Mid January Status Report

January 17, 2014 by Nathan Lowell 2 Comments

January’s about half over and after being a prat about my work load the other day, I thought I’d share some of the stuff I’m doing.

This image is what I’ve done this month.

The circles around the dates are for my daily walk/podcast. Red means I didn’t walk. Green means I walked and did the podcast. Blue means I walked but the podcast file failed.

In the boxes are what I did. For the first week, my word counts were zero. We were still on Holiday Schedule here with family home and kids under foot. HLW in red means editing. I published it on the 12th. (Green box.)

The red box is “No School” day. It’s MLK Day and everybody will be off.

The good news for today is that I finished the markup for Half Share’s paper edition and I’ll be loading those changes in over the next few days. That’ll be one less book in the pile.

I’ve also taken care of a lot of “back office” business this week. I finalized contracts for foreign translations on Korean and Japanese editions. I paid my estimated taxes to state and feds. I shipped a bunch of stuff out to Dark Overlord Media for a benefit auction for CosmoQuest.

It’s been a hectic month and I’ve not done any of the things I planned, but I think I’ve done the most urgent things on my list.

I still have a lot to do. Luckily, tomorrow is another day…

Stop The Presses!

January 15, 2014 by Nathan Lowell 31 Comments

Or more accurately, start the presses.

I’ve gotten feedback from readers that moving forward with new books this year is the wrong course to steer. They’ve convinced me that until I get all the books out in all the formats (ebook, audio, and – most importantly – paperback), I should not move forward with new work.

Of course, ideally, I’d be able to do both but there are only so many hours in the day. Every hour I take away for writing is an hour I’m not working on getting the paperbacks ready.

So, new course.

I just published the ebook of Hermit of Lammas Wood – the final volume of Tanyth Fairport’s first trilogy. It’s available on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo. (Links point to US stores so you may need to adjust for your local.)

That will be the last new book until I get the entire catalog published in paper.

Realistically, that should take four to five months but it will probably take closer to six. I’ve eight titles and each book takes two to three weeks to get prepped, laid out, and proofed. Maybe once I’ve done a few, I’ll be able to speed up a bit.

Quarter Share is out in paperback now and I have the galley proof for Half Share sitting on my desk. I have some overdue audio work that will have priority this week but next week I’ll be back in the vaults working through the old books one more time.

Seven Years Before The Mast

January 12, 2014 by Nathan Lowell 17 Comments

On January 12, 2007, I sat down and wrote “Call me Ishmael. Yeah, I know, but in this case it’s really my name…”

My goal was to have some fun and explore podcast fiction by playing in that world. If anybody had suggested that I’d be sitting here now formatting my tenth novel for sale, I’d have laughed. Actually I think Evo Terra was the first one to suggest that I should publish in text. At that time Lulu was the best choice and I really wasn’t interested.

My how things have changed.

Ten books.
Over 7.5 million audio down loads of the eight books available as free podcasts.
80,000 people have downloaded episode one of Quarter Share.
50,000 people have downloaded the final episode of Owner’s Share.
Seven books in text with tens of thousands of books sold since 2010.

I’m humbled.

Thanks to all of you for making this voyage possible.