Cameron Chapman's Blog, page 11

May 1, 2011

Off Topic: My Review of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1

Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book. I read it a few years ago (during the last presidential race), and it spoke to me in a way no other book has. It was right after this that I started "seriously" writing fiction.


So when I found out they were making a movie(s) out of the book, there was a lot of trepidation mixed in with my excitement. I mean, the book is epic. There are over 1100 pages in the paperback. I felt some relief when I found out they were going to turn it into a series of movies. But I was still worried. I mean, there was so very much that could have gone wrong. And I still remember what happened when they adapted Stephen King's Dreamcatcher (don't even get me started on that one; we almost walked out of the theater).


Then I watched a "making of" featurette online. I felt a lot better then, since the director (Paul Johansson) seemed to have a great vision for the film and seemed to get what it was about. But I still had some reservations, since he's not exactly known for making great films. In fact, prior to this, he'd directed one TV movie, a few episodes of One Tree Hill (of which I am most definitely not a fan), and a short film.


But finally, this weekend, it opened in a theater that is only a two hour drive from where I live. I was still nervous, right up until the final credits rolled. All in all, it's a good movie. Here's a rundown of what I thought (warning, there are some minor spoilers here, though nothing major and nothing that's not in the book):



Positive: The acting was good. Sure, a few people were a little stiff in places, but overall it was spot-on for the characters. Grant Bowler in particular gave a great performance as Hank Rearden, and Taylor Schilling was an unexpected by good Dagny Taggart.
Negative: The editing was not good. The pauses in conversation were too long. There were a lot of extraneous shots that didn't add anything to the movie. Overall, the editing was one of the film's too biggest weaknesses.
Positive: They were faithful to the story. This was my biggest fear. I was terrified that they were going to soften the message of the book, and try to make it more "mainstream". They didn't. This alone makes it a great adaptation in my book.
Negative: The cinematography was lacking in places. The framing was weak, the sets looked smaller than they likely were because of bad angles, and it had a soap-opera-ish feel to a lot of it.
Negative: They softened Hank Rearden's character a little bit. I loved the fact that he was so callous in the book. When he and Dagny start their relationship, he makes it clear to her that it's just sex and will never be anything more, even though we all know that's so not the case. In this, he was more like the doting boyfriend after their first night together. That bugged me (also, the first sex scene in the book borders on violent, while the one in the movie is not at all like that).
Positive: They adapted the setting of the book really well, having it take place five years from now, with entirely plausible current events thrown in.

Overall, I would give the movie a solid 3.5 stars out of 5. If you're a fan of the book, you probably won't be disappointed with the movie. If you've never read the book, didn't like the book, or disagree with much of what the book stands for, you're probably not going to like it. But as a huge Atlas Shrugged fan, I'm pleased with the way it came out.


Note: If you want to comment about the movie, fine. But the second comments turn into any kind of ideological discussion, I'm shutting them down.

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Published on May 01, 2011 17:23

April 27, 2011

New Writing Workshop Site

Just wanted to post something brief about a new workshopping site I'm participating in, Book Country. I got started in the whole online writer community thing through NaNoWriMo and Authonomy. Authonomy has changed a lot since I originally signed up, and I'm no longer active on the site, so I was looking for somewhere new to hang out. Book Country has become that place.


I was lucky to get in as a private beta member, so I've been using the site since the middle of March (they just opened up for public beta this week). I've met some great people so far. There's no race for the desk like there was on Authonomy, so as of right now, I haven't really seen any politics or shady activity going on (which is a really nice change). For those of you who follow the publishing industry, you'll probably recognize the two people who are basically in charge of the site: Colleen Lindsay and Danielle Poiesz. They're both very active, posting their own work and writing reviews for work there, and participating in discussions.


If you're looking for someplace to workshop your writing, I'd recommend you try out Book Country. One note: it's only open to genre writers: fantasy, science fiction, horror (which is classed under fantasy), romance, mystery, and thriller, to be exact. If you do join, make sure to send me a connection request (I'm cameronchapman there).

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Published on April 27, 2011 05:40

April 25, 2011

Trying New Ways of Writing

I'm working on a new novel (not one of The Steam and Steel Chronicles novellas—don't worry, I'm still working on the series and still plan on keeping with the original publishing schedule), and am trying some slightly different writing methods. In the past, I've always been a very linear writer: I start at the beginning and I end up at the end. Only once have I written out of order, but even then I just wrote the last two scenes, and then started at the beginning and wrote straight through.


This time I'm trying something different. I've got the first three chapters done, but beyond that I've just been writing scenes as I think of them. I have a rough outline for what should be the first half of the book (which may or may not be a two- or three-book series, I haven't gotten that far yet), and I'm just kind of writing scenes as I feel like writing them. The plan is to get all the scenes in the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the book written, and then revise them into the correct order and write straight through to the end of the book from there.


I'm still, to some extent, writing linearly. I'll write three or four scenes in order, and then move to another block of scenes. I'm also keeping a spreadsheet with the scene number (for identification purposes only, not the final order they'll be in), a one-line synopsis of what happens in that scene, who's in the scene, the setting, the word count, and what needs to come before and after that scene (which might be events, or might be other scene numbers). This way I know exactly what I've written, and what I still need to write.


In just over 10 days, I've got over 17,000 words finished (so, basically I'm writing at a NaNoWriMo pace). I know that I'll need to do a lot of editing for all my usual things (repetitive words and lack of description are my two biggest first-draft weaknesses) during the revision process, but I'm hoping I can do a one-pass revision on this one. (See Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision method for what I'm talking about.)


Now that I know I can finish a novel (I've finished six novels and two novellas), I'm finding it interesting to experiment with different methods of writing. Maybe at some point I'll find one that makes me a faster and/or better writer. So far, this method does seem to make me faster, and I've been able to produce a lot of words despite all the other work I'm doing at the moment. This is a really good feeling.


What kinds of writing techniques have you all tried? Did you find anything that made you way more productive? Or that made your prose better? What about techniques that failed miserably? Let me know!

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Published on April 25, 2011 11:31

April 19, 2011

Ebook Piracy

It seems like every single day there's another article about ebook piracy and how it threatens the publishing industry and authors. In all honesty, I'm getting sick of hearing about it. Piracy, for the vast majority of authors, is going to have much less effect on sales than obscurity (which piracy can actually help with).


And in all honesty, combating piracy is relatively simple. It doesn't require any technical know-how whatsoever. Any author or publisher can do it. There's no DRM involved, nor any other fancy acronyms. There are three simple steps to minimize the effect of piracy on your ebooks:



Your books need to be simple to purchase legally. As in, 2-3 clicks from the time I decide I want to buy it to the time I'm actually reading it (Kindle and Nook both excel in this department, not sure about other ereaders, though many publisher sites fail in this regard).
Your books need to be high quality and you need to back that up with proof. If someone loves something, they're more likely to respect it. If they don't see the value in your work, they're not going to understand why you expect them to pay for it. It should be easy for someone to preview your work, too, so they can see what they're buying before they actually buy it (sort of like reading a little of a book before buying it at the bookstore). This is a proof of quality, to an extent, at least to the extent that it proves whether you can string words together into coherent sentences.
Your books need to be reasonably priced. This is probably the trickiest part of the equation, partially because what's reasonable to one person is unreasonable to another. But at the moment, "reasonable" seems to be anywhere from $.99 to $9.99, depending on the specific work, genre, and author.

Now, the above steps aren't going to eliminate ebook pirates. But, they will minimize the number of people who want to buy your work but are pirating it instead. Nine times out of ten, it's because either they can't find your books easily on legitimate sites (what do you mean your ebook isn't available directly through the Kindle or Nook or Sony Reader or the iPad?), your book is overpriced (I'm sorry, I'm not paying $15 for an ebook when the paperback is $10, especially when I know the author is only getting $1-2 from that sale), or the buyer doesn't know what kind of quality to expect.


Pirates are still going to pirate, and people are still going to download books/music/movies/etc. illegally. The key is to make it easier for someone to purchase your book legally than it is to pirate it. Most readers want to support the authors they love. If given the choice between purchasing a book at a reasonable price from a legitimate vendor or downloading from a pirate site, most readers will buy it legitimately.


(Note that I'm talking about readers here, not just people who download ebooks illegally. There are tons of people who collect pirated books, music, movies, etc., who never would have purchased them in the first place and never bother to read/listen to/watch what they've downloaded.)


Personally, I'm not worried about piracy. At this point, obscurity is a much larger threat to my writing career than piracy is. My books are all released without DRM (when given the choice), and so far none have shown up on torrent or file sharing sites (without my prior knowledge, that is). If they do, I'm going to hope that I gain some fans through those sites, people who will later go on to buy my books or recommend me to their friends.

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Published on April 19, 2011 13:07

April 18, 2011

A Birthday Gift! (AKA, A Free Book!)

Today's my birthday, and I thought it would be nice to give all my followers/fans/readers/etc. a gift. So for today only I've made a coupon code for Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris, so that you can get it for free from Smashwords. There are a ton of formats available there, including ones compatible with Nook, iPad, Kindle, and your PC or Mac (you can even read it right in your browser).


All you need to do is use coupon code QA45Z when you check out (it's not case sensitive) and you'll get it for free.


Alternatively, if you'd like to give me a birthday gift, you can purchase Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris on Smashwords, Amazon (and in the UK), and Barnes & Noble. Or you can buy The Great Healion Race from Smashwords, Amazon (also  in the UK), and Barnes & Noble. If you've already bought the books, you might consider leaving a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, or Goodreads (here or here) for either one (or both)!


I'll be taking down the coupon code sometime this evening (April 18th), so if you want the free copy, get it early (you don't have to download it right away, so you can "purchase" it now and then download it whenever it's convenient).


Feel free to share this post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. to spread the word!

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Published on April 18, 2011 06:20

April 5, 2011

Websites for Writers

A lot of writers, whether published or aspiring, have awful websites. I mean, as someone who writes about design for a living, and who has a background in web and graphic design (and still does side projects on occasion), it's painful for me to see some of the sites out there that writers are using. And proud of in a lot of instances.


Now, I'm NOT going to name names here. That's just distasteful. But I will say that probably 80% of author websites have some kind of major flaw that seriously interferes with their usability. Some are just poorly designed. Some are filled with broken links (there are some publisher sites that fall into this category, too). Some have so many Flash effects or other "fancy" things that they bog down the user's browser and are unusable to boot.


As someone who wants to see writers succeed, and also wants to see good design on the web, I've put together this little guide for writers who want a website.


Think About Your Budget

For the vast majority of writers, hiring someone to create your website for you is going to result in a better end product than learning to create your site yourself. But a lot of writers (and, really, anyone who isn't a designer) have an unrealistic idea of how much a good website should cost.


If you want a basic, brochure-type website, with no blog and only a handful of pages (like an about page, a page that lists your books, and maybe an excerpt page), expect to pay somewhere between $500 and $1500 depending on the experience of the designer and whether they're basing the site design on a template or designing completely from scratch. This may or may not include a CMS (which allows you to edit the content of your site without knowing how to code).


If you want a custom site with a blog as the main emphasis, with your own web hosting, you can probably expect to pay somewhere between $1000 and $2500, again, depending on how custom you want to get and if you want support for things like video blogs (vlogs) or other more specialized content (it can run higher than this for really advanced features, though it's unlikely). This should be built on a blog platform like WordPress or Moveable Type, though there are others available.


If you want a completely custom site, something like Stephen King's website, for instance, expect to pay at least $1,000, and possibly upwards of $10,000. Sites like this are usually only used by authors who have a large backlist and a lot of information to share. It may or may not have a blog, may have things like photo galleries of author events or author videos, and sometimes even an e-commerce area where visitors can buy author merchandise.


So as you can see, websites are expensive. Good designers spend years learning their craft, and are generally worth the prices they charge. If you're getting quotes from people that are coming in much lower than the prices quoted above, you may want to keep searching. In all likelihood, you're not dealing with a professional. Sometimes local designers charge outside of these norms, but in some cases it's because of a lack of quality.


Students are the other group that often charge a lot less, because they're looking to build a portfolio. I hate to say this, and I know I might catch some flack from the design community, but unless you want to act as project manager and already know exactly what you want from your site, don't hire a student. Their main priority is not going to be your website. In a lot of cases, regardless of how talented they are at design, they're not yet experienced in dealing with clients and handling project management. Unless you can get bulletproof references from other clients they've worked with (not including friends and family), you're better off to spend the extra and hire a professional or go with a template site. The same goes for hobbyists. Sure, there are exceptions, but they're few and far between.


But I Don't Have $500 or More

Not every author out there has $500 or $1000 or more to spend on their website, not matter how seriously they take their career. It's especially hard to justify that kind of expense if you're not yet earning a living from your website. But there are a couple of great alternatives for writers who can't afford to hire a professional web designer.


Weebly is a great option if you want a basic website. They have a ton of templates, almost all of which are well-designed and professional-looking, and a lot of them can be customized with your own header images. Weebly lets you use your own domain name for no extra charge (you'll still have to pay for the name itself), and they have a few other add-ons, too. The best part about Weebly compared to a lot of other free sites is that they don't put ads on your site. The only thing even resembling an ad is a small Weebly link in your footer (you can pay to have that removed).


If you want a blog more than a plain website, WordPress.com is a great option. You can get a blog for free with a WordPress.com subdomain (yoursite.wordpress.com), or have your own domain name for less than $20 per year (including the registration of the domain name itself). There are over 100 templates you can choose from (including some premium templates), and a lot of them can be customized with your own header and background images. You can also create pages on your WordPress.com site, and have a static home page if you want (with your blog on a separate page). As your site grows, you can switch to a self-hosted WordPress site and use WP as a fully-featured CMS.


Other good blogging services to consider include Tumblr (which is sort of a cross between Twitter and a regular blog), Blogger, and TypePad/Moveable Type.


Remember this: It's better to have an attractive, user-friendly template site than an ugly or unusable custom site. A lot of people won't even realize it's a template site, especially if you use a template that can be customized with your own header and background images.


Do I Really Need a Website?

Before you go spending a lot of time and money on a website, ask yourself if you even really need a full-featured site. Would you be better off investing your time into Twitter and Facebook rather than your own site? Are you going to have time to regularly post on your blog? Do you have enough content to populate a website?


If you're unsure, consider setting up something like an About.me page. With this you can set up a brief bio, and link to your social media accounts (including Tumblr, WordPress, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube). You can customize the background image (consider using a background that includes your book cover(s) or author photo) and typography on the page. It's a good option if you don't want to deal with the setup and upkeep of a regular website, but still want some central place to direct agents, readers, editors, and others that might be curious about your web presence.


Feel free to ask questions in the comments, either about any of the services I've mentioned here or author website in general, and I'll do my best to answer them.

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Published on April 05, 2011 20:12

April 1, 2011

Transparency in Indie Publishing: Month 2

So, it's been nearly two months since I started self-publishing The Steam and Steel Chronicles. Sales for March were pretty much on par with sales of February, but the good news is that the past two days, since publishing The Great Healion Race, I've seen a good increase in sales. And not just for The Great Healion Race, but also for Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris.


Everyone I've talked to who has read the book has liked it (or loved it). I've had a couple of good reviews (and am still waiting for a couple more to come out). I had a really positive review from Geranium Cat's Bookshelf, which resulted in a few Kindle UK sales.


I also made it (briefly) onto a couple of the Kindle bestseller lists: the Historical Fantasy list in the UK I reached a high rank of 45 (I think), and I reached #95 on the US Kindle store in Historical Fantasy. If anyone knows of a way to track your rank on the various genre lists (other than checking back a few times a day), let me know. All the resources I've found only track your overall sales rank.


The numbers above are good, because one of my goals was to reach one of the top 100 lists before my birthday (which is later this month). So that's one self-publishing goal down.


So, without further ado, here are the numbers for March:


Amazon US

Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris: 11

The Great Healion Race: 4

Total: 15 books


Amazon UK

ATUAF: 4

TGHR: 1

Total: 5


Barnes & Noble

ATUAF: 5

TGHR: 0

Total: 5


Smashwords

ATUAF: 3

TGHR: 0

Total: 3


So the total numbers stand at  22 copies of Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris sold, and 5 copies of The Great Healion Race (which was released on 3/30). I'm now selling four times as many books on Kindle as I am on Barnes & Noble, which was an interesting shift. Of course, with numbers this small, there's not really enough data to draw any kind of statistically accurate conclusion.


The Geranium Cat's Bookshelf review was the only review I had this month, and I was really pleased with it. I can attribute all of my UK sales to that review, either directly or indirectly.


Now, the numbers above don't tell the entire story. I actually had a bit of a sales slump in March, but on the day I released The Great Healion Race, I had six sales, and the day after I had five. If a rate of 5-6 sales a day keeps up, I'll be quite happy with my April numbers.


Other marketing efforts this month included participating in Sample Sunday on Twitter, and occasionally tweeting about the books. I don't know if that's made a difference or not.


My schedule until the middle of May is going to continue to be pretty crazy, so I'm not sure what kind of marketing efforts I'll be able to do between now and then, other than the occasional tweet and trying to keep up with the Facebook page. I'm also hard at work on Book Three already, which I hope to release either at the end of June or sometime in July.

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Published on April 01, 2011 06:04

March 30, 2011

I Got Impatient (The Great Healion Race is Now Available!)

I got impatient yesterday morning and decided to just go ahead and make The Great Healion Race live rather than wait until Monday. You can buy it for $2.99 at the following links:


Barnes & NobleKindle/Amazon USKindle/Amazon UKSmashwordsGoodreads


If you haven't read Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris yet, you may want to do that before reading The Great Healion Race. It's available here for only $.99:


Barnes & NobleKindle/Amazon USKindle/Amazon UKSmashwordsGoodreads


And of course, if you have a book review blog and would like a copy to review, please let me know!


Also, I've created a page specifically for my books, with the blurb for each and where to purchase them (as well as reviews and press coverage for each). Feel free to send your friends to that page if you think they might be interested in The Steam and Steel Chronicles (or send them the links to buy directly, of course).

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Published on March 30, 2011 09:13

March 25, 2011

Another Big Announcement! (Hint: It Involves a Contract!)

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have another big announcement to share with everyone. I'm sure people have noticed how little I've been posting here for the past month or so, and also that I've been a little less active at times on Twitter and Facebook.


That's because I've been working on a non-fiction book for John Wiley & Sons. I signed the contract in mid-February for The Smashing Idea Book, part of the Smashing Book series. It's a big project, with a ton of research involved, and it's been taking up a lot of my time. I have very tight deadlines (with a quarter of the book due every three weeks), and my regular work load hasn't let up that much (I've had to adjust some things, but I'm still doing a ton of freelance writing), so that's why I've been a bit less active elsewhere. It's a bit different to be working under tight deadlines again, and I'm learning that time management is not necessarily my biggest strength!


The writing and editing of the book will be wrapping up in the middle of May (I've already submitted the first half, and am working on edits for the first quarter), and after that I should be back to my regular blogging/tweeting schedule. If you're interested, you can already pre-order The Smashing Idea Book through Amazon UK (it's not available on the US site yet, but should be before too long).


I'll share more details as I have them!

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Published on March 25, 2011 16:06

An Update & the Cover for The Great Healion Race

The Great Healion Race, book two of The Steam and Steel Chronicles should be out sometime during the first week in April. The proofreading is done, the cover is done, and half of the formatting is done (the HTML half). Once I finish the formatting, I plan to write a post detailing how I do it for those of you interested in formatting your own ebooks. I'm still perfecting my workflow, but hopefully this book will go much smoother than the last one (which was nothing but headaches).


First, here's a look at the cover:



I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I'll mention that there's an Easter Egg hidden in the imagery here, and that it gives insight into something that's never fully explained in the book. If anyone can figure it out, I will give them the entire series in the ebook format of their choice for free (as the books come out, obviously). It's really obscure, so I doubt anyone is going to figure it out, but there's a challenge for you!


In preparation for the release, I've also lowered the price of the first book, Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris, to $.99. This was something I'd pretty much planned on doing from the beginning. The rest of the books in the series will be $2.99, but I wanted a "loss-leader" of sorts to see what kind of effect that will have on sales, and to entice new readers to give it a chance. So if you've been delaying buying the first book, now's the time to do it. Barnes & Noble and Smashwords have already updated their pricing, but Amazon is lagging behind. It should be updated within 24 hours, so check back if the price hasn't lowered yet.


We'll see what happens with this month's sales now that the price is lower. I'm not sure if it will have an effect or not, but it does open up some potential new marketing opportunities with sites that specifically look for books that are $1 or less. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


I may have more news soon for you guys, so stay tuned. I also have some other writing-focused posts in the works, so I should be back to posting on a regular basis soon.

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Published on March 25, 2011 09:22