Signing Ebooks

Over the weekend, I released the first ebook editions of Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revolution. These went out to the backers of my Kickstarter drives, and a good number of them (over 200) were autographed. This took me forever to pull off, but it gave my backers something unique and special, so it was worth it as a way to thank them for their support.

When I first promised to sign ebooks for my backers, I really had no idea how I was going to manage it. Since I planned to publish the books myself, I knew that at the worst, I’d take the brute-force approach.

To pull that off, all you need is a stack of blank paper, a scanner, and a lot of time to get the images of the signatures into your computer and then generate unique copies of the ebook one at a time. It’s clearly doable, but painstaking and slow.

Fortunately, Paul Cooley contacted me about an iOS app he’d produced called MyWrite. It’s a clever solution to the challenge of signing ebooks. You just send Paul your ebook in epub format and pay a small fee to register it. Then you purchase blocks of signatures from him so that you can use the app.

In the app, you select the ebook you want to send out, then enter the name and email address of the person you want to send it to. The app then gives you a blank page on which you can draw or write anything you like. I used a stylus and wrote a short thank-you note and signed it with my notoriously illegible signature. Once you’re done, you tap a button, and you’re done.

Paul’s servers then generate a unique copy of the ebook in both epub (iBooks, Nook, Kobo, etc.) and mobi (Amazon) formats, with the personalized sheet as the last page in the ebook. If the files are under 1 MB, the servers send the files straight out. Otherwise, it sends links that the reader can download the files through instead.

Because I’m handling my 12 for ’12 books as an indie publisher, Paul offered to cut me a break on the pricing. It wound up costing me less than 20¢ in total for each signature. Given the amount of time it saved me, it was well worth it.

Despite that, it still took me hours to get through it all. Even if I spent only two minutes on each note, it was bound to take me nearly seven hours to finish, after all. When I started out, each one took me more than that, but as I smoothed out the workflow of copying the necessary data out of Kickstarter (bluetooth keyboard really helped), that average time went way down.

MyWrite helped make it as painless as possible, and I think it was well worth the effort to sign all those books. I hope my backers agree.

Two New Covers

I have a pair of beautiful but very different covers to show to you today. The first is for Don’t Read This Book, a new anthology of short stories based upon Fred Hicks’s Don’t Rest Your Head RPG. Chuck Wendig put the whole thing together, and he lined up some fantastic talent to bring it to life, including Stephen Blackmoore, Harry Connolly, Rich Dansky, Laura Anne Gilman, Will Hindmarch, Mur Lafferty, Robin D. Laws, Ryan Macklin, C. E. Murphy, Josh Roby, Greg Stolze, and Monica Valentinelli, as well as me.

My story for this one’s a bit of a departure for me. I usually like to write about heroes, people who suck it up and do what they have to, despite the odds stacked against them. The main character in this tale’s a bit weaker than that, and because of that the ending sucker punched me good. Here’s hoping it does the same to you.

The second cover is for Magic: The Gathering: The Spell Thief #2. This features the main villain from the first miniseries, Sifa Grent. Artist Dan Scott does a great job with Martin Cóccolo’s design, making her look both sinister and powerful.

This tale continues our hero Dack Fayden’s hunt for Sifa. It takes him through many planes and reveals a good deal of the history behind both him and Sifa and what’s drawn them together into their fatal dance.

I can’t wait for you to read both stories, as different as they are.

Carpathia Review and Kindle Sale

Over at Wired’s Geek Dad blog (for which I sometimes chip in a bit or two), James Floyd Kelly gave Carpathia a wonderful review:

Yes, Matt Forbeck went there. He took those poor souls that survived the Titanic‘s sinking and decided to make their lives a little more terrifying. He mixed history with horror, and probably did it with a sly grin on his face as he typed up Carpathia.

Very dark. Seriously twisted.

I enjoyed every bit of it.

The Salted Peanut agrees, saying:

What happens when you take the most famous shipwreck of all time and toss in some gothic horror?  You get Carpathia, a winning mix of historical drama and vampire lore.

Coincidentally, Amazon has the Kindle edition of Carpathia on sale right now for only $3.03. They also have Amortals out for only $2.99, making both books fantastic deals. I don’t have any idea how long this might last, so grab them for cheap while you can!

3 for 3 (for ’12) So Far!

On Saturday night, I wrapped up the first draft of the third book of the 12 for ’12 project: Brave New World: Resolution. That makes three novels written for three months in a row, which makes me happier than I can probably say. First drafts have already gone out to early readers and high-level Kickstarter backers, and I’m now returning to Book 1 to revise it and get it ready to go out the door.

To highlight this, I wrote a guest post for Suvudu on Saturday morning. It’s a primer for those who don’t know much about the project yet, of course.

While I get Book 1 out the door, I’m also outlining Books 4, 5, and 6. Since I have to start writing Book 4 straight away, these things can’t wait. In ways, this is a murderous schedule, but it also keeps me on track to get things done, and I like that. Once you read the books, I hope you will too.

Magic #3 Out Today!

Issue number 3 of the Magic: The Gathering comic I write for IDW hits stands today. See below for a free preview, then head out to your friendly local comic shop for a hard copy (complete with playable game card) or click over to Comixology to grab the electronic version. (Bargain hunters: note that downloads of issues #1 and #2 have now dropped to half price.)

I’m having a great time working on this series with editor Carlos Guzman and our Wizards compatriot Brady Dommermuth. Much of that’s down to seeing the artwork Martin Cóccolo and colorist J. Edwin Stevens turn in every month. Having another snazzy cover by Christopher Moeller always helps too.

Hope you enjoy it!

Origins Awards Nominations Out

The nominations list for this year’s Origins Awards just came out. I’m proud to see two projects I worked on make the cut this year: Leverage: The Roleplaying Game and The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design.

Of course, I only wrote small parts of each. The lion’s share of the credit goes to Cam Banks for developing the Leverage game and to Mike Selinker for editing the Kobold guide. They both did fantastic job shepherding multiple authors through their respective projects and fusing them together into amazing books.

Congrats to both Cam and Mike and to all the creators and developers behind the other nominees as well!

Want to Be a Gen Con Guest?

If you’re part of the tabletop games industry and plan on attending Gen Con, you can now apply to be an Industry Insider Guest of Honor at the show. I’ve been a part of this program ever since the show moved to Indianapolis back in 2003, and it’s fantastic fun. In the past, there’s been no clear way for people to get into the program, though, and Gen Con has decided it’s time to blaze that trail and set landing lights along it.

So, if you’re a professional in that industry and think you’d enjoy sitting on a number of panels during the show, you can now head over to the Gen Con site and apply for consideration. The spanking-new selection committee consists of three stalwarts of the program: Ken Hite, Stan!, and me. Please spread the word to anyone you think might be interested, as we’d love to have a large and diverse slate of guests to chat with on the panels. Thanks!

Twitter Chat on March 21 #SFFWRTCHT

Tomorrow evening, starting at 9 PM Eastern Time, March 21, I’ll be a guest on #SFFWRTCHT. That’s the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer Chat held on Twitter every Wednesday night and hosted by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I’ll be answering all sorts of questions and chatting about many things, including Carpathia, 12 for ’12, the Magic: The Gathering comic, Kickstarter, and anything else people care to bring up.

To join in, all you have to do is get on Twitter and look for the #SFFWRTCHT hashtag. You can swing in and out as you like, and if you can’t make it, a transcript will be posted soon afterward for your reading pleasure. Hope to chat with you soon!

Many More Carpathia Raves

Just because the Shotguns & Sorcery Kickstarter sucked up nearly all my attention last week doesn’t mean that everyone else in the world stopped reading. Many of those folks even read Carpathia and were kind enough to say several nice things about it.

At the San Francisco & Sacramento Book Review, David Marshall gushes over the book.

This is a beautifully constructed horror novel with the tension ratcheting up inexorably as night falls on the Atlantic. A good word to describe it is relentless. You may not learn a great deal about true history, but the vampires, like the Titanic, are first class.

At Warpcore SF, Ros Jackson loved the book.

It’s not a relentless disaster orgy of fangs, blood, and people leaping to their deaths or drowning in icy water. It’s much more civilised, yet during the quieter passages I was on tenterhooks just as much as I was when the stakes came out… However at heart this is a thrilling disaster story and bite carnival, with vampires that sizzle like sausages at the touch of a cross but keep coming back, and it’s never too serious for its own good.

On his blog, Tony Lane gives the book high praise.

[T]his could well be Matt’s best work to date, and it certainly has the chance to capture the imagination of a wide audience. It is easy to read, has violence and bloodshed that is vital to the story and not just to shock, and most importantly in my eyes it is a very hard book to put down. I loved it start to finish.

Karen Conlin (formerly Karen Boomgaarden of TSR fame) heaps compliments on the book on Amazon.

For sheer creativity and excitement, this book deserves five stars… The pace picks up steam until it hits that breakneck speed at which if you can put the book down, I’ll say there’s something wrong with you… With just enough levity to break the tension, and tension crafted from word choice, dialog, mood, and more, Carpathia should be at the top of any horror aficionado’s “to read” list.

At Goodreads, Chris Bauer (who won an ARC of the book from me through the Crossing the Streams contest), wrote many kind things:

In the spirit of “taking your protagonists from the frying pan into the fire,” Forbeck does a fantastic job of creating tension and drama with subtle overtones, rather than ANY bludgeoning “shock-gore” scenes. It’s obvious significant research went into this work, and the attention to the little details really pays off… [H]is undead are classic apex predators based on Stoker’s Dracula and were strangely refreshing to read about.

Finally, Upstart Projects gives the book a sharp rave too.

Carpathia is cinematic in its scope… It has an intriguing premise, great characters, and is plain well-written.  If you’re looking to satiate your bloodlust for vampires,Carpathia is a good diversion from the recent crop that harkens back to the monster’s pop culture roots.