As of 8:00 a.m. this morning, in the Amazon store, Servant is:
Nook just has a Sci-Fi & Fantasy category. It’s #2 there.
Of all the books sold in either store, it’s #91 on Amazon and #23 on Nook.
We luvs BookBub, Precious.
Yup. Interior formatted and finished. 
As soon as we put together the cover, I will announce to the early bird sale for my newsletter subscribers.
Now, do you remember the illustration to the side? Back in April I told you to look at it and see if you could find the issue. I will now direct you to Talen’s leg. Click on the image to see it full size. In a post this week, I will explain just what this is all about.
Folks, please resist the SERVANT marshmellow.
Me and my big mouth. I unwisely let it slip in a comment thread that I had Servant up on Amazon (it’s up early because I need at least 24 hours to make sure my purchase gets the ratings going and to make sure everything looks right). And some of you have gone out to purchase it, for which I love you, BUT I should have made clear that we’re still in the proof check phase. That means we’re carefully going over the beta version of the trade paper book and catching the errors you only see when it’s in book form (next time I’ll do the trade paper first and then the ebook). You might not notice the things we’re catching and will be happy with the proof version. But I hate thinking you’re getting anything but the best.
If you’ve already purchased and don’t care, fine. If you do, Amazon has a liberal return policy. For the rest of you: DON’T EAT THE MARSHMELLOW. Give us just a few days. Make sure you’ve signed up for the new book release notification on the left. I’ll let you know when everything is ready to go AND on sale 🙂
Happy holidays!
For those of you watching, I’m past the 65% point on Bad Penny. I’ve set the target at 90,000 words, but, of course, I don’t know if that’s exactly how long it will be. I have two big sequences left, one of which is the climax. My stats so far:
I’ve spent time thinking that I haven’t recorded–time on walks or driving. And time doing research. So this is understated, but it’s probably accurate enough. The good news is that I’m writing this draft slightly faster than I did the first draft of my last novel.
Now look at those numbers again. If I was doing this full time, it would have taken a week, maybe two do finish the pre-draft development. Then another two or three weeks to get to this point. Dang, how nice would that be! Once I finish, I’ll let it sit for a month. Then I’ll revise. Then I’ll give it to my expert beta readers. Then I’ll revise again and send it out for sale.
As for pen names, here’s what I selected out of a finalist list of about 200 names:
Which will it be?
I’m going to be participating at CONduit (Utah’s longest-running and largest general science fiction and fantasy convention) again this year. It’s being held at the Radisson just east of the Gateway shopping center.
Radisson Hotel
215 W. South Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
(801) 531-7500
The list of authors and artists you can meet there is quite long, including BARBARA HAMBLY! They will have panels and workshops on everything from ghost hunting to chain mail. For more info, see the programming schedule.
I’ve got a deal to make t-shirts for my book available, and I have to make some decisions. The problem is that I am terrible at making these kinds of decisions. So I’m asking for your help. Any input would be appreciated.
So we’ve decided on the design. It will say “Servant of a Dark God” on the font as shown. We might put “Welcome to the Grove” or “Beware, the Mother is Watching” on the back. It will NOT have the Tor logo indicating it’s a book. Who knows what that is anyway? Instead, the question is whether to put my name on the shirt in some fashion.
Option 1
Some suggest that it’s better to just have a shirt that has the crazy label, suggesting the wearer is a servant of a dark god. It’s provocative, and if someone asks, the person wearing it can talk about the book. With this option we would NOT put my name on the t-shirt, just a small open book icon under the title. The idea behind this is that those who would buy the shirt would already be fans and the provocative statement will do more to spread the word than my name because going this route will make the shirt more fun to wear.
Option 2
Others think that you should have your name on the shirt to advertise. So we’d put “by John Brown” underneath the title. Or we’d put it on the back of the shirt. But some say it would make the shirt less fun.
What would you prefer and why?
Because of the way we’re going about this, the color of the letters must be fixed. So the question is do we simply let people choose their own shirt colors that they thing will work with the color of the lettering or fix both the color of the lettering AND the shirt?
Option 1
Fix the shirt colors. Brown for guys and plum for women. Make the lettering a fantasy green or cream.
Option 2
Give people as much choice as possible and choose a font color that will work with the bulk of the shirt colors here: http://gildan.com/distributors/colorpalette/.
But what would color would do that and still say fantasy, or would it matter?
So which option to you think would work best? If you chose option 1, which colors?
Why is John worrying about this? Shouldn’t he be spending his time tracing his ancestry back to old grandpa lemur?
The answer to that is that John’s mind works in mysterious ways, dear Reader. You must bear with him. And you must now face your greatest fashionista test ever: which colors would say fantasy and still be something people would want to wear? I will be making shirts up for the book store employees to wear before I come to signings. So I have to decide. Someone suggested plum is all the rage this year for women. Make the letters a nice new willow green. We could have another color for men. Any ideas of what would appeal broadly?
I await your ideas.
(Ha, look at this. It appears one of my greats did indeed live his life out in the Prague menagerie. Hum.)
Comments are closed.
Awesome! Are you seeing an uptick in the rankings for your other books?
Yes, the sales of Servant has lifted the sales of Curse and Raveler, but I expect it will take a few weeks to get the full effect because it will take folks that long to get around to reading their copy of Servant.
I’m probably going to keep Servant priced low for the next few months to see how well the sampler strategy works to move readers through the series.
I don’t think there’s been much crossover to Bad Penny, but we’ll see how that goes. I put a preview in the back of each of the Dark God books. I expect that will have some good effect. I plan on putting a similar preview in the back of Bad Penny for Servant for the thriller readers who also cross over into epic fantasy.
Awesome news, John! Happy to see the promotion is having an impact. BTW, all three Dark Gods novels plus Bad Penny are in my virtual to-read pile. Looking forward to each!
Geez, too bad I don’t have a 100 books. You’re an easy sell. (grin)
Hope they bring you many hours of pleasure.