Three of My Digital Fiction Publishing Short Stories Are Now "Wide"

Once upon a time, I independently published a bunch of short stories on Amazon.com for the Kindle. Digital Fiction Publishing took a liking to many of them and bought the rights to re-publish them as standalone stories and in collections for a generous royalty package. However, since the short stories are often available elsewhere as part of collections, they and the DFP collections are not part of Kindle Unlimited. This means they can be published anywhere.

After checking with the publisher to make sure he had no plans to publish the stories outside of Amazon (having "his version" and "my version" of the stories on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc would just be silly), I have published several of my DFP stories "wide" beyond Amazon's borders. They come with their original cover art courtesy of Alex Claw, using the mighty Draft2Digital.

"The Beast of the Bosporus"-This is cosmic horror in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, but instead of being set in rural New England (as his stories typically were) or in rural Georgia (as my novel The Thing in the Woods is), this is set in the early modern Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans have rebuilt their navy after the defeat at the (Battle of Lepanto), but the empire's decline is already beginning. What is Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to do? It might involve a creepy book bound in human skin. Non-Amazon links here.

"Beast" also had some tie-in short fiction on the blog to go with it. One piece is a faux historical journal article about Sokollu's death that also ties in some incidents in real-history that might be explained by what happens in the story itself. I also have journalistic interviews with Sokollu himself, as well as his rival don Joseph Nasi.

Picking Up Plans in Palma-This is an alternate history novelette set in my Afrikanerverse, in which an earlier Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope leads to a world where the United States and the League of Democracies face off against the apartheid-like Afrikaner Confederation and its illiberal allies. You can see the mostly-completed timeline here. Connor Kelly, an American defense analyst of Irish Catholic background, has to infiltrate the Confederation to retrieve plans for an orbital battle-station. Problem: He has only the most minimal training in espionage fieldcraft and he's romantically involved with an Afrikaner emigre. This is going to be fun. Non-Amazon links here.

Illegal Alien-This is a story about a group of Mexicans trying to sneak into the United States in search of better lives, only to encounter actual extraterrestrials instead. What can I say? I really, really like bad puns. :) Non-Amazon links here.

This story also has some short tie-in fiction. One is a faux report on the aftermath of the incident from a government agency of some sort, while the other is an interview with Patrido Guzman, the story's protagonist. The latter gets into what's going on in Mexico that pushes Guzman to try to emigrate to the United States--NAFTA, the Mexican drug war, mistreatment of women in factories, etc.

Two of my remaining DFP short stories--"Lord of the Dolorous Tower" and "Lord Giovanni's Daughter"--aren't wide yet because they were first-rights purchases and don't have cover art. I'll need to commission some if I want to release them wide as well. The same applies to "Coil Gun," the first story DFP purchased for Digital Science Fiction #3: Pressure Suite, since it was never released as a standalone either. I'll let you know.

The Kindle Christmas Present 2.0

Last year I made several of my short stories free for a few days around Christmas as a present for my fans. This year, even though I've taken some of them off KDP Select due to the new rules, I still have a few I I can use to help my fans fill their Christmas (or Hanukkah or Yule if applicable) Kindles.

The following stories are part of this promotion:

"Illegal Alien"-Free Christmas Eve (12/24) and Christmas Day (12/25). I'd make it free for Boxing Day (12/26) as well, but I ran out of free promotional days. This tale of the titular undocumented immigrants facing off against extraterrestrials features probably my best cover so far. It's one of the ten stories featured in my collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire and has gotten good Amazon reviews.

"Melon Heads"-Also free for those same two days, for the same reason. This is actually a dark comedy featuring evil frats, hydrocephalic midget cannibals, and urban legends. It's also one of the stories included in Flashing Steel Flashing Fire and, along with "I am the Wendigo" was my first Kindle indie.

"Sam"-This one will be free Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day too. "Sam" tells the tale of a loyal Doberman facing off against a Bad Thing that only he can see. If you liked the novel (Thor) or the movie adaptation (Bad Moon), this story is for you.

Got to give credit where credit is due--this was inspired by Seventh Star Press's Christmas discount (which can be found here) and my friend Chris Nuttall making his novel The Empire's Corps free for a time for Christmas.

Enjoy!

A Novel Marketing Idea Involving Twitter...

The other night just before I went to bed after a full day of #PitMad, I remembered I had an Excel spreadsheet of people who'd tweeted my tweets in previous Twitter pitch parties like #PitMad, #SFFPit, #PitchMas, etc. I hadn't updated it in awhile, so I spent this morning going through tweets from Thursday's #PitMad and from the last #SFFPit in June (next one's in December) and adding a whole bunch of people's Twitter handles to my spreadsheet.

Why do this, you ask? Well, when the book(s) are actually published, these people might be interested in reading and especially reviewing. After all, they wouldn't have retweeted my pitches if they weren't interested, right?

(Okay, some of them might have retweeted because I retweeted theirs and not because they really loved the concept, but better too many people than too few. Plus even if they don't want it themselves, they might retweet.)

So when the time comes, whether I go indie (which I'm thinking about doing with Battle for the Wastelands) or traditional (an agent asked for the full manuscript of The Thing in the Woods), I'll have 60+ people to tweet the link to--and many thousands of their followers if they retweet. For each story. :)

Word to the wise if you implement this strategy yourself--don't tweet the same tweet to too many people. I got kicked off Twitter for an hour a couple years ago for trying to promote "Illegal Alien" to too many people too fast. It's called "spamming." :)

And definitely don't be stalkery or pesky. You don't want to get on people's nerves to the point they don't want to participate in these kinds of things again.

And I'd be willing to help promote others, not just use others to promote me. I saw a lot of really good concepts out there in the Twitter pitch parties and retweeted them all when I was able (i.e. not in class or in a job that was picky about social media). I'd definitely be up for doing this myself if someone decides to contact me about a novel they pitched online.

So that's another bit of advice--be willing to do this yourself to help others. Pay it back and pay it forward. Remember, the writing community isn't that large.

Kickstarting an Audio "I am the Wendigo"?

The other day, my friend Nick suggested I use a crowd-funding mechanism like Kickstarter or Indiegogo to fund audio versions of some of my short stories. It would be (relatively) low cost and provide an additional source of funds and exposure. He also suggested I fit the stories into a singular universe, much like how the X-Files managed to fit mutants that ate people's livers, a living garbage avatar enforcing HOA rules, werewolves, a humanoid fluke creature, a shape-shifter who abused his powers for sex, and various other critters into an overarching plot involving a coming alien invasion.

This might not work for all of them, but since many of them are scattered throughout time (Nicortakes place during the Viking Age, while Melon Headstakes place probably around 2003-4), it's surprisingly doable. And there wouldn't even really need to be an overarching plot like the X-Files alien colonization thing--it's just that there's a lot more weird stuff going on the world than we're aware of. Stories that are part of a larger plot of their own like Illegal Alien would need to be left out, but it's not like I'm lacking for material.

My first thought was to do "Nicor," because it's one of my more thoughtful stories and because it has already been professionally published. However, then I did some research about recording audio fiction and came across ACX, which is basically the audio version of Amazon KDP that resulted from Amazon acquiring Audible. I created an account and did some poking around on the main page. ACX will get people in touch with voice-actors, after which one can negotiate a fee-for-service arrangement or royalty split. For the latter, having the sales to attract voice-actors is especially important.

That forced a revision of the plan, as "Nicor" has been a poor seller (probably due to still being available on the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly website and being part of Flashing Steel, Flashing Firecollection). Furthermore, creating an audio version would require either a large cast to play multiple roles or a smaller number of people doing many different voices.

However, I am the Wendigois my single best seller and requires only one voice actor, to play the wendigo itself. Hell, I could narrate it myself rather than hiring a professional voice actor. I could set a "stretch goal" to include a longer project like "Melon Heads" or The Beast of the Bosporus.

Possible incentives to give to people include a PDF of FSFF, print copies of FSFF, signed and personalized copies of FSFF, prints of the cover art, signed prints of the cover art, getting listed as a producer in the credits, etc.

So, my loyal readers, do you think crowdfunding an audio production of "I am the Wendigo" is a good idea? If it is, you'll probably see me digitally panhandling pretty soon...

A Kindle Christmas Gift for My Fans

Starting in September 2012, I published several of my short stories on Amazon.com for my fans who've got Kindles (or Kindle apps for their non-Kindle gadgets). Although I've occasionally set a story for free for a day or two to gin up some sales (or borrows, which if your content is cheap enough make more than sales), making multiple stories available for multiple days is something I only do for very special occasions.

Like Christmas. :)

If you've gotten a Kindle for Christmas (or Hanukkah, since it concluded Christmas Eve) or gotten a tablet or other gadget with a Kindle app on it, the following stories will be available for free today (12/26) and tomorrow (12/27):

"Illegal Alien"-A group of undocumented men from Mexico try to sneak into the United States, only to find that there are far more dangerous things than the Border Patrol. Alien things.

"Melon Heads"-Two college students on the way back to school for final exams discover that a local urban legend is quite real. And hungry.

"Übermensch"-Getting tired of seeing superheroes protecting New York City from aliens, supervillains, etc? How about you come down to Atlanta and walk on the dark side with supervillain Andrew Patel? And if you like it, there's always the sequel, "Needs Must."

And no Kindle? No problem. I've got two stories available for purchase on Smashwords.

New "Beast of the Bosporus" Cover

Based on advice from James R. Tuck and J.H. Glaze, I have decided to revamp at least some of my Kindle stories' covers. In particular, Glaze said to prepare for the long run--should I have a "real" novel available for purchase, there'll suddenly be a lot more interest in my short stories and I want to be able to capitalize on that. Although I didn't want to make any investments that wouldn't pay off for a long time (I think I've only just now paid off the cover for "Illegal Alien"), the long run is the long run.

So I decided to replace the cover of "The Beast of the Bosporus," since it was one of my illustrator's first projects as a freelance artist and he's had just under two years to improve his craft. Here's the new cover:

You like? It's a lot more detailed and colorful than the original. The covers for "Melon Heads" and "I am the Wendigo" are going to stay the same, as are "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must." I might consider an upgraded cover for "Picking Up Plans in Palma," but that might not be necessary--it's still a pretty good cover and it's got the most reviews of any of my Kindle projects (and they're good ones).

And "the long run" might come sooner than you think. I'm pretty sure the collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire James is helping me with will be available sometime this month and my friend Jeff Baker said (based on something he heard at LibertyCon) that one needs many items (20-25) available on Amazon for your sales to really start feeding off each other. And The Thing In The Woods is almost ready for submission to agents...

"Illegal Alien" Might Just Be Relevant Again...

I wrote my short story "Illegal Alien", which features undocumented immigrants from Mexico encountering extraterrestrials (yes, it's a bad pun) in 2004. This was back when illegal immigration was a much bigger political issue. By the time I gave up submitting to the declining number of paying markets and self-published it on Amazon, things had changed--the recession apparently caused (or helped caused) a net reduction of the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico in the United States. After all, they were here for the jobs and if there aren't as many jobs, why stay here? Consequently, "Illegal Alien" has not been that great of a seller even though it has a beautiful cover.

Well, I follow al-Jazeera America on Facebook and found they're running a series entitled "Borderland" about people who've died trying to immigrate to America by illegally crossing the southern border. If illegal immigration from Mexico is becoming an issue again, maybe there'll be more interest in the topic and I'll make more sales.

(This is not to be flippant about the deaths of border-crossers, which is tragic.)

I've considered writing a blog post about how Kindle Direct (or other self-publishing platforms, like Smashwords) are best for stuff that's timely, since publishing takes awhile. I guess now's the time. :)

I've sold a few short stories and it was months before they were published. George Scithers, the late editor of Weird Tales, told me that publication lead time makes it hard to cash in on timely things--in that case, I had a Lovecraftian King Arthur story that I was trying to pitch when the Clive Owen King Arthur movie was in theaters. Meanwhile, Roger Corman once shot a movie in a few weeks to cash in on the Sputnik launch. He was the publisher as well as the writer, so he could do that.

So if you've got a story you wrote to cash in on a current event and especially if you've got one trying to cash in on a movie that's out, you're better off self-publishing it. Your window of opportunity to make money won't last long.

Hmm...I had an idea for a story set in the future where Japan, having shut down its nuclear plants, invades Indonesia again in order to secure the fossil fuels it needs to sustain its economy. Since people are going to forget about the tsunami, how Japan went (hopefully temporarily) nuclear-free, etc. pretty fast, that's something I'd Kindle if I intended to actually write it.

(I probably won't, so if you want to write it, go ahead. Pro-nuclear speculative fiction for the win!)

If You Support More Inclusiveness In Speculative Fiction...

Over the last few months, there has been a big kerfluffle in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror about inclusiveness. Most of that pertains to gender, but there has been some controversy about race/ethnicity as well.

Well, if you want to support inclusiveness in speculative fiction, I would like to recommend to you some of my independently-published short stories:

Ten Davids, Two Goliaths-Set in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire science fiction universe, the lead character Geun Choi is a Korean Buddhist fighter pilot in the distant future. The other POV character Tamara Watson is a female fighter pilot who is recovering from drug addiction and is a practicing polytheist to boot. Five reviews, all pretty good.

Discovery and Flight-Also set in Buroker's Fallen Empire universe, this continues Choi and Watson's adventures in the rebellion's early days, and brings them into contact with Buroker's canonical characters.

Übermensch-This came from a "Southern superheroes" anthology my writing group attempted that didn't go anywhere. The protagonist is an irreligious half-Indian biomedical engineer who lives by the creed of Nietzsche and provides cybernetics services for Atlanta gangs in the vein of David Duchovny's character in the film Playing God. Superhero stories are pretty common--how about a supervillain story instead?

The Beast of the Bosporus-I started writing this story when I was in college after I realized that most of Lovecraft's fiction takes place in rural New England in the early 20th Century. I decided I was going to be a bit different and write a Lovecraftian horror tale set during the glory days of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century. Although the protagonist Sokollu Mehmed Pasha is a white man (he was a Serb by birth), he is a Muslim and the setting is distinctly non-Western. One of my writing friends Matthew Stienberg gave it a very good review.

Illegal Alien-Protagonist Patrido Guzman is a Mexican who seeks a better life in the United States and employs the services of a coyote--an immigrant smuggler--to get him there. Guzman himself is mestizo (I don't really get into racial politics in the story--this is Word of God) and another major Mexican character is more distinctly Indian. And never is the word "illegal" used in a pejorative fashion. Stienberg reviewed it on Amazon and gave it high marks too.

I am the Wendigo-Although the Wendigo is a monster, I drop some hints that when he was a human being, he had at least some Native American ancestry. For starters, he knows that the Algonquin language is more properly called Abenaki.

Although I am a straight, white Protestant male (and therefore get a lot less crap from society than those who aren't), most of my independently-published short fiction has protagonists who are minorities, at least in my own country. Ironic, isn't it.

And I've already had a cover made for a second Andrew Patel story, "Needs Must." I will keep you posted.

Incursion Report: Highway 86, Arizona

ABOVE TOP SECRET

TO: (Redacted)

FROM: (Redacted)

SUBJECT: Arizona Incursion

THE INCIDENT

The day we have all feared has finally arrived. The extraterrestrial conflict that has been brewing in the outer solar system since the late 1990s has finally spread to Earth.

Although our reconnaissance has been spotty at best, our space telescope detected energy spikes indicative of a large space battle near Jupiter. (Redacted) will have more information as to the specifics of the battle, but we do know three small Snake vessels pursued a larger Gray craft toward Earth. Based on the report of a surviving eyewitness, the Gray craft was damaged and its crew was making repairs. That they would need to land here seems odd given how both species have space technology centuries in advance of our own, but perhaps the Grays' extra-vehicular repair capability was damaged or destroyed.

The first reports of a shooting star were made at around noon, while radar from the Tuscon airport briefly detected the Gray ship as it passed over the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The three Snake ships came hard after it and just barely avoided a massive follow-up radar sweep by the alerted airport and some local National Guard aircraft. Our supplying them a fabricated report from Kitt Peak National Observatory about an expected meteor shower got them to stand down their AWACS aircraft and impose delays on local civilian aircraft for much of the day, avoiding an immediate breach of secrecy and likely preventing the substantial human casualties unprepared National Guard units would have incurred encountering even a small alien force.

By the time our personnel arrived, the battle was largely over. Two Snake craft had been forced down in different places, while the third was in the process of finishing off the already-wounded Gray ship a fair distance from the original landing site. Fortunately two companies of our specialist troops were close enough to move overland and surprise and destroy the remaining Snake craft and detain the survivors after an hour-long firefight, albeit at the cost of twenty dead and forty wounded.

If any head must roll for the deaths of our brave men and women, let it be mine. Any spacecraft would probably have radar or something approximating, but unless it was a dedicated ground attack platform, I doubt it would have anything resembling JSTARS. It was my decision to limit aircraft involvement to helicopters lifting off from trucks once the aliens were engaged rather than hitting the aliens from beyond visual range with artillery and aircraft to soften them up first. Alerted, the craft would have been able to inflict significantly more damage and if not triumph (a very real possibility), flee and alert the Snake fleet.

Captured in the incident were three small Snake craft suffering varying degrees of damage and a larger Gray craft that was all but destroyed. Five live Snakes and seven live Grays have been captured, while we have recovered twenty Snake and twenty-three Gray bodies.

IMPLICATIONS

It appears we've retained secrecy, but we were lucky. The one surviving civilian eyewitness, apparently an illegal immigrant from Mexico, died of wounds inflicted by the Grays before the battle despite our best efforts. He did not know if others survived, but there's been no noise even from the usual suspects. If anyone else saw what happened, they're being awfully quiet. That will suit our purposes for now, but if there were any other witnesses, rumors will spread and this will attract unwanted attention. (Redacted) is already cooking up a sufficiently gruesome "training accident" to account for the military dead and wounded, which will hopefully at least delay any deeper investigation into the incident.

Even if their arrival was a fluke, the fact a battle has taken place between the two species on our own ground has changed the situation drastically. Both will no doubt suspect we have captured some of their technology and may attempt to retrieve it, which we will not be able to successfully conceal. Although either side will try to prevent the other from attacking, we cannot count on their being successful. We may face a larger alien incursion in the very near future, especially if secrecy efforts fail and the aliens learn from Earth-based transmissions what happened.

As long as the war was stalemated and they thought us ignorant, we had a chance to build our capabilities in secret, unmolested by any preemptive strike or attempt at alliance. We cannot count on this any longer.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The nuclear mines and kinetic projectiles launched into orbit along with the private-sector satellites over the last five years have given us a bare-bones orbital-defense capability, but a small incursion was able to avoid them and a larger incursion would simply overwhelm them. I recommend increasing the number of mines as quickly as possible, increasing the production of aircraft-deliverable anti-satellite weapons, and constructing thunderwells near strategic sites. Perhaps the president can be nudged to resume strategic-arms reduction talks with the Russians, which will free up strategic weapons for this purpose. Now that we have substantial alien technology, I strongly recommend shifting black-budget monies toward reverse engineering so we can have something more capable than Cold War projects to defend ourselves.

If the alien forces in our solar system alone turn their full might against us, there is no way we can withstand them. However, as long as each species keeps the bulk of the other's military power occupied, we might be able to defeat a smaller incursion and use that (and the alien prisoners in our possession) as bargaining chips to preserve some semblance of independence or the more likely outcome, inclusion in one species' sphere of influence under somewhat better terms. When elephants fight the mouse best stay unnoticed, but we may no longer have that option.

So just what happened in the Arizona desert? Were there other survivors the Feds don't know about? Find out by reading "Illegal Alien," available in the collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire and on other eBook platforms.

Character Interview: Patrido Guzman

Today we're sitting down with Patrido Guzman, a former farmer from Zacatecas, Mexico.

(Guzman is a shorter man, but taller than a stereotypical Mexican. He has thinning dark hair.)

Me: Buenas dias, señor Guzman.

Guzman: Buenas dias to you as well.

Me: So let's get started. When were you born?

Guzman: I was born in 1989 in Zacatecas. My father was a farmer, like his forebears before him. We were better off than many campesinos, since we owned our own land and could occasionally hire help. We grew corn, mostly, but we also had chickens and even some cattle.

Me: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Guzman: Oh yes. I have an older brother Juan and sister Carolina, my younger brothers Eduardo and Quinto, and a younger sister Pilar.

Me: How was the land going to be divided?

Guzman: Well, there wasn't enough to sustain every member of the family, so we couldn't all get a piece. My father thought it best that all of us get work and education so that whoever didn't inherit the land could still make a decent life. My older brother and sister went to Zacatecas City, where my brother found work in the silver mines and my sister as a teacher. I was in secondary school and studying for university when NAFTA came.

Me: What happened then?

Guzman: Free trade is great in principle, but Mexican farmers cannot compete with American corn, especially when it's subsidized to the point it can be sold below cost. We worked harder than ever before and managed to sustain ourselves in the face of American imports for years, but in the end, we couldn't compete.

Me: Your family lost its land?

(Guzman sadly nods.)

Guzman: Losing the land that had been in our family since before the Mexican Revolution was too much for my father. He died of heart trouble a year after we were forced to sell our land and move in with my older siblings in the city. My mother followed him soon afterward.

Me: I'm sorry to hear that.

Guzman: I couldn't attend university and had to go to work right away to help support the family. My younger siblings had to finish school themselves. I went to work in a maquiladora, one of the new factories NAFTA made possible. The Lord takes and He gives, you know?

Me: Job 1:21?

Guzman: The very one. The money was better than many of the other jobs I could have taken, but I hated working there. The supervisor was a real mula who mistreated some of the women in the factory. I didn't want to lose my job and didn't do anything for the longest time and then when I saw him hassling a widow working to feed a child, I told him to go to hell. I got fired the next day.

Me: Yikes.

Guzman: He got his. When the government started fighting the drug cartels, he was found dead. Whether he caught a bullet meant for someone else or someone decided to take revenge for a sister or daughter he put his hands on, I don't know. Good riddance either way.

Me: So what are you going to do now?

Guzman: Well, I've had friends who've gone to work in El Norte.

Me: El Norte?

Guzman: The United States. They made good money doing even the most menial work, enough to send home and build big houses for their families, put siblings and children through school. I once heard of a man who took over a concrete business when the gringo owner retired and he's a millionaire now.

Me: How are you going to get in? I've heard it's hard to get in legally unless you've got special skills and you said you never got to go to university...

Guzman: Well, I knew a man from the factory whose brother knows someone on the other side of the border. A coyote, a smuggler. Juan and Carolina, they loaned me the money to pay him up-front. No need to work for him for years. We're going to meet up in...well, I don't know you. Maybe you work the limones verdes.

Me: Limones verdes? Green lemons?

Guzman: Sorry. Your Border Patrol. They drive around in green trucks.

Me: Got it.

Will Guzman make it to the United States? If you want to find out, check out the short story "Illegal Alien," which appears in the short story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire. Non-Amazon e-books here.

E-Reader Publishing: Three Months In (UPDATED 12/29)

This post was originally published on 12/25, but due to a sudden problem, I felt the need to go back and revise. Read it and you'll see why.

On September 3, I self-published my story "Melon Heads" on Amazon.com for the Kindle, thus beginning my experiment in self-publishing for e-readers. September 20 saw the second coming of my previously-published story "I am the Wendigo" and November 16 saw my Lovecraftian tale "The Beast of the Bosporus." My most recent self-published story, "Illegal Alien," debuted on Amazon December 11. At some point I created a formal Amazon author page as well.

At first, I enrolled all of them in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, which allows members of Amazon Prime to borrow my stories for free (I still get paid through a fund set up for this purpose) and allows me to release my stories for free on certain promotional days. However, being part of KDP Select is conditional on not having the stories available online anywhere else.

KDP Select proved to be a mixed bag. The promotional days allowed me to move large numbers of copies free, which I had hoped would generate more reviews and build buzz, leading to more sales later. The increased number of reviews I expected did not come through (most reviewers are people I already know), although there's no way of knowing the long-term effects of having dozens if not hundreds of readers having seen my content for free. Maybe I'm creating a fan base that will pay off in the future when I have real books available. After all, I did once get some traffic to this blog from a Google search for "Illegal Alien Matthew W. Quinn." The number of free copies moved on the first promotional day tends to be significantly higher than the number moved on later days, and I recall only actual borrow.

So I bought some Facebook advertising for the short stories, remembering how successful it had been in attracting readers to my blog in the summer of 2011. This provided to be a major bust--I'd spent upwards of $70 on advertising, but gleaned few if any sales. This not only applied to my ads for "Melon Heads" and "Wendigo" that received relatively few views and clicks, but even my ads for "The Beast of the Bosporus" that received over 100,000 views and over 100 clicks. Paying $45 for a much nicer cover for "Illegal Alien" didn't generate much sales either. So far, "Illegal Alien" has made 1/4 of the sales "Melon Heads" made in its first month, although since it was published mid-month, I won't be able to make an accurate comparison even after four weeks pass.

This meant more drastic measures were needed. I turned off the KDP Select auto-renew for all four stories. The other stories were either still in their first term or I'd allowed them to renew for another term, but "Wendigo" would no longer be Kindle-exclusive come December 21. This would be especially useful because an ad I'd purchased for my Facebook fan page increased my fan count from 80 to close to 1,400 (as of 12/29), most of whom apparently are from Turkey or other Middle Eastern countries. As far as I know, people from these countries cannot buy from Amazon (except through tricky means like getting a UK e-mail address to access Amazon.co.uk). People from India can access the same Amazon as Americans, but that would exclude Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.

On Christmas Eve, I made the leap to Smashwords, putting up "Wendigo." Soon afterward, I "greased the wheel" a little bit by paying $5.00 to "promote" the post announcing the story was now on Smashwords. The number of "likes" I've gotten from my Middle Eastern fans indicated the move was much appreciated. Within 24 hours, I'd sold ten copies of "Wendigo" in two batches of five. I figured Smashwords' sale of stories in multiple file formats (to allow people using different e-readers or not using e-readers at all) and not being limited by country had paid dividends.

Then when checking my Smashwords Dashboard, I noticed my royalties had been cut in half. I queried Smashwords and looked at the Excel spreadsheet and found that five of the ten sales had been refunded due to "fraudulent payment method." I wrote Smashwords and learned that thieves use Smashwords to either test out stolen cards or "max out" said cards. My remaining five sales were refunded as well for the same reason.

(Smashwords limits purchases to five at a time to minimize the impact of fraud--some poor author "sold" 1,000 copies to a fraudster and then had his purchases refunded.)

Rather than earning $7.85 in a day, I'd earned zero--and my royalties remained zero as of 12/29. I'm not going to complain too much, since it's just one short story and I've only been a Smashwords member for a week or so. Some discussion on LinkedIn indicates that "premium status" (which ensures one's writing is marketed on other sites) on Smashwords is where the real money comes from, and that's still pending. Before I pass judgement on Smashwords as a whole, I'll wait to see what happens with that. I might even buy a Facebook ad for "Wendigo," since it's much, MUCH less limited than Amazon KDP and that might have been a reason behind the first Facebook ad campaign's failure.

My strategy for the moment is to publish the three remaining stories on Smashwords as soon as their KDP Select periods end, which will be in February and March. Any future stories I self-publish will be on KDP Select for one term (to allow for one or two promotional days) and then placed on Smashwords. Maybe I'll post my stories on lulu.com as well.

"Illegal Alien" Cover Preview

Sometime this week, my goal is to post a new short story on Amazon.com entitled "Illegal Alien." It's another example of my love for bad puns--the storyline involves a group of undocumented immigrants lost in the desert who encounter extraterrestrials.

Here's the cover to tide you over for awhile:

In terms of image quality, this is the best cover art for any of my short stories. Adrienne Langston, whose work I've promoted here before, is the artist. Here's a link to her new Etsy site where you can buy her artwork and here's a link to her Facebook gallery, where you can see even more.

Need An Artist? Help A Friend Out...

Today I'm asking you all for help. Not for me, but for one of my writing-group friends. She lost her job a few months ago (I think she worked for Georgia Perimeter College and was one of the people cut when the shortfall hit) and is running low on funds. As in, "homeless within a month" low on funds.

Adrienne is an artist and I've commissioned her to do a cover for my soon-to-be-Kindle-published short story "Illegal Alien." Here is a Facebook gallery of her work. I think you need to be logged into Facebook in order to see it. One reason I chose her is I liked the Native American Elf guy and figured something in a similar style would be useful.

(One reason self-published works don't do well is because they have abysmal cover art. I'm trying to avoid that even if it costs me some money in the short term.)

If you see a need for her work in any capacity--a book cover, a picture of a friend or relative, etc.--give her a whistle.