Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 267

Kindle Unlimited 1.0 vs Kindle Unlimited 2.0

Today Amazon released the payment rate for July under the new terms of the Kindle Unlimited program, $0.0058 per page. Previously, the writer got paid when the reader borrowed a book and reached the 10% mark, and the writer was typically paid about $1.30 per borrow. Under the new terms, which began in July, the writer was paid per page actually read. As you can imagine, this disadvantages writers of short stories, while advantaging writers of longer works. (One suspects Amazon wanted to get longer books into Kindle Unlimited.)

So how does this work in practice? My DEMONSOULED series is currently in Kindle Unlimited, which meant I could compare the results in June, the last month of the old terms, to the first month of the new terms in July.

In June, the DEMONSOULED books were borrowed 183 times, which meant I got paid about $237.90.

In July, under the new page-read system, 139, 255 pages of DEMONSOULED were read. (If my math is right, that would have been about 136 borrows under the old system, assuming that all the books were read in the entirety.) That means I got paid about $807.

Needless to say, I consider July’s Kindle Unlimited experiment to be a success.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. Right now, SOUL OF SWORDS costs $3.99, which gets me about $2.79 a sale. SOUL OF SWORDS counts as 1,144 Kindle Unlimited pages, so if someone borrows it through KU and reads the entire book, I get $6.63! That doesn’t seem sustainable in the long term, so I expect Amazon will change either the payment per page, or more likely, how it calculates page count for a book.

-JM

thanks for the CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP reviews and sales

I’d like to thank everyone who picked up a copy of CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP and/or left a review. The last time I attempted to write anything that could be described as “urban fantasy” was back in 2003, so it is gratifying to see CLOAK GAMES do well!

-JM

Caina & cars

I was going over the notes for GHOST IN THE THRONE today, and it occurred to me that if Caina lived in the 21st century, she would go through a lot of cars very quickly. Like, if she was in a fight, she would decide the best way to deal with a group of (for example) Kindred assassins would be to run them over, or to hit them while driving at high speeds.

That doesn’t even discuss the potential for setting things on fire via automotive mayhem.

It is probably just as well that Caina lives in a world that doesn’t have the internal combustion engine. The insurance costs alone would be staggering.

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP now available!

I am pleased to report that CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP is now available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Canada, Amazon Germany, Amazon Australia, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, iTunes, and Smashwords.

Click here to read the first chapter of CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP.

Here is a nice review of CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP. 

What’s the book about, you ask?

In 2013, a gate to another world opened, and Elves used their magic to conquer Earth, crushing all resistance before them. 

Three hundred years after the Conquest, the exiled Elven High Queen rules an orderly but stagnant Earth, with humanity forced to fight in the High Queen’s war against the traitors on the Elven homeworld. 

Nadia Moran doesn’t care about that. She doesn’t care about the High Queen, or the Rebels seeking to overthrow her. All she cares about is getting her baby brother the treatments he needs to recover from his potentially fatal disease…and those treatments have a steep price.

Fortunately, Nadia has magic of her own, and she’s a very, very good thief.

Unfortunately, the powerful Elven lord Morvilind has a hold on Nadia. If she doesn’t follow his commands, her brother is going to die.

Of course, given how dangerous Morvilind’s missions are, Nadia might not live long enough to see her brother’s death…

-JM

sign up for my newsletter!

CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP will come out this coming week, and subscribers to my new-release newsletter will get some coupon codes for free stories!

If you haven’t subscribed to my new-release newsletter yet, follow this link.

-JM

CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP cover art

Here’s the cover art for CLOAK GAMES: THIEF TRAP, my new urban fantasy book.

All that’s left to do is to upload the book, so I’m going to do that right now. If you missed it before, you can read the first chapter right here. 

-JM

flashbacks vs history

A confession: I do not care for flashback scenes, and try to avoid using them whenever possible.

I think part of that is because I thought I was going to go into academic history a long time ago. That didn’t work out, but the appreciation remained with me. Very often, the past is simply unknowable, and finding out what happened takes a great deal of work, and even then what we learn is subject to interpretation.

(The classic example of historical interpretation: the American Civil War has been called at various times the War For Southern Independence, the War Between The States, the War Of The Rebellion, the Confederate War, the War Of Northern Aggression, and the Second American Revolution. Likely we settled on “Civil War” because it is a.) factually accurate, and b.) neutral in its interpretation.)

A flashback seems like a lazy way to circumvent that, and a writer can get a lot of narrative drama out of efforts to discover what really happened.

Example: a couple weeks ago I went on a local history tour of a cemetery attached to one of the oldest churches in the upper Midwest, with some of the graves dating back to the 1840s. (British readers, who can easily find graves and churches dating back to the medieval epoch, will probably laugh at that.) What’s striking about local history is how much of it is simply lost forever. Like, there were a number of gravestones for people who had been born in Germany and died in Wisconsin. What drove them to migrate? Unless the reason happened to be recorded in a newspaper, an immigration document, or a church register, we don’t know and can only speculate.

To discover the truth would take a great deal of research in local history, documents, and genealogy. In other words, it would take a lot of work. It would be nice if we could just touch the tombstone and have a magical flashback about the person’s life, but it doesn’t work that way. If we want to know the truth about the past, we have to do the work.

That’s why I think flashbacks often (but not always) make for lazy writing, since there’s a great deal of dramatic potential in letting the characters work out the truth for themselves. That’s also why when in FROSTBORN and GHOST EXILE when Ridmark or Caina hear about something that happened in ancient history, they hear multiple conflicting accounts, and even the accounts that agree differ from each other slightly.

It’s much more fun that way.

-JM

a snippet from FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE

Let’s have a little snippet from the rough draft of FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE. In today’s snippet, Ridmark’s band continues to co-exist harmoniously.

“Craftier, perhaps,” said Morigna with a sharp smile, “but not as battle-crafty. We left a dozen slain in our wake, and none escaped to warn their false goddess.”

“False goddess?” said Caius, his marble-like blue eyes twinkling. “Dare I hope that you have come to the Dominus Christus at last?”

Morigna scoffed. “The arachar pray to a giant spider-demon. Whatever our differences, Brother Caius, I am sure we can agree that an urdmordar is an unworthy object of worship.”

“You’re in agreement on…anything?” said Jager, feigning astonishment. “If I look skywards, shall I see rain falling upwards and winged pigs soaring aloft?”

“The world will truly end,” said Morigna, “when some crisis arises and you do not have a glib remark ready at hand.”

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE characters

I think the point of view characters in FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE shall be Ridmark Arban, Calliande, Morigna, and Gavin.

-JM

now starting FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE

I’m starting on FROSTBORN: THE WORLD GATE today. 0 chapters down, 24 to go!

Step one is to get 10,000 words written by the end of the month.

-JM