Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 155
September 5, 2019
GHOST IN THE STONE, Nicasia, and the Vice-Queen of Italy
A few people have sent emails expressing approval that the character of Nicasia returns in GHOST IN THE VAULT.
I’m always happy to take credit for positive developments. 
September 4, 2019
SEVENFOLD SWORD PART V now in audiobook!
GHOST IN THE VAULT now available
I am pleased to report that GHOST IN THE VAULT is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.
Caina has made many enemies, and chief among them is Lord Corbould Maraeus, the most powerful noble in the Empire of Nighmar.
But the Empire is facing dire peril, and Corbould needs all the allies he can find. If Caina can find a missing ambassador, Corbould is willing to forego his vengeance against Caina.
Except no mere political intrigue has snared the missing ambassador.
For the ancient evils in the forgotten Vault of the Moroaica are awakening…
September 3, 2019
DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES editing underway!
I am editing the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES, and that means it’s time to share the cover image, which was done by the excellent Clarissa Yeo.
If all goes well, DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES should be out sometime in October.
[image error]
-JM
September 1, 2019
DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES rough draft done!
I am pleased to report that the rough draft of DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES is finished!
132,600 words in 20 days, which means it’s probably going to be my 5th or 6th longest book ever.
Next up is SHIELD KNIGHT: THIRD’S TOWER, a short story I will give away for free to newsletter subscribers when DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES comes out in October. I had decided to stop doing new short stories, but one thing changed my mind.
Spam email, believe it or not.
One of the metrics all the major email services use to determine whether or not an email is spam is how many links in the email receive user clicks. When I stopped giving away new short stories, the total clicks went way down, so more and more my newsletter emails were getting marked as spam. So, I am back to doing free short stories for newsletter giveaways.
August 31, 2019
Kindle Unlimited Experiment results
I am pleased to report that my Kindle Unlimited experiment for August made back all my advertising costs and turned a profit.
A 37% profit, to be specific. I would have liked more, of course, but that’s still pretty good. It’s popular nowadays to lecture about the Evils Of Profits, but this overlooks how difficult it is to turn a profit doing, well, anything. (Which explains why people cheat and break the law to do it on occasion.)
Like, in the restaurant business, if the restaurant manages to break even it’s doing well.
Way back in the Bad Old Days when I worked for a Big Box Retailer, if the store had a 2% profit for the month, that was doing well. This was a store that could do a million dollars worth of sales over a weekend, but the profit from a single month’s sales wouldn’t even cover the cost of an assistant manager’s annual salary and benefits. And if anything went wrong during the month – like, a blizzard tanked sales for a day, or a freezer mechanical failure wiped out the meat department’s inventory – there went the profit for the month.
So I am very grateful for a 37% profit.
I think we can learn four lessons from this Kindle Unlimited experiment:
1.) Long series of long books can do well in KU.
2.) It does take a lot of advertising to move books in Kindle Unlimited.
3.) About half of that 37% came from audiobook sales. Audiobooks do very well when attached to Kindle Unlimited books.
4.) It’s good not be to exclusively in Kindle Unlimited. Even with THE GHOSTS/GHOST EXILE in KU (but not GHOST NIGHT!) I still have 81 books on other retailers. So even if my KU experiment had been a disaster, I would still have the monthly sales from the other retailers.
-JM
August 29, 2019
GHOST IN THE VAULT Table of Contents
Just about ready to finalize GHOST IN THE VAULT! If all goes well I should be ready to publish the book in a couple of days.
Meanwhile, here is the Table of Contents.
[image error]
-JM
August 28, 2019
FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE on Apple Books Feature!
I am pleased to report that Apple Books included FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE in their UnputdownableReads collection!
Get it at (and other excellent books):
If you don’t use Apple Books, you can still read FROSTBORN: OMNIBUS ONE at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.
-JM
August 27, 2019
GHOST IN THE MASK now available in audiobook!
August 26, 2019
DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES progress update
Now 100k words into DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES!
I think the rough draft is gonna end up at around 130k to 140k. That is really long for me, at least for a book that isn’t the last one in the series, but there was a lot of plot going on!
If all goes well, I’ll wrap up the rough draft around Labor Day, and publish the book sometime in October.
Meanwhile, look for GHOST IN THE VAULT in the first week of September!
-JM
