Thursday, August 25, 2011

Funny Answers to Odd Writerly Questions

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These are inspired by a few questions I've been asked...

Q: Arthor, I read your book DUST. Tell me the symbolism in it. I have a paper due tomorrow so I need to know now.
A: I will tell you the symbolism. But first I'd like you to cut my lawn. It needs to be cut now. I'm waiting.

Q: I have an idea for a book that you should write. It's my life story. Some really interesting things happened, so far. I can't tell them to you because you might steal the ideas. I'm too busy to write it.
A: I'm not busy at all! Would love to sacrifice a year of my life writing your book. Is 2071 too soon?

Q: Why does your book suck so much?
A: This may seem hard to believe but writing a book that sucks takes years of work. First I take anything that is remotely interesting or exciting out of the book. Then I add all the boring characters and have them sit around doing nothing. Finally, I inject suckiness into the prose using a special method taught to me by a suckiness master. It's like becoming a kung fu master, without the exercise. Glad to know my hard work has paid off.

Q: Really, I'm not joking, what is the symbolism in your book? I need to know. I got an extension. 
A: My lawn still needs cutting. 

Q: I have some really great ideas. How do I stop people from stealing them?
A: I don't want you to feel paranoid, but I'm reading your mind right now. Those are amazing ideas! If you want to prevent others from stealing your ideas wear a tinfoil hat.

Anyone else have questions? Post them below...

Art

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Faith: the foundation of writing



You must have faith.

That's the conclusion I've come to after all these years of writing. The cornerstone of becoming a writer and continuing on in this odd field is faith. By that I don't mean religious faith, but a personal faith. You must believe in your story. Believe that, with enough work, the words will take the proper shape and become a perfect (or as perfect as possible) story. Believe that each word, each sentence, each paragraph is getting you closer to your goals.  Believe that what you will create will be worth it in the end (that worth can be defined as making money or your actual happiness with your story).

This "literate" faith is what carried me through having my first six novels rejected by publishers. I certainly had my doubting moments (or even months) but after ten years of trying my first book was published. It was important to believe in what I was doing. I still need faith now--the act of beginning a novel is an act of absolute faith (perhaps even more so since I don't use outlines). The road does get rocky at times, either I can't solve a problem or a character goes off in a direction I don't expect, but I believe the answer will come. And so far it always has.

So have faith. The rest will fall into place after that.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Allo UK! The Hunchback Assignments is now available

Allo, UK!

The Hunchback Assignments is now available as an eBook on Kindle and iBooks. Love live steampunk! Love live the queen!



Visit kindle or iBooks for all the joy, thrills, and brillig adventure! 

Sunday, August 14, 2011

1000 eBooks sold but 0 Big Macs!

Light a cigar! Open a fizzy drink! Eat some chocolate! Have an organic carrot! My first ebook went on sale February 4th, 2011:

Since then I've added 5 more:

and we've finally sold 1000 copies (I say we because I know some of you have bought copies and I thank you sincerely--your imaginary royalty cheque is in the mail).

The sales are divided out this way:
66 B&N
20 iBooks
17 Smashwords
8 Kobo
889 Kindle

Which of course...and you knew this was coming...makes a lovely chart:

Ah, Kindle, how I love thee. Are the rumours true that you dominate the market?

And here are my sales divided by books (the price in brackets is the price most copies were sold at):
Dust = 752 (.99)
Draugr = 75 (.99)
Drang = 42 (2.99)
Loki = 39 (2.99)
Shades = 36 (.99)
Tribes = 56 (.99)

I've only made about $400.00 but I'm not too concerned about the $ at this point. It was more learning to understand how the ebook system works (err, as much as it can be understood, that is).

Art

Monday, August 08, 2011

From 100% on a Short Story to Parade Captain!

This last weekend I had a highlight in my writing career: I was a parade captain in the Gull Lake Centennial parade. Gull Lake, SK, Canada is here:

It's the town where I graduated from high school in 1985 (I attended Tompkins school from K-9) and learned that heavy metal is the greatest music that ever existed (my older brothers had already started those lessons). The organizers  were kind enough to invite me to participate in the parade. At first I thought my high school friends were just playing a trick on my super-sized ego, but it turned out to be really real! This is how cool I looked in 1985 when I graduated:

Yeah, weren't the 80's great? I miss the smell of perms.
 I couldn't decide what to wear. I mean do you go all casual for a parade or do you wear your old high school football jacket?
Anyway, I did make it to the parade lineup in time. There were many old friends there and many old cars and many old friends in old cars. There were also mounties:

Oh, you're a writer. Is it still legal to shoot writers?
There were soldiers there, too, of course. After all you need all the security you can get when clowns and writers infiltrate your town.
This is a buddy of mine, Gord Kozroski, who was in the army for ten years. And still fits into his uniform. He is a real captain (retired). See--people who listen to Iron Maiden can do something with their lives!
And here I am in the parade:
Oh, wait. That's a clown. How can you tell the difference between a writer and a clown? The clown has the nicer vehicle. Here I am with the two other parade captains:
Man, was waving ever tiring! And looking at the disappointed faces of all the children was tiring, too--they thought we might have candy in our car. We didn't. But we did have lots of incredibly funny jokes. My two fellow captains had so many jokes that I nearly broke my face laughing (it is possible).
Oh, here's another clown:
Or that might be a writer, actually. I can't tell because the vehicle is an old one. And, of course, here are more shots of the parade:
It was a 45 minute parade. Absolutely amazing. I did see my Algebra teacher on the parade route and shouted out to him, "Thanks for passing me!" I must say Algebra was very touch and go there on that last exam. But luckily I guessed right on the multiple choice questions. Otherwise I'd still be in high school.
Later I did the traditional selling and signing books thing:

And I posed for a photo with MLA Wayne Elhard!

I also got to thank my english teacher, Mr. Leek, for passing me way back when. And I meant to thank him for teaching The Cruel Sea, which influenced my novel Megiddo's Shadow.
Two of Mr. Leek's students posing with him. Susan forgot that we're supposed to age with time.
Mr. Leek gave me 100% on a short story in Grade Eleven and it was one of those encouraging moments in life where I paused and thought, "Hey, I should do this as a living." What was the story about? Oh, a happy little tale about someone who died and went to hell. Hmmm. Guess I was a little twisted back then. I also have fond memories of Miss Wenner teaching Fahrenheit 451 in grade ten. A science fiction novel in school! That nearly blew my 15 year old mind. She also gave me 89% on a poem once. What was it about? Oh, it was about the Antichrist coming to earth alongside the four horsemen. Happy stuff, eh?

The rest of the day unfolded perfectly and ended with a beef on a bun dinner. Mmmmm. I would show you a picture of that, but I ate it too fast. So I'll end with another picture of a clown:
Happy Parading through life everyone,

Monday, August 01, 2011

How I Didn't Sell 1 Million Copies in six months: July Sales

Amazing new stupendous ebook developments this month!
Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but I have discovered that "free" sells. Or at least it leads to numerous downloads. About the middle of June I made this book free on iBooks and Smashwords:

And now it's free on Kindle (just click the above image but click right now because this offer is only good for 12 10 9 minutes--kidding, I was going all slap chop on ya). There is a trick to this because you can't actually just choose "free" on Kindle. Instead Amazon will set your price to the same as the competition. So once Amazon "noticed" that Draugr was free on other websites it automatically made it free on Amazon kindle. Even though I'd read about other people having "free" success, it isn't until you see it for yourself that you believe it. The book became free on Kindle somewhere around July 6th. Within a day it had shot up the "free" charts to as high as #52. By that time there had been 2000 downloads. In the next two days there were another 3000 downloads. Then it began to drop out of the top 100 and the downloads have slowed to about 100 a day so that the total for July is 7402 copies. To put this in perspective the book first came out in 1997 and sold 5000 copies in the space of a year. It took 4 days to "sell" that same amount for free. So Amazon's distribution model really does work (no surprise, eh). In that same time only about 80 copies were downloaded free on iBooks and 0 on Smashwords. What? You want to see a chart? Okay!



This chart shows the # of total sales I've made in the last six months (it's the tiny column second from the right) and the green column is the total free books I've given away. Now how to get those "free" people to buy books? Ah, there's the rub and the dub (and why I did the little experiment). I hope that over time there will be an increase in the sales of the other two books in the series:

Aren't they cute? Don't you just want to take them home and cuddle them (on your eReader that is)? Anyway, my theory is that this massive # of downloads will lead to more sales of these two books in the next few months as people read Draugr. Or those thousands of copies of Draugr might sit unloved on people's kindles. Poor electronic words...just waiting to be read. I was pleasantly surprised that there was an immediate increase: Drang sold 4 copies in June and jumped to 18 copies in July on Kindle. Loki sold 7 copies in June and leapfrogged to 16 copies in July on Kindle. So that's a nice increase for both the books. Obviously, I'm not going to get rich from that (it is an extra $69.36 in my pocket, tho, since I make 2.04 per book--they sell for $2.99).

But what about my total sales you ask? Ah, I knew you wanted to see another chart. Consider yourself charted:



As you can see by that chart sales stayed steady for July. Here are the totally exciting numbers:

Feb: 12
March: 43
April: 377
May: 274
June: 139
July: 148

So there hasn't been a huge jump. In fact DUST sold 77 copies on Kindle in June and 79 in July. Gee, that is consistent! I still plan on keeping DUST at .99 cents until I've sold 1000 copies (it's at 727 right now). As a point of interest 126 copies of my books were sold on Kindle this month and 21 on B&N (0 on Smashwords and 0 on iBooks--hmmm guess buying every Apple product in existence doesn't help e-book sales). I don't know what that means other than, well, Kindle is king obviously. The good news is I've nearly sold 1000 copies in total. That should happen next month. Oh, and I haven't included Kobo numbers in this because they don't send me my report until mid way through the month...but I only expect 4 or 5 more sales through them.
By this point I had hoped I'd be making enough money to be on a beach somewhere with my feet up while I hired retired ewoks or sasquatches to bash out my novels. I mean isn't that what the internet promised? Easy riches? But I'm satisfied with chugging along. I've done all the experiments that I can think of so far (other than releasing a brand new book--which is in the works) but I may make other books free (there is a theory that if you make a book free and then switch it to "paid" status it will jump up the charts--there are many theories in the e-book biz, I'm finding. Amazon.com is like a bunch of pig entrails that we're all staring at to find the future).
Anyway, it's still fun. And yo! Look over there--it's a  another rainbow to chase!
Cheers,