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Month: March 2013

so i was wrong about the self-publishing thing.

Posted on by Marko

I had this long and very clever blog post witten in which present-day Marko rebuts the arguments of 2011 Marko in opposition of self-publishing, but it came across all braggy and smarmy, so I deleted the draft and decided to start over.

Yes, two years ago I wrote a lengthy blog post detailing why I’d never, ever self-publish. Rather than refuting all my points from back then, I’ll make a short list of reasons why I finally decided to put the novel out myself.

Firstly, and most importantly, I was out of patience with the traditional dance of Query > Submit > File Rejection in pursuit of an agent or publisher. I finished the novel in 2009, sent it to a major SF publishing house in the summer of that year, and didn’t hear back at all. No rejection, no “I still haven’t gotten around to looking at it”, no acceptance, nothing. I might as well have put the manuscript into the stacks at the local library, hoping that an editor might stumble across it accidentally while looking for new reading material in our village library by chance. That’s three and a half years waiting for a response. In the meantime, I shopped the manuscript around to half a dozen other publishers and about 30 or 40 agents, and got no bites. I was simply at the end of my rope with patience.

Secondly, the market for self-publishing has changed quite a bit in the last two years. In 2011, ebook readers were still just getting off the ground; now they’re so mainstream that everyone and their grandmother has a Kindle or an iPad with a reading app on it. Sales of Kindle books have gone up accordingly–that awful Fifty Shades of Kink book sold twice as many Kindle copies than print books. While self-published authors are still looked down upon somewhat (and there is a lot of awful self-published shit out there), there are now plenty of self-pubbers whose books have sold well enough to get their authors offers from traditional publishing houses, and quite a few who can actually make a decent living off their self-published books. Economically, the field has become more viable for self-publishing.

Now that I have the novel out there, I must say that I also like the control I have over every aspect of this endeavor. I went with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and their control panel lets me track my sales numbers pretty much in real-time. KDP also pays royalties out monthly (traditional publishers pay twice a year), so there’s no guesswork involved in when (or how much) I’ll get paid.

So there you have the reasons why I changed my mind on self-publishing: I was sick of the traditional submission treadmill, Kindle publishing seemed like a good way to get my work in front of a lot of readers, and I very much enjoy the transparency and speed of the sales and royalties model offered by Amazon. Times and circumstances change, and I can admit that I’ve been wrong, and that my fears about self-publishing were (luckily) unfounded in my case. Your mileage may vary, of course.

 

 

a tale of a rejection, and the straw that made the cup run over, or something.

Posted on by Marko

Somewhere out there is a literary agent (who shall remain unnamed here) who asked for science fiction submissions on Twitter the Friday before last. I was in bed at the time, reading my Twitter feed on the iPad (as one does), so I got out of bed again to send that agent a query letter that followed the requirements of the agency in question.

I woke up the next morning to find a form rejection in my inbox. That agent had rejected the query without having asked for sample pages–without even having read a single word of the novel. And it was a nice, short, courteous, and professional query letter, not two lines of HAY U WANT TO B MY AGENTZ? CHK YES OR NO LULZ.

I said a very naughty word at the computer screen and felt something in my head go SNAP. Then I had Scrivener compile the ebook files for the novel, bought some cover art, made a book cover, uploaded everything to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service, and told people on my blog that the novel is available for sale.

Right now that novel is #245 on the Kindle Store, #2 in Military SF on the Kindle, and #13 in the entire Science Fiction category (all print, Kindle, and audiobooks) on Amazon. Right now that novel has sold an ungodly amount of ebook copies for a self-published first-time novel by an unknown author.

Right now I’d like to kiss that agent square on the mouth for being the catalyst that finally made me decide to take the novel’s fate into my own hands.

the current novel schedule.

Posted on by Marko

Here’s a quick rundown on the writing schedule for the next year or three, since so many people have been asking about the sequel/s lately.

The second novel, Lines of Departure, will be out in May. It’s told from Andrew’s perspective, just like the first one, and takes place five years after Terms of Enlistment.

The third novel, Angles of Attack, is in the outline phase. It will complete the three-novel storyline I had planned for Andrew and his comrades.

The fourth novel has no title yet, but it will be an “in-betweenquel” that takes place in the five-year time span between the first and second novel. It will be told from a different viewpoint and by a new character, and it will deal with the events in the PRCs on Earth while Andrew is off in space fighting the SRA and humanity’s new adversary. It’s being outlined alongside Angles of Attack.

So yeah—if you liked Terms of Enlistment, there’s a lot more to come in that universe, both from the grunt’s perspective at interstellar war, and from the civil society back home on Earth locked in its own conflicts.

no, i expect you to clear a type 2 malfunction, mister bond.

Posted on by Marko

You know, I LOVE the Bond reboot. Daniel Craig is my James Bond now. But there are a few minor things that rub me the wrong way, and the biggest one is the regression in Bond’s firearms.

In CASINO ROYALE, Bond carries a perfectly serviceable Walther P99 in 9mm. But by the time we get to SKYFALL, Bond has downgraded to a Walther PPK. The PPK is a fine little pocket gun, but a single-stack blowback .380 with tiny sights is absolutely not a believable choice for a stone-cold secret agent killer type who routinely gets into gunfights with other stone-cold secret agent killer types.

I know the PPK has been Bond’s trademark gun since Connery, but they really could have gone with the times when it comes to his pistol. I mean, they updated everything else.

(Of course, one could argue it’s a sign of Bond’s badassitude that he can clean the clocks of his opponents with just a PPK.)

music recommendation.

Posted on by Marko

I’m sort of a late adopter, but I love Pandora now. I was suffering from severe Playlist Fatigue Syndrome with my iTunes library, and Pandora has fixed that issue for me rather handily.

We paid for the annual subscription to get commercial-free streaming. It’s nice to have an infinite playlist matching a particular mood or kind of song, but it’s also damn nice to discover stuff you hadn’t heard of before. I like writing to movie soundtracks and instrumentals because there are no lyrics to distract me from what’s on the page, and some of the very best stuff I’ve found has been by the Nick Cave & Warren Ellis collaboration. The soundtrack to The Road, for example, is very powerful and haunting.

But the best of the Cave/Ellis albums so far is the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It’s a great, great album of elegiac mood music, and the last track (“Song for Bob”) is worth the purchase price of the album all by itself.

I’ve discovered so many of my favorite writers or musicians this way–there’s a sample or a free copy available online, you sample, you like, you buy. Reading the free copy of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, for example, resulted in me buying all the rest of Scalzi’s books with cash money, so I’d say that the “First One’s Free!” strategy really does pay off.

it’s the good ramen at castle frostbite tonight.

Posted on by Marko

Well, this is a nice thing to wake up to:

SFsales

#4 on the Kindle in Military SF. #32 in the entire SF category. #699 in the Kindle Store. Dang.

All of you who bought the little Space Kablooie novel: you have my thanks. If you liked it enough to review or plug it on Amazon or your blogs or the TwitFaces, I thank you again, and I think you’re uncommonly pretty/handsome and brilliant.

That really takes the sting off having to wait for the school bus in ten-degree weather this morning, packing the kids into the van after 30 minutes of No Bus…and having the bus finally drive by just as I’m pulling out of the driveway to cart the youngins to school myself.

crombook laughs at your four winds.

Posted on by Marko

So I bought one of the new Samsung Series 3 Chromebooks, and for all its limitations, I really like the little thing. It has a great keyboard, boots insanely quickly, has seven-hour battery life and a no-maintenance operating system, and doesn’t break the bank. (Oh, and THANK YOU for using a matte screen, Samsung. I hate the glossy ones with a passion, but you can hardly get a laptop without one anymore.)

It’s not a great primary laptop (all you get is the Chrome browser and whatever can run in it), but as a mobile web futz-arounder to toss into your European carry-all on the way to the latte shop, it’s close to ideal. Yes, you need to be connected to the Interwebz to get proper use out of a Chromebook, but there are damn few places I go where there’s no Wi-Fi available (and there’s always cell phone hotspot use). Plus, Google’s document editor has an offline mode, so I don’t need a web connection just to write.

For $400+, the Chromebooks were a little ridiculous, but for $250, it’s a good buy if all you want is a quick and easy little portable web browser with a proper keyboard.

 

a humble request.

Posted on by Marko

My little Space Kablooie novel is finally up on Amazon. People are buying it, which makes me happy. People are liking it, which makes me even happier.

If you’ve read Terms of Enlistment, please consider leaving a review on whatever site you purchased the book. The reviews are not for me (although I can’t deny that I enjoy reading the good ones), they’re for the next person browsing for something decent to read. To those of you who have already left reviews: thank you, thank you. You are wonderful people and quite handsome/beautiful.

Terms of Enlistment will be available on iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and the Sony store very soon. I’ll post links when they are. In the meantime, you can get it from Amazon, Smashwords, or directly from me in whatever DRM-free format suits you best.

For those who asked about when the next one will be out: the second book is already written, and it’ll hit the same outlets probably before you put your first outdoor burgers on the grill this year.

(The second book will be called Lines of Departure.)

derputy herpyderp.

Posted on by Marko

There are a few things I know for sure about Officer Reverse Eotech:

  • He has never been to the range to properly zero his carbine. Probably took it out of the box, loaded it up, mounted the sight improperly, and put the whole thing into the trunk of his cruiser.
  • He went to a hot call with a weapon that has never been zeroed, with a sight that’s non-functional the way it is mounted. Had he been in a situation where he had to use his carbine to stop a threat, he wouldn’t have been able to aim accurately.
  • He did not pay for that sight out of his own pocket. I know hundreds of shooters, and I can guarantee that every last one of them wouldn’t shell out $500 for a holosight without finding out how to properly use it.

But remember, only the cops should be armed, because they’re the ones with the training.

(Never mind the fact that Officer Reverse Eotech is carrying an AR-15 carbine—you know, the kind of gun that’s only good for killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Except when a guy with a badge holds one. Then it becomes a patrol carbine and a personal defense weapon.)