X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (11 July 2023)
X.HoYen's Author Newsletter (11 July 2023)
Greetings Dear Subscribers,
How are you? Any news? Send me a note!
* "Minimum Safe Distance" audiobook status
* "Custodians of the Future" production status
* Updated official headshot
* The standard stuff
============ MSD audiobook status ============
You're gonna love this.
At findawayvoices.com, after receiving the email saying "Congratulations, Minimum Safe Distance will be sent to distributors shortly!", my "Payment & Tax Profile" section showed all green checkmarks:
Four days ago, I finally broke *their* "don't contact us after publishing, just check your sales links page" rule, telling them that four months is an excessive amount of time to hear nothing at all from anyone, and asking if they've received feedback from vendors explaining why there's been zero activity on this audiobook.
Today I received their response. They say my tax form was in error and I should've received notification from suchnsuch @spotify.com about the error. I never did. And I periodically check spam.
I've just made the changes they apparently needed, so maybe this audiobook project will actually go out to distributors shortly.
Grrr!
============ CotF production status ============
Twenty out of the 31 agent queries I've sent out are rejects or timeouts. Rather than waiting until August for the final timeouts, I'm making the decision to proceed with self-publishing "Custodians of the Future".
This time I did not hire a professional editor. It seems like I got away with it, with help from readers and automated editing systems (MS Word Editor and Grammarly). I learned a lot from MSD's editor, Sarah Cypher.
I'm spinning up MiblArt.com, the Ukrainian studio I used for MSD's cover, and I think I've got the paperback interior layout done myself. I've decided that CotF will not be in hardcover form, and the paperback will be smaller and with 11pt font instead of 12pt, to minimize the book price. My royalty per book is still less than a dollar and I'm probably never going to break even, money-wise, unless I find my audience and they post reviews. Finding my audience is possibly the biggest challenge in all this. Creating the ebook file will be another interesting challenge.
Here we go!
============ Updated official headshot ============
Much as it pains me to be photographed and have my photos on the web, it's part of the authoring thing.
The other day I had a photo shoot at Henok.T Photography. Henok's a fascinating, multi-talented person from Eritrea.
https://XHoYenAuthor.com has now been updated with a proper professional standard head shot, on the About page and in the Media Kit. It's an interesting composition (look at the background).
During the shoot, several times I said to Henok, "I am smiling." :)
Here's that shot (the indoor one) and a couple of others from the shoot.
============ The standard stuff ============
Here’s a printable, one-page ad for MSD if anyone has a nice bulletin board/ad column nearby.
All purchase options can be found in the X.HoYen Author Store (https://XHoYenAuthor.com/store) or at GrandUnificationMonastery.com.
You can give Kindle eBooks as gifts: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200652260
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career/hobby thing come together.
Please do share my page 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
https://XHoYenAuthor.com