Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 76
November 15, 2022
The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 134: Publishing Gatekeepers, Twitter, and Indie Authors
In this week’s episode, we discuss whether or not publishing gatekeepers are good for writers, and the effect that Twitter changes might have on indie authors.
It’s time for a new regular podcast feature – the Coupon of the Week! Once a week I’ll share a coupon for a discount off an ebook or an audiobook at my Payhip store.
To celebrate the launch of CLOAK OF MASKS, here’s a coupon for the audiobook of CLOAK OF DRAGONS, the first book in the series. You can get it for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code:
NOVDRAGONS
The coupon code will be valid until November 30th, 2022. Get the audiobook here:
As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.
November 14, 2022
Coupon of the Week – 11/14/2022
It’s time for a new regular blog feature – the Coupon of the Week! Once a week I’ll share a coupon for a discount off an ebook or an audiobook at my Payhip store.
To celebrate the launch of CLOAK OF MASKS, here’s a coupon for the audiobook of CLOAK OF DRAGONS, the first book in the series. You can get it for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code:
NOVDRAGONS
The coupon code will be valid until November 30th, 2022. So if you need to listen to an audiobook for Thanksgiving travel, we have you covered! 
-JM
November 13, 2022
who cares what the gatekeepers think?
It’s NaNoWriMo, which means a lot of new writers will finish their new books. Many will self-publish them, but some will get on the Agent/Publisher Submission Treadmill, despite the fact that, in my opinion, self-publishing is better in every way.
One of the many advantages of self-publishing is that you don’t have to deal with the random Submission Guidelines of various publishers.
Recently, I saw a small publisher on Twitter touting its Submission Guidelines and demanding that would-be writers follow them. I won’t link to it, because I don’t want to start a fight with strangers, but I have to admit the submission guidelines annoyed me. Specifically, it included a long list of what the publisher doesn’t want to see. Some of it was reasonable – no hate speech, no explicit scenes of a certain nature, etc, – but the first four items on the list reminded me of the bad old days:
-Urban fantasy or anything with a modern-day setting.
-Tolkien-style epic/high fantasy.
-Stories that read like a D&D session. No LitRPG, either.
-Anything with orcs in it. If your story has orcs, it will automatically be rejected.
Now, I should point out that objectively, there is nothing wrong with this. If you’re running a small publisher and you want a specific kind of book or story, then you want that specific kind of book. If you’re publishing, for example, urban fantasy, it’s a waste of everyone’s time if you send in your LitRPG epic.
What annoyed me about it was the reminder of the Bad Old Days before self-publishing, and having to deal with whatever random nonsense the publishers and the agents put in their submission guidelines. I’ve had many people tell me that they stopped reading in the 90s, the 2000s, or the early 2010s until they discovered indie books, and the reason for that was the publishers stopped publishing the sort of books they wanted to read. Traditional publishing was never great for writers, but it used to be much wider open until a bunch of corporation consolidation in the 90s really squeezed down the available markets. Because of that, a comparatively small number of people decided what could be published, and not to paint with too broad of a brush, what they wanted to publish was boring stuff that would get awards.
Because of that, back in the 2000s and early 2010s when I was submitting to traditional publishers, all the submission guidelines for the publishers and the agents all said “no orcs, no elves, no Tolkien style fantasy”. Which was annoying, because that was (and is) what I really wanted to write. That’s why when I wrote the Caina books, there are no orcs or elves or anything of that nature.
Granted, that worked out for the Caina books, but only once I started self-publishing.
And once I started self-publishing, I was free to start writing fantasy with orcs and elves and wizards and all that in the form of the FROSTBORN series, which has sold better than anything else I’ve written.
I suppose that was what annoyed me about those submission guidelines – a throwback to the days when the gatekeepers ruled the roost. The gatekeepers of publishing are still in business, but the wall’s gone, and you can just walk past them to write and sell what you want.
Now I’m going to be petty.
The small publisher I mentioned above offers $0.01 per word payment. Their guidelines explicitly refused anything with orcs, but as it happens, I very recently published a short story with a LOT of orcs in it. Specifically, THE FIRST BARGAIN, in which every speaking part in the story, save for the narrator, is an orc. That is a lot of orcs! Granted, the reason I wrote THE FIRST BARGAIN was to give it away for free with my newsletter, because that increases the number of clicks in my newsletter and makes it less likely to get sent to a spam folder. But I also publish the short story to all the usual platforms, since nice people sometimes buy it.
I went back and checked the figures, and in October 2022, THE FIRST BARGAIN made $0.028 cents per word, which almost 150% more than I would have made selling an orc-free short story of comparative length to the small publisher above. Not bad for a short story that I gave away for free to my newsletter subscribers! (And thanks for reading, everyone!)
I’ve been thinking about trying something new in 2023. Since those submission guidelines seem to be like an anti-chrism of success, maybe I should try a LitRPG.
-JM
November 12, 2022
Is The Twitter Purchase Bad For Indie Authors?
A reader emailed to ask if I thought that Elon Musk taking over Twitter would be bad for indie authors.
I don’t think it will really matter for authors one way or another. Of the social media platforms, Twitter is generally the worst at selling books. Twitter as an ad platform is very ineffective. If you’re going to spend money on ads, you’ll get a lot better results using Facebook, Amazon Ads, and Bookbub (not necessarily in that order – it varies by book and platform) or email promo sites like Freebooksy and BargainBooksy. In fact, one of the interesting details that came out of the buyout was that by 2016, Twitter was in serious danger of going out of business, but the 2016 US presidential election suddenly drove massive new interest to the platform.
If you curate Twitter carefully, it can be a good source of news and information. If you misstep on Twitter, you can accidentally summon an angry mob of crazy people that will try to destroy your life. This really doesn’t seem like a good risk/reward ratio.
I’ve had a Twitter account since like 2011, but I only use it infrequently, mostly to post links to my website. Which isn’t the most effective way to use Twitter. If you want a lot of engagement, you have to use it a lot, like dozens of tweets a day, and I have neither the time nor the actual interest to do that.
This sounds like I don’t like Twitter – I don’t, generally – but I concede that Twitter can be a useful tool in a variety of circumstances. It’s just not a very useful tool for selling books the way that the other social platforms can be.
At a bigger level, is Twitter becoming a private company a good thing or a bad thing?
I don’t really know. Having a company go private isn’t inherently better or worse than a publicly traded one, it just depends on the circumstances. The downside of a publicly traded company is that it is basically enslaved to the quarterly filings and reports, and quality (and sometimes legal compliance) goes out the window in pursuit of a good quarter. I’ve used Dell computers both personally and professionally for 25 years, and I’m typing this post on one right now. After Dell went private in 2013, I noticed that the overall quality of Dell PCs and laptops went up by quite a bit. A privately held company is sometimes free to do things and achieve things that a publicly traded one cannot.
The flip side, of course, is that a privately held company can concentrate a lot of power into one individual, and if that individual isn’t up to the task, that can be the end of the company.
So maybe Mr. Musk and his staff will improve Twitter, or maybe they won’t. Time will tell. Based on my negative opinion of Twitter, I think maybe it would be a net gain for the cause of civilization if Mr. Musk totally destroyed Twitter, but even a “less bad” Twitter would be an improvement.
It is interesting that for the last six years or so there have been chin-tugging articles saying Something Must Be Done about Big Tech, and various political leaders have made speeches declaiming that Something Must Be Done about Big Tech. Except it turned out that maybe Big Tech would destroy itself. Facebook seems to have made a big bet on the Metaverse only to lose, and maybe Twitter will totally unravel. I suppose in the end, even the mightiest empires are finally undone by the own hubris and incompetence.
Also, I freely admit that like half of the reason I wrote this post was because I wanted an excuse to do a Photoshop of the Twitter logo on fire.
-JM
CLOAK OF MASKS is now available!
I am pleased to report that CLOAK OF MASKS is now available! You can get it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip.
Yesterday, CLOAK OF MASKS hit #1 in its category on Amazon US! Thanks everyone!
I have to admit this is very gratifying because CLOAK GAMES/MAGE has always been a bit tricky to market. If a new writer said to me “hey, I want to write an urban fantasy series set centuries in the future with an increasing number of high-concept science fiction plot points”, I would say, no, don’t do that, that’s a terrible idea.
But! Here we are with the 20th book with Nadia as a main character. Thanks, everyone, for coming along on her adventures.
###
No one has ever seen this assassin’s face, and I’m his next target.
My name’s Nadia, and I work for the High Queen of the Elves.
That means all her enemies are my enemies…and I’ve made a lot of foes all by myself.
So when an old friend calls for help, I don’t think anything of it.
But it might be the first step into a deadly trap…
-JM
November 8, 2022
The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 133: How To Respond To A 1-Star Review
In this week’s episode, I take a look at how writers should respond to negative reviews of their books. I also take a look at advertising performance in October 2022.
As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.
-JM
November 7, 2022
CLOAK OF MASKS book description!
Just a couple days out from finishing CLOAK OF MASKS. Let’s see the book description!
###
My name’s Nadia, and I work for the High Queen of the Elves.
That means all her enemies are my enemies…and I’ve made a lot of foes all by myself.
So when an old friend calls for help, I don’t think anything of it.
But it might be the first step into a deadly trap…
-JM
November 4, 2022
CLOAK OF MASKS table of contents!
I am far enough along in the editing process to share the CLOAK OF MASKS table of contents.
If all goes well, I will probably publish the book sometime next week.
-JM
November 3, 2022
CLOAK OF MASKS progress update
-JM
November 2, 2022
ad results October 2022
Let’s have a look at my bestselling books of October 2022. Thanks for reading, everyone!
No major surprises there. FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE made the list because I did a sale on it in September, and it really took off on Google Play, which was nice. CLOAK GAMES: OMNIBUS ONE also made the list because I’ve been pushing it with ads.
Speaking of ads, let’s see how Facebook ads did this month! For every $1 I spent advertising a series, here is what I got back.
CLOAK GAMES: $3.69
THE GHOSTS: $3.95
FROSTBORN: $3.92
SEVENFOLD SWORD: $9.18
MALISON\DRAGONTIARNA: $5.73
DEMONSOULED: $1.43
I should note that I stopped advertising SEVENFOLD SWORD to put that budget towards MALISON/DRAGONTIARNA for November, which is why the ratio for SEVENFOLD SWORD is so high. If you stop advertising a free book, there’s usually something of a tail as people who read the free book move into the rest of the series before it drops off. DEMONSOULED was disappointingly low, but I’m in the process of updating all the covers to a consistent look, so hopefully that will help for November.
And the commercial failure (so far) of the Metaverse has had one beneficial effect – Facebook is a lot less ban-happy this election season! Back from like August 2020 to December 2020, if you made practically any change to any ad settings, your account got randomly banned and it took weeks to get it reversed. I’ve heard far fewer reports of that this year. Why, it’s like Facebook’s parent company is suddenly desperate for revenue.
Here’s how my Amazon ads did for October. Remember, for an Amazon ad to turn a profit, it typically needs to generate a sale between every 6 to 8 clicks.
DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE, 1 sale for every 0.6 clicks, $12.70 back for every $1 spent.
CLOAK OF DRAGONS, 1 sale for every 2.17 clicks, $2.76 back for every $1 spent.
DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE did shockingly well. The reason for that is DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS sold so many copies. (Thanks everyone!) That drew a lot of eyeballs that looked at the DRAGONSKULL series as a whole and tried out the first book, which means that the Amazon ads all performed better because relevancy is one of the metrics that controls ads on Amazon. It can be a nasty chicken-and-egg problem, since the best way to get an Amazon ad to work is to get more people buying the book, but the whole point of an Amazon ad is to get people to buy the book. But if you can get inside that cycle, it works really well.
One of the reasons I talk about this is because it’s National Novel Writing Month, and a lot of people who finish their books are going to get on the Agent/Publisher Submission Treadmill. I contend it is better to self-publish and learn digital marketing.
Yes, it’s work to learn all this stuff, but on the scale of human endeavors, it’s a lot easier than digging ditches or brain surgery. And trying to get a publishing deal is like attempting to win the lottery. It could work, but you’re better off going into business for yourself.
Finally, thanks for reading, everyone!
-JM
