Web comic for "Savage Fire" title story

To give my readers a taste of the stories in my Savage Fire short story collection, I have been tweeting web comics for each story. At least I call them web comics. Basically, each is a limerick about the story superimposed on an image that makes some sort of sense. Of course, if you bought a copy on Amazon or at Smashwords, you could read the stories yourself and see the clever (or not-so-clever) logic behind the limericks and the image.

Or just laugh at me. I can take it.

TGIF! Celebrating with 50% off sale this weekend only

Thank God It's Friday! To celebrate, get a copy of Savage Fire for 50% off on #Smashwords using coupon FW77X

Valid through Sunday $1.49 at Smashwords page

Heck, for that price, pick up a copy for a friend.

Excerpt #6 from Savage Fire

Now that Savage Fire is available and getting snapped up by discerning readers everywhere, I thought I'd post another excerpt. Since I promised a few naughty bits, here's the start of one of those stories.

Start of Unfinished Business, an excerpt from Savage Fire:

     Pamela opened her eyes, but it made no difference. She blinked. Still nothing. Her arm was very stiff, but she lifted it with an effort. It smacked into wood with a dull thud a few inches above her face.

     Damn! She was dead after all. Jacob had startled her horse, she fell, and now here she was in a coffin. It figured.

     The day had started well. Pamela rode her horse, Dusty, to the general store to get sugar and flour for Jenny’s cake. The Wilson’s older son, Robert, was alone tending the store. He had the dreamiest blue eyes, which grew wider when she flipped the sign on the door to Closed and unbuttoned her blouse. Robert said he couldn’t, but what do you know, he could after all. Once past his shyness, he’d been quite enthusiastic.

Second day sales results

It's a bit hard to pinpoint sales since Amazon waits so long to post results (Smashwords is virtually instantaneous), but the current results shown are:

Amazon US: 11 sales
Amazon UK: 2 sales
Amazon Germany: 0 sales
Smashwords: 3 sales
B&N (not available until Smashwords accepts into Premium catalog)
Kobo (not available until Smashwords accepts into Premium catalog)

So, a grand total of 16 sales in two days. Obviously, that rate won't necessarily keep up, although I have a variety of people who are reading and planning on reviewing, which should help.

According to a statistic I saw today (unverified), only 5 out of a 1000 books published sells 100 or more copies. Using that as a very rough benchmark, I have 84 copies left to sell to break into the top half a percent. Scary!

Lessons learned while formatting Savage Fire

Having just made it through the process of getting Savage Fire published, I thought I would share what I learned while formatting, first for Amazon and then for Smashwords.

Lesson 1) Format for Smashwords first, and then for Amazon. The Smashwords formatting guide is good, if extremely demanding, but it helps you lay things out right from the beginning.

Lesson 2) Read and follow Guido Henkel's excellent series, Take pride in your eBook formatting as you prepare for the Amazon publishing. Since the early stages of Guido's process suggest using Word, start with the Smashwords, get it working, save a copy and then start with Guido's steps.

Lesson 3) Calibre is awesome (and free) software, but don't use the PDF they create unless you want to use it on very small devices. It sizes things as if you were using an iPhone. The Smashwords PDF is far better, but you can also use a product such as PDF995 to print from the Smashwords document to PDF. If you plan to do that, insert the cover image into the first page before you create the PDF.

Lesson 4) Don't start formatting until you have absolutely finalized the editing.  Making changes in the prepared document can be done, but it is where most errors come in.

Lesson 5) Add two hard returns (hit enter twice) before you insert a page break and set the style for your chapter heading. Otherwise, the font and style mess up the last paragraph on the page before.

Lesson 6) Check and double check your final, formatted document in every format you can.

Lesson 7) Since both Amazon and Smashwords allow sampling, test the samples to make sure they don't end in an obnoxious way. I don't know how easy that is to change on Amazon, but on Smashwords it is very easy to change the percentage. I wish they allowed you to set a mark as the "end of sample", but I couldn't find one.

My first review for Savage Fire - Five stars

It is nerve-wracking waiting for your first review of your first book, but it was worth the wait. I got a five star review that said:

Sixteen short stories, all of them different from each other except that most are ironic or dark. My favorite is one called "Worth Watching", because of its central character. No spoilers in this review, but let's say the story contains an unexpected, fun twist. Solid work on the Victorian dialects in the opening tale, "Savage Fire", and weird, beautiful prose poetry elsewhere in the volume. The inclusion of an old-fashioned, hard-boiled detective short story was a pleasant surprise. Worth buying.

Wow! Thanks, P. Teintze!

You can order your own copy from Amazon or from Smashwords.

Thanks to all the readers supporting me. You make it worth writing. Oh, and please review the book after you read it, even if you can't give a five star review. All feedback is appreciated, whether it is on Amazon, Goodreads, Smashwords or your own blog.

Kindle the Savage Fire!

I am very pleased to announce that my first collection of short stories, Savage Fire is available now for $2.99 for Kindle (unless Amazon puts it on sale). It is also on Smashwords for various digital formats, including on-line reading (with paid order). The cover and ordering info is on the right sidebar.

I appreciate all the support I have gotten here and on Twitter and Facebook as I have prepared this short story collection. Of course, along with the gratitude, I have to ask another favor. Buy a copy of the book, and let me know what you think. If you like it, terrific! If you don't, I still want to know.

There are sixteen different stories in Savage Fire, from Victorian zombies to bizarro to beastly horror to humor. Chances are, you won't like every story the same amount, so let me know if you have any favorites (or most hated).

And thanks again for sharing my journey.

First update on sales: I don't know how far behind the reporting is, but so far there are 4 sales on Amazon.com and 2 on Amazon.co.uk.
Second update on sales: There are 6 sales reported on Amazon.com, 2 on Amazon.co.uk and 1 on Smashwords. The best Amazon rank I saw was #13,182 Paid in Kindle Store.
Third update on sales: As of 6:45am, there are 8 sales reported on Amazon.com, 2 on Amazon.co.uk and 2 on Smashwords. The Amazon rank is mow I saw was #17,363 Paid in Kindle Store.