Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Recap and Follow-up to Meeting #2

Another week goes by...and that's another week of blog posts that I planned and never wrote. I'll get around to them eventually, but the actual writing (aka the fiction, aka the fun stuff, aka the stuff that will make me money) comes first and I'm finding myself with less and less time each week.

As a quick preview on some upcoming topics (because, hey, it might motivate me to actually write them), we've got:

Career Observations from "Rain"
Teaching Creative Writing: Instinctive vs Analytic
The Devil's Advocate Speaks! -- Tell, Don't Show
The Devil's Advocate Speaks! -- EXTREMEism

That should take me through the end of the month at my pace, right? :P

Anyways, the meat of the matter here is that we had another meeting of the Pre-Professional Fiction Writers Business Workshop Extravaganza Fantastique...et al. And this one was a highly productive one -- from my perspective. There was some engaging discussion and identification of areas that we will need to explore more thoroughly, as well as a brief (and then long, and then lengthy) presentation from myself on publication process (and then agents, and then indie pub, and then...it was over).

Below, you'll find a quick recap of the discussion's highlights (including the list of topics that we've identified to talk more about in the coming weeks), as well as some supplementary reading material that I sent out after the meeting for folks to look into if they're interested. Peruse at your own pace and discretion.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Sales Report for January 2012

This is going to be brief, since I don't really have much to say.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next step of the journey -- earning money. As many of you know (or should, by this point), I published the first installment of an ongoing, serialized story on January 9th. It's available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, the iBookstore, and Kobo (still waiting for it to show up on Sony's bookstore) for $0.99 in eBook format.

I want to get two questions out of the way from the start:
1. No. I haven't sold very many yet. Just because it's out there doesn't mean people have found it yet.
2. Just because it hasn't sold very many yet doesn't mean it won't further down the line.

This is a long road, a journey that takes years -- even after making a successful (or even profitable) first publication.

So, with that in mind, I bring you my sales figures for January. I'm planning on doing this each month, not because I want to brag, but because I want to provide a window into the life of a writer taking the first steps on his career. (I'm getting better at this openness thing, right? Right?)

Hopefully, we'll be able to watch an upward trend toward viability over the next few months/years/decades. But I'm not in a position to make any promises.

All I can do is report the information.