Category Archives: publishing

Cover Reveal: Tesla’s Stepdaughters

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Here is the new cover for Tesla’s Stepdaughters.  It should be gracing the ebooks within a few weeks and the paperbacks shortly thereafter.

I actually purchased the art for this cover some time ago, originally for use on the cover of a sequel.  I have a couple of chapters of it written and may well get back to it in the future, but decided, as part of my generally sprucing up of my books, that I would go ahead and use it.  I can always find new art if and when I get the second book finished.

If you haven’t read Tesla’s Stepdaughers, it is a rock and roll, steampunk, detective story.

In an alternate 1975, where men are almost extinct due to germ warfare, someone is trying to kill history’s greatest rock & roll band.  It falls to Science Police Agent John Andrews, only recently arrived from the distant male enclaves, to protect them.   As the band continues their come-back tour across North America, Andrews must negotiate a complicated relationship with Ep!phanee, the band’s lead singer; drummer Ruth De Molay, bassist Steffie Sin, and the redheaded clone lead guitarist Penny Dreadful, as he protects them and tries to discover who wants to kill the Ladybugs.               

The Young Sorceress and The Two Dragons Now at Sony & iBooks

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Well, it’s taken a while, but The Young Sorceress and The Two Dragons have finally found their way into the Sony ebook Store.  You can find a link to all my books for the Sony Reader here.

In a related event, The Two Dragons has finally arrived at Apple’s iBook Store.  You can find a link to it here.  I am especially happy about this because Apple has been my single biggest retailer for most of my books, and especially for Senta and the Steel Dragon.

If you are a Sony Reader reader 🙂 and you were waiting to complete your series, now you can.  And thanks to all of you who purchased my books.

Indy Author Gets Book Deal

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Indy Author Jamie McGuire has landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster.  She has previously done quite well self-publishing her books and this is a real trend of indy authors being discovered by publishers.  Hopefully this will mark a great career move for her.

Read the story here.

Part of what stories like this indicate is that the old model of the publisher as the gatekeeper  is broken– resulting in way too few new Shakespeares and way too many new Snookies.  Way to wake up Simon & Schuster.

Cover Reveal: Women of Power

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One of the running topics over at Smashwords is the possibility of improving sales by improving your book cover.  Along with writing this summer, I’m doing new edits of as many books as I can get done, getting paper versions completed for as many books as I can, and generally improving my product line.  So I decided some time ago that I would redo the cover for Women of Power, since it is the only cover I’ve ever actually gotten negative feedback on– something along the lines of “the book was much better thant he cheesy cover seemed to indicate.”

By the time you read this, I should be very close to uploading this cover to Smashwords and Amazon, and of course the other retail outlets will have it soon afterwards.  If you want, feel free to redownload the book.  Regardless of where you purchased it, you should be able to download the update free.  If it has the new cover, you’ve got the new update.

82 Eridani: Journey

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Time to reveal the secret project I’m working on: Coming in 2013.

82 Eridani is a seven book science fiction series, the first volume of which is entitled Journey.  The other volumes will be: Arrival, War, Conquest, Siege, Duel, and Destiny.

82 Eridani: Journey

The three mile-long interstellar spacecraft Constellation was designed to explore and colonized the Sirius Star System.  The problem is, that it isn’t going to Sirius.  The $14 Trillion spaceship has been hijacked by its commander and is flying toward the 82 Eridani star system, and none of the 7,000 crew and colonists know why.  Officer Freya Johannson, despite being the commander’s lover, has no more idea than anyone else, but she is determined to find out.  Officer James Moore might be curious, but he has more pressing concerns of his own.  His wife may be having an affair, so he turns to a group of others to find out for sure, including robotics expert Robert Stivers.  Stivers builds robots of all types, include ant-sized surveillance robots which he uses primarily to stalk hard-bodied security officer January Sarbanes.  What the tiny robitic eyes have yet to notice is that a serial killer stalks the corridors of the ship.  None of these crew members, nor any of the others including the commander, are ready for the shock of what they will find when they finally reach 82 Eridani.

Warning: Adult Content

The Voyage of the Minotaur is now $1.99

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I am dropping the price of Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur to $1.99.  I have been struggling to decide a price point on this book and this series.  I want people to read it and I hope this will make it more attractive.

The book has been out almost exactly two years now, and as I write this, it has sold 259 copies.  I think that definitely warrents a price reduction.  By going below 2.99 at Amazon, I drop from a 70% royalty rate to a 30% royalty rate, and I don’t really expect the additional sales to make up for it.  But hopefully there will be an increase in the sales of the sequels, and that will make up the difference.

If you have read my other books, but haven’t yet gotten to Senta and the Steel Dragon, give them a try.  They are my favorite books of all those that I’ve written.

Facelifts: Coming this Summer

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One of the things I have planned for this summer is a facelift for my complete line of books.  I don’t plan on a re-edit, though I have a few error corrections to make.  What I plan is changing the margins and indents to work better with ereaders.  I did this with Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike and I like the results.  I’m also going to add more book informtion, sample chapters, and coming soon features in the back of the books.

There will also be some price changes in the works.  Pricing is always difficult to judge.  The way that royalties work at least at Amazon, I get 30% of a 99 cent (or 30 cents) book, but 70% of  2.99 book (or 2.03.  In other words, I have to sell 7 times as many books at 99 cents to make as much as selling one at 2.99.  If lowering the price to 99 cents would guarantee a 700% increase in sales, I would lower them all.

Finally, I’m going to make sure that all my books are available in paperback.  I’m getting Astrid Maxxim out because I think some kids might actually buy them.  In all other cases, it’s just for additional exposure, though I have been selling a few paperbacks of His Robot Girlfriend lately.

6,000th Book Sale

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Sometime in the last week or so, I sold my 6,000th book.  This does not include free downloads like His Robot Girlfriend.  I don’t know which book it was.  As I added up my sales this evening, they sat at 6,098.  That means I’ve sold more than 5,500 books during 2011, because my sales at the end of 2010 had reached just 504.  Or in other words, I sold ten times as many books this year as I sold in all previous years combined.  It would be great if my numbers at the end of 2012 increased at the same rate.  Here’s hoping.

Now in the Premium Catalog

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Well, Astrid and friends have made it through the vetting process and are now in the premium catalog at Smashwords.  In addition, it’s already shown up on iTunes, so it’s available now there at 99 cents.  I’ll let you know when it’s available at other ebook outlets.

Still Waiting on Premium Catolog Vetting

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For those of you not familiar with Smashwords, it is an online publishing/distribution system for ebooks.  When an author publishes an ebook on Smashwords, as I have done with Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike, it is available for imediate download from their site.  Of course most of the sales do not occur on their site, but rather through their distribution channels to Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Diesel Books, Sony, and iBooks.  To get to those distribution channels though, the book has to be approved by the vetting team for the Premium Catalog.  Unfortunately, they are quite backlogged at Smashwords and they haven’t gotten to my book yet.  So it’s going to be at least a couple of weeks before it appears at the above ebook stores.  I hope they get to it soon.  I’m really counting on all those kids with new Nooks, Kindles, and iPads to buy it after Christmas.