THE QUEEN OF MAGES now available!

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Come one, come all, and check out THE QUEEN OF MAGES on Amazon! Only $3.99! Finally available after all this time!

Hopefully I've learned my lesson not to say "It's almost done!" eight months before I finish.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Also, I want to remind everyone that YOU DO NOT NEED A KINDLE in order to read THE QUEEN OF MAGES. Amazon provides a free Kindle reader app for Android, iPhone/iPad, and other systems; and you can read Kindle books in your web browser at [url]http://read.amazon.com[/URL], too, in any browser.

 

[Graylorne]

Well, I bought one. I wanted to try how Amazon worked anyhow, so this came at the right moment It cost me $6.89, actually. Taxes? Now I've got one more book to read, I'm already behind. Nice cover, btw.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

$6.89? Weird, I set the price at $3.99... Oh, are you in EU? (I see it says Netherlands in your infobox.) Maybe there's some weird extra taxes they charge.

 

[Graylorne]

Could be. When I go to Amazon.com without signing in and search for your book it sais this: Kindle Price: $6.89 includes VAT* & free international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet.
I downloaded via Kindle Cloud.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Ah, the mysterious VAT. A thing that we Americans simply don't understand. (No, seriously, I've read about VAT a dozen times and I still somehow don't understand how it works.)

 

[Graylorne]

We call it BTW, that means the same. It can add up, but 75% seems rather steep. We pay 19% BTW over ebooks.

I checked the links to your stories and they give me a price of $3.44 each. Strange; I checked it with a story one of the other MS members published at Amazon.com and at Smashwords. Amazon at $ 3.40, SW at $0.99.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

The price I set for the shorts was $0.99. That's a hell of a markup.

On the other hand, I certainly think my writing is worth the extra cash.

 

[Telcontar]

VAT taxes are funky for eBooks. Print books are exempt from them in most countries, but a couple of countries have classifed eBooks as (I think) a Luxury good, and tax them even further.

It blows for people in those countries who want to buy ebooks, but oh well.

Will be picking up the book in just a couple seconds, Ben. Looking forward to the read!

 

[Amanita]

Would you mind telling us a bit about the plot of the story?
Only reading the text at Amazon, it sounds a bit like the typical "good (and maybe helpless) woman is threatend by evil man"-storyline. Knowing you from the forum, I doubt that this is accurate though, so I'd like to know a bit more before deciding if I want to buy it.

For me, there seems to be about one dollar of VAT taxes, so not as extreme. I think books are among the number of items with lower taxation in Germany. (Food is as well and hotel rooms, the latter due to a specific case of political lobbyism. )
Normally, it's 19% on anything you buy.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Would you mind telling us a bit about the plot of the story?
Only reading the text at Amazon, it sounds a bit like the typical "good (and maybe helpless) woman is threatend by evil man"-storyline. Knowing you from the forum, I doubt that this is accurate though, so I'd like to know a bit more before deciding if I want to buy it.

Oh, she's not at all helpless. I do plan to rewrite the blurb some more and come up with something more interesting; condensing the story into something quite so terse isn't something I've had a lot of practice at, though, and I'll admit my first attempt isn't much. I promise that the book is way better than the blurb.

I actually looked a bunch of other books in the same genre on Amazon to get an idea of what kinds of things people put in those blurbs. I was also trying to make it super-terse, partly because I have no idea whether or not people actually thoroughly read the blurbs, or just sort of skim them looking for keywords the way I do; compressing it into something small that someone can easily digest might be better than a lot of words that make their eyes glaze over.

But then maybe I need to just forget about that and write something fun and interesting to go in that spot. There's a limit of 4,000 characters (~700 words), and I don't want to make it a big slog just to find out what the story's about. My wife suggested putting in a short section of chapter 3 where two of the main characters (Amira and Katin; see below) discuss the magic power; I might do that.

But I'll give you some info and you can see if it sounds interesting. And actually, you can read the prologue and most of the way through chapter 4 on the Amazon preview; that should introduce all the main characters and let you know whether or not you like where it's going.

The book follows four protagonists who live in the quasi-medieval realm of Garova:

- Amira, a young widowed noblewoman, who begins to develop a strange magical power that lets her create and control energy at a distance. Amira is charming, vivacious, beautiful, and highly impulsive–sometimes even reckless. Her power fascinates her, and at first she is the only person who has it.

- Dardan, a young nobleman and heir to a countship, who begins courting Amira after his mother browbeats him into it. Dardan is a dutiful, straitlaced fellow, unsure about whether he'll be able to live up to his father's larger-than-life reputation, and completely unprepared for dealing with Amira.

- Katin, Amira's vala (valai are personal bodyservants who accompany their masters at all times; they're a combination of friend, servant, companion, and confidante), who grew up an orphan and has a scarred past. She worries constantly about whether some horrible fate will befall her and Amira.

- Liam, Dardan's valo, a former soldier who is much more charming and handsome than his master. He has what can charitably be called an eye for the ladies, but Katin immediately hates him. (Where their relationship goes is not obvious.) Liam has an unpleasant past of his own, and sometimes has trouble controlling his anger.

Aside from them, the primary antagonist is the crown prince, Edon, who is a big thoughtless brute and more or less ends up ruining everything for everyone all the time. He discovers Amira's power and wants to control her; and things snowball out of control from there.

I really do encourage you to read the preview on Amazon; I think you'll know at once whether you like the writing style and storytelling. If you want to dive in to the main characters, you can skip the prologue and start at chapter 1. The prologue tells its own mini-story and sets the scene, but it isn't critical.

Look at it this way: Spend one minute reading chapter 1. After one minute, if you still like it, keep going. If not, you can give up, and you've only lost a minute of your time.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I did go ahead and rewrite the book blurb, incidentally. Hopefully it's somewhat more intriguing now.

Also, I posted a free sample (first 5 chapters) of the book on my blog, if you'd like to read it on a regular web page instead of in Amazon's previewer.

 

[Philip Overby]

I downloaded the sample and read the first part. I really like it so far. The end of that part left a good hook!

Looking forward to reading the rest of it. I'm sure I'll be buying the whole thing when I finish the sample. It's just my standard procedure now to read the sample first. And wow, thanks for the dedication, man!

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Thanks! It feels really great to have gone through this whole process and have something to show for it. I was worried that it would be over and I'd sort of feel let down, but it's been really rewarding. And it's wonderful any time someone (who I'm not married to) tells me that they like it.

 

[danr62]

Question: Are we allowed to use affiliate links on this forum when promoting our books? If so, why aren't you using one for this? You can earn a comission on top of your royalties, and you could also earn a comission on anything else someone purchases along with it.

Anyway, I've downloaded the sample and will check it out. I like the cover, did you have someone do that for you or is it DIY?

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Question: Are we allowed to use affiliate links on this forum when promoting our books? If so, why aren't you using one for this? You can earn a comission on top of your royalties, and you could also earn a comission on anything else someone purchases along with it.

I actually don't know wrt the affiliate question, but I wouldn't imagine it would be a problem, as long as other guidelines about promotion are followed.

I haven't really thought about doing the affiliate thing, because, well... it's yet another thing to worry about. My time is already severely constrained, so if I can find a couple hours to dig into the affiliate stuff, I will, but it just can't be a priority right now.

Anyway, I've downloaded the sample and will check it out. I like the cover, did you have someone do that for you or is it DIY?

Ha! I wish I had one percent of the artstic ability needed to draw something like that. The art was done by the talented Melissa Erickson.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Oh, I also wanted to remind people - if you read THE QUEEN OF MAGES and liked it, please be sure to post a review on Amazon! Word of mouth is really the only way this thing can take off, since I spent what little budget I had for this on the fantastic cover art

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I'd like to add that THE QUEEN OF MAGES is now also available for nook! I know at least one of you was waiting for that, so now you can check it out. Same low low price of $3.99!

And as a reminder, if you'd like to read the preview first, the prologue and first five chapters are available to read free online.

 

[Zero Angel]

And actually, you can read the prologue and most of the way through chapter 4 on the Amazon preview;

yours goes all the way to CH 4? Mine ends after CH 2. Is it length of chapters that affects it or is it a specific fraction of the total number of chapters do we think?

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

yours goes all the way to CH 4? Mine ends after CH 2. Is it length of chapters that affects it or is it a specific fraction of the total number of chapters do we think?

As far as I understand, it's basically just a percentage of the overall book length; about 10.5% in this case. The book is 7924 locations long, and the preview stops at about location 839. (Actually, the book starts at location 36, so it's actually about 800 locations worth of story in the preview, which is closer to 10%.)

The preview on my blog is the same except it 1) doesn't include all the front matter (because who cares about the copyright page) and 2) it goes all the way to the end of chapter 5, instead of stopping near the end of chapter 4 like the Amazon preview.