Renée Harrell's Blog, page 18

While at the family reunion, we...

...were asked, "How goes the novel?" The novel being, The Atheist's Daughter, and the 'How goes' being, is it selling many copies? Turned out, the lovely relative making the inquiry had considered buying a copy but bailed. At $10.99 + shipping, the paperback was too expensive.
 
The lovely view on the left is a couple of miles from our house and, viewing the landscape up close, you'd swear you were on some other planet. Which is cool.
 
We can relate. Tough times, tight budget. We could relate even more if she hadn't just told us about the new pair of $200 sandals dangling on her tootsies. But books iz books, shoes iz shoes, we're talking apples to oranges. So we suggested she might spring for the $2.99 electronic edition, ready for download on her Kindle. She wasn't sure she wanted to go a full $2.99 -- she doesn't use her Kindle all that much -- but she was definitely thinking about getting the free sample....
 
We know T.A.D. isn't our cousin's kind of thing and we're absolutely okay with it. (She's a Camp Jacob kind of girl, anyway, and our story is sadly lacking in overt romance.) But the Kindle is a joyful tool and we want to see her make more use of it. So, in case it's a money thing, we've got a couple of recommendations.
 
If you don't know about it, Amazon offers a Kindle Daily Deal. Today's deal carves $8.00 off the sticker price of the adventure novel, Eyewall, providing a 99-cent Today!Only! bargain for the "Buzz" Bernard hit. You know it must be good. People are reading it and no one's asking why it's called 'Eyewall'.  If you'd like to go a different route, there's eReader IQ, and it is a truly marvelous service, tracking the prices of all ebooks as they decrease in cost. Even more fun? They list the FREE ebooks, too, and there's a stack of 'em every day (right here). There's also Pixel of Ink, providing a link to "free & bargain ebooks" -- and there ain't nothin' wrong with that...except that T.A.D. won't be available at any of those sites.
 
How to authors make money off of free ebooks? Volume.
 
Watching: Psych. In preparation for Season 6, which starts tomorrow. As if you didn't know.
 
Drinking: 2008 Nipozzano Riserva Chianti Rufina, which the swells drink when they're having barbecued meat...which is probably, y'know, never. It's mighty tasty even if you're not having bbq.
 
Reading: New World Fairy Tales -- for the second time. We don't read things for the second time, not unless the author's name is 'Lovecraft' or 'Leonard'. But this book is just so much fun....

Many of this country's greatest writers...

…came from Louisiana. We think you'll agree because, like us, you don't know where most of this country's greatest writers were actually born.  And it's in Louisiana that we currently find Blake M. Petit, author of Other People's Heroes and The Beginner.

Even though he's an award-winning writer, we like Blake M.  (He refuses to tell us what the 'M' stands for, so we'll spend the rest of our lives wondering about it.) To begin with, boxful of awards or not, he's still a struggling writer. Secondly, he dumped his publisher to go the indie route.  Finally, despite the middle initial weirdness, he's a friendly, funny guy. (Montgomery. We're almost positive the middle initial stands for Montgomery.)

Most of us are struggling writers and, like us, Blake has a day job. It's not a particularly exciting day job – he doesn't train elephants or fly jet fighters…or, for that matter, train circus elephants to fly jet fighters – so we won't discuss it here. Instead, we'll get to the good stuff: After you left your publisher, Blake Moomba Petitt, why'd you go self-pub?

"I've wanted to be a writer since I was in fifth grade," he tells us. "Now, for the first time, I feel like I've actually got control over my success. No luck of the draw, no hoping I catch an agent's attention while she's in a good mood, no getting accepted by a publisher who quits publishing before my work sees the light of day." (Which, by the way, happened TWICE.)  "Besides, I still believed in my books and I kept getting requests from people – friends, mostly, I'm not claiming I got e-mails from strangers." We e-mailed. We're strangers. He answered. And, now, he's learned a valuable lesson. "Once eBooks hit the market, I wanted to make my books available for anyone who wanted them so I could move on to other things. The response to my first book, OPH, surprised me quite a bit."

He's too modest to share what he means so we'll jump in: Blake MingtheMerciless Petit collected a bushel of glowing reviews – go to Amazon and you'll see that people love his book or they really love his book – and he sold a bunch of copies. He's still selling bunches of copies. (Which encouraged him to put The Beginner out, e-formatted and with a flashy new cover.  It arrived in the e-world just days ago, on sale here, and available for your glowing review. Get to it!) This didn't surprise us…some people seem to prefer to read well-reviewed books instead of our stuff…but you know what did surprise us? Blake put OPH out as an audiobook. A free audiobook. How exactly does that work?

"Podiobooks.com reaches a huge audience of potential readers. Even if only a fraction of their listeners decide to buy the book after listening to it, those are sales that wouldn't have happened without the audio version being out there."

No, we meant –

"You mean 'how' did I do it? I've hosted a comic book/pop culture podcast for nearly five years, and I thought transferring that skill set to an audiobook would be a snap. At this point, clearly, I'm an idiot. Producing a viable audiobook is so much more difficult than doing a chat podcast that I thought I'd never get it done. Not only do you have all of the usual recording issues, you also have to be able to differentiate the characters from one another. The real torture, though, is editing. I learned that I HATE listening to myself over and over again, trying to cut out coughs and 'ums' and repeated lines and still screwing up. It's the hardest recording work I've ever done."

We interrupted again. What we meant was -- free? The audio version is FREE?  Isn't he concerned about losing paying customers to an absolutely-no-charge version of his story?

In response, Blake laughs maniacally. Not really but it's our blog and we wish he had so we're leaving this non-action in place. "Not at all," he tells us. "I'm a voracious podcast listener, and I saw just how effective certain podcast novelists were at building an audience. When Podiobooks.com released the audio version of the book, the sales of OPH actually increased. It wasn't just that I sold a few more copies, it was that I was selling more per week than I had previously and that rate continues to grow."

Now, we know what you're thinking: Where, oh where, is your free audiobook version of Aly's Luck or The Atheist's Daughter? If you're seriously wondering about this, we'd like you to reread Blake's earlier conversation, where he casually dropped the words, 'difficult' and 'hate' and 'torture' before you ask this question again.

But if you'd like to contact Proxima Books and ask them why they haven't started on the project, we're behind you all the way.

If you have a little pocket change...

...you might want to swing by Amazon and pick up an electronic copy of Aly's Luck. It is, for the moment, a Dollar Store bargain. In the UK, it's available for well under a pound. Yep, to celebrate the launch of Proxima Books, the Salt Publications bigwigs decided the science fiction fan base deserved a deal...and, it turns out, we're the deal.
 
If the novel were in paperback (check back in 2012), you'd find our beauty weighing in at 400 pages. Or, at present prices, about a quarter-cent a page.
 
If you're not sure about the purchase, then you might wander over to Brighton tomorrow and hit the Fantasycon about 10:00 AM. Because we've arranged for the World's Greatest Orator, Steve Haynes, to give a reading from our novel. He promises to give each character its own distinct voice while making our world come to life.
 
Plus: sound effects. Also: full orchestra.
 
It's going to be a sight to see and a memory to last a lifetime.

Another day, another cover...

...and how many writing teams can say such a thing? This, friends, is the second almost-cover for our upcoming novel, Aly's Luck. If you take a look at the last Blog-O-Rama post, you'll see some striking differences between the first almost-cover and this one.
 
The pink-haired cover model has lost her tattoo (but still has her bustier, in keeping with the '50s sci fi/adventure theme), the title lettering has been enlarged and given a construction-site feel, and there's a raggedy city back drop, all in gray and intriguingly etched over with various symbols.
 
Can we tell you something? We love the city back drop, all etched over and painted in gray. The only place it falls down a little? There's nothing like it in our story.
 
The brain trust at Proxima Books realized this, too. They tossed this second cover on the scrap heap, telling their graphics team to start over. To heck with the expense, seems to be their attitude, and we're with 'em, as long as we're not the ones expensing it. A third and final image was created and, on October 1st, our novel goes live and we'll show you it's actual cover. So wander on back, will you?
 
'Expensing' is, too, a real word, 'cause us writers know some real words regular people don't get to see. It's in our special Writers Dictionary and you can't buy one, so don't even try. Seriously, there's no reason to get all fongoogly about it.