Archive for the 'Business' Category
April 3rd, 2013 by jdsawyer
Every time I turn around, I see more shared worlds popping up. What used to be a fairly limited market dominated by media and RPG tie-in novels (Star Trek, Star Wars, Dragonlance, etc.) is going mainstream. I suspect this is partly because the changes in the publishing industry make it possible for more shared worlds to come to market, partly due to the rising popularity of the shared worlds embodied by comic book properties, and partly because long-form, depth-centric serialized fiction on television (Mad Men, Lost, etc.) has hit the mainstream. Hell, even the popularity of fan fiction proves that there’s a hunger for complex worlds built with a multitude of voices.
I can’t help but think this is a good thing. Writers are solitary folk, and it isn’t always a good thing. Playing in the same sandbox with other writers is a sociable act, and working under unconventional constraints is creatively invigorating.
Last year, I got six invitations from friends and colleagues to join shared worlds anthologies. Two of them I said “yes” to, the others I said “no” to. One of them, Thomas K. Carpenter’s Mirror Shards, Volume 2, is more of a concept series than a shared world series. The other, John Mierau’s Walk The Fire, is a multifaceted fantasy world based on an interesting form of interstellar/interdimensional travel. There were a lot of reasons I said “yes” to both of these, and “no” to the others, but the biggest reason is this:
The Series Bible.
Continue reading ‘Other People’s Sandboxes’
March 19th, 2013 by jdsawyer
At long last, 
Volumes 2 and 3 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries are available in paperback! The story which began with the cutting-edge biotech noir of And Then She Was Gone continues in Book 2 with hauntings, lawsuits, car crashes, and holiday relatives in the dark and friendly little cozy A Ghostly Christmas Present, featuring new cover art and line drawings by Kitty NicIaian.
When it comes to raw-deal Christmas presents, you can’t beat being thrown in an out-of-state jail on a trumped up charge—but detective Clarke Lantham can’t resist a morbid challenge. So when he calls up his brother for help with bail, he steels himself for the ordeal of spending a holiday weekend with relatives who put the “strange” back in “estranged.”
That was his first mistake. But with only two days to clear his name before he gets thrown back in the slammer—and an old client gumming up the works, a ten-year-old niece with a ghost problem, and the occasional murder competing for his attention—it probably won’t be his last.
Book 2 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries
Now, you can read the book View from Valhalla calls “A creepy and clever dose of Christmas cheer from the maniac in cell three” from the comfort of your armchair without the bother of a screen.
Get a taste of A Ghostly Christmas Present here, or buy it in Paperback, or as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad, or any other e-reader.
And then the adventure continues a week later on New Year’s Eve, with the romantic skin-of-your-teeth manhunt Smoke Rings.
Every detective deserves a second chance…
Holidays make Clarke Lantham squirm–not even New Year’s Eve escapes his scorn. With his space cramped, his personal life on the skids, and his business under assault from lawyers and bill collectors, he holes up in his office, counting his blessings that the year from hell ends tonight.
So when an old girlfriend shows up with a chance for a $50,000 reward and a New Year’s Eve reconciliation, he jumps at the chance. After all, things can only get better, right?
Yeah, right.
Book 3 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries
Ginnie Dare author Scott Roche says “Sawyer hits it out of the park…a sexy, emotional, dangerous story I couldn’t put down.” Find out for yourself what he means: whet your appetite for Smoke Rings here, or buy it in Paperback, or as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad, or any other e-reader.
There’s a lot more coming for Lantham in the next few weeks, so load up on books and keep your eyes on this blog.
March 7th, 2013 by jdsawyer
Some of you might 
have run across the sneaky early e-book release already, but this is the official announcement.
Over the last few years, on this blog and elsewhere, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from authors and podcasters and other people wanting to either get into the audio habit or to up their game. This book answers all of them, and a lot more that you didn’t know you had. It’s written in the same quirky, fun style as Throwing Lead: A Writer’s Guide to Firearms and the People Who Use Them
Available now in ebook and paperback, AWP Books proudly presents my newest nonfiction book Making Tracks: A Writer’s Guide to Audiobooks (And How To Produce Them). Now available at fashionable ebook retailers everywhere, available in the next day or two from most fashionable paperback retailers (find links to order now at the bottom of this post), like these:
Paperback
DRM-free ebook for your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or other reading device.
Also check out my interview today on The Creative Penn where I talk about the book and delve into some of the story behind it.
If you have ever found yourself tempted to pick up a microphone and join the podosphere, make an audiobook, or learn to be a voice over artist, this is the must-have, easily-digestible book you’ve been waiting for.
Back cover copy follows:
Continue reading ‘Released: Making Tracks’
March 5th, 2013 by jdsawyer
Today’s blog post 
was supposed to be a big release announcement, but I’m holding that for a few hours because I received a wonderful email from Mark Coker (CEO of Smashwords) informing me that my story Control Room is featured as a Breakout Book in the UK iBookstore today. This is my first time on the front page there, so do tell your iBookstoring friends!
Huge thanks and kudos to Apple and Smashwords for the big support boost!
Click Here for the announcement on the Smashwords blog.
Click Here to buy the story now at the iBookstore.
What is Control Room, you ask? Well, it goes something like this…
One room…
Infinite possibilities.
He sits alone, with no name. A faceless creature with a single purpose, he lives in a small room. He knows only his consoles, his buttons, his screens–the surfaces of a control room for a great machine that he calls “the universe.”
Or, if you’re not of the Apple tribe, grab it for your preferred device by looking in the column at far right.
June 20th, 2012 by jdsawyer
Sometimes you can’t help
smiling a mile wide just typing an announcement, and this is one of those times (for me–at least I assume I’m the one typing. Yup. Okay, then, on with the show). Today I get to unveil to you my latest literary abomination, one that fulfills a lifelong dream to write a fun pulp sci-fi adventure story. A good short pulp needs a good long title, so here you go:
Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do, a Short Novel of Long Odds.
One Surfboard. Two X-Chromosomes. All Man.
Climbing Olympus Mons put him on the map, winning a gold medal in asteroid jumping got him great press, and children everywhere tune into watch every time he skydives from a space station, but Suave Rob Suarez is just getting started. Together with his childhood hero and his stunt partner, he’s gonna stage the biggest daredevil stunt the universe has ever seen:
Surf a supernova. Or die trying.
Read a sample here, or get it now on your Kindle, Nook, or any other reader.
April 3rd, 2012 by jdsawyer
So, as many of you might have noticed, we occasionally produce audiobooks through ArtisticWhispers Productions. Those of you that have may have also noticed that we haven’t put a new one out (or, at least, anything resembling a complete one) in about two years.
The hiatus is over. As of this past weekend, the following books have all moved out of the pre-production stage and into the production stage.
The books currently in production are:
Throwing Lead
And Then She Was Gone
A Ghostly Christmas Present
Smoke Rings
Free Will
Being In Production
Being “In Production” means that the project is currently being recorded. Some bits of pre-production might go on concurrently, for example…
Casting
All of the fiction books will be full-cast productions in the classic AWP style. Here are the numbers on the roles available for each book (bearing in mind that, since this is audio, actors can double, triple, or quintiple up on roles):
And Then She Was Gone needs 27 roles filled. 9 of these have five lines or fewer.
A Ghostly Christmas Present needs 14 roles filled, 4 of these have five lines or fewer
Smoke Rings needs 21 roles filled. About half of these are roles with fewer than five lines.
Free Will needs 118 roles filled. About half of these are roles with fewer than five lines.
What Happens Now
Starting later this week, I will spool out the open casting calls. These books will be available commercially, so if you wish to participate, in addition to having the ability to record clean audio and (for the more involved roles) the willingness to take live-direction, you must be willing to sign a contract detailing the release of your voice for commercial purposes and entitling you to payment.
Payment for these books, because they’re the first commercial round, will be on a deferred fee basis + royalties. Because payment is involved, you will need to include your Tax ID number on the contract and, when payment comes due, fill out the relevant tax forms.
Watch This Space
These are the first five of an anticipated 9 productions this year, and there will be a similar number next year. I’m looking to build a stable of actors I can work with medium-to-long term.
What Does This Mean for the Podcast?
The podcast returns with Free Will (rebooted) in late spring/early summer. I’m aiming for Balticon, but might overshoot or undershoot by as much as three weeks, depending on how briskly casting goes.
Free Will will be approximately 60 episodes long, and will start out as a bi-weekly podcast, ramping to weekly once the entire production is wrapped. As such, it will run for 13-19 months before we reach the end. Since such a long story full of cliffhangers will drive some of you around the bend, the full audiobook will be available for purchase by DragonCon, if not before.
Additionally, the initial chapters of the other books will drop in the feed so that you who subscribe can hear what’s going on in the productions that aren’t delivered to you on the feed.
And, of course, Dealing In will return, as I sense we’ll have quite a lot to talk about as the story unfolds.
Future novels will podcast after Free Will wraps, but there will always be more content available than what’s going through the ‘cast. You all have spoken loudly, and we here around the Bay have heard your cries.
Stay tuned! More in a couple days.
Update: Free Will casting call has posted. Find it here
March 5th, 2012 by jdsawyer
You heard about
it here eighteen months ago when the project first started, now it’s done. I am pleased at long last to announce the release of Throwing Lead: A Writer’s Guide to Firearms (and the People Who Use Them).
Here’s the back-of-book copy:
While they may be an indispensable tool of drama, firearms aren’t something you see everyday in real life. If you write fiction, you have to know about them–but what if you don’t have any formal training, or a job that brings you into regular contact with firearms?
Sure, you could watch a lot of CSI, but as you’ll quickly discover upon cracking open this volume, you can’t trust everything you see on TV.
Entertaining and humorous in style, Throwing Lead shows you the gestalt of guns, showing you the history of small arms in one readable, accessible, graphics-rich and easy-to-reference volume. Packed full of revealing research shortcuts to help you find accurate information on your book’s period and culture, and cut through the jargon to get you the information you need with a minimum of fuss, it’ll leave you chuckling and get your creative juices flowing with tips on underexploited plot devices and hidden opportunities for comedy and drama that firearms present, but that authors often miss.
This unique tour of the history, technology, and cultural development of firearms, examines how they’ve shaped our language and idiom, influenced manufacturing technology, and created warrior cultures in different professions. More than just a “how to write about it” manual or a technical glossary, this rigorously non-political guide reveals the common myths about firearms foisted upon us by filmmakers while using those mistakes as springboards for deeper discussion.
Topics covered include:
Terminology
Safety practices
Handguns
Long guns
Concealed carry
Ballistics and Forensics
The visceral experience of shooting a gun
Home defense
Police tactics and psychology
Criminal cultures
Snipers and spies
Gunfighters and PTSD
Ammunition construction and the handloading culture
Situational awareness and threat assessment
Science Fiction weaponry
Space combat
Historical weaponry
Urban warfare
Weapons maintenance
Gun handling training drills
Gunshot wounds and medical science
Stupid criminal tricks
Crazy movie gun tricks that sometimes work in real life
Selecting the gun that best fits your character
And much, much more…
Buy it now for your Kindle, Nook, or grab it in all formats from Smashwords.
February 3rd, 2012 by jdsawyer
Ladies and gentlemen 
and those who prefer neither title, I am very proud to announce the continuation of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries.
This is the biggest one yet, ringing in at nearly the same length as Predestination, and the adventure scales with the book. Teaming up with his assistant Rachael and his new squatter Nya Thales, Lantham gets to match wits with alien hunters, Chinese assassins, and FBI agents in his attempt to solve an apparent alien abduction before the only witness is…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the back-of-book copy, to give you a better feel for what’s going on.
The California Academy of Sciences, a bastion of integrity in scientific public relations, has agreed to play host to one of the most valuable travelling exhibits in the world: a Mars rock with microbial alien life. But the attention it’s drawing isn’t just international, it’s interstellar. When a commando team of gray aliens steals the rock and abducts a security guard, in full view of the cameras, the head of the security contractor has only one place to turn: Clarke Lantham Investigations.
Clarke Lantham already turned down an alien-related job earlier in the week, and has had his fill of kooks, cranks, and crooks of all kinds. Unfortunately, with an old client suing him, a employee to pay for, and a new ward chewing through his finances, he needs the paycheck. This time, though, he’s not the only one looking for a missing person: the FBI, Lloyd’s of London, and the Chinese Ministry of State Security are all breathing down his neck.
From the dark underbelly of the Tongs slave trade to the shark-infested waters of Bolinas Bay to the skies far above the concerns of mere mortals, Lantham races against spies, assassins, and conspiracy theorists to find the missing man–and the treasure that went with him–before the theft becomes a diplomatic incident between the world’s most fearsome superpowers and the alien overlords they allegedly support.
When the field gets that crowded, someone’s bound to get hurt. But even that might be okay for Lantham…if he didn’t have to sleep on the couch.
Read the first couple chapters here.
Then, grab the book and dive in. It’s available right now through Read the rest on your Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.
I hope you have at least half as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Enjoy!
January 18th, 2012 by jdsawyer
Warning: Politics
For those of you following the SOPA/PIPA to-do, be warned: if you live in California, both of your Senators are flogging hard for this thing. Because of that, for these two characters I actually wrote a note rather than just calling, tweeting, or petitioning.
In case you want something to riff on, I’m hereby releasing my letter into the public domain, to remix as you see fit for the benefit of your Senators and Representatives:
Continue reading ‘The Blackout: Letter to a Senator (or Two)’
January 10th, 2012 by jdsawyer
Before I start, I should make something plain:
I like Amazon–they’ve been incredibly, uncharacteristically work-with-able on a level that’s unprecedented in the publishing industry. I am delighted to have my books available in their store, I’ve had an excellent time working with CreateSpace for POD books, and very much enjoyed access to what is currently the biggest online storefront in the world.
I need to get that straight right up front, because I’m seeing other authors do something that I think shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both their relationship with Amazon, and the business model of the independent author.
You see, Amazon has started offering KDP select, where an author enrolls their books for renewable periods of 90 days on an exclusive basis. In exchange for the exclusivity (and for allowing Amazon to lend your book to prime members at rates yet-to-be-determined), the author gets the promotional tool that everyone’s been gagging after for two years now:
Continue reading ‘Why the Flight to Amazon?’
