feng shui assassin

So - I have the final answer from booksurge for a print-ready book to be published-on-demand - $299 (plus their 35% royalties). Ouch.

After a couple of emails bouncing back and forth between their rep and myself - as they tried to ply me with editing services (already done and paid for), book cover service (already done and paid for) and any other services a new author should rightly use - the final email came back with the express program offer. $299 to make the book available through themselves (and their Amazon puppetmasters) with a 35% mark-up.

Ok - so I’m not in any great rush for a POD at the moment. I have the books in the garage (thanks to the service from Biddles) and so will be able to fulfill any order at the moment. So I can afford to continue to shop around (Createspace is next on the list) - but I just wanted to be prepared, is all!

The main interest for podding was to allow the book to be bought, cost effectively, from the American market. As the pod isn’t dependent on location - then the shipping costs can be reasonable for whereever the buyer needs the book to be delivered.

Nothing useful to say today - only that it’s time to stop waffling about ‘independent author business models’ and ‘paradigm shifting for online publishing’ and just get on with the nitty gritty. Time to bury the shyness and become an unmitigating self-promoting machine. Or at least dip my toe out there and wait for the minnows to nibble.

Technorati Profile

A technorati profile will get me going. I’ll be signing up to a few of the other blogger social networks and see about a facebook and myspace profile too.

I’m lucky in that the book has a striking title - and the artwork is great too - so first glances may create a second look. But I’m under no illusions and know that it’s a numbers game. 100 sets of eyes equals 1 second look. 100 second looks equals 1 click. 100 clicks equals ‘more than a three second browse’ 1 interested. 100 interesteds equals 1 purchase.

A little off topic - but I have just read Joe Abercrombie’s scrape with yoof violence. An open and frank description of his encounter with a group of youngsters and the pack mentality they display and the bewildering reactions one man can take at provocation.

So many things must have been going through his head as he turned around to confront the group - and I won’t try to pretend what must have been uppermost in his mind. Joe had a touch of ‘Mr Nine Fingers’ and turned to confront a group of teens who had at first tried to steal his bag and then followed him with calls of abuse as he walked to the bus-stop to meet his wife and kid.

The encounter that followed was shockingly scary, bloody, and with a nice touch of black humour. The incident ended with the gang running off and Joe with a bit of claret (and a brush with the emergency services to boot). Brave and stupid in equal measure.

I enjoy reading a good book with splashes of brilliant violence (of which the First Law trilogy gives us plenty) and enjoy a good movie with dashes of balletic action. Bods doing the right thing just at the right time. But in real life? No one knows what they will do in any circumstances until faced with those very particular circumstances. No one can know.

I suspect Joe’s particular blog will find some internet legs and run. It was an honest piece that thankfully ended well (no knives! phew) and with a certain amount of empowerment reclaimed. Youngling culture seems to be particularly jackal-like at the mo. Perhaps writers may listen to this clarion call and write this particularly nasty trait of teen-terrorism out of society.

Bravo, fella.

Do you have a mobile reader? Possess a Sony ereader or an Amazon kindle or just want to read fiction on your handheld? Zip on over to feng shui assassin on smashwords and download an enjoyable ebook. Feng Shui Assassin is perfect for reading on your ereader or handheld - punchy little chapters, twisty turny plotty thing - pick it up and you’ll find it hard to put down.

Mobile reading will only get more and more popular. Having clapped eyes on a sony ereader and it’s oh-so-readable screen I can only imagine once you have one - you’ll soon leave paper behind and seek out the alternative e-book.

It’s also the perfect medium for the independent author - cuts out the publisher and leaves you to set your own price. Low enough to cover the distributor fees, offset any editing costs and a portion of VAT (if you ever need to reach those heady heights of vat registration) and leave you with a quid or so profit.

It comes as no surprise that traditional publishing do not want to let go of their profit margin - and the pause before hitting the confirm purchase people will feel as they do the sums and think ‘Hey - I can get this in spanky hardback for this price.’

So - only people who are desperate to read the novel on their handheld Ebook reader are likely to buy at such the inflated price. Apparently, this also takes into account the VAT necessary - however, it looks like the publisher has considered the hardback RRP and just removed the price of printing (which on a large run will amount to approx 80p!)

The perfect opportunity for independent authors who own the rights to their own books - and thus are able to set their own price (to earn ‘about a quid’ per download).

I was hoping to start making some bloggy comments and begin contribution (or link lurve) with some of the national paper book places and other sites - and considered whether to contribute under me, Ady Hall, or the book profile Feng Shui Assassin. I think I’ll opt for the latter. a) cos the title is catchy and may create a click just on curiousities sake and b) I don’t have much to actually contribute as me.

The contribution/involvement with other sites is a necessity to start building the pagerank for the blog and site - and also attract commentors from other sites and such. Inbound links means a bigger smile on the googlebots - and contribution is an easyish way to attain them.

Smashwords are hosting the first digital version of Feng Shui Assassin.

Whilst Biddles the printers do the paper thing - I looked around for a distributor for the electronic version - and Smashwords won hands down.

Self published e-books from independent authors - the site allows for a profile, a quick and painless upload of your book and allows for a choice of Ebook formats from online reading through html or javascript to offering mobile management for Kindle and handheld palm (as well as standard pdf format which most other readers will accept).

Smashwords is an elegant site with some great tech behind it. It also has some great potential and I hope the owner (who wrote to me offering help with a press release if needed) keeps abreast of any new formats that may appear.

An anonymous Thank You to Simon Haynes of Hal Spacejock with his very entertaining Free Download book (Hal Spacejock) and the wordage about electronic distribution. Read the first and buy the rest!

Final sign off to the manuscript - and sent to Biddles for printing. Now begins the hard work (well - not quite yet). Work is snowballing so am due to get sidetracked - but the main drive for the next year or so will be a spot of marketing - both on and off line.

Am researching the latest tactics for an SEO (search engine optimisation) jaunt - and then will look into profile building for Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Other general profile building on readerly sites perhaps - and the inevitable local bookstores and rellies interest. Plus keeping an eye on other indy author sites and ways to get the book distributed for free (but to also get ‘about a quid’ back for the efforts).

An excellent business model for music has launched in the form of bandstocks. The band stock allows for the music fan to invest in a band with a £10 stake. Once the level of investment has reached a defined level - the monies are released to the band in question for them to make their record/album.

The investors receive perks such as credit, percentage of the profits and priority claim on booking tickets. Not to mention the kudos when/if the band makes it big and they can then sell their share on Ebay.

Similar options have been used for films (I tried something similar with a short film ‘Hairflick’ - a 10 minute B&W thriller (summed up as 3 deaths and a sex scene) by offering Exec Producer credit (and a T-shirt) for £15. Sorry to say that the investment received barely covered T-shirt and advertising costs - though the film was shot and edited on rough (rushes) stock, it now dwells in a mates cellar).

Could a similar business model be introduced for authors and publication? Absolutely! Although writing doesn’t have the immediacy and instant appreciation that the other arts have. Music and film have their social medias all wrapped up (with myspace and such) whilst writers do tend to attract an appreciative audience - they’ll never get the mass ‘buy-in’ from strangers necessary to generate the funds for that first print run.

What it may do is allow for a bookstock concept to buy in to an author - a £10 stake with promise of a signed first edition. I guess this wouldn’t work so well on an individual basis - and perhaps writers would have to cluster together under the umbrella of a genre or a publishing house to attract enough attention from the interested public.

Enough with the Teutonic capital letters, already.

The capital letter frenzy just has to stop. I guess I capitalise a word I think should have importance when, in reality, should just be left well alone to fend for itself. So many apologies for the previous posts with all their self-important ‘look-at-meeee’ stylee uppercase capitalisation. In comes the undercase and he’s here to stay.

It was an issue during editing whether particular words such as feng shui and chi should be capitalised or not (refering to it as a proper name, or somesuch). You’ll be pleased to hear that they’re both lowercase. Ch’i is refered to in the foreward. Thereafter its chi. Feng shui is good ol’ feng shui. The rest of them fiddly terms, karma, chakra and the secret one - are all as they should be.

I guess I just get excitable.

As an Indy Author the writing/editing and production of the thing is half the battle. And the first half, at that.

Having your book published through traditional methods means that the publisher can push it into the retail outlets, the book stores and other nooks and crannies available. This allows for casual browsers (which I’m sure are the vast majority of book buyers) to buy books off the shelf - motivated by recommendations, book cover or general buzziness of a book.

There are still plenty of people who wouldn’t consider buying a book online.

However, the Indy Author might fare pretty well through a concerted strategy with the online sellers. If s/he has a great story, well written, tightly edited and well produced with attractive cover (yada yada) then the competition stakes are raised considerably. Because reviews will count. And yeah - both good and ‘not-so-good’ reviews will help your book. It’ll help it get noticed. It’ll help it raise a little in the online bookstores. It’ll help it get in front of a reader for them to make up their own minds on whether to buy or not.

The playing field is suddenly levelled. Well, if not quite levelled, at least that obtuse angle becomes an acute angle - and the second half of the battle might just sway in your favour.