A few additional BA details

On July 18, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

It’s now available on Smashwords, here, for 99 cents. There are a variety of file formats available.
Apple bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Oyster, and several other stores are coming and will be linked to at that time, but you can download it in whatever format you like from Smashwords.
There’s gonna be a 15% preview available on the Goodreads page in a few hours once they’ve processed the file I sent them. Check… tomorrow, I guess?

I didn’t get any actual writing done today– at least, not yet, and it’s 9:15 so that’s probably it for the day– but I feel like I got enough authorstuff done to call it a decent day.

THE BENEVOLENCE ARCHIVES now only $0.99!

On July 18, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

The announcement’s right there in the title, but let’s put it here too– now that I’ve pulled The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 from Amazon’s KDP Select program, I’ve dropped the price to only ninety-nine cents, which is so cheap it’s practically free. Just not actually free.

In addition, very soon the book will be available everywhere— I have some reformatting stuff I have to do tonight to comply with Smashwords, but I think that by the end of the weekend you will be able to download it through virtually any ebook service anywhere. The Smashwords version is available now, but I’m not going to link to it yet because of the aforementioned formatting errors. If you want some other version, hold off until I let you know everything’s working okay.

But: 99 cents! Let’s sell some books, eh?

Author nerd post!

On July 18, 2014July 18, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

So this has happened– Amazon has introduced a new program called “Kindle Unlimited,” where for a flat fee of $9.99 a month you can download and read as many books as you want on your Kindle and keep them for as long as you’d like, so long as you keep paying the $9.99 a month.

I’m not sure what kind of deal they worked out with the actual publishing companies, but apparently us lowly independent folk get paid the same way we did for the Kindle Lending Library– if you’re enrolled in Kindle Select, you’re in, and you get a portion of the money they set aside for KS people every month each time your book gets borrowed. Which, I should point out, isn’t a bad deal at all, or at least it doesn’t sound like one on paper.

Except:

The Benevolence Archives has moved nearly 500 copies– significantly more as a free book than paid, but that’s still not nothing– and has never once been downloaded by someone on the lending library. So this is not really a thing that appeals to me as an author, although as a reader I’m thinking about checking it out.

Here’s the interesting thing, though: since they’ve altered the terms of the Kindle Select deal by creating this program, they’re allowing anyone currently involved in Kindle Select to remove their book from the program even if they’re not through with their 90 days yet. Mine don’t run out for a few more weeks, but I’d already decided that I didn’t see the advantage of the program, so I’m gonna pull it early. Which means that 1) I can make it available at the various other online services (Barnes and Noble! Smashwords! Apple!) and 2) I have a bit more flexibility about price.

I’ll let y’all know what ends up happening with that as soon as it’s happened.

In case you’re wondering if my mood’s improved

On July 17, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics7 Comments

Note to men: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE for how you act toward and around women. Not the women. Not the women’s fucking clothes. You.

Fucking idiot asshole scumbags.

Fuggit

On July 17, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching16 Comments

Today, so far, has been the day I was worried most of the summer was going to turn into– hours and hours of pointless web surfing and bullshit combined with a complete lack of accomplishment by any metric whatsoever and a mild bout of depression. I caught myself thinking about returning to my previous school on the way home from taking the boy to day care this morning and by the time I got back to my house I was halfway to a fucking panic attack.

I do not want to teach any more. Regardless of where I end up, this must be my last year in this profession. It’s killing me.

I’m going to sit here on the couch with my laptop and uselessly get pissed off at the world until my wife and son get home now.

Kvetching! Pointless kvetching!

On July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing3 Comments

Ye gods, do I hate marketing and everything connected with it. I want to flip a switch that magically makes everyone who might like my book aware of it, and then never have to think about it again.

Here’s a thing I just did. This comic showed up on Penny Arcade today. Then, a few hours later, Gabe followed up on the comic with this post, providing a bit more context and detail. And when I went and looked at the book’s page on Amazon, there are at least a couple of reviews that mention the sex scenes screwing up the tone of the rest of the book.

(Also, she seems to be doing remarkably well for a debut novel for an indie author– “Blue Bedlam Books” doesn’t appear to actually exist. I’m sure sales have spiked today even though Gabe didn’t like her book, but those 80-some-odd reviews had to come from somewhere.)

(Also also, you’re just gonna have to click on the links. It’ll only take a minute to catch up, and you only need to look at the first two. That’s all the context you get; pbbbbt.)

I saw the strip first thing this morning, and it got me thinking. And this is a thing I just did:

@cwgabriel (deep breath) I genuinely think you might like my book. Try the free sample out: http://t.co/RaO7bsxiQU No rasping, promise.

— Luther M. Siler (@nfinitefreetime) July 16, 2014

The thing is, I actually do think Gabe would like The Benevolence Archives. He’s well-known to be a Star Wars fan, he talks about the books a fair amount on the site, and he says right in that post I linked that putting the Millennium Falcon on the cover of your book guarantees a sale. Well, there’s no space ship on the cover of The Benevolence Archives (dammit!) but I gotta feel like if that sort of thing is appealing than my actual cover is going to get a second look out of you.

And just… blech. Argh. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that Tweet is gonna get ignored because that’s how Twitter works, and the guy’s got a hundred and fifteen thousand followers so I suspect he gets pretty well inundated in @s and replies and other such nonsense. But I’m practically hyperventilating over here, like I’m harassing the dude or something.

Ugh. Haaaaaate promotion. Hate it.

Tangentially related: As I’ve spent more and more time fucking around on Twitter lately (and talking to celebrities/more well-known writers than me who have no reason to pay attention to my nonsense) I’ve been downloading lots of sample chapters of books and seeing lots of little Tweet-sized promotions for them.

Holy crap is there a lot of terrible stuff out there. And the problem is, most of the time, when I come across this stuff, I’m finding it because it’s people who are following me who I’ve followed back, or who follow me back after I follow them, and it just feels mean to rip their shit apart as it so richly deserves. I may have to start a Tumblr or a second blog or something just to have a place to make fun of terrible indie books, because oh man, some of this stuff.

Then again, somebody’s probably saying that about my book, so… what the hell do I know, right?

(Note: If I have actually talked to you about your book, I am not talking about you here. I promise.)

(Second note: want to really fuck with my head? Buy my book tonight. I haven’t had a sale in a couple of days and I will go completely nuts wondering if Gabe actually bought the thing or not.)

In case you ever thought I was smart

On July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

I’d like to point out that Chuck Wendig is a Real Author and this is therefore somewhat more humiliating than it ought to be. I have literally been complaining about “ducking” since I got an iPhone and this is the first time it’s been pointed out to me that ducking actually is a goddamn verb.

I is a writar!

My Google-fu and vocabulary have failed me

On July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Writing7 Comments

The bit that’s flipped up there, so that the pilot can climb inside the jet. What’s that called?

I swear to God I’ve just spent several minutes looking for the answer with no luck. Closest I can get is “windshield,” but I feel like that shouldn’t apply to the back part of the damn thing and plus windshield doesn’t repurpose to part of a spacecraft all that well, since there’s no goddamn wind. Vacuumshield? Dumb.

Words are stupid.

(Sidenote: Ha! There was a period of time early in the life of the blog where for some reason WordPress wanted to add “aviation” as a tag to every single post I wrote no matter what. I get to use it for real!)