Tag: The Complete Owen Family Saga

Business of Indie Publishing: Print Editions

April 4, 2017 / Marsha Ward

Business is Keeping Me Busy

I’m in the middle of taking a course on business for fiction writers. One of the things I’ve learned is that an Indie Publisher should have many streams of revenue. Here a few sales and there a few sales adds up.

One revenue stream often neglected by Indies is print editions. I’m hearing that I should rectify this situation.

It must be true. Many times I’ve heard one of my friends say, “Well, I’ll buy it when it comes out in print.” Make that two, no, three friends. There must be more who I haven’t heard from.

I’ve always thought, Well, it’s only a novella, and I don’t plan to do it in print. It’s too small.

Always Learning New Stuff

But I’ve learned that nothing is too small for print! Bundling several projects together can make a larger printed product, but it’s a valid idea to have ALL work in print.

So, I’ve taken a bit of time away from writing to do some business “housekeeping.” That is, I’ve been making print editions of a couple of pieces of my work. I will continue to do this in the future.

Today I also uploaded an updated cover for The Man from Shenandoah with the correct Book Number, and will do the same with Spinster’s Folly after TMFS clears the process.

Besides that, I’m toiling over new print editions for the last two of the Owen Family Saga novels, Ride to Raton, and Trail of Storms. Once they are ready to go, I’ll rescind permission for iUniverse to print those books. My relationship with them will then be at an end.

FYI, prices of the print editions for Gone for a Soldier, The Man from Shenandoah, and Spinster’s Folly are going up a dollar each, but Amazon is holding the line with sales at the lower prices. I don’t know how long that will last, however.

In Print Today:

Newly published is a print edition of Western Stories: Four Tales of the West, with a brand new cover! It’s currently available for $6.99 plus shipping and handling from CreateSpace and Amazon, and is coming soon to BN.com, the Barnes & Noble online store.

Work continues on a mega print edition of The Complete Owen Family Saga. That has been quite an undertaking. I’ve had to change the font and margins several times in order to keep the book within the page limit for the size. At first, I thought I might have to go up to 8 1/2- x 11-inches, but I figured out a way to keep it at the familiar 6-x 9-inches.

It will be a thick book. The minus is that it has over 400,000 words, so the font size is smaller than I would like. However, it’s going to have that stunning yellow cover. I might do it in the silky-feeling matte cover. The five novels within are in the best reading order. Those are big pluses.

I trust these moves will be good for business.

Save

Share This:

Counting a Few Blessings

October 21, 2016 / Marsha Ward / 0 Comments

Once in a while, I have to sit back and count my blessings. Among them is a daughter who doesn’t mind if I bend her ear to listen to a scene I wrote. Her feedback is so helpful, and her responses are genuinely what I worked for.

I’m also grateful for wherever it is I get my inspiration for characters (there are several theories to consider). For the current work-in-progress (WIP), I’ve looked up settler and long-time Shenandoah Valley folk to borrow their surnames. They just fit.

When I started this crazy adventure story back in my late teens, I had no idea that a real family named “Owen” (no s) actually settled just across the mountain from where I plopped down my characters in Colorado Territory. I didn’t know that fact until thirty-some years later. I had no idea that the surname “Owen” was that of several Confederate soldiers who originated from the Shenandoah Valley. I had no idea I would eventually write about the American Civil War as it impacted MY Owen family.

Blind luck? Serendipity? Whatever I owe this whole shebang to, it’s very special to me, and I’m grateful for the experience.

Save

Share This:

2016 Publishing Plans Update

October 18, 2016 / Marsha Ward / 0 Comments

Back in January, I outlined on another blog my 2016 plans for publication. Things didn’t go quite as I had thought they would, though. As always, life happened, and shiny things came along and . . .

I stayed on track for the first planned effort. I released a novel, The Zion Trail, on February 19, followed on March 25 with the print edition (yes, there was enough reader demand for a print version). This book features Julia Owen’s first cousin, Elijah “Lije” Marshall, and is the first novel in a trilogy labeled “Promised Valley.”

From there, things got interesting.

Instead of letting me finish and publish Mended by Moonlight and purchase a cover for a story featuring “gloves” so it could appear, other Characters horned in and gummed up my plans by demanding their time in the spotlight. So . . .

Wes and Lonnie Haught got their moment when I released the novella Blood at Haught Springs on May 27. These Characters have no relationship at all to the Owen Family. They live in frontier Texas. This is the first of three works in the “Men of Haught Springs” series. The ebook contains two bonus short stories, Cottonwood Cowboys and No More Strangers.

With Mended by Moonlight still unfinished when the calendar approached July, I chose to publish Faith and the Foreman instead, which is a stand-alone novella that was first seen as part of the Old West Collection, A Timeless Romance Anthology Book 9 from 2014. These Characters are also unrelated to any of the Owen family, as they live in frontier Arizona. A bonus story, The Usual Game, is also set in Arizona, in the early days of Statehood.

Then somebody mentioned in a review their displeasure that the book they’d read from The Owen Family Saga seemed to be out of order. I agreed. I’d had my struggles with putting Gone for a Soldier as Book 5 in the series, since chronologically, it is Book 1. I decided the best way to address the problem was to publish the books of the Saga in chronological order, as one huge ebook. I polled several of my author friends on whether I should do such a project, and they thought it was a great idea. On September 30, I released The Complete Owen Family Saga as an ebook. All the favorite Characters from the series are intact. Sales so far have validated the idea of publishing this box set containing the five Owen Family Saga novels in the best reading order.

I don’t know if I will publish anything else this year. I am working on three projects at the same time, bouncing back and forth between what I presume is a novel, a novella, and a non-fiction project. If I finish one of them before the year is out, it will be published. Otherwise, 2017 is right around the corner!

In the meantime, to get purchase links to your favorite online vendor for all of the above books, go to the Simple List at the Bookshelf.

Save

Share This:

Fresh Book Friday – The Complete Owen Family Saga

September 30, 2016 / Marsha Ward / 0 Comments

Yay! It’s Friday, and I’m launching a book!

Title: The Complete Owen Family Saga
Author: Marsha Ward
Genre: Historical and Western Fiction
Publisher: WestWard Books
Date of Publication: September 30, 2016
Initial Price: $2.99 (ebook formats)
Regular Price (Monday, Oct 3, 2016): $6.99

Book Description:
Marsha Ward did not write the five novels of The Owen Family Saga in order, but there is definitely an optimal reading order, and here it is in one grand box set collection.

Excerpt:
Rulon — April 19, 1861

Rulon Owen hadn’t intended that crisp Friday in April to be momentous.

In fact, when he’d saddled his horse in order to do an errand in Mount Jackson for his ma, he hadn’t given much thought to anything but stealing a few moments to see Mary Hilbrands.

She was only a little bit of a thing, a girl with dark hair and eyes that shone like… well, they kind of smoldered nowadays whenever she looked his way. Those smoky dark eyes gave him a shaky feeling that spun his head in circles and tied his gut into knots that—

“Whew.” Rulon realized he’d let the horse slow to a walk while he’d been off in a reverie, somewhere not in Shenandoah County, as far as he could tell. He got the horse loping again, and wished it was already a year from now. Mayhap folks wouldn’t get their tails in a twist about them keeping company once Mary turned sixteen in May next year. He was almighty tired of Ben and Peter, and especially of Pa, accusing him of trying to rob the cradle because he’d taken such a shine to the girl. Yes. He’d concede that she was young, but when she spoke his name, his knees felt like they was composed of apple jelly.

Ma sides with me, he thought. Pa was the true cradle-robber of the family when the two of them wed. Him twenty-four. Ma barely sixteen.

He wasn’t likely to throw his opinion on that subject in his father’s face any day soon. Firm. Formidable. The entire county used those words to describe his father. Rulon shook his head. Receiving back-sass from his offspring did not sit well with Roderick Owen. But at age twenty, Rulon hadn’t taken a licking for a long spell. Maybe Pa’s gone soft in his old age. That’s likely, now that he has nigh onto forty-five years pressing him down.

Rulon rode on, wondering what to do to get his father off his back on the subject of Mary Hilbrands. It’s time I ask Ma to say a word to Pa, he determined at last. She won’t let him ride me once I begin to court Mary in earnest.

He slowed the horse to a walk as he entered the town. Ahead, he spotted his brother Ben pulling sacks of grain out of a wagon parked in front of the mill where he’d taken employment over the winter. Glancing up, Ben saw Rulon, and stopped to raise his hand in greeting, a big grin splitting his face.

Rulon drew rein and halted. “Brother Ben.” He clasped the outstretched hand. “What makes you so happy today?”

“I am put in a smiling mood from seein’ you with that enraptured look on your face. Can’t wait to thrust your hand into the cookie jar, huh?”

Rulon snorted at Ben’s fancy.

Ben kept on talking his nonsense. “Oh yes, indeed. You’re an enchanted man, spellbound and smitten, ready to do that girl’s bidding.”

“Speak for yourself, brother.”

Ben laughed and said, “Give my best to Miss Mary,” then smacked Rulon’s horse on the rump, which caused it first to shy and then to run.

After a block atop the runaway, Rulon regained control of the animal. “Heartless boy,” he grumbled, his face hot with humiliation. He settled the horse down to a sedate walk once again as he proceeded on his errand.

As he came in view of Mr. Hilbrands’ store, he saw a crowd of excited men, some coming, and some going. Some were running. Running! What was amiss?

He drew up and dismounted. As soon as he had his feet on the ground, a friend of Pa’s shoved the newspaper from Harrisonburg into his hands and bid him take it home. Slapping him on the back, the man ran down the street.

Rulon watched the man’s hasty departure, then looked at the immense black headlines of the special edition. WAR. He read the subtitles interspersed with the text on the front page. Ft. Sumter surrenders. Lincoln calls for troops. Via. Conv. votes to secede. Ratification vote in May. Counties raising Companies. Defend the Homeland. His heart went cold at the urgency of the words. It soon rebounded, and began to beat at a rate he’d not experienced many times in his life. He looked up from the paper, his breath as quick as his heart rate, and made a decision. Feeling the cogs of his life shuddering to a halt and then changing direction, he strode into the store to put his plan into action.

Purchase Links for ebooks:
Smashwords all formats | Kindle | Nook | Kobo | Apple iTunes Bookstore

Author Bio:

Amazon best-selling author Marsha Ward writes authentic historical fiction set in 19th Century America, and contemporary romance. She was born in the sleepy little town of Phoenix, Arizona, in a simpler time. With plenty of room to roam among the chickens and citrus trees, Marsha enjoyed playing with neighborhood chums, but always had her imaginary friend, cowboy Johnny Rigger Prescott, at her side. Now she makes her home in a forest in the mountains of Arizona. She loves to hear from her readers.

Find Marsha online:
marshaward.com
facebook.com/authormarshaward
marshaward.blogspot.com
twitter.com/MarshaWard
authormarshaward@gmail.com

Join Marsha’s Readers List to be notified of new releases: Click here

Save

Share This: