Andrew Seiple's Blog: Transmissions From the Teslaverse, page 14

Throw in some Wookie Politics

So, in our Wednesday game, it was my friend's turn to run. He had an idea, we had characters built... but he had to postpone. Needed more time to work on stuff.

So I stepped up to run something, and we ended up going with Star Wars.

I had a simple scenario in mind to start with. Started the group off with three of them in the Imperial prison spice mining complex on Kessel, seeking a way out. The fourth one, who hadn't gone deep into debt to build her character, was an inspector called in to check out the prison's records.

I didn't have much beyond a vague plan, and experience with how secure facilities are run. I detailed a few key players among the prisoners, including three gangs with their own characters and outlooks. One of them was made up of the enslaved wookies working the mines, and two of them had a political power struggle going on.

My PC's romped through there, didn't follow any of the script, had a blast escaping, and completely ignored the wookie politics.

And y'know what? It's cool. I had it on hand if I needed it, but I didn't, and that's okay. Life goes on.

I guess what I'm saying, is that... it's better to have enough notes to keep up with the players if they decide to jump a particular direction and not have to use them, then it is to have nothing on hand when they go that way.

It's a pity, though, man. They totally could have played peacemakers and unifiers to a group of angry tree ape dudes. Ah well, maybe another session...

Selling your Book: Going wide vs going deep

So, when I was ready to start unveiling my work, and find a way to sell it to people, I started looking around. And two strategies started unfolding themselves, both seemed applicable at the time I was planning to enter the e-book game. circa 2015.

I could either go wide, and put my e-books up in as many storefronts as possible...

Or go deep, and drop them in Amazon, and only Amazon.

Going wide LOOKED like the better choice. Why stick to Amazon? If I went through Smashwords or used Caliber to turn the manuscript into many different formats, I could sell in the Apple Store, Kobo, the Barnes and Noble e-store, Smashwords itself, AND Amazon.

Whereas if I wen through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, that would only put me in Amazon.

And yet, most of the research I'd done was saying that authors in my shoes were making more sales in Amazon, than the rest combined.

Why?

I looked more closely, and the reason for that was a little program called Kindle Unlimited.

In a nutshell, it's an Amazon subscription service that functions like a library. When you sign up for it you pay a monthly fee, and can download any book in the KU program for free. You can keep up to 10 at any one time, if you want more free books than that, you have to delete one.

On the author side, authors get paid a fraction of a cent for every page read through the KU program. It's been around half a cent for a while, with occasional dips up and down. And after a while? It adds up.

However, the only way to put a book in KU, is to agree to make it exclusive to Amazon for as long as it's in KU.

So you have to go deep...

I did the math, and that decided me. I went deep, with no hesitation. And so far it's paid off. It didn't matter much when the only thing that was out there was my shorter fiction, but Dire:Born? That puppy's 320 pages. Which means $1.50 to $1.60 in my pocket for every full read through KU. That's a little worse than half my take for a direct e-book sale, but I don't mind. My take on it is...

1. People who might not read it are checking it out because it costs them nothing.

2. Essentially it's a win/win scenario. To them it's free, to me it's like selling the book with a steep discount.

3. The number of books in KU is smaller than the Amazon catalogue on the whole, so I have more of a chance of being read.

4. If someone uses KU to read my book for free and REALLY likes it, they might buy a copy later to keep permanently. Not a common occurrence, but it HAS happened.

5. KU grants access to a few marketing methods and specials that I'd have to pay money to get otherwise.

So.

Yeah, I went deep, and it's been working out so far. But...

The e-book market is constantly shifting. Recently Apple's been gaining on Amazon, with their ibooks program. Amazon's still the elephant in the room, but it may not be that way forever.

So for now, I'm going deep. But once I get my first trilogy complete?

Wellp, it'll be time to sit down, look at the way the wind is going, and maybe consider going wide...

Writing the Teslaverse

The theme of my last post was worldbuilding, and there's a reason for that.

I posted it because that's pretty much what I'm doing with my writing, at this very minute. Instead of writing book by book, I've built an entire superpowered world to explore. Every book I release in the "Tales from the Teslaverse" series is going to feature characters and locations that can pop up again in other books. There's continuity here, and someone who gets namedropped in one book has every chance of getting their own short story, novella, or even novel in the future.

It's basically applying a top-down approach to writing, after applying a bottom-up approach to worldbuilding. I kicked around the Teslaverse for years before I finally settled down to write about it.

Dire? She's one of the characters I know best, and one of the most well-received, so I'm opening with her. She'll get a good trilogy, but there will be other fiction along the way, and eventually, more Dire books after the trilogy's done, and various spin-offs and crossovers and a glorious smorgasborg of modern superhero goodness with a dash of magic.

So settle in, folks, it's gonna be a heck of a ride if I can pull it off.

Oh, and for those curious, the Dire sequel is currently at 28% draft completion. It'll take a few months, but it's coming, it's coming...

Worldcrafting and Geopolitics in RPGs

Looking back on it, I think what drew me in to tabletop Roleplaying Games, was the fact that most of them were a toolkit, rather than a bible.

Okay, that sounds weird. Let me expound on this a bit;

The first true RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot of other RPG's that follow in its footsteps aren't designed with a particular setting in mind. They give you rules on how to do things, a few sample character options, and some basic recommendations.

They don't set any rules on what you do with it. In fact, you're expected to fill in the blanks when you start building the setting for your game.

In fact, if they are too strict with it, then the game ends up limiting what you can do with it. So instead of "thou shalt nots," these sort of games just toss concepts and ideas at you, and trust that you'll sort it out.

The basic D&D books are set up to give you a basic, pseudo-tolkienesque high fantasy setting. They give you rules for humans and elves and dwarves and orcs and other things. It tells how magic works in D&D fantasy worlds, and has rules for resolving conflicts. Everything else is up to you.

What's the map look like? Go ahead and create it. What nations are around, and what sort of politics do they have? Go ahead and create it. Where are the ruins, and the flavorful bits that really drum in that fantasy feel? Put'em on the map where the cities aren't, and you're on the right track.

I learned worldbuilding by drawing cheesy fantasy maps, and thinking over what countries were where, and what sort of troubles they had. I could have gone really detailed but I didn't, because it wasn't important. What WAS important, was figuring out the points of conflict, because conflict is fun, and as necessary to games as it is to stories.

Want a war? Put a few gold mines on the borders of GoodguyKingdomA and ExpansionistEmpireB. What do dwarves want? Put a ruined Dwarven Hold smack in orc territory, that'll give'em something to go after. Why is that mountain range jutting out of the sea with no lowlands around? Sure, you just put it there because it looked cool, but maybe there was a cataclysm and this is all that remains of ancient Totallynotatlantis.

It flexes the imagination.

Sure, the RPG companies also put out setting books, and it's okay to use them if you want. But when you're ten, and really bored in math class? Nothing beats drawing out the places you see in your dreams, for your friends to romp around in and explore.

And maybe, if you do it right, they'll be able to catch just a glimpse of the wonder you felt when you dreamed them up.

Publishing on the Kindle...

Welcome to another Writing 101 Monday!

Yep, I think I'll use Mondays to discuss the writing profession, and techniques, and the industry. (At least the little part I've seen of it. I'm still learning the ropes myself.)

So, a forum friend from Spacebattles wanted to know how the publishing process goes, if you go through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). There's some pretty good guides on the subject, but I can tell you how it went for me...

In a word? Easy. Here, let me give you an overview:

Basically, the first step is to head over to KDP.amazon.com, and sign up for an account. If you're in the US, this usually entails giving them your tax information. That's not a big problem, but it can cause a day or so delay as they check it and make sure it's on the line. You'll also need to supply information depending on how you want to receive royalties. If you want your royalties sent to an account, you'll need to provide account information, that sort of thing.

The next thing you'll need to do is format your manuscript so that the Kindle upload tool can convert it into a .mobi file. There are free e-books that tell you how to do this... though do note that if you're not using MS Word, you may have to adjust a bit. I use Openoffice, so I went and got a 99 cent ebook from Aaron Shepard on the subject. It walked me through the basics, and I'm glad I got it.

Once you've got the manuscript formatted and finished, I recommend using Caliber or some other method of file conversion to turn the file into a .mobi. Then try reading it with your Kindle, or Kindle emulator. Go through each page, and make sure your formatting is okay. Trust me, this will save a lot of fussing later.

You'll also need cover art. Go buy some, or draw it. If you buy it, make sure you have signed rights to use it for a cover. Trust me, you don't want this coming back on you later.

Then, once the manuscript is ready and you have your cover art handy, go into KDP and start a new project. There are a lot of fields to fill out, and the guides will step you through them. The most important ones, and the ones you should think about carefully, are as follows;

Description: This is the blurb that comes up when someone will look up your ebook on Amazon. Think of it as back-cover information, or inside-cover information. Make sure it's a good summary of your book, because if it's bad, it WILL hurt you.

Categories: These are basically genres. You get to choose two of them. Choose wisely! If you put your book in the wrong genre, then people may be upset when it's not what they wanted.

Keywords: This is the tricky part. Think of these as search engine bait. If people search Amazon for "superhero", and your book has the keyword superhero, then it'll come up. You get seven of them. They can be phrases.... Dire:Born has "strong female protagonist", for example. You don't have to use all the keyword slots, but the more you use, the more you'll appear to searching customers.

There are other fields, but they're mostly self-explanatory. You can look them up in guides, or with a good google search.

During the process, you'll be asked to upload your manuscript. Now, sometimes this takes a few tries... don't be discouraged if it errors out for no reason you can see. Save your current info, log out, close the browser, log back in and try again.

Once you've uploaded the manuscript, use the previewer tool to check it over. Now sometimes this tool errors out as well... this is why I recommend checking it via file conversion earlier in the process. (Remember that part? Cool.)

After that, it's mostly done. Ah, you'll have to choose royalties. Without getting complicated, basically if your e-book is between 2.99 and 9.99, you can choose 70% royalties. Any less or more, and you're limited to 35% royalties. So it goes.

And you'll need to choose whether or not you want to put it into Kindle Select. I could write dozens of posts about this, but... basically, unless you really want to sell through other online channels, it's a good idea. At least it is right now, the ebook industry is volatile, and if you're reading this five years later, I can't promise that it'll be as good an idea as it is right now.

With me so far? Cool. Alright, so once you've filled all the fields, uploaded your cover art and manuscript, and checked everything over to make sure it's good, then it's time to publish. PUSH THE BUTTON, FRANK!

Now go do something else. It doesn't instantly put your stuff in Amazon, there's folks who are going to go check it first to make sure it doesn't break their TOS. (That's Terms of Service, by the way.)

Generally it'll show up a few hours to a day afterward, with some variance.

Congratulations! You're now a published author! It's that easy.

After that, comes the tough job... marketing.

But I'll leave that for another week. Be well, friends!

A bit delayed, but nonetheless...

Any post in a storm, hm? Yeah, this one's a day late, but so it goes. I got wrapped up in writing and lost track of time.

Which is appropriate, because I think Fridays are the day that I'll normally spend to tell you about my books.

Dire:Born released in November, and it's the origin story of Doctor Dire, supervillain and supergenius. It's a story that's more about people than it is about powers. So far the reception's been much better than anticipated, and I'm enjoying seeing my work read by so many people!

My current project is the sequel to Dire:Born, tentatively named Dire:Seed. The first draft is 23% complete as I write this. It should hit late spring to mid-summer, if things stay on schedule.

If Dire:Born's theme was about letting go of the past to deal with the present, Dire:Seed is about our protagonist (NEVER USE THE WORD HERO FOR HER! SO COMMANDS DIRE!) learning to work within the present, and build toward the future.

Can't go into more detail than that right now, but it's promising to be one heck of a ride...

Special Announcement - Book Signing!

Well! It's certainly a bit early in the grand scheme of things for this, but I don't want to pass up a good opportunity...

The Beavercreek Half-Price Books store has invited me to do a book signing, and I've accepted. It'll be from 3 PM to 6 PM on January 30th. (That's a Saturday.) If you've got a copy of Dire:Born that you'd like me to sign, then come on down! If you'd like a print copy, then I'll have a few of those for sale, too. Or if you just want to stop in and say hi, that's cool.

The store's address is 3310 Pentagon Blvd. Beavercreek, Ohio 45431.

Red Box Reminiscence

My blog my rules, huh? Alright. Well, then let's make Wednesdays roleplaying game discussion days.

So. Let me tell you how I got started. It was back in nineteen eighty... six? Somewhere around there? Hard to say. I was ten-ish, and I'd heard of this thing called D&D. It sounded kind of fun. I loved reading fantasy books, checked out dozens of them from the library each month. I got kind of jazzed by the idea of playing a hero in my own fantasy stories. But aside from longing glances at the kinda-pricey books in Kay-Bee toys whenever we went to the mall, nothing much came of it.

Then on a visit to the local hardware store, I noticed that for some reason they had a display of roleplaying games and wargames. They had Dragon Pass, they had Lords of Creation, they had Powers and Perils, and some other Avalon Hill boxed sets. And they had the red box basic D&D set, in all its Larry Elmore-illustrated glory, discounted down to a mere ten dollars.

I have no idea why a hardware store had a gaming section.

But I saved my allowance, and grabbed that red box set with my scrawny little paws as fast as I could.

I got my money back and more, from that set. It was glorious. I spent hours alone rolling up characters, and drawing dungeons on graph paper. I'd make up story lines, and roll out fights between monsters, and fart around with it. But...

Well, I didn't have anyone to play with. My parents humored me a bit, but it really wasn't their thing. Same thing with my little sister. And I'd gush about it and annoy everyone... to me, it was a great discovery, this awesome thing that everyone needed to know about! To them, it was me going on for hours about weird stuff that got old after the fourth explanation of the various currencies of the realm. Nobody wants to hear about electrum pieces, it turns out. Odd, that.

I loved that old red box set. I still have a copy of it on my shelf today. Later on I'd get the blue box set as a Christmas gift and drool over the glorious adventure that was the Isle of Dread, but I foolishly traded that away long ago. I'd love to track down the full run of the box sets, but they're kind of pricey to tell the truth. And I've got a copy of the D&D rules cyclopedia which collected them all, so that works instead.

I never did play a full game of basic D&D. When I finally got started playing in High School, the group I was in was doing AD&D, which is a different thing entirely.

Perhaps when my daughter's ten-ish, I'll pull that old red box set out, and see if she can defeat Bargle in the solo adventure. Hopefully she won't feel bad when Aleena the cleric dies at his hands.

Or maybe she'll want to play a cleric like Aleena, instead of nameless fighter guy?

Well.

We shall see.

I tell you this, though. If she ever starts telling me the difference between silver pieces and electrum pieces, I'm gonna listen.

You must not come lightly to the blank page...

"You must not come lightly to the blank page." Stephen King wrote that, in one of his few nonfiction works. It's a book called "On Writing", and it's probably the best manual on the craft I've read so far.

It's a wise saying. And it holds just as true for blog posts, as it does when you've got the word processing software of your choice cracked open with the prompt blinking at you.

Writing is serious business... but at the same time, it's hella fun!

Greetings, all. My name's Andrew Seiple, and for about a year now, I've been writing with an eye to publish my work. I'm starting up this blog to collect stray thoughts on writing, roleplaying, and other similar pursuits. I'll write down hints of things to come in my projects here, and the occasional thought or two on random things.

Fair warning; I'm verbose. Especially when I'm not counting words, I spend them like binge shoppers whip their credit cards on Black Friday.

But who am I?

Well, that's simple. I'm nobody special, really. Grew up in the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio, in the United States of America. Lived around Dayton my whole life. Used to want to be in a hurry to leave, but I've got some pretty solid roots in the form of family and friends, and I've found it's not so bad living here.

I had a decent childhood, with a slight downside in a tendency to be bullied at school. I survived that until college, where I found that much to my relief, the world was actually a pretty fun place when you're not surrounded by jerks.

I did a two-year stab at a CS major, found that I had no head for advanced math, and switched over to a MIS major instead. That cost me an extra year in the grand scheme of things, but it was time well-spent. I lucked into an internship with the Air Force as a civilian employee, working at Wright-Patterson AFB. I'm still working there today, in a nine-to-five job that involves computers. I can't talk about details there, sorry.

I'm thirty-nine years old as of December 2015, married to an awesome lady, and have a three-year-old daughter.

And after that daughter goes to bed, I write. In between messing about on the internet and playing video games, I ponder plot twists and characters and exciting scenes, and every night I try to put five hundred to a thousand words on the page.

There are some nights I don't manage it. Too tired, or time's too short, or a fun game's come out and I get distracted. But conversely, once I get deep enough into a manuscript, one thousand words can turn into two thousand, or even five thousand if I'm on a roll.

And I love it!

My day job pays the bills, and the debts, but my night job?

That pays in satisfaction. And a small amount, here and there, that I sock away for the future.

So that's me, more or less. I could go into more detail about hobbies, life, or writing... but I think I'll save that for future posts.

Be well, friends, and I'll post again within the week.