Author: Eamonn Murphy - Writer

Eamonn Murphy has published over seventy stories in small press magazines and collected them into small, cheap volumes for posterity. They are available at all good eBook retailers and libraries. In his spare time, he writes reviews for sfcrowsnest. Retired now after years of hard labour (building sites and call centres), he lives near Bristol, England, with a nice lady, a nasty Jack Russell, an untrainable loony Labrador and some ducks. He has a BA (Hons) from the Open University but very little common sense. Find out more at eamonnmurphywriter.com.

Isn’t it Grand

I haven’t been active on line lately because my silver haired Daddy died. The last few weeks in hospital and the funeral took up a lot of time and mental energy. It wasn’t possible to focus on ray-guns and rocket ships.

Dad was 85 and had a rich full life. An active man, he was fed up the last few months sat in a chair watching old westerns, not able to do the stuff he liked. ‘I’d be better off dead’ he said, some consolation now that he is. Not much.

If anybody needs a cheerful Irish funeral song, here’s the one we played. Will not suit all tastes.

 

Sometimes Passive voice is best.

I wrote this sentence in a review of Bloodbond May 2018:

‘The premise of Bloodbond seems to be that vampires can be put in many different settings. They are no longer lonely, aristocratic outsiders mugging people in dark alleys or seducing maidens. But that was such fun!’

My Pro-Writer software (which is very useful) objected to the passive tense of ‘vampires can be put’ so I changed it to this:

‘The premise of Bloodbond seems to be that writers can put vampires in many different settings. They are no longer lonely, aristocratic outsiders mugging people in dark alleys or seducing maidens. But that was such fun!’

From an anti-passive point of view, this is better. The writers are putting the vampires in a direct fashion. Vampires are not passively put.

The trouble is, this seems to mean that writers were once ‘lonely, aristocratic outsiders mugging people in dark alleys or seducing maidens.’ Adding ‘But that was such fun!’ makes writers sound even worse!

So I changed it back to the original sentence. Sometimes passive voice works best.

I’m off to a dark alley now to mug someone and seduce a maiden but you can read the review of Bloodbond May 2018 on sfcrowsnest. And you can still buy it in the Smashwords sale for just one dollar, yea even unto mobi files if you are so enchained.

All my books are free on Smashwords too. It’s your fault. You wouldn’t buy them.

 

 

 

On Platforms

All my self-published books are free now. I’ve given up trying to sell them and I’ve given up trying to build a platform. Either they don’t sell and I have no readers and no money or I give them away and have some readers and no money. The latter seems the better option. Mostly, I’ve been paid for the stories in them already as they appeared in magazines. Either that or I couldn’t sell them so they’re worth nothing and so free.

But no more platform building. It takes too long and pays too little unless you’re good at it but I’m not and don’t like doing it. After nine months of blogging, tweeting, Linking, Facebooking, Instafreebing, Bookfunneling, Mailchimping and generally pestering the public, I give up. I’ve ‘sold’ 85 books and most of those were free. I doubt if my total royalties amount to £10.

By contrast, I have made some money (not much) selling short stories to magazines and anthologies, and some novellas, too. I take the publisher’s money and I’m done. They can blog. They can tweet. They can Facebook, Newsletter and otherwise publicize their products and I don’t have to. This is a huge weight off my shoulders. Obviously, I’m happy to mention the magazines here and there but the overall responsibility is theirs. I just need to keep writing fiction, which is what I want to do.

Statistically, I’m in the majority. Most self-publishers don’t make a bean. There are a few talented, competitive, productive go-getters who make a living or better. There are a few talented, competitive, productive go-getters who can do this in any field of endeavour and the myth is that ‘anyone can do it.’ If anyone could do it, everyone would.

So, hats off to successful self-publishers. I will still self-publish the odd collection of sold stories where I have the rights or unsold stories I want out there. I may even do a novella or two. But I won’t be desperately flogging them and they’ll all be free. Smashwords ‘sells’ 40 copies of each free book for 1 of every priced. Even cheaply priced. At least some of them get read.

Meanwhile, I’ll go and get a proper job and do this part-time. Art is much more fun if you don’t depend on it for a living.

P.S. My self-published free books aren’t on Amazon. Mobi files are available on Smashwords.