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I’m not sure it’s that far out from the cover. I do like it.
I’m mixing up the description now, to get people to give it a second look. So I’d love to work it into the rotation. While I’m exclusive to Kindle it’s a lot easier…when I first launched I had to maintain a bunch of stores and blurbs…
I also need alternate blurbs for ads on other sites, such as Goodreads, FaceBook, Tumblr, DeviantArt, etc.
I’d like to change the cover as well, so I spend time looking for artists who’ve done stuff I like and do similar things, but so far those few I’ve contacted are already overbooked…
I also want to get more art for the site. But as Rosver said, illustrations take quite a bit of time…especially when trying to do something specific and “on demand” rather than as the muse strikes you. And at the moment I’m not doing any art because I’m writing v2 in all my spare time.
Hmm…
Have you tried buying in a PC/Mac browser from the .COM store and then once it’s in your library sync?
I know I can buy stuff and have it shipped to me from other Amazon’s, including region encoded DVD’s but who know what wackiness they may impose on kindles to comply with “Big Publisher’s Distribution rights” I’ve authorized the book for every region…
At one point I read in Amazon’s Royalty Rules, if someone outside the US buys an e-book from the US Kindle store, I get a 35% royalty vs 70% royalty.
I have seen these 35% books come through from .COMI had thought, from what I read at the time that included buying books at .COM when your country has its own store. But not sure. I.e. I know non-US customers have bought the book in the .COM store…but not sure whether their country had its own Amazon.
Of course, depending on the country there could be other issues, like VAT and maybe they can’t reverse that, or got in trouble for…???
This stuff is so scattershot…rules and regulations change quickly for e-stuff.
The thing is, in general there is no region encoding on Kindle book files. So if one gets the file, you can sync it to the kindle with third party tools from wherever.
Thanks for the update…I have no easy way to test at the moment, but I’m going to look into it.
That’s a question I’m debating.
It’s a shorter book, and less complex in terms of the world and politics. It’s also about 75% of the way done for volume 1. I wrote it as an alternative, more purposefully serialized book style like so many ebooks are (targeting the $1.99-$2.99 range)
Originally it was going to be the next one out, but DoA has done reasonably well and there’s now a built in audience for book II and I’ve promised that for year end. I’m not sure if I want to take the time out from DoA II to finish up the other book. However, I know the slippery slope there is, that as soon as DoA II is out, the same pressure will be back for DoA III…so if any of the other “pent up” 2/3-3/24 written books I have waiting need to get out at some point.
So right now, I’m on a full time contract (programming/architecture) and I have no idea when that’s going to end (I had an end date of mid July…but they aren’t going to be done by then) If my time frees up, I’m going to be writing like mad (and cash) if it doesn’t, I need to chose, and would probably put DoA II first.
On many levels, that’s a complex question…
On Earth, we really don’t see true evil. Or at least, the “true evil” we see is actually depraved indifference, extreme narcissistic callousness in the pursuit of personal goals to the point that everyone else sees that individual as “evil”
In other words, very few people think they are evil, or are “evil for evil’s sake”
If you consider some of the worst Earth offenders: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot (and the Khmer Rouge), Saddam Hussein, the little Kim’s of Korea, Ossama Bin Laden…
All of them had definite goals and were relentless in the pursuit of those goals to the exclusion of (almost) everyone and (almost) everything else. They caused immeasurable amounts of death and destruction, but it was always in the pursuit of some higher goal they didn’t consider “evil.”
But in fact, to all objective standards, they were evil in their misguided ways.
I think one reason we don’t see “Evil for the Sake of Evil” is that Evil is generally defined in opposition to “Good”
Just as Earth doesn’t have many truly evil people, we also don’t have that many truly Good people. Or at least people who go around calling themselves good. (Which would be hubris–a sin) Most “Good” people have faults and fail at being good.
Now, that being said.
Astlan is similar, but much more polarized. There definitely are people (and specifically Gods) that define themselves as “Good” in the Multiverse that Astlan deals with. Thus it is extremely likely that their enemies may choose to declare themselves “Evil” and, if they happen to be truly depraved in their indifference to others and their narcissistic callousness they may revel in their own “Evil” actions and nature.
And this is actually something I want to explore in the later books and most of my other books. What is Evil?
In Astlan, life, for the most part is cheap because for non-atheists there is an afterlife. Demons are immortal with a few exceptional events/things able to take them out.
Thus things or people that permanently “Kill” or destroy other souls/spirits/animus are one of the closest things I can think of to “Evil”
Thus soul sucking swords, certain undead, necromancers and other “monsters” are evil because they drain others of their animus and can eventually consume/destroy or obliterate those individuals. Thus they are truly evil.
Unless, of course, the only way those creatures/devices can survive is to consume others. Then they are just trying to continue their own existence.
That’s not necessarily apriori evil. For example, if you assume an Atheist position on earth, that there is no afterlife. Eating animals to survive would be evil, because you are permanently killing them. OK, for humans it’s a choice, but what about wolves or other carnivores? Are they evil?So in my mind, and in these books it’s going to be complicated.
However, more short answer, but building on above.
Yes there are beings (dark gods, some demons and others) who “consider themselves to be evil” and go out of their way to inflict pain and suffering and true death on others.
However, there are also some individuals who aren’t trying to “be evil” but who may end up being more “evil” than some that were trying to be evil.
Heh heh…
You are, of course, exploring a big chunk of what’s happening in Book II!!!!! :-$
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DON’T LOOK BELOW—————————————————————–
The headaches you describe are a big problem for some down on their luck gods, and we’ll see how and why they deal with these issues as they prepare to enter the battle….(actually they are already in the battle, having suffered huge casualties in Book I–consequently expending lots of mana on their followers)
Suffice to say, there are multiple factions/groups of mortals, demons and pantheons as the curtain continues to rise….
Interesting thoughts…could have used them when figuring out the truth myself.
One thing I can promise you, because I’ve promised it at Amazon discussion, and because I did once torture a friend with this idea who was giving me feedback while writing the book…
In an the next “Series” (after the first X books) Tom does NOT master Temporamastery and travel back in time and sleep with Rupert’s mother. That categorically doesn’t happen.
No, instead, he travels back in time and to earth and becomes his own father…. No…no…no…that doesn’t happen either.
What’s wrong with my pipe? What did Tom say? Is he talking about me behind my back?
I think it’s Astral grease or something that keeps the planes apart. Or maybe it’s simply that they all exist in Orthogonal Quantum States and thus can’t cross or merge.
We do know that Quantum Field Fluctuations do occur and on occasion planes bifurcate permanently. The key being orthogonality. Once a newly divergent plane establishes a unique rest state, or steady state and has it’s own set of propagators (Greens Functions in mathematics), the probabilities of it intersecting with another plane in the exact same rest state are to all intents and purposes nil. Meaning, you’d need too many completely random differences to perfectly align and match for the two planes to align.
In another discussion, somewhere, possibly at Amazon, I talk about the Infinite Worlds of Maybe and why they don’t really exist, at least not for very long. It is also tied to why people’s memories get foggy over time. It’s because all the small differences that spawned the “maybe” worlds get collapsed into a single quantum state. This explains how some people can remember something one way, and others a different way. The people who remember alternatively had more energy invested into one of the collapsed alternate universes and so remember it that way. Whereas many others remember a different path. And still others don’t remember for sure.
Seriously?
Are you in the UK/Europe by any chance? Or, since I know they were starting with selling unlocked ones, are you going to “bring your own phone” to your carrier, because last I heard they hadn’t introduced any official carriers for the US, and the UK list was a bit questionable.
But I know T-Mobile for example goes out of it’s way to help people bring their own and some of the other guys are starting to get the hint…
That’s great news. I’m sure you’re psyched!
Thanks for the feedback! It’s very helpful and a lot of what I expected.
So let me address here a few of those things…not as a defense, but as a “why”
The price:
1) First and foremost, I set the list price, expecting most bookstores to automatically “whack the price” by a dollar or more.
a) only Google Play did this, immediately. No one else did.
b) I actually debated reporting the cheaper price to Amazon so they’d lower it…but it was selling better than expect, and well, that seemed to be stupid of me to do. It got noticed on its own.
c) I was afraid if I set it at $4.99 it would get whacked really low. And a really long, really cheap book screams “CRAP”2) I also tried to set a price based on “entertainment time” The book is almost 250,000 words, which is very long by ebook standards. I see these $2.99 books with fewer than 100,000 words and the bang for the buck thing kicks in. If it’s twice as many words????? It should be twice as much. $5.99 (Yes, I know that doesn’t always hold)
[i]My book prices are really dated (mainly because I don’t buy mass market paperbacks–only ebooks, trade paperbacks and hardcover these days) but in my “mind” a good SF, mass market paperback should be around $6.99, trade $14.99, HC $24.99 and this is just internalized pricing. So a “good” ebook price would be $4.99. Which was really the price I paid the longest for a mass market.
Of course, that is all without inflation…in terms of value, look at how little the price of books has changed, especially SF/Fantasy vs movie tickets?
So my goal was always about $5 for the book, my expectation was it would get whacked to that…and it did, eventually.[/i]
3) Editing: yes, I know there are errors still. It’s unbelievable how many times, I and my best friends have read and edited things and still couldn’t catch stuff. I’m going to give every author I bad mouthed for crappy editing a huge break. It’s hard. (unless you have a publisher…and then there’s no excuse, they are taking most of the money…so they should hire a good editor)
Next time, I’m going to see about a real editor…I just need to find one that’s good with SF/Fantasy and particularly, Oorstemothians. But there will also be a beta program where, while I’d be looking for more content/plot/continuity feedback, I’m sure people will catch annoying editing things as well.
4) Cover art: I never intended to do the cover art myself. I was going to hire someone, but time was getting down there…i wanted to get this out before I started another full time contract job, and the artists I “liked” I was afraid were very expensive, and or had a long queue, and I had no idea how well this book would sell to justify $1k to $2K or more. Now, that I know that I can make the money to pay for a good artist, I’m going to do so.
I also wanted something very catchy to stand out in the huge array of books out there, so I feared it would take quite a lot of back and forth to get the right cover image…and I wanted it “out there”
5) I really don’t know what to do with the description that will hook people, be an honest portrayal/description, and not give too much away. There “is a reason” publishers have specialists to write these things. The author is almost always too close to the story.
Maybe we should have a “write a new blurb” contest?
#-o
It’s not easy to be crazy and have multiple personalities…
OK, dropped a login on the main page. That should solve the cookie problem. I think that’s cleaner than a separate page…although maybe annoying if you are already logged in.
Tried briefly to hide it once people are logged in, but doesn’t seem to disappear…will need to look into that.
OK,
This is a very interesting question that SERIOUSLY gets ignored way too much.
And it’s also something I’ve wondered about, particularly the “how do you know your true name?”
In theory, your father (or mother depending on culture) will name you with a true name at birth, and then your mother, father and “god parents” are entrusted with this name until you are old enough to remember it on your own (of course they will still know it). Or it may come from a priest.
If your parents die when you are young, it would be your god parents job to tell you.
Obviously this doesn’t always work.
In Astlan, the exact rules are handled by your religion. It might be a parent naming you, but in many cases, your true name comes from the priest, and your parents only give you a calling/common name. The reason for this? If you are being reincarnated, your true name remains the same and the priest receives it from the deity or an avatar upon recognizing that you are “born again”
So, if all else fails, say your parents died before telling you, as did your god parents, then you’d need to go to a priest of your religion to find out.
Now, what to do if you are an atheist?
First, as will become very clear in book ii. Being an atheist in Astlan, is simply not a good idea. There are people, particularly hermetic druids, that are basically atheists, but one pays a HUGE price for being an atheist.
With your physical presence a seer or sorcerer can probably figure out your true name. It may require a quest.
As a rule, true names don’t ever change. Titles, and honorifics don’t change. As far as Jr. Sr. Those presume that you have parents/grandparents with the same name, thus your true name will generally have a “the second, the third” in it…or, it may not be any of those…your calling name is not really your true name.
The only time a true name would change would be if two beings literally merged with each other….then it’s probably a hyphenate.
In the case of Tom. Earth doesn’t use True Names any more. So in his case, he essentially “named himself” when he was summoned. yes that was his name before, but it became set in stone with the bindings….
Following this logic (and Jack Chalker’s) a deity could possibly change someone’s true name.
Now, as to why true names aren’t particularly used on Earth anymore…that’s a question for book IV, I think….
As Into the Abyss goes to Kindle Select for the next 90 days, meaning the ebook will only be on Amazon for 90 days.
I am curious as to people’s preferred medium for reading books?
This includes dead tree editions as well.
I myself have a couple an Android phone and book sized Android tablet as well as an iPad and both PC’s and Macs.
Personally, from a “reading pleasure” point of view I like hardbacks followed by trade paperbacks.
From a convenience point of view, I prefer Kindle because I can read the books on all my devices easily.Yes, there are nook readers for all platforms but I like the Amazon bookstore a better than the Nookstore (and iTunes) in terms of search capability.
But that’s just me.
Here are some polls, feel free to add your own comments.
