Five autographed copies of Flight, Book One of The Last Paladin Series are available to win between now and May 25, 2014.

Please click the contest's link below to get a copy of this action packed Urban Fantasy story.   

The second novel to the series is well underway. I am excited about the story. Although the book's focus will be more on the land of Irlendria, there is still lots happening on Earth. I cannot wait to share the story.

I did a lot of research to bring this story to life and I can't wait to share it with everyone.

One of the things I love is a fun read. I want the action to flow and keep you flipping to the next page unable to put the book down. 

I also love tying in real world events, places and current world issues whenever possible. Even though I am not an avid gamer now-a-days because writing takes so much time, I still keep in close contact with the community and new releases. I love to watch new game trailers whenever they are released.

I think it's awesome when you can bring in all the different things you love and build an incredible story with your own twist.

I can't wait to share the new novel with everyone. I guess I'd best get busy finishing the story up! 

There was also an option on Amazon for Bookstores and Online Retailers
and Create Space Direct, which is the option to sell to Amazon's  competitors and give physical bookstores and other Online Retailers the option to buy your book directly from Amazon. Although this sounds like an awesome option for Self-Publishing authors, in reality this is not a choice these companies are going to make when your a new author. Possibly an option when you're very famous, but I would argue it makes more sense to go directly with each company directly if you are self-publishing and have complete rights to your novel.

What I noticed is that my book cost went from $8 and change to $12 and change in cost for a market that will not normally decide to buy my book or carry my book initially. 

This means that your competitiveness on Amazon is dramatically reduced.

Your ability to compete against the other professional books being published by publishers is blown out of the water. From my research, many of the professional published books range between $8.99 to $12.99. Some even dip down to $6.99 and $7.99 which is not possible to compete against when your self-publishing with Amazon, since your book cost to produce is already in the $8 and change range. 

The way for you to be competitive is to keep your costs down as much as possible and do as much of the work yourself. By doing this you can keep the price of your book down to an extreme minimum and still sell competitively. Remember, a known author going through a publishing company are only getting a few cents for each physical book they publish. Publishing houses get most of the money on the sale of a book because they need to pay for their professional services they offer their writers.

In this way I can usually beat or at the worst meet the price of a professionally publishing house and still make more money on each
book sale than what the author is making by going through a traditional publishing house. Traditional publisher houses have more options for getting their authors to be recognized, but with social media sites and the internet, there are a lot of way for the self-publishing author to get the word out about their book.

I also think many first time authors believe that should make a lot more money for every book they sale. This belief causes many new authors problems in marketing their books. If you follow the logic on how professional publishing houses make their money on physical book sales. You realize they are banking their sales on selling a large number of books at an average price. From what I've researched, If you're making three cents a book on physical media then you are making industry average on royalties as an author. 

With self-publishing physical books you can easily get that percentage up to seven or ten cents per book and still match the prices of the professional publishing houses. 

Ebook sales are even more money. You will make more actual money per book on your ebook sales in comparison to physical book sales. With ebook
sales, self-publishers are ahead of the game on making money per  book and keeping their sales below the cost of traditional publishing
houses ebook sales. You can easily get your sales up to 54 cents an ebook
and still be competitively priced against the prices being sold of the larger publishing houses. This is because as a self-publisher we have done the majority of the work and marketing ourselves and are now using Amazon as the outlet to sell our books. 

After creating  your account on https://www.createspace.com/ you can begin building your book. One of the very first questions they ask you is do
you want your own ISBN number or do you want to use one of Amazon's
own ASIN numbers. 

Initially I thought I had to have an ISBN number to get my first book created world wide, but that is really not necessary. Also, if you're not careful it can be a very expensive  prospect. 

If you choose to get an ISBN number, it is important to understand what that means. First, the good part is that if someone wants to look up your exact novel they can go to an ISBN site and search for your exact book. Interesting enough, if you get an ASIN number from Amazon for free there are websites for searching out your ASIN number to find exactly your novel.

If you buy your ISBN directly from Amazon it is expensive. In my case it was $125 for one number.

Sounds great, you now have your ISBN and you can upload your novel as a Mass Market Paperback book, hardcover book and an Ebook with your ISBN, right? Wrong. Your one ISBN is only good for one of those book. Each type of print or ebook layout of the same book could use its own ISBN. At $125 a pop that could turn into a lot of money. 

Interesting enough, Amazon offers ISBN's for you to buy from http://www.myidentifiers.com which sells, at this time, a set of 10 ISBN's for $250. This is a much better deal than Amazon's and only requires a little knowledge on your part. But, before you take the plunge to buy your ISBN's, let me point out a few other interesting bits of fact.

If you change from Amazon to another seller like https://www1.ingramspark.com or https://www.nookpress.com/ or a
bunch of other websites. Although your ISBN should work for whomever you are publishing through, it really doesn't. I'm not stating that I fully understand it, but to change your ISBN over to the new company that is offering your books for sale requires some major paperwork. From  everything I have heard and researched about this subject. It is simpler to just use a new ISBN for the new company and the same book you're trying to sell.

After making the decision to buy one ISBN for $125 (and not the 10 for $250), I am now questioning how necessary it is to have an ISBN. Why not use each service's free or cheap numbering code they are using like Amazon's ASIN number? As I further prepare my hardback book I will do additional research on this option, but for now I would argue that buying an ISBN number is a waste of time when your self-publishing. It is an extra expense that is not needed if you're wanting people to buy your book directly from Amazon USA, Amazon Europe or the Create Space Estore.