Peter Laurent's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-covert-academy"
Book 2 Update - The Covert Academy series
Yep. "Book 2". That's the title for now!
I have several proper titles I'm still deciding between.
Titles are tricky, but oh so important.
The original title of The Covert Academy was in fact "Hyperacuity", until about 3 weeks before publishing.
The purpose of that name was a bit obscure, and the series was always going to be called The Covert Academy anyway, so I thought why not just call the first book by the series' name?
And now I think it's much more suitable.
I am making progress with Book 2. First I organised and updated my notes for Book 1 as a refresher, then wrote several pages worth for new characters, plot twists, locations and more, for Book 2.
Today I have been writing out a much more detailed plot summary, which will help guide me while writing the bulk of the text in the coming months.
I am going into more detail with my notes this time around, since Book 2 must sync up perfectly, continuity-wise, with Books 1 & 3.
Though I do want to also leave room for spontaneous creativity while writing.
I am aiming to have Book 2 done and published before Christmas 2013 or earlier if possible, but that is a very tentative estimate. I may well end up writing a longer book this time, since several people have commented on how the pacing felt very fast in Book 1. That was intentional, I like fast-paced books. It's a tricky balancing act, Book 1 was over 65,000 words, but maybe my writing could stand to be fleshed out more in a longer format novel.
We'll see!
Cheers,
-Petes
I have several proper titles I'm still deciding between.
Titles are tricky, but oh so important.
The original title of The Covert Academy was in fact "Hyperacuity", until about 3 weeks before publishing.
The purpose of that name was a bit obscure, and the series was always going to be called The Covert Academy anyway, so I thought why not just call the first book by the series' name?
And now I think it's much more suitable.
I am making progress with Book 2. First I organised and updated my notes for Book 1 as a refresher, then wrote several pages worth for new characters, plot twists, locations and more, for Book 2.
Today I have been writing out a much more detailed plot summary, which will help guide me while writing the bulk of the text in the coming months.
I am going into more detail with my notes this time around, since Book 2 must sync up perfectly, continuity-wise, with Books 1 & 3.
Though I do want to also leave room for spontaneous creativity while writing.
I am aiming to have Book 2 done and published before Christmas 2013 or earlier if possible, but that is a very tentative estimate. I may well end up writing a longer book this time, since several people have commented on how the pacing felt very fast in Book 1. That was intentional, I like fast-paced books. It's a tricky balancing act, Book 1 was over 65,000 words, but maybe my writing could stand to be fleshed out more in a longer format novel.
We'll see!
Cheers,
-Petes
Book Advertising - My Results, Part Duex
Recently I organised a promotion, for both of my books, through Kindle Nation Daily and World Literary Cafe with the intention of breathing new life into my books' sales 7 months after publication.
I had enjoyed 2-3 solid months of sales starting back in Feb 2013, I have a suspicion that Amazon go out of their way to promote debut authors who sign up to KDP Select, but I have not much to base that on other than my own experience so far. I recommend KDP Select if you are publishing your first book at least. Check my older blog posts on how successful it was for me at first.
Anyway, I paid around $100 each to Kindle Nation Daily and World Literary Cafe for two one-day promotions, to promote my book being discounted from $2.99 to $0.99. They each kindly threw in an extra, by adding me to their partnered email sendouts, BookGorilla and BargainBooksy (respectively), since my eBook met their requirements.
So in effect I had 4 promos all running on the same day, August 1st 2013.
What were my results?
The Covert Academy did make it back into the Bestseller charts on Amazon, around #39 in SciFi Dystopia and #89 in SciFi Adventure, and in the top #5000 overall.
Not bad at all.
However, either because the promo finished at the end of the day and KND and WLC moved on to the next day's promos, my book stopped selling the next day. It's now slipping back down to where it sat before the promo, around #200,000 overall.
I also suspect that putting the price back to $2.99 put a lot of people off, and helped to cause the slip back down the charts.
Too long, didn't read: Advertising with Kindle Nation Daily and World Literary Cafe got my book in the bestseller charts again, but didn't last longer than one day.
And I didn't make my money back through sales either.
But I don't consider it a loss. More people got their hands on my book, hopefully the type who will read it, rather than the type who simply collect free books for their library.
One last note, I also signed up for a promo with The New Kindle Book Review. I got an email saying the date I'd booked was unavailable. I've sent several emails back asking to either change the promo type to another (and I'd pay the difference) or to just refund my money if that's not an option for them.
I haven't heard back at all. Not impressed. These guys ran a promo for me earlier in the year without any hassle, but this time they've taken my money and not done a thing. Very poor service. I recommend staying away from them!
UPDATE: They finally got back to me (almost a month later) and threw in a little bonus for my trouble. So no hard feelings and there's a happy ending eventually :)
I hope that helped you to decide on a promo for your book! Feel free to ask me any questions.
I'll be doing another blog post next week (see the "EDIT" below), because I got an interesting email from Amazon that has lead me to believe there is a loophole in their KDP royalty system that not many people know about. I'm putting it to the test now and will report back!
EDIT: The loophole does exist. It involves setting your list price's 35% royalty higher than your "Kindle Price", by price-matching through another sales channel. It works too.
(e.g. List Price= $5.99, 35% royalty= $1.74
Price match it to $0.99 and Amazon effectively pay you $0.75 per sale on top of the sale itself.)
The problem is, Amazon state that they pay 35% of the list price, not the price-matched Kindle Price (when using the 35% royalty).
But do NOT do it!
I got an email from Amazon asking politely for me to match my list price with my Kindle price, or they'd take it down themselves. We don't want that!
Still, Amazon probably ought to adjust their royalty terms and conditions to close that loophole. It's asking for trouble.
(e.g. What if someone listed their product at $200 and price matched it to $0.99 before Amazon caught on? They'd have to pay out $70 for each sale)
I'm not advocating this at all. Just pointing out an interesting flaw in the system!
My own list price is comfortably back at $0.99, and no harm done.
Cheers,
-Peter
I had enjoyed 2-3 solid months of sales starting back in Feb 2013, I have a suspicion that Amazon go out of their way to promote debut authors who sign up to KDP Select, but I have not much to base that on other than my own experience so far. I recommend KDP Select if you are publishing your first book at least. Check my older blog posts on how successful it was for me at first.
Anyway, I paid around $100 each to Kindle Nation Daily and World Literary Cafe for two one-day promotions, to promote my book being discounted from $2.99 to $0.99. They each kindly threw in an extra, by adding me to their partnered email sendouts, BookGorilla and BargainBooksy (respectively), since my eBook met their requirements.
So in effect I had 4 promos all running on the same day, August 1st 2013.
What were my results?
The Covert Academy did make it back into the Bestseller charts on Amazon, around #39 in SciFi Dystopia and #89 in SciFi Adventure, and in the top #5000 overall.
Not bad at all.
However, either because the promo finished at the end of the day and KND and WLC moved on to the next day's promos, my book stopped selling the next day. It's now slipping back down to where it sat before the promo, around #200,000 overall.
I also suspect that putting the price back to $2.99 put a lot of people off, and helped to cause the slip back down the charts.
Too long, didn't read: Advertising with Kindle Nation Daily and World Literary Cafe got my book in the bestseller charts again, but didn't last longer than one day.
And I didn't make my money back through sales either.
But I don't consider it a loss. More people got their hands on my book, hopefully the type who will read it, rather than the type who simply collect free books for their library.
One last note, I also signed up for a promo with The New Kindle Book Review. I got an email saying the date I'd booked was unavailable. I've sent several emails back asking to either change the promo type to another (and I'd pay the difference) or to just refund my money if that's not an option for them.
I haven't heard back at all. Not impressed. These guys ran a promo for me earlier in the year without any hassle, but this time they've taken my money and not done a thing. Very poor service. I recommend staying away from them!
UPDATE: They finally got back to me (almost a month later) and threw in a little bonus for my trouble. So no hard feelings and there's a happy ending eventually :)
I hope that helped you to decide on a promo for your book! Feel free to ask me any questions.
I'll be doing another blog post next week (see the "EDIT" below), because I got an interesting email from Amazon that has lead me to believe there is a loophole in their KDP royalty system that not many people know about. I'm putting it to the test now and will report back!
EDIT: The loophole does exist. It involves setting your list price's 35% royalty higher than your "Kindle Price", by price-matching through another sales channel. It works too.
(e.g. List Price= $5.99, 35% royalty= $1.74
Price match it to $0.99 and Amazon effectively pay you $0.75 per sale on top of the sale itself.)
The problem is, Amazon state that they pay 35% of the list price, not the price-matched Kindle Price (when using the 35% royalty).
But do NOT do it!
I got an email from Amazon asking politely for me to match my list price with my Kindle price, or they'd take it down themselves. We don't want that!
Still, Amazon probably ought to adjust their royalty terms and conditions to close that loophole. It's asking for trouble.
(e.g. What if someone listed their product at $200 and price matched it to $0.99 before Amazon caught on? They'd have to pay out $70 for each sale)
I'm not advocating this at all. Just pointing out an interesting flaw in the system!
My own list price is comfortably back at $0.99, and no harm done.
Cheers,
-Peter
Book 2 - Progress Report
Hello dear reader,
I've just passed the 40k word mark on book2! Yay!
I feel like this next book is a marathon, but I know it will be worth it in the end. It is far more epic than The Covert Academy (which was 65k words).
But being a bit longer, there is time to explain lots of little details in the universe, including most of the main characters' backstories and how they became the way they are. And some of the future tech has cool explanations of how it could work in real-life (so it's not confused with magic!).
Between juggling my animation jobs (that iPhone game should be coming soonish... all the art is now finalised at least!)
and writing Scout's Honour, I've made it "almost" to the half-way point of the story. So I'm right on track for my goal of 80-90k words. I'm very pleased with this so far!
Now to lock myself away in my mancave and get this 1st draft done!
Cheers,
-Petes
I've just passed the 40k word mark on book2! Yay!
I feel like this next book is a marathon, but I know it will be worth it in the end. It is far more epic than The Covert Academy (which was 65k words).
But being a bit longer, there is time to explain lots of little details in the universe, including most of the main characters' backstories and how they became the way they are. And some of the future tech has cool explanations of how it could work in real-life (so it's not confused with magic!).
Between juggling my animation jobs (that iPhone game should be coming soonish... all the art is now finalised at least!)
and writing Scout's Honour, I've made it "almost" to the half-way point of the story. So I'm right on track for my goal of 80-90k words. I'm very pleased with this so far!
Now to lock myself away in my mancave and get this 1st draft done!
Cheers,
-Petes
Retroactive Fracture
Everyone likes free stuff, so I decided to split up The Covert Academy into thirds, offering Recruitment Drive permanently FREE!
Freshman is $0.99 and Graduation Day is $1.99
At the moment the entire thing is still $0.99 on Amazon because they were price matching my previous sale, but it will be going back to $2.99 as soon as they notice the update, which should be within the week.
That will bring it into line with the price of all three parts. But then what's the incentive to get the whole thing in one go up front?
Well, the complete version of The Covert Academy now includes Scout's Honour for free! That's some sweet value.
If you haven't yet got Scout's Honour, but you already have The Covert Academy through Amazon, you can get it by updating your book through "Manage Your Kindle" in your Amazon account settings. Set your Kindle to update books automatically or just update this one and it should work.
My sincere apologies if you've bought them both separately and feeling short-changed... it's my first time...
Scout's Honour is still exclusive to Amazon until early October, when I will publish it elsewhere for you non-Kindle toting folks.
Anyway, you can get the three separate parts on Smashwords and Amazon right now, they should be coming to the other stores soon too.
One last note, Recruitment Drive is not yet free on Amazon. If you could do me the favour of asking them to price match it to the Smashwords edition (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...) that would be grand.
Cheers,
-Petes
Freshman is $0.99 and Graduation Day is $1.99
At the moment the entire thing is still $0.99 on Amazon because they were price matching my previous sale, but it will be going back to $2.99 as soon as they notice the update, which should be within the week.
That will bring it into line with the price of all three parts. But then what's the incentive to get the whole thing in one go up front?
Well, the complete version of The Covert Academy now includes Scout's Honour for free! That's some sweet value.
If you haven't yet got Scout's Honour, but you already have The Covert Academy through Amazon, you can get it by updating your book through "Manage Your Kindle" in your Amazon account settings. Set your Kindle to update books automatically or just update this one and it should work.
My sincere apologies if you've bought them both separately and feeling short-changed... it's my first time...
Scout's Honour is still exclusive to Amazon until early October, when I will publish it elsewhere for you non-Kindle toting folks.
Anyway, you can get the three separate parts on Smashwords and Amazon right now, they should be coming to the other stores soon too.
One last note, Recruitment Drive is not yet free on Amazon. If you could do me the favour of asking them to price match it to the Smashwords edition (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...) that would be grand.
Cheers,
-Petes
First Draft of The Covert Academy's sequel is DONE!
Yes! I can come into the sunlight once more. What a marathon.
And what a rough draft it is too! Last time around all I really needed to do was tidy up a few continuity issues, fix up lots and lots of punctuation and grammar mistakes, and formatting for publication. And that still took over a month with help from my parents.
But this draft is a mixed bag of scenes that I'm really happy with and scenes that are either going to be outright deleted and/or rewritten. I've got far more subplots than I ought to, haha.
It's going to be a big job since this first draft clocks in at 83,110 words. That's around the same length as The Covert Academy combined with Scout's Honour. I expect it will be around the 90k mark by the time I'm completely done.
The name of the book will probably change too. I've got a new front-runner which I'm going to try out on a few people I know before announcing it.
Time to start editing!
-Pete
And what a rough draft it is too! Last time around all I really needed to do was tidy up a few continuity issues, fix up lots and lots of punctuation and grammar mistakes, and formatting for publication. And that still took over a month with help from my parents.
But this draft is a mixed bag of scenes that I'm really happy with and scenes that are either going to be outright deleted and/or rewritten. I've got far more subplots than I ought to, haha.
It's going to be a big job since this first draft clocks in at 83,110 words. That's around the same length as The Covert Academy combined with Scout's Honour. I expect it will be around the 90k mark by the time I'm completely done.
The name of the book will probably change too. I've got a new front-runner which I'm going to try out on a few people I know before announcing it.
Time to start editing!
-Pete
