardinal features of the usual steampunk novel. The upside of this is that I can describe my novels in various ways. For A Summer in Amber I've replaced "science fiction adventure" with "science fiction apocalyptic", since it is set in a post-apocalyptic society, even if it also lacks many of the cardinal features of that genre as well. In a similar vein, I've moved Some Day Days to straight up "literature" and "new adult romance" from science fiction and romance, which it probably was a poor fit for anyway. Really, it's a story that's hard to fit it into any specific genre, so I can pick and choose and still justify any I do choose. I'm curious to see what, if any these moves have on downloads.
It's closing in on one year since I started this experiment. I've been very pleased with the result – thank you, dear readers! – but truth be told I didn't have any great expectations, so that bar was modest going in. I am planning to post a complete report of how my books did in their first year – all the numbers and such – early in May (2016) so that my readers and any other indie authors that might look in can see the results of my experiment of releasing three free books in a year with a business plan that solely consisted of releasing them and waiting for lightening to strike. (Which, by the way, isn't a business plan.)
Currently I am working on the last part of The Lost Star's Sea and hope to have the first draft of that novel done within the next several weeks. My fantasy novel idea is slow to take shape and being cooped up in the house by winter is simply too productive of a time for writing to waste trying to come up with a story. It's prime time for writing, so I'm writing the story I do know, though I keep bumping up to what I don't know while I push the story to its ending. It changes several times a day. As usual, I know the ending, it's just getting there that's work. Stay tuned.
January 29, 2016
Alpha Ver. Hissi, K'raya, Py, and the Mountain of Gold completed
I'm happy to say that I completed the alpha version of Hissi, K'raya, Py and the Mountain of Goldthis morning – a 63,000 word section which includes three adventures, tied together by characters and place. The title is just the new working title of Slaver, Saint and the Bargemen of Daerithat I posted about early in December. It will be the second of three parts that make up The Lost Star's Sea (Vol 1). With it, we're 124,000 words into the story with one more section to write, and everything to revise and work into shape. Still, if all goes well, I should be able to write the third section, and revise the complete work in time to be published by late summer or early fall 2016, which would be a year after the Bright Black Sea was released. That said, I must admit that I have only a vague idea of what adventures and dangers Wil Litang encounters next. (Though I know how it ends.) But without words on paper, I can't promise any firm release date. I still have a lot of day dreaming to do. If I should find myself bogged down, I may still go with my original idea which was to publish these parts as a series of episodes until the complete work is finished. We'll see how the next few months pan out. Long term, I'm thinking The Lost Star's Sea will be published in two volumes. In this first one, Wil Litang is introduced to the Archipelago of the Tenth Star, and slowly finds a new life within it. In the second volume, we'd then shake his life up again, challenging his decisions and perhaps bring back the unresolved story threads from the Bright Black Sea to be resolved, as well as mysteries introduced in volume 1. That said, I have no idea what this all means in terms of a story. Nothing has been determined as to where it goes and how it ends up, which is one reason why I'd like the first volume to be able to stand on its own, if need be. It may be some years before I tackle volume 2.
One of the great disadvantages to doing a sequel is that its readership is almost entirely limited to people who've read the previous book. Reading the Bright Black Seawill be essential to The Lost Star's Sea. While I'm very happy with how The Bright Black Sea has been received, both in terms of downloads and in reader reviews, we're not talking tens of thousands of downloads yet, so the sequel will appeal to a fairly narrow readership of The Bright Black Sea readers. It is possible that a new release might renew interest in the first book, but I'd not count on it. In any event, this is one of the reasons why I'd like to write something a little different now. I'd like to see if I could expand my readership by writing something that might appeal to people who don't read science fiction. Fantasy is actually more popular than science fiction these days, so I'd like to take a crack at that market as well.
All of which is to say that I plan to take some time away from Wil Litang. Perhaps just a week or maybe a month to make a start on that Edwardian fantasy idea I've been toying with for some time. I now have settled on the nose of a story, which might actually lead to more of the shaggy story that goes with the nose. I'm planning to get this first chapter down, develop the main character a bit and set the stage for a story, if only to prime the pump and see where the nose leads to next. Right now, I'll admit, I don't really have a story yet. But I do have a title, which is half the battle – Here & There, an Odd Door. I'm into weird titles at the moment, I guess. The basic idea is that the fabled Otherworld is closer than you think and that there are doors to it, you just don't see them. Not unless you have a key... I think I'll set it in London and England around 1910, though it may not be the London and England of our history. We'll see. It's all still up in the air. I've worked on my other stories all together, one way or the other, so I don't see that if I end up working on two stories – if I'm lucky enough to be able to have two stories to work on – that it would be a problem. Stay tuned.
January 7, 2016
Slaver, Saint and the Bargemen of Daeri
Haven't had much success coming up with the fantasy story yet – just a glimmering – so I'm continuing on with the next Wil Litang novel. Right now it looks like first of two volumes of The Lost Star's Sea, chronicling Wil's initial (mis)adventures within the Archipelago of the Tenth Star will consist of three sections. The first, Cin, Siss, and the Pirates of Temtre is done in first draft. I'm in the middle of the second section, Slaver, Saint, and the Bargemen of Daeri, which, with luck I'll have done by the end of the month, or the next. The third section I have vague plans for, but no definite plot yet. Still, I have time. If I can get that one done this winter as well (hate to waste all these dreary days trapped in the house) then I'll look to have the complete The Lost Star's Sea, Vol. 1 out late summer or fall of 2016. A novel a year looks to be about my pace, in a good year.
December 30, 2015
New Covers for 2016
For 2016 I worked up some new covers for my books. I used the same art (my own) but reversed the priorities – putting the titles in the box and letting the art fill the cover. I'm thinking they're an improvement. At least I've eliminated that black outline around the text of A Summer in Amber that was problematical in the thumbnail images. Everything I read about self-publishing says you need professionally designed covers. You should make your cover look like the covers of other, professionally designed books in your genre because people judge the quality of the book by the quality of its cover. I have to admit I do as well. That said, I can't say I'm all that impressed with many of the presumably professionally designed covers I see. Possibly because they all look alike. Since I'm not writing my stories to be just like other stories in their genre – I'm writing the stories I can't find to read – I think my covers should reflect their outlier nature. And since my stories are rather old fashioned, I think my covers should suggest that too. Which, at any rate, is my story, and I'm sticking with it. That, and the fact that my cover budget is $0, so cover design, as well as everything else, must be done in-house.
December 7, 2015
Cin, Siss, and the Pirates of Temtre
Cin, Siss, and the Pirates of Temtre is the first episode in the planned companion volume for The Bright Black Sea, tentatively titled The Lost Star's Sea. It will chronicle the (mis)adventures of Captain Wil Litang in the Archipelago of the Tenth Star. The Bright Black Sea took something like four years to write and I don't anticipate that The Lost Star's Sea, likely just as long, will be written any faster. As of now I'm 65 years old, and can't count on tomorrow, much less four years from now, so I'm planning to release the beta versions of each episode as I produce them. I use the terms "alpha" and "beta" rather than first and final drafts because I haven't a clue as to where the story will end up, and I may well need to go back and make minor alterations in an episode or two to make things come out the way they should in the end. Thus, the individual episodes should be considered somewhat tentative until they are rolled into The Lost Star's Sea. 70,000 years and uncounted lightyears away make transcribing Wil Litang's account a sometimes iffy venture.Cin, Siss, and the Pirates of Temtre, is a short novel length, 60,000+ word, episode that serves as a bridge between this new novel and The Bright Black Sea. The Bright Black Sea was written as an ode to the golden and pulp age writers of science fiction. In The Lost Star's Sea I'm setting out to write a fond tribute to only one of them – Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the Archipelago of the Tenth Star I have a vast stage filled with strange and wild creatures, savage and advance peoples, swords and sails, mysteries and dangers at every turn that must be faced and if not conquered, survived. I intend, to give those old stories some new twists – I rather doubt any damsels in these tales will need rescuing. Litang, on the other hand... Well, as I indicated, I really don't know where the story will lead us. I have plot elements hanging from The Bright Black Sea to work with, and have tossed in other possibilities as well in this episode, but where they'll lead is anyone's guess. I have ideas where Litang will end up in the next two episodes, but after that, well, I'll just have to wait and see what develops.
I may tinker with this alpha version over the next two weeks, but I plan to put it away until April or May 2016. By then I should be able to approach it bright eyed and bushy tailed, and with the story down, devote myself to crafting the words to make the story as entertaining as I can. Revisions are always more fun than getting the story down the first time, so the heavy lifting is done. If all goes well, I'll release the episode sometime late May or June 2016.
In the meanwhile, I'm hoping to at least get a start on a completely new novel, a fantasy set not in some medieval world, but in a sort of Edwardian age. Motor cars, trains, and the arcane arts of a lost age. We'll see if I can get that to lift.
December 5, 2015
NEW! Ver. 2.0 of The Bright Black Sea Now Available
The Bright Black Sea Version 2.0 is now available on Smashwords and Amazon. It will be available on iBooks and Barnes & Noble within the next few days.
Ver. 2.0 brings many "bug fixes", hopefully addressing concerns expressed in some early reviews. I moved the file from a Mac to a Windows machine and a newer version of LibreOffice, which then highlighted many typos and questionable words that the old version had not. Whether this is the result of LibreOffice being a newer version or that over the years of working in the old program many words may've somehow gotten into the program's dictionary and so weren't highlighted, I can't say. I do think that this is a significant update for everyone, and especially if you are just now starting to read a version released before 5 Dec 2015. Not only does it corrected misspellings, eliminate extra spaces and correct punctuation, but I've also straightened out several dozen awkward sentences, improved the constancy of names, made some minor clarifications, and restored "then" to the work.
Some how – no doubt operator error, since it's always operator error – while using the "find and replace" function of the program without a word in the "replace" box to check the usage of "then" (after the work had been proof-read), I must've hit "replace all" instead of "done". As a result, every "then" in the document was replaced with a space. Murphy's Law in action – if something can go wrong, it will. Hopefully, I've now restored those missing "then"s.
This work was written over the course of some four years and the decision to publish it was made only towards the end of the process. Going forward with new works, and with the knowledge that I will be publishing these works, I hope to use the lessons I've learned the hard way and have a process in place from day one that will eliminate these errors prior to publication, producing a cleaner copy out of the starting gate.
That said, there will likely always be some typos. Writing and editing/proof reading are two different professions, and I'm not an editor/proof reader. Professional proof readers charge between $.02 to $.03 a word and editing can jump the bill to $.04 a word. There are about 327,500 words in The Bright Black Sea. If you do the math you'd see that it would cost between $6,550 and $9,825 to have this book professionally proof read, and up to $13,100 to be professionally edited. There is simply no combination of price & sales volume that could ever be expected to produce enough royalties to cover even a tiny faction of this expense for an independently published writer like myself without a large established base of readers. I've read that 95% of indie published works fail to cover their expenses. And I know that it is very common for new authors to be able to count their sales on the fingers of their two hands and put a name to almost every sale as well. By forgoing professional covers, proof reading and paid promotions, I can at least break even with a cover price of free. The actual price of the work, however, will be typos. I will continue to try improve my processes to make that price as small and as painless as possible as well.
To upgrade to the new version you will need to:
Smashwords versions will probably have to be re-downloaded. It's live now.
iBooks versions include a "update" button that should update the book to the newest version when it becomes available.
Amazon versions is also live at this posting. I think it can be updated by going to a "Manage your Devices" page and turning on automatic updates. I downloaded the earlier version of this work, and have switched that option on, (it was off by default) so we'll see how it works. In the past I tried eliminating the old version on the device and even from my account, and then re-download the book again only to still get the old version. I'll post more when I know what'll work.
Barnes & Noble versions, haven't a clue. I don't have a B & N account.
Kobo. Doesn't apply to anyone that I know of to date.
