The New You! Or rather Us!

Right so not really the new you. More the new us. Big happenings over at Ravania, we've recently tripled the size of our art department, (which means we went from 1 to 3 art people). Woe is me, this means I have to update the website AGAIN. I mean it seems like only yesterday that I gave the book section a facelift, and if you haven't seen that yet, you should totally do that, it looks sweet.

You know what I hadn't done only yesterday though? Update this blog. Turns out it's been about a year. I guess I got a little self conscious. Back in the bad old days when the only content we had to share on the Facebook page was blog posts, it seemed like I was posting a blog post every week. 

I remember quite clearly that after sharing one said post, our like count went down by 1, and my post had a negative feed back in the insight. It did not take a genius to figure out what had happened. I suppose when you sign up for an entertainment company, and all you see is blog posts over and over again, it could be a little hard to take.

I just hadn't realized it had been a year since my last post. This came up at our last Ravania Meeting, where I was commenting on the fact that the blog section of the website was essentially useless. To this, Patrick commented that he'd actually been updating his. I didn't believe him, so I called up his blog on my phone right there in the middle of the meeting. Not only had he been updating his blog, but he'd been posting some really neat art and stuff. I was clearly and thoroughly wrong. 

I suppose that's what inspired me to dust this thing off. It'll probably get a lot more interesting too, because we've just got so dang much going on. The amount of progress we've made from last year to now is astonishing. The website is growing and so is our following. Now we've just got to keep on track so we don't let all of you down.

As for what am I doing? Right now I'm working on a re-release of Wayward Guardian. The original, though a good story, showed off my staggering lack of editorial prowess. There are comma's everywhere, and there their and they're scattered almost interchangeably through out. Mercifully I've come a long way, but not only that, I've found a new grammer checking suite which is working marvelously. When I plugged in the first 4 chapters, it came up with 318 errors. I was not amused.

Along with this re-release will be a shiny new cover from the man who did the original. Like me, he's come a long way, and is eager to give it a face-lift that will be more eye-catching and dynamic (is that a word you can use when describing art?) than ever. I'm excited. 

I'm also excited by this new found energy we've got. The fresh blood in the company is really helping us grow. We are humbled that all of you are here to see this, and we hope you stick around. The best is yet to come!

Johnny Mead, this time it's personal.

Johnny Mead has been released on the world.

You can see Vance's reaction to this going on, here, and you can get the book in question, here. I mean, sure there's some other stories in the book, and I'm sure they're all quite important and well written by my fellow co-conspirators, but really, all you need to know is that some character named Johnny Mead is in it and that I wrote him into existence.

Jack Lantern never did know what hit him. His first book was written and done, and the rough draft of the second too, before Johnny was more than a little spark. See I was reading that Second draft of Jack when I happened to watch a episode of a show called Gravity Falls that had something called a Jack-O-Mellon. The Jack-O-Mellon was basically a watermelon carved like a Jack-O-Lantern. Upon seeing that, and having been recently been reminded of Jack Lanterns pumpkin head, I had a image flash through my head of a character in the Jack universe who was a little like jack, but... different. A bit of an oddball.

It was with this image in my mind that Johnny began to take shape. I told Vance that I wanted to write a spoof for the Jack Universe and immediately got to work. I wrote half the story in a single night, and wrote the other half a few days later, it was a whirlwind of intensity, with the character of Johnny practically writing himself. He was simply delightful!

I read the story out loud to the Smith brothers of Ravania, and their laughter was music to my ears the whole time.

I really like that kind of music. It's addictive, and seeing as I was in the process of writing Guardian of Isolation at the time, it wasn't a kind of music I was getting a lot of. It felt really good to take a comedy break.

Now the funny thing, that story isn't the one that's in this newest book. No no, that story will be out in the next volume of Tales by Lantern Light. This book got a new story, a kind of proper introduction to the wonderful madness that is Johnny.

You see I wrote the first story for the second Jack book (which isn't even out yet!), and then since Vance liked it so much, had to go write a new one for the first Jack book.

I really like this second story too. It's a blast.

I am wonderfully excited to be able to play in Vance's sandbox, especially with such a chaotic force such as Johnny Mead. I look forward to doing more of it in the future, but for now, you should give it a look. That's Tales by Lantern Light. Find it on this page.

That's it for now friends. Wizard OUT!

The two paths to reviews.

So, bit of a strange week for me here. Guardian of Isolation has been out for a little while now, and I've been trying to get ready to do something special for it. My thoughts had been focusing on Wayward Guardian and in doing another free promo for it in an effort to hook people and drive interest toward Guardian of Isolation.

Now I've done a free promo before. I learned a lot from my run, and then I had the chance to do another promo for my friend Vance Smith for his book series, Jack Lantern. This second promo I did for Vance went a heck of a lot better than my first one for Wayward did. Whereas I got 180 downloads for mine, he got 1800. I chalk it up to lessons learned of course. But you've heard this story before.

Back to the Guardian series. One of the hurdles with being both and independent author, and with doing a free promo, is at any given time, a large number of other small authors are trying to do the same thing you can. You need some way to stand out. The accepted wisdom on that is to get reviews on your book. That's a bit of a viscous cycle, because if you don't have reviews, no one wants to read your book, and if no one reads your book, no one reviews it.

Bit of a problem isn't it?

So how do you over come that? Over time you'll accumulate a certain quantity of reviews based just on sheer numbers, but you can't get those numbers if people don't want to take a risk on your book. Those first five reviews are the hardest, and arguably the most important.

The reason for that importance is that most book websites won't run your promo if you don't have 5 for more positive reviews on your book. But of course, if you can't run the promo, how can you get the reviews?

Two methods are open. Book bloggers, and paid reviews.

Book bloggers are fickle bunch, and get massive waves of review requests from all the authors that find themselves in a situation such as I do. They can't, and won't, read everything, and unless you are really compelling or (surprise surprise) have a few reviews already saying it's not a massive waste of time, they just won't. Or you'll have to wait forever. But book bloggers do have an advantage. They're unbiased. Well most of the time anyway. A review from a book blogger that says you're book was good, feels good, because you know they actually enjoyed it. It means more.

However, paid reviews have their own advantage, you're guaranteed a review, and usually within a time frame. But I've run into the uncomfortable fact that you can't be guaranteed an honest review, just a quick one. I had the pleasure of working with one nice reviewer, and I could tell by what she wrote on her reviews that she was an honest reviewer, but unfortunately, she stopped taking reviews. It really was a shame. I've found it difficult finding a paid reviewer that feels impartial and honest. I'm hopeful that I may find some, because the quick turn around time is very useful when you're trying to plan a marketing blitz.

I've decided that I might well start doing my own reviews on this blog, as I kind of feel it's a do as I do situation. We'll see. I'll start small, after all, I'd rather write my own stories than reviews.

Till next time, Wizard out.

Assorted madness

Good day readers. The Wizard reporting in!

I realize you haven't heard from me in some time, just been working on some lovely little writing projects. We've got a action packed year coming up for Ravania Entertainment. Of course by action packed, I just mean full of books.

Genesis Project is going to be flying off the ground this year, lots of books by the big cheese Aaron Smith, as well as many short story collections. GP has long been out flag ship line, but we've not had the books to back it up. We've had a lot of learning involved in this thing, and it's been a long road, but this year, we make it shine.

This is doubly exciting for me, and this is how I twist it back to me on my blog, because my fantasy novel is set in the GP universe. I am very excited for this book. It's all written, and mostly edited, I just need a cover. Well that, and the big cheese is going over it for me. It's going to rock.

In other news, my dear friend Vance is working on a story blog, it's called the Wish charmer saga. You can check it out here. It is shaping up nicely, and I really liked the format, so I've decided to one of my own.

Mine will be a comedic story about a mad scientist down on his luck. Hilarity will ensue. At least it will if I have any talent left. That'll be launching near the end of April, look forward to it!

The next thing on my list here is the great Johnny Mead. Johnny is a character in the Jack Lantern universe (Also done by vance, also totally awesome, check it here) who has been a long time waiting to see the light of day, but friends, that day will soon be upon us! Johnny will grace your lives with his overwhelming presence and will finally stop pestering me about it!

Well, I'll let you all know when that happens. For now, Wizard out!

To do: Make a to do list.

So as you may or may not have noticed, Guardian of Isolation is in actual fact, not out yet. This is disappointing. Mostly to me, but I'm sure you've all been at the edge of your seats in anticipation.

Why the delay you may ask? It's simple really, I am apparently really bad at staying on task. Though mercifully, that isn't really the whole problem here. No, in this case it's more like I forgot what all needed doing, so I kept thinking that the finish line was close than it was.

This is a lesson that can be applied to life too, it's a very good idea to realize just what it is you are trying to do, and all the steps that are needed to get there. Seeing as I've only published one book, and that I wasn't as worried about building up Ravania at the same time, I might be forgiven for not really known what all I had to do. This time around, I've got more on my plate, because I've got promotions, and advertisements, and all kinds of good stuff to go along with the release of the book.

In the future, what this means is that I'll have to keep a to do list so I don't get carried away in my belief that I'm almost there. The to do list also has another bonus. As I check things off the list, I can look at it and be reminded that I am in fact getting stuff done, which is a huge boon when you want to keep moving.

Anyway, that's all I had to say tonight.

This is the Wizard, Wizarding out.

Guardian of Isolation.

Hello mostly humans!

I thought I'd drop by today and give you an update on my next book to come out. This is the sequel to Wayward Guardian, called Guardian of Isolation. It'll be the second book in the series, following an all new cast of characters, with a couple of old faces still showing up. It'll take place 40 years after the events of the first book, and will hopefully help to set the stage for the last two books.

I feel as though Wayward Guardian is kind of like Star Wars Episode 4, A New Hope, in that it's written in such a way that it could just be its own stand alone thing and be just fine right there. Of course, observant readers will notice that unlike George Lucas, I have opted NOT to wait to see if it was a success before releasing the second one.

What can I say, I'm impatient.

I'll be posting the cover images on the Ravania Facebook page shortly, giving you all a real sneak peek. I'm really happy with how the images turned out .

Now I've just got to get cracking on book three, Guardian Elect. Very excited for that one too, I just hope I'm up to the story telling challenge.

I'll be doing a special promo on Wayward Guardian in anticipation for the launch of Guardian of Isolation, so keep your eyes open! I'll announce that on the facebook page too.

Until next time, keep on keeping on. Wizard say what? WHAT!

Wizard's Writing Update.

You know, given the enormity of what we're doing over at Ravania, it's amazing we don't just all fall over and cry (well more than we do anyway). It's pretty dang ambitious. I mean, it's not every day you just go 'Hey, I want to make a entertainment company!'. Maybe it is for you, but it certainly wasn't an every day experience for me.

So what's on the horizon at the moment? I can't really speak for the rest of the lads, but I can speak for myself. I've got a lot I need to do. This is both a blessing and a curse.

First up, I've got the sequel to Wayward Guardian, called Guardian of Isolation which I'm putting the finishing touches on. The cover is looking great, and more colorful. There were a few complaints by some parties about the last one, but as I've come a long way as an author since then, so too has Austin come a long way as an artist. I think this new one looks super awesome, and I think I already addressed the issue of covers in a earlier post. I liked the first one, and I still like the first one. The image choice was ripped right out of the book. The new cover for the new book also comes right from the book, so it's really cool to see it in living colour.

Of course, it just means I want to see it as a movie now, but one step at a time.

There's going to be at least another two books in the series, and I've already started plotting and writing, they'll be called Guardian Elect, and Guardian of Desolation respectively. No spoilers from those titles, nope, none at all. I think you'll all be quite interested in the direction I take it. You might be expecting something a little more mainstream than you get. Ultimately, I know where this story is going now, and that's cool. Still some details and loose ends I need cleaning up. However, in the case of the loose ends, I may just leave a few of them loose for short story opportunities. Anyway, Guardian of Isolation should be out by the end of the year.

On the fantasy front, we're working on a new fantasy series set in the Genesis Project Universe, only really really really far back in the past. I get the opportunity to help shape some of the almost mythical villains in the GP universe, which as proven to be really awesome. Aaron Smith, the big cheese himself, has been working with me to make this all work, and I'm really excited for how this book is turning out. Got a lot of editing to do though, and it'll need a cover. I've got someone in mind for the cover, but of course, I need to see if she'd be up for it. I rather suspect she will be. The title of this book with be Azra of the Burning Sands. I've already got the second book plotted out, and it's called World Aflame. Haven't got much further than that. I know where the story needs to go, I just don't know how long it's going to take to get there.

I've got a more modern fantasy series I'm working on, which is plotted out, and about 1/3rd the way written, called Gateways: War for the Void. I'm still debating how I'm going to launch this one. I was playing with the idea of doing it as serial, so smaller e-books at a tiny cost. It's almost tailor made for that, and it could be an interesting experiment on my part.

And finally, I've got a more light-hearted sci-fi series I'm working on, but I'll have to let you know more about that later, as it's still very much in it's infancy.

Yeah. You can see why crying is always an option. In a situation like this, it's vitally important to that you maintain consistency, and remember to prioritize your items. You've got to keep getting something done, even if you don't feel like it.

Until next time, Wizard out!

Value of Experince.

Okay, so I've been pretty hard on all the pay up front services in the self publish industry. I see someone trying to charge 500 dollars for a book edit, and it just kinda makes me see red. And that's not just because that kind of price tag would make my budget have a massive deficit.Yeah, I've thought that it's just kinda... wrong to charge that kind of money to new authors. For the most part, new authors don't usually have that kind of money just hanging around, and there are far more services that a 'good' book needs other than just editing. As soon as you add up all the possible costs you could see in trying to publish a book and do it well, it wouldn't surprise me if you had a 2000 dollar price tag.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the traditional publishing industry tends to take care of all that, and then give the author an advance to boot. Granted, this is because they are somewhat willing to take a risk that the book might not be a success, and they may have to end up eating the difference. However, it's not so great for the author either, because if said book isn't successful, unless they have years of writing behind them, they'll find it that much harder to get that kind of help again.

To those who want to maintain their creative Independence though, they have to pay for all the services themselves, or if they are broke, do them themselves. The problem with doing it all themselves, is they usually have no idea what they're doing. I know I didn't. But the price of those professional services can drive the authors to desperation, and so we end up with many books which are poorly formatted, or poorly editing, or any number of other preventable things. Bad writing, on the other hand, isn't something you can really hire someone else to fix.

But there is of course hope. If you do something enough times, you get better at it. This is one reason why said experts charge so much, unfortunately, the authors don't know that. They don't yet know if that service offer is worth the 50-500 dollars asked. In the mean time, they must muddle through themselves, if they can't afford the bill. I found myself in that situation when it came to book promotion. I tried to promo my own book, and got about 180 downloads over a 5 day free e-book promotion. Now, taking what I learned from that, I have done a promotion for Jack Lantern, by Vance Smith, and at 8 AM on the first day, it had already got 172 downloads. In the first 6 hours of the day, I've almost smashed the download record of my last promo. I'd call that some experience.

So yeah, if you find yourself being your own agent, just remember, if you do enough of something (and actively try to learn how to do it better), you'll get better at it. Once you've hit a certain point, maybe you'll even be able to hire a pro like me. Then you'll be rocking!

Till next time, this is the part time Wizard signing off.

EDIT: As of 9PM today, a full 15 hours later, and the download count is at 804. The author and I are both quite shocked at this considerably more potent promo. I'm very excited to see what I can do with the next few books we've got coming up on promotion. 

Taking it one step at a time.

So, last month saw me attempt a free promo on my book Wayward Guardian. My prep work leading up to it was about a 7 dollar face book ad, and submitting my book to about 10 e-book promo websites. Out of this rather paltry effort, I saw 144 downloads and one reader who left a glowing review (though he did take about a month and half to leave it). Considering up until that point, my book had been read by maybe 10 people, of which 6 had actually bought copies, I consider it a success.

Well I'm hoping to blow that success out of the water. Next up on our Ravania promo run is Jack Lantern. Jack Lantern is a book series written by Vance Smith, and it is amazingly good. It's targeted at a younger audience than my book was, but it is by no means beneath an adult reader. I for one loved it when I first laid my eyes on it, and I'm not just saying that cause I like Vance. It's writing is genuinely impressive, and the characters feel alive.

My plan for this one is to have some reviews already in place, courtesy of some book review sites out there, submit it to more sites, and have a big ad on Facebook. Where I submitted my promo to 10, I've submitted his to about 100. Where I had no reviews, I want him to have 2-4 (though time might be working against me on that one). Where I had a 7 dollar ad, I want him to have a 20 dollar ad. I want to do what I did, but I want to do it better, and I want to do it more.

When I did my promo, I didn't know what I was doing. But by doing the promo, I learned. Now that I learned, I'm apply that learning to this, to make this promo even better than mine. This story deserves readers, and I've let Vance know that too, much to his continued discomfort (poor boy doesn't take praise well).

I'll be going over the results of this promo, and seeing how much of a difference my far more ambitious plans do. With any luck, when I do a promo on my book again, I'll have much better results.

Until next time, Ta ta!

Switching gears, and the art of getting things done.

So I find myself in a bit of a situation. I have finished writing the sequel to my book 'Wayward Guardian' and I was rather looking forward to resuming work on my next project, which was a fantasy book which I had thought was only about half done. Turns out it was more than half done. So now I don't have a project on the go.

I discovered this while I was doing some quick edits on the new project in anticipation of writing in it again. While I was doing this, and looking at the rest of the plot that I had worked out, I realized that what I had written actually came very close to a story in and of itself, and that what was left to write, could very well stand as separate book as well, with a few modifications.

Now when I say separate, I mean in a physical sense. The stories are still one and the same, and the second book would be a continuation of the first, it's just that what was originally half a planned book actually has all the making of a full and good story in and off itself. So I decided I'd just split the book into two.

This had the advantage of meaning I now have two books waiting to be published, pending editing. However, as stated before, it means what I thought was going to be my next project for the foreseeable future, now isn't.

So what to do?

I could always write book three in the Guardian saga, but I want to let that wait a bit, let the juices flow. I've got a good idea where the story is going, but it needs some more details.

Instead, I decided I work on the scripts for the graphic novel/web comic series I will be doing with my good friend Austin Shurtliff. We've been wanting to do this for some time, but the timing hasn't been right, and we weren't sure how to go forward.

We had a nice long chat about it some weeks ago, and I think we're ready to get rocking. I'll be doing the writing, and he'll be taking care of the illustrations. Personally, I think he has the harder job, though the writing for this is proving a lot more challenging for me than I had anticipated. I'm hoping to fit the script writing into my schedule, while maintaining some book based writing.

So for the next few weeks, it will be editing, and script writing. Once the editing is done, then it'll switch to script writing, and book writing.

How exciting.

Remember, you can keep up today on all our projects over at the Ravania page. 

Editing, and the art of quality.

Mmmm good day. It's been a busy one for me. I've gone to job orientation for a new job (Got to pay them bills!) to make up the difference while I kick everything else into high gear. I've done my first draft edit of about 5 chapters of my book. I've written a chapter in another book, and decided how to proceed with said book.

Of all of those things, I think I enjoyed the editing the least. I really don't like editing. If I could do without it, I would. However, I cannot do without it. Unedited, my writing is horrible, my grammar is weak, and my story telling is strained. My rough draft is always a mess. You may have even noticed some evidence of this on my blogs. I try to catch it all, but it's a big job.

Good editing can really set a story apart. I was browsing through the latest free kindle books on promotion by Amazon, and reading their reviews, and I was struck by the common thread in many of the reviews of these self published books. That thread was the thread of many obvious mistakes. One review mentioned that the writer had completely neglected to put quotations around his dialog. So the only way to tell the difference between between characters talking and descriptive paragraphs was the inclusion of the occasional he said, she said. I of course chose to download this, but I haven't had the chance to see for myself yet.

I suppose me downloading it suggests it may have just been a clever marketing ploy, but I find that unlikely.

It occurred to me, that it could well be that the only thing keeping these people from being really big would be the strength of their editing. For many of these stories, almost everyone would say 'It's a great story!' or 'It's full of engaging characters.' but then it would get to the rest and these same reviewers would say 'Full of typos.'. Of course, some reviewers never noticed at all, but the ones that that did were numerous enough to hurt their ratings.

I know how hard it is! I really do, if it wasn't for the lads at Ravania, I would be a sorry mess with my writing. We thankfully have something of a support group, we each bear the burden of editing. I find I can read my work as many times as I want and still won't see what I need to see, because I see what I meant to write, not what I actually write. Add a fresh set of eyes that weren't involved in the writing of the story, and all the missed typos start coming to life.

That said, there is a difference between a few missed words, and typos on every page. If you try to hit perfection every time, you'll never actually finish a book. Just be thorough, take the time and effort, and do the best you can. Remember, the keen eyed will find typos even in New York Times best sellers.

To any new authors, or even established indie authors, I'd recommend passing your works to as many people as you feel comfortable with. Try and priorities those who are willing to actually look and not just read. I pick my Father as one of my readers because if there is a misspelled word, he will find it. The man once found a typo in a crossword puzzle, much to his frustration. He doesn't do so good on story content, but I have other people in my reader group to look for those. Different eyes see different things. The more eyes that go over your work, the more they'll see, provided, again, there the kind of people who will look rather than just read.

Remember, if you don't try to set a standard for yourself, you'll never stand out above the crowd.

Till next time! 

Blogging about a Blog, Indies Unlimited

So I read a post from Indies Unlimited. You can find the post I am about to talk about, here. I'd also recommend checking out the blog in general, as it does seem interesting. I've been poking at it, and especially under their section about submissions, I was caught by their mission, stated, "We want to dispel the myth that Indie books aren’t as good as other books." Pretty good for a mission. I mean, it sounds like part of our mission over at Ravania.

So anyway, I was reading this post. The blogger, Becky Wicks, was talking about her switch from a traditional publisher to indie publishing, and her experience therewith.

I was struck by a few things, first, when she switched, she realized that indie authors need to be their own marketing team. Yes! Complete agreement there. As she said later in the post, no one will be as passionate about your story than you. Even if you have a great story with all the makings of a best seller, if no one knows it exists, it won't mater one bit. You have to get out there, you have to make your presence known.

This battle is a difficult one to fight, and an almost cyclical one, as I touched on in my last post, but it's one which can be fought, and one which you can make progress with. Thankfully, as she listed off all the outside help she had to get, I realized that between the five of us at Ravania, and our various circles of influence, we've got most of those jobs covered. For the most part though, we're all pretty inexperienced in our various responsibilities, but we will improve.

The other thing she mentioned was how the magic point for getting some traction and seeing good results was about 5 books. Under our banner, we've got about 3 right now, with another 3 set to release by years end (ish). Between us, we've got that number hit, but individually, we've got some time to go yet. I'm hoping to leverage our combined strength as a way to move our brand forward.

She also mentioned something about having a good mailing list. Still working on that.

Lots of work to do. Lots and lots.

That just makes it exciting.

Till next time people!

Reviewing the Review system.

Good day readers. I regret to inform you that I am going to be away for week, so you'll have to be without the enjoyment of my words for at least that long, well unless I can find a moment it write, but I don't want that kind of pressure. Hopefully my co-conspirator Vance will pick up the slack in the mean time.

I got a little frustrated again this week. When you are a new author, it very hard to get traction. To get into any of the good book promotional circles, you need reviews, to get reviews, you need people who will read your book, to get readers, you need promotion, and reviews so they know it's worth their time. It is a viscous angry circle.

The most obvious thing to do then, is to pick one thing and try to break the cycle at that one point. Or rather, not break the cycle, but start a positive cycle where a negative one once read. The point that is usually chosen as the entry point is reviews. I'm no different in the this regard, I see that as the point to pick too.

The problem, however, is the whole 'getting a review' thing. The really prestigious ones usually charge money, and when you're a starving artist, with emphasis on starving, it's really hard to justify any kind of expense. The free review sites are usually so swamped by the hordes of other authors who just desperately want a chance to prove themselves. It's hard to have your submission seen when it's lost in a mountain of other books. There's only so many hours in a day, and the free sites, by virtue of being free, can't really afford to pay a reviewer.

Now the best kind of review, in my mind, is from readers themselves. The problem with that, is readers don't want to have their time or money wasted. If you leave a negative impression on them, it'll linger. To make matters worse, the level of quality between those hordes of authors and their works varies wildly. Some have the potential to be the next new york times best seller, whereas others, if writing were like American idol, would be sent home crying by Simon Cowell.

The thing they all share in common though is that no one knows about them. No one knows they exist. Their books languish with a ranking on amazon with entirely too many digits behind it. Not many people intentionally browse the lower levels of the book rankings looking for books, and this is in part because no one wants to waste time or money.

If a book has no reviews, it's essentially a gamble as to what you'll get, and if you have to spend money, then it's a gamble most people don't want to take. This is particularly true because there are plenty of books written by known authors that are quite a lot of fun to read. Why take a risk on a no body, when the somebody does what you want, and you know they do what you want?

The method I've decided to use to try and break the cycle is simple, and has been done before. The first thing I'm doing is offering a free promotion for my e-book. From september 4 to the 8 my e-book will be free on amazon. My hope for this is that as it will eliminate the money concerns when it comes to reader risk. Hopefully some people will be willing to take the time risk, and garner me some reviews. Once I have those under my belt, it'll be that much easier to promote, and should translate into more readers for my next book. We shall see if it works!

The trouble with Covers, and some assorted ramblings.

So I was running the 'book review' circuit today. Oh boy what a treat that is. I mean, obviously the best way to get reviews is organically, but if you have no reviews then the quality of your book may come across as suspect.

This does have a negative impact on sales.

I decided that I needed to put my not inconsiderable stubborn determination towards solving. However, after about... three hours... or so, I have now grown bored of this pursuit. This unfortunately means that my stubborn determination is not what it used to be. That said, it was really an adventure and I have learned many valuable lessons.

First and foremost, there is a resource for almost everything you could think of. Everyone has a service to offer, and really I myself am no exception, what with my endless promotion of Ravania Entertainment. The problem you run into though is most services require something in exchange. Things are in rather short supply for me, as I am still in the 'starving artist' stage of my rise to fame. That's not to say I resent this state of being. Far from it, every adventure starts off small, and every journey will have it's challenges. More importantly than that, I am also a capitalist at heart, and I understand the value of ones time. These services don't do themselves!

The second thing I learned is that in the self-publishing world, cover services are ripe with options. It's easy to just pick a template and a picture from the cover design services and whip up a slick cover for your new book. I, unfortunately for them, find most of these such covers to be... well... without personality. Where is the love and care in template? Thankfully I have access to a few talented artists who have thus far been eager for the challenge of creating a cover.

Double thankfully, Ravania Entertainment itself has it's own very talented art guy who has made most of our covers and all of the art assets on our website here. We are truly blessed to have him under our banner. I mean he made our banner, he'd better jolly well be under it!

Anyway, back to the covers. As I was saying, I found most of the covers offered by these services to be lacking in personality. However, technically speaking, they do all look good, and the uniform styles do tend to draw a buyers eye. They see them as similar and it gives comfort. I myself suffer from this particular syndrome. You give me a planet and a spaceship on your cover, and BAM, I'm interested. So it's entirely possible that our lovely hand crafted covers might be doing us a disservice because they look so different from the average cover you find online. But just you wait, when we have 20+ books, we'll have the advantage, no longer will it be a detriment, it'll just be another reminder that it's a Ravania Entertainment book. It'll become a calling card!

Ultimately, everything we do is part of building our brand and making us unique and different. We don't want to be like the mainstream. We want to make our own dang stream!

This is part time wizard Arlin Fehr signing off. I'm outta here!

How to beat a venue mismatch, the Ravania way.

Good day children! And by children I mean (mostly) adults. And by good day, I mean hey look I've written a new post.

A long time ago, I thought to myself, hey you know what would be pretty sweet? Having some of my short stories appear in literary magazines, that would be pretty sweet.

Cue furious writing at that point.

I made up a few short stories, which was a bit of a shock to the boys at Ravania, as up until that point, it was happily assumed I was incapable of writing anything under forty thousand words.

A bit of an aside right now to explain that, the first ever story I finished start to finish was one I wrote for Aaron Smith's Genesis Project series, called 'Sons of an Empire.'. The instructions he gave me was to write a short story. But at the time, I had a tenuous grasp on the concept of short story. As I started writing it, and handing off page after page for his review, dear Aaron noticed that I may not have understood the instructions. Rather than stopping me and saying that I didn't understand the nature of the task, he let me continue, compelled by the strength of the story I was writing. It ended up clocking in at about half the size of one of his normal novels. Not a short story by any stretch. Later on, I decided to write another, to try and redeem myself, and it also ended up being about half the size of one of his novels again.

Happily this ended up not being a bad thing, as we will be slapping the two stories together and calling it a Genesis project book. Look for that at some point in the future.

Anyway, all of the above meant that I was then ridiculed for being incapable of writing a 'short' story. I never really thought it was much of a handicap, it just meant I had a lot of story to tell. However, when I decided that I want to try my hand at getting a story in a magazine, imagine my discomfort at seeing the rather limited word counts.

Rather than let this stop me, I learned how to write short stories. I wrote... about three I believe, and started submitting them around, however the result was almost without fail, 'We like your writing, but we don't think it matches our venue'. This happened with what I thought were clearly matching venues! Now that did frustrate me a little.

So what does one do when his writing doesn't match the venue he wants it in? Well if your part of Ravania Entertainment, which I am, you make your own venue.

Turns out the boy's have been cooking up the idea of doing our own literary magazine of sorts, now this will digital thing, as we are a rather small group, but it will be a way for us to show samples of our writing to potential readers and let them get a taste of us before they throw down some money on books or sweet merchandise. (both available here. :P) I for one am extra excited by this, and am also excited to be able to dust off my stories with no venue, and make new stories for it.

Now I'm not allowed to say anything about the date in which we plan to launch this, but let it suffice that I believe it will be worth the wait.

Thanks for reading dear children, and by children I mean (mostly) adults. Though if you are a child, that's good too.

All's quiet on the northeren front

Some exciting progress to be had by I and the boys at Ravania Entertainment. We had a little ol' sit down the other day and talked about the things we wanted to do and see in the near future. One such item was the creation of a website.

Right now we've got a Facebook page, which you can find here if you haven't already found it, and you know, it works pretty good for what we use it for. We've been using it to post our regular comic updates, our book launch announcements, and generally anything we may feel like posting.

All in all, it's a pretty neat little facebook page, and I think we're using it pretty good. However, it's not every organized. After we post something, and a suitably long time passes, whatever we wanted to draw your attention to is quickly lost in the torrent of updates. So, you know, not ideal.

Thus we decided that a website would be pretty swish. We had one once before, but it was focused on Genesis Project. Genesis Project is a fantastic universe created by our glorious leader, Aaron Smith, but in the time since the old website to today, we've come up with many other intellectual properties and now need a little more than just the one site. Thus is born our soon to be launched new website.

The new site will serve as a central hub for all of our endeavors, the one stop shop if you will, which will whisk you away to which ever part of our tiny empire you may wish to visit. I'm very excited to show this thing off, as I made it myself.

Well that's a bit untrue, I had a little help, namely the Go Daddy web page builder. That thing is seriously slick. I made the page in a day. Granted, I can almost guarantee you I'll be making changes to it after it launches, but it was really easy all in all which was cool.

I just wish it was ready to go now, cause then I'd just link it right now. But alas, I am waiting on a single picture. Oh well.

Till next time!

We got our first review for one of our books over at Ravania Entertainment today.

It was a glowing review. 5 out of 5 stars. I have to say, I am very pleased, although not surprised by it. Poor Vance, the author of this particular book, has been a little more surprised by it. He even went so far as to say he was a little embarrassed by it. The poor chap just doesn't have the same faith in his writing as I do. But I think I've got enough to spare the both of us. I'll make him famous if I have to drag him into the spot light.

This positive start to our endeavors is quite a boon in my mind. As we launch the second book his series, I can use the glowing review as a piece of bait to get people to review the second book, and the first book if they passed on it the first time.

Right now my approach to marketing is really a item by item basis. Each item stands on it's own merits, and each item is treated separately. But that will change. Oh yes it will change. In one of our meetings, the Brothers Smith and I discussed the various brand strategies and agreed to a corporate brand idea. The idea in this case is that we have one brand, that being Ravania Entertainment, under which all our products are created. The advantage to this idea is that as we start to become a force to reckon with, then the mere fact that it has our brand on it will make the products worth giving a look.

Of course on the flip side, it also means that if we have a product that really flubs, it hurts our reputation. That said, I don't think that's going to be a problem. We've got a very talented bunch, and I don't think we'll be writing anything bad. Well, with one notable exception, but you'll see what that is later on. And it will be completely awesome. Bad, but awesome. Awesomely bad. Like a B-movie in book form.

Anyway, as part of our new branding strategy, I find myself trying to tie in my marketing ideas so that they grow the central brand and not just the individual products. Part of this is the need to have more products, and man are we going to be doing that! According to the big cheese himself, Aarron 'The Big Cheese' Smith, by the end of the year we will have no less then 16 different books published and ready to roll. By that point I won't be selling books, I'll be selling a catalog of books!

I am excited by this so very much. It will be a lot of work, but man will it be worth it. See that's the thing, I always thought I was a bad salesmen. Never liked sales in the least, but it turns out that's not quite the case. All I've needed is a product I believe in. And I believe in us. I believe in Ravania Entertainment.

So until next time, keep on keeping on!

So, this blog has been more or less inactive and underutilized. It first started it's life as a place for a very anxious younger me to use as a pulpit for the cause of common sense! If you don't believe me, you can check the archive.

But that's not what I want to use it for anymore. I don't need a pulpit. I just need a wall to scribble on.

So I'm now part of something really awesome. It's called Ravania Entertainment. I and my friends the Brothers Smith, are going to be building a entertainment company from the ground up. We're just starting and I am already super excited for what we've got on the horizon.

This is going to be a prime part of my life for some time to come. We've got plans, we've got lots of plans. My part in the grand design is that of a PR person and the Marketer. I'm in charge of making sure people know we exist!

I've already learned so much more about the world of marketing in the last few months then I ever picked up in years. Already my mind has started to look at the world differently.

That's a interesting thing about me. I can know nothing about a subject, but once I throw myself at it and start to pick it up, everything just starts to become so clear and my way at looking at things changes forever. Once, when I was a purchaser, I started to realize the difficulty of moving goods across country, and the logistics of supply and demand. Ever since then, I've tried to dissect supply chains to see how they work.

So the possibility of cracking the world of marketing and getting yet another window into the wonderful world of commerce is exiting to me.

Any-dang-way, this blog is now going to be my scribble wall as I go down this awesome new path. I'll post on my personal musings, though far less preachy then the three archive posts. I may even delete those posts and just have them live on my hard drive from here on in. (Now deleted forever HA! Aug 2014). It's not good to mix and match things like a personal blog and a preachy blog.

So till next time,

J.A.G. Fehr

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