Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 212

ebook sales for August 2017

I finally had a chance to do some math, and I calculated ebook sales for August 2017.

CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK sold exactly as many copies in its first month as CLOAK GAMES: TOMB HOWL. Thanks everyone!

I’m really looking forward to writing the final three books of CLOAK GAMES. If all goes well, I want to start writing CLOAK GAMES: BLOOD CAST in December. The last three books are going to be pretty epic, and I’m excited to write them.

I also gave away free 5,000 copies of FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT, and just under 3,000 free copies of CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP.

I’m also really looking forward to starting SEVENFOLD SWORD: WARLORD in about a week and a half once SILENT ORDER is wrapped up. Because SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER sold as many copies in its first six days as CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK did in a month.

science fiction technology

Working on editing SILENT ORDER today.

I suppose it is thematically appropriate that I’m having my Kindle Fire read my science fiction novel aloud to me.

one more paragraph vs. PC games!

Andrew asks on Facebook:

I’m just wondering do you say to your self when you are writing …. ok 10 more paragraphs and then I’m done for the night?

I tend to write in 100 to 200 word bursts at the end of the night. Like, I’ll look at the word count thing in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer and say to myself, “OK, it’s at 34,300, let’s get it up to 34,500”. Then I’ll do that, and I’ll switch into a game for a while. After a few minutes I’ll get bored with the game and switch back to writing.

So for me, one of the most important features of a game is the ability to ALT-TAB out the game and into Word and back again without the game crashing. Seriously – if I can’t do that I won’t play the game. There have been games I’ve started but haven’t finished because you can ALT-TAB out of them without the game crashing.

I started playing a lot more Skyrim once I figure out how to ALT-TAB out of the game without it crashing.

-JM

THE GHOSTS now in paperback!

I first published CHILD OF THE GHOSTS all the way back in 2011, and I’m pleased to report that all 9 of THE GHOSTS are now in paperback.

(The easiest way to find them would be at this link – the metadata works so that you can find the paperback on each individual book page.)

So if you’re thinking of Christmas gifts, I humbly suggest that these books would make excellent presents.

SILENT ORDER: Ebook Conversion In Calibre

Yesterday I mentioned that I was using Sigil on Ubuntu as part of my experiment in writing, editing, laying out, and publishing a book entirely from Ubuntu Linux. Sigil is a really useful program, but it produces EPUB ebook files, and Amazon uses MOBI ebook files.

This is where Calibre comes in. Calibre is the Swiss Army Knife of ebooks. If you’re serious about ebooks at all, this is a vital program. The most obvious use of Calibre is to convert ebooks from one format to another, but you can also use Calibre to edit metadata, organize an ebook collection, and even as a simple reader program. Definitely recommended!

You can also use Calibre to read Amazon-only books on a Nook or a Kobo or a Google Play device. Download the book from Amazon through the Manage My Kindle page, convert the file to EPUB in Calibre, and then sideload the EPUB onto your device.

-JM

practice what you preach!

Apropos of my recent post about finishing SILENT ORDER: WRAITH HAND while waiting in a lobby, tonight I wrote 2700 words of GHOST IN THE GLASS in a lobby while waiting to give someone a lift home.

It was thoughtful of life to give me a chance to practice what I preached.

SILENT ORDER: Cover Layout In THE GIMP

To prove that it can be done, I’m writing, editing, laying out, and publishing a science fiction book entirely from Ubuntu Linux. That includes doing the cover. Today I’m using The GIMP (which stands for The GNU Image Manipulation Program) to make the cover for SILENT ORDER: AXIOM HAND.

I use The GIMP a lot, and it’s got two weaknesses: 1.) it’s not quite as good as Photoshop when it comes to really advanced stuff, and 2.) it has a learning curve that makes the Matterhorn look like a gentle slope. However, Photoshop’s learning curve is equally as sharp, and The GIMP is free, which means you don’t have to deal with Adobe’s crazy Creative Cloud pricing scheme.

Also, it runs really fast on Ubuntu. I used to run The GIMP on Windows, but it’s way faster on Ubuntu.

The SILENT ORDER series is coming in October!

-JM

flexibility for writers

Today I finished editing SILENT ORDER: WRAITH HAND, the second book of my forthcoming SILENT ORDER science fiction series.

I actually finished the rough draft of the book back in March, while I was waiting in a lobby to give someone a ride home.

I don’t have any profound point to make about that, save to note that it’s a good idea for writers to be flexible about where they can write. Some writers can only write so long as they’re at their desks with a cup of coffee and music playing and the Internet disconnected and so forth. But I’ve trained myself to write in any public place with a chair, so long as I have a laptop with a charge.

If I hadn’t, those three hours in the lobby would have been wasted. Instead, I finished the rough draft of a book I’m going to publish next month.

-JM

SEVENFOLD SWORD: how does the government of Owyllain work?

Today’s post will have SPOILERS for SEVENFOLD SWORD: CHAMPION! (But not for SEVENFOLD SWORD: SWORDBEARER.)

A reader emailed to ask how the government of Owyllain worked in SEVENFOLD SWORD. 1.) Specifically, if Owyllain has one High King, why are there nine kings for nine cities? 2.) Also, why do only two of the Kings of Owyllain carry one of the Seven Swords?

1.) Well, Owyllain is called the realm of the Nine Cities, and each one of those cities has its own king. But over all the kings of Owyllain is the High King, who has been traditionally one of the Pendragon kings of Aenesium. It’s like the legends of King Arthur, where Arthur was High King of Britain, but there were lesser kings in Britain (like King Lot and King Ban and so forth) over whom he had authority. (Or the Holy Roman Empire, where the Emperor had nominal authority over lots of independent kings and princes who tended to do what they wanted, or early Capetian France, when the King of France had control of Paris but his powerful nobles ignored him.)

In fact, in the world of SEVENFOLD SWORD, since the Pendragon kings of Andomhaim and Owyllain are descended from Arthur Pendragon, the founders of Owyllain consciously chose this form of government. The idea was that Owyllain was originally going to be a loose confederacy of nine independent cities, with the eight other kings answering vaguely to the High King in Aenesium. They would only band together when under attack from pagan orcs or some other threat. But the threat of the Sovereign forced the nine cities to work together much more closely than they would have otherwise, and consequently the High King had greater authority than he would otherwise due to the need for a war leader.

2.) Among the kings of Owyllain, only Hektor Pendragon and Justin Cyros escaped the fighting at Cathair Animus with two of the Seven Swords.

The Masked One and the Necromancer of Trojas each rule one of the cities of Owyllain with the power of their Swords, but they’re not kings and make no pretensions that they are. (Like a dictatorship where the dictator keeps the title of Colonel or General or whatever and doesn’t call himself President.)

The Confessor also took one of the Seven Swords, but the Confessor is a dark elven lord and one of the Sovereign’s former lieutenants, so he definitely doesn’t count as a king of Owyllain.

-JM

 

SILENT ORDER: book layout in Sigil

Now that I’m editing the five books of my SILENT ORDER science fiction series, I’m using Sigil on Ubuntu to do the ebook layout.

This is part of my plan to write, edit, layout, and publish a book from Ubuntu Linux to show that it can be done. (And also part of my experiment to publish 5 science fiction books in October.)

Sigil is a free program that creates EPUB files. It’s really useful, because an ebook file is basically just a collection of HTML files, and Sigil lets you see the underlying HMTL to fix any layout. I’ve used Sigil since 2011 to prepare my ebooks.

Sigil is also available on Windows and the Mac.

Of course, Amazon uses MOBI files, not EPUB, so in a post later this week I’ll talk about the program I use to turn EPUB files into MOBI files.

-JM