Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 129

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 43: Six Ways That Old Books Can Generate New Work (And Hopefully New Sales)

It’s time for another episode of the Pulp Writer Show!

In this week’s episode, I look at six ways that old books can generate new work, and hopefully new sales.

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA: CROWNS progress update

Just passed the 55,000 word mark on DRAGONTIARNA: CROWNS.  On Chapter 13 of 31.

It’s going to be a crazy week, but let’s see how close I can get to 80,000 words by the end of Friday.

I’m also 12,700 words into GHOST IN THE COUNCIL.

-JM

Cover Elements & Facebook Ads

One side benefit of learning Photoshop/DAZ Studio and making my own covers is that I can reuse the cover elements to make image for Facebook ads. Facebook ads are pretty powerful, but at least 80% of an ad’s effectiveness comes from its image. A common way to get images for Facebook ads is to use stock photos. This can be tricky, since it’s hard to find a good stock photo that conveys a sense of what your book is about, and good stock photos get reused a lot. (More on that below.) But it’s very easy to use Photoshop to alter a book cover to create a Facebook ad image. Especially when you made the cover yourself and know how all the layers are put together!

Like, for example, here is the new cover for CHILD OF THE GHOSTS:

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And using the elements from this cover, here was the Facebook ad image I created from it:

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All the metrics for the ad using this image (cost per click, sales, etc) were excellent.

Previous to that, the best results I got for a Facebook ad using a stock image was from this picture:

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I got the stock photo from Dreamstime.com here. It’s obviously a very striking photo, and stock images from that particular series turn up a lot. If you look at book covers on Amazon on a regular basis, you’ll see it turn up in many different book covers. And, in fact, it was used for the UK ebook edition of Ilona Andrews’ book MAGIC BLEEDS:

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You can see that the cover was clearly composited together using stock images in Photoshop. Whoever designed the cover got the image off one of the stock photo sites and incorporated it into the cover. Nothing wrong with that – I do it myself, and it’s a frequent method of cover design in both indie books and tradpub books. So long as you pay the licensing fee to the stock photo site, it’s all perfectly legal and above-board. You can buy the exclusive right to use a stock photo, but if someone does that, the photo will not be up for browsing and licensing on the various (legit) stock photo sites.

That said, someone in the UK saw my Facebook ad using that stock photo and was tiiiiiicked. I got a long, angry “I-want-to-speak-to-your-manager” style message accusing me of ripping off the MAGIC BLEEDS cover, and the person complained to Facebook and tried to get the ad banned. Fortunately, the complaint was baseless enough that even Facebook’s automated algorithms (which, alas, are sometimes like the guard dog barking at a squirrel while burglars empty out the house) were not fooled.

So that was an bit of comedy in an otherwise stressful week. This does happen sometimes in the indie publishing world when an author unfamiliar with the legalities around stock photos sees a stock image from their cover used in another and then flips out, often on Twitter. In this life we must often learn things the hard way, but it’s best to avoid learning those lessons on social media.

Of course, you do have to rotate Facebook ads every so often because the ads grow “stale”, so to speak. The next time I need to refresh my ads, I think I will use this cover to generate a new image for a Facebook ad:

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-JM

task triaging: writing vs TV

A reader on Twitter asked about writing:

“How do you make sure you prioritize the most important things in your life without getting caught up in ‘busy’ work?”

It’s funny timing because I wrote only a 1,000 words yesterday for various reasons.  Sometimes other stuff just takes priority.

That said, it’s a matter of triaging. I’ve heard it said that the definition of adulthood is trying to balance all of one’s responsibilities without shortchanging any of them too badly, and the older I get, the truer that seems.

Some days I have more time to write, and other days I don’t.

Like, one day this past week, I wrote 10,000 words of DRAGONTIARNA: CROWNS. Another day, I did 7,000. Another day, I only did 100. That’s all right. Some days I had more stuff to do than others, and 100 words is still better than zero. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the possible.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t get a task done on a particular day, or that you didn’t get as much done as you wanted. Doing something is always better than doing nothing, even if it’s not as much as you hoped.

I should mention that one thing that frees up a lot of time is that I very rarely watch television and/or streaming media. Like, I’ll often have the TV on the background while I write or do other things, but it’s almost always something I’ve seen before and it’s there for background noise. Watching a new show (like, actually paying attention to it) is such a huge time commitment that I’ll do it only infrequently. Besides, I usually find books or video games more engaging for leisure anyway.

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA audiobooks coming!

Some good news – the first two audiobooks of the DRAGONTIARNA series will be out from Podium Audio before the end of the year!

DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES will be a two-book audio bundle containing DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS and DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES, and if all goes well it should be out on October 27th.

DRAGONTIARNA: GATES & WRAITHS will be a two-book audio bundle containing DRAGONTIARNA: GATES and DRAGONTIARNA: WRAITHS, and if all goes well it should be out on November 24th. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving!

Both audiobook bundles have been excellently narrated by Steven Brand, and you can see the cover images below.

DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES:

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DRAGONTIARNA: GATES & WRAITHS:

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-JM

 

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 42: Four Self-Publishing Tools I Have Reconsidered & WRAITHSHARD Book #4 Now Available!

In this week’s episode of the Pulp Writer Show, I look at four self-publishing tools I have reconsidered, and talk about my new book WRAITHSHARD: PYRE & FORGE!

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA, WRAITHSHARD, and GHOST IN THE VISION

Now that WRAITHSHARD: PYRE & FORGE is finished and out in the world, I’ve started on DRAGONTIARNA: CROWNS!

Currently I’m 15,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 4 of 31.

DRAGONTIARNA: CROWNS will continue the fine DRAGONTIARNA tradition of the books being long. There are three main plotlines, and all of them have pretty significant things to do. Additionally, there were a bunch of chapters with Tyrcamber Rigamond that were going to be in DEFENDERS, but I shifted them to CROWNS since they would have slowed down the climax of DEFENDERS quite a bit.

Anyway, here’s what I’m going to write over the next few months.

-DRAGONTIARNA: CROWNS

-WRAITHSHARD: WRATH & BATTLE (the final WRAITHSHARD book)

-GHOST IN THE VISION.

I’m 11,000 words into GHOST IN THE VISION.

One of my side projects will be to redesign the covers of THE GHOSTS and GHOST EXILE, since they’ve had the same covers for eight years now and are looking a little dated. Here’s the new cover for CHILD OF THE GHOSTS.  

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-JM

Favorite Scenes of 2020

2020 is about two-thirds behind us and I’ve written a bunch of books this year. What have been my favorite scenes so far?

WARNING! Note that this post will have spoilers for CLOAK OF ASHES, DRAGONTIARNA, and WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT. If you haven’t read through CLOAK OF ASHES, DRAGONTIARNA: DEFENDERS, and WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT, you should probably stop reading now.

Now that the warnings are over, here are the favorite scenes I’ve written in 2020!

-In CLOAK OF ASHES, when Nadia fights Mr. Hood. When Nadia runs into other wizards, she’s either stronger than most of them, or grossly overmatched by a few archmages of power like the High Queen or Prince Valcander. So it’s unusual for her to run into someone who is a peer, and writing her fight scene with Mr. Hood was fun.

-In WRAITHSHARD: MAGE & KNIGHT, when Mazael meets Lucan again. If you’ve read the DEMONSOULED series, you know that Mazael has many, many reasons to be furious with Lucan, and Lucan knows it.

-In DRAGONTIARNA: LEGIONS, the attack on Cintarra. One of my favorite things to write about is the “fog of war”, which means that in a crisis no one has any idea what is happening and is trying to act on the best information available, which is usually inaccurate. While this is an unpleasant thing to experience in Real Life, it is nonetheless enjoyable to write about.

-In DRAGONTIARNA: DEFENDERS, the battle of Shadow Crown Hill. Once again the fog of war kicks in, and everyone involved in the battle has their own plan for it. And then all the plans crash into each other like four or five semi trucks all trying to get onto the same off-ramp at once.

Looking forward to writing more this year!

-JM

WRAITHSHARD: PYRE & FORGE now available!

I am pleased to report that WRAITHSHARD: PYRE & FORGE, the second-to-last book of the WRAITHSHARD series, is now available!

You can get it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, and Amazon AU. Available through Kindle Unlimited as well.

Once the series is complete, I plan to phase it out of Kindle Unlimited and onto the other ebook stores.

To save his lands from the armies of Lord Razalis, Mazael Cravenlock must destroy the Wraithaldr, the ancient artifact of necromantic evil.

But to unmake the Wraithaldr, he needs a sword of the legendary Knight Armigers.

And the only place to find such a mighty blade is in the dungeons below the ruins of Castle Valdrake.

Ruins from which few have ever escaped…

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-JM

FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE free!

It’s no secret that a lot of people are under a lot of economic pressure lately. FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE is my bestselling ebook, so I’ve made it temporarily free!

The omnibus contains Ridmark Arban’s first three adventures – FROSTBOR: THE GRAY KNIGHT, FROSTBORN: THE EIGHTFOLD KNIFE, and FROSTBORN: THE UNDYING WIZARD, and the prequel novel FROSTBORN: THE FIRST QUEST.

You can read it for $0.00 at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

-JM