Adventures in Publishing

There are a few topics that will be covered in this announcement, because there's a lot of updates that need mentioning.

First, to answer a few of the more common questions we've been fielding:

Q: Will Eyes of the Seer be on Amazon or Barnes & Noble?

A: Yes, Eyes of the Seer will be available for download from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble by August 1st. (The date isn't more precise because we're currently working through formatting concerns, to make certain that when we do release the novel it is a quality digital book regardless of the format and where you've bought it. This process will get much shorter for future book releases. In the meantime, feel free to explore using Smashwords to purchase our book in whatever format you prefer – they offer most of the notable ones, like .mobi for Kindle and Epub for Nook.)

Q: Will you be making Eyes of the Seer available in print?

A: Yes, through Amazon's Create Space. For those who were unaware, there was an ARC print copy available from Lulu for the past year, but we've made the decision to move away from Lulu and onto Amazon because it better fits our needs. We're still exploring the options of where and how we'll be able to distribute the book and will keep everyone updated here on our site – it will definitely be available through Amazon, but we're looking into other venues. (Actually, if any other self-pubbed authors know the answer the this question, we'd love to hit you up for some insight.)

Related: I'm certain everyone is looking at our Kickstarter campaign and wondering how we're handling or plan on handling the obvious lack of funding. There's a larger section of this post that is dedicated to a more complete answer.

Q: I missed your giveaway contest when you reached 350 twitter followers. Will there be another one soon?

A: Yes. We've been throwing around the idea that we'll do a giveaway for every 50 follower mark we hit through 500 followers (so one at 400, 450, and 500) and then will do one for every 100 follower mark from there on out.

How does this work? – When we're getting close, within 10-15 followers of the next giveaway threshold, we'll tweet about the contest. Each of the next 10-15 followers who gets us up to, or over, our mark will be entered in a drawing for a free e-copy of 'Eyes of the Seer' (as of the time of this post, this is only available through Smashwords. In the future, we will also be able to give away gift copies through Amazon, and possibly B&N if they offer such a thing, depending on the winner's preference). In addition to our new followers being given a chance to win the book, any of our current followers will be eligible to enter themselves in a second drawing by retweeting our tweets about the contest, or, when we cross the threshold, responding via DM to enter for the drawing. This means each of our followers can have up to 2 entries in the drawing – one for retweeting, and another for a DM sent when we announce we're ready to take additional entries (which will be after we cross the follower threshold). The DM portion of the contest will remain open for about an hour, and then we'll announce the winners of the contest (which are determined using random.org). Total for each giveaway is 2 digital copies of Eyes of the Seer.

Q: Will there ever be any other kinds of giveaways?

A: Yes, and we're currently looking for ideas! We learned a lot from setting up our campaign on Kickstarter, and from the other members of the community on that site, but we'd love to hear what you guys would actually want. Poems? Posters? Signed print copies? Some version of the Twitter follower giveaway for our Facebook fans, and blog subscribers? This is all stuff we're currently tossing around as potential fodder for giveaway contests. Leave us your comments or @ replies on our twitter account, or a wall post on our Facebook page (either page -for those who haven't yet 'liked' both of them, we have two, one for Crimson Melodies and one for Eyes of the Seer)

So, about Kickstarter…

We learned a lot of valuable lessons from our Kickstarter campaign. Yes, we know, it's not going to be funded so we won't actually be getting any of the money. (If you're one of the 6 [at the time of this post] people who committed to being a backer, look for an update in your inbox by tomorrow. There will be 'thank-you' goodies.) But it gave us a chance to discover a few things that will be put to good use from here on out.

We'll still be putting the book into print, it just won't be done as ambitiously as it would have had the project succeeded. Obviously we have to come up with our own capital to buy the ISBN numbers and stock copies to be able to offer to people for giveaways, reviews, and everything else we'd planned to do with them. We also won't be able to put out our two proposed short-story collections before the end of the year, but they will get done, eventually.

That was, after all, the core reason of why we began the Kickstarter campaign to publish Eyes of the Seer – to bridge the gap between what we can afford and what we want to do to get our book into the hands of as many readers and possible. What it means for us is that our plans will simply have to be put on a timetable rather than condensed into a single, solid effort. Basically, months instead of month, and a slow crescendo rather than a thunderous fanfare.

Our thoughts on the Kickstarter campaign boil down to this: we did it too soon. Consider it an over-estimation on our part, one that has both humbled and educated us to our status regarding our fan-base. We have lots of people looking – following links and browsing our content, downloading our samples – which means we're doing lots of things right. But the number of people looking vs the number of people convinced to take the next step and support us financially has been very sobering.

Will we ever use Kickstarter again? Yes, definitely. It's a great system with a lot of possibility, especially for the penny-counting artists like us. And the next time you see us on Kickstarter, we know we'll have all the ingredients to make it a successful campaign. (Namely, a completed trilogy, and all the time in the meanwhile to win-over readers to becoming fans. Or at least that's the current plan. *conspiratorial wink*)

Our final thoughts on the matter are actually better expressed as words of advice to any fellow indie artists considering using Kickstarter to fund a project. Before you submit a proposal, before you make a video (and yes, the video is absolutely necessary), make sure you've got a fan-base who not only enjoy your work but are willing to financially support you to see the next stage of it. A campaign that starts off with a noticeable dent toward their funding goal from the start is a campaign that has a much larger chance to succeed.  (Consider, our campaign reached $85 within the first week but had no further significant contribution spikes despite consistent efforts on our part via email, Twitter, and Facebook to draw attention to the campaign. Part of that may have to do with our ambitious goal of $850, and part might have to do with Eyes of the Seer being "another vampire book". But that's where the financial support from your fan-base is so crucial, like reviews on Amazon – people form opinions based on the observable reactions from other people, and won't take the chance on your work, no matter how good it sounds, if it seems like there aren't many other people taking the chance too. I was reading an article recently that noted something very worthwhile – reviews for [free] content cannot be equated for reviews for content you had to pay for. Same goes for your readers – they might really enjoy it for free, but that doesn't equate to them being willing to fork out their hard earned $$ no matter how little you're asking for. So, in short, be certain where you stand before you do a Kickstarter campaign. As a writer in a world where indies are still stereotyped in an unfavorable way, you need the solid start before Kickstarter will work for you.)

As they say, on-wards and upwards. And as always, thanks for reading,

Victor Mason

Peter Dawes