An Adventure in Self-Publishing - Bloodridge book launch report and other news

June 14, 2014

On this day, Bloodridge, Book 1 of the Spies Lie Series, officially launched. The book made headlines at Indie Author News (http://www.indieauthornews.com/2014/06/new-indie-book-release-bloodridge-ds-kane.html). Lots of tweets.

At this time, DeathByte, Book 2 of the Spies Lie Series, is available in print at Amazon. It ill be available for order at your local bookstore in about a week, and available in ebook format about the same time.

And, I'd like to announce that I've scheduled a book signing for all three of the books in the series so far, at Cima Collina Winery in Carmel Valley Village, on Saturday, August 16 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. People who buy one of the books will receive free wine.

An Adventure In Self-Publishing - POST # 8

May 16, 2014

Bloodridge has been in soft-launch for about three weeks with very limited success. DeathByte is now at the formatter and about ten days away from soft-launch. Swiftshadow is at the copyeditor and probably about three weeks away from soft-launch. In three weeks, Bloodridge will launch for real.

Ingrams/LightningSource reports a problem with the cover of Bloodridge, so right now it's available in paper from Amazon only. I hope to have this problem resolved in a few days, and then you will be able to order it at any bookstore.

I'm still spending hours every day on fixing small problems and experiencing unintended adventures and side-trips. My literary agent is now pitching a non-fiction title for me based on what I've written in the Huffington Post. It could well be my next adventure.

An Adventure In Self-Publishing - POST #9

June 8, 2014

At this point, if you've been following my progress, you already know I've soft-released Bloodridge, Book 1 of the Spies Lie series. I've received a few reviews and some sales, but despite my efforts and those of my publicist, this is slower than I'd hoped. There is some acceleration, and that's good. My total cost for Bloodridge (copyedit, cover design and formatting) was about $3,000 to do it with the best people out there.

DeathByte, Book 2 is at the formatter and I've just finished reviewing every word in the PDF they sent me. It's back for a bit of rework, and then they'll craft the ebook versions. The covers, for the ebook and the paper version, look amazing, just as they did for Bloodridge. I've completed paying for it all, but my own work and that of the formatter isn't yet finished. Total cost (not including publicity): $3,000.

Swiftshadow, Book 3, is the final story I will release this summer. So far, the only thing complete is the ebook cover. Copy editing is now underway. Of the total cost of about $3,000, so far, I've been invoiced nothing, but the payments will become due very soon.

I did it this way, because I'm paying for publicity one time for three books, with publicity bleed-through, so every book benefits from each Tweet and Facebook post. My publicist gets paid by the hour and her job is to elevate the discoverability of me first, and my books second. So doing three at once saves me time and money, and is far more effective. To understand how this works for me, examine Metzger's Law: Basically, one point in a large pool gets very little attention, but as you add points, the amount of attention you draw to them increases geometrically. Three books by one author gets nine times the attention of one book, with each book getting three times its visibility.

I'll have a publication party at the Cima Collina Winery in Carmel Valley in August for the three books, and book signings at local bookstores (not yet confirmed).

Within two weeks, I'll have Bloodridge in hard release, DeathByte in soft-launch, and Swiftshadow paid off and near completion. It's been an expensive trip and I'm not sure if there will be a pay-off for all the hard work

The United States is now at war with several countries

May 30, 2014

Starting at the end of the second World War, the United States Congress never "declares" wars. This makes it harder to count them all. For forty-five years following the end of World War II, we fought a "cold war," in which there were no military troops in combat. We had military forces - "kinetic" forces-  involved in Korea, Viet Nam, Serbia and Croatia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But now, something new has happened. Cyberwar. According to Richard Clarke, the next war will be a Cyberwar. And, yesterday, former Secretary of State Leon Panetta declared that we are now engaged in a Cyberwar. Among those who have attacked us are the North Koreans, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, the Saudis and the Israelis. And, according to sources including several whistle-blowers.

With such a widespread set of combatants, this can only be described as a "world war."

World War III. No shots fired, no prisoners taken. Money stolen, or, more accurately, data moved. Factories disabled, or, more accurately, bugs launched and viruses unleashed.

Both China and Russia have placed bugs within the electric grid of the United States. Whenever they want, our lights go out and the NSA is not able to track us. It's good enough to use as a plot line for a thriller, but without a power grid, I won't be able to sell it to Amazon.

Very recently, hackers have stolen the identities of well over half the population of the United States. There have been no kinetic casualties. No deaths.

Cyberwar has been a clean experience so far, so much so that we all seem to have missed the point. A good hacker can break through the defensive security in any computer system. The NSA has made certain of this. To "defend" us, our intelligence services have made every consumer and every corporation vulnerable to losing everything.

It's a war we cannot win unless we attack first. Unfortunately, this is something Russia and China have also very likely concluded.

What's your feeling about this?