I have Osiren’s Tears, and Prophecy by Barlight up on Kobo now. Give me time and I’ll have everything available there.
A prophecy taunts the proprietor of a little bar, until he can’t take it anymore. Mayhem ensues.
Prince Ashini must choose between the love of the beautiful goddess, Sekra, and duty to his own people.
When I first started publishing I was a little worried. Worried no one would like it, worried I would make a bad name for myself, worried I’d never sale one… etc. etc.
But it’s actually going better then I thought it would. Sure, I’ve only had 22 sales, and 48 freebies… but that’s 60+ people that read my book.
What’s even better, I have only 4 and 5 star reviews. That makes me think I’m on the right track, even if it is a slow track.
On that note… I’ll be putting out Small Bites 2 next week. Now that I have some momentum I want to keep that going. I am working on several projects at once so that I will (hopefully) be able to publish something new every Friday for a while.
Books will come out as 99 cents for the first weekend, and then go up, except the Small Bites series. They will stay 99 cents as they are really short.
Then, once all the Small Bites are out, I will stick them up as one set for 2.99 (which gets you one book for free). And I will also be working to put out a big book of all my short stories eventually. No idea what I will price it at yet.
But for right now… Small Bites 2, and we’ll worry about everything else later.
A friend called me up the other day and told me about this amazing sale. A book warehouse was selling everything, just $10 for one bag of books. And you brought the bag, any size.
Well, I had a rolling cart. I could fit a lot of books in that thing. Maybe even a couple hundred. Didn’t matter, she said. Ten bucks.
The warehouse was actually three buildings FILLED with shelves of books. The shelves were pretty close together, too.
Enough that I sometimes had to squeeze through to fit.
Books upon books, stretching out as far as you could see. All of them mixed together in no logical order.
We were hunting for hours to find any that we might like.
Many of them were romances. A lot of mystery. It took me hours to find some sci-fi and fantasy, or paranormal. But I eventually came away with a nice stack of books. I grabbed some Nora Roberts, who seemed to be one of the most prolific authors there, and a few Dean Koontz, and then a bunch of random books with interesting covers.
And you know what I discovered while crawling through those three buildings with thousands and thousands of books laid out before me? Mind you, I could throw as many as I wanted in my cart, and price wasn’t really an option….
Book covers are boring.
Nora Roberts, Dean Koontz, John Grisham, and more… all of them.. boring covers.
You have the authors name in HUGE letters, a boring picture, and not much else. Most of them just labeled them as “fiction” so I couldn’t even get a read on what kind of fiction it was. It was frustrating… three warehouses worth of books and not much time to pic out a book, and this is what I had to choose from.
I did manage to find a lot of books with good covers… but it was hard to find them. And a lot of them were meant for younger children.
I notice that Sci-fi and Fantasy are more likely to have expressive covers. Romance is likely to have two people kissing, or something like that. Paranormal will often have an expressive cover.
This is why I work so hard on my own covers. I want someone to be able to look at a glance, and get an idea of what’s inside the book. So far I think I’ve done alright… You be the judge.
A prophecy taunts the proprietor of a little bar, until he can’t take it anymore. Mayhem ensues.
Prophecy by Barlight is out, and available for this weekend only at 99 cents.
After this weekend it will go up to $2.99.
So get it while it’s HOT!
Prophecy by Barlight is a comedic tale about a barkeep, and his desire to get rid of a prophecy. He’s willing to go to some extremes to do it, too.
A few days ago Amazon announced their intentions to start a new line. Fan fiction… for pay.
This is unusual because fan fiction is usually skirting copyright by avoiding pay.
Basically, if you write fan fiction for “Vampire Diaries” or “Pretty Little Liars”, and it isn’t porn, then you have a chance of earning some money from the sale of that fan fiction. However, in exchange Amazon, and the original IP owners (in this case the studio producing that franchise) get to use your stories in whatever way shape or form they want to, and they don’t have to cut you in on the deal.
This is good, in the way that it allows some people who like writing fan fiction to write it, and sell it. To earn money they would not have been able to earn otherwise.
This is bad because if you do write the fan fiction, then the producers decide your fic is good and they want to make that into an episode… well they already have it. You aren’t getting paid anymore for it, no matter what you say or do. You don’t even get the regular writers fees for people who work on these shows.
If you write it anyway, maybe it is okay for you. But in all honesty I like Hugh Howey’s idea of fan-fic better. He encourages it, and lets you sell. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even care what kind of fan-fic it is because it’s your work. He even advertises it on his website!
Fan fiction is an interesting beast all it’s own. I wrote it when I was younger. E.L. James wrote it then changed it up and made millions off “50 Shades of Grey”. Fan fiction isn’t going anywhere.
But I don’t agree with giving Amazon, or “Pretty Little Liars” the ability to use your work unchecked. If they want to hire you as a writer… great. If they want to use your work, license it. But don’t just claim it for a few bucks while they make millions.
John Skulzi had something to say about Amazon’s new world, and Neil Gaiman agreed with him. Here is Neil Gaiman’s opinion on fan fiction itself.
If you want to write it, and publish it, just know what you’re getting into.
NOTE: “Twilight Tales” will only be available for a few more hours, but if you did pick it up, and read it, please consider giving it a review. Reviews mean so much to new authors. Also, there are three more books available ranging .99 to 2.99.
Twilight tales is Free this weekend.
Please click the link.
Honestly, the toughest part about becoming a writer is just getting people to notice you. So if you could download the book, take a look, and leave a review that would be INCREDIBLY helpful, and you would have my sincere thanks.
It’s been a while since I shared my word count.
You can see the steady rise of daily word counts. I went from an average of 200 in February to 500 in April. I’m pushing that even higher this month.
What I’ve noticed….
When I finished a big project (in this case, Osiren’s Tears) I had a sharp drop off in word counts because I ended up spending a lot of time doing edits, cover design, formatting and the other “boring” parts of self publishing. I also had no idea where to start on the 20 projects I have lined up.
When I got a new idea the words just flew out of my finger tips. I ended up with two days over 2000+ words because of two great little ghost story ideas. Similarly, back in March I had a 1000+ day because of a brand new Sci-fi idea that I am still working out the kinks for.
Good news, I’m getting faster. Bad news, I’m going to have to spend a few more days here and there ironing out the “boring” parts of self publishing because I’ll have more content to put out there.
And a teaser for the ghost story….
After finishing “Osiren’s Tears” I’m kind of at a lose for what to do. I’ve been working on it for so long that I’m stuck feeling like… “What now”.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of projects to chose from. There is the second story in the “Everquest Saga”, Rage War, and “Prophecy by Barlight”, plus the second “Small Bites” I want to put out… I have no end of projects.
I also wanted to try doing some youtube videos. I’m not quite sure how to do them… that pesky fear getting in the way again. But it is something I have to deal with, so I am thinking about trying to paint a scene from one of my stories, and have it narrated while you watch the painting. This could be really good, or really awful depending on how it goes. I think I’m going to try it, and post the results. Even if it is terrible at least I tried.
I updated my bookshelf with pictures of all my book covers, and a blurb about each of them. Links to them as well.
I’ve also done a few minor adjustments to the files for each of the novels. I had to adjust all the book covers to make them a uniform size, and fix a couple of typos. If anyone finds a typo let me know about it. Even though I paid for a professional editor it doesn’t mean she caught every single typo.
I suppose it is time for me to go tackle that new project, whichever one it is.
And as Neil Gaimen so often says… “Make good art.”
Prince Ashini must choose between the love of the beautiful goddess, Sekra, and duty to his own people.
Osiren’s Tears is now up on Amazon.
It is priced at $2.99 at the moment.
I might put it up on sale this weekend for 99 cents. I still have to figure out about marketing before I do that.
However, I am going to be moving this to $4.99 next month. It’s a full length book, after all.
There is a sample available on Amazon. You can read most of the first chapter there. Try it before you buy it.
Now that “Osiren’s Tears” is at the editors I realized that “Small Bites 1” is also ready to go up. SO! I will have two new books out by the end of the month.
I also have two fellow writers helping me iron out some kinks before I put out my next couple books. And my boyfriend who has been helping me when he can, mostly with encouragement, sometimes with editing and advice.
I went through everything I have ready, or near ready, and I actually have 15 books that I should have out by June! (Including the two already out.)
After such a slow start, and months between books, the fact that I will soon have 15 of them is amazing.
Couple things that helped me get this far:
1. Getting organized.
I literally had hundreds of story ideas, so many it was overwhelming. So I started by pairing it down to “What is a solid, complete, story idea”, then “what is almost finished” and was able to narrow it down to just a couple dozen stories. Much of easier to deal with.
So however your creative side isthe finding expression, narrow it down to what is most important now, finish those, then come back for more.
2. Track Yourself
I loved NaNoWriMo. Watching the little graphs go up as I wrote each day. Having a goal. Competing against friends to see who could finish first.
It took me a month in June of trial and error to finally find a system that worked best for me, but now I have it. It tracks all the important things. Words written, chapters finished, blog posts… everything at a glance with a running tally for each month. And because of it my word count is going up every day.
3. Annoying Friends
I have the guys over at SPP and STP, especially Garrett, that keep writing and publishing thousands of words every month. And I keep thinking… I’m going to catch up to you dang it! And by golly I am going to catch up eventually!
It’s the whole idea behind the competition part of NaNoWriMo. Comparing yourself to other people isn’t always a good thing… but for this I’m making an exception.
4. Don’t be Satisfied with the Status Quo
I want to do better. I want to write more, write better, edit more, and have TONS of books out there. That drive to push myself… in the end it’s really what keeps me at this.
So… GO CREATE SOMETHING! No more excuses.
Author Crissy Moss 