Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 158
July 31, 2019
GHOST IN THE VAULT rough draft finished!
I am pleased to report that the rough draft of GHOST IN THE VAULT is finished at 95,000 words!
Editing will start in a few days, so I’ll share the cover image then.
Meanwhile, it’s time to finalize and publish DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS!
-JM
July 30, 2019
CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER now available in audiobook!
I am pleased to report that CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER is now available in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Meghan Kelly.
You can listen to it at Audible, iTunes, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Nook, Kobo, Google Play, and Scribd.
Don’t forget you can listen to the first book in the series in audio as well!
-JM
July 27, 2019
DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS Table of Contents
Barring technical difficulties, DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS should come out in the first week of August, so let’s share the Table of Contents!
[image error]
-JM
July 26, 2019
DRAGONTIARNA, GHOSTS, and CLOAK MAGE updates
We’re at the last Friday in July, so let’s have an update on my projects!
-DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS should be published next week.
-I am at 75,000 words into GHOST IN THE VAULT.
-I just passed 10,000 words of CLOAK OF WOLVES.
-The audiobook version of GHOST IN THE ASHES (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is finished, and should be out sometime in August.
-The audiobook version of FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is nearly finished, and should be out probably in September.
-JM
July 25, 2019
buyer beware!
Recently I got an email from a reader interested in publishing his book. He wasn’t interested in pursuing traditional publication (smart!), but he was too busy to self-publish due to a demanding job. He found a small company that would self-publish his book and handle all of the marketing for 50% of the royalties, and wondered what I thought.
My initial response was, of course: run away! There’s no reason to fork over 50% of the royalties for the term of the contract, especially when you can do all the aspects of self-publishing by yourself, or hire someone to do it for a one-time fee.
I would also be dubious about the “we’ll do the marketing” claims. When a publisher says they’ll “handle” the marketing, what that usually amounts to listing the book in a catalog and putting a page on their website. Or printing bookmarks or something – there is no book marketing technique less effective than printing bookmarks. Recently, Bookbub had a blog post about a writer named Brenda Novak, who got on the USA Today bestseller list with her traditionally published book. Good for her! But here’s the punchline – she did all the marketing by herself (and it was a LOT of work)! The publisher really wasn’t involved.
Realistically, both self-publishing and tradpublished writers will have to do their marketing themselves. So why not self-publish and keep more of the money?
Additionally, when it comes to business, a “small” company isn’t always synonymous with “good”. Americans in general tend to respect small or family businesses more than big ones, but the unfortunate truth is that small business can be just as corrupt as a large corporation like Facebook or Disney. This can be especially true with local businesses who don’t have any competitors, who can become both crooked and lazy. With big businesses, there is at least a higher authority to whom you can appeal. If you get screwed at the local big box store, you can complain to the district manager or someone higher up the food chain. If Bob’s Local Family-Owned Business screws you over, your options are more limited.
In that vein, small publishers tend to have a very good rep in the publishing/writing communities. Nobody likes the big faceless publishers, but small publishers have real live people who care about their authors! Alas, just like small businesses, this is only sometimes true. Some of the biggest crooks in publishing previously (or currently) operated small presses. Nor is this a new tradition. Science fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback, for whom the Hugo Award was named, was so notorious for screwing over and stiffing his writers that HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith called him “Hugo the Rat.”
It is probably fitting that the most famous award in tradpub SF was named for a man who was basically a crook. (Which pretty much sums up my opinion of tradpub right there.) Publishing, alas, both self-publishing and traditional, tends to attract all kinds of con artists.
So, if you do sign with a company that will self-publish your book for 50% of the royalties, you’re basically taking a big leap of faith that the money will come on time, that the royalty statements won’t “accidentally” be off, and so forth. Or that the contract will have a sneaky little clause that says the author only gets paid after “expenses” are met without bothering to define what expenses are. And that’s assuming the company is competent. I know of one small press that went under because the owner spent all her company’s money on surgery for her ailing cat. And even if the company is competently and honestly managed, if the owner dies suddenly, all bets are off.
To sum up, my initial react to the question at the top of the post is not just no but heck no.
That said…
If the company in question is actually honest and well-managed (a big leap of faith), then I can understand why someone would sign with them. I say “do it yourself” like it’s no big deal, but that’s because I have the skillset for it. Right now I’m contracting out some home repairs, and I know that would appall some readers.
“What?!?” they’d say. “Why are you hiring someone to build your front porch? You can do it yourself with some lumber, an electric drill, a power saw, wood screws, and a Saturday!!!”
They say that, but I don’t have that skill set, and I don’t have the time to spare to learn it. It’s the same reason I never read my own audiobooks. I could, theoretically, teach myself to narrate legibly and edit and master audio, but that would take too much time. Additionally, even if I learned that, my voice is still unpleasant – me narrating my own audiobooks would be like a 100 pound man deciding he wants to be an NFL linebacker. There would be a measure of self-delusion involved!
So I understand that laying out your own ebook or making your own cover (or hiring it out) would beyond the skill sets of some people, even though it’s comfortably in mine. In those circumstances, I can understand signing up with a company like the one described above.
But I would still be very, very, very, very wary, and I’d think my email correspondent would still be much better off self-publishing in the long run.
-JM
July 24, 2019
DEMONSOULED, time, and tomatoes
My recent experiment with DEMONSOULED in Kindle Unlimited did well enough that I got a bunch of emails asking when I’m going to do another DEMONSOULED book.
I would like to, but it’s hard to find the time.
I’m really blessed that I have more creative opportunities than I actually have time to do. Like, right now I’m working on the first DRAGONTIARNA book (which is also the next Ridmark book), the next Caina book, and the next Nadia book. There are people who would be delighted if I returned to DEMONSOULED, SILENT ORDER, or THE THIRD SOUL. And that doesn’t even count the other ideas for new series and settings and characters that I have that I don’t have time to do.
People sometimes ask where I get the ideas for my books. Wrong question! A better question is how I find the time to write books. I suppose the answer to that is with discipline and planning. Lately I’ve been using the Pomodoro Technique to manage my time better so I can try to write faster.
So, I suppose I’m trying to say two things with this:
1.) I would like to write another DEMONSOULED book, but not sure when.
2.) I would like to express my thanks to all of you for reading this books and wanting more of them!
-JM
July 18, 2019
GHOST IN THE VAULT & DRAGONTIARNA progress updates
Eight chapters of the GHOST IN THE VAULT rough draft down, 15 to go! I am 1/3 of the way through the rough draft.
I do have several projects underway, so here’s where I’m at:
-DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS is mostly done and will be ready for August.
-40,000 words into GHOST IN THE VAULT.
-I am on Chapter 1 of 20 of CLOAK OF WOLVES.
-The audiobook versions of FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE, GHOST IN THE ASHES, GHOST IN THE MASK, and CLOAK GAMES: REBEL FIST are all in various stages in production, and will come out soon. Probably GHOST IN THE ASHES will come out the soonest in mid-August or so.
-The audio version of CLOAK GAMES: FROST FEVER is available on Kobo, Google Play, and Apple, but it won’t be on Audible until sometime towards the end of August.
-JM
July 15, 2019
GHOST IN THE VAULT full speed ahead!
DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS is mostly done and on track for August, so it’s time to go full speed ahead for GHOST IN THE VAULT!
(Why not push hard and get DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS out in July? Prime Day. Prime Day inevitably causes all sorts of technical glitches on the back end of Amazon which can make publishing a book go wrong, so best to wait until August.)
I’m on Chapter 3 of 23 of GHOST IN THE VAULT, and Chapter 1 of 20 of CLOAK OF WOLVES.
So, if all goes well, here is what I want to publish in the next few months.
August: DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS
September: GHOST IN THE VAULT
October: DRAGONTIARNA #2
November: CLOAK OF WOLVES
-JM
July 14, 2019
Master of Orion
I’ve been playing the recent remake of MASTER OF ORION, and I really like it. I think it captures the spirit of both the first game and MASTER OF ORION 2: BATTLE AT ANTARES while sanding off some of the rough edges of the micromanaging. The modern graphics and sound are nice.
How much do I like the MASTER OF ORION series?
I still have the manual from the original game, which I got as a Christmas present back in 1995.
Of course, this was back when computer software came in big cardboard boxes with printed manuals (and sometimes a stack of six or seven floppy disks), which seems hopelessly archaic by modern standards. 
July 13, 2019
a short CLOAK OF WOLVES preview
Working on the outline for CLOAK OF WOLVES today.
This will be a fun one to write. The High Queen orders Nadia to work with a top Homeland Security investigator to solve a series of murder/thefts that could only have been committed by a wizard. Except Nadia thinks that the investigator is a bully and a thug with a badge, and the investigator thinks that Nadia is unstable and dangerous.
The problem, of course, is that the perpetrators are more than a match for both Nadia and the investigator, so if they can’t work together, the High Queen might have to send someone else to investigate their deaths…
-JM
