Annotated Horror

Giant Superintelligent Triassic Squid - Please Come Back

2011-10-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

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This Giant Superintelligent Triassic Squid article raises some interesting possibilities.

I don't think that the new scientific work out there on the unexpectedly high intelligence of squid has been sufficiently exploited by genre authors.

Personally, I hope this big guy is still lurking down there in the deeps somewhere. Forget Cloverfield, I want this guy to show up on some waterfront some day.

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The Literature of Deflation

2011-10-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

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The New York Times has a frightening little piece up outlining the likely consequences of a Greek departure from the Euro - an event that, to me at least, seems extraordinarily likely.

If Europe truly ends up this bad - if people are fleeing Portugal and Italy with suitcases full of Euros, hoping to hell that Germany doesn't go up in flames too - I have to imagine America's current fascination with apocalypse porn will end pretty quickly. (Sorry, fellow zombie authors.) How fun can that kind of fantasy be, when the reality starts to hit you in the face?

If socialist realism in literature makes a comeback, I for one am going to be really pissed.

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A Quick Thought on Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T05:13:00.000-07:00

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I won't try to cover all the big-picture stuff about the legacy of Steve Jobs, because the entire commentariat is trying to do that right now.

I just want to stop and thank the guy for one thing:

Fonts.

They say that Jobs was personally responsible for insisting that the early Mac word processing programs had to include multiple font choices - an innovation that Microsoft rapidly copied.

That one decision was critical in giving birth to desktop publishing.

In a very real sense, a lot of the "creative" side of the computer revolution is descended in one way or another from desktop publishing. That was the moment when computers stopped being an appliance or a computational tool and became a canvas, too.

Thanks, Steve.

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Back to the Blog Thing - Work in Progress

2011-10-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

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After a lengthy layoff during which my time was dominated by non-writing projects, I'm back at work on a new series.

I'll be posting updates to this space as I proceed - and I'll also be doing some more standard blogging here as well.

What's the new series about? Well, the short answer is that it revolves around this map:

More to follow.

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Shylock of Venice Now Available in Paperback.

2010-12-21T08:47:00.000-08:00

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It took a couple of CreateSpace proofs to get it done, but The Most Extreme Crueltie and Revenge of Shylock of Venice is now available in paperback for $9.95.

Right now it's only up at Amazon. Barnes and Noble and 3rd party booksellers should have it in a few more weeks, when the CreateSpace Expanded Distribution clicks in.

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The Most Extreme Crueltie and Revenge of Shylock of Venice

2010-11-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

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…BECAUSE SHAKESPEARE GOT THE ENDING WRONG THE FIRST TIME.

Stripped of his fortune, his daughter, his religion, and even his name, Shylock of Venice (now baptized “Christoforo”, under duress) broods over his injuries alone. A mysterious traveler, dressed in black, offers him the chance to avenge himself upon those who have wronged him, and to seize back all that they have taken. When Shylock agrees, they embark on a journey that takes them across Renaissance Italy and through the history of post-Humanist philosophy – and what they find is not what either of them expects.

As some of you may have seen by now, my latest release has gone live at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

It's ebook-only for the moment; the paperback should be available in a few days.

Warning: this is a play in five acts, written in early modern English. In other words, I totally committed to the conceit that I was creating a sequel to Shakespeare's play. If you hate EME or the play form, this might not be up your alley.

In a piece for the New York Times, Kevin Kelly of Wired fame wrote of the future of ebooks:

...In the universal library, no book will be an island. Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before. In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages.

I was pretty heavily influenced by this somewhat heady vision. It reminded me a great deal of the fictional "glass bead game" in Hesse's Magister Ludi. It's also reflective of the way I think in general. Those of you who read De Bello Lemures can probably see how this vision would appeal to me.

Shylock of Venice was written with this concept of the future ebook in mind. I don't get there, by any stretch of the imagination, but I take a few baby steps. The text is largely composed of repurposed text from other sources [along with original text that is itself heavy with allusion], and the selection process is itself supposed to contain information that informs the primary story. If that sounds really annoying and pretentious, I apologize. I found it fun, and I hope readers will find it fun too.

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Is "Indie" Publishing Destructive to Literature in General?

2010-10-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

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Zoe Winters has a blog post up today about indie publishing where she writes:

Some readers see indie authors as immature writers who are going through a “rebellious phase”. Some have even called us “lazy narcissists.” If you can’t look at a book cover and a short sample of a work before judging it, perhaps it isn’t the indie author who is lazy.

I find this very interesting because it’s a problem inherent only in publishing. Entrepreneurs who start businesses in other industries, even other creative industries, are not thought of as acting out in rebellion. They are simply choosing to be captain of their own ship by starting a business.

Freedom is the one thing nearly every human being will seek in one way or another. Whether it’s freedom of religion, freedom from oppressive governments, or freedom from working as a wage slave in someone else’s cubicle. Why should writing be any different?

I’ve wondered about this same question. I’m going to put on my devil’s advocate hat and try, for a change, to put a good face on the anti-indie argument out there.

Most people are familiar with the concept of a "network effect" from the world of computers. There are many technology examples of products or services where a part of the value to the consumer is the fact that everyone else is using that product or service. The Windows operating system, for example, is valuable precisely because it is ubiquitous. When you buy Windows and learn how to use it, you gain access to all the products that work with that operating system. Facebook is another good example. Facebook is valuable because everyone is on it. If you were the only user of Facebook, it wouldn’t matter if it was the best product ever.

So one question we have to ask ourselves is: Are there "network effects" in literature?

Is a book a product where the only transaction is between the author and the reader? If so, then all that matters is if the individual reader enjoys the individual book that they buy. Or are there other transactions going on whenever a reader buys and reads a book?

It may be that part of the value in some literary works is the fact that everyone else has read them. There can never be another Shakespeare, for example, because even if someone came along with the same verbal and dramatic talent, Shakespeare’s works have a four hundred year head start on getting integrated into our cultural landscape. A "new Shakespeare" would not have all of his plots recycled in a million other stories and movies. He would not have the vast academic infrastructure devoted to the study of every layer of meaning in his works. You would not be able to go to his birthplace and take part in dozens of tourist attractions based on his name. Shakespeare is just more useful to us, because we’ve all read him, than he would be if he was a niche interest known only to a few specialists.

This pretty straightforward fact makes it at least possible that something will be lost if the mass-interest world of publishing is demolished and replaced with long-tail independent niche publishing. We might all still be able to find individual authors whose work we enjoy, but might not be able to participate in large-scale communities of shared literary experience, for the simple reason that those no longer exist.

Maybe the problem won’t be that indie publishers suck – but that they don’t. If indie work is all garbage, it will just be filtered out and people will still construct communities around Authors Who Matter. But if indie work is good, then the entire concept of a literary community will disintegrate, because there will be no quality mechanism by which to select Authors Who Matter. Maybe the artificial limits placed on the "supply of authors" by traditional publishing was actually beneficial, because that limit made it possible for Authors Who Matter to exist in the first place.

I’m not saying I believe this. I’m offering it, as I said, as the devil’s advocate in Zoe’s discussion. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’d keep publishing even if I was, in fact, going to be responsible for the Death of Literature. But I’m interested in the discussion anyway.

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On the Slush Pile Apocalypse and Other Myths of Self-Publishing - Part 2

2010-09-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

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Yesterday we talked about how the dire warnings of a tsunami of self-published slush washing over the product pages of the Amazon Kindle Store have not come to pass. How can we explain the eerie absence of the millions of slush manuscripts we were told to expect and to fear?

Has there been some sort of unpublished author Rapture? Doubtful.

So what’s up?

I think four things are possible.

1. Slush pile authors only want to be "published".

I will admit that just like every other observer, I assumed that when an easy path to free or nearly free self-publication with wide distribution became available, a significant percentage of slush pile authors would jump on it. Why wouldn’t they? Well, if you aren’t looking at writing as a business or your manuscripts as assets ["I have a product and I want to sell it to people"], but are instead looking at writing as a vehicle for achieving a dream or fantasy vision of yourself, then self-publication isn’t really a substitute for traditional publication.

Some people are writing for the moment when they can walk to their mailbox and open a letter telling them that They Are Somebody. Those people aren’t getting out of line no matter what royalty rate Amazon sets.

2. The slush pile was never really that big to begin with.

The slush pile is a legend of the literary world, and the thing about legends is that they grow in the telling.

Typewritten manuscripts take up a lot of space. Print out 500 novel-length manuscripts, put them in padded mailers, and put them in a pile. It will be a big pile.

But you can add 500 books to Amazon’s database and you won’t be able to tell the difference.

The slush pile will look larger to people who have to physically live with it than it will look to anyone else.

3. The slush pile was as big as everyone says, but it doesn’t represent as many authors as we thought.

"Oh no!" agents and publishers said as they read #2. "You’re completely wrong! The slush pile really is as big as we say! It’s not a perception issue. I get 500 emails a day!"

That may be true – but it’s always possible that this never represented that many authors. Although they’re not supposed to make multiple submissions, I’m sure that unpublished authors violate that rule more than they obey it. And each unpublished author may have multiple manuscripts. If a bunch of busy-beaver unpublished authors are out there sending out ten different manuscripts to every agent and publisher in the Writer’s Guide once a year or every time they tweak their query or opening chapter, that adds up to a lot of unread manuscripts. It can also create the impression that there are orders of magnitude more unpublished authors chomping at the bit than there actually are.

4. The slush apocalypse already came, and those authors slunk away to hide.

Everybody knows that the slush pile represents a certain amount of delusion. In #1 we talked about how some unpublished authors are motivated by a fantasy vision of themselves. I think there’s a second common unpublished author daydream out there – the fantasy of Unrecognized Genius and the related fantasy of Instant Success.

If you’re a slush pile author who subscribes to these two fantasies, you firmly believe that as soon as you get published the world will acknowledge your brilliance and you will sell a million copies and go on Oprah and hang out with Nicholas Sparks and John Grisham and Tom Clancy while the Smithsonian looks into acquiring your childhood photos and mementoes. If you’re that author, the entire time you’re formatting your first Kindle upload, you’re daydreaming about the 1000 sales you will have in the first 72 hours after your upload goes live. You’re daydreaming about how Stephen King will email you about how he bought your book and wishes he had written it. And then your book goes live, and these things don’t happen.

A large number of those authors won’t upload another manuscript. They’re done. They’ll bail.

The funny thing about the traditional publishing slush pile is that anyone in it can still hold on to the dream, or the delusion. For as long as you’re still in the pile, you can still be an Unrecognized Genius. So in a real sense the existence of the pile is itself a factor in increasing the size of the pile – because for as long as it’s there, people aren’t clearing the decks of their dreams.

Consider a nonworking actor who also believes himself to be an Unrecognized Genius. He goes to auditions for years, convinced that he will succeed if someone will give him a chance. For as long as that’s the case, he’s increasing the size of the line at auditions.

And then one day someone gives him a chance. Opening night, the curtain goes up, and he steps out on stage – and the crowd boos. The show closes. The actor finally quits, and the line at auditions goes down by one person.

It’s at least possible that a large number of slush pile authors have experimented with the Kindle platform, and finally "gotten their chance" – and since they didn’t instantly succeed, they quit in disgust. It’s a maddening thing, checking the DTP report system waiting for sales to show up. If your expectations aren’t set properly, it would probably be an embittering thing.

By giving authors a chance to finally fail for real, instead of leaving them to bide their time in the slush pile line, the Kindle boom may finally be clearing the backlog in the slush pile line. It may be leading at least some people to quit who would otherwise have continued to toss manuscripts into the pile.

I don’t know if what’s going on is a function of just one of these possibilities, or if all five are in play. But it’s got to be something.

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On the Slush Pile Apocalypse and Other Myths of Self-Publishing – Part 1

2010-09-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

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A persistent meme about self-publishing is that the ability of writers to independently publish to the Kindle for free and to POD platforms like CreateSpace at minimal cost will inevitably lead to irresponsible and talentless hacks burying the reading public in a mountain of slush.

In a Salon article that attracted a lot of attention, Laura Miller wrote:

Will readers have to flounder in an ocean of slush before the new gatekeepers appear to rescue them? And if so, how long before they contract slush fatigue? A few days of reading bad manuscript after bad manuscript has a tendency to make you never want to pick up another manuscript again, but when finding new talent is your job and your vocation, you keep at it until you're successful enough to hire someone else to do it for you. If, on the other hand, you're a civilian, and reading is something you turn to, seeking fun or transcendence, during your precious hours of free time, how long will you persist when book after book has exactly the opposite effect, crushing your spirit instead of refreshing it? How long before you decide to just give up?

Currently there are a couple of threads over at Kindleboards lamenting this as well.

So the question, to me, becomes: Where is the mountain of slush we were promised, and told to fear? The Kindle has been out for three years. Shouldn’t we be drowning in the slush by now?

Bowker reports that in 2009 traditional publishing produced 288,355 new titles and new editions.

That was down slightly in a recession year, but not to a degree material to our concerns here. 2008 and 2007 showed similar numbers, and we can assume 2010 will as well.

By the time the Kindle’s 3rd anniversary runs around in November, there will probably be around 690,000 titles available in the Kindle Store. That means that Kindle Store title growth is averaging around 230,000 titles a year. In other words, the ebook platform that we’re told will be a fire hose spraying all readers everywhere with slush is currently adding fewer titles a year than the traditional publishing world is adding the old-fashioned way.

And it’s important to note that these years should be the Kindle Store’s peak title growth years, because there’s a huge backlog of existing print titles being formatted for Kindle and added to the store. Right now, right this very moment, should be the peak slush era also - all the unpublished authors between the ages of 20 and 70 should have a giant trunk full of titles available to add to the Kindle with minimal effort. So even with a huge backlog of "shovel ready" content available, and no barrier to entry, the Kindle Store can’t grow its title base as fast as traditional print publishing is growing its own – let alone increase it at the kind of exponential rate people seem to fear. The titles aren’t appearing the way they should be.

So where are they? They. Just. Aren’t. There.

Why aren’t they there? I have a couple of theories. I’ll talk about them in tomorrow’s blog post.

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Win A Free Kindle

2010-09-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

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Scott Nicholson, noted indie horror author, is running a promotion this month where he is giving away free Kindles.

You can view the contest details here.

Check it out!

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Smashwords Listing and Sample Info for The Last Days of Jericho

2010-08-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

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The Last Days of Jericho is now also available at Smashwords.com. The multiformat listings at Smashwords mean that a version of the book should now exist for any ereader.

Smashwords also allows the author to set up a free sample of each title. The sample for this book has been set at 50% - so the first half of the book is now free!

View the Smashwords Listing.

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The Last Days of Jericho Now Available At Amazon

2010-06-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

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The Last Days of Jericho has gone live at Amazon!

The paperback version is $12.95. The Kindle version is $2.99.

I'd like to thank everyone for all the support I received while writing and publishing this book.

A monster is approaching the Bronze Age city of Yarich.

It cannot be stopped. It cannot be turned aside.

And the monster is…God Himself.

The Canaanite city of Yarich is home to a society that is literate, cosmopolitan – and doomed. Sakal, caravan-master to the Melek or king of the city-state, recounts the tale of the increasingly desperate battle for survival waged by an urban culture against fanatical outsiders – nomads from the desert wielding a terrible supernatural power. Half Deuteronomy, half Gojira, Brookside’s story examines the horror that arises from the knowledge of inexorable fate, and explores the moral ambiguity at the heart of the Old Testament tales that help make up the foundation of western civilization.

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De Bello Lemures Reviewed at UNRV.com

2010-06-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

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De Bello Lemures received a very gracious review from the folks over at www.unrv.com today.

UNRV is an in-depth content site for anyone with an interest in Ancient Rome. I'm flattered that they even considered De Bello Lemures for a review, and very gratified by their positive take.

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Free Preview of The Last Days of Jericho Now Available

2010-06-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

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A .PDF format preview of the first four chapters of The Last Days of Jericho is now available as a free download.

I will try to have .EPUB and .MOBI versions available later this week.

Check it out, and let me know what you think!

The full version will be released on July 1st!

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Win a Copy of The Last Days of Jericho

2010-06-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

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To celebrate the upcoming release of The Last Days of Jericho, I'm going to give away two copies on July 1st.

The winners will have their choice of autographed copies of the paperback or the ebook version.

To enter, reply in the comments section of this post. You'll need to use an ID that gives me a way to contact you, whether at your own site or via email.

Since I intend to promote this to my Facebook friends, there are some rules and disclaimers I have to post:

1. No purchase necessary.
2. You must be 18 or over.
3. You cannot live in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, India, or any country embargoed by the United States.
4. This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. You understand that you are providing your information to the Annotated Horror Blog and not to Facebook. The information you provide will only be used to notify you if you win the contest.

You can view the book trailer here.

You can download a free preview of the first four chapters here.

Thanks!

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Trailer for The Last Days of Jericho

2010-06-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

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The Last Days of Jericho Gets A Facebook Page

2010-05-21T18:01:00.001-07:00

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I've created a Facebook page for The Last Days of Jericho.

There's going to be a book giveaway contest in June, and I'll try to lure in some of my FB friends to participate in that over here.

So if you're a FB friend of mine, prepare to get lots of harassing requests to fan the page.

If you're not currently a FB friend of mine, friend me dammit! And fan the page.

Thanks!

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Proof Cover for The Last Days of Jericho

2010-05-19T16:04:00.001-07:00

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The Last Days of Jericho Arrives July 1st

2010-05-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

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A publication date has been set for The Last Days of Jericho. It will be available at Amazon in paperback and for the Kindle on July 1st.

De Bello Lemures is an Amazon-only publication right now, and due to the difficulty of publishing such a heavily footnoted work as an ebook in anything but Kindle format it will probably remain so in the immediate future. The Last Days of Jericho, however, will ultimately also be available for the iPad, the Nook, the Sony e-reader, and the Kobo. The vagaries of the Smashwords publication system mean that I can't give you a firm date for those formats right now, but I hope it won't be too long after July 1st.

I hope to have a preview version posted shortly.

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Interview at www.TheAuthorsSpeak.com

2010-05-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

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Eric Mays of TheAuthorsSpeak was gracious enough to include me in his author interview series.

It's a nice article. Check it out!

BTW, Eric is himself the author of the bizarro-Hamlet novel Naked Metamorphosis. I've read it, and it's great. Check that out too!

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De Bello Lemures Featured At TheIndieSpotlight.com

2010-04-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

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The gracious folks over at The Indie Spotlight were kind enough to feature De Bello Lemures today.

I'd like to thank Ed Patterson and the other folks in charge over there.

Their site is a great resource for keeping track of the Indie book scene, particularly on the Kindle. [The iPad may get there one day, but right now the Kindle is still pretty much "where it's at" in terms of having a vibrant Indie book community.]

Check it out!

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They're Dead, Jim.

2010-04-19T14:36:00.000-07:00

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I'm doing my best to wedge the story told in The Last Days of Jericho into both the available archaeological evidence and into the Biblical account.

This required me to be something of a schizophrenic, because I don't accept the accuracy of the Biblical account, and I think that Kenyon makes a compelling case that Jericho wasn't even occupied any more during the late Bronze Age - but I wanted to tell a story that required me to pretend that I didn't believe this. I had to pretend to accept Wood's dates, which are probably wrong, and the account in Judges and Joshua, which are almost certainly wrong. I ended up forging a messy compromise where I said, "OK, let's say that there was an independent city-state at Jericho, and there was an invasion as described in the Old Testament - but let's do the best we can to place those events in the context of as accurate a depiction of Late Bronze Age Canaan as the available research permits."

On the bright side, taking the real history of the Late Bronze Age seriously allowed me to enhance the Biblical account in ways that were, well, a whole lot of fun. For example, I am indebted to Richard Gabriel's excellent The Military History of Ancient Israel for his account of the chariot tactics employed by the Canaanites. Gabriel persuasively argues that a Canaanite force equipped with chariots, facing an enemy with no chariots on open and flat ground, would have almost certainly attempted to employ a mobile defense based on hit and run tactics; they would only have relied on siege defenses as a last resort. This means that the Biblical account, which leaps directly from Joshua's use of spies against Jericho to an account of the seven-day siege and its associated miracle, cannot be complete. In such circumstances, the Canaanites would have at least attempted to contest the Hebrews' crossing of the Jordan, and would have similarly attempted to engage them on the plain.

Including an engagement between the Jordan and Jericho was a great self-indulgence on my part - since I got to put on my SM Stirling costume - but I think most readers will get a big kick out of this "Military Horror" section. And as fans of Steven Spielberg will know in advance, a military situation where two armies meet and one of them is carrying the Ark of the Covenant can mean only one thing: face-melting. Win!

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Writing About Ancient Urban Environments

2010-04-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

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One interesting thing about writing historical fiction is the challenges you face in describing urban areas.

In the course of working on The Last Days of Jericho, I have discovered that those challenges are magnified when trying to describe an urban area with a pre-monetary economic system.

When writing a scene set in, say, Rome during the Republican era, you can entertain the reader by focusing on the things about Republican Rome that are familiar. You can stress the similarity to modern experience. John Maddox Roberts has a neat little trick he employs a couple of times in his SPQR series: the narrator will walk down the street and stop at a sidewalk vendor to buy a sausage on a roll. The reader reads this and thinks, "A hot dog cart! He just stopped at a hot dog cart!" It's a neat little point of reference that stresses the ways in which some prosaic activities in that urban environment are very similar to the reader's own experience.

The problem I encountered while working on The Last Days of Jericho is that the economy of Bronze Age Canaan was pre-monetary. Money had not yet been invented as a medium of exchange. How do you describe an urban area where no one is using money? When your narrator walks through it, what does he see? It doesn't sound that tough until you sit down and actually try to do it.

The preliminary research I did revealed that the scholarly consensus is that the Canaanite cities had what are known as Redistributive Economies on a model similar to that of Ancient Egypt. All products effectively belonged to the king or the city and would be collected and stored centrally, and then distributed by the primitive state apparatus to the population. Readers familiar with the Old Testament story of Joseph and his sojourn in Egypt can see traces of this economic system in the tale of Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams. Joseph sees the years of famine coming, and the Pharaoh increases the amount held back in storage as a result; he is then able to distribute the stored-up produce when the famine arrives.

In terms of coming up with a way to work this economic system into a novel, the first obvious modern equivalent would be the Soviet system. The obvious imagery would be to depict the Canaanites as the Bronze Age equivalent of Russian shoppers standing in long queues to receive their ration of borscht. But the problem is that Canaanite society was class-based - their Redistributive Economy was not a communist economy, despite its centralization. There was a professional warrior class, a merchant class, a class of craftsmen, etc. - all of whom appear from the archaeological and limited literary evidence to have been on different economic levels. So I needed a way to combine the diversity of Canaanite society with its economic centralization. I think I found a good way to do that - and I hope that readers will like my solution.

What did I do? You'll have to read the book when it comes out to see the answer to that question.

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Cover Concepts for The Last Days of Jericho

2010-03-28T15:05:00.000-07:00

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Just playing around with cover concepts right now. The writing is a little ahead of schedule, so I'm thinking about promotion today.

Let me know which one you prefer!

Between the two, I think that I personally like the second one better. But the first one's basic image is available on a Creative Commons basis, and the second one's basic image would have to be licensed. So I'm going back and forth.

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De Bello Lemures Reaches 500 Sales

2010-03-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

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I had a funny feeling while I was checking out my Kindle sales total for March - I think my subconscious was doing some math on its own again.

So I decided to calculate the sales total across both the Kindle and paperback versions since De Bello Lemures was released on 10/24/2009.

I was pleased to see that as of this afternoon, we have reached the 500 total sales mark.

I'll need to pick that pace up a little to meet my first-year goal of 1500 copies for this title. Sales growth has been fairly steady, though, so I still think it's eminently doable.

Thank you to everyone who purchased a copy, either in paperback or for the Kindle. And thank you to everyone who has written an Amazon review, or been kind enough to mention it or me on their blog.

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Last Days of Jericho Back Cover Text

2010-03-11T05:09:00.000-08:00

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I've been making decent progress on The Last Days of Jericho recently. I've managed to get into a routine where 1000 words a day is pretty much the norm.

To reward myself, I took a few minutes and indulged in a little "back cover blurb" writing. I hate writing loglines, but I love playing with back cover text. Here's the general concept so far:

"A monster is approaching the city of Yarich.

"It cannot be stopped. It cannot be turned aside.

"It's getting closer every day.

"And the monster is...God Himself."

I need more explanatory text below this, so that it won't appear to be a Left Behind book. But this is what I'm looking at right now.

Comments?

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Yes, You SHOULD Self-Publish - Follow-Up

2010-02-25T05:33:00.000-08:00

Shockingly, yesterday's blog post actually generated both readers and responses.

I'd like to address some of those responses here.

Kirstin Morrell was angered by the fact that I quoted her and did not alert her.

I carefully qualified my argument with the phrases "To me" and "That's success as I would define it." Then you decided to throw a little party with my name without even having the courtesy to invite me.

So the question is, then, would you like to have a discussion of this topic, or was this a private party I interrupted, only to find a straw man dressed up to look like me?

First, let me say that since this is a blog no one reads, it would no more occur to me to email Ms. Morrell to let her know that I quoted her than it would occur to me to, say, email Sarah Palin if I blogged about Sarah Palin. I'll try to figure out how to alert her to this post, since it's not my intention to personally offend her.

I'd be happy to talk about the issue of self-publishing with Ms. Morrell or with anyone else, but I'd like to point out that I didn't set up a straw man of her argument for the simple reason that I was not arguing with her. I was disputing a point made by Mr. Sawyer. Ms. Morrell's definition was only tangentially involved. She may have quite a different opinion of self-publishing overall than he does. My post only says, "Mr. Sawyer should not employ this particular definition of 'success' for a self-publishing venture, and here's why." It does not say, "Kirstin Morrell's opinion of self-publishing is wrong."

There were also some Anonymous responses that I would like to address. Two posters referred back to an earlier post I made about lowering the price of the paperback edition of my book to try to increase sales, to try to show that I was, in fact, a failure. And the numbers just don't bare that out, boys, sorry. You're quite right - I am currently only selling about 20 copies a month of the paperback edition of this book. But if you'll check the sales rank of the Kindle edition, you'll see that it's performing much better. I am selling from 100-150 copies of the Kindle edition a month. This means that, between the two editions, I can reasonably expect to sell at least 1500 copies this year.

Anyone who tells you that a first-time novel selling 1500 copies in its first year is a failure does not know what they're talking about. It's that simple. Many, many traditionally-published first novels fail to sell 1500 copies. So if you want me to feel like a failure for selling that many copies, I'm just not going to do so. I can browse the genre lists at Amazon and see where my sales rank stands compared to people published by small presses in my genre - or by not-so-small presses in my genre - and I know who's outselling me and whom I'm outselling. So tell me, if I sell 1500 copies of my book this year using Amazon's tools, and would have sold 0 copies by pursuing traditional publishing, by what crack-brained ratiocination can the decision to self-publish possibly have been the wrong one?

If the Nook or the Sony Reader supported footnotes, I'd probably do even better. But they don't, so I can't sell at B&N or in the other ebook stores, or for the upcoming iBooks store; Amazon is it for me right now. But that won't happen to my next book, so I hope to do even better next time.

It's not a lot of money. It just pays my cable and internet bill. But the advance a first-time novelist would receive wouldn't do much more. It might even do less.

I'd also like to respond to one last comment of Ms. Morrell's. She was obviously a little annoyed when she wrote her post, and decided to get a little snide. I'm not taking it personally, though, because it gives me the opportunity to make another point that I think is important:

And of course your mother will buy your book. That doesn't make success.

No, my mother won't buy my book. Thomas Brookside is a pseudonym. My family has no idea that the book even exists. I realize that the stereotype about self-published authors is that all their sales come from their mom, but that's just not true in my case.

So I'd like to amend my earlier advice telling everyone to self-publish:

My full advice is to self-publish, using only CreateSpace and free ebook tools, and do so under a pen name. The contempt that the traditional publishing world has for independent authors flows from two sources: the notion that you're going to print a lot of books using PublishAmerica or some scam outfit and then nag your family members to buy them, and the notion that the reason you're publishing is so you can show up at cocktail parties and crow, "I'm Joe Blow, published writer." You can take the satisfaction of that contempt away by publishing under a pseudonym, and then leaving your family alone and never, ever, ever being that guy at a party.

Yes, You SHOULD Self-Publish

2010-02-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

In a recent blog post, author Robert Sawyer advises everyone not to self-publish, because he says it's impossible to be successful at it.

He then cross-posts Kirstin Morrell's definition of success:

Now, let's define success. To me, it would be someone who makes a full-time living from writing SF novels, novellas, and/or short stories, without living below the poverty line. That's success as I would define it. And I don't know one SF author who self-publishes who would meet my criteria for success.

I really don't see how this can possibly be an appropriate definition, for two reasons.

First, according to this definition every author everywhere who has a day job is a failure. Poof! There went basically the entire literary fiction genre. Every last one of those people has a day job. Failures all?

Second, the standard of comparison being employed is absurd. To judge whether or not a self-publishing venture is a success, all you have to do is compare your outcome to your likely outcome if you had continued to pursue traditional publishing. Since the overwhelming majority - maybe 99.99% - of people who pursue traditional publishing will never get an agent, never get published, and never sell a single book, any of those people who pursue self-publishing and sell even one copy or net even one dollar made the right decision.

When someone asks, "Should I self-publish?" it's really silly to answer them, "No, because if you self-publish, you won't be as successful as Dean Koontz." The only method of analysis that makes any sense whatsoever is to say, "Ask yourself if you will sell more books, get more readers, and make more money by self-publishing or by traditional publishing."

I would tell everyone considering writing to self-publish. If you don't buy scratch tickets, self-publish. If you don't expect to win the Lotto, self-publish. If you pursue traditional publishing, the odds are overwhelming that you will never sell one single book. If you self-publish using CreateSpace and the Amazon Kindle Store, you at least have a chance to make some sales and get some readers. For every 1000 of you out there who decide you want to write query letters and keep your fingers crossed for a traditional publisher instead, 999 of you will utterly fail and never sell a single book to anyone.

Paperback price lowered to $9.95

2010-01-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

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De Bello Lemures has experienced a fairly extreme discrepancy between its Kindle sales performance and its paperback sales performance.

On the Kindle side, it has consistently ranged in the top 1500-9000 or so best sellers in the Amazon Kindle store. It has also been able to hang around in the top 25 or 50 of many of its Kindle store genre categories, with some forays into the top 10. On the paperback side, however, sales have generally been just a trickle, and it has not been uncommon for it to go two or three days between sales. This means its sales rank can never go higher than 100,000 or so, and right now it's floundering in the 700,000 range.

A lot of the difference in sales performance between the two media has to be attributable to price. The Kindle title has been at 99 cents for a while now [and will remain there for the rest of January, at least], while the paperback has been listed at $14.95. There are, not surprisingly, a lot of people who will take a chance on an author they have not read before if it only costs them 99 cents, and fewer people who will do so if it costs them $14.95.

I've decided to lower the price of the paperback to $9.95. I can't really lower it much further than that because of the CreateSpace printing charges. Getting it under $10 will [I hope] be enough of a change to shrink the gap between the two versions a bit. We'll see, I guess.

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Music in Bronze Age Canaan

2009-12-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

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Just a quick update on my work in progress, since I haven't blogged about it in a while:

In the course of doing research on Middle and Late Bronze Age Canaan, I came across Joachim Braun's excellent Music in Ancient Israel / Palestine: Archaeological, Written, and Comparative Sources.

As it turns out, Canaan during the Bronze Age was quite musically advanced. This is creditable to its intermediary position between the main centers of civilization in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean. [You can write that same sentence about quite a few elements of Canaan's development at this time.] As a result, although I had originally decided to set this novel in Bronze Age Jerusalem, I have decided to shift it to Jericho. If you take Braun's work together with the Old Testament account of the fall of Jericho, the imagery basically writes itself.

Writing material with historical elements is to some extent a big cheat. The research will often just tell you what to write, and your creativity [such as it is] can take the day off. But what the hell, I'm not proud.

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Observations from Sci-Fi Films

2009-12-06T06:52:00.000-08:00

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In WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, at the facility where they are building the spaceship to try to escape from Earth before the other planet hits, written on the wall is the motto "Waste anything, but not Time."

This makes a nice bookend to ON THE BEACH, where there is a banner hanging in the city square that reads, "There Is Still Time". Even when there no longer is.

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Zombies and Social Upheaval

2009-11-28T13:09:00.000-08:00

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Before the holiday, over at A World on Fire Brian blogged about the subject of the relationship of the zombie genre to periods of social dislocation in the United States. He approvingly linked to an older article at IO9.com that charted a correlation between the production of movies with a theme related to the living dead and periods of war and social upheaval. Check out each link for more of each of their respective takes.

Now that all the Turkey Day festivities are out of the way, I'd like to add a few words to what Brian had to say about this.

I think that the correlation that IO9.com found definitely exists - but only for a subsection of the genre. Periods of social upheaval contribute to the popularity of what you could call the zombie action genre, but do not necessarily contribute to the popularity of the zombie horror genre.

I think that to the extent the zombie genre is a subset of the horror genre, it would be hard to find a legitimate correlation. The production of horror films, and fashions within the production of horror films, is so deeply bound up with issues of film financing, film production codes, and the preferences of individual performers and directors that it would be hard to say, "These films were made because of the Viet Nam war," or "That set of films was the result of McCarthyism."

But not all zombie films [or stories in other media, which tend to track along with the fashions in film] can really be said to be part of the horror genre. Many of them - perhaps the majority now - are actually science-fiction action films or stories. Certainly films like 28 Days Later or Zach Snyder's version of Dawn of the Dead pretty clearly belong to the tradition of the science fiction disaster film more than they "fit" into horror. They're much more like Them or Day of the Triffids than they are like The Exorcist. I would argue that the appeal of these zombie action stories basically mirrors the appeal of the science fiction disaster film.

In her essay "The Imagination of Disaster", Susan Sontag outlined her view of the basic appeal of the science fiction disaster tale, and although I don't generally care for Sontag there's a lot in this particular essay to agree with. [Sorry, no link; I don't believe it's available online.]

The lure of such generalized disaster as a fantasy is that it releases one from normal obligations. The trump card of the end-of-the-world movies - like The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1962) - is that great scene with New York or London Or Tokyo discovered empty, its entire population annihilated. Or, as in The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1957), the entire movie can be devoted to the fantasy of occupying the deserted metropolis and starting all over again, a world Robinson Crusoe...Another kind of satisfaction these films supply is extreme moral simplification - that is to say, a morally acceptable fantasy where one can give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings. In this respect, science fiction films partly overlap with horror films. This is the undeniable pleasure we derive from looking at freaks, beings excluded from the category of the human. The sense of superiority over the freak conjoined in varying proportions with the titillation of fear and aversion makes it possible for moral scruples to be lifted, for cruelty to be enjoyed.

In this respect, the zombie action story is like Sontag's model of a science fiction disaster film on steroids, with the amp turned up to eleven. How much of the appeal lies in the more or less openly conceded idea that fighting off a a zombie apocalypse would be fun? Many popular zombie-themed sites - like Zombie Squad or the Zombie Research Society - make no bones about the fact that they are primarily interested in what you could call the survival problem, which is basically the Robinson Crusoe fantasy in a modern context. Basically the subconscious psychological appeal Sontag claimed existed in some types of end-of-the-world sci-fi has been consciously brought out into the open in the zombie genre; we now openly admit that there is something cathartic and almost attractive about the idea that on the day after the zombie apocalypse, none of us will have to go to work, and everything in the malls and the gun stores will be free for the taking, and anyone who has become a zombie can be blown away at will. I don't think it's an accident that one of the largest zombie groups at Facebook is called "The Hardest Part of a Zombie Apocalypse Will Be Pretending I'm Not Excited".

To tie this in to what Brian and the IO9 folks were saying, if this is in fact the appeal of the zombie action story, then it makes sense that these types of stories would be more popular during periods when the population was frustrated or under great stress. When things are going well, fewer people are interested in the catharsis of a release from everyday obligations. When things are going poorly, the reverse will be true.

Of course, I need to cover this entire post with a great big Not That There's Anything Wrong With That. A lot of these "pop psychology" analyses can sound like they're critical of fans of the genre. Certainly Sontag intended to be critical, and patronizing. Not me, though. I've got my own bug-out plan and I own all these films and I sat down and chose to write my own zombie story - so all of these things apply to me, too. But it's OK. I've learned how to own it.

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De Bello Lemures Featured at A World On Fire

2009-11-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

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A World On Fire is a zombie-themed horror blog that is updated with content very frequently and includes a lot of interactivity.

I'd recommend following this blog on Facebook, as well as browsing it directly. The Facebook fan community is very active and there's a lot of great commentary there.

They were kind enough to run a little feature on De Bello Lemures here.

I have to admit that I liked the enthusiasm of the guy who runs A World on Fire and his little marketing pitch for the book. I may have to steal all or part of it.

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De Bello Lemures Featured at ZombieCommand.com

2009-11-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

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The astute zombie fans over at ZombieCommand.com were kind enough to post a brief feature about De Bello Lemures this week.

Check it out!

I have to extend sincere thanks to Barry and all the folks over at ZombieCommand.com. I definitely noticed a spike in Kindle sales right after their feature ran. And it was really exciting to see my work mentioned on a key site within the genre community.

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Book Review: Naked Metamorphosis, by Eric Mays

2009-11-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

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In the course of working on promoting De Bello Lemures, I've inevitably come across other authors promoting their own works. [If I may be permitted to refer to myself as an author for a moment.] Recently this allowed me the opportunity to review a new title in the New Bizarro Author series at Eraserhead Press: Naked Metamorphosis, by Eric Mays.

For those of you not familiar with Bizarro, Wikipedia defines it as "a contemporary literary genre noted for its 'high weirdness'." I think that would be an understatement: it's not really merely contemporary, I would consider it extremely progressive and forward-looking. It's a genre that seeks to use the absurd to entertain - by mixing images and influences in a Grand Guignol of modern hyperreality. It's the reductio ad absurdum [literally] of the concept of the mash-up. Since I am nothing if not all about the mash-up, I am giving some Bizarro titles a shot.

Here's the Amazon description for Naked Metamorphosis:

Kafka's Shakespearean Tragedy!

All the world's a stage...and Franz Kafka wants to direct! The absurdist has got his hot little hands on the Bard's greatest work - Hamlet. Unfortunately, William S. Burroughs wants to direct too! Perhaps, George W. Bush wants a piece of the action as well.

One thing these literary creators haven't taken into consideration, though, are the characters. Horatio, Hamlet's college roommate, has reached the end of his rope trying to determine whether the piece is a tragedy or a comedy. Hamlet has dropped into a world of hallucinogens and drugs, and thinks he may be turning into a cockroach. And after the declaration of a ghost in Elsinore , Claudius has declared a "War on Terrors"!

What's it all about? And why is Puck around? These questions, and many more, will be answered in a bawdy, bizarro tale of Shakespearean proportions - complete with mistaken identity, ghosts, and true love lost.

Bizarro titles are supposed to barrel the reader over with sheer narrative momentum, inventive dialogue, and inspired weirdness. NAKED METAMORPHOSIS certainly succeeds at all of these.

It's not all just strangeness and transgression, however. There is a clever literary structure hidden under the Burroughs-esque imagery here. Part of that comes from using "Hamlet" as an inspiration, of course, but most of it is the author's own doing. It's sort of a revelation to get to the end and discover that there was a literary plan there all along, wearing a surreal disguise - it's like attending a building demolition and then waking up at the end to discover you're at a Kabuki play.

I was interested to see how the author would combine "Hamlet" and "Metamorphosis", since the former work gives us tragedy as the result of character and the outcome of the choice to either act or not act, and the latter work gives us tragedy as something that happens upon us regardless of our character and regardless of our decisions. I think - though I'm not sure - that the author thinks it's both at once. And shows that to us using a bawdy, funny, ridiculous comedy - while off-handedly having his narrator invent existentialism along the way, while dealing with some annoying actors.

A definite recommend. You can add a star if you're "into" the critical history of the original material, since a number of history's ephemeral "interpretations" of various Shakespearian characters make absurd appearances here or are reimagined in comical ways.

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Paperback Version Temporarily Down

2009-11-13T05:10:00.000-08:00

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I have had some feedback about the POD paperback version that matches my own initial estimate of my proof: the front cover is [was] awkwardly centered, and the one or two typos that I did not catch in the proof process really stand out.

So I decided to bite the bullet and revise the files that CreateSpace and Amazon use to produce the POD version.

I've uploaded corrections that are now being processed. The new version should be back up for sale soon.

I hated to take it down, but now at least the paperback version and the Kindle version will match.

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De Bello Lemures Now Just $0.99 for the Kindle

2009-11-10T03:23:00.000-08:00

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When I made the edits described in my earlier post below, I took the opportunity to change the Kindle price at the same time.

New purchasers of Kindle copies will now get the "new iteration" of the book, and will get it for only $0.99.

Basically I've discovered that my Amazon sales rank in the Kindle store dramatically fluctuates as a result of minor changes in the number of copies sold per day. The sales rank crests and ebbs like the tide as individual copies are sold, and as time passes between sales. I'm lowering the price to try to push myself higher during the "crests". If you can get on and stay on some of the bestseller pages it helps product visibility a lot.

With the "Kindle for the PC" app coming out this month, at some point there will be a wave of new users looking for content, and I want to be highly visible when that happens.

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De Bello Lemures Free Sample Now Available

2009-11-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

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Currently Kindle customers can preview De Bello Lemures for free using the Kindle Preview feature. But DTB paperback customers have been out of luck, until Amazon catches up on their "Look Inside!" backlog.

I am therefore going to make available a preview of the first 38 pages via Google Docs. In addition to the link in this post, I will be adding a permanent link on the left hand side of the home page.

Enjoy!

De Bello Lemures, or the Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica

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Kindle and Version Control

2009-11-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

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One of the revolutionary things about publishing for the Kindle is that it is truly zero cost. Authors and publishers upload the text of books to be published as .html files, and Amazon does the rest.

As a result, correcting or updating the text of a Kindle book is as easy as editing an .html file and negotiating an upload window in your browser. There are no new books to print or old copies containing errata to destroy.

This became relevant to me because, as I mentioned in a post below, a reviewer on Amazon asked a pointed question about the title of De Bello Lemures that was not addressed in the text. As he no doubt noted, the title itself is not grammatically correct Latin: Lemures, as a plural noun, should not be used to modify Bello. The fun "noun adjunct" stuff you can do in English is not appropriate in Latin usage.

The truth is that I chose the title I did because I believed that a measurably higher number of people would be able to decipher De Bello Lemures as "Regarding the War of the Ghosts" than would have found a more grammatically appropriate title accessible. Of course, I should have considered that the very readers most able to do that would also be the readers most likely to note an error in Latin grammar. At one point in an early draft, the Foreword included text justifying my title by claiming that it was an addition by a medieval copyist. After the Carolingian Renaissance dried up and blew away, Latin usage even by the most literate churchmen became progressively more abominable as conditions across Europe worsened, so this explanation of my preferred title was certainly plausible, and fit nicely into the entire "palimpsest" narrative. Unfortunately, I cut this explanatory material from the Foreword, along with other material, in order to scale the Foreword down and keep it proportinate to the main body of the text...and naturally the very first reviewer called me out on it.

But thanks to the Kindle, I can correct this omission. I have added the explanation back into the Foreword as a brief footnote. Since I was changing the text anyway, I took the opportunity to correct a couple of other minor items in the text as well. And POOF! I was able to upload these changes into the Amazon system, where they will go live for new downloads in a day or two. With no cost but my [minor] effort.

One can envision publishing for the Kindle eventually becoming highly iterative in nature, as authors interact with readers and make textual changes based on their input. And that's very exciting to think about.

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Upcoming Horror Project

2009-11-07T03:48:00.000-08:00

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One of the things that drew me to the zombie genre was its central place in the universe of apocalyptic fiction. I've always been interested in stories about how systems and societies fall apart. This may be related to my interest in history, which is often presented to the reader as a series of stories about how individual societies rise and then fall; apocalyptic fiction telescopes that process and personalizes it, and often applies it to our own society in interesting and thought-provoking ways. I've always loved the first twenty minutes of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, because it gives us a series of moments where it's clear that society's defenders - the police, the journalists, the government scientist, the helicopter pilot - realize that the situation is deteriorating from a mere emergency to the End of the World, and then shows us how that End actually comes when those defenders stop defending and proceed on the basis of "every man for himself". Society collapses with the speed of a landslide once a few key thresholds are passed. I've also always loved the last fifteen minutes of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, because I'm fascinated by the human beings in the central facility at Ape Control, who have to realize that they've lost the battle and have a ringside seat as humanity goes down for the count. I always wondered, "What would it be like to be in that room? How would that feel?" That bunker experience, to me, has elements of pure horror that can't be explored by other traditional horror tropes.

That's why it's a little funny to me that I've written a zombie novel - that doesn't explore either of those concepts at all. The "traditional" zombie story provides the perfect opportunity to tell an apocalyptic tale, and it also provides the perfect opportunity to explore the horror possibilities of the "last stand". But the zombie story I chose to tell doesn't do either of those, because it's much more of a Night of the Living Dead story than a Dawn story. And that leaves me with some unfinished business.

I'm going to try to finish that business by telling a new horror story, one that again I'm going to try to tell in an unconventional way. I've started an untitled project that will tell the story of the last days of Philistine Jerusalem, leading up to the city's sack and the extermination of the inhabitants, as described in the biblical Book of Judges and Deuteronomy. I have made the creative decision as well to give the "invaders" the supernatural advantage that the Bible stories describe. Although, as was the case with De Bello Lemures, this makes it possible to think of the story as belonging to the genre of historical fiction, I'm going to approach the story as if it were horror: What would it feel like to face the advance of an implacable enemy, bent on your annihiliation and the destruction of everything and everyone you know and love, if that enemy had been chosen by God to be your destroyer? If that enemy was fighting you with the support of the divine? I think that will explore the concepts I talked about above quite well, if I can properly execute what I'm trying to do. We'll see, I guess.

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De Bello Lemures Receives 5-Star Amazon Customer Review

2009-11-05T04:59:00.000-08:00

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When a new title is published and appears for sale on Amazon, naturally there are no customer reviews associated with that title. So there's a period of time that goes by when the title has no stars.

I obsessively visit the title's product page to keep track of its Amazon sales rank, and in the course of one of those visits I noticed that stars were suddenly associated with the title. That's a really nice "Woot!" moment - you're momentarily confused, and then you blaze around the page looking for the review section.

It's a favorable review, and I found it gratifying for that reason, but also because of the reasons this Kindle reader gives for his positive review. He "got" what I was trying to do with this title, and that made me feel like maybe I had accomplished what I set out to do. I'm going to post the review in almost its entirety [the reader asks a question in his review which I'll clip, and answer in a subsequent post]:

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A very clever novella with some real creepiness, October 31, 2009
By John P. (Kennett Square, PA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
I heard about this clever book from someone on a discussion board. The framing as a translation of a Roman manuscript is brilliantly done -- from the "cover" to the translator's introduction to the footnotes. The way it allows your imagination to work on what happened in AD 185 before you get to the actual manuscript reminded me of the slow build-up of an H. Rider Haggard novel. The story itself lives up to the frame. It has good suspense and pacing, with real chills. Overall, the author succeeds at the difficult task of writing a horror story that is both entertaining for modern readers and believable (or not wholly unbelievable) as an ancient work. On a few occasions, the spell was briefly broken when the dialogue became too modern. But those moments are rare.

Well done! I'm interested in seeing more work from this author.

That's really, really nice to read, as an author. The "frame" was a critical element of the story's conception, and I was not sure that readers would appreciate it. I was actually concerned that many readers would find fault with it and think that it detracted from the narrative. For this reader at least that was not the case.

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Modest Kindle Sales Success

2009-11-04T10:53:00.000-08:00

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Kindle sales have been steady since this book's release. The book rose into the top 5000 items at the Kindle store at Amazon, and made it into the top 25 or top 100 in several of the book's Kindle subcategories or Amazon book subcategories. Seeing the book listed next to titles from "name" science fiction, fantasy, horror, and "zombie" authors was extremely gratifying.

One observation I have to make about the Kindle store is its price sensitivity. A lower price definitely equals higher sales through this channel. I've tried it at $9.95, $4.95 and $1.99, and the higher sales rate at $1.99 evens out the lower royalty per sale, and gets the book into more hands, and higher in the Amazon sales ranks. A high sales rank can turn into even more sales, since customers can browse to your title through the genre or category or subcategory, so this is a great trade-off, as far as I am concerned.

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De Bello Lemures Now Available for the Kindle

2009-11-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

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On October 24th, De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica became available for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

Now I just have to promote the damn thing.

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