Finally! I’ve posted exactly one metric crud-ton of stuff to read on my site in the last few days. I mean, sure, there’s always the blog. But also! Stories!

Here’s the deal: I posted 16 of them. Except it was really 19, because I made a three-story “omnibus” out of my Marvin tales. I mean, why not?

All of them are available via free download from BookFunnel. These guys are supposed to be good at delivering ebooks in a useful format to the devices readers actually want to use–in my testing it all seemed okay. They even have tech support, which is cool. But please let me know if you run into problems they don’t solve for you!

Each story has a separate page on my site, with a cover image (I definitely like some of those better than others–hey, at least it’s “done” for now) and a description/blurb. And this page lists all the stories, while also giving some idea of the genre for each, which might be helpful. Not everybody reads everything, I’ve been told. I mean, I knew that already, because there’s just no time for it, but I actually have been told this, and I’ve even read it in some books intended to help writers. I don’t know why it had to be said. But it was. So I thought I’d tell you. In case it helps.

Plus! Those of you who get this via email, if you’re reading the email, will see a link to a “members only” download page right here, also with genres, only with the links going directly to BookFunnel rather than to my site: (not actually a link)

What’s the advantage there? Well, maybe if we walk through it this will make sense. (If not, please let me know?)

If someone wants to read a story–or even potentially all the stories, but we’ll assume they’ve picked one to start–when they click the link from my site, they’ll be transferred to BookFunnel. BookFunnel will then ask for an email address, and send a link to the story to that address.

Right after that? Another email should show up, this one from me. With a link to the members-only page, from which the BookFunnel download links have no email address requirement.

Then whoever navigated this maze will be signed up to get future updates from me via email (this is not done covertly, if you were wondering). But! It’s hackable. If they really don’t want the updates, they can unsubscribe right after getting the download page link. The page will still work. It will still be updated in the future. They could bookmark it, if it seems interesting. It’s pretty much up to them. As it should be.

So, what’s my goal? Well, I’d like people to be able to share my stuff with their friends. Anybody who might be interested? I’m not really into the social media gestalt, if there is one, but there are dinguses on the site that purport to help with the sharing. I dunno. Maybe. I mean, I actually might get into Facebook soon. But that day is not today.

If you find a story you like? Well. You could let someone know.

Oh yeah! There are also two novel-length books available from the members-only page. I’m calling ’em that because they’re really just a single longer story. But, anyway, there they are. One of them, the first, is also available as a direct no-email download on my site. And it’s free on all the retailers I’ve been able to reach. Hint: I’d like people to try it. If they like it, well, there’s a link in the back of the book to a free copy of the second one as well. The third one costs money. Probably because I’m mean like that. There are a couple of other books out that are also non-free. If you’re strapped for cash, though? Let me know. I’ve got ya.

But how, you might reasonably ask, is this world domination? Simple: I’m not trying any other method of becoming Emperor of All. So, I mean, if it happens, I’d like to have predicted it. (You’re welcome.)

More stuff on the way. Soon? Well, we’ll see. I was kind of happy to get this part done.

Have fun out there!

The post World domination! Kind of! first appeared on Caveat Lector.

I’ve now re-published five novels, on Amazon and elsewhere…or, anyway, they’re in process on the distributor/retailer side of things. One of them (The Shivers Between, Book I) is free on non-Amazon sites (including mine–courtesy of BookFunnel). So if you haven’t read it, or know someone who might be interested? It’s pretty easy to get.

It’s actually the first half of what used to be called Shiver on the Sky. And it may become free on Amazon as well–that’s a black art I don’t necessarily feel I fully understand. I’ve set the price at $3.99 US at the ‘Zon for the moment, hoping to discourage sales until the price-match if any occurs. Last word from an Amazon person? They’ll get back to me by the end of the day Tuesday. Maybe so. My understanding is that if the price-match is denied I should just try again. And again and again and etc. as needed and eventually one of their folks will give it the nod. Okay. Sounds efficient to me.

Confession: the freebie ends in a total cliffhanger. On the bright side, it also includes a link to get a free download of the second, non-cliffhanger, book in the series. Though it also signs them up to get more stuff from me at the same time. So I figure it’s only semi-evil? We’ll see how folks react. Could be a good thing, or a bad thing, or, you know, maybe nobody will even notice.

Also, if someone signs up and then unsubscribes immediately? No harm, no foul, and in the process they’ll get a link to a “members only” download page (more about that later) that will not only keep working for them…it’ll be updated with more freebies as time goes on. So they can keep checking back for more to read, if they want to. If not, not. It’s all good as far as I’m concerned.

Book descriptions and such are up on my own site. I’ll be including retailer links once they’ve all come in. IOW I’m a little bit lazy and don’t want to mess with it more than once per book. Google Play and Kobo were by far the fastest to make books actually live-and-for-sale, if any of you are interested in such things. Weird Google Play Books issue: their site insisted there was a problem with each and every cover image. Half an hour later, when I did nothing in response, all was magically well. So, okay, doing nothing? That’s in my wheelhouse.

Hey, I want to say this: these sites are all really good and easy to use, these days. Google in particular used to be a semi-nightmare. But aside from that weird non-error, they, Draft2Digital, and Kobo were super-smooth. Amazon’s KDP remains annoying (especially the “feature” of going back to a previous page, losing my work, when I use the backspace key while editing a pricing field), but it doesn’t seem to be any worse. On Smashwords, I’ve only listed the freebie so far. I’ll probably get around to the others. But D2D is so much easier to use that I’m not entirely certain Smashwords will distribute anything farther than their own store for me. Still. I do like the company. So I don’t want to leave them out entirely.

I thought about publishing directly to Apple’s store, since they’ve apparently made that possible for non-Mac users lately. But, nah. I’d have had to install iTunes to create an account. Or at least that’s what it looked like when I spent a few minutes looking this stuff up. And I really didn’t feel like doing that. I’d have to totally wipe all traces off my computer afterward, and what if I “needed” it again for some damn thing later? So Draft2Digital will handle distribution to Apple for me, for now.

Oh yeah! Funny thing. Pagan Sex is still “In Review” at Amazon, more than 24 hours after I submitted it. Ha! I mean, I know the title is ridiculous and off-putting and not as clever as I want it to be. And Amazon says 72 hours is typical. But, typically, in my actual experience, the review process (if any) finishes within a couple of hours. So that’s making me giggle.

(And hey! I just checked: in spite of what I said earlier, that book’s still “publishing” on Kobo, and so is The Blood Between, so my ill-informed but amusing-to-me guess is that title keywords are relevant to these processes. Once upon a time I got annoyed and pulled all my books from Kobo for several months, because they were not only censoring “erotica” but being draconian about anything that might potentially be sneaky hidden erotica…as if authors had some reason to do that in the first place, which was a weird-but-apparently-PC notion that never made sense to me…and they were especially draconian with regard to indie authors…I mean, fine, if that was how they wanted to roll, but I don’t have to like censorship even though I do claim I don’t personally either read or write that kind of book–anyway, it’s interesting to watch what people do…and also to write really long oddly-punctuated sentences from time to time.)

Much more to come. Those of you who get these posts via email will be receiving a link to a members-only free download page. So far it has the above freebie and the second book in the series…I want to get some more stuff ready before I send that out. Short stories, mostly, for now. They’ll only be available via my site–well, my site plus BookFunnel’s for the actual download/transfer. I’m playing with their service as a way to distribute ebooks in various formats to readers who may need help getting them onto various devices. They handle tech support? Kewl. Maybe it’ll work!

Anyway. Have fun out there!

The post Making some progress! first appeared on Caveat Lector.

I gotta ask: any of you ever watch a show called Glee? I did, with my family. All of it. It was sometimes fun, but it certainly took a while to get through. I mean, not that I wanted to do it any faster. But…

Oh yeah. The reason I asked. Because there was this glee club…they called themselves “New Directions.”

Come on. High school kids? Really? And nobody on the show ever said “Nude Erections” instead? Or thought about it? Or complained about the name? Not even once? (“Shut up, Dad!” said my kids….)

Okay, never mind. Maybe it was just me after all. Moving on.

I have some stuff to publish. Some new things. A bunch of old things. Lots of it is going to be on this website. Some of it is going to available on online retailers. ‘Cause, see, some of it will actually be, no-foolin’, exclusive to the site. Like, maybe almost all short stories? I don’t see the point of putting them up elsewhere. But it’d be fun to give people a way to read them if they want to.

I mean: look, I’m an indie kind of guy. Not that I set out to be that way, really. I just wanted to write. So, starting back in 2005, I sent out over two hundred query letters to agents. Lots of them were actual snail-mail letters. Expensive. Time-consuming…it took me about a year and a half to do all that. Kind of hard, to keep doing it over and over.

You know how many agents asked to read one of my novels? Ever? One. Then she suddenly left the agency, and I never heard anything from them beyond that.

So, for a long time…it really didn’t matter how good my stuff was. Or wasn’t. Nobody saw it but family and friends. I kind of got used to that. It wasn’t so bad. Though…how much did I write? Not a lot.

Along the way I figured out that I mostly wrote to explore new ideas and perspectives. Part of why I can’t plan/outline fiction is that, if I could, I’d have no internally-motivating reason to write a given story in the first place. Stuff gets weird on me, though…I wrote a story about a time-traveling ant from the future, with a dark sort of sense of humor, here in our world to defend/promote his own timeline against agents of other species/civilizations. Then I threw in a bunch of magic and the second half of the story is sort of a homage to Lord Dunsany. With gratuitous political commentary. Did that make sense, as a story? Not really. I loved it. It was fun to write. Also fun to read afterward. For, uh, me. Otherwise, well, not even my mom (Hi, Mom!) liked that one.

I also enjoyed the one I wrote after reading a tweet saying something like “You don’t read many stories about lost goldfish finding their way home.” So that got mixed up in my head with this idea of a gorilla, in a zoo, haunted by the spirit of Walmart. I started typing, suddenly there were two kids complaining about old technology, and a story happened. Sort of dystopian science fiction, I guess. Great fun! For me. For anyone else? Not so much. Okay, maybe two other people in the world, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t read it even though it’d be perfect for them. Too bad!

But, okay, in spite of myself, I have tried to learn about writing along the way. Giving people complete stories, maybe even paying attention to genre boundaries. I do have a series of stories about a teenage wizard for hire. Sort of. That’s reasonable enough, right? Another about a middle-aged man who thinks he’s a normal guy living in a suddenly post-apocalyptic world, though he has no idea what actually happened to the world…only to realize it’s all a malicious sort of imposed misunderstanding and the world in general is doing fine–but, you know, he himself has become a zombie. So there’s that. It’s almost in a genre! And my novels, while possibly a bit odd, aren’t totally unreadable. I think.

(But OTOH there’s a bunch of stuff that exists only because I wanted to play with some idea or other, and it ended when I stopped wanting to go further, and that may or may not be the greatest way ever to create a story to entertain other people who may not be similarly entranced, or for a similar length of time/words/story even if they do decide to come along for the ride to begin with.)

I have a point? Maybe. I only barely care about sending fiction out for other people’s eyes at this point. I think it’d be neat to make some money…but I’m not willing to spend a lot of time or money on advertising, marketing, promotion, book covers, ritual sacrifices, artful interpretive dances, and the like. That sounds like a horrible job. I don’t want it. If it came with a guaranteed paycheck, vs. participation in a semi-lottery, I might consider it. I mean, there was a period in the past when I made money from my fiction. Did it last forever? Nope. Does it mean I know how to make it happen again? Nope. The world and I have both moved on, and not necessarily in the same set of directions. Even if I suddenly started getting paid for fiction, I wouldn’t trust it to last. So how hard can I really expect myself to work in this area? Not very, I’m afraid.

Similarly, though it’d be easier to just put the stuff in one place (Kindle Unlimited on Amazon?), that idea just irritates the God out of me–as my grandmother used to put it. So I’m going to focus on my own site first and foremost. Then, yeah, for much of my fiction anyway, all the retailers. Or at least all of them I can reach without much hassle. Smashwords and D2D are going to handle that for me, is what I’m saying. Plus I have this grandfathered-in publishing account at Google Play, so I can put stuff there. But that’s about it. (Though I did read something recently about them opening that back up to indies sometime soon, or recently? Maybe? I don’t remember the details. Didn’t care a whole lot, I guess.)

Since at this point there’s next to no built-in demand for my fiction out in the world, most of it will be free. At least on non-Amazon sites, since the ‘Zon is occasionally annoying about that, but in most places. Maybe people will post reviews. Maybe they’ll read about the (“EXCLUSIVE!”) content on my site, and come get some of that. Maybe a few of them will buy stuff. Maybe they’ll tell me fun stories of their own. Maybe it’ll turn into something. We’ll see.

So, that’s one new direction. Another: I paid for access to some shared office space this month. Not that the $9/month coffee at Panera Bread was a horrible deal or anything, but after an hour or two I start to feel awkward about occupying a table that theoretically could be used by somebody spending a bit more. (I do tip, so that’s something.) (Also, lately, there haven’t been too many other customers.) (But still.) (Yeah, but they serve absolutely nothing I’m willing to eat, so they can’t reasonably expect–) (Shh. People.) (Okay. Got it. Moving on.)

Oh, I’m also going camping for a couple of days. By myself. I may type or dictate something or other. Not sure yet. Leaving tomorrow, sometime.

And this email, for those of you getting this post via email, is coming from a different place. Different email service provider, I mean to say. I was kind of rolling my own, using software called Sendy, sending via a service from Rackspace called Mailgun…and frankly it wasn’t working very well. Lots of glitches. A lot of people didn’t get my email, one way or another.

Not that I think that’s a crisis for anyone involved. It clearly isn’t. But, anyway, it’s something else that’s changed lately.

I’m not sure how any of this will work out. But, hell, who ever knows stuff like that?

Meanwhile.

Have fun out there!

The post New Directions? first appeared on Caveat Lector.

An impossible goal? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I mean, what’s involved here?

• It should be distraction-free.
• It should provide potentially inspiring distractions.
• Writing equipment (phone, laptop, voice recorder, whatever) should be well-suited to the space.

Right. No problem. What I’m getting at: for me at least, everything needs to be portable. And swappable! There are times when working on my laptop in my office makes sense. There are times, such as next week when I’ll be on a road trip, when I’d really like to get some writing done in the car. I also like coffee shops. And I don’t like carrying my laptop everywhere I go.

No problem. If I write in text files, they can be edited on any device. And if I use Markdown as a text format, the files can include such things as italics. (Otherwise, once I import the file into a word processor capable of italics, I can no longer edit them as plaintext, which restricts the devices/apps I can use thereafter.)

What I’ve been doing until very recently is using Scrivener to synchronize projects with text files. That’s worked pretty well, but then I’ve moved everything into Jutoh to create ebooks. (Yes, Scrivener can create ebooks directly, but I strongly prefer Jutoh’s vastly increased scope for fiddling with the resulting document.) I’ve never liked Scrivener for writing fiction–too heavy for me, with lots of features that just get in the way–but it’s been working.

The problem? Once I’ve moved the text into Jutoh, editing it has only happened in Jutoh. After all, it’s clearly better to have a single always-preferred location for editing. And I’ve had no desire to re-create all of my Jutoh-specific formatting once I’ve done it the first time.

But I’ve been emailing with Julian Smart, technical director of Anthemion Software Ltd., and he’s solved that issue for me! Well, probably not just for me. Probably he thinks there are multiple users who will benefit. I’m not sure he’s right about that, but here’s hoping.

Jutoh is now capable of exporting and importing to and from Markdown. There are still a couple of glitches in the process (including losing quotation marks upon import), but I’ve figured out some workarounds and I expect the problems to go away very soon.

[UPDATE: Yes, very soon. I got an email about an hour after I typed the above. The latest beta release of Jutoh has solved the issues with quotation marks. Awesome!]

I could always have worked this out for myself, exporting from Markdown to HTML prior to importing into Jutoh, and exporting from Jutoh to HTML followed by conversion to Markdown, but frankly I didn’t think of it. Also that sounds like a pain in the ass.

What does this mean? It means I can edit anywhere, on any device. And my work is saved in Dropbox. So even borrowing a computer or phone would work, with very little setup delay.

Rather than carry a full laptop, I can carry my phone, a folding stand, a folding keyboard, and a Bluetooth finger-mouse if I happen to feel like it. In addition, I can carry a voice recorder. All of that fits into a very manly pouch-dingus, by the way.

As far as that voice recorder goes…I could record directly into my phone, and sometimes I do. Mostly I don’t, because I like the microphones of the recorder better. Either way, I can upload files to Dropbox and have my laptop (which is still sitting at the house in this scenario, and connected to Dropbox) auto-transcribe them via Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The transcriptions are then uploaded to Dropbox, and available on any device I happen to want to use within a few minutes (depending on the length of the recording).

Another option is to use an app called Dragon Anywhere for dictation on my phone. But the profile I have on my laptop is much more configurable than the online version. It also doesn’t cost a goofy amount of money every month. It also doesn’t turn itself off every time I pause for 20 seconds.

We’re pretty deep into the weeds here. But just in case any of you think this sounds like fun, or even useful, I’ll give you a bit more information.

• I use WriteMonkey 2.7 on Windows when I want to dictate in real time. WriteMonkey “natively” uses Markdown, so something like CTRL-I will italicize via Markdown (*example* yields example) and prevent me from having to explicitly voice asterisks and such. Or type them either. I have to use this older version of the program, because Dragon’s “Full Text Control” doesn’t work in the latest version.
• I use JotterPad on Android for pretty much the same reason. It works very well with an external keyboard, and the usual shortcut keys work as expected.
• There is also a program called Jarte which works with Dragon. Jarte is built upon WordPad, so Full Text Control works very well. Or anyway it works after you apply the fix found on the following page: http://www.jarte.com/dragon_naturally_speaking.html. Jarte does not understand Markdown, so it’s not ideal for me, but WriteMonkey creates additional files in your working folder that are sort of annoying, so if you’re not interested in the Markdown piece of this it’s a great choice.
• FWIW, I strongly recommend not dictating into DragonPad, the text editor that comes with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It crashes, taking Dragon with it, and losing your work. It’s much better to avoid this scenario.
• I really, really like using Typora to edit text (and Markdown) files when I’m not going to be dictating and when I’m using my laptop. It works identically under Windows and Linux, as far as I can tell. There’s a beta version for Mac, but I haven’t tried that.

Things can get even more ridiculous, of course.

• I can put my laptop into a backpack, connect a microphone, and walk around dictating.
• I can use my phone as a monitor for the laptop using an app called aRDP to see what I’m doing as I wander, and vastly improve on the dictation experience I would have using Dragon Anywhere. This works via sharing my phone’s internet connection via a Hotspot, or if I want to avoid any interruptions I can conversely create a Wi-Fi network on the laptop, put the phone into Airplane mode, turn on Wi-Fi on the phone, and connect it to the laptop.
• I can use an app called WO Mic to redirect the microphone from my phone to the laptop over Wi-Fi, and wander around the house or backyard, phone in hand, sans backpack, also using aRDP as above.
• I can simultaneously use a headset microphone connected to my phone and carry the voice recorder in my hand, reassuring myself that one or the other will actually work. This is probably just me, but dictation works better for me if I don’t look at the words being generated…but if I don’t see them I’m constantly concerned that speaking into the air won’t really work. Have I lost a lot of work that way? Nope. But redundancy makes me feel better.
• Since my voice recorder includes a jack for audio output, through which I can listen to my voice as I record (nice in a headset scenario when the recorder is in a pocket and I want to be sure it’s actually still working), I can get creative and run an aux cable from the recorder to a USB sound card dongle plugged into my laptop: this way I get both a recording (for backup purposes & training Dragon’s accuracy) AND real-time transcription. This is actually my favorite scenario, because I’m trying to train myself to use (and trust) the recorder by itself. Of course there are lots of other ways to get simultaneous recording and transcription. But I like this one.

So maybe this will help somebody. Or not. As for me, I have recently begun writing again. There’s a lot to say about that, and potentially also about my use of a pen name, but maybe I’ll get to it another day.

Have fun out there!

The post The Perfect Writing Environment first appeared on Caveat Lector.

Well, this is definitely interesting. I think I’m about halfway done with the second story, and I’m not going to mess up the rest of the day by working on it further–this is supposed to be fun! And so far it has been. I’ll start a new story tomorrow morning, and maybe I’ll catch up by the end of the month and maybe I won’t. I hope to, for sure. What if I can really do 30 stories, in 30 days, while homeschooling and foster parenting and driving and cooking and doing all the rest of the stuff that needs to happen? If not, what if I can get close? Hey, what if I end up with 31?

In other words? Generally I’m happy with how things are going. I’m getting better at the dictation part–but I’m still pretty inefficient. What I’m doing, basically, is this:

1. I set a timer for 25 minutes and dictate new fiction into my phone, which is set to airplane mode. The timer works via my headphones and gives me these reassuring ticking sounds so I know I’m still supposed to be talking.
2. I share the audio file via WiFi and download it to a Windows computer (actually I download via Linux & access it via a Windows virtual machine, if you care, which you probably shouldn’t).
3. I get Dragon NaturallySpeaking to transcribe the recording. I then fix most-to-all of the transcription errors and copy/paste into Scrivener, which runs under Linux.
4. I may or may not do a bit more editing.
5. I go back and start the timer again.

So, that may or may not be interesting to you–but it definitely is to me. Back when I was doing first-draft typing on an Alphasmart Neo (dedicated word processing hardware) I would do the 25-minute thing, but would do up to four sessions with 5-minute breaks before moving any of the text to another machine for edits. Sometimes I felt a bit adrift in the midst of all that (I used an unreadable font on the Neo, so I couldn’t stop and edit) but it seemed to come out okay. Then, when I was working on a nonfiction book, I would work without a timer, cycle back through the stuff I’d typed earlier in the day, do a bit of research here and there, and generally proceed with few problems.

Yes, the nonfiction was easier for me. Decades of experience, there. I don’t use a timer for blog posts either. Interestingly, Dean Wesley Smith (a writer-guru dude with whom I generally but not always agree) uses a process for his fiction that works about like mine for nonfiction. I think it’s a matter of entering a flow state and staying there, or cycling back to it frequently, and he’s just better at writing fiction than I am. I’ll get there.

Don’t get me wrong–my above process is working. I’m getting 2000+ words a day, and if I had more time I could get more. Just to give you an idea…today I was supposed to have about six hours to write the new story, and I ended up with about an hour and a half once the various crises impinged.

Still. Is there something dumb with my current approach? Maybe! See, if I can just string more of those 25-minute sessions together, I can do the transcription/editing bit later. Why is that important? Because, in theory, I have two hours each morning before other people wake up. If I could fit in four sessions, that’d be great–and then I could do the transcription/editing whenever I got the chance. I can actually do that part in the middle of the living room with a movie and a couple of conversations going on. It’s a matter of shifting the stuff I need to be alone for to the time when I can be alone.

So why haven’t I done it that way yet? It’s just an emotional thing. I just don’t feel that I have as firm a grasp on the story until I see words in front of me.

Once upon a time, though, I felt the same way about using the Neo. I could type on it for half an hour or so, and then I’d need to fix a few things and convince myself I had a handle on the story or novel. I eventually realized that I was doing just fine without that, though, and that’s when my words-per-day count really took off (just under 3000 for most of The Secret).

Simple, right? I need to just trust that I’ll create reasonable words. Words that, even if they suck, can be made into a story. Unfortunately I can’t really just do the transcription for each recording while I’m dictating the next, because I need to fix errors right away–the software (a) “learns” as it goes and gets wonky if I allow too many errors to slip through, and (b) is buggy, so it crashes if I try to work with multiple files or leave it running for too long.

Oh. You have a question?

Hmm.

Yeah, I guess it does seem reasonable for me to dictate the text in near-real-time instead of bothering with all this recording stuff. Thing is, that way I watch the text appear on the screen, which it does in its own sweet time, which screws up my flow. Also I have to keep checking the screen to be sure Dragon hasn’t crashed and the microphone is still working properly, both of which are frequent issues. So it’s actually safer, from a preserving-my-work perspective, to just record stuff for later. And it lets me pace around, too, which is nice.

Oh. Why do I want to dictate instead of type? Because it’s cool, and I like to play with stuff, and I’m having fun with it. Also because I used to type about 700 words of new fiction in 25 minutes, and with dictation I’m getting closer to 1000…and, since it’s one of those “skill” things that ought to improve with practice, I’m hoping for even more.

Why strive for higher word counts? Because it’s fun! Ideally it’ll be fun for you guys too, as I get the fiction-machine running more smoothly.

Now. If I can keep away the refrigerator deliveries and friends who want to take me to lunch and friends who write about their new books and want feedback and kids with crises and…oh wait. Never mind. I love all that stuff too.

Have fun out there!

The post September story #2: No title yet first appeared on Caveat Lector.

Well, let me say this up front: it doesn’t have to be complicated. For instance, I recently pulled Take Back Your Privacy from Amazon’s KDP Select program, and as of yesterday you can get it free via Smashwords. It’ll hit more retailers (update: like Kobo) soon. But, hey, it’s free already. Done! Right?

Why’d I do that? Because KDP Select wasn’t doing me much good with that title, and I only had it in there to begin with because I wanted to see how many copies I could give away during the 5 free days Amazon allows for books in that program (in each 90-day period, during which the ebooks must be exclusive to Amazon). Answer: not so many. I could do much better distributing it for free on other sites. Hell, the thing’s been pirated (torrent site link; be careful if that’s how you roll) in more than one place, and it appears to have been downloaded more often that way than via Amazon. With no efforts by anyone, so far as I know, to “promote” those downloads.

Oh. Why do I want it to be free? Because I want people to read it. It bothers me that so many people out there don’t seem to have a basic understanding of how the internet works. But that’s a rant for another time and place. I’d love it if people were taught this material prior to graduation from high school, too, and it seems deeply weird to me that this ain’t the case. Um…yeah. Another day. Today is about the mechanics of distributing a book for free.

Hey, I can do it via my own website, right? Sure I can! And I probably will, once I get around to it. But, you know, when I post something to the blog it gets seen by maybe a couple of hundred people. Good people! But that’s about it, for the first week or so anyway. Some of my posts get more attention over time, but most don’t. Don’t misunderstand: I’m flattered to have a couple of hundred people reading my babble. But…since I really want this book, or at least this material, to be widely distributed…my site ain’t gonna cut it.

In theory, since I’m distributing the book (as a freebie) to various non-Amazon retailers via both Smashwords and Draft2Digital, it could reach a larger audience. Maybe it will. Maybe Amazon will price-match the freebies from elsewhere, too. That could happen. I won’t hold my breath waiting, though–some people have had good results emailing Amazon’s support staff and asking for price-matching when they’re trying to use “perma-free” to promote things like the first book of a series, but this one (so far) is a standalone work of nonfiction. Sometimes Amazon will price-match when they get some (unknown and possibly arbitrary) number of reports from potential readers of lower prices elsewhere, but that process is (1) a dark art, and (2) unreliable.

Note that I don’t think retailers have any obligation to host my freebies, or my other material, at all! They each have their own policies, and that’s as (I think) it should be.

But still. Giving away free stuff is harder than you might think. For instance, Apple won’t distribute my book, as written, at all. Why not? Because it contains links to Amazon. It’s a reasonable concern, I guess. But this book has hundreds of links. Most of them are to websites, but some are to books. Generally, it can be hard to link to a book without linking to a book retailer. Not all books have vendor-neutral sites, and many of those that do might be better off without them (maybe including mine!). I guess I can see Apple’s point here, but I have one too–if I’m going to write a book that works for a wide swath of readers, I need to include the links most likely to be useful to them. At the moment, that means (in some cases) links to Amazon. Is it possible that I’ll go through and publish a separate Apple-only version of the book? Sure. Not today, because I need to wash my hair, but maybe sometime. When I don’t have any higher-priority stuff to do.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time I’ve had trouble publishing to Apple. They also don’t like my story …come what may. Why not? Because I didn’t capitalize anything. They told me I should change my title. I shrugged, and didn’t. Did they care? I doubt it very much. Me either. This sort of thing, I think, is entirely reasonable–we don’t actually all have to agree, and when we can just walk away without any offense being given or taken? I think that’s swell.

There are freebie-only sites, too, like Wattpad. I could post the book there. I doubt it’d get many readers, for two reasons: (1) Last I heard, Wattpad was mostly kids–I’d love it if this book were read by kids, but I doubt it’ll appeal to many, and (2) I have no idea how to use Wattpad successfully anyway. I’ve tried it a couple of times. A reader (thanks again, Heather!) tried to help me navigate those muddy waters, but I ended up wandering off with little success. I didn’t actually try very hard…but I can tell you this: it’s not just a matter of posting and waiting. That way leads to zero reads.

So, what about other freebie sites? I got invited to post material on one of those just the other day, apparently by its CEO. I said I was open to the idea but asked what benefits generally accrued to those who did. I got a response essentially telling me that I wouldn’t be a good fit after all ’cause I had this crass desire to monetize my fiction, and the site was more for people who were taking a longer-term approach to building their readership. Hmm, I thought, and decided “longer-term” meant “slower,” ’cause my experience to date tells me it’s easier to give books away on retail-type sites than on freebie sites. Plus, yeah, there’s always the chance that folks will move from your freebies to other material, and pay money, and money is nice. So…in the case of TBYP, I guess I could post it on freebie sites. But I have no idea of how to appeal to readers in such places to get them to give the thing a shot, and trying to figure it out on each site seems like it would take a long time with very little payoff–regardless of how “payoff” is defined. I’d rather write, or trim my toenails, or tickle my kid, than mess with all that. Lame, I know.

So the obvious thing to do is to reach out to bloggers, point out that the book is free, and ask ’em if they’d like to recommend it to their readers. I could write email to do this, and customize it a bit, and I actually do follow several bloggers who have readers who might be interested. Still a lot of work, right? I mean, I think giving this book away counts as a public service! Doesn’t that mean people out in the world should be, I dunno, somehow required to pay attention?

Heh.

You know what? Yes, it can be hard to give a book away. Even if you think it’s really important, and people should read it for their own good. And thank whatever gods you like (or dislike, or whatever) that’s the case! Imagine how awful it’d be if people were forced to read books they don’t enjoy…

Oh wait. There was that Ethan Frome (no link!) incident back when I was in high school. But, see, I didn’t actually read it. Because I didn’t want to. And I aced the test, too. I got asked, for instance, why some character or other committed suicide. My response (“She couldn’t deal with the reality of the new situation”) was apparently sufficient.

I want people to read my book. But I’m weirdly pleased that this matters so little. It’s just as it should be. If I put more effort into it, I may get better results. Or I may not.

Life’s full of unknowns. Which is why exploring possibilities is so rewarding. If we knew the results we’d get in advance…hmm…suddenly I have a new story idea! Gotta go write it down, for later. Which bumps the Apple-only book even farther out into the future, and maybe contacting bloggers too, and…it is what it is. And as it should be.

Have fun out there!

(New-fiction word count: zero. Blogged first, today. Told myself I could do the fiction later. Stuff happened. I’d say I should know better, but the thing is? I do know better. Did it anyway. Dumb, huh?)

The post Giving away free books? It gets complicated. first appeared on Caveat Lector.

Hi, everybody!

Kindle Scout, if you’re not familiar with it, is probably best described as a bare-bones ebook publishing arm of Amazon. It’s been described as an “uneasy middle ground between publishing and self-publishing,” but I don’t actually see any elements of self-publishing in it. (If I’m wrong, please tell me how–I’m very interested in this.)

Here’s the deal with Scout: you can submit a work of fiction, of sufficient length (50,000 words) and in a supported genre (Romance, Mystery & Thriller, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Teen & Young Adult, and general Literature & Fiction), and Amazon–once they accept your submission–will create a page advertising your book-to-be. Potential readers may browse these pages and like yours, or you may launch some sort of advertising or social media campaign, or both. Readers can nominate the books they’re most interested in for publication. Amazon will take the readers’ nominations into account, and decide which of the submissions they would like to publish (the decision is up to Amazon–they’re not bound by reader votes). If your work is selected, you’ll receive a $1500 advance and 50% of ebook royalties. It’s possible that Amazon will promote your work, but there is no guarantee. Your Kindle Scout campaign is supposed to last for 45 days, and your work must be exclusive to Amazon during that period.

It’s worth noting that there is a “Submission and Publishing Agreement” in place–once you submit, you’ve committed to allowing Amazon to proceed under the terms of the agreement. If your work is selected by Amazon, Amazon will maintain exclusive rights to both ebooks and audiobooks…unless your book isn’t making much money, in which case you can ask them to revert your rights after a minimum of two years. More on the contract terms later.

Looking at all that, I see no elements of self-publishing at all. I see a crowdsourced slush pile. Not a bad idea. Maybe. Worth a look, anyway.

So, when might you consider submitting to Kindle Scout? Let’s look at some possibilities:

1. You’re a brand-new author with no platform, and your work is a standalone novel for which you do not plan to write a sequel. This, right here, is in my opinion the most reasonable scenario from the author’s point of view. Most first novels simply don’t sell. If you can come up with a sufficiently compelling cover, book description/blurb, and excerpt to push past all the strikes against you–which is what you’d have to do to succeed via Kindle Scout–then you’ll find yourself with a publishing contract. Or maybe you can do it via an advertising campaign (Google AdWords?) of some sort. Regardless: let’s assume you’ve managed to drive traffic to your recommendation page, and impress actual readers with your book. Assuming that…is Kindle Scout still a good idea? You’re already committed, mind…so, uh, if you were capable of getting to this point, I hope you have strong reasons to believe you couldn’t have done the same thing outside Kindle Scout. Because your ebook will remain exclusive to Amazon, or to whomever they sell or otherwise transfer the rights. If they happen to feel like it, or go bankrupt, or whatever. Same with foreign language rights and audiobook rights. You’ll have, at this point, a book with a very good chance of success–but Amazon didn’t make that happen. You did. If, just maybe, you could have done the same thing while keeping a larger chunk of your royalties, and creative control, and not entering into an exclusivity agreement with the same cover, description/blurb, and excerpt via publishing it on your own? Well, too bad for you. It’s done.
2. You have a first novel, no platform, and it’s the beginning of a series. Hmm. This is similar to the above scenario…except that all your later books in the series are likely to be dependent on this one. So you’ve essentially committed to Amazon for the duration of the series. Unless you think ebook buyers on other sites will see that the first book isn’t available, then go to Amazon to buy it? It may be that people who aren’t shopping at Amazon have reasons (justified or not) for that choice. I think you’ll be out of luck. Also, you can almost certainly forget going “permafree” with the first book in your series. Even the Kindle Unlimited freebie days, if any, will be out of your control. Bookbub and similar promotions? Well, maybe you can still do those, if Amazon will agree to discount your title on the relevant days. I have no information on that.
3. For whatever reason, you have a platform. Maybe you’ve written other books, and you have a decent mailing list. Maybe you’re famous already in some other context. Whatever. You have good reason to believe you can sell ebooks. Consider: by publishing it on your own, you’ll get to keep 70% of the sale price–plus control. Via Kindle Scout, you’ll get 50% of the sale price–minus control (of cover, pricing, etc.). You get a $1500 advance. In this scenario, which does assume your book is priced between $2.99 and $9.99, you’re giving up 2/7 of your royalties per copy sold. So at what point are you losing money? 1500 is 2/7 of 5250. If your total royalties under Kindle Scout ever reach $3750, you’re losing money from that point onward. If your book would have sold outside Amazon, you’ve lost that money too. Caveat: perhaps Amazon will actually promote your work, and be successful in doing so, and you’ll make a smaller percentage of a larger pile of cash. Could happen! Again, no guarantee. Amazon also promotes titles that are not in Kindle Scout, by the way. No guarantee there, either. How much of an edge does Kindle Scout give you in this regard? Could be a lot. Could be none at all. Could be anywhere in between.
4. You think you can game Kindle Scout to get selected, and you know damn well your book wouldn’t sell outside of the program. Do it! No downside here, as long as you somehow don’t burn any bridges in the process. Take the $1500 and enjoy it. I have to say this one seems more than a bit far-fetched to me. But, hell, maybe you’ve got it figured out. Good for you?
5. You don’t think your book will be selected–or you’re sure it won’t–and that’s okay with you. It’s your plan. This is my favorite! Not sure how to accomplish it, but maybe your book is full of anti-Amazon ranting? And it’s all somehow integral to the plot? Well, whatever. The neat thing here is that submitting to Kindle Scout is potentially beneficial to the people who don’t get selected. Once you finally publish the book, outside the Kindle Scout program, Amazon will email the people who nominated your work with a link to buy. It’s almost as good as having an email list of your own. And maybe that, plus whatever other promotional activities you engage in otherwise, will give your book a bit of an early push. Could happen, right? Caveat: you already agreed to let Amazon publish it. Maybe they’ll love the book, and just do a search & replace to substitute “Google” for “Amazon” throughout. I’m not sure you have any recourse.

So, you see my problem? With the exception of #4 above, which I included just for fun, I don’t see a scenario where submitting to Kindle Scout is superior to self-publishing. I could easily be wrong! And if I am, I hope you’ll tell me exactly how I’m wrong. Because I’ll have a new novel before long (assuming my daily new-fiction word count goes up from its very rocky start!) and, if Kindle Scout would be a good thing to do…I’d be happy to take advantage.

OTOH, if it’s a choice between Kindle Scout and some other publisher? Because you’ve ruled out self-publishing, for whatever reason(s) seem valid to you? Maybe this is a good idea after all. You’ll get some sort of feedback, and fairly quickly–which can be very difficult to duplicate via querying agents and publishers. The contract terms are likely far less onerous with Kindle Scout than elsewhere (I’ll refer you to Joe Konrath and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for discussion of “standard” contract terms).

But while we’re at it? Let’s look at that Kindle Scout Submission and Publishing Agreement just for a bit. There are some issues that bother me.

• Currently, in the “Synopsis of Agreement,” Amazon tells us “If your book is selected for publication by Kindle Press and you later want to stop publishing with us, you’ll be able to get your rights back in a variety of circumstances.” But…what are those circumstances? Um. If Amazon doesn’t publish it for two years, and you complain. Prior to that, there’s nothing you can do. If, after at least two years have passed, your work has made you less than $500 US in the preceding year, you can ask to get your rights back. There are some additional terms regarding reversion of translation and audio rights Amazon doesn’t exercise–after two years–but that’s it. Also, the above is subject to any agreements Amazon makes with third parties. Which means, to me, that they can do whatever they want. But I suppose they may not fight to retain rights to work that, after all, isn’t making them much money either. Still? A bit misleading in the synopsis, I’m thinking.
• You’ll get an opportunity to respond to their editorial requests. However, they’ll still get to publish the book however they like, with any changes they like. I don’t know that this would happen, but the contract says they can. Verbatim: “Other than changes or revisions we deem necessary for publication, we will not make any material change to the text of your Work without your approval.” Uh, yeah. That means it’s up to them. Personally? I really doubt they’d go out of their way to piss off an author here. But the contract says they can.
• Copyright problems? Well, you own the copyright. Right? (Sorry.) Suppose someone or other posts fanfic. Or makes a movie using your material. You decide that’s fine…but Amazon disagrees. Suddenly, it’s not up to you. “We may take any legal action that we deem advisable to restrain or seek damages for any actual or threatened infringement of copyright, including authors’ rights, in your Work. If necessary, we may make you a co-plaintiff in any litigation we commence and, if made a co-plaintiff, you will cooperate fully (at our expense).”
• Amazon is not under any obligation to publish your work at all. They can decide, whenever they want, that you’re in violation of the terms of the agreement and pull the plug on the deal. You have no such recourse against them. So…if they decide they can’t work with you, or you make a fuss about something they don’t like? You’re still bound by the agreement for (at least) two years.
• The damn thing might just grow on you. Consider this: “You agree to sign and deliver to us any further documents that we may reasonably request to confirm your grant of rights to us (and any further grant to any other third party) under this Agreement, following all instructions we provide for signature and return (“Additional Documents”). If you do not complete and return any such Additional Documents within 30 days after we request them, you agree that we can sign the Additional Documents on your behalf and, to make your agreement legally enforceable, you hereby irrevocably appoint us as your attorney-in-fact with full power to execute, acknowledge and deliver the Additional Documents as required to confirm our rights.” Holy crap. So, if they think you should have agreed to something in writing, and you don’t think so, you just gave them the power to commit you to it. Potentially including whatever they want to sell to any third party. Nice.

I want to find a way to see all the above as innocuous. I do not believe Amazon is out to screw up writers. I think this Kindle Scout program is aimed squarely at those writers who are uncomfortable with self-publishing, and I further think they’ll probably be better off with Amazon than with most other publishers. But when compared to self-publishing? I see much risk, and very little upside.

To sum up: from a certain POV, this could be seen as a scheme to convince writers to submit their work and get reader feedback, in which Amazon gets to skim the most promising new fiction off the top and pay the “winners” lower royalties than they’d get otherwise. I’m a bit befuddled. Though this is mitigated by any promotional efforts Amazon chooses to make, and it’d be nice to have an idea of just how effective those are likely to be. Or if they’ll even happen. And under what circumstances.

I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a publishing industry professional. I don’t even play either one on TV. So. Am I wrong? Seriously, I want to be wrong. Tell me how?

Oh. Also. Perhaps you remember that yesterday I said I’d post my new-fiction writing totals each day for a month? Yep. Doing that. Here’s my first total: ZERO. Things came up, and I didn’t get the writing time I hoped/expected. Later on, I hope to give silly “stats” like words per day, total words per project, and so forth. Right now, I’m amused that even a calculation of days per word is not mathematically possible. Hmm. Perhaps I’ll do better by tomorrow.

Um…changing the subject ASAP here…have fun out there!  {8′>

The post Kindle Scout: Worth a shot? first appeared on Caveat Lector.

Have you guys heard about this? I’m kind of tired of hearing about it already. I mean, it’s a problem…but at the same time I see it as a self-inflicted sort of thing all around. Amazon’s not paying a lot of attention, we writers let them get away with it, and so forth.

Bright side: I don’t think it’s hurting readers at all. Or at least not yet. Or at least not much.

Here’s the scoop: fake books are being published via Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service. They’re, sometimes, really long. Thousands of pages? Well, why not? These tomes have links near the beginning, intended to entice readers to click on them and thus move to the end of the book. So, this works. Readers click on the links. Readers then discover there’s not a lot of useful content (maybe even none at all), and they move on with their lives. Some will leave a bad review. Others don’t care a whole lot. The world doesn’t end, or at least not right away. The oceans have yet to boil, even.

On the writers’ side, things are very slightly worse. See, with Kindle Unlimited (an ebook subscription service, if you’ve been living under a rock but just emerged to read this here post), Amazon pays writers per page read. They standardize fonts & so forth for this calculation, and lately they pay a bit under half a cent per page. So if you read a book of mine that’s got 440 “Kindle Edition Normalized Pages” in it, I get a bit over two bucks.

Before we go any further, I want to say that I very much appreciate the KU readers who find and read what I’ve written and published. And I love the idea of ebook subscription services in general. I especially love that Amazon doesn’t try to force me to use DRM…as including that would prevent my participation entirely. (Pet peeve there; maybe I’ll post about that some other time.)

That said? This business of counting pages read is, clearly, creepazoidal all by itself. It’s why my Kindle can’t talk to Amazon anymore–I did other stuff to it, but mostly I just leave it in “airplane mode.” Next, the thing is, the money paid out each month by Amazon is determined by Amazon. Writers get a proportional share, depending on how many pages of theirs have been read, how many total pages (across all readers and writers in KU) have been read, and the set amount Amazon has decided to pay each month. So, theoretically, the more scammers scam, the less everybody else gets paid. This gets ever so slightly worse, because Amazon pays bonuses to the writers who have the very highest page-read counts each month. So the scammers have been scamming those too. I almost even care.

I do care, a bit, that the scammers have been simultaneously scamming the free book bestseller lists. Mostly because this keeps other books, perhaps some of them being a bit more deserving of algorithmic love (or at least lust), from moving up the bestseller lists and thus being pushed (by Amazon) to potential new readers. But they do it because, once they have enough Amazon accounts set up, it costs nothing to “buy” the freebies…which, once they’ve run up the freebie-charts, then retain a smidgen of digital sex appeal in the nonfree charts. It’s, you know, how the scam works after all.

But look: there are bigger problems.

Kindle Unlimited, while very cool, is only open to writers who are willing to make their ebooks exclusive to Amazon for 90 days at a time. Right now, it’s financially very unattractive to be left out of Kindle Unlimited. Participation pays directly, and there’s also the side benefit that Amazon appears to consider each “borrow” to be the equivalent of a sale for purposes of calculating a book’s bestseller ranking. Those rankings then determine many aspects of a book’s exposure on Amazon’s website. So KU participation opens up an income stream, and boosts exposure, thus (maybe?) leading to more outright sales. (I mean “licenses”…another rant for another time!) But this does mean writers must choose between Amazon and the rest of the world. There’s nothing inherently evil in this–it’s good business sense on Amazon’s part, and it’s just a choice each writer/publisher must make. But it’s only possible for Amazon to do this because we writers allow it. We could stand on principle, if we have any relevant principles on which to stand. But it’ll cost us if we do. What’s the solution? Well, somebody else can build a competing (as opposed to “merely also existing”) ebook subscription service without the exclusivity requirement. It’ll happen eventually. Sooner is better, as far as I’m concerned.

Also, about the “pages read” thing? I haven’t seen this written anywhere yet…but, given that the scam above works, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this means Amazon didn’t really build any new system to count pages read at all. You know how your Kindles and Kindle apps will theoretically (this has never worked well for me) auto-sync to the last page you’ve read for each title? Well, to do that, Amazon must have already built a system to keep track of that last page. Right? So, barring evidence to the contrary, I’m thinking they’re using that same technology to pay out KU pages read.

Thing is…I really haven’t been able to get that “sync” thing to work for me. I can’t sync between an iPhone and a Paperwhite. Trying to use the Kindle apps for Windows and Android just leads to more problems.

So what do I think? I think Amazon is probably mis-counting pages all over the place. Since the sync errors I’ve seen have generally taken the form of “you are already at the last page read” (or whatever the message actually says; it’s been a while since I tried) I think this means Amazon is simply not counting a lot of pages that are, in fact, read.

Maybe this evens out, over time. As long as Amazon never admits to it, it probably doesn’t matter a whole lot. But I think it’s interesting. I also think it’s interesting that any readers out there who have a Kindle Unlimited membership, but always read the books offline, are still helping authors (via the bestseller rankings, because borrows count as if they were sales) but the authors are not getting paid.

Now, Amazon’s done goofy stuff. They’ve penalized some writers for putting their Table of Contents in the back of their ebooks, apparently because that can screw up their pages-read metric. Well, placing the ToC in the back has been considered good practice for years, especially for shorter ebooks–that way the “free sample” potential readers can check out has more meaningful content, after all. But Amazon doesn’t seem to have done much to stop, or even meaningfully hinder, the actual scammers. Easier, I guess, to harass the innocent.

So. You’re all caught up, if you weren’t already. Things are messy out there for writers and publishers, but readers can simply read books while we figure it all out.

You know what? That doesn’t sound so bad. So, the hell with it. I’m going to think about something else now. You can too, if you want.

Have fun out there!

The post Some thoughts on the Kindle Unlimited scammers first appeared on Caveat Lector.

You know, I’m not quite sure what that means. Or I guess I mean I’m not sure where the term comes from. A sale after a fire? Wouldn’t stuff be damaged? Or is that the point?

Hold on a sec.

Okay. I checked. That was indeed the point: discounts, because of fire damage. Hmm. Now that I know this…should I change the title of this post? Doesn’t it imply…?

Nah. The moving fingers, having typed, etc. What was written must be.

Onward! So I’m changing the prices on all books and stories at Amazon to $.99 or a near-equivalent in other currencies. Sound cool to you guys?

Uh…actually, well, I guess I’m not doing that. After all. It was clearly a damn lie. But it’s true for the books and stories I’ve written and posted for sale, except Shiver, which will (I hope) continue to be free over there.

Why am I doing this? Well, why not? I’d like to get some more reviews on my books, maybe get them into more hands, while I go write other stuff (most likely under a different name). I’d just set it all to “free” if I thought that would work, if Amazon would allow it…but my experience to date suggests that those who download freebies generally don’t go on to pay for other books, whereas those who buy books (even for very little money) sometimes do. Might be cool if there are a few more folks inclined to buy my (future) stuff at some (future) point (in the future).

Fear not: there will be more stuff published under my own name. It’s in the queue. And I’m quite aware that “write compelling stories” is the true/only secret to success in this game. But I’ve never quit picking at scabs, either, or at least when nobody’s watching, so…I’m doing this. Just don’t pay any attention and it’ll be fine.

Also, I’m a bit bored this evening and figured I’d shake stuff up a bit. Thought I’d be hanging out with the family, but a basketball game on TV put the kibosh on that. I could, you know, work on something…but this is easier. You’re welcome. And no, I won’t watch basketball. Promised myself I was done with the game back in elementary school, and I’ve kept that promise. For no particular reason.

If I’d thought about it at all, I could now show you (for some reason or other, if any) some pics of the windshield on my newish minivan. Quite destroyed by a hailstorm here in San Antonio, while I was driving it, while my wife rode in the passenger seat. Turns out gleeful chortling doesn’t go over well in situations like that, if you didn’t already know. So I had to pretend the whole thing wasn’t as cool as it clearly was…but, yeah, we could’ve been hurt. Weren’t. So all’s well. Might as well stop typing for now, and maybe go grab a beer. Meanwhile, it’s dark and raining out, and the existing pics are not available to me, thus you either, at the moment. Some other time, maybe.

Hope you guys are having fun out there! Having a pleasant evening here. Petting the cat, reading, goofing off in general. You?

The post Fire sale! first appeared on Caveat Lector.

Looks like it’s time to shake things up again. Writing-wise, this time, rather than life-wise. Or even -foolish, applied to either, which might be more in line with your expectations.

I’m working on a book. Well, the first of a new trilogy. It’s YA dystopian SF. I like the genre in general, and have a few favorites. But…ever looked at the category? Notice anything about the authors?

Their names tend toward the non-masculine. Hmm.

I doubt it’ll surprise any of you that I like messing around with people’s expectations as I write. I have to entertain myself first, after all. But this habit comes with a price tag attached. I mean this semi-literally, and maybe semi-literately, at that!

‘Scuse me. Words are funny. I like them.

Suppose you were a writer. Suppose you wanted to get paid. And you knew, or suspected, or maybe just hoped, that you could write in any of several genres. Suppose you were trying to figure out which one might pay the best. You might try going to Amazon and looking at category listings, right? You could look at the top sellers, figure out how many books already exist in each category, look at the sales ranking for books not only in the top few spots, but maybe also for those books coming in one or two hundred spots below them. Then you might look at a few of the books in the top spots, identify any commonalities you can, and get an idea of what it’d take to hit a genre sweet spot. To satisfy the expectations of readers. You’d end up with a rough sort of notion of how a particular type of book might sell, right? If you were to write it?

You might consider that a series is likely to out-perform a similar number of standalone books. Then you might come up with a plan–you incorporate some long-range notion of several books, or several trilogies, or whatever, and you could hope to bring readers along with you from one series to another–not all readers, of course, but some of them. Over time, you might build a career.

How much do you guys think the above resembles my own process? Not at all, right? I don’t have a writing career in any meaningful sense. I have a careen. Which suits me, mostly. But not entirely. And I can’t use anything remotely like the above process with my stuff. Yet.

Thing is…how do readers find books? Generally, I suspect, it’s either by author or category. Most likely in that order. There are some of you who’ve been reading my stuff for years, and I very much appreciate it. But there aren’t many. And as for finding my books by category? By genre? They’re are all over the place, and none of them fit neatly into existing categories to begin with. No shame in that (I think)…but it does limit my financial upside quite a bit. Having a “backlist” of books readers can buy if they happen to run across one of my titles and like it is very handy. It’s clearly helped. And, let’s not forget, I love to write. But if the backlist is all over the place? As things stand, for my own work, the only readers who might stick around from book to book are those who enjoy several genres, and don’t mind seeing them all mixed up in the same book. My people! So, uh…how many of you are out there?

You know what? For all I know, there are thousands upon thousands of people looking for weird cross-genre stuff just like mine. But. Even if it’s true? How do they find it? I’ll tell you, I don’t know how to find the sort of thing I tend to write. Might be because I’m a weirdo. Might be because retailers aren’t very good at matching books with readers yet. Or both. Doesn’t matter.

Mostly, I’m (not) guessing, other people don’t know how to find books like mine either. Even if they’d want to. Which is more a fond hope than an expectation on my part.

So. With crass commercial intent, I’m going to start out with a new pseudonym, in a new genre. I’m not sure just how easy or difficult I’ll make it to figure out what else I’ve written under my own name, or other names. Probably it’ll be at least somewhat difficult.

Plus I’m going to pretend to be a girl.

Nope, not intending to cross-dress. Or even disguise my voice. It’s just…my intent is to meet readers’ expectations. Or appear to meet them. While writing the best books I can manage to produce, while coloring between the lines.

Further: I suspect that social media stuff, including blogging, is…well, diverting in more than one sense. Fun, but not very useful in terms of sales generated for time spent. Which ain’t the end of the world. But what if time spent writing new fiction turns out to be more productive all around? Also, what if I don’t really want to spend a lot of my time pretending to be someone else, so I figure I’ll just skip that part?

So. I’ll still publish under my own name. I think. I’ll continue to cross genres with wild abandon, and write…you know…my sort of stuff. When I can.

But I really want to know: if I color within the lines for a bit, meeting (most of) readers’ expectations, can I turn this writing shtick into a reasonable sort of full-time income? Can I do it in a single year? Can I do it with no social media time, no time spent promoting my work, via nothing more than writing and publishing fiction? (Well. That, plus a mailing list for the new pseudonym.)

If that works, can I enjoy the process? Can I do it without completely abandoning my genre-bending turn of mind, while still publishing separately under my own name?

Got no idea, here.

I’m going to try to find out, though. And I’ll keep y’all posted. And…well, I’ll probably announce any new releases, only without divulging the titles, and tell you how the books are doing. If you really want to read them? Send me a private email, swear up and down you’ll keep my secret, and I’ll probably tell you how to find the books. Maybe. We’ll see.

Assuming I get them written to begin with. Gotta go work on that.

Another thought: hey, maybe I’m just fundamentally the kind of writer who has to write well enough to entice readers to follow him across genres. Maybe, for whatever reasons, this is my only path to long-term financial success in this game. Well, okay. I can work on getting better. Might need to do that anyway, you know. But. That being said? Who says writing in-genre fiction that pleases people isn’t a path to that goal? After all, more readers means…more readers. Probably not a horrible idea to give them what they want before asking them to try something else. Eventually, I imagine all pen names will be revealed anyway.

Meanwhile. Have fun out there!

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