COLOSSUS RISING has risen!

Colossus Rising

Colossus Rising

 

Available now on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, Audible, and as a print paperback, this is a sci-fi odyssey you won’t want to miss. In the gripping second volume of this electrifying sci-fi fantasy series, the battle for survival reaches new heights in the unforgiving depths of space.

A ragtag group of escapees hurtles through the vastness of space, pursued by armadas, saboteurs, and kamikaze armies. The Earth they once knew is blocked by the relentless Torth Majority who now threaten all of humanity.

Among the escapees is Ariock, a powerhouse of a gladiator with illegal superpowers, a legacy from his legendary great-grandfather who defied the Torth. Ariock is determined to follow in his footsteps. Then there’s Thomas, a brilliant supergenius, physically challenged but gifted with a mind that’s both awe-inspiring and enigmatic. His resilience is shrouded in mystery, even to his foster sister Vy.

Their common thread is fear of the unknown. Crash-landing on a distant, toxic planet, they discover it’s the ancestral home of the Torth, their galactic enemies. The remnants of the Torth era of origin still haunt this poisoned wasteland.

As they face mutant horrors and relentless galactic foes, Thomas envisions only doom and despair. But for Ariock and the streamship exiles, it’s a do-or-die struggle for survival—a quest to uncover light in a city trapped in eternal night.

With over 750,000 views as a web serial, the Torth series begins with Majority. Superpowered mavericks and supergeniuses vie for galactic dominance against a collective armada composed of 38 trillion personalities. Higher stakes than Red Rising or The Expanse. One of the 100 Best Indie Books of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews.


If you read these books, please rate them or leave a review!

Goodreads: Majority | Colossus Rising

Amazon: Majority | Colossus Rising | World of Wreckage

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Publication day for MAJORITY

Today is the day!  I am now a published novelist.

What a journey it has been! I will have more books published, including the sequels to this one, which are already written. But this one is special. It’s the one I spent the most time on. It’s my first novel on Amazon. It’s the one with all the pressure on it, as a series starter. And it’s the start of a series that I stand proudly behind.

Reviews and sales are immensely important to authors. I really appreciate everyone who bought a copy, and those who are planning to write a review, or who already wrote one on Goodreads or Amazon.

If sci-fi isn’t your thing, I would appreciate it if you tell a friend, or perhaps gift it to someone who loves thoughtful sci-fi! For freebies and peeks into my life, you can subscribe to my newsletter.

Thanks for being part of my life!

Majority by Abby Goldsmith

abbygoldsmith.com/majority

Also, I gave a bunch of interviews for this one!  If you’d like to see what I’ve been up to, check out John Scalzi’s blog, Rune S Nielsen’s blog, Jendia Gammon’s substack, Bookishly Jewish, Queen’s Asylum, Bryan Aiello’s YouTube channel, Hinterspace podcast, NFS podcast and a Reddit AMA!

★★★★★ “Engaging from the start, this complex space opera features relatable, believable characters; highly original, meticulous world building; and difficult moral and ethical dilemmas.”

Booklist review

★★★★★ “Thoughtful explorations of morality, altruism, justice and mercy, and the idea that godlike powers come with godlike responsibilities add depth and breadth to this auspicious entry in SF literature’s mutant-superman genre.”

Kirkus review

Cover Reveal for MAJORITY

Majority book cover

This is what the first book of my series looks like! Cover by Jeff Brown.

Contact me if you’d like to request an ARC (advance reader copy)!

I will remove all online versions of this book this month. Publication will be in audiobook, ebook, and print, on September 5, 2023.

Signed a 6 book deal with Podium!!!

I have very incredible and awesome news to share. I’ve signed a 6 book series contract with Podium Audio!!!

My epic 1+ million word Torth series will be coming out in print, ebook, and audiobook editions, probably starting late this year or in 2024.  This is super thrilling for me.  My magnum opus dark sci-fi series is going to hit Amazon & Audible in a big way!  (Books 1 & 2 will be combined.)

I owe it to taking a chance on serialization.  I’m having a blast on RoyalRoad + Patreon.  Feel free to ask me anything.  Now I’m diving into edits! ❤️

If you’re unfamiliar with my Torth series, here’s a brief blurb:


In a galaxy-spanning utopia where societal leaders are networked together for instant communication, nothing goes unnoticed.

There’s no crime. No secrets. No privacy. And no way to escape.

Until Thomas unintentionally captivates the top super-genius influencer.  If he’s going to help his enslaved friends, he’ll need to trick her… plus her audience of thirty trillion mind readers.

And so Thomas’s galactic conquest begins.

Written Serialization Hubs

Where can you reach readers with your written serialized fiction? Here’s a list.

NON-EXCLUSIVE SERIALIZATION PLATFORMS with MONETIZATION OPTIONS

 

NOT MONETIZED SERIALIZATION and CRITIQUE FORUMS

 

MONETIZED ONLY / ROYALTY-PAYING SERIALIZATION

 

And what if you want to self-host?

PAYWALL HELP FOR WEB SERIALS / SELL ADVANCE CHAPTERS

 

FANFIC FOCUSED SERIALIZATION

    • Ao3 / Archive Of Our Own (popular fanfic site with a section for original fiction, apply to join)
    • Quotev (old community)
    • FictionPress (pre-dates Wattpad, may want exclusivity)
    • Mibba (section for original fiction, young writers)

 

NON-ENGLISH / FOREIGN SERIALIZATION MARKETS

    • Belletristica (mostly German)
    • Pratilipi (Indian)
    • Novello (Hong Kong)
    • Joara / Full Novels (Japanese)
    • Honeyfeed (Japanese)
    • KakaoPage (Korean)
    • Snack Book (Korean)
    • Bagle (Korean)
    • BookWalker
    • Livory (German, owned by Tapster)
    • MoboReader (Changdu’s English outreach, requires application)
    • CreativeNovels.com (webnovel translation site, requires application)
    • WuxiaWorld.com (China webnovels translation)
    • Gravity Tales (China/Korea translation)
    • Scribay (French)

 

EXCLUSIVE / INVITE-ONLY / TOWARDS TRADITIONAL DEAL

    • Galatea (an Inkitt venture)
    • Realm / SerialBox (SFF audio, hard to get in)
    • FierceReads (rebranded Swoon Reads, Macmillan YA sourcing site)
    • ThePigeonHole (sources from trad publishers)
    • Boke Technology (romance only)
    • Episodic Reading (2yr exclusive)
    • Alexi Books (sources from trad publishers, looks defunct)

 

CHAT / TEXTING STORIES

    • Hooked.co (texting style stories)
    • Tap by Wattpad (texting style stories)
    • Lure Fiction
    • Viber
    • MessageInk
    • Peep.jp (was Taskey.me; Japanese; crowd-sourced translation if you serialize for free, texting style stories)

 

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE / BRANCHING STORIES

    • Episode (primarily romance)
    • Scripts: romance episode
    • Sana Stories
    • Dorian ($2m funded, Lionsgate Films)
    • Tales (learning curve)
    • Choice of Games / Heart’s Choice
    • 4thewords.com (Costa Rica based, international)

 

SKETCHY / SCAMMY / POSSIBLY ABANDONED

    • Webnovel (China, Qidian’s English site) and Boxnovel
    • Tencent / Qidian.com (huge serialization platform in China; they may take all rights)
    • EMP Entertainment and A&D Entertainment (3rd party distributor, Singapore partner for Webnovel)
    • GoodNovel
    • CreativeNovel (foreign, iffy on rights)
    • NovelHD (steals stories from Wattpad) owned by contabo.de
    • Foxteller (ghost town, may be iffy on rights)
    • HiNovel (rights grabby, contact [email protected])
    • iReader, Fictum, Bytedance Group (reports of selling work without permission, Writer Beware)
    • NovelFull
    • EStory (grabby contract)
    • authorbitz (founder: Lucinda Hawks Moebius, looks abandoned)
    • www.orton.io (sketchy w mispellings)
    • Movellas (looks sketchy, possible plagiarism?)
    • taylz.com (short fiction critique site, free, UK-based)
    • 2Tale (may be abandoned)
    • EGlobal Creative Publishing
    • Tapfun PTE
    • BabelNovel
    • Libri (will take all your rights)
    • BravoNovel (theft)
    • Friver group
    • NovelBee (plagiarism)
    • BeeNovel (red flag, they steal)
    • NovelCat
    • LITeReader (nonpayment)

 

CLOSED / DEFUNCT

    • Curious Fictions
    • LitHive.com (fanfic)
    • Describli (seeking backers on IndieGoGo)
    • ReaderCoin (audio focus)
    • Sweek
    • JukePop Serials (crowd-funded)
    • SparkaTale
    • WriteOn (Amazon; more like a critique group)
    • Book Country (Penguin Random House; more like a critique group)
    • Authonomy (HarperCollins)
    • CloudyPen
    • Figment
    • Story Pony
    • Readitt.com

Self-Publishing Before E-Readers And Apps: 1998—2006

In the early years of the internet, before Amazon was open to self-publishers, distribution for independent authors was very limited.

Print was still king.  Ebooks and Audiobooks did exist, but they were quite niche.  Tech-savvy people might read a PDF on their computer.  There were no smart-phones or tablets, and laptops were a rarity.  There were no apps.  Sony produced the world’s first popular e-reader device in 2006, with Amazon following that up with its Kindle in 2007.  Barnes & Noble was late to the game, offering its competing Nook in 2009. 

In the late 1990s through 2007, Audible was a boutique company that had yet to be purchased by Amazon.  Its selection of audiobooks was even more limited than what you could find at your local Barnes & Noble.  Since audiobook production runs to many thousands of dollars per book, it was prohibitively costly for small presses and independent authors, and besides, Audible only bought from major New York producers who worked with the Big Six.

So in the brand new internet era, print was still the most desirable format. 

If you lacked the patience or the desire to impress big publishers in New York City, might there be another way to get your books into print and into bookstores?

Enter print-on-demand services.

A tech-savvy author-entrepreneur or a small press could use Adobe QuarkXPress (the precursor to InDesign), or freeware tools such as Sigil or Calibre, to format their manuscripts for print (and for e-reader devices, once those became a thing).  That author could then upload the PDF to a niche retailer for independent books, such as JukeBox or NoiseTrade.  One of the largest was a site called Lulu, a darling of micro-press and small press publishers, which survives to this day.  Once your book became part of the Lulu catalog, it had a sales page.  It could be purchased, printed, and shipped to a paying customer.

Independent authors began to take advantage of these services. 

They were shy about it, at first.  Self-publishing had a major stigma attached to it, since at the time, it was synonymous with so-called “vanity presses.”

A Vanity Press meant pay-to-publish.  No publisher would admit to being a vanity press, but in plain English, they only published paying customers and they did not pay royalties.  In other words, the money flowed from the writer to the publisher, instead of from the publisher to the writer.  This arrangement was fine for mom’s cookbook, or for dad’s book of nature photos and poems, or for grandma’s genealogy book.  If you wanted a nicely bound version of those books, someone had to provide it. 

But for fiction?  No.  Booksellers steered clear of anything printed by a vanity press.  If you published your romance or your science fiction with a vanity press, you would never receive royalties.  You would never get it into bookstores.  The venture could only lose you money.  Fiction books from vanity presses were sneered upon as the province of complete failures.

Print-on-demand services such as Lulu were a new thing.  They offered fiction writers the services of a vanity press without the downsides, and—many hoped—without the stigma.  You, as an author, did not pay Lulu.  Lulu simply hosted the file of your manuscript, and if a customer bought it, the customer paid for printing and shipping.  That lent self-published books an aura of legitimacy.

It was supposed to, anyway. 

Unfortunately, many author-entrepreneurs in the brave new era had never tried to improve their craft.  They were hobbyists or amateurs, their books never workshopped or edited.  Some weren’t even proofread.  This was before proofreading tools such as Grammarly existed. 

A handful of these self-published authors solicited massive numbers of people, via email, to buy a copy of their print-on-demand books.  I got suckered in by two such emails in the early 2000s.  The idea of indie authors was a new and exciting thing, so I remember being eager to try their books.  After reading each one, I had regrets about supporting those authors in any way, shape, or form.  They were truly awful.  If that had been my sole experience with self-published authors, it would have left a very bad impression—and it did, for many people.

However, extraordinary innovations were happening on the digital frontiers of online serialization, fanfic, and podcast novels.

Creative hubs formed online.  If you sought free fiction that was more accessible, and fresher, than anything at your local library, then you would find sites such as FanFiction, ElfWood, DeviantArt, and LiveJournal.  These sites and their ilk were less popular, and perhaps less reputable, than today’s Tumblr, YouTube, Medium, and Wattpad.  However, they were the precursors to today’s biggest hubs of amateur and experimental fiction content offered for free. 

As far as I knew at the time, there was only one site where podcast novels were gathered and showcased.  I visited Podiobooks on a regular basis. 

I was skeptical, at first.  There were a bunch of authors on Podiobooks whom I had never heard of, and not a single big-name author or best-seller.  So why did I go there?  The answer is simple.  I ran out of audiobooks that I wanted to listen to, and I craved more.  I had upgraded to MP3s sometime before the year 2000, and I found audiobooks on cassette tapes or even CDs to be old-fashioned and unwieldy, not to mention expensive.  I subscribed to Audible around 2002, but all they had at the time were major best-sellers and classics, nothing edgy or new.  And I had a day job which involved 8 to 10 hours of animation artwork per day.  I needed audio-only entertainment, and I needed lots of it.

Nor was I the only digital artist who listened to audiobooks all day, every day.  Several of my coworkers and friends were almost as obsessed with audiobooks as I was.  I can’t remember if one of them introduced me to Podiobooks, or if it was the other way around.  One way or another, a bunch of us became fans of the site.

Sure, some of those random podcast novels were terrible.  But they were free—unlike print-on-demand books.  They were episodic, too.  If you listened to the first episode, you could pretty much tell whether it was worth listening further.  The site incorporated fan votes, much like Wattpad does now.  The most popular books ranked high and were the most visible.

That was how I discovered Scott Sigler, the first indie author whom I became a fan of.  His works dominated the sci-fi category of Podiobooks.  When I ran out of Sigler books to listen to, I tried just about every other book on the site, hoping to find another author like him.  And I did find a few other gems which stick in my mind to this day.

The year was 2005.

The way Scott Sigler marketed his books caught my attention, because it was utterly different than anything I had ever seen an author do before.  He thanked his readers by offering stuff.  In the opening of every podcast episode, he recorded a skippable ad which included a coupon discount code for a product which a tech-savvy reader might desire.

10% off a domain name at GoDaddy.  5% off a SquareSpace website.  $50 off Nike shoes.  Sigler respected his audience enough to guess what demographic of people they were.  He recorded his own ads, as well as narrating his own audiobooks.  He did it all in a professional manner, with intro music and high quality audio, which was edited and produced by a team of people, whom he credited. 

When I listened to Sigler’s podcast novels, I began to understand what might be possible without a traditional publisher.  Sigler gave away every audiobook for free.  Yet somehow, he seemed to be earning enough income to pay a team of friends to help him produce a high quality podcast of his own novels.  Somehow, he had wrangled partnerships with major corporations such as GoDaddy and Nike.  They were allowing him to advertise for them.

Mind.  Blown.  How was this possible?

I visited his website, and saw that every one of his books was available for sale as a print-on-demand book.  Want to see them on the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble or Borders?  Well, then tell them, silly.  Write to their headquarters.  Oh, and also, you could buy Sigler merchandise.  If you wore a baseball cap or a T-shirt with a logo from one of his books, it was basically a counterculture signal to other fans.  It was sneaky.  And it was fun.

By the year 2006, I openly yearned to become a best-selling author, traditionally published by one of the Big Six.  At the same time, secretly, I also yearned to be like Scott Sigler.  Those two desires were at war within me, and caused a lot of internal confusion and conflict. 

So when Amazon opened its floodgates to everyone and anyone in November 2007, I was paying attention.

This article is part of an ongoing series I’m posting on Wattpad.

Putting the Science in Fiction

I’m stoked to be part of this anthology! It’s wonderful when real life crosses streams with my writing, proving that my job experience in animation counts for more than just having an income (pshaw).

Thanks to Dan Koboldt, the editor who put this together. And thanks to Writer’s Digest Books for taking it to publication and distribution across all major bookstores. Chuck Wendig, who’s been making waves in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, wrote the foreword.

Have you ever wondered how sci-fi screenwriters and authors get their research right? And how many get it wrong? Every article in this book explores a branch of science that is often misrepresented in popular mass media. My article, “CGI is Not Made By Computers,” covers how the human labor component of special effects is often glossed over, or erased, in stories with a virtual reality or video game premise.

Every article I read in here turned out to be fascinating, and I’m honored to be included with so many engineers, physicians, and scientists.

“Putting the Science in Fiction” will be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Writer’s Digest Store, and other major retailers starting Tuesday.

Short Fiction “Across an Aeon” — Futuristica Anthology

I’m pleased to have a short science fiction story featured in Futuristica vol II, just published in May 2017 by Metasagas Press. “Across an Aeon” is about a woman who breaks laws to take a one-way trip to the far distant future in search of her missing husband and daughter. There she finds the unexpected and intertwined fates of humankind, the planet Earth, and what happened to the people she loves.

I’m really proud of this story. I think it’s one of my best short fiction pieces.

Time Travel Fiction

For some deeply buried psychological reason, I keep exploring time travel in my short fiction, although I avoid that can of worms in my novels. My previous short stories about time travel are freely available on Twilight Times and Escape Pod.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Chester Hoster and Katy Stauber at Metasagas Press for their work in editing and publishing the Futuristica anthologies. I really appreciate their generosity with contributor’s copies, and their dedication to communicating with the authors and staying professional in every respect. Shout-out to Zach Chapman, whose story about gaming and VR also appears in this anthology. I’m looking forward to reading it. And the rest of them!

© 2024 Abby Goldsmith DBA Fiery Press