One More Week!

***A reminder that 10% of ALL royalties I make from ALL sales of my work on both the Kindle and NOOK will go to Patrick Rothfuss's fundraiser for Heifer International at the end of 2011. Heifer is an excellent organization that helps people at home and abroad build sustainable food supplies and manage resources, and are totally open financially with the public. Buying my books will help fund that charity drive, but even if you don't want to purchase my work, I can't suggest strongly enough that you check out Heifer for yourself and chip in if you can. They do good things.***

I'm a bad Josh for not updating as often as I promised to on this blog. But now is the time, because in about a week, I will be putting out new stuff on the Kindle and Nook.

So, for those of you who want the long version: On March 1, I will be pushing the "Publish" button on the Kindle and Nook versions of "Living With the Dead: The Bitter Seasons", which is the next installment of the bi-yearly LWtD collections. This collection will pull together September of 2010 through February of 2011, the second half of "year one" of the zombie apocalypse. It will be priced at $2.99, the same as the first six months, Living With the Dead: With Spring Comes The Fall. I will note that both of these collections are full book-length, the first one clocks in at just over 100,000 words, which is about the average size of your standard thriller. Together they will come close or exceed the 200,000 word mark, which is about the size of a small Stephen King novel.

I sure hope you're still reading, because as I mentioned in a previous post, I'm also collecting both of those book-sized volumes into one massive fire-breathing monster of an eBook. This collection will have the whole first year in it, creatively titled "Living With the Dead: Year One". Both of the six month volumes will be included, as well as a bit of behind the scenes stuff about the process of writing a serialized story, and how LWtD is supported by readers and inspired by them. The best part about this collection is yet to come....

See, I've made some friends in the last few months, as well as having reconnected with some old ones. Several people, along with myself, have written short stories to be included in "Year One". Annetta Ribken, Lori Whitwam (while this link is to her author page, I strongly suggest checking out the "blogs" link and at least reading her blog "Fermented Fur", it's amazing, funny, sad, hopeful...and moving. I cried with her when she lost her dog, Ozark.) and Rachel Ayers (whose other website, Near and Far, is a great webcomic and should be heaped with praise) have all contributed to the short stories that will be included in "Year One". There is a possibility that a few other people may as well, possibly folks who have written blog posts on LWtD before, but time is growing short...

So--"Year One" will be the whole first two volumes--$2.99 each--plus some behind the scenes words from me, plus at least six short stories set in the LWtD universe. That's a lot of words. A lot of story. You're likely saying to yourself right now, "This must cost at LEAST one trillion dollars."

But you'd be wrong. Oh, so wrong. This collection will be offered for $4.99. That's a dollar off what you would pay if you bought each six month collection by themselves. AND you get all the extra stuff, the bonus material. I'd say that's a pretty good deal.

Now, I realize that some of you have already purchased "With Spring Comes The Fall" and might be a little miffed at the choices here. Some of you will want to read the extra stuff that comes in Year One, but not want to pay for something that, in part, you already own. So here's what I suggest.

If you just want to get the blog collections and don't care about the bonus materials, then just buy "The Bitter Seasons".

If you REALLY want the bonus material and don't mind shelling out a few bucks, then buy "Year One"

If you DO mind shelling out those few bucks, already have "With Spring Comes The Fall" and can't decide between the options for whatever reason, then I suggest that you just buy "The Bitter Seasons". While the bonus content is only available in "Year One" for now, there is always a possibility that it will become available by itself at a later time. That's something I would have to talk to the other authors about, but if there were demand for it, I would make the effort.

Oh, and here's what the cover for "Year One" is going to look like...

 Nifty, eh? This is courtesy of my friend and sometime collaborator, Courtney Hahn, who commissioned it as a Christmas gift for me. Which introduced me to my new cover artist, Rosie Coleman, who is a young lady with an amazing talent and a bright future. Rosie did the above image as well as the cover for my debut novel, Bound to Silence.

On a related note, my vampire novel isn't going to be released with the new LWtD stuff. I've suffered a lot of setbacks, the least of which was being incredibly sick for most of January. Progress has been good lately, and I'm really hoping to release it in the next few months.

And lastly...

I'm thrilled beyond words that LWtD has had the level of success it has seen on the Kindle and Nook. I'm not making huge money, but it's enough that it gives me hope that one day in the foreseeable future, I could be doing this full time. That being said, each and every one of you are always free to read the blog in its original format--online and free, updated almost every single day. Many of you already do, and still purchase the eBook versions to have a convenient copy of the blog to tote around and read at your leisure, or just to show support for a writer you like. I just want you all to know that your support means the world to me, however you choose to show it.

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy next week's new stuff!

That's what I get for bragging...

Sooooooooo.....

Several weeks ago I went nuts because I finally got into the top 3000 on the kindle store. I was really, really proud of that. That was on the night of January 19 through the morning of January 20. That period of time, that 24 hours, was my best selling single day. I was super excited.

Then, amazon changed things on me. The switch from DTP (digital text platform) over to KDP (kindle direct publishing) didn't seem to do much at first. On the twenty first, as other people were reporting problems with their accounts, from information vanishing off the pages of their long-published kindle books to the kindle converter not working and thus not letting them upload their works, I went to dinner with my wife. It was her birthday.

While I was there, Living With the Dead: With Spring Comes The Fall got booted from the kindle store and went into draft mode. Draft mode means it wasn't on sale at all. Totally unavailable. I know for an absolute fact that I didn't do that. Amazon swears they didn't. They also told me that the switch to KDP didn't do it. Mysterious universe, isn't it?

At any rate, I won't go into the hellish twelve days that followed in the detail my angry brain wants to. Suffice it to say that every problem I could possibly have had with that book, I did have. When I republished it, all of the metadata was gone--meaning that it wasn't being recognized on its own page, nor was it being shown on the pages of other books, which is a big part of how readers find your work on the kindle store. It was almost two weeks of utter frustration as my data came and went.

I was at 288 sales when all of that started, and at the rate I was going, I should have beat 400. I probably would have done better than that, really, since my sales momentum was building up nicely. I should have beat a thousand dollars, but I didn't. I got close to 900, which I am certainly not complaining about. I'm thrilled with what I accomplished last month, and the payday that will be coming in seven weeks or so.

My point is that I was on the path to much larger sales, the numbers and momentum were there to show it. Then amazon killed that momentum, purely by accident I'm sure, and wouldn't even own up to it. I sent out email after email, and through the process of trying to get some help with the plethora of issues that cropped up, came to realize a few things.

While the kindle is clearly the biggest success amazon has ever had, and while it makes them literally about a billion dollars (if not more), they just aren't as focused on support for the authors who stock it with titles. I won't go into the horrors of trying to get an honest response or any help at all here--this isn't a rant solely about amazon, for one very important reason.

With Spring Comes The Fall is back on the store, and has been for the last five days. Its data is fully integrated again, and it is selling. In fact, from 3am on the fourth until 3am this morning (which is how I measure my sales days) was my best selling day ever. Which is weird, because there wasn't nearly the same buildup as there was last month. But I'll take it.

The kindle store is still a great and easy way to publish. It's useful as hell for an indie like me, and for the most part it works well. I get paid regularly, My books' pages look good, and for the most part it's stable.

But now I've seen how bad it can get. I've heard horror stories from other authors that make my woes look like absolutely nothing. I've gazed into the abyss that is seller support, KDP "support" (I put that in quotes because while it exists in name, it does not actually exist in practice), and the false promise of a response "within 24 hours". I feel like the abyss gazed also into me...

So I take every day of selling, be it good or bad, with a grain of salt. I know now that at any moment for no reason at all, my work can be bumped off the store. Leaving me, the author, with no choice but to lose a day of sales by resubmitting it, which takes 24 hours. Then it's purchasable again. Still a less painful and faster option than hoping blindly that tech support will fix it. I promise you, no matter what the problem--they won't. Nor will they reply in any reasonable time frame.

I still respect amazon for how amazing their platform is, and for what it is doing to revolutionize the publishing machine. I just don't give them credit for doing all they can to support us, the ones who populate their super-profitable store with goods. You might have noticed that I haven't capitalized "kindle" or "amazon" in this post. That's intentional. Not to thumb my nose at them, but because they've lost that sense of scope and power in my mind that made them a bigger concept. God gets caps, Hope gets them. Freedom, even.

I used to feel this amazing love for amazon, for providing me with the platform I needed to build my career without middlemen. I still appreciate that platform, but in my mind I see the company for what it really is, uncolored by my excitement and optimism--just another big corporation interested in making money. Which is fine--that's what business is for.

I guess the rose tint was knocked off my glasses, and I'm pretty thankful for that. Better it happen now than later, and from here on out I can manage my relationship with amazon as it should be--a business relationship that is as emotionless as the servers that feed out my book. I shouldn't expect them to cater to me, one single writer toiling away in obscurity, nor should they expect me to stick just with them for distribution of my work when it's obvious there are other options I can explore in addition to them.

Sounds like a bad divorce or something, sorry. I just hated having my dream dangled so closely in front of my face, just to have it snatched away. I'm better now. /Rant over.

More to come on Monday: a happier post that will have some details about my forthcoming works due out in early March! It's gonna be exciting!