backflung

Thanks, received.

Thanks Sox. question backflung.

and back atcha - the second one, with a comment and another cx.

I went to a coffee-thing with a bunch of local writers today. It was fun, there were a number of wonderful people there, nice conversation was had (aside from the business of promoting yourself stuff) and now all I want to do is hide in my room and not talk to strangers for a while. Doomed, I am.

Sounds like fun aside from the being doomed part, Sox.

I got done with chapter 3 of Cog and I'm well into chapter 4. At some point I'll need to send out some more query letters. For some reason doing something that isn't much fun and has poor odds of success isn't as much fun as writing a new novel. Go figure.

Amanda Hocking is 26 years old. She has 9 self-published books to her name, and sells 100,000+ copies of those ebooks per month. She has never been traditionally published.

yup.

That reminds me that I need to get another query letter out; I've put the process in park while considering the new pitch approach and working on Cog.

The growth of eBooks should have interesting effects. Self-published books do have an advantage on pricing. I've been tempted just because I could just be done with it. (Well, I'd want to make yet another editing run over it because of my fear of leaving in some glaring mistakes or typos) I'm not counting on making any money in any event. There's a sense of validation you can't get from self-publishing, though, well I guess you could if you get good sales.

She's writing YA, paranormal, and series, all of which are in demand right now. She priced the first books in each of her series at .99 and then the subsequent titles at $2.99, and engaged in a fairly relentless Twitter/Facebook/blog campaign (which, good for her).

I haven't read her, but several of my writer friends who have say that she's got good chops, which also puts her above a LOT of self-pubbed authors, but she still could've used an editor.

I'm wondering how long, though, amazon will keep that sweet 70% royalty rate (which kicks into gear at the $2.99 price point. Below that, and it's 35% of retail price.)