Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 235
January 11, 2017
Thanks, Kobo readers!
According to this chart from the Kobo Writing Life blog, FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE was the 18th bestselling self-published book on Kobo in 2016.
If I’m reading the chart right, that means FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE was also the bestselling self-published science fiction and fantasy book on Kobo in 2016.
That’s definitely going in the author bio. 
January 9, 2017
new-release newsletter
If all goes well, FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR will come out later this week.
That means this is your last chance to sign up for my new-release newsletter and get a coupon code for a free short story when the book comes out. I just use this newsletter to announce new books and (very rarely) special sales, so if you do subscribe to it, you’ll never get more than two newsletter emails a month.
-JM
January 8, 2017
GHOST EXILE series now in print
I am pleased to report that the entire GHOST EXILE series is now available in paperback format. Links and ISBN information are here at my paperback page.
It is amusing to see how the books in the bottom row of the picture get progressively thicker the closer it gets to the end of the series.
January 7, 2017
FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR table of contents
Making good progress on FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR, so let’s see the Table of Contents!
-JM
January 3, 2017
FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR preview
I have not yet posted any preview snippets of FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR. Let’s fix that:
Smiling Otto rarely smiled in truth. But at the moment, he looked amused.
“Well,” he said, his voice a gravelly rasp. “Well, well. The Gray Knight himself. Still alive?”
“So far,” said Ridmark.
“Heh,” said Otto. “Did you like being right? You said the Frostborn were coming back for years, and the lords all thought you were a madman. Now they’re here. Did anyone ever apologize?”
“Not really, no,” said Ridmark.
-JM
writing goals for 2017
Now that 2017 is upon us, it’s time to discuss my writing goals for the year!
1.) Finish the FROSTBORN series.
FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR is almost ready, and after that there are only two more books to write. So if all goes well the FROSTBORN series will reach its epic conclusion by summer.
2.) Start the GHOST NIGHT series.
Once FROSTBORN is finished, it will be time to start GHOST NIGHT with GHOST IN THE RING. I would also like to get to the second book in the GHOST NIGHT series in 2017.
3.) Start a new epic fantasy series once FROSTBORN is done.
That will be in the second half of 2017, with the first book coming out towards the end of summer. I haven’t decided anything about the new series yet, except that it’s going to be an epic fantasy with a male warrior as the protagonist, since I already have two series (GHOSTS and CLOAK GAMES) with a female protagonist.
4.) Publish three new CLOAK GAMES books.
Right now there are five CLOAK GAMES books, but I would like to have eight out by the end of 2017. The next CLOAK GAMES book will come out in February if all goes well.
5.) Produce more print books.
37 of my books are available in print right now, and I would like to get that number even higher.
6.) Publish one new book every month.
This is kind of a stretch goal, but my other goals should help me do this one. I would like to publish one book a month in 2017…
…except for one month when I want to do three. Which is kind of the Secret Goal for 2017.
But more on that later. 
January 2, 2017
FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR editing underway
Editing is now underway for FROSTBORN: EXCALIBUR, so let’s have a look at the cover image!
-JM
January 1, 2017
Happy New Year and GHOST IN THE RING preview
Happy New Year!
To celebrate the New Year, I’ve got two preview scenes from GHOST IN THE RING, the first book of the new GHOST NIGHT series, which will come out in mid-2017.
The first scene:
He had heard the rumors about Caina Amalas, of course, the stories about the Balarigar and the Umbarians and Istarinmul, but he knew such stories were always exaggerated in the telling.
So he was not sure what to expect when he met the woman in the flesh.
Perhaps she would be a scowling broad-shouldered ox of a woman, the sort of woman who would be mistaken for a man at the first or even third glance. Certainly, that fit some of the tales about the terrible bloodthirsty Balarigar. Or maybe she would be a woman of stunning beauty, capable of beguiling the men around her into doing whatever she wished.
To his mild surprise, she was neither.
Caina Amalas was a young woman of average height and lean build. She was pretty, certainly, but her mouth was too thin and her features too sharp for her to be exceptionally beautiful. Frankly, he could not decide if she looked like a Szaldic peasant girl or a Nighmarian noblewoman, but certainly, she had the eyes of a noblewoman. They were large and blue and very, very cold, and did not blink as she met his gaze.
That was the first indication that there might be something odd about her. Few people could meet his gaze any longer. Most of his own men could no longer do it.
They stared at each other in silence for a moment.
“How old were you,” said Caina in High Nighmarian at last, “when you killed your father?”
He blinked in surprise, a little flicker of alarm going through him.
Perhaps some of those rumors were true.
The second scene:
“This is not your country. These are not your people. You have no business here.” The nobleman leaned forward, a glimmer of yellow fire in his eyes. “Go home with your lives while I still permit it, and never return.”
Caina stared at him without blinking, and for a first time, a glimmer of doubt went over his face.
“You’re right,” she said. “This is not my country, and these are not my people. But I promise you one thing. If you lay a finger upon that girl, I shall give to you what I do best.”
The nobleman sneered. “And what is that?”
Caina smiled. “Ruin.”
Finally, I quoted this bit from MASK OF DRAGONS at the start of 2016, and it certainly was an excellent preview of the year!
“A good plan,” said Riothamus.
Molly snorted. “Something will go wrong.”
“Something always does,” said Mazael.
His daughter rolled her eyes. “Profound as ever, father.”
Let’s hope for a good 2017! Happy New Year, everyone!
-JM
December 31, 2016
publishers shooting themselves in the foot
I liked this article by Simon Owens describing how publishers are driving away writers and into the waiting arms of Amazon. This quote, especially:
Amazon, with its ecommerce system and now its Kindle publishing platform, has figured out how to scale midlist authors, and is therefore willing to gobble up those writers the big publishers turn away, offering them a bigger cut of their sales in the process.
But this, I believe, is to the long-term detriment of the publishers. Because now a new generation of writers is growing up on the Amazon platform, using social media and email lists to market its books, and several of these writers will advance from selling merely thousands of books to selling millions. And once they’re selling millions of books and collecting 70 percent of each copy sold, it’ll be extremely difficult for those conglomerates to lure the authors back under their umbrella with the promise of a puny 10 percent of cover price royalty. By abandoning the midlist to Amazon, publishers are hastening their own demise.
There was another consistent trend I found when interviewing zombie novelists for my article: fervent distaste for the New York publishing industry. And maybe that’s the real reason why publishers and agents never bothered reaching out to them; it’s not that they don’t recognize the sales and money potential for these authors, it’s that they’ve spent the last decade sowing so much bad blood within the writer community that they know approaching them for a book deal is a lost cause. Midlist authors have been burned once, and now with Amazon and their own marketing abilities they can ensure they’ll never be burned again. So that leaves the remaining book publishers engaged in bidding wars for a shrinking pool of first-time writers still uninitiated to the cold, soulless world of modern New York publishing.
“The last decade sowing so much bad blood within the writer community.”
Man! Isn’t that the truth? Back in the last decade I sent the book that would become THE THIRD SOUL OMNIBUS TWO to a publisher, and after about a year and a half, the rejection latter came back with a single line that said “Sometimes I wish Dungeons and Dragons had never been invented.”
Meanwhile, since I self-published THE THIRD SOUL OMNIBUS TWO, it has sold 1200 copies, and the vast majority of traditionally published books fail to sell less than a thousand copies.
A better example – GHOST IN THE FLAMES was rejected about thirty different times before I self-published it in 2011. Since then it has sold just under 17,000 copies.
“Fervent distaste for the New York publishing industry.” That sounds about right.
December 30, 2016
did I meet 2016’s writing goals?
As 2016 draws to a close, it’s time to take stock and consider whether or not I met the writing goals I laid out in 2015.
-800,000 to 900,000 words of new fiction.
Success! I wrote about 1.1 million words of new fiction in 2016.
-Three new FROSTBORN books.
Success! In 2016 I published FROSTBORN: THE HIGH LORDS, FROSTBORN: THE FALSE KING, and FROSTBORN: THE DWARVEN PRINCE.
-Finish the GHOST EXILE series!
Success! In 2016 I finished GHOST IN THE PACT and GHOST IN THE WINDS, which brought the GHOST EXILE series to its conclusion.
-Finish the MASK OF THE DEMONSOULED trilogy at last!
Success! Both MASK OF DRAGONS and MASK OF SPELLS came out in 2016, bringing the trilogy to a close.
-Two new CLOAK GAMES books.
Success! CLOAK GAMES: SHADOW JUMP and CLOAK GAMES: SHATTER STONE came out in 2016.
-A systematic approach to print books.
It’s funny I should mention that, because GHOST IN THE PACT and GHOST IN THE WINDS have both been available in print for a couple of weeks now, and I haven’t gotten around to updating the catalog page yet. But I think this one was a success. I have a main page for print books on my site, I made 17 of my books available as trade paperbacks in 2016, and November and December 2016 were my best months for print books ever.
-More Kindle Unlimited Fix-Up Novels.
We’ll say this one was a half-success. I put out FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS, a compilation of some of the early FROSTBORN short stories, and originally put it in Kindle Unlimited. That said, I got completely out of Kindle Unlimited in the summer, so FROSTBORN: THE KNIGHT QUESTS is now available on all platforms.
I wanted to combine the Mazael short stories into a novel, but I never got around to it. Maybe in 2017.
-A 101 TIPS & TRICKS tech book on Linux Mint.
I didn’t do that one. The only tech writing I did in 2016 was to update my Ubuntu book from edition seven to edition eight. I wrote about half of the Linux Mint book, but I never got around to finishing it.
So I met most of my writing goals for 2016! In a few days I will type up my writing goals for 2017.
-JM
