This episode is brought to you by Mission: Flight to Mars, by V.A. Jeffrey.
Bob Astor is a Quality Assurance agent working at Vartan Inc. Lately his days have been stressful, to say the least. Butting heads with upper management has put his career on life support. A surprising change in circumstance has Bob going on a business mission to the moon city, Langrenus. On the way, he meets one of the delegates on board the Starbird, a desperate man with a dark past and a very dangerous secret. Through a mysterious series of events Bob finds himself in the middle of an interplanetary crises that no one knows about. These secrets could change – or destroy – all human life on Earth. The key to the answer of the crises is on the Red Planet, Mars. It’s up to Bob, the burnt-out Q. A. agent to rise to the occasion and stem the dangerous tide coming from beyond the solar system.
Happy NanoWrimo! To celebrate writing and selling your writing, we bring you an amazing, stupendous, stellar, one-of-a-kind publishing round table! . . . Did I oversell it?
As part of this panel, seasoned professional authors Kevin J. Anderson and David Farland discuss the ever-changing publishing industry and how they have sustained careers. As Kevin notes, they sort of had the rug pulled out from under their feet, but, in the spirit of adapt or die, they have expanded their brands into new publishing platforms.
If Kevin and David were to start their careers today, would they go the route of traditional publishing, or would they publish independently? Listen to find out!
Doug Dandridge HAS launched his career in recent years, but, as he says, the indie publishing landscape has changed in just the last two years. The strategies to build a readership that worked two years ago don’t necessary work today. Doug just sold his 100,000th title on Amazon, so he’s a guy to listen to.
Are you participating in NanoWrimo? Check out the NanoWrimo Book Bundle for a feast of resources. Write your book, sell your book, quit your day job! Hey, if you can’t imagine it, you can’t accomplish it!
Topics Discussed:
- Shrinking advances from publishers;
- Ebooks keeping royalties going to publishers for 130 years;
- An 8% drop in profits for publishers last year;
- The prospect of all big bookstores going out of business;
- The health of small, specialty book shops;
- The need for writers to regenerate, much like The Doctor;
- Using indie publishing for niche markets or stories that don’t fit the blockbuster template that publishers are looking for;
- How indie publishing allows writers to once again build a readership, whereas modern traditional publishing often does not (see the careers of Jim Butcher and Charlene Harris for examples);
- Fake reviews;
- The tipping point of reviews on Amazon;
- Where you can meet these find writers in the future;
- Much More!
Resources and links:
- David Farland’s Daily Kick
- NanoWrimo StoryBundle
- Urban Fantasy StoryBundle
- NanoWrimo Website
- WordFire Press
- Superstars Writing Seminars
Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:15 — 39.7MB)
Not sure how I managed to miss this great episode (I blame auto sync on iTunes!). Some excellent, sensible advice and fascinating stories about the relative success or otherwise of indie publishing. On the point of one of the authors selling in the UK, I have the reverse challenge. My crime novels are based in Glasgow. When my first one, Bone Machines, first came out as a small press paperback, I assumed no one outside of Scotland would buy it, but I got a fan letter from a Texan bearded biker who looked like a member of ZZ Top on a Harley, telling me how much he loved it (the Kendrick crime series ia now available as audiobooks, with the third, Babylon Slide due February 2015 narrated by John Lee, who also narrates one of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels – excited? You bet?). Subsequently, with my free podcast version, most of the fan reviews were from people in the USA.
Interesting discussion on pricing and how the .99c might be perceived as maybe not worth reading. Same applies to marketing and public relations, which I found when doing PR in the arts sector – pricing things too low created a perception of what you were offering as “probably not that good” whereas raising the price potentially increased the audience.
On a final note: I love Story Bundle! I bought the writers’ bundle and the weird fiction 2 bundle. A great idea, and a real bargain, to boot.