Q & A with David Maine discussion

My first foray into epic fantasy and eBooks... but definitely not my last!

I'm glad to hear it won't be your last, Dave, as I really liked it, some interesting characters and I just loved how each set of animals had their own little 'world' with their own 'rules'. It must have taken you a while to have it all sorted in your head as it seems to me like a lot of work has gone into this book.

P.S. I haven't forgotten I owe you a review, life has been crazy busy lately but I will get there, promise.

Hi Mandy! Great to hear from you.

Yeah I plan plenty more books in the series... Actually I didn;t do a lot of planning at first (doing more so now), I just kind of rolled with it and made stuff up as I went along. Halfway through I pulled up and realized, "Hey, I'm onto something here!" And ever since then, it's just been a party all the way... Glad you're enjoying it.

I am curious how well the indie e-book experiment went. Is it selling well without the backing of a publisher? Does it matter if it sells well, since there is no publisher to appease in terms of units sold etc.?

What do you think of the news about Amazon breaking into publishing?

It's selling modestly, as I expected, mainly because reviewers (themselves an increasingly scarce species these days) are for the most part unwilling to look at self-produced books. Given the glut of stuff out there on the market these days, it's tough to fault them for that, but it does mean that writers have few options beyond word of mouth and sites like this one to get themselves noticed. This takes time. I had hoped that my previous books would give me a little heft, and they have, in that some bloggers have taken note and so on, but publicity is difficult to come by these days, and it's more important than ever.

But Gamble is only the first of a series of books, and my hope is that by the time I'm several titles in, the word of mouth will have grown and I'll have some kind of fan base who are interested enough to make the books a success in sales terms as well as in artistic terms.

I see Amazon's move as essentially profit driven (as are all publishers, of course). My understanding is that they say, more or less, "Okay we'll make you book available on Kindle and take 65% of whatever you see." It's a no-lose situation for them; it costs virtually nothing to keep a non-seller in storage, and if lightning strikes and the book sells, Amazon takes a big chunk of the cover price. It's a great deal for them. For the writer, maybe not so great, though 35% is better than 7% or 10%--but 10% of something is also better than 35% of nothing.

It all comes back to publicity, not to mention editing and all those pesky detail-oriented things that publishers tend to care about more than, say, Amazon. I think for some people, the Amazon model might work well, but I think for many others it's a bit of a mirage, an idea that they can leapfrog established methods of doing business so as to grab market share and acclaim when, really, they need to be concentrating first and foremost on the words they're putting on the page... I place myself in the category of "knowing that the writing has to come first, then the marketing," but of course, I may just be deluding myself. We'll see!

Hi Dave, I read Gamble og the Godless a little while ago and really liked it. Nice job! So, I'm hoping there will be more books coming out, right?

My main question is, what advice do have for aspiring writers, especially fantasy/SF writers? Thanks.

Hey Brad, thanks for the kind words. I plan to have Book 2 in the series available in May/June this year.

I have plenty advice for aspiring writers of all kinds. What would you like to know?

In general, I think the two most important things to remember are:

1. Success isn't going to happen overnight, so keep at it; and

2. strive to be original in all things. This can be tough in some genres like fantasy, which have fairly well-defined genre conventions. But that's all the more reason to maintain some sort of uniwue approach, in my opinion.

I don't know if this is what you were looking for. Feel free to keep asking...

Hi, thanks for answering. I guess I'm wondering about the relative importance of plot versus setting in your fantasy books, or in fantasy in general. How much time do you spend thinking about world-building, and how much energy goes into the plot? And I guess, how much goes into the characters? Does everything get equal attention or do you give more emphasis to one thing over another? This is probably a crazy question but I've always wondered. Sometimes I get great ideas for world but then I don't know what to do with them!

Hey Scott, thanks for the props! It's always nice to hear that someone has been touched by something I've written. It's a crazy business, sitting alone in your room, writing stuff down--then years later you find out that it means something to someone else. Thanks. Hearing this kind of thing never gets old, believe me.

Brad, there's no such thing as a crazy question (not in this forum anyway). Actually, I think you bring up a really good point. Fantasy writers (and SF writers too) do have a sort of responsibility to create a world that, say, a writer whose story is set in contemporary New York doesn't. I think for a lot of fantasy readers, much of the appeal of reading lies in exploring those world, getting to know how things function there and so on. Sometimes, plot and character take a back seat to fleshing out the mechanics of these places. (I'm thinking of the 4th Harry Potter book, which opens with a couple hundred pages of the Quidditch World Cup. Entirely unnecessary from a plot perspcetive, but presumably few readers were complaining, besides me.)

When I first started this series, I did spend time thinking about how the world was put together, the different types of animal societies and so forth, because understanding how those world interrelated had a large effect on the plot. Characters came along with that, and once those were somewhat solid in my mind (though still very spongey) I started writing. The plot just sort of flowed out of what I had prepared mentally in terms of the setting.

I'm not sure that this means more energy or attention went into the setting than into the plot or characters; but maybe the order was a little different. I found it helpful to think about the world before I got started with who did what, whereas in a different type of story, I might start with who did what and get around later to where, as well as to how much that location would have a bearing on the story.

Hope that answers your question!

So, why the price drop to 99 cents? Not that I'm complaining, but was it a decision made to reflect current trends in pricing, or was there some other reason? 2.99 was pretty low to begin with, so I'm wondering why you decided to drop it even more. Or is it just a short-term thing?

Thanks for your last answer by the way. Food for thought, for sure!

I dropped the price of The Gamble of the Godless to 99 cents as an experiment (heck, this whole thing is an experiment!) to see what effect it would have on sales, if any. So far the results have been encouraging--in five days since the price drop, I've outsold any other five-day span since the book's initial launch. So, I guess the experiment is a success.

I think that for many people, 99 cents has become the default price for an eBook, or at least an indie release eBook. Conventional publishers have overheads and staffs to pay, indie authors don't. Of course, this way I get less money per copy, but this ain't about the money anyway, or I'd have picked another vocation...

Do you think there's too much fantasy being written and published these days (especially with eBooks and independent authors and all that?)

I know what you mean Unicorngirl! Sometimes I feel the same way, that there are just too many books out there and it's hard to find the good ones. Not that most of them are bad, they're just sort of average.

Is it that there are too many books out there, or that there are too many average ones blocking our view of the good ones?

Wow, some interesting questions here, thanks. In short, no, I don't think there is "too much" of anything being written (or read) these days, just because I don't think it's possible for anything to be written "too much." I consider artistic creativity to be a critical part of what makes us human, and if more people are doing it, that can only be a good thing.

Natalie's point that all this new writing can make it harder to find good books might be true, but the way I see it, I'd rather have a hundred books to look through (or a thousand or ten thousand) than just a handful to choose from, even if that handful are qualitatively "better" (whatever that means) than the self-produced ten thousand. Sure, it might translate into more work for the reader to find those great books--but the way I see it, that's what a love of stories and storytelling involves anyway. So no, I don't think there are too many books being produced nowadays, even though there are certainly more than at any other time in history. I think this means there are more crummy books than ever, and also more average ones, and more really great ones. And I find that tremendously exciting.

Besides all that, I also think there is a natural tendency for quality to rise to the top. Obviously that's not a given, because there are underappreciated good books out there (and some rubbish that is widely read, like --- insert your least favorite book's title here). But, in general, people who read a good book will pass it along to someone else who will pass it along, and so forth, while poorly written books will tend to wither away over time. I think you're seeing that even now in this era of self-publishing and eBooks. There's a reason The Hunger Games is selling so well; it is, on some levels, impeccably structured and written. If it were half-baked or confusing, it would have died out long ago.

I liked The Gamble of the Godless a lot. Any time frame for the next book, or are you going to go all George RR Martin on us and make us wait seven years between books? :-)

David wrote: "There's a reason The Hunger Games is selling so well; it is, on some levels, impeccably structured and written. If it were half-baked or confusing, it would have died out long ago.
"

David, The Hunger Games trilogy is an interesting series of books. It has a touch of that horrid Twilight series (Yes, I admit I read it as an adult female to find out what the hype was about. Now I mock it ceaselessly!) to it with Katniss's whiney love triangle, but otherwise it is a harsh series. When the characters are in the death arena the first two books I was mesmorized and horrified. The author got torture and PTSD down to a tee. It was awful. I needed counseling after each book. I think I ate chocolate each time Katniss didn't die like Harry did after his run-in's with the Dementors in the HP series! But I like a book that is emotionally assaultive for reasons that are story related and not just for shock value. :-)

Unicorngirl wrote: "Do you think there's too much fantasy being written and published these days (especially with eBooks and independent authors and all that?)"

Yes and no. I think as a fantasy lover I love the idea of there being more fantasy being written. BUT, like a fantasy lover I find it hard to know which ones are good in the sea of epic, sprawling fantasy series with +5 books each. It's a commitment to read an epic fanasy series! The 3 books or less series are less daunting, but still sometimes the books are ginormous!
So I think it is both good and bad, this influx of fantasy.

Want an amazing small fantasy series that is a fast read (comparatively) and still gives you everything you need? Try the Earthsea series by LeGuin. It's my fav.

Hi Shorshanik! I'm not saying The Hunger Games is, like, War and Peace, but I think it does what it sets out to do very well. Just look at that first chapter--it sets up the environment, introduces the two main characters (three if you count the younger kid) and lets you know you're in for a wild ride. The chapter ends with a bang and then it's off to the races. Yeah it gets pretty violent later but that's the nature of the genre, it seems to me.

Your comments to Unicorngirl echo my own, which I stated above. Basically, more = better, except when it doesn't. There will be a lot of trash to wade through, but I hope the net reult will be an increase in the number of good books. Could there be a negative effect as better books are squeezed out by crummy, big-selling ones? Sure. But... welcome to the history of literature!

Toby, there's no way I'm the next GRRM. Book II of The Chronicles is scheduled to roll out in late May or early June. It's called The Rime of the Remorseless, so hold on...

Just want to make it official: The Gamble of the Godless is now available for just 99 cents online, at Amazon, B&N, iTunes etc. So if you haven't snatched a copy for your e-reader or PC, now's the time to do it!

I'm doing this as a warm-up to the imminent release of Book II in The Chronicles of Avin. The Rime of the Remorseless should be hitting your e-shelves in late May/early June, so this givees you the opportunity to get up to speed with things in a hurry an in a very-nearly-painless way. Feel free to grab a copy (if you haven't already) and hey, if you're moved to put up a review on GR or Amazon, I sure won't stop ya...

Great news about the 99 cents! I have friends who were hesitent to shell out three whole dollars for a good book (I know, I know) so I'll pass this on. Can't wait for #2 btw.

Thanks Brad--appreciate your support! Since announcing the price drop to 99 cents, Gamble of the Godless has jumped 330K spots on Amazon's ranking. Thanks to everyone for your continued interest!

Hi Dave, I never talked to an author before! What I wanted to know was how you get the ideas for your books. I'm halfway through Gamble of the Goddess and it's amazing, but I'm wondering how you thought up all this stuff? The way the animals talk and everything. Hope this isn't a stupipd question!

Jade wrote: "I wanted to know was how you get the ideas for your books. I'm halfway through Gamble of the Goddess and it's amazing, but I'm wondering how you thought up all this stuff? The way the animals talk and everything. Hope this isn't a stupipd question!"

Not a stupid question at all! I wanted to know the same thing!

Wow Jade, that's a big question... I need some time to figure it out! Meanwhile, thanks for reading Gamble. I'll get back to you on this, I promise. It's just a little early to think so hard, and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.