I’ve had a side project in the back of my mind for a while now. It involved Vellum, which formats manuscripts for ebooks and paperbacks. It reduced the time it took me to produce the paperback for Amazon from three hours to about thirty minutes, so I knew it was capable. Could it handle my new project? Also, how’s the new Amazon blurb working for The Sword of Sirius Book 1: Red Flag Warning? And, oh yeah — did I manage to get any writing done this week? Let’s take a look at the key performance indicators before getting into any of that!
Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers
The week was blessedly light on Real Life Family Events!
My characters in Dreams of Deucalion Book 3: Bait and Bleed continued to interact well this week. Just today, Takeuchi Mai shocked the heck out of me with a response she gave to something Trent Raven asked her. Shocked the heck out of Raven, too! Fortunately, it was perfect for the narrative.
Atticus Porter did the same thing. I knew he was about to have a confrontation with Matsushita Hotaru, but I didn’t expect it to take the form it did. It was much more interesting than what I had planned. It’s like these characters took what I was planning, internalized it, and put their own spin on it.
Which probably means that my subconscious refined it and put it on the page, but it’s still fun to think of the characters as interacting on their own!
Side Project with Vellum
I got an idea from Chris Fox. I’ve noticed that many writers will group their series into box sets to give readers another purchase option. Generally, a collection will cost less than the books purchased separately. I wanted to offer Evolution’s Hand as two boxed sets. It works thematically, because the first three books center on Earth, while the last three focus on Sirius. However, I was worried about how much time it would take.
I kept writing Dreams of Deucalion, but I couldn’t shake the idea. So, I figured I’d spend a couple of hours looking into how Chris Fox created his bundles, then research how Vellum could make it possible. Well, researching how Mr. Fox handled it took about ten minutes, which included me purchasing one of his box sets to get an idea of what it looked like. Then I spent another five minutes looking into how Vellum created box sets.
An hour later, I had both collections created! I need to put them through a few more quality control steps first, but they look good. I contracted with Fiverr’s Jesh N to create the covers. Here they are!
I’m very happy with the work Jesh N did on these covers!
I’m thinking through pricing strategy. I might try to reinvigorate sales by offering the first collection at $0.99. But I’m not sure. That’s a lot of words for a little amount, and I’m not sure $0.99 is as effective a pricing strategy as it used to be. I’ll keep you informed!
Sales, the New Blurb, and Tropes
Honestly, I think it’s too early to tell if the new blurb is working. The new blurb for The Sword of Sirius Book 1: Red Flag Warning focuses on Owen Payne, who turned out to be more popular with readers than the other two POV characters (Ira Malhotra and Luisa Brunner). Sales seem to be trending in the right direction, but with the holidays, I’m not sure I trust the numbers.
I should harmonize the blurbs at some point. The other two focus on Malhotra, and I don’t want potential readers to think I changed characters. I’ll let things ride through January, then take a look back. I suspect I’ll revise the blurbs for The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone and The Sword of Sirius Book 3: Firebreak then, assuming the sales numbers continue to look good for Red Flag Warning.
One fear I have, and it’s based on an observation from Chris Fox’s book Write to Market, is that some readers will be turned off by the strong female characters I’ve tried to write. Ira Malhotra and Luisa Brunner are just two examples. One of the main tropes in the science fiction/military/fleet genre is that the main character is male. There are counter examples, like the main character in Marko Kloos’s Scorpio, as well as several of Elizabeth Moon’s series. Still, male character dominate the genre.
Can Kloos and Moon get away with it because they’re bigger, established names? Do they already have a critical mass of readers who will follow them into revised/reskinned tropes? That’s only one way to ask the question, of course. I think the best I can do is just write what’s in me to write and hope for the best.
Or tailor my marketing. Which is probably a better strategy than hope.
Progress against Last Week’s Goals
Here’s how I did against last week’s goals:
- Complete Janczak’s Midpoint: Done!
- Complete (finally!) Trent Raven’s Pinch 1 (i.e., its fourth chapter): Done!
- Finish part 2 of Atticus Porter’s Midpoint: Done! And I discovered it’s gone to be two parts.
- Start Trent Raven’s Midpoint: Done! It lloks like it’s going to be another chapter at least.
- Evaluate the cover for Dreams of Deucalion Book 1: Special Recon from Miblart: Done! Miblart delivered a draft of the cover, and I loved it. It was exactly what I was looking for. They’re working on the final version now.
Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2025 Week 02
Here’s what I hope to get done this week:
- Finish Trent Raven’s second Midpoint chapter
- Finish Atticus Porter’s Midpoint part III
- Finish Raven’s Midpoint part III
- Finish Raven’s Pinch 2
- Start Janczak’s Pinch 2
- Take delivery of Miblart’s cover for Special Recon
What Do You Think?
How do you know when your readers will accept a new spin on a trope? Do you rely on beta feedback? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!
