Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Master of Pamor

A few years back, filled with enthusiasm with for pentjak silat and having done a lot of incidental research for my own education, I decided to write a novel, set in Java in the 1800's. I also wanted to put a little magic into it.

Unfortunately, the novel seemed to have too much history for fantasy readers and too much fantasy for historical readers. At least that's what my agent determined.

Books that cannot be neatly slotted into a distinct category are hard to sell. Where does it go on the rack? is the question the sales folk ask, and if you don't have a clean answer, where it goes is sometimes ... nowhere.

I liked the book, as of course I would, and the few readers who saw it seemed to enjoy it, but it was not to be. To be commercial, I need to cut either the magic or the history, make it alternate world, or somesuch, and I had no desire to do so -- this was the book I wanted to write, and did.
So that was that.

Ah, but that was before I became an e-publisher ...

So, I am going to go through the ms, clean it up, reformat it, and offer it as an e-book. Here, as a PDF, and on Amazon.com as a novel for the Kindle. Five bucks -- which seems to be a good number. I could do the $4.99 business, but if that penny difference matters to anybody, or they think not rounding it off makes it more appealing somehow, they probably aren't the kind of readers for whom I am looking anyhow ...

Stay tuned ...

And I am back. Book is mostly done, and I'll be toodling over to Amazon.com to put it up soon as I run through it one more time. You'll notice, if I was able to do it again, a new PayPal button over there to the right, with the book listed. I have to say, it still reads well to my completely subjective view. Enough so that I'm willing to guarantee it: If you plunk down your five bucks and get the PDF and you don't think it was worth it when you are done, I'll refund your money.

15 comments:

Steve Perry said...

So, the back cover blurb I'm thinking about using:

Sex, violence, magic, and intrigue swirl through the Sultan’s palace, in the steamy tropics of Bogor, Java, in New York Times Bestselling author Steve Perry’s novel, The Master of Pamor.

Set in a fantasy Indonesia in the early 1850’s, the story offers the adventures of Arjuna Sera, a knifemaker; Mary DeBeers, the Dutch-Indo daughter of a local plantation owner; Edward Partridge, a half-breed British sailor; and Bima, expert martial artist and head of the Sultan’s guard, as their paths cross and then entwine in a twisted thread that risks them all.

You can feel the heat, smell the sweat, and hear the pounding rain in the jungle as the four find themselves drawn into an unfolding plot that happens in ways none of them expected. There are fighting and fornications aplenty, ghosts, and magical blades, all imbued with the flavor of the Spice Islands, in the days of sailing ships and sealing wax ...

(Rated R, for sex and violence.)

Whaddya think?

Dojo Rat said...

Sounds real good!
What about self-publishing through one of those outfits like, is it Lulu?
You probably know about them, you can do it all from your computer and they will pop it out as the sales come in.
I'm considering it myself.

Dojo Rat said...

Ha, I just scrolled down and saw the writers advice. I bookmarked it, thanks

Christopher Wayne said...

I am waiting for this.... I am looking forward to this....

Anonymous said...

I think I should apply for a new credit card.. (sigh)

M.M

Viro said...

Are you doing anything for the Sony reader? I read that teh Google is publishing a lot of public domain books in a format that the Sony reader utilizes.

Tiel Aisha Ansari said...

$5 for a novel? Charge more.

Steve Perry said...

I believe the Sony reader accepts PDFs, since, unlike the Kindle, you can load it from you computer via USB.

Steve Perry said...

Five bucks seems fair. I'm going to do a post on ebooks about this. Stand by.

William Adams said...

One concern on reading a .pdf version on the Sony ebook readers --- screen size. You'll want to size your page in the .pdf to match the display area of the reader --- but now there're 2 different screen sizes w/ a third on the way, but the proportions for the PRS-300 and PRS-600 are the same, so a .pdf made for one should work on the other.

There's a 32 pixel strip which is always present, so one should format to 768 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall at 167ppi (for the PRS-505/700/600). 4.599 inches tall by 3.593 inches wide --- w/ a reasonably large font size it'll be readable on the smaller PRS-300. The .pdf I made for Mike Brotherton's _Star Dragon_ works well on my PRS-505, but I suspect would be a bit small on a PRS-300 --- need to revisit that.

Assuming of course no DRM issues. Or one could make a .epub --- there's a free tool for this, Sigil:

http://code.google.com/p/sigil/

William

Dan Gambiera said...

Tiel, you're still thinking dead-tree prices. Those include the physical cost of the book, inventory, shipping, storage, returning, pulping and taking a loss on unsold copies and so on.

Steve, are you sure about not being able to load the Kindle externally? A quick search brought up Amazon's instructions for hooking up the first generation Kindle to your computer with USB.

Steve Perry said...

Got a few orders for e-books and PayPal somehow decided to charge them five bucks for shipping, along with the price for the PDF. I think I have fixed this, and I rebated the shipping cost to those who were dinged for it.

Another pothole on the information highway.

Jonty said...

I'd love a hard copy of this. Will you consider a paper version? Lulu.com isn't perfect, but it is enabling me to release my MA training manuals without a publisher.

Steve Perry said...

Last time I looked lulu.com had a version of it for sale. Leastways, I have a copy of it on my rack ...

Jonty said...

Oh, wonderful.