Geekus Maximus: The Value of a Pen Name

When I posted my total book sales numbers at the end of last year, I didn't include how much I made. The main reason is that after I spent all that time figuring out how much I sold, I didn't want to go back and do the same thing for monetary totals. As of right now, including permanently free books and collections, I have 22 titles under my main name. They also come in different money-making formats: ebook, paperback, and audio book. Some of them have two formats and some of them have all three. My pen name, Geekus Maximus, only has two short books. They each have an e-book version currently priced at $0.99 and an audio book version currently priced at $3.95. The money I've made from my pen name is much easier to figure out. You can check them both out here:

E-Books
With Geekus Maximus e-books, I generally make $0.35 per sale. Sometimes it's a little more and sometimes it's a little less depending on what country they sold in and the conversion rate to USD at the time. These e-books also didn't require a huge investment in money or time. I had Doug Beckstead do the cover for the Geek of Legend book and I made the cover for Horror Stories From A Computer Tech myself. They were each written as an eight hour challenge meaning they both took under eight hours to create as e-books. For the first six months of 2014, Geekus Maximus had 14 e-book sales between the two books for a total royalty of $4.88.

Audio Books
For the audio books, I worked out a deal with Timothy McKean, the narrator who did Explanations and Advice for the Tech Illiterate. I did a royalty split with him, so my cut is 25% of the sale price. Horror Stories From A Computer Tech took off quickly with a bunch of audio book sales and currently has the third most audio books sold of all my audio book titles. The Geek of Legend audio book also did pretty well. It's now featured in Amazon's Whispersync program which means that if you buy the e-book, the audio book is sold at a discount (currently $1.99 I think) and you can have the audio narration read to you as you follow along in the e-book. For the first six months of 2014, Geekus Maximus had 56 audio book sales between the two books for a total royalty of $49.92.



Totals
For 2014 so far, my Geekus Maximus pen name has been worth 70 sales and $54.80 in revenue (which averages about $0.78 / book sold.) It probably won't make that much between the beginning of July and the end of December since audio book sales have now slowed to a few per month and the e-book versions have never really made much money. Horror Stories From A Computer Tech currently has 14 reviews with a 3.6 star average and Geek of Legend: The Elvish Screwdriver currently has 3 reviews with a 5 star average.

Future Projects
The last two five star reviews on Geek of Legend: The Elvish Screwdriver have asked for another book in the series. I'm working on writing it right now. The great thing about the Geek of Legend series is that I can get a book out a lot quicker since the stories are only around 8,000 words. The second in the series, Geek of Legend: The Goblin Anti-Virus, is currently at around 1,500 words. Yes, there will be another bridge troll that asks tech riddles for those of you who enjoyed the riddles of Org. The book will also feature Goblin pirates who write both viruses and anti-virus software, thus ensuring that they never go out of business. I promise the book will be entertaining and good for a few laughs, especially if you liked the first one.

Current Writing Projects + New Release

I wanted to post an update on all of my current writing projects as these may be the last writing projects I'm able to finish for the next few years. I start law school next month (I was accepted at the S.J. Quinney College of Law with a scholarship) and I plan on continuing in my IT job part time so I imagine my time is going to be spread a little thin.

Middle Demons is currently over 45,000 words. It's been a few weeks since I worked on it and it still has a ways to go as I plan on it ending at around 70,000 words. I'm not currently sure when it will be released but I do have one of my cover artists working on a cover.

I just returned from a vacation in San Diego where we visited the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, Sea World, Cabrillo National Monument, Old Point Loma Lighthouse, and the USS Midway. I spent a couple of days glued to my desk chair after we returned to put together my latest travel photo book: Traveling the U.S.: San Diego. Both the e-book version and the paperback version are now available on Amazon and you can check them out at the links below:

Traveling the U.S.: San Diego E-book
Traveling the U.S.: San Diego Paperback

I also have an idea for a follow-up novella (around 7,000 - 8,000 words) in the Geek of Legend series that I write under my pen name, Geekus Maximus. The working title is Geek of Legend: The Goblin Anti-Virus. I've worked out most of the story in my head and I think I might start writing it soon since the last two five star reviews on Amazon for Geek of Legend: The Elvish Screwdriver have asked for a sequel. I'm not sure at this point what I'm going to do for a cover.

With all that said, I'm also open to hearing from anyone who has read my writing if you'd like to recommend I continue a series or if you simply want to tell me about a book or character you connected with, loved, or hated. You can contact me at randallmorrisauthor@gmail.com about anything related to my writing, e-books, audio books, or paperbacks. Thanks everyone.

Evolution of the Cover: Geek of Legend: The Elvish Screwdriver

Well I finally decided that the cover I made for my first Geek of Legend book was too terrible to continue. To those few hundred of you who grabbed a free copy... at least it was free and the story is pretty good. I hired Doug Beckstead (who made the Jehovah and Hades cover and also did the cover for Minor Demons) to make me a budget cover. No graphics. No coloring. Just an inked drawing with the title. I really like how it turned out. You can check out Doug's other drawings / creations at his website: here.

I started by telling him I want a hooded elf ranger and I showed him a drawing I liked on deviantart. This was his first sketch.

From there he sent me a few different sketches. I wasn't a huge fan of the face on any of them so far so we decided to put that on hold and just work on the rest of the drawing. I also decided to hold off on the hood for a little while (but I eventually changed my mind and had him add one back on.)

The last drawing in this series is when I told him to add the hood back on. I just think elf rangers look cooler with hoods.

Doug switched to a cleaner, simpler look for the face and I had him add the hood.

I had him tweak the eyes a little.

I won't go into all the smaller details we modified towards the end, but I had him add a screwdriver attached to the strap that holds the elf's arrow quiver. Then I had him add the title and my pen name for the cover. I think the end result reminds me a little of a wanted poster. I didn't have any covers in only black and white before this one and I think this one fits the short story pretty well. Here's a link to the book if you want to check it out on Amazon: Geek of Legend: The Elvish Screwdriver.