It was a dark time for SciFi, and it wasn't the first time in my life when the force was weak with the serialized, space bound science fiction adventure sub-genre. Instead of weeping in front of more reruns or seeking out obscure box sets of more obscure series, I decided to try writing my own with the purpose of entertaining myself.
I wrote fantasy before that along with a little horror but took a couple years off after my first self publishing adventure in 2004. In 2008, starting on new years' eve, I dug into a Space Opera idea that I had been daydreaming about for a year. That became the First Light Chronicles, which was eventually collected into one volume and renamed Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins.
I released it in eBook form on a site made by a company in France called Mobipocket, unaware that Amazon already bought the company and was using the tech to develop the now dominant Kindle platform. A year later, I was firmly making a living and spreading my books out to Amazon, Smashwords and other retailers.
It's with gratitude and a little disbelief that I look back at the decade that followed. I've written and published twenty-two novels in that time, twenty-one of which can still be downloaded. Last year I verified that over a million copies of my books were downloaded legally with at least six times that number pirated (that's a gross underestimation).
Granted, many of those legally downloaded copies were free, but it's still a number I wouldn't have dreamed of hitting when I started out in 2004 with my first in-print self published novel, then started writing and releasing SciFi in eBook format.
I'm also having a poster made and updating most of the formatting for all my books while I correct errors throughout the series. The updates will be free for everyone, available through your dashboards wherever you purchased or downloaded them.
I'm wondering if you have any other ideas to celebrate this anniversary. Please, leave them in the comments, but don't forget the Smashwords Summer Sale, especially if you missed Highshield, Brightwill, Dark Arts, Spinward Fringe Broadcasts 6.5 or 10.5.
Thank you very much for reading and buying my books through the years. I hope I can do this for the rest of my life. I love creating this kind of entertainment, first for myself, then for you!
RL
6 comments:
Sincerest congratulations, Randy. You've created something very special. I'm enjpying each volume installment by installment, and then again in book form. Keep 'em coming!
--Steve Carol
From the minute I picked up episode 0 I've loved every page since. From the character development to the cool tech with the highs and lows of each saga. This is hands down the best space opera I've had the pleasure reading. Reading the first part of your blog was the exact place I found myself in, if I'm honest, hunting for obscure series was a little fun though. I would still love for Spinward to be broadcasted someday, here's hoping. Keep up the awesome writing and congratulations!
I have friends who are interested in the Spinward Fringe series. Due to their commutes, they listen to audiobooks. When is the audio book version (unabridged of course) planning to be released?
-Paul, a big fan
I wish I had the time or money to make an audio book, but the following for this series isn't large enough to support one. Each audio book would take a couple hundred hours to produce including the performing, editing and other work required (and I don't think I have the voice or practice for it). Alternatively, the cost of having one book proffessionally done is between $3,500.00 to $6,000.00 and the series won't be able to earn that back and I don't have that kind of money.
I'm afraid we'll have to wait for Ciri and other software that can read our books to us to improve so we can all adapt whatever book we like to audio. I use Ciri when my eyes are too busy now, and it works, but she makes plenty of mistakes, I don't know if I'd recommend it, but it's worth a try, even if the results are sometimes laughable.
Thank you for the question!
RL
Any chance you can add your books to google play books sells platform? Have $100 in play credit I'd like to use to buy the later books in the series.
I wish I could add my books to Google Play, but they haven't been accepting new authors for years. Sorry.
Post a Comment