Good News!

FREEDOM!!!!

Yesterday I teased that I might have some good news regarding A Hero's Journey (Tales of the Scarlet Knight #1).  On the surface it might not seem like such great news:  my publisher and I have parted ways. 

It was my idea to initiate divorce proceedings, but it was an amicable and mutual decision.  I think I've gone into my frustrations with them throughout the life of this blog.  After they agreed to publish the book they really didn't contribute much to its production:  A cover I didn't like, an editor who missed deadlines and didn't really do much, and they didn't even give me a firm release date to promote so no launch parties or blog tours could be arranged.  And the paperback they put out really lacks any kind of decent formatting.  For all that they took like 60% of my meager sales so I was left with 14 cents per copy.

So recently when they said that they were no longer going to pay royalties until they accrued to $10 and that anyone who didn't accrue $10 in six months could get their rights back.  So I grumpily asked, "Do I have to wait six months?"  And they said no I don't and the rest is history--or closer to the present.

In my mind this is a good thing, at least for now; it might turn out to be a bad thing in the future.  The first good thing is now I have the whole series back under my control.  Just as soon as it's taken off Amazon, I can put it back under my auspices, and I can put it back on sale on Smashwords.  And when I do that I'm going to make it FREE like Chance of a Lifetime and Girl Power and hope that helps boost sales of the sequels a little.  So if you've been saying to yourself, "Meh, I don't want to waste 99 cents on THAT" soon you won't have to even waste 99 cents.

Also, I already have a new paperback edition ready.  It has interior formatting to look more professional and also the spine and back cover are formatted to match those of the rest of the series.  Again, once their version on Amazon is gone I can put mine up.  Not that anyone ever buys the paperbacks, but at least the option is there.

The second piece of good news is that I've got a new website for my imprint Planet 99 Publishing.  I used this Wix.com place I'd heard about.  They have some pretty good tools.  For someone who doesn't know anything about programming Flash or Shockwave or Java or any of that crap it was really helpful.  Now I can have cool stuff like slideshows and if I ever have any I could post videos.  If I ever wanted to I could actually sell books directly from the site, but that would create a whole bunch of headaches with taxes and such I'm not ready to deal with.

Of course they claim the site is free and it is--if you want a big freaking ad across the bottom of the screen.  In a way I suppose it's ironic it's $99 a year to get the site ad-free plus with a domain and other stuff.

Anyway, go check out that new site and let me know what you think.  I'm trying to think of other stuff to ad on there.  I'd put author bios and interviews and such but it's pretty much just me and interviewing myself would be weird.  And no I'm not stupid enough to put my Sims on there because I know everyone but me hates that.