Rallying Cry
/So its been some time since I’ve been truly active in posting. First a quick update. As you probably remember, my mother had cancer, a double mastectomy, and a course of chemo. Shortly after that began, I was laid off from my last job. I did find a new job and that’s involved a lot of schedule updates and quite a bit of overtime. Also, there was a major change over at Iron Crown Enterprises that made all my licenses with them invalid. That has been remedied now, and the time that took was completely my fault, not theirs (they in fact told me I could continue selling while we worked out the terms, but I knew I wasn’t going to be as responsive as I’d like during that period). Things have settled enough that I’ve started writing again and I feel that I’ve proven to myself that I can work regularly enough that I can take up publishing tasks again.
So what does this mean to you?
If you’re a fan of my game products, it means I’ve begun working on them again. Unfortunately, I think I’m going to have to drop the HERO System portion of the line, at least for the time being. I haven’t been able to work out a new license on that front. Over the next weeks, you should see Echoes trickling back into the stores as I update their covers and adjust the legal text to comply with the new licensing.
If you’re a fan of my fiction, I’ve spoken with my trusted consultants and we’ve decided that the e-book industry has taken enough of a hold for me to begin producing non-PDF e-books. In that vein, I will be releasing Death by Cliché for purchase. You’ve enjoyed it for free and there is, of course, no obligation to buy, but if the book brought you joy, I’d like to invite you to buy a copy. I intend to release it for Kindle and in e-pub. I haven’t determined for sure yet if it will only be available for e-pub in my store or if you will be able to buy it through iBooks and Barnes and Noble. I intend the latter, but we are in the preliminary stages. I also intend to release a print version on Lulu for those of you who are e-reader adverse, but this is just as a service to you. While I’ll probably make more money per book with Lulu, that won’t likely help grow my business.
So here’s the rallying cry. Sometime in the next months, I’ll be officially releasing these books. I know that many of you are probably in either the Nook, iPad, or Kindle camps. That’s fine. We’ll probably try to hit all of those more or less at once. The crux is this, we’ll want to hit them with purchases all on the same day. The more of you that buy at once, the more the features of these stores should take notice. Amazon, for instance, ranks the sales position of each book in the store. If we can crank that high in one day, we might be able to get the store to take notice and if we can get it to begin offering the book to new customers, and if you give me plenty of thoughtful reviews, we might just be able to accomplish something here.
If not, then at least you have a copy of a book you enjoyed.
I’ll be talking about this over the coming weeks, and because of my full-disclosure policy, I’ll probably be blogging about or answering questions on the business considerations. But Chime in if you want to buy a copy and let us know the format of your choice. I’d like to know what the level of enthusiasm is here. I know that it’s asking something to expect you to give money for something I’ve already given you for free, especially so long after the date. So let me know. Do you want to purchase a copy of Death by Cliché for your very own?
Bob
