Giving Away The Needle

I have a new story in the latest issue of Needle. Don't believe me? Here's the full table of contents:

  • Control by Matthew C. Funk
  • White Haze by Doc O’Donnell
  • Nine Hole Caddy by Scott Morse
  • Finn’s Missing Sister by Jen Conley
  • She Don’t Eat No Meat by Kent Gowran
  • Smothered and Covered by Tom Barlow
  • Haymaker by Nik Korpon
  • Empty Hours by Loren Eaton
  • Smiles by Jeffery Hess
  • The Spin Out by William Dylan Powell
  • Mistake by A.A. Garrison
  • Bad for Business by Carlos Orsi
  • Mr. Mockingbird Drive by Robert Swartwood
  • Push Comes to Shove by BV Lawson
  • Ordo ad Chao by Benoit Lelièvre
  • Right Where She Wants Him by Meriah L Crawford
  • A Dog Named Buddy by Chris La Tray
  • Paying It Off by Kieran Shea

My story "Mr. Mockingbird Drive" is straight-up crime. Here's the opening:

They wait until he finishes with his transaction before they make their move.

Taking his card back from the machine, putting it in his wallet along with the twenty-dollar bills, he turns around with his head down and starts to take a step forward and doesn’t even hear them when they walk right up to him, Tyshawn already with his gun out and pointed at the man’s head.

“Freeze, motherfucker.”

The man freezes. Doesn’t even look up at them, just keeps staring down at his wallet.

Julio glances around the bank parking lot, sees no trouble, knows they have to hurry anyway. “We goin for a ride, mi amigo.”

The man still hasn’t looked up. His black leather wallet shakes in his hands.

Tyshawn steps forward, presses the barrel of his gun against the man’s head. “Yo, he’s talkin to you.”

The man raises his head, but in a slow, cautious way, Julio happy to see the fear in the man’s eyes.

“Your keys,” Julio says, motioning to the man’s BMW behind them.

The man’s lips tremble. “My—my—my keys?”

“To your fuckin car, dickhead,” Tyshawn says, pressing the barrel against the man’s head once again.

The man’s hands are shaking so bad now that he drops the wallet. It hits the ground with a dry thud. The man looks down, looks back up, raises his hands slowly.

“I have to reach into my pocket,” he says.

Julio says, “Keys better be what comes out, or else my boy here will blow your face off.”

The man reaches into his pocket. He brings out a set of keys.

Tyshawn grabs them from the man’s hands, tosses them back to Julio. Julio catches them, smiles, says, “Now get in the car.”

“What? But I thought—I thought you just wanted my car!”

“No way, Mr. Mockingbird Drive. We want a whole lot fucking more.”

Wanna read the rest of this story, and all the other stories in this issue? Of course you do! You can order your copy here, or you can enter to win a signed copy that I'm giving away (or, if you're adventurous, you can do both). Every time I do a giveaway I try something different, so here's what we're going to do this time. To enter the giveaway, you need to utilize social media. Either you can tweet the following (I've made it easy for you to copy and paste because I'm just that swell of a guy):

Look! @RobertSwartwood is giving away a copy of @needlemagnoir! http://bit.ly/GAcsxn

Or you can share the link to this post on Facebook, saying the same thing (again, copy and paste):

Look! Robert Swartwood is giving away a copy of Needle Magazine!

Or you can share the link to this post on your blog, Tumblr, etc. Whatever it is, let me know then in the comments section. This giveaway goes until the end of the month, when a random name will be selected. Ready? Go!

The Calling, A Year Later

One year ago today -- plus an extra day thanks to Leap Year -- I released The Calling into the world. It was the first complete novel I'd written, and was rewritten and revised many, many times. I kept coming back to it, tweaking this and that, because I really loved the story. I think I once heard somewhere that writers are oftentimes way too close to their first novels, and this was probably the case here. But through the years I received great feedback on the novel from very close friends and teachers, as well as writers who have become mentors, including Stewart O'Nan and David B. Silva. I even received some great blurbs from Tim Lebbon and Jay Bonansinga -- which, at the time, I planned to use to help me stand out when querying agents, and when the querying agents thing failed and the novel was put away, I felt really bad because those great blurbs would go to waste ... until a year ago, that is.

So last year in preparation of The Calling’s release (the cover was done by Wyatt Perko, who, after I found the image of the ghost and got permission from Sultan Alghamdi to use it, made a really kick ass design), I released what I billed as a "prequel of sorts" called Spooky Nook (I talked about that release earlier this month), and I set up a few stops for a blog tour. My reason for doing a blog tour? Well, they seemed all the rage a year ago. Who knows, maybe they still are, but unless you're visiting some very well trafficked blogs, it seems like a waste of time (just my two cents). Still, I'm eternally grateful to everyone who hosted me on their blog last year to let me talk about my novel or just blab about one thing or another (even Z. Constance Frost who, as we all know, doesn't really exist ... so yes, I was talking to myself in that interview). Anyway, here was the tour schedule:

For the first month or so I released The Calling at an "special introductory" price of 99 cents, and then raised the price to $2.99, which it has been ever since (in the UK it's been £1.99). As I talked about before, the trajectory for ebooks typically goes against the traditional grain. Normally books start out with high sales and then dip down to pretty much nothing, whereas here it seems digital self-published books start out slow and pick up (not all, of course). Eventually those sales will peak, sure, but who's to say when that will happen ... and who's to say the sales won't pick back up at some point either? Anyway, starting last year, here are my sales for both Kindle and NOOK:

  • March: 41
  • April: 168
  • May: 243
  • June: 285
  • July: 291
  • August: 374
  • September: 333
  • October: 456
  • November: 585
  • December 1,033
  • January: 1,402
  • February: 1,308
  • March (so far): 992

So since its release last year, The Calling has sold nearly 7,500 units. Is that good? Hard to say. Some authors sell 7,500 units of their book a month, while it might take other authors over ten years to sell that amount. I'm certainly happy with how it's doing. Currently it's holding steady in both the US and UK Kindle stores, and the sales in the NOOK store are picking up ... which is why, when my exclusivity with Kindle Select runs out, I'm reinstating Man of Wax, No Shelter, The Dishonored Dead, and Phantom Energy. Kindle Select can be a great tool for promotion -- it's done wonders for Man of Wax and No Shelter -- but after that initial burst, sales begin to slow and it can take months before they start to pick up again and continue to grow. While it's certainly nice having that immediate success of sales, it's even better to watch a book sell consistently high every month ... though it should be noted that, on the flip side, the book's sales could slow and slow until the book stops selling at all, so there's that. Or the book could reach the Kindle Top 100 and sell thousands of copies, and then continue selling hundreds of copies a day for months. You just never know.

Fortunately for me, The Calling has been in the horror Kindle Top 100 in both the US and UK Kindle Stores for the past several months. To give you a more visual insight, here's a graph of my sales in the US Kindle Store:

In the UK Kindle Store, the sales have been more erratic, but have really picked up in the past few months:

What have I been doing in regards to promotion since the book's release? A whole lot of nothing. The reason it's selling is, I believe, because Amazon recommends it to readers, who check it out and then purchase it. I also believe reader reviews play a major factor, as for the past year The Calling has had pretty good reviews (except recently, someone gave it a one-star review because they wanted a Dean Koontz book and for some reason got The Calling instead, and were none too happy, and while I thought that might hinder sales, it apparently hasn't ... for now). Also, it helps that I have grown a backlist of titles pretty quickly in the past year -- four other novels and a handful of novellas.

Obviously, there's no guarantee those sales will stay consistent. Next month they could begin to dip, or the month after that, or even the month after that. Or the sales could pick up for the next several months. Again, it's really completely out of my hands, and that's sort of scary when you've begun to count on a particular title bringing in a particular amount of money each month. But, well, that's publishing for you. Of course, The Calling is my best seller right now, but then again, it's been out the longest. The Dishonored Dead, which I released shortly after The Calling, isn't faring nearly as well, but we'll talk about that later.

In the meantime, if you haven't already checked out The Calling, you can purchase it in the following places:

The Second 10,000

In case you're extremely new to this blog, you know that last year I really took a chance and jumped into the whole self-publishing game. It was, of course, a risk, but one that I felt confident about. In January of last year I sold only a handful of ebooks because I didn't have many ebooks available. But the more ebooks I started putting out there (especially the novels), the more I sold, until come the beginning of December and I sold my 10,000th ebook of the year. It was a big deal for me, I'll tell you what. And, well, I was going through my February sales report tonight and realized that sometime in the past week or two, I passed my 10,000th ebook for 2012. Granted, it helps that I ran those special promotions on a few ebooks (notably Man of Wax and No Shelter), and yes, I'm including borrows, but still, just over two months to sell 10,000 ebooks ain't too shabby. I'd love to think that the sales will progress throughout the year, but I'm a cynical person and try to be realistic and know that sales could slow (or, God forbid, stop) at any time. After all, whether or not a book sells is completely out of my hands. The only thing I can control is just how good it is. And so I'll see you all next week, because I have a lot of writing to do over the weekend. Have a great St. Patrick's Day.

Through Shattered Glass Is FREE!

One of my favorite horror short story writers, David B. Silva, is making his great collection Through Shattered Glass available for free on Kindle. Here's what he has to say:

My short story collection, Through Shattered Glass, will be offered free for Kindle readers on Wednesday, March 14th through Thursday, March 15th.

The original collection was published in a limited edition of only 300 copies by Gauntlet Press, and I’m really eager to get it into the hands of more readers.

The collection takes readers on an imaginative journey through the lives of seventeen ordinary people struggling with extraordinary events in their lives.

This is a must-read collection for anyone who loves horror/dark fantasy stories, or really just short stories in general.

Oh, and did I mention it includes an introduction by the one and only Dean Koontz?

Well, it does.

GRAB IT WHILE IT'S FREE!