If you've read the previous installments, you know that Grace & Witherbloom started life as a web comic. That didn't really take off. I had thought about continuing with the web comic on my own. All it takes to start one is some web space and a web site. As a graphic designer, I could accomplish the latter easily enough. And the former didn't require a ton of money. But I realized that sequential illustration might not be for me.
I realized that the story was what I really craved to tell, and that perhaps there was another—more appropriate—way of telling the stories of Josiah and Helen.
Just a note, for this third (and final installment) there are still no story-specific stories. So if you haven't read the books, you can keep reading...
October 2008
I don't really remember the moment I decided to write a series of novellas, but I can say with certainty that Grace & WItherbloom was always conceived that way. At the time, I had imagined they might be printed and wasn't even considering e-books. I didn't yet have a Kindle or iPad. The iPad was still just a glimmer in Steve Job's eye at that point, I believe. Though rumors of it were to spring up shortly thereafter. The Kindle had been introduced, but I didn't understand the appeal. I have since come to love the Kindle, I should hasten to add. But at the time I liked REAL books and really couldn't imagine reading books in any other way.
I went back and forth on how I might present the novellas though. For a while I considered doing illustrated novellas, but that didn't quite work for me on a number of levels. For one thing, I didn't feel my style of illustration was right for the stories I imagined in my head. It was fine for the comic, but I was afraid if I did my own illustrations that the novellas would feel like kid's books or something. And that wasn't the sort of stories I intended to tell. I also considered the audience for my books. Should they be young adult novels? Well, I decided to let the books sort of tell me that as I wrote them. I decided to write the books I wanted to read and then worry about classifying them. My chief concern was making them entertaining and interesting. But, of course, all of this was purely academic until I actually wrote the thing!
The very first decision I made was that I would go with my initial instinct and set the books in Victorian times. As I had said before, I decided to make the web comic set in modern England partly because I couldn't be bothered to do research. This time, I was going to spend the time to make the book as convincing as I cared to. I will be the first to admit that the era in which G&W live is not meticulously researched. I learned enough to avoid major blunders (I hope,) understand the history of the time and get some fun details to sprinkle throughout the books. The reason for this is that I always planned for the books to clip along at a brisk pace. It's just the way I like to write things. It's fairly rare that people will stand around talking in my books. I try to have conversations on the move, and I try to avoid long chunks of exposition or try to work them in fairly naturally. This is really just because this is the way I like to absorb stories as a reader or a viewer.
The next major decision was getting rid of Kathy. I sort of ended up hating Kathy by the end of the one installment of the web comic. I just realized that she'd probably get annoying fast. Kid sidekicks often do. And there is a part of me that thinks it's very odd when people have kid sidekicks and then go into all sorts of dangerous situations. There is a point where you wonder if the adult in the situation isn't a bit psychopathic... or at least highly irresponsible. Having said that, there is a panel in the comic where Josiah is giving Kathy a cup of cocoa, and you get a sense of the size difference between them. That sparked my imagination and I decided I really liked the image of a young girl with this dapper gentleman character. So I decided to de-age Helen without changing her personality or relationship with Josiah at all. I found this dynamic very appealing, and thought it would be something fun to play off of in the stories.
So, I had my characters and I had my setting. Now, I just needed a plot for my first story. Also, I knew in the back of my mind I wanted some larger story to tie all the individual stories together as well...
Showing posts with label kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kindle. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
The Origins of Grace & Witherbloom! Part One
Now, at last, it can be told!
Last Tuesday saw the release of The Light on the Moor, which told the origin of Josiah Witherbloom. To celebrate, I thought I'd write a blog (well, a series of blogs, actually) talking about the origin of Grace & Witherbloom. No worries, there won't be any story spoilers here so feel free to read even if you haven't started reading the books. But if you haven't, what are you waiting for? :)
July, 2007
The story of Grace & Witherbloom begins over four years ago. As I type that, I can't actually believe it. But there you go.
In 2007, DC Comics launched the (now defunct) imprint called Zuda. the idea was that the site would act as a sort of "American Idol" of web comics. Creators would enter a 10-page debut story for a possible web comic. The Zuda team selected what they thought were the best comics and concepts, and then readers would read the comics and vote for which one they wanted to become an ongoing comic on Zuda.
I was really excited by this prospect. Part of this was that I was deeply jealous of my friend David Willis and the amazing success he's had in the web comics world with strips like Shortpacked. David and I met in high school, and although we haven't actually seen each other in real life for well over thriteen years now I have always kept track of him and his projects. He's a funny and genuinely nice guy and it makes me happy to see him making a living making comics. It also makes me seethe with barely contained jealousy. I always wanted to be a comic book writer and artist. There's just one thing that separates David and I. He worked his butt off at it. Me? I had a lot of raw talent and a bunch of wishes. Also, I was a tad bit lazy with. But more on that next time.
So, here was my chance! I was going to have a web comic! Success would be mine! But, what to do? What comic to make? I had a couple ideas floating around my head over the years for various comics. Some superhero stuff, some sci-fi stuff and even some "everyday life" kind of ideas. But none of the old ideas felt quite right. So I started to think about the sorts of stories I like to read about and what would be fun to draw day in and day out to get a weekly strip out. That's when I hit upon a fantastic idea... Doctor Who! The thing you always hear about Doctor Who and why it's so great is that it has such a great format. Now, that's not all it took to make a multi-media phenomenon that is about to celebrate it's 50th anniversary, of course. But it is a huge asset. The Doctor can go anywhere in space and time. Just think about that. The possibilities are endless. Only tight budgets have him constantly ending up in London or some small village in the UK. So, what if I could do something like that?
I've been a Doctor Who fan since I was very little. I have found out this is somewhat rare for American Doctor Who fans my age. Most of them either found it in their teens or even later. I've been watching it since I was 8 years old. I used to stay up incredibly late at night to watch in on PBS. Which, for my eight-year-old self, was 10:30pm. They played the 4th Doctor years on a loop. You have to realize, when I first started watching I knew NOTHING about the show. I was watching it in a void without any sort of coverage and absolutely no one I knew had any clue about what it was. A few years later random teachers in their 30's might nod appreciatively if I mentioned it. But that was it. Certainly no other kids knew about it! (It's been even more difficult to find fans of my other great love at the time, Are You Being Served. In fact, it wasn't until I was in college and met my friend Laura that I met another real-life fan of the show.) So when the Doctor changed his face at the end of Logopolis, I was flabbergasted! I was even more confused when the next week they played the 4th Doctor's first story, Robot. Eventually though, my PBS station did play all the stories that are still in existence starting with the 1st Doctor. When I was a kid, I had no idea that the stories were of varying length. PBS stripped them all together into one huge story and aired the whole thing in a night, regardless of length. So for stories that lasted 6 episodes or more this was a HUGE time commitment, and I certainly was not able to stay awake for all of them.
I explain all this to say, Doctor Who is practically ingrained in my DNA. So trying to create a series that could have that sort of mish-mash of genres and elements really appealed to me. I could draw pretty much anything I wanted to, for a start! My initial idea was to have two leads who were time-travelling sleuths. So it would be ____ & _____: Temporal Detectives. I didn't have names at this point, obviously. There are two big flaws with this. First of all, time travel is a pretty well-worn thing. Also, in my mind Doctor Who kind of owns it. I didn't want to remake Doctor Who, I just wanted a story with similar possibilities. Next, the whole mystery angle was also kind of limiting. I like a good mystery, sure, but I didn't want to be writing them all the time. I suppose in some ways The Girl Who Died Backwards in the last little echo of this first idea, though certainly no plots were thought of at this point.
So after doing some thinking, I decided I would come up with a way to have my two leads be long-lived individuals. I played around with ______ & ______: Immortal Detectives too... but again, I wanted to lose the detective angle. So I decided these two would have some foreknowledge of historical events. Now, I can't actually say yet HOW this is, because it hasn't been revealed in the books yet! But I thought my solution was pretty novel and I liked it. My plan was to have the first 10-page story finished just in time for Zuda's launch in fall of 2007.
However, while the comic I submitted to them was, indeed, called Grace & Witherbloom it differed from the eventual books in many ways...
To Be Continued!
Last Tuesday saw the release of The Light on the Moor, which told the origin of Josiah Witherbloom. To celebrate, I thought I'd write a blog (well, a series of blogs, actually) talking about the origin of Grace & Witherbloom. No worries, there won't be any story spoilers here so feel free to read even if you haven't started reading the books. But if you haven't, what are you waiting for? :)
July, 2007
The story of Grace & Witherbloom begins over four years ago. As I type that, I can't actually believe it. But there you go.
In 2007, DC Comics launched the (now defunct) imprint called Zuda. the idea was that the site would act as a sort of "American Idol" of web comics. Creators would enter a 10-page debut story for a possible web comic. The Zuda team selected what they thought were the best comics and concepts, and then readers would read the comics and vote for which one they wanted to become an ongoing comic on Zuda.
I was really excited by this prospect. Part of this was that I was deeply jealous of my friend David Willis and the amazing success he's had in the web comics world with strips like Shortpacked. David and I met in high school, and although we haven't actually seen each other in real life for well over thriteen years now I have always kept track of him and his projects. He's a funny and genuinely nice guy and it makes me happy to see him making a living making comics. It also makes me seethe with barely contained jealousy. I always wanted to be a comic book writer and artist. There's just one thing that separates David and I. He worked his butt off at it. Me? I had a lot of raw talent and a bunch of wishes. Also, I was a tad bit lazy with. But more on that next time.
So, here was my chance! I was going to have a web comic! Success would be mine! But, what to do? What comic to make? I had a couple ideas floating around my head over the years for various comics. Some superhero stuff, some sci-fi stuff and even some "everyday life" kind of ideas. But none of the old ideas felt quite right. So I started to think about the sorts of stories I like to read about and what would be fun to draw day in and day out to get a weekly strip out. That's when I hit upon a fantastic idea... Doctor Who! The thing you always hear about Doctor Who and why it's so great is that it has such a great format. Now, that's not all it took to make a multi-media phenomenon that is about to celebrate it's 50th anniversary, of course. But it is a huge asset. The Doctor can go anywhere in space and time. Just think about that. The possibilities are endless. Only tight budgets have him constantly ending up in London or some small village in the UK. So, what if I could do something like that?
I've been a Doctor Who fan since I was very little. I have found out this is somewhat rare for American Doctor Who fans my age. Most of them either found it in their teens or even later. I've been watching it since I was 8 years old. I used to stay up incredibly late at night to watch in on PBS. Which, for my eight-year-old self, was 10:30pm. They played the 4th Doctor years on a loop. You have to realize, when I first started watching I knew NOTHING about the show. I was watching it in a void without any sort of coverage and absolutely no one I knew had any clue about what it was. A few years later random teachers in their 30's might nod appreciatively if I mentioned it. But that was it. Certainly no other kids knew about it! (It's been even more difficult to find fans of my other great love at the time, Are You Being Served. In fact, it wasn't until I was in college and met my friend Laura that I met another real-life fan of the show.) So when the Doctor changed his face at the end of Logopolis, I was flabbergasted! I was even more confused when the next week they played the 4th Doctor's first story, Robot. Eventually though, my PBS station did play all the stories that are still in existence starting with the 1st Doctor. When I was a kid, I had no idea that the stories were of varying length. PBS stripped them all together into one huge story and aired the whole thing in a night, regardless of length. So for stories that lasted 6 episodes or more this was a HUGE time commitment, and I certainly was not able to stay awake for all of them.
I explain all this to say, Doctor Who is practically ingrained in my DNA. So trying to create a series that could have that sort of mish-mash of genres and elements really appealed to me. I could draw pretty much anything I wanted to, for a start! My initial idea was to have two leads who were time-travelling sleuths. So it would be ____ & _____: Temporal Detectives. I didn't have names at this point, obviously. There are two big flaws with this. First of all, time travel is a pretty well-worn thing. Also, in my mind Doctor Who kind of owns it. I didn't want to remake Doctor Who, I just wanted a story with similar possibilities. Next, the whole mystery angle was also kind of limiting. I like a good mystery, sure, but I didn't want to be writing them all the time. I suppose in some ways The Girl Who Died Backwards in the last little echo of this first idea, though certainly no plots were thought of at this point.
So after doing some thinking, I decided I would come up with a way to have my two leads be long-lived individuals. I played around with ______ & ______: Immortal Detectives too... but again, I wanted to lose the detective angle. So I decided these two would have some foreknowledge of historical events. Now, I can't actually say yet HOW this is, because it hasn't been revealed in the books yet! But I thought my solution was pretty novel and I liked it. My plan was to have the first 10-page story finished just in time for Zuda's launch in fall of 2007.
However, while the comic I submitted to them was, indeed, called Grace & Witherbloom it differed from the eventual books in many ways...
To Be Continued!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
On Beginnings...
There really is no substitute for experience.
For instance, if I were to go back and do it again, I might have rethought the way "The Village That Sleeps" begins. Then again, I might have decided that the way the book opens was the best option, dramatically. And this is my chief concern.
However, Amazon chooses a chunk of a book to show for its "Look Inside" feature and I always check them after the appear (the author has no control over it) to see how much of a preview someone is given. The first two books start off right into the action. There's strange scientific experiments and dangerous mountain climbing to be found there. But, the third book starts with... making porridge. And serving porridge. And a bit of very chaste flirting. Part of me wonders if that's not quite as "hooky" as previous books. They don't even get to the bit of business with Helen and the porridge which I think is sort of fun from a character standpoint. Oh well.
Then again, some people might really like porridge making and flirting. It could be a whole new audience.
For instance, if I were to go back and do it again, I might have rethought the way "The Village That Sleeps" begins. Then again, I might have decided that the way the book opens was the best option, dramatically. And this is my chief concern.
However, Amazon chooses a chunk of a book to show for its "Look Inside" feature and I always check them after the appear (the author has no control over it) to see how much of a preview someone is given. The first two books start off right into the action. There's strange scientific experiments and dangerous mountain climbing to be found there. But, the third book starts with... making porridge. And serving porridge. And a bit of very chaste flirting. Part of me wonders if that's not quite as "hooky" as previous books. They don't even get to the bit of business with Helen and the porridge which I think is sort of fun from a character standpoint. Oh well.
Then again, some people might really like porridge making and flirting. It could be a whole new audience.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Author! Author?
The other day someone who had read my book mentioned me in a tweet. But rather than indicating my Grace & Witherbloom account (@gandwbooks) he sent the message to my personal account. Which, made sense as it's not as if it was difficult to find and I thought it was a lot of fun to hear back from someone who head read my book. He also kindly left a review on Amazon. Which reminds me - if you've read the book, if you can review it on Amazon and/or GoodReads that would be amazing!
But anyway, I digress. I looked at my personal twitter account and realized it was very much "branded" with my role as a graphic designer. And under my picture the description read "Graphic Designer, Illustrator and a few other things besides." I realized that I was missing something there. So I changed it to read "Author, Graphic Designer, Illustrator and a few other things besides." Which seems fairly straightforward, I suppose.
But here's the thing. It was the first time I'd really thought of myself as an author. Or at least, it was the first time I'd ever actually stated I was an author. Oh sure, I'd filled in little blanks on Amazon, Good Reads or elsewhere that were labeled "Author" with my name when I was uploading the books or starting up an author profile page. But this was something different. It was an odd feeling. And I wondered why I hadn't really thought of myself that way before. What did I think being an author was, anyway if part of me didn't quite believe I was now?
I suppose part of this stems from the fact that when I was writing these books, I didn't actually tell a ton of people. And when it did come up, I always felt a bit weird about it. The reaction was generally something along the lines of "Oh, how nice." In my head, I felt like this was the equivalent of them saying "I'll believe it when I see it." Now, this was not a universal reaction, and close friends and family who found out were generally very supportive. And I admit, some of this was probably created in my own head. But I think there are a lot of people who say they are writing books. A lot of them write those books, and then don't do anything with them. Some write them and publish them. And a greater number simply never finish. So I didn't feel particularly special writing a book. I felt like just another of the numberless masses who starts writing a book with a head full of ideas and a bunch of good intentions. This was probably somewhat magnified by the fact that there are HUGE gaps between the times I actually was writing the book over the course of three years.
In any case, I think I got a bit stuck in that mode. There are a ton of people that I talk to every day (especially at work) that I have not told. This is partly because it doesn't come up in the natural course of a conversation, and partly because it seems like a strange thing to spring on someone. But there's also a part of me that wonders if people will see self-publishing an e-book as REALLY being an author. Maybe I've wondered the same thing myself. I have not had to go out and get an agent. I did not go from publisher to publisher trying to get a book deal. I never have even tried any of those things. I had planned to originally, but about a year ago I decided I'd give self-publishing a go. And I haven't regretted it so far. Intellectually, I really do think I'm an author. I wrote books and now people all over the world are paying to read these books. What else would it take to be an author? It's just too bad realizing something intellectually doesn't make a person truly feel it emotionally.
When an author is published through more traditional means, there is an implied legitimacy to it. A series of professionals (agents, publishers, etc.) have read this book (or part of this book) and made the determination that it is both fit for consumption by the public and also possibly desirable by that same group. There is a certain imagined "seal of quality" that comes with this. Of course, in reality terrible books are published every day. So this entire system can be meaningless.
On the other hand, the fact that anyone can upload their book up to Amazon with no financial risk at all means that there is going to be a LOT of terribly written books out there. And it's only going to get worse. And I say this fully recognizing that there are sure to be people who will lump my book into this category after they've read it. It's inevitable. So I don't blame people if they eye my books with some suspiciousness. And it's also why I celebrate the brave people who decided to give it a try anyway. Because there are a lot of good books out there. And taking away the (sometimes capricious) middle-men will likely open doors for people who might have not been able to make it by more traditional means. Not because they weren't good writers, but because the timing wasn't quite right or they weren't as good at marketing themselves as someone else might be. And then there's the other group of people (like me) who feel their work is good enough to take the more traditional publishing route but simply choose not too.
Now, whether my books really ARE good is not up to me anymore. I think they are, and they are certainly as good as I can make them. And as I read them over again for their last edits before publishing, I have to say I really do enjoy them. And I can be kind of picky. Publishing your own work for the world to see takes a measure of confidence. I really would not bother to sell these books if I did not think they were entertaining. But then there's that part of me that worries and wonders. Are you like those poor souls on American Idol who have been told by their family and friends that they are great singers, and then they get on a national stage and cant' carry a tune to save their lives?
Of course, in the end, despite all of these doubts and questions I did put "Author" in that little twitter description. And ever since then, I've noticed that more and more I'm actually starting to believe it and be more comfortable with it.
But anyway, I digress. I looked at my personal twitter account and realized it was very much "branded" with my role as a graphic designer. And under my picture the description read "Graphic Designer, Illustrator and a few other things besides." I realized that I was missing something there. So I changed it to read "Author, Graphic Designer, Illustrator and a few other things besides." Which seems fairly straightforward, I suppose.
But here's the thing. It was the first time I'd really thought of myself as an author. Or at least, it was the first time I'd ever actually stated I was an author. Oh sure, I'd filled in little blanks on Amazon, Good Reads or elsewhere that were labeled "Author" with my name when I was uploading the books or starting up an author profile page. But this was something different. It was an odd feeling. And I wondered why I hadn't really thought of myself that way before. What did I think being an author was, anyway if part of me didn't quite believe I was now?
I suppose part of this stems from the fact that when I was writing these books, I didn't actually tell a ton of people. And when it did come up, I always felt a bit weird about it. The reaction was generally something along the lines of "Oh, how nice." In my head, I felt like this was the equivalent of them saying "I'll believe it when I see it." Now, this was not a universal reaction, and close friends and family who found out were generally very supportive. And I admit, some of this was probably created in my own head. But I think there are a lot of people who say they are writing books. A lot of them write those books, and then don't do anything with them. Some write them and publish them. And a greater number simply never finish. So I didn't feel particularly special writing a book. I felt like just another of the numberless masses who starts writing a book with a head full of ideas and a bunch of good intentions. This was probably somewhat magnified by the fact that there are HUGE gaps between the times I actually was writing the book over the course of three years.
In any case, I think I got a bit stuck in that mode. There are a ton of people that I talk to every day (especially at work) that I have not told. This is partly because it doesn't come up in the natural course of a conversation, and partly because it seems like a strange thing to spring on someone. But there's also a part of me that wonders if people will see self-publishing an e-book as REALLY being an author. Maybe I've wondered the same thing myself. I have not had to go out and get an agent. I did not go from publisher to publisher trying to get a book deal. I never have even tried any of those things. I had planned to originally, but about a year ago I decided I'd give self-publishing a go. And I haven't regretted it so far. Intellectually, I really do think I'm an author. I wrote books and now people all over the world are paying to read these books. What else would it take to be an author? It's just too bad realizing something intellectually doesn't make a person truly feel it emotionally.
When an author is published through more traditional means, there is an implied legitimacy to it. A series of professionals (agents, publishers, etc.) have read this book (or part of this book) and made the determination that it is both fit for consumption by the public and also possibly desirable by that same group. There is a certain imagined "seal of quality" that comes with this. Of course, in reality terrible books are published every day. So this entire system can be meaningless.
On the other hand, the fact that anyone can upload their book up to Amazon with no financial risk at all means that there is going to be a LOT of terribly written books out there. And it's only going to get worse. And I say this fully recognizing that there are sure to be people who will lump my book into this category after they've read it. It's inevitable. So I don't blame people if they eye my books with some suspiciousness. And it's also why I celebrate the brave people who decided to give it a try anyway. Because there are a lot of good books out there. And taking away the (sometimes capricious) middle-men will likely open doors for people who might have not been able to make it by more traditional means. Not because they weren't good writers, but because the timing wasn't quite right or they weren't as good at marketing themselves as someone else might be. And then there's the other group of people (like me) who feel their work is good enough to take the more traditional publishing route but simply choose not too.
Now, whether my books really ARE good is not up to me anymore. I think they are, and they are certainly as good as I can make them. And as I read them over again for their last edits before publishing, I have to say I really do enjoy them. And I can be kind of picky. Publishing your own work for the world to see takes a measure of confidence. I really would not bother to sell these books if I did not think they were entertaining. But then there's that part of me that worries and wonders. Are you like those poor souls on American Idol who have been told by their family and friends that they are great singers, and then they get on a national stage and cant' carry a tune to save their lives?
Of course, in the end, despite all of these doubts and questions I did put "Author" in that little twitter description. And ever since then, I've noticed that more and more I'm actually starting to believe it and be more comfortable with it.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Don't Watch The Scale or The Psychology of A Sales Ranking
So, today I reached another milestone in my venture into self-publishing. My books are no longer free. Both Books 1 & 2 in the Grace & Witherbloom series—The Girl Who Died Backwards and The Flood Lily—will now set people back a whopping $.99 each (or the equivalent in other countries.)
Now, I was fully aware of what was coming next. After a surge of downloads of well over a thousand books for the first story and hundreds and hundreds of downloads for the second book, things would slow down. Also, the books would go from being listed in Amazon's free book rankings (where they sat comfortably around #1,000 of all the millions of Kindle books and occupied the top 10 and top 20 of their subgenres, reaching #1 a couple of times) to being listed in the paid section. In the paid section, all of those downloads would no longer be counted.
What I wasn't quite ready for was the psychological effect of going from about #1,000 or so to #280,000 in the rankings. Kindle provides this little graph of your sales rank, and there was a VERY long red line indicating the plummet in rank of the books. It felt as if Amazon had cast my books out into a deep and dark pit.
I had been obsessively checking the downloads, reveling in shock at the huge number of people snapping them up. Now, things have gone quite a bit slower. But I realized something. When you are trying to lose weight they tell you to not check the scale every day. With weight, this is because your weight can fluctuate a lot from day to day due to water weight. It's better to only check your weight once and week so some of these fluctuations are smoothed out and you can concentrate on the accomplishment of the full week. I realized that by checking the sales of the book constantly I was really only driving myself crazy in the same way as someone jumping on a scale every day. And I was letting the heady (and artificially inflated) rush of free book downloads get in the way of enjoying my REAL accomplishment.
As of today, about 12 or so copies of my book have sold for money. Now, that's small potatoes compared to the numbers I was getting, but they are no less special and important than the hundreds and hundreds of downloads that came before. They mean that someone saw the description and perhaps read the sample on Amazon and decided they were worth spending real, hard-earned money on them. And that's an amazing feeling.
Now, I should point out that this doesn't mean I'm not eternally grateful for the people who downloaded the first or second book for free. Quite the opposite. They helped get the book exposure. They are reading them now. They are writing lovely reviews on Amazon and rating it highly on Goodreads.com. They are all wonderful people who saw something completely new and gave it a go. And now hopefully they'll keep wanting to read the books. And they'll tell their friends. But all of these benefits take time to sink it. It's a long game.
So it's time to step off the scale. Sales ranking be damned, I say! I want these books to be successful. I'd love to be a writer full time, and I'm committed to making it happen. So sales are important. They are critical, in fact. But I think it's good to keep them in the proper perspective and really enjoy even these early days, no matter how many red arrows and plunging graph lines Amazon might show me. Oh, and it should be pointed out that it only took a few sales and now the books have shot up to around #40,000 or so in the rankings. So a little goes a long way, and that all happened in a day.
To conclude with, I have posted the synopsis and title for Book 3, due out February 21st on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here too.
Grace & Witherbloom: The Village That Sleeps, Book 3 in the continuing series. What happened to the residents of the picturesque Welsh village of Ddubryn? And why have the authorities closed it off to the rest of the world? Josiah Witherbloom must enter the village alone to uncover its secrets, but finding answers to the mysteries of the village that sleeps will become—quite literally—a matter of life and death.
Now, I was fully aware of what was coming next. After a surge of downloads of well over a thousand books for the first story and hundreds and hundreds of downloads for the second book, things would slow down. Also, the books would go from being listed in Amazon's free book rankings (where they sat comfortably around #1,000 of all the millions of Kindle books and occupied the top 10 and top 20 of their subgenres, reaching #1 a couple of times) to being listed in the paid section. In the paid section, all of those downloads would no longer be counted.
What I wasn't quite ready for was the psychological effect of going from about #1,000 or so to #280,000 in the rankings. Kindle provides this little graph of your sales rank, and there was a VERY long red line indicating the plummet in rank of the books. It felt as if Amazon had cast my books out into a deep and dark pit.
I had been obsessively checking the downloads, reveling in shock at the huge number of people snapping them up. Now, things have gone quite a bit slower. But I realized something. When you are trying to lose weight they tell you to not check the scale every day. With weight, this is because your weight can fluctuate a lot from day to day due to water weight. It's better to only check your weight once and week so some of these fluctuations are smoothed out and you can concentrate on the accomplishment of the full week. I realized that by checking the sales of the book constantly I was really only driving myself crazy in the same way as someone jumping on a scale every day. And I was letting the heady (and artificially inflated) rush of free book downloads get in the way of enjoying my REAL accomplishment.
As of today, about 12 or so copies of my book have sold for money. Now, that's small potatoes compared to the numbers I was getting, but they are no less special and important than the hundreds and hundreds of downloads that came before. They mean that someone saw the description and perhaps read the sample on Amazon and decided they were worth spending real, hard-earned money on them. And that's an amazing feeling.
Now, I should point out that this doesn't mean I'm not eternally grateful for the people who downloaded the first or second book for free. Quite the opposite. They helped get the book exposure. They are reading them now. They are writing lovely reviews on Amazon and rating it highly on Goodreads.com. They are all wonderful people who saw something completely new and gave it a go. And now hopefully they'll keep wanting to read the books. And they'll tell their friends. But all of these benefits take time to sink it. It's a long game.
So it's time to step off the scale. Sales ranking be damned, I say! I want these books to be successful. I'd love to be a writer full time, and I'm committed to making it happen. So sales are important. They are critical, in fact. But I think it's good to keep them in the proper perspective and really enjoy even these early days, no matter how many red arrows and plunging graph lines Amazon might show me. Oh, and it should be pointed out that it only took a few sales and now the books have shot up to around #40,000 or so in the rankings. So a little goes a long way, and that all happened in a day.
To conclude with, I have posted the synopsis and title for Book 3, due out February 21st on Facebook. I thought I'd share it here too.
Grace & Witherbloom: The Village That Sleeps, Book 3 in the continuing series. What happened to the residents of the picturesque Welsh village of Ddubryn? And why have the authorities closed it off to the rest of the world? Josiah Witherbloom must enter the village alone to uncover its secrets, but finding answers to the mysteries of the village that sleeps will become—quite literally—a matter of life and death.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
855 and Counting...
855... that's the number of book downloads of The Girl Who Died Backward that have occurred so far at the moment I write this. The free promo period for the first book has been a big hit so far. The bulk of those were on Friday and Saturday. Sunday seems to have slowed down a bit but that only seems natural. There are two more days to go, but I have to say I'm already excited. The book placed in the top 10 of the two sub-genres it's listed in (even making it to #1 on the chart for a while) in the US, UK and Germany. I'm intrigued to see what happens once it's no longer free and starts to sell at the list price of $.99 (or the equivalent in non-US countries) and I'm also interested to see if people will start reviewing it.
There has been a lot of talk about free (or even $.99) Kindle books and whether people actually read them or just end up collecting them, despite their intention to read them eventually. It's an interesting question, and one I probably won't be able to answer in terms of my own experience for a while yet. I think with this sort of thing it's a marathon and not a sprint. Most people have a big reading list piled up (I know I do!) and a new book by an untested author might not jump to the top of the pile. So I'll have to be patient. But I have to say—at the end of the day—I'm delighted that 855 people (so far) could potentially be reading my book. I would love to make a living at writing and hope people will buy this book and the future installments... but I've got to admit, just getting the book out there is really exciting for me.
I just "locked down" Book 2. If you've got Book 1 you already know the title, but I'll announce it on the website (along with the synopsis) on February 17. Having read it several times again in the last couple of days while making final edits, I realized that although I think Book 1 is a great introduction to the characters, Book 2 actually feels a bit more representative of the series in both its tone and execution. I'm really happy with the way it turned out because writing Book 2 ended up being the hardest of all of them, with the possible exception of Book 7. But I'm exceptionally happy with the way it turned out and can't wait to share it with everyone February 24.
Now, I'm off to watch the return of The Walking Dead... I hope they get off that farm soon!
There has been a lot of talk about free (or even $.99) Kindle books and whether people actually read them or just end up collecting them, despite their intention to read them eventually. It's an interesting question, and one I probably won't be able to answer in terms of my own experience for a while yet. I think with this sort of thing it's a marathon and not a sprint. Most people have a big reading list piled up (I know I do!) and a new book by an untested author might not jump to the top of the pile. So I'll have to be patient. But I have to say—at the end of the day—I'm delighted that 855 people (so far) could potentially be reading my book. I would love to make a living at writing and hope people will buy this book and the future installments... but I've got to admit, just getting the book out there is really exciting for me.
I just "locked down" Book 2. If you've got Book 1 you already know the title, but I'll announce it on the website (along with the synopsis) on February 17. Having read it several times again in the last couple of days while making final edits, I realized that although I think Book 1 is a great introduction to the characters, Book 2 actually feels a bit more representative of the series in both its tone and execution. I'm really happy with the way it turned out because writing Book 2 ended up being the hardest of all of them, with the possible exception of Book 7. But I'm exceptionally happy with the way it turned out and can't wait to share it with everyone February 24.
Now, I'm off to watch the return of The Walking Dead... I hope they get off that farm soon!
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