Andrew Gates's Blog, page 6

Post Halloween Update: Audiobook Out – What’s Next?

Halloween was yesterday and I dressed up as a pretentious medal-winning athlete, but I didn’t take any pictures so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Halloween is a great time of year for all sorts of horror stories! Last year, I released my first horror story, Apex Predator, around Christmas. While I was bummed I didn’t release it in time for Halloween last year, I was excited to have a horror story out on the market for this year.

And how did it sell? Simply, it didn’t.

Not only did I fail to sell a single copy of Apex Predator during the Halloween season, but Apex Predator has not sold since March when I had an unexpected spike in book sales almost overnight. This tells me that Apex Predator, an admittedly tangential deviation from my normal science-fiction genre, was ultimately not the best direction for me to take my writing. I’ve learned that I should stick to what I’m good at and what I know sells.

In short, I’ve learned that I should stay away from horror.

But if Apex Predator wasn’t a big seller this Halloween, what was? The answer is my new Descent audiobook. However, I don’t attribute sales of Descent to Halloween. Rather, I think it sold well simply because it is my newest book.

As people begin to listen to my story, I’ve gotten only a tiny bit of feedback about the audiobook so far. But within the tiny bits of feedback I’ve received, a lot pertains to quality of the narration. I hired a narrator named Lauren Henry to be the voice of Descent, but rather than have her narrate the entire text, I decided to narrate the “From the Author” section myself. I did this despite not having any professional recording equipment. Originally I was worried that there would be an obvious drop in quality going from Lauren’s narration to mine, but from the feedback I’ve received so far, to my surprise, people seem to like my own narration work in the “From the Author” section just as much as they like Lauren Henry’s section!

Either that, or people are just being nice to me.

While releasing an audiobook has been a fun experience, there is more on the line this time. With more up-front costs associated with releasing an audiobook, as well as yearly subscriptions I must pay to keep my audiobook on the market, if this book does not sell, there is a distinct possibility I may actually lose money. Therefore, if you want to assist an author in need, please recommend this book to your friends and neighbors. This one more than most needs to sell if I am to make a profit.

The audiobook will NOT be available forever. It will be available on the following sites until October 21st, 2022. So download your copy or encourage your friends to do the same while you still can.

You can find the links below:

Amazon: CLICK HERE to purchase on Amazon

iTunes: CLICK HERE to purchase on iTunes

Apple Music: CLICK HERE to purchase on Apple Music

Spotify: CLICK HERE to listen on Spotify

After all this news, you may be wondering what’s next. Frankly, so am I. Currently I have no major projects in the works. Releasing the Descent audiobook was my main focus for the last few weeks. I suppose, if anything, my next few weeks will be spent marketing the audiobook. I plan to put up additional content on YouTube to promote it. But as far as any new writing projects, I have nothing currently in the pipeline.

In the meantime, please enjoy the audiobook if you have not yet had a chance to listen. The one-hour story is nice and short for your listening pleasure.

Descent Audiobook Available

Descent, the short-story prequel to the Color of Water and Sky series, is now available in audiobook! The one-hour story chronicles the historic voyage from the surface of the Earth down to the Atlantic Station far below the ocean.

The audiobook is available at a number of sources including Amazon, iTunes, Apple, and Spotify. Soon I will also put up a free sample on YouTube as well, with links from YouTube leading to the various stores where you can buy the audiobook.

The audiobook will NOT be available forever. It will be available on the following sites until October 21st, 2022. So download your copy now while you still can.

You can find the links below:

Amazon: CLICK HERE to purchase on Amazon

iTunes: CLICK HERE to purchase on iTunes

Apple Music: CLICK HERE to purchase on Apple Music

Spotify: CLICK HERE to listen on Spotify

The Color of Water and Sky – Recommended Reading Order

With six books published in The Color of Water and Sky series of novels, some short-stories, some spin-offs, and some considered part of the “main series”, it can be intimidating to know where to start! Here are three ways to experience the six books in The Color of Water and Sky:

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Release-Date Order (Author’s Preferred Order)

Like Star Wars, a good place to start is to look at the release order. This is, after all, the way that the audience was first exposed to the series to begin with. As the author of the series, this is how I would personally recommend someone go about reading them in order.

The release-date order is as follows:

IrisKholvariaCassidyVeznekHiveAtlantia

In this way, we are presented with a small claustrophobic undersea world first, then the world slowly opens up as the series progresses. The world becomes more vast and expansive; the characters and events richer as the books go on.

In this way, the audience is also more easily eased into reading the perspective of Kholvari characters before they become much more prevalent in the later books.

Main Series, Then Spin-Offs (Great for “Testing Out” the series)

Not sure if an entire six-book series is for you? That’s understandable. If you are worried about committing to an entire series, another option is to read the main series first, then read the spin-offs later. In this way, reading of Cassidy and Atlantia becomes optional. That way, if you want to stop after the main series is over, there is no need to continue.

As the author of the series, this is my second most recommended reading order.

The main series, then spin-offs go as follows:

IrisKholvariaVeznekHiveCassidyAtlantia

Although Cassidy and Atlantia are both spin-offs, it is still important to read Cassidy first and Atlantia second, as the third part of Atlantia is intended as a direct sequel to Cassidy.

In this reading order, readers will still experience the slow rise from claustrophobic undersea city to sprawling vast outer space chaos, but then will be pulled back to a smaller, more familiar setting later on before finishing with a fleshed-out, bigger picture of the events they have already read about. Rather than a more consistently expanding scope, the scope will “swell” out and in.

Chronological Order (Great for a Full Read-Through at Once)

Reading it all in chronological order is really cool! However, I would not recommend this as a first-time read through. If you are new to the series, start with a different order first. I say for a few reasons. Firstly, Downfall is admittedly one of the weaker stories in the series and doesn’t provide the strongest starting point. Secondly, the characters will come and go and be generally inconstant until we finally get to Iris. Thirdly, the direction of the series will be a bit lost on a new reader until we get to Iris. Still though, if you have read the series once already, this could be a fun way to experience it on a second read.

This order is a bit trickier:

Downfall (part of Atlantia)Descent (part of Atlantia)Cassidy (prologue)IrisCassidy (chapters 1-6)KholvariaCassidy (chapters 7-12)VeznekCassidy (chapters 13-18 + epilogue)HiveAllora (part of Atlantia)Hive Epilogue

In this way, readers will experience everything in order. Readers will more easily be able to see how everything fits together, especially with overlapping events such as the events of Cassidy and how they mold with the other books in the series.

Which ever way you want to experience The Color of Water and Sky, you can buy the full series on Amazon.com:

Iris

Kholvaria

Veznek

Hive

Cassidy

Atlantia

Assembling an Audio Book

I have my first audio book recorded, produced, and ready. It has cover art, chapters, and everything. This fully-finished book is ready for listening!

The problem is… getting it to the market.

My hope was to get the audio book of Descent available through Audible and iTunes using a service called ACX. Audible is the largest library of audio books available, so I thought it would be a great place to start and ACX is the primary path for independent authors to publish on Audible. Basically if you’re someone like me and you want to get on Audible, you go through ACX.

I uploaded my book, Descent, on Wednesday after some several-hours-long formatting complications, file-type issues and calls with customer service. Alas, finally everything came through and I was able to submit my book for approval.

Now I have to wait through the approval process. This entails an ACX staff person literally listening to the file to make sure it is formatted correctly. ACX has extremely particular formatting requirements for their stories and if it isn’t done the right way exactly as they want it, the story will not be approved.

Audible is a company with a good reputation and customers come to Audible for a certain expectation of the product. I can understand a company’s desire for consistency associated with their brand. However, from the perspective of the artist submitting work for approval, I am somewhat disappointed that ACX requires certain stringent formatting rules. For instance, putting the credits at the start instead of the end, how to introduce title pages, so forth. I have my own certain way I prefer to do things and that did not always align with what the requirements entailed.

In the event that the story is not approved, I do have a back-up plan: Spotify.

Like iTunes, Spotify is typically thought of as a place for music, but it has a vast list of audio books available. While the audience for books may not be as large on Spotify, it will be an alternative place for my audio book to live and will hopefully bring in a new audience in the form of podcast listeners who click over to this (I could see podcast listeners really liking this).

More on that when I learn more. In the meantime, check out the cover for the audiobook of Descent below:

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Atlantia Available Now in All Formats! + New Project: Audiobook!!

Atlantia is now available in both print and digital formats on Amazon! I am excited to have this book as part of my ever-growing portfolio. Although I don’t expect it to do as well as my other books (it is definitely more niche than anything else I’ve written – being a short story collection for another series and sequel to a spin-off), but just having another book out there as part of my offerings is always helpful. Plus, the cover art is pretty snazzy!

I expect that if this book does sell, it will sell to people who are already familiar with the Color of Water and Sky series and are simply interested to read more. I would be surprised if this is able to pick up new fans from the start, although that is certainly possible.

To help make it a bit more appealing, I’ve priced the book at $0.99 for its regular price. This weekend from August 28th to 30th, the book will be FREE to download as part of a special promotion.

So… what is next, you may wonder?

Now, I will turn my eyes to my first audio-book. The fastest growing medium of books, audio-books are exploding in popularity. Frankly, this is the way I experience most books too. Therefore, it has been long overdue for me to break into this world.

There are many upfront costs associated with audio-books, from recording hardware, to software, to voice actors. So that is why, to help mitigate the costs associated with the production, I have decided to select just one short story from the Atlantia collection to be my first audio-book rather than a full-length novel.

Descent, the second story featured in Atlantia (and my personal favorite), will serve as my first ever audio-book production. I’ve hired voice actress Lauren Henry to narrate the piece, which cones in under 10,000 words. I am extremely excited to hear the final product and to enter the world of audio-books.

Lauren Henry’s work is set to be complete at the start of September, so if all goes well, the Descent audio-book should be out sometime before October.

In addition to being my personal favorite of the stories in the collection, I feel like Descent is a great story to include because it acts as a singular self-contained story, as well as prequel to the main series. So hopefully it will bring in new readers and point them to the main series.

I am really excited to see this audio-book come to fruition. I hope it will serve as an entry point for a whole new audience.

That’s all for today! Thanks for reading!

Slow Process of Beta-Reading Atlantia

Beta reading of Atlantia, the upcoming short-story collection featuring three stories set in the World of Water and Sky, is underway. This is the opportunity to catch final errors before the book is officially released. Often times there are things like missing or repeated words, typos, or formatting issues that come to be discovered.

In the case of the first story in Atlantia, one issue that an editor identified is the presence of romantic chemistry between two characters not originally written to have a romantic arc. This has led to the unique last-minute addition of a new originally-unplanned romantic arc added to the first story.

Just some of the fun things that happen in beta-reading! (Though a change this significant is unusual)

However, despite this fun news, that’s not to say that progress is going quickly. With so much going on in July, the two individuals editing the book, myself included, have not had as much time as we hoped to devote to this. But that is not to say progress is not being made. All in all, I would anticipate the book being finalized by the end of the month.

While I hadn’t anticipated Atlantia to be a huge seller while writing it, a recent surge in book sales in the Color of Water and Sky series leads me to be a bit more optimistic. In the past several days, I have seen three instances of customers buying the entire series at once. This is historically not something that I see at all. Typically people buy books one at a time. Therefore to see so much activity of people buying the entire series in one purchase leads me to be a bit more optimistic about the series’ future. Obviously I won’t know any of that until the book is released.

Rest assured, although slow, progress is certainly being made on Atlantia and hopefully this momentum of successful sales will continue into its release.

Atlantia Ready for Beta-Copies

I’ve ordered proof copies of Atlantia, the upcoming short-story collection featuring various stories set in the World of Water and Sky.

I am very excited for this book’s release! I do believe this will resonate well with fans of the series. Unfortunately, spinoff books like Cassidy have not typically done as well as regular entries in the series from a sales standpoint. Anytime you have to explain to someone what something is, it makes it tougher to sell. But much like J.R.R. Tolkien writing the appendices after Return of the King, this was a book I wrote more to finish what I felt was an incomplete story than it was a book I wrote to make money. This is my chance to fill in the holes I felt were left open-ended and a way to close everything out.

In essence, my motivation in writing and publishing Atlantia was to complete what I felt were incomplete portions of the series.

Will Atlantia sell? A bit, probably. Will it be a money-maker? Doubtful. But again, it wasn’t really meant to be a money-maker. I predict this will resonate with a few passionate fans who love the series, but not much beyond that.

That’s not to say I don’t think Atlantia is a good book. On the contrary! I think Atlantia is really interesting! As I said in my second paragraph, I am really excited for people to read it. I genuinely think this will also appeal to people who may be unfamiliar with the other books.

Beta copies should arrive sometime in the next few days, just in time for me to leave for an extended beach vacation. I may end up editing while on my trip, which would be nice. I find it fitting to be editing a book about the ocean while at the beach.

In the past, editing beta copies has been an extremely useful process which has allowed me to spot many sometimes obvious errors. I’ve written about that extensively in the past. Seeing the physical book in person, not on the computer, allows me to catch so much.

Given the pace that everything is proceeding, I would say an August release date is likely.

Atlantia Cover Art Reveal

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As of this morning, Atlantia has a cover! The upcoming collection of short stories set in the Color of Water and Sky series was once again designed by series regular, Sarah Anderson!

I’ve written about my thoughts on the cover before, but essentially the gist is that I wanted to feature three characters; one from each of the stories included in the collection. The woman on the left is a soldier from the NAS from the story Downfall, the woman on top is the last survivor of the Descent from the story Descent, and the teenage boy on the right is a settler in Cassidy City from the story Allora.

The cover draws inspiration from the poster for the film, Glass, along with the format of previous cover art from The Color of Water and Sky books. Below is an image of the poster for the film, Glass, and the cover art for Cassidy. You can see how Atlantia‘s cover draws inspiration from elements from both.

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One thing that makes me particularly excited about the cover to Atlantia is the abundance of green. Other books in the series, Iris, Kholvaria and Veznek, are largely blue and in the case of Iris and Veznek, there is also a lot of black. Hive and Cassidy are a little more varied with orange. But green has been lacking. The green on Atlantia‘s cover (which was Sarah’s idea, not mine) will stand out among a stack of books that are largely dark blue, black, or orange. It will add a good visual diversity to the series. I am very excited about that!

Here you can see the spine of the book lined up with Cassidy:

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As you can see from the image, aside from the obvious color difference, Atlantia is also a tad bit longer than Cassidy. While Cassidy still remains the shortest book related to the Color of Water and Sky series, Atlantia now comes in at a close second.

Due to some personal things going on right now, it may be awhile until I can finalize everything for a finished deliverable product. Therefore I expect Atlantia to be released sometime later in the summer – perhaps sometime in August. I will have more information on Atlantia‘s release date later in July. Right now, that is all I can say.

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“Atlantia” Short Story Collection Coming Together!

I’ve finished writing all of the three stories that will be featured in the upcoming short-story collection, Atlantia, some of which I already completed years ago. My job now is to go through and re-read all of the stories to edit and properly format them.

Having gone through and edited the first two stories over the last two days, it is like a blast from the past re-reading some of these! I wrote the first two years ago and it is fascinating to go back and read them again now.

Out of the three stories, Downfall, Descent and Allora, my favorite is the second one, Descent. I am excited for readers to experience it! I hope readers will like it as much as I do! It has the simplest premise of them all, but the character’s perspective on everything is really interesting.

To give you a sense of the length of each of these stories, the current word count looks like this:

Downfall – 31,650 words

Descent – 9,539 words

Allora – 38,358 words

Total – 79,547 words (not including front end matter/table of contents/about the author…)

To give you perspective, Cassidy‘s word count came out to 56,691. So it’s sequel, Allora, is considerably shorter.

While I am still going to make a few more edits until the book’s release, I don’t expect any  drastic changes that would alter these numbers a whole lot. While the numbers are likely to change somewhat, I’d say for the most part, the stories are each complete and will not be getting any longer nor shorter overall.

While editing and formatting is underway, so too is cover art design. There have been a few really cool iterations that my cover artist has put together and I think we’re getting close to having our winner. It is going to look rather different from most of the cover art in the series thus far, but really cool.

Assuming our work continues at the rate it’s been going, I would expect a cover art reveal soon!

Stay tuned and keep visiting the Color of Water and Sky blog for all the latest.

 

Cover Art in Development for “Atlantia”

My upcoming short story collection, Atlantia, is in the works. It will feature three new short stories: Downfall, Descent and Allora.

Once again, I hired Sarah Anderson to design the cover. She designed the cover for all of the books in the Color of Water and Sky series, as well as Kangblabla! Her work on the other Color of Water and Sky books will add a visual consistency with the cover of Atlantia.

When coming up with the cover art for these books, I typically pitch an idea to Sarah, then she designs it for me and once I actually see it in person, I realize that my idea was terrible. Then she designs a completely different unrelated thing and it looks far better.

For instance, my original idea for Iris was to have a big blue eyeball on the cover. My original idea for Cassidy was to have a woman on a raft in the ocean observing a space ship explosion. Obviously, neither of those things happened.

However, it seems my initial idea for Atlantia may actually have some weight to it this time!

Since the collection will include three stories, I wanted to include an image of each of the three main characters of each story. One of those characters is a futuristic soldier; the other is an old woman; and the other is a teenage boy.

Thinking of other images I have seen that combine three characters into one image, I remembered the movie poster for the film, Glass. If you are unfamiliar with the movie, Glass is about three characters in an asylum played by Samuel L Jackson, James McAvoy and Bruce Willis. The poster has each of the three characters separated by shards of broken glass with a distinct color for each character’s panel (Jackson has purple, McAvoy has yellow, and Willis has green). I love the look of that poster and decided to use that as inspiration for the cover to Atlantia.

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We are still working on the details, so things are definitely going to change as far as how things are going to look. But for now, Sarah and I are finding ways to make a book cover reminiscent of the style above.

The cover is going to look really exciting when we’re done! I cannot wait to show it to you.

In other positive news, is no longer linking their books to my page on Amazon! Yay! I am glad that they stopped.

As always, keep checking this blog for more updates on projects by Andrew Gates and content related to The Color of Water and Sky series.