My first novel – historical military fiction – made it to the top 10 of 9 of Amazon's bestseller lists. Via my blog I share what I have learned while writing two more.
It is too nice to sit inside and stare at a computer. Took the dog for a walk in a greenbelt near our home in Austin. And one of the challenges of the writer’s life is sitting around too much, so figured I’d get a walk in before it gets too hot.
The first novel — Lonely Hunter — in my upcoming Science Fiction novel has a lot of action in rural settings. I have long enjoyed being outside while I was in the military, to include my time as an infantry officer in the Army. So it feels very comfortable to include such settings where it makes sense.
Joanna Penn, an accomplished writer and blogger about writing and publishing has penned (pun intended 😉 ) a nice article about the pros and cons of indie publishing and traditional publishing.
Note that it is not indie versus traditional publishing. It is indie and traditional publishing. Neither is perfect, both have many challenges, and some writers might pick one over the other for one book, and the other for a subsequent book.
Two and a half years after I published my novel, it is still selling several copies a day.
Earlier today it had a sales rank of 50K (see the above screenshot). Sales have certainly declined from where they peaked about nine months after I published, but sales continue at a steady pace. And my novel is in a pretty small niche, so book sales have only so much upside in this niche.
My book is priced at $1.49, and it has been at that price for almost the entire time it has been for sale on Amazon, so I’m not wracking up sales by selling it at $.99.
Below you can see my Author Rank as tracked by Amazon. Even two and a half years after I launched my book it is still doing better than it did the month after I launched it. Again — see my blog on keywords. That dip the month after I published my book was because I did not know what I was doing (like most indies) with keywords. After that, I got my keywords figured out and my sales did much better.
My first attempt at a novel was a dystopian science fiction story while I was in 7th grade in Hays, Kansas. It focused on the Junior High students and our coming challenges as we were to be protected from a cataclysm that would wipe out society before were were to restart humanity. Probably not the best sci fi book plot of all time.
I grew up reading Analog Science Fiction magazine. In fairness, it is more accurately Analog Science Fiction and Fact, but I always did better with the fiction part than I did the fact part.
Later in life, while earning my MA in Creative Writing, I had the chance to study under James Gunn at the University of Kansas. Gunn has published a number of science fiction novels over the last ~50 years, but he is probably better known in the sci fi community as a historian of science fiction and has published a number of books to that end.
I took three or four classes from him, and I spent some time chatting with him in his office, which was as you would imagine it: Stacked high with paperbacks on every flat surface, he was staring into the small screen of his antiquated computer. He eventually chaired my thesis committee.
As luck would have it, he came to our wedding. For a wedding gift — in typical Gunn fashion — he handed me a couple of his most recent paperbacks.
Our home is full of great books. Though I’m the writer, my wife is far better read and has by far the bigger collection of great literature. One of her favorites has long been Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Her love of Little Women has been reinforced because we have four daughters.
One of our daughters found my wife’s battered, tattered and beloved copy the other day, and it happened when a camera was handy…
Aliens has long been one of my favorite Sci Fi movies. It is not great movie making, and it is not great Science Fiction. But it is a great action flick with lots of worthy special effects and various thrills. There is more than that, though, and it comes to a head when Ripley shouts out at the alien: “Get away from her you bitch!”
I’ve long enjoyed military science fiction, so I have had The Forever War on my to read list for…well…you know…forever. I’m glad I did. Finally. It is not just damn good, it is good for a reason. Several, in fact.
