To say things are busy around the Sullivan household is an understatement of epic proportions. But I wanted to take just a minute to update you all on what's going on.
- Yes, the Riyria Chronicle books have arrived, and they are safe and sound in our warehouse. Unfortunately, they arrived when Michael's sister and brother-in-law were out for a visit - their first one in 30 years or so!! So that put a hold on the Kickstarter shipping as once it begins, it's 18 hour days with little sleep or food.
- Out of the Ashes - Book #1 of the After the Fall series is in beta. It's running from Aug 16 - Sep 16 and we have copy editors lined up to start working on it starting October 6th. The soonest we could get on Tim's schedule was June 8th. No official release date yet. A lot will depend on how many changes need to be made once the beta wraps up.
- For those that don't know - I (Robin) have been deep in the middle of a brew-ha-ha with Audible - a company that provides the majority of not only our income, but the income for most authors. Period. Over a year ago, Audible announced the coming of a new royalty model, and I was excited by the headline announcing increases promised, but buried in the fine print is a change, one that hurts authors and circumvents listeners' intention. In short Audible is taking money from higher value "Premium" titles—that people pay for—to give to lower value "Plus" titles in their all-you-can listen catalog. Audible themselves describes those second-tier books as "free." But when consumed with a Premium title, they have a cost - and it's the authors who pay. I've been trying to do three things:
- proposing possible "tweaks" to this system that would turn something bad into somethng great
- doing what I can to alert people to the situation
- analyzing royalty reports from authors on the new model to understand the full implications of the change.
To learn more about this situation, you can review the videos below.
If you want to add your voice to those who want to see adjustments made to the new royalty model you can use this link (or scan the QR code below), to sign my peition - 25,000 people have done so.
As some may know, the new royalty model started off when Brandon Sanderson took a stand and kept his "secret novels" off Audible until they raised royalty rates. He got a preview of the plan, and while he had some of the same concerns as I, he wanted to give it a try. Well, a year later, he's not pleased. See the video below which starts 3:05 minutes into it).
Brandon and I have been communicating via email, and Michael and I will be going out to Salt Lake City to meet with Brandon and his team to strategize and discuss "The Audible" situation and what can be done about it. That will be happening September 10 - 12. I'll be sure to let you know what comes out of that.
- And last but not least. James has locked down the Kickstarter surveys and is starting to organize exactly how many packages need to be sent out. Because of our trip in a few days to SLC, we'll be starting the packaging and shipping on Sunday the 14th - that's about a month later than we had planned, but all that is above are the reasons why.
