Welcome Rob!
Briefly describe your journey in writing your first book.
It was in 2002, after years of stagnancy and a bad marriage, my girlfriend (and future wife) Jessica told me to stop whining about how much I’ve always wanted to pick up writing again and just do it. The art of creating stories had always been my dream since youth, and yet I’d let my abilities stagnate over those previously unhappy years.
So I sat down and tried to mull over what to write. That’s when it came to me; I’ve always been a huge George Romero fan, and I figured that what better way to start than to write a short story that I could dedicate to my hero in the horror world? Henceforth, The Rift was born.
What started out as a short story about an archeologist that unwittingly unleashes a plague of zombies from deep inside the Yucatan Peninsula turned into an epic tale of good versus evil where the line between the two blurs. It is my own personal study of human nature and the choices we make in dire circumstances. By the time I finished, in 2007, it had grown to 400,000 words (roughly 1600 pages).
Deciding this was much too long for a single book, I broke it down into four installments, broken down by season – “The Fall”, “Dead of Winter”, “Last Rites of Spring”, and “The Rise and Fall of the Summer Son”. Then, an artist friend of mind, Jesse Young, called me up and said he was looking for a project to work on to help further his own career. I said, “Why don’t you illustrate and create the cover for my first book?” He said yes, agreed to do the whole series, and here we are. “The Fall”, the first book, is a collaboration between the two of us and has been released on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format. “Dead of Winter” has a tentative release date of December 1st, 2010.
Did you query agents or traditional publishers before publishing on Amazon?
Yes. Well, sort of. I sent out a couple query letters, but the response times were insufferable – aka I only received one back in six months. I was almost thirty-five at the time, and I decided I didn’t have time to wait. If I wanted to get this done, I had to do it myself.
What factors influenced your decision to self-publish?
Basically, I looked at the processes involved in the music industry and applied them to publishing. Nowadays, many big-time producers will tell aspiring artists, “this is a risk we aren’t willing to take; go out, spend the money to produce your own record, build a following, and come back to us when you’ve sold a good chunk of units.” I figured, why not? I’m confident in my own ability, and I know we’ve created a better-than-good product, so it wouldn’t hurt to try things this way. To me, the act of getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. Once a good chunk of people read these books, I’m confident they will start to sell. It’s always been my opinion that a good book will succeed, that it will find its way into the public’s conscience somehow as long as the effort and passion is behind it. I have that passion, and I give that effort, so what choice do I have but to succeed? J
Will you try to garner a traditional publishing contract for any future books?
That’s the plan. As I said, I did this to gain an audience. Even if I have to publish all four books myself, I think the publishing world will eventually realize their worth, will realize our worth as artists.
So yes, that is my goal.
Did you design your cover art? If not, would you care to share your graphic designer’s information?
As I said, my friend and artist Jesse Young supplied the cover art, as well as the twenty full-page illustrations that are within the text. He is a fantastic artist, and has been supplying his work for the Conquest Tactics Card Game recently. His website is http://jruined.carbonmade.com/
If you used a graphic designer, how involved were you during the creative process for your cover?
Well, Jesse and I (and his wife Cat) sat down and designed all of this ourselves. Honestly, I think we did as good a job as most professionals would, though it helps that what one of us didn’t know about the process, the others did. Collaboration. It does a project good.
How did you feel when you got your first sale? Are you pleased with sales so far?
Oh, I was more than ecstatic. I watched the sales bar like a hawk – honestly a bit too much, actually, as my writing suffered at first because I was so obsessed with seeing those numbers grow, one-by-one. In all, as of this moment, we’ve sold 54 paperback copies in three months and 13 Kindle versions in a little over a month. Sales obviously could be better, but it’s still a good start for a couple of unknowns. It’ll pick up soon. I know it will.
What kinds of social media [twitter, facebook, webpage, blog, writing forums] are you involved with trying to garner attention for your book(s)?
That’s a toughie. I’ve tried to make myself a presence on multiple message boards, and we created a website and a Facebook fan page for the project. Also, I’ve begun to review multiple indie authors’ books in the hopes that perhaps some of those will be reciprocated. But mostly, I’m relying on word of mouth at the moment – sending out copies to reviewers in hope that they’ll read the book and doing interviews such as these on various blogs. Hopefully, this will pay dividends down the road.
As a word of warning, however, to my fellow writers, if you’re contemplating Facebook advertising, I would suggest against it. I purchased five days of ad time from them not too long ago. It cost me almost three hundred dollars, and I received more than 250 clicks a day, but that only garnered me one sale. At first I thought it was me, until I asked around. It turns out that Facebook isn’t really the place for this sort of thing. The results of others who have done the same are pretty similar. So if you’re going to spend your money on ads, stick with Google. It’s much more profitable. I wish I’d done the research on this before I put down the cash, but hey, the past is the past. If I can save any one person from throwing their money away as I did, then that alone makes this interview worth it.
Besides Amazon, are there any other sites where your books are for sale?
“The Fall” is also available in print on the Barnes and Noble website (at a reduced price) and will soon be released for the ipad…if I can ever figure out how to format it correctly.
What’s next for you?
Jesse and myself will be appearing at Killercon in Las Vegas from August 26-29. After that, we can hopefully release the second book on time. In the meantime, it’s editing, editing, editing…oh, and submitting some short stories to magazines – which is an arduous process in and of itself, but that’s a subject for another time.
The Fall: The Rift Book I
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Rift-Book-ebook/dp/B003OQUNEA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1279724573&sr=8-2
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