We've got the new trailer for THE WORLD'S END, hot pics of Megan Fox in TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, and a sneak-peek at the Disney/Marvel crossover flick BIG HERO 6. Also, Rowdy Roddy Piper! Bubble gum! Ass-kicking!

Leave a comment on the YouTube bit. That gooses something in the YouTube maths, so try it for me and see if it gets the show some promo. 

You guys! You guys! Check out his new PACIFIC RIM trailer. Who else is going to see this giant monster spectacular on opening night?

Ray Harryhausen passed away today. If you don't know that name, he was a filmmaker who pioneered the use of stop-action animation and made some of the greatest monster flicks ever seen. His SINBAD movies and JASON & THE ARGONAUTS inspired me to build Lego monsters and create my own stories at a very early age. And, of course, his CLASH OF THE TITANS from 1981 stands alone as a classic piece of special effects awesomeness.

I watched his movies over and over. As a kid who loved creatures and monsters, there was none higher than Harryhausen. Without a doubt, you wouldn't have seen the creatures of the INFECTED series without him, nor would you have probably seen the well-developed and truly alien species of the GFL series. He set my imagination aflame.

The first story I ever wrote, "Tentacles, Tentacles and More Tentacles," was, in my young mind, a Harryhausen monster begging to be brought to life.

It hits hard when heroes die. I raise a glass to one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

Back in March, Scott visited Google in New York City to be part of the "Talks @ Google" series of author interviews.  

Google NYC is awesome. Our host Jeffrey Kohl is awesome. It was a grand 'ol time, as Sigler would say. 

The teaser for the talk:
"As traditional publishing models began to shift and change, Scott leveraged some new techniques and new technologies to successfully navigate the traditional system.  As the whole system changes again with advancing tech and more direct-to-consumer outreach thanks to social media, the successful content creator (like Scott) must embrace new technologies and still understand the successes of the traditional methods, and use both."

It's a little less than an hour long, and Scott and Jeffrey talk all over the Siglerverse map, including the Junkies, the NOCTURNAL television show, the future of Dark Øverlord Media, and more! Enjoy!

Way back in the long-ago time of 2009, I did a keynote presentation at Balticon titled "The Future of Content Delivery." I covered a lot of ground in the burgeoning eBook/podcast/self-pub/freemium areas, including a breakdown of the pre-order system ARealGirl and I used to sell over 1,000 hardcover copies of THE ROOKIE in the first week, sans any help from publishers, media coverage, PR or advertising. 

If you want to listen to the presentation, click here. You can skip past my bombastic intro and listen to just the presentation by forwarding to the 5:00 mark. It's got some naughty language, so be warned. It covers a lot of ground, some of which is still useful to aspring authors contemplating if they should pursue a traditional book deal or strike off on their own. I get to the eReader and eBook analysis at about 35:00. 

A focus of that speech, however, was how eBooks offered a way for aspiring authors to reach the masses, and how cell phones were going to become the dominant consumption device for reading digital content. This was in the heyday of the Kindle 2 launch, when Amazon was really ramping up efforts to change the game. Change the game it did, sure, but at that time I was convinced that consumption on eBook-only devices would soon be dwarfed by people reading on smart phones and other smart devices. I predicted that while Kindle sales were huge, the numbers sold were statistically insignificant to the sales of smart phones, and that the day of the dedicated eBook readers would soon pass.

So let it be written, so let it be done! At least that's what app maker Flurry states in a recent study. I found this info through Junkie Gmork (Carmen Wellman), who saw it in this Activity Press article. 

According to mobile app researcher Flurry, almost 90% of time spent reading eBooks, globally, is done using smartphones, not tablets, and not dedicated eReaders. Flurry's study beaks it down to small phones, large phones, "phablets" (my new favorite word), small tablets and large tablets.

So, Kindles, Nooks and Kobos are great. Tablets? Also great. Kindle Fire and Nook tablets? Even greater. But, still, the amount of eBooks read on all of the above pales in comparison to the amount read on smart phones. 

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
People carry smart phones around with them 24/7. More and more of these people are discovering they can read eBooks on the devices they already use for dozens of other purposes, that they constantly have at their fingertips. Right this very moment, there are over 1 billion smart devices out there (phones and tablets). It means there is a huge, as-yet-untapped market for eBooks, where the reader doesn't need to buy anything new other than the book itself. 

In other words: there are millions of potential customers who can enter the market at a price of "free" to about five bucks. People buy smart phones for many reasons, then later understand their fancy device gives them this cool eBook thing. 

This is for a market segment (eBooks) where some experts say a 41% increase in annual eBook sales is a "growth slowdown." 

But, does this massive increase in "digital consumption real estate" (I'll coin that phrase, thank you very much) mean anything for the indie writer? Absolutely. Blogger David Gaughran's analysis states that indie publishers have 30% of the top-selling Amazon eBooks. That is staggering to me. Sure, you can expect a few home-run hitters like Hugh Howey or Amanda Hocking, but for 30% of the top eBooks sold to be indie titles?  Gaughran goes on to estimate that indie writers have captured 25% of all of Amazon's ebook sales. And Amazon? That's a big-ass store right there. A quarter of that is lot of sales. 

I AM CHERRY PICKING
This is just one study. I haven't done serious legwork to see if other studies support or contradict these findings, nor have I looked into the methodology (not that I am an expert in such matters, to say the least). This Publishers Weekly article only talks about dedicated eReaders and multi-use tablets: it doesn't mention phones at all. Which is weird.   

CAN'T FIND THE SLIDE DECK
A bummer, was kind of nice to see these stats and the fancy pictures I put together. But hell, this preso is four years old, which is equal to eight lifetimes in the tech world. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Are we going to see more indie eBook successes, or will Big Publishing catch up to what's going on and commandeer the market? Are you frightened that eBook sales improved "only" 41% from 2012? Will we get a second season of FIREFLY?  

You may have heard that some peeps are trying to turn my novel NOCTURNAL into a series. Yesterday I finished the "series bible." From Wikipeida, a series bible is "a reference document used for information on a series' characters, settings, and other elements."

This bible outlines the first season, which is projected at twelve episodes. It contains a one-page write-up on each episode, character write-ups and other information that a showrunner would use to make the series a reality. It also contains the pilot script (which I consulted on but did not write, and is awesome), and hopefully some new art.

This is just the first complete draft of the document. The series writers and the producer are reviewing it now; there will be substantial edits in the future. So, while it's "finished," it will probably never be "done."

In effect, the bible for NOCTURNAL is primarily a sales tool. When the producer pitches networks, he can use the bible to show there is a clear vision for the show: characters, plot arcs, settings, background, etc. And not just for the first season, mind you, as we've mapped out the plots of seasons two through five. The bible is a way of saying to the potential buyers: "You're not just buying a log-line and a partial script, we've done the work to make sure you're going to have a cohesive, consistent product that has a logical and satisfying season finale." Considering how expensive it will be to shoot this series, network execs are going to want to see that there is a clear vision.

In that way, a NOCTURNAL series is much closer to DEXTER than, say, LOST. Meaning, we know exactly how the last episode will tie up all the plot threads before a single frame of the first episode is ever shot. At this point, at least, we know exactly where the story is going and the main points that will be in each episode. There are significant differences from the book; those differences are also mapped out in the bible.  

Hoo-boy, this was a lot of work. It's 47 pages long. It happened to hit right when I was writing PANDEMIC, was doing a short story for a Charlaine Harris-edited anthology (she wrote the Sookie Stackhouse novels upon which TRUE BLOOD is based), another short story for an anthology edited by Daniel H. Wilson (author of ROBOPOCALYPSE), audiobook recording for BONES ARE WHITE, moving to a new office, and a bunch of other cats that ARealGirl is trying to keep in a tidy herd.

This is my second series bible. I wrote my first back in 2005 for EARTHCORE. Yes, that's right, I wrote a full single-season bible for a 22-episodes adaptation of my first book. I called it up just now to look at it for the purposes of writing this post. Last modified date: 12-21-05. Holy shit. It's been a decade since I wrote it. Looking at it now, I think it's pretty bad-ass. It's probably a good thing to have in the back pocket on the off chance that NOCTURNAL gets made, and on the off-er chance the series does well.

I gave the EARTHCORE series bible to my last three film agents. They all said they wanted it, I don't think a single one of them read it. That's a good lesson to learn: get your content to the movers and shakers that ask for it, absolutely, but temper your expectations: 99.9% of the time, not a damn thing is going to actually happen. But, you keep firing away for that .1% of the time when something might happen. 

Will something happen with NOCTURNAL? There's no way of knowing. The series bible brings us one step closer. We've got a great team, I think we've got a great product, and it seems that we're pitching it at an appropriate time in the entertainment world. There is a lot of scifi and paranormal fantasy out there right now, and a lot of it is doing well. So, that part helps. Only "helps," though, because this all comes down to the basics: will it be a compelling drama on television, and will a network look at it and think "hey, people will love this and we will turn a profit."

It's a business, folks. Let's hope NOCTURNAL makes business sense to the people who can write checks. 

All right, Junkies, it's time to vote! After the debacle that was the last T-shirt contest, we've decided that all future votes (this one included) must be done in the comments, and by people that have a user profile. So if you haven't signed in already, do so (or create a profile), and put in your vote.

In your comment, put "I vote black!" or "I vote orange!"

There are no options but these, so while we appreciate comments like "how about crushed-velvet tie-dye with silver sprinkles," we will be ignoring any such suggestions. These shirt designs were created by in-house artist Scott "BigFish" Pond. 

EDITED TO ADD: I feel terrible that I didn't mention this originally, but the idea for these shirts came from our own Belladonna420. She made a cool graphic for her Facebook page, and we totally stole it. And then I *really* stole it by not mentioning her in this post! Anyhow, I'm sorry for the oversight. THANKS BELLA!

Also based on our last experience, we reserve the right to choose ourselves if this thing goes off the rails. I don't know how it would, or could, with voting in the comments, but you clever people always surprise me. 

Have at it Junkies!

UPDATE on April 20th: 

Okay, it looks like black wins the day here. But, since I love you people, here's what we're going to do: If you mustmustmust have an orange tee, I'll be doing a pre-order-only run on those. That means that next week I'll put up the item for sale, leave it up for a few weeks, then order whatever tees have been purchased after the few weeks are up.

You'll have to wait longer than normal to get your tee (the few weeks of the pre-order, then the two weeks to get them delivered plus a few days for me to send them to you) but you'll have a limited edition orange KEEP CALM and RUN THE PLAYS THAT I CALL tee of your very own. 

Keep your eyes on this site, pre-order will open next week when we put up the new tees up for sale.

This April, ARealGirl and I have been doing a lot of back-end (awww yeah) work that y'all don't see. We've called this "Get Shit Done Month." We're cleaning up delayed projects and getting squared away for creating brand-new fiction (and if you ask about MT. FITZROY, I will fart in your general direction). 

One of the projects has been addressing the overwhelming demands of our website and social media. We've revised our social media activities over the past eight years, but as time marches on and things change you have to be flexible and adjust. Since many of you are creators, authors, or just curious about how such things work, I thought I'd share what we're doing on the social tubes. 

MY WEBSITE:
This website is its own social media presence: we've got registered users and an active community. The site has gone through many changes since 2005. We started out with a simple site with five static pages, then a Drupal site created by Pulsar and Robbie Trencheny, then moved to a custom site created by BackMyBook.com. We've grown beyond what BackMyBook can do for the front-end part, so we're moving to a custom WordPress site. We're still using BackMyBook's eCommerce suite, though, because it's a great solution for us. 

One of the biggest issues is spam. We're getting hammered. We hope the open-source community of WordPress and the community spam-killing tools will help reduce the amount of hours we put into manually controlling that digital cancer.

So, in the next few months look for more changes here. We're going to improve the layout and, hopefully, make all of our functionality work like a charm.

FACEBOOK:
When I started using Facebook in 2005-ish, it was primarily to promote my books and interact with the Junkies. Yes, I had a bunch of personal friends on there, but I do not have 5,000+ personal friends. A few years back, I reached Facebook's 5k friend limit and couldn't add anymore friends. So, we made a "fan page." That worked well for years, but it always annoyed me that I had to post the same content in two places: first to my personal page to share with the fans who had followed me there, then on the fan page to share with everyone else. 

The second problem was the URL. I made my personal page facebook.com/scottsigler years ago, as soon as that option came available. But, I wanted the fan page to have that address, and I could not because it was already used. So the fan page was /scottsiglerpage, which I hated. I wanted facebook.com/scottsigler so I'd have one easy place to send new fans, where they could follow (which they could not on the maxed-out 5k+ personal page). 

Earlier this year, peeps at my publisher, Crown, were able to chat directly with Facebook and ask them to combine the two pages. Presto-change-o, we merged the two pages and I got to put the /scottsigler on the fan page. Problem solved, suckas! 

There's still an issue that my personal page has 5k+ followers. The duplicates were supposed to be purged out in the merge, but that part didn't work and Facebook couldn't fix it. I'll work on that later in the month, possibly even shut down my personal page and make a brand new one. I don't want to miss what Junkies are saying to me because I don't use the personal page. 

So, can do you, author or creator, learn from my experience with Facebook?
Make a fan page. Make that page's URL end in your brand. DO NOT MAKE IT THE NAME OF YOUR BOOK OR ALBUM OR PRODUCT! You are going to make more stuff after that product. Make your Facebook page end in /yourname, where "your name" is the name that will go on the cover of future products. 

TWITTER:
Twitter is a great tool for creatives. It's a solid way to stay in front of some of your core fans, or to disseminate info about new product releases, news coverage, etc. The most important function, however, is the same function it serves for most users: a way to share your thoughts and what's going on in your life. 

There are hundreds of "Top Ten Secrets to Using Twitter To Make Bank" posts out there, so I'm not going to get into any of that. I'll tell you what I'm doing with it lately. 

Once upon a time, circa 2005-2008 or so, if someone followed me on Twitter, I followed them back. I tried the "auto-follow" approach, with a canned message that would say "Nice to Tweet you!" It was fun for awhile, but around 2008 or so I realized I was following a lot of spam accounts. I turned off the auto-follow and have been purging ever since. When I started this purge, I was following about 12,000 accounts, many of which were inactive and/or spam. Ugh. That's a freakin' mess and it's taken awhile to clean it up. 

The Great Unfollow of 2013
Right now I'm using justunfollow.com's free service to manage this. You can purge about 25 users a day from your lists for free, or upgrade to a paid service and nuke 'em all from orbit (just to be sure). 

• Unfollow those that aren't following me: I'm doing quite a bit of this. I still follow 6,000+ people, so there's a ton of action in my Twitter feed. But, if someone has soured on my constant tweets about poop, pee, Twinkies and the Detroit Lions, and has unfollowed me, I'm probably going to unfollow them. Twiter is about finding like-minded people, and/or following persons of interest. If we're not like-minded, I have enough going in without seeing your tweets. 

• Inactive accounts: Because I am still following so many people, this is another way to reduce the number of people I am following. If you've been inactive for three months, I probably already unfollowed you. It's nothing personal, it's just business ...

• People with political views I do not agree with: That does not get you unfollowed. I'm an atheist, but if people I follow like to tweet about their love for God and Christianity that's not a reason for me to unfollow. I'm also pretty moderate, which means the one-sided myopic views of the ultra-left or ultra-right often rub me the wrong way. Still, I usually don't unfollow unless the user (from either side) is spewing illogical hatred on a regular basis. I encourage and embrace differeing opinions, but life is too short for people who are too far gone to consider the other's sides viewpoint. 

• BUT: Douchebags, assholes and fuck-tards: Yes, if you are an unmitigated ass-hat, I aint got time for that. Straight-up hatred, mysoginy, racism or wishes/promises of violence make for an easy unfollow. 

TWITTER CONTINUED: BIGGER IS BETTER ... RIGHT?
As an author, I used to get caught up in the "higher Twitter numbers are good I MUST GET MORE!" mentality. As a rule of thumb, the higher your numbers, the better, but if you don't have hundreds of thousands of followers it's not a problem. It won't hurt your sales. And having 100,000+ probably won't increase your sales all that much: people get hundreds of thousands of followers because they sell hundreds of thousands of books ... people don't sell hundreds of thousands of books because they have hundreds of thousands of followers. Get me? Below are a few guidelines on how to not get angsty about your "poor" Twitter showing: 

How to spot the fakers, and use them to learn that big numbers don't result in big sales:

• Are they adding a consistent number of people every day? Go to twittercounter.com and check it out. If they add, say, 36 followers every day for two weeks straight, that means they probably paid for a service that added followers for them. There's nothing wrong with that practice, but it's good to know so you don't get angsty that you're doing something "wrong" because you're comparing your following to theirs. 

• They have 200,000 followers, and are following 199,500: If the following/follower numbers are very close, and very high, it's probably because they are auto-soliciting other Twitter users that have the primary goal of just growing numbers. You follow me, I follow you. That doesn't help sell books. It's a fun game, sure, but if you see people with these kind of numbers don't spend a lot of time worrying about how they market their products. 

• Sometimes that author you've never heard of has a huge following because they are legit. It's true! There are a lot of authors who are kicking ass, and they don't require your awareness to be successful. They sell a ton of books and have a ton of followers. These are good people to follow and watch. How do they interact on Twitter? How are they marketing? There are people out there who did it naturally from whom you can learn a great deal.

• I've never heard of this woman: how can she have 250,000 followers? If an author you've never heard of has 200,000+ followers, odds are they are using a service for that (or they've been tapped as "recommended" by the Twitter staff), and also that they are very much full of shit. That's not everyone with big numbers, mind you, but Twitter is easy to game and if you want to shell out some bucks and/or auto-follow people whose only goal is to get more followers. So if you see an unknown author (at least unknown to you) with giant-ass numbers, and you want to know if you're missing out on someone who could have great business practices to emulate, check out http://fakers.statuspeople.com/. Sometimes it's easy to see that that user is implementing a "bot follower" service. 

Here's an example. I often look up authors with high numbers of Twitter followers and follow them, looking to see what I'm missing, what kind of different things I can do to find new fans, etc. I found the user in the image below who has 386,000+ followers. Wow, right? Then I checked on StatusPeople to see if those followers were legit. The image below shows that I probably don't need to be watching this person at all: 

GOOGLE+
I love G+. I think it's an excellent way to interact and share. We're not doing much here other than just sharing the same things I share on Facebook and Twitter; we just don't have time to exploit any unique features. 

If you're a creator, you need to be on G+. It reminds me very much of Facebook back in Facebook's early days: it didn't do all that much, but there was this feeling that it was going to topple the 800-pound gorilla known as MySpace. G+ isn't going anywhere. It will continue to develop, so get your page up and get in the habbit of using it to share with people who prefer that service.

THE SOCIAL WEBS!
There's a few more things we're doing, but those are the primary areas with which we spend time. And come May, Junkies, I could give a crap about all of that stuff, because it will be time to write new stuff! If you're a creator, your real fan base comes from creating things, so don't get too caught up in the Social Webs. 

Mickey Mouse tells LucasArts "You're fired!", Zoe Saldana gets her Kermit on for Guardians of the Galaxy, and a new movie gives everyone in America a 12-hour license to kill. 

This episode brought to you by the GoDaddy code scott295, which gives you a new domain for just $2.95. See more deals at our GoDaddy code page.

PANDEMIC's publishing date has been pushed back, Junkies: the new release date is Jan. 21, 2014. This is the third and final book in the INFECTED trilogy.

On the third draft of PANDEMIC, I found some issues that weren't up to the quality of plot/science/logic that you as a reader have come to expect — those things had to be fixed. I want this book out as bad as you do, but I'm not going to deliver a sub-par story and expect you to pay your hard-earned money for it.

Your time is irreplaceable: I will always treat it with respect and appreciate the fact that you spend it with my stories. This is a deadline-driven business. We have to release books to put food on the table. I can't spend ten years re-writing to get everything just-so, but the final product still has to be as good as I can make it.

I hope PANDEMIC will be worth the additional three months' wait.

Click here for pre-order links.

Well, that was awesome. Honestly awesome.

Hello from the Director of Døøm. On April 1, we sold 1,301 books — in 24 hours. That's 797 copies of THE ROOKIE and 504 copies of THE STARTER in paperback. That's a lot of books, in case you were wondering. 

We're very happy that so many peeps stocked up on copies of these books for their local libraries, their kids' schools, and for their not-yet-Junkie friends and family members. It's wonderful to know that folks enjoy the Galactic Football League series so much that they jumped at the chance to share it. It's humbling and inspiring and cool as all get-out.

WARNING: IT WILL TAKE US A BIT TO SHIP THESE OUT!
I'll be honest, it was also a bit of a surprise; we estimated we'd sell about 400-500 books. Selling more than twice that many changes the game in the best way, but still changes the game. We had to order the additional forty cases of books from our distributor. I placed an order for additional mailers today. It's the best kind of surprise for a company that works everyday to delight our customers.

Due to the huge success of the Ascension Day sale, the timeline for shipping out all orders will probably stretch through April. We've got lots of help at Dark Øverlord South for when all the supplies finally arrive, and we'll move 'em out as fast as we can.

If you ordered, I appreciate your patience while we process these orders and get them sent.

As always, Scott and I thank you for your support. We couldn't do it without you, and wouldn't want it any other way.

It was April 1, 2007 that the FDØ kicked the publishing industry square in the ding-ding. That's the day that ANCESTOR went on sale, a trade paperback from a wee little publisher in Canada. The book hit #1 on Amazon.com's Horror and SciFi charts, and was the #2 fiction book overall (behind a HARRY POTTER book, fer cryin' out loud).

This was before eBooks, mind you. We accomplished this with a $15 paperback, not a free or .99 cent ebook, and for that fear we are quite proud.

Henceforth, April 1 is and always will be Sigler Ascension Day! So on Monday, April 1, we're havin' us a big Ascension Day sale. Just come to scottsigler.com on Monday, April 1, 2013. The sale runs the twenty-four hours of that day, on Pacific Time. We'll plaster this up on the front page.

Are we crazy? YES WE ARE! Monday, April 1, 2013 only, we're selling THE ROOKIE paperbacks for just 41 cents each, plus shipping. 

But wait! Don't order yet!

We're also selling THE ROOKIE and THE STARTER paperback combo for just $4.10 plus shipping.

And for both offers, unlimited copies! What? Did I just say that? I must be innnnn-sannneee!

That's right, unlimited copies. Shipping depends on quantity ordered and on your location. You'll get the shipping price when you order on Monday, April 1, 2013.

We'll be using PayPal, which means you can use your account there or just a straight-up credit card. PayPal helps us dial in cheaper shipping costs for multiple copies, if you're so inclined to order them.

FILL YOUR PERSONAL COLLECTION:
That's right, fill it all up. Why not deck out that bookshelf with paperback glory?

STOCK UP ON GIFTS:
Gift-giving season isn't far away, and neither are birthdays. No one has to know you paid so little for these great books. It's our secret!

FILL UP YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY:
At these prices, a few dollars of your disposable income means great books for the kids in your area. Think of it, Junkie — for a few lousy bucks, you're helping kids discover reading. And for just $50-ish, you could give ten sets of the GFL Books I & II to your local library sytem.

FILL UP YOUR SCHOOL LIBRARY:
Face it, there are some kids that don't want to read Shakespeare or Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for their school reports. That doesn't mean the kids are dumb, it just means they have different interests. Why not give some lads and lasses the opportunity to grab these great paperbacks from their school library? They have a book they can fall in love with, and hence, discover the joy of reading. And you spread Siglerism!