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Sara Creasy (finally) reports that her novel Song of Scarabaeus (Face-Lift 131, reprinted in the post below) was published in 2010, and Children of Scarabaeus was published earlier this year. Song of Scarabaeus was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and the Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel.

D Jason Cooper reports that his story, "Something Wicked" (New Beginning 701) is now up at Metahuman Press. It's the first in a monthly series of twelve stories.

It's an amazing success story! An unheard of twenty-six-year-old woman sold 900,000 copies of nine different books since she first put her work for sale on April 15, 2010. There are paperback copies that sell for $8.99 and $9.99, but the ebook editions are the ones selling like wildfire at $2.99 and .99. Just check out the local news story in the video below:



Amanda Hocking tried to go the traditional publishing route for eight years but received countless rejections. She never thought of self-publishing as a viable option.

"Everything I'd heard about self-publishing is that is was impossible to make a living, reach readers, or produce a quality product. But last year, I heard about how some others like Joe Konrath and Karen McQuestion are doing well with ebooks. So I thought I had nothing to lose."

So how did she sell so many books? She worked it via social networking, of course!

"I didn't really have a strategy. I think one of the advantages I have is that stuff considered marketing is stuff that I do a lot anyway. I've been active on social networks and blogs for years.

"I also send ARCs out to book bloggers. Book bloggers are a really amazing community, and they've been tremendously supportive. They've definitely been a major force that got my books on the map.

"When I first published, I did do a bit of promoting on the Amazon forums, but they're not really open to that, so I haven't really interacted there much at all in months. I hang out at Goodreads, Kindleboards, Facebook, Twitter, and I blog. And that's about it."

She now has an agent who is working on selling the foreign rights to her books. She plans to continue self-publishing, but isn't turning her back on traditional publishing.

"As amazing as this ebook revolution has been, it's only 20-30% of the market, and I'm not going to ignore the possibilities to reach the other 70-80% of readers. However, it is hard to compete with what my books are already able to do with Kindle and PubIt."

While that may be true, rumor has it that she's been shopping a four-book series to major publishers and attracting bids well over a million.

It seems we are entering a new and inspiring age, where traditional publishing certainly isn't the last word. Being rejected by a publisher isn't the end of the line. If you have the drive to do it yourself, why not? Publishing, marketing, and creating websites is the cheapest and easiest it's ever been. And in most cases it's free. If you have any thoughts on this topic, we'd love to hear them!

To find out more about Ms. Hocking's books, visit her Amazon Author's Page.

Quotes from The Huffington Post interview, Meet Mega Bestselling Indie Heroine Amanda Hocking.
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Class: Social Networking for Writers: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and More! Learn how to leverage the power of social media with this four-week e-course.

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Steve Prosapio reports that his novel GHOSTS OF ROSEWOOD ASYLUM (Facelift 679) will be published in June by Otherworld Publishing.

Steve kindly (and justifiably) gives 100% of the credit to us.

Dave F. reports:

"The Night Dickie Ward's Tongue Stuck To The Flagpole," which was New Beginning 822 (the plot turned out to be that three teenage brothers confront an alien threat in the Ice Hockey Rink circa late 40's early 50's), was accepted and will be published in the anthology "DIESELPUNK" edited by Sean Monaghan.

BTW - I really liked the way this story turned out. The minions get credit for the first 2/3rds and the turn to dieselpunk clarified the ending. That is, no modern equipment.

The anthology is still open so if anyone has a short story that fits Dieselpunk subgenre or if they can fix up a story to fit the subgenre, they should go to http://www.staticmovement.com/ which is Static Movement's main page and find this link
"http://staticmovement.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=seanmonaghan&action=display&thread=310 to the Dieselpunk Anthology.

For those who don't know: Steampunk's bastard cousin, Dieselpunk looks for speculative fiction filled with rugged, chunky engines but no sign of electronics. What would the would be like if we still had those huge 1950s aircraft, locomotives, tanks and cars, but no computers?

Dave F. reports:

Static Movement picked up my short story "Roll Another Joint For me, Baby!" (New Beginning 779).

It will appear in an Anthology titled Like Frozen Statues of Flesh: A Bizarro Anthology. The anthology should appear sometime in the summer.

Thanks to EE and everyone else for the help and encouragement.

My fantasy story "The Things That Remain," which came into existence as a Bad Backstory exercise and came up for another round as New Beginning 666 has actually gotten published (first time any of mine have done that anywhere) in Mindflights Magazine.

Thank you for the bad back-story prompt! And thanks to you and all the minions for suggesting that there was a real story there, for insisting that the heroine of a real story could not be named Slubka, &c.

Joanna

BuffySquirrel reports that her short story "Snow Cat" (New Beginning 643) has been accepted for publication in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (ASIM).