Lindsay Buroker's Blog: Lindsay Buroker, page 25

Writers, Are You Wasting Your Time Submitting to Agents?

If you’ve read my blog or my books, it’s no secret that I skipped straight to self-publishing in December of 2010 without seriously gearing up for an agent hunt. I put my first two novels out as ebooks and eventually print-on-demand paperbacks. A little over a year later, I had four novels and several shorter works out and was able to quit the day job. Now, in March of 2013, I have seven novels out in addition to the shorter stories. Even though none of these have rocked any best-seller lists, the royalties are generous for independent e-publishers. I just finished doing my taxes for 2012, and it turns out that it was the best income-earning year I’d ever had (it also turns out that I have to send a heaping big check to the IRS here shortly).

Naturally, I’m pretty rah rah with self-publishing, and I pointed out, a year and a half ago, that the best way to find a traditional deal these days seems to be to publish on your own, promote the heck out of your work, build up an audience, sell lots of books, and then look for a deal (or wait for a deal to come to you). Of course, you may decide you don’t really need a traditional publisher at that point, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Now that it’s 2013, I’m not the only one saying this (I’m sure I wasn’t back in 2011 either; it just wasn’t as popular of an opinion). A couple of days ago, Dean Wesley Smith, an author who’s been in the biz for decades and has more books out than Genghis Khan had children, wrote up a post called, “The New World of Publishing: A New Slush Pile.”

Here are a few highlights from the post, which not only talks about how things are today (and why it’s a great time to be an author), but also goes back and shares some of the history of the industry (like why it’s called a “slush pile”):

So near the end of the 1990s, the traditional publishers switched to “No Unagented Manuscripts” and shut down the few slush rooms that were left. In other words, they outsourced the slush to the writer’s own employees. A really, really bad idea since it had the appearance of putting an employee in charge of the employer.

The reasons to go to traditional publishing have vanished. And with the reputations of traditional publishing being tarnished by traditional publishers like Simon and Schuster and Random House going into vanity press scams, even going to traditional publishing for a rubber-stamp of quality has vanished.

The slush piles of old are all now indie published. And the readers decide what is good or bad.

Instead of costing a writer money to mail it to a huge room in New York as we did in my early years, or send it to an agent, writers now can indie publish their work both electronic and in paper and make some money in the process. It might not be a lot, but it is some money. And if the book starts to sell, it will draw the attention of traditional publishers and they will come calling with an offer.

If you follow an old model, you send your manuscript to either an editor or an agent:

In essence, this is what you are doing: Imagine yourself standing at the door of a restaurant in ragged clothes, hat-in-hand, begging for some food. You have no bargaining power, no position to try to get a decent contract (meal). And if you are with a slush-reading agent, imagine that you now only get a part of what little bit of food they are willing to toss you.

If you follow the new, indie-publishing model:

In essence, this is what you are doing: Imagine you own your own business. You have money coming in the door, have customers, and a growing list of products. A representative of a major corporation shows up in your store and asks to buy some of your product for their company. You know what the product is worth and you know you can get decent contract terms. They have come to you, into your business, and it is an even bargaining position for both of you, business to business. They want what you are selling. You can decide if the money and terms are worth you selling it.

I’ll stop pilfering from Mr. Smith’s post now — I just get excited when people in the know are thinking the same things I’m thinking. It makes me feel like I have some sort of clue. If this topic interests you, make sure to check out the whole article and toss a dollar in the tip jar on DWS’s site.

Related Posts:

Using Your Self-Publishing Success to Find an Agent with Elizabeth Mock
Best Way to a Traditional Publishing Deal: Query Agents or Self-Publish?
Facebook or Twitter, Which Is Better for Book Promotion?

How to Connect with Readers Using Wattpad

As some of you know, I started posting The Emperor’s Edge on Wattpad, figuring it was one more place I could have that first book out there for free (I may post Book 2 as well). I’ve heard from other indie authors who have leveraged Wattpad’s massive reader base to gain fans, often before they’ve launched their first novels.

I’m not rocking it over there with EE yet (and admittedly haven’t done any networking or anything to reach out to people — I’ve just been posting my chapters and announcing them on Twitter), so when the more Wattpad-experienced Nicolette Andrews offered to write up a guest post on the subject, I said, yes, please. I’ll turn you over to her now:

How to Better Connect With Readers Using Wattpad

First of all, thank you, Lindsay for letting me take over to talk about my experience with Wattpad and gathering my army of cohorts/followers.

I want to say, I love Wattpad. I have been on the site for a year now and I have met some of the most amazing people you’d ever hope for. I was fortunate enough to find a niche of people who love High Fantasy and love to read and write. Wattpad, to me, is like the ultimate reader/writer social media outlet. And like any other media outlet it’s the ideal place to get to know your readers. I’m going to talk about a couple things that is unique to Wattpad and that I’ve utilized in keeping in touch with my readers.

Dedications

On Wattpad you upload each chapter at a time and it formats it to almost an e-reader format that can be read online or on a mobile app. As the author for each chapter you are given a variety of choices on how to customize said chapter, among other things you can add pictures, videos and a cast (if you so choose). What I love to use is the dedication. When you dedicate a chapter to another Wattpad member, they are notified and it shows up on their page. It’s a nice way of saying ‘thanks’ to some of your more devoted readers.

Broadcasts

The broadcast is similar to a status update or a tweet only instead of it just been part of the thread on a home page, it is directly emailed to any of your followers. (Almost like a built in mailing list.) This is a great way to email teasers, do reader polls, or for me I found volunteers to help me edit my novel ‘Diviner’s Prophecy’. But use the broadcast sparingly, multiple emails in a day about what you had for breakfast or posting for the tenth time that day that your book is now on the Kindle can become overwhelming and no matter how much they like your stories, they will stop following.

Comments and Replies

Another great feature of Wattpad is the comments. Readers have the option to give feedback chapter by chapter, and if you’re posting once a week like I do with my works in progress, sometimes there’s kindly worded threats to write faster. What’s wonderful about this feature is that you can respond to these comments and often times they open up a dialogue about your book. The more you interact with readers, in my experience, the more likely they are to stick around to read more of your work, even if you take forever to post the next installment.

Reading Other Readers’ Stories

This is something I personally like to do but not many authors think it’s worth the time. Now to be clear I only read stories that interest me and at times I have been requested to read other peoples stories and I will read for a while and give feedback as much as I can but you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. When reading other authors stories I like to make sure I comment and vote. (I would want them to do it for me!)

Stay Active

Like any other social media site, persistence is key. Unlike other social media sites, Wattpad is tailored to readers and writers meaning it’s the ideal place to promote your work, connect with fans, and build a supportive village that will be ready and willing to purchase your books.

You can connect with Nicolette on Wattpad, Twitter, or her website, or pick up over first novel at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.

Related Posts:

Trading Excerpts with Other Authors in the Back Matter of Your Ebook
The Speedy (sort of) Process of Ebook Publishing
Keeping Your Already-Published Ebooks up to Date

The Lowdown on EE6 (Forged in Blood)–When, What, Who, and More

Even though I’m chained to my office chair in the *dungeon and trying to be productive for you guys (if you missed it, Decrypted came out a couple of weeks ago, and the Beneath the Surface novella, sort of an EE 5.5, came out in January), I’ve got quite a few folks asking questions about the next (maybe not last?) Emperor’s Edge book.

I’m glad you guys are excited for it and care enough to ask these questions. Here are my answers to the common ones I’ve seen:

When will EE6 be out?

I’m shooting for a late May/early June release. You may want to start sending my beta readers chocolate now, so they’ll be hyped up on caffeine and ready to go when I send them the file.

Will you do an eARC for EE6 the way you did for Book 5?

I haven’t decided yet. If I do it, I’ll want to do a better job than last time (which involved me emailing the Word .doc files to everyone by hand, meaning people didn’t get the manuscript instantly and also had to convert them to readable Kindle, iPad, etc. files themselves), which would probably mean hiring a programmer to add an e-store of sorts to the site here.

Will you guys let me know if there’s an interest?

Will Amaranthe and Sicarius finally “DOOO EEEET”?

Yes, that’s a direct quote (some of the others were less PG). And the answer is…

Haha, like I’m answering that here.

Who will be the secondary point-of-view character in EE6?

Sicarius.

Will this be the last book?

No.

I’d originally planned for it to be the last book, at least in the Forge story arc, but, as some of you who follow me on Twitter have seen, this last chunk of the story is pretty big. Now that I’m 70,000 words into the first draft, I’m positive I’m not going to finish it in the next 50,000 words or so. As of right now, I’m planning to split things in half and make a Part 1 and Part 2. I’m not sure yet on how I’ll title the second book.

Does that mean there’s going to be a *&$! cliffhanger at the end of EE6?

Well…. probably. I’ll try to get Part 2 out within 3-4 months of the first. You can always wait until they’re both available to start reading. Though I’ll hope you’ll still buy 6 when it comes out, because I’m also powered by chocolate, and I need to be able to keep that in supply.

Wait, does that mean Sicarius will be the secondary POV character in two books?

As of right now, that’s the plan. I hope you guys don’t mind spending time in his head. It’s not all that scary in there. Really. Just… practical. And efficient.

Those are the main questions I’ve seen. If you have any others, feel free to ask below. Thanks for reading!

*I am denying all tweets, photos, and Facebook posts that suggest I may have escaped my dungeon for a few days for a trip to Palm Springs.

Related Posts:

Emperor’s Edge Extras: Interview with Sergeant Yara
Decrypted Is Now Available
Emperor’s Edge Audiobooks (1-3) Available at Audible, iTunes, and Podiobooks

Keeping Your Already-Published Ebooks up to Date

I’m doing a little housekeeping today (not actual housekeeping… I’m sure I can put that off for a few more weeks) and thought I’d do a quick post to remind other authors to do the same things once in a while.

I’m uploading a new version of Encrypted to Amazon, B&N, and other stores right now. I’ve updated the file to include a list of all the work I have out to date, and I’ve also include a first-chapter preview of my recently published Decrypted.

Encrypted was the second novel I published, and I realized I didn’t mention any of my other work at the end (probably because there wasn’t much of it available at the time!). That was fine back in early 2011, but now I have seven novels out, with some people stumbling across Encrypted as an introduction into my world. If they like it, sure, they can check the store to see what else I’ve published, but I think it’s a good idea to let the readers know there’s more right when they finish the book. That’s taken care of now, and I plan on going back and updating my Emperor’s Edge books in a similar fashion once I’ve published the last one in the series. I’ll probably change the afterwords, then, too, as many of them were targeted at folks who picked up the book right after it was published (for example, at the end of Book 4, I have an apology about the cliffhanger nature of the ending — at the time 5 wasn’t available, so readers were left, er, hanging).

In addition to tinkering with the afterwords and book lists, I’m changing the pricing for the international stores (i.e. Amazon UK, CA, DE, etc.). I’d just been letting the stores automatically set the prices for other countries based on my U.S. price. Well, I had a short email exchange with Mark Lefebvre, Director of Self Publishing and Author Relations at Kobo, and he mentioned that their Canadian Merchandiser likes to see (and might even give preference to, insofar as showcasing indies goes) books with normal looking prices (i.e. $4.99 instead of $4.92). Well, I’m all about being in a position to be showcased!

On the assumption that this may be true in other markets, I’m going to gradually go in and change all of my books to have *99 or *95 price tags in the international stores (this won’t be possible for the titles distributed through Smashwords, but with Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble UK, it is).

Lastly, I’m going through my website to update the static pages (“book news” and my list of  novels, novellas, and short stories specifically), ensuring they mention my latest publications and have links to excerpts when applicable.

So, in addition to getting back to work on EE6, I’ll be working on these housekeeping tidbits this week. They’re things that are easy to forget about when you start to have a larger number of ebooks out there, but it’s good to remember that you have new readers finding you all the time, and they’ll be wondering about all of your older titles as well as reading orders.

Related Posts:

My Experience Advertising My Ebook with BookBub
How Do You Maintain Steady Book Sales at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.?
Ebook Pricing Strategy for a Stand Alone Novel?

Book Promotion Advice from Popular Indie Fantasy Author Joseph Lallo

Today I’ve got a guest post for you guys from fellow indie fantasy author Joseph Lallo. He’s had a lot of success with his fantasy series (The Book of Deacon is the first and is available for free at Amazon, Smashwords, and many other stores) — in fact, his series is usually outranking mine over at Amazon (not that I pay attention to such things… daily). I’m sure you’ll find some useful nuggets of wisdom in his post today.

Book Promotion Advice from Joseph Lallo

Hi everyone! Joseph Lallo here. When you are an indie author, getting the word out is tough, and why wouldn’t it be? You’ve spent countless hours trying to become a better storyteller and wordsmith, and now suddenly you need to be a marketing department. It seems like a cruel joke, doesn’t it? It can be a little daunting, and it was and remains one of the most difficult parts of the process for me. However, since The Book of Deacon (the first in my fantasy series) was first released I’ve found my way into some pretty great promotions. I’ve tried to distill the gauntlet of trials and errors into the lessons that I’ve learned along the way in the hopes that you’ll learn a bit without earning quite as many bumps and bruises as I did.

The first thing you’ll want to do is the groundwork, most of which should already be done if you’ve got a book you’re hoping to promote:

Make yourself accessible. Have you ever been watching a commercial or a TV show and the announcer informed you that you can get something for free, only to go on to instruct you to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to a P.O. Box in Alaska, then wait six to eight weeks? Have you ever taken advantage of something like that? I haven’t, because if you have to jump through hoops, it isn’t free, is it? No one likes a catch, so you need to do your best to remove as many catches as possible. Have your book available in every format someone could want. If you’re hoping to give it away to reviewers, always have at least one option that will put the book in their hands without having to sign up for any new accounts or install any new software. It is a simple thing, but it goes a long way to making your book more appealing to promoters. You’ll also want a web page, and it is also handy to have a presence on at least a few of the bigger social networks, because a familiar logo that will like/tweet/follow you is sometimes much more appealing than a plain old link.
Have a media kit. In my spare time (Ha! Spare time!) I do game reviews and entertainment coverage for a website called Brainlazy.com. When an indie developer comes along asking me to talk about their new game, their chances of me actually doing so are phenomenally better if they have all of the basics bundled up for me already. It doesn’t take much: some art (book covers and author photos are traditional), a bio, a synopsis, a cluster of purchase links, and some contact info should do it. If you want to get really fancy, try putting together a press release. It just a one page summary of what you’re pushing with all of the key info: Date, title, description, accolades, contact info, and author bio. Trust me, when all it takes is a copy and a paste to talk about you, journalists are much more likely to do it. Don’t just blast them with the press release by itself, though. Introduce it in a human and reasonable way.

Once you’ve got your self set up to be promoted, the next step is to find places that will promote you. In my case, I’ve found that the most effective way to locate a place that you’d like your book to be promoted is to ask yourself a few questions:

How do I find the books I like to read? If you are a writer, chances are you’re a reader as well. If you are an indie writer, chances are you’re a broke reader, so you have to be frugal in your quest to quench that thirst for reading material. Do you look at the free book lists? Well, it is one of the oldest bits of advice out there, and one of the first that I followed with The Book of Deacon, but making the first in a series free, or making a standalone book free for a limited time, is a great way to get a quick injection of readers. With any luck, those readers will like it, review it, and spread the word. GoodReads.com is another place to make sure your books are listed. Not only does it attract reviews, but a few retailers link goodreads reviews in their storefront.
Whose opinions do I trust? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably read posts on an author’s site from time to time. Chances are very good that the author you read and follow has worked with other authors and bloggers in the past. What do you know about these people? Well, they are willing to work with people who write in the genre you prefer, and they are trusted and respected by your favorite authors. Sounds like just the sort of people who might be willing and able to give your books some exposure, don’t they? I have found that a great way to get a list of potential promoters is to visit the sites and twitter feeds of my favorite indie authors, find the sites that reviewed them, and jot down the contact info. Then visit the author sites of the other people those sites have reviewed, find the other sites that reviewed them, and repeat.
How would I like to buy my books? Now, this is an interesting one. Obviously it means that you should do your best to have you books available in the markets and formats that you yourself prefer, but let’s go deeper. When I buy games these days, I often buy them as part of a bundle. Maybe it is a sale on Steam, or maybe it is the Humble Indie Bundle or one of its imitators. A year or two ago it was suggested to me by a friend that bundles might be a great way to sell eBooks, too. I agreed, and started digging around. Eventually I found my way to a site called StoryBundle. If you’re not familiar, here’s the deal. StoryBundle accepts submissions from indie authors of all genres. The folks running it take a look at the books and pick the best to gather together into themed bundles which will be offered for a short time at a price of the buyer’s choosing (anywhere from $1-$100). The books are sold without DRM and in the most flexible and popular formats. To encourage folks to contribute more than the minimum, a bonus threshold is set, usually about $1 per book, that rewards generous customers with a few extra books. Buyers can decide how much of their purchase price goes to the authors versus the site, and a single click can send 10% of your payment to one of two charities. By an amazing coincidence, the Indie Fantasy Bundle is running right now (until March 19th), and as an even more amazing coincidence, The Book of Deacon Trilogy is featured. What are the odds! Despite the fact that I’ve now been featured twice, please be aware that I don’t have anything to do with the site. They just like my writing, and I like their business model. There are plenty of other bundles out there, too. In the end, they can have easily the same impact as a free book promo, except you actually earn money.

By now, you should have an idea of some good ways to find places to promote you. Now you need to do your best to get them to do so. Here are a few tips to improve your odds:

Be Interesting. I don’t mean that you need to cultivate some sort of absurd, over the top persona, but don’t be afraid to let some of your personality shine through in your communications. Like it or not, promotions are commercials for your books and your request for promotion is a commercial for yourself. In either case if you’re going to be making a commercial, make it one people will remember. Think of the band OK Go. A little creativity and a lot of enthusiasm go a long way.
Be Helpful. Remember that unless you really hit it big, the people you’re asking to promote you are going to be people like you or me. They are doing the best they can with very limited time and resources. If you want them to promote you, don’t walk up to them with your hand out. Make an offer. Try to trade. Offer to, say, do a guest post. Maybe a post about different ways to get promoted… We’re getting a little meta here, aren’t we?
Be Persistent. Now, this is very important. Being persistent does not mean being a pest. I’m not telling you that you should send three emails a day to each person on your list. In fact, I’m telling to absolutely avoid it at all costs. What I mean is that you should keep plugging away, and have a lot of irons in the fire. Keep track of which people have replied and which haven’t. Give them a few weeks to get back to you, and if they don’t, give them a nudge. If they don’t reply, move on. It is a great big internet, and there’s always another blog waiting for you.
Be Gracious. Remember the people who help you, and do your best to help them back in any way you can. It pays to have friends. You never know who might get famous with a little extra push, and being one of the ones who helped them along is never a bad thing. Not only that, but the writing biz is fickle, and the people you pass on the way up are the same people you pass on the way down. You may need help again, and they may need yours, so be a good friend and you’ll never be short of help when you need it.
Be Confident. Hard to do on purpose, but it really does help to believe that your book can succeed. I took a chance and entered one of my Sci-Fi books in the Kindle Book Review’s Top Indie Books of 2012 competition, and I got as far as the finals!
Be Lucky. Even harder to do on purpose, but hey, it belongs on the list. If you think of getting rich and famous in self-publishing as a lottery, every time you take a stab at promotion you are buying a ticket. You never know when you’ll hit the jackpot.

If you follow these tips, and you’re at least as lucky as I am, then you’re bound to get at least a few bites, and success leads to success. I started with one or two reviews from bloggers, and a handful of customer reviews. These reviews gave readers confidence to sample my stuff, which led to more customers and more reviews. I learned what my mistakes were, corrected them, and pressed on. In time my success started to move me up the charts, which made me easy to discover, and so it snowballed. A strong sales record and solid reviews will eventually put you on the radar of the big shots. By following the tips I’ve given, I’ve been tapped for an interview from Mark Coker, included in the Apple Breakout Books promotion, included in recommended books emails from Barnes and Noble, and plenty more. It takes a lot of work to get the ball rolling, but once you do, it can pay off in a big way.

I hope this was helpful, and thanks for reading!

—

Joseph Lallo

www.bookofdeacon.com

Related Posts:

Can Publishing a Podiobook Help You Sell More Books?
Trading Excerpts with Other Authors in the Back Matter of Your Ebook
Guest Blogging Your Way out of Obscurity

Book Promotion — What’s Working at Amazon in 2013?

Amazon isn’t the only place to sell your ebooks, and I’ve had some luck with Apple and Kobo of late, but it remains the big dog in the house, and most of the questions I get in regard to book sales (as in, how do I make more of them?) center around Amazon.

Amazon has made some changes in the last year that have had an impact insofar as what works and what doesn’t for getting noticed over there. Let’s go over those first, because I still see people telling authors to do these things.

What’s not working at Amazon any more?

1. Tagging

At the end of 2010, when I was getting started with e-publishing, people had the option to tag books with keywords at the bottom of a sales page. For example, my first Emperor’s Edge novel was tagged with fantasy, steampunk, high fantasy, and a few others. In theory, the more customers who tagged a book as, say, “steampunk” the more likely that book would turn up in an Amazon search for steampunk.

Believing this to be true, a lot of authors exchanged tags with each other (I’ll tag your book with whatever keywords you wish if you tag mine.) As you might imagine, Amazon twigged to this. My understanding is that it may have worked back in 2009 or so, but even by the end of 2010, the tags didn’t seem to mean much.

As someone who came into publishing with some Google SEO experience, I fiddled with descriptions and such to see what worked on Amazon, and putting your keyword in the book title spot seemed to count for a lot more than anything to do with tagging. (Today, that still works, but read the rest of my post before you try that, because Amazon seems to be cracking down on keywords in titles now.) As you might notice if you try to tag a book, it’s been phased out as of this writing, so it’s not even an option. Maybe Amazon knew the only people using the feature were authors.

I just did a search for steampunk in the Kindle Store, something I haven’t bothered to do for a year or more, and EE1 comes up 6th. It’s the first book in the results that doesn’t have “steampunk” stuck in the title. I don’t think it’s in the book description either (it’s really not a typical steampunk book, so I never plugged it as such on Amazon). So why does it come up? I’d guess Amazon is looking at all the content on the page (title, blurb, and reviews) to come up with a book’s keywords. In my case, it must all be coming from the reviews. Also, I believe sales rank + total reviews are taken into consideration (though not as highly as a keyword in the title as the books placed above mine don’t have a lot of reviews).

I want to point out that very few people seem to shop for books on Amazon by plugging keywords in the search box, especially when it comes to fiction, so it’s really not worth agonizing over this stuff anyway.

2. The “Post-Free KDP Select Bounce”

As you probably already know, KDP Select is a program authors can opt into at Amazon. In exchange for making their ebook exclusive to the site, Amazon will enroll it in the Prime lending library, allowing authors to make money from borrows. Authors, however, have largely been enrolling because the program allows one to make an ebook free for up to five days a quarter (author’s choice of when), thus making timed sales and giveaways practical. For the first half of 2012, authors who made their books free and advertised on external sites were able to get huge numbers of downloads (thousands, if not tens of thousands in popular genres) and, for a while, Amazon was counting those as highly as sales. When an ebook returned to its regular price, it would shoot up the sales ranking charts and start appearing in Top 100 (often Top 20) category lists all over the place, thus affording it great visibility at Amazon. This resulted in previously unknown authors getting huge (paid) sales for weeks afterward, like go out and buy a new car huge sales.

Well, Amazon wised up and started making those free downloads count for a lot less. Here’s an interview I did with fellow indie Ed Robertson (someone who tracks stats on Amazon with a passion) last year that discusses this in further depth. I caught him on a recent interview on the Self-Publishing Podcast, and it sounds like what he said last May is holding true thus far.

3. Using other authors’ names in your book description

This wasn’t as wide-spread a phenomenon as the others we’ve discussed, but every now and then you’d come across an author who wrote something like, “for fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and X, X, X authors” in their blurb. Some of these may have been innocently added, but more authors (especially those listing a chain of authors) were likely hoping that their book would come up in searches for those other authors.

I doubt this was particularly effective anyway, but authors doing this are apparently starting to receive cease-and-desist emails from Amazon. (I first saw such a letter posted on the Kindleboards, but can’t find the link to the thread now, so please let us know in the comments if this has happened to you.)

4. Using keywords in the title field

If you checked out my steampunk search when we were discussing tags in earlier, you probably saw that this still works. Most of the books that appear on the first page of the search results have “steampunk” somewhere in the title.

But I’ve again seen emails posted on the Kindleboards about Amazon cracking down on this practice. It sounds like it’s okay if the keyword is a legitimate part of your title (i.e. it’s on the cover of your book) but not if it’s an afterthought tag stuck on when you’re filling out the upload wizard. As of now, only some people have received letters, and there are still many examples of it being done in the Kindle Store, so it may just be something the quality assurance team is checking on an individual basis.

5. Easily finding big venues for advertising your free ebooks

While the KDP Select post-free bump may have been seriously downgraded, there are still perks involved in giving away a lot of free ebooks at once, especially in a Book 1 of a series (I just ran a promotion myself and have been seeing increased purchases of my Books 2-5 of late). Not only do the people who see the ad see your book, but, for a time, your book will appear at the top of the free charts, thus giving random folks browsing on Amazon more chance of running across it.

Amazon, however, recently made some changes to its affiliate program, threatening to punish (by denying affiliate income) large blogs/forums/mailing lists that move 20,000+ free ebooks in a session. Most affiliates will be unaffected by this, but for the big guys, i.e. the folks with whom we’d wish to advertise, they’re having to go back to promoting more non-free books and limit their freebie plugs. From what I’ve heard, this includes ENT, Pixel of Ink, and the Kindleboards at the least (please correct me if I’m wrong about any of these, or let me know if there are other big sites effected), meaning it’ll be harder to get advertising for your free ebook going forward. As of yet, Bookbub doesn’t seem to have changed its policies.

So what the heck IS working for gaining book visibility at Amazon right now?

Sorry, this has been a lot of gloom-and-doom stuff so far, folks. The good news is that the legitimate stuff that’s always worked (releasing good books, gradually building up a fan base, collecting readers’ email addresses for a mailing list, and promoting the next book to those loyal readers while continuing to collect new ones along the way) still works and should always work.

Everything I’ve talked about up above has really been one form of gaming the system or another. Hey, you can’t blame an author for trying, right? But in the end, it’s very hard to build a lasting career over tricks that work one day but don’t the next. You certainly wouldn’t want to quit your day job until you had that mailing list of legitimate fans built up, giving you some certainty that you’re going to sell at least X number of books each time you release a new title.

But, as far as book promotion in 2013 goes, here’s what I’ve done that’s still working and a little of what I may try going forward:

Having some work available for free and putting it out everywhere — Right now, My first EE ebook is available for free at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Apple, Sony, and Diesel. The first three EE audiobooks are free at Podiobooks and iTunes. They’re also in Audible (not free). I’ve recently started posting my fantasy novel on Wattpad in a serialized version. I vaguely remember posting free work to Scribd, Feedbooks, and other big sites that accept freebies too. The more places that people can stumble across your work the better. I’m mulling over ways to get my “brand” into app stores soon too.

Advertising where it’s effective — It’s hard to get into Pixel of Ink and ENT right now, and, as mentioned above, it could become even harder for those advertising free ebooks (I’m not above advertising a non-free one and ran a campaign for Encrypted not that long ago). Bookbub, though, is really delivering for folks right now, despite high prices in popular categories (I guess I’m lucky — or is it unlucky? — that SF/F isn’t as popular). It takes a certain number of reviews and some solid “pro” cover art to get in, but they don’t book more than a month out, so it’s easier to time promotions. When I start in on my next series (this fall, perhaps?), I’ll probably revisit Goodreads advertising too (if you check out that post, keep in mind that it’s over two years old — most of the tips should still apply but I’ll want to update it the next time I start a new campaign there).

Writing more books — This is the best marketing you can do, and it’s the thing that makes advertising and some of the other time-consuming methods of promotion more “worth it.” When you have a whole series out, or multiple series, there’s a chance that a new reader won’t just buy one book from you; they’ll buy a set, maybe even everything you’ve got. It’s also what makes it possible to make a living as an independent author. If you sell 300 copies a month of a $5 ebook, you’re making a thousand dollars. Not too shabby. Now if you have 20 books that sell 300 copies a month, you’re earning six figures a year. 300 sounds like a ton when you’re starting out, but it’s maybe a 15,000 sales ranking at Amazon right now. That means 14,999 books are selling more copies than that this month, many of them belonging to independent authors. You could be up there one day, if you’re not already.

All right, gang, I’ve rambled on for long enough, and my next book is waiting to be written. If you have any tips or want to comment on the ways of Amazon, please do so below. Thank you!

 

Related Posts:

Ebook Marketing Thoughts — What’s Changed and What’s Still Working? (guest post from Collin J. Earl)
Can Posting Stories on Wattpad Help You Sell Books?
Updates to Amazon’s Book Ranking Algorithms: The Death of 99-Cent Ebooks? An End to KDP Select Perks?

Decrypted Is Now Available

We’ve had the interview with Rias, and we’ve had the preview chapter… it must be time for the entire book!

Decrypted Blurb:

Professor Tikaya Komitopis knew that bringing Admiral Rias Starcrest home to meet her family wouldn’t be easy, not when he led the fleet that decimated her nation during the war. She isn’t surprised when people believe she’s been brainwashed, that Rias is still loyal to the empire, and that he has nefarious plans for her homeland. She is, however, surprised when Rias’s designs to build a submarine lead them to stumble across an ancient secret shrouded in mystery, time, and lies.

If revealed, this secret could mean devastation for Tikaya’s entire nation. It could also mean choosing between her people… and the man she loves.

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords (Apple will be coming soon).

Related Posts:

Book Updates: Emperor’s Edge Novella, Decrypted, and Beyond
Interview with Rias (AKA Fleet Admiral Starcrest) — Encrypted/Decrypted Extras
New Emperor’s Edge Novella Available

Interview with Rias (AKA Fleet Admiral Starcrest) — Encrypted/Decrypted Extras

For those who are new to my books, character interviews are a long-standing (almost a year old!) tradition in the EE Universe. Thus far we’ve had frank conversations (and some glares and glowers) with…

Sicarius
Maldynado
Sgt Yara (Part I & Part II)

Now, using the questions from the ladies (oddly, it’s always the ladies, hmm) in the EE forum and on Facebook (two male readers chimed in here, yay!), I bring you an interview with the exiled retired Fleet Admiral Rias Starcrest. He’s recovering from the events in Decrypted as I talk with him (note: Decrypted takes place approximately 18 years before the Emperor’s Edge books, so any references to Sicarius will be of the young 17-year-old assassin Rias last dealt with in Encrypted), but I’ll edit out any spoilers.

Interview with Former Fleet Admiral “Rias” Starcrest

Thank you for agreeing to join us for a few minutes… Rias. Is it all right if I use that name? I know you have your friends call you that, though I’ve admittedly put you through some… distress of late.

Indeed.

That… wasn’t really a yes, was it? Well, either way, thank you for joining us. I understand the Kyattese have been keeping you quite busy, and I imagine Tikaya is, too now that you’re… ah, better not spoil things for the reader, eh?

*eyebrow quirk* Indeed.

Hm, this is starting out a lot like that Sicarius interview. I sense you don’t approve of me fully. Well, perhaps you’ll open up to your readers? Why don’t we jump into the questions…

First up, Moondreamer asks, “Does he want kids? How does he view his future with Tikaya now that they’re both free?”

Yes, I do want children. Freedom, now that’s an elusive concept. So often people claim to seek it, yet they construct the bars of their own cages.

That’s how you’re going to open this interview? With philosophy?

*another eyebrow twitch* I’m getting a sense of why your characters don’t approve of you.

Hey, it’s not me. The readers like… Well, you’ll see what folks really want to hear about in some of the future questions… but let’s keep things simple. Next up, Daisy and Cat wonder what your first impressions were of Tikaya.

My first thoughts were along the lines of… “Dear ancestors, they’re putting a woman in the cell across from me? When I look and smell like this? Maybe if I hide in the corner back here, she won’t notice me…” I wasn’t in a very good state of mind then, you understand. It was only her mutterings of puzzles and mathematics that intrigued me enough to speak.

Right away, her presence on the warship caught my interest, but it wasn’t until I learned about her unique role in the war that I became rather smitten.

Meera asks, “Would you return to Turgonia if it had a more progressive emperor?”

Though I’m reconciled to the life of an exile — and the Kyatt Islands are a far better place to live in exile than most! — it would be pleasant to be permitted to visit my family and old colleagues at some point. But there is little point in musing upon such matters. Emperor Raumesys is neither an old nor unhealthy man, and I expect he will continue to rule for a long time.

Sarah asks, “Is there really a Starcrest Adventure Series for Boys, also known as the less factual tales of Rias’s adventures that Sicarius kept in his cubby at the Barracks? Is there an accompanying action figure, now with more strategizing action? If there is an action figure, how does he see Tikaya reacting to this knowledge?”

*blink, blink* You’ve heard of those books? I confess that I haven’t read any of them, but I’m sure they overly dramatize true events. I’m not aware of any “action figures.” How does one strategize in an actiony manner? With much pacing?

As for Sicarius, we did not discuss books or… cubbies (I believe that what a young man keeps in his cubby is of no one’s business but his own), but I did, of course, sense that he regarded me with deference that he didn’t display toward the other officers. I suspected he was familiar with my military career and found it admirable.

Leslie, SparkleGirl, and others want to know how you survived on the penal island. “How long was he there for, what was it like and was he forced to eat anyone?”

Will this interview be publicly available in the Polytechnic library?

Oh, I should imagine so. They keep records of everything, don’t they?

Well, then, since I may have children one day, I’ll say only that surviving on Krychek Island was difficult, but I was not forced to do anything forbidden by the Kantioch Treaty or that would be otherwise considered reprehensible by modern human notions of morality.

I see. And these nightmares you still suffer from on occasion, they’re of…?

*Rias eyes the Kyattese landscape for a moment* Coconuts falling on my head. It’s dreadful.

Turgonians are very good at keeping secrets secret, aren’t they?

It’s part of the anti-interrogation training, yes.

K2N2 asks, “Is there anything that scares you to the point where you’d seriously consider running in the other direction?  No, I understand the Turgoinan military doesn’t run….so I’ll rephrase that to ‘perform an expeditious strategic retreat to a more defensible position?’” 

I have, on more than one occasion, expeditiously retreated to a more defensible position when my ex-wife’s mother came to visit. Interacting with Tikaya’s grandfather is a pleasure by comparison.

As for physical threats, I’ve rarely found those too daunting to face. I’ve been told, by those under my command or otherwise foolish enough to stand within range of artillery fire with me, that this isn’t always an admirable trait.

Sweartoad asks, “What’s your stance on goatees/facial hair? Spelunking is a very popular sport in Turgonia. Your thoughts?”

Turgonian military regulations require facial hair to be kept shaven. But… I suppose those regulations don’t apply to me any more. Do you think I should grow a goatee? I had some facial hair for a brief time during the story you know as Decrypted, as I was too busy to tend to daily ablutions. Or sleep. Or eat. Tikaya, however, seemed relieved when I shaved it.

Spelunking? In the aftermath of recent events, it may be a while before I’m ready for more cave explorations, though, for the purpose of research, I did enter a cave with Tikaya during our adventures here on Kyatt. Twice.

Just to be clear, you’re talking about real caves, right? With rocks and bats and things?

What else would I be referencing?

Never mind. Rebecca and Kara want to know about the black knife. “Has your black dagger become your tool of choice, like Sicarius? Or did you snatch other super sweet tools from the Alien ruins?”

Actually, the Kyattese confiscated the knife and everything else in my pack when they first detained me. I haven’t seen the black blade since. Perhaps some erudite archaeology professor is using it to clean his nails during staff meetings?

Kitty asks, “So is he gonna be a good submariner and do it deep?”

Yes. Yes, I am.

You know that was a sexual innuendo, right? I only ask because English isn’t your first language and Tikaya isn’t around to help with translations. You kind of missed the spelunking thing.

*bland expression* Yes.

All right, then. Moving on. Parang asks, “Rambunctious Rias in his youth… what was he like to his closest friends?? Do his teachers have stories that they pass on to future cohorts?”

Due to the age difference between myself and my classmates, I was usually… Let’s just say there were years when books were my closest friends. I was often able to convince the neighborhood kids to play with me by showing off the incendiary and sometimes explosive devices I’d built. Nothing dangerous, of course. Nobody lost more than their eyebrows. Or part of an ear. But I maintain that Rivvy Ravencrest blew up his own ear.

As for teachers, I’m told they found me bright, delightful, and… don’t confirm Tikaya’s suspicions here, but the word trying came up often at parent-teacher meetings. That started sometime after the outhouse-as-a-rocket incident. I’m certain I wasn’t the first boy to see if it was possible to make an outhouse… airborne. It’s possible I was the first to achieve it. Have you ever noticed that incidents like that remain on your record? It came up during my officer candidacy interview, if you can imagine.

Rhiannon asks, “Did he like those who must have been in charge when he was still a Warlord? The Emperor, Hollowcrest and (perhaps) Pike.”

I had little contact with them until I reached the rank of admiral. Even then, I was at sea most of the year, interacting with my superiors only through written documents. Since I usually only came into ports for restocking and repairs, and the capital is far from the sea, I didn’t meet the emperor or Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest in person until my promotion ceremony to fleet admiral.

Is it just me, or are you avoiding answering the question?

As a marine, you’re taught to obey the rank, no matter what you think of the person.

I guess that’s the best we’re getting, hm? Okay, last question. Sam says, “I would like to know more about his first wife.”

Sam, if you have a warrior-caste lineage, money, great stamina, dexterity, and an utter lack of inhibitions, I can introduce you to her. Oddly, I don’t believe she’s remarried yet.

* * *

All right, thanks for reading, everyone! The next post will be to announce the availability of Decrypted. It should be up in a couple of days.

 

Related Posts:

Book Updates: Emperor’s Edge Novella, Decrypted, and Beyond
New Short Story (Enigma) Available
Emperor’s Edge Extras: Interview with Sergeant Yara

Decrypted Cover Art and Chapter 1 Preview

Some of you have already seen the cover for Decrypted on Facebook, but I thought a little teaser might be appreciated. The manuscript is off with my editor now, so apologies for any missing words or typos in here, but here’s the first chapter:

Chapter 1

Tikaya crossed out another opening line. A letter should not be so hard to write. True, the circumstances were not ideal: the ship’s wooden railing made a poor desk, the salty wind tugged at the paper, and something redolent of seagull poop adorned the side of her pencil. But it was the topic that made the message a challenge. And the fact that she didn’t know the names of the people to whom the letter would be mailed. Nor was she certain they existed.

She glowered at the page.

“Linguistics troubles?” a familiar baritone asked.

Tikaya turned and spotted Rias. A clean Rias, the first time he’d appeared so in more days than she could remember. She flung herself into his arms with enthusiasm that would have knocked over most of the men on her island; he caught her with ease. His six-and-a-half feet complimented her annoyingly tall six-foot frame nicely. But that height, along with those broad shoulders and the dense armoring of muscle beneath his shirt, reminded her how unmistakably Turgonian he was. For the eight- or nine-thousandth time, she worried that none of her ideas for inspiring her people—her family—to accept him would work. Even getting him past the port authorities could prove challenging.

The basalt cliffs rising from the eastern side of the island told her they had a few more minutes before the ship reached the harbor. She could worry then. For now…

Tikaya rose on her tiptoes, kissed Rias, and wriggled deeper into his embrace.

Catcalls and whistles floated down from the ratlines.

Someone yelled, “Ain’t pass’gers s’posed to have cabins for that?”

“Give ‘em a blanket, so’s we got a show to watch!”

Most of the sailors’ comments were easily ignored—especially considering how little of Rias she had seen during the three-week voyage—but the surly mutter of “traitor” from a passing man stole her ardor.

Tikaya broke off the kiss. “Sorry.”

The sailor had spoken in Kyattese, and she wasn’t sure if it was one of the words Rias knew, but he had to have guessed at the nature of the comment. He merely raised his eyebrows. “I hope that apology is for stabbing me in the neck with your pencil—”

She blushed and adjusted her hands.

“—and not for kissing me,” he finished. “Because if you’ve forgotten how much I enjoy the latter, I’ve been spending far too much time in that stokehold.”

His brown eyes twinkled, but she winced at the reminder that he had paid their fare with his labor. Granted, he was the fittest forty-three-year-old man she had met, but neither that nor the fact that women were not allowed in the stokehold assuaged her guilt. She had strolled the deck or sat in their cabin and studied pages full of symbols and runes, while he shoveled coal into the furnaces twelve hours a day. He had already given up a world to be with her, and she feared the sacrifices would only increase. What if he came to regret his decision?

“No,” Tikaya said when his brow furrowed at her silence. “I just wasn’t sure if it was appropriate for a woman to fling herself into the arms of a naval admiral on the deck of a ship.”

“It’s not my ship, and these days I’m rather retired…” Exiled. “So, unless it’s unseemly for a dignified philology professor to be seen tongue wrangling with a man in a public venue, it doesn’t bother me.”

“You have been down in the stokehold too long if you think I’m dignified.”

Rias offered his familiar half smile, caught her hand and started to lift it to his lips, but paused at the paper crinkled in her grip.

“I’m trying to write a letter.” Tikaya realized she had not answered his original question. “To Corporal Agarik’s family. They’ll probably hate me on principle, but I want them to know that he was a good man, that he saved my…” She swallowed. “What he did for us… I want them to know.”

“Ah.” Rias unbuttoned a shirt pocket and withdrew an envelope smudged with coal dust. He handed it to her. “I wrote to my parents to let them know I’m alive. I was going to ask you to mail it. If you tuck your message inside with a note for my father, he’ll get your letter to the family. Include Agarik’s name, rank, and that Bocrest was his commander.”

Tikaya eyed the envelope, daunted at the idea of asking for a favor from his—from Fleet Admiral Sashka Federias Starcrest’s—parents, especially when she was every bit the enemy to his people that he was to hers. “How about I give you the letter and you mail it with a note for your father?”

“I don’t know where the post office is on your island.” Rias smiled, but his eyes remained serious as he pressed the envelope into her hand. “And if something happens to me, I’ll be comforted, knowing you’ll be able to mail it.”

“Rias, my people are peaceful. We don’t have capital punishment, even for enemies of the nation. They’re not going to—”

A cleared throat nearby made her pause. It was the captain, a steely-haired man with a scar on his cheek almost as long as the pipe dangling from his chapped lips. He nodded to Rias. “You sure you want to get off here?”

The captain ignored Tikaya. The couple of times he had exchanged words with her, they had been in Kyattese, her language. He spoke in Turgonian now.

“Yes, sir,” Rias said.

The honorific surprised Tikaya. Though Rias had only a few gray hairs sprinkled about his temples, he had been as highly ranked in the Turgonian military as an officer could be, so the ‘sir’ sounded strange coming from him. But, then, he had told no one who he was, and, as far as she knew, no one amongst the multiracial crew had identified him. With his short black hair and clean-shaven face, he probably had not changed in the two years since his last command, but most of the world thought him dead, thanks to the story his emperor had circulated. This was a merchant vessel, too, and the captain hadn’t mentioned anything about being a part of the war.

The captain’s gaze flicked toward Tikaya. “Because of her?”

“Yes.” A wary note crept into Rias’s tone.

“Had a talk with my chief engineer this morning.” The captain removed his pipe and tamped it. “Seems you two have had a few dialogues.”

“We spoke,” Rias said.

Tikaya leaned against the railing, waiting for the captain to make his point.

“Seems you know the machinery,” the captain said.

“I’ve sailed on something similar.”

Tikaya almost laughed. She wondered what the captain and the engineer would think if they knew Rias had been designing a vessel of his own while he had been shoveling that coal. He had sketches in their cabin, and even if he’d been a military strategist rather than an engineer, she had little doubt he could build a craft from scratch.

“The chief isn’t usually blunt,” the captain said, “but he was this morning. He says I was an idiot for putting you in the stokehold.”

“The exercise suited me.” Rias lifted a hand. “Besides, the trip’s over now.”

“It needn’t be. Chief’s planning on retiring in the next year. He seems to think you’d be a better replacement than any of his junior officers.”

The offer sent a flutter of nerves through Tikaya’s belly. It shouldn’t appeal to Rias—even if they didn’t have plans to put his mathematical inclinations to work decoding ancient mysteries, it would be a pedestrian job after the challenges he had once encountered daily—but it reminded her that, imperial exile or not, he could find a place in the world just fine without her or the hospitality of the Kyatt Islands.

“I thank you for your consideration, sir,” Rias said, “but I’m not looking to stay on.”

The captain inhaled deeply, puffed out a ring of smoke, and sized up Tikaya. Her cheeks warmed as his scrutiny drifted from her spectacles above her freckled cheeks to the baggy military uniform that hid her curves—it was all she had for clothing until she got home.

“We visit Saltarr twice a year. The women there have teats like this—” the captain demonstrated lofty proportions with his hands, “—and they’ll do anything.” He jerked his pipe at Tikaya. “She doesn’t look like anything worth risking your life over.”

Rias’s jaw tightened. “She’s worth it.”

Tikaya pushed away from the railing and lifted her chin. “And she speaks Turgonian and understands what you’re saying.”

The captain shrugged and took another puff. “Just used to watching out for my crew. Men do stupid things for some skirt. It’s not safe for a Turgonian to step foot on Kyatt right now, not after the war. They might not shoot you,” he told Rias, “but they’ve got wizards and telepaths, and they’ll lock you up and brainwash you until you don’t know your own name.”

“That’s not true,” Tikaya said, though the fact that one of her people had inflicted a telepathic interrogation on her a few weeks earlier stole some of her certainty. That had been a relic raider, a woman who gave up the oath she swore before the Ministry of Science to pursue riches. “In my nation, it’s illegal for telepaths to pry without consent. As for brainwashing, I’m sure you Turgonians, with your manuals on torture methods, would know more about that than my people.”

For the first time, the captain stiffened, and his dark eyes narrowed. Tikaya tensed. Before she had been kidnapped by Turgonians, she would not have expected a man to strike her, but her captors had not appreciated hearing her opinions.

Rias chuckled, stealing the tension from the air. He gave her a fond smile. “I thought you only read the chapter on alchemical interrogation techniques.”

“I did,” she said. “The brainwashing comment was just a guess.”

“Chapter Seven,” Rias said.

The captain snorted, whether with humor or disgust Tikaya couldn’t tell, but at least he no longer looked like he meant to punch her. When a midshipman scurried up to report, he returned to his work.

Tikaya turned her back to the ship and resolved to push the captain’s comments from her mind. Worse insults would come, for both of them. She sighed and propped her forearms on the damp railing. Spray misted her cheeks.

Rias wrapped his arms around her from behind and rested his cheek against her temple. “You’re worth the world.”

The sentiment warmed her more than the sun glittering on the sea, but it didn’t alleviate her doubts. “I hope you still feel that way after you’ve met my family.”

He chuckled, his breath stirring goosebumps as it tickled her ear. Not for the first time, she lamented his indenture belowdecks. The stokers received few baths, and he had been unwilling to share a bunk with her when he was caked in coal dust and dried sweat. Now he was clean, but they were about to dock. Maybe the reception would go more smoothly than she anticipated and they could spend the evening somewhere pleasant.

“So, is Saltarr a port you’re familiar with?” Tikaya smirked as she turned her head to eye him. Though it had no archaeological significance and was not the type of place to attract her interest, she had heard of the vices plied there.

“After more than twenty years at sea,” Rias said, “I’ve been to most major ports in the world.”

A yes. Her smirk widened. A careful yes. “And did you meet any of the women there?”

“That would have been unwise.”

“Because you were married then?”

“That and because…” His eyes drifted up and to the side in his making-a-calculation expression. “One in three.”

She twitched an eyebrow. “And that is the solution to what equation?”

“Given what the sawbones told me, that’s about the odds of a man returning from shore leave in Saltarr without… ah, I’m not sure what the Kyattese term is, but we call it pizzle rot.”

“You Turgonians are a blunt people.”

“Indeed we are.”

Tikaya leaned back into his embrace, trying to relax and enjoy the last peaceful moment, but a landmark above a beach caught her eye. The lighthouse. Snakes tangled in her belly. They were entering the harbor.

* * *

Though the merchant ship had Turgonians in the crew, none of them walked down the gangplank with Tikaya and Rias. More police than she had ever seen strode along the piers and the quay. In their sandals, shorts, and yellow button-down hemp shirts, they were far less intimidating than Turgonian marines, but the fit men and women all carried cudgels or crossbows. Much had changed since Tikaya last visited the harbor.

Only two months had passed since her kidnapping, but she had secluded herself on her parents’ plantation during the previous year, mourning the fiancé she had thought dead. Now she wished she had paid more attention to the goings on in the capital.

Tikaya and Rias mingled with the crowd as people wound their way down the busy pier toward the streets of Yikyo, but their height made them stick out. The departing passengers and crew represented a number of nationalities, but Rias’s size, bronze skin, and black hair left little doubt to his origins. Merchants at vendor carts selling everything from chilled coconut milk to sarongs and sandals to dictionaries for foreigners eyed Rias as he passed. Despite her dubious outfit, no one glanced twice at Tikaya.

The first policeman they passed frowned deeply. His eyes grew distant, the expression of a practitioner calling upon his science—or a telepath communicating with someone.

“Trouble?” Rias murmured.

“Likely.”

“A lot or a little?”

Rias carried a rucksack but no major weaponry—Tikaya had convinced him to trade their rifle and longbow for coin, figuring it’d be best to walk onto the island unarmed—so that shouldn’t bother the police. But he would stand out here no matter what he wore. Also, he’d kept a short blade that hung in a belt sheath. She would have called it a dagger, finding it plenty long and sharp enough to slit throats, but he’d balked at the idea of classifying it as a weapon. The Frontier Toothpick, as he called it, was a mere utility knife by imperial standards.

“It depends on whether they recognize your face or they’re just reporting that there’s a militant-looking Turgonian strolling the docks.” Tikaya picked up her pace. She planned to report to the capitol building straight away—better to tell the president she wanted to bring a war criminal to visit than being caught trying to sneak him onto the island—and thought it’d be best to arrive with the news, rather than after it. Besides, the president had once said he owed her a favor for her pivotal role in ending the war. This was his chance to redeem it. He owed Rias a favor as well—when he’d still been fleet admiral, he’d stopped the Turgonian emperor’s deadly young henchman from assassinating the Kyattese leader—but Tikaya feared the president might never have received the warning note or otherwise learned of the incident.

“You didn’t recognize my face,” Rias said.

Yes, and he had been careful to withhold his identity during the first couple of weeks they’d been dodging assassins, decrypting deadly alien technology, and otherwise getting to know each other. She’d forgiven him for that subterfuge, but she did wonder how their relationship would have developed if she had known who he was from the beginning.

“I spent the war with my nose buried in your military’s encrypted communications. And I’ve spent the rest of my life with my nose buried in philology and archaeology books. My family members are lucky I recognize them.”

Rias bumped her shoulder and smiled. “Sounds like you need more field work. More adventures. Wait until you see what I’m planning for—”

“Halt!” a male voice cried.

The crowd parted in front of Rias and Tikaya. A row of policemen stood at the head of the pier, blocking the quay and access to Harbor Avenue and the city beyond it. The squad aimed crossbows and muskets at Rias.

Though she didn’t expect them to shoot, Tikaya moved to step in front of him with her arms spread.

A firm grip on her elbow halted her, and Rias stepped in front of her instead. She snorted. There was probably some Turgonian regulation against hiding behind a woman.

Tikaya leaned around him and told the policemen, “I’m a citizen. This is my guest. Is there a problem?”

She had never seen a whole squad of men and women drop their jaws in a synchronized stunned gape before. A seagull landed on a pier and squawked. The sound stirred some of the policemen into shutting their mouths.

“Your guest is Fleet Admiral Federias Starcrest?” the squad leader asked. “The slaughtering bloodthirsty tyrant who decimated our ships during the war? The nonpareil war criminal of the high seas? The heinous Turgonian emperor’s most dangerous lackey?”

Rias looked over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised in a question.

“They recognize you,” Tikaya said. “And, uhm, they don’t like you.”

“Yes, I gathered that. There were a lot of words in there you haven’t taught me yet though.”

Curse him, he sounded amused. But then, she’d seen him grin maniacally in the middle of battle, despite being surrounded by people attempting to kill him—no, because he’d been surrounded by people attempting to kill him.

“My people like vocabulary words,” Tikaya said, trying not to sound worried.

The police advanced with wariness despite Rias’s easy humor—they likely had no trouble understanding him, as most Kyattese learned Turgonian and Nurian in school, and those working around the docks would have had practice speaking with visiting foreigners. Four policemen kept their weapons trained on him while two edged forward, one clenching a baton, the other gripping handcuffs.

Rias let them shackle his hands behind his back. His eyebrow twitched when a policewoman took his knife, but he didn’t try to stop her.

A third man stepped toward Tikaya. “You said you’re a citizen, ma’am?”

His words elicited a faint sting. She had never sought glory or recognition, but it was disappointing that the common man had no idea about her and what she’d done to help her people during the war. Of course, the president had deliberately kept her identity secret, hoping the Turgonians wouldn’t figure out who the Kyattese code breaker was—and punish her. He’d underestimated their fact-finding abilities.

“Tikaya Komitopis,” she said.

Her ancestors had been among the original refugees who colonized the islands, so at least the policeman nodded in recognition at the family name.

“You’ll need to come with us for questioning, ma’am.”

“Me? Why?”

Rias lifted an eyebrow. “You were planning to leave me to be tortured alone?”

“I thought we might expedite the process if I could go straight to the president,” she said.

“Expedited torture. Oh, good.”

“No torture. I told you, we don’t do that anyway, but he owes me a favor.” Tikaya smiled, though she feared it did not reach her eyes. Rias would not face the sort of torture with which he was familiar, but she had no doubt he would be in for an ordeal—an image of sugarcanes being smashed in her family’s press came to mind—if she couldn’t get an appointment to see the president promptly.

One of the policewomen cleared her throat. At first, Tikaya thought she’d issue a warning that they should speak in Kyattese instead of Turgonian. But, “President Mokkos is on Akatoo this week,” was what she said, naming the smallest of the Kyattese Islands, and the most distant. “He and his team are assessing the ongoing damage in Ititio Harbor due to the season’s increased lava flows.”

Tikaya grimaced. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

Before the woman could answer, the squad leader lifted a hand and said, “It’s irrelevant. It takes months to get an appointment to see him, and I doubt your family name will hasten that process. You’ll deal with the magistrate. Come.”

Tikaya wanted to state that her surname had nothing to do with anything, that it was her deeds that had earned her the right to see the president in a timely manner, but the police didn’t care to converse further. The squad swarmed around Rias, leading him away, and a pair of men stepped to either side of Tikaya, gesturing for her to follow. They did not otherwise restrain her, but that only made her feel guilty as she walked behind Rias, observing the handcuffs trapping his wrists behind his back.

 

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Should Independent Authors Have Their Books Translated into Foreign Languages?

I’ve had a couple of folks email me because they were looking for work, translating English books into their native tongues (I think I’ve heard from French and Spanish-speaking/writing folks so far). I have a number of balls in the air right now, so I simply kept the people’s contact information in case I wanted to get in touch later, but I have been curious about this. As an independent ebook author, it’s pretty easy to get your books into other countries (Apple, Kobo, and Amazon all have stores overseas), but at the end of the day, the books are still in English, and I’m sure you’d appeal to a different audience if you had offerings in people’s native tongues.

When I saw fellow indie Susanne O’Leary mention that she was having some luck with the German-language version of her ebook, I decided to ask her if she’d answer some questions for us. She said yes, so here are the details:

Getting Your Book Translating into a Foreign Language with Susanne O’Leary

What made you decide to pursue a German translation of your ebook?

I wanted to get into the German market and had heard it was about to take off. But I also heard that German language books are more popular over there and that womens’ contemporary romantic fiction is in great demand there.

How did you go about uploading the book into the Kindle, Apple, B&N stores, etc.? Do you just go through the regular self-publishing dashboards, or do you need to make an account in the other country?

I only published this book on Amazon (because I wanted to put it into the Select programme) and KDP will get it out into all Amazon outlets worldwide.

How did you go about finding someone to do the translation?

I asked an author friend who had just had her own books translated into German and she put me in touch with the translator.

And how do you know if he/she did a good job?

First of all, I knew that the translator’s husband is a German teacher and would be proof reading the book. And I also have some German friends who were willing to beta read the translation for me. They gave me the thumbs up.

Can you give us an idea about the costs and whether you’ve made your money back through sales in other countries?

What I paid is confidential but I can tell you that it wasn’t cheap. I haven’t made the money back yet but the way the sales increased after my three day free run makes me confident that I will in a couple of months. That said, I might mention that sales of some of my English titles are also beginning to increase in Germany. I have to date 9 reviews on this book and they are all positive.

Does your German book only sell in Germany or is there a market for German-speaking readers in other countries?

I have seen sales in Italy and France with this book and I know that Amazon.de also covers Austria and Switzerland.

Do you think you’ll have the book translated into other languages as well?

I might have it translated into French if I can find a good translator. And in this instance, I can check the book myself, as I speak French fluently.

Susanne’s bio:

Susanne O’Leary is Swedish and lives in Ireland. She married an Irish diplomat at a very young age and travelled the world with her family for many years. She started writing about 12 years ago and her books reflect her globetrotting life, drawing on her experiences as an expat. She started her novelist career with a romantic comedy called ‘Diplomatic Incidents’, which was published in Ireland in 2001 (it was re-written and published on Amazon Kindle as ‘Duty Free’ in 2011).

She published Virtual Suspects (a sequel to Virtual Strangers) in December 2012 and ‘Frischer Schnee‘, the German translation of Fresh Powder, also in December 2012. She is currently working on her 11th novel, a romantic comedy set in the west of Ireland, which she hopes will be published later this year.

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