Ah, the first day of a new year. Smells like opportunities waiting to be seized!

Well it’s time to list the goals I’ve decided on for it, and yes, I know: everyone’s doing this sort of thing today.

It is traditional, is it not?

Some of my goals are carryovers from last year (which I decided on kind of late in the year anyway).

I’ve spent the past two days in a productive flurry, tidying up my sites in preparation. You may, or may not, have noticed my sidebars aren’t quite so crowded now, and that there’s a few new pages here. Or that my Shadow Connor titles are no longer available for purchase (though that may take a few days to become evident at some distribution sites).

They’ve been unpublished because I simply haven’t been able to write the fourth book in the series. I’ve made at least a half dozen attempts, but something just wasn’t right.

Feral Intensity was a test.

In 2007, around about June or so, is when my old desire to write original fiction struck. I hadn’t really attempted much since late 2000/early 2001, when I’d written Sienna’s Journal. Early 2007, overcome with drooling lust for a certain superhero, I’d begun writing *gasp* fan fiction.

I like fan fiction. It’s fun to write and it’s good practice for writing original works. I’d be totally embarrassed to admit just how high of a word count my fan fiction stories amount to. But please, you have heard of Wolverine, right? Whew, baby!

Anyway, my first original bit of fiction in six years hit the web in a limited way. The title was Focus, and I was surprised to discover people really enjoyed reading it. I made writer friends, and we’ve become a happy little group since then.

That was also the year I learned about NaNoWriMo and decided to try my hand at it. Having not written anything over a few thousand words in quite a while, I challenged myself to write a 10k story in seven days.

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My big goal for this year was to end it having reached 500 ebooks sold.

There’s ten days left, and I’m still 131 short of that goal, so it doesn’t look like it’ll be reached.

Darn.

Hey, but there’s still time!

All of my ebooks can be purchased directly from my blog right here, in DRM free PDF format.

So if you’ve been thinking of buying one of them, now would be a wonderful time to decide to do so. =)

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I’ve spent the morning attempting to puzzle out the dos and don’ts of writing a web fic. The Night Has Fallen trilogy is my chosen victim to this effort, although its fate is uncertain at this time.

There are a few good reasons to consider writing a web fic, and they’re centered around giving a good, solid example of your writing in order to draw readers and build a readership.

While some people write web fic just for the love of it, there are several authors who do so in hopes that it’ll draw interest to their titles available for purchase, or earn them a bit of sideline cash via donations to fund extras they can’t afford on their monthly budgets.

Ideally, you write a web fic, draw readers in to build a solid readership for your work, and those readers spread word of mouth, resulting in more readers and sales of your other works. Bonus: feedback and interaction from those readers!

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I’d intended to spend this past Sunday working on covers for the six upcoming titles needing them. Instead, I was viciously attacked by a sinus headache that took me down as though I were made of tissue paper.

Yep, wadded me up and tossed me in a corner.

What a way to start my week.

Winter arrived here in West Texas, with a bit of snow, freezing temps and today, wind. Yay. Not.

In spite of it, we’ll be loading up here in a few hours to trek to the city and purchase doors, primer, paint and counter top that will be my desk top for my office. Carpeting may or may not follow next week.

What I’m skirting around is the fact that I’ve gotten jack all done towards finishing Arcane Solutions up. My Story Tamer’s been busy with visiting relatives, so the final edits for The Silent One are on temporary hold.

The very last thing I needed was a Kithran slinking up to purr about a blonde and her very interesting planet. Damn Kithrans.

I did try to shove him into a closet, but he’s bigger than I am. There are battles I can’t win, and this was one of them. Roughly 4k later, he’s agreed that I may have a break.

[glances over shoulder] I’m not sure my idea of ‘a break’ and his match up.

Also, something I’ve kept meaning to mention is that Smashwords announced it has brokered a distribution deal with Amazon.

Opting in means an author/publisher receives 42.5% of the retail instead of 35% distributing directly through Amazon. Smashwords standard take is 15%. If that’s what their percentage is on this deal, then Amazon is receiving 42.5%.

Which means a 50/50 split of sorts now.

Better. Of course, we’re having to wait to see how Amazon is going to handle our titles already directly distributed through them that have been opted in through Smashwords. Be silly to issue another ASIN for them, but I know we want that 42.5% over that 35%.

So we’ll see how that all shakes out.

And I’ve run out of things to say. Laters.

New to self-publishing? Here’s something to look forward to!

This is part of the process I go through when I have a title that’s got a hefty enough word count to justify offering it as a print version in addition to the ebook.

For my ebooks, I have a set pricing schedule based on word count, and I only count the words that actually tell the story itself, not chapter headings, copyright info, etc. stuff.

Arcane Solutions is my example here, since I know the final word count after finishing it and the editing process will fall within the 50-70k range. Knowing that, I know the ebook price will be $5.75.

The print version is a bit more difficult to determine a cover/retail price for until I have the final word count and actually format it. I’ll have to guesstimate the final number of pages because of that, so I’m going to work with a low to highest page number.

It’ll will be a 6 x 9 inch book, and my low estimate is 202 pages with an even 50k word count. My high is 282 pages with an even 70k word count. This does include the needed extra pages like title page, copyright info, author’s bio.

So my base production cost will be between $3.27 to $4.23, going through CreateSpace. I do pay the one off $39 fee to upgrade from Standard to Pro plan, and there is an annual $5 fee to keep each title at the Pro plan. There are two reasons I choose to pay that: 1) I can make a better profit and set a more reasonable retail/cover price for it and 2) I figure CreateSpace deserves something for the free ISBN number and storage of my files.

I will have to pay cost plus S&H for a proof before it’ll be available for sale. If I screw up the formatting, then I’ll have to order another proof. Wait, no I won’t. I get the first proof free because Arcane Solutions was my NaNoWriMo novel this year! Yay!

Moving on.

Not counting my efforts & time spent writing it, plus formatting it and designing the cover, I start off $39 in the red. Not bad.

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