20 years a full-time author...

The book that launched the career in 1999

...or I might have called this post, 20 years of huge highs and some pretty deep lows. Sounds like life in general doesn't it? But it's true, it wasn't precisely 20 years ago today, that I started to play with the big boys and girls in New York City, but close enough. My first big novel, As Catch Can (now The Innocent: A Jack "Keeper" Marconi PI Thriller ), was published by Delacorte mostly to a lot of yawns but to stellar reviews in the Boston Herald, The New York Post, Publishers Weekly, and many others. It was a tumultuous time to say the least with Slick Willy doing the deed in the White House with his young intern (an intern I would later meet while on a train from NYC to Albany). The Internet was new and still in dial-up mode, and I was only 34 years old and a relative pup in this business. They gave me $250K or thereabouts so I partied like a rock star, got divorced, and lost it all. Every penny and then some. I don't regret a minute of that time. It was magical (Catch the original Times Union article about the deal).

But it also served as a maturing experience, since the years that followed were not exactly easy. It wasn't until 2007 that I was able to buy back the rights to not only As Catch Can, but also its follow up, Godchild. The books were republished in 2011, with As Catch Can becoming The Innocent, and along with the help of a new digital eReader device called The Kindle, their combined sales reached about 150,000 units in six week's time. The Innocent stood its ground in the Amazon Overall Bestseller List at Number 2 for a few weeks, it's only barrier, The Lincoln Lawyer which was a major motion picture at the time. The books were then resold to Thomas & Mercer and that's where they remain today.

Then came The Remains, which went gangbusters, and it too was picked up by Thomas & Mercer, and then came other deals with publishers like Polis Books and Down & Out Books. I'd win the Thriller Award for Best Paperback Original for Moonlight Weeps in 2015. That book would also win the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback from the Private Eye Writers of America. Then came major articles in the New York Times, Business Insider, Publishers Weekly, Suspense Magazine, and appearances on the Fox News Network and Bloomberg Business TV. I hit the major bestseller lists and since 2010 have sold close to 1 mil editions of my books and novellas (I'm pretty damn close if you include the Kindle First promo for Everything Burns for which I received a sweet payout).

"Catch" is now The Innocent

At this point, I estimate I've written and published around 50 novels and novellas with an equal number in print in one form or another. This doesn't count short stories nor the anthologies I'm included in. None of these numbers take into account the freelance journalism I continued to produce almost daily up until three years ago, nor the blogs for the Vox. To say these past 20 years have blown rapidly past is a like saying the sun is hot.

In between the books, came the marriages and relationships, the the solo travel to some pretty hairy places, the raising of the kids, the death of my father, the radical shift to independent publishing and hybrid publishing, and much more importantly, the freedom for writers like me who write many books per year in several genres, to make an excellent living without having to bend over for an agent or any one publisher.

I recall 20 years ago when my first book was published and I also recall thinking how utterly messed up the system was. But that's all changed now, and even if there is a perception that the market is being flooded with sub-par books, it's all for the better. Talent will always prevail in this business, and while hard work is not always rewarded when it comes to the arts, the harder you work, the better your luck will be and the greater your chances of succeeding.

So what's in store for the next 20? My aim is to publish 100 novels and novellas over the course of the next 5-7 years. I also plan on selling several stories to television and perhaps a major motion picture. I've come damn close to both so my guess is, if I keep on jabbing, I'll eventually land something. I'd also like to see a series or two developed as video games. With more and more smartphones being purchased every year and all of those devices containing Kindle, eReader, video game, and YouTube apps, the skies the limit. My only regret is my life is going by too fast to realize all my goals. But then, I think that's an indication of how much fun I've been having.

20 Years...When I was playing drums for The Blisterz, we sang a song called 20 Years. It was about a man who is still stuck at his job after 20 years of backbreaking service. I'm still stuck at my job and thanks to my fans, I'm loving every minute of it.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Visit my wesbite to PRE-ORDER two major new novels!!!!
          

The Best Writing Advice

"Dawn...Get up and bite the nail!"

I've been doing a lot of interviews lately about the best writing advice anyone ever gave me. One such interview I did (if you want to call it that) was for my rock star agent, Chip MacGregor or the MacGregor Literary Agency. Chip has just put the finishing touches on a "very nice" 7 book deal for me, which includes two new ones, Blue Moonlight and Murder by Moonlight for the Dick Moonlight series and five of my back-list titles, the top ten and top twenty Amazon Kindle bestselling  The Innocent and The Remains among them.

In his newest blog post at MacGregor Literary.com, Chip asks me and several other authors in his stable, what's the best writing advice anyone has ever given you. Here's my answer:  "The best writing advice I ever got came from Ernest Hemingway in the form of his memoir, A Moveable Feast. If writers are worried about one thing, it's the ability to keep a story moving from day to day. To avoid the 'block,' as some people call it. Papa wrote slowly and methodically in the early morning hours, and trained himself to stop at a point where he knew what was going to happen next. That way he could be sure of getting started the next day -- and it left him the afternoons to play, exercise, fish, drink, or do whatever he wanted."

Taking this a step further, I want to talk a little about mornings.

My band mates in The Blisterz used to get so frustrated with me. Whenever we'd have a gig, I'd request we play the earliest spot possible...You know, when nobody has shown up yet...so that I could get myself home at a decent hour, get to bed, and get up to write. If you're in a band, you don't want to play the early spot. You want to play the late, late, late spot, when the bar is major league packed and everyone is pretty well lubed up. Lubed up audiences are very forgiving. Even when they're shouting out for FreeBird, and you start playing Beat the Brat instead.

But I digress...

As a writer, mornings are precious. Like Hemingway suggested long before me, the morning is the time when you're are most alone and isolated with your thoughts. The dawn is peaceful and the daily rigors of every life like emails, snail mail, needy kids, grumpy spouses, telephone calls, uninvited guests, and more get in the way of your work.

But hey, that's life!

If, however, you can manage to get your page quota in by noon, you then have the rest of the day to deal with said life, and all the adventures it promises to bring your way. Somehow a phone call from the wife telling you she just rear-ended the guy in front of her while she was texting doesn't sound as painful as it might otherwise be if your pages are completed. If you receive an IRS bill for unpaid taxes, it becomes more like water rolling off a duck's back so long as you have gotten your daily quota of words in.

Your writing is your shield and your sword and your rock. It is what you have in the face of uncertainty. It is surety and stability when the earth beneath your feet is splitting open, and about to swallow your home with the dig still asleep inside it. And it all begins in the dawn, when you are the only person awake on earth.

GET ZANDRI BOOKS: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

So Many Words, So Little Time Left

"This year's runaway stocking stuffer...The Mayan Calender."

A very dear friend of mine reminded me just this morning that if the Mayan calender is indeed correct, we've only got about 12 more months on this planet before the whole thing goes Kaboom on December 21, 2012!!!

What this does NOT mean is that I will stop paying my bills.
It does not mean I will stop getting haircuts, or hitting the gym, or jogging my 3-5 miles everyday. It doesn't mean I will cease paying my taxes (although I do so while grinding my teeth), and it doesn't mean that I will stop stopping smoking or take up cocaine, fun as it all sounds.

What it does mean however, is that I am writing like a fiend again. My normal daily output when writing a new novel is five new pages per day. But lately that daily quota has risen to close to ten. In a word, I'm writing like it's the end of the world.

There are other things at play. Like my colleagues at Thomas & Mercer, Scott Nicholson, Lee Goldberg, and Barry Eisler have all astutely pointed out in their popular blogs, 2011 has been a "Golden Age" for writers and digital publication. I've sold hundreds of thousands of e-book editions of my books this past year and now with my new 7 book deal at Amazon, I expect to double those sales next year due to their "matrix" marketing system. Yes, Keanu, I took the red pill.

In the meantime, I want to write books. Not push them.
I no longer feel the pressure to constantly be barking up the social media tree in order to move a few books. I feel like social media has become more a place to say hello to friends and that's the way it should be. Yeah, sure, I'm still gonna taut my books, but the pressure isn't quite what it used to be when I was out there publishing with an indie house all by my lonesome.

Remember a little more than ten years ago when we were all listening to "We're gonna party like it's 1999?" and we were peeing our pants in anticipation of a global computer crash? Well, this year I'm going to write like its December 20, 2012...And if the Mayan calender ends up being wrong, I will have a whole new batch of novels to unleash on the world.

GET SCREAM CATCHER     

Video Games

"Lana Del Rey is a Gamer."

My sons play video games.
Ok, that's an understatement. Not only do my sons (Jack 21 and Bear 17) play video games, they own literally thousands of them. They also own every gaming system available, both TV adaptable and hand-held, and they collect retro systems from the '00s, 90's 80's and even an Atari "Pong" system from the 1970s. The games they purchase and play often arrive to our home in strange packages wrapped in brown butcher paper, postmarked Japan or South Korea and even China. These games will be designed and presented entirely in an Asian language that somehow my sons understand.

The games they play range from G-rated to Mature to Violent with names that have become entirely familiar in and around video gaming circles: Final Fantasy, Mario, Tekken, Street Fighter, and lots more, 

The gaming doesn't stop there.

As many gamers do, my sons are also into the tangental aspects of gaming like graphic novels, video anime, feature length straight-to-video movies, and more. They also maintain a special allure for Bruce Lee, who's early Kung Foo movies curiously follow a video-game-like plot-line of "level's" of battle or fighting, despite their predating practical video game development by a decade or more.

Lately my boys have been designing their own video games starting with humble miniature games in order to educate themselves to the complications and nuances of the art. One day they hope to make their mark on the industry with big games that will be distributed throughout the world.

I grew up with video games which back then in my early teens, were mostly located in video game parlors. Back when you could find records in record stores and books in bookstores. Nowadays it's getting harder and harder to find a video game parlor since just about every household owns some kind of video game system like a Uii or a PlayStation. Certainly just about everyone has access to the Internet. But I never really got into them since I more or less knew that once I was hooked, I would forever be dedicating half my life to sitting in front of a whole bunch of computer generated pixels.

But video games still fascinate me. Especially the ones gamers refer to as "Kill Games."
These first person kill games put you the player in the position of the chaser while you hunt down a series of victims which more often than not assume the form of Zombies (that way they can't ever really be killed). But there are other kill games in which you hunt enemy soldiers or bandits or rednecks driving fast cars. I was curious about what goes into the design of these games and designers who might become so obsessed with making them so realistic and life-like they might go to extraordinary lengths to create them. Like murder for instance. So fascinated in fact, that I decided to wrap a stand-alone thriller around the idea.

The plot I had in mind was not just a simple murder. But an elaborate hunt and chase which would culminate in a murder upon which the chaser would record the victim's screams prior to perishing. The screams would then be used in the design of a Violent First Person video game that would closely resemble the actual hunt and chase that inspired it. That in mind I created a video game designer who is a master of disguise and a serial killer. A man who never stays in the same city for very long and who operates under as many different aliases as he's had facial reconstruction and voice enhancement surgeries. He is a man who will stop at nothing to observe how another human being reacts to a hunt and chase, and he's determined to translate the experience for the video game as accurately as possible.

Even though my sons were able to provide me with almost all the research material I needed for the novel (minus the murder part!) it still took me almost three full years to write the psychological/suspense/horror thriller, SCREAM CATCHER. It's now coming at you in e-Book, trade paper and in a matter of a few weeks, audio, screams and all. It's my contribution to an entertainment genre that has not only fascinated me for a long time, but become an art form unto itself and a way of life for my sons. And even, a living.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Your Modern Marketing Plan

If she were doing a book signing, I'd definitely buy a copy...then get back in line.

My agent just sent over some pretty detailed information for us, his authors in his stable, on how we might go about marketing ourselves in this the ever changing era of digital publishing. What's impressive about the marketing package samples he included with the email is that it's social media heavy. In particular is a bullet about tracking down the top 100 sites that are relevant to your book (be it a hard-boiled mystery, a true crime novel, or a non-fiction narrative about St. Peter and Paul), and then finding ways to either guest blog on them, be interviewed or if none of these, perhaps paying for an advertisement. The point is this: getting your book cover in front of YOUR AUDIENCE!

I like this way of thinking because....:

1. It allows you to focus in on a specific reading group. The old adage applies here. If you shotgun your promotion efforts all across the social media board without a rudder, it's possible no one will see it. But if you focus in on specific peeps who might belong to your tribe, then it's possible everyone sees it.

2. You only have to go as far as your computer to make this work. Whether you're sitting in your bedroom or in a gondola in Venice, Italy, you can become an effective marketer so long as you have an internet signal.

3. Cost. It's potentially free, that is you decide not to pay for advertising.

4. Your audience will grow exponentially so long as you have written a good book. In other words, if it's a good read, the people who frequent these sites will chat it up, and your next book....again if it's good...will probably do even better and so on, and so forth.

So, I applaud my agent here.

But here's where I'm a little sticky with the marketing thing. Much of the sample plan is rooted in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. It talks about driving/flying all over kingdom come and doing books signings. It talks about spending hundreds if not thousands on Bling. Yes, that's right. Bling. You know, T-shirts, pins, key-chains, pocket protectors for that nerdy engineer in your life. It talks about driving all over the place to do readings.

Here's my take on this, let's call it old fashioned approach: Unless you are already Stephen King, it doesn't work for shit. Not only will it not work for shit, it will end up costing you money. Book stores are dying while, at the same time, on-line purchases are on the rapid increase. However, if you can find a book store that will grant you a signing as a virtual unknown, it's likely you will sell only a few copies, if you are lucky. In the end, you will have put out gas money, dough for a hotel, plus incidentals like food, and booze...and believe me, if the signing is a total no-show-whiff, you'll want to have a couple of drinks later. You will wake up the next morning with a mustard on your new book cover T-shirt, hungover, and entirely in the red before the tour has even gotten off the ground.

But wait, can't you land a series of readings????
I'm sure you can try with the help of a publicist who might run you anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per month. But beware, unless you are the hot lingerie model pictured above or Tony Bourdaine with a highly popular cable television show that focuses on exotic locales you can only dream of seeing, you are not only going to be invited to speak without pay, it's very likely no one will show up. Again, it'll be another red letter day.

Hey listen, I love my agent. He just scored me a major deal and we have a lot going for us right now. All I'm saying is, folks, forget the old ways of marketing. They might work to a slight extent, but then I could probably pull out the old 8-track player and pop in that Casey and the Sunshine Band tape and let the good times roll. But it doesn't beat my Pandora account or my I-pod. Now there's progress.

What you need to do as authors, is focus on internet, on social marketing opportunities, your blog, your Twitter posts, your Good Reads, You Tube, and Google+ accounts and more.Seek out those 100 prime sites that will  help you focus in on your audience. If you hire a publicist, make sure she or he focuses almost entirely on online promotion and virtual tours for each one of your titles. Only when this solid foundation of internet marketing has firmly been established, and your e-book editions are selling in or around the 10,000 and less range consistently, should you begin to spend time on book signings and readings. What was once a primary marketing consideration is now of secondary importance.

Why?

Because e-Books are becoming the dominant form in which we read.

Remember 9/11 Today and Then Move On With Your Life

After a divorce or a breakup or a death to someone close to you, a professional therapist will almost always suggest that you try and recall the good things about that person, then move on. Obviously you will never forget and often be reminded of the individual who at one time was very close and special to you. But now that person is gone and they are never coming back to you. The bond is broken forever. Despite the immediate and sometimes agonizing pain, the loss means one thing and one thing only: it's time to reinvent your life.

Today is 9/11, the tenth anniversary of an event that we will never nor should we ever forget, when a Mickey Mouse organization called Al Qaeda comprised primarily of murderous Islamic extremists got very, very lucky, and managed to pull off the mass murder of the century. Since that time the country and much of the world has been tossed into economic turmoil, travel by airplane has become difficult and full of security hassle, many American lives have been lost on the fields of battle in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've tolerantly learned to live with degrees of fear defined by color coded bar charts, and we've tried in every politically correct way possible to understand why Muslim Radicals might hate us so much. We've even come close on occasion to apologizing for just plain being us. Well, I'm not apologizing. I don't say "I'm sorry" to bullies and homicidal maniacs.

Other things have happened in the past ten years. Good things.
Osama, the Al Qaeda chief thug, is dead. A man who lived by the gun and died by the gun. Another thug, Saddam Hussein has been tried and hanged. We now have active counter-terrorism organizations operating both inside and outside the U.S. and in turn, we are better able to protect and defend ourselves. The internet has exploded with social media sights like Twitter and Facebook spreading messages of freedom and democracy to citizens of Egypt, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, making it just a little more difficult in this day and age for a Mafia style thug like Saddam to rule over a country of frightened people. No we didn't uncover weapons of mass destruction in his country prior to entering into the second Iraq War, but that never disguised the fact that they did in fact possess them and had used them before in the form of poison gas on innocent Kurds and had been in the process of acquiring light water for their nuclear processing plants which were being reconstructed.

But it's ten years since 9/11.
Nearly 3,000 innocent people lost their lives on that day, and we shall never forget a single one of them. While it pains my soul to try and imagine the unspeakable sorrow and horrors each of these people went through on that sunny Monday morning, these days I prefer to think about the passengers of Flight 93 bound for San Francisco who decided to re-take their hijacked plane even though it was almost certainly going to mean sacrificing their lives in the process. But somehow they knew that given the choice of being a victim or a defender, they all chose defender. They are heros and saints.

So what shall we do over the course of the next ten years?

Move on. Remember what occurred all those years ago on September 11, 2001 and move on with reconstructing your life.

No more apologies for who or what we are as Americans. We have our faults but we are a strong people whose spirit will always be one of defending the right to be free.

Be tolerant. There will be many more people of the Muslim faith moving to America who are as far removed from the murderers of 9/11 as you and I are from Charlie Manson. They just want a fair shake at living the American Dream. So part of moving on is to move on with people you might have formerly harbored a distrust for.

Be vigilant. There as many domestic terrorists at work in the United States as there are foreign terrorists who want to kill Westerners, Christians, Jews and people of color. Yup, they want to kill little children too. Let's force them out of their rat holes and put these haters behind bars.

Work harder. No one single U.S. President can bear the unspeakable burden of creating jobs for us. As Americans we've always found a way to not only to make a living, but to create new industries. Lets stop complaining, stop collecting unemployment and other "entitlements" and get the hell back to work. Now!

Fight back. It's not only probable that another terrorist attack will occur in the US, it's inevitable. And when it does, we find out the party responsible, and we don't hold back. This time we retaliate with a "police action" not with one arm tied behind our backs, but with everything we've got. We take terror to the terrorists and eliminate every single one of them in as swift a manner as possible. We send a message to the world that we will not be bullied anymore.

Most of all, we must live and re-invent ourselves as free people who love not only our country but the entire world and beyond.

Let's take today to remember the past. Let's never forget! But then let's also pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, and move on with life.

GET ZANDRI BOOKS: WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Author Chris Redding Makes a Flyby at the Vox

"Classy title. Classy writer."

Chris Redding is a writer with a bucket list. But then, who doesn't have a bucket list? It seems I spend half my life in the air on the way to one foreign destination or another while dreaming about going to yet another destination even before I've landed in the first destination. Am I making sense here? Well, the talented author of "A View to a Kilt" (Get it?) certainly does. I owe her big time for picking up the slack at the Vox while I try and catch up from half a summer in Italy and while writing the first draft of my new Moonlight thriller, Blue Moonlight.

Time for you to fly, Chris:


Bucket ListChris ReddingWhen I was younger I never thought about a bucket list. Oh I had things I wanted to see. And because I spent the first few years of my marriage following my husband’s career around the world, I did see many things.I saw the Mediterranean Sea. That body of water was as beautiful as I expected it would be. There I was in the south of France on a gorgeous day. The next morning we had croissants so buttery that when you bit into them, the butter ran down your hands. Ah.One of the things I wanted to do was fly on the Concorde. My DH and I shared this dream, but alas, we had children instead of saving up for it. On July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 took off while on fire and later crashed killing all 100 passengers, the crew and four people on the ground. This was the beginning of the end for the Concorde and it is unlikely we will ever see supersonic air travel in my lifetime.Why am I talking about this now?I recently went to the newly refurbished Intrepid, Sea, Air and Space Museum. For those who don’t know what this is, the Intrepid is an aircraft carrier that was originally used during World War 2. It was decommissioned in the 1970’s and later brought to New York City as a museum.You are tapping your foot. I see it. What does an aircraft carrier have to do with supersonic air travel?This museum complex was recently refurbished and now, on its deck, is a Concorde. (There were 20 made.)And I got to sit in it. No flying. No world class service, but I did get to sit in a seat and in the cockpit. And it was worth every penny I paid. Especially because I learned some interesting facts.I’m sure I will use them in a book.The Concorde was built by the British and French which is a feat in itself. After the accident, the planes were grounded until an investigation could ensue. When ii finished the British decided to bring the Concorde back into the limelight with a publicity tour. They planned on flying celebrities and other important people around Britain. Sadly they picked September 11, 2001 as their date. After that date, air travel was reduced. Companies didn’t want to pay for flying and at the same time computer and internet technologies made it easier for companies to do business with each other without flying. And the price of fuel had gone up. All these contributed to the demise of the Concorde. For me a sad day.But now I have had at least sat in one and dreamed about what it would be like to see the curvature of the earth from an airplane. Thanks for having me today, Vincent.A View to a Kilt excerpt:The trip downtown took ten minutes in the midmorning traffic. Miriam shivered at the cool breeze snaking across the parking lot of the Philadelphia Police Administration building at Fifth and Race Streets. She wasn’t dressed for the fall weather. Pulling her coat tighter around herself did nothing for her exposed legs. The chill percolated to her bones.Would she ever be warm again?Donner left her in an interrogation room and went to get coffee. The room, painted in a subdued green, had what Miriam presumed to be a two-way mirror on one wall. A tape recorder for her statement sat on the table. She couldn’t seem to stop shivering despite rubbing her hands up and down her arms. Standing, she began to pace. A urine smell wrinkled her nose. She jammed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and caught a look at herself in the mirror.“Bedhead, big time,” she said to her reflection. Her crumpled dress added to the picture. She admitted she looked as if she could kill someone. Even her hot pink, sheath dress looked odd on her. How she looked was the least of her worries now. Doubling in pain, new tears streamed down her face. “Oh God, Joe. What were you into since I last saw you?”Chris Redding lives in New Jersey with her husband, two kids, one dog and three rabbits. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. When she isn’t writing, she works part time for her local hospital. Her latest book is A View to a Kilt.

MOONLIGHT RISES Reviewed in Denver Examiner

Writer Zack Kopp reviews Moonlight Rises...



The second full-length novel in the continuing Richard "Dick" Moonlight series by Vincent Zandri has been released by StoneGate Ink in Kindle, Nook, and all e-Book forums, available via your Tattered Cover and other retailers. Private eye Dick Moonlight is really dead this time, see. Three thugs in black wearing Obama-masks and communicating with hand-held voice synthesizers pressed against their voice boxes appeared from nowhere and beat him to death in a dark alley in downtown Albany, NY. But why? And forwhat reason! They demanded a mysterious box, see, of unknown proportions the likes of which he’s never heard about. WHAT box?!! They insist he cut all ties with his latest client: a disabled nuclear engineer of Russian heritage by the same of Peter Czech. Is he really from Ruissia? Moonlight can’t be sure, see. It hardly matters, now that he’s dead. Private Eye Dick Moonlight has a blissful out of body experience, his soul floating above his ruined mess of a body inside the Albany Medical Center I.C.U. whereon his one true love, Lola, is standing by his bedside, see.

But then something happens, see. Something bad. This young punk rambles into the I.C.U, see, he takes Lola’s hand, and draws her into a loving embrace over the limp Dick Moonlight. What seemed at first like a sweet peaceful death now causes Moonlight to struggle to reenter his body so he can stare down Some Young Guy and avenge himself, see. The pain of his battery is worsened by the pain of his breaking heart. Even so, as a hardened private dick, Moonlight wants to find out the true identity of those thugs who killed him, see, and decides his bruised and broken body is the perfect place to lay low for a while and pick up information. Yeah, see. Surely he’s not really dead, given the title. Does he come back to life? Will he spring into action, clubbing down attackers with balled fists? And what about those crazy masks? Is this is a political book? Hah. Life sucks, then you die. But Moonlight Rises

To read original review: http://www.examiner.com/books-in-denver/book-review-moonlight-rises-by-vincent-zandri-review

To grab Moonlight Rises: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005HB16Y6/ref=nosim/theplanningsh-20

"If I Were to Become a Writer all Over Again I'd..."

"The new major pub on the block!"




...self publish.
It's true. If I were to start all over again as an author I would set my sights not on publishing with the majors or even a small indie press. I would simply plan on going DIY the entire way. With Amazon's KDP program, doing it yourself is not only easy, you have nothing to lose but the time it takes to get your writing out there. Now this isn't an advertorial for KDP, it's just me being able to take a step back and look at all the possibilities, and the most obvious for me would be KDP. Amazon has the ability to reach a huge audience while pushing your book. So if you're a newbie, go for it.

However, that established, I am not a newbie. I've been at the game now professionally for 15 years. I've been published by the majors (Random House) and the minors (StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink, etc.) and I've had my ups and downs with both. As for the former, mostly downs and the latter, almost entirely up. As you all know by now, I believe that a full-time author in this day and age should take advantage of all the publishing, marketing, and audience building opportunities by engaging in three kinds of publishing:

1. Major Commercial
2. Small Indie
3. Self-Publishing

It makes sense to go with the majors at least for a couple of books since they can reach out to the masses like no other. While your audience expands they will also get you reviewed by major media darlings like The New York Times and The New York Post (The New York Post called THE INNOCENT "Sensational...Masterful...Brilliant!" That's the kind of review you can cherish for a lifetime).

Publishing with the small indie presses won't garner huge reviews from the major media outlets, but it will afford you a very personal experience that could never be achieved with the majors. If you are lucky enough to land a great small press they will become like family to you. They will ask and indeed come to rely on your creative input every step of the way. Not only about the writing, but about book design, cover, marketing, and more.

Going indie won't get you any of the above (although by investing in a virtual tour you'll nail some reviews from the mommy blogs and expand your audience. I invest in virtual tours no matter how I publish...), but it does allow you the absolute freedom to write, edit, and publish precisely how you want to publish. And in the end, the cash you earn is yours alone to keep. No publishers to pay, no agent percentages to honor. It's all about you and your work. Like I said, if I were just starting out with zero track record, this is precisely the route I would take. If I ended up selling a million copies of my e-books like John Locke, and I were to attract a major publisher like Simon and Schuster in a huge distribution deal, then I would go from happy to ecstatic.

A lot has changed in the past year. Lots of bestselling indie authors who've previously been published by the majors like JCarson Black, Scott Nicholson, JA Konrath and even yours truly have come full-circle by once more signing on with a major publisher for some of their books. The major pub we all have in common is Thomas and Mercer, Amazon's new publishing arm. The move makes sense for us all, since the outfit is new, filled with brilliant editors, open to new ideas and let's face it, Amazon has the marketing power to position your books in the marketplace like no other major publisher. I couldn't be happier about it.

But that doesn't mean I'm giving up on other publishing opportunities or lessening my marketing efforts. In essence, going back to the majors means I'll be working all the harder. Stay tuned!!!!

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

C.R. Lloyd, Author of "The Second Shot"

I love being an instigator.
Case and point: Last November during a very rainy month-long writing retreat in Florence, Italy (I'm writing this from the same apartment), I found myself spending as much time in a local pub as I did behind my desk. Anyone who knows me well enough won't see anything strange in that. Just ask my ex-wives. But I ended up chatting it up with some very cool ex-pats who work the place and one in particular from London who eventually got around to asking me about acquiring an agent. A couple of beers already swimming in my brain, my reaction was thus: If I had to do it all over again, I'd self-pub on Amazon. Forget the agent and forget about wasting time. Go for it now! Or something like that. Now mind you, I'd never self-pub'd a thing in my life and still haven't. It was the old hubris talking I guess. Or beer muscles. But I was speaking the truth. Kindle Direct Publishing is precisely the route I would take if, like London's newest best-seller to be, C.R. (Rebecca) Lloyd, I was young, super-talented, charming, attractive, and just plain fun to be around. Methinks my meeting with C.R. that rain-soaked November will turn out to be not only serendipitous, but also fortuitous. Indeed and jolly good show!

Rebecca, please take it away:

How to court a writer – in the ‘God people must ask you this all the time but please help me with my writing’ kind of way

I met Vincent Zandri at the pub where I worked. An Irish pub in the centre of Florence. I was working in the pub so that I would have the time to write, but so far I had had no luck getting a literary agent for my book.

My colleague Steve told me about Vincent. ‘Hey, there’s this American dude. He writes thrillers. I googled him. I think he’s pretty successful. He’s in town for the rest of the month. You should so speak to him.’ I met Vince a few days later. But I didn’t tell him I was a writer. I was embarrassed. And when he told me that every time he met someone in Florence they turned out to be an aspiring writer needing help, I knew I couldn’t say anything.

But then I bumped into him at the pub after I’d worked the day shift. I’d had a few drinks already and with my shame levels lowered by the beer I brought it up in conversation. Well we talked about everything that night from our relationships with our parents to our love lives to our favourite books. He came into the pub one more time before heading back to the States and gave me his email address and offered to read some of my stuff when it was ready. I blushed to my toes, feeling as though I had manoeuvred him into offering to help but I was very pleased. You need all the help you can get when you are starting out.

So the following March I emailed him the first three chapters of my book – a political thriller set in Italy. He paid me some great compliments, but even more importantly he advised me to publish it myself on Amazon for Kindle. Kindle devices had been on sale in the UK for less than a year and I still saw self publishing as vanity publishing. And Amazon had only just reached Italy at that point – Kindle was unknown – I hadn’t realised that ebooks were becoming such a big thing. But Vince’s books were selling strongly in their electronic formats and he felt that there were real possibilities out there for new writers to get read and noticed. He told me to get myself an editor, a cover and go for it. I did. And my book, The Second Shot, is now available on Amazon. And if you’re interested here’s what it’s about…

Pietro is a typical Italian: angry, disappointed, resigned to the state of things. But one drunken night he gets an idea: why have one man kill the president when you can get half the country to do it? And his idea becomes a plan, a plan to assassinate the president, using donations from Italians who feel the same as him.

The next six months of his life are a battle to put his plan into actionhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif and avoid arrest. His plan will force him to go into hiding, will put his friends and family in danger, and will bring him into contact with the criminal underbelly of Russia, France and Italy.

And after it’s done? Well if half the country are involved in killing the president, it means they have to be involved in what happens next...

The Second Shot by CR Lloyd is available on Amazon for Kindle priced $3.50

MOONLIGHT RISES is RISEN!!!

"The long awaited second novel in the Moonlight series!"


“Life sucks. Then you die. Or, if you’re Dick Moonlight, first you die and then you live.”



The second full-length novel in the continuing Richard "Dick" Moonlight series has been released by StoneGate Ink in Kindle, Nook, and all e-Book forums: MOONLIGHT RISE.

The Story:

Dick Moonlight is dead.

Really dead this time, now that three President Obama-masked thugs dressed all in black and communicating only with hand-held voice synthesizers pressed up against their voice boxes have beat the life right out of him inside a dark, downtown Albany alley. What are the thugs after? A box. Size, weight, description unknown. They also want him to stay away from his newest and only client: a handicapped nuclear engineer of dubious Russian heritage by the same of Peter Czech.

But then, now that they’ve killed him, Moonlight’s problems seem to be over. In fact, as he undergoes an out of body experience, his soul floating above his train-wreck of a corpse inside the Albany Medical Center I.C.U., he feels pretty damned good. Great in fact. To make death all the more sweeter, his one true love, Lola, is standing by his bedside. With her long dark hair draping her chiseled face and big round Jackie O sunglasses hiding tear-filled eyes, she appears every bit the grieving sig other. Nothing could make the dead-and-gone Moonlight prouder.

But then something happens. Something bad. A man enters into the I.C.U. Some young guy. He takes hold of Lola’s hand, and pulls her into him. Together, the two share a loving embrace over Moonlight’s dead body. Now, what seemed like a peaceful death is anything but. Moonlight wants back inside his body so he can face-off Some Young Guy and find out if his true love has in fact been cheating on him. At the same time, he wants to find out the true identity of those thugs who killed him so he can exact his revenge. No doubt about it, Moonlight needs to live if he’s going to uncover some pretty painful answers and take care of business.

Like a little kid dropping down a playground slide, Moonlight slides right back inside his bruised and broken body. Opening his eyes the white light blinds him. He feels the pain of his wounds and the pain of his breaking heart.

Life sucks, then you die.

But Moonlight rises.

Where to grab it:

MOONLIGHT RISES in Kindle
MOONLIGHT RISES in Nook

"On Pricing" Redux and a Challenge to Myself....

"Baby, have we got a deal for you!"






It's been a few months since just about every indie author blog had something written inside it about the power of pricing. The gist of the chatter centered around $.99 being the optimum price, and authors like John Locke and Amanda Hocking were proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that books priced that low can really move. Move in mass quantities that have the potential to add up in the end to a pretty decent payday (and to book deals from major pubs!).

I had a two books priced at $.99 back in February, March, and April and while both of those hit the Amazon Top 25, one of them THE INNOCENT hit the Top 10, settling at No. 3 for nearly a couple of months. Even with paying a standard agent percentage, I still took in payday that averaged three times your normal NYC legacy publisher advance. In May my guys at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink decided to up the prices back to more normal levels and the books naturally lost ground in terms of ranking but continued to sell very well while remaining bestsellers.

Now it's August, a traditionally slow month for publishing while everyone takes in vacation and gets ready for the upcoming school year or whatever. Sales are good, but I'm convinced they could be great again.

I'm still convinced the three major attractors to making your E-Books bestsellers are...

1. An Awesome Cover
2. A Great Product Description
3. Price, Price, Price
(4.) Great Writing
(5). Direct Marketing from online publishers like B&N and Amazon...

That said, my cats at StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink have decided to run a special on CONCRETE PEARL, my new thriller (the first in a series) starring brassy and beautiful commercial construction business owner/amateur sleuth, Ava "Spike" Harrison, and THE REMAINS, my stand-alone thriller that's been a bestseller for 15 months. Both books will be published at $.99 for at least the length of the CONCRETE PEARL virtual tour which is scheduled for September.

Having been blessed with a great 3/4s of 2011, I also want to issue this challenge to myself: if one of the books breaks the Top 100, I'm going to donate $500 to the Boston Children's Hospital which does great things for kid with all sorts of injuries, ailments, and dreadful diseases. From cancer to cutting edge operations that can make a once useless limb useful again, as was the case with my son Harrison (Bear) who suffers from brachial plexus palsy, the BCH is a Godsend to kids and their parents. It's a curing place and an emotional place and I encourage all of you to take a look at their website. We've spent a lot of time at BCH where Harrison has undergone two major surgeries to repair his left arm, the most recent being last July. If both books hit the top 100, I will donate $1,000 to the hospital.

So, like Paul Weller of the JAM once sang, "What you give is what you get!" I couldn't agree more, other than to say, better to give than receive.

Ciao, Ciao for now, from sunny Italy!!!

Is Indie Publishing Dead? Bestseller Scott Nicholson Weighs in on the Possibility

"Bestselling author, Scott Nicholson...a true rebel."





Bestselling indie Scott Nicholson most definitely falls into that, "If we lived in the same town we'd be steadfast buds" category. Or maybe my association with him, although limited to internet, runs even deeper in a sort of cosmic, old soul sense. We've got more things in common than I did any of my ex-wives before I married them (don't get nervous Scott...). Like me he's journalist, a musician, a lover of adventure and history, and maintains an intense passion for creative writing and genre fiction. He's into some great bands too, like XTC, Elvis Costello and The Beatles. No wonder he's made quite a splash on the Indie scene. Like most successful dudes however, he comes equipped with well honed built-in shit detector which allows him to be realistic about what the future holds for authors and publishing. Like his guest post will reveal, what seems like a great independent publishing opp right now can soon turn into something that won't be indie at all anymore. That is, once the big houses pick up on all that we are teaching them about selling books.
But then, judge for yourself. That's what Scott does.

Take it away Scott:

Indie Publishing Is Dead

By Scott Nicholson

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

Nobody wants to read yet another blah-blah-blah indie author post unless it’s controversial. So how about this one: indie publishing is dead.

Does that work for you? Or are you an author whose personal identity is somehow tied up in a specific outcome? You know the drill: the NY author under contract who insists NY publishing is the way to go, or the indie author who got rejected a hundred times by NY who says indie is the way to go because NY sux, or the suddenly-hip “hybrid author” who is “taking advantage of both opportunities,” usually because they have a lot of dead backlist but are still stuck in indentured servitude and have no real choice.

Yes, it’s great fodder for forum flame wars, except we all have to mutually agree or risk somebody slamming us with an anonymous one-star review or declining to retweet our hot sales link. So we only hang out where everyone has the same opinions as ours, because we’d rather be validated than right.

We are all equally right and wrong. I’ve been big pubbed, small pubbed, self pubbed, and soon to be pubbed in ways that are only now coming into existence. And all the words are roughly the same, the talent level is the same, the storytelling style is the same. And while the fracturing of publishing methods continues, it will also slop over, in much the same way all the distinct genres of music eventually get lumped into “rock ‘n’ roll” once they lose their freshness.

Indie publishing is dead because we, the current crop of indie authors, are teaching New York how to publish books. I know, that seems crazy, but publishing has always been a crap shoot, with a lot of money backing almost every bestseller and nothing but luck and the author’s tireless marketing backing the other infrequent successes. But corporations aren’t just nabbing superstar indie authors. They are paying attention to how books are presented, where they are priced, what readers really want instead of following outdated Bookscan reports that serve to reinforce the perception that publishers were—surprise!—geniuses at turning bestsellers into bestsellers.

Heck, even agents are rushing to learn the skills we indie authors were forced to develop as survival mechanisms. It’s truly ironic that NY strengthened the enemy by thrusting marketing upon the authors—and marketing is the only skill of value in the world of digital publishing! All else can be purchased cheaply and easily and operated with no overhead but time.

Yes, we are teaching our competition, as we always should. Not that we could help it. If they aren’t watching and learning, they aren’t competition anyway, because they are out of the game. As soon as indie and trad and small press slop together, as they inevitably will, then indies will lose many of their advantages—low pricing, rapid response to changing conditions, innovative marketing that connects with real readers, and the ability to reach niche audiences with narrative voices that have been long suppressed because New York behemoths couldn’t run on niche audiences. Soon, they can, and the niches can look pretty darned big when they are merely one click away, and staff and overhead has been trimmed, and the corporations consist of a half-dozen tech geeks clicking buttons and raking in cash (of course, they will still have a 60-member board of executives and numerous shareholders at the trough, but still….).

I’m not worried, because I plan on staying one step ahead of everything, even if no solid ground is there, even if it means flying on faith without a parachute. Everyone out there buzzing about John Locke, John Green, J.K. Rowling, J.A. Konrath, or Amanda Hocking has zero chance of duplicating what were outlier successes that defied chance. Buy all the how-to books and diligently copy them and you still won’t be them, because 10,000 people are already doing it. We don’t need a “next Locke” or “next Hocking” anyway. Why not be the first you?

The First You is the one who doesn’t care if indie wins or New York wins or if so-and-so was right. The First You is already right, if you trust it. There are only three questions that matter:

(1) What is the next impossible thing I want to do?

(2) How do I get there first?

(3) How do I inspire people to meet me there?

---------

Scott Nicholson is bestselling author of more than 30 books, including Liquid Fear and Disintegration. He’s also written The Indie Journey: The Secrets to Writing Success, which DOESN’T promise you will sell a million copies. In fact, he’s pretty sure you won’t, but that doesn’t mean your writing isn’t priceless. More at http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com.