Villi Asgeirsson

Drafting ideas...

black sand

Free. Worthless or priceless?

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It is the end of winter, summer is coming. The weather today is nice, I drove home from work with the top open. One of the simple pleasures in my life. Driving with the warm wind in my hair.

Summer is when people read books. They lie on sunbeds on beaches, besides swimming pools in foreign countries or in their own back yard or on their balcony. It is a time to relax, disappear into other worlds, enjoy that we get this time on earth.

I think everyone that has followed me and my writing for any amount of time will understand that I’m not in this for the money. While I appreciate every single reader and absolutely love seeing positive reviews, I have a day job that provides a salary. Writing novels is a passion. Sometimes frustration, but always passion.

Recent years have been strange, with a pandemic, inflation and geopolitical unrest. We should be nice, we should help each other where we can. And I can give my books away for free. I have a job and don’t need the royalties, but I love the feedback.

It is with this in mind that I decided to give my books away for free this summer. Until the end of August, you will get a coupon code when subscribing to the newsletter. The books in question are the three novels in the original English language and the Icelandic translation of Under the Black Sand, which I translated myself. All eBooks, obviously.

Some say giving away your work for free makes it worthless. I’m not sure I agree with that. A lot of things seem to have less value than they used to. We subscribe to streaming services, making all the world’s music available to us. I remember a time when aquiring an album was an undertaking. You had to save up for it, and that was what you had. You couldn’t listen to an artist’s whole catalogue. Just that album. Movies, a similar story. We stream them whenever we want to.

Doesn’t make them worthless. A good album is a good album, even if you don’t pay much for it. A novel you got for free is no less entertaining than if you’d been charged a good sum of money for it.

Giving my books away for free does not make them worthless, but your feedback and review after you’ve read them is priceless. As is your act of subscribing to the newsletter.

Let me know if you’ve read any of my novels and what you thought. And most of all…

Have a lovely summer!

You can find more information on the newsletter here.

Translations? How? Why?

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I’m sure you are all aware that I’m not a traditionally published author with million sales to my name. I write when I can and when I feel like it, I sell a handful of books a year, probably not enough to go grocery shopping… once. But you write because you want to. Because you feel you have something to say. Because there are characters in your head that want to get out and do things. Not because you want to be rich and famous. There are better ways to achieve that.

Difference between writing novels and… say… making music, is that the consumer needs to be able to read the language you write in. My chosen language in English, a language understood by a pretty big chunk of humans. But not everyone can read English, or read it comfortably. That’s where translations come in.

The first translation of any of my novels was my own. I translated Under the Black Sand into Icelandic. It seemed like an obvious project to undertake. The story is set in Iceland, it is my native language and there are certain things about the Icelandic reality that sound better in Icelandic.

I left it at that. Didn’t feel like translating my other novels to Icelandic and while I speak Dutch fluently, I don’t feel confident enough to write in the language. I have a very basic understanding of German and Spanish, but no way near enough to write a short story, let alone a novel.

A few years ago, I uploaded my first two novels to Babelcube. It’s a hub service where authors hook up with translators. No money changes hands, but you share the royalties. Sounded like an interesting thing to experiment with. There have been a couple of failures, translations not completed, either because the translator stopped communicating, or – as happened in one instance – the translator decided she didn’t like my book enough after diving into it. No worries, can happen.

For whatever reason, Blood and Rain has been the biggest taker. It has now been translated into Portuguese, Italian and German by three different translators. I am obviously grateful and honoured that they took the time and effort. As for sales… I’m not famous. Sales are low, but they’re there. I’m writing to get ideas out. They are mostly translating to hone their skills. It’s all good.

As I was updating the website just now, I noticed one of the translations, Sangue e Chuva or the Portuguese version of Blood and Rain had received a four star rating on Amazon. No review, but somebody bought it, read it and liked it. That’s awesome!

Because here’s the thing. I have no way of knowing if the translation is good or not. I can ensure the original version is as good as it can be, but a translation to a language I have no grasp on is something I have no power over. I don’t have friends that speak all languages and can check the text. I have to trust that the translators are doing their best.

There have been times when I thought about removing the books from Babelcube, even removing the original books from vendors. But then I see this. A four star rating for a translation, a five star rating for the original, very positive reviews when Mont Noir came out last year. Why would I stop?

Even if not many are reading the novels, there are a few and if I managed to make their lives a little bit better, more enjoyable or interesting, if I touched them in any way, then it’s all worth it.

A list of all translations can be found here.

Paperback Writer – how to get them?

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Late in 2022, I “remastered” my two existing novels, Under the Black Sand, and Blood and Rain. I made slight changes to the contents and redesigned the books. The cover of Black Sand is now completely different. Blood and Rain is now available in a hardcover for the first time. Both paperbacks are now larger, a digest format rather than a pocketbook.

I haven’t revisited my catalogue like this before, but then I’m not sure if two books can be called a catalogue. Now that Mont Noir is coming and we have three books, maybe we can speak of a small catalogue.

It’s all nice and fluffy to read eBooks, but what if you want physical books? That’s possible now. You can go to Lulu and get them, but if you subscribe to the newsletter, you can reply to it and state what you’re interested in.

Books I sell directly cost less and are autographed.

I do have a limited stock of hardcover books that retail for €25 plus shipping, but the paperbacks seem to be most people’s favourites. Therefore I’m creating bundles of those.

Any paperback is €15
Get two for €25
Get all three for €30

That last offer is as close to cost price as can be.

I have calculated shipping at:
Netherlands: €5
EU €15
UK €20
Iceland €25
USA + rest €30

All the shipping prices are for packages up to 2kg, so you’ll just pay that once.

Obviously, if you are close to me, I’ll be happy to bring them.

Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter and you’ll be able to get any of these deals.

End of Year Sale!

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My eBooks are distributed through Smashwords. It takes the work out of having to individually publish them on the multiple platforms. Only Amazon and the physical books are published separately.

Smashwords has a end-of-year sale and they offer authors to participate. As I have three books there, I was more than happy to take part.

If you go to my Smashwords profile, you will see Under the Black Sand, Blood and Rain and the Icelandic Undir Svörtum Sandi at 50% discount. This offer is valid from today until the end of the year. They are priced at $1.49, or the corresponding price in your preferred currency.

This is a lovely time to treat yourself to a Nordic Noir with a paranormal touch, a story of a young journalist stuck in the middle of the Spanish Civil War or if you read Icelandic, grab that unique novel that isn’t the same that everyone is reading.

Research and Writing

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This last week, received the hardcover copy of my “remastered” debut novel, Under the Black Sand. Flicked through it. Read chapter one and the beginning of the second chapter.

Thought I’d share this with you. Two paragraphs, but the first one sets the location. One paragraph that explains what kind of a neighbourhood it is.

How can I explain the building period, style of houses, the gardens and how the streets are not straight? I’ve been there but merely describing what I saw would be boring. Instead, I read a thesis by a university student on the designing of this part of the city. An Icelandic man went to Copenhagen in the first years of the 20th century to study medicine, but his passion was city planning. He later abandoned his profession as a doctor to design this part of the city. Taking into account, where the sun was in the sky at different times of the year, what the prevailing wind directions were, he designed a neighbourhood that would be pleasant to live in.

I can’t remember how long the thesis was, but it was tens of pages and I read it from start to finish. Translated into one paragraph in the novel. Was it a waste of time? Should I have included more of what I learned? I don’t think so. Putting in too much technical detail will distract from the story, not having a thorough understanding of the subject you’re writing about, will make your story sound hollow.

Never underestimate research. It’s one of the most fun parts of writing, it expands your understanding of the world and makes your writing more believable.

A Book and a Cover

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We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we do. If it looks bad, nobody will give it a chance. If the cover doesn’t say anything about the story, it leaves the potential reader confused. I have tried to have a professional designer create a cover for one of my novels. It didn’t work. I wasn’t happy with the results. Granted, it was a low budget job, but the problem was that they didn’t understand the project like I did. Perfectly understandable, as I wrote the thing. I’m sure big name authors have larger budgets, the designers probably read the manuscripts and have physical meetings with the author and publisher, but that isn’t realistic when you’re self-publishing.

So, I create my own.

When I designed the original cover for Under the Black Sand, I used stills from the short film that inspired the novel. I suppose it was part loyalty and part convience. I loved the actors, they did a great job and I wanted them to be… immortalised? On the cover? And they were the characters. I imagined them as I wrote the story. Also, the typeface is the same as the one I used in the film.

At the beginning of November, I put the finishing touches to Mont Noir and finalised the cover. As I was working on that, I opened the Blood and Rain design next to it. They do partially follow the same characters and I wanted them to have a visual connection. Since I was busy anyway, I opened the Black Sand cover. It didn’t work for me. I guess too much time has passed, the short film is decades in the past and I felt the cover didn’t do the story justice. Obviously, no slight on the actors, they are still awesome, but the story had grown beyond the short film. (If this thing ever gets filmed, they will still be my first choice.)

That’s when I got a designer to create a new one. As I mentioned, it didn’t work. I tried it myself. Grabbed a photo I’d shot in the Icelandic highlands last summer and worked with that. It received positive feedback, so I decided to republish the book.

The Under the Black Sand cover shows a desolate road in Iceland. You see a car and something that appears to be a ghost. The cover depicts a core scene in the book, shows where it all goes wrong. It is just one scene, but it reverberates throughout the story. The old cover crammed at least three scenes in and it was cluttered. This is more clean and hopefully does the story more justice.

As I was writing Blood and Rain, I experimented with different designs. It was always going to be red and black, the anarchist colours. Oh, I actually started with a 1950s style 5 cent paperback design, but it’s a 1930s story and I think most books back then were some kind of canvas designs. Back to red and black. I had a full body female silhouette with a gun, but it was too James Bond. Settled on a face. The diagonal line is the anarchist flag. The typeface from the 1950s design survived, as I used a kind of Film Noir type. The pattern coming out of her eye represents that even if she isn’t the protagonist, everything that happens radiates from her.

Blood and Rain

Mont Noir is just around the corner. It follows some of the same characters. Anarchism has been abandoned by most of them, at least in their daily life, so the red colour is gone. Instead, we have the blue of the Dutch skies and water. You see the plane and the danger. Interestingly, the typeface I chose for Blood and Rain is more pronounced here, as the title of the book uses it.

Lastly, and this is kind of a bonus feature, I published a book of poetry and odd bits in 2018. I had seven copies printed and have given away two of them. I will never have more printed and may or may not give more away. Some of the poetry are song lyrics I wrote while playing with the guitar. I never recorded any of them and they are forgotten, but the words remain. Silent songs, a book that nobody will read. A very personal work. Book of Silence. The cover represents this, as it is me, in relative darkness, facing away.

Book of Silence

Designing covers is something I love doing. As I’m working on a story, they are a great distraction when I don’t feel like writing but want to be close to the project. If I had a large budget, I would probably get someone more skilled to design them, but I would always be very involved.