In case you didn’t already know, The Dragonswarm is now available!

You can find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

These are currently just the digital editions, but the paperback should be available some time next week.  I’ll let you know when that happens.

Status Update

I know a lot of you are personally interested in the success of my writing and of this book in particular. It’s only been live for about 15 hours at this point, and Amazon hasn’t even finished hooking up all the moving parts yet. That’ll take a couple days still.

But I can give you a little bit of information:

• In the first 15 hours (and prior to any major public announcements), The Dragonswarm sold 168 copies.
• It’s now being tracked on two category lists, and is ranked #11 in Kindle Fantasy Epics, and #21 in all Fantasy Epics.
• My current overall sales rank among all Kindle books is 512. (It took months for Taming Fire to get under 1,000.)
• I also currently already have ten customer reviews up at Amazon, thanks to my incredible fans who requested Advance Reading Copies. So far, they all love it.

These are all very positive numbers. Obviously there’s going to be some launch-day enthusiasm, but I anticipate even better numbers one Amazon gets everything hooked up, and then maybe another big boost from Christmas.

Some Things

I’ve been hearing wonderful things about the book from the people who’ve read it. I’ve been watching sales climb and climb. I’m…ecstatic. I’m at work today, and having to fight very hard not to get up and dance out of my cubicle. It’s my lunch break now, so maybe no one would notice….

I’m also having a hard time concentrating enough to write a coherent blog post. So I’ll just throw some other exciting things at you.

• The Dragonswarm is my fifth published novel. It’s the seventh novel published by Consortium Books, and the ninth title (we also have a short story collection and an individual short story available).
• The Dragonswarm features a world map. The map deserves a post all its own. It’s gorgeous. I’m so excited we were able to include that in the book. Huge thanks have to go to Becca J. Campbell and Daniel Lunsford for putting it together in record time.
• The Dragonswarm was published with the financial backing of our very first KickStarter campaign. We asked $2,000 and were able to raise it in just 20 days. And the next campaign is already running, to fund Joshua Unruh’s young-adult spy-fi adventure TEEN Agents in The Plundered Parent Protocol. Naturally, you’ll be hearing more about that.
• I finished writing new scenes for The Dragonswarm about 36 hours before publishing it to Amazon. (If you find any typos, that’s why.)
• One week before The Dragonswarm‘s scheduled release date, a behind-the-scenes change in the code at Google Docs broke the custom publishing tool we use at Consortium Books with no warning. We had to scramble to massively rewrite our program while I was also scrambling to finish rewriting the book. That was an adventure. (In the process, we made a whole lot of things work a lot better than they have in the past.)
• Because of those improvements, I decided to re-release Taming Fire as well. So while I was scrambling to publish The Dragonswarm, I added another book to the pile. But that means Taming Fire now includes a world map, too! If you already have a copy, you can delete it from your Kindle and redownload it, and you should get the updated version.

I love being a writer. I’m surprised how much I love being a publisher, too. Every project is an adventure.

Of course, it certainly helps to have a ton of sales. I owe so much of that to all of you. Thank you. You’re amazing.

I’ve got a whole bunch of news concerning The Dragonswarm, including an update on the KickStarter campaign, an official release date, and a link to a live excerpt from the upcoming book. But before I get to that, I want to make an offer.

Advance Reading Copies

Taming Fire has seen extraordinary success, and The Dragonswarm is already much-anticipated, and that’s because I’ve got some amazing fans. You guys are awesome.

I’m incredibly grateful to all of you. You’ve done a lot to support me and help me become the writer I am today.

And now I’m giving you an opportunity to do more. I want to share some Advance Reading Copies of The Dragonswarm with my fans.

With only six more days to get the thing assembled they won’t be very advance, but at least you’ll get a reading copy. I only have digital copies available, but they should be readable on whatever you’re using to read this blog post.

If you’re interested, send me an email through the contact form. Put “Advance Reading Copies” (or just ARC) in the subject line. You don’t even have to write a message.

Sometime tomorrow (I really, really hope), I’ll have a very-nearly-final-draft ready, and send them out to the first hundred people who’ve contacted me. All I’d ask in return is that you write me a review at the digital vendor(s) of your choice. Blog posts are welcome too, of course.

Now, on to other matters!

KickStarter

Sunday night, with barely an hour remaining on the campaign, the KickStarter campaign to publish The Dragonswarm was funded! That’s incredibly exciting news for me personally, for my publishing house, and for writers in general.

Not that I’m sharing the money with all those people. But as I’ve said before, patronage is a much better model for artists than commodification is.

Long-term, I’m hoping to support artists (and be supported as an artist) through the self-funded Consortium model, but until that’s proven, KickStarter is an easy and convenient way to crowdsource patronage.

That deserves a full post of its own. For now, I just want to say how deeply grateful I am to everyone who contributed.

None of you had to contribute. I didn’t even lean too hard on the mercenary sales pitch. You did it out of love for my work and my goals, and that warms my heart. It’s so much easier to do the work knowing people care.

Publishing Stuff

Before I get too sappy, I should move on to other news. And I have news!

• On Monday afternoon, I finished the rewrite on the novel! And then I got right to work on the editing and publishing of the novel.
• I’ve gotten complete feedback from Joshua, and should hear final opinions from Courtney and Jessie today or tomorrow. I’m hard at work smoothing down the rough edges and putting a final polish on it, but overall the feedback is good.
• As a reward to the contributors at KickStarter, I promised to publish an excerpt from the novel if they pledged at least half our funding goal. They did, I did, and you can get a sneak peek at The Dragonswarm on the publisher’s blog now.
• We’ve also got an official release date! The novel will be available in digital formats on Tuesday, December 20. That’s just six days from now!

Thanks again for your support! I’m so excited about this project.

I’m a huge fan of GMail. Have I ever mentioned that before? I know I’ve talked about Google Docs, and you can probably take it for granted that anyone who raves about Google Docs appreciates the company’s email service, too.

Still. I’m a huge fan of GMail. I never delete anything. Everything goes in the archive, and it’s astonishing how many questions in my life can be answered by searching through old mail.

The other day Joshua was introducing me to a writer friend and pitching a new fiction project, and he needed to dig up some old synopsis he’d shared with me. So I went searching in my GMail, and discovered we’d first chatted about that project back in early June.

I laughed to see that conversation started with him saying, “Good morning! What’s the Taming Fire emergency today?”

Releasing Taming Fire

Taming Fire was set to come out June 21, meaning for ideal publishing conditions I should really have been done with it by May 7. But May 7 rolled right by and I was still rewriting the original manuscript. I hadn’t even given it to my editor yet!

For that matter, May rolled by before I got my first rewrite done. And then I had Jessie and Courtney and Joshua read through and give me feedback, and they all found big problems, and suddenly it was mid-June and my book was supposed to be out next week and I was still frantically trying to finish writing it (let alone getting cover art and promo text and sales pages set up)!

I got it done. The book went out on time. Then I sat back with a heavy sigh, wiped my brow, and stated loud and clear, “Never again!”

Yet here we are.

Releasing The Dragonswarm

That book’s sequel, The Dragonswarm, was on my publishing schedule for December 13, 2011. I wasn’t going to wait until Nov. 1 to have it done, though. I wouldn’t have time. I was scheduled to write a novel this semester (book 3, The Dragonprince’s Heir) for my Master’s project, and another (Ghost Targets #5, Faith) for NaNoWriMo, and all my publishing staff would be busy with NaNoWriMo, too, so I was determined to have Dragonswarm done before school started.

I didn’t make it. My summer turned out busy. Then school started, but I was still determined to have Dragonswarm done before the end of September so I could really focus on the other stuff. I didn’t make it. I didn’t make October, either. Or November.

Right now, I’m six days from the scheduled release of The Dragonswarm, and I haven’t quite finished the first rewrite. Last night I finished Chapter 16 (out of 18). Jessie’s done an edit up through 10, and Joshua’s given me feedback up through 12. So far, it’s looking pretty good.

But once again, I’ll be sitting up ’til after midnight for the days before my launch. I’ll be frantically typing in every desperate spare moment. I’m skipping meals and canceling plans and missing blog posts.

I don’t want to say, “That’s just how it is.” It isn’t healthy. It’s not fun. And yet…it’s such a thrill. I can’t slow down, can’t second-guess, can’t dither over options. I have to do it now, and do it right, and in a couple days the world will be my judge.

It’s good. I’ll tell you that. It’s huge and loud and action-packed. I’ve killed more dragons in the last week than in the rest of my life combined, and there’s still thousands more rushing to the fight.

That’s where I’ve been. Now I’ll go get back to work.

About a month ago I got an email from an old friend and ended up posting my response here as an excellent summary of my plans for the Consortium. You might remember that.

He wrote back right away to ask me for some more details, and it has taken me a month to answer. But once again I’ve impressed myself with my own eloquence, and I wanted to share with you some of the gritty little details I’m taking for granted when I say I’m aiming to “establish a new patronage.”

Here’s the question I was answering:

I’m a fan of the notion of patronage. I see it as an idea whose time has come around again. Do you see a Kickstarter/Indiegogo model where people can “fund” an artist for a given period or a more general non-profit structure that pools donations and “employs” artists?

The answer is the latter. We’re already registered as a non-profit, and we’re within a couple months of really starting to build up our pool. One of the issues I kept running into when I started on this idea was the problem of blockbusters and bestsellers–the record labels signing two dozen bands in the hopes one will pay out (and cover the investment across all the losers).

That works out fine for the labels, but it sucks for the losers. They’re left with a punishing contract, the guilt of an unearned advance, and the realization they’ll probably never see another penny from all future sales of that album. It’s exactly the same way for writers, and that’s all because the funding of art has been through risk-based investment.

Funding the Production (Not Investing in a Product)

I fix half of that problem by going non-profit. It’s not an investment, it’s a public service. But that’s still going to leave the emotional (and value) judgments of winners and losers. To some extent, that’ll always be true, but I don’t want the fickle randomness of the marketplace to determine (and limit) the viability of our projects.

So we’re funding the company through an endowment. That makes startup costs a lot harder (I have to generate sixty bucks for every dollar I want to spend), but it’s a difficulty directly measurable in dollar value, and there are an awful lot of dollars out there to be got. On the other hand, working off an endowment makes the art a whole lot easier to make.

With a million dollars in the bank (speaking in very rough estimates), I could hire a journeyman artist full-time at $50,000. His salary’s coming entirely off spendable interest, which means all the work he does is already funded. By the time he finishes a painting, or a novel, or a radio single, it’s already completely paid for. It was paid for when the money went into the endowment.

His only commercial obligation is to keep making new art (and to keep improving in his craft); there’s no extra (personal financial) incentive to make a product that will turn a quick profit, or to release something before it’s ready–to pander or to spend his time making things that are profitable instead of making the things that make money.

Of course, there’s some merit to having to produce work into a competitive marketplace. It drives people to grow and improve, and that’s critical for any artist. I’m just not convinced the free market provides very good direction for the growth of an artist. Instead, we’re building our company around progression and mastery.

Mastering Your Craft

That’s the other half of the Renaissance model we’re borrowing: apprenticeship. Our employees will apply for admission to one (or more) of our Schools of Art, so a new Creative Writing grad joining the Consortium might come on as an Apprentice in the School of Writing. She’d have a Journeyman as her mentor, and it would be part of the Journeyman’s job (along with producing work and improving his craft) to train up the Apprentice.

And, likewise, every Journeyman will be studying under a Master. I’d like to pay something on the order of

• $20,000-$40,000 a year for Apprentices
• $40,000-$60,000 a year for Journeymen
• $60,000-$120,000 a year for Masters

For my organization, I’d love to have six or seven Schools (Writing, Painting, Photography, Programming, Film, Performance, Music…), with three to seven Masters per school, three to seven Journeymen per Master, and three to seven Apprentices per Journeyman.

That is, of course, extremely long-range thinking. I’d also love to see the Consortium concept take off. I considered franchising it, but I’m thinking I’ll just evangelize it instead. I want there to be a Consortium Austin, and a Consortium San Francisco, and a Consortium Brooklyn.

And I love the idea of every one working under its own structure. Some will use strict patronage (no direct percent of sales royalties go back to the artist), some will use a mix, some will just be meeting-places for artists looking for traditional work.

For now, we’ve got two Schools (Writing and Fine Arts), and about two dozen artists. Probably half are Masters and half are getting there. For now we’re all working for free, but I think I might have enough reliable income to go full-time sometime late next year, and after that I think really exciting things will start to happen quickly.

KickStarter and Other Fundraising

In the meantime, I’m strategizing and building brands. And partly thanks to that first email, I even checked out KickStarter again. My Director of Marketing has been big on KickStarter for a long time now, so I worked with him and we decided to start putting up campaigns for all our book launches (there should be one a month next year). Once we get the hang of it, we’ll start expanding it out to Fine Arts projects, too.

I’m also in a pretty good position to pursue arts grants, thanks to my years of Tech Writer experience. And since we are focusing on the localized Consortium (ours being Consortium OKC), I think there’s a pretty good chance we could get some support from local government and businesses, once we’ve established some credibility.

But ultimately, I’d much rather fund our company through proceeds from our products than through direct fundraising (because you have to spend so much time asking for money instead of spending it on your mission). That said, we have some pretty huge ambitions and if the commercial angle doesn’t cut it, KickStarter could be a very cool way to fill in the gaps.

It’s National Novel Writing Month. I’ll have to do a post about my annual spreadsheet again this year, because (once again) it’s a very interesting story. Alas, I’m not the story’s hero this time. I’m still pretty thrilled with the plot developments, though.

Here’s what I’m getting at: I’m not getting much writing done. Most years by this time…well, most years I’d be done with NaNoWriMo by now. 50,000 words already in the bank, and grinning as I look forward to writing the last two words of an 80,000-word novel come November 30th.

That’s not going to happen this year, because I’ve got too many projects going. It doesn’t bother me too much. All the other projects I’ve got going are at least as exciting as winning NaNoWriMo.

Still, I was holding out hope right up until last weekend. Last weekend Trish took the kids out of town, and I cleared my schedule, and I dedicated something on the order of fifteen to twenty-five hours to writing, so I could get all caught up and really impress everyone in my writing group.

It didn’t happen. It’s one thing to say I “cleared my schedule,” but that’s sort of like bailing water of a ship that’s already swamped. I can toss as much out as I want, there’s plenty more to rush in and fill the space.

Halfway through my day on Saturday, that came crashing home to me. I realized Trish was going to be getting home in a couple hours and my dedicated writing time was pretty much over. I thought about trying a frantic scramble in those two hours, but I was busy with something at the moment and, really, that something needed to get done.

I don’t even remember what it was right now. (One of a dozen little projects I finished on a Saturday.) But I remember what it was for. Consortium Books. It was a publishing project. Even on my days off I didn’t have time to be a writer because I was too busy being a publisher.

And here’s the exciting part of the story: I realized with sudden clarity that I didn’t mind at all.

I’m not saying I would give up being a writer to be a publisher. If it was an either/or question, I’d choose writer hands down. But it’s not. In fact, it’s only because I chose to be a publisher that I got to be a writer (or one with a multiple-digit readership, anyway).

And for the last year, as I’ve built the Consortium, I’ve done it in the sure knowledge that I was giving up the long-time plan of retiring to a life of writing and (otherwise) idleness. I’ve spent the last year dooming myself to become a publisher, and I came to terms with that pretty early on, but I never stopped to evaluate how I felt about it before.

But, as I mentioned last week, I recently got honored by the same professors and mentors who taught me how to write because I decided to become a publisher. I recently did an interview concerning the effect of the new digital market on authors and I told the guy it’s an amazing opportunity for writers…as long as they’re willing to be businessmen, too.

(For what it’s worth, that has always been the deal. Always. Authors have lived in poverty and paid intermediaries lots and lots of money to help them pretend it wasn’t the deal, but it always was.)

Anyway, it’s been on my mind. I’m a successful writer now. Taming Fire is doing amazing, and the two books I want to work on are both sequels to that, and I spent the weekend constantly getting dragged out of that work to do the work of a publisher instead.

And I loved it. I love the challenges. I love figuring out the dynamics of the market and exploring the potential in the new technologies. I love breaking down barriers and fostering a free competition of ideas. I love helping other writers discover opportunities they might never have known otherwise. I love teaching, and coordinating, and collaborating.

I love it. I love writing, too, and I’ll keep that up, but it’s liberating to discover that all the trappings that go along with it, all the responsibilities and challenges and obstacles I’ll have to overcome are rewarding in their own way. No matter what I’m working on, I’m loving it.

It’s my worst year of NaNoWriMo ever, and easily the best year of my life so far. Funny how things work out.