Monday, January 27, 2020

The Phantom has published!!!

That's the live link to Amazon.com where my first book is now available!

And yes, Edward Thomas is very much a pen name.

A little background, this book started off as a tiny little idea in my head in 1993. I wrote down things from then until about 2012, when a friend of mine read the collected scribblings, pronounced them good, and told me "You have to finish this right now!"

So I did finish it, around 2014. Then I kept going and going, until now I have five in the can and two more in the oven, as it were.

This year it was decided I needed to get busy and PUBLISH it, so a cover was constructed and here we are. Published.

I'm not sure how I feel about it right now. I pulled the trigger at 3:15 this afternoon, and now I have a stomach ache. 😓

The Phantom

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

First, congratulations on finishing it!

Second, don't stress yourself out. While I'm certainly not an expert, probably the hardest part of self-publishing a book is promoting it.

I vaguely recall Larry Correia telling the story of being turned down by basically every publisher on the planet for Monster Hunter Inc., so he started aggressively promoting it on gun forums. I can't imagine how many books I'd have missed out on if he hadn't kept pushing! Both his Monster Hunter and Grimnoire series are favorites of mine.

I don't have any specific advice for you on self-promotion (I did say I wasn't an expert!), but hopefully with perseverance you'll find an audience. I went ahead and picked up the book, but may not have a chance to read it for a few days - looking forward to it.

The Phantom said...

Ah yes, promotion. The part that us odd people are so good at, right? ~:D

That's going to be interesting, I guess is the word. I'm hoping for some word-of-mouth, but so far the word is "harem anime." Which is fair, I guess, but not really what I was going for.

Still, there's a big honking market for harem anime, despite that bashing it is popular they keep making more and more of it. Maybe I'll see if there are forums for that.

paladin3001 said...

Congratulations. Publishing one is easy. Hard is getting the second one out there. Best of luck and may it make lots of sales.

The Phantom said...

I don't know, Paladin. Publishing this one wasn't that easy. ~:D I've been hoping the process improves with repetition.

Sales are obviously going to be slow, nobody knows about it. I'm hoping as more books get published and word of mouth gets out, it will pick up.

Wi Fi Lunchbox Guy said...

Congratulations!
Is it going to be available at all the usual publishing places?

The Phantom said...

Available from Amazon in e-book form, or Kindle Unlimited at the link above.

Paperback version is under construction right now.

OvergrownHobbit said...

Despite one aspect that wierded me out it was really good.

The Phantom said...

Thanks! I didn't mean to imply that thing you were complaining about in the story, in fact that whole subplot of rescuing little kids should have taken care of it. They're -robots-, right? They're bigger, faster, stronger and smarter than adult humans. They're not immature female humans, they are hyper-capable AI beings who make up their own minds about things. And some of them are tanks. I mean, come on, right? How hard can I sell this free-will thing before it becomes stupid?

However, in your defense there's that new French movie with the robot made to look like a 10 year old, people were walking out. So this is in the air.

Maybe after another book it'll be more clear. 😁👍👍