Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 292
March 4, 2014
FROSTBORN: THE FIRST QUEST milestones
FROSTBORN: THE FIRST QUEST had a good day today – this is the highest any of my novels has ever gotten on Amazon US. Thanks, everyone!
Needless to say, this gets me excited to start FROSTBORN: THE MASTER THIEF in a few days. 
-JM
March 2, 2014
Reader Question Day #83 – the nobility of FROSTBORN
BAU writes to ask:
I liked FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT, but one issue I had with the book was all the noble titles. I don’t know if you made up the titles of the nobles or if they’re archaic words, but they are confusing.
I think BAU is referring to the titles “Dux” and “Comes”, which various nobles in FROSTBORN hold.
They’re real titles. Or they were a long time ago. The premise of FROSTBORN is that the survivors of King Arthur’s realm go through a magical gate to a new world with elves and orcs and magic and dangerous creatures, and found their own civilization. If a historical King Arthur did exist, he would have been part of what’s called “sub-Roman Britain“, the stretch of time after the decaying Roman Empire abandoned Britain in the early 400s ADs to the time when the Saxons overwhelmed the Romano-British culture sometime in the mid-500s. So I took the titles of the nobility of FROSTBORN from the names of various offices in the late Roman Empire.
“Dux” is one of those titles, Latin for “leader”. In the late Roman Empire, it was an actual military rank. The rank outlasted the Empire, and the word “dux” became the root word for the titles of Duke and Doge and Duc and so forth.
“Comes” is another one of those titles, the Latin word for “companion.” Originally, this meant a companion of the Emperor, and the concept predated the Roman Empire. Alexander the Great had his Companions, his elite cavalrymen and bodyguards. In the Late Roman Empire, “comes” became another formal government office. And like dux, “comes” outlasted the Empire, and became the root word for “count”.
So that is where I got the noble titles in FROSTBORN. In Andomhaim, the Duxi are the high noblemen, the most powerful and from the oldest families, some of whom can trace their lineage back to Old Earth. The Comites are the mid-ranking noblemen, like barons or counts.
-JM
March 1, 2014
GHOST IN THE COWL table of contents
Making good progress on GHOST IN THE COWL. I had planned to hold off on releasing the book until April, to give me time to get started on FROSTBORN: THE MASTER THIEF, but I’ve had so many emails asking about GHOST IN THE COWL that I’ve decided to release it as soon as it’s done. So, mid-March.
(Don’t forget to subscribe to my new release newsletter to get a free copy of GHOST SWORD, the short story that won last month’s poll!)
Meanwhile, let’s have the table of contents!
Chapter 1- Istarinmul
Chapter 2- The House of Agabyzus
Chapter 3 – The Poet
Chapter 4 – Breaking
Chapter 5 – Writ of Servitude
Chapter 6 – The Circus Master
Chapter 7 – The Master Slaver
Chapter 8 – The Master Alchemist
Chapter 9 – The Locksmith
Chapter 10 – Nightfighter
Chapter 11 – The Slaver’s Brand
Chapter 12 -Liberator
Chapter 13 – A Master Thief
Chapter 14 – Bounties
Chapter 15 – The Widow’s Tower
Chapter 16 – The Desert Maiden
Chapter 17 – Keys
Chapter 18 – Smokeless Flame
Chapter 19 – The Last of the Circle
Chapter 20 – The Mirror of Worlds
Chapter 21 – Hellfire
Chapter 22 – New Circle
Epilogue
-JM
February 24, 2014
cooking fires and editing GHOST IN THE SURGE
Now editing Chapter 11 of GHOST IN THE SURGE.
A couple years back, I was surfing the web, and found a web page detailing the dangers of grease fires upon a stove. Apparently, some people occasionally try to put out stove fires by dumping flour upon them, the way you can put out a fire with sand. Except, of course, this is a extraordinarily terrible idea, because flour is quite flammable, and if enough of it disperses into the air it can in fact explode.
I can’t imagine why that memory would pop into my head when editing GHOST IN THE SURGE.
-JM
February 19, 2014
editing for GHOST IN THE COWL now underway
I am now editing GHOST IN THE COWL. That means it’s time for another excerpt!
Damla gave her a sharp look. “Why would you say that?”
Caina could not tell her the truth about the faint sorcerous aura, so she picked another comparison. “The eyes of the Immortals are almost the same color, that same ghostly blue. And the Immortals are violent and vicious as well.”
“I had not thought of it like that, I confess,” said Damla. “You…have seen Immortals?”
Caina had, in fact, killed several of them during the battle of Marsis. The Immortals were the elite soldiers of Istarinmul, assigned as the personal guards of the Padishah, the high emirs, and the Alchemists. The Alchemists fed them sorcerous elixirs to enhance their speed and strength, though at the cost of murderous rage. Caina had barely escaped from them with her life.
“Once or twice,” said Caina.
-JM
ebook sales for 2013, part two
Apropos of my last post about ebook sales in 2013, there is one fact I would like to mention since it illustrates the point of my last post so perfectly – in January of 2014, my book THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS (the 4th and final book of my THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS series) sold its 1,000th copy since I published it in June of 2012.
I would like to thank everyone who bought and enjoyed the book. Additionally, I think that is really remarkable, for reasons I shall explain below.
I wrote THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS series in its entirety in 2003, and found a publisher for the first book in 2004. Due to a variety of circumstances, the book did not come out until 2008, and did not sell very well. I received just enough in royalties to buy a Big Mac. Needless to say, the publisher was not interested in the subsequent volumes.
So when the Kindle came along, I got the rights to the first book back, and published the entire series in June of 2012. Compared to some of my other books, it has not sold that well – GHOST IN THE SURGE did 1,000 copies in a single month – but I’ve given away thousands of copies of the first book for free, and each of the subsequent books has sold over 1,000 copies.
Think about that. That means over one thousand people read THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS for free, and liked it enough to spend $9 to buy the remaining three books in the series and read the adventures of Ally Wester and Arran Belphon and Thomas Wycliffe all the way through to the end. Obviously I’ve made a pleasant bit of money from this, but that’s not the main point – a thousand people have read the series, something which would have been literally impossible under traditional publishing. In fact, I know it is literally impossible, because I tried it in 2008, and saw the results.
So, if you are a new writer, you are infinitely better off self-publishing than attempting the madman’s lottery that is traditional publishing. Unless there is a publisher backing a dump truck full of $100 bills up your driveway (which, as one might expect, happens very rarely) you are better off self-publishing.
Which would you rather have? An agent’s “send me the rest of the manuscript” letter, or a complete stranger who paid $9 to read all three books in the series to the end?
-JM
February 17, 2014
CHILD OF THE GHOSTS on ILoveVampireNovels.com
CHILD OF THE GHOSTS turned up unexpectedly on ILoveVampireNovels.com today, which led to a nice download boost for the book. Thanks!
Though I should point out the book doesn’t have any actual vampires in it. Well, I suppose the character of Maglarion is somewhat vampiric, but he is definitely the villain!
-JM
ebook sales for 2013, part one
There’s been a lot of doom-and-gloom jeremiads from prominent agents and traditionally published writers about self-publishing ebooks recently, mostly centered around how a “tsunami of crap” (or, more crudely, as a “shit volcano”*) shall destroy readers’ appetites for ebooks. This is, to put it bluntly, utter nonsense, and based upon a flawed understanding of how the Internet works. (My opinion on why is here.) YouTube and eBay both, for instance, are awash in “crap”, yet people seem to be launching careers off both sites on a regular basis. The assumption is that without the help of “gatekeepers” to curate appropriate books for the public, readers shall lose themselves in a sea of poorly written books, grow disgusted, and abandon reading for watching “Dancing With The Stars” or whatever.**
The irrationality of this assumption is quite visible in hindsight. It turns out that if you offer people near-infinite choice, they will still select the things they like! Subway offers a gazillion different possible sandwich combinations, and I pretty much order the same thing every time I eat there.
However, the reader need not take my word for it. Hugh Howey (author of WOOL and SAND) released a massive report this week that confirmed what many people have suspected – self-published ebooks have basically taken over the market, and traditional publishing has become increasingly vestigial. (UPDATE: There’s another good analysis of the topic here.)
So, in the spirit of sharing information to help other writers make informed decisions, here are my ebook sales from 2013.
I sold 75,896 copies of my books, and gave away 125,091 free copies. Thank you, all! I am very grateful, and that is an amazing number.
Individual details are below. Note that I skipped some of the weaker-selling short stories below, though I did include them in the final total:
THE DEMONSOULED SERIES
Demonsouled (free book): 30, 983
Soul of Tyrants: 3,298
Soul of Serpents: 2,875
Soul of Dragons: 2,696
Soul of Sorcery: 2,726
Soul of Skulls: 3,447
Soul of Swords: 2,381
Demonsouled Omnibus One: 73
DEMONSOULED SHORT STORIES
The Wandering Knight: 513
The Tournament Knight: 336
The Dragon’s Shadow: 433
THE GHOSTS SERIES
Child of the Ghosts (free book): 81,258
Ghost in the Flames: 5,312
Ghost in the Blood: 4,381
Ghost in the Storm: 3,932
Ghost in the Stone: 3,916
Ghost in the Forge: 4,207
Ghost in the Ashes: 2,811
Ghost in the Mask: 2,100
Ghost in the Surge: 7
The Ghosts Omnibus One: 66
THE GHOSTS SHORT STORIES
Ghost Dagger: 1,330
Ghost Aria: 885
Ghost Claws: 336
Ghost Omens: 424
Ghost Thorns: 129
The Fall of Kyrace: 217
THE FROSTBORN SERIES:
Frostborn: The First Quest: 629
Frostborn: The Gray Knight: 1,765
Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife: 629
THE THIRD SOUL SERIES
The Testing (free book): 4,605
The Assassins: 1,103
The Blood Shaman: 940
The High Demon: 806
The Burning Child: 884
The Outlaw Adept: 656
The Black Paladin: 609
The Tomb of Baligant: 554
The Third Soul Omnibus One: 361
The Third Soul Omnibus Two: 321
THE TOWER OF ENDLESS WORLDS SERIES
The Tower of Endless Worlds (free book): 6,700
A Knight of the Sacred Blade: 688
A Wizard of the White Council: 626
The Destroyer of Worlds: 649
NONFICTION
The Ubuntu Beginner’s Guide: 2,855
The Windows Command Line Beginner’s Guide: 5,397
The Linux Command Line Beginner’s Guide: 4,431
The Ubuntu Desktop Beginner’s Guide: 547
The Linux Mint Beginner’s Guide: 746
The Windows 8 Beginner’s Guide: 205
-JM
*I have always found it wise to ignore statements from a writer who is incapable of constructing an argument without profanity.
**Which, to be fair, is a surprisingly entertaining show.
February 16, 2014
GHOST IN THE SURGE – a new milestone
One of my writing goals for 2014 was to sell over 1,000 copies of a single book in a single month. I am pleased to report that GHOST IN THE SURGE sold 1,060 copies between January 1st and January 31st.
Thank you, everyone! Though I suppose the real test shall be how many of those 1,060 people come back for the next book in the series, GHOST IN THE COWL.
-JM
