Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 91

CLOAK OF SHARDS now underway!

Despite all my blog posts about audiobooks over the last week, I have been actually been writing something new!

I am now 43,000 words into CLOAK OF SHARDS, which puts me on Chapter 9 of 23. If all goes well, I am hoping the book will be out by Easter, or possibly a little after Easter.

Let’s have short, spoiler-free excerpt!

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“Ma’am,” said the younger officer, “you’re going to need to…”

“Mrs. MacCormac?” said the older officer.

“Lieutenant Arnett, Lieutenant Lemke,” I said. I had met them last spring when Russell’s ex-girlfriend had been accused of murdering her computer science teacher.

That had turned into a huge mess, let me tell you.

“Goddamn,” said Lemke, the younger of the two officers. “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be happy a spook is turning up at the crime scene.”

“Glowing symbols on the wall will have that effect,” said Arnette. “Chief Quell is waiting for you with Mr. Smith.”

“Thanks, guys,” I said. “At least there are no cyborg clones turning up today.”

“Yet,” said Arnett with the resigned fatalism of the veteran law enforcement officer.

-JM

20,000 traditionally published audiobooks!

When I passed my 10,000th self-published audiobook sold, I mentioned that I didn’t have a good way to total up how many traditionally published (through Tantor and Podium) audiobooks I’ve sold.

But I had some help from someone very skilled with Excel, and I am pleased to report that I sold my 10,000th traditionally published audiobook! That’s more than I expected.

Actually, the proceeding statement, while true, is also somewhat inaccurate.

I sold my 10,000th traditionally published audiobook some time ago.

In point of fact, I sold my 20,000th traditionally published audiobook sometime around the end of 2021. My two bestselling titles were FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT and SEVENFOLD SWORD: PART I.

Thanks for listening, everyone! And thanks to everyone at Podium and Tantor for their hard work in bringing the audiobooks to life.

I have to admit it’s actually a pretty sweet deal. I didn’t have to do any work beyond sending in pronunciations. All I have to do is promote the ebooks, which I would do anyway, and then watch the money arrive every quarter.

That said, the last two and a half years have been pretty challenging for most people. God likes to remind us that all things are transient and all people are mortal. That said, I hope that some of my audiobooks have provided a pleasant distraction while driving, working, exercising, or simply going about your day.

-JM

Listen To DRAGONTIARNA Free On Audible

I am pleased to report that if you are an Audible member, you can no listen to DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES for free!

Here’s how it works. I’m afraid the explanation is somewhat long.

For a very long time, Audible had only one tier of membership. You got your monthly credit (or 2 or 3 monthly credits if you coughed up for more), and then you used your credit to buy an audiobook. You could still buy audiobooks at list price off Audible, but most people don’t do that. Like, for THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE, 86% of its lifetime sales have come from credits, and the rest from people buying retail. This was the dominant model for many years.

But! Things are changing. Audiobook subscription streaming (think Netflix but for audiobooks) is becoming a growing model – companies like Scribd and Storytel are already doing it. Rumors abound that Spotify and Apple are planning to do an audiobook streaming service. Amazon, which owns Audible, is Very Worried about this, since Audible is set up for credits and retail sales, not streaming. So I expect Audible will start moving towards more streaming subscriptions in the future.

But here and now, this is why you can listen to DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES for free if you’re an Audible member. As part of the move towards streaming, Audible now has two tiers of membership:

-Audible Plus, which is like $8 a month, and lets you listen to anything in the official Audible Plus library. The Audible Plus library has a bunch of audiobooks, but also podcasts to compete with Spotify.

-Audible Premium Plus, which is $15 a month, and works like the traditional Audible credit system, but you still listen to anything in the Audible Plus library without spending a credit.

That is a pretty good deal for listeners. I have no idea whether it will be good for writers or not. I suspect it will be like most things in life – some people will win, some will lose, and some won’t even notice that anything is happening.

Anyway, that was a long explanation, wasn’t it? The long and the short of it is that DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS & THIEVES will be in the Audible Plus library for the next two years, and if you’re either an Audible Plus or an Audible Premium Plus member, you can listen to it for free today!

-JM

DRAGONTIARNA Apple Books Sale!

Australia and New Zealand readers! Apple Books is running a special sale in your region – you can get DRAGONTIARNA: KNIGHTS for free, DRAGONTIARNA: THIEVES for $0.99, and DRAGONTIARNA: GATES for $2.99, and a whole lot of other interesting books.

Check out the link to the sale below:

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 112: Prequels, Fantasy Maps, and Free Audiobooks

I accidentally posted this a few days earlier, so you might have heard it already. But if you haven’t, there is a new episode of the podcast!

In this week’s episode, I explain why I don’t like writing prequel novels. I also discuss drawing fantasy maps and some exciting audiobook news about the DRAGONTIARNA series.

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

-JM

FROSTBORN: THE DRAGON KNIGHT now available in audio

I am very pleased to report that FROSTBORN: THE DRAGON KNIGHT is now available in audio, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills! You can listen to it at Audible, Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon AU, and Apple.

I’d like to thank Brad for all the hard work he has done on the FROSTBORN series, but especially on DRAGON KNIGHT, which he had to record during some family health difficulties.

And since someone is going to ask like five seconds after I post this, we are planning to do the final FROSTBORN book as soon as possible. If all goes well, FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON will hopefully be out by summer or thereabouts. Once it is done, between the first five FROSTBORN books from Tantor, the ten that will be self-published, and the SEVENFOLD SWORD and DRAGONTIARNA audiobooks from Podium, you’ll be able to listen to all thirty-seven Ridmark books from beginning to end for something like 300 hours of audio. It will be exciting to see what the final combined length is.

Thanks for listening, everyone!

-JM

DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES now available!

I am pleased to report that DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES is now available!

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.

A knight armed with sword & shield isn’t prepared for a dagger in the back.

Gareth Arban intends to return to Tarlion to marry the woman he loves.

But dark forces seek the Dragonskull, the lost relic of power, and Gareth is the key to finding it.

Unless Gareth watches his back, his death will be the first step on the path to the Dragonskull…

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 111: Self-Publishing From Scratch

In this week’s episode, I answer a reader question about what I would do if I started self-publishing from scratch in 2022. We also take a further look at the effectiveness of free ebooks.

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

-JM

An Updated FROSTBORN Map

Longtime readers will know that I absolutely hate drawing maps. It feels very constraining! But the fantasy genre in general requires a map, so I made one for Andomhaim.

However, that was nine (nine!) years ago, and the setting has expanded since then. Additionally, DRAGONSKULL might visit some places we’ve never seen before, so the map might need to be updated as well.

Back in 2013 when I made the Andomhaim map, I drew it in GIMP. Since then, I’ve started using Photoshop, so I imported the map into Photoshop and went through the vexing trouble of converting all the text. It turned out pretty well – the map is much more legible now, and as an added bonus I can expand and add to it much more easily.

You know. Just in case that turns out to be necessary for DRAGONSKULL.

-JM

Backlist boost!

I frequently say that the easiest way to boost sales of older books is to release a new book in the series.

Fortunately, I now have a convenient way to prove that.

CLOAK OF IRON is the 17th book with Nadia as a main character. Before CLOAK OF IRON, the last Nadia book came out in July, so that makes for a good span of time for the older CLOAK books to return to sort of a normalized baseline.

So when CLOAK OF IRON came out, the older CLOAK books (not including CLOAK OF IRON) sold 48% more copies in February than in January.

Thanks everyone! A new book in the series definitely helps sales of the older books.

-JM