Nick Bryan

self-publishing update

Hobson & Choi – Case Four: Blood Will Stream – COVER AND PRE-ORDER DETAILS

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Hello.After many Twitter mumblings and late-into-the-night formatting sessions, I’m excited to report that the fourth book in the Hobson & Choi series is happening!

It’s called Blood Will Stream, it’s about the locked-room murder of a YouTuber and it should be with you on 4th October 2016, just under a year after the third one.

Which is exciting in itself, but also means another cool part of any Hobson & Choi book launch – a new cover by Design For Writers! As you can see, they’ve very much taken the online streaming theme and run with it.

To go alongside that, here’s a nice sales blurb:

“I used to think knowing people just by online handles was totally cool, but these internet murders might be changing my mind.”

After YouTuber GrazGrim is found dead in his locked bedroom-studio, the police are ready to write it off as a suicide.

The online fandom only have one chance for justice: John Hobson and Angelina Choi, internet detectives!

But can Angelina persuade Hobson to take the case on? And will anyone like what they find?

Blood Will Stream is the fourth book in this darkly comic London crime series. The detectives are back in whodunnit territory, revisiting their love-hate relationship with the internet.

Hobson & Choi has been #1 in Dark Comedy on Amazon, broken records on Jukepop Serials and now returns with an all-new mystery never seen anywhere else!

So there we go. This is really happening. As the blurb implies, this is the first H&C book written specifically for book format, rather than forged from rewritten webserial chapters, and I think it’s the best yet. Although it does mean I haven’t had any pre-validation from online comments.

Still, if you want to validate me, you can always pre-order using the links below! (Seamless…)

And it’s also on Goodreads here for those of you who go there. If you have a blog, YouTube channel or other book reviewing outlet and want a review copy, email me at nick@nickbryan.com and we can probably work something out.

Probably some more stuff to come – it has been pointed out that one suitable promo campaign for this book would be to do some YouTube videos, so you might get to see that over the next few weeks. You lucky, lucky people.Now, as has become tradition, it’s 3D time…

ADMINARAMA – H&C on Wattpad! Competition answer! BOOK THREE LOOMS!

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Sundry bits and bobs on the blog today – might try for a full-length post in a few days, but for now, sundry newsbursts from Nick-land…

The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on WHAT pad?

If you want to read The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, the first book in my darkly-comic crime Hobson & Choi series, without shelling out cash, I’m currently serialising it on Wattpad, the popular story-sharing site. Plus you can read H&C old-school, serialised with cliffhangers, a format I still have a huge amount of affection for.

Chapters are going up every other day (next one tomorrow) and there’s only fifteen of them, so it should be all there fairly soon.

Check it out and if you have a Wattpad account and feel like throwing in a vote or comment, go for it.

Phantom of the Space Opera – Competition ongoing!

Remember my competition from last week? The one where you had to guess which chapter I wrote in the team-written book from Nine Worlds? Well, no winners yet, so because I feel like it, rather than tell you the answer, I’m going to just leave it hanging.

Once one human being (not one of the ones who has told me they got the answer in a way other than reading it) emails the correct answer to nick@nickbryan.com, I’ll send them a copy of The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf, signed or unsigned as per their will. Maybe some other gift as well, I’ve got a few spare comics and stuff hanging around.

Once that happens, I’ll post the right answer here. Check the original blog post for the full details of what that’s all about.

Trapped In The Bargain Basement soon to be released!

Last and definitely not least, the third Hobson & Choi book Trapped In The Bargain Basement is finally more or less ready to be released into the community! It’s taken some work – specifically, a set of rewrites so massive that I’ve had to remove the original webseries version from the internet because it embarrasses me.

But we have a final text, nearly a final cover, it’s all very close. I’m not going to say anything specific like a date yet, but Trapped should be with you by this time next month, let’s put it that way. So even sooner than that, there might be a cover reveal. Gosh.

However, if you have a blog and would like a review copy so you can post something near the release date, do email me or something and I can probably get it to you reasonably soon. If you definitely have a blog/other outlet for reviews and desperately want to cover the whole series, I may even be able to supply all three.

How To Be Number One! (In the Dark Comedy category on Amazon US!)

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News that social media followers probably already know! For around a day, dawn to dusk on Thursday 12th March 2015, my self-published crime epic The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf was the most popularest, bestest book in the Dark Comedy category on Amazon US. If you don’t believe me, here’s a screenshot.

BEHOLD THE ORANGE STRIPE OF VALID LITERATURE

Now, much as I’d love to pretend this was an entirely natural spurt of love for me, I did require some advertising to achieve this. For anyone who wants a tiny wee glimpse into the inner workings of the self-publishing DIY promotion world, harnessing the resources available to reach the very top of a fairly uncompetitive Amazon category, this is your moment.

Quite cool, as the bulk of my existing readers are in the United Kingdom, so sales across the Atlantic had been quite modest until now. This is an important step in breaking America. If Doctor Who and Sherlock can do it, then so can Hobson & Choi!

As you can see, I also placed in some more challenging crime-related categories

Also, I was in the mid-80s of the overall humour (or “humor”) category on the site, which I was quite pleased with.

Anyway – long story short, I advertised the book with Fussy Librarian on Tuesday 10th (costing $7) and Ereader News Today on Wednesday 11th (costing $35), and by the morning of Thursday 12th, I was atop my category, so mission accomplished.

If you’re wondering how many book sales this requires, it’s about 85. So for my total $42 investment, that’s about two books per dollar. Not bad, although due to the first book in the series being a cheap hook-them-in deal, I didn’t quite make my initial investment back.

I found the people to advertise with by lurking for a while in the Writer’s Cafe section of KBoards. Although actually posting isn’t mandatory, a lot of people do share their experience, particularly of different promoters. There’s even a spreadsheet here if you just want a big list.

Obviously, the long-term dream is for the book to either sell itself or make a huge profit on advertising. More short-term, it’d be pretty sweet if some of the 85 people who bought the first book just now leave a review and/or pick up the second one.

So yup, this is the ultimate plan. Promote first book, hope it fires through to later books. Ereader News Today is one of the biggest and most reliable promotions, it seems, so future efforts may not be quite as huge.So, in case anyone was interested, that was my achievement this week. We’re still at #12 in Dark Comedy as of this writing, so that’s nice. If you want to help me achieve pleasure via numbers, feel free to buy the Hobson & Choi darkly comic crime books, but no pressure. I blog for love.

Hobson & Choi Case Two – “Rush Jobs” – out now!

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Today, my friends, the second H&C book goes forth into the world, where it hopes to be received with open arms and warm love. After meeting in the first book, John Hobson and Angelina Choi further explore the world they’ve found themselves in, and find it to be a strange, grim place.

So, here is a picture of the cover – for more details on the actual plot, go to the Hobson & Choi homepage, where you can also find links to buy a copy of Case One – The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf – for a newly super-cheap price.

For the new book, you can add it on Goodreads here if you so wish, and if you feel like leaving a review and/or rating there, on Amazon or on your own blog/social media, that would be pretty sweet of you. Continued growth plays a big part in helping me continue to get these out there.

Speaking of heading on out there, we’re also doing the Hobson & Choi Blog Tour to coincide with the book launch – check out the details here if you want to follow along. If you follow me on Twitter, I’m sure the blog posts will also be retweeted there as they happen.

You can buy Rush Jobs in both print and digital from various venues. I’ll also be dropping off a few copies soon at the Big Green Bookshop, if you’re a fan of buying things in person.

2014 – A Writrospective

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Because it’s a retrospective about my writing, you see? So it’s a writrospective! Even if you don’t care about me or my work, surely it was worth clicking on the blog post just for that pun? See diagram for more details.

Anyway. I have more or less reached the point where all my free time is booked for the remainder of the year. Might squeeze in an hour or two somewhere, but I doubt any more substantial writing work will happen before 2015 hits.

So I thought I’d take this chance, late on a Thursday night, to look back on what I did/achieved this year, in and around writing, and whether it met my lofty goals from twelve months ago. Don’t worry, it won’t be pure self-congratulation – I missed almost all of those goals, but not completely.

ONE – Self-Publish Hobson & Choi

At the start of the year, roaring through the second major storyline, I’d already more or less settled on the idea of self-publishing my Hobson & Choi webserial in some form. We were some distance away from the final format but my vague goal was: get one – maybe two – H&C books out by the end of 2014.

Well, The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf appeared in July 2014, book two is scheduled for late January 2015. I think I’m going to say this goal was almost entirely a success. Don’t worry, misery-fans, this is the only one.

Not only has that first book sold a few copies (not millions, but more than I’d conservatively estimated), but it was stocked by the excellent Big Green Bookshop as part of their small press programme and sufficiently demanded by readers to graduate from the small press shelf to the big press table.Look, here it is in situ:

That picture definitely makes me happy I paid for a decent cover so my book wouldn’t look embarrassing next to others. Anyway,  if you live anywhere near Big Green and want a copy, go grab one there. And if you too are a bookshop and want to stock H&C, get in touch and we should be able to sort something.

For the non-bookshops among you, stay tuned for Rush Jobs in around a month. Cover reveal coming dangerously soon after January starts. Sign up for the launch blog tour here if you want.

TWO – Finish drafting fantasy devil-based novel, send it to agents

I haven’t entirely managed this one. But as of about a month ago, I have completed the first clause, a good draft is done, so I don’t feel like a complete waster. Basically, two things happened to get in the way of this goal:

  1. The above-mentioned H&C self-publication.
  2. Editing, beta-reading and yet more editing took longer than I expected.

On the one hand, I’m quite pleased with the systematic, steady and ultimately (I hope) successful approach I took to editing this one. On the other, it still took a while. There are only a handful of scenes in the book that haven’t been rewritten and/or replaced entirely once since the first draft, and some multiple times.

I know a few people who are currently trying to get editing done, we all finished our first drafts at a similar-ish time, and I think we’re all finding the next stage takes a lot longer than we expected. Such is life. When screwing around with a big house of cards, one change has more knock-on effects than you expect.

Still, damn near there now. I’ve been working on my cover letter and hopefully the second half of the target can take a battering in the new year. Woohoo/gulp.

THREE – Write first draft of new lighter-hearted adventure novel

We’re basically at the Total Failure section now. Well, I lie, I wrote the first 1,500 words of this novel yesterday, largely to avoid admitting I’d blown this target.

Obviously, this plan imagined a world where I finished the fantasy book much earlier, spent the last third-ish of the year sending it to agents and could do a decent chunk of this first draft for NaNo. Instead, I spent NaNo concluding those edits and this didn’t happen.

Still, once the Rush Jobs publication is out of the way, I live in hope that I will be able to forge on with this and have (at the very least) a non-shit first draft done by the end of 2015, if not a complete second or third out to betas.

And this, kids, is how I live, constantly balancing targets to make sure I can never relax for a second. I also have about five thousand words of notes on the project after this one, but I’m not putting that on the official to-do list yet, as I value my mental stability.

Still, despite the theoretical missing of many targets, I got a lot done this year, and that’s not even counting the almost-50 chapters of H&C webserial I wrote. I have almost two real books (as illustrated above) to show for it. Writing-wise, things are moving along. I even went to my first ever convention at Nine Worlds and had a great time.Go team me.

Maybe I deserve the enforced fortnight off writing I’m about to have. If I don’t make it back before Christmas, have a good one. I should go to bed now. The now-regular annual Top Ten TV Shows should follow after I’ve seen the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Hobson & Choi Blog Tour – Book Two Blurb + Launch Plans

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It appears the launch of Rush Jobs, the second Hobson & Choi book, needs preparation. You can see an exclusive 100% real not-fake not-a-joke preview of the Case Two cover just to the right of these words. Enjoy!

But yeah, if you’re someone who dislikes making Christmas plans in mid-November, best duck and cover, because we’re about to talk late January 2015.

After The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf‘s relatively soft launch, we at H&C HQ are going bigger this time. Yes, it’s a blog tour. This means that if you, the reader, run a blog about books (or something else you can easily relate back to H&C), you can host a post around the time of the Rush Jobs launch. This could be your own review of the book or a piece I’ve written or some combination of the two. We can work something out.

However, if you wish to be involved at all, you should register your interest by filling in the form here, which does include checkboxes to determine what kind of post you might want to feature.

Get ye applying. Your blogs won’t tour themselves (because I will be doing that).

In order to get everything in order for this blog tour, we’ve also put the new book on Goodreads, so if you want to announce your formal intention to read it, you can do that too.

Oh, and to make the Goodreads page look less skeletal, I’ve released the blurb for Rush Jobs, which goes like this:

“Sometimes #crime feels like the Matrix. Or the #patriarchy or #porn. It’s everywhere, even in people you trusted, and there’s so MUCH of it.”
Angelina Choi returns for her second and final week of work experience at John Hobson’s detective agency, ready for anything after their first successful murder solve.
After all that online buzz, they’re in phenomenal demand. Can Hobson & Choi solve a kidnapping, play chicken with corporate crime, beat back gentrification, save a dog from drug dealers and head off violent backlash from their last case?
Or will grim revelations about Hobson’s past leave them floundering in the chaos?
Rush Jobs collects the second major storyline in the Hobson & Choi saga, #1 on Jukepop Serials and #2 in Dark Comedy on Amazon, adding brand new chapters and scenes to the case.
Also included: bonus story Infernal Accounting, exclusive to this book. An unfortunate accountant is terrified of his first day working for Rush Recruitment – but they’re only a temp agency, right? How bad can it be?

So there we go. The countdown has officially begun. Apply now to be a tour stop! And yes, the real new cover, from the creators of the first one, will be unveiled at some point. Exciting times.