- Alaskan Totems Billionaire Shapeshifters, Austen Chronicles, CEMurphy, Murphy Lawless, Take A Chance
2016 Round-Up
2016 in review is a work related round-up, because it’s been an absolutely awful year personally. The other day somebody sent around a “some good things must have happened at least on a personal level in 2016, please post them!” and I honestly couldn’t think of anything actively good enough to stand out.
So, this year in publication review: startingly good, actually. I had 5 books come out, including the graphic novel of TAKE A CHANCE, which we’ve all been waiting for forever. :)
To wit:
MAGIC & MANNERS
An Austen Chronicle
A retelling of Pride & Prejudice, where the sisters have too much magic instead of too little money!
Kobo || Kindle || Nook || Amazon (print) || Audible & at bookstores near you! (ask them to order you a copy!)
ATLANTIS FALLEN
The Heartstrike Chronicles: Book One
Immortality, ancient grudges, powers beyond the ordinary…familiar grounds, but I hope you’ll like what I’ve done with them. :)
iBooks || Kindle || Kobo || Nook || Audible
RAVEN HEART
Alaskan Totems Billionaire Shifters
A sudden fun delve into writing billionaire shapeshifter romance, which turns out to be a thing!
iBooks || Kindle || Kobo || Nook
TAKE A CHANCE
A vigilante without superpowers in a world that now has supers! My 2009 comic book in long-awaited graphic novel form!
Amazon || Nook || Comixology
(& at nearly any comic shop or bookstore, just ask them to order it in! ISBN 978-1909276628!)
YEAR OF MIRACLES
Collected Tales of the Old Races
A return to the Old Races universe with the titular novella plus a dozen new and republished short stories!
iBooks ||Kobo || Kindle || NookTo my intense dismay, due to year-end postal slowness, neither YEAR OF MIRACLES nor ATLANTIS FALLEN has a print edition yet, but they should both be available early next year.
I have two books lined up for next year: the 1945 urban fantasy REDEEMER, and a Regency romance called BEWITCHING BENEDICT, which, despite the title, has no magic in it. :) It’s charming, though, and I’m looking forward to finally getting it out to readers.
Tentative plans for other books include PROMETHEUS BOUND (the next Heartstrike Chronicle), at least one Murphy Lawless novella, and, with any luck, a second Regency to follow BENEDICT. The second Austen Chronicle, SORCERY & SOCIETY, is slated for 2018, and we’ll see what else I manage over the next year. ♥
-
Attack Kickstarter: Atlantis Fallen print edition!
I’d told everybody I didn’t want to run a Kickstarter for the ATLANTIS FALLEN print edition until I at *least* had REDEEMER off to the editor, to whom it went a couple of weeks ago. Then it turned out that both my cover artist and book designer were free to turn a project around quickly, so I have launched a SUDDEN ATTACK KICKSTARTER!!!
It’s a super low-key Kickstarter by my standards: it’s got one simple goal, which is financing the ATLANTIS FALLEN print edition.
Why Kickstarter? Because I’ve found out the hard way that a print edition isn’t worth financing on my own, not until and unless I can really ramp up the marketing game and get the books into major chains reliably. For independent publishing, e-books are where the money is at; print is a sinkhole.
But I love print books, you love print books, we all, let’s not kid ourselves, love print books, so Kickstarter is the best way to make it happen right now!
Most of the costs for ATLANTIS FALLEN have already been dealt in; all I’m going for here is covering paying my book designer and cover artist so ATLANTIS FALLEN is as gorgeous as any of my other books, and shipping the books worldwide (a cost I’ve folded in to the basic buy-in price, to make it easier for all of us).
If it goes beyond the basic funding goal, extra funds will go into a kitty toward future print book editions of other things I write. That will be exciting!
(Actually, I think this is exciting anyway, because this is going to be such a pretty book! Yay! <3 <3 <3!)
-
Writing Wednesday: Price Points
I’ve released two books back to back so far this year, MAGIC & MANNERS in March, followed by ATLANTIS FALLEN in April.
As an experiment, I priced ATLANTIS FALLEN $2 cheaper than M&M, to see if the number of sales at the lower price point made up for or (hopefully) outstripped the profit I make off the higher purchase price of MAGIC & MANNERS.
It did. Just barely. It took about 28 of its first 30 days to catch up to MAGIC & MANNERS’ first month, and in the last couple days it inched into making slightly more money than M&M had, but we’re talking about…$110 more. Which is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s also not a great argument for quantity over…er. Higher price point. Whatever single word we would use to mean that. :)
There are an overwhelming number of unknowns in this variable, making it pretty well impossible to say whether ATLANTIS FALLEN would have done (financially, for me) just as well at $9.99 as it did at $7.99. Just a few of those variables are:
– it was the second book I released in a row; perhaps at $9.99 it would’ve sold fewer copies because of that
– it’s urban fantasy vs historical fantasy, and urban fantasy is kind of what CE Murphy is Known For, so perhaps the price point didn’t matter at all because of Preferred Genre status
– I promoted MAGIC & MANNERS pretty damn relentlessly its first month but was much more lacksadaisical about ATLANTIS FALLEN
All of those and other things could be factors. Absolutely no way of telling.
A thing I’m finding really interesting, though, is that throughout April, and so far in May, MAGIC & MANNERS is only slightly behind ATLANTIS FALLEN in absolute number of sales (and consequently slightly head in actual profit, because of the price point difference).
The wonderful thing about that, from my perspective, is that although I have a perception that readers feel Urban Fantasy is My Thing, it may be really that CE Murphy is My Brand and that’s what people are buying, more than a specific genre. Which is what a writer hopes for, of course, so yay! (Especially yay because whoo boy do I have a wide variety of stuff coming out over the next several months! :))
At any rate, I think I’m going to leave ATLANTIS FALLEN at $7.99 and see how the two books play out over the course of several months or even a year, just out of curiosity. All of this is a long-term game
Oh, and for those who are curious: NO DOMINION, which was released, er, several years ago now, doesn’t seem to be getting any kind of boost from the new books. It’s still selling about what it has been the past couple-three years, which is both interesting and totally fine. If its sales represent the long-term income/sales numbers for any given book then someday that’ll be a modestly decent income to rely on. So that’s cool.
Obligatory link salad:
MAGIC & MANNERS:
Kobo || Kindle || Nook || Amazon || Audible
& at bookstores near you! (ask them to order you a copy!) -
Launch Day: Atlantis Fallen
Today is Launch Day for ATLANTIS FALLEN, first of the Heartstrike Chronicles! This is a book of my heart, with a long and sordid history; it’s undergone major revisions, and I still basically love it and hope you all will too. :)
Without further ado:
ATLANTIS FALLEN for Kindle!
ATLANTIS FALLEN for Kobo!
ATLANTIS FALLEN for iBooks!
ATLANTIS FALLEN for Nook!ATLANTIS FALLEN can also be found on Scribd and Inktera if you don’t buy from the above links. It might be available other places, too, I don’t know. :)
The Nitty Gritty:
At the moment, ATLANTIS FALLEN is an e-release only.Like everything I’m doing right now, it’s self-published. That means in order to have print copies I have to pay a book designer and cover artist for the interior layout and the cover. Right now I don’t have the money to do that, but believe you me, I want a copy of this book on my shelf as much as you do.
People have already suggested Kickstarter for a print edition, and that’s a brilliant idea that I will almost certainly be pursuing. The thing is, I’ve got the unfulfilled REDEEMER Kickstarter to finish, and I’m not comfortable running a second Kickstarter until I’ve got that done. So for now, ATLANTIS FALLEN is e-only, and I apologize to those of you I’m taunting with a new book that won’t be available in print for a while.
Oh, and for the audiophiles among us, I’m pursuing an audio book! I don’t know how it’ll pan out, but I’m workin’ on it!
Atlantis Fallen: Book 1 of the Heartstrike Chronicles A city hidden for five thousand years.
A man so ancient his early history is lost to time.
A woman who has nothing to lose…
Lorhen, oldest and most ruthless of the immortal Timeless, put aside the sword long ago for a quiet life. But peace doesn’t last forever, especially for a man whose age can be counted in epochs, and the mortal life he’s built unravels as the Keepers, a society of historians who record Timeless lives, learn that he’s been hiding in their midst.
Then an archaeologist’s claims of finding Atlantis brings back millennia-old memories, and Lorhen is drawn unwillingly into intrigues aeons in the making—and deadly enough that he may yet face the heartstrike blow that will unleash his power on the world….
Atlantis Fallen
The Heartstrike Chronicles: Book One
Out Now! -
ATLANTIS FALLEN cover reveal!
A city hidden for five thousand years.
A man so ancient his early history is lost to time.
A woman who has nothing to lose…
Lorhen, oldest and most ruthless of the immortal Timeless, put aside the sword long ago for a quiet life. But peace doesn’t last forever, especially for a man whose age can be counted in epochs, and the mortal life he’s built unravels as the Keepers, a society of historians who record Timeless lives, learn that he’s been hiding in their midst.
Then an archaeologist’s claims of finding Atlantis brings back millennia-old memories, and Lorhen is drawn unwillingly into intrigues aeons in the making—and deadly enough that he may yet face the heartstrike blow that will unleash his power on the world….
Atlantis Fallen
The Heartstrike Chronicles: Book One
April 2016
