It was my plan to spend December goofing off, and instead somehow I’ve been knee-deep in projects. How did that happen? I think I got tired of my own complaining, to be honest. I was doing the equivalent of the South Park underpants gnomes: step 1, write. Step 2, publish. Step 3…? Step 4, profit! And then when step 4 wasn’t happening very well, I got maudlin and mopey.
I suppose I am out of the mopey stage. It certainly helps to feel like I need the money! But anyway, here are my various initiatives, for the curious.
First, the AI audiobooks. This beta is so very much a beta, full of things I can’t fix or change or that break. But I’ve managed to get the following books out:
- Mindtouch. But not Mindline, or the subsequent books, because the AI can’t handle the /slashes/ I use for psychic dialogue.
- An Exile Aboard Ship.
- Thief of Songs and Cantor for Pearls. This was actually a relief to me, because I wasn’t looking forward to shopping for a narrator for them if I ever decided to do them.
- Marda Quincesinger, Postulant. I think I might like this one the most!
- Vinny the Armadillo Makes a Friend. Surprisingly this one was eligible, so I went for it.
- Princes’ Game Summaries. So was this one, but the AI wouldn’t let me remove all the sketches, so… I admit I played with it a little. Once you get to that part of the book you’ll see what I mean.
Gratifyingly, some of these audiobooks already have orders (and no returns), so it appears they’re serving their purpose. I still want to hire humans eventually, but this will do for now. I’m hoping to get more of them out, once Amazon answers my latest “this is broken, and I can’t continue without it being fixed” email.
Next, library-available paperbacks and hardcovers. Previously I’ve done all my POD (print-on-demand) paperbacks via Amazon, but that virtually guarantees they never appear at brick and mortar stores, or in libraries. So this month I bit the bullet (grumbling all the while) and shelled out for ISBNs so I could use IngramSpark to create editions that will be available elsewhere. IngramSpark also allows for wholesale orders, which makes the books more attractive to retailers.
I don’t think this is a big deal for most adult fiction, but the children’s books will always be dead in the water without wider distribution and I think, though I’m not sure, that I’ll be able to do smaller hardcovers through them. I’m investigating. Whatever the case, I’m planning to move all the children’s books over, and the nonfiction.
If you’d like to see where you can now order (though for now, it’s just Marda), here’s the list of retailers, which includes Walmart and Target as well as libraries and schools. That list also includes UK, Europe, and New Zealand outlets if you’re in those locations. The new ISBN is: 9781963189001.
Refreshed Ebooks. About half? Maybe less than half? Of my ebooks are from my hand-coding era, and while they’re beautiful and functional, updating them is a pain. Since buying formatting software, I’ve only had to do a single master document to export ebook, paperback, and hardcover editions, which means if I find a typo or want to release an anniversary edition, I don’t have to separately update three different end products; I just fix the master. This is such a huge advantage that I’ve started updating all the hand-coded books… which was part of what inspired the Earthrise kickstarter I’ll be wrapping up after Christmas.
Bonus: updating these books makes them available for the AI narration beta. The hand-coded ones don’t meet the criteria.
Finally, I’m working on New Reader Support items. The biggest of these is the Jaguar Chimerical Book Catalog, which lists all of my books and gives you overviews and ‘if you want this, then try this’ type data. I’m done with the first revision, so if you want to take a look and give me feedback on how to make it more useful, let me know!
I also updated and revised (and recovered) the Peltedverse Guidebook, which you can re-download here if you want a new copy.
The last thing I’m doing is what people call ‘reader journeys’, where you have series of emails that walk people through useful information. I’ve done one for Alysha’s books, where the first email tells you about the wiki and the guidebook; the second email gives away a copy of “Leadership Lessons” as a way of informing the reader that the Fleet stories continue in a separate series of short story collections, and the last one talks about series adjacent to Alysha (Her Instruments, Dreamhealers, etc) and offers a link to the book catalog.
I’d like to do one next for Mindtouch, since I’ve signed up for a few giveaways in January.
The one thing I’m not doing much of is writing, because I’ve concluded that I need to write Qora’s story before I finish Surela 2, and then I need to release them both simultaneously, or close to. So I’m taking a lot of notes for that, many of which are ending up on the wiki… so if you’re a wiki watcher, go enjoy. I also have the short story for the Kickstarter, which is partially complete, to finish up, and I have a note here that says I should write another short story about Reese in January.
Christmas is in less than one week, and I expect I'll slow down until then. After, we'll start livestreaming the Kickstarter doodles. Then... 2024! Who knows what next year will look like....
