Amazon seems to be on the verge of doing something really clever with its new Kindle Worlds program. It looks as if it has found a genuinely new way of developing, creating and marketing tie-in fiction, and also a method of making fan fiction profitable, not only for Amazon, but for the fans and the creators of the worlds those fans write in. It’s early days yet, of course, and we have not really seen any of the final product but what it appears to be is a system similar to Kindle Direct Publishing which will allow fans to upload their stories and create ebooks set in the worlds of those creators who have agreed to participate in the program. (At the moment there are Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and the Vampire Diaries. Apparently … [Read more...]
Writing Fantasy Heroes
Today I am pleased to have a guest post by Jason M Waltz, the publisher of Writing Fantasy Heroes and many other fine works via his company Rogue Blades Entertainment. Jason and I have crossed paths in numerous sword and sorcery forums and and his knowledge of and his sincere love for the genre have always impressed me. I am really happy to have him here talking about his latest project, a book with a stellar lineup of contributors which is certainly worth the attention of the writers among you as well as anyone who is simply interested in how the fantasy genre is written. There will even be a chance to win a copy of the book itself. Anyway, without further ado I'll hand you over to Jason... Howdy all! I want to begin by … [Read more...]
If You Can Push Save On Your Word-Processor You Can Create An Ebook
Some of you may remember me claiming some time ago that pretty soon you would be able to create an ebook by pushing the save button on your word-processor. Little did I know that it was close to possible even as I was writing that. Of course, it depends on what word-processor you use. It would probably be too much to hope that Microsoft would make creating an ebook possible from within Word any time soon. Apple does allow you to create EPUB documents from Pages but to use that you need a Mac. Scrivener makes it easy to create both Kindle files and EPUB files but in order to get your book edited, the chances are your going to have to send it to the editor in a more conventional format and then reimport it into Scrivener which is a lot of … [Read more...]
Kormak Omnibus Released
So that’s the first Kormak Omnibus released. It comprises of pretty much everything that has been written so far; the first three novels, the short story Guardian of the Dawn, all my author’s notes for the series and a lovely parchment-style map by Chazz Kellner. I confess this is an experiment with a new format more than anything else. A lot of indie writers have reported having success with omnibus editions and the various Gotrek and Felix and Space Wolf collections Black Library have put out have always been my biggest sellers. The value proposition for the reader is obvious. I am aiming at a roughly three for the cost of two price point and throwing in the rest of the stuff as extras. If you’ve been putting off buying the … [Read more...]
New Cover For Guardian of the Dawn
As you can probably tell, I have been sprucing up the Kormak ebooks recently. Here is the lovely cover that the talented Clarissa Yeo over at bookcoversale.com did for the short story Guardian of the Dawn. If you're interested, you can read the whole story for free here. The Author's Notes are here. … [Read more...]
New Kormak Covers
Here are the new covers for the first three books in the Kormak series. I think we can all agree they are a gigantic improvement on the ones I designed myself using Powerpoint and stock art. They were created by Clarissa Yeo at bookcoversale.com. I highly recommend Clarissa if you're in the market for a cover for your print or ebook. She is fast, talented, patient and very pleasant to work with as well as reasonably priced. … [Read more...]
A Map Of Kormak’s World
So finally the Kingdoms of the Sun have what all serious/series fantasy worlds seem to need-- a map. This beautiful one was done by Chazz Kellner using Campaign Cartographer 3. (Thanks Chazz!) It's an enormous improvement on the vague sketches and lists of names that I produced when I first started writing the stories. The distances are accurate and I now have a much clearer idea where everything is. It's been a fascinating process watching bits of background from my published books, my notes and my half-completed short stories take shape. I'll be adding this map to the latest version of the ebooks. Hopefully, there will be an update for those of you who have already bought them. Of course, there are a few words of caution. Like all … [Read more...]
Anatomy of an E-Book Sale
I just bought an e-book, Yesterday's Spy, by Len Deighton. So what, Bill, I hear you cry-- you buy ebooks every day. Most of us do. What's there worth writing a blog post about in that? Well, it's a process I usually do unthinkingly and today I actually analysed it on the level of both my intellectual processes and the mechanisms of sale. (Forgive me if what I am going to say sounds entirely obvious, but sometimes it's worth thinking about the obvious.) Here's what happened. This morning I was reading an article on Slate about how Len Deighton wrote Bomber which may well have been the first book ever written on a word processor. (It's a fascinating article, you should take a look.) This reminded me how much I enjoyed his writing. I went … [Read more...]
Author’s Notes: Weaver of Shadow
Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilisation is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph. That quote, as you probably well know, comes from Robert E. Howard. More specifically it comes from his 1935 story Beyond the Black River, one of my two all-time favourite Conan tales. (It’s a toss up with Red Nails. I can’t choose between them.) Beyond the Black River illustrates Howard’s theme all too well. It’s a tale of violence along the border between the civilised land of Aquilonia and the Pictish Wilderness. It was written late in Howard’s short life at a time when his always dark vision had turned particularly bleak. In it events spiral out of control as war erupts between … [Read more...]
Author’s Notes: Defiler of Tombs
I started work on Defiler of Tombs almost seven years ago, back in 2006. I really wanted to write a novel about Kormak, the monster-hunting hero of The Guardian of the Dawn but I was trying to fit it into the template that would be acceptable to a conventional fantasy publisher. I’ve written about what a struggle that was elsewhere, but to recap, I was trying to fit a lean, taut sword and sorcery tale into an oversized vessel, to make it longer than it was meant to be. It could not to be done (by me at least) and thus I abandoned it. I always thought it was a real pity, because the story had many strengths. There was Kormak himself, a somewhat different take on the conventional sword and sorcery hero, a savage outcast trained by an … [Read more...]
Gamesday Italia and Other Stuff
Just a quick note to say I am getting ready for Gamesday Italia in Modena. I am really looking forward to this. Also for all you writers out there, a book recommendation; 2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better. This is one of the shortest and best books about writing I have read, and certainly the best book about writing I have read this year. It's by Rachel Aaron, of How To Write 10,000 words in a Day fame and it covers not only how to increase your word count, but how to edit efficiently and well, and probably the most important bit of writing advice you are ever likely to get in terms of motivation, and, no, I am not going to tell you what it is :). Go get the book! It's only 30000 words and you can read it in an evening. (I did.) … [Read more...]
Author’s Notes: Stealer of Flesh
I know, it's a bit silly to be writing up the Author's Notes five months or so after the book was released but what the hell-- I've been busy and I've been sick and these things get done in their own time. Stealer of Flesh is a book that Amazon made possible. Seriously. All of my life I have wanted to write something like it but I was born at the wrong time. In order to explain that we need to rewind to when I was a very young teenager. I grew up reading, among other things, lots of good, old-fashioned sword and sorcery; Robert E Howard's Conan and Solomon Kane; Michael Moorcock's Elric, Corum and Hawkmoon books; Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique and Hyperborea and Averoigne stories and many more. … [Read more...]
The E-book Experiment: Year One
On 7th July 2011 I uploaded my first e-book to Amazon. It went live on the 8th. I was curious as to how it would go. 6 months ago I published the data I had collected over the previous few months, and said I would report back again in six months. Six months passed. I was flattened by flu on the anniversary date but I took a snapshot of my sales with the idea I would write them up as soon as I felt better. Other factors lengthened the delay. More illness, deadlines and a holiday without access to the Internet intervened. Anyway, better late than never... So how did it go? Better than I ever imagined when I did that first upload. In my first year I sold approximately 18000 e-books. I say approximately because all of the numbers are not yet … [Read more...]
Death’s Angels Finally Free In The UK
As of Tuesday evening Death's Angels, my dark fantasy tale of mercenary soldiers in a world haunted by ancient demon gods, is free on Amazon UK as well as iTunes UK. That means you can now download the book for free most anywhere I can manage it, should you feel so inclined. Why have I done this? Glad you asked. It all started with my post about the general disappointment in the indie community caused by Amazon's tinkering with its algorithms for free promotions using the Select program. The net result of this has been that books no longer get the huge sales spikes coming off free promotions that they used to. My argument was that this was probably never Amazon's intention. People had lost sight of the basic purpose which is simply to put … [Read more...]
Death’s Angels Free
Just wanted to make a quick announcement that Death's Angels, the first book in the Terrarch series will be available free for a limited time on Amazon.com, B&N and iTunes US and UK. For some reason, it refuses to go free on Amazon.co.uk but you can download it from Smashwords. Alternatively, if you get really desperate, you can email me with your reader type and I will send you a copy in a format suitable for your machine. … [Read more...]
