I’ve just finished the writing of my latest venture, titled They Came in Peace; it’s now nearly ready for Beta Reading. Continue reading Beta Readers Wanted
Tag Archives: eBooks
Why KDP Select is Bad
Among my o
f-late all too infrequent posts, I have been giving loose updates about experimenting with Amazon’s KDP Select initiative.
According to Amazon’s too-good-to-be-true KDP Select promotional page, authors enrolled in the programme can “Earn higher royalties, Maximize your book’s sales potential”, and “Reach a new audience,”all in exchange for making your enrolled titles AMAZON KINDLE EXCLUSIVE for an “enrollment period” of 3 months, which renews automatically unless you go through the steps to make sure that the book is only re-enrolled at your behest. But that, like much of KDP Select, only becomes evident after you enroll.
Even going through their broad, devoid-of-details 3 Question Long FAQ’s at the bottom of the page, it becomes obvious that while Amazon are touting the supposed benefits of KDP Select, they most certainly aren’t giving you any real information:
Apparently, the least-asked question is, “How well does it pay?”
Clicking on the “For more FAQs” link leads to a page that just re-hashes everything in the image above, only in more elaborate detail and just enough doublespeak to obfuscate the fact that they ain’t giving you all the fucking facts.
However, having read many a blog article by many a successful author, I decided to have another go at KDP Select – after an early gamble years ago when I first published online.
I decided, as Kindle exclusivity would shut me out of 1/3 of the eBook market, not to cut my nose of to spite my face and make all my titles part of the KDP Select stable for a full quarter-year. That made the chapter books from Chronicles of the Aeons War the ideal test subject for the KDP Select Experiment.
I will not be renewing my Amazon KDP Select
For those following along, I decided to run an experiment to see if being in KDP Select (And Amazon exclusivity) would affect my sales.
Short answer: it has.
Long answer: I AM HEMORRHAGING SALES. Continue reading I will not be renewing my Amazon KDP Select
Reflections on Completing the First Act of a Novel
I think most people understand the basic tenets of writing, that a story has a beginning, middle and end. I think that most people understand that stories don’t always START at the beginning, nor do they necessarily FINISH at the end. And that middle part…well it’s a proper layer cake, isn’t it? It is the meat, cheese, veg and condiments of your sanny, and you want to build it to be as filling and palatable as possible. Continue reading Reflections on Completing the First Act of a Novel
WANNA BE AN INDIE AUTHOR? DON’T BOTHER
So you’ve written a fantastic masterpiece, but don’t know what to do because you don’t have the background, pedigree, connections, contacts, or bribe money to get it published?
As the eBook and Print-on-Demand revolution marches forward, you seem to get the sense that YOU, TOO might be able to GET YOUR BOOK OUT THERE?
Don’t fucking bother.
THE OMNIVERSE: BACK TO BLOGGING
Okay, break (or mourning period for my civil liberties under Stephen Harper) is over. Back to the blahg.
So, what topic to cover for my return to my own damn website?
Well, as this is supposed to be where I blahg about my writing and stuff…let’s talk about my writing! Continue reading THE OMNIVERSE: BACK TO BLOGGING
How I Went Out for a Walk and Came Back With a Chapter
So, I’ve made little to no secret that I’ve been creatively constipated for months, because of personal struggles and, of course, because I’m working on the first draft of two (generally speaking) wholly new stories.
When writing new material, I often find this start-stop-start happens, especially when working with a completely new universe. The first rule of new universes is to be very, very careful while exploring them. Unfortunately, that leads to hesitation, which leads to self-doubt, which leads to second-guessing and obsessive micro-editing of everything I’ve previously written for that particular story, going forward and writing a paragraph or two, realizing I have no idea where to go from there, which leads back to hesitation. So the cycle becomes recursive, leading to full-on writer’s block. Continue reading How I Went Out for a Walk and Came Back With a Chapter
Liars and Cheats and Why I Hate Them
So…what kicked off this week’s blahg post, you might wonder? I had yet another (Blocked, reported for spam) Twitter follower today attempting to sell me multiple five star reviews of my eBooks.
This pisses me off, because “buying” reviews got the movie studios in trouble back in the 1990s, I think, and it was as despicably shitty then as it is now. Continue reading Liars and Cheats and Why I Hate Them
CleanReader Update: WE BEAT THE BASTARDS!
We did it…the thousands of independent authors who rose up and told CleanReader, through Twitter and Facebook, through our blogs, through interviews and forum posts in no uncertain terms to keep their hands off our dirt, got our books removed from their app.
Smashwords, the major eBook broker out there (Besides Amazon, who are in no way affiliated with CleanReader – so far as we know), ordered their subsidiaries to take down the feeds of ALL THEIR TITLES into CleanReader, effectively shuttering their store. Their reason: it violates Smashwords’ Author Agreement, by allowing third-parties to modify the content of an eBook. Continue reading CleanReader Update: WE BEAT THE BASTARDS!
FUCK CENSORSHIP
Warning: this post contains naughty words; many, many naughty words. Reader discretion is advised. Continue reading FUCK CENSORSHIP