Author of Sister of the Circuit, Shadow of the Owl, and a recipe for a pretty decent mushroom fritta...
This is an email I’ve dreamed of sending, but was fearful would never happen. Thanks to the amazing support you have provided, Human Resources is going to be published by Inkshares!
The competition is not over yet, and the campaign rolls on, but in the last week HR reached a critical milestone — we passed 250 pre-orders. This means the novel has qualified for "Quill" publishing by Inkshares, regardless of the competition outcome.
I am thrilled, and can’t thank you all enough. I can’t stop and relax yet though, as I need to continue campaigning until the end of the competition — 16 December (PST).
Why keep pushing when you are going to get published?
Quill is a "light" publishing model — it is print on demand (not mass-production), doesn’t include marketing to bookstores, and misses out on some of the more valuable editing. If the book is published under Quill, I’ll hire an editor to make sure you get a quality finished product, but if we win the competition that is included — and obviously the marketing and mass-production would be amazing.
But wait, there’s more! Human Resources has also been selected by two Syndicates; the "Quill Brotherhood" syndicate and the "Great sci-fi for the 21st Century" syndicate. For those not familiar with Inkshares syndicates, they operate as a block. Readers can sign up to a syndicate (most have a clear theme) and agree to purchase the syndicate pick each month. I’m honoured to receive the support of both these groups.
And now for some bad news...
The judges’ of the Launch Pad Manuscript Competition announced their Top 10 finalists this morning, and Human Resources did not make the list. This is disappointing, but I have much to celebrate:
Over the course of the competition so far I have interacted with a number of the authors I have been competing against. Not only do they have some great books, but they have all been friendly and supportive. My sincere congratulations to the Top 10.
Where’s my "special" update?
Last week I promised something special this update. I was full of enthusiasm at the time, expecting to get everything done in time. However, I’m still refining the content of my second bonus feature. Rather than send it out bursting with typos, I’ll hold onto it and share it over the next week.
As always, if you haven’t ordered yet — there’s still time!
Robert
I meant to send this update out last week, but I am forgetful. First off the edit I decided to do on Magus is going to take longer than my original estimate, because it always takes longer than the original estimate(I suspect all my fellow writers will understand that). As I’m looking over I’m finding not just the matter of a few descriptions which could have been more clear in their wording, but also a few bits of dialogue that with some minor tweaking can be much better displays of the characters’ personalities. Its still minor changes, but also one’s which will only make the book stronger. Unfortunately its also the kind of changes which require I go over the entire book word by word.
Now on to the slightly more detailed explanation of my plans for Magus. First I’ll start with what I had intended for Magus when I started writing it: for it to be released in a serialized fashion, basically a sequential release of short stories which each told their own story and part of a larger story. This was started years ago and at the time I looked around and decided that while there are obviously still magazines that include short stories, that serialization had faded to a point of near non-existence so my plan wouldn’t work. As a result I hadn’t looked into it in the years since, but after my first campaign ended I was contacted by a website asking if I wanted to serialize through them. I decided to wait on that since I knew I wanted to give an Inkshares campaign one more shot, but it did cause me to go on a bout of new research into serialization options and the resulting discovery that a decent number of them had popped up in the time since I abandoned the idea.
So, stage 1 of my Magus plan is to go the serialization route. Since most of the terms for such sites understandably state that the book cannot currently be available elsewhere in a digital format or free online that means I will be taking down the chapters I have posted here as well as those on Goodreads and Wattpad. Starting next Tuesday I’ll take down one posted excerpt every other day. This will begin with the first excerpt (chapters 1-3) and continue sequentially from there so if you want to get a free read of any of the chapters that’s the timetable you’re looking at. Once that and the current edit is done then I’ll start submitting to some sites I have in mind. I would most like to get Magus on either Serialteller or Channillo (you can actually read the work of another author who started funding on Inkshares and then moved to serialization, Rebekka S Leber, here on Chanillo), so hopefully that will work out.
I do still want to one day get a print run of Magus out there, so stage 2 of the plan occurs concurrently with stage 1 as I scrape together funds to get the book into the condition I want it to be physically both from an editorial perspective and interior artwork-wise. My current idea for a serialization outline would have it running about a year, maybe a year and a month, so I hope to have gotten everything to where it needs to be by the end of that time, finances allowing. If I’m still running short on financing I may consider running a Kickstarter to make up the difference closer to that time, but I would prefer to avoid crowdfunding if possible.
Also part of stage 2 is a continued effort to get my name out there and attention to Magus via a more active posting on my own and others’ blogs. A general idea of attracting readers through actually writing basically. I know full well that it will be a difficult task since I’m only one small voice in a very crowded field. Try and I may fail, but don’t try and I will always fail. Just gotta forge ahead and hope I can make the smart choices at the right times.
Since I will need to save up as much money as possible, that also means that I’ll soon have to stop almost all non-essential spending. This unfortunately also means the backing of funding books on Inkshares, a freeze that I’m delaying until 1/1/2017. I still want to do what I can to help others meet their funding goals though, so I’m going to try to do my best to keep my eyes open and spread the word about those books I really want to see published via recommending/sharing/reviewing and so on. If you have a book you want to see get funded, whether its your own or someone else’s, still feel free to point it out to me.
Finally, stage 3 is actually getting that print run done and out into the hands of people who want to read it. I have no doubt this will be even more daunting than stages 1 & 2, but I’m just too stubborn to not try. Its also pointless to talk in more detail on this until the time draws nearer and I have a more clear idea of the strategies I’ll employ. For now my main focus is on stages 1 & 2, with only light planning/brainstorming for stage 3.
Of course once these three stages are completed its far from over, since I’ll need to repeat some version of these stages for each book I try to put out whether its one of the many in the Exile series or one of my other projects. I do hope that one day I can build a following large enough to reliably fund and release via Inkshares, but I have a lot of platform building to do before that day is here.
Feel free to contact me for any reason, though especially if you have any advice/tips/tricks for me as I prepare to forge ahead. As always, thanks for your time and support, and keep reading and enjoying!
My Sequel Dystopia was in funding mode recently from the 1 day I had it in the G&S Fantasy contest, even though it was separated from the contest, I never updated the timeline, so it naturally finished on 10/31 when the contest ended.
When it was done, my sequel Dystopia was kept around even though I thought it had ended. There was a glitch near the end that put the campaign in "ends today." That sat there. Forever. With no refunds being processed. Just like Devil’s Call. Finally I clicked a single button on the page and just like that... ’Poof’ everyone’s orders were refunded and the campaign was ended. Even though I had a potential desire to keep it running throughout my book launch, I decided to just let it lapse there for now and finish writing it.
So, I went the other way than Devil’s Call, but there was a glitch and a delay in processing stuff. So don’t go run out and punish the Author of Devil’s Call because changing payment processes or whatever caused a problem.
As for the List contest, let everyone have their second shot and push themselves off the edge. They set it up that there can be 3 in the top 3 and 3 more from anywhere else in the contest. If you are in the list. Focus on making an awesome campaign to attract attention.
This contest doesn’t seem so much about a race to the top 3, as it does your ability to run an attention grabbing campaign.