Indie Superstars Storybundle now live

The books in the Indie Superstars Storybundle

Indie Superstars Storybundle

The Indie Superstars Storybundle puts together a number of books from well-known self-published authors. It includes my ISF-Allion novel Juno Rising.

Crystalline Space – Dark Stars Trilogy Book 1 by A.K. DuBoff

“A refreshing approach to the genre. Crystalline Space sets the bar high as the first book in a series. This is a fun read with intriguing world-building and a compelling storyline. I look forward to where the Dark Stars trilogy takes us next.”– Amy J. Murphy, author of the Allies and Enemies series & Dragon Award Finalist

The Circuit – The Complete Saga by Rhett C. Bruno

“Bruno has crafted a complex, multi-dimensional story that combines the best of his genre with age-old truths—and quandaries—about humanity, politics, religion, family, and, yes, love.”– Portland Book Review

Corpsman – Women of the United Federation Marines by Jonathan P. Brazee

“Bravo Zulu (BZ) is the military code for a job well done. And a resounding Bravo Zulu is what Col. Brazee deserves for his latest Women of the Marine Corps books.”– Amazon Review

Juno Rising by Patty Jansen

“I love her characters, settings, plot twists, and the fact that she can switch from writing stories that are ‘pro’ ISF to stories that are ‘pro’ Allion (ISF and Allion being the two protagonists in these stories), and they are both as believable as can be.”– Amazon Review

Horde’s Challenge – Starbarian Saga Book 1 by Robert Jeschonek

“Robert Jeschonek has a flair for fast-paced, pulse-pounding combat scenes.”– William H. Keith, author of the Grey Death Battlemech novels

Red Team Alpha by Jay Allan

“I started reading this book because I have read every other book Mr. Allan has written and love them all. I don’t normally read prequels because they reference information you already know. Well I have to say, this book is great as a stand alone novel as well as a prequel to the Crimson World series. We find out that Mr. Stark is the same devious person he is in the other books, just younger. It kind of reminds me of the Tom Clancy Op Center series just in the future. If you like Tom Clancy, you will absolutely love this book.”– Amazon Review

Apocalypse Paused – Books 1-4 by Michael Todd

“Truly frightening sci-fi a la Michael Crichton. Believable characters, mind bending situations and monstrous creatures. Do not read this before bed, it’s nightmare inducing. Highly recommended!”– Amazon Review

Janissaries by Chris Kennedy

1.”A great start to a mil sci-fi series that I’m looking forward to diving further into. I definitely recommend it.”– Amazon Review

Element-X by B. V. Larson

Wow! This book felt like I was on one of those County fair rides where there is no control. I dislike those rides, but I LOVED this book. What a rush! The action barely let up for one minute, and I was hanging on by the seat of my britches all the way through.– Amazon Review

Exile by Glynn Stewart

“This fast-paced starfaring adventure succeeds with a thrilling mix of space battles and tender emotions.”– Publishers Weekly Starred Review of Exile

Flagship – A Captain’s Crucible Book 1 by Isaac Hooke

“Flagship by Isaac Hooke is a sci-fi novel that really blew me away. This was awesome! So much action, battle scenes, intrigue, suspense, aliens, and a powerful psychic. Love it!”– Amazon Review

Trevalyn Academy by James David Victor

“Well plotted, exciting read!”– Amazon Review

Dragonspeaker Chronicles Book 1 now available

The first book of the new Dragonspeaker Chronicles series is now available on my website.

More info here.

This is part of a new series that follows the Ghostspeaker Chronicles but can be read independently.

For the writers, I’m trying something new with this series. The Dragonspeaker Chronicles books will be available only on my website store until the series is complete at three books, they will then go into Kindle Unlimited for one, possibly two, terms, during which time I will scramble to get print versions and audio done, and then they will go live everywhere and stay there.

The rationale is as follows:

I make by far the most per sale from books sold on my website. Many awesome readers (if this is you, thank you so much!) like to support writers by buying their books at full price. These are the awesome people who receive a free copy and then buy a copy anyway! I cannot stress enough how awesome you are.

I also have readers who don’t have a lot of money and like reading books as part of their Kindle Unlimited subscription. I still get paid, although not by far as much, and everyone is (relatively) happy.

My default of course is to have my books available everywhere on all stores in all countries in all formats so this is where the books are headed and where they will stay indefinitely.

The Kindleboards goes down in flames

Exit Kindleboards.

Those of you who know me or have read my self-publishing books will know that I’ve been a fan of the Kindleboards as a place where new writers find out about news and best practices.

As of this week, I no longer recommend that anyone even goes to the Kindleboards.

The board was started in 2008 or thereabouts by Harvey Chute as a forum for users of the new Kindle device. Very soon after people were allowed to publish on Kindle, the Writer’s Cafe became a very important part of the board and the one that attracted the most traffic.

Payments late? Author Central down? New sales platform? Been scammed? You found soulmates, solace and solutions at the Kindleboards.

Harvey Chute died in 2014 or 2015 (not researching this, just penning a quick announcement) and his daughter carried on for a while.

However, to manage a board with over 60,000 members is no small job, especially if it was not your passion. There is the hosting, the tech support, the ads (and appropriateness thereof), complaints, SSL, everything. And then came the people eager to drag the boards into court. For me, that would have been the drop. I get it. She didn’t want to do it. So she sold the forum. We know nothing about whether she was approached of how the sale happened. “Sold out” is bandied about, but they may simply have posed a solution to a situation that was no longer fun, especially since an idiot on the boards was screaming about talking them to court.

Vertical Scope, the new company changed the TOS. For full detail, see this Passive Voice post.

DON’T GO TO THE KINDLEBOARDS to look. DON’T GIVE THEM THE TRAFFIC.

A number of writers got up in arms about the ridiculous TOS that said the company owned in perpetuity everything we’d ever written there. That’s ridiculous and not to say unenforceable. A lot of even more ridiculous assumptions were made by many Chicken Littles. Like that they also owned our books cover images that we posted. Some people even suggested that our books were owned by them. Yeah, I know, ridiculousness all around.

Fact is, the TOS is stupid. Just a copied boilerplate agreement is my guess, but writers are precious about their words.

Up until that point, I would have taken the wait-and-see approach.

But then two of the VerticalScope staff members “Phillip” and “Helena” came in and proceeded to stonewall and insult the members who asked genuine questions about the possibility to make the TOS more writer-friendly. “Helena” called us trolls, and anyone who has spent any time on the KB will know that the word troll is not allowed there.

The place erupted in a huge ball of flames.

I’ve logged out and don’t intend to go back. Thanks to Ann and Betsy and Becca for moderating.

DON’T GO TO THE KINDLEBOARDS. The new owners have NO respect for the writer community.

This will be a thing soon

To be published soon: a series of three novellas featuring agents Jonathan Bartell and Gaby Larsen.

Realistic science fiction mixed with mystery and a touch of whodunnit.

Set in the real solar system, the three novellas explore the difficulties in maintaining healthy environments for people in space and the many, many ways in which people can sabotage them.

When micro-organisms were discovered on Mars, Jonathan was one of the flood of students who went to study exo-biology. Students who are now all flipping burgers because the micro-organisms weren’t very interesting and no one was willing to fund enough research into the them to absorb all the new graduates.

Jonathan wants a job in space. Any job. Quarantine Officer at the Orbital Space Station is a start, right?

Gaby Larsen is a doctor in the tiny hospital at the Orbital Launch Station.

Jonathan is new and blunders into things that he would be better to keep out of.

Gaby has seen these things and knows for sure that the truth is better hidden.

This is the main premise of three novellas in this world. Each will be an independent story that follows the previous but that does not require that you read them in order.

The first novella should be done shortly.

If you’re on my mailing list, you will get a notification. You can sign up in the column to the right and here.

P.S. This blog will be closed to comments until further notice. If you want to comment, blog posts are syndicated to my Facebook page. You can comment here.

Getting hung up on the wrong things

Further to the epic rant I shared last week, I listened to Mark Dawson’s interview with the mysterious Data Guy this morning. I got up at 4am, drove to the city to drop off my husband to the bus to Canberra (where he has a course this week, so has to start early), went back home (still very dark), walked to the gym (scared the bejesus out of a possum in the dark, or maybe it scared me), where it was still very empty at 5.15am. I always listen to podcasts at the gym, because gyms are boring and I can learn something while I’m there.

An interview with Data Guy is a real scoop for the show. I guess Mark knows who he is, but we’re all speculating. In short, every three months, he rents hundreds of servers for an hour or two and they crawl across the entire book section of whatever site he chooses (mostly Amazon US, but he’s done others) and collect publicly visible data. Title, author, publisher, ranking. He does this for an ever-increasing portion of the books for sale. He uses this data to create an immediate snapshot of the industry. The book industry at large is now beginning to see the value of this, because all of the data they can collect does not offer them as complete or immediate a picture.

Data Guy writes the quarterly Author Earnings reports together with Hugh Howey, and these reports give a lot of insight into what’s happening in the book industry. Too much to mention here, but everyone should read them, whether you have a publisher or are self-published. If you’re really keen, the data is publicly available, so you can download it and play with it.

Back to the podcast.

Apart from all the things I mentioned in the rant from last week (people don’t use ISBNs and those books are not counted; people buy even their print books online), I’d like to highlight this quote from the transcript (bolding mine):

James (interviewer):
Is there a particular area do you think you could point people towards they should be looking at?
Data Guy:
Absolutely, and that is marketing and advertising. What is conventionally understood by traditionally published authors to be important absolutely isn’t. Newspaper and radio ads, book signings at the occasional book store, they’re fun. They are enjoyable. I’ve done them. I’ve really enjoyed as an indie author signing at Barnes and Noble. But 70 books in a day in print, where you basically earn very little with your POD books, is not comparable to selling 1,100 or 2,000 books in a day, which is what you can do with an online promotion without too much difficulty if you plan it right. Focus the energy on what works today.

Yet, I see authors getting hung up on in-person sales, signings, presence of their books on shelves, con appearances etc. every day.

This stuff is FUN. It strokes your ego. For sales, it does diddly squat.

Next month, I’ll go to Supanova on the Gold Coast. It’s a tax-subsidised holiday. That’s it. It’s fun. Yet at these events I meet people who don’t even have ebooks. Or who have their ebooks farmed out to daft third party joints that are inflexible and expensive.

Selling print books at stalls or signings is successful when you sell 50 books or more. During my biggest sales day online, I sold 3046 books. In a single day. I can go back the next day and sell 1000, and the next day, and the next day, and…

Ebooks, online, that’s where it’s at. That’s where you should advertise.

Yes, it was still dark when I got home at 6.30. The possum was gone because the rubbish trucks were prowling the streets. We need the end of daylight saving, please?

What is coming up?

A little news post.

Sand & Storm went live on 24 June and the sequel, Sea & Sky, is set to release on 20 September. I’ve actually just received the final files today, but will probably stick to the schedule because the audiobook of Ambassador 1 should be dropping in August!

I’m writing the final volume of the Moonfire Trilogy, Moon & Earth, and should finish the first draft within a few weeks. I mean–I’ve “only” got 25k to write, and of course All The Freaking Plot Threads to be tied up.

When that is done (or, I should say, when I boot that one off to the editors) I will start on Ambassador 6: The Enemy Within. This will involve an ever-increasing party of varied people travelling to Earth for a trial. They will take two toddlers who get up to all sorts of mischief (no, none of them are Cory’s–yet). There will be spies (Klaus Messner), there will be shooting and there will be some very big ethical questions asked.

Tag line:

In order to save the earth, he has to betray it

There may or may not be New Zealand, and camels (you know I have thing for camels in books), but those things may also be moved to book 7, for which I lack a title. If I’m on a roll, I might write book 7 as well (providing I can come up with a title).

Anyway, I’ll start bugging Tom for a cover soon.

After that (and we’re talking 2017 now), I’m thinking to start the first set in my Ilk Urban Fantasy series. The book will be called The Hunter. There will be a Sydney setting, local councils, developers, corruption, murders and a guy who may or may not resemble Eddie Obeid 😛 There will also be “Ilk”: were-possums, were-ibises, were-frogmouths, were-fruitbats, were-kookaburras (basically, insert all obnoxiously loud local wildlife). And a journalist from Adelaide called Bindi Winslow who is looking for her slippery brother.

I’d like to start one totally new project every year.

Meanwhile, I’m taking part in some cross promotions, so don’t forget to sign up for the Ebookaroo newsletter.

The Ebookaroo lives!

Ever since I nicknamed my mailing list “The Beast” I got a lot more people joining. That mailing list is my personal author list, and has information about my books and my writing.

I take part in a lot of giveaways and cross promotions, and those attract another group of readers: people who like promotions.

These are really two groups of people, although there will be some overlap. People who are waiting for the next Ambassador book (it’s coming, I promise!) don’t want to receive all the emails about cross promotions. People who want bargain books don’t want to hear about my 5th book in a series they’ve never heard of.

So, here is the Ebookaroo, a list especially for those who like to hear about author-run promotions and giveaways which may or may not include any of my books. It will definitely include books of a lot of the awesome peeps I’ve met around here.

Click here or on the image to read more.

Adventures in audio

As some people already know, I’ve been getting ready to move into audio books.

This is not a decision to take lightly, because 1. it’s expensive, and probably only worth it if you have books that sell, 2. I’m in Australia, and I don’t have direct access to ACX, 3. You have to spend some time selecting a narrator and listening to examples to know what you want, 4. Quality really matters, taking us back to point 1.

In short, it’s not without risk and you don’t want to have to mortgage your house to do it.

ACX (the audio book exchange) is your gateway to audio. You upload a sample and narrators send in auditions.

First, you have to set up an account. If you’re not in the US or the UK, you can do this through this company.

Then you have to decide how much you’re willing to pay per finished hour of narration. A finished hour of narration will in general take the narrator a couple of hours to finish, record and edit.

You can also opt not to pay outright but share royalties with the narrator. Professional narrators are not interested in this option, because anyone who’s got money (= who sells well) will be paying outright.

Aggregated wisdom says that you should expect to pay at least $200 but probably more like $300 per finished hour for professional level narration.

Armed with all this wisdom, I uploaded a snippet of text from chapter 6 of Ambassador 1. Why this snippet? Because it includes dialogue and you want to see how the narrator handles it. It includes some made-up names and I wanted to see how the narrators interpreted those without pronunciation guide (if they’re close, they’re likely to be on my wavelength).

I was also happy that the snippet includes a bunch of swear words, because as it turns out–and I had no idea–there is a lot of difference in the capabilities of narrators to swear convincingly.

Accents. Aggregated wisdom said not to be too esoteric, but I flipped that the bird and asked for a New Zealand accent, and said in the comments that I figured it was unlikely to happen, and I was happy with a general British or American accent.

I got 42 auditions, all male, because I asked for it. Not to be sexist, but Cory is male, and the book is in first person. A woman would be just… weird.

Out of the 42, most were American. A good number were British. One or two I suspected of being Australian, and one stated that he was from New Zealand.

At this point, I found that a lot of other factors come into play. Voice quality varies a lot. Things like age, tone, speed of speaking all determine the type of character, and some just didn’t mesh with Cory. He’s of slight build, thirty-five, so you can’t have a narrator with a very deep voice who sounds like a gruffy detective of sixty. Just doesn’t work.

In the book, I also make a point of de-Americanising the world, and some had American accents that were just waaaayyyy too strong. I did put some Americans on the shortlist.

When you have voice quality, age and accent sorted, you need to consider the sound quality of the sample. Are there hisses or echoes and is the speech clear? This is determined by the type of equipment the narrator uses, and it needs to be professional.

After listening repeatedly to the best audition samples, I chose one, and I’m happy to say that he has accepted. He’s a Brit from London, trained as actor and his sample was near-flawless, the sound quality is great, his voice is not too deep, he speaks clearly without missing syllables (this is really common, by the way), and he knows how to fling an f-word or two without making it sound like a hot potato. He responds to correspondence in a professional way, and has assured me that the first book will be done by 19 August.

Watch out for further news!

Ambassador 5 is out!

The next Ambassador book went live!

Read about it and get buy links here.

With the previous book, Coming Home, I finished the arc that I started at the end of book 2, involving the ancient ship. Blue Diamond Sky is a complete story, but at the end you will see that it leads into a bigger arc that I will spend the next few books exploring. We are going back to Earth. There is an election looming and things are looking dicey.

I am really enjoying the series. The characters are like friends to me and I know them very well.

My favourite character? There are a couple, actually.

Veyada, because he talks no bullshit.

Sheydu, because she talks no bullshit either, and because she is an older woman with a penchant for explosives.

Thayu, because Cory does not quite know the depths of her previous experience. He doesn’t really know what she did before she came to his household. He knows she has upper level spy training, but he doesn’t know what she did with it.

Asha, because he leads the most powerful army in the galaxy, because he finds Cory curiously interesting and toys with him like a cat with a mouse, giving him scraps of information or positions not normally available to outsiders to see what he will do with it.

More news!

I’m auditioning Ambassador 1 for audio production!

Supanova Melbourne: Come and say hello

I’m leaving tomorrow to go to Supanova Melbourne.

If you’re in Melbourne or are also coming, come and say hello. I’m in the Artists’ Alley at table 36.

We’re leaving tomorrow, because on Thursday, my daughter and I are planning a photography trip to the Twelve Apostles. Let’s hope the weather behaves!

It’s likely that you won’t hear from me on this blog until I’m back. I may or may not have internet. The accommodation says there is free wifi, but seriously, you know what free wifi is like, so I’m not holding my breath.

In other news, I just heard that Bookbub is finally taking Ambassador 1 on 11 May. This is going to be very, very big, especially since it’s so close to the release of book 5.