{"id":317,"date":"2014-12-16T22:31:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T03:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/?p=317"},"modified":"2014-12-17T00:23:19","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T05:23:19","slug":"my-favorite-book-emperor-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2014\/12\/16\/my-favorite-book-emperor-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Book: Emperor Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emperor<\/a>
Emperor Dad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was shortly after I took a severance buyout package from Motorola that I had a little more time to write than before.\u00a0 I had written other novels, but the number of New York publishers that would even look at an un-agented novel was shrinking rapidly.\u00a0 I remember the decision to write a novel just for fun — not because I thought that was the most responsible novel to write at the time to advance my writing career.<\/p>\n

There was an old story from 1995 that I had struggled with, never getting beyond simple outlines or a first chapter, but that seemed like it would be fun.\u00a0 I toyed with the idea of the garage inventor inventing teleportation, and the sphere concept that was its core.\u00a0 But as I toyed with the story, I came to realize that just maybe, it wasn\u2019t the inventor\u2019s story.\u00a0 It was the son\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Now, friends of mine had commented that I tended to write young adult stories, but I hadn\u2019t really believed them.\u00a0 Now, with this idea, I went into it whole-heartedly.\u00a0 This was to be fun.\u00a0 The son was the main character, although some of the details had to be from the father\u2019s perspective.\u00a0 I even made the story more personal — setting the family in my town, in roughly my house, and borrowed bits of my son\u2019s life to round out the main character.<\/p>\n

The story came together well, with a detailed outline and a story that I was able to write quickly.\u00a0 I packaged it all up and starting sending queries to the last few NY publishers that I thought might take it.\u00a0 I even queried an agent or two with it.\u00a0 There was no interest.\u00a0 Once again, the major publishers and my writing style were heading in different directions.<\/p>\n

But then, I had an idea.\u00a0 Why not publish it myself?\u00a0 I could save it as a PDF file and peddle it online. I chose $5 as a random price and set up a page on my website where I could take PayPal.\u00a0 It was just an experiment, and I had little expectations of massive sales.\u00a0 My brother bought a copy, as well as a couple of friends.<\/p>\n

Time passed. Lulu the self-publishing website caught my eye.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been writing for decades.\u00a0 I\u2019d had mild success with short stories, but now I was writing novels and I liked the scope that the longer format gave me.\u00a0 If the big publishers were never going to like what I did, then why not give self-publishing a try. It was a hard decision, more than selling a PDF off my website was.\u00a0 Still, I had tried the PDF experiment.\u00a0 Why not try a Print-On-Demand experiment?<\/p>\n

I would need a cover. I passed the word, and Scott Cupp introduced me to his nephew, Wes Hartman via email.\u00a0 He asked for ideas and I sent him a few to choose from.\u00a0 He put them all into the very busy cover — but I liked it.<\/p>\n

I researched what a book format was supposed to look like and laid it all out in my aging copy of Word. (Insert whole book about what I learned about publishing here.)\u00a0 I printed a few dozen copies and tried to peddle them at science fiction conventions.\u00a0 Again, my sales were infrequent, but people liked it.\u00a0 That was enough.\u00a0 It won the Darrell book award, and was a finalist in the Next Gen Indie Book awards.<\/p>\n

I did have trouble placing it in bookstores, and with a few typos showing up, I decided to make a second edition with all the formatting lessons learned and typos corrected.\u00a0 That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been selling since, although I still have a handful of first editions left if anyone wants them.<\/p>\n

The e-Book world exploded.\u00a0 Emperor Dad was my first experiment there.\u00a0 Just recently, my first audiobook came out, Emperor Dad was my trial experiment in that media as well.<\/p>\n

So, Emperor Dad was a fun book that was my first steps into publishing and proved that people actually did like my books. That\u2019s why it\u2019s my favorite.<\/p>\n

More About Emperor Dad<\/a><\/p>\n

Next up —\u00a0 My Favorite Book: Roswell or Bust<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was shortly after I took a severance buyout package from Motorola that I had a little more time to write than before.\u00a0 I had written other novels, but the number of New York publishers that would even look at an un-agented novel was shrinking rapidly.\u00a0 I remember the decision to write a novel just… Continue reading My Favorite Book: Emperor Dad<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[26,12,8],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-57","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}