R.J. Blain's Blog, page 3

The Prince of New York is a B&N Top Indie Title! Also, some updates on audiobooks, answering a bunch of questions recently, general news!

Hello, folks! In the past week or two, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the background economics of books (thus the series of posts, adjustments to the chart, etc), and I wanted to take the time to dig through the question archive and answer some of them. (If I tried to answer all of them, we’d be here for months.)

But before I begin, Barnes & Noble curated The Prince of New York as a June / July Top Indie Favorite! Hooray! Good job, baby book!!! I’m so proud of you. It is under the Scien...

#150Daysto100k Assignment #4: Create Conflict.

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Pictured: Zazzle coping with the terrible conflict of being on the wrong side of the fence and unable to capture the bird she very much wishes to hunt.

In an earlier post, I discussed that your character(s) needed a destination. (And I’m not talking about a final one, although your vibe may very well result in them doing the equivalent of driving behind a log truck…) Today, your assignment is to identify the primary conflicts that are preventing your main characters from getting to where ...

#150Daysto100K Assignment 3: Identify (and Create) Your Main Character

In my section of the universe, good characters are the foundation of a good book. Compelling plot lines mean absolutely nothing to me if they aren’t backed with engaging and interesting characters.

So, today’s assignment is all about the main character. Who is this story REALLY about? Why is the story about this specific character?

In the case of a romance novel, you’re going to have two main characters, so you would identify both of them now.

In Rise of the Rift King (which will be the...

How to Follow Me Without the Extras! (Plus a correction re: economics post) (AKA, how you can dodge future #150Daysto100k Posts)

Before anyone becomes upset, freaks out, etc, I understood when I started the writing challenge that there would be those who simply have zero interest in the behind the scenes work that goes into a book, those who simply have zero interest in writing, and those who just want news and nothing but news.

News regarding what is coming up after the preorder titles is located at the end of this post. (Read or not as you desire.)

As I will be doing a post or two a day moving forward, I wanted to...

Bonus Assignment: Map Making #150Daysto100K

While everyone is germinating on where their novels are going, here is a bonus assignment for those of you who are going to be writing and creating their own world for their project.

Draw a very rough map with your climate zones, kingdom boundaries, and the names of the particularly important kingdoms/regions.

I will be creating maps for the interior of the books for fun, but I happen to own the software and tools, although I did get a replacement basic Wacom tablet to simplify some of the...

Assignment 2: Decide Your Novel’s End Goal (150 Days to 100k; #150Daysto100k)

Yesterday, in Assignment #1, I spent more time showing my tools than giving you a task, which boiled down to ‘known your genre, know your vibe’ before you start writing. I know that pacing is slow for those who want to dive in and start making the magic happen, but I’m of the opinion that faster isn’t always better, and setting up for success is important to make it through a project like this.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I’m hoping that if I can distill the process into bite-sized mor...

Assignment 1: Basic Conceptualizing of a Novel. (150 Days to a 100,000 Word Novel Challenge) #150Daysto100k

To those of you who don’t like receiving numerous blog posts a day, I’m sorry! I’m starting a project, and I want to invite everyone who has ever wanted to take a stab at writing a book to join me.

The 150 Days to a 100,000 Word Novel Challenge is just that; it’s 150 days of plotting, writing, and editing challenges to help you write a full-length novel! Note: some of you may finish sooner, some of you may need longer. I honestly don’t know if I’ll need more or less than 150 days to do this p...

More on Changes to Print Editions (Plus an Expanded ROI chart with a nicer legend)

I’m moving ahead with discontinuing the 4.25×7 trim size (And I genuinely apologize to the 10-15 of you who were buying that size over the period of a year; I wish I could keep maintaining the trim size, but the reality is, with the price hikes, the 10-15 has dwindled closer to 5-10, and 5-10 purchases simply don’t cover expenses.)

To make limit the risk of people continuing to purchase that trim size (for significantly higher expense) than the 6×9, I’ve put in a distribution removal order wi...

The Economics of Writing Books (with practical numbers)

Hey, folks!

So, I am preparing to schedule my writing activities for the rest of the year and figure out what I will be publishing in 2026. As such, I needed to figure out what my profitable series/books are.

So, I made a spreadsheet. And I was pretty cruel about it, I’m not going to lie. I calculated how long it takes me to write a 100,000 word book, and then I did some fancy math so I knew exactly how much, per word, I needed to be paid from that book to cover my living expenses from the...

Susan Copperfield Books (Signed) for Charity Collection

For the Susan Copperfield fans out there… there is a set of fourteen signed books up for grabs in the charity auction as well. Sorry for the second post. The auction organizers did not communicate with me regarding how they separated the books I donated, so… I had to go snoop around to see what was going on. So, yeah. Here’s an auction for the Susan Copperfield fans!