John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 28

Why I Write Fantasy Literature Part 3: Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons has not, to my knowledge, ever been cool. It has occasionally been pop culturally relevant, but cool? Not in my experience.

So it is with some degree of hesitation that a guy who has had a minor (Yes, minor!) obsession with being cool since high school would admit to D&D influencing him to become a fantasy author.

(Cool, of course, is a matter of opinion and is definitely in the eye of the beholder. [That's an intentional D&D pun for those of you who have played.] My brother and daughter would laugh uproariously at the suggestion that Cool and I ever knew each other well enough to even say hi as we passed each other in the hall. But I digress.)

Imagining a typical game of D&D conjures images of sweaty men in ill-fitting t-shirts, eating junk food and making bad Monty Python references, while pretending to be heroes who slay dragons and other monsters.

This was not me. Except maybe for the junk food bit.

It also tends to invoke the worst kinds of male power fantasies: barbaric warriors with giant, uh, swords, who only meet women wearing chainmail bikinis that barely cover their anatomically impossible curves.

This also was not me. (Although I did read a lot of Robert E. Howard in high school.)

But despite my being a non-sterotypical D&D player, the game did have a profound impact on my development as a writer.

I played most of my D&D in high school. I would play here and there in college and graduate school, and, for awhile, I was managing publication of Avalanche Press’s historically accurate D&D supplements. But it was in high school where Dungeons & Dragons laid the foundation for my becoming a fantasy author.

The game was a new gateway into magical realms. Just as George Lucas, C.S. Lewis, and Lloyd Alexander had shown me faraway lands where magic and monsters really existed, D&D granted me access to them. Like many of today’s young Harry Potter fans, I imagined myself as a wizard, capable of casting spells that changed the universe. D&D made it possible to actually do it.

I should pause to note here that I never had a Mazes and Monsters moment, where I had a break from reality. Like virtually all players of role-playing games, I understood it was exactly that — a game. The magic in the game wasn’t real.

But the magic of playing was. For the first time, I wasn’t just reading about these fantastic heroes; I was being one. I wasn’t just absorbing the story; I was making it unfold myself — I was creating it.

I can’t understate the allure being the person who created the stories. As a teenager, I didn’t know anything about publishing  or even writing a novel. While the thought ran across my brain more than once and I even hand-wrote a D&D-inspired novel in a notebook, I had no idea about how one actually becomes an author. But playing Dungeons & Dragons put that power in my hands in a very real way for the first time. I made decisions for the character. I chose what spell to cast in which situation. I built the reputation of one of the greatest sorcerers in the world.

It’s no surprise I was immediately attracted to the role of dungeonmaster. This special player is the one who creates the lost tombs for the characters to explore. He or she is the one who fills it with monsters and treasures and is the arbiter of the rules, deciding what happens when there is a conflict. The DM describes the scene and controls the bad guys. In short, the dungeonmaster is the writer who sets the stage for the adventure.

Through D&D, I was creating my own fantasy adventure stories. I was engaged with heroic fiction in a whole new way, and that intimate relationship to the tales was fundamental in making me want to become an author.

Moreover, Dungeons & Dragons was my entroit into mythology. The Monster Manual — the book that had game stats and descriptions for the foes the players would face — was filled with virtually every legendary creature in Western tradition and some from Eastern ones. I encountered elves and dwarves through D&D before I ever read The Hobbit or studied Norse mythology. I met the Sphinx and the Ki-Rin in the game before I ever read about them in real life. I did battle with Medusa before I watched Harry Hamlin do so in Clash of the Titans.

Understanding these classic myths became central to the stories I would later tell as an author. They would shape my perception of Western culture. But I found them first in the pages of Dungeons & Dragons.

In many ways, the game was ridiculous. Forgotten tombs populated by diverse monsters who never left the rooms in which they guarded treasures they had no use for were the mainstay of our adventures. My assemblage of them demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of ecosystems and logic.

But that’s not what the game was about to me. As unsophisticated as our adventures were, they had a profound effect on my young mind — they made me want to create fantasy stories of my own. They enabled me to work my own particular brand of magic. For three to four hours every other Friday night, I was a wizard capable of conjuring fire and affecting the course of nations. I was shaping fantastic stories.

That idea stayed with me. It clung to me as I studied literature in college. It inspired me to spend eight years designing, writing, and publishing similar games in my 20′s and 30′s. It gave me the courage to self-publish fantasy books when e-publishing exploded.

The fantasy adventures I created playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school were embarrassingly bad. They are every bit as uncool as the stereotypical image of the teenage (or even adult) gamer.

But just like reading Lewis and Alexander, playing D&D set me on the path to becoming a fantasy author. It gave that creative impetus in my mind a good, hard shove. It made me want to write fantasy literature.

Next week, I’ll examine one of the most critical components of fantasy literature — escapism — and why it appeals to me.

Merging Romance and Action

An action-adventure story has a lot of important elements you have to put in — fights, chases, cliffhangers, megalomaniacal villains, etc.

But love?

Sure, there’s usually a girl (or, in some of the more modern action-adventure stories, a guy) to rescue/fall for/team up with. But a love story is the stuff of romance novels and chick lit, isn’t it? You don’t find that sort of thing in action tales.

I tried to think about some of the biggest adventure stories in recent Western culture/literature for examples of love in the action genre. In Die Hard, John McClane’s estranged wife Holly is in Nakatomi Tower while he battles the terrorists, and he’s clearly in love with her.

But Holly Ginero is really just a variation on the damsel in distress. Die Hard isn’t a love story.

In the Star Wars trilogy, Princess Leia is much more than a beautiful woman who needs to be rescued. Once she’s out of her cell, she’s in charge. But none of those films is a love story in any meaningful way. Princess Leia is a supporting character to the epic of Luke Skywalker’s maturation into a redeemer.

In the first movie-and-a-half, she is Luke’s love interest. In the second movie-and-a-half, she becomes Han Solo’s. By the time she turns to Han, Luke is already emotionally gone. He’s on the path to becoming a Jedi, and the love triangle, such as it is, is conveniently broken by the retroactive revelation that Leia is Luke’s sister, so it wouldn’t work out anyway.

The only modern action-adventure story I could think of that really has love as a central theme was Ladyhawke. The largely forgotten 1985 Richard Donner film starring Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Matthew Broderick tells the story of two cursed lovers. She spends every day as a hawk; he spends every night as a wolf. While one is in animal form, the other is human. They are eternally together but forever apart. The action of the film may be Hauer’s quest for revenge against the bishop that cursed them, but it is the love affair between he and Pfeiffer that drives the story.

So, when I sat down to pen Red Dragon Five, I knew I wanted it to be a love story, but I didn’t have a lot of models to work from. How does one write an action-adventure novel that is also a love story without slipping into the realm of romance fiction but still creating an authentic tale about two people in love?

The funny thing is, despite there not being a lot of fiction to model my story on, I didn’t worry overly much about getting it right. I just wrote. Wolf and May are in love. Like any other two people, that is integral to whom they are. It also doesn’t mean they don’t have jobs with concerns independent of their relationship. Wolf is an Urlish Shadow. May is Captain of the Elite Guard. During the day they do what their governments need. At night, they come together and share their lives. I just wrote them that way.

It helped a bit for finding the balance that the lovers are apart for much of the novel. Wolf is off behind enemy lines in Jifan searching for the missing Red Dragon. May is home in Alfar dealing with a disintegrating political situation. The action aspect of the novel was easy to carry off, since the two main characters have their own separate plots.

But the love story drives everything else. Wolf leaves on a dangerous mission and is afraid for the first time in his life. It’s not going behind enemy lines with no backup that scares him. It’s the possibility he might never see May again. When he disappears and is presumed dead, May abandons her post and frees several prisoners to help her search for him.

And while they’re apart, their free moments are spent thinking of the other. Wolf yearns to be finished with his mission, so he can return to May. May worries about Wolf constantly and wonders what he’s doing.

And in between that there are battles and murders and political machinations and intrigue and suspense and all the things you expect from a good action-adventure story.

But there’s also love.

There is the poignant moment when May, having been told Wolf is presumed dead, visits her father to ask for advice on what to do. There is the realization by Wolf that he has never been in a real relationship before, never been in love before, and he has no idea what he is supposed to do or how to handle it. There is the uncomfortable understanding between the two that they both have dangerous jobs and someone’s career may need to change for them to continue to be together.

Red Dragon Five is a page-turning yarn about the sabotage of a top-secret weapons program. But it’s also a book about two people in love and their struggle to be together. Those two stories, while separate in a way, are not incompatible. They are blended together to weave a very human story . . . even if one of the lovers is an elf.

There may not be a lot of modern precedent for an action-adventure tale that is also a love story, but that wasn’t daunting to me. I wrote Red Dragon Five to be a book I could not only be proud of but that I would like to read. And, as much as I like thrills and spills, I enjoy a good romance too.

Red Dragon Five is both.

Why I Write Fantasy Literature Part 2: Lucas, Lewis, and Alexander’s Influence

There are seminal moments in our lives, when we can feel the world come to a complete stop. When everything comes so clearly into focus that we know this is important. We know things are going to change and we will remember forever.

Like that night when I was 10 years old sitting at the dinner table. My father had just gotten back from a conference. While there, some students had taken him to see Star Wars. He said, with all the enthusiasm a dad has when plotting something fun for his kids, “You guys have gotta see this movie! They’ve got these dudes who fight with laser swords.”

My young mind boggled at the very concept. So did my brother’s.

My mother had previously forbidden us from seeing George Lucas’s masterpiece, because it had monsters in it, and she worried we would get nightmares. But my dad assured her we would be fine, and he took us.

As amazing as my father’s descriptions were, they could not do Star Wars justice. At the time, no one had made a movie anything like it. Nothing looked like it. Nothing sounded like it. I was completely blown away by the epic scope, the visual feast, and the sheer awesomeness of it.

Seeing Star Wars put me on the path to writing fantasy literature. I’d always been into adventure stories, but Star Wars made me love fantasy.

Make no mistake. It’s a fantasy film. A young man leaves home in search of adventure. He goes to the dark tower and rescues the beautiful princess from the evil wizard. Along the way, he self-actualizes.

I rarely admit it, and I certainly didn’t understand it at the time, but I identified with Luke Skywalker. I dreamed of being more than I was. I wanted to go out into the world and have lots of adventures. I wanted to get the girl in the end. (I had no way of knowing Lucas would later change Leia to Luke’s sister, making the kiss before swinging across the chasm on the Death Star gross.)

A year later, I would find this magic again in print. When I was 11, an animated version of C.S. Lewis’s immortal classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, aired on television. When I learned it was based on a book, I wanted to read it. My mother bought me The Chronicles of Narnia and I devoured them.

Lewis’s Christian allegory went by me at the time. I was simply caught up once again by the stories of average young people being swept away to another world and changing the course of history. Of defeating an evil witch.

My reading teacher noticed how caught up in the fantasy angle I was, so she gave me a gift at the end of the school year: Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron. I was as entranced by Alexander’s retelling of Welsh mythology as I had been by Lewis and Lucas, but The Black Cauldron had an element I hadn’t encountered before: horror. The cauldron-born zombie warriors were terrifying. And I loved that. Imperial Stormtroopers were bad soldiers. The White Witch had an army of mythological beasts. But the cauldron-born were horrific. They were dead, and they couldn’t be killed.

As exciting and terrified as that was, though, Alexander used the same common element that had hooked me before. It wasn’t magic or giant battles or larger-than-life characters. All of that appealed to me. But where I connected was with the main character. Taran the assistant pigkeeper was about as lowly a person as there was. He was in love with Princess Eilonwy, and she often laughed at him. As a kid getting bullied and trying to figure out who I was, Taran and Edmund and Luke all spoke to me on a deep, personal level I didn’t comprehend at the time.

I would later come to enjoy other fantasy series and characters, but it was these three protagonists that really hooked me into the genre. Their desire to be more than they were, their humble beginnings, and their eventual triumphs over both themselves and their foes inspired me. Luke becomes a badass Jedi who redeems his father. Taran and Edmund become kings. All this from being humiliated by Uncle Owen, by the White Witch, and by Princess Eilonwy.

Each time I first met one of those epics, the world stopped. Everything came into focus. I knew this was important.

I write fantasy literature because I’m one of the characters. I’m that small boy dreaming of adventure, hoping one day I’ll be the hero. I haven’t mastered The Force or a magic sword, but I’m working on it.

In the meantime, I continue the adventure.

Next week, I’ll look at an important bridge between reading fantasy literature and writing it: Dungeons & Dragons.

Why I Write Fantasy Literature Part 1: Why Fantasy?

We all make choices in life — in our careers, in our families, in our interests, etc. Those choices say a lot about who we are. They offer insight into our thinking, how we were raised, and what’s important to us.

This is especially true of authors. We all choose what kinds of books we will write — fiction vs. non-fiction, genre vs. mainstream. And those choices say a lot about the kinds of writers we want to be, the kinds of writers we are.

I’ve decided to pen a weekly piece on this blog about why I write fantasy literature. I don’t know how many installments there will be. As many as it takes to answer the question, I guess. My purpose is twofold. First, I’m hoping this will be interesting to those who read or are thinking about reading my work. Readers are often interested in how the authors they enjoy think or create their stories, so I’m hopeful there are some people out there who think this might be interesting to read. Perhaps too there are those who write fantasy lit themselves, who will find something useful in these essays.

Second, I want to answer the question for myself. I have long wanted to write a deeply thoughtful literary novel. In fact, I love reading that type of book. Most of my all-time favorite novels, are not genre pieces.

But I just can’t write that sort of thing. No matter how I try, I always come up with stories about magic and monsters. I want to know what’s up with that. I suspect I know, but, like any good writer, I don’t discover my own truths, really, until I write them down. So here’s hoping I come to understand myself as a fantasy writer along the way.

Defining Fantasy

I suppose the first thing to do is to put some sort of definition on the kinds of literature I write. Fantasy can mean a lot of things. I specifically do not write erotica, for example, although sex is often a theme in my work. Still, my work is not about describing or fulfilling sexual fantasies. That’s a very different kind of book.

I also don’t write daydream-y literature. That is, I don’t have characters exploring their imaginations. The realities of the worlds I create are, for lack of a better word, very real. They are not fantastical.

So, I suppose, when I say I am a fantasy author, what I really mean is that I write about magic. I write about magic as if it were real. Whether it’s casting spells or meeting legendary creatures, I create stories that imagine things that don’t exist.

I don’t confine that to “strange, new worlds.” My short story, “Sleeping Beauty,” for example is set in our world. It features an investment banker and a depressed wife and a confused teenager and a young woman in a coma.

But there is also magic. Rex Shipman found a witch, who sold him a magic potion to make his daughter Beth fall into a coma. The only way to wake her is through True Love’s First Kiss.

The story is about overprotective parents going too far to control their children’s lives. It is set in modern America. But the mechanic that drives the story is magical. Beth may be in a coma, but she’s really under a curse. “Sleeping Beauty” is a fantasy.

So why use magic to tell this modern story? There are a couple of easy answers. The first is that by retelling a fairytale, there is a familiarity that enables me to say what I want in a familiar setting. Everyone knows the story of Sleeping Beauty. I rewrote it to have it tell us something new. By choosing a story everyone knows, I made it easier — perhaps even more fun — to read the new ideas.

The second is that the magic of the story doesn’t really matter. It’s just the mechanic that enables me to put Beth in a coma and drive the action to rescue her. She could have been hit by a car too. That would be just as disturbing if her father arranged for that as him poisoning her with a magical elixir. But, in this case, the potion gives him more control over the end results, and the kiss gives the reader a logical reason for the spell to be broken. In terms of literary devices, magic makes the story I wanted to tell possible.

But, the most revealing answer, is that I chose to use magic because I like it. I could have conceived a story with a different mechanic. I could have rewritten Sleeping Beuaty without magic. But I like that fantastic element. I wanted there to be a mystical causality behind Rex’s plan and Beth’s rescue.

And that’s the question I want to explore in this series. Why choose magic? Why do I like it, and what does it say about me as a person and an author?

Next week, I’ll follow the advice of Rodgers and Hammerstein and “start at the beginning — a very good place to start.” I’ll go back to my childhood and my first contacts with fantasy literature — to the stories of George Lucas, Lloyd Alexander, and C.S. Lewis – to see how they shaped me into the writer I would become.

2013: A Look Ahead

Now that 2013 is fully in motion it’s time to look ahead. Any business needs to be constantly thinking about the future, and being an independent author is definitely a business . . . at least for me. So here’s my business plan for 2013.

Publishing:

The heart of any writing business is the publishing of the books themselves. I had a very ambitious schedule last year that I didn’t really make. That was largely due to inexperience. I didn’t understand how much I could realistically get done in one year.

In 2012, I published three books — two short stories and a novel. (Technically, I published three short stories, but one was a loss-leader designed solely to interest people in the Wolf Dasher series. It was never intended to be a part of my catalog.)

I want to hit that three-book threshold again in 2013, but this time I want to publish two novels and a short story. That would amount to an increase in the number of words I write, and it will improve my opportunities for increasing my profitability. Short stories may be faster to turn out, but I don’t feel I can charge more than 99 cents for them, and that impacts the amount of money I can make.

For example, “Sleeping Beauty” emerged as my bestselling book last year. However, I only make 35 cents per copy, so, even when it sells really well, I have to move three copies of it to equal the sale of one copy of Red Dragon Five. Thus, from a financial perspective, it makes more sense to publish novels over short stories.

I still think there are benefits to publishing short stories, but I’d rather work on one a year, mixing it in with two novels.

This year, I plan to release the following books:

Calibot’s Revenge — A fantasy novel concerning a young man, who is estranged from his father, the most powerful magician in the world. First quarter.

“Beauty & the Beast” — A short story that is a modern retelling of the classic fairytale. This formula worked very well for “Sleeping Beauty”, and my goal is to create a collection of re-imagined fairytales. Summer.

Roses are White — The next novel in the Wolf Dasher series. November/December.

Marketing

If you want books to sell, you need to spend some time marketing them to readers. We’re all still trying to navigate the new seas of indie publishing, and that includes cracking the code on what works best with getting the message out.

Last year, I spent money on advertising in a number of different venues. I ran ads on book websites like The Kindle Book Review and Digital Book Today, and I experimented with Facebook advertising. My impression was these efforts did do some good. I believe they helped get my name/books out to a wider audience.

However, the amount of money I spent advertising didn’t even come close to equaling the sales those ads generated. Thus, while I helped expand the reach of my brand, I’m not sure that was the best investment of my resources. I will likely spend some more on advertising this year — there are still some experiments I want to run with Facebook — but I will definitely be choosier about how I invest in this area.

The other most successful marketing ploy I conducted last year was enrolling several of my books in Amazon’s KDP Select program and running some free days. Once again, I’m quite sure that helped raise my profile and sell some books.

I am growing concerned, though, that there a lot of readers who believe they don’t need to buy books anymore. They just have to wait until they are offered for free. Because I’m in this business to make money, I worry that I am undercutting my long-term success by offering free books through Select. That’s not to say I think there is no value in a free giveaway, but I am going to evaluate other ways of doing so. I think, for the time being at least, I’m going to back away from running any more free events.

Amazon and KDP Select

Despite my plans to turn away from Select’s free days, I will continue to keep some of my books enrolled in the program. The reason is twofold. First, my sales at Barnes and Noble are so tiny as to be statistically insignificant. Until BN does something to help me get my books into the hands of Nook users beyond the Pubit! platform, it just doesn’t make sense for me to focus my business efforts there.

I have done better with Smashwords, and they certainly seem interested in helping authors get their work over more than BN. However, my sales at Smashwords, while better than BN, are dwarfed by those at Amazon. Thus, I need to put my focus where the money is.

The second reason is the Amazon Prime program. Books enrolled in KDP Select are eligible to be borrowed. To date, I’ve only had two borrows, but I want to remain eligible for this benefit, especially since Amazon is adding an additional $1.5M to the pool for December through February. Thus, for the time being, I plan to continue to take advantage of KDP Select for some of my books.

Blogging

Last year, I redesigned my website and refocused this blog to be dedicated solely to my writing career. I eliminated other things I was blogging about (although you can still read my thoughts on the Cincinnati Bengals over on my other blog, The Who Dey Herald).

This year, I plan to tune “Pleading the Phyth” even more. I’ve spent a lot of time blogging about the business side of writing, and that’s interesting to other indie authors. I’ll probably still write some about that.

But it doesn’t do a lot to draw the people I really want to be cruising my website: readers. I want to interest potential and existing readers in my books, and the blog is a means of doing so. Thus, this year, I’ll be writing more about my writing and charaters than about running my business.

That’s what I’ve got planned at the beginning of the year. We’ll see how the plan evolves as I get into it. In the meantime, thanks for reading! I hope both “Pleading the Phyth” and one of my books keeps you entertained throughout the year.

My 2012 Year in Review

Ah, the end of another year. It’s that time of year when we all think about what has gone before and hope it looks good. So, before popping the cork on another bottle of champagne, I’ll review 2012 from one writer’s perspective.

Overall, the year gets a mixed review from me. On the positive side, I grew my business. At this time last year, I was a completely unheard-of newbie with a single novel available for download. Now, I’m a largely unheard-of veteran with two novels and two short stories available. The books are available in print and electronic form, although I do a lot more electronic sales than print.

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“Sleeping Beauty” outsold all my other books in 2012

“Sleeping Beauty” — my creepy retelling of the classic fairytale — has emerged as my bestselling product. It is consistently moving double-digit copies every month, and that is both gratifying and encouraging.

However, there are a number of disappointments wrapped up in that fact too. The first is that “Sleeping Beauty” is an 8000-word short story, so I really don’t feel I can charge more than 99 cents for it, which minimizes its profitability. Additionally, I was sort of hoping my novels would sell better than they have. They are the initial entries in a series, and there doesn’t seem to be as much interest in those, making me think I should have spent my time writing more things like “Sleeping Beauty.”

I experimented some with advertising this past year, and I believe it did raise my profile to the point where I sold more books. However, I have, to date, spent more in ad fees than I have reaped in sales. So, while that will certainly do me a favor come tax time, it still represents a net loss to the business.

But I’m really not complaining. The last three months have seen a significant improvement in sales. They have not raised me to a sustainable level yet, but I do feel as though I am building a foundation. I plan to release another novel in the first quarter of 2013, and my understanding is authors with a larger catalog have better sales. Certainly, my own sales have improved since I’ve expanded my offerings.

On a more ephemeral level, I published two short stories and a novel in 2012. I penned the first draft of another book. It’s been a busy and productive year. I’m very much looking forward to 2013.

To all my indie author friends, here’s to a prosperous new year. I hope your sales match your expectations, and you find lots of new readers. To my readers, thank you for your purchases, and may you find many excellent reads in 2013 . . . and hopefully some of them will be mine!

A New Plan for Twitter

Sometimes, you know you’re doing something wrong, but you don’t know how to fix it.

Such was the case with my use of Twitter. I knew I wasn’t really using it correctly, but I didn’t really know what to do about it.

They tell you not to just tweet ads for your products, because people aren’t interested in you then. And I totally get that. It makes perfect sense to me.

But what else do you tweet about it?

I’ve never really gotten that part of it. I Facebook a lot. I put out statuses designed to be funny or clever and to let my friends know what’s going on in my life. But I have very few friends following me on Twitter, so should I be tweeting about that stuff?

I’ve tried. I try to remember to tweet about cute, little things in my life that others may be amused by.

But it’s hard. For whatever reason, my brain just isn’t wired to think to do that. There are those that do, and good on them. But I just have a hard time remembering to share my life in 140-character spurts. Maybe it’s my age, but I just don’t tweet that way.

So maybe I should just give up on Twitter. I’ve been spamming my followers for over a year with my book tweets, and it doesn’t seem to be creating any sales. I enjoy live-tweeting during Bengals games, but does anyone really enjoy reading that? Maybe I should just leave off it.

But everything I read indicates I MUST be on Twitter. It’s critical to helping sell books and getting my brand over.

So what then?

Well, it occurs to me that when I use Twitter for myself, it’s because I’ve followed a link to useful information someone else posted. So if I use Twitter that way, maybe others do too.

Here’s my Twitter plan for the new year:

Spend part of my day researching the internet for articles and other interesting materials I think are worth sharing. I’m not going to make sure I forward something every day. But if I find something useful, I’m going to share it via Twitter.
Reinstitute my IAN Author of the Day tweets wherein I pick out someone else to feature.
Reduce the number of people I’m following. My Twitter stream is so packed with stuff, I can’t read it all, or even a portion of it. I just can’t keep up. I’m going to have to cut it back, so I can actually keep up with Twitter and find things to retweet. It’s nothing personal to the people I unfollow. It’s just that I’m going to need to be choosy about what I’m getting, so I can actually read it.
Reduce the number of ads I send. Tweetdeck is a useful tool, but I need to schedule more than links to my books. Thus, maybe one ad a day and tweets when I update my blogs.

Hopefully, this will make me a better tweep. I am interested in being a good citizen — I want to help other people sell their books and learn about stuff that may help them. I also want Twitter to help me sell some books.

Hopefully, I can become a resource to others. Not only will that do some good, it may help others become a resource to me too.

Are Disappointing Holiday Sales and KDP Select Connected?

Oh, Santa may have brought you some stars for your shoes,

But Santa only brought me the blues –

Those brightly packaged, tinsel-covered Christmas Blues.

–David Holt and Sammy Cahn, “The Christmas Blues”

Santa didn’t actually bring me the blues. It’s been a generally nice holiday season — national tragedies notwithstanding.

But he also didn’t bring me stars for my shoes. What Santa really brought me was a conundrum. With it being the holidays I was hoping for stronger sales than what I’ve been getting. I could get upset about that, but I’m choosing instead to wonder what’s happening, why, and if there’s anything I can do to change it.

A little background first. October was a good month. In fact, it was a record month for sales. November was even better. In terms of overall numbers, I looked to be building some momentum. They were nowhere near making this a sustainable operation yet, and even a struggling midlister would probably laugh. But when you’re going from nothing a year ago and then only a couple sales a month, semi-regular purchases build some hope that you’re starting to put a foundation on your business.

Moreover, I released a new novel in November, and it sold right out of the gate. It was easily the best launch of any of my four books to date. So I really started thinking I was getting somewhere, no matter how slowly, and I figured the holiday shopping season would help push me further forward.

But after strong sales in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, everything came to an abrupt halt on Turkey Day. I didn’t really expect anything on the holiday, but Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Sunday, and Cyber Monday all went by without me moving a single copy of anything. Then on Tuesday, I started selling again.

But much more slowly. I put together a five-day streak of sales and then went dark for almost a week. It’s been hard to make a sale since then.

On the other hand, I’ve run two very successful free events through KDP Select. I offered “Sleeping Beauty” free the Monday after ABC’s Once Upon A Time had its mid-season finale and again a week before Christmas as a holiday promotion. The first event moved an impressive 183 copies. Yesterday’s was even better with 239. Those are just U.S. numbers. It #21 on the World Literature > Mythology list and #23 on the Contemporary Fantasy one.

And “Sleeping Beauty” remains my bestselling book overall. But at the moment it’s only sold four copies this month. Worse, after a strong two-day debut, Red Dragon Five didn’t sell anything until yesterday. I was briefly excited to see a sale of a novel during the free event of a different book, but it was returned almost immediately. Not sure if someone bought it by accident, but it was pretty disappointing to be teased like that.

So what’s going on? Why do my sales have the Christmas Blues?

Is it the economy? Retailers have reported disappointing holiday sales this year as consumers worry about us going over the fiscal cliff.

Is it the material? Books, especially eBooks, make great post-Christmas gifts. You get an Amazon gift card as a stocking stuffer or you get a Kindle Fire HD, and then you go shopping for books. Maybe sales will rocket up on the 26th.

Or is it KDP Select? There are numerous websites dedicated to informing readers about free books for their Kindles. I used several of them for the last two promotions for “Sleeping Beauty” and had very successful giveaways.

But does this mean consumers have decided they don’t need to pay for eBooks? Do they figure they can just wait for books to be free?

The idea behind the free giveaway is to give some readers the material for free, so word of mouth will spread, and, assuming the book is good, they’ll write a review that will help it sell. I’ve now run four free events for “Sleeping Beauty.” I’ve given away 1072 copies in the U.S. alone.

But my results are pretty mixed. I have yet to earn a single review after a free event. Nearly 1100 people have downloaded the book, and none of them has taken the time to write a review. That’s a pretty poor return on investment.

On the other hand, “Sleeping Beauty” is my bestselling book, hands down. It started selling in measureable numbers after its first free event. That also helped ignite new sales for State of Grace. I believe the free events have raised my visibility and consequently raised my sales numbers.

But not to a sustainable level. Not even approaching a sustainable level.

So what do I do? Should I continue as I have been? I am building things (at least I was before Christmas season), so maybe I just need to think, “slow and steady wins the race.” Or maybe I need to try something new, because I’m still not successful enough to complain about my taxes.

I’ve got a lot of thinking to do over the next few weeks. I have one more free event scheduled this year. Then I’m going to have to decide if I think giving books away en masse is bad for business or not.

I’m pretty sure KDP Select free events are impacting my business. The question is whether it’s positive or negative.

Give by Borrowing: Amazon’s Holiday Bonus to Authors

Gifts are an important part of the holiday season. You can debate whether that’s a good thing or not, but it certainly is true.

Well, the nice folks at Amazon have decided to get in the spirit a bit. If you haven’t heard, Amazon has announced a bonus of $1.5M for its KDP Select program for December, January, and February.

What does that mean? Books enrolled in KDP Select are eligible to be borrowed by members of Amazon’s Prime program. For a fee, you can sign up to be in Prime, which allows you to “borrow” a book enrolled in Select to your Kindle for a month. It’s sort of like an electronic lending library you pay to be a member of.

Each month, Amazon sets aside a pool of funds to pay for borrows. That number is currently $700,000. Every time a book is borrowed, Amazon pays that author a percentage of the pool. The number is determined by the total number of borrows divided into the pool number. Amazon hasn’t released figures for November yet, but in October they paid authors $2.36 per borrow.

The $1.5M figure is on top of the $700,000 pool. I am not clear if that is $1.5M per month or for the total of three months. Regardless, it adds to the size of the pool available, which means it increases the per-borrow payoff.

What’s nice is that this bonus isn’t just for December. That covers the holiday shopping period, but books usually sell pretty well in the first quarter. Why? People get gift certificates to book stores for Christmas. So Amazon is going to be paying bonus money during a pretty strong three-month period.

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“Sleeping Beauty” is one of my three books you can borrow through Amazon Prime.

I have three books enrolled in KDP Select — the two Wolf Dasher novels, State of Grace and Red Dragon Five, and “Sleeping Beauty.” Last month, I got my first two borrows — one each for SB and RD5. In the case of “Sleeping Beauty” that was particularly gratifying, because, since it sells for 99 cents, my royalty for a sale is 35 cents. So getting a borrow on it was much better than a sale — $2.36 is more than the book retails for, let alone my royalty.

Naturally, I’m excited about the bonus money Amazon is going to be paying out, as, I’m sure, are all the other authors with books enrolled in KDP Select. So here’s my Christmas pitch. If you’re enrolled in Amazon Prime, please make sure you make borrows in the next three months. Of course, I’d like to suggest borrow one of my books (and, hey, I’ve got three eligible books, and you’ve got three months, so . . .), but regardless, this is a real opportunity to help out the authors you like to read. We indie authors especially can use your assistance.

So, follow the links below to borrow one of my books for the holidays, or have a look at those available from your other favorite authors. This holiday season, you can give a gift by borrowing instead of buying.

State of Grace

Red Dragon Five

“Sleeping Beauty”

Giving eBooks as Presents is Simple and Thoughtful

Getting a new book for Christmas is among my favorite holiday treats. After all the gifts have been opened, and the turkey’s in the oven, and all the relatives have been called and booty has been compared, there is nothing quite like lying back on the couch and cracking open that brand new read. If there is snow falling outside that can be seen through the window and a fire is roaring in the fireplace, it’s that much better.

Too bad you can’t really give books in the Brave New World of eBooks, right? You can’t very well wrap up electrons and put them under the tree, right?

Wrong.

Giving an eBook as a Christmas (or anytime) gift is not only possible, it’s ridiculously easy. It can be done with just a few clicks on Amazon.com.

RED DRAGON FIVE makes a perfect gift for the reader on your shopping list.

Let’s say, for example, you wanted to give my new book, Red Dragon Five, to the action-adventure reader on your list. First, you’d go to RD5′s Amazon page (click the link to follow along). Note that, on the right side of the page, under the “Buy for $3.99″ button is another button that reads, “Give as a Gift.”

If you click that, it’ll take you to a new purchase page with several options. You have a choice between providing the email address of the recipient or your own. By putting the recipient’s address in, he or she will receive an email saying, “Guess what? A nice person bought you a book for your Kindle! Click here to download it.” Or something along those lines.

You’re able to add a custom message yourself. So you could write, “I know you love James Bond-style thrillers and fantasy literature, and this book is awesome, so I know you’ll love it! Merry Christmas!”

You might be thinking, “Yeah, but then my special person will get my gift before Christmas.” Amazon has thought of this little detail. You can choose what date the email is sent. Just click on the little calendar icon and then on the date you want — like, say, December 25, 2012. If you’re afraid the person won’t look at email on Christmas, send a text or mention in your booty-comparing phone call he or she should check email for one more present.

If you still prefer to give a physical gift, choose to send the email to yourself. Then you can print it out on pretty paper, wrap it up, and put it under the tree.

E-Readers have been popular gifts the last two Christmases. In 2010, Amazon’s Kindle was extremely successful, and last year the new Kindle Fire made an excellent find under the old Tannenbaum. With the Kindle Fire HD out this year, giving an e-reader is once again a nice thought if you can afford it.

But don’t forget that, despite its ability to play games and surf the internet, the Kindle’s basic purpose is to enable eBook reading. So when you give that gift (or know someone who is getting one), why not load it up with a few books? In particular, indie authors tend to charge less than the big publishing houses, so you can get more books for the same amount of money. Red Dragon Five is my most expensive novel, and it’s a mere $3.99.

Finally, as good as it is to give, it is also nice to receive. Take a look at RD5′s page again and notice that below the “Give as a Gift” button is an “Add to Wish List” button. Click on that to put the book on your wish list that you can send to friends and family, so they’ll know what you would like to see on your Kindle this holiday season.

Books may be moving from print to electronic media, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make perfect Christmas gifts anymore. With just a few clicks, you can make sure your loved ones are curling up with their Kindles (new or not-so-new) by the fire on Christmas afternoon with a new read.