Solar Clipper Diary

News from the Golden Age

Archive for the Quarter Share Category

Happy Anniversary

While I count January 12, 2007 as the birthday of Ishmael Wang, February 18th is the anniversary of the first episode I published on Podiobooks.com.

It was the 98th title and Podiobooks had just over 10,000 members. I remember that it took a couple of months or more for me to pick up 100 subscribers and I was being trounced on the charts by Morevi and Earthcore and 7th Son.

In the beginning, I set out to see if I could finish a novel, and have a little fun. I wrote, recorded, and edited Quarter Share in secret so I could present it as an anniversary present to my wife, Kay, who suffered through so many false starts and rough writings that it’s a miracle she’ll read anything of mine any more.

Because of a tagging error on the files, I missed the date by a day so the first episode didn’t drop on our anniversary, but actually the day after.

Today, four years later (almost) with eight books, almost 20,000 fans, 162 episodes of my own work, and two books in print, this little writing project is bearing a lot more fruit than I ever thought it would.

She’s put up with it, even when it made her uncomfortable to have all you strangers in our life. She’s been a supporter and a fan and a friend for over thirty years. Today marks our 26th wedding anniversary.

To quote the Grateful Dead: “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

Personally, I’m hoping for longer and stranger.

Thanks!

The Kindle version of Quarter Share has been edging up the charts slowly on Amazon. We purposely did not try to do an Amazon rush on this because, well, I think they’ve been over done and I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on the fans. In spite of not doing the rush, word’s getting out and, rather than a one day flash in the charts, we’ve got a nice solid presence in three of the SciFi sub genre charts.

We’ve been hanging mostly in the under-1000 region for a few days now and more folks who aren’t from the podcast world are beginning to find it. It’s terribly exciting and even though these are sub-genre lists, the idea that I’m in there with the likes of Asimov and Heinlein has me a bit giddy. I’m even number 30 in best sellers in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction — which is squee-worthy in itself.

Thanks to all of you for helping me reach this point and I’m looking forward to releasing the next book in a few weeks.

The Glamorous Life of an Author

Here’s the first book being signed and dedicated for a fan about 7am this morning.

There was quite a pile of addresses and I’ve already gone through half a case of books. We’re gonna have to order more pretty quickly I think.

In addition to these domestic US, there were copies to New Zealand, Australia, and Europe.

I don’t know how many you all have bought in total across the various media, but I’m fairly well amazed. When it all happens behind the screen, it’s hard to really get a feel for how many books are out there. With them stacked up on the dining room table like that, it gets very real.

Thank you, all.

Shipping News …

No, not the book by Annie Proulx — Quarter Share.

Amazon now lists it in stock and Ridan reports they have recieved their initial shipments. I’m waiting for my boxes to show up here in the next day or so and you can order a signed copy of your own right now!

Pretty cool, I think.

Quarter Share Edits

Robin reminded me that I haven’t keep you up to date on the editing.

We’ve passed the book back and forth about three times now and I’m very pleased with the way the editing is going. We’ve had some tweaking of the cover art, mostly for color and tone, but the real time is being put into cleaning up the story.

One of the things that always baffled me about interviews with authors who went from Print to Podio was the question of “Did you have to change much?” I understand that question much better now. Writing for print is, on its surface, a much more straightforward proposition. There are a lot of visual cues on the page to help the reader understand what’s going on. There are, likewise, a lot of audio cues in a podiobook. Since I wrote all my books to be read aloud and not printed, I’m finding that we’re spending a lot of time fine tuning that difference.

It’s taking longer to edit that it did to write originally, but that’s to be expected, given how fast I wrote it. I believe that — in the end — you’re going to be pleased with the results, and in any case, we’re taking the approach that it’s better to be good than fast.

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