Showing posts with label epublishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epublishing. Show all posts

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Cover Tease for Sandwiched by Spiders

Here's a little cover tease of my upcoming short, "Sandwiched by Spiders".


Yep, in case you hadn't already guessed, L'hassia and L'katipia from "Succubus Summoning 211" are getting a chance to show off their stuff in their own short story.  (If you were hoping for Puff and Pfaffle, don't worry, I'll be getting to them later)

I'll be running some final formatting checks tomorrow before uploading to Amazon and other sites.  As it's a short, I'll be fully self-publishing this one rather than going through Excessica (they only have a limited number of slots per week and it wouldn't be fair to the other writers there if I monopolized those slots with a series of short stories.  My other books will be coming out with them as usual).  I'll post as soon as "Sandwiched by Spiders" is available. Check back here for further details.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Introducing "Sandwiched by"

What is Sandwiched by?

Sandwiched by is a series of linked short stories I’ll be putting out in 2015.  In this case the link is a thematic one.  Each story will feature one (un)lucky guy sandwiched between the hot and sexy bodies of two (or more) monster girls.  If you remember the scenes in Succubus Summoning where Phil was wedged between Rosa and Verdé, or Puff and Pfaffle, then you’ll have an idea of what’s in store.


There won’t be anything linking the stories together other than the theme, although they may link back to events in my other story universes.  Some will be nice, some will be funny, some will be icky, and some will be downright terrifying.  The one thing they’ll all be is sexy (I hope!).

I’m planning to put out one a month through the usual ebook outlets (Amazon, Smashwords, etc).  Lengthwise they will be a similar length to my other stories (4,000 to 8,000 words, although there might be a few longer ones if I get carried away with all the sexy).  I’m going to sell them at 99 cents each, which seems a fair price for individual short stories.  Going below $2.99 results in significantly reduced royalties from Amazon (35% instead of 70%), but I don’t think $2.99 is a fair price for a 5,000 word short story.

Initially, I wasn’t a big fan of selling short stories separately, but the advent of ebooks has changed things considerably.  A lot of erotica authors have reported a lot of success with selling shorts and Sandwiched by is an experiment by me to see how viable shorts are.  Varying the lengths also allows me to get work out more frequently rather than hoarding a bunch of stories and then missing the date I should have put a collection out.  It’s also a challenge to me to see if I can set a project and maintain that monthly release schedule.  A few of the ideas in my ideas folder are for serials and it might be fun to do something similar with an old-style pulp serial (with tons of gratuitous sex, obviously!)

So why not post these Sandwiched by stories up on Literotica or on your blog here?  Simple cold economics.  This is now going to be my job and if I want to keep it as my job I need to make sure it brings money in.  This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop posting on Literotica or take my existing stories down.   Free sites like Literotica are great advertising and if people like something they tend not to mind paying for more of the same goodness.  Think of it as getting more options to read more hot stories by me.

I’m hoping you’ll be tempted to give Sandwiched by a look anyway.  The first story will be out later this week just as soon as I’ve finished the cover.  It features two characters from Succubus Summoning getting a little more action (and if it’s not the two characters you were hoping, don’t worry, they’re going to get a story as well).

And speaking of Succubus Summoning, yes I know the latest chapter has been delayed again.  I was supposed to wrap up the series in Nov/Dec.  Sadly this got knocked around in all of the fallout from losing my job and having to move country.  Now I’m into the deadlines for the new collection coming out in March.  I’m hoping I’ll get that out of the way in Jan and can then devote Feb to (finally!) completing the Succubus Summoning 201 arc.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

There is no self-epublishing bubble (but you might not find gold…)

GuardianBooks announced on twitter “Two epublishing doom-sayers on @guardianbooks today.” I’m not sure I’d trust either with a crystal ball to be honest. In particular, I think Ewan Morrison’s argument that self-epublishing is a bubble is spectacularly off.

At the risk of sounding like a bargain-basement Joe Konrath, ebooks aren’t going away. It’s a technology shift. Ebooks are a bubble in the same way music CD’s, then .mp3 downloads are a bubble, or movies are a bubble, as in they’re not a bubble at all. There are people who still like vinyl records and theatre, but neither has the cultural significance they once had.

I can see why Morrison is trying to make an analogy between bubbles and self-epublishing, but I suspect Gold Rush is a better analogy. Fuelled by the success stories of writers like Amanda Hocking and John Locke, a bunch of folks have decided there’s gold in them thar hills, grabbed a shovel and charged off to make their fortunes. A rare few will strike a motherlode, some will eke out an existence panning dust and a whole lot of folks will return empty handed and disappointed.

This is what we’ll see with self-epublishing. There’s a lot of interest and excitement now, but that will fade once the Get-Rich-Quick merchants realise how much work is involved for little guarantee of success. The current glut of self-published ebooks will subside, but it won’t pop and collapse completely. People have put quill to parchment, or whatever equivalent, for a very long time now, mostly without any promise of riches and rewards, and there’s no reason to think the future is going to be any different.

As always with articles like this I get a slight whiff of Writer vs. writer snobbery. Writers are big, important people who write big, important words. They must receive cheques to support them writing their big, important words otherwise the whole of culture as we know it will collapse into the sewer. writers are hobbyists who scratch words out in their spare time after they’ve finished their shift and popped the kids off to bed. While what they do is nice and commendable, they’re not really important and, besides, they already have the financial support of their day job, or their partner.

When I read articles like this complaining about future hardships for publishing, I tend to substitute writer with Writer, because that’s what they really mean—the few deemed worthy enough to pass through the sanctified gates. Morrison talks about how bad it is when a newly self-epublished writer puts their book out and earns only £99 in a year. Um, the vast majority of writers never make anything, not a single penny. They spend six months, a year, whatever, writing a book and it doesn’t get published. THE END. Oh that’s right, I forget, those folks don’t count because they’re writers not Writers.

And Morrison thinks writers are going to suddenly stop overnight even though a century or more of receiving nothing failed to deter them in the past. Oh wait, my bad, he means those other Writers.

For the majority of writers, the old publishing paradigm was terrible. They couldn’t get published and no one read their work. Yes, this benefitted the reader by protecting them from an awful lot of crap, but it also atrophied choice, especially in marginal areas where publishers were afraid to take risks. Now it’s much better for the majority of writers—they get a chance to be read. These next few years will see more books available to read than at any previous point in human history. If there aren’t a few future classics amongst that lot we should give up as a species and all go and drown ourselves in the Atlantic.

The argument against that is the good books will all drown in the swamp of badly-written dreck. It’s bullcrap. If a book is good it will be found by someone, because it’s out there, to be read, forever. It’s available to be found, as opposed to being locked in a drawer somewhere, never to see the light of day, because it didn’t fit what the publishers of the time thought would make them money.

Morrison’s apocalyptic crash scenario is one where the competition between all the desperate self-pubbers creates a whirlpool of ever-lowering prices, which sucks in the major publishers and leaves no one able to make any money at all apart from Amazon. This could happen. As I mentioned earlier, over a century of receiving—on average—nothing has not deterred writers from writing. This would leave writing as the province of only eager amateurs. Purists would argue it should be done for the ‘art’ rather than money anyway, but they probably haven’t read a book written after 1870 either.

It could happen, but I don’t think it will. There is a bottom. Both Selena Kitt and Joe Konrath have experimented with pricing and come to similar conclusions. The 99c thing was fun for a while, but readers are prepared to pay more for better quality books, although probably not the crazy-high prices set by most mainstream publishers.

More likely, rather than crashing, self-epublishing will stabilise and mature. Readers will get savvier at both avoiding the crap and finding the books they want to read, and will ultimately benefit from greater choice. Despite this, it won’t be that different from traditional publishing in that a few lucky/talented writers will earn huge while the rest won’t make enough income to quit their day jobs.

The majority of writers are still better off. They make some money, whereas before they made none. They’ll find some readers, whereas before it was only friends and family. As for the Writers, they’ll have to prove they are Writers by being popular enough to sell enough books to support themselves, or by being good enough to win the awards/garner the reviews that will generate enough book sales to support themselves. If they can’t do this, then maybe they weren't that different from the rest of us writers in the first place.

If self-epublishing creates a stable ecosystem where writers that wouldn't have been published are able to supply readers whose tastes wouldn't have catered for, and allows those writers to make a profit, then it will be performing its role quite admirably.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Encouragement for all Erotica Writers

Zowie! Go Selena Kitt! Or should that be $elena Kitt.

Selena Kitt started off eXcessica publishing and is now doing very very well out of erotica ebooks. Success well deserved, I'd say. Selena was ahead of the curve when she set up eXcessica. Back then it was to have the requisite stable of writers to get work up with Fictionwise. Of course, then Amazon came along with the Kindle and ebook publishing mushroomed into a huge market.

It's encouraging news and indicative of how much the ebook revolution has opened things out. I wonder how many more Amanda Hockings, Joe Konraths, Selena Kitts and M.E. Hydras will emerge in the new world of epublishing.

Okay, maybe not that last dude. Should be locked up in the nuthouse if you ask me. Writes those horrible stories...