Tag Archives: self-publishing

Self-Published Fantasy Authors – Mark Lawrence Wants YOU!

Or rather, he wants your book. Mark Lawrence, author of the highly acclaimed Broken Empire trilogy, is running a book-blogger focused competition to find the best self-published fantasy novel. Full details are on Mark’s blog.

As many of you know I initially self-published Blood Song and would have been very grateful for something like this at the time, so it’s a really great thing for Mark to do. Remember, you have nothing to lose but your obscurity.

 


Penguin Website Guest Post

Check out the Penguin website for my guest post: The Long Overnight, or How I Became a Published Author, for the story of my journey from self-published nobody to published some guy you may have heard of but probably not.


Interview on Writing and Publishing Resource blog

Check out the Writing and Publishing Resource Blog for my latest interview: http://sabineareed.com/fantasy-author-anthony-ryans-interview-author-of-blood-song/

Thanks to Sabine Reed for hosting the interview which is focused on my experiences of self and traditional publishing. There are also some tidbits about the future of Slab City Blues and a few words of advice for aspiring writers.


New Slab City Blues Novella – The Ballad of Bad Jack

The latest Slab City Blues novella, The Ballad of Bad Jack, is now available on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and Smashwords. Links also on the books page. Thanks to James at Humblenations.com for the excellent cover.

jack


Slab City Blues on Ereadernews & Day Job Quitting News

Thanks to the folks at Ereadernews for listing Slab City Blues: A Hymn to Gods Long Dead. Also listed on their Facebook page. Tell your friends and watch out for the next instalment in the series next year.

I’d also like to say a heart-felt thank you to everyone who helped me get to the point where I’ve quit the day job and will be writing full-time from now on. I really couldn’t have done it without you. Merry Xmas, secular holiday and New Year to one and all.


New Slab City Blues Cover

Thanks to James at Humblenations.com for the excellent new cover for my novella Slab City Blues: A Hymn to Gods Long Dead. He’s also produced a cover for the upcoming The Ballad of Bad Jack, which I’ll put up whenever I’ve actually finished writing it.


Blog Post Recommendation – The Anatomy of a Self-Published Ebook

Check out Lars Townsend’s post on The Anatomy of a Self-Published Ebook for some excellent insights on the nature of ebooks, self-publishing, writing in general and (incidentally) the inside story of how I got my deal with Penguin (yes, I owe it all to him – but my lawyer says I don’t have to pay him). It’s a long post but well worth the effort.


SFF Mania Interview

Thanks to Chris W at SFF Mania for hosting my lastest interview, you can read it here:

http://sffmania.com/general/224-anthony-ryan-answers-8-hostile-questions

And, just for the record, I’m not an MI6 ninja.


Fantasy Book Critic Interview

My interview with Fantasy Book Critic is now up, check it out here:

http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/interview-with-anthony-ryan-interviewed.html

 

Thanks to Mihir and Liviu at FBC for sorting this out, and their Blood Song reviews, all greatly appreciated.

 


The Number 10,000

Just recently I’ve become preoccupied with the number 10,000. It’s a nice big round number, isn’t it? Not huge, not small, just about within range of the human mind’s ability to visualise, the number of people you can get into the average football stadium in fact.

The number 10,000 also has a tendency to crop up in history (terrible Roland Emmerich films notwithstanding). The size of Xenephon’s army during his famous march across Persia in 399 BC? 10,000 men. The length of the Vietnam war (from a US perspective)? 10,000 days.

It’s also the number of neurons each individual neuron in your brain is connected to, and roughly the complement of a modern army division or even a Roman legion (including auxiliaries and support elements). It also has a name, the Myriad, and when expressed in Roman numerals it comes out as a pleasingly contemplative MMMMMMMMMM.

Another reason for this present fascination is that I’m currently reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, a study of the various elements that make for a human success story. It transpires from numerous psychological studies that developing the muscle memory and experience needed to become truly proficient at a given task requires a lot of practice. How much you ask? About 10,000 hours. In my previous post about the Secret to E-Book Self-Publishing Success I estimated that it had taken me about 100,000 words before I felt myself reasonably proficient at writing prose. However, after reading Gladwell’s chapter on the importance of practice, I did a rough calculation of the actual amount of time those 100,000 words represented: I’ve been writing fairly regularly since the age of fourteen, despite some lapses, and my usual writing stint, up until recently, lasted about one to two hours. So, adding it all up to the point where I’d started on the first draft of Blood Song, accounting for occasional periods of inactivity, take away the number I first thought of… carry the two… The  answer? About 10,000 hours. How about that?

The number 10,000 is also of considerable significance in the publishing industry. The average advance for a single book? $10,000 (maybe a little less these days). The average number of copies an individual title will sell before it goes out of print? 10,000.

But perhaps the most salient reason for my current preoccupation with this  seemingly magical number is the fact that, as of this morning, l sold over 10,000 copies of Blood Song (10,042 to be exact).

I know cynics may look on the above post as just a contrived way of boasting about selling 10,000 books, and they’d be absolutely right.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who bought a book, left a review or told their friends. I literally couldn’t have done it without you, or those 10,000 hours.