Josh Lanyon's Blog, page 39

GRL 2018

This was my first time at GRL (the annual GayRomLitRetreat) and I flat out loved it.

I mean, I knew I would enjoy meeting readers and fellow authors, getting to talk books and writing and publishing for hours on end, but I didn't expect to love it quite so much!

I loved the city of Portsmouth, VA--beautiful old homes and gardens, plenty of quaint shops and wonderful restaurants (Fish and Slips, I will remember you and the lump crab dip fondly forever) within walking distance. I loved the hotel (yes, it took forever to get a drink and the restaurant was so-so, but when is that NOT the case at a conference hotel??). I loved all the events which were organized to give authors plenty of opportunity to interact with readers. I loved the ferry and hugs and the she crab soup and the white caps on the water and all the churches and statues and old trees of the city. I loved the fact that we didn't miss our flight going home--which was a near thing after I realized Sunday night that I'd arranged for the shuttle to pick us up five minutes before we were supposed to board our plane!

Highlights...almost too many to list: meeting LE Franks for lunch the afternoon we arrived (possibly the last moment of quiet sanity for the entire week), the Fanyon dinner (FINALLY meeting the legendary Marilyn Blimes), the first dinner at Fish and Slips with S.C. Wynne, Felice Stevens and C.S. Poe, the author lounges--love, love, loved getting to talk to so many readers--getting to hang out with narrator Kale Williams, singing karaoke with S.C., the spotlight panel with S.C. and Felice (so many great questions from the audience) the Patreon breakfast on Saturday, the MEGA book signing that followed...and this is where I start to lose track, but that's the sure sign of a great trip. When there is simply too much good stuff to recount in a single post. 

Was it worth it from a professional standpoint? I would say so. Networking. There's something to be said for meeting your peers face-to-face. But what I thought was especially well done about GRL versus other conferences I've been to was the effort to create a variety of events for authors to interact directly with readers. Two lounges, a panel and a signing mean there's a lot of opportunity to meet and greet readers--and that's really what this kind of event is all about. The readers.

Was there room for improvement? Undoubtedly there is always room for improvement. From my perspective, next time I'd try to schedule a little more one-on-one time with the author friends I didn't manage to connect with. I probably spent too much time in the bar hanging with the usual suspects (but that's kind of what happens when you only see your pals once or twice a year). I'd bring a pair of boots. I'd try to get a little more quality sleep because by Saturday night I was whipped and just couldn't make it to the big 80s party. I would make more of an effort to eat healthy (in fact, I've never had so much fried food in a single week in my entire life). I'd schedule the Patreon breakfast for earlier in the week. I'd bring a smaller selection of print books, but more copies (who knew Fatal Shadows-- Fatal Shadows?! --would be my big seller :-D). I'd do a way better job of bagging my preorders. I'd buy one of those banners that drape OVER the table...

Anyway, that was GRL. A big thank you to the organizers (I'm guessing it takes the better part of year to pull that event together). And another thank you to the readers who took the time and trouble to attend. I can't tell you how much it means to hear that a book helped you get through the dark times, still makes you laugh aloud, taught you something new or gave you a Come to Jesus moment.

If you're an author or a reader and you've been trying to decide whether to attend GRL in the future, well, like any event, a certain measure of what you get out of it will be equal to what you put into it. But you're unlikely to find another real life event so tailored to the things we spend most of our online lives thinking and talking about. And, after all, despite our shared love of fiction there's still something to be said for real life. ;-)

If You Don't Vote, You Don't Get to Complain

And I know complaining is such a vital part of social media these days, so Be Aware.

But seriously.

When I was researching Murder Between the Pages, I remember reading a contemporary (1940s) account of women being dragged off a parade float celebrating their newly gained right to vote. Yes. Women being dragged off a local parade float by their male FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS AND FAMILY MEMBERS because of their outrageous demand to have a say in politics.

And by politics, I mean legislation that affected these women intimately and immediately--as all legislation does.

Now, in fairness, many gentlemen in the crowd came to the assistance of these ladies--this is why we all need allies. We cannot do it alone. No one can. Allies are required. Allies are a non-negotiable component of success. To affect political change you need the good will and strong arm of the majority behind you--and even then, you're in for a hell of a fight. Make no mistake.

Anyway, women won the right to vote--the right to even cast a vote--in 1919. Please pay attention, girlfriend, because some of your great-great-grannies did not have the right to vote. My grandma could remember a time in which she did NOT have the right to vote. (That's right, I am old--and I wear it proudly.)

This right that you take so much for granted that you don't bother to use it...well, think about it. African American males won the right to vote in 1870.  (As well they should have.) But our right to vote is still relatively new and pretty damned fragile. I have heard females argue that women have innate protections merely by virtue of being white or middle class or pretty or whatever.


NO. Get your head out of your ass, my dear. What are you, British? (That's a joke--British women only got the right to vote in 1918.) Wake the fuck up.

We still live in a time when men (some men) take it for granted they can legislate everything from our health care to whether we have children.  We live in a time where OTHER WOMEN take it for granted that men should have the right to legislate our health care and whether or not be have children.

You think "it" couldn't happen here? That's what people always think. Look at history. And then weep. Or not. Because big girls don't cry. They VOTE.

The Sunday Woman

I feel guilty about this, but I've started taking weekends off.

The guilt is interesting because I know that there are very real, completely practical reasons to support this decision--the decision to take time for myself--but when there is so much to do--ALWAYS SO MUCH TO DO--it feels...wrong.

Now, when I say "taking weekends off," that's a bit of a misnomer because I usually work all the way through the weekend. But I don't tend to write--and the stuff I do is whatever I feel like crossing off the list rather than what is next on the list.

And yet I still feel like I'm getting away with something.

The decision to take the weekend has become a conscious one, but it started out with just being too tired to be effective. I started taking longer lunches on the weekend and then I started knocking off at lunch time. And eventually it turned into full blown, I'm not sure what I'll do today!

Wow.

It feels like quite the luxury to just do whatever occurs to me--be it laundry or taking a turn at cooking dinner or wrapping parcels for Patreon or outlining notes for a brand new project. It feels like this is why I wanted to work for myself. So I could actually have some control over my life.

Anyway, that's what's happening on the weekends now. Rest and recharging. And it does seem to be paying off in some ways because I'm feeling much more creative again. Not only do I have ideas for new projects, I feel like I have the energy to pull them off.

What I don't have is extra time, but the funny thing is how the decision to stop obsessing about time has seemed to generate extra time. Maybe it just feels like that because I'm working more effectively?

Anyway, Happy Friday!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like, er, Autumn

Which means, gulp, Christmas and the winter holidays are right around the corner.

Time to start thinking of Ye Olde Advent Calendar.

I know! But yes. Really. It's that time again.

I want to extend an invitation to all and sundry (okay, maybe not -- rather to all fans of my work and this blog) to contribute to this year's calendar. Stories, art, games, contests (giveaways), essays... Basically anything that relates to my characters and worlds and/or the winter holidays would be most welcome.

I'm aiming to do six codas this year. I haven't settled on the character pairings yet, but that's the goal.

Which leaves a LOT of room for reader/fan contributions as well as giveaways and all the usual holly-jolliness.

If you're interested in participating, drop me a line through my website OR through Facebook or Goodreads or Twitter or any of the usual places. The more the merrier, IMHO. 

Just Another Morning in September

I love mornings like this.

I woke up around 5:30--even too early for Marlowe the Mutt!--and went outside to water and just breathe in the quiet cool fall morning. So quiet. All around me house lights are coming on, people waking for school and work, but the buzz has not yet begun, is not yet audible. This is my favorite time of day. When there are still infinite possibilities for the day ahead.

What does my typical Friday morning look like?

The dark and cool garden smelling of earth and damp flowers

Email & coffee & thinky-thoughts (So many thinky thoughts!)
1 - Am I making a mistake not letting Amazon control my print backlist?
2 - Can I talk about this new series without getting reamed for daring to think of new books before I have delivered old?
3 - Could an art gallery be used as a front for the mob?
4 - Is audio still viable in the age of subscription services?
5 - Why do people with two stunningly mediocre books under their belt feel comfortable giving writing advice to other newbies?
6 - Will the plane crash on the way to GRL?
7 - Could a publishing house be used as a front for the mob?
(You see how it is...)

Maybe a little bit of social media (So. Much. Talking.)

The SO wakes and the TV goes on (BOO! I knew I should have remained single!!!!) :-/

The SO brings me another cup of coffee and asks what I want for dinner (YAY! I KNEW getting married was a good idea!!!) :-D

Massage and more thinky-thoughts
1 - I will resume yoga
2 - I will eat more veggies
3 - Could a film company be used as a front for the mob?

The day begins for real...

What is your Friday morning like?

Nothing Gold Can Stay

I dread the end of summer.

Which is strange because I actually love the fall--and then winter brings the holidays, which I also love.

But somehow I feel melancholy as summer begins to wind down. Not that there isn't plenty of bounce left in summer because although the nieces and nephews are headed back to school (college for three of them and the final year of high school for the youngest) we've still got many, many days of scorching temperatures ahead.

Many long, lingering twilights and moonlight swims. Fresh picked fruit and grilled salmon suppers and homemade ice cream experiments (the red chili coffee ice cream was an interesting one). Listening to the chimes through the open windows at night--and songbirds at the crack of dawn.

Anyway, it's been a busy and eventful couple of months--I feel like I'm finally FINALLY beginning to catch up a little. Maybe. 

I'm hoping to finish up Seance on a Summer's Night by the end of the month. It will be available for sale in print only--well, and eventually audio. It's going to be our first experiment with Ingramspark and the beginning of maneuvering my print backlist away from Createspace/Amazon.

After Seance I get back to work on The Ghost Had an Early Check-Out. That's slated for a fall release. (It will be available in print and audio as well, yes!)

Speaking of audio, Kevin R. Free is back to narrate In Other Words...Murder (that's likely an October release) and I've been talking to Joel Froomkin about narrating Green Glass Beads (that would be more like a November release--although I'm hoping to have it to my patrons for Halloween). ;-)

That's probably going to be it for the year. I'm attending GRL in October--my first time!--and then we'll be into the holidays and the annual Advent Calendar and THEN before I know it, the next Sam and Jason will be due... Yikes!

Hope you're making the most of these final golden days of summer...

My Friend is Visiting

She brought me this card--which I tried to buy as a magnet and THEY'RE OUT OF STOCK!

#AMWRITINGAGAIN

On Your Mark, Get Ready... Wait. What Time is It?!

How the heck can we be more than halfway through the year!?

A lot of what I'd planned to accomplish this year is complete or in the process of completion. Like my new website, for example! But some of what I'd hoped to do, even with tempered expectations (or so I imagined) was simply too much. That's the problem with being an optimist. We tend to overestimate our own resources--as well as everyone else's.

Anyway, I can't do more than four novels within a year. There was a time I could--and did. That time seems to be gone. But it's been a really productive year so far (from my perspective) and there is nearly half the year left!

(There's that optimism showing again!) :-D

But it seems like I can squeeze out a bit more if some of the things I'm doing are serialized and I'm writing them at a snail's pace. That does seem to be doable, as proven by my experience at Patreon. But generally speaking, three to four novels a year is all I can manage.


This year's novels were:
The Magician Murders (The Art of Murder 3)
Murder Takes the High Road
In Other Words... Murder (Holmes & Moriarity 4)

Still to come in 2018:
Seance on a Summer's Night (Patreon exclusive)
The Ghost Had an Early Check-out

That's it. I might manage another short story and at least a chunk of the next serialized story for Patreon, but realistically, that's my limit for 2018.

Now there's other stuff coming. There are audio books, print books, digital boxsets. I'm starting to build a PAYHIP store so that when a book doesn't go live as scheduled, it can be purchased through my website. Not that I want to keep having issues with preorder dates, but that'a another area where optimism gets me into trouble.

I'm still working on a lot of things I talked about earlier in the year--moving my print catalog from Createspace to Ingram Spark, for example. But one thing at a time.

There are four projects slated for 2019 
Blind Side (Dangerous Ground 6)
The Monuments Men Murders (The Art of Murder 4)
Haunted Heart: Spring
Something serialized for Patreon

There's also Mr. & Mrs. Murder, but that's non-fiction and, while it does take time to write, doesn't drain me creatively the way fiction does. So that leaves room for one additional large project next year, but I'm not going to jinx it by promising anything in the here and now.

So that's pretty much where we are at this point in the year. A lot of the remaining year will go to figuring out more audio and rethinking how best to repackage and market my oldest titles. But I'm quickly running out of road. October is jammed with stuff -- everything from visiting family to GRL and then we've got the holidays. So essentially...I've got two months of creative production time left.

On the bright side, compared to last year this has been an enormously productive year. Last year I did a novel and two short stories! So I'm happy with what what I did manage to achieve--and I didn't burn myself out doing it. Progress!

Results of my KU Experiment Take 2

This has nothing to do with anything except I need a drink after so much mathLast September I announced I was going to experiment with Kindle Unlimited again--and that I would publish the results once I had them.

If you missed that post, here's my reasoning. I still think the reasons were valid--and I am still against pinning your entire writing career on Kindle Unlimited for several reasons:

1 - Amazon is already way too powerful and we are all way too dependent on them--even those of us who continue to resist the lure of Kindle Unlimited.

2 - I believe the only way to guarantee a healthy market is competition--and Amazon's competition cannot survive if we all give in and go exclusive. Without a healthy thriving marketplace, Amazon only becomes more powerful and more autocratic. If you're angry at the way they deal with reviewers and royalties and all the rest of it now, just wait for the day when Amazon is the only game in town.

3 - Amazon is changing both the way people read and the way books are written--and not for the better. In order to thrive in the Amazon food chain, a steady supply of books must be cranked out which results in burnout and breakdown--and encourages writers to take short cuts that absolutely affect the quality of books. Some of those shortcuts including hiring ghostwriters--which is good for the ghostwriters, I admit--but it's also a disingenuous way to do business. You can see the effect of KU in how people read too. There's a lot of skimming and scanning by what are now referred to as "whale readers." Readers who consume vast amounts of product without really absorbing much of it--not least because a lot of it is just sand and water.

Anyway, those are my main reasons. I admit that Kindle Unlimited can be a great tool when used in conjunction with exercise and diet--wait. Wrong lecture. When used with a game plan that includes also going wide at intervals, but putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. And that's actually also my advice for traditional authors as well. Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Anyway, it took me a while to get around to figuring out the data on my experiment. For one thing I wasn't in any hurry because I believed I already knew the answer to my question.

But it turns out I was partly wrong. And, hey, I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong.

There's a handy dandy relatively inexpensive tool called Book Report. It allows you to get insights from your Amazon sales dashboard that would otherwise require ninja math skilz I don't have the patience for. Like your lifetimes sales. Or your lifetime sales on a particular book. Or your lifetime sales on a particular book versus your page reads on that book.

By using Book Report I was able to see at a glance that I earned way WAY more in sales than kindle page reads during the six months I had Murder Between the Pages available in Kindle Unlimited.






That one's not even close. I suspect that choosing a historical--and a quirky, satirical historical novella at that--was not a good choice for Kindle Unlimited. Probably a more realistic experiment would have been something more typical: a novel length standalone FBI thriller, for example. That might have offered a more fair comparison.

But anyway, that was the original book I chose to experiment with and those were the results.

With my second KU experiment I decided to create a couple of box sets and see how those did. One of the box sets I was experimenting with was an existing set Male/Male Mystery & Suspense Box Set: 6 Novellas which is usually priced at $9.99 but was priced at $3.99 for the 90 days it was listed in KU.

The second set was created specifically for my KU experiment: Partners in Crime: 3 Classic Gay Mystery Novels. This too was listed at $3.99 for the 90 days it was listed in Kindle Unlimited.

The third collection was Los misterios de Adrien English, the Spanish translations of the first three Adrien English novels. List price $3.99.

Now, again, the English titles are all older titles that earned out long ago. The Spanish translations do almost nothing, so I was curious as to whether KU could move the needle on them.

And the winnahs are...



The results were kind of all over the place. With the six-novella box set--which has been available forever--I made more money in outright sales than KU reads. I think this is because my existing readership saw a chance to pick up some completer titles and simply bought the box set outright.

With the three-novel box set, I made more in page reads. I'm going to guess that's because my existing readership has all my novels already and so the sale was not useful to them. The page reads probably came from new readers, but they were really pretty low, so going wide would easily made up the difference there.

As for the Spanish box set, I earned more in page reads, but still again, very minimal numbers.

My conclusion? Advertising probably would have made some difference, but old titles are probably not useful as far as any kind of serious experiment.

At this point in my calculations I realized I had left out a key comparison, which is what the single titles typically averaged in sales during a three month period.

However, because I'm a glutton for punishment, the first thing I checked right off the top was how much had the novella box set earned at its regular price. Never mind 90 day averages, the entire amount it earned for 2017 (not including the period of my KU experiment) was $557.55. So basically it earned more in three months of KU than the rest of the year. Ouch.

Okay, but that was just through Amazon. Including my other sales channels, the book did sell more at full price wide in nine months than in three months of KU. BUT the fact that the numbers are that close is...well, it can't be dismissed. What also can't be dismissed is I sold more copies at $3.99 in three months than I did at nine months of $9.99.

Fair enough, but it is a very old collection. And the stories in the collection were very old when I collected them.

On the other side of that, ideally I'd like every single title to continue to earn something forever. My challenge is to figure out the best way to do that.

Okay, so on to comparing sales of the single titles.



So basically in three months the box set earned more in page reads than any of those single titles did in a year AND it very nearly matched what they all did individually within the year. So yes, safe to say the KU earnings were more than the titles could have earned individually in the same three month period.

That said, again these are really, really old titles AND the single titles were available in the box set during that period, so some people would have opted to buy the box set... But really, I'm just going around in circles here. The books sold more in KU than they would have outside of KU. That's the bottom line. There is really no arguing with that, as much as I am inclined to try.

And what about the three novel box set? How did those single titles fare in comparison?


The first and obvious difference is, with the exception of Murder in Pastel, which has never been a big seller (perhaps partly due to its role in certain dramatic events) this time the KU numbers did not outstrip the books' annual earnings or even quarterly earnings.

Three months at the $3.99 sale price did not equal what Winter Kill typically earns in a regularly priced month and barely beat out Somebody Killed His Editor, so there's really no contest there.

And same with the page reads.  The 90-day KU earnings for those titles was $824.82 whereas in a three month period those three titles would typically average around $1938. And that's not including my wide sales, which of course are lost during the KU period.

Now the point of the experiment was to introduce my work to new readers so maybe there's some read-thru value there that I can't see, but numbers-to-numbers, the novels box set earned less in KU than the titles typically earn sold individually at full price. The novella box set earned considerably more.

Had I run a huge advertising campaign on the novels box set, that might have made a difference, but how much would I be willing to spend in order to earn what the novels are already earning? ;-)

There are always variables. These novels will continue to age and their earnings will continue to decline. And, in fact, out of curiosity I compared the earnings on these novels for the last three years both at Amazon and everywhere else. What I found was series remains strong everywhere. Standalone is dropping fast and faster. Well, hell.

In conclusion? I have a lot more information, but I'm still not completely sure what to make of it. There seem to be a lot of x-factors involved in calculating when or whether to put something into KU. The much vaunted formula for success is to produce something new every month or so, release in KU and price at .99. Repeat as necessary for success or until you drop dead. Whichever comes first. I mock, but it's a formula that certainly seems to work for a lot of authors.

Of course when I say "it certainly seems to work," I mean it works for a percentage of KU authors in the same way that the old formulas worked for a percentage of us, er, Old Guard.

Personally, I think the best way to build a large and loyal readership is to stay wide as much as possible. Staying wide is also the only chance of not becoming completely dependent on Amazon, and that should be a major concern for all of us.

But...I don't want to make bad business decisions based purely on emotion. Kindle Unlimited is not going anywhere anytime soon, and I have to factor it into my plans moving forward. I don't know what that means yet, I just know I have to looking at everything objectively.

Thoughts? What did I miss? What did I get wrong here?