The First Lemming Over The Cliff

I’ve had a busy week.

First, birthday promotion went very well.  I think I’ve already sold more books this month than in any prior month, and it’s only the 13th.  Thank you very much to everyone who helped spread the word–it worked.

Today was the last day, and the prices reverted to normal.  We’ll see if I sell any more this month.  They are still all enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, so if you’re a member of that you can check them out for free any time.

Next up, The Dragon’s Rocketship sales table at Archon.  It’s moving right along.  I now have in my basement boxes of books from three indie authors, and more on the way.  We should have quite a selection.  It’s still open for new authors, by the way.  If you’d like to send me books to be featured on the table, send me a message via my contact page.

Even more exciting than that, though, is the fact that our panel discussion has been approved by the convention programming committee.  The topic is “Publishing Alternatives In The 21st Century” and there will be five of us, authors with a good mix of experience in both self-publishing and small press publishing. I’m really looking forward to it–it should be an interesting discussion and it is to be hoped that we can help other authors find their way.

Then there is this round robin story I’ve gotten involved with.  It’s another Dragon’s Rocketship project (that really is an awesome group).  There’s a half dozen of us all adding onto this story and we’re having a lot of fun with it.

Someone complimented me recently for putting together the Archon table and panel discussion and, as much as I love praise, I really can’t take credit for either.  My contribution has been relatively minor–I was just the first lemming over the cliff.

I have a lot of ideas, some of them good, some of them not so good.  I honestly don’t think that I’m anything special for having ideas–everybody does–I’m just kind of an outlier in suggesting ideas.  There are a lot of folks out there who are a lot smarter than I am who keep quiet because they are afraid that what they’ve come up with won’t work.

Well, it probably won’t.  Most things don’t work.  I have suggested tons of stuff–I’ve started a number of groups for projects.  Most of them fizzled and died in short order.  That’s the nature of the beast.  You take a good hard look at it, figure out (if you can) why it failed, kick a layer of dirt over it, and move on.

Having a project that fails doesn’t make you a failure as a person.  It means that you are trying, and that you’re willing to take risks and try things out.  Now, I don’t recommend investing your life savings on an untried concept, but time and effort and creative energy is never entirely wasted–at the worst you learn not to try that particular thing again.  Most of the time you learn more than that, you stretch yourself and improve your skills and are in a stronger position to launch your next crackpot scheme.

Which will also probably not work.  But the ones that do pay back more than enough to make up for the ones that don’t.

Fauxpocalypse was such a project, and we came up with a book that I am very proud of. I’ve tried a dozen other things that never got off the ground.  It’s okay.  Right now I have a project that is working and that I think is going to be a good promotion for a number of worthy authors.

After this, who can say? I’ll take something else and run with it.  Someone’s got to be the first lemming over the cliff.