As you guys know, I’m an independent author, and I tend to post interviews and guest posts by other indie authors, but there are reasons why self-publishing isn’t for everybody, and there are options out there that needn’t involve spending years hunting for an agent. Science-fiction author Liana Brooks is here today to talk about why she chose to publish with Breathless Press instead of going out on her own.

Interview with Liana Brooks

Welcome, Liana! Do you want to tell us a little about Even Villains Fall in Love?

Doctor Charm, the wickedly sexy super villain, retired in shame seven years ago after his last fight with the superhero Zephyr Girl. The fact that the charming Evan Smith – father of four and husband of the too-beautiful-to-be-real Tabitha – bears a resemblance to the defeated Doctor is pure coincidence. And, please, ignore the minions.

Everything is perfect in the Smith household until Tabitha announces her return to work as a superhero. Evan was hoping to keep her distracted until after he rigged the 2012 presidential election, but – genius that he is – Evan has a backup plan. In his basement lab Evan has a machine whose sole purpose is keeping Tabitha hungry for him.

But children and labs don’t mix. The machine is broken, and Tabitha storms out, claiming she no longer knows him. World domination takes a back seat to meeting his daughters’ demands to get Mommy back right now. This time his genius isn’t going to be enough – he’s going to need both his evil alter-ego and the blooming super abilities of his children to save his wife. But even his most charming self might not be enough to save their marriage.

With self-publishing being all the rage right now, what made you decide to look for a publisher?

That’s a very loaded question, especially since I’m visiting your blog and you’ve done so well with self-publishing. This is just my view, and might not be applicable to everyone…

To be a successful self-published author I believe you need three things: seed money, time, and the ability to write and edit quickly.

I’ll be honest, the up-front costs of self-publishing scare me. After talking with several friends who self-published and hearing how much they made on returns (or didn’t in several cases) I was leery of spending the kind of money you need to invest in a good editor and great cover art. There’s always a chance your self-published work will flourish and you could make money hand over fist because of the royalties, but there’s also an excellent chance of crashing and burning.

Big 6 publishing has the danger that you might not earn out. But small press? There isn’t an upfront cost, nor is there a payment of any kind of front. The royalties are lower for the price point than if I self-published with Amazon (40% vs 75% I believe), but I’m not spending anything out of pocket.

Is that horribly selfish and calculating of me? Possibly. But there’s more to life than writing, and I need to be a responsible parent too. I can’t throw my family’s money into a risky investment.

That doesn’t mean self-publishing is off the table. I think chasing down e-zines for pittance pay on a short story is rather ridiculous, and editing for a short story doesn’t carry the same costs that editing for a novel would (most editors I’m familiar with charge by word count). And I may choose to self-publish a novella or novel later on. The publishing industry is in a state of flux, and the only way to be successful is to be flexible.

Were you fairly limited since your story is a novella instead of a novel?

I’m answering this as a separate question because I’ve been asked this more than once. Not-So-Secret-Seceret: E-publishers love novellas! The whole idea of word counts by genre are expectations built by the limitations of print. E-books don’t have the limiting factors of paper and ink costs, so word count is just another way of measuring length for the reader.

I’ve often wondered what a small press can bring to the table (that I, as an indie, can’t do myself). Can you talk a little about your experience with Breathless Press and what they’re doing to help with promotion?

The three major differences that I noticed were the content edits, the fact there was no up-front cost for publishing, and the built in fan base that comes with the publisher. Many e-publishers have readers who check the publisher’s website regularly for new releases. These people may never have heard of me, but they’ll stop by the publisher’s site and pick up a book out of curiosity.

Part of my contract with Breathless Press includes a list of promotional work they’ll do, including sending out review copies. They also provide a list of recommended advertising groups and a list of things the other BP authors have done. It’s all something a self-published author could do, or that any author could research, but for someone new to the field I think the support is invaluable.

Did the press offer a developmental editor for you to work with? If so, how was that experience?

Breathless Press did provide me with an editor. During three rounds of major edits we addressed style and formatting issues, and two rounds of content edits before a final pass was done by the proof-reader.

I loved what the content editor brought to the table. All my beta-readers are people who know me, they’re honest, but they also know how I think. There were things the content editor caught that my beta-readers didn’t because the editor was able to read without any bias.

How much input did you have on things such as cover art and pricing?

I had no input on pricing. The press has a standard price for short stories, novellas, and novels. It’s my understanding that most presses work this way.

For the cover art, I was able to work directly with the artist. I filled out the standard form, sent her pictures of that I thought matched my characters, and emailed her several times to fine tune the cover art. It worked exactly like it would if you hired the cover artist privately. In fact, the cover artist for EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE also did the cover art for the short story I self-published, SEVENTY.

The downside to all of this is that the likelihood of having exclusive art for your book is limited. I’ve seen variations of “my cover” on several other e-books. Mine’s the best, of course, but popular stock images are reused across the spectrum.

We all know how long the Big 6 publishers can take to get a story out. How was BP in that regard?

Big 6 publishers are known for getting books out slowly, although I think that’s changing. I’ve seen several author with Big 6 contracts publish multiple books in a year. Kevin Hearne, who write the Iron Druid Chronicles published by Del Rey, has had four novels printed in the past year. The self-publishing movement has changed the timeline.

For me, I signed the contract with Breathless Press the last week of December and EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE was published the first week in April. We probably could have done a tighter turnaround time, but I took part of February off for maternity leave. Over all, I think three months from contract to debut isn’t bad.

Would you like to tell us about your next project? Is there a sequel to EVFiL planned?

I have a couple of projects in the works. Breathless Press has expressed interest in acquiring more books in the EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE universe. I didn’t originally write it as part of a series, but working through a plot hole during the editing process I started EVERY HERO NEEDS A VILLAIN, which is the courtship of Zephyr Girl and Doctor Charm from her point of view. From there it didn’t take much for me to begin writing the stories for each of their children. Right now, the Heroes and Villains series has seven books written or planned.

I also have a novel in progress, JANE DOE, which is a near-future sci-fi novel dealing with clones and time travel. I’m hoping to query that and try to take it to a Big 6 publisher. It won’t be the end of the world if I can’t find an agent for JANE DOE, and I’d be willing to self-publish it or take it to a small press, but I’d like the Big 6 experience too. That way I can have a full set of publishing venues.

Bio:

Liana Brooks was born in San Diego, California. Years later she was disappointed to learn that The Shire was not some place she could move to, nor was Rider of Rohan an acceptable career choice. Studying marine biology  so she could play with sharks seemed to be the only alternative. After college Liana settled down to work as a full-time author and mother because logical career progression is something that happens to other people. When she grows up, Liana wants to be an Evil Overlord and take over the world.

In the meantime, she writes sci-fi and SFR in between trips to the beach. She can be found wearing colorful socks on the Emerald Coast, or online at www.lianabrooks.com.

You can grab a copy of Even Villains Fall in Love at Amazon.

So, you want to get your self-published book and/or ebook into the library, where lots and lots of new readers can discover you. Me too! That’s why I hunted down librarian Marlene Harris for an interview. First I’ll let her introduce herself:

I am a librarian with more than 15 years experience. I’ve worked in both public and academic libraries all over the United States, from the Chicago Public Library to the University of Alaska Anchorage. I’m currently a consultant, book reviewer and blogger at Reading Reality. I speak to librarians about using the blogosphere to help with collection development, and integrating ebooks into library collections. My take on the best ebook romances for 2011 was posted at Library Journal in December. I currently publish Ebook Review Central every Monday, a service that provides links to reviews and ratings for ebook-only titles from around the blogosphere.

Welcome, Marlene!

Now for the interview…

Let’s start with the question on every self-published author’s mind: Can we donate copies of our books to local libraries and get them on the shelves? If so, what’s the process? I imagine just dumping them into the donations bin might not be a good idea.

This is a terrific question, and it’s one every library gets asked.  Sometimes after the fact. Let’s say you are talking about self-published fiction and popular-type nonfiction books, and you want to get them into your local public library. That isn’t the only case, but it’s the easiest one to describe!

Please don’t put them into the donations bin. Anything in the donations bin, (or handed across the checkout desk) will probably end up in the book sale. Not always, but this is the way to bet.

Check the library’s website, or call to find out who the person in charge of Collection Development or Acquisitions is. (If your book is a children’s book, get the name of the head of the Children’s or Youth Services Department) That’s the person you want. Call or email that person and say you want to donate a copy of your book. And a lot of libraries would prefer two copies. There is a significant labor cost to cataloging even a fiction book, and many libraries find it makes more economic sense to just start with two copies.

Most libraries have a collection development policy that gives a broad outline of what they collect, whether they buy it or have it donated. Local authors usually fall neatly into the “we’d love to get pretty much everything if we could afford it, so if it’s donated, we’ll happily take it” category. There are always exceptions.  Textbooks are the biggest known exception for a public library. Fill-in-the-blank books are the second. Spiral and/or comb bindings are probably number three on the list.

If our books do get into the library, is there a limited length of time they’ll be kept on the shelves? I’ve heard that how often a book is circulated plays into whether it’s kept.

Shelf space in a library is real estate. Some libraries have limited amounts of it. Some have a lot. If a library looks cluttered, just like your own house, it can be difficult for people to find what they are looking for. In a library’s case, they go elsewhere, and usually that elsewhere is Barnes and Noble or Amazon. Libraries want to keep their patrons using their libraries, so they keep them looking fresh.

If your book is popular non-fiction, the information may get dated. Books on “flipping” houses from before the current housing crisis are all, well, not a good idea right now. Pluto used to be a planet.

How long a book stays on the shelf depends on the library’s available space, and how well the book gets used. And also the condition of the book itself. If it looks like the book got dropped in something noxious, most libraries will throw that copy out and replace it. I once saw a library book that had been put into the library’s book drop after it had been used to stop a bullet. The bullet was still in it. It was a very thick book. The book was withdrawn.

At my last library, fiction would be weeded from branch libraries if it did not circulate after a year or 18 months, depending on the size of the branch. But things lasted at the main library a lot longer, because there was more room, and the mission of a main library is usually to have a larger collection and to be more comprehensive. Branches are smaller buildings and are supposed to be popular collections. It’s their purpose.

Is there anything authors can do to improve the chances that our books will be found and checked out more often? I imagine cover art plays a big role here.

You absolutely can judge a book by its cover. Paperbacks circulate better than hardcovers, and hardcovers with dustjackets circulate better than hardcovers without dustjackets. Good descriptions on the sides of the dustjacket, or the front and back of the paperback help a lot.

If you can get the librarians on board, they can also help you tremendously. People forget that librarians also hand-sell books, just like bookstores do. Libraries host book groups, libraries do author events. If your library has any kind of book blog or book feature on their website, they can help promote your book locally, or even just post a review. At my last place of work, one of our most popular features was the list of what the librarians were reading each month. And the books we read definitely circulated more, whether they were old books or new books or audiobooks or whatever.

I had a nice SF/F acquisitions librarian stumble across my books and say she was going to order copies for her library. Do self-published authors need to get lucky like that to see their works added to non-local libraries? Or is there something they can try if they’re hoping to get in elsewhere? I imagine it’d be cool to be able to say your books are available at the New York Public Library, for example.

Any author who wants to see which libraries have their books should check out worldcat.org. Worldcat is the public face of the librarian’s cataloging tool. It tells which libraries have which books. 105 libraries have Lauren Dane’s Heart of Darkness, and the nearest one to me (I’m in the Atlanta suburbs) appears to be in Jacksonville, FL) I think when I hit that point in my TBR list, I’ll just buy it!

The trick to getting libraries to find out about your books if you’re self-pubbed or just getting started is to get reviewed. Libraries don’t always rely on reviews (Stephen King doesn’t need good reviews!) but for a relatively unknown quantity, it’s just hard for libraries to find out an author exists. And when money is tight like it is now, if there’s a choice between a book that is reviewed and a book that is unknown and not reviewed, the choice is to go with the review.

Librarians look for reviews in a few specific places; Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews. Except for PW they are all library trade specific. And they all review everything from children’s material to adult. School Library Journal is an offshoot of Library Journal that reviews just children’s stuff. There are also review magazines, online plus print, that are specific to genres, like RT Book Review (romance) and Locus Magazine (science fiction and fantasy) that some libraries get.

RT Book Review has pretty broad distribution in bigger libraries and does sometimes review self-pub and indie-pub romances. Kirkus also reviews indie and self-pub books. Kirkus also has a way for self-pub authors to expedite (meaning pay) for a review. This doesn’t guarantee a good review, but it does guarantee a review. It’s not cheap, but it will get seen.

Library Journal began reviewing ebook-only romances in August 2011. They have reviewed at least a couple of self-pubbed books, regardless of whether they were available to libraries or not.

I’ve been thinking of paperbacks thus far, but a lot of self-published authors are going the ebook route these days. Are there any special rules for authors who’d like to get their ebooks into the library? Can they send gift copies to the librarian (I obviously haven’t tried this and don’t know what I’m talking about!), or… what’s the process?

It’s not so much a special route as a special name. The name is OverDrive. The only two individual libraries who have worked out a way to manage DRM and simply storing the contents of all their ebooks are the Kansas State Library and Douglas County Libraries in Colorado. Everyone else licenses their ebooks from a company called OverDrive and simply doesn’t have a way to manage ebook gifts. Because authors only want to donate a copy, not the rights for lots of copies, and libraries generally don’t have a way to handle that. OverDrive handles it for them. There are other companies now entering this same market, but this is pretty much a work in progress.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way for a self-pubbed author to work something out with OverDrive and then offer their books to libraries. There are a lot of “publishers” in the OverDrive catalog that publish the works of a single author only.

For romance authors in particular, finding a way to work this out might be worthwhile. Romances are the hottest circulating category of ebooks for public libraries. And this is a case where the authors do not have to be known quantities to get circulated. Every romance circulated like the proverbial hotcakes. Or hot sheets.

Ebooks in libraries are one of the biggest issues looming on the horizon. The “Big 6″ publishers are seesawing about how and if and whether they want to let public libraries loan ebooks to patrons. They are afraid that ebook lending will cost them sales. Publishers forget that people who read, read a lot. People who read also buy. And now that there is data about ebook buying, people who buy ebooks buy more ebooks than people who buy print books. People who borrow library books who could afford to always also bought print books. They would get introduced to an author at the library, then buy their books. The library provided the “gateway drug”. Ebook lending can be the same thing. But if the big publishers get out of the library market, and library patrons still want ebooks, then there will be a LOT of room for small publishers and independent publishers and self-pubbed authors to get in. The demand for people to read ebooks from their library is big and growing. We all just need to find a way to meet it.

Great information, Marlene. Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!

Make sure to stop by and visit Marlene’s site for the latest SF/F book reviews.

While you may have purchased your e-reader so you can digitally devour your favorite books, you needn’t be limited to straight text offerings. You can subscribe to blogs and even read comic books, and some folks are taking advantage of that.

Mark Toner is the author/illustrator of Gail Scott: Space Pilot. For those thinking of uploading comics, or even children’s picture books, you’ll want to read this interview with Mark.

Why don’t you start out telling us about your road? What made you decide to publish comics for ebook readers?

Well – it all goes back to my strange childhood in 1960s west of Scotland. Due to the US submarines stationed in my part of the world and the US Navy’s use of unsold comic books as ballast, I had the opportunity to read all kinds of stimulating comic stories and soon began to write and draw my own. This became a compulsion and I was always to be found drawing whenever there was a spare moment. In my teens I drew the school comic and, instead of studying hard for my PhD at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, I drew a regular comic for the ROE Bulletin. You can still read those 80s “Humphrey” comics on my web site www.spacepilot.co.uk.

After a spate of teaching to supplement the family income while our children grew up, I found myself with access to the web and a head still full of comics. So I decided to join the electronic self-publishing movement and get my webcomics out there. They seemed to attract a lot of interest and some nice comments. Then I discovered the Amazon Kindle Store and realised that you can actually sell your electronic publications rather than just post them for free. So I decided to collect the webcomic pages together into proper comic books and get them out into the Kindle Store. The latest, “Gail Scott: As Mars Turns” has just gone live on the Store.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced? I’m sure formatting isn’t easy with all those images!

Formatting is a problem. A lot of people are just scanning print comics and uploading them to the store. However these are only readable on a Kindle application on a large screen device. They are illegible on a Kindle eReader or a smart phone. I was very impressed by the ideas of Canby Samson in his Kindle book “Kindle Comics: The Coming Digital Comics Revolution” which lays out just how graphics have to be sized and shaded to make them readable on a Kindle. So I started reformatting my comics so that they’d look good on small devices. In fact the latest was drawn from scratch as a Kindle comic and published in enlarged form as the webcomic. Once you know the dimensions of the screen, you can make the graphics the correct size and get the text big enough. Then it’s actually just a web page that you put the pages into and send to Amazon for Kindling.

It looks like you’re doing an ongoing series. How long do you make each ebook episode?

Yes, the Gail Scott stories are going to be an epic. I’ve just completed volume 1, although I have to redo issue 1 for the Kindle. It’s currently an illustrated book rather than a comic. The Kindle sized pages that I draw for the Gail Scott comics take a couple of days to make, with pencilling, inking, scanning and lettering, before formatting them for the webpage and the Kindle. Then there are nearly thirty of these per issue. So it takes a couple of months for each Kindle book and that doesn’t include the writing stage, which takes a few days in itself.

Do you have any thoughts on pricing when it comes to comics?

Print comics have become too expensive. DC are relaunching their entire comics line which is 52 separate titles at $3.99 each. So they’re hoping that comic fans will each spend $207.48 every month on their product! Now I know that the quality of the artwork and finishing is very high on a print comic these days but I think they’d sell a lot more if they reduced the paper quality a little and adopted a simpler, quicker to produce, style of art. Then the price per comic could come down and we could all read more of them. Alternatively they could go back to black and white ink and put them out on the Kindle Store. Due to the way Amazon stages the royalties, my books cost $2.80 there. Once they start moving in volume I may be able to reduce that.

What are your plans for the future? More in the same series? Something new?

There is going to be a little break between volumes of Gail Scott while I start a companion series called “Meanwhile Back On Earth.” This is going to cover the period when Gail and her crew are travelling out to the stars. Due to relativity, Gail’s ten year space mission will be more like 70 years back here on Earth and I’m going to make something like a newspaper strip (three or four panels in a row) to cover a series of adventures that happen here over that 70 year period. It’ll probably start with a Highland police adventure involving UFOs. Eventually both series will converge with the surviving characters from “Meanwhile Back On Earth” meeting Gail and her friends when they return to Earth for volume 3.

I’m also touting for business as an illustrator and have a number of projects that I’ve poked my nose into, some or none of which might result in something. An example is that I’m putting what I have learned with the Kindle comics into practice with a bespoke Kindle book cover service. Look out for a series of Kindle books entitled “Curious About…” issued by the New Curiosity Shop (www.newcurioshop.com) which will feature my cover illustrations.

* * *

Note from Lindsay: It looks like the Canby Samson ebook on formatting comics has since been taken down. Perhaps Niki Smith’s Formatting Comics for the Kindle and Nook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Images and Ebooks would also be a good starting point for folks.

I’m always looking for new indie authors to interview, folks who are doing well for themselves (and can share some tips with us!), so if you chat with me on Twitter, I’ll probably check on your books to see how well you’re selling (that’s not stalker-ish, is it?).

J. Michael Radcliffe is a fellow fantasy author, and I noticed that his novel is doing well — quite well considering it’s his only novel (with fantasy, you often pick up traction as you release more books in a series) and it’s not a 99-center. He has a couple of short stories out, too, but I’ll let him tell you more about them below.

An interview with J. Michael Radcliffe:

What led you down the road to self-publishing and what’s your experience been like so far?

First I would like to thank you for featuring me on your blog, Lindsay – I really appreciate it.  One of the things I love most about writing is getting the opportunity to meet and interact with other authors such as yourself.

I finally decided to publish my novel, ‘The Guardian’s Apprentice’ when I began reading about the Kindle process through Amazon.  I had sent my work off to several agents and publishers, most of whom never bothered to even send me a rejection notice.  I believed that (a) my work didn’t fit their business model (b) wasn’t a hot genre at the moment or (c) maybe my writing was so atrocious no one would touch it.  So I decided to publish through Amazon and see what happened – and I have been overwhelmed at the response!

My experience so far has been very positive.  I have met so many wonderful new friends and fellow writers who provide help to each other and help cross-promote each others’ works.  The publishing process itself was incredibly easy, though I must admit I still find cover design to be the most daunting task.

It looks like you’re selling a couple hundred copies a month (more?) of your flagship novel, The Guardian’s Apprentice. It’s not a 99-center either, so that’s putting some extra change in your pocket! What have you done to promote it?

I am very, very pleased – if not downright shocked – at my level of sales.  On average, I’m selling about 20 a day – not a bestseller, but I’m ecstatic nonetheless!  I have a facebook page for my various works and try to be active on twitter.  I’ve also put a lot of information online at my website: http://www.theguardiansapprentice.com and my blog: http://michaelradcliffe.wordpress.com.  I tweet under the name @Alderdrache, which means ‘elder dragon’ and is one of the characters from my novel.

I’ve found one of the best forms of promotion was becoming active with a writer’s group at BestsellerBound.com.  Late last year Joel Kirkpatrick, one of their members, put together a three volume anthology with excerpts from the books of some 60+ authors including me.  Earlier this year I contributed my short story ‘Tears for Hesh’ to an anthology of short stories from ten authors in the same group.  The free anthology hit the #1 free download on Amazon and has resulted in a lot of exposure, in my opinion.

That is one thing I would recommend to all writers, is to join a writing group for advice, feedback, etc.  BestsellerBound is a great one, as is Critters.org.  On critters.org there is a critiquing system where you can get your work critiqued by fellow authors, which is really very helpful.

You also have short (some very short!) stories up for 99 cents that appear to be from the same world. How do those sell for you? Do folks seem to mind paying 99 cents for stories that are much shorter than your novel?

The short stories sell fairly well, though not at the level of TGA.  I’ve noticed however that those who purchase the shorts seem to go on and purchase TGA and vice-versa, so I think the shorts are a nice inexpensive way for someone to become familiar with my work.  I think people are more willing to spend a $1 on an unfamiliar author than $3 – and if they like what they read they go on to spend the $3.

Short stories are also a wonderful way to expand on secondary characters or introduce readers to new characters who may play a role in future works.  For example in ‘Forsaken’ I tell the story of Nisha Black, one of the supporting characters from TGA.  In the novel I didn’t have time or space to explain to readers why she was forced to spend all but one hour per day as her animal form as penance for a past crime.  It’s also great fun to try and develop a character and story but stay within a tight word constraint such as 3,000 or 5,000 words.

It looks like your second best seller is a short story collection that includes “descriptions and histories of the creatures, characters, places and items from the novel.” What made you decide to add those tidbits? (It sounds like a neat idea.)

I read an excellent blog piece written by Joe Konrath about different ways to package and market your work, which is what gave me the idea for the Anthology.  After I had written my third short story, I decided to put all three shorts in an anthology along with the prologue to the sequel to TGA (“Bloodstone – The Guardian’s Curse”) as well as all the extra stuff.  “Beyond the Veil – the world of The Guardian’s Apprentice” ended up being home to all of the creatures, places and things from TGA as well as the three shorts.

All of the characters, creatures, etc. are either in TGA or will be in Bloodstone.  I’ve kept a separate Word file with notes and ideas as I wrote the novel – I guess you could say my overactive imagination didn’t know where to stop.

Do you have any book promotion tips for new authors?

Three things I would recommend:

1. Join a writing group such as BestsellerBound or Critters – you’ll meet great new friends and learn a lot!  If you get the opportunity to contribute to an anthology, do so (as long as you retain your rights) to increase your exposure.
2. Utilize twitter, facebook, blogs, etc. to interact with other authors.  I’ve noticed traffic to my website referred from other writer’s blogs on which I’ve left comments.
3. Be patient – it takes time to reach out to people, especially if you are a new indie.

Lastly, would you like to tell us what you’re working on next? 

I’m currently working on the sequel to TGA, which is titled “Bloodstone -  The Guardian’s Curse”.  This novel picks up where TGA left off and delves a little deeper into the history of the magical Orders.  Keegan will also face a terrible choice to save someone he loves, even though they may not wish him to make so great a sacrifice.

Sounds fun! Thanks for joining us today, Michael!

The last indie author I interviewed was doing well for himself after deciding to give Book 1 in his series away for free on Amazon, B&N, etc. Today we have another author who went from a couple of sales a day to as many as 100 by using the same tactic.

Ronnell D. Porter is a young up-and-comer who writes fantasy and does his own cover art as well. Here’s more of his story and what his recent success means to him:

Q: I’m going to ask you about the tremendous break through you’ve had shortly, but I’ve love to start out asking about your first couple of years. You’ve been at this a while and have quite a few ebooks out. What made you choose e-publishing, and how has your road been thus far?

A: Well I was nineteen years old, working my first job doing production for Kellogg’s, and had just finished BREAKING DAWN, I’m not if sure you’ve heard of it – it’s a niche book with a small following. As soon as I put down the book I thought “Well I’ve got stories to tell! I should write a book!” Up until that point I’d only been writing on FanFiction.Net, so my goal was to get published and gain enough fame to have an archive dedicated to one of my books. I’d always wondered what it would be like from an author’s point of view to see what people would come up with surrounding my characters!

So after establishing that I was going to be the next über –selling author (because it was just going to happen lol) I went out to my favorite thrift store, SAVER’S, to find a typewriter. I didn’t have a computer at the time, so that was my solution. I found a nice typewriter for $3.50 that worked perfectly and then ran off to STAPLES to find out if they carried any ink ribbons for that model. Turns out they did because it was one of two new current models they had in stock for $140 brand new: best deal of my life!

Unfortunately, writing with a type writer gets very expensive. It cost me $10 for a pack of two ink ribbons, and I would only get just over 40 pages from each ribbon. After spending way more than I could afford on ribbons, and having lost my job at Kellogg’s, I put my stack of papers in a box and gave up on the dream. That was, until, my estranged father very generously bought me my first laptop three months later in December of 2008. Suddenly the flame was relit and I took out my stack of papers and continued from where I’d left off.

March of 2009, THE POCKET WATCH was completely finished. I couldn’t believe that I’d written an entire novel – six months of hard work! So I did what any hopeful amateur would’ve done: I queried out to about 40 big-name literary agents at once (I was really, REALLY hopeful). I received three replies out of those forty, each from said agent’s assistant, stating that the project wasn’t right for them at that time. After some research, I could see just why no one was going to touch that manuscript; turns out 286,000 words was a bit too much to publish in print, especially from a nobody like myself. And as I researched agent blogs and read writing newsletters, I also quickly realized that I wasn’t really such a great writer either. I ended all quotes with periods, which is a no-no, among a haystack of other things I’d never learned.

November, 2009. I’d landed a part time job as a cart-pusher for Wal*Mart, but was still not making enough to survive on my own. I’d whittled THE POCKET WATCH down to its current 145,000 words – still way too long to publish. But I’d learned about a site called Lulu – and though at first I was happy with having my book in print (the first run being 8.5×11” textbook size!) I quickly learned that Lulu was a joke once I’d discovered Createspace. I met an amazing artist on DeviantArt named Alena Kubíková who created the current paperback illustration of THE POCKET WATCH. I published, pedaled, but still no luck or success.

And then, in April of 2010, I found Amazon Kindle. I’d never heard about it before, but when I’d stumbled upon the Kindle Boards to advertise my books (I’d just finished THE WHITE KNIGHT at that point) I was introduced to the incredible world of eBook publishing and, of course, the Kindle. I created my own cover for The White Knight, and put them both for sale on the kindle market. Then something magical happened; I managed to sell books! I was only making about $20 a month in the beginning, and by then I’d been let go by Wal*Mart and had been unemployed for months, but it was enough to buy a victory dinner at Burger King and my Twilight Saga: Eclipse movie tickets lol.

Then when I met Amanda Hocking, having just published MY BLOOD APPROVES and FATE, things really became fun. She put an excerpt of a novella I’d written called THE UNDYING in the back of MY BLOOD APPROVES, the first chapter. I put the first chapter of MY BLOOD APPROVES in the back of THE UNDYING; sales picked up a bit to garner about $120-$130 a month. I made a meager living designing book covers for newbie indies like myself in the fall at $50 a pop, and that would get me another $300 or so a month. Altogether it was enough to scratch and claw around while I continued to put in unsuccessful applications.

In December of 2010 I set the prices for THE POCKET WATCH, THE WHITE KNIGHT, THE UNDYING, and my two middle-grade books THE LITTLE PEACH KING and CURSED at $0.99 from December 1^st  2010 through January 31^st 2011. Sales boosted enough to the point that when I went back to normal prices of $0.99 – $2.99 in February, I was making a steady $200 a month. By January I’d also upped my book cover design prices from $50 to $100 per eBook/Kindle cover, $150 per 300dpi Paperback PDF, and created a website for my services. After that, I was finally earning enough money a month to feel a lot more comfortable than before, from $500 a bad month to about $1200 a good month (including Kindle profits). And then in May, I learned of the free book craze that had swept the Kindle Boards: If you made your book free on Smashwords and distributed it free to its outlets (Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Sony, Kobo Books, etc) then there was a chance that Amazon might make it free in the Kindle Store. This would hopefully bump up sales for your other books.

I made THE POCKET WATCH free, and within two weeks it was free on the other sites as well. I set all three in the TRINITY SAGA to $0.99 to tempt sales, but it didn’t boost anything. I made myself a promise that if it was made free, I would donate all of June and July’s earnings for its sequels to charity. Every time it popped up on another site, I promptly informed Amazon of the sale. But still, the book wasn’t free. Come June, I kept informing them until there were no more sites to tell them about. On June 23^rd I send a polite letter to the KDP’s Customer Service reps, explaining that I’d been trying to make it free for my upcoming charity venture, and asked if there was anything else I could do to sway them onto the free side. I got a very nice reply the following day stating that the factors that determined a price match to make a book free depended on many more factors than just the fact that it was free elsewhere. They said that it wouldn’t be in Amazon’s best interest if they just went around making all books free whenever they came across it on another site. I was a little disheartened, I just knew that they weren’t going to make it free, but I could understand their point.

On June 25^th, I’d checked my sales at 3 pm: 63 copies of THE POCKET WATCH sold, 48 copies of THE WHITE KNIGHT sold, and 43 copies of THE MEMORY KEEPER sold, all at $0.99. Not much profit, but more readers, and that always lays a path of hope in front of you. So I raised the prices back up to $2.99 and put the thought of free books out of my mind. I figured that the free option was probably only awarded to the more well known authors of Kindle fame, since they’d been the ones on the Kindle Boards with the miracle under their belt. I boarded the train that would take me up north to see my family for the weekend. 3:40pm and I checked my sales again: 67 copies of THE WHITE KNIGHT, 52 copies of THE MEMORY KEEPER, and a whopping 500+ of THE POCKET WATCH. In just 40 minutes I’d made an impossible record for myself, and my jaw dropped (It literally did, gaping wide open). Then I had the idea to go to Amazon on my phone to check the price of THE POCKET WATCH, just in case…

$0.00. Happy Dance.

Between June 25^th and June 30^th, the final tallies for sales were as follows:

29 sales for CURSED

5 sales for HOWL: A Short Story,

1 sale for I Was A Brooding Teenage Vampire

4 sales for THE LITTLE PEACH KING

325 sales for THE MEMORY KEEPER

409 sales for THE WHITE KNIGHT

And 32,826 free sales for THE POCKET WATCH.

I couldn’t believe it. On my blog posting about my charity venture, I’d stated that I’d be very happy with being able to raise a modest $1,000 to donate to the two charities I’d been wanting to contribute to: Breast Cancer (The American Cancer Society) and Save The Children, dividing and donating $500 to each. By the end of June, I’d already surpassed that goal by raising over $1,500 in the sales of the sequels.

I can’t stress just how grateful I am to have been so lucky, and how great it feels to know that between July 1^st and July 4^th I’ve sold 356 combined copies of the sequels, adding another $726 to the money already raised in June. I can’t wait to see what the final donation is going to be, and that’s astoundingly humbling.

Do you think things have changed a lot since you got started? Is it harder for new authors to get noticed with all the competition out there, or are there a proportionate number of new ebook readers available to buy people’s books?

That’s a tough question because I can only answer from the point of view of my time spent on the Kindle Boards; I haven’t been to any other forums, and I’m afraid to go to the Amazon forums since it has a reputation of being particularly vicious to indies. From what I’ve seen in the Kindle Boards since I joined in April of 2010 is that not too long ago there was an explosion of new members, so I think that it is getting tougher for not just the new faces but for all of us to be seen by readers. With so many millions of books available on the kindle, the odds of crawling out of the barrel aren’t high enough to make an indie very hopeful, at least I wasn’t. I’m still not entirely convinced that I will, I feel like this freebie boost is a temporary fit of luck and I’ll fall right back to where I was before

Okay, tell us about your books! It looks like you have a couple of series out. What do you enjoy working on most, and what sells best for you?

I enjoy paranormal and fantasy the most, though my problem is sticking to one story long enough to finish it. I have dozens of books with only a few chapters written and then left in the dust because I was inspired to write something new. As for the stories that I was lucky enough to stay focused on long enough to finish, there’s THE TRINITY SAGA of course, The Pocket Watch/Book 1, The White Knight/Book 2, and The Memory Keeper/Book 3 and my FAVORITE one. Then there are my middle grade adventure books THE LITTLE PEACH KING, and CURSED, both about magic and mayhem. I think those were the easiest to write because they only took a few days from beginning to end due to their short length (both at 30,000 words) and they were all about fun. Then there’s HOWL, a short horror story about a girl pitted against surviving a disease in West Africa (10,000 words) and then there’s I WAS A BROODING TEENAGE VAMPIRE, which I’d just published at the end of June and sold an impressive 2 copies! It’s a comedy parody of the teenage vampire love saga genre, and I think it’s hilarious, of course, but my opinion is the only one I can give, especially as no one else (save two people) have read it lol.

And now the decision to list a freebie on Amazon. How did you go about doing that, and what kind of difference has it made?

Well the difference has been immediate and immaculate: I actually have a readership now! And reviews are popping up. For one whole day I was on the front page, very top, and dead center of Kindle Nation Daily: I’d never even dreamed of an honor that high, at least not realistically. I’d like to see more reviews for the third book in the Trinity Saga, The Memory Keeper, since that’s my absolute favorite one and I want to know what others think, but I’m happy as long as it sells and people read it.

Thanks for your time. Do you want to finish up telling us about future projects and plans?

I’m currently writing the fourth and final book in The Trinity Saga, The Navilus, and simultaneously working on the first in a spin-off trilogy that takes place about twenty years or so after the end of the Trinity Saga. The world is in a crazy state of being after the final events of The Navilus so I thought it’s be wild to explore the new society with a bit of depth. I’m also writing a paranormal romance when I need a change of pace from the other two projects that revolves around a new kind of demon that I think is a nifty read, but the main heroine isn’t exactly ‘likeable’, she kind of an overgrown brat, so I’m not expecting much success there either lol.

Thank you so much for your time and letting little old me be a guest on your impressive site!