Michael Coorlim's Blog, page 54
October 4, 2013
Death of a pen name
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to bid farewell to Liam Brennan, beloved pen name of author Michael Coorlim. In his brief stint upon this Earth he published one book, fathered one Twitter account, and was involved with one Facebook page. He was killed not by neglect, but by obsolescence, and while the idea of a second identity is a cool one, it is, at this time, more trouble than it’s worth.
Requiescat in pace.
The birth of Liam Brennan
When I started out as an author, I created pen-names with wild abandon. Some were created for A/B testing of different marketing strategies, and others were created to capitalize on a tight authorial brand. At one point I had planned to keep and maintain as many as six genre-focused names, both out of a sense of optimism and necessity. As time went by, however, and I gained more self-publishing experience, I realized that my plan needed some adjustment.
By the time I’d finished Grief, I’d narrowed my plan down to two names. Michael Coorlim for lighter work, and Liam Brennan for darker works. I’d planned out at years of releases under each name, staggering them so that each would see a release somewhat regularly. I wasn’t terribly concerned with keeping the names separate, but I didn’t intentionally link them, either.
Why have my plans changed?
You don’t really need a pen-name
Back in the day conventional wisdom was that authors needed pen-names if they wanted to write in multiple genres. Publisher expectations aside, it was believed that readers weren’t interested in reading off-brand work from a given writer, somehow believing that each writer was only capable of writing one kind of story.
Self-publishing has displayed this to be largely untrue. As long as a book is accurately branded, readers will enter with reasonable expectations.
We, as writers, need to trust our readers. Unless you want to keep your actual identity secret for professional reasons, or to isolate writings in genres like Children’s Lit and Erotica, there’s no strong argument to maintain multiple author names, and a very good one against it.
Pen names are a lot of work
The key to success as a self-published author is productivity. Efficient creation of quality written material, published frequently enough that you constantly have a title on the Hot New Release charts. That’s a title out every month or so.
If you’ve got two pen names, that’s one release every few months under each name, at best. That’s two marketing platforms. Two twitter accounts. Two facebooks. Two blogs, possibly. Doubling your workload for questionable benefit.
So, regretfully, it is time to say farewell to Liam, and consign him to the ether to which all fictional characters go when their time has passed. The idea of authors with multiple pen-names has become archaic, a legacy of publishing concerns that can no longer exist in the modern marketing environment.
The post appeared first on Michael Coorlim.
October 2, 2013
Why Run a Book Blog?
A few months ago I started writing Book Nouveau, an indie-focused book blog. I’m terrible about keeping to an update schedule, but I do manage to post a few reviews a week, which are echoed over to Goodreads and Amazon. I’m a busy author-type, but I find that it’s a good use of my time. Why?
Book Blogging forces me to read
Seems funny to say it that way, but it’s true. I used to read a lot as a kid. Constantly. I didn’t so much keep my nose in a book as I did read books in school while the class was discussing other books that I’d already read. Somehow, though, over the years I just didn’t have the time to hit the library, or the money to buy books, or the attention span to pass up other, more passive forms of entertainment.
A writer must read. This is a truth. Your craft suffers if you don’t. Reading, to a writer, is second only in going out and having emotional experiences when it comes keeping your muse fully charged.
So, I started the book blog.
Book Bogging enables my reading habit
Hey, books are expensive. When I started the blog I typically entered Librarything giveaways to get free books to review, but after a few went up, indie authors started sending me books. More books than I can possibly keep up with. I download every copy I’m sent and read it on my commutes, in bed, what have you. The fact that these books are a gift does not mediate the way I review them, though if a book isn’t of sufficient quality that I feel compelled to read it, I’ll just stop and move on to the next.
Book Blogging has made me a better writer
It’s a well-trod axiom that a writer is the worst judge of his own work. It happens to be true in my case. Running Book Nouveau has given me exposure to a variety of work of a wide spectrum of quality. I’m learning to read more critically, and I’m applying what I learn into my own writing.
Why a self-published focus?
Book Nouveau focuses exclusively on indie and self-published books. Why? Independent authors need all the exposure they can get. Further, because they’re underexposed, I have the chance of discovering the next Wool, and that’s kind of cool. It’s mostly doing my part to give back to the indie-author community, though. The advice and stories of those who came before me enabled me to do this full time, and that’s a debt I owe.
Maybe it’s not something I can ever repay, but I do want to do my best to pay it forward.
Should you become a Book Blogger?
If you’re willing to invest the time and attention to read and review regularly, I say go for it. I’ll be trying to blog on a more consistent basis, but man, do I have a lot of irons in a lot of fires.
If you have a book you’d like reviewed, email a .mobi, .epub, or .pdf to booknouveau@gmail.com. It’ll go into consideration with the other titles I’ve been sent.
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September 30, 2013
Dreams of the Damned paperback giveaway
Release Date: 11/2013
Less than a month until Dreams of the Damned is released, and I’ll be giving away a free copy of the paperback as soon as it’s ready. The lucky winner will be randomly selected from the people signed up on my mailing list at the time of publication.
I don’t want your spam
I’m not going to spam you. The mailing list is only used to alert interested readers to new releases, and for contests like this. So that’s what? An email every other month at the most? I’m not a fast enough writer to spam you.
I am totally going to sign up, see if I win, then unsubscribe!
Fine by me; you can opt out easily. The mailing list is what I use to gauge how many actual fans I have. It’s a tool I use to predict sales. A few days before the “official” release of a new book I publish it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and the iBookstore at a substantial discount, and alert only the followers of my mailing list. This gives them a window of exclusivity; this early notification and discount is what my fans get out of following the newsletter, and I get a metric on how my authorial reach is growing.
Don’t want early release exclusivity and a discount? Don’t need to follow me. If you want the chance at a free book, though, just be subscribed when I am ready to publish at the end of October/Early November. I won’t be sending out any newsletters until then, anyway.
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September 29, 2013
Keeping the ‘Punk’ in Steampunk with Labor Unions
While Galvanic Century is set in a largely historically analogous Edwardian Earth, many steampunk stories are set in worlds that are either wholly fantasy or only bearing a tangential resemblance to the real past. Nonetheless, it almost always includes some sort of Industrial Revolution. This is often portrayed as a transformative era, but what is frequently glossed over is the class revolution that technological innovation made possible.
In other cases, while the results of labor movements and progress are shown, the means by which they’ve gotten to the point where the workers’ lots are better is frequently glossed over. I feel that that’s a wasted opportunity; the struggle that puts the ‘punk’ in ‘steampunk’ closely parallels the modern conflict between “job creators” and “the 99%”. The labor rights movement echoes strongly in the collective reader psyche because we’re living it, right now.
One of the driving forces behind the workers’ revolution was the International Workers of the World, the IWW, or the Wobblies. Check out this video that shows the development and struggles of the union through vintage footage and interviews with the men and women who fought those battles:
Regardless of your personal politics, utilizing the workers’ movements of the early 20th century can add powerful conflict to your stories and forge identification with your readers.
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September 27, 2013
Cover Reveal: Dreams of the Damned
Funny story: The ninth Galvanic Century book is actually the fifth that I started to write, but I put it off to write the Aldora Fiske Chronicles of a Gentlewoman stories, and then March of the Cogsmen.
Okay, so it’s not so much a funny story as it is trivial, but I think that the resulting novel is a lot stronger for it’s new place in the chronology. It required a rewrite from the bottom-up, but I’d only gotten a quarter of the way in, so no big loss.
The ninth book, and second novel, brings Bartleby and James to the heart of one of steampunk London’s most advanced mental health institutions, a center for cutting age psychological therapies. This was a fun one to write, as by the 1910s England is well past the “dunk them in freezing water and see if that cures their madness” stage of treating the mentally-ill like criminals, and into the “we don’t really know what we’re doing, but we now have tools to play with the mind” age.
Great fun.
Dreams of the Damned is due out in early November, and as always, those subscribed to my mailing list will get early notice, and at a discounted price.
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August 11, 2013
Web Serial Pitches
In addition to the current novel I’m writing, I’ve been considering writing a weekly web serial. Once a week I’ll post a 3,000 word chapter of an ongoing story, available for free to anyone interested in reading it. Once it’s complete it’ll be packaged up and offered for sale as an ebook at all the usual outlets.
Why Web Fiction
Why?
For one, I find that a bit of writing unrelated to my current project gets my creative juices flowing. It primes the pump and gets me ready for the day’s business of slaving away in the word mines. Working on parallel projects also allows me to jump tracks if I get stuck and work on something unrelated.
Secondly, it’ll be another avenue for reader discovery of my work. Readers who like the style of my writing might be tempted to buy the books I have to offer, and the readers of my books may take up following the serial.
Third: I’ve got a number of ideas that work better in an open-ended episodic format well suited for serial fiction than self-contained novels.
Finally, it’s another potential income stream. The fiction will be free, yes, but I’ll provide a donation button, possibly with different thresholds for bonus content; extra chapters, perhaps, or the commissioning of series art, or hiring voice actors to read a chapter. The steady writing will also result in periodic ebook and paperback releases.
But all that is secondary to the fact that I think it’ll be fun.
Web Fiction Options
So what am I going to write? I’ve got a few ideas.
A series tracking the development of an alternative reality where superpowers appeared in the 16th century. Every arc is set in a different historical era.
Proof of mankind’s advanced technological past is discovered on the first manned trip to Mars. A mission is mounted to travel the stars in search of our forgotten past.
Characters in a medieval fantasy setting gradually discover that they’re AI simulations in a virtual reality MMORPG.
Desperate people slip the embargo Earth’s leaders have placed upon us after first contact with alien civilization, only to discover galactic society and culture are even more alien than they’d anticipated.
Agents in clock-punk renaissance Firenze in the service of Niccolo Machiavelli, keeping the city safe from its geniuses.
Life aboard a massive generation ship as it finally begins to reach its destination, filled with a people that no longer have but the faintest legends of Earth.
I’m sure I could knock out another half-dozen ideas if I put my mind to it, but this’ll do. Which of the above appeals to you? Which are you most interested in reading? Let me know in the comments.
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June 19, 2013
Why Reviews Are Important
The publishing world is undergoing a massive reconstruction at this time, and it’s far from directed. The world is changing, technology is changing, business is changing, and nobody really has a handle on how or why yet, or what’s important and what no longer is. Those are the questions that are best answered in retrospect. What we do know is that reader reviews are an important — if not the most important — part of the process.
Reviews have always been important, but particularly for self-published and independent authors, they have become vital. This puts power back into the hands of the readers where it belongs.
Reviews are important for readers
Today’s readers are canny, not easily impressed by publisher marketing. Word of mouth is what motivates their purchasing decisions, and it’s reviews from other readers that tell them whether or not a book is worth spending their limited time reading. Marketplaces like Amazon.com and reader communities like Goodreads and Librarything have given an equal voice to all readers.
It’s from this compilation of viewpoints that today’s readers can form an opinion, from this gestalt word of mouth. Books with a lot of reviews are those that readers feel strongly about, and the weight of those reviews can tell us for good or ill. In many cases, these reviews are the only element not provided to readers by a publisher or author — they’re the only signposts that can be trusted in the sea of marketing.
This gives readers a tremendous power, for they are the new gatekeepers. Not the writers, not the publishers, not the editors.
Reviews are important for authors
And that works the other way, too. Savvy authors know that word-of-mouth advertising is the only true form that matters, and that it cannot yet be reliably created or manipulated. Writers, particularly independent and self-published authors, depend on reader reviews to get the word out about their books. A writer can have excellent prose and commission a perfect cover, but it’s the reviews that will make or break a book’s sales.
As an author I would thus implore you readers to take advantage of your position in the literary ecology. Spread the word about the books you love. Write reviews. We read them, and it’s the most valuable feedback we can get. It tells us what you like, what you want to see more of, what doesn’t work for you. Support the authors you like and it enables them to keep writing the books you love.
Reviews are important for the industry
Finally, the publishing industry relies on readers to act like gatekeepers and direct new readers to the books they’ll enjoy. The publishing houses cannot — and should not — perform that function. The more the power rests with readers, the better off the industry is as a whole. We no longer have to rely on editors’ guesses as to what sells, the market tells us itself.
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May 31, 2013
Sleep Study Pilot Screening
Sleep Study is a found-footage style web series about surreal happenings at a research facility studying the effects of sleep deprivation upon perception. Each episode is footage leaked by a whistle-blower, who starts out intending to expose his employers’ less-than-ethical practices, but soon veers into an insomniac nightmare of fluid reality and conspiratorial illumination.
The pilot stars Craig J Engel, Ben Nicholson, Kat O’Connor, and Jennifer Blankenship Sall. I wrote and co-produced it with Uncanny Valley Studios. We’ll be screening it at Chicago Filmmakers’ Open Meetup on June 1st, 2013.
While I look forward to seeing the results of the months of effort we put into this on the big screen, my sincere home is to pick up a new producer or production company for the series. We’ve got the first two seasons written and a third laid out, actors eager to take part, and all we need is for someone to shoot and edit it.
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May 20, 2013
Top-Selling Amazon Kindle Categories Redux
A day or so after my original post Amazon went ahead and added a bunch more categories to their storefront. I took the weekend to go ahead and recalculate the top twenty Amazon categories based on this new hierarchy. The methodology was largely the same, but this time my sample was books ranked 20-81.
I skipped categories that were entirely represented by sub-categories. Romance Mystery/Thriller has a Romance Mystery and Romance Thriller category so that’s really all there is to it.
The results
Best sellers remained relatively consistent by genre; there were few outliers to account for. The increased granularity in category means that we have a better view of what kinds of stories readers buy. This lead to some categories rising in the ranks as higher-ranked categories were broken down more specifically.
Last time I presented a top 20 ranking, but in the top 20, the difference between “Contemporary Romance” and “Horror” is only 3000, which isn’t a lot when you consider how many books are available. As a comparison, Cyberpunk has a six-figure average.
Which Categories Sell
A more useful breakdown might be as follows:
Excellent-Selling Categories
Contemporary Romance
Thriller Suspense
Mystery
Romantic Suspense
Erotica
Paranormal Romance
Great-Selling Categories
Historical Romance
Historical Fiction
Action/Adventure
New Adult Romance
Women Sleuths
Urban/Paranormal Fantasy
Sword and Sorcery
Epic Fantasy
Fantasy Romance
Police Procedural
Westerns
Romantic Comedy
Good-Selling Categories
Horror
Romance Western
Romance Mystery
Sci Fi Adventure
Crime
Werewolf Romance
Fair-Selling Categories
Spy Thrillers
Vampire Romance
Sci-Fi Military
Hard-Boiled Mystery
Space Opera
Private Eye Mystery
Poor-Selling Categories
Gay Romance
Time Travel Romance
Legal Thrillers
Fairy-Tale Fantasy
Military Romance
African-American Romance
Worst-Selling Categories
Historical Fantasy
Hard Sci-Fi
Occult Horror
Historical Mystery
British Detectives
Mystery Series
Ghost Romance
Sports Romance
Dystopian Sci Fi
Witch Romance
Multicultural Romance
Technothriller
Sci-Fi Romance
Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi
Ghost Horror
Angel Romance
Sci-Fi Anthology
Demon Romance
Cozy Mystery
Gothic Romance
Alt History
Space Fleet Sci Fi
Fantasy Anthology
Lesbian Romance
Medical Thriller
Time Travel
Dark Fantasy
Space Marines
Alien Invasion
Genetic Engineering
Coming of Age Fantasy
International Mystery
Psychic Romance
Steampunk
Political Thriller
Mystery Anthology
Superhero
Metaphysical Fantasy
Cyberpunk
Sci Fi Colonization
Metaphysical Sci Fi
Galactic Empire
Arthurian Fantasy
Space Exploration
First Contact Sci Fi
Mythic Fantasy
Horror Anthology
Again, let me say that these rankings do not imply that the books in said category are of a given quality, or that individual books will not sell well or poorly. They are simply observations of the average overall sales-ranks in a given category, and how well a random book marketed in that category might be selling.
I like steampunk. I write a lot of steampunk. Steampunk books, by and large, do not sell well, but that doesn’t mean a steampunk book cannot sell well. While the average rank is in the 60,000s for steampunk books ranked 20-81, the top ranked Steampunk book is in the 3000s.
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May 15, 2013
Audiobook Release: Maiden Voyage of the Rio Grande
The Audiobook version of Maiden Voyage of the Rio Grande, the second in The Bartleby and James Adventures cycle of the Galvanic Century series, is now available through Amazon for $6.99. Wayne Farrel does an excellent job of narrating, as always.
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