As of today, December 4th, there are less than ten days until the official release of my first book. Also on today’s agenda is sending out a reminder to my ARC readers that they should be downloading their copy so they read it in time to get a review posted in that first week of release (hopefully).
For the last week, I have been looking into creating some social media images to post in advance and on the day of release. Right now, I am playing around with Canva’s free version. You can see some of the preliminary results as the cover image for this post as well as here:
Posted on Instagram with hashtags. One like from a random person? I call that a win!
I’m enjoying the program so far. It is easy to use and does a great job of providing a color palette that coordinates with any images I upload rather than making minor adjustments constantly until it is what I think looks good enough.
Paperback Version?
Yes, I am now also looking at the paperback version process, and it is just as complicated as I imagined it would be. As I don’t think I’m going wide distribution at this stage, I’m probably going to use the KDP cover creator to use my ebook cover and use a solid color for the spine and back. I might get fancy with a future release, but I have already spent a fair bit of money on this whole endeavor.
The other piece I waffled on was trim size. I usually bought mass-market paperbacks, so all of the books on my shelf were pretty small. If I went with that size, it would mean more pages and, therefore, more expensive to print while simultaneously appearing cheaper. Online guidelines are somewhat helpful, but this morning we went to the local bookstore (B&N) to see what fantasy authors are publishing trade paperbacks at these days for both trim size and price.
Based on my quick assessment, this is either 5”x8” or 5.5”x8.5” with a price range between $11.99-$21.99. The higher end of that range was for well-known or currently trending authors and series. I have decided to try 5.5”x8.5” and $12.99. We will see what the author test copy looks like once I put it all in the system and order one. I think I also need to purchase a barcode for this ISBN to put it on the cover, but that will be part of my final paperback research.
In Other News
We are going to have five weeks between the D&D game this week and our January session, so I’m in the process of setting up a little Jeopardy trivia game to play via Discord between sessions to keep info top of mind for everyone. I have set up the questions and the reward system. It is just for fun, but I’m hoping everyone finds it engaging and informative!
Our little tree is up. I wonder how long before one of the cats swipes the first ornament off.
We are hosting a little potluck for my immediate family in a couple of weeks. It is something we do every year to include my grandparents. We skipped it last year for obvious reasons. Everyone is protected now and being very careful, so we are moving forward with it for 2021. It will be good to have our little group together again.
Next week for the blog, I’m debating talking more about the imminent publication or sharing the next installment of my dream story. Time shall tell! I hope you are all having a great holiday season so far!
Welcome back to my dream story! As a reminder, this series is based on an odd dream I had a bit ago. More details stuck with me than usual, so I decided to turn it into a short science fiction story for the blog even though I usually write fantasy. This one has a bit more exposition to it.
I’m still not doing any beta read revisions on these, so they will read like the draft version they are. These will just be fun little shorts between other posts.
If this is your first time coming to the story, you can find part 1 at the link below, and I’m tagging them with the Dream Journal tag if you want to search.
At Tryss’s command, I hit the button on my interface and tucked my chin, bracing for what was next. The first ascent chute deployed, yanking on my suit and rocketing me upward. While the suit took some force from my body, it was still similar to what the astronauts felt back when they took shuttles into space.
The ascent chute itself looked like a parachute made of golden lace, but that lace was not fabric. Thousands of solar-powered AG filaments connect in a flexible web that is stronger than steel. Once deployed, the filaments charge and react to gravity the same way similar magnetic poles react to each other. The filaments, once charged, are repelled from the Earth’s center of gravity.
The force and speed driven by the repulsion are extreme upon initialization. Then, like a magnetic force, the impact dissipates with distance. This dissipation is why we have three ascent chutes in our equipment. One is strictly a redundancy, but a second chute is necessary to leave the atmosphere and navigate once in orbit.
The extreme forces lasted for about five minutes before easing enough for me to look around. Earth’s curvature grew more distinct even as other details faded with my rising altitude. It was a sight that never failed to take my breath away. The world glowed like a living blue marble, giving me a contradictory sense of enormity and insignificance. I could reach out and hold the world in the palm of my hand.
What will it feel like to be the first humans to leave our solar system? I wondered. What would it be like to watch the world fade until it was nothing in the vastness all around you?
That was not my mission. I wasn’t selected for the first flight, but with any luck, I would maintain my spotless record and be on the second mission once it was approved and ready.
My HUD flashed with a thirty-second countdown, and I brought my mind back to the mission. At this point, without a second chute, I would see my speed drop until I fell into a stable orbit around the planet unless I reduced the charge flowing to the filaments and allowed my orbit to degrade. As my objective was further out, the second chute would deploy on this new mark.
The HUD flashed again at fifteen seconds, and I prepared for the second chute deployment. I could already see my squadmates ahead of me navigating with their two chutes on the target trajectory. Below, a line of chutes followed me up like a migration of glowing golden jellyfish.
Another flash and my second chute deployed, unfurling quickly to catch the sun. It filled with solar energy as a sail with the wind and pulled tautly against the connecting lines. A current shot through the lines for both chutes, making them solidify. With easy hand movements, I could now shift the position of each chute relative to myself and each other.
Using my HUD, I triangulated my target and shifted my trajectory to intercept. It was still too distant to make out more than a fleck flashing silver in the distance. Unlike my training lifts or my one mission to the space station, this one would take me to Inspiration. Despite not being able to see the ship yet, I felt my excitement grow once more.
Inspiration was the first human vessel capable of interstellar travel. At least, it will be capable once the final modifications, uploads, and tests are completed. The massive construction project was a cooperative effort between fifteen countries and more than twice as many corporations and research organizations. It began nearly a half-century ago with a group of scientists living around the world. They all met regularly online as a club to exchange ideas and build upon those ideas together.
Some of those scientists had the right connections to politicians and investors. Some had connections to patent and international lawyers. What could have ended in unrest, conflict, or even war, was instead the trigger for an unprecedented level of international cooperation. The standard of living rose globally, driving increases in education and freedoms in nearly every corner of the world.
Earth was in a scientific Renaissance, and this ship was the guiding light. Initial construction happened in pieces around the world for the ship and all of the assembly robots. When they were finally ready, AG platforms lifted and maneuvered every piece into place. For the next twelve months, the bots and remote operators joined the sections and installed final components.
Since that time, six supply ships with additional materials and installation bots had docked and delivered supplies. One month ago, ground control powered up Inspiration on a live broadcast to begin live testing on the software. Celebrations sprung up around the world and lasted for days. When the initial tests cleared successfully, plans for an unmanned, automated test drive moved into their next phase.
It would be a short program to initiate travel to open space, scan the area, then jump back. The entire process was expected to take less than four hours and bring back a wealth of knowledge. The first target date for a manned trip would be six months from that initial jump, pending a “go” from all departments based on the initial data, including analysis of the physical impacts on the mice going on the three-plus-hour tour.
Then, a week ago, there was a glitch detected by a tech monitoring some of the programs, a malfunction in a system. A second problem followed, then a third, and all ground investigations came up empty as to the cause of the malfunctions. All the operators, bots, and measures read as though nothing was wrong, but the glitches continued.
Yesterday, my unit was activated, and a lift was authorized. We specialize in space repairs, and three of my squadmates were members of previous supply drop checks on Inspiration, including Tryss. Our mission was to perform a complete system check, hardware, and software, looking to isolate what could be causing the problems. If we needed to dismantle entire sections of hardware to find a shorted wire or bent screw, that is what we were authorized to do. We had two days to find an answer and a solution, or the test flight would be postponed.
“Mark One reporting in. G-9 docking bay identified and perimeter guiding lights are lit. Report green for dive.” Ace’s voice came over the mic in my helmet.
“They called it a dive because docking during a lift was a little like cave diving. You had a docking bay that was effectively a black hole in the ship surrounded by a circle of lights”
They called it a dive because docking during a lift was a little like cave diving. You had a docking bay that was effectively a black hole in the ship surrounded by a circle of lights. You shot for the hole, dove in with your chutes, and a magnetic field in the void caught your chutes and automatically guided you down to a force field net where you could retract your chutes.
The net had some give to it in case there was a malfunction and you came in hot. It would catch you gently and stabilize. When you cleared safely, the net glowed gently under your feet and in a path guiding you to the airlock.
“You have a go, Mark One,” Tryss replied to Ace.
The daunting responsibility of our mission hit home for me as the ship loomed closer. A large sphere made up the ship’s core, with starbursts spearing out of it like rays of the sun. Each “ray,” known officially as “spires,” could be detached and independently navigated or used together to navigate the ship as a whole at sub-light speeds. The center of the sphere held the interstellar drive. From afar, it looked like one of those old spikey ocean mines, but that was before you realized the gargantuan size of the ship.
As I passed along the nearest spire, the golden glimmer of my chutes faded. This mini-ship was the size of a skyscraper, and it blocked out the light of the sun at this angle. The faint glow of the ship’s exterior lights was dark in comparison, but it would make identifying the docking bay easier.
Beyond my chutes, I could make out the ring of lights circling the pit. The HUD’s infrared showed me where my unit was gathering one by one. I adjusted my chutes a final time, aiming for the darkness ahead. With a final nudge, the ship swallowed me whole.
I’m about to show how much of a social media novice I am with this next revelation, but here it goes. Do you want to know an important piece of social media exposure? The answer is hashtags. You need to include hashtags in your Twitter and Instagram posts so that more people see them when they look at or search on said hashtags. Most of you presumably already knew this, but I have never been a great social media user. My Space was “the thing” to have when I was in high school, and I never had an account. Self-promotion and sharing are not natural for me, and I am finding out new things every day.
One (helpful) social media tip I will share from the Facebook author groups I am part of is: be cautious of the people who contact you to promote your work. When I started using hashtags related to my book, I immediately received a handful of messages asking me to follow this and DM to “promote” through them. Someone even reached out with an offer to review my book on their account.
All of this sounded great. I’m trying to get the word out about my work and get it noticed on social media. All they wanted was $20 here or $40 there. Simple. Right?
The more I look into this, the sketchier it appears. Many of the promotion Instagrammers have followers and likes inflated by bots, and when you ask about their returns and guaranteed clicks, they get dodgy. In some cases, I have heard, they threaten to bomb your book with 1-star reviews if you don’t end up promoting with them. I am now hiding all promote or DM comments on Instagram to try to limit or prevent these.
On the reviewer side, you have to be very careful about not doing paid reviews. There are some editorial reviews where this is allowed, but this can get you banned from Amazon. They frown heavily on paid reviews, so before you pay anyone, make sure that you know exactly what they are offering, and you read all the fine print for Amazon and other distributors and sites you are on. Fortunately, I did not agree to pay anyone.
ARC Readers
This is a good segway into the concept of ARC readers and how they are different than paid reviews. First, you should never pay ARC readers. That is how it becomes a paid review rather than an honest review. ARC stands for Advanced Review Copy, and is a copy of your book that you provide, for free, in advance of the release date so that reviewers can read and post their reviews in advance of or on the date a book releases. You often “provide the book for free in exchange for an honest review.”
What this means could be a myriad of different interpretations. I have heard some authors become upset if someone who receives an ARC does not finish the book or post a review. I have done some ARC reads and reviews myself for some of the groups I am on, and I prefer the Readers Favorite approach:
“We only post 4- and 5-star reviews. If an author receives a poor review, we provide private constructive criticism to the author instead. We were the first book review company to not post negative reviews because we are in the business of helping authors, not hurting them.”
Readers’ Favorite Website
The groups I am part of are for indie authors like me, and my goal is to be supportive, not hurtful. I will reach out on 3-star reviews to see if the author wants me to post, but for 1- or 2-stars, I generally will not post those when something is below 50 total reviews. It is my philosophy and not something I push on my ARC readers. I give them a free copy for an honest review, so I need to be okay with their choices in this. It’s the “honest review” part; it means I’m not influencing them by payment or intimidation. What a reviewer posts, is what that individual thought of the book.
Some helpful tips and resources for ACR readers:
If you receive a free book in exchange for your review, you should call that out in the review, so that others reading your review are aware of the facts.
ARCs are important because almost everyone looks at the star rating before they look at the description. You want as many (hopefully good) reviews posted on or around the day of release as possible. The number of reviews also matters. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I think it is below 20 reviews readers dismiss even a good rating, and Amazon does not start promoting books outside of paid advertising until a book has around 50 reviews. So, the next time you enjoy that book you just read, take a minute to rate it for the author to give them some applause for that artistic performance.
Invitation to Action
This week I sent out my first invitation to ARC readers with their copy of Hidden Memory, and I am now going to make an offer to my early blog followers. I know some are friends and family who have already or are planning to buy the book if only to support me. I love and appreciate that support.
If you would like an ARC copy of Hidden Memory free in exchange for an honest review, I invite you to comment below, sign up via this form, or reach out to me. You will be signed up for the newsletter to receive emails from me, but I can then send that digital copy out to you. You don’t need to follow my philosophy above, but I would ask you to reread the book description to make sure it sounds like something you would enjoy before signing up.
Whether you sign up or not, I thank you all for your support and engagement throughout this year. Less than four weeks to go!
Today is all about catching up on all my ARC activities. I’m at or behind several deadlines related to sending out review copies, and today is the one-month weekend mark before Hidden Memory is officially released. I still need to set up my Bookfunnel account, perform final checks on the copy to be uploaded, finalize my ARC sign-up form, create the MailChimp ARC invite that points to Bookfunnel, and identify bookstagrammers and others like that to request reviews. Today marks one of the final milestones before the very last Amazon uploads, so I’m hoping I can get it all complete.
I will share some of the details next week if all goes well. In the meantime, I had an odd dream recently. Usually, I don’t remember much of my dreams, but this one had some of the details stick with me more than usual. I wrote them down in bullet form, and I have decided to turn them into a short story here on my blog. It will be the draft version with the only editing from Grammarly, and if it ends up making no sense…Well, it was a dream. So, while science fiction is not my go-to genre, here is part one of my sci-fi short, Ship in the Void:
Stage one – Liftoff
I looked up at the clear sky in anticipation of my imminent ascent. Despite having made numerous AG lifts before this, it still made her pulse race every time. The speed. The altitude. The weightlessness. It was like skydiving with additional exhilaration from going well beyond the stratosphere.
“Final check!” Tryss, our unit commander barked out. “T-minus ten minutes to liftoff.”
Tryss was…intimidating. Gifted with Amazonian height, she topped everyone else in the unit, measuring 6′ 3″ barefoot. When you added in the leanly corded muscle, stellar record, strong voice, and eyes that missed nothing, she could inspire awe in anyone.
She was also gorgeous. Her head was shaved, accentuating sharply defined cheeks and full lips. There was a warm glow to her smooth brown skin, and it echoed in the melted chocolate color of her eyes. I’m certain her appearance gave her no end of grief as she made her way up the astrocore ranks. That certainly did nothing to lessen my jealousy.
At Tryss’s command, I quickly started performing final equipment checks with the rest of the squad. We were all wearing our AG (anti-gravity) suits. When I compared AG lifts to skydiving, it was not only about the feel of flying.
AG suit design supports AG chute use for lifting humans into space and bringing them back. Each suit carries three ascent chutes, two drifters, two descent chutes, and thirty-six hours of compressed oxygen. They regulate body temperature, even in space, and process liquid waste. The drifters, extra oxygen, and waste features are all to get us back into the atmosphere without burning or breaking up on re-entry.
Checking my gear at this stage was primarily about the monitors on all this equipment and the suit itself. As my gauges read in the green, I started with the boots and worked up through each piece. The suits were constructed of an ingenious fabric that was self-repairing and self-sealing. A code activated each suit’s connective properties. Once it was “on,” each piece was sealed in place when put on.
The boots merged into the pants, which melded to the shirt, then the gloves, helmet, and equipment vest that integrated and monitored me and all my equipment. All-inclusive, it was over 100 lbs of gear wrapped around my torso and settled squarely on my hips.
All the seals were looking good, so I did a final check of the face shield. The helmets were made of the same flexible fabric with a sturdy frame around my face. It contained the shield mechanism and a holographic HUD I could toggle visually or manually. The shield functions measured air pressure and would maintain a healthy atmosphere in the suit, adjusting resistance and air consumption from either my reserves or the environment accordingly.
To test it one final time, I slowly touched my nose with my bare left hand. The face shield flared, sparkling a faint orange glow and producing a soft tingle against my skin. Finally, I put on the final glove, and it merged with my sleeve. By all measures and senses, I was clear to go.
“T- minus two minutes!” Tryss called out.
I looked up to see others touching their noses and putting on that final glove, ignoring how stupid we all looked. My position was number twelve, so I lined up.
“T-minus one minute,” she called. “Get in line and sound off!”
“Twelve, go!” I yelled out when it came to me.
Tryss looked at her wrist as we finished the sound off. We were all a go. No one would miss this lift.
“Ten!” she started the final countdown.
My adrenaline spiked, and I shook out my jittery limbs as I waited.
“Three. Two. One. Mark one, go!” Tryss shouted, and the first of our unit deployed, shooting upward.
“Mark two, go!”
One by one, we took off, until finally, it was my turn. My jitters always settle in the buffer-time before a lift, and it was a steady hand I raised to my interface.
The title “as a writer who works” is not to be confused with a writer whose work is writing. Someday, I might transition to the latter, but the math on that is pretty daunting. I’m selling my ebooks for $5 each, so let’s see what it would take to bring in a salary of $50K annually.
First, we need an estimate of royalties per book. Here are some rough estimates:
$5 @ 70% = $3.50 – 0.75 KDP fee = $2.75 – 0.222% of $5 B&O tax = approximately $2.739 per book.
Next, I will translate that into the number of sales necessary annually.
$50,000 / 2.739 = ~ 18,255 books
My series will have four books in it. If we assume everyone who buys one will buy all four, that translates to 4,564 new customers of the series needed every year. This calculation is not factoring in any costs for cover art, copy editor, or other costs associated with publication.
While this is not impossible, I don’t expect to achieve this level of popularity anytime soon without some serious advertising and promotional backing. Book four is still a couple of years out as things currently stand. What all of this means is that I need to keep my day job for a while longer.
Work/Write Conflicts
I have struggled to find balance this month. In a previous post, I mentioned it is budgeting season at work. This process sets the budget for my organization for the entirety of next year. It is the measure against
which we will score our financial performance, and it is due this week.
The whole process is a lot of numbers work, and it is complicated this year because I just started with this company in July. I’m still learning all the terms and measures for a company and industry that is new to me. It translates into long workdays and a fair amount of stress. The latter is mostly due to my limited experiential knowledge. The budget is an important deliverable, and I constantly feel like I am missing something that will become a big problem for us next year.
With this on my plate, when the workday ends I don’t feel like writing. The computer reminds me of work, and I think about everything I still have to complete. Instead of writing, I spend my hour of downtime in front of the TV. October is almost over, and I have only gotten through one chapter of my book in the entire month.
I could probably force myself to use that hour to write, but the result would likely be something unreadable and need to be completely re-worked later anyway. This is one of the perils of being a writer with a different primary job. A person’s brain only has so much capacity for everything demanding our attention and time. At some point, you become overloaded and need to step back and prioritize. What is important? What is urgent?
Years ago, I took a 7-Habits mini-class that focused on using those questions to prioritize, and I often fall back on it to determine my next steps. Any goals can be daunting if you don’t break them down into the component steps. That is what I’m doing now.
Work will slow down, and I will get my weekends back. As long as I revisit my book outline and re-read the recent chapter additions, I will be able to hop right back into it without too much issue. Until then, writing will remain on hold. With a clear head, the entire writing process will go more smoothly than if I tried to force it while there is so much other activity.
Hidden Sanctuary has an August 2022 release date. A month of work drama—maybe even two—is baked into that schedule. I’m a writer who works, and my time is not always available for writing, but I will push through!
Hang in there, fellow writers, whether to are a writer who works or your work is writing. If you are stuck, break the tasks into pieces and keep moving forward.
Tiffany Shearn 
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