Brian McClellan's Blog, page 35

Pre-ordering The Autumn Republic

As I'm sure many of you are aware of by now, my publisher Hachette is in a bit of a spat with Amazon as they try to come up with an agreement on ebook pricing. One of Amazon's negotiating tactics is to delay shipping of many of Hachette's books (like Promise of Blood). Another is to take the pre-order buttons down off of future Hachette titles, including the final book in the Powder Mage Trilogy, The Autumn Republic, which is due out February 10th, 2015.

This has become a bit of a concern for me. Amazon accounts for a huge portion of the book market and there are plenty of people with no knowledge of the ongoing fight between the two companies that are no doubt going to my book page on Amazon, scratching their head at the lack of a pre-order button, and moving on with their lives.

Pre-orders are kind of a big deal. They tell the publisher how many physical copies they should print and whether they should bother putting marketing money behind a book and so on. I'd rather not lose those pre-orders.

To that end, I'd like to draw your attention to my very own little book store, where you can now pre-order a signed and dated copy of The Autumn Republic directly from me.

But that's not all. If you're looking for a discounted hardcover or to support an indy bookstore or for the ebook pre-order, I've included a big old list of the places you can put your money down for a copy of Autumn Republic:

United States

Barnes and NobleiBooksBooks-A-MillionIndieboundPowell’s

United Kingdon

Amazon UKWaterstonesWHSmith

Australia

FishpondAngus and Robertson

Signed Copies

From Brian (US)

Books! Books Everywhere!

Okay, maybe not everywhere. Just on this one pallet which just got dropped off in my garage.

What I'm saying is I have a lot of books. So here's a coupon code for 25% off any copy of Promise of Blood in my store: 456BKIH

It's good until next Friday at noon. I'm not sure if the store will accept multiple orders on one coupon but if you want more than one at 25% off just email me and we'll figure it out.

Short Story Giveaway

I've been off in sideprojectland the last few weeks, cleaning out my brain before I start book one of the next trilogy of Powder Mage books. Just popping in to say hello because I thought it would be a good time for a giveaway!

For Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, you can download a *.mobi, *.ebup, or *.PDF file of the Powder Mage short story "Hope's End" for absolutely free. No strings attached, no DRM. All you have to do is grab it from right here.

If you'd like to just go ahead and buy the story you can still do so for $.99 by going to my store or your favorite ebook marketplace, where you can get the other stories as well: Forsworn, Servant of the Crown, "The Girl of Hrusch Avenue," and "Face in the Window."

New to the Powder Mage Universe? Pick up a copies of Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign today!

Short Fiction Reading Order

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about the reading order of my Powder Mage short fiction. I figured it's about time I actually put that someplace people could find easily. First, I should note they were not written in chronological order. One of the reasons I write the short fiction is so I can jump around and tell stories where and when I want to.

Each story is meant to be mostly self-contained, so you can read them out of order if you want. However, I suggest reading Forsworn and Servant of the Crown as a pair (in that order).

So, in-universe chronological order:

Forsworn : Occurs about thirty-five years before Promise of Blood . Servant of the Crown : Takes place immediately after the events in Forsworn but before the epilogue."Hope's End": About nineteen years before Promise of Blood."The Girl of Hrusch Avenue": Ten years before Promise of Blood."The Face in the Window": About two years before Promise of Blood.

You get get any of these stories from your favorite ebook store, or directly from me on this website.

Servant of the Crown now on Audio

Happy Monday everyone!

The news today is that the latest Powder Mage novella, Servant of the Crown, is now available as an audiobook! It's narrated by Daniel Dorse, who I think did a great job. You can pick it up over on Audible or iTunes.

You'll note that I didn't go with Julie Hoverson on this one or "Face in the Window". No complaints at all about Julie, but I wanted a male narrator because the viewpoints in both these last two stories have been male.

Hope you enjoy!

 

Giveaway Results

Sorry I'm a bit late on this! I've been working on copy edits for The Autumn Republic like a madman. But now the results of the giveaway are in!

Congratulations to the winners of the international Audible portion of the giveaway: Oskar Karlsson, Jeremy Hughes, Darren Pries, Keelyn Wright, and Jamie Smith. You'll all be recieving Audible codes for the Powder Mage novella Forsworn.

And the winner of the US-only ARC giveaway for Promise of Blood is Monica Mileti of Caramel Valley, CA.

The Cost of a Good Book

The first thing that hit my eyes this morning upon jumping on the internet was this petition that's going around. Reportedly written by self-publishing cheerleader Hugh Howey, it's the biggest crock I've seen in a while. If you want to be very confused and misled for the next twenty minutes, go read it. My beard-brother Chuck Wendig has a great response over on his blog.

In his argument that Amazon is the best thing since sliced bread, Mr. Howey goes after my publisher, Hachette. The publisher that took a wild chance on my first book. The publisher who has treated me fantastically from start to (as of February 2015) finish on my first trilogy and has me under contract for another trilogy. Mr. Howey spends a lot of time talking about how horribly publishers treat their authors and how little they pay us and why Amazon is so much better. Because I don't have time to say all the things I want to about that petition, I'll just address the one complaint: payment.

Let's take a quick moment and note that, like Howey, I am a hybrid author. I publish my novels with Orbit and I self-publish my expanded universe short fiction via Amazon, Kobo, Nook, etc. You can read more about that on a guest post I did just last week. I do this because diversity is good and I have rent to pay.

But maybe Howey has a point. Maybe Orbit (imprint of Hachette) should be paying me more than industry standard 10% on hardcover and 25% of net on ebooks and audio. So I thought it would be a fun thought experiment to figure out how much it would have cost me to produce my first novel, Promise of Blood, all on my own.

Let's say that Promise of Blood, as it is on shelves now, sprang fully formed into my brain and I was to put it into motion exactly as Orbit had done (which it wouldn't have, because Orbit employs amazing creative minds to help it become what it is). Here's our breakdown, all of which I've tried to be conservative on:

I spoke to a couple freelance copy-editors and looked at this handy guide here, and am guessing around $4000 for three rounds of editing: copy editing, substantive, and typesetting.

A source within the industry which would like to remain anonymous has guessed my cover, with photography, digital art, model, props, etc, would cost between $4000 and $6000.

The audiobook of Servant of the Crown (my self-published Powder Mage novella) cost me $145 per finished hour to do through ACX, and the excellent reader gently told me he was working cheap because I happened to catch him at a lull. So for 19 hours of Promise of Blood: $2800.

Printing costs is where it gets tricky. My book is a hardcover. Self-publishers will go for Print on Demand because it's free, with Amazon or whoever just taking their cut when the book is ordered. But POD books can be of dubious quality. Let's say I ordered a print run of 8500. At a professional printers, the estimate is about $2.50 a unit. That's $21,250 right there.

We're looking at somewhere around $32-34K to produce Promise of Blood, and we haven't even included marketing, ads, ARCs, ebook production, mailing to reviewers, placement in Barnes and Noble, nor even the cost of the UK printing or the paperback in either country. I'd be shocked if it was made for less than $60K.

You know how much money I made the year Orbit picked up Promise of Blood? About $13,000 with months unemployed and three different crappy jobs. Let's just say I didn't have $60,000 laying around to produce a novel that wasn't just a fun read but a tightly-finished experience. Hell, I didn't have $12,800 it would have cost just to do the ebook and audiobook right.

"Brian!" you protest. "You're a smart, thrifty guy. Surely you would have gotten it done for less than that!"

Probably. Servant of the Crown was my last self-published novella. It cost me $420 for art, $200 for copy-editing, $25 for the ebook layout, and $430 for the audiobook. And I got all of that dirt cheap. I got friends to do beta-reading and cover layout stuff. Let's say I do Promise of Blood to my standards rather than Orbit's. It'll still cost me $1000 for the art, $2800 for the audiobook, and $4000 for the copy-editing. That's $7800.

So, to recap, Orbit pays me the traditional industry standard on my novels because they invested between $34K and $60K into each of my novels. NOT INCLUDING MY ADVANCE.

Sure, my self-published short stories and novellas pay me between 35% and 70%. But do you know how much Amazon has invested in me? $0.

Would I love for the industry standard to be higher? Of course I would! But I understand why it's not, and I'm learning to diversify because this is what I do for a living.

Showing Off

I now have an award big and hefty enough to be used as a murder weapon. This means I'm going to end up on an episode of Law and Order or CSI as the victim (or suspect) somewhere down the road.

Once again thanks to everyone who voted for Promise of Blood for the Gemmell Morningstar Award! And thanks to my UK editor, James Long for picking it up for me.

New Giveaway!

To celebrate the release of the the new Powder Mage novella, Servant of the Crown, I've decided to have another giveaway! Or rather, two giveaways. Given the expense of international shipping, I'm going to have one giveaway for USA readers and another of a digital item for the rest of the world. That might ruffle some feathers, but hey. It's free stuff. Winners will be chosen at random and will go for a week or until I'm sick of getting emails from you all.

 

USA Only:

I'll be giving away a signed advanced reading copy (ARC) of Promise of Blood. This may not sound that cool, but it's a rather rare item that usually only booksellers and reviewers are able to get their hands on. And I just so happen to have some left of my own.

To enter, email contest@brianmcclellan.com with the subject line "ARC Giveaway". Include your name and mailing address in the body of the email so that I don't have to track you down later (this won't be used for anything else).

Outside USA Only:

I'll be giving away Audible codes for the Powder Mage novella Forsworn to five lucky winners.

To enter, email contest@brianmcclellan.com with the subject line "Audible Giveaway." Include your name and country of residence. If you live in a country where Audible won't let you download it, I'll provide you with an epub, mobi, or pdf of Forsworn or Servant of the Crown.

 

If you want to check out the new novella, go here to find a link to your favorite ebookstore.

Servant of the Crown

The new Powder Mage novella is here!

Picking up between the last chapter and the epilogue of Forsworn, the new Servant of the Crown follows Captain Tamas in his struggles with the Adran royal cabal, his superiors within the army, and the nobility of Adro. It also explores his early relationship with the old Iron King and a certain half-Adran powder mage by the name of Erika...

It's available for early access from my own bookstore here (this allows you to get every format DRM-free as well as puts a little extra money in my pocket). I'll be uploading the files to Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks tonight and will add them to the list below as they go live.

Enjoy the read!

 

United States

Direct (all countries)AmazonNookKoboiBooks

United Kingdom

Amazon.co.ukNook.com/gb

Other

Amazon.inAmazon.deAmazon.frAmazon.esAmazon.itAmazon.co.jpAmazon.com.brAmazon.caAmazon.com.au

Audio

AudibleiTunes