This week the Robots, minus Justin, chat about writing humor. Eliyanna tries unsuccessfully to make Terry funny. We promise, there were no jokes about pervy old guys and lesbians in bars. Really.

This week’s promo – Dragon Ash, a podiobook from Charlie Brown Yes, that was also the promo for last week. Maybe Terry should listen to the episodes after Justin mixes them.

This week Terry and Eliyanna talk with fantasy author Michael J. Sullivan about the release of his first book from Orbit, Theft of Sword. Tune in and see what he’s been up to and what he might have planned.

A few links:

Since Eliyanna insisted, here is a link to Terry’s Erotica titles on Amazon. My more public identity is Lynn Mixon. Yes, I know. Talk about false advertising. I’m not nearly that hot in real life. Or that gender.

Justin’s Movember donation page

This week Terry and Eliyanna Have the second part of a conversation on marketing with Robin Sullivan. Enjoy.

Robin Sullivan’s Blog
Ridan Publishing

This week’s promo – John Mierau’s Asunder

This week Terry and Eliyanna talk long about writing short. Short stories, that is. Enjoy.

This week’s promo – Paul Elard Cooley’s Garaaga’s Children

There is going to be a reading of selections from various Cleis Press books (including Lesbian Cops, the anthology with my story Healing Hand) in NYC on July 10 at 7-9 pm at the KGB Bar (where Ellen Datlow has readings for her anthologies!). Sacchi Green, Rachel Kramer Bussel, D.L. King, Evan Mora, and R.G. Emanuelle will be reading.

If you’re in the city, or even Jersy, take a trip and listen. You won’t be disappointed.

Author’s Product Description

Shayne Bartlet has been kidnapped, his powers disabled and his memory altered. He’s not having a good day. And he doesn’t even know it.

Together, Danielle and Shayne discover that things are not as they seem. They must stop Danielle’s race from destroying the Maslonian planet, and free Shayne’s people.

** SPOILER ALERT ** Be advised I have included some minor spoilers below.

Since I don’t haunt the Young Adult romance aisle of the bookstore, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I read this novel. What I got was an enjoyable read and characters I truly cared for. Shayne and Danielle are strong, likeable characters put into an interesting and twisty situation. Danielle and her people have been kidnapping people from Shayne’s world for a long time. Now Danielle is hunting for Shayne while he is trying to stop them.

In the process of them dealing with their divergent goals, they fall in love. They also encounter other honorable people and villains. These secondary characters didn’t have the same depth and development as the primary characters. For the most part that isn’t a major problem, however I would have liked to have seen them more fleshed out.

Since this story is a romance and not science fiction, I kept a more open mind when it came to some of the futuristic plot elements. A few of them had me raising an eyebrow, they didn’t detract from the romance storyline.

I would have liked to see a bit more ambiguity when figuring out who the bad guys were. I think that would’ve helped ratchet up the action and conflict. Maybe that is not the way Young Adult Romance handles things. Again, this really didn’t detract from the story for me.

I liked this book a lot and none of the issues I mentioned really slowed me down as I read the story.

I’ll have my eye on Victorine and will grab the her next book when it comes out.

I give this book four out of five stars.

This week the Robots the Robots are joined by J. Daniel Sawyer to talk about the dark clouds on the horizon of traditional publishing. Once again, Terry mixed the sound, so your milage may vary. Enjoy.

Some of the links mentioned during the show:

Dan’s post about Peggy Lee.

Posts by Kristine Kathryn Rusch are here, here, and here.

Some of the information discussed came from the blog of David Farland.

The Nolo Copyright Handbook was also mentioned.

Don’t forget to check out Dan’s books.

This week the Robots sit down to chat about writing historical fiction. Justin is off to Balticon, so Terry recorded and uploaded the episode. That means all audio flaws are his. Enjoy.

Eliyanna mentioned a Washington Post article about pen names.

From Publishers Weekly

The teenage (and innocent) John Wayne Cleaver swears he is not the serial killer that has emerged in his small town–despite his grisly name and a series of unpleasant and eerie similarities. His fascination with the killer leads him to launch his own investigation of sorts–one that leads him to the identity of the murderer.

I Am Not A Serial Killer is the first of three novels revolving around John Wayne Cleaver.

** SPOILER ALERT** Be advised I have some minor spoilers below.

John Wayne Cleaver has known something is different about him his entire life. The interactions of others rarely make sense and he doesn’t connect emotionally with anyone, not even his own family. He had many things in common with serial killers. They shared the same behaviors, urges, and hungers. Not good in a fifteen year old boy in high school.

The only difference between them and him was that he refused to let the monster out to play.

Most wouldn’t call his life normal. By trial and error, he formed a set of rules to lock the monster behind a wall. Working in his family’s mortuary provided him with a safe way to channel his fascination with the dead. Another outcast boy at school became his shield there. He wasn’t the eccentric loner, rather just one of the odd kids. One that kept writing homework assignments about serial killers, sure, but not dangerous.

Then a local man was disemboweled. The monster inside John stirred at the news and he had to go see the place where it had happened, even if it wasn’t safe for him or those around him. He told his therapist, who promptly told his mother. She didn’t know what a sociopath was, but she was pretty sure working with dead bodies wasn’t healthy for John, so she banished him from the mortuary.

That hurt, and made the monster harder to control, but he found a new hobby–tracking down and identifying the serial killer. As the death toll mounted, he pieced together a profile. When a chance encounter revealed everything, he called the police.

That didn’t turn out so well for the police, because the killer was literally a demon.

More determined than ever, John wasn’t going to let that minor detail stop him from bringing the killer down. He set his rules aside and started plotting to kill the otherworldly being. Unfortunately, that also freed the monster within him.

Could a fifteen year old boy fight a supernatural force and his own psyche? And would the people he should have cared about pay for his lapse, either at the claws of the demon or at his own hands?

This book wasn’t at all what I expected when I started reading it. I had heard it was horror, but I didn’t feel horrified. The sense of dread I expected of a horror novel never appeared. While it had serious similarities to watching an episode of Dexter, it is not a rip-off, just similar.

I’d almost call this an urban fantasy with an unusual protagonist. The ending satisfied me and I will read the other books in this series as time permits.

I’ll give it four out of five stars.

Today, I read that the Association of American Publishers had reported e-books had grown to be the number one format among all trade categories for February of 2011. As a percentage, they accounted for 29.5% in the combined print and e-book sales group. Considering they only garnered 8.32% in February 2010, that is nothing short of astonishing to me.

The salient facts quoted straight from the report are:

1. e-Books grew 169.4% to $164.1M.
2. the combined categories of print books fell 24.8% to $441.7M.

The full report can be found here.

Credit goes to Robin Sullivan for parsing the data here.

This surge may be because of the large number Kindles, iPads, iPhones, and other e-book capable devices sold for Christmas, so I’m not proclaiming the demise of print. What I am going to do, in my own outspoken way, is declare 2011 the year of the Indie author.

Okay, many other people have said much the same thing, but it’s my turn. I’ll share some figures, but mainly this is my gut feeling. If nothing else, this will make for a great discussion. If I seem a bit unfocused and rambly, I appologize. I forgot I needed to write this until the last moment.

In this last year, I’ve heard sales figures from a number of indie authors that should make everyone sit up and take notice. Let me share some of the numbers as quoted by Robin Sullivan on J.A. Konrath’s blog. I’ve plucked the exact listing and links from his blog so as not to screw them up, so all the credit on them is theirs.

Blake Crouch – 2500+
Nathan Lowell – 2500+
Beth Orsoff – 2500+
Sandra Edwards – 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley – 2500+
C.S. Marks – 2500+
Lee Goldberg – 2500+
Lexi Revellian – 4000+
Zoe Winters – 4000+
Aaron Patterson – 4000+
Bella Andre – 5000+
Imogen Rose – 5000+
Ellen Fisher – 5000+
Tina Folsom – 5000+
Terri Reid – 5000+
David Dalglish – 5000+
Scott Nicholson – 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske – 10,000+
L.J. Sellers – 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan – 10,000+
H.P. Mallory – 20,000+
Selena Kitt – 20,000+
Stephen Leather – 40,000+
Amanda Hocking – 100,000+

The link to their full post is here.
A more detailed analysis by Derek J. Canyon is here.

I know what you’re saying.

Those are just a few people and we don’t even know how much they’re making. True, but even if we posited they sold for $0.99 and only reaped $0.35 a copy, that would be $10,000 in their pocket for a year at the lowest volume mentioned. Some of these folks made substantially more. Amanda Hocking made almost two million dollars before she got a print offer. Selena Kitt is on track to come close to a million dollars in sales this year.

How many people were making anything like those kinds of sales on their own a few years ago? And that’s certainly not a comprehensive list, either.

Okay, I’ll agree that these folks are at the upper end of the spectrum. The thing is that unlike traditional print, their books never fall off the shelf. As they add books to those shelves, their sales numbers continue to rise. Every month, more people hit that list and with the growing number of e-book sales, it will continue to grow.

With millions of e-reader devices out there, it isn’t a stretch to imagine selling a thousand books a month after working at putting books out for a few years. And the thing about same e-book sales is that they aren’t trailing off with time. They’re ramping up. Each title is selling more every month on average and the trend is accelerating.

You could still be selling that title with good numbers for decades. No print run can match that.

I’m not saying it is as simple as just tossing an e-book out there. You need to do the same things a traditional publisher does. Make sure the story is entertaining. Edit it. Get a professional looking cover. Get it formatted. Crap books won’t sell. Make yours the best it can be and it will find an audience.

All that said, there could be good business reasons to seek a print deal. It just won’t be for the money. It’ll be for things like reaching a new audience and building name recognition. If dirty, filthy lucre is your end goal, traditional publishing isn’t your best bet.

In future installments, I’ll be talking about this topic in more detail. I’ll also be taking your howls of outrage into account, so tell me where I blew it in the comments.