Andrew Gates's Blog, page 16

Toying With New Idea: Preview Book

Hello all!

For the last several days, I’ve been toying with a new idea. I’ve never heard of this being done before, but I’ve pitched it to some other authors and the general consensus seems to be that it is worth a shot.

The idea is to release a “preview book”, literally just a collection of chapters in the Color of Water and Sky series, for FREE on Amazon.com. The chapters would be spoiler-free. They would provide a sample of this world for readers, but not give them the full story. Here are what I see to be the main pros and cons:

Pros:

By nature of being free, the book will get a lot of downloads even without advertising. This is beneficial because it will increase my Amazon author rank. The way author rank works is simple: the more books downloaded, the higher the rank. The higher the rank, Amazon’s algorithm will place my content higher on their search feeds. This would obviously be very beneficial to me.
It would serve as a form of free advertising for the series. When people download the free sample book, they would learn about the series, get exposed to it and likely read reviews of the other books.
Readers would get a taste for the series and get a better sense of whether or not they want to purchase the books. I think a lot of the time it is hard for readers to commit to a book because they are not sure if they can get into the story. This “preview book” would provide their first foray into the books, without forcing them to commit to purchasing anything first.

Cons:

I can see this being very confusing for people who look at the series listing on Amazon. They see a book marked “Book 1” and a book marked “Series Preview”. I can understand that it might be hard for people to know what to read in which order. I also worry about people who start with Book 1 and then later find out about the preview after the fact and regret not downloading it first.
People would not be getting a full story with this preview book, merely a few sample chapters. I can see people getting rather annoyed by this fact. People want a full story, not a chunk of one. Back when I was part of the Broken Tomorrow Boxset Collection, this was a major complaint I received in my reviews.

As I have been putting a lot of thought into this idea lately, it naturally crossed my mind that I would need cover art for this preview book. Should I go through with it, I think I will end up using the cover art I originally commissioned for Cassidy. To be honest, I think the art would be better served for a preview book of this nature anyway. Take a look below:

[image error]

There is a lot of blank space on the image, which allows me to include text explaining what the book is. Plus this image fits perfectly into the prologue of book 1, which is definitely a chapter I would include in the preview.

Obviously this means I would need NEW artwork for Cassidy, but I’m not all too concerned about that. I have been having second thoughts about this piece as the Cassidy cover anyway.

Should a preview book like this actually come to fruition, it likely would not be until after Kholvaria‘s upcoming release. I will also put Iris on sale for free for four days next week, just as an experiment to see what happens. I don’t want to jump into this endeavor without a good sense of free book download statistics.

Stay tuned for more on that.

In other news, I have another interview out! Readcommendations, who interviewed me last year, has done another piece. You can read the full text HERE.

In other other news, my two Headtalker campaigns could still use support. The more support, the merrier! There are a few more days left to support these before they go out. Here are the links:

#1: https://headtalker.com/campaigns/kholvaria-release-day/

#2: https://headtalker.com/campaigns/tcowas-kholvaria-kindle/

For more on Headtalker, check out my last blog post HERE.

Preparing for Kholvaria Release

May has arrived, which means Kholvaria will release later this month. Ahead of the new book’s release, I’ve been very busy setting up promotional material to help boost sales and pre-orders.

I recently discovered a website called Headtalker. I had never heard of this website before about a week ago, but it intrigues me. Anyone can start a campaign on the site for free. Then you share the link out. When people support your campaign, they agree to have a message sent out to their social network profiles at a specific date and time. This increases the chances of that message will go viral. Despite my skepticism that social media is the best source of advertising (click HERE for more about that), I’ve started two Headtalker campaigns just to see if it adds a little boost. You can find the first one HERE and the second one HERE.

In addition to my Headtalker campaigns, I’ve recently taken part in two different interviews ahead of my book’s release. Neither one has been released yet, but both will be available soon. One will be in the form of a video. The other will be a written interview. Once again, it is my hope that this added exposure will help with sales and pre-orders.

So far, despite my efforts, I have not had any luck garnering a single pre-order sale. This surprises me, though I wonder if most people are simply holding out for the paperback edition. Hopefully once the Headtalker posts go out, sales will pick up.

In some very good news, I have FINALLY received my $$ from the Broken Tomorrow release back in the winter. For those of you who do not recall, Iris was one of several books featured in a boxset collection with some pretty high-profile writers (more about that HERE). My cut came in at the end of April. The amount is sizable. It’s the first time I’ve ever made four figures from my writing. I’m so excited to know that this kind of money is possible from book sales. Now I just need to find a way to do that again.

Lastly, editing on Kholvaria is nearly complete. I am currently just waiting on one more of my beta-readers to get the book back to me. Then I’ll need to make the edits and format it for Kindle, which is a monster of task. You can read about my experiences formatting for Kindle last year HERE.

In the meantime, keep checking this blog for more updates. Stay tuned for the upcoming interviews.

Promoting With Social Media

Social media promotion can be a jackpot if done correctly. Getting the right image and phrasing is an art. In fact, for some, it’s a full-time job (literally!). So for those untrained in the field, it can be a daunting mystery.

Platforms like Facebook or Twitter are a great way to stay connected with fans, so launching a book series without it seemed like a poor decision. When I first released Iris, I already had an active Facebook page up and running, in addition to this blog.

I was astonished by how easily I was able to gain Facebook fans from across the world in a short amount of time with some very simple promotional techniques. Within months, I had over 2000 fans from all over the planet. Many posted on my page with comments about how eager they were to read the book or how much they liked the images or content. It was fair to say my page’s following  grew rather quickly, though to my unfortunate surprise, those numbers did not directly translate to book sales.

In fact, as far as I can tell, there has been no correlation whatsoever to posting on Facebook and selling books. Even as likes increased, sales remained the same. I would go so far as to say it seems like having a Facebook page has contributed 0% to my overall readership. These people who are posting about how excited they are to read the book do not end up actually purchasing it.

Lately my page’s total number of likes has actually flattened out, despite having a few new likes every now and then. This is because over the last few days, I have seen a considerable number of fans “unliking” my page, therefore unsubscribing to my posts. It led me to wonder why these people chose to like the page in the first place.

[image error]

As you can see from the graph above, I have been carefully treading a fine line. In this particular graph, you can see that my overall likes increased by just one over the last month. It seems for every new like I gain, I lose just as many.

So what is it that causes people to unlike my Facebook page? And if there seems to be no correlation between Facebook following and sales, should it even matter?

My conclusion: people just like to “like” things. I’ve noticed that people who comment and interact with content on the Facebook page are often people who have recently liked the page for the first time. After a few days of having liked the page, those users do not often comment or interact anymore. The novelty of interacting with a new fan page has simply worn off for them.

There is an expression in social media: post often. I always thought this practice was intended to keep old fans constantly interested in the content, though now I wonder if this advice is actually intended to appeal to new fans so that they have something to see and interact with when they first “like” the page. After all, I hear stories of people who have intentionally “unliked” pages for posting too much. I guess it’s all about finding the right balance.

A few months after starting my Facebook page, I decided to start a Twitter account. As someone who has never used Twitter before, the platform was completely new to me. I have had it for a few months now and even still, I am struggling to fully understand how it works.

Twitter, from what I have learned, is more of a science. Unlike Facebook, where fans just want to interact for a brief time and forget about it, Twitter followers typically plan to stick around. I’ve been told that four tweets a day is apparently the magic number to keep people interested and to gain followers on the page.

For me, that has yet to come to fruition. I have certainly tried to stay relevant on my page, taking advantage of current hashtags and trending topics. For example, today I posted an image about #alienday and #wednesdaywisdom, which were both trending hashtags at the time.

[image error]

Despite trying to stay relevant, my page has seen very little pickup. For the longest time, it was stuck at 17 followers. It has only recently reached 21. Though this is certainly an improvement from 17, it is nothing in comparison to the 2000+ fans on my Facebook page.

Still, I wonder if all this effort is really worth it. Like Facebook, there seems to be no correlation whatsoever between Twitter interaction and sales. Even posts to links about pre-orders (on BOTH social media platforms) have not garnered a single pre-order sale thus far.

I have heard numerous success stories claiming that Facebook and Twitter are the keys to making it big. Yet for me, I cannot see how. Perhaps I am still discovering how to use these platforms. Most things come with time, after all. But I am surprised just how little impact social media seems to have.

To view the official pages for The Color of Water and Sky series, check out the following links below:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecolorofwaterandsky/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TCOWAS

Chesapeake Vacation

I apologize for the long gap between blog posts. There has not been much progress on Kholvaria over the last few days, largely due to two main reasons: for starters, there’s not a lot to do but wait at this stage and, secondly, I’ve been on vacation.

I spent the last few days on the Chesapeake Bay, a short two-hour trip from where I live. I partook in delicious crustaceans, swam in pools, hot tubs, cold bay water and kayaked with Blackwater Paddle and Peddle Adventures, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and even left a nice Yelp review). If you’ll remember from an earlier blog post, I was hoping to find a nice bar to sit and get most of my editing done last week. That did not end up happening, however, I was able to find a nice beach-side seafood restaurant and pose a nice photograph (see below). Ironically, I had already finished my read-through when this picture was taken. I actually didn’t do any editing at this bar.

[image error]

The bar pictured above, by the way, is called Snappers Waterfront Café and Tiki Bar. It’s a great place to relax on a weekday or party on a weekend. I highly recommend it. If you go, I encourage you to order the crab sampler (pictured in the back there).

During my trip, I contemplated ways in which I could expand The Color of Water and Sky series in the future. While I still want it to be a four-part series (with one spinoff already being written), I have been playing around with two ideas: a prequel short-story collection dealing with the war leads to the Descent and an epilogue book, set twenty years after the fourth book. Both ideas I think would be really cool. If the series grows and gets popular enough, I think there would definitely be a market for both of those books. Right now all of this is hypothetical, but I think there’s a lot of potential there, again, assuming there’s a demand for it.

In other news, Kholvaria is NOW be available for pre-order on Amazon.com (link HERE). The official release date has been set to May 27th. For more information on the upcoming release, stay tuned to this blog as well as all social media pages.

Editing Coming Along

There is not much news to report today. But as the old expression goes, no news is good news.

As I reported in my previous post, editing is coming along. I am currently beta-reading a physical copy of Kholvaria, as are some of my friends who have agreed to help. Reading a physical book is a great way to spot things I haven’t seen on the computer.

A lot of my editing is taking place during commutes on trains or busses, though some of it is done at work.

Last year, when editing Iris, there was a day I went to a Mexican bar in DC, ordered some chips and beer, and just edited the book for hours. It was a great way to get a lot of work done all at once in a fun setting away from home. I plan to do this again on Monday. I’m looking forward to it. I’m wondering which bar I will use – it has to be one that’s open during the daytime and is relatively quiet, so that does limit me somewhat. In any case, it should be fun!

[image error]

So far I’m pleased to say that Kholvaria does not seem to have as many noticeable errors as Iris. That’s a good thing. It means I’ll have less work to do once I make all the changes.

When I do make the changes, it will be in one day all at once. That will be a big day. I hope to have that take place in early May, although that date is largely dependent on how fast my other beta readers can operate, which is a variable I cannot control.

In other news, my work on both Cassidy and Veznek has temporarily stalled. In order to move things along with Kholvaria, I have not touched either project in a while. I do not expect much progress to be made on either of them until after the new book is released.

For more news on everything related to the Color of Water and Sky series, keep checking here on this blog.

Kholvaria Beta-Copies Out + Cassidy Sneak Peak

Beta copies of Kholvaria have been shipped out! This is an exciting time. What that means: we are closer and closer to Kholvaria‘s release date.

Beta reading is the final step before the book can be released, and a very pivotal step at that. Often times errors can go unnoticed on the computer screen. Reading it on paper is a helpful way to catch many last minute issues, particularly issues related to formatting.

For me, that means beta-reading my own book along with the other volunteers I have recruited to assist me. It is a long process, but I look forward to reading through the book like a regular reader would.

As things have been going ahead of schedule lately, I can confidently predict a May or June release date for Kholvaria. I would be astonished if the book comes out any later than that.

In other news, Veznek (book 3 in the Color of Water and Sky series) is now over half-written. Cassidy (the spinoff in the Color of Water and Sky series) is now over two thirds written. Both are still on track for a summer 2018 release.

Things are progressing quickly.

On that note, I can officially show the cover art for next year’s spinoff novel, Cassidy. Unlike the cover art for Iris or Kholvaria, Cassidy will be a wrap-around image. The tone and look of the art is intentionally very different. Take a look below:

[image error]

Fans of the series may recognize this vessel as the Cassidy X20 experimental submarine, still intact before its encounter with the mysterious orb.

For more information on Cassidy, you’ll just have to wait.

Kholvaria Cover Art Reveal

As the day of Kholvaria‘s release draws ever nearer, finishing touches have been falling into place left and right. The book’s first proof edition has been sent off for review. Soon beta copies will be distributed for editing. Everything is coming together, ahead of schedule no less.

Meanwhile, progress has accelerated on Veznek, the third book in the series. Nearly 40% of the book’s rough draft has been completed, no small achievement. This too is coming together ahead of schedule, a phrase you hear all too rarely in the publishing world.

As a testament to the progress that has been made, consider this blog post the first official unveiling of the Kholvaria cover art, which will soon make its way onto various social media platforms.

[image error]

As you can see, the book will once again be available in both physical and digital formats. The cover art is the same for both editions, though with the physical book, you also get a back cover as well. You can see the full physical book below:

[image error]

Kholvaria will be released summer 2017. A more specific date to be announced soon.

As always, check this blog for all the latest news on the Color of Water and Sky series.

Designing Cover Art

For those of you closely following my blog, you know I don’t often write about cover art design. It’s not that I try to hide this content out of some sort of secrecy. Cover art design is just not my specialty. While I do dabble in the art from time to time, I always outsource the project to others for my own books.

Currently I have two cover art projects being worked on right now. I have chosen two different artists to help work on two different books, both within the same series. Typically this is something you would want to avoid. Using the same artist provides visual consistency across a series. However, I want Cassidy, the upcoming spin-off novel, to have a very different feel about it. So for that reason, I have chosen to use a different artist.

I thought that you, my beloved readers, would want to know how the cover art design is going for my various projects.

The first project, of course, being Kholvaria, the upcoming sequel to Iris. The book is currently on track to release later this summer – more updates on that when the time comes. For this project, I am using the same artist who worked on Iris. This artist knows what I’m looking for. Using her again will provide a level of visual consistency across the series. Expect a brighter color scheme here, signifying the crew’s ascent to the surface (out of darkness, into light, so to speak). The cover will also feature glimpses of the surface including trees and sky.

The back cover will read as follows:

The ancient ones called it America.

The survivors call it the New World.

Others know it only as Kholvaria.

It is a desperate time for the Federation. The Atlantic Station, the last known city on Earth, has been destroyed. Humankind is on the brink of extinction.

Nine survivors flee the crumbling city in a dire effort to survive. Their destination: the planet’s surface, a poisonous landscape untouched for generations.

Plagued by danger, disease, hunger, and mystery, they do whatever they must to stay alive.

But they are not alone. Other eyes, above and below the sea, watch the survivors with great interest.

For the first time in generations, humanity is coming home, but it may not be to the home they expect.

I owe a degree of thanks to my fans for assisting me in coming up with the blurb contents. As I mentioned several weeks ago, the wording of the blurb requires a lot of input from you guys. I take your suggestions very seriously.

To give you perspective, this is what Iris‘s cover looked like, including the spine and back:

[image error]

As you can see, we have a very dark color scheme here. It’s mostly black and blue. Expect Kholvaria‘s cover to be much brighter than this. It will still heavily feature the color blue, but paired with green.

A preview should be coming soon in the next few days.

Also in the works – the cover for Cassidy, the upcoming spinoff novel. As I mentioned last week, I do not expect Cassidy to be released until later next year. My plan is to release it AFTER the release of book 3 in the Color of Water and Sky series, which will be called Veznek. That being said, I figured it would behoove me to get a head start on the project early on, especially since the cover art I plan to use will double as a promotional piece for the series as a whole.

What do I mean by that?

For Cassidy, I plan to use a wrap-around cover, rather than a separate image for cover, spine and back. Without text added in, this image will create a nice piece of promo-art. I can use this for advertisements and banners on my social media pages. I can even do this well ahead of Cassidy‘s release.

As you may recall, I took some time to design some concept pieces for what the Cassidy cover may look like. I have since abandoned those ideas. The new cover will look completely different from the concepts I conceived earlier (shown below:)

[image error]

[image error]

For this project, except another dark, ominous image, more along the lines of what Iris‘s cover featured. I have hired an artist with a strong background in this type of design. He has worked on other famous science-fiction projects in the past. You can see an example of his work below:

[image error]

For those of you expecting to see some new images today, I apologize. Everything will be revealed in due time. Expect the Kholvaria cover soon, along with more information about the book as we come closer to the summer.

As always, keep checking this site to stay up-to-date on what’s happening with the Color of Water and Sky series.

Logan

Logan is a film about what it’s like to get old. It’s gory, brutal and realistically portrayed, which makes it uncomfortably hard to watch. It’s not like a sci-fi laser is ripping through a house. Instead, it’s realistic and gritty. Watching an old man struggle to go to the bathroom is scarier than anything from the science fiction realm  simply because: it’s real.

Let me back up here.

Hi there! A few nights ago I watched the new movie, Logan. I have a lot of thoughts on the film. There are MANY things I think the movie did well and I wanted to take some time to discuss them.

For those of you who don’t know, Logan takes place in the X-men movie universe in the year 2029, that’s a few years after one of my favorite X-men movies, Days of Future Past. In this setting, all of the X-men are dead. Few mutants remain alive. The reason – a bit of a spoiler, so I wont’ get into that here (it’s revealed in the film very subtly, but well done).

Logan is getting old, which, for him is not something that should be happening. He is immortal after all, or supposed to be. Watching him get old is difficult as a viewer. We know him to be amazingly powerful to the point of being unstoppable, so watching his downfall is hard. He gets shot, bloody, damaged. He limps, he falls unconscious, he gets brutally injured and it all takes a toll. Part of what makes it so hard to watch is the brilliant makeup and effects, but I mainly attribute it to Hugh Jackman’s ace acting. You feel pain just by watching him. His eyes are red, really red from pain and crying, no easy feat for an actor to just pull out of thin air. He gasps for breath, limps, shrieks in pain, struggles to stand and it all seems so realistic, so well-executed.

Also getting old is Charles Xavier. His scenes are almost even harder to watch. Seeing someone struggle to remember where they are, struggle to move around, even struggle to go to the bathroom is hard. It’s hard because it’s real, it’s something that can actually happen to all of us.

Even some of the side characters, for example, a newly-introduced albino mutant character, seem so decrepit and dirty. The grittiness of it just makes everything seem so depressing. It’s also filmed entirely on location. I don’t think there was a single shot on a green screen that I can remember, which definitely gives it a different feel for a movie set in this universe.

On that note, this movie is rated R, which we have not seen yet from Wolverine. The R rating really works here and helps make the movie so horrifying. People are BRUTALLY dismembered. Every single stab tries to win the “goriest death” award. It’s visceral, but awesome.

I also think there are times when the R rating was abused a tad. There is absolutely no reason for a scene early on in the movie where a drunk woman reveals her boobs to the camera. This just seemed weirdly out of place. Part of me feels like they included that just because they could. It’s like saying “look what we can do that now that we’re R rated!”

But overall, as I mentioned, I think the R rating works in the movie’s favor. A lot of the grittiness and darkness wouldn’t have come through as well if the film was limited to what it could put out with a PG-13 rating.

My only real gripe with the movie is, surprisingly, when it tries to appeal to its base and offer something more X-men-ish. The main adversary is… well, a bit corny, though does provide for a  good and terrifying surprise. It’s a creative idea I suppose, and one I did not see coming, but I’m not sure it was the best choice, especially because this villain was introduced so suddenly and so randomly.

If you want to bring your kids to see a good movie about Wolverine, don’t choose this one. Definitely don’t choose this one. Not only is it too brutal, but I honestly don’t even think kids would enjoy it. The pace is slow and there isn’t as much action. As much as I hate the film, take your kids to see X-men Origins: Wolverine instead. That movie has a lot more explosions and fighting that kids like.

Overall, Logan is an awesome movie. It’s a smart movie, for sure, and scary to watch because of its realism. I don’t know if I would call it “the Dark Knight” of X-men movies like some other reviews have said, but it’s certainly a quality film.

Small Overdue Update Amidst a Busy Week

As the title of this post would suggest, it’s been a busy time for me. I’ve had to pick up a lot of slack at my day-job, leaving me with less time to write and provide my loving audience with updates.

For that, I apologize.

With so many projects in motion, I figured I would break them down one by one and provide you with brief little updates on what’s going on.

Kholvaria (Part Two of the Color of Water and Sky)

Lots of progress has been made on my draft to Kholvaria, the second part of the planned four-part series, the Color of Water and Sky. I have now gone through and edited it all to a point where I am satisfied. I have even developed the back title blurb for the book, with some help from you guys.

If you read my post from a few weeks ago, you’ll recall that after editing my draft one and a half times through, that draft was strangely longer than my original draft. It originally started at 137,068 words and grew to 140,505 words. Today I’m here to tell you that the same strange phenomenon has taken place yet again. Instead of getting shorter with more edits, the book has actually gotten longer. The final count comes to 140,791. That’s 3,723 words longer than where it started.

Weird.

Now I’m just waiting on cover art to come through. Once it’s done, I’ll send the book off to my beta-readers. These are people who read through my book and mark it up, catching any small errors I may have missed (such as spelling, format or grammatical issues). I have two readers lined up, though I’m looking for a third. Consider this an offer: if anyone wants to lend a hand and receive a free copy of Kholvaria, leave a comment in the comments section. You will be required to read and edit the book and mail it back to me (I will pay for all the postage). You will get a free book in return.

Expect some upcoming promotional material and perhaps another interview coming soon.

Veznek (Part Three of the Color of Water and Sky)

I’ll admit, I haven’t touched this as much as I’d like. Progress on Veznek has been slow. For the longest time, I was working on a more difficult, slower part of the story and was struggling to figure out how to tell the story.

But that’s behind me now and I have no excuse apart from my own motivation. I am now working on a rather exciting part. I would go so far as to call it the single most eventful chapter in the entire series so far. So much happens from a character standpoint, a plot standpoint and a massive geo-political standpoint. It’s been a blast to write this chapter, but I just haven’t had the time to dig in. I have not touched it since February 21st. But alas, now that my editing of Kholvaria is complete, I will have much more time to finish this amazing chapter.

Overall, I’m probably about 1/3 of the way finished with the rough draft.

Cassidy (The Spinoff to the Color of Water and Sky)

Cassidy is my black sheep. I have very strict rules when it comes to working on this project. Mainly, I do not allow myself to work on it when I am at home. This is exclusively meant to be a commuter project. So when I say I’ve been running to work much more than I used to, that should cue you into the fact that I haven’t touched it much in the last month.

Yesterday I managed to write a bit of it, a rather exciting chapter in fact, but I have not put much down. It’s strange. There was a time when Cassidy was coming along faster than any of my other projects. But now it seems to be the slowest.

At this stage, I still predict Cassidy will be finished a bit ahead of Veznek, though I am thinking I will hold off its release until after Veznek is out. Tentatively, I plan to release both Veznek and Cassidy sometime in 2018, ideally only about a month apart. All of this is potentially subject to change, but that’s the plan as of now.

[image error]