Here’s the result of the poll on The Last Stormlord online
(Those figures should add up to 100% but we have an extra 1% from somewhere.)
Hmmm…no one admitted they read it in part or in its entirety and decided not to buy. Maybe they were too shy to say so, or more likely weren’t interested enough to visit my blog!
2% bought it although they had no intention of doing so before they read it online.
35% of those who read the whole thing online said they would buy book 2 – but no one at all was game enough to admit the opposite – that would not buy book 2 at all!
Via SF writer Mike Brotherton, here’s an extract from an article by Zaid Jilani:
In his new book, Speechless, Tales of a White House Survivor former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer reveals how politicized the revered Presidential Medal of Freedom became during the Bush administration.
Latimer writes that administration officials objected to giving author J.K. Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because her writing “encouraged witchcraft”.
There really is no end to the stupidity of folk who can’t see the difference between fiction and reality, is there? And no end apparently to idiots thinking that imagination is an evil that must be curbed.
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Here is newspeak as a lesson to writers on how to manipulate readers (the bolding is mine):
Iran was reported Monday to have test-fired long-range missiles capable of striking Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf in what seemed a show of force.
Telegraph Jan 18, 2008
Israel has carried out the successful test launch of a long-range, ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, in what was intended as a clear show of strength to Iran.
Read the whole article at Salon here.
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A long time ago I read a SF story in which it was possible to take a snapshot of the last visual and emotional moments of someone who had died. In the story, if I remember it properly, this was used to find murderers (and, I think, subject them to the punishment of feeling and seeing their victim’s last moments, over and over again.) I could have misremembered – if anyone recognises the story, do tell me.
Anyway, to get to my point. Just now I read this article.
And wow, guess what, a brain scan of your (living) brain can now tell a researcher what you have been looking at.
That’s right. Look at a weed or a house or a flying squid…and there’s a difference in the patterns of your neural activity – which can be picked up in a brain scan. Now all they have to do is refine the machinery and their analysis of it and we have a mind reader.
And then…what next?
Hmmm…
Imagine something, convert those thoughts into something a machine can read and reproduce – and bingo, photoshop your visual memories anyone? Oh, wow.
Over at DeviantART.com, there is an artist who makes pictures out of everyday stuff – and I love what he does with books in particular. I’m tempted to buy a print…
His name is Martins Debarros and you can see more of his work here.
These are called:
The Librarian
The Historian
The Art Scholar.
I think my all time favourite is The Librarian.
Here we are at the end of September, which means that we writers get our royalties statements (and money, one hopes).
Basically, the royalty statement arrives twice a year, calculated from January to June and July to December, but it takes 3 months or thereabouts before you get it, no matter who the publisher is. (How many of you would be happy if you were paid 3 months late…?)
A writer gets a statement, even if they have not earned out yet on a particular book, in which case the amount is expressed in a negative amount. “Earned out” means you have earned enough royalties to cover the amount of your advance. In other words, you don’t get anything after the advance payment – until you have earned out. Got that?
So over on Pub Rants a while back, the literary agent Kristin said about earning out (in USA, I assume):
…the statistics are rather grim when it comes to authors earning out their initial advances. …what I can safely say is this: the percentage of books that never earn out is high—over 50% of the books sold (and probably reality is more like 80%…)
So I suppose I should be really chuffed that of the 6 relevant books on my statement, 4 earned out some time back and are still selling. Two haven’t got there yet, but are also still selling. And that is one really fabulous thing about Harper Voyager Oz – they keep their authors’ books on the bookshelves in the bookstores, which is more than many publishers in many countries. The Aware, published in 2003, is therefore still earning me money…
Thanks, Voyager.
The bad news is that I shall have to wait till end of March before I have the faintest clue how The Last Stormlord did at the till. Did putting it up free online for two weeks increase or decrease expected sales? Or did it have no affect? I have no idea. And what should I expect anyway? The only figures that I have to compare it with would be the sales figures for my other books.
So all you readers, if you liked it, tell someone, and come March, I’ll tell you how the sales went…in the end, you guys are the ones who determine whether a book does well – or not.
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Jason Nahrung, Australian horror writer and author of The Darkness Within says this of The Last Stormlord on his blog:
Larke’s world-building is a great strength of the story, the dryness and heat permeating the fabric of her society, with enough touches of the fantastic to excite the imagination. This, combined with a bloody climax, leaves the reader keen for the next instalment.
Read the whole review here.
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Like many writers, I go through long periods of self-doubt concerning my ability. I write for weeks – no, months, without anyone seeing a word that I have committed to paper. I re-read and re-work and re-read and re-work, until words and story are a jumble of impressions, no longer fresh or interesting to their creator because they have been rehashed so much.
I send the result off to beta readers, who come back with a load of criticisms that lead to more teeth gnashing on my part, and more reworking, and a load more doubt.
Then off it goes to editors and agent.
With Stormlord Rising, book two in this latest trilogy, this culminated in considerable praise. My agent, for example, thinks it the best thing I have ever written, and every time I send her a copy of a lovely review of The Last Stormlord, she gleefully informs me: “Wait till they read Stormlord Rising.”
And still I couldn’t see it.
The copyedit – two of them, in fact, came back, and I have worked my way through both over the past couple of weeks.
Now I have a printed-out copy of Stormlord Rising and I am reading it to make the final tweaks.
And today, suddenly out of the blue – it burst on me, that wondrous, joyous revelation: “Hey, you know what? This is actually good.”
