I'm almost ready to hit the big red button, so I thought I'd start one of these threads. Some of you have been with me on this journey already, answering my questions, being beta readers, critting my blurb . . . AW is amazing. 
I honestly shudder to think what I would have done if I hadn't found this site.
About my book: It's what I call "mathematical fiction," but since nobody knows what that is I'm going with "speculative thriller" instead on the advice of people here. It's about a protagonist whose superpower is being really, really good at math. I've spent YEARS thinking this would be the coolest superpower ever, because if you could do math -- any sort of math -- really, really fast, what couldn't you do? The first book is titled ZERO SUM GAME (I'm starting with Book 0, hahaha! <-- nobody thinks that's funny except me), and it's the first book in the Russell's Attic series, which is planned to continue sort of indefinitely in an episodic manner, the way some urban fantasy series do (I have a rough story arc that could potentially take me through 10 or 20 books if I let it).
Here's my cover, done by the marvelous Najla Qamber:
Here's my blurb, thanks to the squirrels in QLH:
Upcoming: The second book is written and in editing. The third book is about 2/3 of the way written. The fourth book is about 1/5 of the way written.
I'll be looking at sending out ARCs this week but based on what I've read and my particular genre I don't have terribly high hopes for responses. I'm guessing (read: hoping) that the genre/audience for my book will play well into the long game: building word of mouth, building up my mailing list, and writing the next book.
And one other thing I'm doing that I'm hoping will help marketing is releasing under Creative Commons, which means I'm purposely making it legal to pirate my book. Yup, you read that right, I'm purposely legalizing piracy! (In fact, a stalwart belief in Creative Commons is a large part of the reason I chose to self-publish.) I believe in free culture, but I also believe that people pirating me will ultimately earn me more money, because the number one thing most authors struggle against is obscurity. So. We'll see! It's an experiment. I'll be sure to report back to you all.
I honestly shudder to think what I would have done if I hadn't found this site.About my book: It's what I call "mathematical fiction," but since nobody knows what that is I'm going with "speculative thriller" instead on the advice of people here.
It's about a protagonist whose superpower is being really, really good at math. I've spent YEARS thinking this would be the coolest superpower ever, because if you could do math -- any sort of math -- really, really fast, what couldn't you do? The first book is titled ZERO SUM GAME (I'm starting with Book 0, hahaha! <-- nobody thinks that's funny except me), and it's the first book in the Russell's Attic series, which is planned to continue sort of indefinitely in an episodic manner, the way some urban fantasy series do (I have a rough story arc that could potentially take me through 10 or 20 books if I let it).Here's my cover, done by the marvelous Najla Qamber:
Here's my blurb, thanks to the squirrels in QLH:
My process so far: I wrote the book (seven months), self-edited it (16 months), sent it through 4 beta readers, had a language expert copyedit some of the dialect, sent it to my wonderful pro editor Anna Genoese, formatted it by hand-coding the HTML and CSS according to Guido's guide, and did a proofread / device check with family and some AWers.
Upcoming: The second book is written and in editing. The third book is about 2/3 of the way written. The fourth book is about 1/5 of the way written.
I'll be looking at sending out ARCs this week but based on what I've read and my particular genre I don't have terribly high hopes for responses. I'm guessing (read: hoping
) that the genre/audience for my book will play well into the long game: building word of mouth, building up my mailing list, and writing the next book.And one other thing I'm doing that I'm hoping will help marketing is releasing under Creative Commons, which means I'm purposely making it legal to pirate my book. Yup, you read that right, I'm purposely legalizing piracy! (In fact, a stalwart belief in Creative Commons is a large part of the reason I chose to self-publish.) I believe in free culture, but I also believe that people pirating me will ultimately earn me more money, because the number one thing most authors struggle against is obscurity. So. We'll see! It's an experiment. I'll be sure to report back to you all.
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