Just a few more days until publication!

To review for those new to my blog, I’m publicly tracking preorders on my forthcoming novel The Last Good Man. The novel has already earned a Publishers Weekly starred review, and several glowing endorsements from other writers. But it’s a crowded marketplace…

My goal was a modest 500 preorders before the June 20 publication date. And you know what? I made it! The print orders did it. There were a total of 153 as of this morning — VERY small potatoes in the grand scheme of things — but enough to let me reach my goal. Thank you to everyone who preordered a copy, whether ebook or print!

So what does this mean in dollar terms? After all, I need to contribute something to the family income…

The ebook is priced at $7.99. For most copies sold, I earn 70% of the list price less a few pennies, so let’s say $5.55 per copy. That’s a nice cut, much better than I’d get in traditional publishing. If all preorders go through, I’m looking to net around $2,175 from the ebooks.

By contrast, print — specifically print-on-demand — is expensive. So despite the $18 cover price, I’ll be netting only about $2 a copy for the preordered print books.

Adding estimated income from ebook and print preorders gives me a total of $2,415, which I won’t see until two or three months after publication. Not exactly high finance, eh? But it’s a start.

I’ll write more on income versus expenses in another post.

Find all related posts here.

Find preorder links and info here.

It’s not really a good idea to go on vacation right before a book launch, but circumstances worked out that way so I spent the last week in Japan with Ron, my daughter Dallas, her husband Ed, and a new camera which I don’t know how to use. For most of the trip I had the camera inadvertently set on some kind of burst mode and I haven’t had time to figure out how to pull individual shots, so all but the first of the photos below are from the second to last day of our trip.

We started in Tokyo — my first visit to that city — then headed out to Nagano for a few days. From there we were able to visit Matsumoto Castle and attend a firefly festival in Tatsuno. This was the first time I ever saw fireflies! They are amazing and wondrous little creatures. I did not realize they are so bright.

We also took a long day trip, starting with the Shinkansen to Itoigawa. From there we transferred to a one-car train that headed into the mountains — the “Japanese Alps” — following a spectacular narrow gorge with a white-water river. We were heading for a nature preserve, so we left the train and took a bus up to a ski town, nearly empty in June. From there, a twenty minute gondola ride with more spectacular views, and then a five-minute tram. By this time it was late afternoon and we had only twenty minutes at the top where the nature preserve was located. We didn’t see the green meadow in the brochure though because there was still several feet of snow on the ground! The scenery was gorgeous all the same and well worth the adventure.

We returned to Tokyo and visited some sites around the city. Our first day was rainy, but a sunny day followed and we were able to visit the Meiji Shrine Inner Garden and the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. Photos below.

Street of umbrellas. 😉

To review for those new to my blog, I’m publicly tracking preorders on my forthcoming novel The Last Good Man. The novel has already earned a Publishers Weekly starred review, and several glowing endorsements from other writers. But it’s a crowded marketplace…

My goal is a modest 500 preorders before the June 20 publication date — only eleven days away! This is the first week print preorders have shown up. Only 36 so far, but it’s a start. Thank you to everyone who ordered. This number has been included in the total below.

Details:
++ The 525 newsletter subscribers are a separate list, newly signed up via a recent promotion. It should be assumed that most are unfamiliar with my work.

Find all related posts here.

Find preorder links and info here.

I’m publicly tracking preorders on my forthcoming novel The Last Good Man. The novel has already earned a Publishers Weekly starred review, and several glowing endorsements from other writers. But how is it doing in a crowded marketplace? Not so great.

My goal is a modest 500 preorders before the June 20 publication date. During this past week I passed the halfway mark, and it’s possible the numbers are a little better than what I can show here. More on that below. First, the current statistics:

++ The 525 newsletter subscribers are a separate list, newly signed up via a recent promotion. It should be assumed that most are unfamiliar with my work.

I can’t see preorders at iBooks, and I didn’t ask my distributor for an updated count, but it’s unlikely to have changed much from the five copies reported last week.

The print edition is available to preorder and I know that at least two books have been ordered, but those numbers have not shown up in any report, so I’m going to assume I won’t see print numbers until the books actually ship. That means print is a big mystery, and the numbers above reflect only ebook sales.

By the way, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon are offering the print edition at a 23% discount as of this writing.

Find all related posts here.

Find preorder links and info here.

It’s June 1st! The Last Good Man publishes later this month — and it’s already showing up on some lists of summer books.

Barnes & Noble has included it in their “NOOK Press Presents” collection for June and July.

The Verge has included it in a list of thirty-nine science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels coming out in June.

Kirkus has listed it among a dozen science fiction and fantasy titles to “Kickstart Your Summer Reading.”

Both the ebook and print editions are available for preorder. Find links and more information here.

Twitter can be a rough-and-tumble place. People have opinions and most do not hesitate to share them. I don’t claim innocence and I do recognize that nuance is often lost with 140 characters.

But what is it with the grand sweeping condemnations?

Grand sweeping condemnations — that’s my term for when people choose a demographic characteristic common to a large and otherwise diverse group — and accuse all of being guilty of some shared sin. In my Twitter timeline white men and baby boomers are common targets. It will be different for you depending on who you follow — and who you unfollow. Damn right I’ve unfollowed people for excessive GSCs.

(Yes, #notAllMen is either a legitimate dissent or an ironic comment. Hard to be sure in all cases.)

I don’t understand the logic of GSCs. What do people expect to gain by using them? Shore up the perceived tribe by casting disdain on others? Maybe.

As a baby boomer, it’s hard not to notice how the baby-boomer hate routine has become increasingly common. Otherwise fine folk who would not for a moment consider themselves bigots are happy to play this game. No big deal if you want to insult me. I know how to unfollow.

In the abstract though, when baby boomers are held up as the worst generation, reprehensible in all aspects and particularly in their regard for the environment, I get offended on behalf of people like my husband.

Ron devoted his career to Haleakala National Park. He worked long hours for limited compensation because it was his goal to protect the park’s unique and fragile natural areas from the ravages of invasive species, and when he retired from the park service he left those wilderness areas in a far healthier condition than they’d been when he started. The ecological recovery has been amazing.

In essence, Ron picked one place in the wide world and poured his heart and soul into making it better. That might be a strategy to consider, for those of you who want to point fingers at his generation. Better to act, do something, than to accuse and complain and alienate those who actually have contributed to the betterment of the world.

And one more bit of motherly advice from the old lady: Don’t determine your tribe by simplistic demographic dividers. There is more diversity in any group than many of us care to admit. Yes, even those heinous baby boomers.

Here are four baby boomers, celebrating the completion of a fence to keep feral goats and pigs out of Maui’s amazing national park:

Left to right: Ross Hart, Ron Nagata, Mike Ing, Ted Rodrigues
photo credit: Dallas Nagata White

I’m publicly tracking preorders on my forthcoming novel The Last Good Man. The novel has already earned a Publishers Weekly starred review, and several glowing endorsements from other writers. But how is it doing in a crowded marketplace? Well, it’s not setting any records…

My goal is a modest 500 preorders before the June 20 publication date. Right now I’m closing in on the halfway mark. Here are the current statistics:

I can’t see preorders at iBooks, but I had my distributor check and they reported five copies sold there as of last Monday.

The print edition became available to preorder during the past week. It’s listed at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon. (BN has a 23% discount as of this writing.) But I haven’t seen any record of print preorders yet. It’s possible I won’t see these until they ship and the purchaser is billed. At this point, I just don’t know.

Find all related posts here.

Find preorder links and info here.

Barnes & Noble
A new review of The Last Good Man has gone up at the Barnes & Noble SFF blog. Read it here.

And, perhaps not by coincidence, Barnes & Noble is offering a 23% discount on preorders of the print edition. I have no idea how long this discount will last, but here’s the link.

Giveaways
On Twitter, I’m doing a giveaway of The Last Good Man. All you need to do to enter is retweet this tweet — and by doing so you’re helping me get the word out to potential new readers! So if you’re on Twitter, I’d really appreciate some more RTs:

I have an early copy of THE LAST GOOD MAN to give away! RT this by 5/28 for a chance to win it. PW starred review. #nearfuture #SciFi #milSF pic.twitter.com/dRMMZTsDqn

— Linda Nagata (@LindaNagata) May 18, 2017

Don’t forget, there is also an ongoing Goodreads Giveaway.

New Arrivals
Two new arrivals have shown up recently in my mailbox. Here, Xena is keeping an eye on the Polish edition of The Trials, translated by Mirosław P. Jabłoński, and published by Rebis:

Here are print copies of Cosmic Powers, a short story collection that includes my contribution “Diamond and the World Breaker.” Cosmic Powers is available in simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback editions:

I’m publicly tracking preorders on my forthcoming novel The Last Good Man. The novel has already earned a Publishers Weekly starred review, and several glowing endorsements from other writers. But how is it doing in the marketplace? Not all that well, honestly.

My goal is 500 preorders. Here are the current statistics:

(?) Over the weekend and early in the week pre-orders were moving along slowly but steadily. My guess as to why is that Amazon may have begun including the title in their daily emails to potentially interested customers. But the pace slowed considerably after Tuesday.

**Around 350 subscribers have been long-time subscribers. The others are mostly new to my work, having signed on during recent promotional events. Only 39% of emails sent track as having been opened.

Find all related posts here.

Find preorder links and info here.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

My two children are adults now, but I’ve always loved being a mom and still do. Perhaps as a consequence, moms have often been prominent in my fiction.

My children were quite young when I wrote my first novel, The Bohr Maker. In that story, Phousita, one of two main protagonists, is not technically a mother but she’s a mother-figure for many. In Tech-Heaven the solo protagonist is a widowed mother with a close relationship to her own mother, her mother-in-law, and her daughters. Deception Well is a bit short on mothers, but Vast makes up for it, I think. Limit of Vision doesn’t directly explore motherhood, but in Memory one of the driving emotional themes is the strong relationship between the protagonist, Jubilee, and her mother. The Red trilogy is lacking in motherhood — it’s Dad who gets the focus here. But in The Last Good Man motherhood returns as a powerful emotional force behind a fast-paced plot.

True Brighton is the protagonist of The Last Good Man. As a forty-nine-year-old mother of three adult children, she’s not your usual action hero–but then she’s not your usual forty-nine-year-old mom, either. True is an army veteran, working now as a military contractor. She’s seen her share of battlefield action and she understands all too well the pain that parenthood can bring. In this opening scene, True encounters a father desperate to hire the services of Requisite Operations to rescue his kidnapped daughter:

Read the entire first chapter of The Last Good Man here.

Best wishes for the day, whether you’re a mother or not. 🙂