I'm experimenting with Weebly as a website and blog to host The Burning Times and I think it will replace poor tumblr. It lets me set up something that looks more like a magazine website and I've put together a page on the books' historical and mythological context, which makes me feel good. It also looks nicer.
Create Space are vetting the paperback edition of Tinderspark, so hopefully that will go live in the next few days. Meanwhile, the book is dead on Amazon. It's impossible to find by chance (lost on page 78 of the Fantasy listings) so I'm contemplating re-defining the Genre, or at least one of the Genres. Over on Smashwords there have been over 100 downloads because people can find the book - if you select 50,000+ words and "Free" it's at the top of the page for Historical Fantasy and pretty prominent for vanilla fantasy too. Amazon won't let me give the book away for free, so I think I'll have to be more ingenious about marketing it.
Meanwhile, 'Hexenfire' is finished and being proofread so hopefully it should go live as soon as the cover art is ready. I've no idea what difference a second book makes to the visibility or desirability of the first. Any? None? This is all a voyage of discovery for me.
Positive Things About The Whole Experience
Negativity
Well, the rest, really. Once the book, my baby, is 'out there' I want it to thrive and grow. I'm not expecting it to provide an income for me, but I want it to be successful, be read, be enjoyed. So I find myself fretting about it. Day and Night.
I was going to make a joke allusion to Gollum and the Ring in Tolkien's novel, but then it occurred to me, it's EXACTLY like that. Hmm. I wonder if Tolkien got his inspiration for the Ring from the act of novel writing. Was the book itself his 'Precious'? Is Gollum the author? Do I have to fall headlong shrieking into a canyon of fire, book in hand? Would that shut me up?
Create Space are vetting the paperback edition of Tinderspark, so hopefully that will go live in the next few days. Meanwhile, the book is dead on Amazon. It's impossible to find by chance (lost on page 78 of the Fantasy listings) so I'm contemplating re-defining the Genre, or at least one of the Genres. Over on Smashwords there have been over 100 downloads because people can find the book - if you select 50,000+ words and "Free" it's at the top of the page for Historical Fantasy and pretty prominent for vanilla fantasy too. Amazon won't let me give the book away for free, so I think I'll have to be more ingenious about marketing it.
Meanwhile, 'Hexenfire' is finished and being proofread so hopefully it should go live as soon as the cover art is ready. I've no idea what difference a second book makes to the visibility or desirability of the first. Any? None? This is all a voyage of discovery for me.
Positive Things About The Whole Experience
- I've written two books. It's been emotionally exhilarating and turned me into a narcissistic obsessive.
- I've learned how to use Word properly (section formatting, saving to HTML, creating styles) and also ventured out into twitter, blogging and using Facebook for more than sharing videos of cats falling over
Negativity
Well, the rest, really. Once the book, my baby, is 'out there' I want it to thrive and grow. I'm not expecting it to provide an income for me, but I want it to be successful, be read, be enjoyed. So I find myself fretting about it. Day and Night.
I was going to make a joke allusion to Gollum and the Ring in Tolkien's novel, but then it occurred to me, it's EXACTLY like that. Hmm. I wonder if Tolkien got his inspiration for the Ring from the act of novel writing. Was the book itself his 'Precious'? Is Gollum the author? Do I have to fall headlong shrieking into a canyon of fire, book in hand? Would that shut me up?