Ketchup

Two milestones to start this week, one belated, one as fresh as this morning’s donuts.

First:  Excited about the upcoming release of Valka S Pandemii (better known to you and I as Plague War) in the Czech Republic, I realized I’m over 150,000 books in print worldwide.  With the rise of e-books, this is becoming a less relevant statistic every day, and, yes, I know plenty of writers with, like, eighty million books in print, but it’s still a happy number.

How will publishers of the future gauge their own expectations and pre-release demand?  Beats me.  At the moment, e-books remain less than 10% of total sales, but some experts predict they’ll skyrocket to 50% in five years.  Others are less sure.  I’ve heard estimates ranging from 20% in ten years to TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION WITH THE MAYAN APOCALYPSE IN 2012!!!  That last prediction is from the hardcore e-reader proponents, of course.  The one thing for certain is that e-books are here to stay and will grow in market share.

Second, Adad Warda’s book trailer for the Plague Year novels hit 30,000 views on YouTube this weekend.  Combined with views from other sites and players, this short film has received more than 40,000 hits, which is amazing and especially gratifying since we put it together for $300 out of pocket.

You can relive the magic right here:

In other news, apropos of nothing, I’ve finally gotten around to posting two segments of my appearance on “Good Day Sacramento” in December for the release of Plague Zone. The hosts of this popular morning show, Cody Stark and Lori White, were great about indulging my sinister plots at Christmastime, especially in the second clip, which can only be called “Fun With Nuclear Waste.” Enjoy!