Yet another vampire book, and stuff

Yes, A Phone Man Visits the Vampires made it through the Smashwords queue. This time around, I only made corrections, no additions. I'm already working on Touched, so that should be out by this weekend, or Monday at the latest if the SW queue is really long. Once I finish with Amber's first book, all of the archived vampire stories will be available again. I'll go through the rest of the archive at a much more relaxed pace. I don't think anyone is going to be complaining bitterly that Shadow Walker and Erick's Journey are temporarily unavailable.

But I will get them up soon enough. Getting the old stuff back online is actually a very high priority at this point. Just look at how fast I've worked to release this, as well as Job Interview With a Vampire and Haunting Sins. I want to get all the archives up, and then work on getting out the newer series. Now that Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies is out, my next new series starters are NINJAWORLD and Peter, The Wolf. I've also got to figure out when to finally release Books of Daniel, but given how it has themes similar to Peter, The Wolf, I might hold it back and give the other stories time to find an audience first.

I've also decided to release Mmmm…Crunchy! It was my 2010 NaNoWriMo winner, and I abandoned it because I was intentionally trying to write a bad book. But I still like the premise, and I figure I'll explain that it's a bad book in the extended description. If people buy it then, at least they were warned, right? Oh, and don't worry, I still have no plans to release Dave: A Messiah. Some trunk novels just need to stay in the trunk, know what I'm sayin'?

[image error]My roundabout point is, even if I stopped writing, I'd still have a loooong backlog to put out.

That said, the muse is back, and she's insistent that she's got a winner. She wants to do a high fantasy porn about a transsexual half-elf princess and a half-orc barbarian. Oy. A 3rd person POV pure story from the perspective of the barbarian. Oy! And the elf is underage. Oy vey! (y_y)  But, at least it's a hobby. Or, that's what I'll tell myself when this sucker flops.

And now, a sales report. I know, you're dying to know how sales did after I blew up. Well, they were steady, and this month's income from Smashwords and Lightning Source is $36. Not bad at all. Yes, I took a hit for not having sales with Amazon, but my higher prices made the few sales I got really count. As I get my archives onto Smashwords, I think that trickle of sales from my back catalog might be enough for me to earn a very modest living.

As I get the stories up on Lulu this summer, my other goal is figuring out where to find print readers willing to shop with Lulu. The book quality at Lulu is fine, so I shouldn't feel ashamed of working with them. I know from personal experience that the books from Lightning Source are almost identical, and I didn't get anything out of the "prestige" of selling with Lightning Source. People didn't buy my print book with them any more than they bought from Lulu.

But, I can put out books through Lulu without ISBN numbers for free. The archived stories will be given a proper layout for their paper format, but if I didn't already have a cover for the book, I'm not bothering. In fact, I'm not even bothering with a stock image. I'm just going with a pastel color and white text.

Go ahead, judge the book by the cover. Judge it by the vendor, or by the hack writer's lousy attitude. I don't care if you decide not to read me. All I know is, if I put out my books with Lulu, I can do it for free, and the products that readers order will last a long time. It will not be good enough for me to ever win an award, or ever be taken seriously by bigger reviewers. But hell, I wasn't haven't any luck with those people even after I had a professionally edited book through LSI with a custom art cover worthy of an award. So now I'm just making sure I get rid of as many typos as possible, and screw alla that cover bullshit.

I will say this about Lightning Source: they have the BEST customer service. You email them and say what you need, and bam, it's done. They may be a bit pricey, but the service they give for that price is stellar. So, if y'all folks were wondering what I think of Lightning Source, I think they're all right. They're just too upscale for my redneck ass.

Off to do guitar practice. Later, peeps.