The official web home of William F. Aicher: the author of The Trouble With Being God and a self-proclaimed Internet rock star since 1996.
Have an Amazon Kindle? Looking for a low price on a quick read?
Now you can get The Trouble With Being God, my debut philosophical / psychological thriller, for just $3.50 on the Kindle. (Or download the free sample to take a peek first).
Also, if you have an iPhone, don’t forget you can also download Kindle books to it with the Kindle iPhone app.
I’m an indie author. Or self-published author … or whatever it is you call someone who wrote a book and decided to publish it through channels other than the traditional ones. At least, that is, as far as my debut novel, The Trouble With Being God, goes.
As you probably know, I’m working on my next book – albeit a bit slowly (we just had our second son, so I am obliged to take a break). This second book is definitely superior to my first – and is a rather marked departure from the contents of my first (there are no murders – so far). But the biggest difference with the new book is that I am probably not going to publish it myself.
Obviously I don’t have anything against indie publishing. After all, I’ve been waving the indie flag for quite a while now. But the thing is, indie publishing has a specific purpose and that purpose was to let books like The Trouble With Being God exist. It wasn’t a regular book – and I definitely took some big risks in the way I wrote it. I never expected it to be a huge success (and so far it hasn’t been) but the goal with that book was to write the story I wanted to tell – even though it wasn’t likely to be a hit with any sort of mainstream audience (in fact, I expected the ending to probably piss a lot of people off. It did – and for those of you who felt cheated, I’m sorry). Still, indie publishing is made for that kind of thing – trying something new to put it out there when traditional channels just aren’t ready to take that kind of financial risk. (more…)
With the experiences I’ve had so far as an independent author, I’ve come across quite a few like-minded individuals. The problem is that some of them aren’t that great at writing something that grabs me (sorry, but it’s true). Some of them, however, are. This is where Scott C. Rogers falls with his debut, Celluloid Cowboy.
To be honest, at first I really wasn’t very interested in reading his book. The cover art definitely screamed indie, and the premise seemed a bit cliche (man’s life sucks, is presented with chance to change), and I am also usually pretty wary of author’s soliciting their works to me to read. (I already have quite a few books on my to-read list.) But Rogers and I emailed back and forth a few times (full disclosure here) and I told him that if he put it up on Kindle I’d maybe read it. He did, he emailed me, and I went ahead and read it.
The thing is, this really isn’t my kind of book. From some of the reviews out there he supposedly has some similarities to Bukowski, who I’ve never really cared enough about to read (and therefore can’t comment as to if he really is like Bukowski). I will say this though: Celluloid Cowboy is really damn weird. (more…)
Talk to me, people – and talk to each other.
That’s the most important message I try to get across to my team members. As the Director of both the Web Team and Marketing/Editorial Team at Musicnotes.com, I have a lot on my schedule. I directly manage and work with six extraordinarily talented individuals across these two groups, each of which is truly a master of his or her domain. But along with being masters of their domains, they are also multi-talented individuals who are quite capable of helping each other out by stepping out of their specialty and into someone else’s (or a specialty we didn’t know we even needed).
With such a talented group, and at a continually growing and forward-thinking company like Musicnotes, there’s always a lot going on. When one project ends, another is always there to take its place – and oftentimes there are multiple projects being worked on at once. These kinds of circumstances are the ideal cocktail for confusion and failure to brew; with so much going on, almost all of it “high priority,” it’s easy to see how things could quickly spiral out of control. (more…)
I’m a self-published (i.e. “indie”) author, and I’ll be the first to say it: a lot of self-published books really suck. I mean really. They’re horrible – filled with typos, grammatical errors, poor storytelling, bad research, and so on. That’s the biggest problem with how easy it is to publish your own book now – these suckfests bring down the name of self-publishing and tarnish anything with “self-published” immediately as being suspect. (more…)
Yesterday afternoon here at South by Southwest (SXSW) I had the chance to sit in on a panel featuring Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) and several key members of the traditional book publishing world, including representatives of Penguin and Bloomsbury, titled New Think for Old Publishers. Unfortunately this panel had very little think involved, as the first half of the panel basically consisted of introductions, descriptions of favorite books recently read and attempts to reinforce the importance of the beaurocratic system traditional publishers work in (and why this model is essential for book readers). It wasn’t until the second half of the single hour allotted for the conversation that the audience was told the publishers weren’t here with “new think” but instead wanted to get ideas from the audience. What ensued was quite a show of vitriol from the audience.
Rather than get into the details of the audience discussion (you can get the gist from the Twitter discourse or can get the overview from MediaLoper), I want to discuss a bit the bigger point the publishing industry doesn’t seem to be getting – they no longer hold the keys to the kingdom. (more…)
I’m sitting here on the floor at Austin’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, waiting f0r the next panel discussion on my schedule to start, but as I sit here I wonder a bit what the point of coming to these conference really is. Sure, there are a lot of smart people here, and for the most part the panels have some great ideas… but are they ideas I couldn’t have acquired by simply reading sites like Mashable, Internet Retailer or other tech blogs and news sites? The answer here is pretty clearly “no.”