Pathetic worms! She better be gluten free…

Well, I finally surrendered to the big, hairy gorilla. I was scared he’d drag me to the top of the Empire State Building and leave me there to watch him smash planes and news helicopters buzzing around us. I could have lived with that – honestly, I could use the publicity. Him, wreaking havoc. Me, waving a Crimson Son poster and checking my sales figures.

I said I was going to stop blogging about writing and my process, but I’m shelving this under “consumer alert”. Things my customers need to know if they want to keep reading my fiction.

I dropped Smashwords. As of now, the Crimson Son eBook is only available through Amazon. (A moment of silence for all the irreparably broken links I’ve scattered about the ‘net.)

If you love paperbacks. If you need to feel a book between your fingers – the soft caress of the pages along your thumb, the pulpy vanilla scent as you fan the delicate layers, then this means exactly nothing. No change. My paperbacks will still be available at most major online outlets and a couple of select Dallas Fort Worth merchants.

If you enjoy the super-powered feel of wielding your entire book collection with one hand. Of having access to untold amounts of data quite literally at your fingertips and don’t mind never having to stuff a kleenex (unused) into a book to mark your place ever again, then this might mean you have to deal with the gorilla.

I know. I know. I’ve crossed to the darkside. I’ve submitted to the will of a vengeful tyrant of books, and accessories, and clothes and…

But you know what? So have you.

90% of my eBook sales have been through Amazon. And while the 10% is not insignificant, my connection with the other resellers and ability to market to their customers has been tenuous. I had chosen to use a distribution service as well, and it could be that middle step that hampered sales. In the future, I may return to other resellers with my eBooks, working directly with each, but for now I want to try a new approach.

If you need Crimson Son in a format other than Mobi (the Kindle format) I suggest using the free program Calibre. You can convert between eReader formats fairly easily and it doesn’t take much time or technical expertise. I know this isn’t an ideal solution and I apologize to any readers this may inconvenience.

In other news, you may have noticed less posting traffic here on the blog. My Free Fiction Friday is on hiatus for now and I’ve slipped to one or two posts a week while I try to knock out the next book. Or should I say books.

The plan is to have two books ready to go next year, either spring or summer 2015. First Song (working title) is a fantasy tale about a bugman, a whore, and a clockwork man in a world being unmade. The intent was to write one book but it has a very natural flow into two volumes. I’m still hammering out the details but I’m very excited to share this world with you.

After that, who knows? Maybe a dude in a Crimson Mask will need to swoop in and rescue me from the top of that skyscraper.

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