Modern Evil Press – Page 7

Never Let the Right One Go – full cover preview

I’ve been having trouble getting much recording done, as expected. Hopefully next week will go better. I think I’ve decided that “Beta” readers (of which I have few, having converted most of my old ones into First Readers) will be getting the file late (still probably a month or more before “publication” but without much time to give me feedback before I print the hardcover version) and any errors they find will be corrected in the eBook versions, only.

Today, unable to get any recording done due to noise issues, I worked in Photoshop, instead. I’ve finally received permission from both of my preferred photographers to use their images on the covers of my new books, so I spent the afternoon re-altering the image for Sophia with the full-resolution original and I spent the evening laying out the full-spread dust jacket for the flipbook. Here is a preview of what the book’s cover will (probably) look like:

I reserve the right to continue tweaking it, as needed. In fact, if you have constructive feedback, I’ve got time to work improvements in, as needed. The image I’ve uploaded is around 1/5 the actual resolution I’m working with, and it’s still probably too big to fit on your screen; sorry.

Trying to fit perfection in the schedule

Disillusionment, depression, the distractions of spring break, and the aforementioned disappointing response to the Kickstarter campaign have altered the timeline/schedule I’d penciled in for the remaining work on Never Let the Right One Go. I can’t allow it to push back so far as to not have the paper books on hand, ready to sell at Phoenix Comicon at the end of May, which means that if I end up being too far behind, it’s only certain aspects of the quality which may suffer. Allow me to explain:

The worst-case scenario has the text of Never Let the Right One Go at only the same level of quality as my other recent books, and not better. I keep trying to extend and expand my workflow, to add as much quality as possible between my first draft and my published product. The flow I’d mapped out for this book added a set of “First Readers” to the “Beta Readers” I’ve worked with in the past, in the hope that, were the book in need of significant re-writes, I might be able to correct the content before moving on to correcting the text. Then I wanted to record and edit the full audio version of both books, as doing so requires me to go over every single word at least 2-3 times (and sometimes several times as many), which is a great way to find almost every little error in the text (along with any remaining awkward sentences or clunky dialog) – this is a step I’ve been intending to do with all of my books since early 2010 (some I’ve managed, some I haven’t), but it’s also a step which takes several weeks of work. My intention for Never Let the Right One Go was to finish that step before sending the books to my Beta Readers for final feedback and proofreading; many eyes looking at text they’ve never read before find errors my eyes (having read the books quite a few times by this point) easily miss. I’ve since decided that, to get as many early reviews as possible, and since I won’t be sending any of the limited-edition hardcovers for free to reviewers, I’ll send the Beta (read: ARC) eBooks to reviewers at the same time, and ask all my First Readers and Beta Readers to post a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads as well.

On my initial calendar (filled in after finishing the first draft) I’d laid everything out so, all things going well, I could send the Beta version out by the end of March, in the hope of getting at least some feedback before the end of April – which is my hard deadline for sending the books to LSI for printing, if I want to be sure I can have them in time for Comicon. Then I kept wanting to give my First Readers more time (I had most of the feedback I would end up getting within the first week, but have still only heard from about a third of them six weeks later) and didn’t plan to start on recording the audiobook until last Monday… which I forgot (in my multi-month planning) was my wife’s spring break (she’s a teacher), and I only got a few hours of work done (I prefer to spend time with my wife, when possible; imagine that!) all week. This pushes everything back a week. If I record very aggressively, and spend a heckuva lot of time editing, I could theoretically finish “on time” to get the Beta version out by the end of the month. I’ve actually been telling most people “first week of April” for the Beta version lately, but even that would be a challenge for my voice (and ears, and mind) holding out for the next couple of weeks. I’ll try, for sure, but something’s got to give.

Either the Beta version is going out later than I’d hoped, reducing the amount of helpful feedback I can get before publication, or the Beta version is going out before I can finish recording and editing the audio version, potentially increasing the number of errors in the text I send to reviewers (and the number the Beta Readers would need to locate). I should still be able to finish my own passes over the text before publication, certainly, and the audiobooks with them, before reaching my hard deadline, so that makes the books about as good as I can make them. Where quality suffers by this compression of the schedule is in potentially getting less feedback from Beta Readers. In potentially getting worse reviews for having errors in the text, errors which may or may not be found before publication.

Oh, and then there’s the other goal I’d set, which might find itself incomplete before Comicon: Writing & publishing my book about my experiences writing and publishing. I’ve already put a fair amount of work into it, not just over the years but over the last few months, and now it’s largely a matter of writing from my “outline” the remaining 40k-50k words I haven’t written, yet. (No content editing needed for a book like this, it’s my honest life experience – likely no real Beta Reading, either, though since it’s digital-only the deadline is much closer to the end of May, to promote it at Comicon, so there may be time.) I might be able to do it as quickly as I finished Never Let the Right One Go, after I finish the audio recording of the next couple of weeks, and if I’m able to stay focused. There’s time while I wait for Beta feedback to get it written. In theory. To get it written, and coded for basic eReaders, and “enhanced” for iBooks, and maybe even time to figure out how to market an eBook in person at a con.

All in all, still enough time to get everything done, and done well enough – just not, perhaps, enough time to reach perfection. Hopefully enough time to straighten out the covers situation. Still only halfway there. I’d better email the other photographer again today. If I don’t hear back from him by the end of March, I’ll be assuming I need to use a different image for Sophia. Trying not to stress out about it. I’ll maybe put together a first alternate to show you, soon. To show me, to convince me all isn’t lost, that other photos would work. I guess I’ve got a month to convince me.

Never Let the Right One Go – Kickstarter not funded

The Kickstarter campaign for Never Let the Right One Go ended a few hours ago. There were $361 in pledges from 14 different backers, 10 of whom pledged $30 or more and wanted the limited-edition hardcover. Unfortunately, since the goal was $1000, no funds were collected, and none of those people (currently) have per-orders in place for the book. What I expect to do is post a backers-only update, when I have the books in hand, and offer the finished books to backers at the Kickstarter price. (Or the final price, plus shipping, whichever is lower.)

The main thing this Kickstarter campaign was meant to do, which it did quite successfully, was to gauge reader interest in my new books. As I said before, if a hundred or more people would have been willing to pay $30 for the hardcover, I wouldn’t want to have limited the edition to 50 copies. If 1,000 people wanted to buy the book, I’d certainly want to do an additional unlimited-edition (paperback) and also pay the LSI distribution fee, at least for the first year, getting the paperback on Amazon &c. for that huge audience’s friends. Likewise, if fewer than 50 people expressed interest (as has happened), then my planned limited edition of 50 copies is sufficient.

Interestingly, the Kickstarter campaign’s gauge of interest showed me something else: I had nearly double the number of backers, versus my last two Kickstarters. Half of the hardback-level backers were people who found the campaign on their own, browsing Kickstarter.com, and liked my project enough (not knowing me or my existing body of work, not following my links, my friends’ links, or any other thing extended from my online presence & social network) to pledge. This speaks well to the general-public appeal of the books, I believe. Perhaps the eBooks will, indeed, find an audience.

re: Printing the hardcover edition, when I take into account all the costs of producing a hardcover print run (setup, proof, printing, shipping, ISBNs, free copies for the photographers, et cetera), if I want to keep the pricing in line with my new scheme, and start at $25 or $30 a copy, and not lose money (presuming all copies eventually sell), I can’t realistically do an edition much smaller than 50 copies. In fact, I’ve been running and re-running the math, and if I follow my current/new pricing scheme, and if I start them at $25, and if I sell all 46 salable copies, my net profit will only be about $70 for the whole publication. If I start at $30, I can double that, and if I sell all 46 copies at $30 I can net roughly $457 of profit. My current estimate puts me at having spent between 1,000 and 1,250 working hours on these books by the time I’m done, not including the hours it’ll take over the years to actually sell them. Yet here I am, trying to decide between valuing my time at 6¢/hr or 11¢/hr, and feeling bad about having the audacity to suggest I might like to earn 38¢/hr for my efforts by standing fast to a single price for all copies of the signed, limited-edition hardcover.

Actually, technically, with the latest numbers, I can’t really afford to print the limited edition without putting my company in the red for the year… I’ll need to actually sell a bunch of copies to earn the difference between my early estimates and the actual numbers I’m getting now. And/or sell a few more pieces of art soon. Ack. Not to mention, the profits mentioned in the previous paragraph are on a per-title basis, not an overall-business basis, and do not take into account my overhead costs. Like, I keep thinking/wondering/hoping about how many copies I’ll sell at Phoenix Comicon, and how much money I’ll earn that way – but showing at Comicon costs me hundreds of dollars, dollars which have to come out of “profit”, one way or another. If I price to only earn $70 or even $140 on the full print run, even the best-case scenario of somehow selling out at Comicon wouldn’t actually be profitable, after overhead. I’m terrible at business, I guess.

Of course, there’s no good way to know how many people will buy the book (or the eBook; if the eBooks sell well, it takes a lot of pressure off the hardcover edition), regardless of venue. At the last two Comicons, I sold only a couple dozen books across all my titles, including very cheap books, each. My best-selling title (in paper) has sold fewer than 20 copies in two and a half years. If I were to guess, I’d say that probably 3 or 4 of the backers will follow through and actually buy the finished book, now that the Kickstarter has failed. I have no clue how it’ll do at Comicon: Probably either really well, or like a lead balloon. It would be foolish to expect to sell more than half the print run before the year is out, based on the data I have now. That many sales would cover my accounting underestimation, but then what?

I don’t know. I’m very frustrated, right now. I probably need to get some sleep. I was hoping I could work through more of this, and come to a better emotional point through logorrhea, but I still feel quite mixed up, and my eyes are begging to be shut. Expect another couple thousand words on this, and related topics I don’t want to even begin to write about tonight, soon.

Things are going well, it seems, re: Never Let the Right One Go.

Things are going pretty well, it seems. I didn’t get as much First-Reader feedback on Never Let the Right One Go as I’d been hoping for, though I got as much as my past experience led me to expect, and after another couple passes I think the text is about as good as I know how to make it. I did a full read through of both books at the end of the week, making small changes as I went, and was very happy with how each story unfolds – even when read simultaneously, alternating chapters between the two books. I was pleasingly entertained, after a month of worrying whether the books were good enough.

I’ve heard back from one of the two photographers whose images I wanted to use on the covers, and barring an unexpected problem with getting a model release signed, have permission to use their image. I’ve begun working on the full-resolution image for the dust jacket, with it. I haven’t mentioned it here before, but I also recently found some music I wanted to use for the intro/outro of the audiobook versions (I normally compose something myself, but have been having difficulty coming up with anything I liked for this project), and this morning I heard back from the composer with permission to use it. All I’m waiting on now is permission from the other photographer (or to locate another acceptable photo for Sophia, which I can get license for) and the rest is good to go. I’ve been spending a fair proportion of my worry over the last month on the matter of getting permission from other creators, and it’s nice to have this (mostly) resolved.

The Kickstarter campaign for Never Let the Right One Go is only at about 20% with less than five days left, and unless there’s a surge of interest in the next few days (I don’t really know how to create one) it looks like it won’t be funded. This is okay, as I’ve said before: I can afford to do a limited-edition print run (probably 50 hardcovers, though I’m now considering an even smaller run) without funding, and without my business going into the red for the year. Being funded would be better, and knowing I had more than half a dozen potential buyers up front would be nice, but I’ll find the readers for these books eventually. Sadly, without funding (or more art sales) I won’t be able to afford to buy the font I want for the text. Oh, well.

I expect to begin recording the audiobook versions either this week or the next, and to send the “Beta” or “ARC” (Advance Reader Copy) version of the texts out to Beta Readers and reviewers as soon as I’m done working on the audiobook. Depending on how my voice and ears hold out, possibly by the end of the month. I still seem to be on track for getting everything together for a mid-May eBook release and hardcover availability, and I’m thinking of making the official release date 5/12/2012. (Though I probably won’t have the hardcovers in hand (and almost certainly not signed, numbered, and ready to ship) at that point.) I haven’t set down a release schedule for the audiobooks, yet, but probably I’ll be releasing one chapter of each book once a week, with (say) a chapter of Sophia on Monday and a chapter of Emily on Friday (with a couple poems from Unspecified, which I haven’t podcast yet) on Wednesdays. That would stretch it out to just over 26 weeks, not being complete until late November. I’ll have to check their policies in May, but Podiobooks.com has said they want to move to only accepting “complete” audiobooks, which would mean neither book would be available there until the end of November. Meh. If people want the whole thing sooner, they can come to modernevil.com and/or pay for it.

I think that’s it for status updates. Things aren’t as good as they could be, but they’re going pretty well. Getting more feedback, hearing from the other photographer, finding another 30 backers, these things would be nice – but I’ve gotten some good feedback, I’ve heard from some of the creatives I want to integrate the work of into mine, and I’ll be able to afford to publish something very close to the premium edition of the books I’ve been imagining. Plus: I’m aiming for finishing (if not publishing) another 3-4 books (or more) this year, and I don’t feel I’m over-reaching. There’s a good chance they’ll all be digital-only.

Thinking several moves ahead

Formulaic writing is the mind-killer.
Formula is the little-death that brings creative obliteration.
I will face the monomyth.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the hero’s journey has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I’m working on several things at once. That’s a good thing. Both so that, when I finish one thing I’ve always got another thing queued up to be working on, and also so that, if I get bored/frustrated/blocked on one thing, I can simply switch projects and work on something else. Here are just a few of the things I’m working on right now, or will begin working on soon:

running a Kickstarter campaign for Never Let the Right One Go
developing a book trailer for Never Let the Right One Go
editing Never Let the Right One Go based on First-Reader feedback
making a decision about the cover(s) for Never Let the Right One Go
recording the audio books for Never Let the Right One Go
composing the theme music for the NLtROG audio books & trailer
writing a book about my experiences writing & publishing
studying the hero’s journey & other formulas for YA adventure books
planning the re-write for Dragons’ Truth, as a formulaic YA adventure
planning two additional books, to make Dragons’ Truth part of a trilogy

I already compromised some to get Never Let the Right One Go as potentially-commercial as possible, but for the Dragons’ Truth re-write, I want to go just-about all the way. I’ve purchased Joseph Campbell’s book, I’ve been looking up other resources, and I have plans to formalize the structure, down to a fine grain, of the Dragons’ Truth re-write based on the patterns of commercial fiction, and of YA adventure books in particular. In reality, this will not merely be an edited version of Dragons’ Truth, or a simple re-write, but a completely new work, barely derivative of the original. With any luck, I’ll be able to power through the whole process and have at least the first book (if not two or three) written by the end of this year.

Then, almost undoubtedly, I’ll want to write something completely lacking in plot, conflict, character growth, and antagonists. Something extremely cerebral, deeply layered, and which is not nearly what it appears to be. No idea what that will be, yet, but that seems like the sort of rebound my mind will take. Either that or I’ll go straight into the crime/thriller/action TV miniseries I’ve been planning on writing, since it’ll require me to think formulaically, but will also be a bizarrely-philosophical construction. Have to see how I feel & what I’m thinking by the time I get through the Dragons’ Truth business.

(Yes, to a certain extent, the interactive digital comic I was planning on has disappeared from my schedule. Depending on events out of my control which may occur in the next few weeks, it’ll either reappear in my plans or remain indefinitely postponed.)

Anyway, part of the plan is to absorb and digest the formulaic writing, focus it intensely onto the Dragons’ Truth re-write, and then move beyond it, pushing it out of my conscious mind. I expect the process to be painful. I never want to be the sort of author who consciously constructs their prose based on things like “what will sell” and “what normal readers expect”, and for this upcoming project, that is (in a way) precisely what I plan on doing. My intent is not in alignment with the apparent goals of such a process, which helps, and challenging even my own norms and ideals seems worthwhile if I can learn something from it, just as I tend to hope to do when challenging any other set of norms and ideals.

Ah, well, now it’s time to go record another video for Never Let the Right One Go, or something. Wish me luck!