Month: January 2023

A second chance at a Cold Run

What does it mean when your so-called new book launch is actually a second chance at life?

I’ve been thinking about this lately, especially as I work my way through finishing the book series I contracted last year with Falstaff Books. Cold Run, Book 1 of the Rick Keller Project, is a werewolf secret agent novel that tells the story of Rick Keller, a wolf without a pack, a soldier without a country, a wanderer who searches for someplace to call home.

Falstaff Books released Cold Run on Dec. 8, 2022, but it wasn’t the first time the novel had ever been launched into the world. I’d originally written it for NaNoWriMo in 2011, although the idea for the novel came around even earlier than that.

The book, which I hadn’t even considered expanding into a series at the time I wrote it, grew out of a book, Naming the World. My writing group in Texas was working its way through the various prompts and practical exercises contained in NtW, and I had chosen to write about a dark place on a snowy night off a narrow trail in the wilds of Vermont. As I imagined this place and started concentrating on the details that would bring it to life, I saw a wolf running along the path, pursued by men with silver weapons, sprinting for sanctuary under the full moon.

As the writing exercises evolved into a novel idea, and the idea evolved into an extremely rudimentary outline, and the outline served as the basis for the mad dash that is NaNoWriMo, I began to think about publication. For the next two years after I wrote it, I workshopped, revised, workshopped, and revised again. I continued to grow as a writer, and eventually conceived of an entire trilogy around this character of Rick Keller, secret agent werewolf; his partner, former Army psychological operations officer Karen Willet, Ph.D.; and their run-ins with the agency he used to work for, MONIKER.

When I was finally satisfied with the book, I submitted it to a few agents and editors. A small publishing house by the name of Untold Press picked it up and offered me a chance to get it published. And then I wrote another novel, and a novella and a reader magnet, which they also sent out into the world. I personally made a lot of mistakes and did eventually end up asking for and readily receiving my rights back to the books. However, I don’t regret this experience. I learned a lot from it, and when it came time to decide how I wanted to publish other writing, or to coach others’ in their writing journey, the lessons became that many more tools in my writing and coaching toolbox.

Instead of publishing right away, I decided that I was going to rapid-release them all, and also that Winter Run, the fourth book, would be the last in the series.

Deciding to indie publish is a route that can be fraught with, if not danger, then a lot of frustration and head-desk contact. The stereotype of the writer who drinks is often based in reality. Let me tell you, the writer who is publishing herself, and also running an indie publishing company (because of course, launching an indie horror micropress in the middle of plague times was a great idea! For more on that, check out Crone Girls Press,) that writer/editor/publisher is going to keep the package good store in good standing.

At one point, I ran up against a roadblock that was going to take a good deal of time, effort, and likely money to fix. I headed over to my current writing group, The Writing Tribe, and with sorrow in my heart, I vented my frustration and asked the universe (and my fellow writers) if this was worth it. Not writing, in general. This werewolf secret agent series in particular.

I don’t have an answer yet to that question. And when I do formulate that answer, I’ll be taking my publisher’s concerns into the equation. But I will say this.

When you get a second chance to return to a character, a book, or a series that you have put a lot of yourself into, and that you still believe in, you sometimes just have to take a chance and kick your imposter syndrome to the curb, along with your inner editor who can’t believe that you’re allowing you early writing back out into the world. I did do some updates and revisions to Cold Run, based on my growth as a writer, and my new understanding of craft and how to structure a novel. I have also been working on a series arc in addition to the other novels in the series (four? Ha! It’s going to be five books long now, and I have so many ideas for short stories in the universe.)

The decision to go with a publisher or head down the indie route can be a hard one, especially with a project that you’ve already tried and not quite met with the success you hoped. But it you have a publisher who believes in you, and who says things like, “I can’t wait to have this book on my table” or “Rick Keller reminds me of Joe Ledger,” then it becomes easier to take a leap of faith and get back to writing. (Also, if you sign the contract, you’re obligated to do so, and therefore I should probably wrap this up and get back to work.)

Thanks to John Hartness and Falstaff Books for giving Rick Keller and company a new lease on life, and thanks to the readers, old and new, who have grabbed a copy and are coming along on the ride.

Richard Keller wanted nothing more than to watch the world go by from his isolated home in Vermont. Life on the other hand had other plans. Kidnapped by his former employers, the covert government organization MONIKER. Richard is forced to suit up once more and use his supernatural abilities in an effort to save kidnapped victims.

However, not all is as it seems with MONIKER, and Keller is going to need all of his wits and strength if he is to return to some semblance of his normal life.

The hunter is about to become the hunted.

Rachel A. Brune graduated from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts in May 2000, and was immediately plunged into the low-stakes world of entry-level executive assistant-ship. Her unexpected journey out of that world and into the military is chronicled in her self-published book Echoes and Premonitions. After five years as a combat journalist, including two tours in Iraq, and a brief stint as a columnist for her hometown newspaper, she attended graduate school at the University at Albany in NY, where she earned her MA in Political Communication, and her commission as a second lieutenant in the military police corps. Although her day job has taken in her in many strange, often twisted directions, Rachel continues to write and publish short fiction. She released her first novel in early 2013. She blogs her thoughts about reading and the writing life at http://www.infamous-scribbler.com.

We hope to have Cold Run in the Literary Underworld soon! In the meantime, catch it on Amazon where it is available on Kindle Unlimited. 

Going wide

By Silke Campion

In 2021, I started a new pen name in a different niche of romance than where I’d previously published. The old name wasn’t getting any traction, the brand was a muddied mess, and I needed a fresh start.

It was also past time that I put some of my years of accumulated knowledge of marketing and writing to work for me. Enter Silke Campion, writer of short, hot instalove romance. There was an established niche for the kind of stories I wanted to write and (this is key) I really enjoyed writing and reading these short novellas. They provided the quick endorphin hit that many readers needed, especially post-2020.

I quickly wrote and published a reader magnet plus seven novellas around 20K each that I put into the Kindle Unlimited subscription program. All my market research indicated that KU was absolutely the right move for someone starting out in this niche, and many of my colleagues quickly populated my also-boughts. The readers had found me.

In 2022, I slowed down quite a bit and only published three novellas, all part of multi-author collaborations. Remarkably, my income increased slightly! Most of it came from my backlist, and my readership was split about 60/40 with the majority coming from KU page reads versus outright purchases.

I’d toyed with the idea of going wide because at the same time as I was succeeding, I also knew several well-established authors who had suddenly seen their Amazon accounts locked (some of them irreversibly) for no discernible reason. If they were all in with KU, that was it. They were sunk. Some of them scrambled to publish their work elsewhere and some of them had had enough of the publishing game and just quit. I cannot blame them at all. The devastation they must have felt haunts me.

On Dec 31, 2022, I went to bed, satisfied in the knowledge that my estimated royalties for the year were in a comfortable place.

On Jan 1, 2023, 30 percent of my income from the previous year was nowhere to be found. Surely, I thought, this is a glitch. The software was stuck somewhere along the line and in a couple of hours, all would be right again.

Reader, it was not a glitch.

Trying to downplay my panic, I scrolled through FB groups and Discord servers to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing. What I found horrified me.

Occasionally, Amazon will decide that too many of an author’s page reads came from bots and strip half of them away. Since KU represented about 60 percent of my income, the amount I’d lost in a blink was an accurate representation of that math.

Remember Hades’ flaming blue hair from the Disney movie “Hercules”?

That was me.

To make an already long story marginally shorter, I got lucky. I emailed Amazon a polite, but tersely worded note requesting a review and reinstatement of my earnings. While their reply was the usual CYA “there’s nothing wrong here,” my page reads were returned to their previous numbers over the next 24 hours.

I repeat: I. Got. Lucky. There was no reason for them to even blink in my direction, but somehow, it worked out.

However, I’d come too close to losing it all. So this is my year to go wide.

The Facebook group, “Wide For the Win” has been invaluable in my research. I found knowledge and techniques that will help me move all my books over later this spring, tips to help me let my readers know what’s going on, and best practices for using aggregators or going direct to different vendors.

Yes, it’s a lot of work. I’d already planned to do some reformatting, updating backmatter and keywords, and refreshing blurbs, but this has put those plans into high gear as I prepare to publish my backlist to all vendors in the best way possible to pave the way for the new series I’m writing and plan to publish wide from the start.

A few years ago when I started self-publishing under my old pen name, I had already set up accounts at various vendors, plus Draft2Digital. Establishing a new pen name with those accounts has been one of the simpler tasks, but at least I’m not starting from scratch.

One of the things I’m prepared for is a dip in income. Hopefully, releasing new work as I debut my backlist will mitigate those losses, but the one thing everyone has said is that it takes time to build a readership on other vendors, which makes sense. As far as Kobo or Barnes and Noble or Apple readers are concerned, I’m coming out of nowhere. But it’s a mountain I’m willing to climb, rather than play a constant game of “the floor is lava” with Amazon.

hope to come back next year with news that everything has gone well and I’m now purchasing a private island with my income. Or at least I’m keeping my head above water as I dog-paddle forward.

As an endnote, I’d like to say that, despite all the Zon’s shenanigans, my KU strategy worked. It got new stories from a new writer in front of thousands of people, and I profited from it. In fact, I’d still recommend it as a short-term strategy to use their algorithm of rapid releases and build backlist quickly. But I don’t think the center will hold for everyone, so stay on your toes and always have an exit plan.

Good writing!

 

Silke Campion writes hot, flirty, sweet and dirty romances featuring heroes who will gladly take control to ensure their heroines get their Happy Ever After. She’s been married to her own military hero for over twenty-five years, living and loving through dozens of cross-country and international moves with their two children and a menagerie of dogs and cats. Now they’re settled back in the U.S. where — when she’s not head-down writing — she contemplates the serious issues of what to make for dinner with the ridiculous amount of basil she grows in her herb garden, what cocktail will go with it, and what cross-stitch project she’s starting next. She also writes paranormal and sci-fi romance as Sela Carsen.

Find out more at https://www.silkecampion.com/