Shannon Phillips

It’s the last day of my free launch promotion for The Millennial Sword. As of right now 933 copies of the book have been downloaded; I’m very confident that it’ll cross a thousand downloads before the end of the day. It’s also currently listed at #14 on Amazon’s list of Top 100 Free Books in the “Contemporary Fantasy” genre. This is the kind of thing that authors get excited about even though it doesn’t particularly mean much. The real test of whether or not the launch promotion was a success will be if I start seeing reviews crop up on Amazon, Goodreads, and other sites.

I have some details that I can share about the paperback version. It will probably be available next week, and it will be priced at $12.99. This is on the expensive side because I’m doing print-on-demand; I don’t benefit from the economies of scale that are involved in a large print run. To be honest, I don’t expect to sell many paperbacks. What I have heard is that having a paperback version available tends to boost e-book sales: that $2.99 digital price looks even better when it’s next to a $12.99 paperback. Plus, I can get copies for my family members and give them away at Christmas.

Over the next few weeks, what I really need to do is stop obsessively refreshing my Amazon sales stats and my book’s Goodreads page, and get back to working on my second novel. As I think I mentioned before, e-book authors almost never make huge sales on a single title—instead, they earn income by building a solid backlist of titles that each sell in modest but steady numbers. I would like to have a second novel to publish by the end of next year. But doing that will require closing down my web browser, and putting in some actual work!

So I’m going to try to post more book reviews. I guess I’m hyper-aware right now of how much reviews mean to an author!

The other day I read The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater.

From the book description:

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love…or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

I really enjoyed this book—it’s well-written, with compelling characterization, a great setting, a twisty plot, fresh and interesting ideas. My only complaint is that the ending was pretty abrupt, and left a lot of the novel’s main conflicts unresolved. It’s the first book in a series so I assume the dangling plot threads will all pay off in later books, but I would’ve still liked more closure at the end of the book.

On the first day of my launch promotion, The Millennial Sword was downloaded 369 times. If the numbers continue at this rate, I’ll get over a thousand downloads before the free period ends on Friday. If even half of those people (500) actually read it—and half of those (250) like it—and half of the ones who like it (125) tell their friends…then I will consider the promotion a great success.

Most of what I’ve read about indie publishing suggests that books with 15 or more Amazon reviews get a lot more traffic. I think this has to do with Amazon’s search algorithms and the way that they promote material on their site. But I have to remind myself not to be impatient for Amazon reviews: people need time to actually read the thing, after all!

A couple of technical notes: some people in the UK had trouble getting the download. The link for our cousins across the pond is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Millennial-Sword-ebook/dp/B009JW9K4M/. That should let you grab the book without any problems.

ALSO, while the Nook version of the book won’t be out for a few months, I wanted to let Nook owners know that there are free programs that can convert between e-book formats. Calibre seems to be one of the most popular. I would expect the formatting might not be perfect after an automated conversion, but if folks with the various non-Kindle e-readers want to grab the novel while it’s free, Calibre might be a good option for you.

The Millennial Sword is now free to download from Amazon! Feel free to spread the link around; the launch promotion will run through Friday, after which the e-book will return to its normal price of $2.99.

Some of my early readers have been posting their reviews, which is lovely. Dom Camus called the novel a “vivid, elegant remix of a classic theme…a cleverly arranged story involving some classic themes from English mythology blended with some well-observed writing concerning the heroine’s life in modern day America.” And Jessie Bennett described it as “a love song to San Francisco, a San Francisco where there are goblins in the subway and were-panthers at cocktail parties,” which I think sums it up perfectly.

Reviews are going to be the lifeblood of this book, so I am very grateful to everyone who takes the time to spread word about it. Thanks so much!

Big news! My first novel, The Millennial Sword, is now available from Amazon!

Isn’t the cover art amazing? It’s by my friend Jessie Bennett. She did such an incredible job, really, I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this. To my eyes Morgan le Fay has a gorgeous pre-Raphaelite quality to her face, and the way she’s rising out of the water is somehow both sinister and compelling. Hey Jessie, have you thought about taking the text off and selling prints?

Clicking the art will take you to the Amazon page for the book. It’s currently only available for the Kindle, although I’m working on putting up a paperback version, and there will also be other e-reader editions to follow. In the meantime, though, even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can read the book on your computer, iPad, or smartphone by using this app.

The e-book is priced at $2.99. But! Starting tomorrow, and continuing through Friday, I’m going to make it available as a free download. The reason I’m doing this is that e-published books rely on word of mouth and good reviews—that’s really the only way for a first-time author to build sales. So my four-day FREE launch promotion is designed to get some attention and pull in reviews. There’s no strings, but I would ask that if you read the book and like it, that you leave me a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or whatever social media networks you use. I really can’t overstate the importance of Amazon reviews—it’s the main sales driver for indie publishers.

I’ll put up another announcement when the free promotion begins! I am just about vibrating with excitement, if you can’t tell!

Thora went to her first “puppy preschool” class today! She got to socialize with lots of other puppies and their owners, and she made good progress on learning the “sit” command. She’s always responded to “come,” because she’s such a lovebug and always wants attention, but we’re reinforcing that too. “Down” and “stay” will be next on the curriculum.

After class she relaxed with her bone:

When I was younger, under a different name, I published an obscenity-laced tirade against Andrew Jackson that I am not going to link to from here, because it was egregiously profane. But for the record, my stance on Andrew Jackson hasn’t changed. He was a traitor to our country and a genocidal killer, and the fact that he’s still—to this day!—held up as some kind of American hero is both utterly baffling and deeply, deeply offensive to me.

Don’t talk to me about the Battle of New Orleans or paying off the national debt or whatever. Don’t even start. I’m sure Hitler was nice to puppies. Jackson defied the Supreme Court’s edict requiring him to abide by the treaties the United States had made with the Indian nations, and unlawfully forced tens of thousands of people on the death march we call the Trail of Tears. Among the Cherokee alone 15,000 were forced to march, and 4,000 died—more than one in four, many of them children. For this genocidal act Jackson takes his place among history’s greatest monsters. He betrayed our Constitution and murdered thousands of innocent people. He was not a President but a dictator.

And we have this monster on our money.

This really shouldn’t be in the “annoyances” category. What Andrew Jackson inspires in me is more accurately described as “rage.” Seriously, don’t talk to me about Andrew Jackson, I start yelling and spitting. I can barely go to the ATM because they always give you twenties. Okay, that’s an annoyance—the ATM thing. I’m going to change the title of this post from “Things That Annoy Me: Andrew Jackson” to “Things that Annoy Me: Automated Teller Machines,” and then everybody will be completely baffled until they get to the last sentence.

I’ve been able to harvest quite a lot of tomatoes over the past couple weeks—the cherry tomatoes ripened first, and they’re still coming in waves, while now we’re getting these little plum-sized guys as well. I honestly don’t remember the varietal: I think it was either Stupice or San Francisco Fog. I’ve also gotten a few bigger, darker tomatoes from our third plant, though most of those are still green. (Was it Cherokee Purple? Next time I’m writing the varieties down somewhere.)

So I’ve been making a lot of tomato salads. Garden tomatoes with cucumber, olives, and feta—or with basil and fresh mozzarella—yum! Still, the tomatoes are coming faster than we can eat them. Time to start foisting them on the neighbors!

I snapped this while the boys were watching television—an uncharacteristic moment of stillness. They always look so much older after a haircut!

The show was “My Little Pony.” Robin is a brony now. He got some birthday money from his great-grandmother and he decided to spend it on a Rarity doll. Maybe it’s a Rarity “action figure”? Anyway, that choice came as a surprise to us, because he mostly talks about Rainbow Dash—but after Rarity arrived, he started saving up his allowance for Fluttershy. So I guess those are his favorites!

The allowance is a new thing too. We’ve started giving him $5 a week, which would basically allow him to get one new pony a month (although some of them are on sale sometimes). We keep track of his money on a notecard attached to the fridge. It’s the Bank of Mom and Dad. The advent of the allowance coincided with the arrival of a weekly chore schedule—he’s now expected to let the chickens out of their coop every morning, and to help set the table for dinner.

Davy’s hit some new milestones too. He’s successfully transitioned into his own bed, in Robin’s room: it’s awfully sweet to hear the two brothers chatting to each other in the mornings. The next big challenge will be potty training. I’m going to give him six weeks or so to settle into the school routine, and then start pushing to get him out of diapers.

Lastly, here’s our little girl, at almost ten weeks:

Still a baby, but getting bigger!

Well, technically it was Robin’s second day of school—but Davy’s first. For the rest of the year Davy will be going on Thursday and Friday mornings.

Robin showed him around the school:

And sat with him at lunch:

Then they split up, and Davy went out to wash a monster truck:

But we met up again at park time, when Davy spent time on the swings:

And Robin ran around barefoot in the sand:

And then it was time to go home!