A middle aged man, slender, reddish hair combed straight back, well-groomed goatee, neatly dressed in a suit with the collar of a cleric and a small crucifix stands walking slowly on a treadmill in front of a desk, hands clasped behind his back. On the screen, a young woman in a simple skirt and blouse walks through a meadow, matching him pace for pace.
Ship AI: Faith in that which cannot be measured is not rational. Continue reading Taj Short-Newborn 3
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Taj Short – Newborn 2
An elderly man with whiskers, tanned skin, and a waistcoat over his brightly colored shirt converses with a ship avatar, appearing as a swarthy middle-aged man with a confused expression.
Ship AI: But why is Xerbos Chancellor? His statements are contradictory to the point of being almost random, with extreme inconsistency not only over time, but current proclamations conflict with his claimed principles. I find no reason not to agree with the news articles calling him a pathological liar.
Bud: Yes, that and more. All politicians are liars. Continue reading Taj Short – Newborn 2
Taj Short-Newborn
A crowd of people are assembled in a large mission-control room. At each of the dozens of work-stations sit a range of people, from older men with flowing beards in casual clothing to “youngsters” in their late 20s sharply dressed in the latest fashions, a scattering of women. In the central area is a gathering of older people, ethnically diverse and dressed in conservative business clothing. The background is filled with the hum of the A/C and quiet murmur of the scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and programmers conversing or going though checklists. Most of those “on the floor” sound and look professional and excited, the politicians observing look nervous and uncertain. Continue reading Taj Short-Newborn
700 Club
Wow. Just hit the second milestone number for The Stars Came Back, where I’m sure I’ve just recovered my upfront costs of editing, cover art, etc. Still hanging in the charts, bobbling around unsteadily but consistently between the low 20s and the high 30s on the Space Opera and Military Sci Fi charts at Amazon. The charts are recalculated ever hour or so, based on some sort of recent sales formula. So if I never sell another copy, at least I haven’t lost money. [UPDATE: check the whole chart if it’s not there. It wobbled into the #19 spot just now.]
It went live on the 13th of January. It’s now the 2nd of February. Three weeks to hit 700 net copies sold (and a couple dozen borrowed). Guess I must have done something right. *sigh* Time to work on reformatting for getting it in paperback, I suppose.
Another seven million copies and I can retire.
Shamelessly stolen from my other post.
So the question is: PoD (Print On Demand) or print run of X copies? How many people want dead trees on their shelf?
Crazy
A person can go crazy watching numbers too closely. It continues to plug along, staying on the charts in the middle of the mil-sci-fi and space-opera second page of the top 100, floating around between #25 and #35 mostly, while bouncing between #3000 and #8000 in overall sales rank. I know there is some lag, and some weighting on sales that show what “direction” they are trending, but it’s totally non-transparent as to why exactly it moves sometimes. I’ve seen it move up over a period when nothing sold, and down when it has sold several copies, so obviously it depends on sales relative to other books.
Not having any idea how a buyer found the book is also frustrating, but unless I get famous I doubt Amazon will readily share that info with me. Guess I gotta get famous, then :-).
Reviews continue to be good. The three 4-star reviews each gave a perfectly valid reason to dock it one star, and I really can’t argue with them. I’d count my self lucky to get another hundred reviews like them. Two thought it was a great story, but didn’t like the screenplay-like format, one thought the writing and story was solid, but not quite 5-star worthy (needed to be Heinlein or Jefferson level prose to earn a 5-star, which it isn’t). Not sure why, but several copies have been returned. Nothing to worry about, just curious why. I’ve heard that between 1/2% and 6% get returned, and after peaking at 2% it’s been inching down, though doing stats with small numbers isn’t very accurate. I won’t “trust” the return numbers until I have a statistically significant sales number, preferably over 3,000.
Guess I should go start writing a new book.
Another plug
Got a plug at Ace’s Sunday Morning Book Thread. I’ve been looking around, and a lot of popular web sites have a regular “book thread’ of some sort. Definitely need to get after more of these, because the people who read them are, well, readers. Seems to me that’s a good group to target when hawking books.
Halfway to breakeven
When I started out, I had a couple of goals, “threshold numbers” I wanted to hit. I passed the first one (100) a while ago fairly easily, as expected. The next number was 700, roughly the number where I was certain I had broken even on cash costs for editing, cover art, and this website. I’m now halfway there (not counting the 8 units borrowed by Prime members). If sales hold steady at the current rate, I’ll hit 700 in three weeks or so, call it mid-February. Continue reading Halfway to breakeven
Painful lessons, learned slowly
The reviews are solid as I write this, 11 five-star reviews and a single four-star (didn’t like the format). Fine, I’ll take that – I already knew that some people wouldn’t like it. But if it’s a five-star story, writing, editing, and plot, and only get knocked down a single star because it’s a strange format? I’ll take a hundred more like that in a heartbeat.
So, what have I learned so far about releasing a book, as opposed to just writing it?
Continue reading Painful lessons, learned slowly
Killing Trees version
If a physical paper book of this story was in print, how many would want it, and what would be a fair price? Bear in mind that this is a large book, on par with a mid-size Harry Potter story in word-count.
No Kindle?
A couple of people have asked me how to read it if they don’t have a Kindle. No problem. You can download a “kindle reading app” from Amazon. Pick your platform, download the app, then buy the book. If you have some other preferred reader, once you download the file, you can find it on your computer, then convert it with Calibre. Again, if you like it, spread the word, write a review, let me know.