StephanLoy @StephanLoy@writing.exchange

#bookcase What's on your bookcase?

#Bookcase What's on your bookcase?

#Bookcase What's on your bookcase?

Uncivil Service
Book 7 of Nightwatch
Book 2 of Fiona Street
You might even call this Bad Lands 2. Fiona Street, America's baddest badass secret agent, is hunted by her own government. While avoiding getting put down with extreme prejudice, she must stop an incursion from a nightmare universe whose denizens are out to obliterate all reality. Marshal Hostetter from Bad Lands guest stars. Introducing the Voice of the City, a superhero.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/775938
Sorry, $3.99 at Smashwords

Bad Lands
Book 6 of Nightwatch
Marshal Clayton Hostetter pulls together an oddball posse to track the most ornery bad man in the Old West. He's wanted for murder, mayhem, terrorism, and conspiracy to destroy the 18 contiguous universes. Riding with Hostetter is a 10-yo boy, a spectral Nigrah lady with a great, big brain, and Bigfoot. Yep, that Bigfoot. Oh, and Fiona Street makes an appearance.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/666232
$1 at Smashwords

Galactic Geographic
The adventures, or rather misadventures, of Charlese Tilbrenner, stumbling, bumbling and not too stable correspondent for Galactic Geographic, the galaxy's leading news and lifestyle electronic magazine. You want restaurant reviews? Sea monsters? Gangsters? Interstellar war? Charlese delivers.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/585369
$1 at Smashwords

Redemption Song
Book 4 of Nightwatch
Book 2 of Last Days and Times
The sequel to Last Days and Times, where the legendary Knights Templar come out four-square against seers of God and the Vatican Secret Service goes all-out Bond. Angels and monsters, terrorism and the final state of the Holy Land. Thriller city.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/562190
$1 at Smashwords.

Fiona Street
Book 3 of Nightwatch (Book 2 was Shining Star)
The Singularity is here, and it ain't pretty. You want your phone in your head? Wanna be Inspector Gadget? This government agent is living the dream, or is it nightmare? In order to build a more perfect union, the feds link her brain cybernetically to that of a common alley cat, a move that makes her the most deadly special ops agent in the US inventory.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/456585
$1 at Smashwords.

Conqueror's Realm
My fourth novel. A speculative fiction political thriller where the United States is run by a racist Republican majority that decides to initiate a kind of apartheid to maintain white rule. Bucket loads of racists, terrorists, and political opportunists, plus unending war against Muslims and the press persecuted for trying to expose this evil plan. Sound familiar?
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/370503
Free at Smashwords

Shining Star
My third book.
For everyone who thinks a national religion (theirs, of course) is a good thing, this is what happens when you institute a theocracy. Mass murder, thought police, slavery, and all other manner of ills. A bastardized Catholic power subverts religion as a way to control a spacefaring people. And those fighting the power aren't angels, either.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/358430
$1 at Smashwords

Isis Wept
My second book. A dramatic retelling of the Isis/Osiris Egyptian myth. Stuffed full of sex, violence, monsters, magic, truly awful situations, and petty gods. The mere humans have to survive what amounts to an apocalypse of immortal politics. But it's the humans who have the real power here. They can make themselves; the gods are stuck as whoever and whatever they are.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/357908
One buck at Smashwords.

Last Days and Times
My first book, published back when. A crazy radio evangelist decides that the best way to bring home God's kingdom on earth is to freaking blow up the earth. He starts with the Great Lakes basin. A paranoid, hard cussin', not too stable disaffected Jew is his only opponent, but she's the seer of God, blessed to see all God's works, no matter how beautiful or terrible.
Book 1 in the Nightwatch series.
Free at Smashwords.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/8615

An aside, almost all of my novels are on deep discount or free at Smashwords this month. Part of their Read a Book Christmas in July Mega Grab Shit for Nothing Sale. At least I think that's what they call it. I'm gonna post little descriptions and links of all those books so you can grab them if you want. I'll put them under CW so as not to annoy those who don't want to see shameless plugs. But, yes, free or $1, that's what they are. Then you can decide for yourself if they're good or not.

I got on this rant after seeing that Wil Wheaton, the actor, with all his social media reach, barely manages to sell a half dozen copies a month of his self-published novel.
With his resources he barely makes enough to buy dinner after several month's royalties. Me, without that social media footprint? I might manage one or two dinners a year. If I'm not too particular about the restaurant.

That alone shows just how few sales it takes to be in the upper echelon. To be in the highly profitable range, though, you need an act of God. It's difficult enough just to sell those few books every few days. To gain enough attention to sell fifty every few days will drain your bank account and not return even a break-even investment.
For most people. I'm sure there are some here who are rolling in royalty payments.

It's enough to drive you crazy.

So, yeah, for all that and other reasons, writing is a lottery. If I suddenly start selling tons of books, I sure won't quit my day job, because the lottery could move on to somebody else the next day.

I've read enough books on Amazon where you get treated to a hundred misspellings and grammatical mistakes in the first chapter, where the author sometimes refers to characters by the wrong names, in other words, books that were never edited, and yet the books are selling like hotcakes. The reviews actually point out these shortcomings and the people buy the stories anyway! What's that all about?

But one thing I know for sure, also from lots and lots of research, is that quality does not have much to do with sales. I'm mystified by how often a book can get a couple of hundred low reviews, as in 3-star and below, with VERY cogent analyses of why the book is no good, and yet be rated in the top few hundred in sales.