Hello and welcome to 2017!
At long last, after months of work leading up to it…
Feedback Episode 5: Gain, is now available to purchase before I publish it.
What Is Feedback?
I’ve written a lot about Feedback that you’re welcome to look at for more details (check out the first episode, its free here!), but described simply: it’s a dystopian soft sci-fi serial that takes place in a future with severe noise limits. Music, singing, loud protesting, even materials and industries that make noise are either banned or unnaturally controlled (loud factory-based industries are kept underground, for example).
It’s 500 years after humanity nuked itself to near extinction, and though the past world was super-advanced, making it easier to re-develop society from the few who remained, much is still unclear and lost to time. But the world is uncovering more technology from the futuristic pre-war past and gaining new knowledge.
However, the conventional belief system is that the past world was too unrestricted, which led to mass uprising and pointless wars that escalated to near-extinction levels. It’s this kind of thinking that supported the now firm but fading belief that enforced silence is the key to capping off humanity’s danger toward itself.
The main characters are college students and people of similar age who are against this concept that dominates the world’s culture, but one thing that sets Feedback quite a ways apart from the average dystopia is that the antagonists are not just on the controlling, pro-silence side, but on the anti-silence side as well. Radicalism is just as dangerous as the established order. No one is squeaky clean, and while the world is being controlled, the story is far more complex than just “overthrow the evil government.”
The Problem
I have four primary costs when it comes to writing and publishing books.
1: Writing the books themselves. This arguably is the biggest expense when I account for my time, because any hour I’m writing fiction is an hour I could alternatively spend making money as a freelance copywriter. Though each episode is fairly short, within the length of a healthy novella, I spend a lot of time on the story and make every single moment, every reveal, every character, every line of dialogue resonate with other things established beforehand. I have been writing for over eight years, and that has developed into me being able to write short, very narratively complicated books at a high quality level.
2: Cover design. I LOVE the way the covers work in Feedback. I am giving each season a specific subject and color scheme, as you likely can see when comparing season one’s gray people to season two’s harsh, red, noisemaking objects. But naturally, if Feedback were a series of novels (although they wouldn’t really work in that format) my cover cost would be much lower. I also make full-season books that combine the story of episodes 1-4, 5-8, etc. and those also need their own covers that incorporate the subjects of the episodes.
3: Editing the books. The OCD Editor does a terrific job and has worked with me in every capacity, from the micro level of individual line editing and proofreading to the macro level of catching plot holes or even coming up with ideas better than what I originally had! She’s terrific at what she does and an amazing supporter of my work, and I need to keep her around!
4: Publishing expansions. I decided, once the first season of Feedback was complete, that I would offer print books in addition to ebooks. Making print books available from the beginning of each new release is now my plan. Some day I’d also like to get into audiobooks, another expensive but exciting opportunity.
Please consider pre-ordering a copy of episode 5 to get my journey into season two started on the right foot! You can also follow the updates to see how my progress has been with writing the book, and then choose to pre-order if you want. If you’re not sure and don’t know much about this series, crack open episode one for free and see if its interesting enough to fund this upcoming book!
Many people have told me that I have something special with Feedback, and repeatedly push me to release the next season. Help those people get what they want sooner! You very well might end up one of them 😉
All the best,
Shane
