Hi, My friends call me Andy. I'm the author of a science fiction comedy eBook series on Amazon called: Sorcery And The Art of Giant Robot Maintenance
I have a character that has to maintain a war-frame, does that count? Welcome to ze Forum, hope you will stay a while. Normally this is the part where I would wish you luck, but it seems you are fairly established so...hope your most recent work goes well.
Hmmm... what's a war-frame? My google searches only result in a game called 'Warframe' - - Game looks good...
Oh. Then yeah. Totally. My series is all about the Mecha! Nice job referencing a 90's game too. Extra points.
Welcome to the forum. Do check out our New Member Quick Start; there should be everything you need to know about the forum in a nutshell. I like the name of your series. Whimsical. See you around! -Kat
You seem to be pursuing a fairly non-traditional marketing plan for your story - are you serializing it? I'd be interested in hearing your plan for that, if you're open to discussion. Always looking for new ideas!
I'd love to talk about it. It's really trial and error at this point. I try to complete a ten thousand word chunk on a regular basis. (often go over) It took longer than expected for the third episode to be finished due to it being a lot more complex to write than I thought it would be. So it was late. But it is early days with the experiment, so I can afford to take the time to get things right without too many people questioning if the next part is ever going to show up or not. Did you have any specific questions?
Yup, I got a question. I am curious about the merry pranksters reference. Seriously, I believe Neal Cassady drove that thing and flipped hammers.
I was hoping somebody would get the reference. He did indeed drive the bus for a spell... though it was Ken Kesey who really 'drove' the bus.
What was your thought process on deciding to serialize rather than publishing a full book? Is it working the way you expected? Besides the timing issues, do you think there are other drawbacks? In terms of the writing process, it sounds like you're publishing as you're writing? Do you think there are advantages/disadvantages to that approach?
My decision to serialize came about for two reasons. Firstly, I have often looked at others footsteps as a guide to follow, and I started writing this motivated by trying to fill a hole in the literary world left by Terry Pratchett. There is a market and an audience there... I have decided to avoid asking myself if 'I am good enough to achieve this' and just give it a try. I assume there are many others out there doing the same thing, and I'm happy to be part of a Pratchett influenced horde. His first discworld novel reads like a collection of serialized shorts combined together, so I thought, if I am following in his footsteps, then I should use them as a guide, and set out to explore if serializing would work for me. This was the inception of the idea. What excited me about following the idea through was the 'satire' and 'parody' parts of the writing, and using the internet as a platform. By releasing something on a regular basis, I can actually respond to current events in a more immediate way, and let the world around me influence the direction of the story and the subject of the satire. I am a big fan of SNL and love the way that the humor can stay up to date with what is happening in the world. I was excited by the idea of being able to follow a similar path in a different medium. As I wrote in my blog, I am deliberately avoiding the current election campaigns, even though it is so open for parody and satire, because I want the outcome of the election to influence the direction of the story rather than the election itself. I'm using this time to establish the characters and the world of the story, and will take more time to flesh out my villains once I have decided who it is my villains will actually be mocking. There are many disadvantages, of course - I am used to meticulously planning out my novels. I usually cover my house in a sea of post-it notes that map out what happens in my novels and when. This book,while I do have a plot in mind, by it's very nature is open to constant change. I am concerned that when I have hit a certain word limit, I will start to feel like I have to tie my plots together and create a larger 'the end' point so that I can attempt to publish it as a volume - a lot of me wants to fight against that and keep it as an on-going story online. My other concern is that new readers are always going to want to start at the beginning, which will make staying current a little bit harder; so I am trying to keep in mind that some of the jokes need to be a bit more timeless and not just a parody of current events. Writing comedy, of course, has it's own challenges. The other difficulty is the different approach to marketing. I am self-published, and poor; so I am constantly trying to come up with inventive ways to get people to know that what I am doing is actually going on. (no, I didn't just join this forum to plug my book, I came here to interact with other writers.) If I wrote it as a single book, I would obviously attempt to get it published in the usual way, and have a team of people help out. Here, with this method, I am kind of on my own, and rely mostly on the generosity of my readers. In terms of if it is working how I expected... I don't know. I'm not sure what I expected. I have read a lot of mixed opinions about selling on Kindle, and most of what people say is that publishing anything other than erotica is going to be a struggle. I do have a few readers, more than I thought I would have. Also, when I offered the first book for free in a promotion in July - it got to the top ten downloaded science fiction books on Amazon, which I was actually very surprised with - considering I didn't have any money to spread that promotion out very far. Still, I'm not really generating an income from it that could be thought of as inspirational... If money is your concern, then patience is a much needed virtue.
