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Watch that title - it looks a bit like the Magic: The Gathering font and design. Wizards is the type of company to pounce on things like that.

Although I love that your name is in Courier/System/whatever TT font that is.

Yeah, I don't care for the typography, but the colors in the painting are nice.

Zappit said:

Watch that title - it looks a bit like the Magic: The Gathering font and design. Wizards is the type of company to pounce on things like that.

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Yeah, when I saw the word Magic in that font when scrolling up from the last post, I thought it was a Magic the Gathering thing and then I noted the thread I'd clicked on. The image outline is nice so far.

really nice painting. Like the others, i don't like the font used for the title tho

It's honestly the first thing I thought, too. It's the strong serifs, all caps, and unusually slanted "M".

Am I the only one who doesn't see any images?

Tinwhistler said:

You know, other than having a texture, I don't see a similarity in the font at all.

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Yeah, but four other people do, and there'd likely be more.

Yeah, side by side they're obviously different, but my first thought was M:TG as well.

Magic has been using an orange text on its website and for other promo work - http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Summoner/ - and they likely have the copyright/trademark specific to that color, too. That's where you could run into trouble.

I'm not a MTG guy and it's what I thought as well. It could just be the prominence of the word though, rather than the design. Maybe the layout of the text just needs to be tweaked.

Nice!

... although to be honest, kinda looks like the artist pasted on that face from another illustration. Color doesn't quite match, and the perspective is jacked.

That is a very nice image.

What is this book about again?

Very nice!

First paragraph sounds pretty good.

As for the cover, I think everything looks great except the face. It looks like the kid's face is aimed elsewhere and doesn't fit what is otherwise a beautiful image. Don't know what happened there.

If no one else noticed the Magic thing, then it's probably a fluke with us, and even if not, I doubt anyone would really give you shit about it.

That sounds pretty interesting and down my alley.

When is its publish date? Paperback? Hardcover? I love me some Hardcover.

Who are you doing the paperback with? Createspace?

I'll be curious.

But man are there some profit-sucking yutzes on there, charging $19 for a 170 page mass market paperback book (you know, the little ones). That's just BS.

On the cover art: when you zoom out (to more like the size an actual book would be rather than stretched across our monitors) the face looks more like it's aiming where it should.

That smaller size "I" is annoying me to the point of distraction, but that's a goofy nitpick.

Tinwhistler said:

I'm not sure who you're saying are charging $19.00...authors or CreateSpace.

But near as I can determine, CreateSpace will be charging me in the neighborhood of about $8.50 per book sold (or about $5.00 if I upgrade to "pro" whatever that costs) for a 6x9 350 page book. I'll probably only list the book to earn me a buck or so above costs, which is pretty close to in line what traditional sci-fi/fantasy authors make (near as I can determine, anyway)

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One of the authors was charging $19 for a 174 5 x 8 book. I think that's a rip-off.

Sounds like you have the right idea--and sounds like Createspace does better with its base prices than Lulu.

Save costs, increase royalties, or meet between those. Either way, if you think you can make $40 off the book (and considering your support here and your site's popularity, I think you've nothing to worry about) then it sounds like a good idea.

In fact, looking it over is making me reconsider if I want to collect stuff from my site using Lulu anymore. I think I'd have to purchase a paperback from each site and see how I felt about the quality, but CreateSpace certainly caters more to pricing between reader and author. (Anyone remember when Cafepress did print-out books? Shiiiiit. Pages falling out, cover print not lined up properly. No wonder David Willis re-released book 1 of Roomies with another company.)

Hey Tin, should we expect to see this in time for the holidays?

When you have your hands on it and are ready to sell, send me a PM and tell me price + shipping.

Since the e-copy is ready to go, how's the physical?

Keep us updated on the Physical Copies.

Tinwhistler said:

http://amzn.to/viLOa3
Amazon moves pretty quick..ebook version is already out

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Damn, that first reviewer and his/her kids are a group fast as hell readers.

Very cool, man. I think Amazon should cross-reference the eBook reviews onto the page of the physical book. I might just order from them since I'm an impatient type of person.

And awesome on the eBook sales--you're gonna make back the Pro Plus (or whatever it's called) pay in no time at this rate.

Damn, man. That's great!

(Embarrassed I had to look up what a score was.)

That must be such a gratifying feeling.

How come Amazon says they're out of stock? Did you put it on hold?

Tinwhistler said:

Are you referring to the paper version? I found a typo that I fixed and re-uploaded to CreateSpace. I wasn't aware that it'd make the book out of stock, but it should be back as soon as the automated review process is complete.

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Did you have to pay a processing fee? I remember reading that it was $25 to upload a new version.

(Also, was it where it says "the gods way" early on? Because that should be gods' way).

Oh, cool.

I also see they've finally connected the Kindle version to the print version.

4.99 Kindle version?

Tinwhistler said:

I've been reading various e-book blogs from authors who have had some success actually making a living with writing. I'm experimenting with price points.

Evidently, a lot of people see the .99 price point as an indicator of poorly written crap, at least in one author's experience. She actually made *more* sales and got better reviews with a higher price.

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I can see that, though a lot of the badly-written supernatural young adult novels that inexplicably pop up on Amazon for me despite my not reading those seem to get priced around 2.99.

Weird that Amazon's now selling the book for 9.32, but rather than that being the current price (indicating you did it), the 12.95 is slashed out. I hope they're not gutting your profits on their sale.

I just finished it ten minutes ago, and I'm gonna let my thoughts sink in before I write an Amazon review. That'll be shorter, but I wanted to get my full thoughts down here.

I also have to thank you for reminding me what a brisk read is. I read Cherie Priest's Dreadnought at the pace I do for work, proofing for 40 hours a week, and I think I ruined it for myself. I only realized what I was doing as I started reading this book, and decided I wasn't going to let it happen again. I'll have to take the same approach when I read Priest's Ganymede so I don't end up disliking that one too.

Let's do cons first, because I like to get negative out of the way. I think another read-through would be beneficial to the book in terms of punctuation and formatting of dialogue quotes. Fortunately, that stuff's easy to edit (as opposed to revising words). I had some issues with the pacing, but I can't really complain because I couldn't think of what else you could've done. It reminded me of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, my favorite movie, in that way--I can bitch all day about how they go from being captured, to being caught, to being captured... but hell if I know how else it should be done, because the story's fine as it is.

And that's a decent segue into the positives. On the one hand, I can say "Man, they sat around talking about magic for a long time," but then, that was probably where I was most eager to keep reading. I'm glad the Amazon description removed the note about the "magic system," because that sounded too much like video game speak to me. What I found really interesting were the explanations. No one of them was a big deal, but brought together, the magic angle was fascinating, and how each method could play off others. That's what's often missing from fantasy characters--creativity. The author is usually plenty creative, but you don't usually get to see that from the characters themselves, and I really enjoyed seeing Randall figure things out and think up approaches that the adults just wouldn't, even if those sometimes made his place worse.

On Randall, he's a teenager. You wrote a realistic teenager, with all the highs and lows that brings. He can be as endearing as he is frustrating. Randall's a normal, believable kid. He does the kind of dumb crap that my younger brother used to, struggling with something, and then making an ass of himself when he finally figures it out. Just when you want to congratulate him, you then wanna wring his neck.

As for the story, again, I had issues with the pacing, but I liked it overall. I honestly expected things to turn out differently after the first 100 pages, and maybe they would have had other things not intruded on the situation. There was a point where the whole book really synergized for me. I look forward to these in character-centric novels, where I feel completely locked-in. They only last a few pages for most books I read, but there was a good 20 pages or so here that were my favorite:
I could've read a section of that twice as long, though I'm sure other readers would've been annoyed.

I noticed someone on Amazon noted the ending being rushed. It was fast, but I disagree about it being rushed. I think it would've felt very cliche and tired if what that reviewer had probably wanted out of it would've happened:
What went on was far more personal, which is more appropriate for a book, especially one so centered on its protagonist.

Final thoughts: You wrote a good book, Tin, which is more than many people who write them can say. I've got a shit-ton of fairy tales, but they're really just short stories put together in a single cover, and I have manuscripts sitting with me, but I can't call them good books, because they need polish, revision, more revision, more polish. Aside from the punctuation quibbles, this is well-written, smooth prose that I can tell you paid great attention to. That's so damn important to a book, and so often it's ignored in favor of purple prose hack-job Stephanie Meyers-wannabe trash. I could go on a long rant on that, so I won't, but that's another thing I wanted to touch on. I've really wanted to give self-published books a chance, but most of the fantasy ones I see want to be rip-offs of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Twilight (lots and lots of fucking Twilight rip-offs). Why self-publish if you're going to write the same derivative stuff that the publishers already pump out by the dozen each year? I admit that at first I thought this was going to be in the Harry Potter category, and then it showed it wasn't, and then it REALLY wasn't. Maybe others will disagree, but in my opinion yours was definitely the right way to go (and I say that as someone who likes Harry Potter) and was more satisfying for it.

This ever goes paperback or hard cover and it'll be in my next Amazon.ca purchase.

Just bought the 5th book of Games of Thrones yesterday, was a few dollars short of free shipping, so I bought the woman a 5$ book to make the purchase over 25$.

Needless to say, it could have been your book Tin, it could have been a sale.

I could have judged your work.

You would have been proud.

Why no paperback?

Why?

Jay said:

This ever goes paperback or hard cover and it'll be in my next Amazon.ca purchase.

Just bought the 5th book of Games of Thrones yesterday, was a few dollars short of free shipping, so I bought the woman a 5$ book to make the purchase over 25$.

Needless to say, it could have been your book Tin, it could have been a sale.

I could have judged your work.

You would have been proud.

Why no paperback?

Why?

Spoiler

View attachment 3932

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A Touch of Magic, paperback, Amazon.ca

See, they got this thing called a searchbar...

Looking more closely, I see that it has to be paid for using Canadian dollars, which as we all know isn't a real currency. I understand your plight now, Jay.

Fantastic my friend.

Added to Wish list for the next wave of books later on... next year.

Posted Amazon review.

I feel like it's gonna be a while before mine shows up on B&N. I also decided to forgo iBook and Nook stuff and went with Amazon's promotional thing. The results of that will determine whether I go with it again for volume 2 in a few months or try your route with the other eBook applications.

Lol, I'm assuming this was one of your old reviews Quotemander. I found it from the link to this book.
title of the review:

Hide and Suck,February 21, 2005

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Hilarious.

Bowielee said:

Lol, I'm assuming this was one of your old reviews Quotemander. I found it from the link to this book.
title of the review:

Hilarious.

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Yeah, that's mine . I used to write a lot of reviews back in college. I'm still proud of my review of Stephen King's It being the top one on the book's page since that's one of my favorite novels.

I did not know that; I was actually puzzled over the free promotion aspect. That will be useful, I hope. I'll let you know how it turns out and whether it helps boost actual sales after a while.

What? There's no way the trash you write is better than the brilliance of Snooki.

If you don't get the sarcasm in that, you need professional help.