October 25, 2011

Year of IMMORTAL: Reviews, arguments, discussions

Posted by genedoucette under Adam Interview, Immortal, Interview, Mary Sue, Year of Immortal | Tags: , , , , , |
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We’re recapping the first year in the life of Immortal.  If you’re not reading this blog, hopefully it’s because you’re busy reading Immortal instead.

Is Adam an asshole?

The winter brought more readers and more reviews, and lots of more interesting questions.  Two question in particular resulted in my favorite blog post title, by far: Mary Sues and assholes.  Author Spencer Seidel also checked in with a nice review, as did Associated Content and Night Owl Paranormal.

Christmas also brought a celebration of the new year and an opportunity for readers to order their own signed copies.  (An offer that is still valid.)

An interesting series of discussions

In January, writer Jacqueline Lichtenberg weighed in with one of the more interesting discourses on Immortal.  Jacqueline had gotten a review copy of the book prior to publication in anticipation of a possible blurb.  What she saw when she read it was an opportunity to use the narrative approach I took– I broke some rules, let’s just say– as a teaching exercise.  

The results (mind you, she liked the book) began here, continued a week later when my response was posted here and picked up again three months later in response to some of the criticisms posted in the comments section of the first two posts, here.

Adam’s first interview

While all of that was happening my main character, Adam, who may or may not be an asshole, gave his first interview.  It was a great chance for him to be sober, which became important in April when we went on our first Blog Tour.

Next: A Blog Tour!!!!

 

October 19, 2011

The Year of IMMORTAL: A book is released

Posted by genedoucette under Amazon, Barnes & Noble, E-Book, iBooks, Immortal, Release Party, Sony, Year of Immortal | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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This week we’re looking back at the first year in the life of the indie published book Immortal.  You should probably read it.

I’m not proud

Immortal was scheduled to debut on 10-1-10, and I’d love to say things went smoothly, and everything worked out okay, and I was cool about it all.

But…

There was Amazon.  The publisher’s initial plan was to use Amazon’s “fulfillment” plan which resulted in this spectacular blog entry in which I attempted to convince my readers to wish-list the book due to the impossibility of pre-purchasing anything in the fulfillment program.

I then convinced the publisher to use Amazon Advantage instead so the book looked like every other book on the retailer site.  (The fulfillment listing looked like it might if one were buying a used pair of off-brand shoes from a “retailer” that lives in an “apartment.”)  But switching didn’t exactly happen immediately, resulting in this panicked blog entry wherein I tried to cover for the possibility that the book would not actually be available on the much-publicized release date.

And then came the release date… and the book was available.

These are not, needless to say, exemplars of posterity.

And that was only for the print version

After a nice launch party (for which I neglected to take any pictures, because I’m smart like that) and a press release it was time to sit back and watch the sales figures go up…

…and answer awkward questions about where the ebook version was.

OK, I know this was only a year ago, but I’m not that bright.  I didn’t realize how important ebooks were to the current publishing model, and neither did my “this is only our second book” publisher.

It took another writer (the very nice Lorna Suzuki) to ask, “Gene, why don’t you just use Smashwords?”, which prompted me to ask my publisher, “Why don’t we just use Smashwords?” and then there I was formatting an ebook myself.  This was a process that required multiple revisitations, considerable anguish, and not an inconsiderable amount of weeping.  But it got done.  And thanks to Smashwords, it’s available not just on the Kindle, but in all the other formats you can name, and a few you’ve never heard of: Nook, iBooks, Sony, Kobo, Diesel.

Next week: More reviews roll in, we discuss whether Adam is an asshole, whether the book is structurally sound, and whether you’ve bought your copy yet.

 

October 17, 2011

The Year of IMMORTAL: a prehistory

Posted by genedoucette under Agents, Blurbs, GoodReads, Immortal, Indie Book Event, Reviews, Social Media, Twitter, Year of Immortal | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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We’re looking back at the first year in the life of the indie published book Immortal.  Join us, as we reminisce and speak in first person plural for no reason.

Before the beginning

The official publication date for Immortal was 10-1-10, which was a perfect binary day despite actually being a Friday and thus a very bad day to release a book.  But so many things had to happen before we even got to that day.

ARC’s and Blurbs

Books need blurbs!  Collecting nice words and pre-publication reviews with quotable parts was a major concern, especially since I didn’t really have many industry contacts, I knew no reviewers or how to contact them, and I was barely competent when it came to social networking.

I had a few long shots.  Back in 2006 when an earlier iteration of Immortal was in my agent’s hands and we were trying to line up some names for it, I went nuts looking up authors and sending them emails to ask if they would be interested in reading an advance copy.  The two most notable positive responses I got were Christopher Moore and Eric Garcia.  Unfortunately between 2006 and 2010 Moore hired a publicist I couldn’t get past, but Eric was still around, still remembered me, and was still happy to help.

In creating the ageless Adam, Gene Doucette has conjured up a character as witty as he is old, and as charming as he is depraved. IMMORTAL is by turns thrilling, moving, and deeply, darkly funny.

–Eric Garcia

Twitter, Goodreads

I did have some success meeting reviewers and other authors on both Goodreads and Twitter.  One of my first reviews came from Lori Hettler of The Next Best Book blog who I met through Goodreads.  I met Lori in person at the 2011 Indie Book Event where I also had a chance to hear her describe the things authors do online, when talking to reviewers, that she hates.  She then described half a dozen things I’d done myself.

Part science fiction fantasy, part action adventure and thriller, Gene Doucette creates the perfect balance of humor and edge-of-your-seat anticipation in this genre-defying story of an immortal man named Adam, who finds himself battling demons and bounty hunters in his eternal search for Eve, the red haired mystery woman of his dreams. Witty and wonderful, with a bite of sarcasm, Immortal is a five star read for any fiction lover… 

–Lori Hettler

Other great early blurbs came from blogger Sue London, author Vincent Zandri, WritersNewsWeekly, author Jonathan Vos Post and The Pigeon Post.

And then came 10-1-10

Wednesday: stumbling toward the publication date, and the importance of having an e-book version ready to go.

 

October 12, 2011

The year of IMMORTAL

Posted by genedoucette under Immortal, Year of Immortal | Tags: , |
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An anniversary

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but we’ve gone one calendar year– and some change– since the official publication date of Immortal and I didn’t even realize it until a few days ago.  

And it’s been a hell of a year, the kind of year that cries out for a recap of some kind, and by God that calls for a blog post!

But there is too much

This was supposed to be that recap, but as I looked back on the last twelve months I realized nothing shorter than 2,500 words would do the job, and that’s much too long.  So to cover the reviews, the blog tour, the advertisements, the book events, the quotes and excerpts and everything else, I’m going to hold a Week of Immortal beginning on Monday (10/17) and possibly even lasting the entire week.

Why wait until next week?  I, um, haven’t written anything for it yet.  Also, tomorrow’s blog entry will have a guest promoting a book that isn’t Immortal, and that would just be weird.

 

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