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My first commercial self-publishing venture is out today! This is a collection of my shape-shifter stories from the Sword and Sorceress anthology series, finished off with a brand new novelette. I hope you enjoy it! For purchase links, see the Books2Read universal link: https://books2read.com/u/bMMqp8

Anyone who know me at all personally knows how uncomfortable I am with self-promotion. I’m going to say some very uncomfortably self-serving things in this blog. (When I want to draw attention, I normally fall back on doing or making something so totally fabulous that everyone will just naturally want to be my friend and talk to me…which evidently makes me too scary or intimidating to talk to, but that’s an entirely different essay.) So you needn’t fear that essays like this one will become a common feature on my blog.

But book releases are a special thing—a thing that only ever happens once for each book. As I’ve frequently mentioned, when Daughter of Mystery was released last year, I really wasn’t sure what to expect or what the rules were and I missed a lot of opportunities and made a lot of mistakes. Perhaps mistakes that couldn’t have been avoided. No doubt this time I’ll make an entirely different set of mistakes. But the one mistake I’m going to try not to make is to believe that if I just let my book sit there on the shelf being its utterly fabulous self, that the sheer fabulosity will make it successful.

Bullshit.

Fabulous things get overlooked all the time. And quietly fabulous things get overlooked a lot. So here’s where you—my readers and fans—come in.

I’ve frequently mentioned how tickled I am that my reader reviews are so overwhelmingly literate and articulate. I think a well-written review helps persuade potential readers more than a simple “OMG this is great!” does. But you know what else helps persuade readers? Numbers. A year and a quarter out, Daughter of Mystery has exactly 21 Amazon reviews. (It would have had 22, but I think they took my brother’s review down because he was honest enough to mention the relationship.) That’s actually pretty pathetic numbers. Books that are a tenth as good as mine have ten times the number of reviews. You know why? Because they have energized fan bases. Amazon reviews drive visibility on the site. They matter. Daughter of Mystery has 14 Goodreads reviews. (More ratings, because Goodreads lets you rate without reviewing.) That’s really pathetic.

Obviously, I’m happy about the people who have left reviews. But I get rather depressed about my book’s apparent inability to get more people excited enough to talk about it. Excitement spreads interest. Interest generates curiosity. Curiosity leads to people checking the book out. And I can’t count the number of people I’ve heard say, “I wouldn’t ordinarily have read something like this, but so-and-so convinced me to try it and I absolutely loved it!” I can’t get those readers if my greatest fans are just quietly appreciating the books in private as if they were a guilty pleasure.

Discoverability is a major problem for small press books and for niche genres. Let’s be brutally honest here: my publisher doesn’t do any promotion outside the lesbian fiction market—and that market is pretty much assumed to be a closed class who only need to be provided with the information of a book’s existence. All the promotion outside that narrow market is on my head, and it pretty much means that I’m hand-selling books one at a time and desperately hoping that someone else will love the book enough to spread the word. That’s where you all come in. Here are some very specific things you can do to help The Mystic Marriage be a success—assuming that you’d like it to be a success. Keep in mind that success is essential to having book series continue to be published. If the Alpennia books are very much outsiders in the larger world of SFF publishing, keep in mind that serious historic fantasy is just as much an outsider in the world of lesbian fiction, which is dominated by contemporary settings, category romance, and erotica. A lot of lesfic readers who will reflexively buy every new contemporary erotic romance, give Daughter of Mystery a pass because they don’t know what to do with it. So I need that cross-over appeal. I write niche books and I need to find and fill that niche in every reading community it exists in.

So that’s the pep talk. What can you do?

• Read the books – OK, that sounds like a no brainer. I assume that people who read this blog do so because they enjoy my writing and my ideas and are predisposed to like my fiction as well. But it’s not actually a given. So I’m going to make a personal, emotional appeal: I will never judge anyone by whether they’ve read my books or not, but if you have ever tried someone’s books or stories solely because you liked them as a person and wanted to support their creative work, I’m not proud. I’ll gladly take that as a reason for having you read mine. And past evidence has indicated that you’re more likely to be glad you did than sorry, so it's not a big risk.


• Tell people if you enjoyed the books – In person, in your social media, everywhere. Be as enthusiastic as your conscience will allow. Not just, “Hey what are you reading?” “Oh, this thing my friend Heather wrote.” but “It’s this great book [title]! It has [favorite story features] and I love the [best parts]! And it’s a series—I just finished the second book and I can’t wait for her to finish the next one!”


• Post reviews – You don’t have to buy a book from Amazon to post a review there. (You do have to set up an account, but that’s trivial.) It’s just as easy to set up a Goodreads account and you can post the same review in both places. And then re-use the review on your personal blog, or facebook wall, or anywhere else. A review doesn’t have to be a formal essay. It doesn’t have to be long. (As noted above, specific observations are better than generic squee. But don’t forget to squee as well!)


• Add the books to Goodreads lists and best-ofs -- Goodreads has a lot of features for helping people identify books they might enjoy reading. There's simple shelf-tagging. There are theme lists. Daughter of Mystery is currently included in "Lesbian Historic Fiction" and "Lesbian Fantasy". Other lists that it might naturally belong on include "Fantasy of Manners" and "Regency Fantasy". There are book groups with associated recommendation lists. Goodreads also has the option to ask an author questions, or to start discussions related to a specific book. All of these things increase visibility and engage people's interest.


• Recommend the books – If you encounter people looking for suggestions to read, keep the Alpennia books in mind if they fit what the person is looking for. There’s nothing like the thrill of seeing someone recommend your book to a third party. (And it’s disappointing when someone who says they like your book never seems to remember it exists when they’re making recommendations. See comments about “guilty pleasures”.)


• Pass on promotional opportunities – Not everyone will be in a position to do this, of course, but if you know someone who does book reviews or book blogs, someone who does book-related podcasts, if you’re part of a book club (either in-person or on-line), suggest the Alpennia books any time they’re relevant. If you’re reasonably local to me, I’m always happy to look into personal appearances. Personal connections got me a library reading, a bookstore reading, and a Q&A session with HS and college students who’d had Daughter of Mystery as assigned reading. The possibilities can be creative.


• Help get the books into bookstores – Yes, I know, brick-and-mortar stores are so 20th century, and many people no longer have the luxury of having a local bookstore, not even a Barnes & Noble. But physical stores are still a great place for book discoverability, and bookstores rarely stock small press books without a special reason. If you have the opportunity, give them that reason. Special-order my books through your local bookstore and actively suggest that they order extra copies and put them on the shelves. (I had one SFF bookstore tell me, “We didn’t stock your book because we didn’t think it would sell, and since nobody came in and asked for it, obviously we were right not to have stocked it.” Just one person walking in and saying, “Hey, could you order this book for me?” might have gotten me into that store.) And here’s a further detail on discoverability: suggest that they shelve the book in the SFF section…not that one tiny shelf in the far back of the store where they cram all the LGBTQ books. People who buy lesbian fiction will already have heard about my books (it they’re going to hear at all). It’s the fantasy readers who need to be able to stumble across them.


• Be enthusiastic – I can’t emphasize this enough. The minimal baseline for getting people’s attention for a book these days is “OMG this is the best thing ever! You have to read it!” A recommendation along the lines of, “I rather like it. If you’re into this sort of thing, you might check it out.” might as well be a thumbs-down.


• Don’t anti-sell – There’s this thing that shows up in reviews sometimes that comes out sounding like, “This book is very good for a lesbian novel” or “If you like lesbian fantasy adventures, you’ll enjoy this.” A lot of potential readers will have a knee-jerk reaction to being told that a story has lesbian characters. “Oh, this isn’t meant for me.” I never want to apologize for my characters being women who love other women. And every time the books get described in a way that prioritizes the “lesbian” label, it feels like a big red warning label is being slapped across the cover. Lots of people have enjoyed Daughter of Mystery who would not have deliberately read a “lesbian novel”. Don’t feel you have to foreground this aspect of the books unless it’s a positive selling point. Because if you do, it comes across as giving your listener an excuse to reject it. And that connects to...


• Make connections to other things people like -- One of my readers recently recommended, "If you like Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the Sword or Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics, or if you think Georgette Heyer novels would be better with lesbians, Daughter of Mystery is a book for you." Now that's how you sell a book to people! I would love it if more people promoted the connections between the Alpennia books and better-known works that have the same target audience. (I'd love it even more if someone convinced the authors of those better-known similar works to check out Alpennia and if they subsequently recommended my work to their fans. This is, alas, something that is Very Bad Form for an author to do herself.)

So that’s everything I can think of at the moment. I’m sure you’re all creative enough to come up with more. The LHMP100 celebratory contest for a chance to win a e-book of The Mystic Marriage is still running and will be open through April 20. You currently have an excellent chance of winning if you enter (hint, hint). Now I’ll just go back to working on being quietly fabulous until next time.

Yesterday I made my annual Mac-geek pilgrimage to the MacWorld Expo in SF, in company with the usual suspects (esp. scotica). While I'm not immediately in the market for any of the hot new products, I did spend some time fondling the new Macbook Air and proclaim it eminently fondlable. The only major purchase I ended up getting was the upgrade to the Leopard operating system, although I fell slightly in lust with a project/contacts organization system that actually looks like my brain feels. (The name is, in fact, something like "Your Brain".) I lusted after several assorted pieces of luggage, all of which more or less duplicate functions that I already have luggage for, so they were safe to lust after.

And while in the middle of checking out one of the various POD (that's Print On Demand for the non-writerly readers)) companies, I suddenly had the belated flash of insight that the solution to getting Harpy Publications back up and running is to switch to a POD model with a company that handles all the order fulfillment. Since I'm primarily dealing with people who know the publications exist and simply want to obtain them, rather than a situation where I'm trying to go out and promote them to an unknowing public, this is pretty much an ideal solution. It does mean that I'd need to transform my literal paste-ups into pdf format, but that's a lot less effort than doing order fulfillment out of my living room. Of course, the POD solution doesn't cover the various songbooks -- specifically Dreamer and Songbook Pusher -- that wouldn't get reprinted even if I managed to sell out of the existing copies. But the historic stuff -- including some of the pamphlet-sized items -- could all be set up for POD. I think I've identified one of my projects for the year. A big advantage of leaving the printing and order fulfillment to a 3rd party is that I don't have to deal with a resale license or filling out sales tax forms. And a brief check of sample pricing indicates that the production costs are comparable to or lower than the run-them-off-at-the-xerox-shop costs.

Why I didn't twig on this idea long ago is a mystery to me.

I spent most of the day yesterday at thread_walker's games party. Cleaned up the map on a couple rounds of Settlers of Cataan, learned some new railroad games, and declined to enjoy "Munchkin Chthulhu", which ended up having more vociferous arguing over minute details of the escessively complicated rules than actual play time. (As I understand it, arguing over the rules is a design feature. I just don't find that fun.) Overall, much fun and I'm grateful for having been invited. (Oh, and yummy food, too.)

On my way to the games, I swung by the "electronic waste collection day" (an Earth Day event) being held in the IKEA parking lot. This enabled me to get rid of an old intermittently-malfunctioning tv, two old printers (which might or might not be convinced to function again), a wireless phone whose battery would no longer hold a charge, and a flat-bed scanner that made horrible gear-slipping noises when you tried to run it. I'd been planning to offer up several of the items on Freecycle, but my tendency to write excessively honest descriptions ("25-year-old TV set, reception is lousy except when I'm testing it to verify that it needs to be thrown out, at which point it will work reasonably well.") tends to undermine people's interest in my more marginal cast-offs. So the opportunity to get the stuff out of the house was not to be missed. Further progress on the life-cleaning!

I sent off the requisite form to the IRS inquiring about the fate of my refund check, but I've developed a suspicioun about it ever since I noticed that somehow my tax accountants had filled out the forms with my residence being on "X Avenue" rather than "X Street". That just might have been enough for the Post Office to have sent it back as "no such address". If so, getting it redelivered should be a lot simpler than it would be if the check had been stolen out of my mailbox.

Today is another work-party day at Ed Levine Park which may or may not get rained on. (It was bright and almost clear when I got out of bed, but now it's clouded up again and it was raining fairly constantly yesterday afternoon and evening.)

I also need to do some website work since I've decided to post a short story in honor of the recently-proclaimed International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. (For those who don't want to follow links and untangle the backstory: one of the officers of SFWA, the sf writers' association, made some incendiary comparisons between authors who post their works for free on the net and scab laborers. There immediately emerged a grassroots movement in support of a contrary position -- that posting material for free reading is a reasonable part of a comprehensive career-buildling program by an author and doesn't undermine either one's individual potential financial gains nor the overall economic basis of professional writing. International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day is planned as an implementation of this position, celebrated by individuals making selected items of their own professional-quality writing available for free reading online.) I can see points on both sides, but from a purely pragmatic point of view, you deal with new technologies by making them work for you -- not by railing against the ways in which they change the old paradigms.

Finished the Consonance songbook at entirely too late last night (although the lateness was due to my procrastination, not due to any enormous amount of work involved). It seems like every time I pull out my music notation program, I have to re-learn all the tricks from scratch. And just when I get proficient again, the project's done. This time, much work was eliminated by receiving some of the original tunes as midi files, which can be fed into the notation program as a starting point. Just finished the proofreading over my lunch hour and have a number of minor corrections, plus a long list of "can I tweak this spacing just a little?" notes. Fortunately, among the tricks I re-learned are all the space-tweaking ones. My own deficiencies aside, I'm quite fond of my current notation program (Smart Score by Musitek). I contains pretty much all the features that I swore over not having back when BL and I were doing songbooks at Wail Songs. (My favorite being "link lyrics syllable-by-syllable to the notes so that when you move or copy the notes around, the lyrics follow".) The feature that really sold me, but that I haven't used much at all is "OCR for music". One of these days, I'll scan in the printouts from all those old in-progress music book projects just to have them in a more accessible format. (Somewhere I have archive disks of the files -- and even still the program they were created in. But I have very little faith in being able to run a 15 year old DOS program even under the most creative emulation programs available. And simply scanning in the printouts will probably be less work than pulling up the old files and converting them into midis for export.) I rather doubt that either of the other-people's-songbooks that we were working on B.G.S. (before grad school) will ever get resurrected, but there are a few projects of my own that are one of the main reasons I invested in the current software.

Ten hours of solid sleep seems to have kept the beast at bay for the moment. If I can manage the same tonight, it might give me enough reserves to make it through a cross-country plane flight.

I promised myself into a little extra pre-convention running around. Running through some old e-mails (the "need to answer this sometime" file, which had run up to 300 messages -- most now obsolete) I ran across inquiries from Poison Pen Press (who merchant at Darkovercon every year) about my Medieval Welsh Clothing booklet. Mistakenly (as it happens) thinking I had some copies from the last time I'd run a printing for Alban for Pennsic, I shot off an e-mail saying I'd bring a bunch for them to deliver at the convention. Then I discovered that I'd misremembered about having any copies in stock. Ah well, not an enormous amount of work, but one more thing to keep track of. I really need to put some systematic work in on getting Harpy Publications back on its feet. (Along with all the other pending Major Projects.)

(later) Books picked up. All packed. Elder brother instructed on cat care. And several hours left before an early bedtime for a 7am flight.