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Press Release

Sci-fi and fantasy lovers looking for an engrossing tale to bring to the beach this summer should pick up ‘In Her Name,’ a tale of galactic conquest, friendship and love by author Michael R. Hicks.

'In Her Name' is an action-filled epic story of Reza Gard, who as a youth was caught up in the century-long war between the Human Confederation and the alien Kreelan Empire. Captured by the mysterious warrior priestess who killed his parents when he was a child, Reza and thousands of other youths are taken back to the Empire as part of an alien experiment to discover whether human beings have souls, and to plumb the mystery of an ancient genetic curse that plagues the Kreelan race.

Reza grows up fighting for survival in a brutal society ruled by a god-like empress, forced to learn the ways of his enemy, and finds himself transformed by the unexpected and forbidden love he shares with a young Kreelan warrior. He must risk everything to save her, and to save humanity from extermination in a galactic holocaust.

The first four complete chapters are available as a free download from the author’s site at www.kreelanwarrior.com. ‘In Her Name’ is available in paperback from Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, or from your local bookseller. It is also available in e-book format from Mobipocket.com and for the Amazon Kindle. ISBN 978-0-615-20853-4.

For more information, please contact Michael Hicks at sword @ kreelanwarrior.com.

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Sorry that it's been a while since my last post! I've been curled up with the laptop making some revisions to In Her Name. Nothing major, but some things that a couple of readers pointed out to me that really begged for another revision, mainly to catch some formatting errors and a couple of other rough spots that weren't caught in earlier edits. So if you bought one of the first-release books, with a bit of luck you may someday have a collector's item on your hands!  ;o)

The Amazon Kindle and Mobipocket versions have both been updated, and a new bookblock was submitted to both Lightning Source and CreateSpace for the Amazon print version.

But this also brings up another interesting point from the publisher's perspective: in traditional publishing, what goes to press gets printed among thousands of copies. So if there's a blooper in the text - and almost every book I've ever read from various publishing houses has a few, despite the professional editing staffs - an entire print run is stuck with it.

But with print-on-demand (POD) technology, you're not. This is huge in terms of updating and revising how-to books and other sources of information covering changing trends or technology, for example. As a writer, no longer does your book need to be continually obsolete - you can update it as needed, and those changes are immediately reflected in the latest version of the book.

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The print version of In Her Name is now available both on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble!

I actually didn't expect it to be available for another few weeks, so this is great news!

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You never know about people: I was at a luncheon a couple days ago with a bunch of folks from work, and somebody brought up the fact that I was an "author" of this big sci-fi novel.

While technically that's true, I suppose - since I have, after all, written a book - but it was a bit surprising to actually hear someone use the term and apply it to me.

So the discussion at the table turned for a bit to In Her Name. The first thing I discovered was that I need to come up with a short spiel to tell people what the book is about: that was, not surprisingly, the first question asked, but I didn't have a good answer. So instead I whipped out my Treo smartphone and called up the Amazon site so they could read the description and first review of the Kindle version.

That was good for some oohs and ahs, but point one was taken: a short descriptive "what's it about" spiel is a must.

The second point was business cards: I made up some business cards, but didn't happen to have any with me at the time. Moral of the story: if you don't have them with you, they aren't doing you any good. Yes, I know, "Duh!"

But the upshot was that the next day I brought in my proof copy of the book to show the couple folks who were interested by the book's description. One of them wasn't there that day, so the other got to check it out for a while. After maybe half an hour, he comes over to my office with the book, shaking his head. "I had to bring this back or I'm going get in trouble for sitting there and reading it the rest of the day."

All I could think was, "Wow." I know there are plenty of places where people would use any excuse to get out of work, but you don't want to get busted for gaffing off, either! And he's an honest, hardworking guy, so his interest was quite genuine.

"So when can I get a copy? And how much?" I told him it would be about six weeks or so before it would appear on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, unless he wanted to get the Mobipocket version (he doesn't have a Kindle). "Or I could get some copies direct from the printer, that would be next week. It'll be around $15, although I've got to work out the exact cost (which came to $15.76)." I wasn't planning on selling books direct, but hey, why miss a potential sale?

"I want it." He started digging around in his pocket, but I waved him down, telling him to wait until I had a copy for him. When he went back to work, he was looking forward to going home and starting in on the excerpt with the first four chapters.

So I went ahead and ordered ten copies from Lightning Source to have handy for such occasions. You just never know...

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A new version of In Her Name for the Amazon Kindle has finally made it into the Amazon catalog! The content is the same as the other versions, but there were some problems with the Mobipocket version that was distributed to the Kindle store not making it into the correct categories so interested readers might actually be able to find it (d'oh!).

Not all of the metadata - description, etc. - has appeared yet with the new Kindle release, but that should - hopefully - appear in the next day or so. It just takes a lot of time for the information to propagate over Amazon's servers.

Lastly, for those who may be interested, please keep in mind that at least for a little while there will be two versions of the book available in the Kindle store: they are exactly the same, except the sample for one (the Mobipocket version) is slightly longer than the Amazon DTP version. There will also be a difference in price, depending on how Amazon discounts the two versions, but the version from Mobipocket should disappear from the Kindle store soon.

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The first reader review of In Her Name is in! Even though I've been telling myself not to let my ego get wrapped up in this, and that not everybody's going to like any given book, I've been sweating the first review: a good one would certainly give a positive incentive to potential readers, while a negative one could have drastic effects.

I know that sounds obvious, but it's different if a book either already has a number of reviews (assuming at least some of them are good), or is by a big name author. But for a first-time author - self-published, no less - the first reader review is a very big deal.

Now, under the preface of "full disclosure," I'll say that the reviewer - Bufo Calvin - is a fellow Kindle publisher whom I helped out a bit on the DTP forums to get his book formatted for publication. He volunteered to do a review of In Her Name, but he didn't share any details with me before publishing it (and I didn't bribe him for a good review!).

So, with that out of the way, here's his review (referring to the Amazon Kindle version, although the text of all versions of the book are identical). And in case you're wondering who Bufo Calvin is, he's a rather prolific contributor to Scifipedia, Scifi.com's encyclopedia/wiki, among many other things (read more details).

Characters You Care About, Action You Can Feel (Four out of five stars)
May 12, 2008 By Bufo Calvin

In Her Name is a superior science fiction novel, with intimate insight into its characters' thoughts and feelings, a fully realized alien culture, sweeping space battles, and fierce hand to claw combat.

Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs may feel at home in the first part of the book. It features a blue-skinned race of alien female warriors and a lone boy who grows up with them, learning to fight as they do. In the process he becomes both more and less than human. It seems a bit like a cross between Tarzan and Barsoom.

But this is not your grandfather's pulp fiction. It is a complex (but clearly structured) tale that takes us through the life of Reza Gard. From his struggles on an orphanage planet to his capture and assimilation into the Kreelan race, to political twists and turns as his native and adopted races clash, the book grows along with him from adventure story to military science fiction, but never forgets to let us relate to the rich array of characters he meets. This is 21st century sci fi, with questions of personal identity and how one relates with the universe integrated with bloody combat.

Readers of the old pulps would also be surprised at the number of strong female characters. Although like everything else in the book, we know them primarily through their connections with Reza, they stand on their own as interesting people.

One word of warning: if this was a movie, it would be rated R. Not all readers will be comfortable with the harshness, the language, and the explicit nature of some of the plot elements. Those that are will see that they are a legitimate part of the drama, but others may find them distasteful.

Overall, this is a great example of the self-publishing that Amazon's Kindle enables. It's hard for any book to work its way through the traditional process that gets a paperback in your local store. Hopefully, one of the traditional publishers will become aware of the book here and release it to the (currently) much wider audience it deserves. For this reader, though, the Kindle was perfect for an epic that would otherwise be quite bulky.

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The updated Amazon version of In Her Name has been back on the Amazon Kindle store now since 25 April. Granted, that's not all that long - not quite two weeks - but no sales have come through yet, compared to how well it's been doing on Mobipocket.com.

Now, I'll confess to being both impatient and curious, so I decided to conduct a bit of an experiment: I updated the Amazon DTP version of In Her Name to the same as that distributed through Mobipocket and am publishing it again. They'll be running under two different Amazon identities, or ASINs. I'm simply curious which may fare better. It's not like the original DTP version was burning rubber in terms of sales, but it was pulling in one or two every few days, even without the free sample feature and with a very short description.

So, I figure that I'll run this for maybe a month and see what happens...

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I just wanted to share a great bit of news with you: In Her Name made the top 10 of the science fiction bestseller list on Mobipocket.com! Okay, it's not on the New York Times bestseller list, but seeing that was really cool! I'm actually not sure how it's happening, since I'm not exactly running a huge marketing campaign or anything (and no, I'm not selling hundreds of copies, either, but I'm certainly not complaining).

But again, I'd just like to say thanks to the folks who are buying my book, and that I hope you really enjoy it! Let me know what you think of it, and please consider writing a review... :-)

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Not that this is a huge toot of the horn or anything, but still it's encouraging: yesterday when I checked the Mobipocket site and sorted by bestsellers, In Her Name had moved up from #89 to #71! It's been selling an average of one copy per day; some days it doesn't sell any, other days it sells as many as three copies. I just wish someone would review it, though!

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Just a quick update on how long it takes (at least in this case) for the text description to catch up with the appearance of the rest of the Amazon Kindle entry from Mobipocket: In Her Name took about 24 hours or so!

I also found out from a post on the Mobipocket forums that - if you're a publisher going through Mobipocket - your sales royalties from Amazon will indeed be listed through the Mobi publisher site.

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Okay, In Her Name is back up on the Amazon Kindle store! Looking back through my posts, I took the DTP version down on 18 April, and submitted the paperwork (tax information) to Amazon via snail mail maybe the week before. So, let's say two weeks - not too bad.

The only trick is that the catalog entry on the Amazon store doesn't carry the description text, although I'm hoping that it will catch up soon. When I originally published In Her Name via Amazon's DTP service, the description took a few days to get merged in.

So, if you've got a Kindle, go check out the Kindle version of In Her Name and download the free sample!  ;-)

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In my continued effort to try and confuse things as much as possible (not!), I had the Amazon Kindle version of In Her Name that I originally published through their Digital Text Platform removed from the Amazon catalog.

Why? Because the version on Mobipocket.com will - hopefully soon! - be distributed to Amazon, as well as other ebook retailers. And the difference for interested buyers is that you'll be able to download a free sample to your Kindle, which for In Her Name is the first four complete chapters (which you can also get here in PDF format).

So, please be patient if you encounter "not found" and broken link errors to the Amazon Kindle version! I'm hoping that the book will be back up on Amazon within the next week. But in the meantime, if you want to read it using any of the versions of the free Mobipocket reader on your PC, laptop, or PDA, feel free to try the free sample from Mobipocket (and hopefully buy the book!).

In the meantime, I've got to go back through the site here and change all the links to the original Kindle version to the new version. D'oh!

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Well, it's been about twenty-four hours since I published In Her Name on Mobipocket.com. If you'll recall, Mobipocket is essentially an ebook distributor/wholesaler that makes books published through them available to other on-line stores, including Amazon.com.

So, I'm performing a little experiment in seeing how long it takes for the various ebook retailers to pick up the title. The first, obviously, was Mobipocket: as soon as you activate your title and click on "save," the book is available!

I don't know how long it took exactly, since I didn't check them all last night, but BooksOnBoard has made In Her Name available, and at a nice discount, too (at least for the moment) in case you're interested!

None of the others have picked up In Her Name yet, which isn't surprising (and frankly I'm surprised that BooksOnBoard picked it up so quickly). My main concern is to see how long it takes for the title to be released to Amazon's Kindle store (so I can take down the Amazon DTP version, which doesn't have the free sample feature).

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Just to let you know, In Her Name is now available on Mobipocket!

What's Mobipocket, you say? Well, they offer a ton of ebooks, and are actually now owned by Amazon (Amazon bought them a couple years ago, apparently). So now you can get In Her Name downloaded to a variety of different devices using the free Mobipocket reader.

For those of you who may not have used an ebook reader before, I have to say - all shameless self-promotion aside - that Mobi has a very slick product in thieir ebook reader (by the way, did I mention it was free?). It can be used on a variety of different devices, from your PC or laptop to a variety of PDAs that use Windows Mobile or Palm operating systems, to name just a couple.

Mobi also has a feature that lets you download a free sample, which in the case of In Her Name is the first four complete chapters (equivalent to 60 full pages in trade paperback format) - essentially the same as the free sample PDF file that you can download here from the site (although tomorrow I have to get that PDF updated!).

But what about the Amazon Kindle? I've spent a lot of time talking about that, and now it's all Mobipocket. Have I given the Kindle a cold shoulder?

Not at all! As it turns out, Mobipocket - which is owned by Amazon, remember - is like a wholesaler that distributes its ebooks to on-line merchants. One of them, oddly enough, is Amazon! So many of the Kindle books that you see were originally published through Mobipocket.

If you're a Kindle publisher, the nice thing is that - unlike the current iteration of Amazon's own Digital Text Platform (DTP) - ebooks published through Mobipocket that are distributed to the Kindle store have the free sample feature that Kindle readers expect. The books published direct through DTP don't. Go figure!

Now, the downside for the ebook publisher is that the net rate for sales through Mobipocket is 25%: you get a royalty of 35%, but you have to pay Mobi 10% for usage and distribution fees. Well, okay, fine: I figure my sales can only get better with the free sample feature, and Mobi distributes to two dozen or so on-line ebook sellers. So I'll take the hit, especially since it's so easy to use the Mobipocket Creator to make the ebook in the first place.

So, that's where we are now. I just published In Her Name on the Mobipocket site before I started writing this, and it was available immediate on their site. Let's see how long it takes to get to the Kindle store on Amazon...

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At long last, I think I've finally wrapped up the final edits for In Her Name! Granted, I haven't been able to spend more than an hour or two a day, but this seems like it's been going on for weeks! But, the good news is that it should be about ready to go to press now.

My tentative plan at this point is to first update the version for the Amazon Kindle, since that's a quick and easy update. The next thing I plan to do is get the book published electronically through Mobipocket (which is the topic of another upcoming blog post, but I'm too tired tonight!).

At the same time, I'm setting up a business entity (Again! This'll be the third time - hopefully it'll be a charm!) to help manage all the financial aspects of this biz.

And once that's ready, it'll be off to Lightning Source to try and get In Her Name published in trade paperback! That's going to take some more work to get it into the right format and make sure that all their guidelines are met, but I'm pretty confident I can clear those hurdles.