Shameless Plug - My New Novel
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Spoiler-less review that I got via text message from a friend the other day. I laughed.
I just read Book 2. You, sir, are a bastard.
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Indie Sci-Fi Authors Are Upending Publishing, And It's Turned Into A War
As mainstream sci-fi publishing has gotten more and more political, writers have discovered there's a huge market for apolitical, independent books.
20BooksTo50K was founded as a small Facebook group of indie authors who wanted to better their business skills. They focused on publishing, advertising, business models, and most of their conversations are all about those points. They didn’t care about politics at all, but just good books being produced. The authors’ group is comprised of shrewd businessmen and has performed amazingly in the market over the last several years.
At their annual conference last year in Las Vegas, several authors raised their hands when asked if they were making more than $100,000 per month on Amazon. Dozens were making more than $10,000 per month, and almost the entire conference was making more than $1,000 per month on their books. If the industry were in as much trouble as establishment publishing likes to moan about, how did this happen?
Politics aside, this might be another venue for you to look into for promoting your stuff.
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I'm on the final editing pass for my upcoming third novel, The Prince's Revenge. It should be available Soon™.
That will be halfway through the series, so I think I'm going to take a break and do a standalone novel that's completely unrelated. It's going to be military science fiction with a side of horror, and I'm going to read some H.P. Lovecraft to help get myself in the proper mindset. I've got enough details plotted out to make a page on my website, although nothing links to it yet. I'm not totally sure if I like my current title or not.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I'm
ondone with the final editing pass for my upcoming third novel, The Prince's Revenge. It should be availableSoon™August 23, 2019.Ebook is done and up for preorder. The paperback ought to be available around the same time, if my next proof copy looks good.
Amazon's release date is wrong so ignore it. I set it up to release on August 23, but that change hasn't filtered through their system yet.
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Paperback's out and available now, ebook is still in the prerelease queue. I wish Amazon would let me set a release date on the paperback so I could drop them at the same time.
The Prince's Revenge released! - TJ Mott
The third novel in the Thaddeus Marcell Chronicles, The Prince’s Revenge, has been released in Kindle ebook and paperback editions! This entry brings back an old enemy, High Prince Saar, the absolute leader of the Tor Regency who, many years ago, hired Thad Marcell to protect his empire during the...
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@mott555 I bought book 1 a couple days ago, and book 2 this morning. I'm really enjoying them and getting completely sucked in. Have you thought about having an Audible version done? I have a friend I think would really enjoy the series, but he primarily listens to books. At the very least, it could expand your market base.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
The paperback is going to be expensive, though. On-demand printing is pricey, expect the customer's cost to be around $12 for a 350-page 6" x 9" paperback.
That doesn't seem terribly expensive. I would expect to pay at least that much for a decent book, even a paperback.
But I'm not one of those hippie open-source communists who thinks everything should be free.
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@abarker said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Have you thought about having an Audible version done?
Not really. I don't think it would be a bad idea, I just don't much about it except that hiring a narrator is expensive.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I just don't much about it
I think you accidentally a word there.
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@Mason_Wheeler I accidentally little coffee.
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@mott555 Why not read it yourself? Lots of authors do that and it can be better than having someone else read it
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@hungrier ...sometimes. Writing is a different skillset than dramatic vocal presentation. There's a fair amount of overlap, but they're still distinct things.
Brandon Sanderson, known as one of the great fantasy authors of our day, almost always does some reading from some work of his at his live tour events. In the early days of his career, when I would go to his events, his reading was so incredibly awkward that I remember thinking more than once, "if I didn't know this was the author I would say this guy has no idea what the story he's reading is about!" (He's had a lot of practice and gotten better over the years.)
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@Mason_Wheeler What if
users narrate it? None of us may be the Brandon Sanderson of voice actors, but I'm sure it'll turn out brillant.
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@hungrier said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 Why not read it yourself? Lots of authors do that and it can be better than having someone else read it
I've never even listened to an audiobook before, so I'd have to do that first to even know what the basic expectations for an audiobook are. Other than that, my voice is pretty dull. It's low without many harmonics in it and it's difficult for me to not speak in a monotone. Like Mason said, vocal communication is a completely different skillset than written communication, and I'm such an introvert that I sometimes go days at a time without talking so it's a relatively undeveloped skill for me.
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@pie_flavor I think I might explore audiobooks once the entire series is done, but probably not before. I imagine it'll even take heavy editing of the manuscript to make it doable, and that would detract from the time I have to work on the remaining entries.
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You want to see some audiobooks done really well, check out Graphic Audio. Their tagline is "a movie in your mind," and they work hard to make that aspiration into reality. The book doesn't just have a narrator or two; it has a distinct voice actor for each character. Plus sound effects, a cinematic-grade soundtrack, etc.
They're expensive, but awesome. Listening to a Stormlight or Mistborn book in Graphic Audio is a whole new level of experience.
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@Mason_Wheeler My favorite is when a movie/show I've already seen does an audiobook with the movie/show's actors doing the characters they play. They did that with American Gods and it was great.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I've never even listened to an audiobook before, so I'd have to do that first to even know what the basic expectations for an audiobook are.
I've listened to a wide variety of audio books, and they generally fall into a handful of categories:
- Basic Single Reader, no changes in voice for different characters. Generally reserved for first-person narrators.
- Advanced Single Reader includes attempts to create different voices for each character. This seems to typically be used for third-person omniscient narration.
- Multiple Readers are used in various ways, but most often when a story is told from multiple perspectives (think of the Percy Jackson series, where each chapter is from a different point of view).
From a little research I've done, you would start by essentially creating a script for each book - basically adding notes about words that need to be emphasized, marking each character so they're easy to differentiate. If you take @hungrier's suggestion, you might be able to outsource some of the markup work.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I'm such an introvert that I sometimes go days at a time without talking so it's a relatively undeveloped skill for me.
Not even cursing out your users in absentia?
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@pie_flavor said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 You could also do what @hungrier suggested. Particularly @remi has a great voice.
I think you meant @Remy (i.e. Remy Porter, the TDWTF front page writer), I don't think you have ever heard my voice, and I suspect you wouldn't call it "great" unless you love a French accent.
Or you really meant me and you've heard me speaking and that's mightily spooky as the most likely way would be if you've managed to doxx me, and heard me talk in a trade show which since you are IIRC still a student in a totally different field, on the other side of the world, seems more than highly unlikely.
More on topic, @mott555, if you see from last month or so a sale in France (or maybe it'll be tagged from the UK since for some reason that's where my Kindle account is located),
I've just a read a couple of chapters yet (I downloaded it as something to read when I've only got my phone and nothing else, I'm a traditional type who prefers to read physical books...), but I'm liking what I've read so far.
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@remi weren't you the one involved in the Radio WTF?
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@pie_flavor No, that was Remy (with a Y).
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@Mason_Wheeler
@mott555 revised suggestion: try to get @Remy to do it.
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@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
if you see from last month or so a sale in France
I don't see any sales from France, ever. But Amazon's reporting is a steaming pile of inconsistent WTF so who knows? I often see huge spikes in sales rank, but no corresponding sales...
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@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
unless you love a French accent.
(In an AlloAllo voice) Oohh Remy!
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Status:
: *ding!* You have a new e-mail from Amazon!
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Don't I have that on preorder? Why am I not getting an Order Confirmed e-mail?
: Yep, brand new! Only available in paperback though.
: @mott555 wouldn't do that...
Let me check his author page, let's see what's up...
book_4_alt_text!
: 
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@mott555 It looks like the fourth entry is actually the "buy all 3" entry, but someone didn't test mobile. No idea why the Kindle and paperback entries aren't tied together, and no idea why Amazon didn't send me a "New From" day-of. Regardless, I now have Book 3 on my phone.
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@TwelveBaud said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Only available in paperback though.
I got rejected from my entry into some kind of Amazon-run storywriting contest with a 20,000-pound reward. All I had to do was publish a book in August and give it a certain tag. My entry was rejected because they claim I did not publish a paperback edition for this one. The email from Amazon was a no-reply address with no way of appealing or telling them to double-check because they're wrong.
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It's just been stuck here all day.
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@pie_flavor Is that Kindle?
That's happened to me a few times. It can be fixed by cancelling the download, force-quitting Kindle, rebooting the phone, reopening Kindle and reinitiating the download. (Not sure how Kindle manages to wedge itself so badly that all those steps are necessary, but it does and they are.)
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@pie_flavor Is that Kindle?
That's happened to me a few times. It can be fixed by cancelling the download, force-quitting Kindle, rebooting the phone, reopening Kindle and reinitiating the download. (Not sure how Kindle manages to wedge itself so badly that all those steps are necessary, but it does and they are.)
Might be using android's download service. That breaks for me every now and then and I have the choice of restarting the phone or clearing its cache.
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@Mason_Wheeler I just cancelled the download and that was good enough.
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@mott555 I've finished the first one. Definitely enjoyed it, good read, well written and a gripping plot. I will very likely buy the other ones (as "time killer" read for when I'm on the move). So well done on that, and I'm certainly glad I bought it.
Are you interested in a couple of typos that I spotted (it's easy with kindle to highlight a place while reading, so it's not like it took me any effort to mark them)?
Also, I could tell it was written by an IT professional when in the first chapter or so, the hero takes time to lock his workstation before leaving his office!
The bad part now: while I very much enjoyed it, it still feels like it is missing something to make it a book that I would re-read, or recommend to others. I can't really pinpoint what exactly, but something feels... I don't know, maybe a bit superficial in the plot (there are a few hints at the complexity of some relationships (political or human) but in the end the main plot is a fairly straightforward "muscle" mission, with few subplots)? Maybe not so original in the universe (I enjoyed the realism of the hyperspace thing and ships, but overall nothing challenges a vision of a fairly conventional sci-fi stereotypical universe)? Too conventional in writing style (it's fluid and well done, but nothing stands out)?
None of those things prevented me from enjoying reading it, and not being able to put it down before the end, but there is probably little that I will remember about it in 6 months' time...
So a very nice book and again I'm very likely to buy the rest but... don't quit your day job yet
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@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Are you interested in a couple of typos that I spotted (it's easy with kindle to highlight a place while reading, so it's not like it took me any effort to mark them)?
Sure. I self-edit everything, and it's often hard to see errors in my own work even if I make 3 - 4 editing passes before publishing. I just had a friend tell me that the second book was full of errors, which kind of flabbergasted me although I'm not really surprised that I missed some things.
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
The bad part now: while I very much enjoyed it, it still feels like it is missing something to make it a book that I would re-read, or recommend to others. I can't really pinpoint what exactly, but something feels... I don't know, maybe a bit superficial in the plot (there are a few hints at the complexity of some relationships (political or human) but in the end the main plot is a fairly straightforward "muscle" mission, with few subplots)? Maybe not so original in the universe (I enjoyed the realism of the hyperspace thing and ships, but overall nothing challenges a vision of a fairly conventional sci-fi stereotypical universe)? Too conventional in writing style (it's fluid and well done, but nothing stands out)?
That's all valid criticism. It was my first published novel, and I'm sure it's always going to stand out in various ways because of that. It's also the first part of a six-book series so some of it is just establishing characters and backgrounds in a shorter work so I can get more detailed later on. In theory.
Otherwise, I'm just writing pulp sci fi for fun and a few extra bucks in a good month. I don't expect it to be anything groundbreaking in writing style, or to make me a household name. Especially not now. If I continue and end up with a few dozen releases to my name, maybe that'll change as I learn and grow. For now, my sights and expectations are set fairly low.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Are you interested in a couple of typos that I spotted (it's easy with kindle to highlight a place while reading, so it's not like it took me any effort to mark them)?
Sure. I self-edit everything, and it's often hard to see errors in my own work
Yes, I know that. Even someone reading your text might not spot it as they get carried away by the text itself (even if consciously reading to spot those). I had one thesis proof-read by someone who didn't know a thing about the topic, which helped for that since they couldn't actually follow what the text said and thus only focused on the words, but it must have been pretty boring to read for them...
Anyway, here you go. I was going to export them from the app but there are only 3 (and they don't spoiler the story!) so I'm just gonna put them here:
- Ch. 5 (Kindle location 952, if that's any help finding it... although I guess a good'ol grep or similar on the offending word will work as well): "if he didn't reign it in".
- Ch. 9 (2091): "I hope your happy"
- Ch. 14 (3065): "Who'd have thunk?" (that one might have been intentional as a stylistic device??)
Otherwise, I'm just writing pulp sci fi for fun and a few extra bucks in a good month.
Well, I wasn't really expecting much more than that and I would say that while it does fit this definition ("pulp" is indeed the word I was looking for to describe it), it still was very good in that domain and I liked it, so well done.
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@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Anyway, here you go.
Those aren't errors in editing.
Those are deliberate typesetting registration errors.
See publishers actually insert those sort of errors in the text of books deliberately, and register with a notary exactly what errors they inserted, and where. That way they have notarized proof that they put errors in those places, so if anyone publishes the book after it enters public domain and copies their typesetting work they can prove that their typesetting work was copied and sue.
Map makers do the same thing with what their industries calls Paper Towns. Towns that only exist on paper so if another cartographer steals their work it'll include the same paper towns and thus can be proven as a copy. Rand McNally used a paper town as part of a high profile lawsuit against Google Maps in the early 00's. Rand McNally lost because Google's defense of "Yeah, it was a paper town when you published the map, but since then people started living there and adopted the name of your paper town, so it's a real town now. and since it's real we mapped it." The court transcript on that one was fascinating reading.
Anyway. yeah. those aren't typographical errors. they're typesetting errors, and deliberate. ... Yeah..... That's what they are...
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@Vixen said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
paper towns
There is even a complete paper country: Belgium
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@Luhmann It originated when someone broke into a cartographer's office and wrote a curse word on the map as a prank
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@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
"if he didn't reign it in".
Huh. TIL that this isn't correct. I hate English.
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
"I hope your happy"
Oops.
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
"Who'd have thunk?" (that one might have been intentional as a stylistic device??)
Not an error, just slang. IIRC English isn't your primary language?
I do intend to do a second edition of everything once the series is complete, so I can correct a few things like this as well as add a page with names/cover art for the entire series. That might be a few years.
EDIT: Dumb question, which book were those from?
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Not an error, just slang. IIRC English isn't your primary language?
Your right ;-)
I know it's not proper English, and I also know that it's sometimes used despite (or because of) its incorrectness, which is why I wasn't sure whether it was an error or not (the fact that, contrary to the other two, it's not just a confusion between homophones made it even more suspicious)...
Amusingly, I've found that ESL tend to be somewhat better at avoiding the kind of typos that native speakers often do (your/you're etc.), probably because they had to consciously learn the language and thus immediately see grammatical errors, where native speakers just jump to the sounds and understand the meaning whichever way it's written.
Also, French are pedantically obsessed with spelling and grammar and writing things the Proper Way, so it's like we have a spider sense for that.
(cue yet another thread derailing into the French Academy and other pedantry)
EDIT: Dumb question, which book were those from?
First one, the only one I've read so far (Rescue at Waverly).
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@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
Also, French are pedantically obsessed with spelling and grammar and writing things the Proper Way, so it's like we have a spider sense for that.
I saved a bunch of money by not hiring an editor and reading hate mail from the Grammar Nazis who read my work.
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@mott555 Call it "leveraging multi-cultural crowd-distributed semantic correctness checking", and you can even make some money by selling the idea!
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
"if he didn't reign it in".
Huh. TIL that this isn't correct. I hate English.
In the same vein, people frequently use the incorrect term "giving [someone] free reign". Both expressions properly refer to the reins used to guide horses, not the reigns of kings.
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@Mason_Wheeler Yes, I'm aware of the two definitions. Somehow I never realized they were spelled differently. I thought you used reigns on horses, too.
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@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I thought you used reigns on horses, too.
So many people do that i wouldn't be surprised if in a upcoming edition of the OED they list it as an alternate spelling, or even as the preferred spelling and
reinswould be listed as an alternate or antiquated spelling.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
"if he didn't reign it in".
Huh. TIL that this isn't correct. I hate English.
In the same vein, people frequently use the incorrect term "giving [someone] free reign". Both expressions properly refer to the reins used to guide horses, not the reigns of kings.
TIL. I always thought of it as the freedom to make your own rules, so reign made sense to me.
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@Vixen said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
I thought you used reigns on horses, too.
So many people do that i wouldn't be surprised if in a upcoming edition of the OED they list it as an alternate spelling, or even as the preferred spelling and
reinswould be listed as an alternate or antiquated spelling.Ugh, I hope not!
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@hungrier said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@mott555 said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
@remi said in Shameless Plug - My New Novel:
"if he didn't reign it in".
Huh. TIL that this isn't correct. I hate English.
In the same vein, people frequently use the incorrect term "giving [someone] free reign". Both expressions properly refer to the reins used to guide horses, not the reigns of kings.
TIL. I always thought of it as the freedom to make your own rules, so reign made sense to me.
No, it means releasing the reins and allowing the horse to run free. An equivalent term is "giving the horse his head", which isn't used nearly as much these days because of the potential
confusion.
