Jeff Haws

Independent author

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Does the book’s title really matter?

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I had this discussion on Facebook recently, as I consulted with various people on what the title of my upcoming novel should be. On my first book, once “Killing the Immortals” came to me, it was one of those proverbial light bulbs popping up above my head. Maybe literally. I can’t say for sure. But it was fairly bright in the room at the time, so perhaps.

Anyway, I knew right away that was the title. It was striking, a little mysterious, and had a seemingly contradictory nature that I liked. I love forcing readers to ask themselves a question they can only answer by reading whatever it is I wrote. “How can you kill immortals?” Know how you’re gonna find out? Buy my book and read the thing, damn it. [Read more…] about Does the book’s title really matter?

New Books By Nobodies Don’t Sell Jack

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Sell

In the week since “Killing the Immortals” was released, I’ve been asked dozens of times by numerous people, “So, how are sales going?” These people generally mean well and are just trying to engage with me on the subject of the book, but the answer for pretty much all brand-new authors who have no real platform to sell from and are completely unknown outside a fairly small set of friends, family and acquaintances: “Predictably slowly.” I tend to tell people they’re “trickling in.” That’s pretty much right. It’s also pretty much exactly what I anticipated. There’s a reason new indie authors don’t just quit their day jobs once their book is out. Like any other small business, it takes a long time (and a good bit of luck) to build a following and a foundation for success. I’m a long way from that.

I don’t mind when people ask that. I’ve yet to punch anyone who did so, in fact. I make no promises, but it’s likely I won’t. But, in the interest of addressing the question, I thought I’d take a look at that in this post. Full disclosure and all. One of the things I never could find as I researched the business of publishing was an idea of reasonable expectations. This won’t solve that completely, but maybe it will help a bit. It’s a sample size of one, though, so bring your grain of salt with you. Here we go … [Read more…] about New Books By Nobodies Don’t Sell Jack

How Much Should a Novel Cost?

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It’s a tough question, and it’s one that shouldn’t be answered with a shrug and a blindfolded dart toss: How much should a novel cost? More specifically when it comes to me (and, maybe, you), how much should my novel cost? There are plenty of factors that go into figuring that out. [Read more…] about How Much Should a Novel Cost?

The Book I’m Writing is Not Mine

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Writing

This recent blog post from Mark Malatesta at Literary-agents.com was pretty striking for me to think about, the notion that the book I’m writing, this one I’m putting all this time and effort and energy into eventually producing for people to insult me over, isn’t really mine at all. It actually belongs to you, the reader. Maybe these blog posts do too. Or is that taking this whole idea a bit too far? Let’s look at this for a second.

With the book, I am, believe it or not, hoping to actually sell a few copies. It’s true. As such, once I pour out my blood and sweat for months, then do it again for a second draft, then let people read it and tell me how much it sucks, then finish a final draft, then answer a million questions about how to go about publishing, perhaps querying agents/publishers, the title, cover design, genre categorization, printing, price, and where I last saw my phone (pretty sure it was on the side table by the bed … hmmmmm), I’ll set out to sell the book to people. People who read. People who can’t read will be of little use to me, but I wish them well in their journey of life. [Read more…] about The Book I’m Writing is Not Mine