Allison M. Dickson's Blog, page 6

Are You Prepared to Self-Publish? A Managed Expectations Checklist

Publishers Weekly just announced today that there have been 400,000 self-published books released in 2013. In light of that staggering number, as well as some recent discussion about how reviewers choose not to review self-published books simply because it's a numbers problem (meaning, there just aren't enough people to review the glut of traditionally published books every year, let alone the tsunami of self-published stuff that hasn't really been vetted at all), I figured it was time to gather folks around and talk about what the average person can expect from having a career in self-publishing. Because the more popular of an alternative it becomes, the more noise we'll have to fight through in order to be noticed.



Some of this isn't easy to admit, but these are the questions you must be prepared to ask yourself if you're deciding to forego the drudgery of traditional publishing in favor of the drudgery of self-publishing. Hybrid authors will probably note some overlap, but no matter.



If you answer YES to most of these questions, you may be ready to self-publish.



1. Are you prepared to sell anywhere between 0 and 15 copies in your first month, with a buying audience comprised entirely of people who know you?



2. Are you prepared to sell about the same or less than that in your second month as you exhaust the People Who Know You list?



3. Are you prepared to feel victorious when your Amazon sales ranking has 5 digits instead of the more common 6?



4. Are you prepared to feel like Stephen Fucking King when your sales ranking reaches 4 digits after the debut of your BookBub ad? Or maybe like Stephen Fucking King Conjoined To James Goddamn Patterson when that rank hits three digits?



5. Are you prepared to peak out when you've sold several hundred (or thousand) steeply-discounted copies and then watch your ranking precipitously fall back into the 5-6 digit rank tank about five days later after you raised your price back up?



6. Are you prepared to celebrate when Smashwords can finally pay you because after six months you exceeded the $10 payment threshold?



7. Are you prepared to celebrate when you get your first review from someone not your best friend and/or mom?



8. Are you prepared to wonder if you still have to claim earnings at the end of the year if you only made about $37 from Amazon? (The answer is yes, you still should claim your earnings).



9. Are you prepared to spend about nine hours combing through a database of book reviewers and bloggers, sending out query letters to no fewer than thirty people begging for reviews, only to hear back from two of them? One of whom can't post a review for you any sooner than 8 months from now because their reading list is about three dozen books high?



10. Are you prepared to give thousands of books away with the hope that dozens will pay actual money and that you'll get enough reviews that maybe a couple dozen more will pay actual money?



11. Are you prepared for people's eyes to dull just a little when you tell them, "I'm self-published"?



12. Are you prepared to feel like a raging success story because after plugging away at your endeavors for five years, you've managed to sell an average of 50-100 copies a month, with maybe a couple bad months in the middle of summer, because hey that's publishing for you?



13. Are you prepared to take your whole family out for a celebratory steak dinner when your yearly earnings cross over into the four-figure range? What about the first time your monthly earnings are enough to cover a decent basket of groceries? Or a tank of gas?



14. Are you prepared to accept that most people don't agree on what a fair price for your hard work is (though they're pretty much unanimous on the whole $.99 or less price point) and no number of boorish "daily latte" arguments will persuade them to spend that four or five bucks on your thing?



15. Are you prepared to hold your breath before reading every review, because if it's one or two stars, and you only have 5 reviews, it will be visible on your product page and could adversely affect future sales?



16. Are you prepared to hold late night discussions with yourself about the moral implications of purchasing only a few reviews? You know, just to bump up the enthusiasm factor a little?



17. Are you prepared to become unnerved and a little jealous at how well some of your friends are doing at this thing, even though you just KNOW your stuff is totally better than theirs?



18. Are you prepared to be perpetually ENRAGED at Stephenie Meyer or (insert some other highly successful author you consider a hack) because, again, your stuff is totally better?



19. Are you prepared to stare at sales rankings like they're tea leaves, trying to divine why it was so much higher the other day when you only sold 3 copies, but it's in the toilet now that you've sold 6? Have you Google searched already on how to crack and/ or game the Amazon ranking algorithm?



20. Are you prepared to seek solace in the words of the self-publishing pioneers who insist that if you just do what they do, if you believe in the paradigm hard enough, if you just keep releasing every single book you write, you too can dine at their gold-plated trough?



21. Are you prepared to feel like, at any moment, the few people who have discovered your work and have diligently reviewed it, will leave you because you haven't released anything new in a few months, and irrelevance is just one more nail bite away?



That should about cover the basics. I hope this was helpful in getting your brain into the place it needs to be in order to be your own publisher. No, it's not easy. No, the money doesn't flow. I have said it before, but most times you get out of self-publishing what you put into it. If you make promotion a second full-time job, you can wind up doing pretty well for yourself. Or sometimes, magic does happen, a perfect storm between the right book and the right tastemaker getting your book in front of the right set of eyes, and you can be off and running in no time, racking up day job-quitting numbers after only a month or two.



But if you find that things haven't quite been the money-spooging success you thought they would be,  that for whatever reason, your book hasn't found its way onto thousands of Kindles despite all your hard work and monetary investment, take heart. You're not alone. There is plenty of solace in knowing there are tens of thousands of us planting our gardens and reaping our pennies. And then one day you might wake up to find something beautiful has sprouted, and it has your name on it.

Authors and the Conundrum Great Expectations

If you stare at it long enough, you'll become a bestseller!



There is so much unwarranted mystique that surrounds the publishing industry. Telling people I'm a writer is usually met with a gaze of wide-eyed awe that makes me want to retreat and hide in the nearest broom closet. Not only because I'm embarrassed that now I'm the center of attention, but also because I feel almost an obligation to dispel people of their erroneous notion that writing books for a living is anything glamorous



You stay in this business long enough, and the glittery shininess wears off pretty quick. You can see the big, slow-moving machinery for what it is, and you realize you're only another cog in that machine. But for the uninitiated, publishing is still very much a machine that churns out sweet-smelling delusions. That's fine for people who don't work in the business, but there are none so hopped up on the gas as the people who aspire to be authors, whose fictions on the page can't even come close to competing with the ones populating their heads.



I had my own pretty little fictions once. They motivated me in the beginning, but taken too long, and like any drug, it can ruin you. I still need to realign my head and heart from time to time. Authors are natural dreamers and idealists who require constant course correction, so this is to be expected.




My point isn't to defeat anyone here or to discourage people from pursuing their goals. It's to help you go into this thing smart, and with your soft and tender bits covered in thick armor, because while the act of writing is a divine and beautiful form of self-expression that makes you feel like you can conquer the world, publishing can be downright grueling, dehumanizing, nerve-wracking, heartbreaking, confusing, and tedious. In fact, it's a lot like a sore on the side of your tongue that rubs against your teeth every time you try to talk or chew. And it doesn't matter if you're self-published or if you're part of a publishing team.




Essentially, selling books is the antithesis of everything that makes you love crafting them. Writing is the wide open field of limitless possibility. Publishing is the leash that reins you in and reminds you of your real place in the world. If handled properly, it's the perfect yin-yang relationship. The key is to make sure you love writing enough to put up with the many rigors on the business end. So let's get started on the five most common reality checks, shall we?




1. The First Book You Finish Probably Won't Get Published (by a traditional publisher)





Al Gore isn't the only one dealing out inconvenient truths

Not that any of these things are easy to hear, but let's just rip this one off like a band-aid, because it's a fuck ugly fact that few authors ever want to entertain. I know I didn't, and I don't know a single writer that has. If anything, the act of trying to woo an agent or publisher for that very first novel is more of an act of ignoring odds. Of course, the odds of publication are always long no matter how many books you write, but with your first book, they're downright dismal. It's the equivalent of rolling two dice in a game of Farkle. It's like Neo trying to make his first jump in the Matrix: no one makes it. Well, almost no one. But you'd feel like a jerk if you didn't try.




Nevertheless, repeat after me: My first book is practice. It's the act of finally holding a really impossible yoga pose. This does not a professional yogi make, just as finishing one book does not a professional author make. 




I can hear people itching to spew their bile at me right now, because there are exceptions to this rule. There are exceptions to every rule. But the truth is still true for 99.9% of us. You can ask nearly any traditionally published author if their debut novel was their first completed book, and chances are nearly all of them will laugh and give you that "you have no idea" sigh. My first two books are resting peacefully in a trunk now. I had to write several hundred thousand words before I got a tiny break. And several hundred thousand more before I got a slightly bigger one. This tale of woe is far from unique.




Do not take this to mean that your accomplishment is meaningless. Finishing a novel is a HUGE DEAL. It deserves all the fanfare and celebration in the world, because it is something so many people cannot do. Take pride in it. But your work as a budding novelist has only just begun. You proved you have it in you, now get going on the next book. Furthermore, agents and publishers love for their writers to be able to demonstrate that they are productive. They want to make money off you for the long haul. They aren't looking for a one book wonder. Publishers usually feel a lot better about signing you to a two or three book deal when you have shown a capacity for finishing books regularly. And honestly? I am RELIEVED those first two books of mine weren't ready for prime time, because I sure as hell wasn't. I was still getting my legs under me, and that was probably bleeding through every word. When I finally got an agent, one of the first things she said to me was my book read like someone who had been doing this a long time. And you know what? She was right. She would not have said that five years ago.



The first book you try to sell to a publisher is basically a resume demonstrating you as a Writer of Books -- emphasis on the plural, emphasis on Writer, i.e. YOU. Because YOU are the product every bit as much as the thing you wrote. In many ways, finishing your NEXT book is almost more momentous than finishing the first, because you are proving this is a muscle you can flex more than once.



While this should not dissuade you from trying to get your first book published--we all have to take our licks out in the field--it's a good idea to know what you're up against. Your resolve will strengthen, and you'll head back to the computer ready to make more and better books.




2. Deserve's Got Nothin to Do with It.





William Munny don't care about your big dreams

Let's just be plain here. As an author, you are entitled to exactly dick. If you think you're a special snowflake because you worked so extra special hard, and you've had an extra special hard life, and you have an extra special story without which the world will not be complete until millions of gazes are thrown upon it, get in line. Most people become writers because they're working out a lifetime of their own specially brewed demons. In fact, we're all kind of miserable bastards. That's why we do art in the first place. So walking into this with a galaxy of fate and entitlement swirling around your head is probably the biggest mistake you can make, both for yourself and the people at whom you're thrusting your masterpiece.



Furthermore, treating your career like a product of well-timed star farts rather than the result of extremely hard work, dedication, and humility is an insult to people who work their asses off for a living, telling luck to go pound sand, who have taken their knocks and kept getting back up despite every single setback, who were creative enough to forge new paths when the ones they originally envisioned didn't pan out. A fatalistic attitude also has a way of making authors behave very badly, and every agent and publisher has a horror story of an author who refused to take no for an answer because "I'm more different and betterer than everyone else out there, which you'll see if you just give ME a chance!"




Just remember: the process of sending your work to agents and publishers is called "submission" for a reason. Because you will be forced to check your ego at the door and get down on your knees regularly to prostrate before the gatekeeper gods while slapping your face directly into the pavement. You'll be forced to follow stringent guidelines that feel tedious and seem designed only to make authors run a fiery gauntlet through Word. And they will reject you. A lot. Why? Who cares. They just will. Most of those rejections will be impersonal and make you feel pathetic and tiny. Some of the rejections will be detailed and personal and they will make you feel even more minuscule. Sometimes you won't hear a thing back from an agent or a publisher at all, even when they asked you for a partial or full manuscript to peruse.



You will be asked to wait. And wait some more. And then hurry up so you can wait even longer than that, because publishing moves at about the speed of a cryogenically frozen snail.




You could even get a book deal or an agent to sign you only to have the whole thing fall through for any number of reasons. Your agent could get sick a year later and decide to retire. He or she might also be unable to sell your work, despite how good you both think the book is and how great the agent's reputation. You could get a book deal, and a contract that seems pretty golden only to have the publisher go bankrupt or be cannibalized by another publisher six months before your book was supposed to come out, tying your rights and your book in an endless limbo. Or you could get a book deal, have your book hit the market, and then wind up realizing you wound up with one of "those" publishers who owes you thousands in back royalties, because they don't pay their authors.




There are so many roadblocks standing between you and your publishing dreams. Don't be your own roadblock by acting like all the setbacks are interfering with your destiny. Shit happens all the time in this biz, and all snowflakes, no matter how unique, will eventually melt under the pressure.




3. Books Don't Sell Themselves. Especially for Debut Authors.







Hold off on those exotic pets. Unless you're Mike Tyson.

Congratulations! You not only finished your book, but you found a publisher for it, and your big book birthday is just around the corner. Already you're picking out your dream home and imagining the purr of that sweet sweet Audi engine, or the endangered tiger you plan to buy, because all eccentric millionaires have tigers. Maybe you have a deal with a big New York house, or possibly it's with a reputable small press or a co-op or some other outfit. Either way, you'll soon learn the size of your publisher isn't all that relevant. Some have more powerful distribution than others, and they have other bells and whistles to make your book shine, but their capacity to sell your books for you is more or less the same, meaning that while some of them may give you an initial push out the gate, it is up to you the author to keep a lot of that momentum going. If you were lucky enough to get a publicist, you will do better than most, but the number of brand new mid-list authors with regular publicists is downright nil.



Also a quick line about money: depending on the genre, you will likely not get very much for an advance, if you get one at all (most small presses don't offer more than token advances). Debut authors with large publishing houses can probably expect somewhere in the vicinity of $5-10K, unless of course you wrote a YA dystopian vampire tale called TWIVERGENT, at which point you can start perusing your Audis and tigers. Regardless of the amount, advance money is paid out in chunks leading up to the publication of your book (which can take upwards of two years from the signing of your contract), and you also need to pay taxes on that money. So $10K paid out in two or three chunks over the next year and a half to two years, minus what you owe Uncle Sam? Not exactly exotic tiger money, is it? And THEN, you don't see another dime from the publisher until you sell enough units to pay for said advance (or "earn out"). Hint: most debut books don't earn out, especially if you're not out there grinding away on promotion. You could get paid for some appearances, but remember, you also have to leave time to write your next book.



As for promotion, be prepared to hit the ground running. A large publisher or a good agent can help with setting up signings, speaking engagements, interviews, press releases, and other events, but its not a magic pill, so slap the notion out of your head now that any of this is automated. This way, anything you DO get from your publisher in terms of marketing help will be a bonus. I've seen just as many authors with a major publisher have to work just as hard to sell the same number of copies as I've sold with my small press gig. And that's EVEN with reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and the New York Times, and famous author blurbs under their belts. In short, making money at this game ain't easy. It takes a lot of mojo, smarts, savvy, and elbow grease to convince a lot of people to buy (and read) the book of someone they've never heard of.




4. Movie Deals, a.k.a That Other Pipedream You Have







Every writer wants to be the meat in this sammich. Or replace Gillian's meat. Er.

I cannot count on a million hands the number of authors whose main approach to this business is not to sell books and have a flourishing literary career, but to get their book made into a movie, with the idea that this is where the "real money" is (oh, there's money in movies, but it's mostly reserved for movie makers, not book authors). Like it's so simple to get a movie made. One very shallow glimpse into the film industry ought to dissuade most people of that fantasy, because if you think book publishing is a grueling nightmare, Hollywood makes publishing look like a charity fundraiser for out of luck scribes. With the umpteen moving parts that all have to be moving in sync to crank out even something mediocre, it's a miracle anything ever gets released in our local theaters.



But it's hard to shake this dream, because so many movies are based on books, right? I mean, a new one hits theaters every week. Look at Nicholas Sparks and Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins, and and and . . . Yes, there a LOT of movies and TV shows that first began life as a book. The adaptation machine is a well-oiled one, and it gives a lot of fuel to an author's dreams that their book will be next. Hell, my own short story, CONSUMPTION, was just optioned for development into a screenplay, and that was really exciting. But here's the reality:



On the very very rare off-chance that out of the nearly 300,000 books published in the U.S. in one year alone, yours caught the eye of a screenwriter or a production company passionate enough about its prospects, you have only reached the one of about a ZILLION hurdles that exist between the signing of an option and its appearance on the big (or small) screen. A production company may offer to option your book for about five grand. Sometimes the amounts are much lower than that, especially if your book isn't a runaway bestseller, but if you have a film agent, they can negotiate decent terms for you. From that point, your work is being "leased" by the producer, where it will remain in limbo for eternity while it awaits the screenwriter, the director and (most important) the financing. This process can take so many years that you will have likely written a dozen novels and have grandkids by the time your agent calls up to tell you they have a green light. Of course, getting the green light is also no guarantee. The movie could even be finished, but then fail at getting distribution. You know how many movies starring hugely famous actors are sitting on shelves gathering dust right right now because of this very thing? Don't try to count them. It'll only make you sad. But none of that makes any difference to your bottom line as an author. That's movie business. You've likely already made and spent all the money you'll get from that project by then anyway.



While a lot of writers make a decent side income just from yearly option renewals from movie studios, and that's cool and all, if this is your endgame as a writer, you're going to be sorely disappointed.



5. The Victory Lap is a Myth









If you think you've reached the top of the heap, you're probably not setting your sights high enough. The climb never ends. Unless you've made enough money at this that you could retire and do something else entirely, the challenges are endless.



Finish your first book? Great. Congrats. Take a few days off and start the next one.



Friends and beta readers think you're the second coming of Kerouac? Enjoy a brief snuggle with your warm and fuzzies and then put that shit away. Writing is a lonely profession, and it's nice to get a boost from our well-meaning supporters once in awhile, but don't huff those fumes too long, or you'll never be able to see your work like the imperfect raw thing it actually is.



Got yourself an agent? Awesome. Good for you! Celebrate and cross that item off your to-do list. And then start praying your agent sells your book.



Agent sells your book? Fantastic! Now get ready for the editing grind and the long long wait to release day. Also start prepping your next book, because the sophomore effort is often more stressful than the freshman one.



Movie studio options your book? Woohoo! Now cash your option check and pretend like nothing happened, because you are a book writer not a movie mogul, and you have to let that process play out on its own.



Sales rankings looking pretty fantastic? Stupendous! Keep churning out the words, because like those awesome story ideas you have right before you wake up, sales trends are fleeting and they dry up. Having another book done and ready to go before that happens is probably not a bad idea.



Got your first royalty check? Terrific! Now set aside money for your taxes, track your expenses, and manage your pennies wisely, because writers can get into a lot of trouble with the tax man. And don't quit your day job just yet (or let your breadwinner quit theirs), because as you have probably noticed by now, those royalty checks are pretty small and they only come monthly or quarterly.



In other words, this is a job like any other, and it's hard as hell on your psyche, your physique, and your bank account. It isn't a quest for fame or some romantic dream come true, and it sure as hell isn't a get rich quick (or even not-so-quick) scheme.



But it is rewarding, and you get to wear pajamas for most of it too (still my favorite perk). Yes, the publishing industry is full of thorns, teeth, and snares, but you have plenty of time between releases to ask yourself whether you were crazy when you decided to take this path. But usually, before you can get around to answering that question honestly, you get another idea, and soon you're speeding along the roller coaster track once again, feeling that old thrill, all doubt and uncertainty left in the dust, because while the other books might not have shot to the top, THIS is going to be the one that hits.



I can feel it.

How a Book Can Change You: GONE GIRL

Join me on a recurring blog series where I discuss various books that managed not only to be great, but life-changing.





[image error]
Here's a little story about a gone girl...


In June of 2012, I was coming off the high of signing my first book contract with Hobbes End Publishing for a little sci-fi dystopian novel I wrote called THE LAST SUPPER (due out on 12/13/14, pre-order now!). In addition to that, I had developed a pretty stable platform of speculative fiction stories composed mostly of horror-lite and science fiction. Things were looking good.




But I was frustrated. You know how, if you live in an apartment with thin walls,  you can hear your neighbors in the next door units knocking around? Their muffled voices, their televisions, their plumbing every time they flush the toilet, and even the sound of their fucking starts to feel like an invasion, a constantly playing soundtrack to your life, and no matter how many times you pound the walls to tell them to pipe down, the racket doesn't stop.





The textbook example of a frustrated writer


That's what it was like inside my head, only the thing on the other side of that wall was a whole world of stories that try as I might, I couldn't seem to access. I knew what I loved. I loved gritty, hard, mostly realistic stories that made me feel uncomfortable, with characters I didn't like but still wanted to hang out with and observe. FIGHT CLUB is like a fucking bible to me. But I seemed to be lacking the proper tools or inspiration to help me access that part of myself. It was getting so my choice to go supernatural all the time felt like a crutch, and I didn't want to make stories that felt like a gimmick, where things started out normal enough, and then I pulled a laser ghost bunny out of a hat.




Then my friend Jody told me I absolutely had to read a book called GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn, an author I'd never heard of. In fact, she was so insistent I read this book that she mailed me her copy. She and I had done this a few times over the years. In fact, Jody was the person behind my discovery of Margaret Atwood, but I will leave that marvel for another day.




I read the synopsis of GONE GIRL, and I have to admit, I wasn't expecting much. It sounded like a pretty cut and dried mystery-suspense thing. Not that I had a problem with the genre--I love crime stories--but Jody must have known there was something special and twisted about it that would appeal specifically to me. And you know what? I trusted my friend more than the book jacket blurb, so I dug in.




Immediately, I was hit over the head by the voice. Crisp and biting like good gin. It strung me along like the best kinds of stories do, making me all too aware that I was entering a place of danger, but worse, I didn't even care. It was the quintessential poisoned honey, and I was lapping it up like Winnie the Pooh. But still, I was wondering exactly how this was going to play out in a way that wasn't staid, that hadn't been done a thousand times in stories about a missing wife and a suspicious looking husband. Did he do it or not? To me, it wasn't enough to answer that question.




Well, as anyone who has read the book can tell you, Flynn delivers a sucker punch at about the 1/3 mark that makes you question whether the world is right-side-up, and from that point on, the punches just keep coming. Punches to the gut, punches to the head, punches to the soul. I reached the final page, and I wanted to throw the book across the room. I wanted to curl up into a fetal position and rock myself. I wanted to write Flynn a love-hate letter telling her I hated her so much I wanted to marry her, because goddamn her for not being afraid to "go there" and tell the kind of story that makes you bleed. People have criticized the story for being bleak. I call that it's most redeeming feature.




I knew, as soon as I closed the book, that I wanted to write a story that did the same thing to someone else that this story had done to me. Not only that, but I knew that I could. I didn't have the idea yet, but I now had the axe to break down that wall separating me from the characters and the situations I had been desperate to meet and explore.




[image error]

And so, a month or so later with those tools in hand, I wrote a short story called "The Good Girls." And then a couple months after that, I expanded TGG into a book called STRINGS, which I also sold to Hobbes End. The book was mainly branded as a horror, and rightfully so given some of the graphic content, but I was playing in a real-world sandbox I hadn't previously entered before. I wasn't only calling to my newly found muse, but also to old solid favorites like Stephen King and Thomas Harris. And I knew that this was where I truly wanted to live as an author. While I would of course still pursue my speculative fiction stories as they came to me, the dark psychological horror/suspense books were going to be my bread and butter. STRINGS poured out of me with pretty much no resistance, and I knew there were going to be more stories just like it. I was a silver miner who had hit a fresh vein of ore.




Some time passed after the release of STRINGS where I tried to figure out my next move. I started the sequel, released the first book in a sci-fi franchise, and I started pondering what would be my next book in the genre that Gillian Flynn and GONE GIRL had opened up in me. Then my mother and I were having lunch one day, and she told me about her trip to visit her old hometown in Georgia the summer previous, about how it hadn't changed much at all since her childhood, and about the kudzu that had grown so thick in the ditches that you could probably bury a body in there and no one would ever find it.




That planted the seed for my book KUDZU, a story about a murder and family secrets set in the south. It was the book I knew I wanted to use in order to hopefully acquire an agent. And the first agent I knew I wanted to query was the one who represents the author who inspired me back in 2012 to find that hidden layer living inside me. And as I detailed in a previous blog, the rest is history. Gillian Flynn's agent, Stephanie Rostan, is now also my agent, and when I think about the kismet associated with that, the whole "coming full circle-ness" of it, I want to fall over and die of happiness. I just don't want it to happen before Ms. Rostan sells my book, as well as the other twisted thriller I'm currently writing called A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE.




So there you have it. GONE GIRL quite literally changed my life. It inspired me to be the writer I truly wanted to be. And I will be in line first thing this Friday, 10/3, to see the movie.




Feel free to comment below and tell me about the books that have changed your life!

THE LAST SUPPER Release Info and How You Can Get a SIGNED COPY!

Here we are, a week away from October. Fall is officially in the air, awakening the dormant part of my soul that is only alive and happy when everything around me is dying.



Wait...that didn't sound good. Let's back up.



So, my awesome publisher has been hard at work prepping THE LAST SUPPER for its debut on 12/13/14, and it's getting the full Cadillac treatment. For one thing, the print books are already up on Amazon for pre-order! And what's better? They're less than ten bucks right now BOOYAH! They will be up on Barnes & Noble for pre-order by the middle of next month, and you will be able to pre-order for your Kindle on 12/1. You will be sure to receive plenty of notification when that happens.



I have already had the privilege of holding one of these bad boys in my hand, and have even sold a few already. It's a beautifully designed and printed 360+ page tome. Even if you've all but sworn off print books, I think you're going to want to have this on your shelf. See for yourself!











Anyway, I highly recommend any and all folks head on over to Amazon and pre-order a copy right now. If you do, I'll have a very special prize just for you! See below:



HOW TO GET A SIGNED PRINT COPY



When I released STRINGS last year, I didn't have a lot of time to plan for the eventuality that people from all over the country (and a few outside the country) would want signed copies. It's hard to engineer that, as print books can be a little heavy, and the shipping costs even with USPS Media Mail can get a little unwieldy. The system I've devised now involves the use of acid-free labels. I will sign the label just as I would any interior book cover, at which point I'll drop it in a standard First Class envelope, slap a stamp on it, and mail it to you. Then you just place the signature label right inside the book where the signature would ordinarily go. BAM! Done! Signed book! Also, I will include a special LAST SUPPER bookmark designed by the wonderful Jeff Fielder.









So here's the deal: Anytime between now and 12/13/14, if you pre-order a print copy of THE LAST SUPPER, contact me with proof of purchase (screen shot of your Amazon receipt is fine by me), and you will be added to the list for a signature label and bookmark to be delivered to you upon the book's release. Don't forget to include your mailing address.



TRAILER, ARTWORK, AND OTHER MEDIA



Right now a lot is brewing behind the scenes. As you might have noted just by the more scaled down look of this page alone and the link right at the very top, I have a brand new official website. Because Writing will serve as my blog, which will feed into the new site. I still like Blogger for blogging, but I wanted something a bit more flexible for my official author page. Anyway, if you click on over to allisonmdicksonbooks.com, you will see specially commissioned artwork by the one and only Justin Wasson. He is the illustrator behind my Colt Coltrane covers as well as my convention partner and crime. He's doing an absolutely splendid job capturing scenes from THE LAST SUPPER, which I plan to use for marketing as well as in the development of a trailer. You can see the four images I've released thus far over there, but I'll throw one down below for a small taste, so to speak.







As we gear up for the release come November or thereabouts, I plan to have other promotional activities such as GoodReads giveaways and other chances to win. There will also be an official online release party. More information on that when it comes available.



STRINGS ANNIVERSARY EVENT + LAST SUPPER READING



Right now I'm in the planning phase of a STRINGS anniversary event that will tie together both celebrating the horror thriller Hobbes End released last year, as well as ushering in the new book. The event will be on Facebook on 10/25. We'll have STRINGS discussion, games, and I'll give away print books and some other swag (Kindle books, signature labels, and bookmarks), as well as do a select reading from The Last Supper (recorded via YouTube). If you haven't read STRINGS yet, you will have a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor, because Hobbes End is making the Kindle version FREE on October 1st all the way through October 5th!

My Response to Amazon's "Important Kindle Request"

Irreconcilable Differences, anyone?


If you're an author with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program (and in some cases, even if you aren't), you're probably aware of the increasingly ridiculous fight dragging on between Amazon and publisher Hachette over contract terms. You probably also received a very strange email from the "Amazon Books Team" this morning. You can read it here, if you like. For accompanying music, I recommend Orff's O Fortuna. 




Okay, now that you're mostly caught up, let's just get down to the nitty gritty. I have no interest in regurgitating excerpts of the communique and "fisking" it paragraph by paragraph. A lot of great bloggers have done that already. Instead, I'm going to come at this purely from the angle of the small-time, nobody KDP author that Amazon was directly addressing and hoping to recruit.



Dear Amazon,





First off, I want to thank you for giving me space in your digital bookstore over the years. It is your platform that allowed me to grow a readership that caught the attention of my current publisher and gave me the confidence to elevate my career to the next level. After signing with a big shot agent last month, I've never felt more optimistic about my future as a writer, and it all started with you. I have sung your praises a lot over the years as a business partner who offered fair terms to author-publishers looking to get a leg up and push their books out into the world. Because of the ease of your program and the ability for people to sell through the biggest ebook marketplace in the world, stars were born, and indie books had serious footing on bestseller lists right alongside traditionally published authors. And through this whole battle with Hachette, I have been careful not to go "all in" with Hachette, and I have given you concessions on certain matters. For instance, I agree that $14.99 is too much for ebooks. I know I don't pay that much as a consumer. I just haven't been in agreement with your particular brand of arm twisting, which has really only hurt authors, even when you've been assuring them you're on their side. I also find your approach of pitting $9.99 against $14.99 disingenuous, when there are several more price points than that, which you have refused to elaborate on.




But this morning, after sifting through your over-wrought and downright bizarre screed, I have come to the conclusion that you have crossed the line. In fact, I find your stance to be an insult to the very same KDP authors you're attempting to recruit to sling mud for you.



Right off the bat, I find the Orwell and Hitler/WWII parallels to be tasteless and beyond the pale, as well as insulting to the actual victims of oppressive regimes, as I can assure you that Hachette and other traditionally published authors are not. Your hyperbolic language has only served to make you look desperate and highly manipulative. Second, as a KDP author, I consider myself part of the value segment of your ebook market. Most of us have been shoehorned into the $2.99-$4.99 price point segment for years now, and we've found a way to thrive there. That's our "turf," if you will. So why would I fight harder to make ebooks from traditional publishers cheaper when it would only lower the perceived value of my books? You want to cap at $9.99, but chances are likely that many of those books will actually sell for $7.99 or possibly less. This does ME no favors. In fact, we wind up getting priced right out of existence. Your attempt to recruit me in your battle to lower the prices of Big 5 ebooks is diametrically opposed to my best interests as a KDP author. Their higher prices make MY rock bottom prices look more appealing. When a reader has a choice between a $4.99 book from a nobody indie or a $7.99 book from a traditionally-published bestseller, guess who's going to have to lower their prices back down to the $.99 and $1.99 shit pit of oblivion to stay competitive? That's right, me.




That you would enlist me and others like me as a foot soldier in this fight without acknowledging that only tells me what little you think of KDP authors. Of course, your KDP Select program already made that more than evident. Requiring us to give you exclusive rights to sell our work in exchange for a few choice perks has always been disingenuous. This was only made worse when, upon the release of Kindle Unlimited, we learned that certain high-tier authors were offered far better terms than we unwashed KDP peons. While they were getting 60% and no requirements for exclusivity, we were relegated to a cut of a pre-determined honeypot that you continue to sweeten with zeroes in the hopes we wouldn't notice we were being fucked by the mathematics.




And NOW you want us to rise up and fight your battle with Hachette for you? Sorry, Amazon, but I'm going to have to sit this one out. While I think Hachette has to provide better terms for their authors, I cannot sit idly by and pretend that what you are doing is even remotely about the authors. In fact, neither of you appear to give much of a fuck about the authors getting trampled under your boot treads, but it seems after this little email stunt of yours, the mask has come off, your PR illusion shattered. This dispute belongs to you, not me. I can handle being a nobody. I've long adjusted my appetite to accept the crumbs that fall from the tables of royalty in every single facet of my life. But in this particular fight, I refuse to be your bitch.



Sincerely,



Allison M. Dickson




P.S. To all the authors who are still confused as to what to do next, I can only offer this little nugget of wisdom: spread your work far and wide. Keep the alternatives alive. Neither Amazon nor Hachette is your bestie, but keeping our options varied is the only tonic we have to fight against monopolistic tendencies of companies that have grown far too big to fail. Furthermore, I very much appreciated James Patterson's appeal to Jeff Bezos's better angels in this article yesterday. Of course, as evidenced by today's weird stunt, I don't think Bezos is listening.

Author-Conscious Book Buying: How Readers Can Help Authors Make the Most Money

There's money in books, I tell you!

I have had a number of people over the years ask me the best option for purchasing my work, in terms of how it best benefits me. First off, I love getting this question. It means a lot when people want to know how their purchases directly affect those involved in the transaction, and it also means a lot when people want to purchase in such a way that best benefits me, whether that's buying the print or the digital copy, or getting it from specific retailers, buying direct, etc.



The answer is a little complicated, though, so I decided to bring it over here in the hopes that I can expound on various points of purchase, and what they might mean to a small-time author such as myself.



I want to be clear upfront about one important thing, though. If you're buying any book of mine, regardless of where you bought it, I am first and foremost grateful. I was taught never to look a gift horse in the mouth. But if you are interested in seeing how your dollar can best be put to use to benefit artists you care about, I'll break it down below with a few of the most common methods of acquiring books, and how those methods affect an author's bottom line. WARNING: SOME MATH MAY BE INVOLVED



1. Buying Direct: Publishers, Payhip, and Conventions







By far the most profitable method of sales for any author is when we can cut out all or at least a portion of the middle man by having you buy directly from the source. Most publishers have online stores for just this reason, and it's always our hope that you will take advantage of it when looking to support your favorite authors. Direct sales are hugely beneficial to authors and publishers for a couple reasons. First, we are paid a percentage of net proceeds, which is whatever the publisher gets after the retailer takes its cut.



Here's how it works with print books. Publisher releases a book with a $12.99 cover price. Amazon (or Barnes & Noble or whomever) stocks it, but they get a wholesale discount of 55% (that's industry standard, not just Amazon), leaving the publisher to make a little less than $6 on the sale. And that is only assuming the book wasn't marked down 20% or more from the cover price, which it usually is. The publisher's proceeds might be less than that if they're also giving a distributor a cut. For the sake of argument and easy math (and because I can't really divulge the terms of my contract), let's say I make 20% net monies on the sale of a print book. That means when you buy a print book of mine from Amazon or any other bookstore for that matter, I get $1.



But when you buy direct from the publisher at the cover price, my net proceeds come directly from that, so 20% on a $12.99 direct sale nets me $2.50. Of course, you will pay a little more for your book when doing it this way, and you'll likely have to pay shipping too. But if your concern is ensuring the author and the publisher make the most money from a sale, that's the best way to do it.



It's not all that different in self-publishing, really. With Colt Coltrane and the Lotus Killer, I make $1.86 when you purchase a paperback from Amazon for $7.99. However, whenever you buy that same book direct from Createspace, I make $3.50. Again, because you're basically buying direct (in this case from the printer), which cuts out the retail middle man, the share I make is much larger. Unfortunately, it's just a little less convenient for the buyer.



Ebooks are a little different, but the pay structure is similar. When I price an ebook at $2.99 or above, Amazon keeps 30% of each sale, leaving me (or the publisher) with 70%. On my indie published stuff, I get to keep the whole 70%. With my traditionally published stuff, I make a percentage of 70%. If something is priced below $2.99, I make 35% on each sale. So when you download a Kindle short from me for $.99, I make $.35.







I have recently opened up a direct ebook sales portal through Payhip. When you buy your Kindle or Epub files from me rather than from Amazon, Apple, Nook, etc, you are ensuring I get paid immediately and that I make more money on the sale. Now, Payhip takes 5%, and PayPal takes 2.9% + $.30, but even accounting for all that annoying ass math, I make $.62 on a one dollar short, nearly DOUBLE the money that I make selling that same book through Amazon. So if you're interested in purchasing my indie work and want to make sure you're giving me the most financial support while doing so, Payhip is definitely the place to go for ebooks. With traditionally published stuff like Strings, options have been more limited. Amazon it is. But it doesn't hurt to see if other publishers have direct ebook sales. Most of them do, and the benefits are the same. Provided you don't mind manually moving your ebook files onto your device, it's a good way to support your favorite authors.







Finally, when I have a table at an event, for instance, like Gem City Comic Con or any similar show, and you hand me dollar bills in exchange for my books, that is like giving an author's (typically near-empty) bank account a cash transfusion. Of course, it isn't all profit. Expenses are incurred. Most times we have to pay for the table, and prices can vary anywhere from $25 all the way into the hundreds depending on the size of the event. Copies of Colt Coltrane and the Louts Killer run me just under $3 a pop to print, and I sell them for $6 at the events. I could probably sell them for the same $8 I do on Amazon, but I'm a firm believer in pricing things to sell when you're dealing in person, and they sell very nicely at $6. My traditionally published stuff also has to be purchased at cost from the publisher. If not that, then a deal is usually made ahead of time to ensure the publisher gets their cut of the action. But I still make more money on those sales than I do selling them through a retailer, and generally when I take the whole show into account, expenses and all, I almost always have a profit.



The best part is walking out of the event with money in hand. Most writers, who don't usually get paid more frequently than once a month (or sometimes only a couple times a year), REALLY appreciate the concept of immediate money, so if you go to a trade show or a book signing and purchase a book directly from the author, trust me . . . we LOVE you for it.



2. Print vs Ebook: What Pays Authors More?







Honestly, there is no easy answer to this, because it really depends on an author's contract. As the Amazon-Hachette dispute has shown us, ebook royalties vary widely among publishers, and they're not always so great. Indie presses and other smaller publishers seem to pay a much more generous ebook royalty than what I've seen some of my more mainstream author friends making.



But for ME personally, given the way my contract is structured (again, I can't divulge exact details, sorry), the difference between you buying a Kindle copy of Strings or a print copy from Amazon are scant enough that I don't really raise much of an eyebrow. Prices on Strings paperbacks there have ranged anywhere from $9 to nearly $12. I can never be sure how much a print sale from them will pay from day to day or month to month. The $2.99 Kindle price, on the other hand, doesn't change. My percentage of the publisher's 70% nearly matches my average print royalty. So don't feel like you have to buy a print copy in order for me to make more money, especially if you're not buying direct.



Now, let's jump to self-published stuff. With Colt Coltrane and the Lotus Killer, when you buy the print book from Amazon for $7.99, I make $1.86. Right now, the book is priced at $7.19, so my take would be a little lower than that. For the ebook, I make 70% of $2.99, so a little over $2. I make a tad more on the ebook sale than I do on the print, but it's negligible. If you're buying from Amazon, buy it however you like, because I'm making about the same money either way.



Again, this could be VERY different for other authors. Folks published with the Big 5 likely make more money on print sales than ebooks, but that's mostly because Big 5 still banks a huge chunk of their business model on print books. Small press publishers, on the other hand, aren't as heavily invested in the print model, and their ships are smaller and more efficient and they don't tend to sell as many copies as the big guys, so their ebook terms are generally much friendlier. In other words, you'll have to ask each author what's most beneficial for them.







That being said, buying print books from local bookstores--big and small--supports a very vital and important ecosystem. The author might not make the most money from these sales, but you're helping to keep our industry alive by maintaining a varied and thriving marketplace for books. These stores also add enrichment to communities and they keep people who are passionate about books employed. If you can't always buy locally, consider alternating your purchases between online and brick and mortar.



3.  Used Books and Libraries







Let's just be upfront: authors don't make money when you buy used books or borrow from the library. However, since libraries often purchase the books they stock, they do usually make money for that, and given the thousands upon thousands of libraries in the country, and the fact that they could buy anywhere from one to a dozen copies of a single title (not to mention ebook licenses), there is plenty of money to be made from libraries in the outset, even if people wind up borrowing those books. That being said, the benefit of used books and libraries is more indirect. This is how large segments of the population discover new talent. If someone takes a risk on a new author through a used or borrowed book, they are much more likely to go out and buy their other books new. Barring that, they might tell someone about that author and that person may go out and buy this author's books. Word of mouth is itself a currency, and it adds up over time. So authors diss libraries and used books at their peril. And really, if you're in the business of peddling books, the last thing you should be doing is attempting to stifle a culture of literacy, and that's what you do when you wish to prevent people of limited means from obtaining reading material.



That being said, if you are a regular visitor of libraries and used bookstores, my hope is that you will do a little bit to pay it forward. Talk about the books you've read. And post reviews on sites like Amazon and GoodReads. Reviews are also currency. The more reviews authors have, the more visible our books become, the more promotional opportunities we can take advantage of, which in turn helps us to sell more books. I can't stress this enough: REVIEWS ARE VITAL. Even if you didn't purchase on Amazon, you can still review there. The same goes for you pirates out there downloading torrents online. You might not give us your money, but if you could take five minutes and spread the word about that which you could not buy, you would be doing the author a world of good.



This makes me money!


******
To sum up all this, the best way you can help an author make the most money is first to buy their books. That's obvious. And if you can buy their books, try to buy direct through the publisher, the author, the printer, or at a book event or trade show of some kind. If you are going to buy through a retailer, consider buying them from a physical bookstore. If that's not possible and you find Amazon's lower prices hard to resist, again, a writer will be grateful for the sale, and since books are a volume business and most people are buying from Amazon anyway, the increased sales often make up for the deficits in individual income.



Finally, in lieu of purchasing, spread the word about it. Recommend the author's work to a friend. You might not be participating in the system with your money, but you can still participate. You can still enrich the livelihoods of the authors you love, and for all the efforts you have made to do that, we appreciate it.

On Secret Selves and Writing What We Know

People have asked what my writing specialty is. Not specifically what is my genre (though I do get that question a lot), but more like what's my "thing?" What do I bring to the table that makes my work unique?







Folks in the habit of throwing around writing advice will often say that writing what you know is a bad or outdated tip, but the thing is, we all do it. Sure, sticking only to what you know is a bad way to challenge yourself or stretch your creative muscles, but I think we all have to start from a place of intimate knowledge, be it about a particular subject the characters are exploring, the settings in which they live, or at the very least a mindset they're battling (be it addiction, OCD, bipolar, grief, or crushing guilt). The personal knowledge we have that we share through our stories creates a sort of empathy between the author and the characters. That empathy is like the salt in your stew. If it's missing, the story feels incomplete, bland on the tongue, forgettable.



A lot of fiction writers come to the table with a certain amount of expertise under their belts. They may be cops, lawyers, or other government employees, so they they can showcase their knowledge of procedures and lingo, the inner-workings of government agencies, or how crimes are investigated and solved. Sometimes fiction writers have crossed over from the world of journalism, bringing their journalistic sensibilities along with them in the form of intrepid characters who might also be journalists themselves. Or at the very least, they will often write in a style that befits their training: tight stories that get quickly to the point and don't fuss with extraneous details. And it's the same with nearly all professions. If you're a soldier, you might not write about soldiers, but you might write LIKE one.



In other words, a writer will either explicitly or implicitly use their knowledge to demonstrate "this thing they keenly understand, and therefore you should keenly understand it too" and that is often what sets their work apart from others.





I, personally, am an expert in pretty much nothing. You will very likely never see a non-fiction work from me (apart from the blatherings you find on this blog), unless it's creative non-fiction. And I doubt I'm interesting enough to even pull that off. I have four collective years of college under my belt, but no degree to show for it. A lot of what I know comes from years of observation and simple research, or interacting with experts until I feel like I can fake it on the page. I've read more books and watched more movies than I can count, and I've developed love affairs with certain subjects and causes, but not a lot of it has made it into my writing. For instance, I love cooking and exploring the world of food, but I have no interest in writing about a chef. The idea of using any technical knowledge I might possess to tell a story just doesn't interest me for some reason.



What I do know, however, is people, and particularly how they behave in relation to one another. I believe we are never the full picture of what others see. There is always a drawn curtain hiding a secret self from the rest of the world. Sometimes even we don't fully know or understand our secret selves, and the process of discovering who that person is can make one hell of a story.







Our secret selves self may engage in thoughts and behaviors that don't adhere to the norms societies have constructed in order to feel safe. That's not to say I think we're all doing or thinking bad things, but I think we are often doing or thinking INTERESTING things. The people you pass on the street every day, the ones who fill your drinks or scan your groceries or patrol the streets to keep you safe -- all of those people live lives that you don't see, and within those lives, the people who know them best don't know them completely. Every single one of us has secrets we would rather die before sharing with a complete stranger, those things that for whatever reason our brains sometimes like to remind us of so we can feel bad for a little while.



Sometimes, when I'm sitting in a public place, like a mall or a restaurant, I find myself trying to tunnel into the lives of my fellow humans, to imagine their struggles and triumphs, their dirty little secrets.



And maybe they're completely mundane things, at least to them, but they all have stories unique to themselves, about the things they've seen and the people they've met that shaped who they are, for better or worse. Every single one of them. Every single one of US. And it's in that very realization where I find I'm taking the pulse of something infinite. People say there is nothing new under the sun, that there are only so many ideas out there that we use over and over again. That may be true to a point, especially when we're talking about HOW we tell these stories . . . but the stories themselves are forever unique like grains of sand.



I'm not a psychologist or a sociologist or any other "ist." I don't know much about planes or trains or automobiles. I've never been to war. Hell, I haven't even been out of this country yet. But I was gifted with a curious sponge of a mind with an antenna that tunes into the frequencies of certain people, to see them as they actually are, behind the veneers and the fancy window dressing. The marriages people keep up for appearances, but are actually falling apart behind closed doors, the sad old men filled with regrets that no one will understand, the desperation of someone longing to be free of the chains holding them back, the capering, mean little demons that live in us all, whether we acknowledge them or not. I seek them out. I sidle up next to them on the park bench, and I ask them questions and gain their trust so that they let me in.



And then I write down every ugly little thing I see, using vivid words so that you may see them too, and then I find an artful way to ask if this ugly thing looks a little like the ugly thing living inside of you, inside us all. And if you're being at least a little honest with yourself, you might admit that yeah, maybe. Just a little. But no one else has to know. It's a secret you've confided to the imaginary people living in the pages. And that's okay. I think that's one very fundamental function of art in general. We share our secrets with you, and you quietly pass yours to us.



That's my "thing." That's my specialty. What's yours?

All About Dust: Revised and Expanded Edition, The Four Phantasms, and Other Improvements!

I have been such a busy little bee over the last 24 hours, abandoning exercise and grocery buying obligations, eating poorly, not leaving my pajamas. How is that any different than normal, you ask? Well, I've been GETTIN SHIT DONE, man! At least in the publishing sense. Dirty dishes, hungry kids, and body odor are nothing in the face of monumentally overdue indie-pub spring cleaning and a rare hypomanic spell that somehow gives me the power to work nearly 17 hours straight without a drop of caffeine.



I think it all started when I opted to take another month-long hiatus from Facebook, which is something I think I will be doing quarterly from now on, because there is some kind of magic involved when I leave that place and devote that reclaimed time to my work, as well as interacting more on Twitter. I become magically more productive and for whatever reason, I sold more books in one day yesterday than I had the entire month previous. What mad sorcery is this?!



Anyway, for the last six months or so, I've been procrastinating on all my miscellaneous indie publishing chores. My little online marketplace had become downright stale and was due for a major sprucing up. Front matter was out of date, books needed prepping for wide distribution, there are a few covers (and one title) I've been fundamentally unhappy with, etc. So here's what I've been doing, all in list form. I'll start with the most important thing:



1. "Dust" Gets a Makeover







It's been five years since I completed the story (though four years since its first publication), and in that time, "Dust" has been my most widely downloaded and read title. It's the story that has garnered the most reader mail, and the one I think people most clamor about making into a novel or a movie. When it was a regular Kindle freebie, it also brought the awesome Vincent Hobbes into my life, and from there STRINGS and THE LAST SUPPER came into existence. And from those things birthed KUDZU, which gave way to my recent signing with an agent. You see where I'm going with this? If life really is a twisted and complex domino run, Dust is the first one that tipped. So this story is very very special to me. While I failed to expand it into a novel, I did give it a new cover and 6000 more words (which would effectively make it a novelette). The plot is the same, but I think the story itself is richer, and it scratches a lot of itches I've always had about the original story. I hope it does the same for all of you, too.



I replaced the existing product with the new book file and I informed Amazon customer service of the change, so the thousands of you out there who have a copy should hopefully be getting an updated version soon (make sure you have your Kindle set to receive updated files). Otherwise, it's available for purchase now, and I'll be running a freebie promotion on it this weekend, July 25th and 26th. Note: the original version will remain in the At the End of Things collection.



2. Phantasmic Flashes becomes The Four Phantasms







It's a minor change to a flash fiction collection that doesn't get all that much play, but it was important to me to make the change, because I'm not sure it was a very accessible and searchable title. I'm all about revising history lately, it seems. Well, that's one particular beauty of author publication. I can change shit whenever I want! There aren't any amendments to the actual stories, but I'm hoping the refreshed title will help it reach more people, because I really am proud of these little babies.



3. Distribution Wider Than My Ass.



Yesterday, I signed up for an account with Draft2Digital. They are an alternative to Smashwords in that they convert your ebooks and distribute them out to other sales channels, like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, etc. Only, their user interface is better in several ways. There is no pesky style guide to follow. They can generate front matter, teasers, table of contents, and other things in your books automatically. They also pay monthly, claim to have faster sales reporting, AND they do CreateSpace distribution! Essentially they're everything I've been looking for in an ebook distribution service. I have pre-loaded my currently available Kindle books onto D2D, and expect to start releasing them in August. The first and largest batch containing Wicked Brew, Dust, Agnes Winters, Vermin, and Four Phantasms will go out on August 4th. Then I have two othes on the 5th and 6th. Colt Coltrane and the Lotus Killer will go out on the 15th.  Consumption, because it's newest, won't be freed from Amazon's clutches until October 3rd.



4. I'm Not Just Hip. I'm PAYhip!







Also starting next month, I will be embarking on something COMPLETELY different: direct sales. If you look at the top menu bar of my site, you'll see a Buy My Stories link. Right now, there is only one story up there, but once distribution goes wide, you'll see a whole lot more. I have always wanted to offer this option to people, but the available tools were a little unrefined, and I had no urge to build an e-commerce site. Over time, enterprising individuals have devised solutions to make direct ebook sales a lot easier. Ganxy is one option, but I found their platform to be half-baked to downright clunky. Payhip seems to be the best I have encountered to date. The interface is slick as hell and very clean. Also, unlike other services I've seen, every time you purchase a book direct from me, the monies are deposited immediately to my PayPal account. I don't have to wait a month or more for a deposit, and the 5% cut these guys take off the top is more than fair. While I plan to distribute my current Kindle offerings through Draft2Digital, I will be offering a lot more on my Payhip site. All my individual shorts will be available there for folks who want just to pick and choose the stories they want, and I plan to make some other special bundles as well as release other exclusive content there that you won't be able to get anywhere else. EPUB, MOBI and PDF file formats will also be available.



5. And if All that's Not Enough . . . A New Novel!







After signing with my agent, the impetus to get the next suspense book off the ground became a lot stronger. To that end, I'm nurturing a little seedling of a novel called "Dysphoria," which I can only say right now is like American Beauty meets Vertigo. It's in the very early stages (only about 5000 words in so far), but I'm liking where it's heading, particularly because the framework I've built around the story leaves room for a series that I'm tentatively calling The Hartnell Files. We have a weary Ohio sheriff from a rural county (local trivia -- it's roughly based on the Piqua area) named Tom Hartnell, a former Chicago cop with a story of his own. He moved to the country to escape the craziness of the city, but as we'll see in this book and each one that follows, the weird and awful tendencies of human nature have followed him. While he's not actively solving the cases, he gets to bear witness to several bizarre confessions in his tiny interrogation room, and they will tie in somehow to his overall character arc. We'll learn more and more about Hartnell as we go, and he'll provide a sense of companionship for the reader, which is important. So he's basically the "hero" even though he's more of a passive observer. At least for now.

Temporarily Embarrassed Bestselling Authors and the KDP Select Honey Trap

About two years ago, after becoming fed up with inconsistent distribution, unresponsive customer service, and a huge lag in sales reporting, I left Smashwords in a huff and took all my toys with me. Then, because at that time there didn't seem to be much by way of alternatives (other than dealing directly with individual retailers, which is a bigger headache in its own way), I pushed all my chips into the Amazon pot and decided to just hang back for a bit and see what happened. For a while, it was nice only having to deal with one retailer and one set of payment reports, and I was making roughly the same amount of money, but with a lot less of the headache. But I didn't realize then that I was on a downward trend, and now I'm more or less seeing the bottom, so it's time to talk about it.



On KDP Select Losing Its Luster



Amazon Makes an Offer You Can't Refuse

Smelling potential disaster earlier this year, I ventured back over to Smashwords in March with one of my free and clear short story titles ("Vermin") in an attempt to see if things had changed much. I also uploaded my latest Colt Coltrane short story. Aside from a marginally improved user interface, it was same old same old. On any given day, my books would be listed as available in all distribution channels, only to not appear in search results in the actual stores. There was no rhyme or reason for this. No explanation. And of course, sales reporting data appeared to be as laggy as always. I took down the Colt story, but left Vermin up there as a test case. I'll get back to that in a second.



Disenchanted as ever, I dug in my heels with Amazon's KDP Select program for another 90 day cycle as I tried to figure out what to do next. Might as well, right? I mean, with KDP Select, at least I get to do some free promotional days and maybe a Countdown Deal or two. I feel a bit like an addict trying to justify why drugs are so damn awesome, but Amazon had always been decent to me. I mean, I get good sales reporting data that's as close to real time as one can get in this business. They pay every month instead of quarterly, and they even removed that pesky $10 minimum threshold so even the pennies I make from the overseas stores come to me every month. Also, if I've ever had a problem, their customer service has always been timely and helpful.



But the truth is Amazon likes to position itself as the kindly and benevolent godfather that's doing right by you and looking out for you, even as he's whacking your family members in dark alleyways and building an empire with your own blood and sweat. It's hard to hate Amazon, even when you should at least be cautious, or when things start to smell a little off, like maybe they've put a decapitated horse head in your bed.



It used to be if you did really well on a freebie day, there would be a nice little sales bounce afterward. Those days have since passed. I can't remember the last time I had a sizable post-freebie bounce. Hell, I can't remember the last time I had any bounce at all, even after a day where I had nearly a thousand downloads and topped the free charts. It's difficult to put my finger on what has happened over the last six months or so, but making money via Amazon has been like squeezing blood out of bone. Sometimes it feels like the ranking gods are flogging me, or like they've decreased the visibility of my books on the site, but it's not like I can verify that. I also realize I've played a part in this. I shouldn't have stayed exclusive for so long, for one thing. For another, I'm questioning whether it was wise to put all my work into collections while removing the availability of more individual downloads. But I'm also a firm believer that for the most part, you get out of self-publishing exactly what you put into it, and in my drive to finish a new novel and acquire an agent, I have let my indie work slide a bit. I haven't had many releases at all this year, and I haven't promoted much either.



But the slide was happening even before the turn of the new year, and around January, I was pretty sure the luster was wearing off. I intended to start distributing wide again in April, but then due to a snafu on my part, I wasn't able to do so. While all my PUBLISHED work was free and clear, I had forgotten to uncheck the "renew" boxes on the individual short stories in my collections that I had since unpublished. Even in that case, Amazon still holds you to the terms of exclusivity (again, publisher beware, read the fine print). I could have risked violating that, but I didn't want to enter a potential kerfuffle with Amazon. So I unchecked those boxes and then reupped with my other titles for another three month term so that everything would be coming free around the same time in August. With KDP Select, it feels like you're living your life in three month blocks of time. Mini prison sentences. Hopefully my parole will not be delayed by another technicality next month.



But What About Kindle Unlimited?





So I give you everything, and I get pretty much nothing? Where do I sign?!

It looks okay in some ways. For traditionally published authors that are part of the program, they're making similar royalties per download based on the average value of their book for that given month, and they're not locked into exclusivity requirements. However, I'm not entirely thrilled with the way Amazon has set it up for KDP members, as yet another supposed fringe benefit to letting Amazon (and only Amazon) be your kindly godfather. It will likely serve as only a pipe dream for most self-published and small press authors. I can almost hear the siren call now . . . "Stay with us exclusively, and we'll make your book available FREE for thousands and thousands of subscribers, and you'll still make money. Ain't it great?"



No, actually, it really ain't. While Amazon is branding it as another revenue stream, you'll probably be lucky to get five subscription downloads a month, same as the Amazon Prime Lending Library. Is that worth giving Amazon full exclusivity? No, sorry. Most of the readers signing onto this KU program will be doing it for free access to the big names Amazon is using to rope them in. They won't automatically be sniffing out self-published or small press indie authors that had to hand over their only set of keys for the opportunity. But there you will be, another temporarily embarrassed bestselling author, acting against your own best interests, letting Amazon hold the ropes to your work in the off-chance it'll really pay off this time.



Chances are overwhelming that it won't. And like other authors have pointed out (check out this blog post over at Terrible Minds), you're not getting paid based on the value of your book like the traditionally published authors. You're making a percentage of a pot of money that Amazon is setting aside, just like with the Lending Library. Most times, you're topping out at about $2 per download. That's great if you're selling books below $2.99. But anything above that, and you're losing money on the sale. That's not a great deal. And if people start using Kindle Unlimited as their standard for acquiring new books, they will likely be buying fewer of them outright, which means you can say goodbye to your actual paid royalties. You'll be making less money on each sale indefinitely. You know how a lot of musicians hate streaming services like Spotify? It's for similar reasons as this, except unlike musicians, you'll be locked into an exclusivity deal with one retailer for the dubious privilege of making less money on a sale. It's a little frightening to think about what this might do to the future of indie publishing if everyone starts going this way. Hopefully terms will improve, but I doubt it. Not with the Self-Publishing 1-Percenters distributing petitions of undying love and devotion for Amazon. Gee, it must be nice having such shiny gents speaking for us unwashed masses plugging away to make enough money to buy a cheap dinner every month. I'm pretty sure Amazon would prefer to use those guys as their spokesmen rather people like me, who outnumber them 100 to 1.



I've long considered my indie publishing life an experiment. I mainly use my short stories to test the waters of the author-publisher market, and I'm not afraid to move my goalposts and change my strategies when need be. If you become too ardent, too set in your ways, you run the risk of losing your ass. This is why if you find yourself falling under the spell of certain self-publishing demagogues, back the hell away. They may have found success at this great gamble, but they're no different than the skeevy politicians who will tell you that one day, you can be rich and sell millions of books just like them, if you don't give up and if you keep writing awesome books and believing in the big American dream and the Great White Hope that is Amazon. Don't look for that man behind the curtain. Don't question the questionable business practices of Jeff Bezos the Great and Powerful.



It's nothing more than lyrical bullshit designed to divide writers into distinct camps, when really you should be steering a much more dynamic ship that can weather all markets and all conditions. Take it from me what can happen when you fail to diversify even for a little while.



So What's Next?





There is life yet

Well, THE LAST SUPPER is up next, and with that I hope to offer wide distribution of all my other work for new readers to enjoy, provided they don't hate the new book. Oh I hope they don't. So back to that copy of "Vermin" I left up on Smashwords. It's hasn't exactly been doing gangbusters, but I've sold a few copies on Barnes & Noble. I consider it a sign of life and look forward to getting the rest of my work out there again. I have plans to use Draft2Digital and Payhip to make it happen, so stay tuned for more details there in the coming months.



If you're testing the KDP Select waters for a little bit, fine. More power to ya. Maybe it'll pay off and get you some additional readers. Just don't overstay your welcome. Being in the program is like standing in the sun too long without sunblock. You'll walk away bitter and blistered.

5 Ways to Help Build a Creative Routine

I read a great little article on Lit Reactor about how to build a writing routine, and I think it's definitely a topic worth addressing, because whether you're just starting out writing or if you're a pro, you may have trouble nailing down the reasons why some days you write like gangbusters and others you can't seem to force out more than a measly "the" before the shiny objects or the dreaded sandman pull you elsewhere.



Some of this can be attributed to lack of inspiration or being stuck in a plot dead end, but I know when I'm not feeling on the ball, it's because I did a poor job of preparing myself for the task. Like any other job we do in life, be it cooking, working out, going to our day jobs, or doing homework, a ritual or at least an acknowledgment of some necessary preparation is in order. I'm not the most routine oriented person I know. Sometimes I write a lot in the morning, other times I burn the midnight oil. If the story is in a particular hot spot, I tend to do both. But I have found that a certain set of parameters has to be put in place in order for me to work to an optimum level, and while it's going to be a little different for everyone, I think it's worth trying out these five basic things I'm about to lay down here. Most of my suggestions have to do with how you treat your body, and there is a good reason for that. A good body equals a good mind, and a good mind is a productive one. So let's go.



1. Get Plenty of Sleep





Because everyone looks like this when they sleep...

90% of the writers I know absolutely insist on the magical powers caffeine to help them write billions of words, and the association between writers and coffee is about as plain and common as the one between Colonel Sanders and fried chicken. But I guess I'm odd or something, because I don't require much if any caffeine in order to write. My coffee drinking seems to coincide with seasonal changes or other drastic shifts in routine that have my sleeping schedule in flux (see: summer vacation). On the days when I do feel like I need coffee, it's because I didn't get enough rest the night before. If I don't have my requisite seven hours a night, I feel dopey in the morning. Nothing gets done, let alone the writing. I used to love being up during the wee hours, but doing that and sleeping late to compensate for it just doesn't mesh well with the whole having a family and a couple pesky animals thing. So rather than depend on the caffeine high alone to motivate you to the keyboard, consider whether you're getting enough sleep, and if that sleep is good sleep (apnea and alcohol-free, for instance). I can guarantee that cleaning up the sleep routine even a little will give you a boost of brain power that no chemical stimulant will be able to match.



2. No Food





But only after you write

Oh look at me, recommending a starvation diet. I'm actually not doing that, but the Lit Reactor article mentioned how food can be a creativity killer, and I couldn't agree more. I've been on fasting-style diets and found that when my digestive system wasn't being taxed at all, I was in sort of a writer nirvana mode. Of course, I can't sustain myself for long on diets like that and I'm not saying you should start fasting or even that you should write while feeling physically hungry (because that's just as distracting). But you might consider not writing after you've just had a big meal, particularly one that is heavy on starches. You might be the exact opposite, but to me, writing on a full stomach is a lot like exercising on a full stomach. Both make me feel sluggish and wrong, and I never get very far. On a typical morning following a good night of sleep, I start the day with a very light snack (a piece of fruit or a cup of yogurt, sometimes a smoothie). Then I'm ready to commence writing. I like to get a good chunk in before breaking for lunch, at which point I consider myself done until a couple hours after dinnertime. Or if you're going to incorporate a heavy meal into your day at some point, try to counterbalance it with some decent exercise. Which brings me to my next point:



3. Move Around, Dammit





Me in fifty years, before I start an important scene

I'm the least disciplined person I know when it comes to working out, but even making a little effort to move can mean a boost to the word count and to your overall sense of motivation, provided you don't overdo it. When I was swimming more than an hour a day a few years back, I wasn't writing much because I was doing more than my body was equipped to handle, and I didn't have anything left for the page. But if I don't exercise at all, I feel terrible and will often even fall asleep in mid-sentence. For the longest time, I was starting to wonder if I had an attention disorder of some sort, but I realized my body's engine was running worse than a mid-80s Chevy with flood damage due to a severe lack of activity. These days, I try to keep my swims to 45 minutes, no more than an hour. Any more than that, I become stiff and tired, and the whole concept of exercise works against me rather than with me. Either way, just take 45 minutes out of your day and do something. Even breaking it up in to chunks throughout the day is better than nothing. Getting up from your chair a couple times an hour to lift some free weights or do a few yoga positions or some good old-fashioned push-ups will make a world of difference.



4. Kill Your Distractions







Before they kill you...

The article was so right on about that, and I'm sure I've talked about this before, but you definitely have to find a way to deal with outside distractions, especially early on in your career when your confidence is probably shaky and you haven't proven yourself able to finish much of anything. Even if you can't get away from the internet, unplug your router. Or if that would make things too inconvenient for anyone else trying to use the internet in your house, there are programs that will disconnect the internet from your computer for a set amount of time (I particularly like Freedom). Consider a device for writing that has no internet connection, like pen and paper or an Alphasmart. Turn off your phone's ringer for an hour or so. Go in a room and shut the door or tell the people in your life that you are not available during certain hours of the day, that your writing IS a job and they should respect that. One thing that has become the most helpful to me is deactivating my Facebook account when I'm trying to get a new project up off the ground. Some people can handle their Facebook addiction better than others. Sadly, it's probably the largest timesuck in my online world, and checking it has become nothing short of compulsive. When I started my book Kudzu back in February, I decided the best thing I could do for myself and my state of mind was to deactivate Facebook for a month. And that wound up being the most productive and peaceful month I'd had in years. Five months later, I was signing a contract with my new agent for that very book. Hey, I know it won't always happen that way, but I'm just saying . . . there is a lot of good that comes from clearing the noise and clutter out of your head. Take a Facebreak. You'll be glad you did.



5. Make Sure You're Writing What You Want to Write







Maybe you want to try something else for a bit...

I hear from a lot of people who are just having a hell of a time finishing a story they started, or they've thought about it a long time and have plotted and researched a ton of stuff, but just can't seem to get it off the ground. We all hit bumps in the road with a project. In fact, without fail, I reach a major crisis of confidence in any project around the time I hit 30K words. That is usually when the honeymoon period wears off and it starts to feel a bit like a chore. Almost always, though, I forge my way through it and by the time I pass the 50K mark, things start to feel a little better again. Every project is plagued with those kinds of fits and starts, so I don't want anyone to think that having an off week means you shouldn't be working on your current WIP, but I think if the problem becomes pervasive enough that it's not any closer to being finished than it was two months ago, then it might be time to do a little soul searching and ask yourself if this is really what you want to be doing. It's a well-known wisdom that the most important part of being a writer (at least the kind whose goal is to sell books) isn't just writing, but finishing what you write . But there is a fine line between having a rough week and torturing yourself with a piece of work for months or even years on end. It's that kind of thing that tends to make people resentful of the craft and stifles inspiration and creativity. It's OKAY to start something else if it will inure your wounded spirit. It's okay to come back to the old project later, with a refreshed sense of purpose. Hell, it's also okay to not come back to it at all if you've found a project that has really captured your attention. Follow your bliss. Do the thing you can finish. It's easy to build a writing routine around something you don't resent.