Joe Vasicek

Business Plan for an ebook venture

Alright, after watching the market and giving it some considerable thought, I’ve decided to venture into indie publishing, if only to test the waters. I’ll release a couple of short stories first, mostly to learn how to format and release an ebook, and from there I’ll move on to other work.

I spent this afternoon drafting a business plan for the venture, using the resources available at the SBA website (thanks, Jerle). Here’s what I have thus far:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Mission Statement: To tell cool stories and have fun doing it
Projected Start Date: 31 March 2011
Founder and sole owner: Joseph M. Vasicek
Employees: 1 (services to be contracted on a freelance basis)
Location: Provo, UT (subject to change)
Product: Short stories, novels, and novellas

1) Summary of Growth

As the business has not yet been launched, there is no growth to report.

2) Future Plans

Stage One: Initial Release

In this stage, I will prepare and release two short stories, “Decision LZ1527” (previously published in issue 58 of The Leading Edge) and “Memoirs of a Snowflake” (previously unpublished) as ebooks on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.

The goals for this initial venture are to:
1) learn how to properly format and release an ebook,
2) gain familiarity with the ebook publishing system, and
3) gauge a general estimate of ebook costs and profits.

Stage Two: Initial Novel/Novella Release

At least 3 months after releasing “Decision LZ1527” and “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” I plan on releasing Sholpan, a novella based on the novel Bringing Stella Home. By doing so, I hope to:
1) learn how to properly outsource editing and cover art,
2) gauge the earnings potential for my novels, and
3) generate an audience for other books in the Gaia Nova series.

After releasing Sholpan, I will most likely wait for a few months to see what happens, submitting my other novels to traditional publishers in the meanwhile. If sales of my ebooks exceed expectations, I will consider moving to the next stage and fully implementing this business plan.

Stage Three: Full Ebook Release

If success in the previous stages justifies it, I will release my completed novels as ebooks, starting either sometime in July/August 2011 or after September 2012 (depending on how well my other works do, according to a metric which has yet to be determined). Currently, these consist of Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home, though Worlds Away from Home should be nearing the final phases of revision.

My business goals from here out are the following:
1) produce and release two novels each year (minimum of one),
2) consistently expand my audience through social networking,
3) obtain an agent to handle foreign/subsidiary rights,
4) obtain a print deal in order to build career prestige, and
5) earn enough to support myself entirely off of my writing.

If the works released in stage two do not sell well enough to justify moving on to stage three, I will continue to make them available as ebooks but will postpone releasing my novels until either my other works begin to sell well, or independent publishing becomes the generally accepted path for new writers.

Mainly, I just want to experiment with ebooks and figure out how they work. Since the initial costs are so low, my initial goal is not to make a lot of money, but to learn how to format and release an ebook. I was a little uneasy doing that with my novels, but I figure it wouldn’t hurt to practice on my short stories (all two of them).

So yeah, that’s the date: March 31st, 2011. I’ll release “Decision LZ1527” for $.99, and “Memoirs of a Snowflake” for $.50 or so (since it’s flash fiction). I’m not sure how well it will sell, but I hope that all of you reading this right now go and buy it!!!1!! (that includes you, Mom) Hehe, just kidding. ;P

But seriously, I’ll keep you guys updated closely on how the venture goes. A lot of ebook authors are very transparent with their numbers, and I plan to be no different. And if you have any feedback on the business plan, please let me know. I’m kind of new to this sort of thing, and while it’s surprisingly fun, I’m sure I’ll make a TON of mistakes. Your help would be appreciated!

A Hidden Place by Robert Charles Wilson

Travis Fisher is an outsider in most places, but nowhere more than the small midwestern town of Haute Montagne. But when his mother dies, leaving him parentless and jobless in the midst of the Great Depression, his stern aunt and uncle are the only ones who will take him in.

When Travis falls in love with Nancy Wilcox, the rebellious daughter of the Baptist Ladies Association president, things become worse. With murderous transients roaming the countryside, Haute Montagne closes ranks, casting them out.

In this moment of distress, a mysterious yet hauntingly beautiful woman reaches out to them with a cry for help. Stranded in the small midwestern town, she is a being from another world, and she is dying. Only the two young lovers can help her, but to do so, they must find her dark, masculine half–and in so doing, confront the demons that threaten to tear them apart.

This is one of Robert Charles Wilson’s earlier novels, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s very short, yet well crafted and beautifully written. Wilson’s prose is extremely evocative, and his descriptions of Haute Montagne brought back childhood memories from when I lived in the Midwest. The story was also done well, and had a very satisfying ending.

While this is a good book, though, I wouldn’t say that it’s Wilson’s best. His characters were interesting, but not nearly as compelling as those in Spin. The baptists were a little too villainous, though Travis’s aunt and uncle were individually more complex.

In spite of all this, however, the story was structured so well that the poignance of it largely overcame these flaws. As a writer, that’s what I found most interesting about this book–how the masterful way the story was constructed made the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Call it the monomyth, the hero’s journey, or whatever else, but something about this story made it reverberate in a powerful way.

I suppose that this is what all great stories do: echo some greater, universal story that is in all of us. It’s the same echo that I felt when I read Spin, or Ender’s Game, or The Neverending Story, albeit a little softer. It’s something that I hope my own stories evoke, this sense of clarity and wholeness, of returning to some great truth that we lost somewhere between birth and adulthood.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but those are my thoughts. It’s a short read, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. If you can find it, it’s a good one to pick up.

Story Notebook #5 (part 1)

Alright, time to revisit my old story notebooks and run through some of the ideas there. This one starts in fall of 2009, my last semester at BYU, and ends shortly after my hasty exodus from a miserable internship in Washington DC.

And now, without further ado, here goes:

A super-celibate society that holds that sex is evil and reproduces entirely by artificial insemination.

In other words, what if the Shakers had had our modern reproductive technology? Weird, but not beyond the realm of plausibility.

I suppose that in such a society, the nuclear family would not exist, and children would instead be raised by the community as a whole–kind of like Plato’s Republic. Question is, would this be a happy utopia, or a miserable dystopia? I know how I’d write it…

Shattered glass sparkling in the roadside desert

Okay, that’s less of an idea and more of an experiment with prose. I suppose I saw broken glass on some dusty asphalt and wanted to capture it with words.

The next passage is from an assignment for the wilderness writing class at BYU. We went camping in Moab and hiked up to Delicate Arch, perhaps the most iconic natural landform in all of Utah. Shortly after taking this picture, here is more or less what I wrote:

They say that the arches in this national park are formed by wind erosion. The funny thing is, so is the slickrock. The same wind that carved the gravity defying structure of the arches also wore the rock all around them almost perfectly smooth, so smooth that you feel as if you’re about to slip and fall even as you sit on the edge of a relatively flat ledge.

It makes you wonder: what was here before the wind blew it away? What did the land look like before the wind took out the loose material, leaving behind only the strongest, most resilient bedrock? How many other arches lie underneath our feet, waiting only for time and the wind to unearth the landscape that hides them?

Awesome class; if you ever get a chance, take it. Professor Bennion is great.

A boy born without a name.

Not sure where that came from, but it kind of makes me think of this girl in an abusive household, who grew up to age 14 before learning how to speak. It seriously crippled her intellectual development, so much that she never became fully independent.

Think about it: how would not having a name stunt a person’s growth?

Below them lay the alluvial plains–miles of silt and dirt vomited from the mountains over the passing of countless centuries.

I think I intended this to be a line in the first chapter of Worlds Away from Home…and unless I’m mistaken, something very similar to this passage made it into the book.

The detritus of life from which we extract the fossil record of our memories

Another passage meant to evoke something in the reader. I think I wrote it when I was cleaning out my apartment shortly before leaving for DC. It certainly makes me think of a dirty, junk-filled room.

And that’s enough for now. This basically takes us up to January 2010, when I left for the BYU Washington Seminar program. All the other ideas in this notebook have a decidedly civic/political bent to them, so stay tuned!

8-bit Irish music FTW!

Holy crap, this is so cool:

Doctor Octoroc is this awesome internet artist who did the 8-bit version of Dr. Horrible and the Twilight: Eclipse interactive game. This latest album release looks pretty good, combining two things I absolutely love: Celtic music and chiptunes.

Dude…seriously, this is awesome–like, 9.2 on the awesomeness Richter scale. I can’t stop listening to it.

Part of me is just a teeny tiny bit bummed, though…I was thinking of doing an 8-bit Celtic music album myself, but it looks like Octoroc beat me to it. Well, I can still give it a shot–and hopefully it will sound as good as this one!

Now, back to writing…

Momentum slowly building

I wrote about 2.2k words today in ITND–not a bad amount, but I feel as if it could have been much more. I think I spent more time thinking about the novel than I did actually writing it, which is either 1) a sign that I’m procrastinating too much, or 2) a sign that I’m slowly building momentum.

Trouble is, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two. When I haven’t worked on a project for a while, I’m often restless for a couple of days before I settle back into the zone. The weird thing, though, is that while I’m pacing restlessly around, I’ll be writing out lines of dialog or paragraphs of description in my head. Weird.

I think I’ve got a good idea where I’m going with this project, though. The thing that hung me up on the first attempt was that I did a poor job introducing one of the viewpoint characters (Kyla Jeppson), even though I did a good job outlining her. I’ve given that scene to my online writing group, so hopefully they’ll give me some good feedback tomorrow. However, I still have to read the other submissions, and it’s getting late, so I’ll probably just cut this short and go to bed.

But first…what the heck, provo craigslist?

I swear, one hundred years from now, our contemporary attitudes towards women will seem as wrong-headed and despicable as the last century’s attitudes seems to us. Honestly, which is worse: turning women into domestic house slaves, or turning them into mindless sex objects? And we consider ourselves feminists…

…but that’s a post for another time. G’night!

Change of plans

So I was going to start Edenfall this week…but then, I realized I wanted to spend some more time in the universe of Worlds Away from Home, so I decided to work on Into the Nebulous Deep instead.

ITND is a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior. Basically, it grew out of the realization that James’s story wasn’t anywhere near finished. Like WAFH, I’m trying to throw in some romantic elements…how well that works out remains to be seen. I’ll probably get it all wrong on the first draft, but make it shine in subsequent drafts.

Anyhow, here’s the soundtrack I’ve put together. Most of the songs are from ocremix, but there’s also a good bit of U2 and a little Daft Punk, as well as a couple chiptunes that probably no one’s heard of. Man, I love chiptunes.

I’m going to try to write through this rough draft as quickly as possible. Right now, I’ve got a deadline for April 16th, but I wonder if I can finish before that.

Part of that has to do with my new goal of two novels per year; I want to train myself to write quickly, so I can be putting out more work. More than that, though, I want to try and tap into my creativity in a deeper way. If I can train myself to write quickly, I’ll be less prone to self-edit, which hopefully will help the creative part of my mind to flourish more freely. That was certainly the case with WAFH 2.1, and I want to do it again.

I stopped ITND 1.0 back in December in order to work on Bringing Stella Home; not because it wasn’t working, but because BSH needed a little more work. After that, I ended up picking up WAFH. Now, it’s time to go back and finish this project.

Farnham’s Freehold by Robert Heinlein

Bomb warning. Third bomb warning. This is not a drill. Take shelter at once. Any shelter. You are going to be atom-bombed in the next few minutes. So get the lead out, you stupid fools, and quit listening to this chatter! TAKE SHELTER!

Thus begins the wild and crazy story of Hugh Farnham, a middle aged suburban American, with his alcoholic wife Grace, his law student son Duke and daughter Karen, their black house servant Joseph, Karen’s sorority sister Barbara, and the cat Mr.-Livingston-I-Presume. When the Russians nuke the peaceful town of Mountain Springs into oblivion, only the uncanny foresight and resourcefulness of Hugh keeps them alive. When they open their bomb shelter and climb outside, however, they find themselves in a world that defies anything they could ever imagine.

This book was incredible. I finished it at 4:00 am on a Sunday night, and honestly I wouldn’t have it any other way. The characters are memorable and engaging, the plot face-paced and thrilling, the world fantastically imaginative, and the story both entertaining and thought provoking. Wow.

Heinlein is an unparalleled storyteller, and I think he does it by creating worlds that are innately fascinating and imaginable and populating them with characters who act like real people, with the full range of reactions and motivations that real people have.

Consider the basic premise: who hasn’t wondered what World War III would be like? No one who grew up during the Cold War, certainly. And as for surviving and colonizing an uncivilized wilderness, people of all ages have been enthralled with that idea since Robinson Carusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson. Heinlein capitalizes on this urge by telling us a story that we love to tell ourselves.

But the thing that really drew me in was the characters.

I’ll confess, when I got to the part where they open the bomb shelter and find themselves in a pristine, virgin wilderness instead of a blasted city, I threw the book across the room. Up to that point, everything about the nuclear attack had been so realistic that the cross-dimensional time travel element totally threw me out.

However, even after I put the book down, I couldn’t stop thinking about Hugh Farnham. The down to earth, no nonsense resourceful man who took the Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared” to a whole new level–who had the chutzpah to draw a gun on his own son when his rebellious behavior threatened to unravel the group–his undying attitude of “never surrender”–I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. So I picked the book back up and finished it, and am I ever glad I did!

But it wasn’t just Hugh Farnham. Grace, with her debilitating alcoholism and irrational outbursts, was a character I really loved to hate EVEN THOUGH she reminded me of people in my own family. Joe, the longsuffering polite servant who changes so frighteningly with the reversal of fortune in the second half of the book; Duke, whose dysfunctional relationship with his father leads to so many problems; Barbara, the 60s era divorcee who goes from outsider to one of the closest members of the group–man, there were some memorable characters. And NONE of them were caricatures; all of them had strengths and weaknesses, and while some fell prey to their flaws, others rose above them and triumphed magnificently.

I suppose that Farnham’s Freehold is a good example of pulp science fiction at its best: an imminently entertaining story that is also meaningful and thought provoking. If so, then this is definitely the kind of stuff I want to write. The descriptions may be sparse and the prose rather unremarkable–but man, the story…what a wild and crazy ride!

Interesting job search development

So over the weekend, I saw this ad on the Provo craigslist for a pizza delivery position, and decided to walk in on Monday and ask about it. But I didn’t want to make the trip without doing some other errands, too.

I happened to have a complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia that I’d bought from my sister over the summer. Knowing that I probably wouldn’t read them before my next move, I figured it would be best to trade them in for credit at Pioneer Book.

A little bit about Pioneer Book: it is the awesomest used bookstore in Utah Valley. While I was in college, I used to go there at least three or four times a semester, often with friends. Half the books I owned before I left for DC came from there, and even now, I find myself going back often. Great place.

So I went to Cougar Creations, printed up a few copies of my resume (one for the pizza place, a couple others just to have on hand), and went downtown. Unfortunately, the pizza place was closed, so I decided to come back later and run up to Pioneer Books instead.

I walked in, put The Chronicles of Narnia on the desk, and asked the cashier what they’d take for it. She asked for me to hold on while she got her manager.

All of a sudden, I realized that this was my perfect in to ask if they had any job positions opening up soon. I’d already planned to ask (since hey, it doesn’t hurt), but I hadn’t expected to talk with the manager.

Well, it turns out that I recognized the manager from when I’d come with my brother in law over Christmas break. We chatted a bit, I asked if there were any positions opening in the next couple months, and he said that there might be, so I should probably come back and drop off a resume.

Guess what I happened to have in my jacket pocket?

Man, Pioneer Book would be an awesome place to work. It’s a bookish job, with bookish people, in a city full of college students, working with books…man, if I could make enough money, I might even postpone teaching English in Asia.

Most of the employees are students, so when April comes around and most of the students go home, some positions might very well open up. And hopefully, I was able to leave a professional enough impression that they’ll call me back. Wish me luck!

More thoughts on indie publishing

Since my last post on indie publishing, I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject. I haven’t decided to take the plunge into self published ebooks yet, but I have decided to make some changes in my writing and my career strategy, in order to position myself more favorably if/when I choose to do so.

Basically, my new strategy is something like Japan or Saudi Arabia’s approach to nuclear weapons: they don’t have an explicit nuclear program (since that would violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty), but they have gathered the equipment, resources, and expertise together so that if they decided to go nuclear, they could do it in a year or less.

First, though, I attended Brandon Sanderson’s class lecture this Thursday, in which he had some very interesting things to say about ebooks and the publishing industry. This was part I of his “how to get published” lecture, and here are some of the more interesting points he made:

Almost all the indie writers who are making it big have at least one loss leader ($.99 or less) on their list.
No one really knows whether indie publishing will be viable for large numbers of writers, or whether authors like Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath are outliers.
Successful indie published books are typically:
1) short (70k to 80k words)
2) written in a pulp genre (thriller, romance, paranormal, sword & sorcery, etc)
3) promoted very well through social networking
We have not yet seen any indie successes in epic fantasy, young adult / middle grade, historical fiction, or non-fiction.
The produce model vs. unlimited shelf space argument for going indie doesn’t apply as much to science fiction & fantasy as other genres, because:
1) sf&f stays on the shelves in bookstores longer than other genres
2) sf&f series grow better with a big push on the first book
3) sf&f makes a lot of money on hardcover, unlike other genres

A lot of these points tend to mesh with what I’m hearing from my other sources–and Brandon really represents the last of the successful writers to make it big on the old model, before the ebook revolution began to take off. He doesn’t make as big a deal on the current 25/75 split on net ebook sales as I would make, but then again, he’s making most of his money through print.

So anyways, here is what I plan to change about what I’m doing in order to better position myself to best take the ebook plunge, if/when I decide to do so:

1) Write at least 2 polished novels per year

Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith make very good arguments about how being able to write well quickly is a huge asset for a writer these days.

There are many good reasons for this:

1) Writing faster gives you more practice with craft, which tends to improve quality.
2) The best way to promote your books is to constantly write new books.
3) The limited shelf space argument against writing quickly is now moot with ebooks.

In particular, I want to increase my writing speed in order that I can have a larger list to put out if/when I decide to go with indie publishing. It’s much harder to be successful if you’ve only got one book available for sale; if/when I decide to take the plunge, I want to have at least three.

So far this year, I’ve finished one (Bringing Stella Home), but that’s because it was already sitting in the queue and only needed a quick touch up. I would like to get Worlds Away from Home polished before the end of the year, and possibly one other project, such as Edenfall.

2) Reduce production time to as close to one year as possible

Right now, it takes me on average about two years to write a polished, salable novel. That’s not a problem, because I have a lot of projects in the queue, but it’s not as fast as I would like. I wrote Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home while I was still a journeyman writer, figuring out my craft. I should be able to produce a lot faster.

Towards that end, I’m going to try to get Edenfall finished and polished within a year. Since it’s already March, that might mean getting it polished by February of next year, but I still want to try.

My biggest weakness is first drafts; I always tend to get stuck midway and drop the project for a while before I feel ready to finish it. That’s something I would like to change. Then again, that might just be part of my writing process, and shouldn’t be forced. However, I certainly could go through my revisions much faster.

3) Write out the direct sequels while the first book is still unpublished

Previously, I thought it was a bad idea to write out all the books in a series or trilogy before the first one is ever picked up. After all, a rejection from a publisher on the first book is a rejection on all the other books in the series as well. Using this reasoning, it was much better to write the first book of another trilogy, in order to maximize how much I could submit at any given time.

With indie publishing, however, it’s much better to release the whole trilogy all at once, so that readers who finish the first book can immediately pick up the others. Again, the paradigm here is that the best way to sell books is with other books; if they loved the one, they’ll buy the others, especially to find out what happens next.

Of course, the best model is probably to have an open series with several indirect sequels with recurring characters in the same world. With the Gaia Nova books, that’s exactly what I plan to do: Worlds Away from Home is set in the same universe as Bringing Stella Home, but with different characters and different story arcs.

However, Genesis Earth has serious trilogy potential, and with Edenfall I’ve decided to actually write the other books. If/when I decide to take the plunge, I want to be able to release at least the first two books in that trilogy at the same time. In fact, Genesis Earth is perhaps the biggest reason why I’m thinking so seriously about going indie, but that’s a subject for a whole other post.

4) Experiment with pulp genres such as space adventure stories

When Brandon said that the pulp genres tend to do better, I wasn’t sure whether that includes what I write. I write primarily science fiction, but not the kind of stories you’d read only for entertainment and promptly forget once you’re finished. If anything, I want to write more like Ursula K. Le Guin, whose stories are so meaningful they stick with you long after you’ve finished them.

Then again, there tends to be a lot of overlap in science fiction between the thoughtful, meaningful stuff and the pulps. Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers immediately come to mind as awesome, entertaining stories that also have a lot of depth. In his lecture, Brandon made it clear that “pulp” does not necessarily conflict with high art–just that the primary purpose of the story is to entertain.

I can live with that–and I actually have several story ideas that would translate well with the pulp mentality. I’d like to do a novel (or a series of novels) with Danica from BSH and her mercenary team, perhaps as a sort of origin story for Roman, Anya, Artyom, and the others. I’d like to revisit the Hameji as well, with a sort of “Ain Jalut in space” involving Sholpan’s son (BSH was basically the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in space). I’ve already started an “Odyssey in space,” as told from a female Telemachus character–that’s To Search the Starry Sea. All of these are, at their core, space adventure stories, and might translate well as pulps.

5) Commit to releasing one book every 6 months if/when I take the plunge

This is related to the first strategy on the list, but it’s more of a business plan than a personal writing goal. Basically, if/when I take the plunge, I want to:

1) have at least 3 finished, polished books to put out at first,
2) know that I can put out one book every six months at least.

This not only means developing a backlist, it means doing some soul searching as a writer to find out how difficult it is to keep up with this pace–and adjusting my writing habits accordingly. I’m optimistic that I can, but it’s something of a paradigm shift, and I want to make sure I’ve made that shift before I take the leap.

Anyhow, these are my thoughts on how to alter my current writing strategy. I haven’t yet decided to go indie, but when the time comes, I think that these things will help me to maximize my potential if/when I decide to do so.

Of course, what do any of us really know?

Worlds Away from Home 2.1 is finished!

Yep, that’s right! I finished another novel, in this case the second draft of my fourth. It’s not without its flaws, but good enough that I won’t feel humiliated for life by sending it out to my first readers.

Anyhow, here are the stats:

Worlds Away from Home 2.1
ms pages: 450
words: 96,212
file size: 219 KB
chapters: 20 + prologue
start date: 14 Jan 11
end date: 4 Mar 11

And the wordle:

Yeah, there are a few words that appeared a bit too frequently there. At least I know what to cut out in the next draft.

As for the song that best encapsulates the experience of writing it..hmm, I don’t know. The last couple chapters, I was kind of on a Metroid trip, so even though the old NES game has absolutely nothing to do with my story, I suppose I’d have to go with the Metroid title theme:

So yeah, those are the stats. As for my thoughts, here goes:

This draft was tough, but a lot more fun to write than the rough draft. Most of the struggle happened with the outline, which took about three or four weeks to actually come together, which is unusual for me.

I did a complete read through back in the first week of December, putting everything else on hold just to write the revision notes, and ended up following almost none of it. However, it wasn’t a complete loss, because outlining it helped me to cut out a bunch of useless filler and dead-end subplots.

I tend to do a lot of shotgun writing on my rough drafts, which means I spew out all my ideas in every which direction, going off on useless tangents and failing to properly foreshadow the major central conflicts.

However, by writing this way, I often discover things that I never could have foreseen from the outset. So long as I’m careful to outline each successive draft and cut out all the filler crap (even the crap that I love), it usually works out in the end.

This draft is somewhere on the crappier side of rough draft vs. finished, polished product, but it’s definitely better than the first one. If the third draft is this much better than the second, I’m optimistic that I’ll have this thing polished and ready to send out before the end of the year.

But before then, I need the help that only a few dozen pairs of eyes besides my own can give. That, and a few months to sit so that I can come back to it with new eyes.

If I know you IRL and you’re interested in being a first reader, please contact me. I’m especially looking for male readers, since the target audience is probably more male than female, but I’m open to pretty much anyone who enjoys reading science fiction.

So anyways, enough of that. On to the next project!