Andrew Seiple's Blog: Transmissions From the Teslaverse - Posts Tagged "writing"

Any post in a storm, hm? Yeah, this one's a day late, but so it goes. I got wrapped up in writing and lost track of time.

Which is appropriate, because I think Fridays are the day that I'll normally spend to tell you about my books.

Dire:Born released in November, and it's the origin story of Doctor Dire, supervillain and supergenius. It's a story that's more about people than it is about powers. So far the reception's been much better than anticipated, and I'm enjoying seeing my work read by so many people!

My current project is the sequel to Dire:Born, tentatively named Dire:Seed. The first draft is 23% complete as I write this. It should hit late spring to mid-summer, if things stay on schedule.

If Dire:Born's theme was about letting go of the past to deal with the present, Dire:Seed is about our protagonist (NEVER USE THE WORD HERO FOR HER! SO COMMANDS DIRE!) learning to work within the present, and build toward the future.

Can't go into more detail than that right now, but it's promising to be one heck of a ride...

Welcome to another Writing 101 Monday!

Yep, I think I'll use Mondays to discuss the writing profession, and techniques, and the industry. (At least the little part I've seen of it. I'm still learning the ropes myself.)

So, a forum friend from Spacebattles wanted to know how the publishing process goes, if you go through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). There's some pretty good guides on the subject, but I can tell you how it went for me...

In a word? Easy. Here, let me give you an overview:

Basically, the first step is to head over to KDP.amazon.com, and sign up for an account. If you're in the US, this usually entails giving them your tax information. That's not a big problem, but it can cause a day or so delay as they check it and make sure it's on the line. You'll also need to supply information depending on how you want to receive royalties. If you want your royalties sent to an account, you'll need to provide account information, that sort of thing.

The next thing you'll need to do is format your manuscript so that the Kindle upload tool can convert it into a .mobi file. There are free e-books that tell you how to do this... though do note that if you're not using MS Word, you may have to adjust a bit. I use Openoffice, so I went and got a 99 cent ebook from Aaron Shepard on the subject. It walked me through the basics, and I'm glad I got it.

Once you've got the manuscript formatted and finished, I recommend using Caliber or some other method of file conversion to turn the file into a .mobi. Then try reading it with your Kindle, or Kindle emulator. Go through each page, and make sure your formatting is okay. Trust me, this will save a lot of fussing later.

You'll also need cover art. Go buy some, or draw it. If you buy it, make sure you have signed rights to use it for a cover. Trust me, you don't want this coming back on you later.

Then, once the manuscript is ready and you have your cover art handy, go into KDP and start a new project. There are a lot of fields to fill out, and the guides will step you through them. The most important ones, and the ones you should think about carefully, are as follows;

Description: This is the blurb that comes up when someone will look up your ebook on Amazon. Think of it as back-cover information, or inside-cover information. Make sure it's a good summary of your book, because if it's bad, it WILL hurt you.

Categories: These are basically genres. You get to choose two of them. Choose wisely! If you put your book in the wrong genre, then people may be upset when it's not what they wanted.

Keywords: This is the tricky part. Think of these as search engine bait. If people search Amazon for "superhero", and your book has the keyword superhero, then it'll come up. You get seven of them. They can be phrases.... Dire:Born has "strong female protagonist", for example. You don't have to use all the keyword slots, but the more you use, the more you'll appear to searching customers.

There are other fields, but they're mostly self-explanatory. You can look them up in guides, or with a good google search.

During the process, you'll be asked to upload your manuscript. Now, sometimes this takes a few tries... don't be discouraged if it errors out for no reason you can see. Save your current info, log out, close the browser, log back in and try again.

Once you've uploaded the manuscript, use the previewer tool to check it over. Now sometimes this tool errors out as well... this is why I recommend checking it via file conversion earlier in the process. (Remember that part? Cool.)

After that, it's mostly done. Ah, you'll have to choose royalties. Without getting complicated, basically if your e-book is between 2.99 and 9.99, you can choose 70% royalties. Any less or more, and you're limited to 35% royalties. So it goes.

And you'll need to choose whether or not you want to put it into Kindle Select. I could write dozens of posts about this, but... basically, unless you really want to sell through other online channels, it's a good idea. At least it is right now, the ebook industry is volatile, and if you're reading this five years later, I can't promise that it'll be as good an idea as it is right now.

With me so far? Cool. Alright, so once you've filled all the fields, uploaded your cover art and manuscript, and checked everything over to make sure it's good, then it's time to publish. PUSH THE BUTTON, FRANK!

Now go do something else. It doesn't instantly put your stuff in Amazon, there's folks who are going to go check it first to make sure it doesn't break their TOS. (That's Terms of Service, by the way.)

Generally it'll show up a few hours to a day afterward, with some variance.

Congratulations! You're now a published author! It's that easy.

After that, comes the tough job... marketing.

But I'll leave that for another week. Be well, friends!

The theme of my last post was worldbuilding, and there's a reason for that.

I posted it because that's pretty much what I'm doing with my writing, at this very minute. Instead of writing book by book, I've built an entire superpowered world to explore. Every book I release in the "Tales from the Teslaverse" series is going to feature characters and locations that can pop up again in other books. There's continuity here, and someone who gets namedropped in one book has every chance of getting their own short story, novella, or even novel in the future.

It's basically applying a top-down approach to writing, after applying a bottom-up approach to worldbuilding. I kicked around the Teslaverse for years before I finally settled down to write about it.

Dire? She's one of the characters I know best, and one of the most well-received, so I'm opening with her. She'll get a good trilogy, but there will be other fiction along the way, and eventually, more Dire books after the trilogy's done, and various spin-offs and crossovers and a glorious smorgasborg of modern superhero goodness with a dash of magic.

So settle in, folks, it's gonna be a heck of a ride if I can pull it off.

Oh, and for those curious, the Dire sequel is currently at 28% draft completion. It'll take a few months, but it's coming, it's coming...

So, when I was ready to start unveiling my work, and find a way to sell it to people, I started looking around. And two strategies started unfolding themselves, both seemed applicable at the time I was planning to enter the e-book game. circa 2015.

I could either go wide, and put my e-books up in as many storefronts as possible...

Or go deep, and drop them in Amazon, and only Amazon.

Going wide LOOKED like the better choice. Why stick to Amazon? If I went through Smashwords or used Caliber to turn the manuscript into many different formats, I could sell in the Apple Store, Kobo, the Barnes and Noble e-store, Smashwords itself, AND Amazon.

Whereas if I wen through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, that would only put me in Amazon.

And yet, most of the research I'd done was saying that authors in my shoes were making more sales in Amazon, than the rest combined.

Why?

I looked more closely, and the reason for that was a little program called Kindle Unlimited.

In a nutshell, it's an Amazon subscription service that functions like a library. When you sign up for it you pay a monthly fee, and can download any book in the KU program for free. You can keep up to 10 at any one time, if you want more free books than that, you have to delete one.

On the author side, authors get paid a fraction of a cent for every page read through the KU program. It's been around half a cent for a while, with occasional dips up and down. And after a while? It adds up.

However, the only way to put a book in KU, is to agree to make it exclusive to Amazon for as long as it's in KU.

So you have to go deep...

I did the math, and that decided me. I went deep, with no hesitation. And so far it's paid off. It didn't matter much when the only thing that was out there was my shorter fiction, but Dire:Born? That puppy's 320 pages. Which means $1.50 to $1.60 in my pocket for every full read through KU. That's a little worse than half my take for a direct e-book sale, but I don't mind. My take on it is...

1. People who might not read it are checking it out because it costs them nothing.

2. Essentially it's a win/win scenario. To them it's free, to me it's like selling the book with a steep discount.

3. The number of books in KU is smaller than the Amazon catalogue on the whole, so I have more of a chance of being read.

4. If someone uses KU to read my book for free and REALLY likes it, they might buy a copy later to keep permanently. Not a common occurrence, but it HAS happened.

5. KU grants access to a few marketing methods and specials that I'd have to pay money to get otherwise.

So.

Yeah, I went deep, and it's been working out so far. But...

The e-book market is constantly shifting. Recently Apple's been gaining on Amazon, with their ibooks program. Amazon's still the elephant in the room, but it may not be that way forever.

So for now, I'm going deep. But once I get my first trilogy complete?

Wellp, it'll be time to sit down, look at the way the wind is going, and maybe consider going wide...

Ever read Astro City? You should. If you at all like comics or the superhero genre, it's a fascinating change of pace.

It's the work of a very good author named Kurt Busiek, illustrated by Brent Anderson and Alex Ross. It was a very big influence on the Teslaverse, and it's still being published today.

The stories are good, for the most part. Very good! They take a lot of the tropes and run with them, think them out to some logical or fun extremes, and go from there. The genre is solidly silver age, with a few dips up into the modern spectrum, and it's a "kitchen-sink" setting, with everything from aliens to magic to superscience, and the heroes are across the board. There's a ton of familiar archetypes in there, yeah, but there's also androids shaped like human-sized Barbie dolls, living cartoon characters, and more.

The impressive thing, however, is that it tends to focus on character studies, rather than straight-up action. Oh, it's got some of that, don't get me wrong, but every arc gives you a perspective on a new character, or strong development for an old one. You don't just see the characters yelling banter and slinging punches, you get to see them in their day-to-day, picking up groceries, celebrating birthdays, and just generally living their slices-of-life.

It works.

It works really damn well.

It helps that it's an unabashedly positive comic, where the good guys nearly always win in the long-run, albeit at a cost sometimes. It evokes the silver age throughout, with a ton of affectionate callbacks and explanations for otherwise goofy things. It even does "Cosmic" well, and that's no easy thing. Going cosmic too early has hurt many a series, and I'll get into that in a later post. But Astro City managed it, and that's the important thing.

When I decided to put together the Teslaverse, I took much from Astro City's example. They didn't start with origins, or a dawn of heroes situation, or anything like that. Kurt just showed us, panel by panel, the broad strokes of a world which had grown up and grown old with heroes, and used each issue to peek a little more into a different part of the world.

I'm no Kurt Busiek. Dude's got chops. It'll take me years or more to get catch up to him, if I do.

But I think that parts of his method can be duplicated, for different effect, and I'm thankful to him for showing me part of the way.

Also for Steeljack. Tarnished Angel ROCKED.

But mostly for showing me the way.

Five days to go...

This is pretty early. Maybe way too early. I'd been expecting to have two more books out before I started courting these. But when Half-Price books asks you to give it a whirl, you give it a whirl.

And hey, that's fine. Costs them nothing more than a table and some space at the front of the store. Costs me nothing more than time, and some minor setup work.

Part of that setup was an order of books shipped through Createspace. About thirty or so should hold me, and I'd be surprised if I move a third of them. One of the big mistakes a lot of indie authors make is ordering a lot of their books. They end up with garages full of moldering paper... since I'm going with a POD provider I don't have to order big batches at a time. They're more expensive per unit, but the cost is still within acceptable parameters.

The other necessary prep steps were to set up a mailing list, and get cards. Some fiddling out at Mailchimp got that squared away at no real cost. The interface is simple enough that it'll work for me, for a few years at least.

And once I had my signup URL (Posted in this blog description, by the way,) I could get the cards made. An artist friend of mine did up a logo as a gift, and it looks pretty nifty! I may see if I can persuade her to let me use it as an image for the mailing list, or a background for the eventual website... we'll see how it goes. The cards have my mailing list URL, and the URL to this blog.

If I'd had time I would have looked into a website, but I'm always nervous about those. I prefer to wait until the money from writing is good enough to pay someone to look into that. So that'll be 2-3 books down the road, minimum. Anyway, getting the cards printed off and shipped set me back around $30 for 500, so that's more than enough to last me for half a year or so. Maybe more, depending on how often I huck them at people.

Well.

If nothing else, the book signing will be a good excuse to see friends and family, many of whom will be stopping by. I'll have fun talking with strangers and handing out cards, and a few hours spent at a bookstore is never wasted.

Wish me luck, Goodreads!

(The event details are at https://www.hpb.com/030 )

Good afternoon. My name is Andrew Seiple. If you're reading this blog for the first time, and seeing this now, it's likely that you either met me at the January 2016 book signing, or followed the link in the back of my e-book. However the circumstances, thank you and welcome!

This is an informal blog, where I put my thoughts on literary matters, my projects, and occasionally roleplaying games. I post about twice a week, and tend to ramble.

My current project is called "Tales from the Teslaverse." It's my attempt at building a superheroic universe book by book. I've spent a good amount of time mapping out characters, tropes, and setting, and now I'm revealing it bit by bit like the horrible tease I am.

I'm going to bounce around between protagonist and antagonist viewpoints for much of it. It'll take multiple series and standalone books to fully map out, and if I do my job right they should all be entertaining. You may already be acquainted with Doctor Dire from her novel Dire:Born, or a few other places around the internet. She's got a sequel coming, and another after that to make her first trilogy. After that you'll start seeing the stories of more heroes and villains, and a few types who are solid shades of gray.

The next Dire book, (working title Dire:Seed) is currently 46% written. Expect to see it in a few months, and if you've signed up for my nifty mailing list, you'll be among the first to know when it's available. :D

Aside from the Teslaverse Tales, I'm also working on a gritty fantasy book that may turn into a series if the muse permits, and writing stories for some small freelance RPG projects. One of them should get a Gencon Release this year, if all goes well!

At any rate, I hope that you enjoy my work, and feel free to visit this blog anytime. I aim to keep this place friendly and informal, so do as you will so long as you're cool to others. If you have questions or issues just comment here or message me through Goodreads, and I'll respond as I can. Thank you and good night.

Short blog today, folks. Thanks to game night (and a rockin' session of Star Wars,) I'm behind on my writing.

One thousand words a day, that's the minimum I've committed to. That's the amount I must do, each and every night. I can go over, but I can't go under.

That's how you do it, y'know. That's all it takes. Say "Today and from now on, I'll write 100 words." Then after you're good with that, say "Today and from now on, I'll write 500 words."

Then you just keep stepping it up when you're ready, and before you know it, you're done. It's that simple... and that hard.

See you Friday!

When I run RPG's, I usually try to give each non-player-character their own distinctive voice. Accents, tones, ways of speaking, stuff like that. It adds flavor to the game I find, helps the players visualize the person they're talking to. And honestly, it's pretty darn fun. The voices don't have to be perfect, so long as they're memorable.

I carried that technique over to me when I write. My characters all have their own voices, and ways of speaking. The goal is to make it so that you can recognize who's talking without quite as many "he-said, she-said's" on the page. I don't always succeed at that goal, but that's fine. It's still fun, and it helps me visualize the scenes that I'm writing.

And a funny thing happens, if you can find their voices... dialogue becomes easy. You don't plot out what they're going to say anymore, you just put the characters in a scene and let them talk about it. Often I'm surprised by how they banter, or go off on a subject that I didn't expect because, well, they would. It's just how they talk and act.

It was a bit scary letting them do this at first, since I was giving up control... but the more I went back and read the scenes where I tried it, the more I realized that they felt natural. Unforced. It felt more REAL.

So yeah. This technique might not work for everyone, but if you ever get the chance, I recommend that you try it. What've you got to lose?

Let your characters talk as they will. You might be pleasantly surprised at what they're saying.

Afternoon, all! After some wrangling, I'm going to be attending the Independent Creators Expo and Film Festival on 20 February, at the Ramada Inn off Miller Lane in Dayton, Ohio. I will be hanging with my friend who makes cute dragon statues over in the dealers' hall, and peddling copies of Dire:Born. I'll happily autograph books, chat, or throw cards at you as you please, if you can make it over that way.

Small conventions like this are a good way for local writers to network and get word-of-mouth PR. The tables are typically inexpensive, so that you only need to move a few books to recoup your cost of attendance, and sometimes you can even get in on panels or other programming events. As long as you aren't too shy, your gain usually outweighs your risk. And you get all the joys of attending a convention, and meeting fun people!

It's also a non-standard marketing technique, that can help ally the boredom of your usual work in this area. Which is important, because if you fall into a rut, your writing can suffer. So don't be afraid to get out there and mix it up a bit, you might enjoy the results...