Royce's Random Thoughts

 The Complete Red Vixen Adventures is now available for pre-order in both Kindle ($5.99) and trade paperback ($19.99) for a June 1st. 2017 release.

Since 2011 readers have enjoyed the adventures of the Darktail family and their entanglements with the vivacious space pirate, the Red Vixen. Now this brand new collection gathers all the major stories in the series Captive of the Red Vixen, Shadow of the Red Vixen, Shadow of Her Sins, Shadow of Doubt, The Red Vixen at Sea and I Fought the Claw and the Claw Won, plus two never before published short stories "Solstice Gifts" and "The Parable of the Glassblower" along with an appendix featuring fun world building notes.

Got a private note from my regular cover artist, pleading creative burnout, which I can't blame her for. Unfortunately it does mean I'm at a loss for cover art for "The Red Vixen at Sea" and "The Complete Red Vixen Adventures."

The main problem she was good and obscenely cheap (which I have pointed out to her before). It's a combination I'm unlikely to find again easily. Cover art for furry novels like these are rather dependent on showing off the characters so the reader knows what they're getting, and character art almost always means commissioning something instead of using open source images and an online cover creator.

So at this point I'm either going to have to go with that, or find an artist and do a Kickstarter to pay them what they're worth.

Unless chaypeta is willing to work for Terinu fanfics. :/

OK, for those of you who didn’t know, I’m in the process of putting together The Complete Red Vixen Adventures, which have all of the primary RVA stories (Captive of the Red Vixen, Shadow of the Red Vixen, Shadow of Her Sins, Shadow of Doubt, and The Red Vixen at Sea), in addition to the side stories I Fought the Claw and the Claw Won, Solstice Gifts, The Parable of the Glassblower and an appendix with several of the worldbuilding articles I’ve written over the years, plus possibly interior illustrations if I put together a Kickstarter for the audiobook and add them as a stretch goal.

Currently the ebook version of this monster is going to be a hair over 450 pages at 12 point type.  Big, but perfectly reasonable. It’s not like it’ll add any weight to your Kindle.

Going with the same type size (to save my already terrible eyesight) in a trade paperback size, that will work out to over eleven hundred and fifty pages. Cheating and reducing the typeface to 10 point will drop it down to just over seven hundred and eighty pages. That’s frigging Stephen King and GRRM territory.

So, yeah.

Just wondering if I should still go through with this, give it up, or blind everyone with an 8 pt. typeface... 

Okay, it's been a bit over a year and a half since the release of the Captive of the Red Vixen audiobook. I'm going to be honest here, I don't think I've got another Kickstarter in me. Running it the last time was a stressful experience that I'm in no hurry to repeat, especially since realistically any future funding would be to the tune of $200 per hour of audio. That said, I might consider doing it again, or perhaps a GoFundMe campaign to pay for another book, if the demand was really there. Hence the poll.

[Poll #2047369]

In celebration of LGBT Pride Month, and the recent release of Shadow of Doubt, this Saturday and Sunday I am giving away the two previous Salli and Ali adventures Shadow of the Red Vixen and Shadow of Her Sins as free downloads on Amazon.com. Download them now!

Since theferrett is conducting a survey on how well self-publishers do, I decided to compile my data for him, and also post it here.

* * *

Some caveats: This is only my Amazon.com sales. I don’t offer all my works on Smashwords, and anyway the sales there are minimal compared to Amazon, perhaps $10.00 in royalties in a very good year.
I have fifteen works for sale, consisting of seven novellas, seven short stories, and a self-published audiobook
Good Landing is a short story that I offered for free when I first started on Amazon. The first few weeks it was there downloads of it went through the roof, for reasons I’ve never really been able to understand, since I didn’t promote it in any way.

Average price for my novellas is $2.99. Shorts other than Good Landing, of which I have six, are $0.99. My most popular series is The Red Vixen Adventures, which mostly hits the Sci-Fi Furry LGBT Romance market. After that it’s my two For Your Safety shorts, which are speculative fiction about a rather gentle Robot Apocalypse. I’m hoping to break out of the Furry market with those stories, which I’m putting out in a paired set of collections with other shorts in the same universe.

Post 2014 I haven ‘t pushed anything until the recent June release of Shadow of Doubt and my sales tanked accordingly.

Sales History
2011
Good Landing: 2514
Other: 99

2012

Good Landing: 26
Captive of the Red Vixen (November free promotion): 794
Other: 276

2013

Good Landing: 313
Other: 400

2014

Good Landing: 112
Other: 356

2015

Good Landing: 41
Other: 198

2016 (through May)

Good Landing: 0
Other: 53

Lifetime

Free: 3800
Paid: 1382

Music: Acoustic blues guitar


A long time ago,
In 2009
I went to Kindle Direct
Out to make a few dimes.
I wrote up a story
To make a lotta cash.
But without a decent cover all the readers gave it a pass.

CHORUS
Oh, yeah
Didn’t have a clue what to do.
Yeah I had a real bad case,
Of No Cover Art Blues.

Then one day,
I went begging to a friend.
A pretty Aussie momma,
Real good with a coloring pen.
I said, “I need a beautiful mage,”
“And her pretty elfboi friend.”
“But I’m telling right now I ain’t got much spend.”

CHORUS

She said, “I’ll draw ya cover,”
“Cuz I like your stories a bunch.”
“But I gotta tell ya, I can only do it once.”
It’s a pretty picture, she didn’t take a chance.
Cuz she knows the lady readers love an elf in tight pants!

CHORUS

I wrote more stories
With dragons, furries and ghostly shuttles.
But every time, the covers were just a muddle.
I needed artists, ones that were fast and cheap.
But when I told ‘em my budget, they looked at me like I was a freak.

SPOKEN: “Hey baby, think of the exposure! Hey, where ya going?!”

CHORUS

The years have gone by,
Cover artists have come and gone.
Found some friends who did me favors,
But the deals didn’t last too long.
They were just too good,
To stay in my price range
They said, “Hey Royce, we really love you, but we’ve got bills to pay.”

CHORUS

I got my latest book done
Art’s still my pain
Gonna ‘shop an image,
Found in Public Domain.
It looks like crap, the font is so lame.
But hey at least it’s still better,
Than the covers published by Baen!

Spoken: “A guy’s gotta have standards!”

CHORUS

Summary:Trying to get back into the habit of monthly reporting for the start of the year.

Sales were definitely down in 2015 compared to the previous year. Total before tax profit from KDP, ACX, and Smashwords was $280.51, compared to about $600 the year before. Blame for that is squarely on me, since I didn’t publish anything new to support sales of my back catalog. Also the sales of CotRV audiobook have been pretty disappointing, coming to about eleven units since October of 2014 after subtracting the complimentary copies given out to my Kickastarter supporters.

Comparatively speaking sales picked up towards the middle of January, fueled I think by one of my unpublished FYS stories being chosen as a Daily Deviation on DeviantArt. Still down compared to the same time the year before, but an improvement compared to previous months.

Things to Do: Still working on Shadow of History Doubt and The Red Vixen at Sea. The former is much closer to completion, and I’m hoping to have it out in the next couple of months. I’ve also restarted Prisoners of History, a non-salacious follow-up to Prisoners of War, tying it more firmly in the RVA universe.

Also in progress are various shorts set in the FYS. At the urging of Ryk Spoor, AKA seawasp, I’m trying to put together a pair of short story collections, one for stories set during the Groupmind’s rebellion and takeover of the Earth, the second during the era of the Ring. Ryk seems to think the latter period would be a unique setting for science fiction, given the Groupmind’s lack of malicious intent compared to universes like Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids.


Sales Report: KDP/Pages Read


Captive of the Red Vixen: 3/1 (1/0 DE)

For Your Safety: 4/0

I Fought the Claw & the Claw Won: 3/0 (1 UK, 1 DE)

Mimsey's Tale: 1/0

Prisoners of War: 1/0 (1 UK)

Shadow of Her Sins: 3/170 (1 UK, 1 DE)

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 3/0 (1 UK, 1 DE)

Total Sales: 18/171

Summary: Very late report this time around. Sorry

The sales slump continues. I have to get new stories out. About the only good thing is I've got one short RVA tale in the can and two longer novellas in production. But the two cover artists I habitually use are unavailable now and finding another that will work at such reasonable rates is daunting.

Things to Do: Still working on Shadow of History and The Red Vixen at Sea. I've done a few more shorts in the FYS that aren't really long enough to rate individual sales, but I might start pulling them together for a collection.


Sales Report: KDP/KOLL


Captive of the Red Vixen: 3/2 (1/0 CA)

CotRV Audiobook: 3

For Your Safety: 9/0 (1/0 CA)

Good Landing: 2*

I Fought the Claw & the Claw Won: 1/1

Mimsey's Tale: (1/0 CA)

Prisoners of War: 0/1

Shadow of Her Sins: 1/1 (1/0 CA)

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 1/2 (1/0 CA)

The Dragon’s Companion: 1/0

Teal's War: 1/0

Unexpected Diversions: 1/0

Total Sales: 19/7