Benjamin M. Weilert's Blog: BMW the Blog, page 5

Traditional Publishing is Bizarre

The dream of many writers is to be traditionally published. There is a certain amount of clout that comes with having a manuscript printed by a company that is in the business of publishing books. There is a validation when an author’s book is distributed to brick and mortar bookstores like Barnes and Noble. I understand the appeal, but the more I learn about modern traditional publishing, the more I find it antiquated and bizarre.

Is traditional publishing behind the times?

For personal reasons, I have decided to exclusively pursue self-publishing as my venue for distributing my stories. While this is in part due to my realization that I can’t make a living off my writing—and thus why I pursue it as a hobby—I’ve dipped my toe in enough of the process and discussed it with other lesser-known authors who have successfully done it to realize that it’s somewhat stuck in the past. Here are three things about traditional publishing that I find bizarre:

1. Agents

As an author, the concept of an agent seems like an extra step to getting published. In simple terms, I would basically hire someone to go to publishers and present my manuscript for consideration. This seems like I’m hiring an intermediary for a process that should only be between two entities. Sure, I understand that the agents have the “connections” to get a book into traditional publishers’ hands, but isn’t that what the internet is for? Can we not connect with millions of people (and companies) through our computers? Why, then, do we need a person to connect us with a publisher when the publisher clearly has a website with a “contact us” section?

I find agents to be an extra layer of gatekeeping on top of the gatekeeping of traditional publishing. Not only do you have to have a story that interests the publisher, but it also has to interest the agent who pitches it to the publisher as well. Perhaps my perception is wrong, but from most of the agent descriptions I read on querytracker.net, the agent I get is only interested in the manuscript I’m querying and not the multitude of other ideas I might have. Do I then have to get a different agent if I want to write in vastly different genres? Say I get an agent who does sci-fi, but then my next book is literary romance, which they won’t touch with a 6-foot pole. If they are my agent, should they try and get a publisher interested in it even if they themselves are not? Maybe an agent makes sense if an author is only going to write in one genre, but that seems constraining to me.

2. Distribution and Marketing

There was a time when the only way people could buy your book was if they went to an actual bookstore and bought it there. As far as I know, the only bookstore that’s left is Barnes and Noble. Even though they have managed to provide independent authors with methods of getting these books on their shelves in recent years, what extra benefit does the traditional publisher provide? If they’re distributing to smaller local bookstores, I can see some benefit, even though those stores are disappearing at an alarming rate. Anymore, people buy straight from Amazon, which is one of the premier resources for self-publishing (I refer, of course, to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)).

Authors seem to think that a publisher will put a lot of money into marketing their book. The trouble with that is—from the anecdotes I’ve heard—they don’t. They expect authors to come to the table already flush with followers and readers who will automatically buy the book they will be publishing. I ask, then, if these followers would buy the book anyway, why does it need to be from a traditional publisher? Sure, the publisher does marketing, but only for the “brand” authors already well known. They aren’t going to take a risk on some unknown or first-time author.

3. Rejection

Traditional publishing normalizes rejection. This feels backward to me. Sure, I know there are many stories out there, and not every one of them is marketable. That being said, even when authors spend so much time researching agents (and publishing houses that accept open submissions), their acceptance rates seem abysmal. Perhaps the reason why rejection is the norm instead of the exception is that the submission process is all backward. How often have I heard stories about famous books rejected by every traditional publisher, only to be picked up and bought en masse by a public that wanted to read that story? These anecdotes seem to enforce that submitting the traditional publishing process is broken.

Here’s how I’d fix this: instead of authors going out and saying, “Hey! I think you should publish my book,” they should instead have an internet database somewhere that allows them to upload the requisite materials usually asked for during the querying process. An author uploads the first 10 pages, a synopsis, and a cover letter. The author then adds other metadata like genre, word count, and intended audience to their submission and adds it to the database. At that point, an agent or publisher could search the database for the stories they are looking for and send acceptances to the authors who make the cut. This should cut down on the “slush pile” so many agents receive because it can filter out the authors who send queries to every available agent, hoping to hit gold with the shotgun approach.

Traditional publishing is about money.

I’ll admit one of the advantages of traditional publishing is the advance. While this sum of money is likely more than I’ve ever made on any single book, it’s also rare that an author will sell enough to pay the advance to the publisher, at which point they’d start receiving royalties. And perhaps the idea of traditional publishing is to prove you can do it once, so it’s easier to have your follow-on manuscripts be published by the same publisher—if your sales are good enough, that is; otherwise, they might drop you.

When it comes right down to it, traditional publishing is about profit. The reason authors lose the rights to their work—which then may be tweaked into something they no longer have control over—is because selling books is tough. Traditional publishers aren’t going to take risks on unprofitable genres, let alone on authors who haven’t necessarily proven themselves already marketable. Of course, the whims of the buying public are fickle and can change trends almost overnight. Some breakout success can change the game one day because a publisher took a risk that paid off, and now everyone else is scrambling to keep up. Authors are brands, and publishers like to keep these brands as focused as possible, which is why some excellent writers might never be traditionally published because they experiment with genre too much.

I’ve published more the last five years through self-publishing than I would have traditionally.

My decision to self-publish was mostly because of control. I like to control how my book looks and what’s inside it. I’m not the best at marketing, but I’m also writing in genres that are difficult to sell. Since I’ve decided I’m doing this for fun, I have stopped obsessing about the numbers and rather enjoying the moments where people tell me they like what I’ve written. After all, I can reach more people in this modern, connected age than I ever thought possible, and I didn’t need a traditional publisher to do so.

How about you? Have you been traditionally published?
If you’re trying to be traditionally published, why?
How long will you pursue traditional publishing?

2021 Has All the Fun

Another year, another set of writing goals. 2021 will be a bit different in that I’ve already been hard at work getting things prepared for publication—or merely fixing up the project that I delayed from last year. Either way, I do plan to continue my goal of self-publishing at least one book each year. With most conventions postponed or canceled this year, I’ll certainly have time to sit down and work on these projects.

Buried Colony

Despite the setback I had last year, I still plan on self-publishing Buried Colony as soon as possible (before it becomes a reality). I’ll be re-working the parts that need attention in January and will get a few beta readers to check my work before proceeding with the advanced reader copies again. Fortunately, a lot of formatting and design has already been completed, so it’s really just the content that needs some polishing before publication. I also hope to release this as one of the first audiobook versions of one of my novels, so look forward to that (I’ve already found a narrator I think will work for this project when I was nearing completion last year)!

First Name Basis: 10th Anniversary Edition

It’s a little difficult for me to believe that my first novel came out ten years ago. First Name Basis taught me a lot about writing and self-publishing. The “secret project” I have been referencing on social media and my newsletter is that I’m re-releasing First Name Basis (the whole Fluxion Trilogy, actually) with a slightly newer cover, character sketches, and portions of the appendix that appears in the Fluxion Trilogy omnibus. Thanks to artist Robin Childs, these characters have finally come to life with her sketches and illustrations. I will also be recording the audiobook version of this novel this year, so if you have been waiting for the audiobook, now’s the time to get hyped. If you haven’t picked this one up yet, now’s the year to do it!

Stop Screaming!

While it’s difficult for me to grasp how First Name Basis is ten years old, it’s equally challenging to realize that my wife has been making homemade ice cream for the past five years. From our regular “Fourth of Jul-Ice Cream” socials, we’ve decided to make a cookbook for people who want to get into making their own homemade ice cream. This won’t be the definitive cookbook for the ice cream aficionado, but it should help capture the tips, tricks, and pitfalls that the neophyte to homemade ice cream will want to know. Of course, there will also be ice cream recipes in this book, some of which are likely flavors you’ve never had before. I will be writing the first draft of this book in July.

Autocomplete

Now that I’m done with the Slumberealm Saga for NaNoWriMo, I think that my next November project will be based on this Tumblr post I found a while ago. There are eight short stories I can write off of each one of these “autocomplete” suggestions from Google. This may be my most hilarious collection of short stories yet, and I look forward to writing short stories like “Old Habits Die Hard” and “Magical Prince Adolf.”

Your regularly scheduled content…

2020 was a bit of a mess, so there are still ideas and blog posts that I have planned for this year that I didn’t get to last year. All this being said, I do hope to accomplish everything I want to this year but will give myself grace if it doesn’t happen the way I envisioned it in January.

The Hindsight of 2020

As the saying goes, “hindsight is 20/20.” This year has been a bit challenging and different from past years due to the pandemic. I didn’t have nearly as many opportunities to go to conventions since they were all canceled or delayed to future years. While staying at home would have provided me with plenty of opportunities to write, I have also learned that having an infant daughter is a challenge that I had not accounted for in my plans. Regardless of these challenges, I managed to complete at least a few things in 2020, based on the goals I set forth at the beginning of the year. Let’s see how I did in this year’s…

2020 YEAR IN REVIEW

The Ascent of the Writer (Ironed Man / The Last Immortal)

In part due to the “hindsight” saying, I decided this year to go back and collect together all the little bits of writing I had written over the last 20 years. The result was The Ascent of the Writer, a compilation of poetry, satire journalism, and short stories that shows where some of the inspiration for my later (and larger) written works originated. This collection is also the official release of two short stories I wrote that weren’t accepted into anthologies: Ironed Man (written around 2016) and The Last Immortal (written in 2020). If you want a free copy of this collection, you can get an eBook version of it by signing up for my newsletter.

Welcome to the Alpacalypse (Be Fruitful…)

About a month into the first lockdown for the Coronavirus pandemic, The Midnight Writers finally released their animal-themed short story anthology, Welcome to the Alpacalypse. My story, Be Fruitful…, ended up being quite prescient when it came to how the end of the world might look for those who would have to live in it. Granted, our current “end of the world” scenario doesn’t involve rabbits procreating exponentially, but it does involve staying indoors for long periods of time.

Nightmare’s Endgame

The final book in the Slumberealm trilogy, Nightmare’s Endgame was my 11th win for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I actually wrote a lot slower this year than I usually did, and only hit 50,000 words on the 16th of the month. I did manage to finish the story at 75,400 words on the 23rd. It’ll be some time before anyone (including myself) will look at this draft, but I do hope to make it into something worth publishing in the future.

Buried Colony

While I was well on my way to publishing Buried Colony this year—along with advanced reader copies and an audiobook version—some significant feedback caused me to put this project on hold. I’ll be revising and revamping Buried Colony next year, so that you will hopefully have a chance to read it!

This is Not a Drill

While I queried this children’s book in very few places, I haven’t heard back from any of them. This means I’ll move forward with it and self-publish in the coming years.

Blog Posts

It was a little tough to think up new things to write on this year, but I managed to get these topics up on my blog:

January: 2020, Looking Forward

What did I plan to do in 2020? This post explains the goals I had for the year.
February: Answers to a new writer’s FAQ

I have seen plenty of the same questions from new writers over the years. This post tries to answer these frequently asked questions.
March: The List of Best Movies

Anyone who has read Cinema Connections knows I love movies. In this post, I try and create the definitive list of the best of them.
April: Logic and the Suspension of Disbelief

Even if your story is completely fictional, it still has to make sense in a logical context.
May: An Author’s Online Presence [PART 1/2]

Social media can be intimidating as an author, but that doesn’t mean they should completely avoid them.
June: An Author’s Online Presence [PART 2/2] 

If you want to be found as an author online, there are platforms and search engines you’ll need to control.
July: Eating the Elephant

Sometimes big projects are intimidating until they can be broken down into smaller pieces.
August: Why I don’t make a living on my writing

Many writers dream of supporting themselves with their creative talent. I did the math to show how difficult it can be.
September: When did the writing begin?

While The Ascent of the Writer looks back at 20 years of my writing, I was jotting down stories long before that.
October: Pretend Politics

As someone who could now run for president, what would I change in our current political system?
November: How to pivot as a writer

When a project just doesn’t go write, having multiple irons in the fire helps to keep the content ready to publish.

Once again, I want to thank everyone who enjoyed the content I created this year. I do have more exciting things planned for the next year, including a secret project that I’ve been hinting at for months in my newsletter. All will be revealed in 2021, so stay tuned!

How to pivot as a writer

If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s how to be flexible. It’s quite difficult to predict what will happen in a year, let alone one with such a massive global event like COVID-19. Fortunately, writing is a solitary activity, so writing new stories isn’t terribly difficult when I’m forced to stay home. Unfortunately, this pandemic has been such a historical moment that it’s difficult to ignore it in anything written in the present day.

While I had plans to write a rather dramatic story set in the real world and in present times, I’m now considering moving it out a few years to gain some distance from COVID. Hopefully, this whole mess will be done by the time I start writing this book, and I’ll have a bit of hindsight to help mold the characters and plot. So far, I’ve already gained a few key points that I want to integrate into the story that will certainly be familiar to anyone who has lived through this pandemic.

When plans change, how do you react?

The problem with pushing out this story is what to do in the meantime? I was planning on writing this book next year, but now that it’s being pushed out, I need something to fill the gap.

Fortunately, this is hardly the only project I’m currently planning. In fact, I have another story set in a fantasy world that has nothing to do with our current reality. I’m quite energized to write this fantasy book and almost can’t wait to commit these words to paper. Since the inspiration is so fresh and vivid for this different story, I’m not even sure if it will be a single book; it might even be a series, which would definitely give enough time between COVID and the start of my “real world” story for things to settle down.

Of course, it’s easy to pull from a backlog of ideas and move around my scheduled writing a bit when nothing has, in fact, been written yet. It’s a little more difficult to shift course when the book has been written and is about ready to publish.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Earlier this year, I was well on my way to publishing Buried Colony. I was pulling out all the stops for this one. I had hired a professional editor, I was working on arranging an audiobook version, and I had enough time to give out a few advanced reader copies. The pandemic had allowed me to push out my release date into September, which provided me with more opportunities to promote Buried Colony than I had ever utilized before.

Then I got some startling feedback.

Despite having run this story through multiple beta readers and my editor, one of my advanced readers provided some notes that were far from flattering. After getting over the sinking feeling in my stomach, I did the right thing and pulled back the release of Buried Colony. One of the preparation steps for this story I had not considered was getting a sensitivity reader to go over it. While this reader basically acted as that role for me, I knew that this book would need some major re-working to be more acceptable to the general public.

In 2016/2017, I set a goal for myself to publish a book each year under my own name. While I had released Welcome to the Alpacalypse this year with The Midnight Writers, I still wanted something that was solely mine to publish. With not nearly enough time to fix Buried Colony before the end of the year, I needed to pivot to another project to accomplish this goal for 2020.

Fortunately, the next project I was planning on completing was collecting short stories that would become The Ascent of the Writer. I was originally planning to release this book in 2021 since the first stories in it were written in 2001—exactly 20 years before its publication. Because I self-publish what I write, I moved up the timeline for The Ascent of the Writer and released it in the spot where Buried Colony once stood. If anything, the nice even 2000 to 2020 timeframe for The Ascent of the Writer was better for marketing purposes.

The more control you have, the easier it is to pivot.

In both instances this year, I was able to change plans and pivot to other projects quickly. I was able to do this because I work on multiple projects at once. The worst thing for an artist (especially a writer) to hear from their fans is, “I like what you created, but what have you done for me lately?” Sure, some authors can hang their laurels on a Magnum Opus, as it were. However, as a reader, I love reading the next book by my favorite author, no matter if it’s in the same genre or not.

Of course, this can get out of hand as well. A few months ago, I was planning out the projects I want to work on in 2021, and I had to step back and realize I was stuffing my schedule too full. I had managed to schedule three book releases next year, along with writing, editing, re-working, audiobook recording, marketing, and various other tasks involved with eventually releasing a book. Sure, some of the drafts I plan to write next year won’t be published next year, but they have to start somewhere—and they still take time to write. By taking the time to write out what I wanted to accomplish, I was able to lighten my creative load a little while still having enough backlog to pivot should another crisis like Buried Colony come along.

 

How many projects do you work on at once?
Do you have a goal for each year?
What happens if you can’t meet it?

Pretend Politics

I just turned 35 a few weeks ago. According to the Constitution, since I am a natural-born citizen of the United States, I am now eligible to run for President. With the latest Presidential election upon us, I thought I’d take some time to figure out what I would change if I were running this country. There’s clearly a lot that could use some improvement.

One of the challenges of identifying what’s wrong with any situation is how easy it is to focus only on the symptoms instead of the root cause. One of the most memorable television shows I watched growing up was Connections. This PBS show that aired in the mid-1990s would take random objects/themes and show how they are all interrelated. I loved how these elements of “cause and effect” revealed how interconnected our world is. Nothing is truly isolated.

As a scientist and writer, I can explore hypothetical situations. Granted, many of these scenarios rely on my knowledge and worldview—both of which I do not claim to be perfect. I have biases and lack certain deeper knowledge, just like everyone else. Even so, I can use what I currently know and run a political simulation where the constraints and assumptions of our current world are adjusted to fit what I would consider a better outcome than the current one we have. All I need to see this through is an understanding of root causes and any extrapolated effects from changing them.

Just for giggles, here are a few things I’d change in my pretend political scenario…

MEDIA

What is the truth? Ideally, journalists should aim to uncover the truth of the government and use it to hold our elected officials accountable. The problem here is that the truth is often seen as “boring.” Nobody is going to read the news if it’s just straight facts. To add further complications, it costs money to present the news to the nation. Where does the money come from? Advertisers.

When it comes down to it, the media is a business. How can advertisers get people to watch 24 hours of news? How do they induce people to click on their websites? As we’ve seen, people will tend to consume the content with which they agree. Using biased language and focusing on sensational topics, the media is trying to get as many eyes as possible to view its content so that the advertisers who fund it will keep coming back to pay their bills. Alternatively, if the news is “entertaining,” it will draw viewers. That’s perhaps why the current political climate is the way it is: people want to be entertained by politics.

With the rise of the internet, it is incredibly easy to become a “news outlet.” Unfortunately, these new media sites do not always tell the truth. Gone are the days of the Watergate Scandal where journalists dug into political corruption to expose the truth to the public. Journalistic integrity has vanished because it’s not flashy enough. The problem is that we still need someone holding the whole government accountable.

To remove the bias from the media, we need to remove the money. One way to do this would be for the government to set aside money from its taxpayers for an independent review of the government (think of something akin to the Inspector General in the Department of Defense). This publicly-funded media should be tasked with uncovering any corruption in the government. Additionally, this media source should be checking all politicians against their campaign promises and providing information to the nation’s constituents that should be used to keep politicians honest. Think of it as “Snopes for politics.”

ELECTIONS

First of all, get rid of Gerrymandering. Period. I’m not sure how to re-do the district lines to remove this bias, but I’d think some grid system would be the most prudent. Second, term limits should be enacted. I don’t understand why people think that having career politicians run the country is helping to represent the people who elected them. If anything, each follow-on Senator or Representative should continue to represent their constituents’ interests, which would look the same as having a 10-term (or more) politician in the seat with the benefit of fresh blood and new ideas every few years.

I am completely in favor of informed voting, which is why I believe mail-in voting (with certified drop-off locations for those who don’t trust the mail). Each registered voter should receive a packet in the mail in early October that lays out all the issues and candidates in clear terms (perhaps even through the publicly-funded media). Colorado already has both of these in place, and I appreciate getting the “blue book” to help me make informed decisions on how I vote as I take a few hours filling out my ballot before dropping it off. In-person voting requires people to bring cheat sheets and/or merely vote down a party line, regardless of what the voter actually wants. Plus, it’s on a Tuesday, when people are usually working. Voting should be as easy as possible to encourage people to take the time to do it properly (obviously, safeguards should be put in place to prevent fraud).

One of the biggest things I would want to see changed in elections is removing personality from the equation. An initial way to do this is to restrict the amount of money spent on advertising. It should be $0. Each candidate should be allowed a simple billboard/newspaper ad that states their name, what position they are running for, and their picture. That’s it. Most people win elections by having the money to spend on extensive campaigns, which basically excludes any candidates who don’t have the money to do so—or are required to get donations to run a campaign, thus tying them to corporate interests. Additionally, I’d love to see no names tied to these elected positions at all. Give us a “blue book” that lays out the platform for all candidates (and I mean all candidates, not just the two main parties). Voters should vote for the platform they want to be enacted, not the personality of the person who will enact it.

I’d be willing to concede some information about the candidate could make its way into the informational booklet to help people make their decisions. Furthermore, these candidates should appear on every single ballot across the country. Sure, these people would need to be vetted before being allowed to run, but can we remove bias from our decisions if we don’t know the gender, age, sexual identity, or race of the candidate running? For example, let’s use a simplified view of some candidates that might look similar to this current election:

Candidate A: Ph.D. in Computer Science. In favor of personal freedoms. Against involvement in foreign affairs.
Candidate B: Businessperson. In favor of focusing on America’s interests. Against poor foreign deals.
Candidate C: Trade unionist. In favor of healthcare for all. Against current renewable energy policies (too weak).
Candidate D: Career politician. In favor of human rights. Against capital punishment.

With these simple pieces of information, how would you vote? Furthermore, it would be nice if there was a weighted voting system where voters could pick their first, second, and third choices. This is another change I’d definitely want to enact if I was in power.

TAXES

Three topics that are usually frowned upon in polite company are politics, religion, and money. I’ve already talked about the first one, and I’ll defer the second for another time. Let’s talk about money. The current tax system is broken. Aside from the fact that taxes penalize the poor and incentivize the rich to find as many ways as possible to avoid paying taxes, the fact of the matter is we’re being taxed twice on almost everything. This is because we have to pay income tax and sales tax. Since most of the problems arise in the annual report to the IRS (the income tax side), there are a few ways to fix this.

One of the ways to fix taxes is to get rid of the income tax completely. Sure, there are still issues with relying entirely on sales tax—including a black market of “tax-free” goods—but in an ideal world, luxury items would have more sales tax associated with them. This sliding scale would certainly need refinement so that necessities like utilities, groceries, gasoline, healthcare, and housing (to a point) are taxed minimally (if at all). Simultaneously, private airplanes, enormous mansions, and expensive cars would all bear a greater share of sales tax from those who can afford it. People living simple lives should have no issues with taxes, while those who want to appear wealthy will certainly pay the price to maintain that level of living.

Alternatively, simplify the tax code so that the IRS sends you a postcard each April with the amount of income it thinks you made this year. Kind of like how the census requires its citizens to check to ensure their information is correct, this tax postcard would provide us with the opportunity to confirm what the government already knows about us. Obviously, people will lie on these taxes and require an audit, just like the current system. Additionally, if we remove the incentives and other deductions and merely use an exponential scale to tax those bringing in millions (or billions) of dollars each year, perhaps we can get the national debt to go down. Unfortunately, if you tax the rich too much, they may just up and leave (then where will we get the taxes to pay for all this?). I also assume huge charitable donations would sharply decline in this scenario, and I’m not sure how to fix that. However, why should rich people determine which charities live or die based on their philanthropic donations? Furthermore, I’m not sure the government is the best entity to dole out tax dollars, either—especially from the federal level. If it were up to me, the local communities would receive these taxes while an amount would be sent to the federal government to defend the homeland (of which we don’t really need most of the military, in my honest opinion).

 

Obviously, I can’t make these changes happen overnight. Heck, even if I was President, there is only so much I could enact (which is why we have the Legislative and Judicial branches as part of the checks and balances system). Furthermore, I’d certainly need to spend more time thinking through these ideas’ consequences before implementing them. No solution fixes everything, so there’s still an amount of give-and-take. Reaching a compromise is ideal, so at least everyone gets some of what they want. I understand that I’m writing from a position of privilege and that my opinion is just that: an opinion. Most of this post is me spitballing solutions for problems that I see, but I certainly have blind spots that vulnerable communities deal with daily. I encourage conversations and know that emotions often play a part in how people view the world. There are plenty of logical fallacies in people’s current thinking (of which I am also guilty). Still, if we can pull back the layers of our society to expose the roots, perhaps we might have a chance of solving the core issue instead of just the symptoms. I encourage you to look beyond what the current reality is: there’s a difference between knowing how things are and how things could potentially be different.

As a writer, maybe someday I’ll write about the fictional United States that implemented my ideas…and reveal how new and un-thought-of problems reared their heads as a result.

When did the writing begin?

Before this year began, I decided the idiom of “hindsight is 20/20” was an appropriate chance to reflect on the writing I’ve done over the years. While I managed to collect over 200 pages of my written works from the last 20 years in my latest book, The Ascent of the Writer (available today!), my writing “career” started well before then.

I’ve never been one to throw away anything I’ve created. My basement has quite a few boxes and cardboard portfolios filled with all the visual art that I made throughout my elementary education. Among the pencil sketches and finger painting, I also managed to keep some of my earliest writings. These go back as far as 1992 when I was in the first grade.

Some of my earliest stories were written in 1992.

It’s quite a trip down memory lane reading some of these “stories” I wrote back then. I still remember the inspiration for some of them—some of which were just re-telling television episodes I had seen at the time. Others were inspired by common tropes I had already picked up on by the time I was seven.

What’s fun for me in revisiting these old stories is how I tried to make them as “official” as possible. Almost every one of them has a construction-paper cover (some even had a spiral binding). I even did the illustrations in all of them. My spelling wasn’t phenomenal back then, but I could still get my point across. Here are a few of the titles of these books…

What I know about Indians (November 25, 1992)
My Favorite Christmas Carols (December 1992)
Kinds of Computers (February 2, 1993)
Dear Daddy (February 5, 1993)
Valentine (February 14, 1993)
Chicken Big (March 5, 1993)
My book about dinosaurs (April 5, 1993)
All About dinosaurs (April 14, 1993)
Ant Adventure (May 19, 1993)
The African Idol (May 26, 1993)
Horse Tooth (May 31, 1993)
I like Robbie (June 11, 1993)
I like Mrs. Disler (June 12, 1993)
Triceratops! (date unknown)
P.E. (date unknown)
Back to the Future: Part III (date unknown)
The 2 million spiders (date unknown)
The 13 Days of my Diet (date unknown)

Some of these were writing assignments for school, but others I’m still waiting on the royalty checks (I’m looking at you, Back to the Future: Part III). What shocked me was one of the poems I wrote in this timeframe titled “Hurt No Living Thing.” I’ve typed it up and posted it here so you can see what I mean…

Hurt no living thing,

Ladybird, nor butterfly,

Nor moth with dusty wing,

Nor cricket chirping, cheerily,

Nor grasshopper so light of leap,

Nor dancing gnat,

Nor beetle fat,

Nor harmless worms that creep.

I’m still surprised by what I’ve written.

Despite my prolific nature in first grade, the next “book” I wrote was five years later, in 1998. It was likely for a school project in fifth grade about book publishing. The cover was much more professional (it was cardboard and contact paper now), and the trim size was closer to the standard book size, along with all its text printed in Times New Roman font (instead of hand-written). I chose not to include this work in The Ascent of the Writer, even though it’s one of the best things ever written (plus, it didn’t fit neatly in the “20 years” retrospective I was going for with Ascent). Sure, the writing is what you’d expect from a 10-year old boy. Then again, Axe Cop seemed to get away with this, and I’m pretty sure most of the thrillers I’ve read aren’t much more profound than this story. So, for the first time, may I present, “It’s the Blue Wire, Right?”

[Written & Illustrated by Ben Weilert | Plutonium Publishing Company, Los Alamos, New Mexico, U.S.A., Copyright © 1998]

Dedication: To officers on bomb squads everywhere.

BOOM!!! Rick O’Shea cringes in pain as the pipe bomb goes off. Dazed, one of the bomb squad people comes out of the Sacramento Apartment building; the United States Bomb Removal Squad helps the recruit into the car when Rick gets a call from Chicago.

“We have a bomb on the 112th floor at the Sears Tower!” the desk clerk yells, “If someone does not do something, it will go off in 12 hours!” Rick groans as he puts the armored vehicle into gear and guides the squad to the nearest airport where they can get on a private United States jet to Chicago.

Rick is a General in the Bomb Removal Squad and has handled many situations like this. As a man of 27, Rick has gone through college and has received his Masters in Electronics. He uses his skills to defuse bombs and get into small places because he is thin.

As the plane takes off, Rick starts going through his procedure on how to diffuse the bomb.

First, he will have to drive to the Sears Tower. Then, he will get into the freight elevator and go to the 112th floor. He will find the bomb and diffuse it.

“We will be landing in Chicago in three minutes,” the pilot announces through the intercom.

Rick gets ready to land.

After driving from the airport to the Sears Tower, Rick talks to the manager to find out some vital information.

“The elevator is closed from here to the 56th floor,” the manager says.

“Don’t you have another way to get up there?” Rick asks in frustration.

“Well, we do have stairs, but that is ridiculous. No one in their right mind would go all the way to the 112th floor using stairs!” the manager states.

“I know,” Rick says over his shoulder as he dashes over toward the stairs.

A few hours later, Rick arrives at the 56th floor, panting. “Boy, 56 flights of stairs are longer than I thought.” Rick scans the room and quickly finds the elevator. As Rick is pressing the button, he thinks, Gosh, I hope this works. Suddenly, the doors hiss open, and Rick steps inside the elevator.

Besides the horrible elevator music (which sounds like a coyote trapped in quicksand), the ride is not half bad. Since the engineer hadn’t worked out all the bugs yet, the elevator stops on every floor. A 20-minute ride actually takes four hours and 59 minutes! (Now, being blown to smithereens sounds better than listening to that music).

Finally, Rick reaches the top. Since he only has one minute to diffuse the bomb, he scans the room then starts searching through files until he comes to the vending machine. Right where the Warheads candy is supposed to be, he finds a real warhead. Rick shoves his hand in his pocket and finally finds $1.20 and shoves it in the machine. After pressing C-5, he looks at the digital display and sees 00:00:10. He runs over to the somehow opened window and throws the bomb out onto an alien spaceship we’re not supposed to talk about.

After sliding down the railing (because Rick had enough insane music for one day), he finally reached the bottom to find the President of the United States ready to greet him.

Later, Rick gets in a car and drives down the parade route. Arriving at B.R.S. headquarters, his cell phone rings, and a voice comes in, “So you foiled my plan, Rick, is it? Well, this time you won’t get a second chance. There is a bomb on the 105th floor of the Empire State Building. Bwa! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Here we go again,” Rick sighs as he walks into the building.

Rick then decided to see how many stories in the Empire State Building and finds out it only has 102 floors. Rick decides it must be just some freak caller, but he can never be sure. So he goes off on yet another zany adventure.

THE END.

The one note about this story is that the “About the Author” section starts the same way it does today (born in Colorado in 1985), but there’s a line that says, “He is still living today.” As if only dead people could write published books.

The earliest “books” I published.

Going back over everything I’ve ever written, I start to wonder where the love of storytelling came from. Maybe it was my paternal grandfather who would tell his grandchildren stories (like the one about a boy who got trapped in a cave because he liked eating too much gum). Maybe it was all the books my parents read me when I was a child. I know for sure that Pano the Train has left them scarred by how many times I requested they read it to me.

Regardless of the source, I know there was a time when I hated writing. It was a chore relegated to schoolwork and was constantly graded. Luckily, I eventually found myself writing for fun again after I graduated high school. In the years since, I’ve written poems, short stories, and novels. I like to think that my daughter will tell me her own stories someday, and I certainly want to encourage her to do so when that happens.

How about you? When did you start writing?

When did you stop writing?

What was the first thing you ever wrote?

Why I don’t make a living on my writing

Writing is my hobby. I have a full-time job, so there is no need for me to make a living on my writing. Since I do it mostly for fun, I’m not too concerned about making money. Most importantly, for tax purposes, writing is my hobby. Sure, I try to run it like a business by keeping track of expenses and sales, but overall I’m not doing much more than breaking even. This is fine. After all, a hobby is usually considered a “money pit” where you don’t expect to get a return on investment other than the pure enjoyment it brings you (think about other hobbies like restoring cars, reading books, or gardening as examples).

A few years ago, I received a review request from someone who had written a book. They were self-publishing and admitted that they were currently homeless and that this book (that they had taken over a decade to write) was their only ticket out of poverty. This got me thinking about what it would take to make a living as a self-published author.

What does it take to make a living?

Most writers who earn their primary income through being an author are traditionally published, as the advances they receive will be more than the royalties they’d make if they were self-published. Most traditionally published authors—especially the ones starting out—don’t make back their advances anyway, and thus don’t earn any further royalties on their works.

Alternatively, there is money to be made in copywriting and ghostwriting. Granted, your name will not likely appear on anything you’ve written. If you don’t care about your pride and mostly want to say you make a living with your words, this might be the best place to start. I know a couple who are doing something akin to this and seem to be making it work, even if it’s a ton of effort.

Writing can take time and money.

Before we get into specifics, let me lay out some of the math behind the finances of making a living with your writing. As a bare minimum, the annual salary for a family of four right at the poverty line in the United States is $25,750. Since most scenarios here are likely to be considered “self-employed,” we’ll have to add on 15.3% to account for taxes. This means an individual supporting a family of four needs to make $29,689.75 each year to stay afloat. To account for some overhead (i.e., inventory, shipping, business services, etc.), let’s round up to an even $34,000 for the three paths that I’ve introduced above. From my perspective, I’ve arranged these three from easiest to most difficult to achieve.

1. Ghostwriting/Copywriting

Rates here are a little hard to come by, but let’s use some Fermi estimation to say that these options could potentially earn you as high as $0.10/word or as low as $0.01/word. The quality of your work will determine how much you can charge for it. If you are a native speaker/writer of the needed language and have a degree from a university (a Bachelors’s in some form of writing helps), you already have a good base on which to start. The trick here is finding clients. Sure, you can set up a website and say you’ll write anything for anyone, but unless people hire you, you’re out of luck. Self-promotion is critical here, and I think the ~15% overhead I mentioned above should cover the networking needed to get your foot in the door. Alternatively, sites like Upwork and Fiverr can certainly get you started for minimal cost as you build your reputation. With these things in mind, you’d have to write anywhere between 340,000 and 3,400,000 words each year to be at the poverty level. Just know that the quality of your writing might require you to either pay for an editor to ensure your clients get polished work (which can require you to write more to compensate for the cost). To put this in perspective, I have occasionally written 100,000 words in a month in my free time, which might work if I had the reputation to bring in $0.10/word and had enough clients to allow me to write the full 100,000 words (with no editing).

2. Traditionally published

There are plenty of factors to consider here, but let’s use the minimum advance for a first-time author. While some books can make up to $50,000 for an advance (for authors with a pre-existing audience/fan base), the minimum is usually around $5,000. This means you’d not only have to write seven books each year, but you’d have to make sure your agent can sell them to publishers. Your agent gets paid when a publisher picks up your book, but that will likely cut into your profits by 15% for their commission (therefore bumping up the number of books you’d need to publish to eight). Obviously, the better you get at establishing a name for yourself, the more you’ll receive in royalties—thus reducing the number of books you’d have to write each year. Also, make sure you consider how long traditional publishing takes, as it might be longer than you think.

3. Self-publishing

Here’s where it gets tough. The least amount of overhead for a self-published writer would be to publish eBooks since they don’t require printing and shipping costs. Even with Amazon’s 70% royalties, there’s still a sweet spot for unknown authors pricing their own books. Again, to make the calculations easier, let’s say you sell an eBook for $1.43 and earn $1 for each sale. This means you’ll have to sell 34,000 copies of that book to hit the poverty line. One way you can make this figure easier to meet is if you write multiple books each year. It’s not easy, though, as even if you self-publish ten books in a year, you’ll still have to sell 3,400 copies of each of them. Considering that most sales of self-published books peak sometime within the first month of release, you’ll likely have to make those thousands of sales in a single month. Let’s also consider that ~15% overhead might not be enough to pay for a cover designer and professional editor—both of which help with initial and future sales, respectively—for up to 10 individual books. Other ways to increase your sales include running ads on Amazon, Google, and Facebook, all three of which can cost a lot of money and might not gain you many sales if your keywords are wrong or oversaturated. Additionally, conventions are great opportunities to sell your books and build a fan base. However, these events require vendor table fees, as well as the costs for having physical copies available to sell (which, depending on your profit margins, might work in your favor). You still have to sell thousands of copies of your books to remain above the poverty line as a self-published author, which requires a lot of marketing on top of actually writing and producing a polished product.

With these three methods in mind, understand that this is what it takes to remain just above the poverty line for a single year. If you want to continue earning a living with your writing, you’ll have to do what I’ve described above every year. This also doesn’t account for saving money for retirement, so be prepared to keep writing for a long time.

In the end, I am fortunate to have the privilege to write as a hobby. I have a well-paying job that makes enough for my family (with retirement included). Not everyone has the free time or independent wealth to even self-publish anything if they’re working three separate jobs to make ends meet. This is why most of the authors you come across are (for lack of a better word) homogenous. If we want diverse voices in the writing community, we need to lift up, support, and promote authors who do not have the privileges that allow them to write without distraction. And while we cannot necessarily change the traditional publishers, we can certainly buy books from these authors to show our support. If we can make it financially beneficial for these publishers to take risks on all authors—not just the ones they know will turn a profit—we all succeed.

 

How much do you think you need to write/sell to make a living?

Which of the three options above appeals to you? Why?

Do you write for a living? Tell your story in the comments.

Eating the Elephant

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” – Desmond Tutu

Let’s address the elephant in the room: self-publishing a book takes a lot of work. In fact, plenty of accomplishments in our lives seem daunting at first glance, but turn out to be just an enormous amount of smaller tasks. The trick with any of these large projects is the ability to break the end goal into smaller milestones that are easily achievable. Nobody expects to climb a mountain with one giant leap. However, with enough small steps, even Mount Everest can fall to a determined climber (given they have the right gear for it).

While enough determination can overcome most things, experience helps lay the framework for completing a long-term goal. Even with endless hours of commitment, there are enough “unknown unknowns” in any field of interest that prevent a neophyte from becoming a master. Heck, even with enough steps, it is unlikely that an inexperienced person will successfully climb Mount Everest. Being able to recognize the “bite-size” piece of a project comes with knowing the scope of the project.

How do we determine the “bites” of a project?

At the end of last year, I became a father for the first time. While this was a life-changing experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything, I did inadvertently trade something for it: my free time. Before fatherhood, I had plenty of free time in the evenings and on weekends and holidays to pursue my hobbies. I knew I could finish editing photos or self-publishing books because there was always free time to do so. While I had the experience to complete my projects, now I no longer had the unstructured free time to do so. Even with COVID-19 keeping me at home for most of the year, my productivity didn’t increase by the same amount (which is fine).

Realizing the limitations of my free time, I decided to change how I went about completing my long-term goals. When January rolled around, I made the conscious choice to give myself a task to accomplish each night of the week. I fastened a “week at a glance” whiteboard near my workspace and chose each Sunday night to schedule what tasks I would accomplish in the upcoming seven days. Knowing what commitments I would have during the week, I could flex how much of a small goal I could achieve each night. I also made sure to include weekly tasks that I have to do anyway (like scheduling social media posts or doing yard work), so I could adjust what my additional tasks for that day would be.

What can you accomplish for an hour each day?

The fortunate thing about children is that they go to bed earlier than I do. Since I also needed to spend time with my wife (who also goes to bed before I do), I figured that there’s probably an hour or two of free time each evening that I could use to work on my goals. The first challenge came with determining how much of my long-term goals I could fit into one-hour chunks. Luckily, my experience helped give me realistic expectations. Sure, I could probably edit 100 photographs in an evening, but 30 was a manageable amount that would allow me some time to rest and relax (and thus prevent eventual burnout).

The whiteboard. Daily tasks are above. Long-term goals are on the post-it notes.

Here’s a list of some of the nightly tasks that I gave myself this year. Each one took me about one to two hours each night to complete:

Edit 3,333 words of a novel
Submit ten stock photos to three stock photo sites
Edit 30 photographs
Review a chapter of a proof copy of Buried Colony
Revise and schedule three reviews on my main website

Seeing as we’re half-way through 2020, I can say that my “whiteboard tasks” system is working pretty well. Granted, some months—like April’s re-write of nearly 100,000 words of a manuscript—were a challenge. Still, even factoring for some grace periods to work around family events that would have me out of the house (back when that was a regular thing), I did manage to accomplish quite a bit more than I expected at the start of the year.

Dormant projects can finally see completion.

I’ll admit that some of my larger projects were so big in my mind’s eye that I dreaded working on them. These are the tedious tasks that I’d like to eventually complete…just not all at once. I could spend tons of mindless hours submitting stock photos to Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, but chipping away at my backlog an hour at a time still feels like progress, even if it’s at a slower pace. Some progress is better than no progress at all. It’s encouraging to mark off milestones on more significant tasks and see the finish line inching closer each week—and to have a predicted end date as well.

Additionally, I’ve pinned longer-term projects to this whiteboard to keep my eye on the end goal for these more significant accomplishments. This helps keep me focused on what self-imposed deadlines I have and potentially even gives me the motivation to complete the “dreaded” projects so I can work on the fun ones. Consequently, in these six months, I’ve been able to self-publish a short story anthology, get Buried Colony ready for self-publication early enough to have Advanced Reader Copies available (and with enough time to pull back and perform re-writes), finish editing my backlog of photographs I’ve taken, submit over 200 stock photographs to Shutterstock and Adobe Stock, and schedule 70+ reviews on my website. With some of my long-term projects finally entering the “completed” stage, I’m starting to wonder what other projects I’ll pick up in their stead. In the end, there will always be something to do, and my whiteboard keeps me accountable on these projects.

 

How many projects do you work on concurrently?

Do you schedule your free time to work on projects?

What method helps you complete your long-term goals?

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An Author’s Online Presence [PART 2/2]

Last month, I wrote about how an author should have some form of an online presence. Engaging with the writing community and potential readers is easy to do when starting out. Social media helps connect people online, so it should be the first place to start when developing a writer brand. Even if a writer hasn’t published anything yet, these profiles help legitimize what they’re trying to do in the off-chance that they do decide to proceed into publication (either self or traditional).

And while social media is somewhat “unofficial” in the sense that anyone can sign up and participate in it, there are plenty of self-published authors who are missing out on some “official” portals of information that they can control. These are the places where customers are likely to come to search for information on a particular book or author, so it’s essential to ensure that they look like they’ve been set up instead of having default data displayed.

Just like last month, there are three categories where an author’s online presence can be controlled by the author:

1. Amazon

While I would have included Goodreads in last month’s post, as it is inherently another form of social media, I decided to add it here for one key reason: Author Profiles. Since Goodreads pulls data from Amazon, an author’s book might already be on the platform without the author doing anything about it. However, if a writer has an Author Profile on Goodreads, they can put up future books and other missing books that weren’t caught in Goodreads’ data-scanning bots. Plus, there’s still that amount of social media inherent with Goodreads that allows an author to provide links to blogs they’re writing, answer questions from fans, and interact with the reading and writing communities present on the platform.

[image error]Being a Goodreads Author is easy!

While Goodreads is a subsidiary of Amazon, self-published authors should also be aware of what they need to do to claim their Author Profiles on Amazon proper. The current reality of self-publishing is that Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is the best way to get an author’s book into the hands of consumers. And while KDP allows for information about a writer’s books to be updated, it’s the Author Central side of Amazon that’s important here. Author Central is a slightly different service that lets Amazon’s authors consolidate books, read reviews, and update information that consumers would see when clicking on the hyperlinked name associated with their book. With an updated Author Central profile, potential readers can see all the other books an author has to offer while also gaining a sense that the author is aware of their presence on Amazon.

An Amazon profile brings some credibility to an author.
2. Website

If a writer is serious about their work, they should set up a personal website for it. While free options exist, it benefits an author if their website is a simple URL that they can have printed on business cards and the front-matter (or back cover) of their books. The point of a website is to be a landing page for anyone who happens to search for an author online. From there, currently published books, future books in the works, and links to social media profiles are useful information to include on a website. I also find it helpful to write a blog post somewhat regularly about whatever topic the author wants to write about (as you can see here in this post). Ideally, it should have some connection to their books, whether it’s researching, writing, editing, or whatever. The blog post mainly shows that this individual is active. Additionally, it’s relatively easy to get set up through Square to sell books online through an author’s website as well. This way, an author can also include an online storefront for signed copies of their books that they can sell directly to consumers.

Of course, most of these online profiles are only as good as the internet’s ability to search for the author. One of the other benefits of a website is to get people to sign up for an e-mail newsletter. Most information on the web is “pulled,” meaning that users pull the information they want. In the case of an e-mail newsletter, an author can “push” information to potential customers. The frequency of e-mails should be fairly limited, so as to not become spam for the consumer. I generally do one monthly newsletter on the first Tuesday of the month. I also use MailChimp, which is a simple service that has some useful layout tools for a sharp-looking newsletter. Some authors send out quarterly or annual newsletters, but it should be frequent enough that readers are reminded they exist. As for content, I generally aggregate all the material I’ve created over the month, just in case someone missed a social media post or a blog post on my website. Much like the amount of social media to do, newsletters can be as little or as big as an author wants, just as long as they’re consistent.

3. Google

Have you ever Googled yourself? I did a short while ago and noticed that Google had collected together enough information over the internet that it decided I was important enough to have a “Portal.” These are the little boxes over to the right of the listing of search results that gives a synopsis of the person, place, or thing that’s significant enough to warrant such a Portal. Granted, it was missing some information about me, but I was able to follow the Verification process with Google so that I could provide these additional details. Part of this process required me to show that I was who I said I was, which came in handy because the way Google does this is by asking to see screenshots of the admin areas of social media websites to ensure the requestor is valid.

One of the reasons I think Google realized I was someone important enough to have a Portal was that my local library had a profile on me. Granted, I was the one who submitted the information to the library so they would create it for one of their “local authors,” but it still doesn’t deny the fact that it adds legitimacy to an author’s name. Considering this library profile is the first thing that comes up when someone searches for me, it means that if someone wants to find my books, my Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is fairly solid. In fact, clicking through on the “BOOKS” link on my Google Portal brings up a whole other page with all of my books listed on it. Basically, if you can control how the internet searches for you—and what it finds—you can ensure potential readers are guided in the right direction.

Having a Google portal made me feel like I had “arrived.”

While a lot of these online profiles seem complicated to set up, there are plenty of guides out there about how to do them correctly. A lot of them won’t change much from month to month or year to year, but they are critical to establishing an author’s presence online. Social media is excellent for fast and somewhat impersonal connections with readers and other writers, but knowing what the internet digs up is equally as important. If an author wants to be taken seriously, they should probably go out and ensure their brand is consistent across the internet, including Amazon, Google, and their personal website.

Does an Amazon profile legitimize an author?

If an author has an out-of-date website, are you disappointed?

When you search for an author on Google, what comes up?