Michael R. Hicks's Blog, page 15

The Great 2013 Southwest Publishing Workshop and Book Signing Tour

Our Fleetwood RV, ready to be loaded up!

This summer I’d like to do a little “giving back” while we try to see a bit more of this great country of ours. From early June through mid-July we’ll be on the road touring the Southwest, and it’s my hope to meet with groups of authors to pass on what I can about how I’ve made it this far in the self-publishing biz, as well as getting together with some of the great fans who’ve helped me get here.

Come 8 June, we’ll be heading out in our RV, coming to a city that I hope will be near you! My plan at this point is to contact some of the Meetup.com author groups in cities we’ll be passing through to set up some self-publishing seminars (note: these will be FREE), and to see if there are some local bookshops or other venues where fans might like to get together for a book signing, belt out a few bawdy songs, and walk away with some free goodies, too.

So if you have any ideas or suggestions, please comment on this page or email me directly.

While nothing’s carved in stone yet, although the departure and return dates are pretty well fixed, here’s what our itinerary is looking like. So if you’re in or near one of these towns on the dates we’ll be passing through, let me know and we’ll see if we can set something up! Note that the dates given are our arrival-departure dates for each location…

View larger map

7-9 June: Tampa, FL
8-9 June: Chattahoochee, FL
9-11 June: New Orleans, LA
11-13 June: Houston, TX
13-16 June: San Antonio, TX
16-17 June: Sonora, TX
17-18 June: Carlsbad, NM
18-20 June: Las Cruces, NM
20-24 June: Tucson, AZ
24-26 June: Phoenix, AZ
26-28 June: Seligman, AZ
28 June-2 July: Grand Canyon
2-7 July: Page, AZ
7-8 July: Holbrook, AZ
8-11 July: Santa Fe, NM
11-12 July: Amarillo, TX
12-15 July: Dallas, TX
15-17 July: Houston, TX (we’ll be here on my birthday – w00t!)
17-19 July: New Orleans, LA
19-20 July: Chattahooche, FL
20-21 July: Tampa, FL

And if you’re not along the circuit we plan to travel this summer, fear not. We hope to do this sort of thing every summer, going to different parts of the country. I don’t want anyone to feel left out…!

FORGED IN FLAME Paperback Edition Now Available on Amazon

If you’re one of my readers who enjoys having print editions, I just wanted to let you know that Forged In Flame is now available on Amazon.com.

At the moment (as I write this), Amazon is indicating that the book is temporarily out of stock, so it might take a tad longer than normal to arrive on your doorstep. That’s really only because they’re finalizing the order setup with the printing facility, which prints each copy of the book as it’s ordered.

Anyway, if you’ve been waiting for a print copy, head on over to Amazon and click that buy button!

P.S. The print edition should be available on the other Amazon stores, Barnes & Noble, and other on-line retailers soon!

Forged In Flame (In Her Name: The First Empress, Book 2) – Now Available!

The waiting is over! Forged In Flame, the second book of the First Empress saga after , has just been released!

Keel-Tath, the child who would unite her people as foretold by an ancient prophecy, has grown to be a young warrior in the confines of the Desh-Ka temple, where she has been sheltered by her old friend and mentor Ayan-Dar from the clutches of Syr-Nagath, the Dark Queen. But when Keel-Tath is forced to choose between sanctuary and her honor, she goes into exile, leaving behind a broken-hearted Ayan-Dar.

Captured and bound in chains by those who serve the Dark Queen, she is rescued from an unspeakable fate by a warrior from the shadows. Thus begins Keel-Tath’s perilous journey to the ends of her war-ravaged world, through deadly wastelands and even deadlier seas, unaware that some of those she holds most dear stand ready to betray her…

The major ebook retailers are either carrying it now or will be shortly. The major exception is iTunes/iBooks, where Forged In Flame should be available sometime around the end of February (sorry, folks, distribution issues!). The print version should be available around the same time from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

P.S. By the way, we WILL be having a contest coming up, but I wanted to wait this time until the print version was released…

Get It Now At:

Amazon US (Kindle, Print)
Amazon UK (, Print)
Amazon CA (, Print)
Barnes & Noble (Nook, Print)
Barnes & Noble UK (Nook)
iTunes
Kobo
Smashwords
Google Books

FORGED IN FLAME Set For Release On 18 February

The beta readers for FORGED IN FLAME have been chosen, and I’m busy slinging books out the door at them (bonk!). I’m now also going to say that the official release date for the book is 18 February, which also happens to be President’s Day here in the U.S. And, um, yeah, that’s next week!

Because of how the whole distribution thing works, it will be available first on the following ebook platforms:

Amazon for Kindle
Barnes & Noble for Nook
Kobo
Smashwords for multiple ebook formats
Google Play

The only major ebook format that’ll take a while longer to percolate through is for Apple iBooks, which should be available about two weeks later (again, because of how the distribution is handled).

Unlike my previous books, I’m also going to get the print version formatted and uploaded to the printer right away after I get the final revisions. Show the paperback should be showing up in the on-line retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble in early March.

So, get ready – here it comes!

Seeking Beta Readers for FORGED IN FLAME

The final edits for should be back soon. Once I make those revisions, guess what it’ll be time for? BETA READERS!

If you’d like to be considered for this onerous, um, fun little job, here’s what I’m looking for in potential victims (did I say that?):

While finding typos and grammatical bloopers is always a plus, the primary job of the beta reader is to spot anything that jars you out of the story, things that make you go, “Now wait just a gosh darn minute! How did that happen?” Or maybe something is really glossed over that maybe needs more detail, or the other way around. Continuity errors are another good one, where there’s no logical way that a character could have gotten (literally or figuratively) from A to B without a Star Trek teleporter. That sort of thing. In short, anything that seems to detract from the story.
You’ll have to have some sort of ebook reader or app, as I don’t send out print copies (since there aren’t any yet – LOL). And you’ll also have to be able to convey to me where the issues are without using platform specific pointers. For example, telling me about a typo at 2,394 on your Kindle doesn’t help me much, but saying “From see to shining see – should be SEA” or something like that works well, because I can search on the incorrect text in the book manuscript file.
Probably the biggest trick is that you’ll have to have time available to read the book on a pretty short timeline: I’d like to have all comments back by Saturday, 16 February (and yes, of this year). Call me a slave driver!
Oh, another little prerequisite: you really need to have read first!

And that really is that. Also, let me say up front that I REALLY appreciate folks taking the time to beta read my books – it’s a huge help in making them the best they can be!

So, if you’d like to be considered as a beta reader for and you think you can check all three points above, let me know why you’d make a good one in a comment on this thread. Then after I make the final editorial revisions, I’ll let the lucky stuckees know who they are (note: I usually pick about half a dozen people) and will forward them the book files for maceration!

2012: Looking Back, Looking Forward

2012. It’s hard to believe it’s almost over. I guess a lot of us say that every year, but this year held so many changes for our lives that it really IS hard to believe! But as one year ends, another is about to begin, and I wanted to take a minute or two to reflect on where live’s taken us, and where I hope to be next year.

2012 was a milestone year for several reasons. The first is that it was the first full year that I’ve spent as a self-employed author. As you may recall, I left my rather high-paying “executive” job at the National Security Agency (NSA) in mid-2011 to write full-time. Despite the meteoric start, the rest of the year turned out to be a lesson in hard knocks. In 2012, while I certainly didn’t get everything done that I had planned, I certainly can’t complain from the business perspective: while the final count’s not in yet, I figure that for the year I’ll have sold over 80,000 copies of my books and given away over a quarter million. For a first year in business, I’ll count that as not too darn bad, and I owe it all to you, dear reader.

The second reason is that my wife and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. Every anniversary in a marriage should be an important milestone, one where you should mentally refresh your vows and double-check that you’re cherishing each other. It’s very easy to lose sight of that in this day of hustle and bustle, so take some time with your spouse and make sure they know through your words and deeds that you love them.

Now, our anniversary was a key element in the third major milestone for us in 2012: moving from Maryland to Florida. My wife and I have lived in Maryland since the mid/late 1980s, working at NSA. While Maryland certainly isn’t a bad place, it never felt like home to an Arizona boy like me. And my wife, while she was from Pittsburgh, has always loved warmer climates.

And so, for our tenth anniversary, we decided to take a car trip to Sarasota, Florida in April and relax for a week in a timeshare condo on the beach. We originally hadn’t even intended to go to Sarasota, but it turned out through an odd series of events that we wound up going to that particular condo (the Calini Beach Club, if you must know). We immediately fell in love with the area, and said to ourselves, “You know, we could live here.”

You know, my wife and I may be many things, but one thing we are not is indecisive. We spent the rest of our trip scouting out neighborhoods in the area, and as soon as we got home to Maryland we started getting the house there ready to sell. By August we had a contract on the house, then we packed up the RV and headed south (think of Robin Williams in the movie “RV” – that’s us!.

When we got down to Sarasota, in just a few days put in a contract on a house that was an estate sale. In the meantime we got the boys enrolled in school and hunkered down to wait for the sale of the Maryland house to go through so we could buy our home in Sarasota. We spent five weeks living in the RV, and while it was a pain in some ways, I think it was among the best times we’ve spent together as a family.

We closed on the house in September, and have spent a lot of time and money making it ours (in fact, the kitchen remodeling project is still only half-finished).

If anyone had told me even a couple years ago that I would be making such huge changes in life, I would have called for the men in the white coats! But here we are. Are things perfect? Heck, no! Living a dream is a process, not an end state. Sometimes you’re going to come up short, sometimes you’re going to fail or make mistakes. Just never stop reaching, never stop climbing, never give up.

And that brings us to 2013. I’m not going to say I have any “resolutions,” because I don’t live by those. I live by goals. Granted, I don’t always achieve the goals I set, but I set them and do my best to shoot for them. Here are my big ones for the coming year:

Get my Gumby-like rubbery body back in shape! A friend of mine once told me that you’re body is your temple, and it really is true. It sucks that it’s so easy to fall out of shape, but takes so much work to get there, but that’s the way it is. Starting tomorrow (26 December), I’m working out at the local YMCA a minimum of four times a week and shifting to a much healthier eating lifestyle. Buff bod, here I come!
Start growing spiritually. I’m not here to push my beliefs at you; I happen to be a Christian, and if you believe differently, power to you. But whatever your beliefs are, you shouldn’t let your spirituality stagnate. I’ve done pretty darn near absolutely nothing in the last twenty five years to question, learn about, and expand my spiritual horizons. This year that’s going to change. My goal is to read the entire Holy Bible over the course of the coming year.
Live more. It’s so easy to let your work or other things consume you while the simple pleasures of life pass you by. This has been a very chaotic year for us, and we haven’t gone out and done many of the things that we planned when we decided to move here. It’s six minutes from our front door to the nearest beach, yet we’ve only gone a few times in the last couple months. There are tons of cultural and social events here. There are lots of water-related sports and activities. Yet, we have yet to take advantage of them. That’s going to change. My goal is to go to at least one cultural event (a show, musical, whatever) once a month; attend one of the local meetup groups at least twice a month; and get to the beach every day, weather permitting!

On the work side, I have some new goals, too:

As far as my writing goes, I’m changing things a bit from what I had this last year. I had set myself a goal of 3,000 words a day, but only rarely achieved it. This year, I’m going to stick a sign on the wall of our office that says, “You have to write 2,000 words before you can go to bed.” I think I can achieve that consistently without over-stressing my right wrist (it got banged up in a car wreck a couple years ago), and if I plaster that sign up where I’ll be looking at it all day, it should help keep the goal in my pea brain. Rain or shine, at least 2,000 words a day before I go to sleep. No excuses.
Get all the books into audiobook format. I’m already working on this one, trying to find a narrator, but I want to get this nailed down and get the books out there in audio to develop that segment of my fan base and bring in a new stream of income.
Focus more on the emerging markets beyond Amazon-US. There’s no question that Amazon-US is buttering my bread. But it’s also clear that Amazon-UK is a vital player, accounting for a full third of my royalties from Kindle book sales, and I want to focus more effort on developing the other retail outlets and national markets. I don’t have a full strategy put together on how I plan to do that, but my goal for January is sorting that out and then setting it into motion.

So, those are the highlights of where I’m heading going into 2013. I hope you take some time to lay out your goals for the year, the things you need to do to move you closer to your dreams and aspirations!

Looking For A Narrator For SEASON OF THE HARVEST

Okay, after a lot of thought about this, I’ve finally decided to stop dithering around trying to get the audiobook versions of my novels done myself and just hire someone to do it, at least for now. The first one on the catapult is SEASON OF THE HARVEST, which has been sitting at ACX.com (which feeds the main audiobook channels like Audible and iTunes), waiting for me to get to it, for quite a while now.

So, if you’re a narrator or knows someone who is, please do take a look at the SEASON OF THE HARVEST project on ACX so we can get this puppy done and out to all the people who have emailed me to complain there aren’t any audiobook versions of my novels!

Christmas Gift Card Giveaway Contest 2012

Nina wishes you a Merry Christmas!

Assuming we’re not all vaporized on 21 December, Nina the Cat and I are going to be giving away some gift certificates as our own little celebration of Christmas, paying back a little to readers like you who have made my writing career possible (and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, don’t let that stop you from playing – I’m doing the celebrating, you’re getting the goodies!).

This one’s going to be a little different, and I hope will be some fun. It’s very easy: just post a comment here containing your favorite quote from any of my books (and yes, for your over-eager types, you can only post ONE comment!).

What, you haven’t read any of my books and don’t want to buy any (yet)? That’s okay, because you can check out three of them for free so you’ll have some quotable material. Come on, how hard can that be, right?

On the 25th, barring any apocalyptic developments, I’ll be giving away the following goodies in the form of gift certificates to your favorite ebook retailer:

ONE $50 certificate
TWO $20 certificates
FOUR $10 certificates

If I’m counting right, that’s seven chances to win! Everybody is eligible, inside & outside the US (note: for those outside the US, if I can’t get a certificate to your favorite ebook seller for any reason, we’ll figure something else out).

You have until I wake up on the 25th and shake the cobwebs outta my head, so get commenting!

P.S. If your comment doesn’t show up right away, don’t worry: I have to approve them manually to keep the spammers at bay…

Looking For Some Advice From Non-U.S. Readers of eBooks

You’d have to be living under a rock not to realize that ebook market growth is skyrocketing across the globe. I think that’s a good thing for readers everywhere, and it’s also a great potential opportunity for authors like myself. Of course, the trick is to know what ebook formats/devices and retailers people are using, along with a couple other tidbits of information. That’s where I’m hoping that you, my friend, can lend me a hand.

Now, I’m going to set aside the language and translation issue for the moment, as that’s a much bigger issue. What I’d like to ask is that if you live outside the United States and read books in English (either as a primary or secondary language), please leave me a comment here with a bit of info:

The country you’re living in
Your favorite ebook retail site(s)
How you typically discover books you’d like to read
The typical price (or range of prices) in your currency of the books you buy
Any other comments you might care to make on the topic (and suggestions are definitely welcome!)

Depending on the number of responses, I’ll consolidate the results in a follow-on post.

Many thanks in advance should you decide to help me out with this!

P.S. Please feel free to forward this on to any friends you know who might like to add their input.

Does Giving Books Away Free Devalue The Author?

While I don’t have the final numbers, I can safely say that by the end of this year (2012), I will have given away somewhere around 250,000 free ebooks across all platforms. In 2012. Yes, that’s a quarter freakin’ million books that I gave away free this year.

“You fool!” Many authors will exclaim. “How could you do such a stupid thing? You’re devaluing your work, devaluing the work of other indie authors. If you keep this up, the entire self-publishing industry will collapse under the weight of Kindles and Nooks laden with free books that those readers will never read, and it will be all…your…fault!”

Well, I guess I’m a total pinhead. But I think I forgot to mention that in addition to those 250,000 freebies, I will have sold around 90,000 copies in exchange for the hard-earned cash of my beloved readers. And I very strongly believe that I wouldn’t have sold nearly as many copies had I not been so generous with the freebies.

Listen, it’s like going into one of those places like Costco or Sam’s Club where they have all sorts of free stuff you can nibble on. They give you some for free, and if you like it, there’s a good chance you’ll buy it. It certainly works on me!

It’s the same with giving away a book or two. While it’s great to have a 10% sample on your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or whatever, the reader still isn’t sure what they’re in for, and whether the book is going to be worth it. This is especially the case if it’s a book that’s part of a series.

My solution? Give them the first book free. Make it a super-sample. That way the only risk they have to take is spending a little time reading it. After that, there are two likely outcomes: a) they don’t like it, delete it, and move on, or b) they love it and go on to buy the next book. Giving readers the first one free gets them past the hurdle of “Jeez, am I going to like this or is it going to suck like that last book I bought?” The free book eases their mind, because they now have a real taste of this author. I have gotten comment after comment, email after email of readers saying, “You know, I took a chance on one of your freebies, and wound up buying every one of your books!”

“Yeah, but a lot of people who don’t like it will leave me a one-star review!” Yes, that can and will happen, but unless your book really does suck (sorry, but that does happen, you know), most readers who don’t like the freebie aren’t going to waste even more of their time reviewing it. But those who enjoy a book will be more likely to review it, especially if it was a freebie that they really enjoyed and that led them to read your other $$$ books.

To prove my point, check out the books on my Amazon author page and see how many reviews each one has. Let’s ignore In Her Name: Redemption (trilogy) for the moment, because that was the first book I published and has had the longest to garner reviews. Of the other books, Empire, Season Of The Harvest, and First Contact have – by far – the most reviews. And guess what? They’re the freebies.

As for this whole “free books devalue indie/self-published authors,” I say hogwash. That’s a self-perception on the part of some authors that has nothing to do with the reader and nothing to do with effective marketing strategies. Go out on the web and look at how much stuff you can get for free. You get free samples in the mail. You get free samples from your doctor. You get free samples in the grocery store. Companies give stuff away free because they know it’s an effective tool to move prospective customers past their reluctance and closer to buying the product, whatever it may be. This is also why most successful companies have no questions asked return policies, free shipping on returns, etc. – it’s all part of reducing that “resistance to buy” thing and make customers comfortable with their purchase.

Again, readers want to read good books. That’s all, really. They don’t care about the ego or angst of the author (I certainly don’t!). Readers are also willing to pay for good books. And they’re much more willing to pay for good books if you give them a good book to try first…for free.

Now, maybe you only have one book out. Should you give it away free? That all depends. Are you hoping that your one book is going to be an overnight bestseller that will lift you to fame and fortune? Or are you in this as a business for the long haul, with the eventual goal of writing full time?

If the former, I say good luck – enjoy the kool-aid.

If the latter, I say yes, give it away free – just make sure it’s good (note: free crap is still crap). It’s going to take you a few years (yes, that would be years) to build up a fan base, and during that time your book isn’t likely to earn you a ton of money; it could earn some, but that’s short-term tactical thinking. You need to look at long-term strategies. Get people interested in your work by letting them read your first book free while you’re working on the second, which you’ll sell, and which your growing fan base will snap up as soon as it comes out (which, by the way, will boost the second book’s initial rankings). Will it be the next Harry Potter? Probably not. Keep writing. Then write more.

By the time you have six or more books in your list, you’re working like a dog to (politely!!) promote your work, and you’ve been giving that first book (and maybe even another one) away in every possible venue (again, politely), you’ll be making some real money. Maybe it’s not enough to live on yet, maybe it is. Keep writing, because this is largely a numbers game, and the more titles you have in your backlist, the greater will be your long term residual income. And all the while that freebie(s) will be your best tool in building a wider readership.