Simon Royle's Blog, page 8
August 31, 2012
August 29, 2012
Bangkok Burn Going To Print
August 28, 2012
Fifty Thousand Downloads and thanks
August 19, 2012
A Song from the past…
This was like an anthem in Patpong in the late eighties. For the nostalgic among you, here’s a full playlist of ZZ Top.
June 25, 2012
Selling Advertising Space in my eBooks
Got an idea I want to run by you... Yeah you, reading this - do you see anyone else around here? Okay, ready? Good.There's been a lot of talk going around about "free" being detrimental to authors and books in general by denigrating their value. I think the idea is, that by giving a book away you are saying it has no value. If I'm wrong on that feel free to correct me - the comment section is somewhere around here.
I'm not convinced, because of what I call, "DCM" TM Digital Critical Mass; and because I make more money now selling my books than I ever have. 'Course I haven't been selling books for very long - so what do I know. What I know, is that since being in KDP Select, through giving away free books; more people, download and pay for, or borrow my books - every month. That's a fact.
Over the different times I've "gone free", I've given away well over 30,000 books (that's peanuts btw, compare to some). During that time my income from books (and the taxes that I am putting into the American economy - thanks very much) has increased month on month by thirty-percent, compound.
No doubt, most of those 30,000 people have not read my books yet, and a large percentage, perhaps never will. I'm fine with that. The reason I am fine with that? Those who have read my books.
What is much, much more gratifying than the money, is the increase in email sent to me, and fans on the facebook page. That increase is even higher than the increase in income.
It is this increase which is in alignment with my current goals as a writer, and that makes Select an option that I'm going to continue to use for the foreseeable future. All of my books are sold DRM free (stupid concept anyway) so that users can read them on multiple, and different devices. There are, to my knowledge, no paper versions of my books, and they are only available from Amazon - for now. As the copyright owner I can change that decision within any 90 day period. Should that or something else not to my liking change; then so will my alignment to the program.
In the meantime KDP Select is still serving my current goals as a writer. These are:
Have lots of readersMake money by writing stories and selling them
I know, lofty goals, aren't they?
However, and thanks for bearing with me through all that background preamble, here's the thing I wanted to get your opinion on - you see Select's T&C's say nothing about advertising in the ebooks.... so how would you feel about that?
Because, I have to tell you, I feel fine about it.
Here's what I'm thinking...
In Bangkok Burn, Chance uses a Maserati, Glocks, Bally shoes, Mercury Engines, and a whole host of other "Brand Name" items - so, for some clickable links (you don't have to click on the link) and for some embedded images (you can always press 'Click' to the next page real fast); I could easily continue to write for "free" forever. So if any of you, know any advertising guys feel free to drop the dime and put them in know.
Indicative Pricing List (Per Annum rates)*
Maserati Quattroporte - (free advertising because they're cool; but if you could spot me one for the upcoming trip I'd really appreciate that - thanks, yes, the Quattroporte I'll be bringing the family.)Glock USD500,000 (come on guys, you sell guns, 500k is a drop in bucket - links to your main gun sales page with (optional +250K per) link to Darknet pages as well.Marlboro (I'm not sure what laws we'll be breaking here so we need full indemnity and because this is so politically incorrect USD2,500,000)Bally (USD100,000)Panadol (USD350,000)Aspirin (USD150,000)Bangkok Post (THB3,000,000)The Nation (THB5,000,000)Virgin Galactic (USDXX - free trip barter deal - think about it, Richard.)Big Tiger's Restaurant (there is no Big Tiger's restaurant, I made that up).
* For custom advertising placement please get in touch: simon @ simon-royle dot com; you know the drill....
June 23, 2012
Building Worlds
United States Navy Picture - Independence The Future NowThe Independence, is a 418-foot warship built in Alabama, and boasts a top speed in excess of 45 knots, or about 52 mph. This is a new breed of warships designed to be fast, agile, and operate as part of a network. The Littoral Combat Ship uses powerful diesel engines, as well as gas turbines for extra speed. Has steerable waterjets instead of propellers and rudders and have shallower drafts than conventional warships, letting them zoom close to shore.
Independence is an aluminum, tri-hulled warship built by Austal USA in Mobile, Ala. The lead contractor is Maine's Bath Iron Works, a subsidiary of General Dynamics.
There is another of these, Freedom, its headed to Singapore later in this year to spend the early part of 2013.
Here's another ship that's being worked on:
Courtesy of unrealistic futureThe ship pictured above is designed to be all electric and manned by a relatively small crew. Perhaps a platform for the Rail Gun that DARPA is building. Back to the future.... This was "state of the art" back in 1912. A New York Class Battleship:
United States Navy 1912 New York Class battleshipDisplacement:Standard: 27,000 tons;
Mean War Service: 28,367 tonsLength:573 ft (175 m)Beam:95.5 ft (29.1 m)Draft:28.5 ft (8.7 m)Propulsion:2 shafts; vertical, triple-expansion; 14 boilers, 28,100 shpSpeed:21 knots (39 km/h)Range:As built: 7,060 nautical miles (13,080 km) at 10 knots
Coal: 1,900 tons
Oil: 267 tonsComplement:1,042 officers and menArmament:10 × 14 inch/45 caliber guns (5×2)21 × 5 inch/38 caliber guns4 × 21 inch torpedo tubes (submerged) And forward to the future...2113 - What would a ship look like that was heading to Singapore? A passenger ship, a cargo ship, a warship (I hope not, but even though I'm an optimistic person I doubt we'll have given up our fetish for war by then) - I would also think about air-ships, and naturally by then, space ships, in far greater abundance.
What would the crew wear? What would they eat? How would they party? Would there even be a crew? (I think in many cases not - many cargo ships will be fully automated, radio controlled, loading and off-loading). But there will always be people who operate around ports.
What navigation systems would they be using? What areas of sea would they have to avoid (for environmental or sea farming reasons)?
What would their politics be? Their backgrounds, educations and social? And, most important, what would their dreams and aspirations be?
Hopefully, a better future...Provided we don't do something stupid like blow ourselves up or wipe out through plague it seems entirely logical to me that one day we will be called, Citizens of Earth. There may, at that time, be Citizens of other moons or planets. I hope that when that day comes our cultural identities will be even stronger - because we do not need the false constructs of borders and nations.
I hope too that we have evolved governance to where it truly works for all of us, instead of just some of us. Government for the people. It seems a natural human trait that we want and respond to, Leaders - may they be benevolent, if not by nature, then by our universal laws.
Hopefully we will have evolved a social structure suitable for sustainability and the desire for humans to grow. Hopefully we have also figured out how to reward that desire on an individual and mass population basis.
Perhaps by then, starvation, disease, lack of clean drinking water, slavery and other forms of abuse and death of humans will not be tolerated - that the miracle that is life, is treated as such for every living thing on this planet.
We are all humans, we share a common mother - L3.
June 8, 2012
Enlightenment
Byte by byte I've been reducing the noise level in my life - I call it my "enlightenment phase", i.e. lightening the load.
It had gotten to the point where the "noise" was threatening to drown out everything else. By "noise" I mean all those notifications and emails coming from robots. So and so has updated their blog - email; thingmajig (no idea how you spell that) has clicked this or that - another email. A second here, a minute there and soon an hour is gone.
So for the past month I've been un-clicking various little tick boxes all over the internet - goodbye cruel noise. Leaves a lot more time for writing.
May 6, 2012
Folks in Texas like Bangkok Burn
I've been getting some nice comments and really cool fan mail lately, particularly from Texas. Which is great. Getting readers who take the time to send you an email telling you how much they liked your writing is a huge, huge, HUGE responsibility - it's also great (I think I might have said that already but it bears repetition well).
The responsibility comes in the form of writing the next one, and making it at least as good as those that preceded it. Fortunately, I can report that I am having quite a bit fun writing about the floods of last year - and having fun while you're writing is, to me at least, the "voice" in the story.
Thanks for the emails, they keep me writing.
The responsibility comes in the form of writing the next one, and making it at least as good as those that preceded it. Fortunately, I can report that I am having quite a bit fun writing about the floods of last year - and having fun while you're writing is, to me at least, the "voice" in the story.
Thanks for the emails, they keep me writing.
