Living the Published Life

The honeymoon is over, the book and the novelette have been on Amazon for over a month and people are buying. And in most cases, I have no idea who they are. Strange, and fun. They aren't selling like the iPhone, or my pie-in-the-sky dreams would have hoped for, but like Logen Ninefingers from Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, I’ve gotta be realistic.

I set up a book trailer to give someone a brief 2 minute idea of what the book is about, gave away a couple free copies to bloggers/book reviewers (want one?) and got the book up on the "Book Received" page for SFSignal.com and the "New Releases" on AdventuresinSciFiPublishing.com.

I have a lot planned to further market, but I'm going to take the advice of space opera author Nathan Lowell (prior blog post) and I'm not going to try to hammer anyone in the head, trick them or make the book free, or even TOO easy to buy. (Sound counterintuitive? Check the link, but in essence, I want someone to read the book that will like it. Not everyone will, some people turned their noses up at Harry Potter — absurd, right?)

Of better use for my time, than setting my Twitter account to auto-post "Please buy my book and make me feel special" posts, is to expand the writing. So, I've done just that. Part 2 of Seeking the Veil is written, and I've just finished putting Part 3 together. Both need revision, Part 3 is very rough, but Part 2 is nearly there. The story will take a turn here, you'll see Hestea develop and the plot unfold. It's an exciting story. I loved writing Seeking the Veil, and for someone looking to try the Hammerblood universe, it's a perfect entry, or a great compliment for the fan of Veil of a Warrior.

So, it seems that life as a published author is ultimately little different. At least before I sell that first million.