April 11, 2020: Bonds sale ends tomorrow, some stuff about print editions. Newsish stuff.

Dear humans,

We meant to do this yesterday, but life happened. The female became busy picking a fight with Grave Humor, and the allergies struck again, this time bringing a rash. The rash has mostly cleared up after taking allergy medications. Keyword: mostly.

Please enjoy this picture of me taking a nap with my sister. On my sister. I do enjoy my naps.

We meant to do a lengthy Q&A yesterday… and today… but the female has a great deal she must do, so we’re going to do this quick and dirty style. Really quick and dirty style. We’re sorry. (The coffee isn’t ready yet, either, and the apartment is not going to clean itself… and she can’t hire a maid right now. It would take an army of maids to make the apartment clean.)

Honestly, she’d need an army of maids to make the place presentable enough to bring in an army of maids.

Cleaning. She hates it. She’d rather be writing… so she does. Now she must pay. One day, she will learn. Today is obviously not that day.

Q: Is Grave Humor finished?

A: It would be if the female got off her lazy ass, accepted the book is done, and just finished the last few thousand words. She doesn’t want it to end because she likes it.

The female can be a very annoying creature.

Q: Allergies or Plague?

A: Allergies. No, female, stop scratching at the rash. I swear. Are you a child?

Q: Print editions?

A: Always 3-4 weeks following release. Sometimes longer. Rarely shorter.

Please stop asking. The answer is not changing, and the female is not going to deliberately delay every book by up to 2 months for an edition she doesn’t sell many copies of. We get you like print books… but please stop asking.

There would need to be hundreds of more people who actually buy print books to justify the female adjusting how she schedules and releases book for them. Or hundreds of libraries.

I have been dismissed to go enjoy my nap and have some time outdoors, so please enjoy the rest of the communications from the female. Bye-bye for now, humans!

Hey, folks. So, here’s the nitty-gritty. Most of my readers are digital consumers. I appreciate those of you who like the print editions, but they don’t sell more than 20 or 30 each at release. Most of you just prefer digital books. I do them as a labor of love. Please understand this. I cannot (and won’t) withhold a book from thousands of people for 20 or 30 people. The print editions are always made. They are just not prioritized. Frankly, I lose money on them, but I do them anyway.

If they sold more than 20 or 30 copies around release, I would consider rearranging the schedule to hold back releases so the print editions were ready for the regular release of the digital version. But bookstores and libraries don’t typically carry them, which means the print editions are few and far between in terms of sales.

Yes, I will keep doing them.

No, begging me about print editions will not make me do them faster. It might make me want to throw bricks at windows, though. It’s very frustrating when there’s minimal demand for something but a general sense of must have it now.

If you must have the books now, we recommend the Kobo Forma, the Barnes & Noble Nook Glowlight, or the Kindle Paperwhite. These are all e-ink readers, so they mimic the general look of a book very well. You can swipe a finger to turn the page, and the content of the book is the same, it weighs a great deal less, and if I make an oops, you get the corrections sent straight to your device.

I can’t correct print editions easily.

Yes, e-readers run out of batteries, but honestly? I just have more of them kicking around in case I want to read right that instant… or I read on my phone.

Consider the e-readers. I assure you, they are still books, and you can set them to be whatever font size you want, you can have whatever screen brightness you want, and the words are the same.

Yes, yes, we all like the sound and smell of print editions. But if you want it right away, consider an e-reader.

Every now and then, I do giveaways for them, as they do make books just that much more accessible.

(Plus you can enjoy free books authors offer through stores like Amazon, etc, and many of the e-readers can be linked into library systems.)

Here is Amazon’s quick and dirty about how the book lending system works with public libraries.

And during times like now, you can check books out at your library even while they’re closed.

Libraries are great. Print books are great. But please consider digital if you need the book right now.

I really, really can’t justify delaying the digital book because a very small number of you want the print book at the same time digital readers get their copy.

The time it takes to bring print editions into market depends on a lot of factors, including designer availability and printer delays. Both of my designers are really busy right now. There is a backlog of approvals at the printer because of COVID.

At current, the process from booking with the designer to getting approval from the printer is four weeks. It then takes an addition 2-6 weeks for the book to get from the printer into full distribution.

Then it can be another 2-6 days for delivery.

So, if I use the higher number of each range, I would have to delay a book by eleven weeks minus a day.

This is just something to be aware of.

(Usually, distribution has been closer to the two week mark, but I have seen some epic delays in the past. And with the current pandemic, I am expecting the longer margin.)

But since I’m here, Bonds & The House Lost at Sea are both waiting for approvals from the printer. As soon as they are approved, they will be added to distribution. We plan on setting their release date for the last day of April, assuming we can adjust that before we do the final step. If not, it may be a little longer.

All that said, I made it easier for you to locate all of the books.

This bookshop I made has links to all of my print editions with short notes about what the book’s version. I’ll be making this prettier and more streamlined (with better notes about what the books are) as I have time. At time of posting, the only book not in this list is the Magical Romantic Comedy Starter Pack hardback. If it isn’t listed, it’s not available.

Please note this is a beta store. If you have problems with the shopping interface, please contact their customer service. (It’s not my site, I wouldn’t know how to fix it if a mongoose slapped me with a black mamba, and I’m not a customer service agent for them. And that is not a slight against customer service agents. They know what the fuck they’re doing. I don’t. Please contact them if you need assistance.)

Note: I price my paperback editions so I receive roughly a dollar of profit, so I really, really undercut myself on them compared to digital editions. I want them to be accessible to readers. Print-on-demand is not cheap. So, to answer the question about if I can make the print editions cheaper, the answer is a resounding no.

So, onto some Royal States stuff.

Taken will be tacked onto the end of the Royal States series when its new cover comes in. The box set will hang in the ether, as box sets are not allowed in series listings. No, we can’t do a decimal version. Amazon no longer allows that in series listings, and they haven’t for a while. Some authors slide them in, but it’s against the rules.

At some point in the future, she may renumber them, as it’s a great deal of work and hassle, and the Magical Romantic Comedy series still has issues with numbering despite the hassle taken to renumber anything.

She will put together a guide to reading order for inclusion in the books. We make no promises if it will be in the back or the front of the book. We want to make a good reading experience for everyone.

Yes, Pat will have a third story. Yes, it will showcase some event in the series or leads up to some event in the series as a consequence, so it’ll be a proper part of the Royal States series–just like Taken has events in it that ultimately shapes Null and Void.

(And just like how Storm Called ultimately shaped the events in Null and Void.)

Moving forward, The Royal States series will begin getting equal work time with the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count series.)

Essentially, this is how it will work:

When scheduling, I need to do 2 or 3 “money maker” books before I can justify doing a passion project.

Money maker books are currently Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) books and Royal States books. In short, enough people enjoy these series I know if I write and release one, I can pay my bills, pay my staff, and ultimately feed myself and my family.

Everything else is a passion project. Passion projects tend to be cycled through until the previous book released of the same type makes enough to have covered its bills, covered the food bills in the house, and so on. Once it has made enough money, the next one is worked on.

Hypnos, for example, just recently tipped over in favor of making enough money to justify all of the expenses to continue the series. It had a downside though, because it needed to justify two books, as Day of Reckoning and Achlys will both release around the same time. It’s much easier for me to work on the prequel while working alongside the next book in the series. It helps me keep everything consistent, and then I can keep the worldbuilding stable.

It’s complicated. It’s also challenging. I love this series, and I will finish it, but it’s not a money maker. It’s a passion project.

Yes, I am planning on doing Silent Stalker, which is Blood Bound’s sequel. My cover booking for that is not until September 2020, unless a spot opens earlier and the designer opts to do that cover in an earlier spot.

Yes, I’m still planning on trying to have Tales of Two Tigers ready for early 2021. I have run into a slight technical difficulty with it.

I have too many fun stories I want to tell. I also need to do the opener of Stone Bound to figure out which stories may be too spoilerish. I might do a section in the book entitled “The Spoiler Fields” with a note that the stories may spoil some elements of Stone Bound, and to perhaps dodge them until after the book’s release. That would allow me to write all of the stories I want and release it without having to figure out how to handle the issue. Then readers can decide for themselves if they want to wait to read those particular stories.

That would solve my primary issues.

As I mentioned in the Fantasy Worlds of RJ Blain group, this may be delayed if the stories take longer than anticipated to write–or if the collection balloons beyond expected levels.

Some of the outlines are for novellas, so it’s going to be a great deal of work. But, it is being worked on.

Yes, the Fantasy Worlds of RJ Blain group voted, and Tales of Two Tigers got prioritized. That does mean Stone Bound does have to wait for Tales to be productive before it is worked on.

(Insert twenty billion sneezes here. Damn you, alllerrggiieeesss!)

The Fox Witch World will likely release one or two titles a year. Unless it takes off and really flies, that’s just how it’ll be. I’m okay with that. I’m really enjoying working on the stories on the side.

The Vigilante Magical Librarians series is likewise a passion project, but honestly? If I finish all the “I promised I would do these” series and money makers, I may finish the whole shebang in one go later in 2021. They’re so much fun and I have so many good ideas.

The Magically Hellish Comedy (with a body count) trilogy will be done at my whim. We count that as a money maker series, so it’ll be prioritized along with the main Mag Rom Coms. The same applies to the Otterly Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series.

If the trilogy to full series sets do well, I will likely rotate in the following fashion:

A “standard” mag rom com, a Royal States novel, a “series” mag rom com, and a passion project. Rinse and repeat. Every now and then, I’ll slip in a Bernadette Franklin novel. (I love them, but they aren’t money makers yet.)

I am going to be trying to write 6-8 books a year. This whole 13+ books a year thing is lethal. And I wish I wasn’t using that more literally than figuratively. I don’t want my health to land in the shitter, so while I am a promise made and promise kept type of gal, which I *could* put some stuff to next year without penalty because Amazon is allowing changes like that right now, I’m going to keep my promises.

At this point in time, the only book that might be slightly pushed off is Wild Wolf if I need the extra time because I have three releases in December.

And it would only be pushed off to January, after Dirty Deeds releases.

I have figured out how I’m addressing my general issues with Dawn of Dae, and the primary (albeit critical) new scene addition happens in Chapter four. It is a significant inclusion. (Originally, I meant to start the arc in book three, but I’m slow burning it starting in book one. It will change significant things later. It’ll be a challenge to edit, but that’s fine.)

At this point in time, I do not expect to release Unawakened for at least a year. There’s just not much interest in the book, and so I will pick at edits in my spare time. I almost considered just cancelling Dawn’s preorder since there’s so little interest in it, but I’ve already done a lot of work on it already, I’ve paid for the new covers, so… I’m doing it.

It’s a shame, because this series is one of my favorites, and without it, the Mag Rom Com series wouldn’t exist.

And now I have to go clean the apartment. Have a good day, folks.