Cameron Chapman's Blog, page 8

Happy Thanksgiving and a NaNoWriMo Update!

Here in the U.S., today is Thanksgiving. I'm taking a rare day off of work (I even went so far as to close my email program) and hosting Thanksgiving dinner for my husband's family and my father. We haven't hosted a family dinner at our house in a number of years, so it's a nice change. And a lot less stressful than the first year we hosted Thanksgiving for twelve or thirteen people less than two weeks after we bought our house. That was quite the holiday!

So today I'm spending time cooking and writing whenever I can. My NaNoWriMo word count stands just shy of 39,000 words at the moment, and I'm hoping to push it up over 42,000 today. That will put me slightly ahead. I'm working on book four at the moment. Book three came in at around 32,000 words, though that will probably decrease during editing.

There are a lot of loose ends from the first two books that I'm tying up in the third and fourth books. I left a lot of things open-ended because I knew this was going to be a series, and I've had some negative feedback due to some of those things. But I promise that all of it will be tied up one way or another, and pretty much all of it will be explained in one way or another.

Book four is going to be the most adventurous book of the series, and will bring us back to some of the same places we went in book one. Characters that first appeared in books two and three will become vital parts of the resolution to the series (even if they only had cameos in earlier books).

Writing a series is a completely different animal than a stand-alone novel. Especially when they're being written a year apart. There's a lot to keep track of, and I think with the next series I'm planning, I'll spend some time putting together a story bible to keep track of everything.

I guess I should spill the beans on the next series I'm planning. I was going to take some time to work on a gothic romance novel (a complete overhaul of part of a very early novel I wrote, the same one that Steam and Steel was inspired by) after I finished Steam and Steel, but now I'm thinking I'm going to write another steampunk series instead. The working title (and I'll be coming up with something better before it's done) is Clockwork Colony. It's steampunk set in an entirely different world than The Steam and Steel Chronicles, and will take place in India around 1910. It's going to require a lot more research than other books I've tackled, but I'm really excited about it.

This series won't be a continuous series like Steam and Steel, but instead will be a number of books loosely set in the same world. This means I can write in that world when I want to, and when I have a story to tell, but I'll have the flexibility to write other things in between, without worrying about alienating fans of the series. I'll likely start working on this one in December. We'll see.

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US, and happy Thursday to everyone else!

A Rant About Self-Publishing Rip-Offs

Okay, so I was going to mostly stay out of this debate/conversation (with the exception of a brief status update on Google+), but the more i think about it, the more it pisses me off.

I guess I should start at the beginning. Back in April (?), I signed on as a private beta tester of Penguin's Book Country site. I had been a relatively early member of Authonomy but that site had gone downhill and I was looking for somewhere new to converse with other writers, get feedback, etc. Book Country looked like the place to be.

I posted some work, got some feedback, had some conversations in the forums, and generally found it to be a decent resource. I kind of stopped using it around mid-summer, though, because I had a lot of stuff going on.

This week, Book Country did something that has made me decide to close my account. They've started offering self-publishing services.

Now, I self-publish and have no interest in working with a legacy publisher. Ever. And I understand that not everyone wants to take the time to learn to format their own books. That's fine. What I take issue with, in Book Country's case, is their complete and utter price gouging. Their pro package, which offers ebook and print book formatting and uploading and basically nothing else that you couldn't find with some quick Google searching, is $549. That's FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE DOLLARS. I'm sorry, but under what system is that not a total rip-off?

Their basic  package includes templates for you to do your own print and ebook formatting, and they'll still take care of the uploading. That's $299. TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE FREAKIN' DOLLARS. For you to do your own ebook and print book formatting. Using templates that you can just as easily find online, for free.

Or, you can do their ebook only package, which costs you $99, and you still have to do your own formatting.

Now, those prices are bad enough, but here's the kicker that, if it were coming from any other company, would have authors screaming THIS IS A SCAM!!! They take a percentage of your royalties, forever. So you're paying them hundreds of dollars to do something you could do yourself for free, and then they're taking a cut of your income for the life of your book.

No. Sorry, just no. That's WRONG.

Now, there's one other company that will format and upload your book to other book sellers, and they take a royalty. Smashwords. But here's the difference: a) they take no up-front payment from you for conversion or uploading, and b) they only keep 15% of your royalties. 15% is a pretty reasonable fee by pretty much any estimation. And they're completely transparent about it. They even offer you a calculator when you're setting up your book to show what percentage the retailer gets, what they get, and what you get. Honestly, they're a pretty decent company to work with (I've published four books with them).

Book Country, on the other hand, is not particularly forthcoming with their royalty split. And honestly, the royalty split kind of sucks when compared to other ebook sellers.

First of all, for books sold on Book Country's own site, you get a 70% royalty on books priced over $2.99 (which is the same as Amazon), but only 30% if it's priced below that (which is less than Amazon or Barnes & Noble). On the "wide network" distribution, you get the same percentage, but only on the amount the retailer actually sends through to Book Country.

So yeah, you're a LOT better off doing things directly. Or hiring someone and paying them a flat fee to format and upload your books.

Here are a few other reasons why this Book Country "deal" is horrible for authors:

You get no access to your sales numbers from the retailers themselves. When I publish with Amazon's KDP or Barnes & Noble's PubIt! service, I can see my sales numbers pretty much in real time. You don't get that with Book Country.
There doesn't appear to be any transparency in regards to your earnings. How do you know that Book Country is paying out what it's supposed to? How do you know that your numbers haven't gotten confused with someone else's? Are there any audit procedures in place if you don't agree with the numbers Book Country is reporting to you?
You get paid monthly, but only once your account has reached $50 in earnings (or every 3 months if it doesn't). KDP and PubIt! pay monthly, generally once your account has reached $10. That means Book Country is getting paid on a monthly basis (because they're getting paid for all their authors, which have almost certainly earned over $10 in total) and earning interest on your earnings until you reach $50. Are they paying that interest on to you? No.
The user-formatted templates you get only work with Microsoft Word (2003 or later). I don't know about you, but the last time I tried to lay out a book in Word, I ripped my hair out. It's an inferior program for professional print layouts. Pay someone to do it for you with professional software like InDesign.
They're not even honest in their assessment of other self-publishing services. Both KDP and PubIt! offer optional DRM on any books you publish through them, but Book Country doesn't tell you that in their handy little chart. I wonder what other features they're not telling you about?

Basically, Book Country's self-publishing deal is BAD for authors. They take too much control, want too much money, and don't give you enough transparency or value. The process fo actually self-publishing is not complicated. All the information you need to do a good job is available freely online. There is free software out there for formatting your ebooks, and free and low-cost services that will do it for you.

Instead of spending $300-$550 on a publishing package that will provide you with no real benefit, take that money and hire someone to design you a kick-ass cover. Or do some marketing with that money. Either one will offer you a LOT more return on your money than anything Book Country is offering.

Legacy publishing is grasping at straws, looking for any way they can capitalize on indie authors. They know that their position is threatened, and rather than trying to figure out why that is and fix their own internal problems, they're looking to latch on to the revenue streams of others.

So I urge you, PLEASE, if you're an author and are thinking about self-publishing, do your research and stay away from predatory services like Book Country.

Over 1,000 Sales Since February!!! (And a NaNoWriMo Update)

As of today, I have sold more than 1,000 ebooks since February! This is a big deal for me, as it means over 1,000 sales in less than 10 months, for an average of more than 100 books sold per month.

To celebrate, I'm making Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris available for free for a couple of days through Smashwords. If you haven't started reading the series yet, here's a great way to start! All you need to do is enter the coupon code HN48E at checkout and you'll get it for free (the coupon code expires on the 19th, though I'm not sure at what time). All I ask in return is that after you've read it, leave a review on Smashwords, Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, or elsewhere if you feel like it. I'm not asking for positive reviews, just honest ones.

It's said that most self-published books don't sell 100 copies total, so I feel like the fact that I've sold over 1,000 so far this year is a big accomplishment, and one worth celebrating. So, please, feel free to pass this coupon code along to others, or share this post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or wherever else you want.

I'm also at over 28,000 words on book 3 of The Steam and Steel Chronicles, which I should be finishing up either today or tomorrow. Then it's on to book 4, which will be packed with adventure, more so than any of the other books in the series. I'm really excited about writing it!

NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 12 & Another Little Excerpt

I'm still on track for NaNoWriMo this year. I'm currently sitting between 19k and 20k words, and the goal for today is 20,000. So I'll be there in another hour or so. I have to say, and this might seem a little pompous, but I'm LOVING this book. I love where it's going. I love the twists the characters have thrown up in my face. I love the new character who has made himself an integral part of the plot.

Sure, there are some spots that will need quite a bit of work (or that might be cut all together) for the final draft, and it needs plenty of polishing, but overall I really love it.

On that note, I'm going to share a brief bit of description I just wrote that I really like for some reason. So just in case it gets edited out of the final draft, I thought I'd share it here. It's just a paragraph, but description is something I always struggle with, so for me to actually like what I've written is rare. And I'm not going to give you any setup, because I don't want any spoilers here, and the description stands just fine on its own. Again, this is a first draft, no editing, so please excuse any typos or awkwardness.

The swamp there was so incredibly different from the banks of the sea where he grew up, where everything was flat and open and treeless, and the wind off the water kept the air crisp and cool. This was hot, and damp, and stagnant. The air didn't move, and everything hummed with the sounds of insects. There were untold dangers lurking in the waters, alligators for sure but other things he'd only heard whispered in back rooms in New Orleans' less reputable establishments.

Now I need to stop procrastinating and go back to writing!

NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 6 Update and an Excerpt!

NaNoWriMo is going really, really well this year. I'm on track with my own personal goals (2k words per day, which is a bit higher than the 1,667 words per day required to make the 50k goal), and I'm almost halfway through book three of The Steam and Steel Chronicles. I'm really, really enjoying writing this one so far. I've had some surprising plot twists pop up without any planning, and I've introduced a new main character who will be in the third and fourth books. I've also brought back a favorite element from the first book that will play a major role in the conclusion and solution to the books and their central arc.

So as it stands right now, at 12:12pm on Sunday, November 6, I've written 12,487 words. I'm going to try to get another 1-2k words done today (probably this evening), because my word schedule is a little bit hectic right now and weekends are the best time to try to build a little buffer into my word count.

I also wanted to share an excerpt from what I've written so far. Now, there's no guarantee that this will make it into the final version of the book, and this is completely unedited, so please excuse any awkward phrasing or typos.

The sky was clear and the ground below was a patchwork of yellows and orange leaves and still-green fields. It wouldn't be long before the ground was covered in snow and the air at that altitude would necessitate not just a coat but a full mask, gloves, and fur-lined boots.

But for now, Stig was on deck with his coat open and his head exposed to the elements. He could see the coal mines of eastern Wyoming as he flew over, great black expanses uncovered by steam shovels the size of which were unrivaled the world over. The American West was the most prosperous land he'd ever seen, with what seemed like limitless supplies of oil, coal, and gas, with mines for every precious metal and mineral he could think of between the Mississippi River and the California coast.

He needed to check his heading, to make sure the winds over the plains wouldn't throw him off course. The winds were unpredictable in October, and he didn't need any delays.

Twelve hours later he was docking at the St. Louis airfield. He paid the fee, an exorbitant amount considering he wasn't picking up freight, and asked for directions to the hotel Gunnarr had mentioned in his telegram. With any luck, he hadn't missed him.

This is from relatively early in book three,  but not the first chapter. I may post another excerpt later on, when the third book is finished. As it stands right now, the third book should be out sometime in late January, and the fourth will likely follow a month or so later. I'm also planning a big launch for the final book, and will be giving away some prizes!

Transparency in Indie Publishing, Month 9

I can't believe it's been nine months since I started self-publishing The Steam and Steel Chronicles! Sales were good this past month, better than they've ever been, which is nice. I seem to sell between 145 and 165 books per month without doing much marketing (other than the occasional Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ post), so that's encouraging. It means the word is out there at least to an extent.

I'm hard at work on books three and four as part of NaNoWriMo (over 7k words into book three already), and hope to release them in January and February. I'll be doing a tight release schedule like I did with the first two, so you won't need to wait too long between them. I'll also be putting together some special editions, and will probably do a contest or two surrounding the launches of the books. I'm even thinking about giving away a Kindle! (It'll be one of the ones with offers, because while the books are selling well, they're not selling that well. Of course, if someone wanted to sponsor an iPad giveaway, I'd be more than happy to oblige!)

Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris

Amazon US: 89 (last month was 69)
Amazon UK: 1 (last month was 4)
Barnes & Noble: 7 (last month was 16)
Smashwords: 0 (last month was 1)
TOTAL: 97 (last month was 90)

The Great Healion Race

Amazon US: 58 (last month was 49)
Amazon UK: 2 (last month was 4)
Barnes & Noble: 5 (last month was 4)
Smashwords: 1 (last month was 1)
TOTAL: 66 (last month was 58)

So sales were up at Amazon, but down pretty much everywhere else, which resulted in only slightly better sales (163 this month vs. 148 last month). But, this was my best month to date as far as sales go (the best month prior to this was 154)! So that's good news. I'm hoping that once the third and fourth books come out, I'll see a jump in sales. I'll also be doing a lot more marketing at that point, and will likely release one long ebook with all four books included, plus a bonus short story that I've been thinking about writing. Or I might release the short story for free, as an enticement to buy the rest of the books.

NaNoWriMo 2011: Day 2

Just ran into my first plot hitch, which sometimes happens when I just let the flow take over and don't really pay attention to what I'm writing. The advantage is that sometimes I get really great ideas this way and things turn out better than I'd planned. The downside is that I don't always know where to go with these plot threads. That's what happened during this morning's writing session. So I'm asking for ideas over on the NaNoWriMo forums. If you've read the first two books in The Steam and Steel Chronicles (or even if you haven't), feel free to chime in over on the forum thread with ideas, or here in the comments if you're not a NaNoWriMo participant. Don't worry, there are no spoilers in the thread for the upcoming book. And if you give me a unique idea that I use, I'll mention you in the acknowledgements of Book 3!

I'm currently sitting at just over 4,000 words in less than 36 hours. I'm aiming to get an average of 2k words per day done, and so far I'm on track. We'll see if I can keep it up!

NaNoWriMo 2011: T-13 Hours and Counting

NaNoWriMo 2011 starts in less than 13 hours now. I'm fairly prepared. I know my characters inside and out, because they're Stig and Isabell from Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris and The Great Healion Race. I have no idea yet what the next two books will be called. I do know they'll likely be the last two books in the series (though I have an idea for a short story that I may publish for free or add to one of the other books as a bonus). I was originally planning on six books, but I feel like that might end up dragging the series out for too long, and upon looking over my original outline, I can cut and combine two of the books without taking anything of substance away from the overall story.

And, to be quite honest, I'm ready to move on to other things. I love The Steam and Steel Chronicles, I love the characters, but I also have a lot of other projects that I love and want to work on.

So, I'll leave a few tidbits about what will be happening in the next two books:

A certain device from ATUAF will be making another appearance.
A certain character or two from TGHR will be reappearing in a fairly major role in Book 3.
Things will most definitely be resolved between Stig and Isabell.

I'll also offer you this photo of how I always pictured Stig (sorry if you've always pictured him differently). If there's ever a film version of the books (which I honestly hope there will be, and will consider producing myself at some point in the future), I'll be lobbying hard for Grant Bowler.

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Now, as for NaNoWriMo itself, I may stay up until midnight tonight to try to knock out a thousand words or so before bed. If you're new to NaNo, you might want to check out My Guide to Surviving NaNoWriMo (which was also republished on Publetariat).

I'm going to aim for 2,000 words a day so that I can take days off around Thanksgiving if I need to. And for those days when I'm just not feeling it and only manage a few hundred words. It's always a challenge to manage a full-time writing/editing/copywriting job, plus a college-level class, plus writing at that rate, but I've done it before and I'm 99% sure I can do it again (you just might see me a lot less on Twitter/Google+/Facebook until December).

Also, if you want to "Buddy" me on the NaNoWriMo site, feel free to do so here.

My Guide to Surviving NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo officially starts in less than three weeks! I'll be participating again, this time hopefully finishing up the third and fourth books of The Steam and Steel Chronicles. I feel like I've finally got some plot issues tied up in my head, so I can move forward with it. The thing is, when I wrote the first two books last year (for NaNoWriMo), I didn't really have an overall story arc in mind. I just sort of threw everything in there and waited to see what stuck.

So now I've got all these potential plot threads that need to be tied up in the third and fourth books (I'm thinking those will finish the story, though I'm also planning a short story or two that will take place between books one and two). I'm not one to just let things go unanswered, and I want to make sure that things people liked in the first two books are featured again in the third and fourth books, without being shoehorned in. I've got them all figured out now, though, so I'm eager to get writing again!

But I wanted to put together a guide for surviving (and even winning) NaNoWriMo. I'm hoping it will be useful whether you're a NaNo veteran or a first-timer.

1. Make sure you're passionate about your story

This is key. If you're not really, really into your story, you will very quickly get sick of it. Trust me. I've been there. I've done that. And I've lost because of it. So the first thing to make sure of is that you're absolutely, positively in LOVE with your story.

2. Use the forums

The NaNoWriMo website has great forums. They are insanely active during October and November, so be sure to use them. If you get stuck, head on over to the Plot Doctoring section. If you're tearing your hair out, visit NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul. And be sure to check out the tips in Reaching 50,000!

3. Don't be afraid to suck

First drafts often suck, but NaNoWriMo first drafts have the potential to suck a lot more, because of the insane time constraints. So give yourself permission to suck. You can fix it in December.

4. Turn OFF your internal editor

This can be one of the hardest things to do, but it's vital. Turn off your internal editor. In fact, don't just turn it off, banish it to the basement for the duration of November. Tell it you'll give it lots to do in December and January as a trade-off.

5. Use Write or Die

Write or Die is probably the most useful tool you can use during the month of November. Set yourself a time limit (tight, but not insanely tight). Then write. Your computer will start giving you nasty looks if you stop typing, and if you set it to kamikaze mode, it will even delete your words if you don't reach your goal. This was my secret weapon last year, and I'm eternally grateful to it. Without Write or Die, I can almost guarantee I would not have made my word count goals. In fact, I think this year I'll purchase the desktop version (it's only $10) to show my appreciation.

6. Play dirty

There are a few times in life when playing dirty should be applauded. NaNoWriMo is one of those times. Forget about conjunctions. In fact, do a search for apostrophes in your document and eliminate contractions (instead of "don't" it should be "do not", etc.). Make yourself a list of the contractions you've replaced, so that way you can easily go back and re-contractionate (yep, totally just made that word up) them when you're done. Other ways of playing dirty include having your characters tell completely mundane stories just to eat up word count, adding tons of adverbs you can eliminate later, quoting poems, song lyrics or other written works, and creating characters who are naturally verbose. If you're worried about creating a draft that's going to be a huge pain to edit because of all this crap, just set off anything you think you'll want to eliminate at a later date in [brackets].

The goal here is to keep up your momentum. Dirty tricks like this can work wonders to keep your morale high and keep you on track. That's the important thing to do here. You need to stay motivated to finish, and if you see yourself falling behind, you're going to get discouraged. It's better to complete your 50,000 words and win and feel motivated even though in actuality you only have 30,000 usable words than to get discouraged at 25,000 words and give up entirely. If nothing else, you'll have a novella in the end.

7. Write often

I work more than full time. I'm often putting in well over 40 hours a week, and my "day job" is writing. That means I can be left with little creativity at the end of the day. So rather than leaving all of my writing to the end of the day, I write in bits and pieces throughout the day. I'll head on over to Write or Die whenever I need a break, set myself a word count goal of 400-500 words, and a 10-15 minute time limit, and write. If I do that just 3-4 times a day, I've met my word count goal. Other days, if my schedule was a bit more relaxed, I'd spend an hour writing first thing in the morning, before starting any of my other work. By switching back and forth between those two schedules, I was able to reach my goal without too much struggle.

8. Write more when you can

If you're in the U.S., there's one major holiday during the month of November: Thanksgiving. There are also a number of weekends. And sometimes, life pops up and requires you to take a day off. NaNoWriMo requires you to write an average of 1,667 words per day, every day, for 30 days. It can seem like a huge hurdle if you miss a day, as it means you have to write even more every day after that. So instead, I try to write more from day one. I aim for 2,000 words a day, and on that schedule I would reach the goal by the 25th of November, giving me 5 days off. Some days, I might even hit 3-4k words. The first year I did NaNo, I reached the 50k goal by about the 15th of November, and had 95k words in 33 days. Now that I'm working more than full time, though, that kind of pace is less realistic for me.

So, do you have any other tips for surviving NaNoWriMo? Questions I can answer? Please feel free to comment!

Transparency in Indie Publishing, Month 8

So this is a few days late because I've been dealing with some family stuff for the past 10 days or so (father in law ended up in the hospital and had to have emergency surgery last week, but he's coming home today). I've also decided that I'm only going to do these posts through the 12-month mark, though I may do occasional sales updates after that. This is partially because I see next year being very, very busy for me, and also because I'm trying to be less obsessed with my sales numbers.

But anyway, sales are down slightly from last month (they would have been almost equal if there had been 31 days in the month rather than 30). Here's the breakdown:

Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris

Amazon US: 69 (last month was 80)
Amazon UK: 4 (last month was 6)
Barnes & Noble: 16 (last month was 10)
Smashwords: 1 (last month was 0)
TOTAL: 90 (last month was 96)

The Great Healion Race

Amazon US: 49 (last month was 49)
Amazon UK: 4 (last month was 4)
Barnes & Noble: 4 (last month was 5)
Smashwords: 1 (last month was 0)
TOTAL: 58 (last month was 58)

Total sales for the month equalled 148, compared to last month's 154. So it's a small drop, but if there had been an additional day in the month, sales would likely have hit 153, almost exactly on par with the last month. As it stands, it's less than a 4% drop. I'm hoping that the new Kindle pricing and models will increase sales through the rest of this year, as more people start reading ebooks. I'm also happy with the increase in my Barnes & Noble sales, which were up 33% last month.

I'm not discouraged, as a 4% drop isn't significant enough to make me worry. If it continues to drop, then I'll start worrying…