X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (27 Aug 2022)
Greetings Dear Subscribers to X.HoYen's Author Newsletter,
27 Aug 2022 (last one was sent 04 Aug 2022)
As promised, I do not inundate you with newsletters. :) But in this Fall’s run-up to MSD’s 17 OCTOBER release, entries will be somewhat more frequent.
I hope everyone is well! Send me a note (xhoyen@gmail.com)!
BUT FIRST, EMERGENCY -- HELP NEEDED
DOES ANYONE KNOW OF A TRUSTWORTHY APARTMENT RENTAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY, CA?
One of your fellow subscribers just got a 60 day eviction notice because the owner of the property is selling it. If you know of a good rental opportunity in that area, please send me an email, AND THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!
SELF-PUB FIRE HOSE
Drinking from a fire hose is always, ahem, a blast.
There's *so much* involved in self-publishing. (if you have the stomach for it, skim the bullet list I included at the end of this newsletter -- some of you are well familiar with it, right Jordan?)
The good news, however, is that my publishing expenditures are much lower (several $k) than if I'd given in to the dark side temptation and paid one of those hybrid publishers ($10k for one, $30k for the other!), plus I have full ownership and control.
When I'll break even is a big unknown.
MSD RUN-UP TO RELEASE
17 OCTOBER is my target release date for MSD, but I will let YOU, my ultrasupporters, know EARLY/ASAP when it's available as a FREE EBOOK promotion. Even free promo ebook downloads will help me from a sales ranking standpoint, so if you can't afford to spend money on it or just don't want to, you'll have an almost effort-free way to provide support! I still hope for holiday gift purchases, too, but I'm happy to accept help with ranking, of course. Free ebook "sales" count as sales, and sales beget sales. :)
I'll be going wide with the ebook distro (i.e. not just Amazon), so non-Amazon customers and international customers should be covered.
The soft cover printed book version will be available on Amazon and possibly also IngramSpark. The hard cover will be available on IngramSpark. (Not Amazon, because Amazon doesn't support dust jackets, only textbook/children's book style colored laminate covers. For my hard cover version I want a nice, textured cover with a dust jacket over it. :) I'll be buying printed copies for sale at in-person events, so I can arrange for autographed copies, but they'll be expensive with shipping.
But Miblart is currently working on the layout files, so I can't even buy a test copy yet. I've been waiting for one particular testimonial, too.
YOUR PRE-RELEASE SUBSCRIBER TREAT
On 8 SEP I'll be giving you an early-release short story ("Preet's Monsta") set after the events of MSD. When I chose 8 Sep for this gifting date I didn't know 8 Sep is "Star Trek Day" but I don't mind that at all. :) Maybe I'll make Star Trek Day an annual subscriber special gift day, at least until "The Expanse" or "Project Hail Mary" get their own day.
AUDIOBOOK MINOR SETBACK
The narrator will cost a lot of money (around $2k), but I feel that having an audiobook version will help with exposure in the long-term.
Unfortunately, my narrator has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome *and* has a surgery scheduled next week. The former will extend and complicate the recovery from the latter. She sprung this on me after I approved her as my chosen narrator yesterday, but I'm having a hard time holding it against her. As a result, the audiobook rendition won't be available for at least six months (and this is, of course, assuming her narrated rendition is a quality work that would be good for my exposure and not a one-star debacle).
LOCAL CONVENTIONS LATER THIS YEAR
I still haven't heard back from Mile Hi Con regarding my Author's Row table application. And Rocky Mountain Con's web site is not yet updated. But I'm set up for in-person purchases, and have purchased a nice, large banner to put behind such a table and postcards to put on the table. All of this waiting has been driving me up the wall. I'm so itching to have all this up and running so I can see what the printed versions look like and have a small inventory for these kinds of events, not to mention so I can get on with writing my next thing.
MY NEXT PROJECT
...is tentatively titled CUSTODIANS OF THE FUTURE. On New Year's Eve 2099, can a hapless janitor squad save Stockholm from itself? Can Luxembourgers, Buddhist monks, and the dreaded Canadian Space Agency stop them?
The vision is that there will be several of these "of the future" books in a non-series series (i.e. set essentially in the same world, but not a series per se), and I'm trying hard to include some whimsy in this material.
When the time comes, I'll still need your help to generate orders and holiday season gift orders, and to generally get the word out. The fact is, seeing sales generates sales. I hope we get some good reviews, too, to counter the inevitable bad ones, HOWEVER those of you whom Skynet would identify as my family or my close friends should NOT add online reviews. That's rightly seen as fakery and can cause problems for me.
Thanks for sticking with me on this long journey.
Self-publishing activities (after the writing/revising/editing/revising/revising again of the novel itself, of course)
learn the need for and the how-to of all of the below (BIG bullet)
get a doing-business-as with the state (my publisher/imprint dba is "Grand Unification Monastery"; I used that name and logo back in 2005 with my non-fiction book and I just like it, so I kept it)
get an EIN (Employer ID Number) with the IRS (replaces my SSN for biz purposes)
get a business credit union account
obtain ISBNs (each book version, including audio, requires its own ISBN, although ebook doesn't require one)
get a sales tax license with the locality (city, in my case)
establish publisher accounts with distributors:
KDP (for ebook and soft cover; I had one already from my non-fiction book from 2005, but had to revise it)
Apple itunesconnect (for ebook)
IngramSpark (for hard cover)
Google Play (for ebook)
DraftToDigital (for wide ebook distro)
Findawayvoices (for audiobook production and wide distro)
research narrators
request and iterate on auditions
etc. (ongoing)
buy a proper book cover (Miblart.com; in this case using source art I commissioned from a proper artist years ago)
prepare for in-person sales at conventions
sign up for an Authors Row table at local conventions
create and set up a Venmo business account
obtain and set up at least one QR code
create and set up a SquareApp business account
buy a "portable terminal" device that can handle multiple methods of payment (dip [chip], swipe [old mag strip], tap [Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other NFC methods])
somehow format the book to satisfy ebook and interior layout requirements of the above distributors (hired Miblart.com to do this; they're currently working on it; I was waiting for late-breaking testimonials before kicking this off, because iterations cost more; maybe I'll buy and use Vellum software in the future so I can do this myself, but then I'd have to learn all those formatting requirements)
register the copyright with the Library of Congress
learn how to promote/market (ongoing...)
write good blurb
back cover copy
collect testimonials
press kit (just learned that I probably need this...)
offer reader magnet to try to bring in new newsletter subscribers
create book cover reveal graphics (that I can do. done!)
figure out pricing
figure out promo pricing and timing
learn how to use Goodreads.com for promotion
buy promo services (freebooksy, bargainbooksy, bookbub, ENT, robinreads, etc.) for release week promo sequence
obtain Universal Sales URL from Draft2Digital (only AFTER the sales links at all the various vendors go live, unfortunately)
Who knows what I've forgotten to include on this bullet list?
Standard newsletter stuff
Please do share my URL with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoyed Weir’s The Martian, Older’s Infomocracy, Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Mandel’s Station Eleven, or Corey’s The Expanse. I'm convinced Minimum Safe Distance would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote it for me and *I'm* in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
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