Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 11

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 251: Ebook Formatting Tools

In this week’s episode, we take a look at four different ebook formatting tools for indie authors. We also discuss the phenomenon of Star Wars day.

You can listen to the show with transcript at the official Pulp Writer Show site, and you can also listen to it at Spotify, Apple Podcasts , Amazon Music, and Libsyn.

-JM

GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION rough draft finished!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION is done at 97,000 words!

That will make it just slightly shorter than GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY.

Next up is GHOST SPELLS, a bonus short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free in ebook form when GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION comes out.

After that is done, full speed ahead on editing. And I really should make a cover for the book at some point.

-JM

Coupon of the Week, 5/13/25

Once again it is time for Coupon of the Week!

This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Malison: The Complete Series at my Payhip store:

MALISON25

The coupon code is valid through June 3, 2025. So if you need a new book for spring, we’ve got you covered!

-JM

Heroquest: Return of the Witch-Lord

I spent a lot of the day painting outside, so I finally said “screw it” and took two hours to run the final quest of the HEROQUEST: RETURN OF THE WITCH LORD expansion pack.

Given that I started RETURN OF THE WITCH LORD back at the end of August, it took me like eight months to get to the final quest. But the final battle against the Witch Lord was a good fun fight – I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am looking forward to starting FROZEN HORROR, hopefully sooner than next month.

Also, if you’re working for a guy who has a giant mosaic skull on the floor of his throne room, it might be time to rethink your employment choices.

-JM

progress update

It is Friday, so let’s close out the week with a progress update!

I am 90,000 words into GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION, which puts me on Chapter 19 of 21. Almost to the end! I think one or two more good pushes will get me there, so hopefully that will happen next week.

I am also 9,000 words into SHIELD OF POWER, the final book of THE SHIELD WAR series.

Finally, I am 91,000 words into STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE: FINAL QUEST, which will conclude the STEALTH & SPELLS LitRPG series. If all goes well I want to have that out after SHIELD OF POWER, so probably sometime in July.

-JM

SHIELD OF DECEPTION now in audio!

Good news! SHIELD OF DECEPTION, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills, is now available in audiobook!

You can listen at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Payhip, Chirp, Storytel, and Spotify.

-JM

Question of the Week: favorite STAR WARS?

It’s time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire enjoyable questions of enjoyable topics.

This week’s question: what is your favorite STAR WARS?

The inspiration for this question is the fact that May 4th has become “STAR WARS day” in a very tongue-in-cheek manner.

For myself, I would have to break it down into four categories because STAR WARS media covers so much different formats now.

For the favorite movie, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, with RETURN OF THE JEDI as the runner up.

For the favorite TV series, Season 2 of THE MANDALORIAN.

For my favorite book, THE THRAWN TRILOGY by Timothy Zahn, with REVENGE OF THE SITH by Matthew Stover and DARTH PLAGUEIS by James Luceno coming in as strong runners up. Seriously, if you’re at this website you probably enjoy reading books, so these five are definitely worth your time.

For my favorite video games, I would say TIE FIGHTER with KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC as a very close runner-up. But TIE FIGHTER was definitely my favorite. You play as an Imperial pilot, and the designers had the clever idea of making the Imperials sympathetic by having the player spend most of the missions hunting pirates, suppressing alien civil wars, and fighting renegade Imperial warlords who are trying to overthrow the Emperor. In the last two expansion packs for the game, the player is flying as Grand Admiral Thrawn’s elite pilot against the renegade Grand Admiral Zaarin, and finally defeating Zaarin after like forty missions was VERY satisfying.

So those are my favorite STAR WARS media items.

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 250: Writing Full-Time, Expectations vs. Reality

It’s the 250th episode of The Pulp Writer Show! To celebrate this occasion, this episode takes a look at the expectations people have of a full-time writer’s life and contrasts them with the reality.

You can listen to the show with transcript at the official Pulp Writer Show site, and you can also listen to it at Spotify, Apple Podcasts , Amazon Music, and Libsyn.

-JM

Advertising roundup April 2025

As usual, it’s time for my monthly ad roundup!

I do this to demonstrate that it is possible to profitably advertise ebooks once you have enough of them, and to share my mistakes in hopes that people can learn from them.

Let’s see how the ads did across all platforms.

First, Facebook ads, where I advertised THE GHOSTS, CLOAK GAMES/MAGE, and DEMONSOULED.

-THE GHOSTS, $4.79 back for every $1 spent, with 13% of the profit coming from the audiobooks.

-CLOAK GAMES/MAGE, $4.43 for every $1 spent, with 10% of the profit coming form the audibooks.

-DEMONSOULED, $2.21 for every $1 spent.

GHOSTS and CLOAK GAMES/MAGE were way up, while DEMONSOULED was just slightly down from March. I suspect it’s because the ad images for GHOSTS and CLOAK GAMES had female characters while DEMONSOULED had male, so I may experiment a bit with that in May and see what happens.

For Amazon Ads, my main campaign was for HALF-ELVEN THIEF. Some setbacks for this one. Remember that an Amazon ad really needs a sale or a complete KU readthrough for every 6-8 clicks.

-HALF-ELVEN THIEF: $1.07 back for every $1 spent, with a sale/readthrough for every 2.07 clicks.

Why was the profit so low despite the good click rate? Just one of the ads in the campaign had glitched and was bidding for higher clicks, so it was getting a lot of clicks at too high a cost. We caught and adjusted that, so I think it will be more profitable in May.

Better results came from the campaign for HALF-ELVEN THIEF OMNIBUS ONE:

-HALF-ELVEN THIEF OMNIBUS ONE. $12.66 back for every $1 spent, with 63% of the profit coming from the audiobook, and a 1 to 1 click to sale ratio if you include the audiobook.

I don’t think the omnibus cannibalized the ads for HALF-ELVEN THIEF because the culprit was clearly the excessively high bid, and most of the profit for the omnibus came from the audiobook.

Lastly, I did some Bookbub ads for SEVENFOLD SWORD and THE GHOSTS on Apple and Google Play:

-SEVENFOLD SWORD Apple: $5.71 for every $1 spent.

-THE GHOSTS Apple: $7.71 for every $1 spent.

-SEVENFOLD SWORD Google Play: $6.14 back for every $1 spent.

-THE GHOSTS Google Play: $18.62 back for every $1 spent.

So very clearly it is advantageous to advertise permafree books on Apple and Google Play!

As ever, thank you for reading and listening to the audiobooks!

-JM

What will GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION be about?

I am now on Chapter 12 of 21 of GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION, which puts me at over the halfway point!

So what will be the plot in GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION?

Let’s have a brief preview.

It has to do with the nature of orcs in fantasy literature and games.

Overall, in fantasy literature and games you will see two different kinds of orcs – I call them the “Warcraft” orcs and the “Tolkienian” orcs.

The “Warcraft” orcs are kind of like fantasy Klingons – sort of Proud Warrior Race Guys who love battle and whatever their conception of honor is. I call them “Warcraft” orcs because I think WORLD OF WARCRAFT really popularized this version of orcs, so much so that while orcs always used to be Chaotic Evil in older versions of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, in modern versions they’re less so. These versions of orcs can be good and loyal friends or terrible foes, the same way that the Klingons have been either bitter enemies or loyal allies of Starfleet depending on the particular STAR TREK show. Either way, these versions of orcs love battle and are frequently violent, but in a fantasy setting that can be a good thing. The point is that the “Warcraft” style orcs aren’t inherently evil – they can be evil, but they are no more likely to be evil than humans.

In the FROSTBORN and HALF-ELVEN THIEF books, I went with these kind of orcs.

The second kind of orcs I call “Tolkienian”.

These orcs are inherently evil because they were made that way. In the THE SILMARILLION, the first orcs were Elves that the Dark Lord Morgoth captured and tortured, mutating and ruining them into horrible versions of their previous selves, and then Morgoth used them to breed his armies. The orcs were warped and hideous forms of life, one that inspired revulsion in any who looked upon them, and while they weren’t as strong as the Elves they were a lot more numerous. For that matter, the orcs’ nature was likewise ruined, and they became sadistic, cruel, and violent. Yet at some level they were aware of what was done to them, and they hate Morgoth and Sauron for it, but they cannot resist their cruel masters. This isn’t a new idea – all cultures have legends of monsters that used to be human but have given themselves over irrevocably to evil – werewolves, vampires, warlocks, and so forth. In fact, the very word “monster” comes from a Latin word that refers to something evil outside the normal moral order of the universe.

I used these kinds of orcs for GHOST ARMOR when I decided to introduce more fantasy creatures to the Caina setting as part of the plot.

Interestingly, Tolkien himself was never 100% comfortable with this version of the orcs, since he didn’t like the idea of a creature that was born evil and remained that way. In a couple of his earlier drafts, he considered having the orcs grown from slime or mud or be created from animals. When his son Christopher put THE SILMARILLION in order after Tolkien died, the “corrupted elves” version was the one that was most common in Tolkien’s writings, so he settled on that version for THE SILMARILLION.

So what does this have to do with GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION?

In the book, one of the lords of the orcs is ordered to kill Caina for all the trouble she had caused the serpent priests. Except the lord of the orcs doesn’t care about that.

Caina’s death might be the way to achieve a long-sought goal and take revenge on his serpent priest masters at the same time…

-JM