Just hit the button

I just hit the button and put the next two books up for pre-order on Amazon.  They're currently in the queue, and should go live by tomorrow. I'll put links out in my newsletter on Friday, and on my blog and site on Monday.  Newsletter subscribers can also win a chance to earn free paperback copies of each.

Nidhöggr

Múspellsheimr is a realm unlike any other, with suns that never set and lakes and seas of poisoned water.  When Fenrir and Jörmungandr take drastic measures to survive the realm’s intense heat, they in turn endanger the lives of a family of vengeful giants.

In a deal to retrieve the ancient magic to undo what was done, Jörmungandr puts his life on the line while Fenrir is sent out with the landowner’s eldest daughter.  But when the magic isn’t where Fenrir expects it to be, he is forced to race against time and face witches, undead spirits, and self-made gods to save himself and his brother.

Releases April 1st.

Valkyrja

When war breaks out between the elves and the men on Álfheimr, all the warriors in the kingdom are called to fight for their king.  As a jarl’s daughter, Hilde is amongst the front lines, prepared to fight for her king and her land against the invaders.  But it isn’t long before sides begin to shift and lines blur.  Soon, Hilde finds her tribe allied with the men, and fighting against the king.  Unsure where her loyalties lie, Hilde does the unimaginable and flees from battle to seek out any who might help guide her to the right path.  Even if that help comes at an unpayable price.

Releases May 1st.

 

LibraryThing Giveaway

If you entered into my LibraryThing giveaway for Dwarf's Ransom, you should be receiving several notices in your email.  All files have been sent out to the email addresses provided.  If you do not receive an email from me shortly, please be sure to check your spam folder.

I'm kind of excited to see how this works out.  This is the first time I've used a third party to host the giveaway, and it's already been easier than using Tumblr.  Depending on how this goes, I may continue to do this for all future releases.  Or I may not.  We'll see.

Amazon and Kindle Book Categories

This is something that's been on my mind for a while, and have two different opinions on it. When authors upload and publish their books to Amazon, there are two ways to get the book into the author's desired categories. The first is selecting them manually, from a long list of options. The second is through using specific tags. Both options are under the author's complete control, and it's something I both love and despise.

Book Review - Dragon (False Kings, True Gods Book 1)

False Kings, True Gods: Dragon 
Eva Mae Ramble
Price: $0.99

My Rating: Three stars (out of five)

Review:

I like a short read, so despite the other review complaining this book was too short, I picked this one up to give it a go. But ultimately, I have to agree with them.  This book is the first of a series, and there is some promising world building in this one, but the entire story felt rushed, and almost breathless. We're hardly given the chance to know the characters for themselves. Instead, they all seem to be described from the points of view of the other characters. The characters whose names all blend together, because they're all so long. Everyone has a name, a surname, and a byname. Some even have more than one byname.  While I had little trouble keeping them apart during reading, I cannot recall a single name even moments after reading the story.

But the story itself does show some promise.  There's an evil king (more on him and what makes him evil) who's taken over the land like he's a Lannister in King's Landing, his wife, whose husband he had previously murdered, their daughter, and the boy their daughter is betrothed to. When the boy runs away, the king stops everything to fetch him, lest he get eaten by dragons.  The only reason he fetches the boy is because he's betrothed to the daughter.  It was one of the elements that seemed particularly rushed to me, if he's the evil king who's already taken over everything, it seems odd that he'd go out of his way to fetch a boy he didn't much care for to begin with. It seemed as if he'd wanted the marriage, but the boy's kingdom is one that already fell, so the marriage felt moot anyway.  But since we never get to see anyone's motivations without seeing them through someone else's eyes, it's difficult to know what he's up to, or why.  In fact, the only thing we do know about him is that he raped his wife for twenty straight days until she conceived their daughter.  Rape as a way to show how evil someone is has never been a trope that sat well with me to begin with, but the flippancy in which it's discussed, even by the ten year old daughter, was disturbing. And that was another thing.  The daughter didn't seem like she was ten, and seemed to flip between sides and opinions as quickly as I flipped pages.  I would have loved to see more of what that was all about.  It seemed like she might have been playing some long game, but with the shortness of the story, it's difficult to tell if that was the case, or if the author just lost the voice halfway through. There's also a strangely Christian slant to this book, which I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.  But it didn't ping me as being overtly Christian until the Lord's Prayer was said to Ra, which was odd. 

And there was the whole thing with the dragons at the end.  I picked this up entirely because it was a book about dragons, and there it did deliver.  A least in the final act. At first I was confused about how many dragons there were, and had to read a passage several times before just guessing that there were three.  I really wanted to see more of the boy and his dragon, and wanted to find out more about the dragons. They seem intelligent in this author's world, and I wanted to see how far that went. I kept wanting the dragon to say something, or to give some definitive confirmation that it understood the boy, but the story ended abruptly just as it started to get truly interesting. Everything just suddenly wrapped up in a strangely neat bow that I'm still not entirely sure I understand the logic of.   The rest of the series isn't out yet, and I can't say if I will in the future. However saying that, I do appreciate that it was written, and I love seeing European-ish fantasy with characters who aren't white. 

Check it out if you like Princeless and dragons.  It's a short read that definitely feels like there could be a lot more behind it.  Again, the premise is interesting, and it shows a lot of potential, but the rushed quality of it makes it feel like there's a lot missing to this story.

Bad Business: BlueHost

My current web hosting is crap, and I've been looking into transferring my domain elsewhere.  I had every intention on doing that tonight, but one wrong decision has ruined my night and made me sick. 

When I clicked on BlueHost, it was because it was on a list of hosts recommended by WordPress.  I went through, and the pricing and products looked good, so I ordered the smallest package, since I don't need much.  It was going to be $3 a month, paid in advance for a year.  And since I already have the domain name, that was an added savings right there.

So when I purchased it and went to initiate the transfer, I got blocked because my account wasn't verified.  Well, I thought.  I'd gone through all the hoops, hadn't I?  I checked my email to make sure there wasn't a link I missed clicking on somewhere.  But no.  I have to phone them to verify my account.  And they're nine-to-five, so I couldn't even do that.  I was kind of annoyed, and went digging through the options to see what else I could even do without verifying my account (answer: nothing).  And that's when I saw that instead of being billed $36, I was billed over $230.  Because not only did they charge me for extra time I did not order, but they added on extra packages I did not order.  Packages I specifically opted out of. 

And I can't even cancel, because they're not open.  I feel so sick right out.  I can't remember the last time I've been taken advantage of so thoroughly.  First thing in the morning, I'm calling and speaking with someone's supervisor, and I am not hanging up until I get a full refund.  I was willing to deal with being jerked around with the verification, but I will not do business with this company ever again.

New Mailing List

I have a new mailing list set up.  Anybody subscribed to the old one has already been moved over to the new service.  Subscribing is now simpler and does not require a Google email address.  You can subscribe either by using the form on this blog's sidebar, or by going to this page. 

Mailing list subscribers automatically get entered into drawings for free books and other promotions.  Five signed copies of Sky Treader will be given to subscribers on April 1st.  Other titles will be offered as they become available.

Goodreads Giveaway

Are you on Goodreads?  Do you want a signed, printed copy of Dwarf's Ransom?  I'm giving away ten of them!  The giveaway will last for one month, with winners announced on April 5th.  Enter now for your chance to win!

BOOKS!

Well, a book.  My book!  The first proof copy of Sky Treader came in today.  I need to make a minor change to one of the pages that didn't centre properly, but it's good.  I was particularly worried about my font choice, and thought it might be too big, but it works.  And now that I know it does, I'm going to go ahead with the others as well. 

After reading a lot of discussions on CreateSpace's printing, I was a little worried that I wouldn't like the end product, but it actually feels really sturdy.  The cover is good and thick, and the pages don't feel like they're going to tear if you look at them too hard.  When I get it through and have it properly available, I'll probably order about a dozen copies and do a GoodReads giveaway to celebrate.

LibraryThing Giveaway

Even though I just held one on Tumblr, I've decided to see how much I like LibraryThing's giveaway platform.  I just posted the details for it, though I can't find how to link to the actual giveaway.

These giveaways are also the reason I've decided to look into going into print.  I'd love to hold a few giveaways on GoodReads, but they only allow printed books, where LibraryThing does allow ebooks.  Already looking at it, I'm seeing several times more requests on print books than ebooks though.

I'm kind of excited to see how this goes.  I'm only running it for a week, so I don't expect to see too many takers.  Still.  It seems like it might be easier than running them on Tumblr.

Release day book binge

Since Dwarf's Ransom came out yesterday, I spent last night going through the top sellers for its category and effectively scoping out the competition.  It's a small category, but of what I started to read last night, I wasn't able to even get past the first chapter on any of them.  The last one seemed promising, but by the time I got to it, I was too tired to keep my eyes open, so the last one's waiting to be read tonight.
Most of the books I came to had similar problems in formatting that made it too difficult to read (either because something happened and there were no paragraph breaks, or the author didn't understand formatting conventions or how paragraphs work), or had just been placed in the wrong category and weren't anything I actually wanted to read.  Two of them had misspellings in the title, which just made it impossible for me to get past (and I thought twenty uses of "reigns" when the author meant "reins" was grating).  These are issues I find I can look past in fanfic, but if I'm paying for a story, I expect it to at least be spelled correctly. 

Another really common one that came up, which just reminded me of why I hated reading as a kid, is all the pointless infodumping.  And not even about anything interesting, like the setting, or a particularly turbulent political history.  Those, I can usually get through.  But more like the kind of infodumping every children's novel does, where they describe in detail what a person looked like, and what they're wearing, and what they thought about what they're wearing, and their opinions on what they had for breakfast two days before...

I read a lot of that last night.  And it's just something I could not possibly care less about.  I've always been a believer in only telling the reader the important bits, but so much of infodumping is just random garbage.  It goes back to the boring bits.  Often, the boring bits are boring because they're unnecessary. 

I admit, this is a matter that entirely comes down to taste, but it's becoming so prevalent that I find myself reading less and less these days.  And when I do read, half the time I'm just skimming over stuff and hoping to find the plot again.

Dwarf's Ransom Release! Also, contest winners!

Dwarf's Ransom is now availale on Amazon for $2.99.  You can order it to read on any wireless device with the Kindle app, and read for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription (only for the next 90 days.  After that, it will no longer be avalable on KU, since I won't be keeping it in Select after the first enrollment period).

And if you still haven't grabbed it, Sky Treader is free for the next five days, as well as being available in Kindle Unlimited as well (also only until its enrollment period expires).


Why are they coming out of Kindle Unlimited?  I've decided to give Select (the publishing method which allows books to be enrolled in KU) a try this month, to see how I like it.  Enrolling in Select gives me higher royalties in terroritories outside the US (70%, as opposed to 35%), but at the expense of not being able to offer my books anywhere outside of Amazon.  Since this limitation does not expand to print, I've decided to release all new books in print as well.  In future, I'm going to aim to have them release on the same day as the ebook version, but that wasn't possible with Dwarf's Ransom, since I only made this decision within in the last few days.  It and Sky Treader will be made availble this month, as time and scheduling allow.  If the stars manage to align and I can get everything formatted in time, I would like very, very much for Nidhöggr to come out in print and digital together next month.


But what's this?  A contest?  That's right.  Three lucky winners have won the giveaway for a digital copy of Dwarf's Ransom.

moustashleigh, freedom-taker, and elethyra were the lucky winners this round.  I will be contacting you later today, when it's not the middle of the night.

Winners were chosen via random number generator at random.org.

Sky Treader in Print?

Yep!  Well, not quite yet.  I've only just submitted it, and have to wait for it to go through approval before I can order the proofs.  It's small — like, children's book small — which is part of the reason I chose Sky Treader for my test book.  Depending on how easily the process goes from here, and how well I like the proofs, I plan on staggering print releases with Kindle releases.  I could, in theory, release both the Kindle and the print versions at the same time, but that would mean I'd always have to have a second book in buffer, since I'm placing the first 1000 or so words of the next book at the end of each one.

I'd been told that the covers tend to be tricky to set up, but I actually found that the easiest part of the process.  Since I have .psd files of all my covers, it was just a matter of expanding it from just a front cover to a full cover, and my designs are simple enough that it took about 20 minutes.  The hardest part was figuring out that I had to flatten the image before exporting it as a .pdf, as required by the printer.  In fact, the hardest part of the whole process was figuring out why Word thought I wanted all of my text to be vertically centred.  I only ever have problems like that when I use someone else's template, but I've tweaked it enough that I'll be able to use it for all future titles without that problem.

Amazon Ads, part 3

The message from my last post is gone, and even better, my stats are now steadily rising, instead of bouncing all over the place.  It actually got fixed a few hours after my last post, but I wanted to hold off and see if it stayed fix.  Which it seems to have done.

With it being fixed, I've been able to work on my targeting a bit more.  Now that I have somewhat accurate data (it still only seems to update once every 12 hours), I've been able to fiddle with my targeting a bit more.  I spent about 20 minutes yesterday adding more products to my list, and have already seen results.  This time yesterday, it showed just over 400 impressions. Since going through and changing my targets, I've got just under 1200 impressions, and one click (still no sales, but I wouldn't expect a sale off of the first click).

What I find interesting is this campaign started the same day I began promoting listings on Etsy, and the impressions on both sites seem to be fairly close to one another.  It's just a strange coincidence that has nothing to do with anything, but it gives me a bit of a benchmark.  Amazon is a much bigger search engine than Etsy, but I'm also bidding a little higher for a few of my Etsy listings.  I'm kind of wondering how long they'll stay at similar ranges, and when one of them will finally overtake the other.  In a strange way, I almost expect Etsy to out-perform Amazon, but we'll see.

Amazon Ads, part 2

First, I'm going to start with this:

Data Inaccurate

Metrics data is currently reporting inaccurately. Data for your campaigns will be available in full when this issue is resolved.

 

 

This is what's appearing at the top of my campaign page right now, and other people are saying the same.  We're wondering if this might have something to do with the magically resetting stats which make it impossible to track your clickthrough rate.  I'm hoping this is the case, because I need to know at least somewhat how effective my targets are.  But I've seen my impressions bounce from 10, to mid-60s, to low-20s, and now back up to the 80s.

Which is still absurdly low.  But I went around checking out what books are being promoted where, and I'm finding the most ridiculous targeting I've ever seen.  Since I'm targeting Sky Treader to a bunch of Thor comics, figuring people who like Thor will probably be into fiction about Norse deities, I went clicking around the titles I'm targeting.  And I'm finding everything from Gothic romance to bizarre plays about hair... or something.  I'm wondering if these people are targeting by category, and then selecting every single available category.  Because while I'm sure there is some overlap between Thor and Gothic romance, people probably aren't going to go looking for Thor and then suddenly change their minds about what they want.

I've been seeing this everywhere too.  Even on the books within my genre, I'm seeing the most random things being promoted.  

Right now, the low impression rate isn't bothering me, because it's nothing out of pocket.  But I'm looking forward to see where it winds up later this summer.

Amazon Ads

There's been some talk about these things on several message boards lately, so I've decided to start a campaign and see how well it goes.  Something I put off for a very long time, because well.  Let's be real here, Amazon's whole KDP system is really opaque and difficult to wrap your head around sometimes.  The minimum amount you can spend on advertising with them is $100, which put me right off.  I had assumed this was an up-front fee for ads in targeted emails.  Which I would definitely pay for, if I had that kind of money to just spend all at once.

But it's more like Baby's First AdWords.  In which I mean it really doesn't give you any anaylitics, which is also kind of a deterrent.  There's no way to know how your targeting is working, and which of your targets aren't performing.  For which I suppose the solution is to just have all the targets you can possibly have.  More on this later, because despite this, I've decided to try it with Sky Treader.  It's on a pay per click model, which means I only pay if people click my ad.  I've set my bid at 5¢ per click, so I just have to have one sale per 40 clicks to break even.  Which are just about the only analytics Amazon gives you. 

They tell you how much you've spent, how much of your budget is remaining, your number of impressions, your number of clicks, and your number of sales.  Which apparently all like to reset at random, or so I've heard, so I'll have to keep a close eye on it.  Either way, I will still be able to see my sales on the main dashboard, so it's not like I'll be going at this completely blind.

I've also set my campaign to run for the maximum allowed time: six months, and selected the option for my budget to be spread out evenly over that time.  I'm looking at a maximum spend of about $16 a month, which is far more reasonable.  That would be a minimum of 320 clicks, from which I should be able to make eight sales in order to break even.  In reality, with my low, low bid, I probably won't wind up spending even half that amount per month. 

The reason I've set my campaign up to span six months is with the speculation that my impressions, clicks, and sales should gradually increase over time.  This system is brand new, and lots of people are using it.  People who are promoting to every single category on Amazon with little regard to target demographics.  And because they're competing with everybody else, I'm seeing average bids of upwards of $1.00 on several message boards.  By taking the low-risk approach of a low bid and marathon campaign, rather than a sprint, I may only wind up spending a dollar or so for the first few months.  As everyone else depletes their budget and their campaigns end, I'll still be there with my 5¢ bid, still making $2 for every sale instead of 50¢.  If it looks like it's working for Sky Treader, I'm going to set up a campaign for several other books, using the same model.  If it seems like it is going to somehow cost me more money than I'm making back, I can always end the campaign without being charged my full budget.  But if I can't make a single sale off 40 clicks, there's something wrong with what I'm selling, and not with the ad I'm running.

Dwarf's Ransom, and what's next

Just a reminder that there's one week left before Dwarf's Ransom releases.  You can pre-order it here.

You can also pick up Sky Treader for free for five days, staring March 1st.  Both will also continue to be available on Kindle Unlimited.


Now that I've finished with Dwarf's Ransom, I've been fiddling with the next one a bit.  I'm not entirely sure where it's going to go, but it will involve Fenrir and Jörmungandr, and possibly a trip to Muspelsheimr.  I have a few other ideas, and plans to introduce someone I've been wanting to bring in since this series' original inception as a web serial. 

I also have something else in the works with Sigrid, a character we meet in Dwarf's Ransom.  I don't know when her story will come out, since it's the sort of story that seems like it's only interesting to me, at least for the moment.  Maybe her story will become interesting later in the year.

Dwarf's Ransom now available for pre-order!

Dwarf's Ransom is now available on Amazon for pre-order, and will be available to purchase or borrow on March 1st.

Jari, a young dwarf from an isolated kingdom, is sent out to find his trouble-making brothers. After being saved by a stranger from being trampled by a horse, Jari finds himself with a new companion in this strange land. As they search for Jari's kin, they find more trouble made than either of them had anticipated. Soon, Jari's missing brothers are implicated in the murder of a god, making their return home all the more urgent. But when they are finally found in a distant land, troubles only seem to get worse for Jari and the companions he's picked up along the way.

Also featuring Loki and Odin, Dwarf's Ransom explores Nidavellir and gives a glimpse of Jötunhemr as the three of them find their paths intersecting.  While Jari looks for his brothers, Odin searches for Kvasir's murderers, and the only thing keeping them from murdering one another is Loki, caught in the middle.

You can find Dwarf's Ransom on Amazon.

Deceived by a God now on Amazon!

Loki is travelling; wandering aimlessly across the realms when he meets a young elf named Óttarr. He strikes a bargain with the elf to do some work in exchange for a bed for the night, a meal, and a chance to bathe. Rather than doing the work he promised, Loki decides to bathe first, and takes Óttarr with him to help. It isn't long before Óttarr comes to learn Loki never intended to do the promised work at all, and had his own motives for their meeting.

Available for $2.99, or to borrow for free with Kindle Unlimited.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T8IBXSI

A History of Magic

 

Las Vegas is a city in flux. People come and go, either because they think they can win it big and leave all their problems behind at the tables, or because they feel like whatever they're missing in their lives, they'll find it under the neon lights and marquees of the Boulevard. For those who were born there, it's just another city where college is too expensive, jobs are too few, and very little happens.

Carly is one of those few, struggling to finish a degree she doesn't know what she'd do with when she got it. To distract herself from the stress of college life, she goes to club meetings at an off-strip magic shop, where amateur magicians gather and show off for one another.

Gunnar meanwhile brings his act from Iceland to Las Vegas, and finds himself in need of a new assistant. When an audition in an off-strip hotel brings them together, Carly soon finds there are things more stressful in her life than college credits when she gets caught up in the middle of keeping her dream job and keeping her life in one piece in the wake of Gunnar's ulterior motives for moving out to the desert.

A History of Magic is now available on Amazon for $4.99, or you can read for free with your Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Branching out

I am about to start an experiment, of sorts.  One which I hope will go well.  Over the last week or so, I've been talking to people about erotica, and the possibility of partaking in a little side venture there.  Since I've already taken a crack at the romance genre, and then completely deconstructed and subverted it, I figure it might be a bit of fun to try this as well.

Erotica will not be published under the same name as my more mainstream stories, but it will feature the characters and settings from Lay of Runes.  This is because they're the only characters I really care enough about at this point to devote to a series of sexual shenanigans.  You'll be able to find information on the new pen name on this page.