I know that for Book One and Book Two (not to mention: Forget What You Can’t Remember, More Lost Memories, all versions of Lost and Not Found, and a good chunk of Dragons’ Truth) I got my most productive work done while spending time at a coffee shop all day, drinking overly-sweet coffee drinks. ((For Book Three, I wrote the bulk of the book in a single 60-hour session, in my bedroom, while using modafinil to stay awake and only white tea to drink.)) While in Vegas I had 3 days to write. The first day I tried writing in the hotel room, drinking water, and barely passed 1k words all day. The second day I went to Starbucks and, after spending an hour updating podcasts/etc, I tried to get by on cheap iced tea drinks… slow. Then a bit after mid-day I ordered a super-sweet espresso drink I’ve dubbed ‘liquid awesome’ and proceeded to write at over 850 words/hour for the remainder of the day. The third day, feeling the crunch on my wallet from a few of days in Vegas, I tried switching to the cheaper drip coffee and iced tea, and only wrote ~1500 words all day (though that’s partially because I spent a couple hours chatting with a stranger).

What I’d like to be able to do is to take my laptop to a local coffee shop in the morning, sit all day drinking fancy drinks (and eating coffee-shop sandwiches/etc) and working on the book, and repeat that day after day until at least Book Four is done. ((Preferably until Book Six is done.)) I wrote most of Book Two over about a week of such days, and expect to be able to repeat that performance for the rest of the Untrue Tales… series. The only (big) problem standing between me and this goal is money. As you know from my other posts, this writing gig doesn’t exactly pay the bills. Not even close. And while my wife’s income is sufficient to cover our monthly expenses, allowing me to be a full-time creative, after going to Vegas and San Diego Comicon this summer our “disposable” money is used up for now. So while we aren’t behind on any bills, and we can afford groceries, there’s no extra money (at least for a couple of months) for spending days/weeks in coffee shops.

You can help, and I’ve thought of a couple of possible options:

First, easiest, is that you could buy the $50 signed paperback copy of the first trilogy of the Untrue Tales… series from modernevil.com. I currently have 6 copies of this edition “in stock.” Sales of the last couple copies have to pay to re-order,  so they don’t help as much with coffee unless even more people order. I also have a limited number of copies of the not-currently-in-print individual paperback first editions of Book One, Book Two, and Book Three available signed for $25 each. Order any of these 4 books directly from modernevil.com at these prices and I will personally sign it (and can personalize it) and ship it to you, then add you to the acknowledgements / Special Thanks page of the second trilogy (and of the individually available eBooks)… and use the proceeds to do the coffee shop thing, for as long as the money lasts.

Second, if you run a local (Phoenix, AZ), independent coffee shop (or are friends with someone who does) and would like to sponsor or co-sponsor my writing, I would be glad to give you my loyalty, Special Thanks in the books, and lots of mentions on twitter/facebook/yelp/this-blog/my-podcasts as I work on, publish, and later podcast each book remaining in the series. I realize this isn’t a traditional way to advertise, and doesn’t reach a vast/huge/mass-media audience, but the majority of my paperback sales are hand-sales in the Phoenix area, most of my facebook friends are in Phoenix, and a reasonable chunk of my twitter followers are in Phoenix. If you’d like to be seen as an author-friendly place to be, this could help. Even something as simple as first-drink-free/day would go a long way to stretching the dollars contributed by supporters who take advantage of the first option, though if you’re a coffee-shop-owner and a reader, I’d be glad to work out a books-for-coffee exchange, too.

Third, even if you can’t afford a signed paperback right now (or already have one and can’t think of anyone to gift a copy to), or aren’t a coffee shop owner, you can help: Spread the word. Link to this post. Give people my email address. Tell someone at your favorite Phoenix-area indie coffee shop you know an author looking for a spot, or just tell me what/where your favorite local coffee shop is so I can go talk to them myself. Tell your friends who read books about my books, and about this offer.

Until something happens on this, or until November (when I should begin to have a bit of “disposable” income again), I’ll keep slogging on at home, a couple hundred words at a time. The current setup of my desk/home, while great for podcasting, just doesn’t seem conducive to writing books in the Untrue Tales… universe.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers, as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 59 / 977 / 27
• Dragons’ Truth: 135 / 671 / 71
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 88 / 2379 / 75
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 95 / 1927 / 164
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 78 / 2211 / 136
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 80 / 928 / 80
• Cheating, Death: 18 / 2852 / 185
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 309 / 39
• More Lost Memories (full): 0 / 1523 / 200
• More Lost Memories (ind. stories, eBook only): 1
• Time, emiT, and Time Again: 1 / 644 / N/A
• Total for all titles: 555 / 14,092 / 977
• Total YTD: 4,091 / 162,983 / 11,284
• Total all-time: 12,513 / 343,084 / 22,403

Of note: Podiobooks numbers are WAY off for August. Most titles had up to 40% fewer total downloads, and up to 50% fewer downloads of final episodes versus July, which was already down 10% from June. Untrue Tales… Book One and Cheating, Death were actually flat, and More Lost Memories just finished in August (so was up), plus Time, emiT, and Time Again began in August, so it’s also “up” (from zero) – which means that the “all titles” numbers only appear to be off 10%-22% for the month.

In terms of sales: The only eBooks I moved directly through Smashwords were the free copies of Cheating, Death. “Premium” channel sales via Smashwords have not been updated since I posted last month, so who knows? Amazon says I sold 3 kindle books for ~$10; this is the new 70% royalty rate at work. The same three eBooks would have netted me only ~$5 at the old 35% rate. I’ve begun hearing horror stories from authors who have their books on Amazon and Smashwords “Premium Distribution” where some of the “Premium” vendors (read: Kobo) are cutting your prices, or where metadata miscommunication results in wrong prices, and Amazon’s new system auto-matches the lower price the author never authorized, or Amazon cuts off sales entirely while it investigates. I set my prices identically across all the platforms I offer them (at 1/2 the paperback cover price), which will soon include Amazon, Google Editions, Goodreads, and Smashwords (& thus: Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Diesel, and Sony). I am not looking forward to having to cut any of those channels out because some automated systems want to argue over how little to charge for my books, but if Kobo screws up my sales, I will. The free copies are for people who thing $5.99 is too much for an eBook – the $5.99 copies are the lowest point of entry for people who want to financially support me as an independent creator; no need for a price war, people. You can’t beat free.

Also, while updating my spreadsheet today I noticed there was a miscalculation that effected the numbers I posted last month. The error only effected Podiobooks numbers, and only for “all titles” numbers. I have corrected the post.

About half of them are finished going through the meatgrinder right now (there’s been a queue of between 160 and 220 eBooks waiting to be processed all afternoon), and they seem to be being approved automatically by the AutoVetter for “Premium Distribution” within another few minutes of conversion. I do not recall ever having seen the system work so smoothly or automatically, even prior to the introduction of “Premium Distribution.”

Well done, Smashwords! I may be stubborn and opinionated about how I want my eBooks to be formatted, but for anyone willing to follow your (relatively straightforward) guidelines it looks like your system is actually approaching both easy-to-use and works-right. Hooray!

…now, to go figure out about getting ePub versions of my books ready for Google Editions and Goodreads.

Now, there are two important things that small press / independent publishers need to do to get their books on bookstore shelves. One is marketing – contacting book buyers at all the book stores you want your book in, and convincing them to stock the book. This is, strangely, where most big publishers believe their sales end; they see the customer for their books as the book stores, not the readers. So a lot of effort and expense goes into getting book buyers for the big chains (and the indie book stores) to buy/carry publishers’ new books. Frankly I can’t afford to compete in that marketplace, even if I didn’t have an aversion to traditional marketing & sales.

The other thing publishers need to do is get their discount right (and for their books to be returnable, which mine are). The discount is the percent off the cover price wholesale buyers (bookstores) have to pay. Lightning Source allows me to set my discount just about anywhere I want, down to 20%. The recommended discount, the industry standard discount (a ridiculous number, if you ask me), is 55%. I’ve read that the big chains (Borders, Barnes & Noble) won’t even consider a book if the discount is lower than 50%; like, theoretically they won’t display it to their employees as even being orderable if the discount is too low. This is because the discount is where the bookseller makes their money. If the cover price of a paperback is $13.99 and the discount is 55%, the bookseller can make up to $7.69 by selling you that book. If they want to sell it to you for 20% off, they still make ~$4.90. On the other hand, with my latest book at $13.99, with a 50% discount, I only make $3.47 per copy sold (after printing cost), and the bookseller can make up to $6.99. In a world where the bookseller does most of the work of finding new readers, their making twice as much per copy as the publisher might make sense.

So… I’ve been setting my books’ discounts at 50%. Until today. (-ish… The changes won’t trickle through to all booksellers’ systems for “up to 45 days”) Today I changed the discount rate on all my “backlist” books to 20%, where “backlist” means it’s been in print for more than a year. Sales of these books, right now, are at a trickle. As far as I know, no one is walking into their local Borders and asking to order a book I put out 3 years ago; they’re going to Amazon.com or bn.com or such to order online. Or they’re buying the eBook for their kindle/iPad/nook/whatever. So… my sources lead me to believe that most/all online book stores will continue to carry (if not discount from list price) my paper books, even at a 20% discount. Because I’d sure like that trickle of book sales to be able to cover the cost of keeping them in print, which, luckily, is only $12/year/title.

What does a “short” 20% discount do to my share of a sale? For Forget What You Can’t Remember, another $13.99 title, my share (after printing) goes from $2.25 @ 50% discount to $6.44 @ 20% discount. Amazon, which doesn’t currently discount that title at all, will see their cut of each sale go from $6.99 to $2.80. My after-printing cut on More Lost Memories, goes from $3.05 to $6.94 per copy, while a bookseller will see their cut drop from $6.49 to $2.60. I’ve set up similar pricing across my other titles. (Except for the Untrue Tales… Book One, Book Two, and Book Three combined edition, at 416pp and priced at 24.99. My cut after printing at 50% was $6.19 (about the income of 2 books), and at a 20% discount will be $13.68. The bookseller’s cut will go from $12.49 to $5.00.) What this does is… it means I only need to sell two copies of each book per year to “profitably” keep them in print forever, instead of 4+ copies.

What it doesn’t do is change bookstores’ intentions of carrying my backlist books; except for “classics” and ongoing bestsellers, bookstores typically don’t carry any book for more than a couple of months after its release (and my new books will remain at a 50% discount). Alternatively, Amazon carries books as long as they’re available and -unless I’ve been seriously misinformed- will gladly carry books that are priced with a short discount of 20%. If my books start disappearing from online stores next month, maybe I’ll consider changing it back… but I think this will work out fine. Because the people paying for my books are, theoretically, doing so because they want to support my work financially (otherwise they’d just take one of the free versions), changes like this and like offering my signed copies for $25 apiece seem to make sense to me. Do they make sense to you?

Now, the bad/bizarre: I have been fighting with Smashwords for the last two months (and over & over with other issues over the last year or so) over their inconsistent and sometimes inappropriate application of their “style guide” and “Premium Distribution” rules. Currently, six of my eBooks are held up from “Premium Distribution” – all for things that are also “wrong” with my other 18 already-approved eBooks.

What’s wrong, you ask?

Well, when formatting my books, I like to use both an indented paragraph and a small trailing space (less than 1 line-height) after each paragraph. I believe that this enhances readability on dedicated eReaders, and I’ve been doing it for years. When my eBooks started getting rejected for this, I took a look and discovered that the Smashwords style guide explains how to do both, then says you are not to do both, but only to do one. All 23 of my eBooks have the same formatting, in this regard. When my 7 latest eBooks were rejected for this, I emailed support about this, making reference to the 17 others that had already been approved and my personal preference for it, and Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords) emailed me to say that “since this is what you want we’ll let this through.” One of them was approved, the others stayed rejected until I tried re-submitting them yesterday – now they’re rejected again for this and other reasons:

I use page breaks. Apparently (this is a new one to me, so I haven’t checked the style guide again today about it) the style guide advises that “since not all Smashwords formats respect page breaks we recommend you insert two paragraph returns before every page break.” Which I do, everywhere I feel it is appropriate. I’m aware that “not all” the formats respect page breaks! Last time I checked, only 3 of their 8 formats retained my page breaks. At the same time, I don’t feel extra line breaks are always appropriate where a page break would be the best option, and in some of my front matter I only put a single line break, so that -if page breaks aren’t available- the front matter doesn’t stretch on and on with unnecessary space. (ie: if it’s all going to be on one page, let’s try to keep it all on one page!)

Whoever reviewed my eBooks for premium qualification also decided that some of my books need new covers and new titles. They think they might be too confusing. Here, take a look at my books on Smashwords. You’ll notice that the top 7 eBooks have similar covers and titles. If you actually spent more than the briefest moment looking at them, I suspect it would become clear to you that 6 of them are individual short stories from the same collection, and the 7th is the full collection – since that’s what it says in their descriptions. And if you downloaded the preview of any of the individual short stories, so does the Preface to each story, very clearly. So since what I’d like is for people who try one of the individual stories to buy the full collection, I’m doing what I can to keep the stories connected to the collection, both by title and by covers. If you scroll a little further down the page, you’ll see I did the same thing with 7 short stories from my 2009 collection, More Lost Memories. (All 8 eBooks of which have been approved for “Premium distribution” more than once without my being told they were “too confusing.”)

Actually, when I’d originally submitted the first couple eBooks from this new collection, I got an email from Mark Coker asking what I was doing. I replied with an explanation similar to the above & never heard anything back… and now I’m seeing them rejected with this reason included once again in the long list of things “wrong” with them.

Prior to April of this year, when I went through and re-formatted and re-created all my eBooks for Smashwords (because they had their meatgrinder re-process all their eBooks and then decided to reject about half of them from “Premium Distribution” for the following), it was because they were rejected re: their Copyright declaration. At first it was that I used a correct Copyright declaration that said Modern Evil Press was the publisher (it is), but had failed to mention Smashwords. I also wasn’t using their recommended license statement, which I consider excessively informal, because I was using a proper, formal license statement instead. I guess their automatic filter was looking for either their recommended license statement or the phrase “Published By [publisher] at Smashwords” – I opted for the latter. Of course, then I had to go through and do it all again, when a few days later their system started rejecting for including the © symbol on the Copyright page.

You know, because some eReaders might not display it properly.

So I’ve been rejected for properly declaring my copyright. I’ve been rejected for making informed decisions about how I’d like my books to appear on eReaders. I’ve been rejected because my book covers might confuse readers, “especially once these go out to distribution.” (Because people who would spend $hundreds on an eReader are obviously pretty stupid, right?) I’ve even been told I need to change my books’ titles. The audacity.

This is why I am beginning to get fed up with Smashwords. Yes, all my titles are available to customers who go directly to Smashwords.com, and “Premium Distribution” isn’t the end of the story. Yes, if I go re-format all my books (because if I only go re-format the 6 currently rejected, I won’t have consistent formatting across all my titles – I’m trying to be professional and consistent, so if I take out the trailing spaces after paragraphs in some, I’m compelled to take it out of all of them – and resubmit them all, hoping they don’t get rejected for some other, new reason) for the third time this year to accommodate Smashwords’ ever-changing requirements, then it would simply be a matter of them telling me what I can and can’t name my books and what my covers are allowed to look like. Yep.

In other news, I don’t have this problem when selling directly into the kindle store. Everything there just works (once I’ve hand-coded my book into their proprietary format). Ooh, and apparently I can sell my eBooks directly through GoodReads, now? Maybe I should suggest to Mark Coker that Smashwords should partner with GoodReads as a “Premium Distribution” channel. Because (seriously) I’m nowhere near fed up enough with Smashwords’ frustrations to pull my books or otherwise give up on them; I like what they’re doing enough to want to see them do better. That’s why I suggested (to founders on both sides) that Smashwords and Podiobooks (both distributors of independent electronic fiction) should work together – and now they do. That’s why I tell every indie or aspiring author I know about Smashwords. I love hearing about upgrades, enhancements, and new partners… even when they do lead to some of my books going undistributed for months at a time.

I’m working on Untrue Tales… Book Four. I know I mentioned it on Twitter/Facebook, but in case you haven’t been following me; I began writing Book Four while I was in Las Vegas recently. (During the day while we were there, my wife Mandy was at a teaching conference, so I had plenty of time to work. Evenings were for having fun.) I got about 5700 words written in Vegas, and haven’t added a word in the three weeks since. Actually, I’ve been pretty darn depressed lately -including the last three weeks, comicon, Vegas, and for quite some time before that. I’m a bit surprised I was able to write anything at all. Luckily, I’ve been working on feeling a bit better and in the last week or two, and while I haven’t managed to get any actual writing done (and have actually experienced stress to the level of physical pain the last two times I tried to sit down to work on Book Four), I have been working through the story quite a bit.

I’ve seen/remembered quite a bit of the rest of the story, and it looks like instead of 7 books (or more) as I recall originally envisioning, the story will be well told in 6 books. The first three are done, you can read them now. I should have Book Four done within a couple of months. (ie: before NaNoWriMo’10) Then maybe I’ll write Book Five for release in early 2011 and Book Six for release in mid- or late-2011. I am planning on keeping them all very close to the same length as each other and as the first three books. The writing may (or may not) go quickly through all 3 books, one after the other, but I’m beginning to get used to the idea of investing months per book for editing/preparation/recording in advance of an official release.

I’ve just looked at a calendar, and if Book Four is ready by October 8th & I start podcasting it on the Modern Evil Podcast that week (immediately after TeaTA finishes its run), then it’ll run out in mid-December… Two more books of the same length would be another 5 months of episodes, if posted back-to-back, which would put the release of Book Five in December 2010 or January 2011 and Book Six in March 2011. Which I suppose would be alright. The first three were released in 2004, 2005, and 2006. I somewhat wish I could release the next three in 2010, 2011, and 2012… but I also don’t like the idea of sitting on a finished book for a year or more… and I kinda want to get all three books written as quickly as possible.

Of course, pre-2008 I was only writing/publishing about one book per year.

Now, for the release, I’m thinking of doing a modified version of what I’ve been implementing with my more recent releases (though certainly in line with the current availability of the first three Untrue Tales… books). I’m thinking of releasing the individual books 4-6 as eBooks and audiobooks and not as individual paperback books, then putting out the second trilogy as a combined paperback after all three books are done. I brainstormed a variety of models for putting out various other combinations of paper/eBook/audio at various intervals, doing various fundraisers, even thought about limited hardback releases, but due to the expense of paper (and the miniscule interest I’ve seen over the years in the individual books in the series in paperback) I think this will be the most reasonable plan. Then, maybe, I’ll look into doing a limited hardback release encompassing the full series.

On the writing itself: (Possible spoilers ahead) I haven’t written -or been in the mindset that created- books in the Untrue Tales… series for over four years. Since then I’ve been through a variety of life changes, not the least of which was my marriage in 2007. Despite Trevor’s having been reunited with his wife at the end of Book Three, their being together for the remainder of the series, and Book Four being about their life together before his being exiled to Earth, my relationship with my wife actually distances me from the relationship Trevor has with his wife. Writing Book Four has been an emotional stumbling block since (perhaps) 2005, and is the primary reason I’ve not previously continued the series. It was supposed to be about Trev & Toni’s love story, which led directly to his exile on Earth… and writing the core of that story is one I may never be able to do.

Luckily, upon examining the way the story needs to be told and how events unfolded prior to Trevor’s exile, I discovered that the emotional core of and the how-they-met-and-fell-in-love part of Trev & Toni’s story doesn’t get told in Book Four or (probably) anywhere in the series. Book Four is still nearly-all-flashback to what led Trev into exile, as told by Toni, but she’s keeping a vital element secret. Something that won’t be revealed until the cliffhanger ending of Book Five. Something which, since she’s keeping it secret (for good reason), means she won’t be telling the story of how they met, fell in love, et cetera, either. This takes a huge weight off my back re: writing Book Four.

I’ve also discovered that the tall man, the closest thing to an antagonist in the first 3 books, figures into Trev & Toni’s backstory and into future books – would you believe he’s actually a complex, sympathetic, and manipulated character? His love story, I get to tell.

Most of the rest of what I have planned, I can’t tell you about here. It would give too much away. But it’s going to be awesome. The main battle sequence in Book Five is mind-blowing, and the twist at the end of Book Five… well, the main storyline has been planned from the beginning, it’s just a few details that have needed ironing out. Most of which happens in a process very similar to remembering something that happened to me long ago… or far into my future. It’s hard to tell the difference, sometimes.

It’s coming. If you want to get early access, you can volunteer to be a ‘Beta Reader’ – you’ll get to read the books before the general public does, in exchange for giving me feedback on them. You don’t have to be a professional editor, you just have to be an interested reader (and familiar with the first three books in the series).  Email me, or comment below, if you’re interested.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers for the full Year-To-Date, as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 498 / 11,843 / 550
• Dragons’ Truth: 755 / 8,785 / 965
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 648 / 28,446 / 828
• More Lost Memories: 2 / 1,909 / n/a
• *MLM/individual stories: 32 (24: Pay Attention)
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 569 / 23,594 / 2,040
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 480 / 25,962 / 2,009
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 539 / 14,053 / 1,278
• Cheating, Death: 13 / 31,773 / 2,340
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 1 / 2,526 / 297
• Time, emiT, and Time Again: 1 / n/a
• *TeaTA/individual stories: 1
• Total for all titles: 3,537 / 148,891 / 10,307
• Total, all time: 11,959 / 328,992 / 21,426

The two items marked with a * are for the short stories, from my two short story collections, which I have released as individual eBooks for $0.99-$1.99. Though they are also available on the podcasts, I have chosen to only count their audio downloads as part of the whole collections. Also, More Lost Memories wasn’t entirely available on Podiobooks.com until today, so there are no ‘finished’ numbers available yet. Time, emiT, and Time Again was available as an eBook in July, but does not start on Podiobooks.com until August 9th.

Overall, these numbers look good. Podiobooks downloads have been dropping all year, but are already passing last year’s numbers (with 5 months & a couple books to go in 2010). eBooks numbers are holding reasonably steady and have also just passed 2009′s totals – they’re not up to where eBook downloads were in 2008, but it’s still about 75-100 copies of each book available for free on modernevil.com, every month. The only books without huge download numbers are the ones I haven’t posted directly to modernevil.com – and even Cheating, Death (which only requires you to download from Smashwords to get the free eBook) has only had about 8 free downloads all year.

On the money side, I’m doing reasonably well. My goal for this year, financially, is to have Modern Evil Press operating at a profit. Any profit. I’ve reported a loss on my taxes the last two years, and would prefer not to have to deal with reporting a loss for a third year in a row. Due to a slight miscalculation or two, I’m currently about $20 in the red, year-to-date. Which is pretty close to a profit. If I sell a few copies of my new book, I’ll be there. If I decide to participate in the Art Walk again this fall, I just need to ensure I make more money than it costs to show. ((I haven’t been working on art at all, in months, so maybe I’ll just bring books. Or maybe I’ll start working on art again this month. Who knows?))

On a related note, I’ve just gone through modernevil.com and updated all the ‘Add to cart’ buttons with a new model for sales, based on the idea of ‘pay what you can’. I’ve always believed that this was the model I was trying to use, but I have the feeling people didn’t see it very clearly on the site, so I’ve tried to make it more clear. If you like my work and want to support its further creation, you can do things like buy the original art I’ve created for some of the covers (or in the case of my poetry journals, the original hand-written journals themselves), becoming a patron of the arts by spending hundreds of dollars. For $25 each (or $50 for the Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 combined edition), you can buy a signed paperback copy of any of my books; this flat rate is still based on the idea that you would like to offer your patronage, but that perhaps your budget cannot afford to invest $100-$500 right now. If that’s out of your price range, rather than personally selling my unsigned paperbacks and eBooks at list price, I’ve simply linked to several online stores where you can order them for list or less, typically from $5-$14. Then, of course, I also make my eBooks and audiobooks available for free, creating a spectrum from full patronage at one end to the ability to try my work for free at the other end, encouraging people to ‘pay what they can’ on nearly every page of the site.  Your feedback/comments/suggestions on this change are welcome/encouraged.

• Buy the paperback at modernevil.com
• Buy the paperback at Amazon.com
• Buy the paperback at barnesandnoble.com
• Buy the eBook from Smashwords
• Buy the eBook for your kindle

I’m already working on the audiobook version; if you subscribe to the Modern Evil Podcast, you’ve already heard some of it. It should begin running on Podiobooks.com in August, after More Lost Memories is complete there. Actually, I’ve already recorded the entire book, but still need to do most of the audio-editing… and I need to work on the music a while longer. I’m not happy with my first few attempts to compose the intro/outro music for the audiobook. Definitely not doing book-length bed music for it, but I’m a bit blocked on coming up with a melody/sound which encapsulates the entire collection.

I’m pretty happy with the finished book. After reading and re-reading the book over and over again in the last few weeks, it feels pretty solid. In case you’re wondering: I read each story aloud as soon as it’s written, for any immediate/obvious edits. About half the stories in this book were written a couple of years ago, so -while they’d already received quite a bit of editing- I re-read them recently, as well. Then when I’d written the first nine stories & essays, I re-read the entire book (aloud, again) before sending it to my Beta Readers. (Then I wrote the final story, Buying Time.) Then after I’d got the final feedback from my Beta Readers, after preparing the book for print, I printed out a proof and read that aloud (Finding even more errors!) before sending it to Lightning Source (my printer). Then I read it aloud again to record the entire audiobook.

The order of the stories and essays feels good. The balance between them is strong. There’s a wide variety of characters, time manipulations, and relationships. I’d have liked to have had more/longer essays, but that’s more a personal preference than that the book doesn’t work as-is; the essays currently in the book work well as brief interstitials between the stories, like a mental palate-cleansing. I’m happy with it, overall, and I think readers will be, too.

I do not recall the precise details of the conversation, but it began with a confusion. When the caller insisted that something must be wrong, that Untrue Tales… wasn’t all there, I immediately went into tech-support mode and tried to determine where their problem downloading might be. Soon, as they explained further and my mind wakened more, I realised that what they meant was that the story didn’t have an ending.

Which is correct. Only the first three books of the series are written, so far, and I have plans for at least another four (possibly six) books to complete Trevor’s story. I have been putting off continuing the story for the last several years. Book Four is supposed to be nearly entirely flashback, filling in the story that led to Trevor’s exile on Earth and separation from his true love, and I’ve worried that I won’t do the story justice.

I wrote & published (via Cafepress, originally) Book One in 2004, Book Two in 2005, and Book Three in 2006. In 2007 I began seriously working on starting Modern Evil Press, buying ISBNs, contracting with Lightning Source, and getting several books both in print and available for purchase everywhere. And got married. In 2008 I stopped working a day job and started being a creative full-time, devoting quite a bit of that time to creating audio versions of my existing books and writing Forget What You Can’t Remember and More Lost Memories, which were published on 1/1/2009. In 2009, in response to certain feedback from readers of FWYCR, I spent the better part of the year doing research on zombie novels, then wrote Cheating, Death. Then edited together the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut for sale as an eBook. So far this year I’ve put out the print edition of LaNF-DC and am nearing completion of this new collection of short stories and essays, Time, emiT, and Time Again. I’ve been busy.

Then, while I was working on Cheating, Death I had a few ideas for an alternate history universe where I could tell at least a few good stories. I’ve been doing a fair amount of research on the period and characters from which I intend to develop these stories from, but the task is far and away the most research-intensive project I’ve ever attempted. (Normally I prefer simply to write the stories and worlds that originate in my own imagination, rather than to attempt to start anywhere near actual history and real people.) So I’ve postponed it a bit, too. In fact, putting together (and expanding) Time, emiT, and Time Again was partially because I suspect that I might not feel ready for the first book to see print by the end of 2010, and I wanted to be sure to put out at least 2 new books this year.

On the other hand, I’ve received my first enthusiastic contact from a fan since Dragons’ Truth also led a few people to ask me if/when there would be a sequel. (My response to that is a question of where, exactly, one might go from the end of Dragons’ Truth. As soon as someone has a reasonable idea, I don’t see any problem with pursuing it.) I know thousands of people have downloaded the eBook and Podiobook versions of each of the three Untrue Tales… books, but the dropoff in readers/listeners from Book Two to Book Three is fairly significant, feedback & reviews are sparse & mixed, and I’ve long suspected that people aren’t getting to the end or don’t like the series very much. The only people who, prior to today, had asked me about continuing the series were people who hadn’t read it yet and were avoiding it because it was unfinished.

Actually, I’ve still been asked more frequently about the description of the fireplace in Book Three than when or whether Book Four will be written. As in: “I really liked the whole series, except for the description of the fireplace in Book Three. What was that about?” That, dear readers, was in the same vein as the entirety of Forget What You Can’t Remember; I was trying to simulate in the reader, via writing style and structure, the experience the character is having – forced on you by the act of reading itself. You like to feel tension and excitement while reading the tense, exciting parts of a thriller. You like to feel as though you are being romanced while reading a romance. I just tried to do the same thing with irritating distraction (in the fireplace), depersonalization disorder, and amnesiac confusion and ethical doubts (in FWYCR).

Yet I’ve now had a great conversation with someone who not only liked the Untrue Tales… books, but is eager and excited to read the rest of the series. Eager enough to look up and call the author’s phone number, to ask about the rest of the story. Which is, in itself, perhaps enough motivation to attempt to squeeze Book Four into my schedule before starting on the alternate history series. At first glance, I think perhaps if I start thinking about it now, I might be able to finish it & publish it by the end of August. Or perhaps September.

Even though I’m not much motivated to write it. I’m a bit distanced from the explicit erotica, violence, and (the core of the thing, which most readers will never notice) the central motivation for the whole project being the satire by exaggeration of the way series like Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events were unfolding at the time. Rather than despising such frustratingly written yet inexplicably popular books and wanting to mock them by emulating and exploding them, I just don’t care about them any more. Technically I had already got to that point by the time I published Book Three, but it has been a real stumbling block to the continued writing of the series. I will have to determine whether I can either simulate or replace that motivation, in order to continue the series without drastically altering the storytelling style.

Perhaps this comes down to that question of ‘why’ – Why I write, why I publish, why I do all this work. If I write “for the readers” I’ve got to finish the series. If I publish to be able to write what and how I want to write, I’m fine to go on ignoring it. I think it’s complicated and contains some of both of those (and other factors), which is why I’ve neither written the next book nor taken the first three out of print. I shall continue to think about  it, and I’ll see if I can start working on it this summer.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers (including above eBooks estimates), as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 65 / 1342 / 61
• Dragons’ Truth: 133 / 934 / 102
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 102 / 3032 / 90
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 91 / 3771 / 332
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 89 / 3493 / 247
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 93 / 1841 / 159
• Cheating, Death: 2 / 3176 / 229
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 909 / 89
• Total for all titles: 575 / 17,589 / 1,220
• Total YTD: 2,595 / 109,990 / 7,800
• Total all-time: 11,017 / 290,091 / 18,919

What this looks like, in case you didn’t just look at April’s numbers, is a slight drop in dl rates of most of the Podiobooks and a slight increase in most of the dl rates of the eBooks. The Untrue Tales… Book One & Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut Podiobooks held steady, and the Lost and Not Found eBook dropped off. I can guess the latter is because the Director’s Cut is quite visible on modernevil.com, and is new on Podiobooks.com. It also looks like I’ve probably (in the last couple days) passed the 30,000 downloads point (across eBooks & “finished” Podiobooks, for 8+ distinct books), which is a nice-looking round number. I’ll probably also pass 300,000 Podiobooks episodes downloaded some time this month. Not anywhere near Scott Sigler’s numbers, or Nathan Lowell’s, but numbers I’m pretty happy with.

I have a new Podiobook launching in a couple of days; the short story collection More Lost Memories, which has been out a year and a half in paperback and all but one story of which has already run on the Modern Evil Podcast. It’ll run for the next couple of months and then I’ll start running the audio version of Time, emiT, and Time Again there. (TeaTA begins on MEPod in 3 weeks.) Each new Podiobook means the “Total all-time” numbers just go up faster and faster, both simply because there are more episodes to be downloaded, but also because (generally) people who try one are likely to try all the others, and the more they like them the more likely they are to share them.

Moving on to actual sales: First, you already know about the great success I had with my first attempt at a Kickstarter fundraiser. The fundraiser ended (and the pledges were transfered to me) on May 15th. The big pledge is $500 and I’m counting it as art sales (since the $500 reward level included ‘everything below’ and a single piece of original art, and the ‘everything below’ reward level was much lower at only $150). I’ve never made $500+ in art sales in a single month. (Even if you want to only count $350 toward art, since the other rewards are all related to the book, I haven’t made $350+ in art sales in a single month since moving back to Phoenix in ’04. (My records for sales in Pine are … effectively non-existent.)) Best art sales month, ever.

My other two backers pledged $15 each for copies of the TeaTA paperback & a chapbook & eBook. That’s $30 for 2 (or six, if you want to count them that way) books.

Also in May (last weekend) was the Phoenix Comicon 2010, at which I was a ‘Small Press’ exhibitor. I had all my books with me, prominently breaking them up into genres (heh) of ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Fantasy’, ‘Horror’, and ‘Poetry’ (in the back corner). I also had the little zombie I’d crocheted, priced at $55, as a sort of mascot to sit next to the stacks of Cheating, Death. The zombie sold Saturday, along with a copy of the book, which was awesome. (The zombie sale counts as art, bring the total art sales for May to $555, by the way.) Here are my total sales (all paperback, except where noted):

• Lost and Not Found: 0 / $0
• Dragons’ Truth: 4 / $49
• Dragons’ Truth MP3 CD: 1 / $13
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 5 / $70
• More Lost Memories: 0 / $0
• MLM/Pay Attention chapbook: 1 / $2
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 1 / $12
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 0 / $0
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 0 / $0
• Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined): 8 / $200
• Cheating, Death: 6 (plus 2 given away, 1 to Wil Wheaton) / $55
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 1 / $10
• Total Comicon book sales: 27 / $411

I have never had $411 in book sales in a single month before. Actually, with the sale of another copy of LaNF-DC prior to Comicon, the TeaTA sales, wholesale sales of 3 books (2 Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined) & 1 Cheating, Death; $14.82 total net) and eBook sales, my total book sales for the month were $468.10. Best book sales month, ever, and it compares pretty favorably with the total book sales I reported on this blog for the whole of 2009 ($503.39). I suppose I’d better sign up for a table at the 2011 Phoenix Comicon.

Two very successful projects came to fruition in May, and they pretty fairly secure profitability for Modern Evil Press for the remainder of the year, barring unforeseen expenses (or, if/when I return to the Art Walk this Fall, even worse sales than before). More importantly, they give me hope for the ongoing financial viability of Modern Evil Press. Thirty-four books doesn’t come close to the sales volume most other authors and publishers would consider “successful” for a month’s work. It does exceed the goal I set last time I bothered trying to set a sales goal; that if I could sell at least one thing per day, on average, Modern Evil Press would be financially viable, and more than successful. Since I’m not planning on doing any in-person sales for the next 3-4 months, I expect much lower sales numbers for a while. Still, I believe I’m on the right track, and things are looking good.

As you’ve seen, the fundraiser for publishing Time, emiT, and Time Again was successful. My most generous backer also had an excellent seed of an idea for a new story, so I’m mulling that around and developing an entire world from it for some small glimpse of the idea to be shown through my words. (That ended up being an awkward sentence…) I’ve painted the cover image. I’ve done most of the edits for all the (as-yet-written) stories, put them together and sent them to my Beta Readers. (We’ll see how many send anything back… If you’d like to offer your assistance & haven’t already received a copy, please just ask and I’ll be glad to add you as a Beta Reader.) I’ve assigned ISBNs for the print and eBook editions of the book. I’ve added the book over at Goodreads.com, and as of today, I’m doing a giveaway there.

Enter for your chance to win one of nine (9) copies of Time, emiT, and Time Again.

In order to do that, I had to set a publication date. I usually play by ear and… well, I haven’t written the final story yet, so there’s got to be some flexibility there, but this time I’m trying to do things with a bit more than the usual padding. So the ‘official’ publication date is June 30, 2010. Which is when the contest at Goodreads ends. Enter today!

Why nine copies? Nine is a recurring, if not consistent, number in more than one story in the book. Plus it appears 3 times on the front cover (sortof)…. If you can tell me how to read three nines from the cover of the book (no, not including the 6), I’ll send to the first person who responds correctly in the comments of this post a free signed limited edition chapbook of Second Thoughts (one of the stories in the book), or a coupon code to get the eBook edition of Second Thoughts for free from Smashwords (depending on their preference).

In about 20 hours, the widget here will change from counting down the hours to saying I was “successful.” Which is awesome. For an attempt to try to raise funds to cover publishing costs by selling art, it has been a success. As you may already know, if you have looked at this kickstarter project’s progress at any time in the last 44 days, I actually surpassed my funding goal on day 1. I had two pledges on the first day, one for the “signed paperback, plus” level, at $15, and one for the “painting and everything else” level – at $500. Then last night my sister pledged another $15 – which I appreciate; she’s certainly my most loyal and supportive reader, always helping with editing and then buying the books she’s already read anyway. She has a full collection of every book I’ve published.

What I find troubling/frustrating is that in the time from the first day to the last, my project received no other pledges. I recognize that this may be, in part, because when they went to the page it said I’d already surpassed my $300 funding goal, having $515 in pledges from day one. I further recognize that it means that only 3 people (so far) considered this to be a good way to pre-order this book, and support the project.  Maybe I didn’t sell it well enough. Maybe people aren’t interested in time/love stories, sci-fi stories, or it’s the “short stories and essays” part that’s throwing them off. I don’t know. But I tried.

My furthest-reaching campaign was via podcast. I created an ad and had it inserted into 5 of my audiobooks over at Podiobooks.com. I realize it was a little long, at a full minute, and that the same ad played before every single episode of each book, so that some people may have gotten into the habit of skipping past it… I’m going to work on refining my advertising attempts in the future, I assure you. (Literally days after I submitted my ad plan to Evo, he sent out guides to the entire PB authors community explaining how to do better than I did – not mentioning me, just … basically, it felt like a response, addressing a laundry list of things I did “wrong”.) Still, the ad was attached to somewhere in the neighborhood of 19k+ episodes of my books. At a minimum (if there was 100% overlap of readers between books) around 475 people downloaded at least one episode with the ad, based on the stats I have, and perhaps more than 1650 listeners heard it. On my own podcast, the promo itself was downloaded another 50 or 60 times by itself, and I’ve mentioned it in four or five other episodes, to try to remind my readers about it. Now, since the first 2 pledges came before the ad started running, and the other pledge was from my sister, I know that advertising this on my podcasts has had a 0% response rate.

Hundreds of people visited this blog, over a thousand people follow me on twitter, I have another couple hundred ‘friends’ on facebook, and I’ve tried not to mention the fundraiser too often but I’ve certainly mentioned it plenty of times in the last 6 weeks. The backer that wasn’t my sister (and wasn’t for the painting – that guy is a patron who funds lots of kickstarter projects) came from someone who saw it on Facebook, so that was semi-successful. But blogging, twittering, podcasting, talking about it at parties to my longtime friends, and the rest of it seems to have drawn no interest.

I don’t know what else to do that I can afford to do. Yes, it was “successful” in that I reached the goal amount and will be able to print the book without going further into debt. Yes, this book will be profitable before the first copy is printed and sold, and will continue to be profitable just about forever (because while I’m not great at business, I at least know how to subtract). Yes, that’s wonderful and I’m grateful, and I’m looking forward to being able to continue using the sell-art-to-publish-books model in the future. I think it’s great.

Still, I wish I had a broader (paying) readership. People who were so looking forward to my next book that they’d be willing to pay $15 for a signed copy (or $1 for the eBook! Seriously!). I’ve had at least 6100 people download at least one of my eBooks or audiobooks (and perhaps as many as 28,000 people) in the last couple years. I know those aren’t “big” numbers, those certainly aren’t “big publishing” numbers, but if 1% of 6100 people had been willing to pay $15 for my next book I’d have had triple the amount currently pledged and could publish my next few books without worry. If one-tenth of one percent of 6100 people had pledged, I’d have had twice as many pledges as I do now.

It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that people just aren’t interested in reading (or paying for) the books I’m authoring.

I suppose I’ll just have to keep working on it. Keep trying to be a better and better author. Keep trying to find new readers and new listeners, hopefully some who can afford to pay a few dollars a year to buy my books. Keep coming up with effective ways to keep profitable if/when that doesn’t happen. Persevere.

Here are the eBook and Podiobook download numbers (including above eBooks estimates), as usual giving the total of eBook downloads, the total of Podiobook downloads, and the more-accurate (re: # of people who dl’d a full book) total downloads of the final episodes of each Podiobook, as: eBook/total-PB/final-PB

• Lost and Not Found: 81 / 1488 / 71
• Dragons’ Truth: 90 / 1149 / 111
• Forget What You Can’t Remember: 96 / 3029 / 90
• Untrue Tales… Book One: 69 / 3961 / 354
• Untrue Tales… Book Two: 60 / 4241 / 327
• Untrue Tales… Book Three: 70 / 2320 / 214
• Cheating, Death: 2 / 4042 / 304
• Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / 806 / 97
• Total for all titles: 468 / 20,230 / 1471
• Total YTD: 2020 / 92,401 / 6580
• Total all-time: 10,442 / 272,502 / 17,699

Starting late in the month, I put a code to download Cheating, Death for free from Smashwords on its eBook page at modernevil.com – for my other books, I’ve downloaded or created the various free versions of the eBook and put them right on the page, which is where the above download numbers come from; this is an experiment to see if people will go through the extra couple of steps to get the book from Smashwords for free. So far: no. None. Maybe next month. LaNF:DC eBook is still pay-only.

I’m sending a copy or two of the paperback to the patron-of-the-arts who purchased the painting I created for its cover. I’m sending a copy to the Library of Congress. (I might supposed to be sending 3…? But my actual paperwork just asks for one.) I’d love to send YOU a copy for review (in your preferred format, paperback, eBook, or audiobook) if you’d be interested in reading and reviewing it. Book bloggers are preferred, but if you’ll review it on Amazon & Smashwords I’d be glad to provide a copy of the eBook to just about anyone. If you’re a fan of audiobooks, you can get it right now for free from Podiobooks.com – I’d appreciate a review there and, if you can take the few minutes to copy/paste it, on the iTunes Music Store as well.

Go here for more information about Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut. (Updated just now.)

Comment here, or email me at teel@modernevil.com, or send me a request on twitter @modernevil, and I’ll get you a copy.

You don’t have to pay $1.99 to read it, though. You can still have it for $0.99, if you like. Just use the coupon code MA67W when checking out at Smashwords and get this short story for half off. (Coupon code expires 6/30/2010, by which time I fully expect to have the full collection available in print.) Or, if you’re itching to pay $2 and/or love paper, you can still buy it as a signed numbered limited edition chapbook. Keep in mind, of course, that any backer who pledges $5 or more to my Kickstarter fundraiser will also get a chapbook – currently looking to be one of these Second Thoughts chapbooks (unless another 40+ people pledge in the next 25 days, in which case I’ll be making another story into a chapbook!).

What is Second Thoughts about? Well, it’s about a young man in love. It’s also largely about a timestop situation (ie: where the whole world seems to stop, except for one person, who keeps going) and the surreal experiences that creates. It’s worth a look – and you can read the first 1/3 for free.