Sandal Press Blog

I am sorree my is late this month but mama wuz sik. So my had to look after her. She is better now so my can talk abut fud.

First my never gets enuf fud. If u culd talk to mama abut that n tell her my needs mor fud my will like u mor.

Mama makes my fud. She also makes de catz fud. We eat a raw fud dyeit. Mama sez it is healtheeer fer us. Fluff the big wite cat was the furst to eat raw fud. He is now 9 yeers old. He is v grumpy. I wunder if it is becos he eats raw fud. I wont be like that. I like raw fud. I get xtras like krill n egg n yogert n cheesee. Sumtimes my also gets samwichs. I like sardeen samwichs.

Mama tryd my on kibbel but my poos were v soft and not tasty at all. Mama sez my shuldnt sa things like that but its my blog so my can sa what my wants. And its the trooth and mama always sez we must tell the trooth so my dont kno why she wuld be upset wit my telling u that kibbel poos taste bad.

Mama thinks my eats everything but she is rong. I dont like mushrooms n also my dont like raw prawns. I will eat a prawn cos my is a brave minee bul terrier but my doesnt like it v much. I also don like my zinc tablts. They taste funny. I likes my fish tablts n other tablts. But my dont like zinc. So you see my suffers. I dont eat enuf fud and mama gives me zinc tablts. If u culd talk to her about that my will be yur friend. Maybee. Bye.

Sausage

PS Well, darling dog, you’re going to have to learn that not everything that’s good for you tastes good too. In other news, Sausage was right. I got a bad bout of tropical fever and Sandal Press was effectively offline for a fortnight. I’m slowly recovering now, but it means that the fourth book in the Check Your Luck series, NIGHT OF THE PONTIANAK, won’t be ready for a December release. It’ll be out in January instead. 

We were knocked off the intertubes yesterday by a large lightning storm that hit the Larkin (Johor) area. But thanks to the wonderful guys at Time dot com, we were up and running again within 3 hours. Thanks guys!

Needless to say, then, I can’t use that as an excuse to explain why this blog is late! What I can say is that I’m currently in a writing frenzy. It just so happens that, every second book or so, something happens and I manage to average 5-7,000 words per day. Unfortunately, this only lasts for, interestingly enough, five to seven days.

I’m in the middle of one such frenzy and, really, I want to concentrate on it before it goes away.

I’ll do another post once I’m in a calmer frame of mind.

Sum peepls want to kno what my is. I is a minee bul terrier. Minee bul terriers is smart. Smarter than catz. Minee bul terriers is brave. I chase away de rubbish men and serkueritee gards on scooters. Minee bul terriers is good at garding. If tatas chair sqeeks my barks at him to warn him that the chair is abut to attak. If sumone brings in a box my barks to let mama kno that the box is abut to attak. Boxs are my enemy. Litel dynosore is my human littermate. Her bed cliks. I bark when it cliks to warn her that de bed is abut to attak.

I live in a v dangerus house. I hav to bark when if sumthing wants to attak. If my was not around evrybodee wuld be attakd. That is already a v important job without beeng maskot of sandal press.

But my do not gard the catz. They hav sharp klawz. They have klawd my nose when my has tried to explain de rools of de house to them. I do not explain de rools of de house to them any mor but my still pertecks my fud from them. They is v sneeky. One of them even likes cheesee which is my treet not there treet. But one of them tries to eat it any way.

I wanted to talk about fud but my has run out of space. I shall tell you about fud next time. It is my faverit subjek n my knos a lot about it. Bye.

Sausage

POSTSCRIPT: The first Sandal Press newsletter is about to go out, packed to the brim with news! If you’d like to get in on the action, just click the big newspaper icon to your left. You’ll be taken to a sign-up page at MailChimp. Hope you join the party.

We have been a little unhappy with some of our covers. You may remember Augustin’s post on her animated cover for OVERCLOCKED? Then, Smashwords came out with revised cover dimensions, thanks to Apple demands, and we found ourselves with a defunct cover! The image we’d originally picked was very expensive at the bigger size, so we had to come up with something new. And once we started revamping one cover…well, we just couldn’t stop. So, in this month’s first blog post, here are the covers we’ve modified.

OVERCLOCKED

We feel a bit sorry for this cover because it never saw the light of day, but here’s what we’re going with:

In a new world, there are new challenges, new dangers…new ways to die.

Basement Five’s first cybernaut is lost in a universe of bits and bytes.

Was it an accident? A deliberate act of sabotage? Dr. Tania Flowers is about to find out….

 

IT’S 10AM, WHY AM I STILL SOBER?

Although we don’t make a point of it, we looked up the ranking for this book and discovered it at #29 on the Amazon list for travel books about Russia! Considering the book was about Poland and the Czech Republic, we’re still not sure whether to be chuffed or horrified! Has the book gained/lost ranking since then? Who knows.

Join KS Augustin on an hilarious tour of the Silesian region of Poland…with a detour to the Czech Republic.

Twelve years of marriage, and two children, is long enough for Kaz Augustin to wait before paying a visit to her husband’s homeland. But if hubby, his friends and family think that they’re finally meeting a demure, docile Asian wife, they have another think coming!

From Silesia to Krakow to the student capital of the Moravian region in the Czech Republic, Augustin opens her mouth (and journal) and calls it as she sees it.

STEEL & SKIN

One of two short stories that we released this year. Joel Frielander, the Book Designer, liked the original cover but, really, it’s way too subtle.

Shanti is a dedicated student…or so everyone thinks.

Shanti’s family consider her a hard-working student, always ready to head to university and get her assignments done. What they don’t know is that the sight and smell of books does more to Shanti than arouse her scholarly instincts, and she depends on her study partners to help scratch her erotic itch.

YELLOW FEVER

And if we thought STEEL & SKIN was too subtle, well YELLOW FEVER was downright obtuse! This cover badly needed a revamp. And if you’re wondering about the Chinese characters on the new cover, they mean “lust”. That’s the only bit of yellow we used, as we thought using a yellow cover for a story entitled YELLOW FEVER seemed a little too obvious. And, just to turn it around, we went with the completely opposite colour for the background; i.e. blue.

There is an unspoken malaise in Singapore that only affects foreign men….

Simon Finchley, his wife Amanda and their young son, Nicholas, are starting a new life in Singapore. But Simon is unprepared for the heat, Amanda’s waspishness, and his decidedly attractive female students. There is a name for such attraction. It destroys rationality, propels lust, fragments families. It’s the Yellow Fever.

And we haven’t finished! Look out for new covers for the CHECK YOUR LUCK series and WAR GAMES, all to be redone near the end of this year. Whew! I think we need a lie down after all this.

Mama sez this is her and tatas blog but my figer that wit my paws on de keybored it is now myne. I has bin told that my is de maskot of sandal press but my dun kno what that meanz. Not mor fud thats fur sure. Ha ha.

I am here to tell u aboot my life cos mama cant tink of what to rite. Humans are v bad like that. They sa they will do tings then dey dont. Like giving my mor treets when my is good. Then when my is good mama fergets to give my mor treets. Its v conveeneeent. As you can see being with mama is also gud cos my gets to use lots of long wurds.

Most of my lif is waiting. Wait for fud. Wait for mama. Wait for pottee. Also not waiting when my has to perteck my fud from the katz. We has to katz. They is big. They is also greedy. I have to chase them away whenever mama makes my fud or they will eat it all. Greedy katz! I spose my has to sho u them but that can wait. They are only greedy katz.

I spend lots of time garding mama. I do this by lying in a beenbag behind mamas desk. Everbody thinks my is sleeping but my is reely garding. I have a big bed also behind mamas desk but de beenbag is mor komftabel. But my also gards from my bed so nobody steels it. Like the katz.

I paws is getting tired. I will tell you mor next time. I will tell you about fud. Bye.

Sausage

POSTSCRIPT: Hi, Kaz here. The editing with THE WRATH OF THE HARIMAU has been proceeding slower than normal, due to scheduling conflicts with DevEd. We’re currently looking at early October for HARIMAU’s release. On the positive side, we’re moving up release of OVERCLOCKED as a result, and it should hit the virtual shelves by the end of this month. Thanks for taking up the slack, Sausage! I love you.

Thats ok mama. I luvz u to. Do my gets mor fud?

After a break, as we ruminated on the blog and its very existence for several weeks, we have decided to move to a blogging schedule of posting twice a month. For the sake of predictability, this translates to the first and fifteenth of each month. In which case, welcome to September’s blog post!

We are readying two releases at the moment: the third part of the Check Your Luck series, WRATH OF THE HARIMAU, and a cyberpunk romance, OVERCLOCKED. HARIMAU is scheduled for the end of the month and OVERCLOCKED will also be available within four weeks of that release. We are also putting news snippets together for our first Sandal Press newsletter, due out in the first week of October. There will be some big news in that newsletter, so make sure you subscribe, by choosing the UFO newspaper icon in the sidebar.

It’s a little scary looking over the cliff at Q4, 2012. It seems like only yesterday that we were readying our first release for the year (QUINTEN’S STORY), and now we’re already beyond the last and into 2013 planning!

Our KDP Select experiment with BALANCE OF TERROR has proven, to us anyway, that the whole KDP Select thing has jumped the shark. With a total of 305 free downloads during our first freebie weekend, all our readings said that this should translate into plenty of paying sales as well, but this is turning out not to be the case. For the kind of books that Sandal releases, we think it’s safe to declare KDP Select a bust and won’t be doing it again.

No other news for the start of this month. We’re still not sure what to write for the mid-month post, but I’m sure something will occur to us.

The third book of the Check Your Luck series, WRATH OF THE HARIMAU, has been completed and is now resting. This is a necessary step for the book to store up energy before being pummelled by the author and editors in round upon round of edits. By the end of this, HARIMAU will be so eager to escape people’s clutches that it will fling itself upon an unsuspecting world without a care in the world.

Author Cara d’Bastian says: “If each book in the series is a day of the working week, then WRATH OF THE HARIMAU was definitely my ‘hump’ book. I’m just so glad (and relieved) that I managed to get it done and looking reasonably coherent…although I could be contradicting what my editors will say. NIGHT OF THE PONTIANAK [Book 4 of the series], here I come!”

And I know it’s late, but the traditional authors’ anthem of Big Publishing being some kind of “curator” of “quality” has taken a rather severe beating with last month’s news that Penguin bought Author Solutions, that money-grubbing vanity press.

According to Penguin Chief Executive John Makinson:

This acquisition will allow Penguin to participate fully in perhaps the fastest-growing area of the publishing economy and gain skills in customer acquisition and data analytics that will be vital for our future.

Notice that he didn’t say “better books” or “cutting-edge literature” or “new vistas for the reading public”. No, instead Makinson spoke of “customer acquisition” and “data analytics”. Because, as we all know, data-mining == literary quality.

Sandal Press officially opened its doors on 1 August, 2011. At the time, J and I were thinking that if we could squeeze out 3-4 releases a year, we’d be doing pretty damn well. I’ll hope you’ll forgive us, but here are the covers for all our releases over the past twelve months:

 

Nine releases! We couldn’t be more chuffed. I don’t know if we’ll be able to match that over the 2012/2013 year, but we’ll give it a good try.

We’ll be organising coupons for giveaways during the month of August but you’ll have to follow us on Twitter in order to get them. We made that decision because we’re committed to a weekly post at this blog (plus a weekly post at KS Augustin’s blog), and that’s about as much time as I want to spend away from fiction writing. So, if you want the most up-to-date information, you’ll be best to catch it on Twitter.

We’d like to thank our editors, H Hammond and John Young, and our cover artists, Valerie Tibbs and Derek Murphy, for helping Sandal start with a bang. We’re planning other offerings, so stay tuned. And here, have a glass of champagne on us! Here’s to Year Two!!

Always late to the party, that’s me, but better late than never! I have three pieces of news for you:

Number 1: Sandal Press will be starting its newsletter with a launch in early October. Anybody currently subscribed to either the KS Augustin or Cara d’Bastian newsletters will be rolled into the Sandal Press list…as it essentially covers the same person! If you are part of either list and don’t wish to receive another newsletter, hit the “Unsubscribe” button in your last email. I won’t be transferring the names across until the end of September.

Number 2: Sandal Press now has its own Twitter account, which will be as corporately obnoxious as allowed. It always made me feel uncomfortable tweeting about my books from the @KSAugustin account but now, with a corporate account, I can promote like hell, so watch out for advance news, coupon codes and suchlike!

Number 3: And in a whirlwind of social media entrapment, Sandal Press has a page on Pinterest. I’ve only just started it, so it’s pretty pragmatic at the moment but we’ll see what happens.

Number 4: Oh yes, and I’ve scheduled the free Kindle days for BALANCE OF TERROR. They are (all US timings):

• Friday/Saturday 10-11 August
• Labor [sic] Day, Monday 3 September
• Columbus Day, Monday 8 October

BALANCE OF TERROR should be available at all other etailers from 19 October.

Recently, the big news broke that Kobo Books was throwing open its self-publishing platform, Writing Life.

Unlike a lot of self-published authors, particularly those outside North America, I’ve been self-publishing on Kobo for a year now, so you could call me one of Kobo’s very early adopters. Imagine my surprise, then, not to get One. Single. Email from them about Writing Life! In fact, when I queried them about login credentials (could it be the same as my FTP credentials, I wondered), I was told I would have to go through the registration process all over again, like everyone else. “But, but, I’ve already gone through the registration process. I even snail mailed you signed copies of the Kobo contract, dammit!” I spluttered at my email Inbox.

To no avail. To make matters worse, I was then informed that the books I already had for sale at Kobo would take “a few weeks” to migrate across to my Dashboard. On top of the delays in getting every book on Kobo, the two month delay in getting THE CHECK YOUR LUCK AGENCY to even appear with its cover (and, remember, I was already uploading the final EPUB and JPG files here), this was the last straw for me.

I don’t know how Kobo is going to treat all its new authors but, judging by last year’s track record of Sandal’s own experience, I’m imagining some negative feedback hitting the intertubes soon.

As I’ve said before on this blog, the ebook etailing game is not so much Amazon’s to win, but everyone else’s to lose. I’m not happy with Smashwords over its lightning-fast change on cover requirements (I especially like the fact that the interior images can still be as low-res and fuzzy as before, it’s just that we want all our covers to look extra pretty for the iPad users, doncha know?) and its Meatgrinder. I’m not happy with Kobo and how I’ve been treated by them.

With all this in mind, Sandal Press has signed up BALANCE OF TERROR, KS Augustin’s newest release and sequel to IN ENEMY HANDS, with KDP Select. Yes, why not? Sandal Press wants to grow, wants to be visible and — much to our chagrin — Amazon appears to be the only etailer that currently appears geared to such a goal. So we’re going to test BALANCE with Amazon exclusivity for 90 days and see how it goes. And, maybe by late October, my blood pressure would have simmered down enough for me to go back to the other stores. In the meantime, I’ll be watching Kobo, oh yes I will.