Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 74

2022: The Complete Short Stories now available!

The end of the year is coming, which means it’s time to release 2022: THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES!

It’s a volume containing all eight short stories I wrote and published in 2022.

I’ve given away all these stories for free to newsletter subscribers over the year, but enough people want short stories in a bundle that TALES OF THE SHIELD KNIGHT and OTHERWORLDS did well, which makes it worthwhile to occasionally bundle some short stories together.

2022: THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES will start out at $0.99, and then go up to $4.99 in January.

Here are the eight stories in the collection, along with their main characters.

1.) Prophecy of the High Queen (Tarlia/Nadia).

2.) The First Warlock (Mharoslav).

3.) Dragon Song (Nadia).

4.) The First Siege (Gareth).

5.) Elven Honor (Tythrilandria/Nadia).

6.) The First Bargain (Niara).

7.) Bronze Gaze (Nadia).

8.) False Funds (Jack March).

Available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip.

Daring heroes. Bold heroines. Fantastic adventure!

Here in one volume are all eight short stories internationally bestselling author Jonathan Moeller wrote and published in 2022.

Follow the adventures of Nadia as she battles creatures of the Shadowlands, Gareth Arban as he fights orcish raiders and dark wizards, and Jack March as he unravels the plans of the sinister Final Consciousness.

-JM

Don’t Spend Too Much On Cover Art, But Beware AI

A comment from reader Grace reinforces the idea that you shouldn’t overspend on cover art:

“As someone who reads many, many books on Kindle Unlimited a week, I can confirm that the cover is only used as a quick way to guess the genre and read the title. The small size of the cover shown in Kindle recommendations means that small details aren’t as important as the broad picture. I can normally guess the genre of a book if I can see the title and cover.
Also, the print-book habit of making the author’s name really big, bigger even than title? I’m pretty sure that’s only good for the really big-name authors.”

That is a very good point. I know of people who have spent megabucks on cover art. There can be legitimate need for that – like you’re doing special-edition hardcovers, or most of your sales are print, and so forth. Scenarios where readers might spend a lot of time actually looking at the cover art. Like, to pick a concrete example, the four books that came out of Brandon Sanderson’s Kickstarter this year will probably have very expensive cover art because so many of the Kickstarter pledges were for the hardcovers.

However, most of us aren’t Brandon Sanderson, and Grace’s comment makes a good point. The majority of your cover’s actual utility will be people looking at it in thumbnail, and you don’t necessarily need to spend a ton of money for it to look good in thumbnail.

It’s a bit how I finally realized that most science fiction readers want covers with a spaceship and a planet on them. It clearly conveys the genre, and the sales of the SILENT ORDER series went up once I switched to covers like that.

However, you don’t want to go too cheaply, since that has its own set of perils. “Free” stock photo sites often don’t have proper attribution for their images.

I would also issue a strong caution against using the new generative AI image tools for anything, especially for something commercial like book covers. For all the talk and hype about the AI “creating” images, it isn’t creating anything. For that matter, calling it “intelligence” is deceptive – it’s just a very complicated mathematical formula and decision-making tree.

It doesn’t create anything new. What it does do, however, is scan thousands of related images, grabs bits and pieces of them, and smushes them together into a composite. That’s basically what I do when I make a book cover in Photoshop, just on a larger scale. The difference, however, is that I pay for all the stock images/3D textures I use for book covers.  (The image included with this post was made with a lot of stock photos and 3D textures I’ve collected over the years.) The artificial “intelligence” tools, by and large, do not. There have been documented cases of photographers finding the watermarks they use for images on their sites in the images “created” by the AI tools.

So basically many of the AI tools are industrial-scale plagiarism engines, and there’s going to be a massive lawsuit about this at some point. You don’t want to be the test case!

The most important thing about your cover is that it doesn’t look ugly and it precisely conveys the genre. While trying to do it for free has its dangers, you can achieve what you need in a cover without spending a lot of money.

-JM

DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER

Now that SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND is done, it’s time to start on my next project!

Specifically, DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER, the sixth book in the DRAGONSKULL epic fantasy series.

Naturally, I started the book in the waiting room of the car repair place. I’ve spent a LOT of time writing in the waiting rooms of various places. Like, when I was proof listening to the audiobook of GHOST IN THE PACT (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) back in October, I distinctly remember writing large chunks of the chapters set on Pyramid Isle waiting for my new car to get its first oil change back in early 2016. I wrote the last chapter of FROSTBORN: THE GORGON SPIRIT waiting in my car in a parking lot, and I wrote the scene in DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE where Gareth and friends meet Azalmora for the first time while sitting in my car outside of a doctor’s office, since that was back towards the end of the Great Rona Freak-Out and you couldn’t go in the waiting room without a good reason.

I think the point is that one of the chief keys of longevity as a writer is flexibility. Or adaptability. Flexibility and adaptability are important. Like, to pick an example at random, if you’re one of those writers who can only write on an MS-DOS computer running WordPerfect from 1995 or so, you’ll never get anything done.

Anyway, that was a roundabout way of saying that DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER is underway! I’m 10,000 words into it, and it all goes well, the book will be out in January 2023.

-JM

SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND now available!

I am pleased to report that SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND is now available at all platforms! You can get it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Payhip.

It’s already had a strong start on all the platforms, so thanks for reading!

A few people were curious how long the SILENT ORDER series will go on. WRECK HAND is the 12th book, and there will be a grand total of 15 books. 15, I think, will allow me to wrap up everything in satisfactory way.

Next up will be SILENT ORDER: THUNDER HAND, and that will be out sometime in 2023.

Meanwhile, here is the book description for SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND.

###

A wrecked ship. A valuable cargo. Both are death traps for the unwary.

Jack March is on a vital mission for the Silent Order – find and destroy the Pulse, the deadly superweapon of the Final Consciousness, before it can destroy Calaskar.

But when the mysterious artificial intelligence known as the Custodian summons March, he has no choice but to go.

The Custodian holds knowledge that might save Calaskar, or destroy it utterly…

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 137: Business Tips For Beginning Writers

In this week’s episode, I answer a new writer’s business questions. We also discuss when smartphones first became useful.

The release of the final audiobook in the GHOST EXILE series, GHOST IN THE WINDS, is imminent! To celebrate this occasion, this week’s coupon gives you 75% off the audiobook of GHOST IN THE COWL (the first one in the series) at my Payhip store:

DECGHOSTS

The coupon is valid through December 25th, 2022. So if you need an audiobook for your Christmas travels, GHOST IN THE COWL has you covered!

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

Coupon Of The Week – 12/5/2022

It’s time for Coupon Of The Week!

The release of the final audiobook in the GHOST EXILE series, GHOST IN THE WINDS, is imminent! To celebrate this occasion, this week’s coupon gives you 75% off the audiobook of GHOST IN THE COWL (the first one in the series) at my Payhip store:

DECGHOSTS

The coupon is valid through December 25th, 2022. So if you need an audiobook for your Christmas travels, GHOST IN THE COWL has you covered!

-JM

Beginner Writing Business Questions

JC asks:

“I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few related questions in terms of being a self-published author. I’ve recently been given some ‘advice’ and I don’t think it’s overly viable for someone just starting out. Such as, ‘You need to spend at least $200+ on your front cover,’ ‘Hire an expensive editor’ and ‘Commission art of your characters to put on your Patreon page.'”

I don’t actually have a Patreon page so I couldn’t offer good advice on that. That said, if you do have one, it is necessary to offer a reasonably steady stream of content to keep people engaged. I know some people offer a monthly short story, or release books early on Patreon before they go on the various ebook stores. Serial writers often release regular chapters on Patreon, and then compile them together into a book to be published later.

If I did a Patreon, I would probably set up one along the lines of Lindsay Buroker – sharing stuff with patrons before it gets published to Kindle Unlimited. That said, I’ve been doing this a long time, and so I would probably find it easier to get traction than someone just beginning.

But if you’re just starting out, a Patreon probably wouldn’t be worth the effort unless you have an existing audience from some other field that might come over with you. The flip side, of course, is that if you start a Patreon right at the beginning, you can grow it slowly and gradually so it doesn’t immediately become an overwhelming amount of work.

“What advice would you give on front covers, editing and that tricky side of publishing beyond getting the manuscript drafted?”

You can spend thousands of dollars on a front cover, but it is most likely not necessary. Frankly, when just starting out, you want a cover that’s 1.) not ugly, and 2.) effectively conveys the precise genre of your book.

A lot of cover design sites now offer “premade” covers where they can just drop in your name and title. The point of the cover is to effectively convey the genre of a book, so that’s more important than if the cover’s specifically precise about the details of the book (eye color of the characters, etc.) If you go with a premade you can generally get by for less than $100. And if you can afford it, you can always get new covers later. People re-cover their books all the time as trends in cover design change and so forth. My book DEMONSOULED has had like five million different covers at this point. (I exaggerate, it’s more like 3.5 million.)

I don’t have a lot of experience working with editors, save to note that there are different levels of editing and you really shouldn’t pay for more than what you actually need. Like, a developmental edit helps with plot and characters and story structure. A copyedit and a line edit look for typos and repeated words.

“Also, what do you feel the best approach to Social Media is? I currently have blogs, social media accounts and the likes set up from the point of view of a Book Reviewer; which is what I started several years ago as a frustrated creative. Would it be better to switch things up and create new accounts under my author’s name and on which platforms?”

It probably depends on the genre you are writing in and how much of an audience already exists on your current social media page. If you have a big audience, it might be worth keeping the current pages. Then again, if the audience is mostly book reviewers, they might get annoyed by the change in tone, so it may be worthwhile to start with new pages.

I’d say start with Facebook and Instagram. Facebook has enough of a user base that it’s probably not going anywhere for a while, especially since it seems the management is realizing that they need to back away from the failed Metaverse experiment. Twitter may or may not go out of business or even exist in its current form in a few months, but even if Twitter doesn’t change at all, it’s never been good at selling books. Writers mostly use Twitter to complain about writing to other writers. I’ve heard people have gotten good results with TikTok, but I’ve never tried the app since I don’t like video very much. Additionally, there’s a considerable amount of ill-will towards TikTok in US governmental circles for a variety of reasons, so there’s always a chance the US government might block the site at some point.

“Are there any other magical words of advice that you’d impart to a budding author? Any pitfalls to avoid?”

-Definitely don’t spend more money than you make.

-Also don’t go into debt. It’s better to bootstrap and make gradual improvements than, for example, put $5,000 on your credit card for in new covers in hopes of making it back.

-The easiest way to start advertising is to write three books in a series and then make the first one free.

-These two books are good starter guides for self-publishing, and they’re both free in ebook.

–Successful Self-Publishing, by Joanna Penn.

–Let’s Get Digital, by David Gaughran.

Finally, the thing about self-publishing is that there are a lot of different ways to do it, and none of them are wrong. Granted, there are things that are obviously bad ideas – paying $5,000 to a vanity publisher for their biggest package, paying $10,000 to have custom art made for your cover, etc – but there are a lot of different paths. You could publish to all the ebook platforms, or just to Kindle Unlimited, or you could serialize on Vella or Webnovel, or you could run a Patreon, or you could focus on paperback books with ebook as an afterthought (like children’s book authors), or some combination of all of the above.

What matters is choosing the route that 1.) works for you artistically and from a business perspective, and 2.) that you can sustain over the long term.

-JM

sign up for my newsletter and get a free short story!

SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND should be coming next week if all goes well, which means this is an excellent time to sign up for my newsletter. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of the short story FALSE FUNDS when WRECK HAND comes out.

I have discovered that the optimal cover for science fiction books is a spaceship with a planet in the background. However, I’m giving away FALSE FUNDS with the newsletter, so I could experiment a bit with the cover design.

-JM

Bestselling books of November 2022

Here’s my bestselling books of November 2022:

Since SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND should come out in a few days, it was good to see RUST HAND still in the top ten. CLOAK OF MASKS took #1 because it was the newest one, and MALISON: THE COMPLETE SERIES had a very successful Bookbub on 11/7.

Meanwhile, let’s see how my Facebook ads did! As usual, the number is what I got back for every $1 I spent on a particular series.

CLOAK GAMES/CLOAK MAGE: $5.96

THE GHOSTS: $4.62

MALISON/DRAGONTIARNA: $3.70

DEMONSOULED: $1.71

The DEMONSOULED series, alas, just doesn’t perform very well with Facebook ads. I think for December I will stop advertising it with Facebook ads and attempt Amazon ones.

Speaking of Amazon ads, here’s how my Amazon ad campaigns did in November. Remember, for an Amazon ad to be profitable, it needs to get a sale for every 6 to 8 clicks. I’ll also include what I got back for every dollar spent.

DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE, 0.77 clicks, $9.74

CLOAK OF DRAGONS, 2.58 clicks, $2.35

So DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE continues to do excellently on Amazon ads, so it’s probably good I’m hoping to start on DRAGONSKULL: TALONS OF THE SORCERER next week.

As always, thanks for reading, everyone!

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 136: Seven Things I Am Thankful For As An Indie Author

In this week’s episode, I take a look at seven things I am thankful for in the indie author world. I also talk a bit about ELDER SCROLLS BLADES, a mobile game I’ve been playing recently.

Since if all goes well SILENT ORDER: WRECK HAND will be coming out soon, this week’s coupon is for the ebook of SILENT ORDER: OMNIBUS. Start Jack March’s adventures with this 75% off coupon at my Payhip store:

NOVSILENT

The coupon code will be valid through December 10th, 2022, which should give you enough time to read SILENT ORDER: OMNIBUS ONE before starting WRECK HAND.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM