The site needs much work, but I’ve been able to successfully neglect that site as well.  Two posts today over there and a reference from Owasm to Guy.

So I have one of my e-books up.  I’ll have a middle grade novel up in a week or so and a full-size novel up before the end of the year.  My goal is to have three up before Dec 30 and ten more up by the end of next year.

The anthologies I mentioned earlier are mostly written as are two of the novels for next year.  I can put up the middle grade novels at a rate of about one every two months.  So that is six of those, three anthologies and two novels.  That makes eleven, so I have some cushion!?

It’s a goal.  Don’t know if I’ll make it.  So far Sword of Spells is bringing in $15o to $200 per month.  Multiply that by thirteen and my take would grow to $1,950 to $2,600 per month.  That’s second job territory.

The pipeline needs to be continually stoked and the quality has to go up, but that’s doable.  I’d like to level off at four novels per year.  But this is just the start, so we will see what happens.  I may be making $150 to $200 a month with fourteen works for sale.  That would be a bummer, but I’m prepared for that, too.

The Brull anthology is finished.  I ended up writing four new stories (about 25,000 new words) and now have eleven stories, not counting a short prologue.  The prologue talks about Brull’s world instead of me continuing to infodump his environment in every story.

I’ve got a novel ready for proof-reading.  I’ve split it into six books and I’m wondering if I should set up six titles and call it a serialization.  The smaller books would be between 12,500 and 27,000 words each.  The entire set is 93,000 words.  If I split them up into titles, I would have seven titles on Amazon and Smashwords by the end of October.

It looks like I’ll need a month for each of my anthologies, if the stories are revised and rewritten to produce a decent set of stories.

Self-publishing, for me, will be somewhat liberating.  I keep reading about queries and how long the publishing process is.  That’s too long for me, and I don’t think my work is sophisticated enough for publishers to get excited about.

These books will be out under a pen name:  Guy Antibes (pronounced Gee Onteeb).  Some french dude.  I own the guyantibes.com domain and will get a Brull domain of some sort as well.

Once the Brull anthology is out, I’m going to promote it for awhile and set up a twitter account for Brull.   I think a Brull story, in first person, unfolding on Twitter will be a fun project.

So what have I done?  I am looking at my publishing schedule.  Yes, I made up a schedule of what I can put up.

I’ve got twelve separate works.  Some written.

I’ve got three standalone novels with rewrites required and one of those will actually be split into two volumes.

I have a one series of five stories, of which one is written.  A series, in my mind, is a set of novellas or novelettes or whatever something about 8,000 to 25,000 words is.  So each one is written separately.  That’s five.

And… I have four short story anthologies.  I write 60 to 100 short stories a year (for the past two and a half years I’ve been writing).  Most are dross, but the best ones will be pulled together.

Anthology One one is my favorite character– Brull, the warrior mage in the Sword of Spells series.  It’s tongue in cheek light S&S fantasy.

Anthology Two is Science Fiction.  Working Title is Eater of Worlds.

Anthology Three is S&S fantasy with some funny stories and some serious ones.

Anthology Four is a Speculative mix of post-apocalyptic, steampunk, vampire stuff.  Some are funny, some aren’t.

I want to get product out there and it takes time, so most of the stories can do with some rewriting and some are ready to print.  However all of them need proofreading.

I think I can do the covers myself.  I will need to actually pay someone to at least proofread.  All of the works that I’ve written have been at least critted in one of the three workshops I frequent except for one of the novels.

So this is a twelve-month goal.  I can write fast, but rewrites are slower.  Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.

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I’m currently re-writing my first novel as an e-book.  It certainly needs rewriting, but it has a decent story and I have a string of sequels already mapped out.

While I’m involved in that I’m going to turn a couple of my short stories into e-books to get comfortable with the technology and try various conversions.

While I am getting comfortable with e-book conversion I’m going to develop a set of services that authors can use to get their writing converted to e-books.  I’m a proponent of giving an author 100% of their work, so we will charge for a menu of services.

I know there are writing bloggers out there that say you shouldn’t have to pay for services, that agents and publishers will do it for you, but the e-book business is different.  If you want to keep all of your work, then you have to pay to get it produced.  The difference is, you keep all of your rights if you pay to play and if you wait for a publisher, you don’t pay, but you’ll get little pay back and have to wait years to get your novel out in the marketplace.

So my model will consist of services:  e-book conversion, copy editing, content editing, cover design and execution and perhaps some marketing assistance.  It will be offered under a publishing company that I will create.

The services will be offered to anybody, but in order to issue it with the publisher’s name, it will have to achieve a certain quality.  That quality won’t be determined by how many services are purchased but how the book reads.

Books will be distributed to whomever the author wishes either on their own or through a distribution system, even through Smashwords or similar aggregators.

What will be the difference between this method and vanity publishing?  The difference is the internet.  Once you are out there, the readers in your genre determine what they’ll buy and what they won’t.  A book can be out in the e-marketplace and languish or be successful. The publisher’s name will be an indicator that the book has been worked on and not just thrown into the e-marketplace.

I think that books from publisher-type organizations that have some quality control built-in will give some polish and reputation for authors.  However, that’s entirely speculation and the way authors get their works out into the marketplace is going to change a lot in the next twenty years.

They land on an enemy planet on a peace mission and find their ship blown up and they are confined to quarters.  The XO takes over as the planet practices sharia law so she has to appear subservient as they make an escape.

Now the story was more of a sketch due to the time constraint of the challenge so much was left unsaid.  A reviewer took exception to the relationship between sexes and could, from what he said, have been very offended.

On another writer’s group, a person reviewing a novel I wrote, couldn’t even make it halfway through.  She claimed ‘rookie’ writing, but it was apparent in her comments that she was offended by the fact that women couldn’t practice magic because females couldn’t remember spells.  She didn’t read through to see that the main character developed strength and she makes some pretty noble decisions.

I think that, in our day and age, that political correctness finds its way even into areas of speculative fiction which should be an area where all kinds of justices and injustices should be examined.  With twists and turns in Fantasy and Science Fiction, you need to be prepared for anything to happen and by insisting on overlaying one’s predjudices (I consider political correctness to be a prejudiced POV) on the work is an act of close-mindedness.

Now I’m a pretty straight guy and will stop reading a book where there is excessively graphic sex or pummeled with constant F-bombs.  I will say the story’s not for me, but I know there will be a market for it and will review the story, setting that aside. (I’m much more tolerant towards violence… everybody’s different.)

My point is that gender issues have become super-sensitive and they inhibit the exploration of the various shades of relationships in a story.  Religion has become another area, but there are genuine outlets for stories that reach into that sub-genre.  I’m not a proponent of sexual-related violence towards men or women, but that we should be free to explore relationships in both unique and stereotypic ways in any genre without offending others to the bone.

• Hatrack River Writers Workshop – challenges, WotF groups, General Writing information
• Liberty Hall Writers Group – challenges, challenges and more challenges
• David Farland’s Writers Group  – novel writing group

Each fits in its own niche in my writing and so far they’ve worked out reasonably well.

I’ve continued to have some life issues.  My prostate cancer has come back and I’ve been taking radiation treatments (3 down, 35 to go) for early stage post-prostatectomy cancer.  I had to move from a house I spent nearly 20 years living in.  So it’s mentally slowed me up a bit, but I’m positive.

My interest in self-publishing has taken a large upswing.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to do quite a bit of self-publishing for a few reasons:

• I’m old enough that I can’t wait two years per book to get published once I’m ‘discovered’.
• What I like to write genre-wise, is not what publishers want.  So if I self-publish I’ll be able to write that old-fashioned purplish sword and sorcery stuff without having to go so dark.  Perhaps even some of my poetry.
• I may end up doing some publishing for others.  There’s still a need for other authors to have their works worked over, covers made and their prose edited.  I read a decent e-book last week, however I had to make it past at least 20 easily spotted errors.  Self-publishers need people to look over their works.  I’ll have to develop a different model.  Perhaps do some pre-Smashwords prep for other writers.  But that’s for another post.

I’ve got all my novels unpublished so I’m looking forward to some rewrites, some revisions and some fun being more free with genre and length.  I wrote a 40,000 contemporary fantasy, but had to shelve it because it didn’t need to be bigger, but publishers wouldn’t want such a small book.  No longer an issue if you self-publish.

My WIP has deteriorated from six months ago.  Perhaps gotten stale might be a better word.  My last three WotF entries were rejects.     So I have more work to do on my craftsmanship.

It just means I’ll have to be more active.