• Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers Part Two

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers Part Two

    self-publishing top ten

    Also published at BadRedhead Media here

    6. Long gone are the days of just writing and nothing else.

    Like I said before, unless you catch a break or find yourself in Amazon’s “also bought” loop and bestseller lists, you’ll have to market your work. This goes beyond just having a website and telling your friends on Facebook and Twitter about it (though those items are a good start). Even if you score a traditional deal, you’ll need to put in the time to market your work until you have such a large fan base you know they’ll pick up everything you write regardless of what it is and all that’s needed is an announcement.

    A suggestion is to dedicate at least one day a week to marketing or, if you can spare it, do a minimum of two things a day to tell others about your book, two things that involve both the on-line and off-line worlds. Marketing on-line is harder, actually, because you’re competing with so many more voices. Local off-line marketing is much easier—unless there are two hundred thousand authors all shouting about their books in your local bookstore.

    Take the time to set up things like:

    – newspaper/radio/magazine/blog/website interviews
    – book signings
    – convention appearances
    – social media efforts
    – trunk-of-car sales
    – magazine ads
    – other

    It takes time. It takes work. But that’s what it takes. Simply uploading your book to one or two platforms doesn’t cut it anymore.

    7. Utilize both the on- and off-line worlds.

    It’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing solely on on-line sales. I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it, and I’ve had good times and bad times with it.

    Like I said about diversifying, you need to be both on-line and off-line with your book.

    My book, Getting Down and Digital: How to Self-publish Your Book, walks you through both processes step-by-step with your average self-publisher’s budget (a few hundred bucks). It gives a well-rounded approach to publishing and emphasizes using both the virtual and real worlds.

    I will admit, however, there is an on-line bias and that’s because of the off-line world’s system of book returns. You can be in every bookstore in every country, but unless your book sells and stays sold—bookstores allow customers to return books after all—you face the potential nightmare of having a ton of books returned to you at your expense.

    At the same time, off-line sales pose the chance to make a good buck per book. Like I mentioned about my convention experience—and I’ve been doing conventions steadily for seven years—I net $8-10 a book. Can’t do that on-line because even books sold through on-line retailers require the retailers get a cut.

    The following should be part of a self-publisher’s arsenal on top of on-line sales through the usual suspects, whether those on-line sales are for eBooks or paperbacks:

    – book signings
    – convention signings
    – book events
    – public readings
    – direct sales to family, friends, co-workers, strangers

    8. Publishing costs money.

    A lot of writers struggle with cash. I totally get that. I was once homeless because of me chasing this dream and have lived close to the breadline a few times as I pursued it. It’s hard when you look in your cupboard and there’s not much there and you have a family to feed. It’s hard when part of your income is walking back alleys looking for beer cans to cash in. I fully sympathize with any writer struggling right now and those who have struggled. However, the one thing that has always been consistent is it costs money to publish whether one is struggling or not. You need to either save up, work a few extra hours at the day job, get a second job, sell some stuff, do pre-orders or something else to raise capital.

    Some people you’ll need to pay:

    – an editor
    – book cover artist and/or book cover designer
    – printer set up
    – office supplies
    – paper and ink to print out your manuscripts
    – marketing expenses
    – other

    It costs money, too, if you want to get in books for events, signings and other things. However, you can quickly make it back if you get in small quantities like, say, twenty books a pop. (i.e. print books at $4 a book, sell them at $15. I’ve made back my $100 printer bill and then some after the tenth copy sells. Copies eleven through twenty are all gravy.)

    9. Stick to your own thing.

    Like I mentioned earlier, trends come and go. Recently, there was a huge zombie boom in literature and doing zombie books was like printing money. Now that bubble’s burst and the sales aren’t there like before. I know this from personal experience and from talking to those in my publishing circles.

    Vampires were huge for a while and those books were moving like crazy. Now, not as much on the whole. Urban fantasy is the new thing. Those are moving like hotcakes at the moment. But you know what? That’ll change, too, so unless you’re willing to write whatever is hot at the moment, you’re better off just writing what you enjoy. While it’s true some genres sell better than others (i.e. romance has always been a solid seller), you’re better off just doing your own thing. Your joy in writing whatever your genre is will come through on the page and make a better book. You’ll build your brand as “that guy/girl who writes thriller/mystery/superhero/weird” fiction and will develop your following of readers who love that stuff as a result. That’s the trick: finding that niche market of readers who’ll support you for each release. The goal after finding them is to grow that group and sticking to one or two genres goes a long way in making that happen.

    If your genre isn’t hot right now, odds are it will be at some point. I never thought I’d see the day when superheroes were all over popular culture. Thanks to Marvel’s efforts at the box office—and if DC gets their act together, them too, and Man of Steel was a sign their new shared universe is off to a good start—they’re everywhere, more than at any other point in history, and it’s put a spotlight into my main genre: superhero fiction (The Axiom-man Saga). Good deal for me. I stuck to my thing and now it’s poised to pay off.

    10. Have fun.

    Nothing kills creativity like discouragement. When we first start out writing, we’re all gung ho and looking to make a career. We’re hungry for it and sacrifice anything to get it—I was homeless trying to make this happen, remember? Sometimes success comes right away, other times you got to toil away for years and years. Look at J.A. Konrath. He put in around twenty years before things really came together. I’m sure there were times the fun stopped and, dare I say, he even considered quitting. But he didn’t. He made it work, made it fun and kept on going. Now it’s paid off.

    Writing is an art form above all else and there are many writers who never catch a break and just toil away at it their whole lives. They’ll say it’s because “they can’t help themselves but write,” but what does that mean? It means they’re having fun regardless of payoff. Writing is a source of joy for them and completes them in some way. Whether you publish or not, there needs to be a fun element. Very, very few writers write solely for money.

    Publishing should be fun, too, even if success doesn’t happen right away. Transforming a book from a manuscript into an actual book with two covers is also an art form, a fun art form, and should be part of the joy of creating something from nothing just like writing the story is. In fact, it’s becomes highly addictive after a while.

    Writing should be about honesty and good times. If it’s not, why bother?

    Anyway, thanks for reading my Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers. There are more, but these are the big ones. Others can be found in my book, Getting Down and Digital: How to Self-publish Your Book, which walks you step-by-step through the publishing process for print and eBooks, formatting, cover design, marketing and more. It’s an entire self-publisher’s education between two covers, one that covers multiple eBook and paperback markets, and is meant to be the ultimate go-to guide for the career indie author.

    Thanks again.


    📂This entry was posted in Articles Self-publishing Writing 📎and tagged

  • Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers Part One

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers Part One

    self-publishing top ten

    Also published at BadRedhead Media here

    Self-publishing has been around for a long, long time. In fact, that’s how writers used to publish their work before the whole big trade system came along. Self-publishing has also always—always—been a viable way to make a living as a writer, but the problem was most writers who tried it didn’t execute it properly and ended up losing a ton of money, were taken advantage of by dishonest companies, or simply sat on a pile of books because they didn’t know how to move them.

    Or was that just me?

    Nowadays, self-publishing is easier than ever before, but like those days long ago, many writers don’t know what to do or where to start, or if they do find information on-line, it’s not always complete. As a ten-year self-publishing veteran and one who has been doing it full time since the spring of 2009 before the indie revolution, there are several truths about long-term self-publishing that I’ve discovered over the years and want to share here.

    My Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers in no particular order:

    1. Self-publishing is completely feasible to make a living at with the proper knowledge.

    When I started, I had no idea about the book business, how it worked, who to talk to or what to do other than knew I needed a publisher. After a string of rejection letters, I ended up putting out my first book through a subsidy press. They call themselves “self-publishing houses,” but they’re not. The moment any “publisher” charges a service for a fee, they fall into the category of a subsidy press with you, the writer, subsidizing them. With that press, it cost me around $2500 and all I had to show for it was a badly-written book—with a good story, but terrible writing—and no audience. Despite spamming the news lists in those days—didn’t know any better—nothing really came out of it. Had I done my research into what real self-publishing was, I would’ve found out that it’s not paying someone else to publish your book, but rather covering all the costs yourself, learning how to produce a professional product, and doing all the tasks of a publisher for your own work.

    What I should’ve done was:

    – spent several evenings combing the Internet researching self-publishing
    – read books about self-publishing and learned the requirements
    – discovered what legalities might be involved
    – learned software
    – researched success stories to learn from those who made a go of it and did well, then applied those lessons to my own career

    But I didn’t take the time to learn the ropes and paid a high price for it, not just financially, but mentally and emotionally as well.

    There’s a cost to self-publishing, but the good news is this cost becomes less and less the more one learns about it. Though I am a firm believer in hands-on learning, even going through trials for some lessons, research and taking one’s time before jumping into the pool is always strongly encouraged.

    I wish someone would’ve told me to do the same way back then, so I’m here to tell you—if no one else is—to research, research, research. You’ll save yourself a boatload of headaches and heartaches later if you do.

    It’s important to:

    – be ready to listen to others who’ve “been there and done that”
    – be willing to hear the stuff you want to hear and the stuff you don’t want to hear
    – in short, be willing to learn regardless of the lesson. No one is a master right out of the gate, and even those who seem to have perfected a system of publishing are always learning themselves.

    2. You need to work hard.

    Aside from catching a break and getting caught in Amazon’s “customers who bought this book also bought this other one” loop, or finding yourself a regular on the bestseller lists thus maintaining your visibility, self-publishing is hard work.

    Not only do you need to put in the hours to write the actual book, you need to:

    – put in the time to perfect the book during the rewrite stages
    – the willingness to listen to and work with an editor
    – put in the time formatting the book for paperback, eBook and possibly hardcover
    – later, to stand out amongst the hundreds of thousands of books published each year, make a solid effort marketing your title so people know about it while you also write and produce the next book

    For many writers, if this isn’t their fulltime gig, they find it difficult to maintain a day job, family and put in the time for their writing career. Many quit along the way because the workload-without-always-an-immediate-payoff gets to them and they get discouraged. Understandable, for sure, but sad when they walk away.

    You see, the challenges aren’t always a book not selling well.

    Sometimes these challenges are:

    – the people in our lives, those telling us to get a real job or “it’s fine to dream but make sure you have something stable”
    – those who just don’t get why we spend hours upon hours writing stories [hopefully] first for our own amusement and then for the amusement of others.

    Their words cut. Their words hurt. Their words sometimes put a stop to things before they even begin.

    Their words—even actions—become the challenge and sometimes make the inherent challenges of writing and publishing easy by comparison.

    Going into self-publishing knowing you’ll have to make a sincere effort will help make that effort easier. I know many who jump into self-publishing thinking it’ll be a breeze only to quickly get discouraged and overwhelmed when the workload kicks in. Prepping your mental state ahead of time will help see you through those 3 AM rewrite sessions when the coffee brewer runs out.

    The good news is as your career grows, this becomes easier because practice makes anything simpler and less time-consuming (our first go-round is always the longest). At the same time, working hard at the writing and production of a book(s) is usually lifelong for any self-publisher and until one’s name can sell books all by themselves, the marketing work needs to be there, too.

    3. Diversify, diversify, diversify.

    I’ve been self-publishing for ten years and I’ve seen trends come and go, markets come and go, and formats come and go. For the longest time, hardcopy books were all that were available so that’s what people bought. Later, as the Internet grew, non-fiction PDF eBooks were a big deal and folks were making a mint off them while paperbacks were a steady seller. Then—at least in the small press—things were paperback-focused again barring a few markets, but now eReaders have come along and eBooks have taken over. Truth is, this stuff is cyclical and things will either balance out and paperbacks will gain ground again, or might even become the norm once more. We really don’t know, and that’s the truth. This business changes like crazy and has been changing more rapidly since Joe Author has been able to keep up with the big boys with greater and greater ease. What happens next, only time will tell.

    And as a self-publisher, you need to be ready for it.

    In the realm of independent publishing, the self-publisher needs to diversify their distribution and take advantage of all the outlets and not just focus on one or two. I know those who put all their eggs into the Kindle basket and now their sales have dried up because the market’s flooded. They didn’t diversify and are paying for it. On the other hand, those I know who have their books available via more than a couple channels are just fine because they can afford it when one channel lags behind for one reason or another. It’s like your book(s) is riding a series of rollercoasters simultaneously: some go up while others go down, but at the end of the day, you’re still moving books because readers buy their books from more than one source in more than one format. The more sources and formats you’re in, the more consistent your paycheck will be at the end of the month thus making it easier for you to put in the time to keep the self-publishing machine going.

    Case in point, I do the e-market, sure, but also do comic conventions where I net $8-10 a book and sell a lot of books. I can’t hand readers eBooks, but I can hand them paperbacks, and since I use an affordable printer, my per-unit cost is very low and thus make out well come time for direct sales. And I print on demand, too, by the way.

    I also had a couple eBook channels go out of business on me, but that was okay because my eBooks were available elsewhere and not just at those two places so the hit wasn’t all that bad.

    Bottom line: your paperback venues, eBook venues and even hardcover ones, if you go that route, need to be available in as many places as possible so that when the market fluctuates for good or ill, you’ll still be able to pull through. I’m not suggesting to stretch yourself too thin either and sign up with every distributor on the planet. If you’re a one-person-band, your time and attention only go so far so keep things reasonable, of course, but certainly keep them varied.

    4. Write a good book.

    The biggest book marketer of all time is word-of-mouth. That’s why when a certain book or series gets popular, it suddenly sees a giant spike in sales: everyone’s talking about it. Sometimes a book is popular because it’s popular since people generally ride bandwagons for their entertainment, but other times it’s because a book is genuinely good that word spreads. Writing a good book helps increase the chances of that and helps encourage those who’ve read it to tell others.

    It also serves as a resume of sorts for your other titles.

    – if a reader likes Title A, he/she is more apt to try Title B because Title A was written so well
    – if you turn them off the first time because of bad writing, then you’re only shooting your backlist in the foot

    There is so much to choose from in this competitive market that the reader will move onto someone else in the hopes of a better written book. And let’s be honest, writers—or any artist—are a dime a dozen. You need to do well to rise above the crowd.

    Simply put: write a good book, and if you’re thinking of self-publishing your first book, make sure it’s objectively good and isn’t just good because you and your mom think so.

    – see what other seasoned writers think
    – see what a beta reader group thinks

    Most people’s first novels aren’t that great as the writer is still learning their craft. I know mine was a stinker. Great story, but terrible writing.

    Best to put a strong foot forward and take your time learning your craft before getting all excited and jumping into the self-publishing pool. That’s one of the reasons the market is so painfully flooded right now. Everyone’s publishing everything. The idea of publishing whatever and finding your audience doesn’t hold any water and the current climate proves that. Publish “whatever,” sure, but make sure it’s a good whatever, you know? If you’re serious about this business, you’ll want to be in it for the long haul and being known as the writer who consistently writes good books—regardless of sales volume—can only help you in the long run.

    This business is a marathon, not a sprint.

    5. You need to be attractive on the inside and on the outside.

    And, no, I’m not talking about your looks.

    An exciting and attractive book cover will make your book stand out amongst the rest. Don’t know how to make an attractive book cover? Either learn how or hire someone who does.

    There are certain elements that need to be in play in order to hook the reader’s attention, everything from:

    – color choice to graphics
    – eye flow
    – font size
    – other items

    If you don’t understand these items and how they apply to your genre(s), you need to learn how. This is why you see so many books out on Kindle and elsewhere that have terrible covers. The author cheaped out and didn’t put as much effort into the cover as they did into writing the book. A book’s cover is part of the creative process of a novel. It’s its “clothes,” so to speak. You can have the greatest book in the world, but if the cover stinks, then odds are you and possibly a few others will be the only ones who’ll read it.

    Assuming your cover has interested the reader, they’ll pick your book off the shelf or “search inside” it via an on-line retailer, so having an equally nice interior is also important. It’s about creating the whole package for them and a properly formatted interior makes a better reading experience for the reader and, later, will make them more likely to check out your other books because they had such a pleasant experience with that first one. It also demonstrates you take your fiction/non-fiction seriously since evident care was put into the book’s presentation. People pick up on it whether consciously or otherwise.

    Read part two of Top Ten List of Truths for Self-publishers here.


    📂This entry was posted in Articles Self-publishing Writing 📎and tagged

  • Secret Projects Announcement! The Titles are . . .

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    I’ve been talking a lot about “Secret Projects” in terms of what I’m working on. Awhile back I revealed the titles of Secret Projects Nos. 1-3 via my newsletter (a good reason to sign up for it, by the way: you get info early), but I haven’t revealed them publicly here.

    That said, I’d like to formally announce the names of Secret Projects Nos. 1-3.

    They are:

    Mechapocalypse

    Mechapocalypse 2

    Mechapocalypse 3

    They’re about, you guessed it, mech robots and mech war on an epic scale. Right now the title is one word though I might break it up into two prior to publication. Not sure yet. Regardless, it’s an exciting series with tons of action and I’m having a blast writing it. Book one is done, and I’m working on getting to the halfway mark of book two. I hope to have these finished and published in time for comic con in the fall. They will be released all in one shot. Will books 2 and 3 carry subtitles? Maybe. I’m also happy with just a simple numerical sequence for numbering the sequels. Something basic about that that I find charming.

    Can’t wait until these are all wrapped up, polished and published so I can share them with you. I know you’ll dig them.

    Hope everyone had a good weekend.

    Peace.


    📂This entry was posted in Writing 📎and tagged

  • New Interview Up at Captain Awesome’s Realm of . . . Awesomeness

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Like the headline says, there’s a new interview with me at Captain Awesome’s Realm of . . . Awesomeness. It was a pleasure doing the interview and I got to talk about superheroes and self-publishing. Andrew Lorenz, who conducted the interview, is a great guy and great comic writer. He runs September17 Productions, which publishes the comics he writes.

    To read the interview, please go here.


    📂This entry was posted in Interviews 📎and tagged

  • Laying Low

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    This site has been fairly quiet as of late. Part of it has to do with a change in personal schedule, the other part being I don’t have much to report on a platform like this blog right now. Lately, my on-line efforts/time has been spent on Twitter and in my weekly newsletter. Like my last post said, I’m having a great time writing a newsletter and am really enjoying its potential for communication with readers. It’s my current method of bringing my thoughts to the virtual page and sharing it with you guys. I suggest signing up for it–it’s free–as a means to a) keep in touch with me more regularly and, b) to receive information on things pertaining to the writing life, publishing stuff, life stuff and other stuff.

    Been also juggling multiple projects so am in kind of a working season where not much is going on publicly but with stuff happening beneath the surface. It’s been awhile since I’ve had so many irons in the fire, but as it is with these things, it takes time to complete each one. So, yeah, in work mode, in figuring-stuff-out mode, and am just plugging along.

    Been thinking about my publishing schedule for this year and how it might need to be changed to accommodate some other life changes that are happening. We’ll see how it all pans out, but, of course, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I’m going to be laying low for a while as I get things done because in the end it’s getting the work done that matters. However, I’ll still be active on Twitter and, as I’ve been pushing, in my newsletter.

    Like they say, watch this space.


    📂This entry was posted in Stuff Writing 📎and tagged

  • Having Fun Writing a Newsletter

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    I’m having a blast writing The Canister X Transmission. Just yesterday I sent out the seventh issue. It’s weekly and I’m having a ball. I think it’s the idea of publishing something new each and every week that appeals to me. Unlike blog entries, a newsletter is something that is “sent out” as opposed to just posted. Sure, some people get my blog posts via email, but a newsletter is meant to go out, be read, possibly even shared.

    I’d like to invite you now to sign up via the signup box on the right hand side of this site. It’s free. You can also visit the newsletter’s page at Tiny Letter to read back issues and see if it’s for you. I hope so. I try to make them interesting. They’re not terribly long either and only take a few minutes to read. I cover musings on the writing life, some fanboy and pop culture stuff, writing updates, and publishing and marketing tips.

    I also got a master file going in which I write out each newsletter first. The plan? Why, make a book out of them, of course. I’m thinking of doing it annually, so 52 newsletters per collection. Might even craft a bonus newsletter that you can only get in the book.

    Hope you sign up. It’s a fine method of communication and I’m having fun doing them. Likewise, if a particular issue speaks to you in some way, you can reply to it and let me know your thoughts.

    Thanks.

    See you on the list.


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  • Can You Just Start A Publishing Company?

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Can You Just Start A Publishing Company?

    can you just start a publishing company

    This entry was prompted because I’ve come across it more than once. Three times, to be exact, so I figure it’s worth blogging about.

    Authors and starting their own publishing company.

    This is the approach to publishing I strongly advocate in Getting Down and Digital: How to Self-publish Your Book. It’s my opinion that taking the time to set up a publishing business the proper way opens doors to taking your self-publishing career in multiple positive directions, on-line and off-.

    But can you just start a publishing company? On three separate occasions I’ve seen authors simply “start companies,” that is, just making up a business name and start and/or plan to publish under it without registering it through the proper channels.

    While the nuances of business start-up rules vary country to country, state to state, province to province, if a person wants to start a company, there is a certain way to go about it because each industry functions on different rules of trade and sales depending on where you live.

    When I started Coscom Entertainment and any if its imprints, I had to go to the Companies Office downtown, fill out paperwork, explain what my business was and pay a fee. This was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

    I know from speaking with other Canadian and US publishers that they, too, had to go through a formal procedure to get their company up and running.

    But I have also seen authors pull a company out of thin air and aim to start using it. I don’t know if this is simply because they don’t know any better or if it’s because of all the Kindle talk that people think all areas of publishing are free and one can do whatever they want when it comes to it. Or maybe, like most writers and artists, money is hard to come by so they want to do things as cheaply as possible and free is about as cheap as it gets. Perhaps it’s the Internet mentality because a lot of people view the Web as a “place to get stuff free” so why not start up a company for free, too? The problem with this kind of free is it’s unethical. Why create the groundwork of your career on something that’s wrong? It’ll only lead to problems down the road.

    The publishing industry is changing, this is true, and things are not what they used to be–and this extends past the whole eBook thing–but other things have remained, and that is the need to properly start a business if setting up a publishing house is part of your self-publishing plan.

    If you’re not sure what to do, pull out your phone book and look up your local Companies Office. Tell them what you plan on doing–publish books–and they’ll let you know what you need to do so that if your business is ever looked into, you can produce the proper paperwork that states you are allowed to run your business whether out of your home or an outside office. Likewise, when it comes tax time and you claim your writing income, claiming it under a company might work to your advantage in terms of write-offs. Talk to an accountant about this as the rules vary place to place.

    In the end, if you wish to self-publish via your own imprint, part of the deal is registering that imprint with the proper authorities.

    Start your career on the right foot. It can only payoff in the end.


    📂This entry was posted in Books Publishing Self-publishing Writing 📎and tagged

  • Secret Project No. 1 is Complete!

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Yesterday I finished writing Secret Project No. 1. It came in at roughly 51,100 words, which is about 1,100 more than I estimated, which is fine. I think it was Sunday that I thought of the ending and Monday I was able to put it down.

    Taking today off writing-wise, though I did write the first draft synopsis for Secret Project No. 1 along with this Saturday’s newsletter. (It’s free to sign up for, by the way; just use the email box on the right of the screen.)

    I hope to reveal the title to Secret Project No. 1 in the near future, and by near future I mean between now and the end of June. Might even throw the titles to Secret Projects Nos. 2 and 3 in there, too. Stay tuned, as they say.

    But it feels good, takes some pressure off, and I’m able to gear up for Secret Project No. 2. Like the first one, you can watch my progress via the word-o-meter on the side of the screen. I can’t remember how long it took me to do the first one–maybe a month-ish–but Secret Projects Nos. 2 and 3 first drafts are due by the end of June. That’s 100,000 words minimum in 41 days. Totally doable as that averages 2,400 or so per day, every day. I know some days I’ll do more so I’ll be on track barring the world doesn’t end or something. July will be spent editing–both by myself and my editor–and I hope to release all three of these projects in August sometime.

    As for another hint as to what the story might be about, it involves mechanical things. Big ones and small ones.

    Peace.


    📂This entry was posted in Writing 📎and tagged

  • The Axiom-man Origin and Why I Write Superhero Fiction

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Note: This post was originally published on Jeffrey Allen Davis’s blog

    Axiom-man Display
    The Axiom-man Saga at the C4 Comic Con 2013

    The Axiom-man Origin and Why I Write Superhero Fiction
    by
    A.P. Fuchs

    The Axiom-man Saga is an old story. A couple decades, in fact, as it was around then that I started to daydream about a similar hero while walking my paper route each morning. I’d get so lost in this story about a hero caught in a cosmic war between Good and Evil that I’d be done my route before I knew it and would often run house-to-house to double check and make sure I delivered the paper to the right places.

    In that fantasy, of course, I played the hero. As the story grew and I got older, I ended up transferring the honor of being that character to someone else, a fictitious someone else who would one day go by the name of Gabriel Garrison.

    Axiom-man began to take shape in concept throughout all my years of delivering the paper—and went by a different name, which was featured in my novel, April, written as Peter Fox (for that secret name, you’ll just have to read the book to find out). In 1995, Axiom-man received his new costume, the one he wears today. At the time, Axiom-man—originally called Trinity—and this concept character of mine were two different people. Trinity was more of a supernatural hero ala Spawn and fought demons, whereas my other hero was more down-to-Earth in nature and had very Superman-like powers. Yes, I know: Superman isn’t very down-to-Earth, but he does deal with things on this plane of existence 9 times out of 10. Anyway, as time went on, Trinity became Axiom—who was yet another character at the time—and as even more time went on and after being inspired by the likes of Frank Dirscherl and his Wraith character—who back in 2005 had one novel, a comic and a movie in the works—I decided it was time to put my long-thought-about superhero to paper. I merged my paper route fantasy character with Axiom because I always had an affinity for him, and after doing a quick web search on the Axiom name and finding a company out there with the same name, I went and made it my own by adding “man” to the end of it, hyphenated, of course, because that’s who Axiom-man really is: a self-evident truth embodied in a single person, in his case the self-evident truth of being one to do good rather than evil. From there it was an issue of scaling his powers waaaay back and settling upon three of them: strength, flight and eye beams. And when I say I scaled his powers way back, I mean way, way back. When Axiom-man debuted, he could only lift around 1000 pounds, could fly at about 60 kilometers an hour, and his energy beams only carried so much force. I didn’t want to make him too powerful thus making him always the winner and, because of his great strength, have no choice but to always pit him against ultra powerful foes. My story was to take place in our world under the idea of, “If this happened in our reality tomorrow, how would it most likely play out?” Making him with that kind of power set helped keep him grounded in reality and gave me plenty of options for enemies he could fight to sometimes win and sometimes lose against.

    His backstory and mythology were left unaltered and kept the same as the character I thought about growing up, still the product of a nameless messenger having visited him and granting him his abilities without explanation. As the story goes on, Axiom-man finds out why he received his powers and how he is caught in a cosmic war that has raged since time immemorial.

    The reason Axiom-man made his debut in books rather than comics was because, at the time I brought him to market, I knew of superhero fiction but didn’t think to do it independently. Frank Dirscherl’s The Wraith and Knight Seeker by Eric Cooper showed me otherwise. Axiom-man was originally a comic book character and I even drew a 21- or 22-page comic with him when he was called Trinity back in high school. I still have it somewhere and might publish it one day as a kind of behind-the-scenes thing. Anyway . . .

    By doing superheroes in prose, I was able to work alone, could tell the story exactly how I wanted it, and because I was already self-publishing other fiction at the time, had the system in place to get Axiom-man out there.

    You know, even though Axiom-man was my first official superhero release, I look over my fiction and every book I’ve written is a superhero novel in some way. Take A Red Dark Night, for example. It’s about a summer camp under siege by blood creatures. One of the protagonists, Tarek, is superheroic in nature, wears an otherworldly outfit complete with a cape, and shoots blue fire from a gauntlet on his forearm.

    My epic fantasy book, some quarter million words long, called The Way of the Fog, is about a group of people who get superpowers in a medieval/fantasy-style setting.

    My zombie trilogy, Undead World, deals with the supernatural, time travel, and each character is superheroic in how they act, even archetypical in some cases, with comic book-like good vs evil action.

    Zombie Fight Night—aside from an aged Axiom-man making an appearance in there, is full of comic book characters monster-wise, everything from werewolves to vampires; to robots to pirates; to ninjas to samurai; and beyond, all battling the undead.

    The Metahumans vs anthology series is, obviously, about Metahumans aka superheroes fighting a themed foe throughout each book.

    As mentioned, my love story, April, is about a comic book writer who’s fallen in love, and what does he write? Superhero comics.

    Look, Up on the Screen! The Big Book of Superhero Movie Reviews is about . . . well, I guess I don’t have to explain that one.

    The list goes on.

    I think it’s only fitting that superhero fiction in its truest form—an actual superhero storyline—became a part of my repertoire. It seemed inevitable considering my love for the genre. Ever since I knew what a superhero was—at three years old, I think—I’ve been hooked, and not a day in my life has gone by where I haven’t thought about them, theorized about them, fantasized about them, pretended to be them and more. I even wear Superman and Batman onesies to bed for crying out loud!

    Calling me a geek is an understatement, but I don’t care. Geeks make the world go round and fanboys are the ones providing people with entertainment. Superhero fiction just happens to be my main venue for doing so.

    And where is Axiom-man going from here? Well, thus far, 7 prose books have been released along with a few comics and short stories. The whole saga is planned to be 50 books long, so I’m coming up on being 20 percent finished. The good part is the story is pretty much all mentally written. I had 9 years or so of delivering papers to get the story right, after all.

    What I’m enjoying about the superhero fiction format is I’m able to do things with my characters that comic books don’t allow, at least, current superhero comics don’t allow. I’ve long advocated—and still do—that the comic book is the greatest storytelling medium to ever come down the pike, with books being a close second. Why? Because it’s the one-two punch of pictures combined with narration, whereas prose is a text-only medium. I still believe that, but being that at this stage in my career I’m primarily a writer versus a writer/artist, I’m sticking to books and the book medium is capable of telling superhero stories in a way comics haven’t as yet, namely getting inside a character’s head. Very few comic writers have succeeded in that in the past. Superhero comics are far too picture-heavy these days, with flashy computer coloring jobs, flimsy stories and scant dialogue. I miss the old days where there were almost equal amounts of text and pictures. At least with The Axiom-man Saga as it stands now, I can bring the reader dense characters where every thought and feeling is brought to the fore and, hopefully, pull the reader into the characters’ shoes in a way that superhero comics don’t. That’s my main goal with this: bring the reader in so that they feel they are experiencing my fiction versus just reading it. I’ve yet to read a superhero comic where this has happened. I have, however, read superhero books where this has occurred, Batman: Knightfall by Dennis O’Neil being a major favorite of mine and my first foray into the superhero fiction world.

    What also sets The Axiom-man Saga apart from any of the current superhero offerings is that it’s a cross-medium superhero story that encompasses books, comics and short stories, all part of the same continuity. This has never been done before, and putting new spins on old things is one of the things I’ve always striven for in my fiction, especially in this industry where things are pretty copycat and cookie-cutter (we all know of certain authors that seem to turn out the same book over and over again just under a different title, right?).

    Whether Axiom-man becomes this wild success or remains under the radar, for me it’s about writing the superhero story I always wanted to read, the one I’ve always thought about, and the one that, when my time on Earth is done, is the one I’ll be remembered by. It’s meant to be a career piece, a giant story with a beginning, middle and end, the story of a superhero, his life, and what that means to the world around us.

    I invite you to come along for the ride.

    Hope you enjoyed this little insight into the Axiom-man origin.


    📂This entry was posted in Axiom-man Books Superhero Fiction Superheroes Writing 📎and tagged

  • Publishing Isn’t Free

    Posted on by A.P. Fuchs

    Publishing Isn’t Free

    Pen and keyboard publishing isn't free

    Raising Capital for Your Book
    by A.P. Fuchs
    (from Getting Down and Digital: How to Self-publish Your Book)

    Publishing books costs money. Like the saying goes, you’ve got to spend money to make money. There’s no way around this. Thankfully, desktop publishing has dramatically cut that cost down and instead of having to spend thousands of dollars up front like in the old days, you can publish your book for less than a couple hundred on the low end, or a thousand or more on the high end.

    This book shows you how to publish your book for around $200, give or take a little depending on what you hire out when producing your book and where you live.

    Keeping up with the spirit of this book, which is starting out with little to no money like I did, let me make a few suggestions as to how to raise that $200 if you don’t have it saved already.

    – set aside a set amount every payday so you can publish your book in a timely manner

    – if things are indeed tight and nothing can be spared, then consider getting a temporary part-time job to cover the expenses of book publishing

    – if your book is complete, write up a synopsis of your book and take pre-orders from family and friends. This may be tricky, however, if you don’t know how to price your book. See the section on pricing for more info

    – have a yard sale

    – start a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign at www.kickstarter.com

    – sell off your unwanted CDs, books, records, etc. to stores that specialize in those items

    Of course, there are many other ways to fund your project but the above are a few suggestions. After all, publishing isn’t free.


    📂This entry was posted in Articles Self-publishing 📎and tagged