On the back of my publishing contract with Random House and film deal with Columbia Pictures, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be taking a brief break from the Rittenhouse books to collaborate with the world’s most significant living author. Mutt and Stray have caught the eye of none other than J.K. Rowling.
Rowling, who needs no introduction, sought an outlet for new young adult fiction ideas after the publication of her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, in 2012. Upon discovering Mutt, Rowling contacted me about potentially collaborating on a one-off novel.
The yet-unnamed project deals with young magic-users, but it should be quite different than either Rittenhouse or Harry Potter: set in the 1950′s in Alabama, it addresses themes religion and prejudice in the 20th century American South.
“I’m quite excited to work with Evan,” Rowling said. “The Rittenhouse Saga has renewed my love for young adult literature. I’m presently reading Stray with David [Rowling Murray, her son].”
I’ll be traveling to Edinburgh this summer for a three-month stay to begin writing the book.
One of my favorite aspects of Stray is how the uncertainty, fear, and urgency is felt throughout the novel. We, as readers, are made to empathize with Emery as he races against not just the odds, but the clock. We cringe with him as he uncovers truths, and feel deep sadness for the past secrets he shares.
Just like Mutt, Stray has a fantastic series of heart-pounding scenes where Emery is tested beyond his limits, and where the story reaches suspenseful climaxes. Fuller has a skill for creating anticipation and delivering what the reader seeks with style.
I’m sure a few of you remember that I did a Name Your Price week for Mutt on Smashwords a couple of months ago. Well, being negligent, I forgot to change it back to regular pricing. It was no big deal; the book’s Smashwords page doesn’t get many hits, so without the promotion nobody was paying attention.
Nobody, that is, except Amazon. Somebody on their site found the Smashwords promotion, and as per their policy, Amazon matched the price. I should mention here that I’ve been very sick* for the past couple months and have failed to manage my online presence, which includes checking my sales reports. Tonight, I checked Amazon on a whim and discovered that I’ve “sold” about 900 free copies of Muttin the past few weeks.
Right now I’m baffled and laughing out loud (I should note here that, with daily, round-the-clock promotion, I gave away about 50 free copies of the book for Name Your Price week). Mutt, the dystopian fantasy novel that’s won love and adoring reviews from all over Tumblr, will be free until I can be bothered to fix the price, so go get your copy on Amazon now!
Pass the word along!
*I’ll update about this at some point, but know for now it’s nothing life-threatening.
This summer has been a great one for Mutt. The book’s first roundof reviewshas seennot one, not two, but sevenglowing opinions. The unanimous praise from reviewers and overwhelming support from the book’s small but enthusiastic fanbase are more than I could have asked for. It’s time to take the next step–getting the book into as many hands as possible to spread the word. So I’m doing something unprecedented for the end of summer:
Q. What’s this Name Your Price thing?
It’s exactly what it sounds like. You choose how much you want to pay for the book. You can download it for free, pay something crazy like $100, or anything in between.
Q. So wait, I can get the book for free?
Yes.
Q. Is that, like, cool?
Yeah. If you download the book for free and decide you really like it, feel free to go back and pay for a copy! Anything you can spare helps. But my immediate goal is to get the book out there. So if you don’t have spare cash (or credit card access), this is your one-time chance to grab the book with no strings attached.
Q. If I really like the book and want to support it but don’t have any money, what can I do to help?
Just spread the word. Force your friends to read it through threat of violence, post about it on your blog, tell your parents to buy a copy for your little siblings. Whenever a new person is being exposed to Mutt, I’m doing better than I was before.
Q. Why isn’t the book free all the time?
Artists love to say they’re “not in it for the money.” While that’s a good sentiment, and while I write because I love to write, money is vital in two ways: it allows me to spend less time at my day job at more time writing, and it covers the direct costs of publishing the books. I’m still working toward regaining what I spent on Mutt, and once that’s covered, I’ll be raising money for the publication of Stray. The amount I raise from sales of Mutt will determine everything from Stray’s release date to whether and when a print version is available.
I’ve seen some early alpha builds of the game, and I can say with confidence (and without the slightest bias) that it’s going to be as awesome as it is unique. The game design combines elements I’ve never seen together before, the presentation is gorgeous, and the story is subversive without being obtrusive or overly serious. Also, every donation gets a personalized thank-you video:
I’ve known Justin since we were in diapers, and the other people in the company are super rad. They’re also much better at promotion than I am, so I see no reason why this shouldn’t take off. Go donate to the project, and you’ll get eternal bragging rights when the game is a huge success.
This past week I had the utterly awesome opportunity to do an author interview with Dayla at Bookaddict24-7. Dayla was the first blogger ever to review Mutt, and the interview was a total blast. The interview has the first details about Stray, the forthcoming sequel to Mutt, and a photograph of me if you’ve been wondering what I look like. Here’s a little sample:
What’s the best thing anyone has ever said about your writing and what is the worst?
“That first one is hard to answer, just because my friends and the bloggers reviewing Mutt have been so kind. So I’ll go with a curveball: one blogger who wrote a very positive review of the book half-jokingly called me a dick for one late-book plot development (this was in an e-mail, not the review itself). I was really honored and excited to see that the story was captivating people to that degree and producing those gut reactions
And I’ve had some pretty critical things said about my work, mostly in workshop classes at school, but the most offensive thing to me was when a perfectly well-meaning person called me an “aspiring writer.” I would’ve been less offended at “unsuccessful writer” or even “bad writer,” because “aspiring writer” suggests that I want to write in the future or think about writing a lot. I don’t aspire to write; I sit down and write.”
Go check out the whole interview on the site, and be sure to follow Dayla for all-around good content. She’s a writer too and posts updates with her progress, which can be great encouragement for those banging away at our own manuscripts. And as always, grab your copy of Mutt on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords if you haven’t already. Peace and love!
With a bigger, better RAM stick installed, I was ready to revisit the world of Pottermore with hopes of actually being able to run the site. I noticed two things in rapid succession: first, the interactive “moments” were indeed running far more smoothly, and second, these pages were painfully boring. I’m sorry, but I have yet to understand how clicking through some mostly-static scenes to collect salt shakers and seaweed is supposed to enhance my experience of the fiction. I progressed slowly through these scenes, thinking I must be missing something: this couldn’t possibly be the point, could it?
When I reached the Diagon Alley scenes, things began to open up a bit. There were items to buy with different attributes, and it appeared that these would aid in actual gameplay sections later on (at the time of this writing, I still haven’t reached a section where I make actual use of these items). Having kept both birds and toads in real life, I selected a cat as my magical creature. When all that was done, I went to Olivander’s and got myself a larch wand with a phoenix feather core. Eleven inches, rigid. Damn right.
Wand in hand, I hurried through the next few scenes to the one I’d been waiting for since I started on site: the Sorting Hat. I was subjected to the rather awkward and obtrusive video of Rowling explaining the sorting process (my friend had mentioned this to me before, and its awkwardness did not disappoint) and then began the quiz itself.
I have to stop here to ask if anyone, while reading the Potter books are watching the films, ever actually thought to herself, “Hufflepuff is totally the coolest house.” Friends of mine have described it as “the stoner house;” it’s where you go if you get into wizard school but don’t really stand out beyond that. I mean, Slytherin is kind of strange in that it seemingly exists only the harbor the fiction’s equivalent of neo-Nazis, but I do have friends who favor that house (probably due in no small part to the awesome that is Alan Rickman). I haven’t met a single person in real life who wants to be in Hufflepuff.
So while the rational part of my mind knew I was destined for Ravenclaw, there was a fear that my nice-guy tendencies (combined with a possible desire on the part of the site’s creators to distribute users somewhat evenly among the houses) might push me toward Hufflepuff. Try as I may to answer the questions honestly, that fear might have influenced me when I chose to save Merlin’s book before the dragonpox cure. In the end, the fear was unfounded; some users end up on the cusp between two houses and have to choose for themselves. I wasn’t one of them.
Greetings to all my new housemates. Check back soon for Part III!
My curiosity to experience Pottermore reached a boiling point yesterday after I learned that the site was not only an interactive way to interface with the Harry Potter story but also Ms. Rowling’s coming-out party as an indie publisher of the Potter ebooks. As an indie myself, I find Rowling’s “Radiohead move” from traditional to independent distribution to be of especial interest, so I’ll be documenting my experiences with the site.
There was a moment of fear for me when the text surrounding the Sign Up button said, Before you can begin your Pottermore journey, you need to find out whether or not you are magical…” What? Would I get my hopes up, only to find out I was some mere muggle after all? Thankfully, no. When the first page after the account creation screen announced, “Congratulations! You Are Magical,” I did feel a momentary excitement seeing my name above Mr. Potter’s own. Maybe this was some grand new beginning for the Harry Potter story, and this time I’d get to slay Voldemort myself, with Harry as my loveable sidekick with the cool scar and bad temper.
Then I reached the next screen. Wait, what the hell? I had to choose from five preselected usernames? I’d just hoped to use “kingofautumn” like I do on most sites. I hadn’t intended to name my account “ButtS3KS” or something involving my social security number. And even given the preselected usernames, why isn’t there a way to see more options than the first five presented? (Even refreshing the page did nothing here.) I ended up choosing “LightSeer 16166,” trying not to think that there were probably other LightSeers before me, as many as 16165.
So I got into the main portal for the site, which I found could barely run on my netbook. (I made a long-needed memory upgrade today, and the site is running for more smoothly now.) It was on this page that I began overwhelmingly to feel what I’m sure countless other users of the site have felt: a profound disconnect between Pottermore and the Harry Potter aesthetic familiar to fans. It takes a bit of external knowledge to discern the cause of this.
As I said, Rowling is self-releasing the Potter ebooks exclusively through the site. A bit of background, as best I understand the situation: Rowling’s contracts with Scholastic and Bloomsbury were written before the Kindle and similar devices made ebooks a significant force in the market, so the publishers included no provision granting them rights to the ebook versions of the Harry Potter books. Rather than sign the rights to these books away, Rowling decided to maintain complete control over the ebooks and publish them independently. She has also made Pottermore the exclusive vendor of the books, bypassing major retailers such as Amazon.
While she has the rights of the books themselves, it appears that a lot of the art assets have been retained by the publishers—or, in the case of the assets created for the films, by Warner*. Even the ubiquitous Harry Potter font is absent from the site design, and trademark visual elements like the house insignias had been redesigned from the ground up. (Once I realized this, I was surprised to see that Rowling had even been allowed use of the original book covers for the books.) Pottermore is about creating Harry Potter experience controlled by Rowling and Rowling alone, one she can do with as she pleases in every regard. I’m not quite sure what I think of it just yet, but it’s a noble endeavor, at the very least.
*EDIT: I’d originally cited Disney as the distributor of the Harry Potter films. Oops.
As an independent author, it’s probably a foregone conclusion that I love ebooks. They’ve created a market that didn’t exist before, giving self-publishing writers a feasible way to release their books affordably and reach their audiences. Every review of Mutt published so far has been written by someone reading the ebook. The digital medium has also given me cause to rethink story structure entirely; my next series after the Rittenhouse Saga will likely be a sequence of very short (30-40,000-word) novels released biannually at a $2.99 price point.
It may surprise you to learn I don’t actually read ebooks.
Well, that isn’t entirely true. I’m presently making my way through a Poetry Magazine anthology on my phone’s Kindle reader. I also use it for a lot of nonfiction reading, as it’s easier to annotate and reference texts than in print. But I don’t own a dedicated e-reader, and I’m still reading fiction almost exclusively via dead-tree books.
After getting all those books yesterday, I had immediate buyer’s remorse—not at my selections but at the medium in which I’d purchased them. In addition to all the benefits I see from the perspective of a content creator, idea of an e-reader appeals to me from the customer end because it’s a way to consolidate my physical possessions. So should I just put down the $99 for a Kindle, return the paperbacks, and get the same books digitally?
For one thing, I did some comparative shopping and found that the subtotal for the four books would only have been $1 less than the cost of the print versions. Graceling was a bit cheaper; American Gods was inexplicably more for the ebook than the 500-page print version. And in addition, while American Gods and Neuromancer were mass-market paperbacks, both Graceling and Paper Towns were inexpensive trades. The money a publisher saves on ebooks versus print (and trust me, the claim that that cost difference is negligible is a myth) should reflect in retail. If we indies can manage to offer deep discounts on our ebooks, the major houses should be able to afford a discount of at least a dollar versus the cheapest print version of the same book, especially for a book like Neuromancer that’s been on the market for decades.
I’m also concerned by how digital media is redefining the idea of ownership. When I buy a print book, I obtain a physical item that is irrevocably my possession. When I buy an ebook, I’m actually only licensing that data on a limited and reversible basis. I read a story a month or two ago (link when I find it again) that a man whose Amazon account was deleted, Kindle library and all, on a rather ludicrous suspicion that someone had been trying to illegally access the account. When the man’s ebooks were ultimately replaced, he had lost years’ worth of annotations. This sort of thing is obviously very rare, and I don’t really have a legitimate fear of it happening to me if I buy a Kindle, but it does underscore the fact that in the digital world, “ownership” can always be reversed.
(A sidenote: if you ever lose access to a purchased copy of one of my books for any reason, please just let me know. As long as I control the rights to my work, I’ll happily replace anything lost due to a hard drive crash, a car running over your e-reader, etc. )
One thing is for certain: if I do by a Kindle (and it will likely be a Kindle, if only because Amazon’s royalties to writers are slightly better than B&N’s), I’m going to avoid the 3G model. Connecting the device to my computer for ebook purchases may be inconvenient, but it also ensure that I more frequently consider buying from vendors like Smashwords. I do love Amazon, given that they’re the ones who opened the ebook market up in the first place, but I never want to become so attached to one outlet that I don’t shop around.
I’d love to hear some thoughts on this one, both from writers and readers. Does the idea of ownership vs. licensing matter to you? How have people’s transitions to the ebook medium gone so far?
I got a particularly nice tip at the day job this morning. I had a few free hours between deliveries, so I did a few of my favorite things: ate at Chipotle, got coffee at Elixr, and went book shopping with a bit of that hard-earned cash. Here’s what I got.
John Green - Paper Towns
This is to be my first John Green novel, and two chapters in I’m already intrigued. I was actually trying to find Looking for Alaska, but the problem with an author’s books being all over store displays is that it can actually be harder to find them when you’re looking for something particular. I’ve intentionally not read the back of the book in hopes of having as few expectations as possible going into it, and I’m eager to see how the story takes shape. I can say already, though, that Green’s prose is far better than anything I’ve read recently in YA and is full of why-didn’t-I-think-of-that turns of phrase.
Kristin Cashore - Graceling
I’ve read a good bit of popular YA speculative fiction recently that I haven’t liked nearly as much as I’d hoped I would. I try not to be tactless in talking about such books, especially given that there’s a big overlap between their fans and my own target audience. But suffice to say I’m looking for a woman writer in contemporary YA who I can really get behind. A friend recommended this novel to me, and I’m hoping it’ll become a new love.
Neil Gaiman - American Gods
Many of my friends are hardcore Gaiman fans. I recently read Neverwhere and liked it but wasn’t blown away; I’ve heard American Gods is a better display of his prowess. It breaks my short book rule for the summer, but that’s what rules are for, right? If it’s as good as people keep telling me, I’ll whip through it.
William Gibson - Neuromancer
As a slow reader, I can’t help but have some pretty big holes in my survey of a given genre. After reading Dune a couple years ago and Hitchhiker’s Guide last month (both at the urging of good friends), the next authors on my path to sci-fi competence are Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and most immanently Gibson. I’ve been meaning to get to his most celebrated novel since reading “Burning Chrome” years ago, and this summer I’ll finally have at it.
Before the summer ends I’m also hoping to read Slaughter-House Five, more Douglas Adams, more David Mitchell, and maybe more by the above authors if any of these novels really floor me. Beyond that (if my slow slow reading pace takes me beyond that), I’d love suggestions!
Hey, guys and gals! I’m happy to present the latest review of Mutt, this one by Madeline at Read Like Breathing. She’s super cool, and I was happy to find that she had some great things to say about the novel. From the review:
I also loved the characters. They’re so human in these inhuman circumstances, they question and fear and strive to be better against all the odds. You’re also introduced to some people who are obviously striving for power regardless of the consequences, which ends up adding glorious and painful twists to the story. There are a lot of different elements that work together, and for once, guess what? NO TEENAGE ANGSTY ROMANCE. I thought I was going to die and go to heaven when I realized that. Just average human encounters, without all the disgusting appeal to the 14 year old masses.
Go check out the full review, and be sure to follow Read Like Breathing for other reviews and quality content in general. And as always, don’t forget to grab your copy of Mutt on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords if you haven’t yet!
One of the most crushing moments growing up in the information age was when I first realized there were other, better-known individuals who share my name. It’s a matter of luck and the creativity of one’s parents, but one may find himself in line behind any number of other people for the use of his own name. Thankfully, none of the other Evan Fullers in the world are ultra-famous, but it’s been clear to me for years that in order to achieve name recognition as an author, I’d need to either build a more prevalent web presence than the rest of them or use a pseudonym.
I chose the former option, and thanks to all of you who’ve been reading this blog every day, I’m making progress toward that goal.
In the time since starting my daily updates three weeks ago, I’ve risen to #3 result on Google searches for Evan Fuller, as well as #1 on Yahoo. I’m staking out three of the top five spaces on Google searches for “You’re Just a Mutt.”
Getting associations for “Mutt” has been quite a bit more difficult, given it’s a much more common word. I haven’t broken the top 100 for that one just yet, but at the rate things have been going, I’m sure we’ll see some kind of progress relatively soon.
Thanks again to everyone who’s been reading. If you haven’t already, grab a copy of Mutt. As the reviews coming in are saying, it’s a good read.
Too many late posts recently; I’ll get caught up today. Anyhow–
1) Graphic design is very easy when you’re reusing art assets by an awesome illustrator.
2) You’ll notice my delicious iced coffee in the background. Good Karma Cafe receives my packages for me, because the baristas there love me.
3) I’m going to need some help plastering these all over Philadelphia and parts unknown. If you’d like to help, let me know! And please read my tagging policy before you put themabsolutely everywhere.
Since I released Mutt in December, the reaction from its gracious and growing readership has been almost uniformly wonderful. However, sales have a bit slower than I had anticipated and much slower than my pipe-dream goals for the year. I completed a first draft of the sequel months ago but can’t afford to publish it as soon as I’d hoped. I’m going to have to recoup the costs of releasing Mutt–getting there!–and raise additional money for the second book (which may be ebook-only at first or may be released simultaneously in print, depending on how well Mutt does between now and then). In short, I’m trying to sell more books. Surprise!
I just finished writing a book of poetry for class, and that took the majority of my focus for the past few months. Today I’m beginning a 90-day period of nonstop promotion, trying as many ideas as I can come up with and seeing what sticks. And I’ll be documenting it here. Hopefully this will prove useful to those of you who are self-publishing as well. Different strategies work for different books and authors, but it will offer very broad set of promotion ideas and one writer’s success with each.
To start with, here’s a recent one I’ve tried that didn’t work so well.
Google AdWords
I got a coupon for $100 of free AdWords advertising and put it to immediate, if ineffective, use. I ran text ads linking directly to the Amazon page for Mutt. I figured that since a lot of visitors to my site don’t follow the big shiny banner links to the point-of-sale sites, I’d just send people directly there.
At a final cost of just over $103, the ad generated 175 clicks across 11 days. I’m estimating that about two sales came from this campaign, channeling less than a tenth of the ad cost back to me in royalties. The ad did total nearly 750,000 impressions (the total number of times the ad was displayed), so I’m thinking a big mistake here was my use of text-only ads. If I had run ads with pictures based on the cover art for the book, it would have generated a lot more visibility, even if it didn’t immediately translate to sales. If Google offers another free or discounted campaign, I might try this. In the meantime, paid advertising doesn’t look like the best way to go, based on this early experiment.
