Well, this is awesome. Dead Weight is featured on the front freakin’ page of the Apple iBooks Store!

Look — proof for you unbelievers.

iPhone:

iPad:

And it’s also on desktop, but I won’t bore you with a screenshot.

Did you see that placement in ‘Popular Fiction’? Sandwiched between George R. R. Martin and Ann Patchett, as I often am in my dreams? Seriously, one of these things is definitely not like the other, but I’m not complaining.

I feel like I need to link again to the iBooks version to celebrate, so that’s exactly what I’ve done here.

I need to preface this update with an important fact, which is that I really wouldn’t know. Dead Weight has been out less than a week and so far it’s performing a’ight. Hundreds of books purchased, not thousands. But at least it’s not tens. From a first-time author, no less. I tell myself that every night before I cry myself to sleep, anyway.

I have, however, been studying the top charts in an effort to understand what performs. Based on what I can ascertain, my next book should be about vampires who screw… a lot. Or, I should call my novel ‘Dirty’ something. If it’s about a seamstress, I guess it’s ‘Dirty Seamstress,’ and if it’s about a lovable hamster, it should be ‘The Lovable, Dirty-Ass Hamster.’

There’s a lot of fiction about getting it on. Vampires getting it on. Werewolves getting it on. Dirty people getting it on. People getting dirty and then getting it on. And that shit is selling like crazy.

Dead Weight is at a slight disadvantage because it features no vampires, no dirty girls, and only a little sexy time. Also, there’s not a half-naked dude with a six-pack on the cover.

This, too, is really cool.

Click here to buy it.

Also unrelated. This is some guy who needs to win an Academy Award.

What’s so great about this is that all of the following might be true:

• He’s an evil minion sent by a witch
• He just dropped an anvil on his foot
• This is twenty minutes after he downed six spoonfuls of equine laxative
• He struggles to say words
• He’s at an Iron Maiden concert and something bitchen happened

This has very little to do with anything on this blog, but it has everything to do with life.

In case of any confusion, this is John Rambo using a very powerful weapon to explode a guy a foot and a half in front of him.

This is also cool.

 

You can download it here.

 

This is cool.

You can download it here.

I probably have a weird process, but I like to create two potential covers for my books even as I’m writing them. Usually, I do this about midway through (although, in the case of my third book, I’ve done it much earlier).

The final cover for Dead Weight is shown somewhere on the blog below, but this is another stab it from an equally gifted artist.

I love audiobooks.

I know there are some people out there who have taken a somewhat elitist attitude toward this medium. They are quick to say, “You listen to your books? That’s not really reading.” That’s true. It’s not reading. It’s listening. But the story comes through all the same. In many ways, it comes through louder, and clearer, and better. This, coming from an author — someone sworn to protect the written word.

Too many of my friends and my family haven’t gotten around to reading my first novel because they’re waiting for the audiobook. Which, of course, means I need to make the audiobook.

Turns out, audiobooks are an investment. If you’ve got a great voice, and you’re a dramatic reader, by all means record your own audiobook. You’ll save a good chunk of money. If you’re like me, though, you possess neither of these, so you’ll need to look elsewhere. This means you have to contract a voice artist to read your novel. And guess what? Not so cheap.

A good voice artist will set you back between $200 and $400 per finished hour. Per finished hour means, simply, that regardless of how much time the voice artist spends recording and editing your work, you only pay for the finished hours of recording. Thank all the gods, too. Otherwise, you would have to spend an exorbitant amount for editing work, too.

Dead Weight is 95,000 words, which equates to about 11 hours as an audiobook. The rate for my recording is $280 per finished hour, so the math is simple.

$280 x 11 hours = $3,080.  Yup, three grand. That’s a lot of dough for the average person to throw down. There are options. They aren’t, however, any better.

The leader in audiobooks is Audible, which is an Amazon joint. Honestly, If you don’t put your audiobook on Audible, you may as well not put it anywhere.

All of this to say, at $3,000 for Dead Weight, I figure this is going to be throwing money to the wind. But, you know, it’s pretty cool to hear your book read by a professional.

Here — listen to a sample for yourself.