/lit/ - Literature

(Cont.)

>>2752614
The lower class thinks that War World is the best thing since the beginning of the universe. All of the soldiers are divided into teams and, in order to maintain rosters, each soldier is cloned prior to the games. When they die, their consciousness and memories are transferred into the new clones and the process begins all over again. What the rest of humanity doesn't realize is that each death and resurrection is incredibly painful and disorienting. In addition, due to the costs of resurrection after their first death each one of these soldiers becomes a slave. Rarely do any of them make it off the asteroid."

Little generic, I admit, but the focus is more on character-development and social commentary. So if that sounds interesting, check it out. It'll be free on Amazon today.

Here's the link to my site : kevinkauffmann.com

Thanks, Anon. I really appreciate being able to post this. And hey, if you don't like genre literature and want to yell at me, that's totally fine. I'll be here all day.

tl;dr Free book

That actually sounds sort of interesting but, like you said, a little generic. Nonetheless your description is modest and isn't purporting grandeur or vampires so I will give it a shot. How many copies have you sold?

>>2752621

Yeah, although I hate comparing the two, Hunger Games beat me by a few years(also Running Man, Battle Royale, etc.). Worst part was that I never even heard of it until I was done with my first book.

I haven't had too many people buy it yet, since I really only promote the free days, but lots of people have been picking it up. In just the first month over a thousand people downloaded it.

Part of me is really excited about it, part of me wishes it was more successful. But that's the problem with self-publishing. I don't have a team of people promoting my book all the time or ads everywhere.

>>2752615
Sounds good, I shall check out your book also!

>>2752661

Thanks a lot. I hope you enjoy it. When I posted it here last time, a few Anon actually read it within the day. They seemed to like it.

And with that I gotta go run some errands (read: drop off the last of my flyers at some comic book shops). I'll be back in an hour or two, though.

Bumping so the late afternoon crowd will get a look, but I also have an update on sales.

Over the last twelve hours it's been downloaded over a thousand times and it's #4 in Sci-Fi and #208 in all Free Kindle Books.

Kinda shaking. If I get into the top 100 I might actually break into popular consciousness.

Hoo Boy

>>2753579
Where else have you been flaunting your wares, sir? Surely that thousand d'loads wasn't just from here.

What's the quality of the paperback like?

Sounds like a hunger games wannabe.

>>2753586 Everywhere I could think. I threw five hundred flyers and three hundred business cards at HeroesCon in Charlotte, a steampunk con in Chapel Hill and at a whole bunch of local comic book and game stores.

Then digitally I set up a big facebook ad, started up a twitter campaign(didn't work) and hit up deals.woot. Reddit was impenetrable, too. And, well, it seems to be building on itself, now. Pretty exciting.

>>2753587

Really nice, actually. The only problem it has versus the digital version is that the description on the back is a little different and for some reason a couple of words got cut in half and put on the next lines. The inside of the book is pretty much the same, though. It's even the same font, which I thought looked great in both versions.

>>2753590

Yeah, really bad timing on my part. Hadn't even heard of the series until I was working on the second book. Now whenever someone mentions that series I get frustrated.

It's much deeper and has a number of thematic levels, though. Grief is a big one, and while it's subtle there are certain mythological allusions throughout the series. At no point did I ever try to dumb it down for mass market appeal, which is what makes today so surprising.

>>2753601
Fuck it. I will order a physical copy of your novel when I get my paycheck on Friday. Bookmarked the Amazon page. Let's fucking do this.

>>2753605

You rock. I won't give my own opinion of the books, but I've heard it's engaging from people I don't even know. I wish I could discount the physical book, but it's not in the cards.

Thanks a lot, Anon. I appreciate you.

>self-published author

>>2753637
>implying some of the greatest works of literature ever written haven't been self-published
The internet is changing attitudes towards it pretty swiftly. Don't get left behind.

>>2753647
>The internet is changing attitudes towards it pretty swiftly. Don't get left behind.

Hahaha, no. Just no.

>>2753637

Unfortunately the traditional way of getting published is archaic and I decided I couldn't trust it, at least not directly. In most cases it takes six months just to possibly get a response(most of the time that doesn't even happen), let alone a book deal.

I did try for a long time to get an agent in order to have a leg up in the publishing world, but as other posters have noticed, it bears some similarities to Hunger Games and, really, most people are biased against science fiction. It's really difficult to sell.

Most genre literature has stigma associated with it, but I feel like science fiction has it pretty bad. What sucks is that except for two or three factors, there's very little science fiction in my books. By the third book the only thing that could be considered science fiction is that it takes place in the future. For me, it just happened to be the best way to tell the story and explore the characters and themes.

Basically, I was impatient and didn't want to spend half a year just to get rejected or ignored, especially since I already have the second book done, too. And with the advent of e-books, the business model is changing. My dad actually gave me the advice, since that's what he experienced with Kindle. He would buy the first book for dirt cheap, and then once he got hooked he would pay more for the sequels. Since I'll be done with the entire trilogy by the end of the year(they're all pretty short and I spend a lot of time writing), it just makes more sense for me to pursue self-publishing.

And, well, apparently I'm getting results.

you should've taken another title this will just make people think you stole the title form that 90s thriller movie.

which you probably actually did.

>>2753791

Never heard of the movie before writing the book, either. A murder of crows just happens to be a popular phrase, referring to a group of crows. There's actually about twenty books with the same title; my content is just drastically different.

It's actually a perfect title for it. All my characters are on a team called the Crows and they're constantly dying. And there's a third layer, as well, but that's at the end of the book, so I don't want to spoil it for potential readers.

Just dl'd it.. will try to read this week. :)
As a hopeful myself, I wish you luck!