Apex Publications Is Having Big-Time Sale

The other day, I spotted a blog post saying that speculative fiction stalwart Apex Publications is "retiring" 42 titles and was offering a substantial discount until the end of January Given Apex's importance to the small-press scene and the business I've done with publisher Jason Sizemore, this was somewhat concerning, so I checked it out.

It turns out that Apex is reverting the rights to many of its older titles to their original authors, to "trunk" or republish as they see fit. Apparently they're not generating enough money to cover the administrative costs of maintaining them, paying the writers, etc.

From a business perspective, this makes sense. I've looked over the list (more on that below) and a lot of them seem to be short-story collections or shorter works. Collections are generally not strong sellers--on Amazon I've sold three copies of Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire in the last six-odd weeks in comparison to five sales of The Thing in the Woods and three sales of its sequel The Atlanta Incursion. And that's fairly unusual--Thing, TAI, and Battle for the Wastelands typically sell at least all right, while FSFF languishes. This is even more blatant at conventions, where I move lots of novel-length works but few copies of FSFF, my novella Little People, Big Guns, or, in recent years, The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2. I put all of my shorter work (with the exception of Battle prequel "Son of Grendel") on Draft2Digital for wide release and only "Ten Davids Two Goliaths" and "Discovery and Flight" (both set in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire universe) seem to sell.

Since I'm a one-man show without any authors to continue to pay or actual employees (the artists, designers, etc. are all contractors), keeping FSFF and the other shorter works available for purchase is no big deal. However, if for every sale I had to do the paperwork, royalty computation, etc. for multiple authors, that wouldn't be worth the minimal return I get. However, I do have to store my convention stock and the fewer boxes sitting around my apartment the better.

I took a look at the books on the Apex list and here are some that interest me. Appalachian Undead is a collection of zombie stories set in, well Appalachia. It leads with a story entitled "When Granny Comes Marchin’ Home Again," which is certainly attention-grabbing, and even has another story alluding to a John Denver song. Harlan County Horrors operates in a similar vein, with lots of ugly doings in coal country. Breaking The World is about what might happen if the apocalypse actually started during the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and certain sounds interesting. HebrewPunk is a group of short stories or novellas featuring characters based in Jewish tradition, culminating in all of them joining forces for a heist. Kentucky Kaiju is a Dungeons and Dragons-style monster manual for large creatures inhabiting Kentucky of all places. Severance is about the mishaps that can befall a generation ship bound for another star system. Stay Crazy has a pretty interesting concept--is this woman insane, or is there a being from another dimension recruiting her to fight another extradimensional being? Starve Better by Nick Mamatas is about the writing life; I already own it, but it's been awhile since I've read it. To Each Their Darkness and Yours to Tell also books about the craft of writing, and I'm seriously considering snagging that one while I still can.

My to-be-read pile (including several library books that might lead to fines) is pretty substantial as is, so I'm not sure which of these I'll actually purchase when all is said and done, but those all sound cool. However, if you're interested in helping out someone who's helped me, Sizemore has done a lot for my independent novelist career, including editing Battle back when I was still pitching it to publishers, connecting me with cover designer Mikio Murikami and laying out and assembling some very well-designed e-books.

Two THE ATLANTA INCURSION #BookTube Reviews In Two Days

One strategy I've been using to promote my work is seeking out booktubers to discuss my books on their channels. Early-mid May has been, to quote the great Borat, "Very nice." I have gotten two largely positive video reviews on YouTube for my novel The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The Thing In The Woods.

Here's the one posted May 9 from Jeremy Fee, a Texan who liked the small-town feel of the original Thing and followed the survivors to the big city for the sequel:

And here's the one posted May 10 from Lady Jane Books, who got very excited about it:

This was a very nice couple of days. If you're interested after watching these videos, you can find both The Thing in the Woods and The Atlanta Incursion on Amazon. They're both in Kindle Unlimited. And if you're not, check out their YouTube channels--they might have books you would enjoy.

Summer and Fall 2021 Convention Schedule (So Far)

Given how lucrative conventions are for me--one convention's profits equate to several months' Amazon royalties--and COVID seems to be waning, I'm getting events lined up for this summer and fall. This is still in-progress, so I might come back and edit this post as necessary. Hopefully there won't be any COVID spikes or political nonsense that could interfere...

Confirmed Events

June 5, 2021: The Middle Georgia Comic Convention in Macon, GA. I want to expand outside of the Atlanta market without hotel expenses cutting into my profits, so a one-day event an hour and a half or so outside of Atlanta is just perfect. I made sure to contact some of the local media in advance--the newspaper did a preview story (and the editor came by to purchase two books), while the local TV station announced it was coming and then interviewed one of my Horror Writers Association Atlanta Chapter colleagues. I made a decent profit and got 17 new e-mails for my newsletter, which will be helpful in the long run.

July 10, 2021: Comics and Collectibles Show in Braselton, GA. I think a lot of the people involved in Toylanta 2021 were involved in this one and Braselton is convenient to both heavily-populated Gwinnett County and Athens, the home of the University of Georgia. And cheap table cost too. :)

August 6-8, 2021: Atlanta Comic-Con-This is the big kahuna--I made all the money I mentioned above when I split the table cost with C.S. Johnson and I've got a partner for this one as well, fellow Atlanta Horror Writers Association member Venessa Giunta. And last time I only had two books, The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, the latter of which I straight-up sold out on. This time around I'll have seven books available, including the Thing sequel The Atlanta Incursion (great for two-for-one deals) and the completely new (to ACC) steampunk Wastelands series. I'm also going to set Thing and Battle for the Wastelands e-books to $0.99 and hand out a lot of cards with QR codes linking to them, a strategy that has ginned up e-book sales before.

Also, Cineprov, an Atlanta film comedy troupe whose membership overlaps significantly with Myopia Movies, may be performing there as well. Come for the humor, stay for the products. :)

August 14, 2021: FarleyCon-I found out about this event at Toylanta in mid-March. Although I'm leery of out-of-state events due to hotel costs eating my profits, this event takes place in a suburb outside of Chattanooga, pretty close to the Georgia line. Table costs were pretty low, although owing to the distance mileage is going to be an expense.

August 15, 2021: Atlanta Comic Convention-This is a relatively short event relatively close to Emory University. I've been there a couple times before, but this time I've got a lot more stuff than last time.

October 2, 2021: NextChapterCon-This event is dedicated to independent authors and books solely. I attended two previous events and served as a panelist on multiple panels, so it's good to carry on the tradition. Furthermore, this year's event will be in Dalton rather than Ringgold, meaning hopefully a larger audience given how it's a larger community to start with and Dalton State College is located there..

In-Process

October 8-10, 2021: Monsterama-This is another relatively new convention. It's a bit of a hike from my day job and so last time I dawdled so much that I ended up not being able to get a table when I finally decided to apply. However, Toylanta showed that going straight from work to a convention that officially starts Friday night in the northern suburbs is completely doable.

My Convention Setup For Convention Applications

As part of a convention application, I need to submit an online photo of my typical setup at a genre convention. Having searched the Interwebs and social media, I only found a couple photos, period, and most of them were fairly bare-bones (only my earliest books, no tablecloth) shots of my early conventions rather than the more elaborate ones that came later.

So here's a shot of my typical setup, somewhat abbreviated because I'm using my card table rather than the six-foot table most conventions provide.

Owing to the table's smaller size, I wasn't able to get all of my books onto it, but here's my current convention inventory, broken down by genre:

Battle for the Wastelands-A post-apocalyptic steampunk military fantasy with a lot of political intrigue. I describe it as "Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones." First in a series.

"Son of Grendel"-A Battle for the Wastelands prequel novella featuring the villain's eldest son leading a counterinsurgency mission. It takes place around a year before the main book.

The Thing in the Woods-My debut novel, a tale of Lovecraftian horror set in small-town Georgia rather than the typical rural New England. It stands alone as a creature feature, but the story continues with...

The Atlanta Incursion-The sequel to Thing, featuring one of the surviving characters as a college student in Atlanta and a confrontation with a new otherworldly threat. This gets into more science-fiction territory than Thing does, but I would still consider it horror.

Little People, Big Guns-This horror-comedy features little people (they don't like being called "midgets") fighting predatory badgers...and worse.

The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Vol. 2-This is a collection of around twenty sword and sorcery stories (think Conan the Barbarian) featuring my Viking tale "Nicor."

Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire-My first independently-published book, a collection of ten science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories.

Finding My Books at Libraries...

Many moons ago, while listening to the writers' podcast The Sell More Books Show, one of the hosts suggested a good way to get readers was to donate books to libraries. This advice I followed, donating copies of the first edition of Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire and later The Thing In The Woods to the Cobb County library system, the library system I grew up using.

When I started seriously self-publishing, however, I took that strategy into overdrive. Here's a running list of the library systems that have my books.

Georgia

Cobb County: Like I mentioned earlier, a copy of Thing and two copies of FSFF, both at the central library in Marietta. I recently donated an additional copy of Thing, two copies of its sequel The Atlanta Incursion, and two copies of Battle for the Wastelands. Those have not yet been catalogued, but I will check again and update this post as needed.

Gwinnett County: The Gwinnett County library system has got two copies each of Thing and its sequel The Atlanta Incursion, which so far comprise my Lovecraft-inspired "Long War" fictional universe. Both copies of TAI are kept at the headquarters location, but one copy of Thing is at the headquarters and another is at the Suwanee branch. I'd donated one copy each already, but I saw on the website an absolutely absurd amount of holds for TAI--at one point I think as many as eight people were in line for it--and a significant number for Thing too. In early October I donated an additional copy each of Thing and TAI and they were logged in the system within a few days. As of November 9, 2020 there are four holds on two copies of TAI and zero holds on two copies of Thing. I'm not sure why I'm so popular in Gwinnett, but maybe I'll donate more if the backlog continues.

And the Long War series isn't the only thing I've got in Gwinnett. There's also a copy of Battle for the Wastelands at the Five Forks branch. That one is available now, so there probably isn't nearly so much demand. I also donated a copy of Little People, Big Guns and that's available at the Collins Hill branch. That's under "Matthew Quinn" rather than "Matthew W. Quinn," so it doesn't show up in the same author search. The library also has "Son of Grendel"  at its Collins Hill branch, so the system has all of the Wastelands series so far. It also has my short story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire at its Lawrenceville branch.

(And perhaps when the pandemic eases enough people are comfortable with live events, maybe I'll see if a Gwinnett library is willing to host one.)

PINES: This statewide library network serves most counties in Georgia and I made ample use of it when I lived in Lovejoy and McDonough. I donated a Thing copy to the Griffin-Spalding County Library in Griffin when I was selling books at the town's Mistletoe Market some years ago. That copy is still there, while a copy one of the library staff purchased at the Next Chapter Con North Georgia independent authors event the year before last is at the Dalton-Whitfield Library in Dalton. More recently, I was interviewed in the Dalton newspaper and donated several of my books to the Dalton-Whitfield and Calhoun-Gordon libraries and the Athens-Clarke librarians bought a copy each of Thing and TAI at an event I did earlier in 2022. PINES now has three copies of Thing, three copies of TAI, one copy of Battle, one copy of "Son of Grendel," and one copy of Little People. People from all over Georgia can read them now. :)

DeKalb County: The DeKalb County library system has got three copies of Battle, one at the Dunwoody branch, one at the Decatur branch, and one at the Tucker branch. It also has a copy each of Thing at the Tucker branch and the Decatur branch and TAI at the Tucker and Decatur branches as well. At the 2019 Decatur Book Festival I checked with library staff and the copy of Thing at the Decatur branch had been checked out three times, something I rather liked. Little People, Big Guns has a copy each at the Decatur and Stonecrest branches.

Fulton County: The Fulton County library system has got two copies of Thing, one at the Peachtree library in Midtown and the other at the Wolf Creek library in the southern part of the county. The library also has a single copy of Battle for the Wastelands and Little People Big Guns, both at its central library in downtown Atlanta.

Kentucky

Carter County: Two members of a conservative-leaning writers group I'm in organized a book drive for the Carter County public library system after reading in another Facebook group that the library system is in severe need of books--they had only eight science fiction and fantasy books in the whole library system, for example. I donated single copies of Thing, TAI, Battle, SOG, HFQ, FSFF, and LPBG over the summer of 2021 and they have since been catalogued. The Carter County libraries are located in the towns of Olive Hill and Grayson.

Facebook Ads *Avoiding* Kindle Unlimited

In the past I've posted here extensively about my various Facebook ad campaigns. Although Facebook ads moved copies in ways that Amazon ads generally didn't, none of my earlier campaigns made a profit. The closest I ever came was making $43 royalties on $50 spend. Although there were times money from con sales or random hand sales could cover those costs, COVID-19 means a lot fewer conventions and those remaining are a lot smaller.

However, in early August I wondered if my ads might've been flawed--in order to make it clear that I was selling e-books (i.e. I didn't want people thinking the book I was selling was a video game, then costing me money by clicking and deciding not to buy) and attracting people with the magical word "free," I emphasized the book was "free on Kindle Unlimited." This meant thousands of Kindle Unlimited page-views per month, but at slightly under half a cent per page read, this came out to $4.80 per 1,000 pages read--aka not much even if I got thousands of page-reads (and believe me I did). Even though I made outright sales, no combination of sales and KU page-reads covered the costs. This applied even when I released The Atlanta Incursion, the sequel to The Thing in the Woods and advertised Thing in hopes people would buy it and then move onto the next book. Furthermore, based on my experience KU readers seem less likely to review than people who made full purchases and I was in severe need of reviews, especially for TAI.

So I created a new $100 Facebook ad for Thing with ad copy stating it was "available in e-book and print" rather than "free on Kindle Unlimited." Based on advice from a Facebook ad consultant (buy enough ads and they'll start wanting to call you to chat), I was also sure to include "engaged shoppers" as a behavioral characteristic--per the consultant these were people who are more likely to buy things. I also made sure to max out the spend at $5 per day, which is a recommendation I got from Help My Facebook Ads Suck, meaning an ad campaign running from 8/8 to 8/28.

The first day went pretty well. I sold two e-books of Thing and one e-book of TAI for a $6.18 royalties gross on $3.91 ad spend for a net of $2.27. There were also a few Kindle Unlimited page-reads, but we're talking less than a dollar. The sale of TAI took a little effort on my part--one person who commented on the Thing ad said he'd like to see the back-story for the titular monstrosity and I told him it would be in TAI, which was now available. He was glad to see it and bought it. I made another such sale on 8/10 (in which I suggested making a two-for-one series buy), so let that be a lesson--engage your fans on the Facebook posts. :)

Of course, one good day doesn't make a profitable campaign or a wise strategy, so I watched and I waited. Even after the campaign formally ended, I held off on commenting for a few days in order for the last Kindle Unlimited reads to come in and see if any sales came off the shares of the boosted post (there were 12 shares).

As of morning 8/29 when the post was no longer boosted, Thing and TAI between them had nine e-book sales and one paperback sale for Thing (per Amazon for royalties of $21.28) and five e-book sales for TAI ($10.30 royalties) during the advertising period. No additional sales were made for either book on 8/29, but the day did feature nearly 400 KU pages read for Thing. The Kindle Unlimited revenue for Thing in this period as $21.83 (a little over 4,500 page-views) and for TAI was approximately $3.55 (739 page-views). Overall, the ad campaign generated $56.96, $59.02 if one counts a Thing sale made 9/1 that might've been from a shared post. There's actually a decent amount of read-through from Thing to TAI in terms of purchases, but not nearly as much in KU. Also got one new review for Thing from one of the people I engaged with on Facebook, but no TAI--that's later on her reading list.

Ironically in July I had 19 Thing sales and 3,167 KU pages read, with a Facebook ad emphasizing Kindle Unlimited. There were nine TAI sales and 1,071 KU pages read (although this is skewed by the fact the book premiered in July), but even with those the ad didn't cover its costs. And this new ad ran for much longer at a lower cost per-day. I'm thinking that emphasizing free on KU might be a good idea, not a bad one. However, I also suspect I'm reaching the point of diminishing returns, even if one treats advertising as a loss-leader rather than something that should pay for itself each and every time.

(Bad idea--Samhain Publishing at one point had a banner ad in Times Square advertising to millions who'd never buy their books when that same money advertising in genre magazines would've been much more useful.)

However, before I decide on no more Facebook ads (at least until the third and perhaps fourth "Long War" books are done for more series read-through), there are more avenues I have yet to explore.

Firstly, as part of a multi-author promotion, I have set Thing to $0.99 from 9/2 to 9/7. I could advertise that on Facebook, hoping that the fact there's a sale generates more interest and that KU reads and read-through into TAI compensates for the greatly reduced royalties (35% on anything below $2.99 but 67% on $2.99 to $9.99). After all, I advertised Battle For The Wastelands when it was free as a COVID morale-booster and moved not only 250 free copies but at least some KU reads from people who didn't want to have the book permanently. And I got some reviews on Goodreads and perhaps on Amazon, something that TAI in particular needs. With the Augusta Toy and Comic Show coming up this weekend (Sept. 5-6) and the Next Chapter Con Sept. 19, I can afford another loss-leading ad.

Secondly, one of my reviewers (I can't remember whom) suggested that one really didn't need to read Thing to enjoy TAI. In late July after the presumed premiere boost wore out, I'd spent $100 on a Facebook ad selling TAI to fans of the Lovecraftian role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, horror fiction, and e-books (that didn't cover its costs and didn't even generate that many clicks for that matter), but blogger Matt Stienberg explicitly compared TAI to the X-Com game series. Given the focus on the Gray aliens on the cover art and throughout the book, X-Com fans might be a better target market for TAI on its own. Thing is, so long as TAI doesn't have any Amazon reviews, that might be quite a risk even if I emphasize that magical word "free" and use the KU ad copy.

Thirdly, I could send people to the Amazon series page showing off Thing and TAI together. That might be better to wait until I have more books, since a two-book series isn't exactly impressive.

Another alternative is to continue advertising but not spend so much money. Although the longer ad campaigns made more sales and grossed more, they also lost more money. Meanwhile, the $50 ad buy came within $7 of breaking even, and that was pushing Thing without TAI.

We'll see. I'll need to make a quick decision if I want to push the $0.99 campaign.

My First #Booktube Videos

One of my strategies for promoting my "Long War" science fiction/horror series--The Thing in the Woods and The Atlanta Incursion thus far--was querying #booktube for people to do review videos about the books. I queried several YouTube book enthusiasts and the first to agree was Books of Blood.

Here's the video he did on Thing:



Here's the review he did on The Atlanta Incursion, which he liked better.



I also queried about my "Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones" indie novel Battle for the Wastelands. The #booktuber Mindy's Book Journey agreed to take a look, and here it is.



I've queried a lot more #booktubers since then, so let's hope this strategy continues to bear fruit.

After-Action Report: ConFinement 2020

On Saturday (6/13) and Sunday (6/14), I attended ConFinement, an impromptu convention in Dalton, GA put together by people who really, really wanted to go LibertyCon in Chattanooga, canceled this year due to coronavirus concerns. My main goal was to sell books, although networking and just plain enjoying myself was a nice plus.

Before I get into the sales part, here are some fun things that happened:

*I'd anticipated only fans from Georgia and Tennessee and maybe a few outliers from states that are farther out but still nearby, but people came from all over. I spoke to a young-adult librarian volunteer from Florence, Texas about their possibly stocking The Thing in the Woods and met people who'd come down from Raleigh, Detroit, somewhere in Virginia, and even New York City. And although the Facebook event only had 60 confirmed and 80 maybes, around 118 people actually showed up. For a convention that only had two months to prepare and wasn't heavily advertised, this was impressive.

*One person couldn't leave Sunday morning because a cat had gotten into the engine of her hybrid van. The hybrid part is important because the undercarriage is sealed off rather than being open like a conventional engine--the cat would either have to get in/out via the axle/wheel well or up through the engine. I got some of a breakfast casserole to try to lure it out with the smell of meat, but that didn't work. I called the county animal control in hopes they had people with the skills and tools to get an animal out (maybe some kind of lasso or hook), but we had three police cars show up instead. It must've been a very slow morning. :) I ended up going back inside, since I doubted I could be of any more use than three policemen with flashlights and the car's actual owner. I later went back to check on everybody and both the driver and the police were gone. The hotel manager said he didn't know exactly how the "crisis" was resolved.

(Cue the Unsolved Mysteries or X-Files theme songs. The great mystery of ConFinement 2020--what happened to the cat?)

*Enough people came that the convention organizer--Baen Books author Michael Z. Williamson--ordered Chili's for everybody. Given the severe hit that COVID-19 inflicted on the economy in general and restaurants in particular, I'm willing to bet that huge order of sliders, ribs, Southwestern egg rolls, and vegetables with ranch dipping sauce was well-appreciated.

*Since the hotel only provided the most basic continental breakfast (i.e. honey-buns), people chipped in food for a con suite. We're talking homemade cookies and brownies, candy, fruit, pastries, deli-type sandwiches, soft drinks, and water. I tend to bean-count to make sure I cover my costs at every event, so not having to buy any meals (other than some McDonalds in Acworth when the sugar crash from the birthday cake I'll get to in a later anecdote hit on the way home) was really nice.

*The whole event, including the panels and all the vending, was in one large room. So from my table I could hear everything being discussed. For example, on a panel about actually running conventions, I learned a bit about labor laws and why chocolate or cheese fountains at conventions are not really good ideas. :)

*Sunday was somebody's birthday, so a big sheet cake was acquired. Another nice boost for the local economy. And free cake. :)

*Late Saturday night, I got to listen to Baen Books Acquiring Editor Gray Rinehart play on his guitar a parody of Looking Glass's "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" about a fan who wants to go to LibertyCon. He also played "Another Romulan Ale" (a Star Trek song that also references other science-fiction franchises) and a short parody of "Freebird" about not playing "Freebird" on request. That song was pretty funny. And he's got a BandCamp page, so if you want to listen to his songs, here you go.

(And although Baen had rejected Battle for the Wastelands, Mr. Rinehart was so kind as to send me all the commentary, both positive and negative, from the editorial readers. I used that to make the final edits before hiring Jason Sizemore to put together an independent print and e-book edition for me. I showed him the final product and he liked what he saw.)

*Baen Books Publisher Toni Weisskopf gave me a free copy of the science-fiction novel Frozen Orbit because I'm a teacher. Ms. Weisskopf went all-in on the free books--for teachers, for parents of teens, for people who'd never attended a Baen "road show" at a convention before, etc. I think I'll review Frozen Orbit when I've got the time to read it.

As far as selling went, I sold that second backer copy of the tabletop war-game Stalin's Final War that I helped fund on Kickstarter. I'd helped fund the game because I liked the concept, not because I'm a gamer, but realized that I could independently sell my backer copies much like I independently sell my books for money. I also sold five copies of Thing, five copies of Little People, Big Guns, two copies of Battle, one copy of my short-story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire, and two copies of the short-story collection The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2 in which my Viking monster story "Nicor" appears. I sold a bunch in "two for $20 deals" and made one "three for $30" deal that, although they meant less per-book profit, meant more books got moved.

Having reviewed my figures, if I don't include the cost of SFW (which I backed more to be a patron of the arts rather than get a product to sell), I made a profit of $34.19 for the whole weekend. If I include the cost of SFW, however, it's a loss of around $35. Not including SFW, period, means a loss of $15. I also got ten e-mail addresses for the newsletter, which will be of particular importance with The Atlanta Incursion (the Thing sequel) slated for release in later June or early July and one person saying they'd prefer Thing and Battle as e-books.

Still, for the fun had and most if not all of the costs covered (I definitely got more than my money's worth on all the food), I would count this as a success. :)

ConFinement Impromptu Convention Set for 6/12-14 in Dalton, GA

Owing to the coronavirus epidemic, I wasn't anticipating attending any conventions until the Atlanta Comic-Con July 31 to August 2 or the Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo, originally slated for March but punted to August 15-16. Since books are non-perishable, I figured I'd sit on my inventory and wait.

Then I learned through Facebook about ConFinement, an impromptu convention organized through the group Emergency Holographic Summer Convention. If you join the group, you'll be able to see and sign up for the event. From the look of it, it's being organized by a bunch of people slated to attend LibertyCon and when that was canceled, organized this one instead. At least one official from Baen Books is going to be coming. It's going to be 6/12-14 at the Econo Lodge in Dalton, GA. Address: 1507 N. Tibbs Road, Dalton, GA, 30720.

Here's the full schedule:

Friday, June 12, 2020

10:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Trip to a nearby shooting range

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: Opening Ceremonies and Cocktails

3:00 PM - 5:00 PM: Random Author BS Session

9:00 PM - 11:00 PM: No Kidding, There I Was (True War Stories from veterans, agents, and others)

Saturday, June 13, 2020

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM: How A Convention Actually Runs--not this emergency seat of the pants thing, but a real one.

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Improvised Workout Panel (proper name to follow), MEETS IN PARKING LOT

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Classic Weapons Show and Tell--A handful of exotic items you won't get to see often

1:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Doc Osborn's Science and Climate Presentation--What Do The Stars Say To Actual Scientists

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM: Baen Traveling Roadshow, The Cozy Edition (tentative)

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Operation Blazing Sword

9:00 PM - 11:00 PM: I Hate Trek--by people who hate Trek so much they've seen every episode at least twice and taken notes

Sunday, June 14, 2020

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM: How Do We Research All This Stuff?

I'm going to be selling books at the event on Saturday and Sunday. Last time I was in North Georgia (a toy/game show in Dalton and the Next Chapter Con in Ringgold), I had only The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2 to sell. Now in addition to those, I've got my steampunk fantasy novel Battle for the Wastelands (and the companion e-novella "Son of Grendel"), the short-story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire, and my bizarro novella Little People, Big Guns.

So if you're looking to get out of the house (don't worry, I'll be wearing a mask and I'll have hand sanitizing wipes for anybody who'd like them), come on by the Econo Lodge. With so many events being canceled, this seems like it'll be the first one since the lockdowns began and one of the few events for awhile.

Buy My Books Direct!

Owing to the cancellation of numerous conventions and other in-person events, I'm taking a page from author Wesley Southard and offering my books direct for sale. Signed by me, of course, and prices include postage. :)

(U.S. only, owing to high cost of mailing internationally. Sending two copies of Little People, Big Guns to Great Britain cost $25.)

Battle for the Wastelands-I describe this book as "Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones," while steampunk/dieselpunk author (Jack Connor) called it "a rip-roaring post-apocalyptic adventure." In a world rebuilding after a long-ago apocalypse, a young man joins a rebellion against a steampunk Norse tyrant who has problems of his own. One reviewer called it a "steampunk Cormac McCarthy," while another reviewer compared it to Fallout New Vegas. I have plenty of copies, so this won't be a problem. $12.00, including postage, but $18.00 if you include the prequel novella below.

"Son of Grendel"-This Battle prequel novella follows Grendel's eldest son Falki Grendelsson on a counterinsurgency mission. Since Falki is by modern standards biracial (his late mother was from a pan-Asian ethnicity and he takes after her in looks), we explore of the racial politics in this world in addition to various battle scenes. $8 by itself, but see above for the combined deal.

And did I mention there's a dinosaur? :)

The Thing in the Woods-This is Lovecraftian horror set in suburbanizing Georgia as opposed to rural New England. James Daly, a teenager from Atlanta, sees something he shouldn't in the small town his family moved to in order to afford a bigger house. Now he's being hunted by a cult that's been worshiping an alien horror since before the Civil War and only a renegade cult member and the local girl he doesn't like liking can help. I Never Meant To Start a Murder Cult author Darrell Grizzle said it's "highly recommended for fans of eldritch horror in a realistic, modern-day setting" and this gentleman who sounds like a military veteran liked it despite not ordinarily being a fan of horror. $12.00, including postage, but you can get it for $20 with the sequel below. I'll carry the extra postage costs.

The Atlanta Incursion-James Daly is now a student at Georgia State University, trying to his best to forget the horrors of his senior year. However, just in time for his girlfriend to visit him one October, he begins seeing things...not just the monster of Edington, but Gray aliens. The Men In Black get involved and soon it's war in downtown Atlanta. Here's a Goodreads review from #booktuber Carla's Book Bits. $12.00, including postage, but if you buy the first book too I'll give you a two-for-$20 deal and eat the postage.

Little People, Big Guns-A quartet of Oklahoma little people (they generally don't like being called "midgets") face off against predatory badgers that killed one of their own, only to find a much greater evil at work. Inspired by a story from the British tabloid The Sunday Sport that actually went viral worldwide. Blurbed by horror writers Brian Keene and Wesley Southard. This reviewer on Amazon said it's hard to deliver on the promise of the blurb, but I did it. $10.00, including postage.

Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire-This is a collection of several of my published short stories and some that were never published individually. The book also includes some behind-the-scenes content, such as how the science fiction short story "Illegal Alien" was inspired by the 2006 "Si Se Puede" immigration protests and "Lord of the Dolorous Tower" was originally the prologue for a full novel. This reviewer on Amazon loved the world-building and attention to detail. $10.00, including postage.

The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2-The webzine Heroic Fantasy Quarterly bought my Viking-monster story "Nicor" back in 2013 and later bought the anthology rights for two years. The collection includes 22 stories, only one of which is mine. I've been selling this at conventions alongside Thing and later books for many years and still have a few copies left. $10.00, including postage.

I can be reached via e-mail at mquinn1984@gmail.com to work out mailing arrangements. Payment via PayPal or Facebook.

After-Action Report: Facebook Advertising for BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS

Once upon a time, I used Facebook to advertise this very blog and all was well, getting me 3,000 hits in a month. When the time came for me to promote my independent fantasy novel Battle for the Wastelands, I decided to go back to Facebook advertising. I created a new Facebook Page in order to use it, but owing to a clumsy and bizarre ad interface (the one I used years ago was much simpler), I ended up making two ad campaigns by accident. One was targeted too broadly (at pretty much everybody in the United States if I remember right) and although I did manage one sale, I shut it down pretty quickly to keep it profitable. The second campaign was more narrowly targeted, focusing on adventure fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, fantasy, steampunk, and e-books and didn't turn out very well. I spent $8.96 and made, as far as I know, no sales whatsoever before I shut it down.

After the failure of my initial Amazon ad campaigns, I decided to give Facebook another try. I went to my Facebook fan page and boosted a post pushing Battle that said it was free for the Kindle March 15 and March 16, although the ad campaign was slated to run for five days.

(By the way, using "boost post" on your Facebook page allows for much easier targeting than the ad interface. Furthermore, getting into Facebook ads through the Facebook page rather than going into the ads directly also allows access to a much easier interface. Perhaps Facebook has tweaked its operations again, or the easier ad campaigns I remember from years ago were done through my now-defunct "Matthew W. Quinn: Speculative Fiction Writer" page rather than directly in the ad system.)

For my free-book campaign, I targeted people in the United States interested in "steampunk" and "Western." I budgeted $50 for that ad campaign in hopes of moving a lot of freebies and thus getting a lot of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads in addition to helpfully providing people in coronavirus lock-down something entertaining to read.

And in that respect, my campaign succeeded massively. Although I also shared the link around to certain Facebook groups (skewing the numbers and also-boughts--for example, sharing in the Facebook group dedicated to author S.M. Stirling meant a lot of Shadows of Annihilation also-boughts), my ad reached 6,609 people and got 402 clicks. I moved 233 free e-books and at least five people on Goodreads marked it as "currently reading" or "to read," with one person giving it a rating (3/5 stars) on Goodreads 3/19/ If only five percent of the people who got the free e-book decide to review, that's 11 new reviews, something I very much need. During this period, I also got 470 Kindle Unlimited page-views, which comes out to be $2.68, even though since it was free on Amazon they didn't need to spend any money at all. And in the remaining days of the campaign, I also sold seven e-books ($19.18 royalties) and got 508 Kindle Unlimited page-views ($2.44). Although this combined $24.30 covered slightly less than half of the advertising cost, I'm hoping the additional reviews generated from the freebies  will set Battle up for long-term success.

Then I decided to see what Facebook advertising alone could do, avoiding the confounding variable of posting the freebie link in different Facebook groups, on Twitter, etc. After giving it a couple days for the sales to cool off (I still made one e-book sale, one paperback sale, and got twenty KU page-reads), I created two new Facebook ads. One was a retread of the original ad focusing on Western and steampunk, while the other was more ambitious, targeting people interested in fantasy books, dark fantasy (although Battle is not supernatural dark fantasy in the vein of Hellraiser, it's bleak and morally gray like A Game of Thrones), and Stephen King's Dark Tower series and The Gunslinger. After all, my sales pitch for Battle (which got me some print sales at Days of the Dead this past year) is "Dark Tower meets Game of Thrones." I led my ad copy with "Free on Kindle Unlimited" so people wouldn't think they were clicking on an ad for a video game or film, something I learned from one of my podcasts. I budgeted $150 for the first campaign, given its predecessor's success, and $60 for the second, not wishing to spend too much money overall and wanting to keep my ads fairly focused.

In terms of sales made, the campaign was a massive success. Although there are still some confounding variables (like a purchase that might have been from a member of my writing group reading my twice-a-month newsletter rather than through the Amazon campaign), I sold fifteen e-books ($41.10 royalties) and two print books ($5.81 royalties) between the ad's premiere on March 22 and its conclusion on March 28. In that same time period, there were 2,790 Kindle Unlimited pages read for a total of approximately $13.39. I also saw an uptick on sales rank for my first novel The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2, a collection I have a story in, on March 23 and March 24. The first ad campaign reached nearly 21,000 people and got 655 link clicks, while the broader second one reached a little over 9,000 people and got 247 link clicks.

However, the gross revenues came out to be roughly $60.39 against the $215 I ended up spending. That actually represents a much larger net loss than my Amazon campaigns, although I brought in around four times more gross revenue. Although paperback sales don't post until they actually ship (and the coronavirus situation means shipping books is less of a priority), I doubt I sold enough paperbacks to make a significant difference. Hopefully this campaign will generate some reviews once people have time to finish reading--after all, four people on Goodreads marked it as "currently reading" in the 3/22-28 range and I got one rating (4/5 stars) on 3/25.

In conclusion, although Facebook advertising is still a money-loser overall (at least if I've got just one book in the series), I was able to move a lot more copies than using Amazon's advertising platform. This knowledge will come in handy when I post my own edition of Thing and its forthcoming sequel The Atlanta Incursion, since those who buy Thing might in turn buy TAI. Once I get "Son of Grendel" posted and especially once the second Wastelands novel goes up, then Facebook advertising Battle again might be a good idea.

And if I decide to go with another Facebook ad campaign for Battle, I think I'll use the first ad but narrow it further. In addition to "steampunk" and "Western," I'll add "Kindle Unlimited" and "Kindle" to the keywords keep the focus on e-books. Also a lower budget so it's easier to cover the costs--the first campaign covered half its costs (when two of the five days it was making KU peanuts), while the second campaign only covered a little over a quarter.

Adventures in Amazon Advertising: BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS

One of the reasons that I independently published Battle for the Wastelands rather than continuing to submit to traditional publishers is that I wanted to use it as a test-bed for various book-marketing plans I've learned via writing podcasts like The Sell More Books Show and The Six-Figure Author (successor to The Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast). Although the coronavirus outbreak has scuppered my usual strategy of "sell books at lots of events and get lots of e-mails for the newsletter" (seriously, that's how I've made most of my money from 2017 when The Thing in the Woods came out until today), on the bright side that's given me some very strong incentive to try other methods.

However, even before the outbreak I ran a series of Amazon advertising campaigns using relevant keyword sets for searching like "post-apocalyptic," "western," and "steampunk." I also attached Battle as a sponsored product to similar books like William R. Forstchen's the Lost Regiment series, books like the Atomic Sea series by Jack Conner (who blurbed it), etc.

Results were mostly negative, although they did help me learn a bit about keywords that might be more successful. Here's a breakdown:

*One Amazon campaign using various derivatives of "western" like "western books for Kindle" and "western weird" got me three Battle sales for a total of $11.97 at a cost of $17.88. Battle is in the Kindle Unlimited program and I do remember upticks on Kindle Unlimited page-reads during this period, but I don't think it's enough to cover the difference. Plus $11.97 divided by the three copies is $3.99, the e-book list price and not my net profit, so the profitability gap is even larger. The "western weird" keyword set got me two sales totaling $7.98 for a spend of $0.51, which to quote the great Borat is "very nice," but "western books for Kindle" got me one sale for $8.60 spend, a substantial loss. And two variants of "Western Kindle" spent $8.77 between them for no sales at all.

*Another advertising campaign ate $28.73 for no sales whatsoever. That one was focused on post-apocalyptic fiction with military fiction as the follow-up. A keyword related to steampunk that was almost an afterthought spent $2.55 for no sales and that was the best performer in that campaign. 😭 This was the first ad campaign I straight up shut down to stop the bleeding money-wise.

I think the reason that happened is that post-apocalyptic readers prefer stories that take place immediately after the apocalypse or within a relatively short time (think The Walking Dead, Zombie Road, or various EMP-type books), while the apocalyptic event in the Wastelands world was centuries in the past. This is more secondary-world fantasy with an apocalyptic background--Lord of the Rings had the Fall of Numenor and the decline of its colonies/successor states like Arnor and Gondor in Middle-Earth as the background and my short story "Lord of the Dolorous Tower" has a comet impact the medieval-ish society remember as "the Hammer of the Heavens." Meanwhile, Wastelands has...well, I can't get into that for spoiler reasons. :)

*Another ad, with a focus on steampunk, netted one sale at a cost of $18.94. The keywords that got that sale are "steampunk fiction" (broad), while "steampunk fiction" (phrase) lost money and "steampunk books" lost lots of money.

*An ad campaign focused on steampunk books, in particular higher-selling ones, only got clicks on three of the six books and made no sales on those and straight up lost nearly $7 on "steampunk fiction" as a category.

I think there's at least one more ad campaign there, but I'm pretty sure you get the point. As a result of all this, I shut down all my Amazon ad campaigns, period. Although Kindle Unlimited pay-reads--and those did go up--does provide a bit of "fudge factor," the profitability gap was so large that there is no way hundreds of pages at half a cent each was covering them.

In some discussions online about Amazon and Facebook advertising, someone I've talked with said that AMS ads make a lot more sense if you've got a series rather than just one book. That way, even if only 10% of people who click buy your book, if a bunch of those go on to buy later books, that ad is a lot more likely to pay for itself. This bodes well for my planned related novella "Son of Grendel," which will probably be out sometime in the spring once I make some revisions and get it formatted.

And if I do give Amazon ads another spin before I have another Wastelands story out, "Western weird" might be the way to go. 😎