I’m very happy to report that since the release of the book on Monday, in the past three days I’ve sold several times more books than the short story sold in the same time period. Admittedly, in raw numbers it isn’t all that many right now, but I think I can take it as a good sign of things to come.
When I pushed The Pirate Arc out back in November, I think it was ranked around 115,000 on the Amazon Bestsellers list. Nobody debuted around 9,000!
There were still some errors in the narrative, a few things that got through. Corrections are already being made and have been pushed up to the servers. So, if you think you found something, just sync your ebook reader to your account and the refresh should come down. If the mistake you found is still there, send me an email (showing chapter number it appears in and copy the text of the error) so I can fix it. That’s one of the nice things about ebooks: mistakes can be fixed. (You can send me an email via my web site.)
I’ve already pushed one update up to cover some issues. I’ll be pushing up a second today. And if anything else shows up, a third before the weekend.
It’s amazing the silly things that got through! Most errors (six so far) were dropped or disarranged words. One error was actually right underneath one of the earlier edits, and as such had been overlooked. None of the editors, nor myself, caught these. It’s a case of the same tired eyes looking at the same text too many times. Errors were caught be readers with fresh eyes.
I’ve only myself to blame on this. Two of the errors were of the sort that I had to slap my forehead and exclaim, “How the hell did I miss THAT?”
So, keep those coming! These are things I would have preferred to have caught before the release. But at least this guarantees a better product for people who will buy the book in the future, as well as those who have already bought it.
Of course, for those people who care about such things, you might want to store the original file elsewhere so it doesn’t get overwritten if you want to keep it as a collector’s item. (First edition, with all the errors!) Truth is, that is how first editions of collectable books are identified: by the errors in them that were replaced in subsequent editions.
What didn’t make it into the book?
A number of things, actually.
Originally, the story began with Nem’s childhood. I decided to remove that, because it had too much the feel of a boy’s adventure tale and would have set the wrong tone for the series. Aggadeh Chronicles is no children’s series.
Second, is the little dreamer, Ophelia, whose dreams replaced the story of Nem’s childhood. Ophelia has a much greater role in the story besides dreaming. But we don’t get to meet her until Nem gets to meet her.
Third, the Great Lady Oracle. Said to be the most beautiful woman in the world and the most powerful. Yet, for all her power, she has little control over her life. She is the living goddess, the head of an Empire and cannot command it. Her desire to free herself of the constraints on her life has significant repercussions for the rest of the world—and for Nem. I was going to show a little more of her life, but decided against it as it created too much jumping around in the story.
Then was Nem’s life in the islands of the Southern Archipelago and the days leading up to the attack on Gulahg when they were encamped in a hidden fjord while Nem created the crystals that would sink the pirate ships. Problem was, I found the section of him creating the crystals to be too mechanical. Sure, it involved the sinking of a ship when a crystal was dropped, but overall it just wasn’t that interesting a chapter. And Nem’s life in the islands was tangential. It didn’t really move the story along, so I dropped it from the narrative. Relative to this, was how Nem came to be on the Island Dancer. A storm damaged the ship he served as navigator and the navigator of the Island Dancer was injured in the same storm. Essentially, the captains of the ships traded navigators as the most efficient means of completing business for the two vessels. The editing process trimmed this part back to merely a thought and comment on Jess Gowan’s behalf.
The big question? What is Nem’s backstory?!
I get asked that a lot. Mum's the word.
You get to know and discover Nem as the other characters in the story learn about him.
He is, after all, just a nobody…
No comments:
Post a Comment