Frequently Asked Questions
I’m afraid I’m not in a position to enter into any kind of individual correspondence with readers: however, feel free to contact me for business, review or promotional queries using 'Contact' details in the footer. Answers to any recurrent questions will be posted here.
Why is this called Season One?
No Gods or Kings is a pretty lengthy story, and I wasn’t keen on releasing it as a part of a fifty-part series of novels: Amazon seems littered with those anyway. However, grouping it into single novels meant I was looking at lengths that were pretty daunting: each one would be 2500 pages in paperback form at least.
Given the growing social trend for consuming episodic material in binges, I decided to try releasing No Gods or Kings in ‘Seasons’ and ‘Episodes’. Kind of like any HBO boxset you care to name - or like the new trend for serialised video games pioneered by companies like Telltale - this means that people can either follow it as it comes out, or just buy it in one go and binge on it.
As a welcome side-effect, it does mean that the story itself is actually published a little bit like a comic book: first you get your regular single issues, and they eventually comprise the collected edition of the first story arc of single issues, and then you get the next volume being released in singles, and so on…..
How many seasons are there going to be?
The initial plan is to have three seasons, each of roughly the same length.
How many episodes are in each season?
For season one, it’s definitely nine episodes and each is around the same size. For the next few seasons, I still don’t know….
Wait, does that mean you’re making it up as you go along?
Far from it: I know exactly what happens and have mapped out the arc of the whole story. I just haven’t got it down in fine detail yet. In fact, I’m writing all the episodes in parallel, dipping from one scene to the next as the mood takes me. You may be interested to know that all the ‘Interludes’ that end the episodes are already written, as are several scenes for each individual installment including - yes, really - the final scene of Episode Nine.
How often will episodes be released?
The plan was originally to release an episode every three or four months or so. However, that has now slipped to a roughly six-monthly time-frame. I appreciate it can be frustrating, but I’m not willing to sacrifice quality for making these deadlines. Keep in mind that - for now - No Gods or Kings is not the income stream that’s putting food on my table: I have a full-time job in addition to this project, and life can unexpectedly get in the way.
Will there be any kind of season pass?
Good question, and the answer is no. There are a few reasons for this: I don’t know how to do this using Kindle Direct Publishing, and the individual episodes are also priced very cheaply at less than a dollar.
Is the price always going to be a dollar? And what about later episodes?
The plan is to always release every single episode for 99 cents (or 99 pence in the UK), and that price will never go up.
You say that: what’s up with the increasing prices on the physical paperback versions?
That is a very good question. The paperbacks are produced by KDP, who allow me to offer physical versions for readers who prefer that. The production costs are set by Amazon, and I have no say in that. As such, they vary depending exclusively on the length of the book. Amazon then lets me choose a price that has to be above their minimum cost (a combination of production and their cut) and I always set the USD price as being a 50 cent increment above that. In other words, if they say I have to charge over $5.59, then I charge $5.99.
This basically means that I get even smaller royalties on physical copies sold than I do for electronic versions! Nonetheless, I do feel like the physical version is the best reading experience to go for, and have tried to to make the unique style of the physical formatting and cover worth your money. So please buy and share!
How long is an episode?
Well, Episode One is 207 pages long as a paperback. You can expect all the episodes to be roughly around that size, give or take: the second episode dips slightly lower to 177 pages, but since then it’s been rising steadily to Episode Three at 233 pages and Episode Four at 297.
Where did the title come from?
It’s a quote from the videogame ‘Bioshock’. In the opening scene, the protagonist climbs into a lighthouse and finds a statue under a banner saying ‘No gods or kings, only man.’ A lot of fans of the game mistakenly think it’s an Ayn Rand quote: it’s not, but it is a variation of the anarchist French slogan ‘no gods, no masters’ popularised in the late nineteenth century.
Is Thomas Judge your real name?
No. It’s a pseudonym.