C. Gockel's Blog, page 110
July 24, 2014
July 23, 2014
avali:
Painting from Livestream. I wanted to do a quickpaint of...
Painting from Livestream. I wanted to do a quickpaint of whatever came out, and it was all sort of flowing along a ‘I don’t know what this is going to be line’ until I thought about Loki and what spellwork was like back in ancient times. How he might appear as more of a force of nature and a little less like a goat.
To me he just seems like the type to be silently watching the world from the brush, barely noticeable, waiting for his chance to pluck at the strings of fate.
Oooo….hadn’t seen this picture of the So-Called God of Chaos
Thank You Reviewers! I Bring the Fire has just received 256...
Thank You Reviewers! I Bring the Fire has just received 256 reviews in the U.S. Reviews let potential readers know that it’s worthwhile to take a chance on a book about Loki that features a dinosaurs on the cover. (They are not random! They have a purpose! Or maybe they’re random AND have a purpose?)
Thank you willow, Sandra “BSN 2009”, Lysha, Mary, Rachel D., The Ghost, Nemi, ted goheen, Krystal Tipton, and Amazon Customer! Thank you also to reviewers on Barnes&Noble—you’re all Anonymous, so I can’t name and shame you. Thanks to everyone whose rated my books on Apple, GooglePlay, Scribd, and Oyster (I didn’t know I existed there until a few days ago.)
Also thank you to anyone who has left a review on Goodreads. It’s the Wild West over there and I’m so glad to have some people rooting for me.
Besides extra downloads, reviews help whether the vagaries of rising and falling rankings, and make navigating the ever changing landscape of this business worthwhile. Thanks everyone!
I’m doing another Goodreads Giveaway! Enter to win an...
I’m doing another Goodreads Giveaway! Enter to win an autographed copy of I Bring the Fire Part I.
Thanks for all your support, everyone! Good luck.
July 22, 2014
Max Gladstone: "First Drafts Suck"
First drafts suck. Does that sound too fierce for you? Too general? Let me try again: my first drafts suck. And in all probability so do yours. That piece where as you wrote “The End” you heard ang…
The biggest mistake new authors make is not having beta readers. You need beta readers who are really rough with you and say, “This character is getting too boring”, “this scene doesn’t need to exist”, “that doesn’t make sense.” I don’t think even with eight rereads you’ll catch it all. It’s too close to your heart. You need readers who will smash your heart to pieces.
July 21, 2014
oceanplait:
superwholockey:
tanzanator:
bookworm-for-life:
...
Limits of the Human Body by Soda Pop Avenue
I am a writer I say as I reblog this
i am an a R TIST
FUCK THIS I’M A MURDERER
Hey, I just like to know my limits.
Useful info for writers …
KINDLE UNLIMITED aka the great author freak out of 2014
So, as some of you may have heard (I know a couple of you out there like to read) Amazon has just announced the Kindle Unlimited program. Basically, Kindle Unlimited is like a Netflix for books. For $9.99 you can check out 10 books a month and keep them as long as you like. To sweeten the deal, the first month is free.
A subscription service for books isn’t a new thing. Scribd and Oyster currently have my books, and both of them have a month long trial period too (so yes, you could technically read all my books free).
None of the services allow you to read EVERY book: the publishers participating in each program vary. You can get all off Neil Gaiman’s work on Scribd, none on Amazon. All of Rowling is on Amazon, not on Scribd.
I think that for readers, especially in remote locations, these subscription services are a good idea. (Although I don’t know if you get locked into a contract). All pay authors, albeit at a diminished rate, for borrows.
So why are authors freaking out? Because unlike Oyster or Scribd, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited requires that I be exclusive with them if I put my books in Kindle Unlimited. (They don’t require that of Rowling, or big indies, but I’m so small fry they don’t care about me.)
A lot of authors, myself included, earn about one-third of our income on other sites: B&N, Apple, Smashwords, Google, and Kobo. It’s a big gamble for us to pull our books from all those sites, lose all our reviews, and limit them only to Amazon. Especially since Amazon won’t say how much we’ll get per borrow. Yep. That’s really the kicker there. But borrows drive up rank, and rank drive up sales on Amazon, so it could be, taking a hit on those borrows would be a better deal.
If I could be in Amazon Unlimited and be on all the other sites too, I would have done it in a minute. But the thing is, I’m already getting anecdotal reports from people in my genre, that they aren’t getting any borrows or seeing their rank improve by being in the program. Even in popular genres, I know of at least one author who pulled all her work from all other sites, put them in Kindle Unlimited and got … nothing.
Have I seen any fallout yet? It looks like my sales are hurting—on Amazon AND all other retailers, but it’s only been three days. And you know, as I’ve been reading about in Naked Statistics, that means nothing. Some authors have been saying that permafree downloads have been lagging, but I’ve seen absolutely none of that.
I think my best course of action right now is to point my readers to Scribd, and Oyster if they’re interested in a subscription service.
I was planning on writing a standalone novel in the same universe (I want to play with the idea of Soul Mates … I’m thinking bi-racial urban techie and an elf prince who is the son of … well I’m not telling). I might make that part of the KU program, and hopefully it will funnel some readers to the main series.
Also, since I Bring the Fire Part I, my permafree aren’t hurting, I may continue to occasionally goose my second in series with 99 cent days. My sell-thru rates from Monsters to Chaos is about 90%. And from Chaos to Fates it is about the same. Surprisingly, In the Balance is probably my worst seller. I’m not sure why that is. The Slip is still selling! It’s the little story that could — apparently everyone wants a short story from Sleipnir’s point of smell.
