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Month: February 2012

The Sauder Diaries On Six Sunday – 26 Feb 2012

Post Views: 2,383 From “The Sauder Diaries — By Any Other Name“: Arietta turned and swung her other leg over the edge of the catwalk and then let herself down to the floor in a fluid and graceful motion. She wiped her hands together and then wiped them on her vest. “Stop wishing you were a moronic cutthroat pirate and start accepting who you are and where you are. It is what makes you the man you are, Hans. You have made quite a splash since you came aboard and none of it would have been possible if you were anyone but who you are.” Without another word, she turned and left the Tank Hold with an easy sashay, leaving a somewhat stunned Hans sitting on the catwalk…

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Orangeberry Book Tours – Stephanie Abbott

Post Views: 291 Greetings one and all! Trying something new and different here at Split Horizons… having a guest author, Ms.Stephanie Abbott, provide a character interview for her novella “Past Lives #1 Rachel”. Do me a favor and leave some feedback … 1) are you interested in seeing more guest posts from other authors and 2) would you be interested in seeing a few character interviews with the gang from the Bloody Rose? Let me know! Without further ado, allow me to present Ms.Stephanie Abbott (AKA S.A. Reid)! ———————————–  “What Do You Like About People?” By Stephanie Abbott  If you’d asked me this question before the crash, I probably would have gotten snarky and said, “When they leave me alone,” or “Watching them back the hell off.” Oh,…

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The Sauder Diaries On Six Sunday – 19 Feb 2012

Post Views: 2,352 From “The Sauder Diaries — By Any Other Name“: He had schemed and struggled for two months to return here. Then, at the call of his country and the request of a woman, he had delayed his return by another month. Now, here he was, wearing the attire of an airshipman and on a secret mission from an infamous Pirate Captain to sell an encrypted stolen text to a beautiful spy that worked for British Intelligence. It occurred to him that the way that entire notion seemed perfectly normal to him should likely have suggested he retire for a week or more to Bedlam until he was somewhat more firmly grounded in the real world again. He wondered if his sister Valeria would accuse him…

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More Thoughts on the Economics of Authorspace – It’s a business … who knew?

Post Views: 2,273 Alright, I am obliged to confess to being a bit embarrassed. I run a small business, and I’ve been in charge of $100k IT budgets. So I was rather gobsmacked to read an article at “Rob On Writing”  that told me I was clueless about my approach to figuring out a reasonable price for my books. Why? Well, because I’m a production shop, and I have a cost per unit and I need to know what that is. Huh? Wait, what? I’m an artist, right? A story teller? A creative spirit? What do you mean I’ve got cost per unit to calculate? Go read the article, but let me give you the short version: if you’re Indie publishing, this shit’s not free. No, really! It…

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The Sauder Diaries On Six Sunday – 12 Feb 2012

Post Views: 2,626 From “The Sauder Diaries — By Any Other Name“: “Thieves we are,” Blackheart said in an incongruously conversational tone. “But we steal far, far less than the governments waste in needless ‘improvements’ to Dragons, Chimera, Galvanotaurs and the like to feed the ravenous maw their own debased ‘national pride’ and ‘national interests’.” “The Crimean war ended years ago, but still the governments of Europe, the Baltic, and North Africa waste time, money, materials, and lives building better engines of destruction. I can assure you, Mister Sauder, that while some of my crew are indeed killers, none are nearly the murderers as the scientists, politicians and nobles you so highly respect.” “And as for being reviled,” Blackheart laughed aloud. “For an educated man, you seem to…

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More Thoughts on the Economics of Authorspace – Book Prices

Post Views: 242 G’afternoon, folks. So, given that royalties and prices are a trending topic with a couple of author groups on FB I am a part of, I figured I’d do a bit of research and post results. I went to Amazon’s Kindle Books section for fiction and spreadsheet’ed the top 60 books on the chart. I removed any “short story” from the list, since I’m trying to sort out pricing for novella’s and wordier. I then ran averages for the blocks to determine the pricing normals. Here is what I got: Average .. Low .. High Top 10: .. $7.07 .. $2.99 .. $17.54 Top 20: .. $5.50 .. $2.99 .. $17.54 Top 30: .. $5.14 .. $2.99 .. $17.54 Top 40: .. $5.51 .. $1.99…

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A quick update about the state of progress for “The Sauder Diaries”

Post Views: 387 So I am pleased to report that my former publisher delivered both my sales numbers for December 2011 as well as my royalties today. My rate of sales for the 12 day period from the 19th to the 31st was about double my “hopeful” target, which certainly feels good. The royalties recieved will be going into financing the Book Cover Contest, for which I’ve already recieved some smashing submissions. I’m in the process of reading up on Amazon Kindle’s publishing requirements and then I’ll be moving on to Chapters and then Barnes & Noble. With the current fracturing going on in the distribution space as a result of Amazon’s decision to open its own imprint, I’ve decided to work as broadly as I can. There…

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Book Cover Contest – Making Lemonade and Spreading the Sweets

Post Views: 1,508 Contest Announcement! As you likely heard, I’ve been obligated to remove my first novel, “The Sauder Diaries – By Any Other Name“, from the shelves as a result of a copyright infringement issue stemming from the systemically unethical actions of my former publisher. This is a bit of a kick in the teeth, since the book was doing remarkably well for a new author’s first release by any metric I was able to determine from blogs and common wisdom. This has left me with a problem of likely not being able to have another publisher of any size touch the title due to legal mire issues. So, I’ll be self-publishing this one to get it back out on shelves where people can enjoy it. The…

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