Software, StoryBox

StoryBox Version 1.0.83 (Finally!)

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Today is a day that I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. Creating a piece of software and releasing it into the wild is about as stressful as anything. What did I miss? Will anybody like it? Will anyone buy it?

I tried to limit my stress by following my pre-release release plan, and it worked. There are quite a few users of StoryBox already and I’ve seen some nice comments about it in various places. They’ve posted a large number of problems to me, and I’ve been pretty diligent about fixing them as they came up.

There are still issues with it, I’m sure. The more people using it, the more oddball problems will be found. I’ll fix these as soon as they crop up. The release strategy has worked all this time, and I see no reason to change it. You will continue to get updates frequently.

I have a list of features to add to StoryBox that includes 26 items. Some are small, and some are rather large, and perhaps difficult to do. There are some I’ve committed to doing, like printing and exporting of synopsis and notes, and others that I haven’t yet committed myself to doing (not spilling those beans yet since I don’t know if I will do them).

You may be asking yourself, if I’ve got a list of features that long, why am I releasing 1.0 right now? With software, there are always features that could be added. StoryBox, as it stands today, does everything I wanted it to do when I first started out, and more. Could I have added the features on my list to 1.0? Sure, but it would be another year before I could release it, which would mean a year of people looking at it and saying to themselves, “It’s pre-release, it’s not done.” Software is never done. Versions releases are only a pause in the development, a point at which the developer decides the software has reached a milestone.

And thus, today is the birthday of StoryBox. Thank you to everyone that has helped or purchased a copy during the pre-release period. I can’t wait to get started on my list.

Download Version 1.0.83

Software, StoryBox

There Are Four Days Left To Get StoryBox For $25

I’m impatient. I have the 1.0 build of StoryBox ready to go. I have the website mostly complete. I have the payment processor set up with the change for the full version.  I want to pull the trigger on this thing right now.
 
I’m not about to do that yet. I’m sure I’m forgetting something important, or there’s that one last really bad bug that’s going to show up as soon as I put up the build (this will undoubtedly happen no matter how long I wait).
 
But it really comes down to this. I don’t want to just pull the switch on those of you who’ve been waiting to buy StoryBox without giving you a real warning. If you want to buy StoryBox at the current $25 price, you have four days. Thursday, October 7th, 2010, I will be releasing StoryBox 1.0 to the world, and it will be priced at $34.95. It will never be $25 again.
 
This has been a long journey for me. It started back in August of 2009 when I couldn’t find software I wanted to use on Windows. I put up the first public build on September 21, 2009. There have been 62 builds between then and now, averaging more than one a week, even with the long hiatus last winter and spring.
 
Don’t worry, however, that this is the end. I have twenty two planned features already, many of them suggested or requested by those of you brave enough to use StoryBox these last months. I’m going to continue the cycle of frequent updates. As a user, I love lots of little presents, rather than waiting six months for updates, so I give you what I love.
 
Writing

Three Conclusions

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If you know where to look, you can find ebook sales numbers for any number of indie ebook authors, and you’ll find they run the gamut from almost nothing to six figures a year. J.A. Konrath details his figures on his blog, others post them on KindleBoards.com. I’ve read samples of books from many of the authors, both large sellers and small, and I’ve come to some conclusions.
 
First, if your sample sucks, people won’t buy your book.
 
Eh? What? You mean I need to write well? Yes. Write a good book. Get all the errors out. Don’t screw up your POV. Start with something interesting to read. Readers read the samples before buying the book. You do, don’t you? I sure do. I may have some disposable income, but I’m not about to dispose of it on something I don’t want, and I certainly don’t want books where I can’t stand the writing.
 
Second, one book isn’t enough.
 
You may get lucky and that book you wrote may be the only book you ever need to write. You may also get lucky and have a thousand one carat diamonds just fall into your lap. Nearly every author selling large numbers of books (hundreds per month) has more than one book available. Each book sells itself, but they are advertisements for your other books, as well. Each new book is a new page on Amazon. Each page helps to sell all your books because of the link to your Author Name. They also help because of links to similar titles and people who bought this also bought this other thing.
 
Third, this is going to take forfuckingever.
 
I’ve seen that when you’re just starting out, one book a day is a pretty decent number for the first month. If you can get some additional books available, you can be selling a few hundred books a month after about six months. Even if I could write and release four books a year, and their average numbers are Konrath numbers, it will take several years to replace my current income with writing income. Big numbers come from multiple complementary books, and I haven’t even finished the first one yet.
 
I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m writing only for money. I’m not. I’m writing because I want to write. I’d like to be able to spend my entire day working on things I want to work on, be it my games, my music, or my writing. The only way I can do that is if one of those things, or a combination of them, generates enough money that I can jettison the day job.
 
If you really want to help me out, tell all your friends to buy multiple copies of StoryBox. I like working on that, too.