Iain Rob Wright's Blog, page 5
March 24, 2014
Big Bonanza Boyaa Book Sale!
SALE! SALE! SALE!Because I am such a nice guy, and in no way using a sales promotion to further my own ends, I have currently placed 3 of my top titles on sale for 99c/99p. Right now, and for the next 3 days, you can purchase The Final Winter, The Housemates, and Ravage for next to nothing; so if you're yet to check 'em out, now's your chance you've been dreaming of. Hope you enjoy them! :-)
The Final Winter- A page-turner of 70,000 words
- 10,000 words of Bonus content
- A twist ending
THE SNOW WAS JUST THE START...
On the night it begins snowing in every country of the world, an ordinary group of people gather at a rundown English pub. At first they assume the weather is just a random occurrence and nothing to worry about - but as the night goes on, weirder things happen, and they start to realise that something far more sinister is at hand. Something that none of them could ever have imagined.
By the end of the night, not everyone will make it, and those that do will wish they hadn’t.
Buy it here: UK US
The Housmates-- An SG Horror Release
-- From UK's Top Selling Horror & Thriller Author, Iain Rob Wright
-- 60k words in length
-- BONUS CONTENT: short story by horror author, Matt Shaw: INFLUENZA
TEN DAYS, TWELVE COMPETITORS, TWO MILLION POUNDS IN CASH.
What at first appears to be a wonderful opportunity for Damien Banks turns out to be the worst nightmare he can imagine.
Trapped inside a house with eleven strangers, and a booming voice known only as ‘The Landlord’ controlling his every move, Damien will be forced to compete not only for the money, but for his life.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN…
Buy it here: UK US
Ravage-- An SG Horror Release
-- From Top Selling Horror & Thriller Author, Iain Rob Wright
-- 110k words in length + an additional 10k words of bonus content (120k words in total!)
-- Book finishes with Kindle-exclusive bonus content: THE PATH OF INFECTION (follow the virus as it passes from person to person on its rampage of destruction)
FIRST PEOPLE GOT SICK. THEN THEY GOT VERY SICK..
Nick Adams is just a normal guy. He loves his family, appreciates his home, and covets his car. But he absolutely hates his job. Which is what makes it so difficult that not a single customer has come by his store today. It seems as though there’s a bug going around, something that has come out of nowhere and is keeping people at home. Still, it’s probably nothing to worry about. People get sick all the time.
And besides, things are finally starting to look up. Nick’s first customer of the day has just stumbled through the door…
HIS DAY IS ABOUT TO GET WORSE..
It won’t be long before Nick’s entire life is turned upside down, sending him on a frantic journey through a ravaged world that will ultimately lead him 500 feet upwards to a hilltop amusement park. Is it the last safe place on Earth, or are the monsters at the top of the hill even worse than the ones below?
WELCOME TO RIPLEY HEIGHTS. WHERE THE FUN NEVER STARTS.
Buy it here: UK US
The Final Winter- A page-turner of 70,000 words
- 10,000 words of Bonus content- A twist ending
THE SNOW WAS JUST THE START...
On the night it begins snowing in every country of the world, an ordinary group of people gather at a rundown English pub. At first they assume the weather is just a random occurrence and nothing to worry about - but as the night goes on, weirder things happen, and they start to realise that something far more sinister is at hand. Something that none of them could ever have imagined.
By the end of the night, not everyone will make it, and those that do will wish they hadn’t.
Buy it here: UK US
The Housmates-- An SG Horror Release
-- From UK's Top Selling Horror & Thriller Author, Iain Rob Wright -- 60k words in length
-- BONUS CONTENT: short story by horror author, Matt Shaw: INFLUENZA
TEN DAYS, TWELVE COMPETITORS, TWO MILLION POUNDS IN CASH.
What at first appears to be a wonderful opportunity for Damien Banks turns out to be the worst nightmare he can imagine.
Trapped inside a house with eleven strangers, and a booming voice known only as ‘The Landlord’ controlling his every move, Damien will be forced to compete not only for the money, but for his life.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN…
Buy it here: UK US
Ravage-- An SG Horror Release
-- From Top Selling Horror & Thriller Author, Iain Rob Wright -- 110k words in length + an additional 10k words of bonus content (120k words in total!)
-- Book finishes with Kindle-exclusive bonus content: THE PATH OF INFECTION (follow the virus as it passes from person to person on its rampage of destruction)
FIRST PEOPLE GOT SICK. THEN THEY GOT VERY SICK..
Nick Adams is just a normal guy. He loves his family, appreciates his home, and covets his car. But he absolutely hates his job. Which is what makes it so difficult that not a single customer has come by his store today. It seems as though there’s a bug going around, something that has come out of nowhere and is keeping people at home. Still, it’s probably nothing to worry about. People get sick all the time.
And besides, things are finally starting to look up. Nick’s first customer of the day has just stumbled through the door…
HIS DAY IS ABOUT TO GET WORSE..
It won’t be long before Nick’s entire life is turned upside down, sending him on a frantic journey through a ravaged world that will ultimately lead him 500 feet upwards to a hilltop amusement park. Is it the last safe place on Earth, or are the monsters at the top of the hill even worse than the ones below?
WELCOME TO RIPLEY HEIGHTS. WHERE THE FUN NEVER STARTS.
Buy it here: UK US
February 10, 2014
MAKE YOUR OWN DREAMS...
There was a time when self-publishing meant that you were silly enough to pay some company of crooks a load of money to print several dozen poorly constructed copies of your naively written novel and then try to sell them from the boot of your car. It used to be called Vanity Publishing, and for good reason: the only thing it was good for was stroking a wannabe writer’s ego. What it did not do was put food on their table or allow them to quit their day job. Self-publishing used to suck.
That all changed when the gadget era began. First music migrated to a digital existence via itunes. Then films did it via Netflix. Now books are doing it via Amazon Kindle. Of course there are other players such as Apple, Kobo, etc, but I truly believe that Amazon were the ones with enough vision to truly take reading into the digital realm. They championed the rise of the ebook like no other.
Now, both aspiring and established authors can sell directly to the public. They can cultivate their own audience and grow their online business in the same way a person selling monogramed toilet seats can. For that is what the ebook revolution has truly done: it has changed the publishing industry from an old boy’s club to a free enterprise where effort and talent is rewarded. Now, finally, in the same way as any other business, a person can start from fresh, deliver a good product and grow their business via positive reviews, recommendations, repeat business, advertising, promotions, giveaways, partnerships, and any other avenues an entrepreneurial writer can think of. The devoted will succeed, while the weak-willed will struggle. That’s right, not everyone will make a fortune self-publishing, but at least now everyone CAN! The potential is there for everyone to have a crack at it and give it their best shot. The publishing industry is finally fair. Somebody wanting to be a writer now has the same obstacles as someone who wants to be a carpenter. Learn the craft, work hard, find customers, and succeed. Welcome to the business world. You are now a Director of your own destiny. Here are some of the experiences I had on my own path to making a good living as a writer. There is no failure anymore, just varying levels of success…
The Early StagesThe early stages are hard and prone to tears. No one can make it easy for you. As you self-publish your book, many of you will be opening yourselves up for the first time to criticism and disappointment. Well, don’t be afraid, because getting told you suck is one of the most important parts of your growth as a writer. I will explain why in a moment.
Now, just to prepare you, when you self-publish your very first book – you will get no sales (well, maybe a few). Your earnings will be poor and you will shake your head and weep that you will never get to leave your horrible job. Well, don’t panic, because that happens to all of us. No one knows you exist! It’s not that you are no good. You could have written a masterpiece, but right now no one can see it. You need to get customer reviews, word of mouth, and also wait while Amazon (and any other vendors you have used) integrates your product into its vast website algorithms. You are at the very first rung of the ladder, and your only focus now should be to climb a little higher each week. Don’t focus on how much you WANT to make. Focus on what you did last week and beat it.
Now, the first thing you need is reviews. Buying a book with little or no reviews is a risk, and customers don’t like risking their money. So what do you do? You reduce the risk. For the time being, give away your book free via promotions or price it as cheaply as you can (you can charge more when your book has lots of great reviews). You still may not move a lot of copies, but you will slowly start to get some people reading your book. Some of those people will leave reviews; and that is what you need. If you’re lucky, one of those people will like you and become a fan.
On the negative side, some of those reviews might be bad. They might tell you that you suck. That is good. You are not a good writer yet and your probably do suck a little bit. No one has ever blindly published a masterpiece. Mozart didn’t just play the piano perfectly one day; he learned and developed. You must do the same. Bad reviews are the very best advice you will ever get – because they are harsh, unbiased, and most importantly of all, honest. You have flaws, sorry, but you so. If you write for sixty years, you will still have flaws. Charles Dickens had flaws and so do you. Bad reviews point them out to you.
When I first started, I noticed a trend in all my bad reviews (as rare as they were, ha!) was that I was identity confused. Although British, I was writing like an American to emulate all the great American horror authors I had read growing up. This led me to have a confused writing style, which included very British words like ‘telly, brew, git, bugger, knobhead,’ side-by-side with very American words like ‘cookie, trunk, wiener, and Justin Bieber.’ This led to both sides of the Atlantic being confused and distracted when reading my work. Not good. But my bad reviews made me aware of the problem. As a result, I made the effort to remain true to my British background and began writing in my own true voice. My books suddenly had a new identity. Americans began to enjoy my ‘quirky’ dialogue and my English fans enjoyed being accurately represented by a writer of their own. Needless to say, my bad reviews became rarer and rarer. You, too, must take heed of your bad reviews. They may be hurtful, but dag namit they are helpful. Only a fool closes his ears to his critics. You must bend over and welcome your detractors.
Building an AudienceNow, as you get in a few reviews and sell a few books, you will find things will gather a little bit of steam. Your sales will still be few, but they should be steady. Your books may appear in searches (I always add subtitles after my book titles, such as ‘A Horror novel’ or ‘Apocalyptic Horror novel,’ as this increases the number of keywords in the title) or be recommended by people who have already read it. Time to start leveraging what you have to grow your audience.
Now the first thing to do is NOT go on Facebook and start begging readers and other authors to help you. They get this all the time from dozens of other desperate authors, and quite frankly why should they help you? You haven’t done anything for them. Believe me, the path to success is not by shoving your book in everyone’s faces. You should be championing yourself, not your book. If you want to make a career out of writing, people need to like YOU and follow YOU as a writer. So be a nice guy, chat to people about what ever it is that people are chatting about. Offer to share the work of another author you have seen. Do favours for others and get involved with the reading community – they’ll return the favour down the road. It is much better to have someone share your book because they like you and because you did a favour for them previously. If you are a nice guy people will help you because they WANT to, not because you nagged them. Believe me, this is the way to go about things. If you need to share something about your book, do it on your own page or even on pages set up for promoting new releases (there are hundreds), but don’t invade someone else’s privacy, because you will annoy them.
Once you have the ground work set up and a small following, forget about social media and start writing again – and I don’t mean short stories or novellas, I mean novels. The best way to make more money and gain new fans is by writing full-length novels. The more novels you have on sale, the more chance someone has of stumbling upon you. It also means that when you are lucky enough to find a fan, they will be able to buy 2,3,4 books from you rather than just 1. That in itself equates to more money. Writing new books should always, for as long as you do this, be your NUMBER ONE priority. If you want to quit your day job you need books. The lucky writers will need but a few to make decent money, others may need a dozen, but one thing is true: the more books you write the more money you make. It will also help you grow and develop as a writer, too. More words on paper (or eInk) means more practice for you.
Now, I know lots of authors are very eager and they quickly publish a load of short stories or novellas. These are lovely for bridging gaps between novels for an already successful author, but they honestly waste the time of the writer still wishing to grow. Short stories make little money and sell far fewer copies than full-length titles (at least in my opinion). I know it is hard to have to wait so long to get a taste of what releasing a new story feels like, but you have to be patient. Commit yourself to writing a new novel and don’t stop till it’s done. It may take a while, but it is time well invested. Once you publish your new novel, start the next one. When you have hundreds of fans clamoring for another fix, then you can give them something shorter to tide them over. As a new writer you need to make money and find fans – novels is where it is at! Period.
Building a BrandOnce you have the basics dealt with and have built a small platform on which to grow, you need to take things to the next level. Remember, you should be selling yourself as a writer, not individual books. You want people to find ALL of your work, not just a novel at a time. You need to become a brand.
The first thing you should do is get help. People think self-publishing means going it alone. IT DOES NOT. Self-publishing means you’re the boss, but even bosses need to hire out for other services. McDonalds doesn’t make its own tables and chairs in a McWoodwork factory. It pays someone else. A writer does not paint his or her own covers. They pay someone else to do it. Artists, editors, website designers, and formatters are all worth the money they charge, so consider them carefully.
Use the money you earn from you books and reinvest it. When you first start to use your earnings towards investment, the first thing you should look at it artwork. Unless you have a qualification, you should not do your own covers. If money is short, you can pay graphic designers to pull something nice together from stock images, but even this should be a stopgap until you can afford to pay an original artist (I use Stephen Bryant at SRB Productions). Expect to pay around $450 dollars per cover for a top-class painter, but I promise you that the cost covers itself. Develop a relationship with your artist and develop a brand with them. Study the best selling books in your genre and take note of what they all have in common (hint: they are usually vague and only seek to create mood. Very rarely do they give away any content of the plot or characters. Moody and vague is key for Horror, Thrillers, etc). If you have more than one book, develop a template. The individual artwork and colour scheme should change for each book, but your template should remain. Have your name appear in the same font and size on every cover. Give yourself a strapline (mine is ‘Fear on every page’. James Patterson’s is ‘The pages turn themselves.’). Make it obvious to a browser that you are more than just one book, and that you have longevity. Readers like to know that an author is writing more books (Reading books is an investment and good authors are hard to find). Also, by having a consistent brand, your books will stick in a browser’s mind. If they ignore your book a few times, but keep seeing the same name in the same style and font, they will start to get curious. You will have made them aware that you exist. This is the fundamental challenge of being a self-published author: being discovered. Your cover is one of the best weapons you have to hook a new reader.
Expanding your brand even further, create yourself a website and get your artist to do you a banner with the same fonts and templates as your book covers. Link all of your online sites together and your whole presence as an author will become more cohesive and more professional. The differences between you and a New York Publishing house author will become less and less. You are not less than they are, so why should you seem it. Look at the websites of authors you admire and emulate the layout. Don’t get too fancy. You’re a writer not an online casino. Join up to as many social media sites as you can and link to them from your website. Make it easy for fans to contact you, but don’t waste your day on Facebook because it is folly. You should be writing books, remember? If you are lucky enough to have a fan contact you, then you better bloody well get back in touch with them. Love your fans and they will love you. They are family now and you need them!
ExpandingOnce you have a few books out and a cohesive brand, you should be making enough money to get butterflies in your belly. You might be able to buy a new flat screen TV with the money you have earned, or even start being a little rude to your boss at your day job (you will be able to stick your fingers up to him one day soon if all goes well).
The last part of the puzzle is to expand, expand, expand. You need to write new novels, I cannot stress that enough, but you should also make sure that in addition to ebooks, you also publish paperback copies through Createspace (formatting is tough, so pay someone), and look at publishing audiobooks through ACX (doing a royalty split with the narrator means no upfront cost). You can also look at foreign publishers, comic book artists, and more. Each of these things will only earn only a small income, but if you do it with all of your books, then that small income will become not unsubstantial. It also has a benefit besides income: it makes you look professional. When a reader sees your book and then notes ebook, paperback, audiobook, and German, it tells them that you are the real deal, and that you take this shiz-nit seriously. Just make sure to exploit every money-earning opportunity that you can. Succeeding as a self-publisher is not about writing one big hit, it’s about writing lots of books and maximizing the profit each of them makes. It’s a business and books are your products. You need to sell them.
The Future
I don’t know what the future holds, (people like JA Konrath and Barry Eisler are better prophets than me) but I can say that my fortunes keep increasing as a self-published author. I started at zero, with no publishing credits and no friends in high places. Now I feed my family and love my life. Self-publishing gave that to me. It took me out of my crappy, low-income job and gave me a life I love. It may not happen for you, I am sad to say that, truly, but there is no reason that it shouldn’t. The best thing the self-publishing revolution has given us is an equal chance. You have as much chance of succeeding as anybody else. So give it your best damn shot, buddy. I hope to see you at the top.
That all changed when the gadget era began. First music migrated to a digital existence via itunes. Then films did it via Netflix. Now books are doing it via Amazon Kindle. Of course there are other players such as Apple, Kobo, etc, but I truly believe that Amazon were the ones with enough vision to truly take reading into the digital realm. They championed the rise of the ebook like no other.
Now, both aspiring and established authors can sell directly to the public. They can cultivate their own audience and grow their online business in the same way a person selling monogramed toilet seats can. For that is what the ebook revolution has truly done: it has changed the publishing industry from an old boy’s club to a free enterprise where effort and talent is rewarded. Now, finally, in the same way as any other business, a person can start from fresh, deliver a good product and grow their business via positive reviews, recommendations, repeat business, advertising, promotions, giveaways, partnerships, and any other avenues an entrepreneurial writer can think of. The devoted will succeed, while the weak-willed will struggle. That’s right, not everyone will make a fortune self-publishing, but at least now everyone CAN! The potential is there for everyone to have a crack at it and give it their best shot. The publishing industry is finally fair. Somebody wanting to be a writer now has the same obstacles as someone who wants to be a carpenter. Learn the craft, work hard, find customers, and succeed. Welcome to the business world. You are now a Director of your own destiny. Here are some of the experiences I had on my own path to making a good living as a writer. There is no failure anymore, just varying levels of success…
The Early StagesThe early stages are hard and prone to tears. No one can make it easy for you. As you self-publish your book, many of you will be opening yourselves up for the first time to criticism and disappointment. Well, don’t be afraid, because getting told you suck is one of the most important parts of your growth as a writer. I will explain why in a moment.
Now, just to prepare you, when you self-publish your very first book – you will get no sales (well, maybe a few). Your earnings will be poor and you will shake your head and weep that you will never get to leave your horrible job. Well, don’t panic, because that happens to all of us. No one knows you exist! It’s not that you are no good. You could have written a masterpiece, but right now no one can see it. You need to get customer reviews, word of mouth, and also wait while Amazon (and any other vendors you have used) integrates your product into its vast website algorithms. You are at the very first rung of the ladder, and your only focus now should be to climb a little higher each week. Don’t focus on how much you WANT to make. Focus on what you did last week and beat it.
Now, the first thing you need is reviews. Buying a book with little or no reviews is a risk, and customers don’t like risking their money. So what do you do? You reduce the risk. For the time being, give away your book free via promotions or price it as cheaply as you can (you can charge more when your book has lots of great reviews). You still may not move a lot of copies, but you will slowly start to get some people reading your book. Some of those people will leave reviews; and that is what you need. If you’re lucky, one of those people will like you and become a fan.
On the negative side, some of those reviews might be bad. They might tell you that you suck. That is good. You are not a good writer yet and your probably do suck a little bit. No one has ever blindly published a masterpiece. Mozart didn’t just play the piano perfectly one day; he learned and developed. You must do the same. Bad reviews are the very best advice you will ever get – because they are harsh, unbiased, and most importantly of all, honest. You have flaws, sorry, but you so. If you write for sixty years, you will still have flaws. Charles Dickens had flaws and so do you. Bad reviews point them out to you.
When I first started, I noticed a trend in all my bad reviews (as rare as they were, ha!) was that I was identity confused. Although British, I was writing like an American to emulate all the great American horror authors I had read growing up. This led me to have a confused writing style, which included very British words like ‘telly, brew, git, bugger, knobhead,’ side-by-side with very American words like ‘cookie, trunk, wiener, and Justin Bieber.’ This led to both sides of the Atlantic being confused and distracted when reading my work. Not good. But my bad reviews made me aware of the problem. As a result, I made the effort to remain true to my British background and began writing in my own true voice. My books suddenly had a new identity. Americans began to enjoy my ‘quirky’ dialogue and my English fans enjoyed being accurately represented by a writer of their own. Needless to say, my bad reviews became rarer and rarer. You, too, must take heed of your bad reviews. They may be hurtful, but dag namit they are helpful. Only a fool closes his ears to his critics. You must bend over and welcome your detractors.
Building an AudienceNow, as you get in a few reviews and sell a few books, you will find things will gather a little bit of steam. Your sales will still be few, but they should be steady. Your books may appear in searches (I always add subtitles after my book titles, such as ‘A Horror novel’ or ‘Apocalyptic Horror novel,’ as this increases the number of keywords in the title) or be recommended by people who have already read it. Time to start leveraging what you have to grow your audience.
Now the first thing to do is NOT go on Facebook and start begging readers and other authors to help you. They get this all the time from dozens of other desperate authors, and quite frankly why should they help you? You haven’t done anything for them. Believe me, the path to success is not by shoving your book in everyone’s faces. You should be championing yourself, not your book. If you want to make a career out of writing, people need to like YOU and follow YOU as a writer. So be a nice guy, chat to people about what ever it is that people are chatting about. Offer to share the work of another author you have seen. Do favours for others and get involved with the reading community – they’ll return the favour down the road. It is much better to have someone share your book because they like you and because you did a favour for them previously. If you are a nice guy people will help you because they WANT to, not because you nagged them. Believe me, this is the way to go about things. If you need to share something about your book, do it on your own page or even on pages set up for promoting new releases (there are hundreds), but don’t invade someone else’s privacy, because you will annoy them.
Once you have the ground work set up and a small following, forget about social media and start writing again – and I don’t mean short stories or novellas, I mean novels. The best way to make more money and gain new fans is by writing full-length novels. The more novels you have on sale, the more chance someone has of stumbling upon you. It also means that when you are lucky enough to find a fan, they will be able to buy 2,3,4 books from you rather than just 1. That in itself equates to more money. Writing new books should always, for as long as you do this, be your NUMBER ONE priority. If you want to quit your day job you need books. The lucky writers will need but a few to make decent money, others may need a dozen, but one thing is true: the more books you write the more money you make. It will also help you grow and develop as a writer, too. More words on paper (or eInk) means more practice for you.
Now, I know lots of authors are very eager and they quickly publish a load of short stories or novellas. These are lovely for bridging gaps between novels for an already successful author, but they honestly waste the time of the writer still wishing to grow. Short stories make little money and sell far fewer copies than full-length titles (at least in my opinion). I know it is hard to have to wait so long to get a taste of what releasing a new story feels like, but you have to be patient. Commit yourself to writing a new novel and don’t stop till it’s done. It may take a while, but it is time well invested. Once you publish your new novel, start the next one. When you have hundreds of fans clamoring for another fix, then you can give them something shorter to tide them over. As a new writer you need to make money and find fans – novels is where it is at! Period.
Building a BrandOnce you have the basics dealt with and have built a small platform on which to grow, you need to take things to the next level. Remember, you should be selling yourself as a writer, not individual books. You want people to find ALL of your work, not just a novel at a time. You need to become a brand.
The first thing you should do is get help. People think self-publishing means going it alone. IT DOES NOT. Self-publishing means you’re the boss, but even bosses need to hire out for other services. McDonalds doesn’t make its own tables and chairs in a McWoodwork factory. It pays someone else. A writer does not paint his or her own covers. They pay someone else to do it. Artists, editors, website designers, and formatters are all worth the money they charge, so consider them carefully.
Use the money you earn from you books and reinvest it. When you first start to use your earnings towards investment, the first thing you should look at it artwork. Unless you have a qualification, you should not do your own covers. If money is short, you can pay graphic designers to pull something nice together from stock images, but even this should be a stopgap until you can afford to pay an original artist (I use Stephen Bryant at SRB Productions). Expect to pay around $450 dollars per cover for a top-class painter, but I promise you that the cost covers itself. Develop a relationship with your artist and develop a brand with them. Study the best selling books in your genre and take note of what they all have in common (hint: they are usually vague and only seek to create mood. Very rarely do they give away any content of the plot or characters. Moody and vague is key for Horror, Thrillers, etc). If you have more than one book, develop a template. The individual artwork and colour scheme should change for each book, but your template should remain. Have your name appear in the same font and size on every cover. Give yourself a strapline (mine is ‘Fear on every page’. James Patterson’s is ‘The pages turn themselves.’). Make it obvious to a browser that you are more than just one book, and that you have longevity. Readers like to know that an author is writing more books (Reading books is an investment and good authors are hard to find). Also, by having a consistent brand, your books will stick in a browser’s mind. If they ignore your book a few times, but keep seeing the same name in the same style and font, they will start to get curious. You will have made them aware that you exist. This is the fundamental challenge of being a self-published author: being discovered. Your cover is one of the best weapons you have to hook a new reader.
Expanding your brand even further, create yourself a website and get your artist to do you a banner with the same fonts and templates as your book covers. Link all of your online sites together and your whole presence as an author will become more cohesive and more professional. The differences between you and a New York Publishing house author will become less and less. You are not less than they are, so why should you seem it. Look at the websites of authors you admire and emulate the layout. Don’t get too fancy. You’re a writer not an online casino. Join up to as many social media sites as you can and link to them from your website. Make it easy for fans to contact you, but don’t waste your day on Facebook because it is folly. You should be writing books, remember? If you are lucky enough to have a fan contact you, then you better bloody well get back in touch with them. Love your fans and they will love you. They are family now and you need them!
ExpandingOnce you have a few books out and a cohesive brand, you should be making enough money to get butterflies in your belly. You might be able to buy a new flat screen TV with the money you have earned, or even start being a little rude to your boss at your day job (you will be able to stick your fingers up to him one day soon if all goes well).
The last part of the puzzle is to expand, expand, expand. You need to write new novels, I cannot stress that enough, but you should also make sure that in addition to ebooks, you also publish paperback copies through Createspace (formatting is tough, so pay someone), and look at publishing audiobooks through ACX (doing a royalty split with the narrator means no upfront cost). You can also look at foreign publishers, comic book artists, and more. Each of these things will only earn only a small income, but if you do it with all of your books, then that small income will become not unsubstantial. It also has a benefit besides income: it makes you look professional. When a reader sees your book and then notes ebook, paperback, audiobook, and German, it tells them that you are the real deal, and that you take this shiz-nit seriously. Just make sure to exploit every money-earning opportunity that you can. Succeeding as a self-publisher is not about writing one big hit, it’s about writing lots of books and maximizing the profit each of them makes. It’s a business and books are your products. You need to sell them.
The Future
I don’t know what the future holds, (people like JA Konrath and Barry Eisler are better prophets than me) but I can say that my fortunes keep increasing as a self-published author. I started at zero, with no publishing credits and no friends in high places. Now I feed my family and love my life. Self-publishing gave that to me. It took me out of my crappy, low-income job and gave me a life I love. It may not happen for you, I am sad to say that, truly, but there is no reason that it shouldn’t. The best thing the self-publishing revolution has given us is an equal chance. You have as much chance of succeeding as anybody else. So give it your best damn shot, buddy. I hope to see you at the top.
January 20, 2014
Self-Publishing Interview with Brandon Sneed.
A short interview where I talk about self-publishing and my views on whether or not it is worthwhile.
http://brandonsneed.com/i-interviewed-successful-self-published-author-iain-rob-wright/
January 18, 2014
Six Author Boxset starring ME! (99c / 99p)
Greetings gangsters... (or some such)
Lately my life has had a tendency to get a little bit trippy. When five authors who I greatly respect and admire (and fancy a little bit...) invite me to come join them on a project, I take a moment to pinch myself. But I'm not dreaming. Available now for a limited time only (and on sale for only 99c / 99p) is a boxset featuring my own novel, The Final Winter as well as the following gems:
-Link to buy is at the bottom of the post...
*****
Eerie (By Blake Crouch & Jordan Crouch): TRAPPED INSIDE A HOUSE
On a crisp autumn evening in 1980, seven-year-old Grant Moreton and his five-year-old sister Paige were nearly killed in a mysterious accident in the Cascade Mountains that left them orphans.
WITH A FRIGHTENING POWER
It's been thirty years since that night. Grant is now a detective with the Seattle Police Department and long estranged from his sister. But his investigation into the bloody past of a high-class prostitute has led right to Paige's door, and what awaits inside is beyond his wildest imagining.
OVER ANYONE WHO ENTERS
His only hope of survival and saving his sister will be to confront the terror that inhabits its walls, but he is completely unprepared to face the truth of what haunts his sister's brownstone.
****
Haunted House (By Joe Konrath):
BEYOND AFRAID...
It was an experiment in fear.
Eight people, each chosen because they lived through a terrifying experience. Survivors. They don't scare easily. They know how to fight back.
BEYOND TRAPPED...
Each is paid a million dollars to spend one night in a house. The old Butler House, where those grisly murders occurred so many years ago. A house that is supposedly haunted.
BEYOND ENDURANCE...
They can take whatever they want with them. Religious items. Survival gear. Weapons. All they need to do is last the night.
But there is something evil in this house. Something very evil, and very real. And when the dying starts, it comes with horrifying violence and brutal finality.
There are much scarier things than ghosts.
Things that will kill you slowly and delight in your screams.
Things that won't let you get out alive.
HAUNTED HOUSEPeople are dying to leave
*****
Speed Dating With the Dead (by Scott Nicholson):For fans of Stephen King, Joe Hill, and James Herbert. A paranormal conference at the most haunted hotel in the Blue Ridge Mountains goes haywire when ghost hunters accidentally stir up demons.
SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD
When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team Spirit Seekers International to the White Horse Inn, he is skeptical that his dead wife will keep her half of the bargain. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and just before she died, she promised to meet him there.
But when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and his wife, his convictions are challenged.
And when guests start to disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of
demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because soon the inn will be closing for good, angels can’t be trusted, and demons don’t like to play alone . . .
*****
Wolf Hunt (by Jeff Strand):Two thugs. One innocent woman. And one VICIOUS frickin' werewolf.
Meet George and Lou, thugs for hire. The kind of intimidating-yet-friendly guys who will break your thumbs, but be polite about it.
Their latest assignment is to drive across Florida to deliver some precious cargo to a crime lord.
The cargo: a man in a cage. Though Ivan seems perfectly human, they’re warned that he is, in fact, a bloodthirsty werewolf.
George and Lou don’t believe in the supernatural, but even if they did, it’s daytime and tonight isn’t the full moon. Their instructions are straightforward: Do not open the cage. Do not reach into the cage. Do not throw anything into the cage. And they don't.
Unfortunately, Ivan doesn’t play by the usual werewolf rules, and the thugs find themselves suddenly responsible for a ferocious escaped beast. One who can transform at will. One who enjoys killing in human form as much as he enjoys killing as a monster.
If George and Lou want to save their careers, dozens of people, and their own lives, they need to recapture him. Because Ivan the werewolf is in the mood for a murder spree…
From Jeff Strand, the three-time Bram Stoker Award nominated author of PRESSURE, comes 75,000 words of action-packed, blood-soaked werewolf terror!
****
Virgin (by F Paul Wilson):A two-thousand-year-old scroll is found in the Negev Desert. It describes what might be the final resting place of Mary, the mother of Jesus. To the disappointment of all, the ink is dated as less than a dozen years old. A fake. But one woman believes and goes searching. What she finds will change the world – forever.
VIRGIN is a thriller of international scope, traipsing through the Judean Wilderness, the shore of the Dead Sea, the River Lee in Ireland, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Big Sur, and the Central Pacific. It's peopled with various believers and skeptics: a priest and nun who are lovers; a cardinal who has spent his life debunking miracles and is now desperately in need of one; a US Senator with a son dying of AIDS; his vicious chief of security; and Kesev, the mysterious Israeli Shin Bet officer who was derelict in his unofficial life task of guarding the remains of "The Mother" and is determined to retrieve her remains at any cost.
And in a finale that harkens back to that 1950's film, "The Next Voice You Hear," the Virgin has news for the world – an unexpectedly secular message that will resonate with any open mind.
BUY THE BOXSET HERE FOR ONLY 99c/99pUK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Supernatural-Horror-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B00HUUMP8I/ref=la_B0052WR48C_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390071843&sr=1-9
US - http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Supernatural-Horror-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B00HUUMP8I/ref=la_B0052WR48C_1_9_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390072135&sr=1-9
---------------
Lately my life has had a tendency to get a little bit trippy. When five authors who I greatly respect and admire (and fancy a little bit...) invite me to come join them on a project, I take a moment to pinch myself. But I'm not dreaming. Available now for a limited time only (and on sale for only 99c / 99p) is a boxset featuring my own novel, The Final Winter as well as the following gems:
-Link to buy is at the bottom of the post...
*****
Eerie (By Blake Crouch & Jordan Crouch): TRAPPED INSIDE A HOUSE
On a crisp autumn evening in 1980, seven-year-old Grant Moreton and his five-year-old sister Paige were nearly killed in a mysterious accident in the Cascade Mountains that left them orphans.
WITH A FRIGHTENING POWER
It's been thirty years since that night. Grant is now a detective with the Seattle Police Department and long estranged from his sister. But his investigation into the bloody past of a high-class prostitute has led right to Paige's door, and what awaits inside is beyond his wildest imagining.
OVER ANYONE WHO ENTERS
His only hope of survival and saving his sister will be to confront the terror that inhabits its walls, but he is completely unprepared to face the truth of what haunts his sister's brownstone.
****
Haunted House (By Joe Konrath):
BEYOND AFRAID...
It was an experiment in fear.
Eight people, each chosen because they lived through a terrifying experience. Survivors. They don't scare easily. They know how to fight back.
BEYOND TRAPPED...
Each is paid a million dollars to spend one night in a house. The old Butler House, where those grisly murders occurred so many years ago. A house that is supposedly haunted.
BEYOND ENDURANCE...
They can take whatever they want with them. Religious items. Survival gear. Weapons. All they need to do is last the night.
But there is something evil in this house. Something very evil, and very real. And when the dying starts, it comes with horrifying violence and brutal finality.
There are much scarier things than ghosts.
Things that will kill you slowly and delight in your screams.
Things that won't let you get out alive.
HAUNTED HOUSEPeople are dying to leave
*****
Speed Dating With the Dead (by Scott Nicholson):For fans of Stephen King, Joe Hill, and James Herbert. A paranormal conference at the most haunted hotel in the Blue Ridge Mountains goes haywire when ghost hunters accidentally stir up demons.
SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD
When Digger Wilson brings his paranormal team Spirit Seekers International to the White Horse Inn, he is skeptical that his dead wife will keep her half of the bargain. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and just before she died, she promised to meet him there.
But when one of the conference guests channels a mysterious presence and an Ouija board spells out a pet phrase known only to Digger and his wife, his convictions are challenged.
And when guests start to disappear, Digger and his daughter Kendra must face the circle of
demons that view the hotel as their personal playground. Because soon the inn will be closing for good, angels can’t be trusted, and demons don’t like to play alone . . .
*****
Wolf Hunt (by Jeff Strand):Two thugs. One innocent woman. And one VICIOUS frickin' werewolf.
Meet George and Lou, thugs for hire. The kind of intimidating-yet-friendly guys who will break your thumbs, but be polite about it.
Their latest assignment is to drive across Florida to deliver some precious cargo to a crime lord.
The cargo: a man in a cage. Though Ivan seems perfectly human, they’re warned that he is, in fact, a bloodthirsty werewolf.
George and Lou don’t believe in the supernatural, but even if they did, it’s daytime and tonight isn’t the full moon. Their instructions are straightforward: Do not open the cage. Do not reach into the cage. Do not throw anything into the cage. And they don't.
Unfortunately, Ivan doesn’t play by the usual werewolf rules, and the thugs find themselves suddenly responsible for a ferocious escaped beast. One who can transform at will. One who enjoys killing in human form as much as he enjoys killing as a monster.
If George and Lou want to save their careers, dozens of people, and their own lives, they need to recapture him. Because Ivan the werewolf is in the mood for a murder spree…
From Jeff Strand, the three-time Bram Stoker Award nominated author of PRESSURE, comes 75,000 words of action-packed, blood-soaked werewolf terror!
****
Virgin (by F Paul Wilson):A two-thousand-year-old scroll is found in the Negev Desert. It describes what might be the final resting place of Mary, the mother of Jesus. To the disappointment of all, the ink is dated as less than a dozen years old. A fake. But one woman believes and goes searching. What she finds will change the world – forever.
VIRGIN is a thriller of international scope, traipsing through the Judean Wilderness, the shore of the Dead Sea, the River Lee in Ireland, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Big Sur, and the Central Pacific. It's peopled with various believers and skeptics: a priest and nun who are lovers; a cardinal who has spent his life debunking miracles and is now desperately in need of one; a US Senator with a son dying of AIDS; his vicious chief of security; and Kesev, the mysterious Israeli Shin Bet officer who was derelict in his unofficial life task of guarding the remains of "The Mother" and is determined to retrieve her remains at any cost.
And in a finale that harkens back to that 1950's film, "The Next Voice You Hear," the Virgin has news for the world – an unexpectedly secular message that will resonate with any open mind.
BUY THE BOXSET HERE FOR ONLY 99c/99pUK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Supernatural-Horror-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B00HUUMP8I/ref=la_B0052WR48C_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390071843&sr=1-9
US - http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Supernatural-Horror-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B00HUUMP8I/ref=la_B0052WR48C_1_9_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390072135&sr=1-9
---------------
January 16, 2014
SAVAGE - Chapter One...
GARFIELDFungus grew underfoot. Fungus grew everywhere lately. With each step that the dead took they seemed to shed flesh. That flesh would meld with the earth and give life to an all manner of strange flora. Even in death things grew. But the world had not died, not really; it had just changed – tilted in such a way that the lowly fungus was now better sustained for life than the once mighty human race.
Garfield crested a muddy hill, his boots sinking into puddles from the recent storm. Winter was still winter in the UK, and the heavens still enjoyed a good downpour on a daily basis. One thing the dead could never change was the weather.
“There’s a garage over there,” said one of the foragers, pointing.
Garfield nodded. “Checked it last week. Empty.”
The forager sighed, then hurried off to continue his search.
Garfield sighed too as he gazed across the barren landscape that had once hosted scenes of gridlocked traffic. Nothing moved anymore; the many abandoned cars slept in long lines, but they would never get where they were going. It was like a still-life painting of what life had once been like. The nearby petrol station had little use, the fuel in its pumps useful only for starting fires (and there were many simpler ways to do that). Food and drink were valuable now, not oil and petroleum, and Garfield knew that the little forecourt contained none of the former. Very few places did any more.
We’re going to have to trek further. There’s nothing left around here anymore. We’ve picked clean what remained and now we have no choice but to venture out.
But venturing out would be dangerous. The lands surrounding the camp were relatively safe. It was a rural location and mostly deserted. There was, of course, packs of the dead wandering around from time to time – that was true everywhere – but they could be seen early and avoided easily. Even now, half a mile away, Garfield could see a shamble of perhaps a half-dozen off in the distance. The dead men and women bumped and clawed against a chest-high wooden fence that had once kept horses contained but now contained them. Their clumsiness might keep them there forever – eternally penned-in by an obstacle that would have been easily surmountable had they been alive.
Since the last of the sprinters – infected people who had became flooded with rage and adrenaline – had died out and become the slower, shambling kind of zombies, things had been a lot safer. Garfield and his group of foragers now had only to contend with a foe that was clumsy and stupid – still dangerous, but predictable also. There had even been rare words spoken of hope lately; dreams that things might one day work themselves out. Garfield was not so childish as to hold on to such childish notions. There was no coming back from this.
A short, sharp yell from behind Garfield made him spin around. He immediately yanked a long screwdriver from a pocket inside his heavy overcoat and held it ready. So used to fighting, was he, that every time he heard a noise he unfolded like a spring.
At the bottom of the hill, one of the foragers had fallen down to the ground beside an articulated lorry. Beneath the vehicle’s rusted axels, a body crawled in the mud. The dead man had a firm grip on the forager’s ankle.
Garfield reached the bottom of the hill in a flash, with a speed he had never possessed in his sedentary life of before. He scrambled down towards his struggling colleague and wasted not a second in driving his long screwdriver into the side of the dead man’s skull and piercing the temple. He left the screwdriver there, jutting out like a lever. The forager lay beneath the corpse, panting and moaning in fear. Garfield kicked the dead body away and helped the man to his feet.
“Thanks, Garfield. I thought I was a goner.”
Garfield smiled.
Then he pulled a claw hammer from a hidden compartment up his sleeve and smashed it into the top of the forager’s head, killing him instantly.The other men in the foraging group backed away, staring at Garfield like he was a murderous lunatic. Perhaps he was.
Is anybody sane anymore?
Garfield wiped the bloody hammer on his olive overcoat and replaced it up his sleeve. He shrugged his shoulders at the other foragers and pointed to the one who was dead. “Look. He took a good bite on his ankle. There was no hope for him. I did him a kindness. He never even knew he was infected.”
The other foragers glanced down at their dead colleague’s ankle and saw the wound there, clear as day: a bright red gash in the shape of a human mouth. The dead man beneath the truck had killed the forager the moment his rotted teeth had broken skin. Garfield had done nothing but put an animal out of its misery. The other men sighed, but they nodded also. They understood. It was the way of things now, and nobody wanted to become one of them. People tried not to dwell on the things that must be done.
“Come on, let’s get back to camp,” said Garfield. “We’re going to have to plan a new route. There’s nothing left here.”
Garfield had just turned away when a banging inside the articulated lorry’s container alerted him. Everybody turned to face the noise, their various make-shift weapons at the ready. Garfield pulled a small hand axe from his belt.
The banging continued, weak but obvious.
“It’s just one of them,” said one of the foragers. “We should just leave.”Garfield knew it was stupid, but his mind kept turning to the half-dozen men and women trapped inside that horse paddock half a mile away, and how they might never escape. The thought of a creature – who had once been a human being – being trapped inside a rusty container for all eternity brought him great sadness.
“Open the doors,” he said. “There might be supplies in there. If there’s a dead man inside, it means nobody has checked it out yet. We can’t afford to ignore what might be inside.”
The foragers sighed. As experienced as they all were with handling the dead, nobody ever took it for granted. They had just lost a man to a bite, and they knew it could happen again to any of them in an instant. A dead man’s jaws closed fast.
One of the foragers crept around to the back of the container and took a firm grip on the release handle. The other foragers readied their weapons and waited. Garfield stood in front of the container’s doors.
“Soon as the doors are open, keep back. If it’s anything we can’t handle, make back to camp immediately. If I’m intact I’ll come with you.”
The man at the release handle nodded and then shoved down the steel lever and pried open the locking bar.
Then he opened the left door and stepped away.
Garfield crouched, axe at the ready, staring into the black rectangle that had opened up in the back of the container. The banging had stopped, replaced by a delicate shuffling.
Carefully, Garfield grabbed a hold of the right-side door and began to edge it open. Soon both doors were hanging wide and the black rectangle of darkness grew in size.
The shuffling continued.
Garfield glanced at the other foragers. They all stood ready, primed to attack. But so far there was nothing to alert them; just the shuffling noise.
At least it sounds like there’s only one of them in there. I can handle one.Only takes one to end you.
Garfield placed a gloved hand onto the lip of the container and heaved himself up onto one knee with one leg still hanging down, ready to carry him backwards at the first sign of danger. When it was clear nothing was going to lunge at him, Garfield gained some confidence and pulled himself fully up inside the container.
As he entered the shadows, his eyes began to adjust; the blackness turned to grey. Something moved towards the back of the container, a brief shifting that disturbed the dusty air.
The container was nearly empty, but there were a few pallets stacked towards the back. Garfield took a slow step forwards. The thud of his boot echoed inside the steel box.
The shuffling started again, and seemed to increase.
It knows I’m here.
He took another step, his axe out in front of him, ready to split open a skull. His eyes gazed up…down….up…down.
Can never tell where they’re going to come at ya. Just as many chomp at your ankles then those which face you head on.
One more step was all it took for Garfield to spot the squirming body on the floor. His eyes had now fully adjusted to the dim light and he could see clearly. The man lay between two pallets stacked high with rolls of toilet paper. He was covered by a grubby brown blanket and two steel crutches lay beside him.
A blanket? Crutches.
Garfield raised his axe, ready to bring it down on the man’s exposed head. He couldn’t tell in the dim light, but he was sure he could make out a bright crop of ginger hair that matched the colour of his own. Most of the dead had nothing left on their heads but dirty grey clumps.
Being trapped in here must have kept him in better shape than being out in the open.
Garfield placed a boot on the dead man’s chest and squeezed the shaft of his axe tightly. “I never asked for this, and I’m sure you didn’t either.”
Garfield swung his axe.
The man on the ground reached up a hand. “Please.”
Garfield managed to divert his swing at the last moment. The axe buried itself in a roll of toilet paper and ensnared itself in the plastic wrapping that secured the rolls to the pallet.
“Jesus! You’re alive.”
The man was weak and in obvious pain, yet he was undoubtedly alive. The stink coming off him was as bad as any dead man, but he was alive. Garfield could see the sweat on his forehead.
“You’re bitten?”
The man managed to shake his head. “No. No…”
“You’re not bitten? You sure about that, because you don’t look too perky.”
“I…I’m sure.”
Garfield felt he was being lied to, and that made him angry. He flicked aside the man’s blanket with his boot and was vindicated to find the man was caked in his own blood.
“Not bitten, huh? Looks to me like something took a good chunk out of you.”
“…Bullet.”
Garfield raised an eyebrow. “Somebody shot you?”
Guns had always been outlawed in the United Kingdom and now that the world had ended they were even harder to come by. Garfield had not seen a firearm since the Army’s initial response to the crisis that brought dead men from their graves.
The injured man moved a feeble hand to his t-shirt and pulled it up over his stomach. Sure enough, there was a perfectly round black hole, where something – quite possibly a bullet – had entered his torso. It was hard to say for sure if the man had indeed been shot, but at the very least it was clear that he had not been bitten. He may as well been, though.
“There are no doctors,” Garfield said. “Probably best that I put you out of your misery.”
“N-no. I can make it.”
“I don’t think you can.”
The injured man waved a hand. “I’ve been badly injured before. I can make it. I just…I just need some help.”
Garfield let out a long sigh. The best thing to do was to end the man here. A dying man was nothing but a burden.
“Please…”
Garfield pulled his axe free of the pallet’s plastic lashings and lifted it onto his shoulder. He turned and walked away, exiting the container and re-joining the foragers without.
“What did you find?” he was quickly asked.
“There’re a couple pallets of toilet paper inside. Would make good kindling for our fires and may have various other uses. Get it out and load it up on the sledges.”
The men smiled. It was better than nothing. They enjoyed returning back to camp to cheers and back pats, not the sullen faces that greeted them whenever they came back empty handed.
“Was there a dead man inside?” one of the foragers asked. “The shuffling?”
Garfield cleared his throat. “Oh…yeah, there’s an injured man inside. If he’s still alive by the time we leave then I guess we should take him with us.”
“Was he bitten?”
Garfield shook his head. “No, but he may as well have been. The poor sod’s been shot. Slim hope he’ll even make it back to camp with us.”
The forager looked worried. “But…who on earth has guns anymore?”
“I don’t know,” said Garfield, “but I would rather much avoid them.”
Garfield crested a muddy hill, his boots sinking into puddles from the recent storm. Winter was still winter in the UK, and the heavens still enjoyed a good downpour on a daily basis. One thing the dead could never change was the weather.
“There’s a garage over there,” said one of the foragers, pointing.
Garfield nodded. “Checked it last week. Empty.”
The forager sighed, then hurried off to continue his search.
Garfield sighed too as he gazed across the barren landscape that had once hosted scenes of gridlocked traffic. Nothing moved anymore; the many abandoned cars slept in long lines, but they would never get where they were going. It was like a still-life painting of what life had once been like. The nearby petrol station had little use, the fuel in its pumps useful only for starting fires (and there were many simpler ways to do that). Food and drink were valuable now, not oil and petroleum, and Garfield knew that the little forecourt contained none of the former. Very few places did any more.
We’re going to have to trek further. There’s nothing left around here anymore. We’ve picked clean what remained and now we have no choice but to venture out.
But venturing out would be dangerous. The lands surrounding the camp were relatively safe. It was a rural location and mostly deserted. There was, of course, packs of the dead wandering around from time to time – that was true everywhere – but they could be seen early and avoided easily. Even now, half a mile away, Garfield could see a shamble of perhaps a half-dozen off in the distance. The dead men and women bumped and clawed against a chest-high wooden fence that had once kept horses contained but now contained them. Their clumsiness might keep them there forever – eternally penned-in by an obstacle that would have been easily surmountable had they been alive.
Since the last of the sprinters – infected people who had became flooded with rage and adrenaline – had died out and become the slower, shambling kind of zombies, things had been a lot safer. Garfield and his group of foragers now had only to contend with a foe that was clumsy and stupid – still dangerous, but predictable also. There had even been rare words spoken of hope lately; dreams that things might one day work themselves out. Garfield was not so childish as to hold on to such childish notions. There was no coming back from this.
A short, sharp yell from behind Garfield made him spin around. He immediately yanked a long screwdriver from a pocket inside his heavy overcoat and held it ready. So used to fighting, was he, that every time he heard a noise he unfolded like a spring.
At the bottom of the hill, one of the foragers had fallen down to the ground beside an articulated lorry. Beneath the vehicle’s rusted axels, a body crawled in the mud. The dead man had a firm grip on the forager’s ankle.
Garfield reached the bottom of the hill in a flash, with a speed he had never possessed in his sedentary life of before. He scrambled down towards his struggling colleague and wasted not a second in driving his long screwdriver into the side of the dead man’s skull and piercing the temple. He left the screwdriver there, jutting out like a lever. The forager lay beneath the corpse, panting and moaning in fear. Garfield kicked the dead body away and helped the man to his feet.
“Thanks, Garfield. I thought I was a goner.”
Garfield smiled.
Then he pulled a claw hammer from a hidden compartment up his sleeve and smashed it into the top of the forager’s head, killing him instantly.The other men in the foraging group backed away, staring at Garfield like he was a murderous lunatic. Perhaps he was.
Is anybody sane anymore?
Garfield wiped the bloody hammer on his olive overcoat and replaced it up his sleeve. He shrugged his shoulders at the other foragers and pointed to the one who was dead. “Look. He took a good bite on his ankle. There was no hope for him. I did him a kindness. He never even knew he was infected.”
The other foragers glanced down at their dead colleague’s ankle and saw the wound there, clear as day: a bright red gash in the shape of a human mouth. The dead man beneath the truck had killed the forager the moment his rotted teeth had broken skin. Garfield had done nothing but put an animal out of its misery. The other men sighed, but they nodded also. They understood. It was the way of things now, and nobody wanted to become one of them. People tried not to dwell on the things that must be done.
“Come on, let’s get back to camp,” said Garfield. “We’re going to have to plan a new route. There’s nothing left here.”
Garfield had just turned away when a banging inside the articulated lorry’s container alerted him. Everybody turned to face the noise, their various make-shift weapons at the ready. Garfield pulled a small hand axe from his belt.
The banging continued, weak but obvious.
“It’s just one of them,” said one of the foragers. “We should just leave.”Garfield knew it was stupid, but his mind kept turning to the half-dozen men and women trapped inside that horse paddock half a mile away, and how they might never escape. The thought of a creature – who had once been a human being – being trapped inside a rusty container for all eternity brought him great sadness.
“Open the doors,” he said. “There might be supplies in there. If there’s a dead man inside, it means nobody has checked it out yet. We can’t afford to ignore what might be inside.”
The foragers sighed. As experienced as they all were with handling the dead, nobody ever took it for granted. They had just lost a man to a bite, and they knew it could happen again to any of them in an instant. A dead man’s jaws closed fast.
One of the foragers crept around to the back of the container and took a firm grip on the release handle. The other foragers readied their weapons and waited. Garfield stood in front of the container’s doors.
“Soon as the doors are open, keep back. If it’s anything we can’t handle, make back to camp immediately. If I’m intact I’ll come with you.”
The man at the release handle nodded and then shoved down the steel lever and pried open the locking bar.
Then he opened the left door and stepped away.
Garfield crouched, axe at the ready, staring into the black rectangle that had opened up in the back of the container. The banging had stopped, replaced by a delicate shuffling.
Carefully, Garfield grabbed a hold of the right-side door and began to edge it open. Soon both doors were hanging wide and the black rectangle of darkness grew in size.
The shuffling continued.
Garfield glanced at the other foragers. They all stood ready, primed to attack. But so far there was nothing to alert them; just the shuffling noise.
At least it sounds like there’s only one of them in there. I can handle one.Only takes one to end you.
Garfield placed a gloved hand onto the lip of the container and heaved himself up onto one knee with one leg still hanging down, ready to carry him backwards at the first sign of danger. When it was clear nothing was going to lunge at him, Garfield gained some confidence and pulled himself fully up inside the container.
As he entered the shadows, his eyes began to adjust; the blackness turned to grey. Something moved towards the back of the container, a brief shifting that disturbed the dusty air.
The container was nearly empty, but there were a few pallets stacked towards the back. Garfield took a slow step forwards. The thud of his boot echoed inside the steel box.
The shuffling started again, and seemed to increase.
It knows I’m here.
He took another step, his axe out in front of him, ready to split open a skull. His eyes gazed up…down….up…down.
Can never tell where they’re going to come at ya. Just as many chomp at your ankles then those which face you head on.
One more step was all it took for Garfield to spot the squirming body on the floor. His eyes had now fully adjusted to the dim light and he could see clearly. The man lay between two pallets stacked high with rolls of toilet paper. He was covered by a grubby brown blanket and two steel crutches lay beside him.
A blanket? Crutches.
Garfield raised his axe, ready to bring it down on the man’s exposed head. He couldn’t tell in the dim light, but he was sure he could make out a bright crop of ginger hair that matched the colour of his own. Most of the dead had nothing left on their heads but dirty grey clumps.
Being trapped in here must have kept him in better shape than being out in the open.
Garfield placed a boot on the dead man’s chest and squeezed the shaft of his axe tightly. “I never asked for this, and I’m sure you didn’t either.”
Garfield swung his axe.
The man on the ground reached up a hand. “Please.”
Garfield managed to divert his swing at the last moment. The axe buried itself in a roll of toilet paper and ensnared itself in the plastic wrapping that secured the rolls to the pallet.
“Jesus! You’re alive.”
The man was weak and in obvious pain, yet he was undoubtedly alive. The stink coming off him was as bad as any dead man, but he was alive. Garfield could see the sweat on his forehead.
“You’re bitten?”
The man managed to shake his head. “No. No…”
“You’re not bitten? You sure about that, because you don’t look too perky.”
“I…I’m sure.”
Garfield felt he was being lied to, and that made him angry. He flicked aside the man’s blanket with his boot and was vindicated to find the man was caked in his own blood.
“Not bitten, huh? Looks to me like something took a good chunk out of you.”
“…Bullet.”
Garfield raised an eyebrow. “Somebody shot you?”
Guns had always been outlawed in the United Kingdom and now that the world had ended they were even harder to come by. Garfield had not seen a firearm since the Army’s initial response to the crisis that brought dead men from their graves.
The injured man moved a feeble hand to his t-shirt and pulled it up over his stomach. Sure enough, there was a perfectly round black hole, where something – quite possibly a bullet – had entered his torso. It was hard to say for sure if the man had indeed been shot, but at the very least it was clear that he had not been bitten. He may as well been, though.
“There are no doctors,” Garfield said. “Probably best that I put you out of your misery.”
“N-no. I can make it.”
“I don’t think you can.”
The injured man waved a hand. “I’ve been badly injured before. I can make it. I just…I just need some help.”
Garfield let out a long sigh. The best thing to do was to end the man here. A dying man was nothing but a burden.
“Please…”
Garfield pulled his axe free of the pallet’s plastic lashings and lifted it onto his shoulder. He turned and walked away, exiting the container and re-joining the foragers without.
“What did you find?” he was quickly asked.
“There’re a couple pallets of toilet paper inside. Would make good kindling for our fires and may have various other uses. Get it out and load it up on the sledges.”
The men smiled. It was better than nothing. They enjoyed returning back to camp to cheers and back pats, not the sullen faces that greeted them whenever they came back empty handed.
“Was there a dead man inside?” one of the foragers asked. “The shuffling?”
Garfield cleared his throat. “Oh…yeah, there’s an injured man inside. If he’s still alive by the time we leave then I guess we should take him with us.”
“Was he bitten?”
Garfield shook his head. “No, but he may as well have been. The poor sod’s been shot. Slim hope he’ll even make it back to camp with us.”
The forager looked worried. “But…who on earth has guns anymore?”
“I don’t know,” said Garfield, “but I would rather much avoid them.”
January 14, 2014
Self Publishing Earnings 2013
Happy New Year Everybody.
It has become the norm in recent years for self-published authors to disclose their successes and failures for the good of the collective industry. In times gone past, authors were very closed-lipped and competitive about their contracts and earnings, but that was a different, more selfish time. Now we share, we help one another, and we support. When a self-published author shares his results it will either inspire or deter those walking in their footsteps. At the very least it educates and gives a representative view of what to expect when self-publishing. So, in the tradition of Joe Konrath and many other self-publishing pioneers, here are my earnings (Amazon KDP earnings only. Foreign books, audio, and books published elsewhere not included). Make of it what you will.
To start from the top and work downwards, Amazon paid me a total of £38,117 (Just over 60k dollars) in 2013. With various other payments from other avenues, I made about £45k in total ($72k). This is only my second full year of being a writer. In my first year I made £25k ($40k). In the year before, as a phone salesman, I made £20k ($32k). So one thing is very clear: self-publishing was the best thing I ever did. I made more than twice as much this year as I did a few years back working full-time as a salesman (a job i hated). I work about 25 happy hours a week currently; compared to the 45 hours per week I worked as a miserable salesman. I took 6 weeks off over Christmas, including all of December (I could barely get a couple days off over the holidays working retail), and still earned £5424 ($8700) that month. What other job could you get away with that!! Being with my family and enjoying spending time with them was the biggest bonus of all.
The above figures also show another interesting trend. I doubled my earnings this year from last. The money I am making from self-publishing is going UP not down. There is a lot of doom-mongering about things getting tougher and sales going down, and as you will see later, sales have indeed gone down title per title, but you can easily offset this loss by releasing more books (as I have shown). The reason I made more money this year than last is 100% because I released new books. That should be your absolute priority if you want to get into this gig and stay here. More books equals more money - Simples!
So, now that it has been established that, for me at least, self publishing = good times, lets look a little deeper. Here are my figures for 2012 (starting from March) and 2013.
Month 2012 2013January * £2374 ($3800)February * £1318 ($2550)March £1330 £1591 ($2545)April £1342 £1303 ($2085)May £1535 £1881 ($3000)June £1630 £2910 ($4700)July £5254 £4800 ($7700)August £2408 £3205 ($5130)September £2225 £5034 ($8050)October £2000 £3993 ($6400)November £2079 £4393 ($7030)December £2229 £5424 ($8700)
Now, it can be seen that the months are more or less in line year by year. The beginning of the year for me is bad (Feb to May) and I will admit that that last April I was beginning to grow pale. Fortunately, I released Ravage and The Housemates in time for Summer and my earnings shot upwards dramatically. My best month in 2012 was £5254 in July and was a one-off compared to the months before and after. During the Summer of 2013, every month of Summer hit high figures and only trailed off slightly towards Christmas. The increase in sales was due to the season (Summer always seems to be great) but also that I released new books. Releasing new books for summer sent my sales rocketing up. This again shows that releasing new books is the key to making money. Ravage came out in May 2013, The Housemates in July 2013, and I re-released Animal Kingdom in August.
The negative observation is that sales are indeed going down per title. The Final Winter made just under £10k in 2012 (and that doesn't include the sales in January and February that I did not record, so it was probably around 12k). In 2013 it only made £5500 (half as much). The sales for The Final Winter declined a lot but they did eventually steady (thankfully). I imagine it will make about £5000 a year quite comfortably from now on. However, my newest release, The Housemates, made £8000 ($13k) in just five months that it was sale in 2013 (August to December). More than The Final Winter made in 12 whole months. Ravage also made £8000, but in 7 months (not as good as The Housemates but still good). So it is clear that New Releases make much more money than older books (backlist). Again this shows that to make money you need to write and release new books. Your backlist will still make money, but your new releases will make more.
Now, providing I release another 3 or 4 books in 2014, I fully expect my earnings this year to be at least £70k ($110k). While the sales for The Housemates and Ravage may calm down to match those of The Final Winter, I fully expect my new releases to offset this loss plus add to my overall profit margin. I expect to make more in 2014 than 2013; and that's a good position to be in. Over Christmas I used the new Kindle countdown deals to great effect and I expect Amazon will continue to try new things. As long as you stay on top of these tools and keep writing, I believe we can all increase our earnings. Lots of guys are warning us things will get harder. I believe this may be so, on a book by book basis, but as writers we can still move forward by doing what we're supposed to: WRITING.
With foreign deals in the works, audio books, comic books, and more, I hope to move forward as a writer not backwards. I hope that all of you do the same :-)
It has become the norm in recent years for self-published authors to disclose their successes and failures for the good of the collective industry. In times gone past, authors were very closed-lipped and competitive about their contracts and earnings, but that was a different, more selfish time. Now we share, we help one another, and we support. When a self-published author shares his results it will either inspire or deter those walking in their footsteps. At the very least it educates and gives a representative view of what to expect when self-publishing. So, in the tradition of Joe Konrath and many other self-publishing pioneers, here are my earnings (Amazon KDP earnings only. Foreign books, audio, and books published elsewhere not included). Make of it what you will.
To start from the top and work downwards, Amazon paid me a total of £38,117 (Just over 60k dollars) in 2013. With various other payments from other avenues, I made about £45k in total ($72k). This is only my second full year of being a writer. In my first year I made £25k ($40k). In the year before, as a phone salesman, I made £20k ($32k). So one thing is very clear: self-publishing was the best thing I ever did. I made more than twice as much this year as I did a few years back working full-time as a salesman (a job i hated). I work about 25 happy hours a week currently; compared to the 45 hours per week I worked as a miserable salesman. I took 6 weeks off over Christmas, including all of December (I could barely get a couple days off over the holidays working retail), and still earned £5424 ($8700) that month. What other job could you get away with that!! Being with my family and enjoying spending time with them was the biggest bonus of all.
The above figures also show another interesting trend. I doubled my earnings this year from last. The money I am making from self-publishing is going UP not down. There is a lot of doom-mongering about things getting tougher and sales going down, and as you will see later, sales have indeed gone down title per title, but you can easily offset this loss by releasing more books (as I have shown). The reason I made more money this year than last is 100% because I released new books. That should be your absolute priority if you want to get into this gig and stay here. More books equals more money - Simples!
So, now that it has been established that, for me at least, self publishing = good times, lets look a little deeper. Here are my figures for 2012 (starting from March) and 2013.
Month 2012 2013January * £2374 ($3800)February * £1318 ($2550)March £1330 £1591 ($2545)April £1342 £1303 ($2085)May £1535 £1881 ($3000)June £1630 £2910 ($4700)July £5254 £4800 ($7700)August £2408 £3205 ($5130)September £2225 £5034 ($8050)October £2000 £3993 ($6400)November £2079 £4393 ($7030)December £2229 £5424 ($8700)
Now, it can be seen that the months are more or less in line year by year. The beginning of the year for me is bad (Feb to May) and I will admit that that last April I was beginning to grow pale. Fortunately, I released Ravage and The Housemates in time for Summer and my earnings shot upwards dramatically. My best month in 2012 was £5254 in July and was a one-off compared to the months before and after. During the Summer of 2013, every month of Summer hit high figures and only trailed off slightly towards Christmas. The increase in sales was due to the season (Summer always seems to be great) but also that I released new books. Releasing new books for summer sent my sales rocketing up. This again shows that releasing new books is the key to making money. Ravage came out in May 2013, The Housemates in July 2013, and I re-released Animal Kingdom in August.
The negative observation is that sales are indeed going down per title. The Final Winter made just under £10k in 2012 (and that doesn't include the sales in January and February that I did not record, so it was probably around 12k). In 2013 it only made £5500 (half as much). The sales for The Final Winter declined a lot but they did eventually steady (thankfully). I imagine it will make about £5000 a year quite comfortably from now on. However, my newest release, The Housemates, made £8000 ($13k) in just five months that it was sale in 2013 (August to December). More than The Final Winter made in 12 whole months. Ravage also made £8000, but in 7 months (not as good as The Housemates but still good). So it is clear that New Releases make much more money than older books (backlist). Again this shows that to make money you need to write and release new books. Your backlist will still make money, but your new releases will make more.
Now, providing I release another 3 or 4 books in 2014, I fully expect my earnings this year to be at least £70k ($110k). While the sales for The Housemates and Ravage may calm down to match those of The Final Winter, I fully expect my new releases to offset this loss plus add to my overall profit margin. I expect to make more in 2014 than 2013; and that's a good position to be in. Over Christmas I used the new Kindle countdown deals to great effect and I expect Amazon will continue to try new things. As long as you stay on top of these tools and keep writing, I believe we can all increase our earnings. Lots of guys are warning us things will get harder. I believe this may be so, on a book by book basis, but as writers we can still move forward by doing what we're supposed to: WRITING.
With foreign deals in the works, audio books, comic books, and more, I hope to move forward as a writer not backwards. I hope that all of you do the same :-)
December 12, 2013
November 29, 2013
October 7, 2013
AUDIOBOOKS FOR INDIES
*** For proofreading use http://www.grammarly.com if you needs help getting your grammars good! ***
An area I am currently looking to exploit is audiobook versions of my work. The problem I have is that most options, other than signing up with an audiobook publisher and forfeiting most of your rights, is to pay up front for the audiobook production and then hope that the ensuing sales yield a profit. From my preliminary research, I am getting the impression that audiobooks are a viable revenue stream for 'Indie authors' or authors wishing to maximise their royalty share by funding their own audio book production.
While ACX seems an intriguing prospect for US authors, it is not currently available to UK writers. The best alternative that I have found so far is http://www.dynamic-ram.co.uk. I had a sample produced by this outfit, along with a reasonable quote for services. If you are looking at opening up your books to a bigger audience, and you don't mind footing the bill yourself, I think that getting these guys to produce an audio book for you is likely to pay divends within less than a year (and then will make profits forever for as long as you leave the audiobook for sale.)
Writing has become very much like a business and I believe that audiobooks are a worthwhile investment in the same way as paying a decent editor and getting a proper artist to do you covers. It costs up front, but will more than pay for itself in the end.
I will keep you updated on what I do with my own books going forward, but for anyone trying to find the best route to getting audiobooks produced, I can personally vouch that these guys will do a decent job at a decent price, so keep them in your minds at the very least.
An area I am currently looking to exploit is audiobook versions of my work. The problem I have is that most options, other than signing up with an audiobook publisher and forfeiting most of your rights, is to pay up front for the audiobook production and then hope that the ensuing sales yield a profit. From my preliminary research, I am getting the impression that audiobooks are a viable revenue stream for 'Indie authors' or authors wishing to maximise their royalty share by funding their own audio book production.
While ACX seems an intriguing prospect for US authors, it is not currently available to UK writers. The best alternative that I have found so far is http://www.dynamic-ram.co.uk. I had a sample produced by this outfit, along with a reasonable quote for services. If you are looking at opening up your books to a bigger audience, and you don't mind footing the bill yourself, I think that getting these guys to produce an audio book for you is likely to pay divends within less than a year (and then will make profits forever for as long as you leave the audiobook for sale.)
Writing has become very much like a business and I believe that audiobooks are a worthwhile investment in the same way as paying a decent editor and getting a proper artist to do you covers. It costs up front, but will more than pay for itself in the end.
I will keep you updated on what I do with my own books going forward, but for anyone trying to find the best route to getting audiobooks produced, I can personally vouch that these guys will do a decent job at a decent price, so keep them in your minds at the very least.
September 26, 2013
Animal Kingdom: Remastered Edition
After two years on release with Grand Mal Press, Animal Kingdom has now been re-released under the SG Horror banner and has been brought in line with my other novels. The new remastered version has several changes to the plot and has been re-edited thoroughly. As one of my first books it was not quite as polished as my more recent books, but after having reworked on the book, it should now be a much better read.
I was intending to announce a surprise project this week, but it is going to be delayed until next week, so keep checking back. I currently have a new novel in the works but it is currently a guarded secret (for reasons that will eventually be revealed). All I will say is that it is a very exciting project and may be a big surprise to most of my fans.
After my current novel is finished (hopefully for Christmas), I will then begin work on the sequel to Ravage, Savage. This will wrap up all of my horror books so that I can start a new universe, beginning with the first Sarah Stone book. Those are my concrete plans and should take me into next summer.
Below is the new cover for the remastered edition of Animal Kingdom. Options to buy are also below.
Download it now: UK US
I was intending to announce a surprise project this week, but it is going to be delayed until next week, so keep checking back. I currently have a new novel in the works but it is currently a guarded secret (for reasons that will eventually be revealed). All I will say is that it is a very exciting project and may be a big surprise to most of my fans.
After my current novel is finished (hopefully for Christmas), I will then begin work on the sequel to Ravage, Savage. This will wrap up all of my horror books so that I can start a new universe, beginning with the first Sarah Stone book. Those are my concrete plans and should take me into next summer.
Below is the new cover for the remastered edition of Animal Kingdom. Options to buy are also below.
Download it now: UK US
