The release date is 2016-04-04.
By then I will, in some technical sense involving the number three and the cardinality of books, have committed trilogy. Though I should like to note firmly that there's no structural sense of trilogy involved; it's a series, and it's proceeding onward. (Presuming I do so, in any case.)
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| Commonweal novel covers |
(Sample chapters? Well, the first few chapters are very short, and I think it would be unkind. It's also the sort of thing that can rather throw the pacing of a book off, at least in my experience.)
Wow, I never noticed that the anti-panda was on the cover until you just pointed it out. It is kind of creepy when you spot it though.
ReplyDeleteExcellent news! Now pre-ordered on Google books.
ReplyDeleteThe first was great, the second was even better, and extrapolation with only two data points is unwise and unfair. That said, I am very much in favor of your proceeding onward.
Pre-order'd.
ReplyDeleteWhoot!
Here's to increasingly inaccurately named trilogies!
ReplyDeleteGraydon, are you eligible for the Campbell Award?
ReplyDeleteRandolph --
ReplyDeleteThat is up to the administrators of the award, but so far as I understand the rules, no, not in the slightest. You aren't eligible unless traditionally published with a certain size of print run -- 10,000 copies if I remember correctly -- or if you self-publish you have a profit (net sales) threshold of 3,000 USD in the calendar year of publication for the work. I don't qualify by the first measure and don't come close to qualifying by the second.
It's changed a bit, these days a "print run" of over 10,000 for a real price is sufficient, but it sounds like you don't make it quite yet.
ReplyDeleteTotal sales for the Commonweal, all three books (because, to my lasting astonishment, there are pre-orders for _Safely You Deliver_), nudged over 700 in March of 2016.
ReplyDeleteThere are approximately twice as many copies of _The March North_ sold as of _A Succession of Bad Days_, too. (Typical series decay.)
Increasing sales by two orders of magnitude isn't something I expect will ever happen.
(These days I'm trying to use the "artisanal pemmican" analogy rather than the "burlap lingerie" analogy, but it's much of a muchness.)
I wondered if there was a reason you are not publishing to Amazon? That was the first place I looked when I heard about your book (from the /u/rational subreddit). It was a bit unusual to see it just on Google Books. It seems like you might have wider exposure on Amazon.
ReplyDeleteSaint Peter --
ReplyDeleteI am approximately as likely to be crowned king as I am make quit-the-day-job money at writing. _Not_ pursuing that as a goal enormously decomplicates everything about writing, including worrying about how thoroughly I fail Turing tests.
There's a category of contract one cannot sensibly sign. (Eg., if you're doing contract work, and the contract wants pre-emptive injunctive damages for poorly-specified "loss of business opportunity" for information loss presumptively the fault of the contractor's poor security arrangements, you don't sign it. Because the people writing that contract aren't interested in fair dealing of any kind.)
Amazon's contract is in that category. (Way in, not lurking in the hinterlands; I may or may not be able to unwind the language correctly, but if I did get it right, they assert a right to unilaterally alter the contract _retroactively_. That might not be the most alarming thing in there.)
So I, who had got as far as setting up the tax forms, read this thing, and went, no, no way.
So, yes, I would have wider exposure on Amazon, but it would be in several of the senses of exposure and I want none of it.
Yikes. You may be one of the few who read it.
ReplyDeleteWe'll, I guess I'll just have to settle for you being my closely held secret. I can get hipster credit for being a fan "before you got big".
I think you will get there eventually, perhaps sooner than you think. The first book or two doesn't usually get much in sales, you have almost no marketing and your distribution is spotty.
ReplyDeleteThese days, some pros start out self-publishing or with small presses, including some of my favorite authors. I'll be surprised if, in a book or two, you don't get an offer from a major publisher.