Ask Annabelle (Oct 2018) (Patreon)

Hey all! I had a few questions this month, but I'm going to be pretty brief (for obvious reasons).

Q1. Are you still going to post a chapter this month?

A1. Signs indicate yes. Since I am in between HFHM books, it was a great time to sit down and set up the story for Last Arachne. At worst, you should have the first part of that by the end of this month. If I can get some serious writing time this month, I would like to post LA part one and then CH. 27 of HFHM.

Q2. Will you ever finish Iceman?

A2. Yes. My plan is to write the fifth (and final... for now) chapter of Iceman by year's end. When I do, it won't be a paid post. I promised it for free back in January (right before life took a swift turn to ShitVille) and I will hold to that. Iceman took a backseat to HFHM (for obvious reasons) and I likely won't write much outside of the Monster-Verse until I am making enough money either here (or through book sales) to spend more than twenty hours a week on writing.

That, and Iceman will become a novella. It will go through the same process as HFHM, get a sexy cover and then be available for sale.

For those of you who wonder, I have been absolutely humbled by the publishing experience. Editing alone is the soul sucking activity it promised to be, and I hate doing a third pass of something I already wrote when I would rather be writing the next chapter or starting a new story :P However, editing is super important for selling a quality product and to do otherwise would go against my motto.

Q3. Why is the paperback only available from Amazon?

A3. Short Version: cost and taxes.

Long Version: Okay, buckle up. For the book, it came down to a couple of options. I could either do Print On Demand (POD) or the more traditional Offset printing.

POD means that someone orders the book and it gets printed and shipped to them from a nearby facility. Offset printing means that the publisher would have to buy hundreds/thousands of copies for themselves and then ship them individually. While this is technically feasible, it would mean opening an online store, and this causes issues with taxes because it means that the publisher is now selling merchandise and would have to file additional paperwork (super annoying). That would also mean we are in charge of storage and distribution, which adds additional work and headaches. In short, Offset is typically only an option for big traditional publisher for this very reason.

There are several POD services, but we decided to go with Amazon to start with. The main reason was cost. PODs will distribute everywhere, but expanded distribution requires a higher initial price because everyone wants their piece of the pie. The other reason is that it was easy - we can link it to the ebook so people get a choice. 

However, this could change if A) the quality of the books is bad or B) demand is high enough that we can discuss going through Ingram Spark.

That's it for now. Expect some big stuff VERY SOON.