Christopher J.H. Jones's Blog, page 5

Crowdfunding Books: Part Six – Pentian

This is the sixth in a long series of posts outlining crowdfunding methods and ways to get a book published other than the traditional route. The overview is here, Kickstarter/Indiegogo is here, Patreon is here, Pubslush is here, and Inkshares is here.

Pentian is a platform that has had a lot of success in Spain and parts of Europe, but is very new in the states. I have to warn you right now: it shows. They claim that they have published dozens of books in Spanish through the platform. The US launch of the site was June of 2014, so they’re one of the newest players in this space. They had 200 live book projects in the first two months of action, so there may be a market for this idea.

Pentian, like Unbound (that we’ll see next), is book only, and the staff at Pentian vet the books that are proposed. Pentian, though, adds an innovation that none of these other platforms have: the backers can reap the rewards of hitting a winner. It’s a subscription publishing model that hasn’t been seen since the 19th century, where the buyers of the books are the backers of the book, and they can participate in the financial rewards if the book does well.

Basics:

You sign up as a book author. As always, it’s free.
You fill out the website form for your book, including the title, the genre, and uploading at least 30 pages of the book as a word file (see below).
The professionals at Pentian read the book and assess its publishability. If they like it, your project goes live.
You sell subscriptions to your backers. There is editing and marketing support from Pentian. I have my doubts about its effectiveness on this side of the pond.
You get 40% of the proceeds, the backers split 50%, and Pentian gets 10%.

Downside: I’m going to reproduce here the email I got from Pentian, unexpurgated and in its entirety.

Hello,

We couldn’t check your book.

We need the hole book in a WORD file. In case you don’t have it finished or you don’t want to send it complete, we need you to tell us the exact number of pages your book is going to have, and at least 30 written pages of it so our team can value it.

We would be pleased if you rely on Pentian to publish your book.

We are sure your book can collect enough money to be published, helped by a crowdfunding campaing in our website.

Kind Regards.

Saludos.

Julio AC.

That, right there, sums up my fears about the current incarnation of this platform.

Tips:

Get a book up on the site so it can be there as they work out the bugs.
Be patient. This is a beta. You’re not going to make money for a bit.

Next time: Unbound.

Crowdfunding Books: Part Five – Inkshares

This is the fifth in a long series of posts outlining crowdfunding methods and ways to get a book published other than the traditional route. The overview is here, Kickstarter/Indiegogo is here, Patreon is here, and Pubslush is here.

And now we’ve reached the newest entrants into the fray. Inkshares comes into the crowdfunding arena with interesting quirks and massive support from one of the biggest names in the industry.

Ingram is the backer for Inkshares, and as such is in a unique position to provide services that the other platforms do not. A book proposal on Inkshares that meets the pre-sale target will be printed and distributed by Inkshares Publishing. Once a book reaches that target, essentially it is acquired by Inkshares and published. Ingram is a big name in the industry, and certainly has the resources to make good on the promise.

Basics:

You start on Inkshares by registering as a creator. It’s free.
You put together a book pitch. This is a 140 character tweet, essentially. [Mine read: Delivering data in Virt is an invitation to pain. But that’s Ethan’s job. And today, it might actually kill him.]
You can upload samples of your work as well, pieces of the novel, as much as you like.
You also create a pitch-length synopsis of the book, analogous to the jacket blurb, to attract readers.
You put up a mock cover for the book. This isn’t what will be used in the final copy, but something like it, something again to attract attention.
You push the link out to Facebook and Twitter and what have you, and invite people to “follow” your book. This is a reasonable indicator of how many people are interested in your book.
You can stop right here if you want. But if you want to participate in Inkshares contests, where you can get your book published without hitting the pre-sale targets, you can flip the book from “draft” to “pre-sale” and get people to put their money where their follows are.
If you hit your pre-sale target, your book is published. If not, nobody is charged, no harm done. Inkshares does not take a cut unless the book makes it to print.
If you get published, you get editors, designers, marketers, publishers, distribution into bookstores, and 50% of the paper sales (70% of digital). You give up a non-exclusive print right to Inkshares, but that’s all. It’s a square deal, however you slice it.

Downside: You do all the pre-publishing marketing on your own. You need a solid platform to pull this off. You only get half the money on the sale of the book once it’s published.

Tips:

The low barrier to entry–all someone has to do is enter a couple pieces of information and click “follow”–means you can hammer your social media people without feeling too bad about it.
Make a good cover. If you’re going to get any followers from the group of cruisers on the site, you’ll need that.
Write a great first page. See the bullet above.
Follow a lot of other people. If you follow them, ordinarily they’ll follow you back.
Inkshares has a currency internal to the site that allows you to rack up money you can use to support other projects. So complete their tasks, build profiles, post your novel, get a certain number of followers, and you can use those bucks to support other projects.

Inkshares is so new–it only began last year–that it’s only now acquiring any kind of notoriety. As it does, the number of cruisers that might see your pitch and follow your book goes up. If you’re good. Write a good pitch.

My experience on Inkshares has been mixed. I love the idea and the website. The communication from the company to the author is stellar–I always know what is going on with my project. My problem is, and this is fairly common in my experience, that I don’t have a huge organic network of people that will buy my stuff. With Inkshares, I don’t get to trade on the cachet of the publisher to drive sales unless I can make my own market first. It’s understandable, but it’s going to severely limit the people that can make a go of it, and a lot of those people are going to think that if they have to do all that on their own, they might as well go whole hog and self-publish.

Still, the people at Inkshares are professionals, and there is a rumor of some other incentives, like the ability of backers to share in the success of the novel. We shall see.

Next time: Pentian.

Crowdfunding Books: Part Four – Pubslush

This is the fourth in a long series of articles about how and where to crowdfund publishing books. The first (summary) is here, the second (Kickstarter/Indiegogo) is here, and the third (Patreon) is here.

Founded in 2011 by a mother-daughter team of publishers, Pubslush caters directly to our targets: readers. There are no videos here to compete with, no cartoonists (well, okay, there are if they write books), no multi-platinum bands. All you get on Pubslush is books.

Pubslush is also quite successful at funding the projects that it takes on. According to some figures, more than 50% of the posted projects meet their funding targets. Most of them are, admittedly, quite modest, but some are more ambitious, in the low 5-figure range. Pubslush provides a robust platform for marketing your work, as well, and the best website of any of the sites in this series, I think. Additionally, Pubslush has a foundation and supports literacy for underprivileged kids.

Basics:

You choose the level of pre-publication support you want. There are seven levels:

Free (it does come with a pre-campaign checklist)
Bronze ($50, gets you an impressive level of services, including campaign consultation for designing reward levels, email templates, etc.)
Silver ($100, all of the above plus a dedicated campaign relations coordinator)
Social Media Only ($150, adds tweets and Facebook statuses custom to your project, feature on Pubslush’s blog, and Pubslush SM boost)
Gold ($200, most everything above plus a marketing director)
Platinum ($300, you get the idea)
Iron ($750, gotta love that iron is more than double platinum, must be a GOT thing. This level is essentially a vanity press level, adding Storiad as a publisher/promoter.)
Platinum Plus ($1000, but you don’t get Storiad, which is interesting and somewhat disappointing)


Having chosen a level of support, you present your book. There is some support for every level, even the free one. You get a cover photo, a pitch (back-of-book blurb), and a sample, about 10 pages (3000 words or so).
You design your campaign and funding level, put up your reward packages, and off you go. You get 60 days.
You designate minimum and maximum levels, like Indiegogo. If you hit the minimum, you keep everything after that. Pubslush takes 4%, which is less than anyone else.
Your Pubslush campaign page converts to a sales page with a “buy button” that takes you to your Amazon page.

Simple. Actually, it really is simple. Pubslush has a clean, easy-to-navigate site, it’s very attractively put together, and anyone should have no trouble with it.

Downside: You’re going to be doing a great deal of the work yourself. By “work” I mean you’re going to design the cover, you’re going to do the editing (or, please for Heaven’s sake, get a pro to do it), and you’re going to do almost all the promotion of the thing, even at the higher levels of support.

It’s not too harsh to say that Pubslush essentially functions as a basic way to generate pre-publication momentum and take in some money earlier on in the process than you otherwise would be able to. You can be as professional about this thing as you want, which means that in general, most of the projects aren’t all that professional.

Tips:

Use the site as additional boost for your already-go project. If you have a book, and you’re going to self-pub the thing because it just doesn’t meet the industry’s go-to vibe at the moment (I think we’ve moved to ghosts now, having exhausted zombies and before that, vampires), Pubslush is a good way to use crowdfunding to spread out some of the financial benefits, so you can spend money in prep instead of shelling it out yourself.
Spend money on cover design. If you’re going to attract additional backers beyond just the friends and family you’re already courting, you need to have a brilliant cover, one that says you’ve done a professional job.
Make your pitch outstanding. You get one shot at this. Don’t take it less seriously than you would an agent or publisher query. Professionals are always on their game.

My worry with Pubslush is that it’s a site that generally caters to people who think their books are terrific, and just can’t get past the gatekeepers of the industry. I won’t lie; while there’s some validity to this thinking, most people that engage in it are delusional (not clinically, just normal-human delusional). It is absolutely true that many great books were rejected for a long time before getting published (often under quasi-miraculous circumstances, see Rowling, J.K.), which certainly indicates that there are terrific books that did NOT have their own individual miracles, and have never been published at all. Yours may, indeed, be one of these.

If it is, Pubslush is a way for you to find out, for very little risk and not much more work than you’re already doing.

Next time, part five: Inkshares.

Crowdfunding Books: Part Three – Patreon

This is part three of a lengthy series on crowdfunding for authors. The overview is here; part two (Kickstarter and Indiegogo) is here.

I think I should issue this disclaimer before we go any further with today’s post: I love Patreon. I use it, I depend on it, I believe in it. That’s the lens through which I’m going to present today’s analysis. Just wanted you to know.

Okay. Patreon is a relative newcomer to the publishing/crowdfunding scene. It’s only been around for two years in any form, and only the last year in its current incarnation. Still, it’s racked up some impressive numbers: more than $20 million in total funding (as of early 2015), $1 million a month going to creators/publishers (reached in May), more than 12,000 active creators and 250,000 patrons. Recently Patreon bought its direct competitor Subbable and is now, for all intents and purposes, the only major player in the patron/subscription model for art on the web.

It’s not actually a new idea, just a new way to execute. Not that long ago, artists made their money not by hawking their wares to the public, but through patronage, having a wealthy backer put up the cash to support the artist in exchange for access to all the things the artist does. Patreon takes that model into the 21st century by allowing for mass patronage, instead of just one or two patrons. We don’t all have Prince Joseph to take care of us, and few of us are Mozart.

Basics:

You open up a creator account on Patreon.com. It’s free.
You set up your reward system. This takes a little bit of explaining, because while it is similar to the Kickstarter model, there are some differences. You have two types of rewards:

One set is a per-creation reward. The more a patron gives you per creation/post/story, the more benefits he receives.
The other set is a funding target, like other crowdfunding platforms. When you reach $400 a story, for instance, you’ll produce a special story just for the people that are currently supporting you.


You post content. Anything you like, really. You’ll find podcasts, art, comix, songs, poetry, videos, cartoons, film, and even (hurray!) stories. If your story won’t fit well in their post format, you can attach a .pdf or what have you.
Your patrons sign up with Patreon to support you. They may do this for as little as $1/mo. NOTE: this can be confusing, so make sure you understand both of the ways you can get paid with Patreon:

One way is the per-creation model. Everytime you post a paid creation, your patrons are charged. They can cap their patronage (so much per month) so that you can’t bankrupt them.
The other is a per-month model. Your patrons are charged the same amount every month, whether you’ve put up a hundred pieces of content or zero.

I can’t stress enough how excellently this works for content creators. You know, in advance, how much you’re going to be able to get per posted piece. You write a short, you know you’re going to make X from it. You retain the rights, as well, so you can still sell it again (I’ve done that). The charges are automatically made the first of every month and the money deposited in your account.

Downside: For all my raving about the wonders of this platform, there are a couple of downsides that need to be mentioned, though they’re mostly difficulties we encounter as authors of the written word. One, like a lot of the web, the platform skews heavily in favor of visual and audio (or, ideally, both). Artists like Pentatonix ($21,300 per video/song), Peter Hollens ($7236), Amanda Palmer ($33,700. No, that is not a typo. Thirty-three thousand seven hundred dollars. Per creation.) have done brilliantly with this format. You are unlikely to do that well. True authors who do nothing but produce writing cannot expect returns like those above.

Second, the website is still clunky and hard to make real discoveries on. Patreon has a “featured” list for each category of creator, and if you’re not on that list (it does rotate, though the algorithm used for the rotation is opaque), strangers finding you by accident is next to impossible. That can make it hard to grow your patronage through sheer volume of awesomeness.

And the way Patreon presents creations, putting up a novel is not going to work. Even a decent-length short is just a wall of text. It’s hard to make it visually appealing.

Tips: That said, there are good ways around this stuff. They can make you better as a writer, too, in interesting ways.

Don’t post full stories. Instead of hitting your patrons with 4000 words, parcel the first 1500 words out in free posts, get people hooked, and then post the remaining story behind the paywall, as a creation and as an attachment. It’s not perfect, but the workaround does work. I’ve done it.
Always dress the post up with a visual. Photos are cheap and/or free. Use them.
Shoot video and post that content as well. People will click on videos and play them while they’re doing other things. It’s a way to be involved in the creator’s life, which most people find endlessly fascinating. (“Where do you get your ideas?”)
Record audio of your stories and post that. This is perhaps the single least-utilized method of transmission for writers on the web . The market and demand for this kind of content is immense. I don’t use that word lightly.
If you’re intent on getting paid for a novel, do it like Dickens. Put out a few thousand words at a time. Even a 60,000-word novel will only take you fifteen posts at 4000 words a crack. Same sort of posting logic applies as in the first bullet above.

Here’s my personal experience with Patreon.

I started writing shorts a few years ago. I had a bank of them, maybe thirty or so, when I opened up on Patreon in May. I’ve since posted 16 of them, about half in the clear, half behind paywall. I put up two pieces of paid content a month.

My first day live, I had 20 people back me, totaling about $185 per story, so an average of $9 and change per patron. I topped out a few days later at 27 patrons and $218 per; I’ve since dropped back to 23 and $190. I do absolutely nothing to increase this number, having had other parts of my career explode in the meantime. However, to date, I’ve been paid $1733 to write short stories this year. By the time we hit the year mark, I’ll have made north of $5000.

I tentatively estimate that there are less than a thousand short story writers that will get paid that much in the next twelve months for nothing but shorts.

There is essentially zero stress with the model. I post, I get paid. I treat my patrons as if they were the angels of Heaven, because that’s precisely what they are.

Tomorrow, one of the older players in this space, Pubslush.

Crowdfunding Books: Part Two – Kickstarter/Indiegogo

This is the second of a series of posts about using crowdfunding to sell/market your books. The first post/overview is here.

Kickstarter is the 800-pound gorilla of crowdfunding. To date, according to them, they’ve funded a total of $1.9 BILLION to over 90,000 projects. They have 9.2 million plus backers for those projects, too, so that tells you they’re a serious force. Kickstarter’s statistics say they fund somewhere around 15% of their projects, which is not too bad, better than one in eight. The best chances are in music and art projects, which fund north of 20%.

Indiegogo is a bit smaller than Kickstarter, but they also have some features that make them more hospitable to writers, especially those on the lunatic fringes of genre. Indiegogo will take your project, almost certainly (don’t try a project to manufacture explosives, but writing erotic horror, for instance, won’t faze them), while Kickstarter is more selective (and some say unnecessarily restrictive). Also, Indiegogo will let you keep the money if you don’t hit your goal (if you choose flexible funding). That can be critical. We would all love to get $10,000 up front to write that novel, but we also know that if someone offered us $4700 instead, we would almost certainly say yes.

Basics:

You set up the project, for instance “The Great American Novel” . It’s free to do this.
You set the funding goal. Let’s say we’re going after $10k. That would be a decent advance for a new writer.
You set the timeframe for completion. On Kickstarter, this is a hard deadline, and if you don’t hit the above funding target, you get nothing. On Indiegogo (flexible funding), you can keep the dough you raise (less between 4 and 9%). Let’s choose 60 days.
You set reward levels. If someone gives you $1, they get a kind mention at the back of your book (for instance). If your rich Uncle Harry gives you $10,000, he gets to be the hero of the book. Stuff like that.
You put the project up and tell everyone you know about it. This is your job, and you’ll have to work hard at it if you want to get the project funded.
You fund the project and write the book, and sell it yourself on Amazon, Smashwords, and everywhere else.
If you overfund, that is, take in more in pledges than your target, you still keep the extra dough.

Downside: It’s very hard to make this work. Everyone wants to write a novel, and no one wants to quit their day job to do it. Statistics are a little vague, but it’s probable that book projects fund less than 10% of the time.

The problem is that books aren’t sexy. What funds on Indiegogo, et al, are projects that have either a “duh” factor or a “wow” factor. For instance, a project to fund the making of potato salad raised $55,000. One of my favorites, Reading Rainbow, was massively successful. Games generally do very well; it’s the golden age of board games (and, really, all games).

Books, on the other hand, are words on the page. They aren’t particularly visual. They don’t move. All the action happens in your head. This means that they are very hard to sell in this format, especially because (in our example above) they haven’t been written yet. There is literally nothing to sell but anticipation. If you’re Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer, you can drum this anticipation up with your massive backlist. If you’re Cj Lehi or Tiana Smith, not so much. You need to up your game to win.

Tips: But there are ways to do this. Some suggestions:

Get a beloved Star Trek character to pitch your project. Like, oh, Geordi LaForge. Just to pick someone at random.
Make a trailer, just like you would for a movie. Video sells.
Leverage the rewards. If you can’t offer a lot in terms of your literary backlist, offer benefits, even some that don’t have to do with the book. Most of us have other jobs. There’s no real restriction on the rewards, so get creative.
Cross-promote. Get artists to draw you concept pieces to illustrate how awesome your book will be. Good exposure for them, and for you. Plus you’re leveraging their followership.
Write really well. You’ll want to put up some teasers about the book’s content, and if your writing is compelling, nothing will sell your book better.
Do something outrageous. Here’s one of my favorite success stories on Kickstarter: Matt Forbeck’s 12 for ’12, where he raised money to write twelve novels in twelve months. He put the projects up one at a time, and used the gravity slingshot to propel his pitches forward. Something like this, or writing a novel entirely while being driven coast-to-coast on Route 50, for instance, might have a chance.

If you have a large social media presence, good business contacts, and a robust group of fans, you could make it work. It’s a longshot, but no longer than blasting through the slush pile at Penguin House*.

Tomorrow: Patreon

*Yes, I know it’s not called that. I just like this name better.

Crowdfunding Your Book Part Two: Kickstarter/Indiegogo

This is the second of a series of posts about using crowdfunding to sell/market your books. The first post/overview is here.

Kickstarter is the 800-pound gorilla of crowdfunding. To date, according to them, they’ve funded a total of $1.9 BILLION to over 90,000 projects. They have 9.2 million plus backers for those projects, too, so that tells you they’re a serious force. Kickstarter’s statistics say they fund somewhere around 15% of their projects, which is not too bad, better than one in eight. The best chances are in music and art projects, which fund north of 20%.

Indiegogo is a bit smaller than Kickstarter, but they also have some features that make them more hospitable to writers, especially those on the lunatic fringes of genre. Indiegogo will take your project, almost certainly (don’t try a project to manufacture explosives, but writing erotic horror, for instance, won’t faze them), while Kickstarter is more selective (and some say unnecessarily restrictive). Also, Indiegogo will let you keep the money if you don’t hit your goal (if you choose flexible funding). That can be critical. We would all love to get $10,000 up front to write that novel, but we also know that if someone offered us $4700 instead, we would almost certainly say yes.

Basics:

You set up the project, for instance “The Great American Novel” . It’s free to do this.
You set the funding goal. Let’s say we’re going after $10k. That would be a decent advance for a new writer.
You set the timeframe for completion. On Kickstarter, this is a hard deadline, and if you don’t hit the above funding target, you get nothing. On Indiegogo (flexible funding), you can keep the dough you raise (less between 4 and 9%). Let’s choose 60 days.
You set reward levels. If someone gives you $1, they get a kind mention at the back of your book (for instance). If your rich Uncle Harry gives you $10,000, he gets to be the hero of the book. Stuff like that.
You put the project up and tell everyone you know about it. This is your job, and you’ll have to work hard at it if you want to get the project funded.
You fund the project and write the book, and sell it yourself on Amazon, Smashwords, and everywhere else.
If you overfund, that is, take in more in pledges than your target, you still keep the extra dough.

Downside: It’s very hard to make this work. Everyone wants to write a novel, and no one wants to quit their day job to do it. Statistics are a little vague, but it’s probable that book projects fund less than 10% of the time.

The problem is that books aren’t sexy. What funds on Indiegogo, et al, are projects that have either a “duh” factor or a “wow” factor. For instance, a project to fund the making of potato salad raised $55,000. One of my favorites, Reading Rainbow, was massively successful. Games generally do very well; it’s the golden age of board games (and, really, all games).

Books, on the other hand, are words on the page. They aren’t particularly visual. They don’t move. All the action happens in your head. This means that they are very hard to sell in this format, especially because (in our example above) they haven’t been written yet. There is literally nothing to sell but anticipation. If you’re Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer, you can drum this anticipation up with your massive backlist. If you’re Cj Lehi or Tiana Smith, not so much. You need to up your game to win.

Tips: But there are ways to do this. Some suggestions:

Get a beloved Star Trek character to pitch your project. Like, oh, Geordi LaForge. Just to pick someone at random.
Make a trailer, just like you would for a movie. Video sells.
Leverage the rewards. If you can’t offer a lot in terms of your literary backlist, offer benefits, even some that don’t have to do with the book. Most of us have other jobs. There’s no real restriction on the rewards, so get creative.
Cross-promote. Get artists to draw you concept pieces to illustrate how awesome your book will be. Good exposure for them, and for you. Plus you’re leveraging their followership.
Write really well. You’ll want to put up some teasers about the book’s content, and if your writing is compelling, nothing will sell your book better.
Do something outrageous. Here’s one of my favorite success stories on Kickstarter: Matt Forbeck’s 12 for ’12, where he raised money to write twelve novels in twelve months. He put the projects up one at a time, and used the gravity slingshot to propel his pitches forward. Something like this, or writing a novel entirely while being driven coast-to-coast on Route 50, for instance, might have a chance.

If you have a large social media presence, good business contacts, and a robust group of fans, you could make it work. It’s a longshot, but no longer than blasting through the slush pile at Penguin House.

Tomorrow: Patreon

Crowdfunding Books (and other stories): A how-to series

This is part one of a multi-part series on crowdfunding. I’ve had success with a number of different methods, and I’m going to share how I did what I did, what and where I did it, and what’s coming next (I think).

Crowdfunding (n): using the potential future market for a product to fund the product before it is made available for sale. See preorder.

Amazon has long allowed pre-orders for books on its site; the difference here is that you get paid first, then you write the book and ship it, where with Amazon, the pre-orders mostly ensure that the book will end up on various bestseller lists, having logged a large number of sales on a single day.

I should clarify a couple of other terms as well.

Traditional publishing (n), also known as “trad pub”: a method of offering a written work for sale through the use of a publishing house, a distribution company, and bookstores, frequently also involving an agent, an editor, an advance on sales, etc.

and

Self-publishing (n), once known as vanity press publishing: a method of offering a written work for sale directly through one of the many print-on-demand and distribution services. Primarily a 21st-century phenomenon.

Those are broad categories. Many authors fit in both, some in neither. It depends on how they prefer to work, and I neither make judgments on that nor represent that I know best how either route should be run. What I’m discussing here is another way to go, one that fits neither of the above definitions precisely, although it does often meet up with self-publishing down the road.

No, crowdfunding of a literary work can allow an author to get paid to do the work, not just (possibly) get paid after having done it.

If you’re an author, here are some prominent ways to get paid for your work without going either the trad publishing way or the self-pub route:

Kickstarter/Indiegogo: I’ll start with the ones you know. There are differences between the two sites, of course. They think the differences are material; I assure you that from an author’s standpoint they are not. Both are large, powerful sites with great reach. They also have a commensurate amount of chaff that your missiles have to negotiate to strike their targets. If you’re Stephen King, this is a fantastic way to go. If you’re Cj Lehi, not so much. Basics: You set the funding target. If you reach it, you get paid. If you don’t, you don’t. Your supporters won’t be charged unless you’re successful, which minimizes their risk. Being successful in this space takes something out of the ordinary, though. Not for the faint of heart.

Patreon: Here’s one you don’t know. Although nobody’s heard of these guys, the funding model is both bleeding-edge and centuries, probably millennia, old. Just as Mozart and Beethoven produced their symphonies for wealthy patrons, who were paying their way while they scribbled notes, Patreon allows you to have regular contact with a group of patrons that support you either on a monthly or a per-work basis. The relative newness of the site means traffic isn’t all that heavy, but there is good bang for the buck here. Basics: you produce work and post it, and your patrons are automatically billed for it. They can pledge as little as $1 a month. The more of them you have, the more you make. You may also post free content, and you should.

Pubslush: Billed as a method of cutting through the slush pile, Pubslush attempts to get pledges for the completed work before it hits the press (pre-orders are also available, if you’re going to print anyway). In this way, it functions much like the big crowdfunders above; you set a funding goal, and if you hit it in the time limit you set, you get the money. Basics: you set up a campaign page, and you set a funding goal. Unique little feature here, you can set a funding goal that does not show on the main page, which allows you to set a BHAG and still get paid if you don’t hit it. Pubslush also supplies marketing analytics to its authors, which can be useful.

Inkshares: Backed by some of the biggest players in the industry, this is a platform that builds a sense of a growing book as you go. Ingram Publishing Services is the backbone, one of the biggest distributors in the book world. It’s a clever play, really, allowing them to find out which books have their own sales platforms before they commit resources to the book. But if that platform is there, they’ll do it, and they have the clout to do it right. Basics: you can start with as little as a tweet, 140 characters that describes your book. From there you can do blurbs, upload chapters, drafts, all manner of things, and push those things out to your “followers”. The more of those you have, the more platform you have for the book, the more likely you are to hit your pre-sale numbers, which is what triggers publication. When you hit the number (1000, for instance, is the pre-sale target for trade paper), they’ll edit, cover, and publish the book for you. You keep 50% of the money (and yes, they set the price).

Pentian: This is a new player in this space, at least in the US. Pentian is big in Spain, and some of their marketing materials are still in that language. Unlike all the others above, there’s an up-front editorial process here that you have to get through. It’s not terribly selective, but if you clearly can’t write, you won’t get a page and a campaign, so do the work. Basics: After you run the editorial gauntlet, your page goes live and you can start soliciting pre-orders from fans. There’s a twist, though, and it allows your backers to participate in the future sales of the book. If they sell the book for you, they get some of the proceeds. Yes, it cuts into your percentage, so Pentian pays out less than the others. On the other hand, having your fanbase with a stake in your book’s success isn’t all bad.

In coming posts, each of these will get an in-depth treatment. So come on back.

In Which I Ask for Help

I have a budding career as a writer. I have contest wins, I have books on submission, I have six completed novels and two more in advanced stages of pupation. I have a good (line) editor. I even have steady income and a small pool of readers.

I don’t have a critique group. Or even a critique partner.

Not one. I’ve never been in a critique group. I’ve never had a critique partner. The closest I’ve come is a steady first reader, which I had for a while in the inimitable Jill Peterson, but one, she’s pretty busy these days and two, she was always too close to the author, being that she worked for me (different line of work).

I find myself cranking out content at a murderous pace right now, more than 50,000 words a month, or a little less than a novel every 30 days. I’ve done that for a year almost, and the last couple of months have been easier than ever, so I’m taking that as a sign that this is going to be a thing. I intend it to be. I’m confident that the material I’m writing is good.

What I don’t know is if it’s publishable-good. I can’t determine this on my own. I’m far too close to the material. I don’t even do a good job of editing it.

I’ve gone as far as I can go toward a real career in writing as I can without someone(s) to help make those judgments. I’m therefore asking for help.

What I need is a couple of people to read my stuff. It shouldn’t be a terribly onerous job, since we’re talking about–at most–a couple of hundred pages a month. But it does need to be fairly timely, as in, I send a manuscript, I need to get feedback within a couple of weeks. I have short timelines for getting these things whipped into shape and getting them out in the market, one way or another.

And the reader needs to be

really good at this kind of thing, willing to be brutal when necessary, and able to provide encouragement when not
well-read in a wide range of genres, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, literary, mystery, shorts and novels and everything in between
familiar with and able to analyze story structure as well as language

I realize I have very little to offer in return. I am willing (eager, even) to read material as a critique partner for someone else, and I think I can promise to give back everything I’m asking for, so if you are looking for someone who’s had success to read your stuff and give you signposts to getting better, I think I can do that.

Anyone interested? Email is chris [at] iamchrisjones [dot] com.

The End of Employment

I’m a man. In US culture, that’s synonymous with “employed”. If you doubt this, go to a party, and introduce yourself to someone. The first question you’ll be asked is “what do you do for a living?” Humans interact with one another beginning with categories (male/female; my tribe/not my tribe; kind of work; religion, etc.), and proceed (sometimes) to individuality.

Therefore, if your answer is an individual one, you’re asking people to move to a level of interaction with you that they might not be comfortable with. There will be awkwardness on one side or the other. [NOTE: some organizations encourage this in the name of starting conversations that can be used for recruiting purposes, as in “I help ordinary people reach extraordinary goals,” which sounds on its face like a great thing, but is always, in my experience, either a financial services pitch or an MLM. As such, it has ruined that kind of answer for people for everyone.]

My situation is complex. I never know how to answer that question. Generally speaking, I list off the things I do in some sort of order and ask them to pick. It’s unsatisfactory, of course. The purpose of the question is to allow them to categorize me, and what I’ve done is said, “you can’t.” Am I a mortgage officer? A writer? A teacher? An opera singer? A director? A public speaker? You bet I am. I get paid to do all those things. They aren’t hobbies.

There have been an increasing number of articles written about the transitional economy in which we find ourselves, where our technological achievements have made a number of fields of employment precarious, if not completely untenable. Manufacturing jobs everyone knows about, but more and more no industry is safe. Loan officering? Heck, a computer can do 80% of what I do, and it can do 100% of what some LOs do, faster, cheaper, and with fewer mistakes. Driving a truck? Carrying mail? Reading meters? Even things like writing novels, once thought to be safe because of the creative element involved, are under fire. Robots will replace most of the jobs we currently have. It’s going to happen. It’s happening. You, sitting at your desk? Don’t look back. Something is gaining on you.

The good news here is that robots are ridiculously cheap to run and that means that most of the things we’re paying for now will continue to fall in price. We won’t have to work as hard to pay for the things we want. There will be tremendous upheaval before we get to the point where people have to work only a few hours a day doing things that have to pay, but we will get there, and we’ll get there in my lifetime.

When that happens, the number of specialists is going to go way down. If you’re not in a job that simply cannot be done by a robot–and I’m struggling to think of what job that might be (possibly teaching)–it won’t make any difference what you went to school to learn to do. It won’t matter if you go back and get a different sort of training. When every job is a buggy-maker, what kind of buggy you’re making is irrelevant.

People will need to learn to decouple themselves from their employment. Think about the word, for a moment. Employment. It means that you’re a hammer, and someone has picked you up and used you for their purposes, whatever those are. It might be driving a nail. It might be clubbing someone over the head. Can the hammer object? Not really. It is being employed to do a task, the larger implications of which are not its business. Why we think employment is a good thing, then, is a little confusing to me.

Many people are going to have to learn to move beyond employment, to become post-employment workers. Don’t misunderstand me, work is critically important to people’s mental health. Working is good for people. Jobs, employment, are not necessarily the same thing. I’ve had jobs that weren’t work, per se. Haven’t you? But work is one thing, and employment is something else. To illustrate, I’ll use my own situation. I know it best, and I’m unlikely to sue myself for libel if I get something wrong.

I like work. I do as much work as anyone I know. That my work is pleasant, not physically taxing, fairly flexible in terms of hours, and sometimes non-remunerative is no reason to discount it. Quite the contrary.

The reason I can’t answer the party question is that I’m post-employment already. Hey, for the first time ever, I might be cutting-edge! How’s that for a degree in Classical Civilization!

Actually, it’s what you ought to expect from it. I got a degree in a subject in which there was no employment. I went to college to learn stuff (and to get married, I won’t lie), not to get a job. I wanted the piece of paper, not employment. I knew I could get a job if I wanted one, doing all manner of things, and that is precisely what I’ve proceeded to do. I got the costume piece that says “educated”, and gives me entree into the job market, entirely (hilariously) irrespective of the fact that my education has nothing at all to do with any specific piece of employment.

What I do in that market is sell myself. I can do almost anything. I can clean things, write everything that man can write (yes, even things like sonnets), teach practically any subject (I am right now teaching biology, anthropology, and astrophysics), analyze financial statements, tax returns, or mortgages, conduct choirs, sing, dance, and act. I can run meetings, motivate, create and brainstorm. Those are just the things I have already done. I can learn to do anything else. ANYTHING else (given time). And I’ll probably enjoy the process.

But here’s the kicker. I’m a whole toolbox in one, but I like hitting my own nails. I won’t be employed. You can ask me, and if I like the job you can hire me (please do!), but you’ll not put me in a position and keep me there.

It’s not for the faint of heart. But it will be, I believe, the wave of the future. More and more people will be performing jobs on their own time, their own schedules, contracting as they desire to, for whatever work they decide they want to do*. It’s less “stable” than a job at IBM; on the other hand, a staffing cutback at one of the schools I teach at would have no more than a transitory effect on my income. Not everyone will be able to (and many fewer will actually want to) make this transition. The need to, though, is already here.

Broaden your skills. Take classes in things you can’t see any use for. Approach the future of your work in terms of what you’re going to be so excited to do that people will be compelled to pay you to do it. If they do, you’ll be happy and fed. And then, if they don’t, you’ll just be happy. Either way, you win.

If you meet me at a party, I won’t ask what you do. Will you forgive me if, when you do, I give you a really odd answer? Maybe together we can come up with a better question, one that fits the way we’re going to be living from now on.

*A couple of things need to happen for this to become more prevalent. One is that government needs to get out of the bleeping way. Categorizing people as “employees” or “independent contractors” is ridiculous. Almost everyone falls into both categories. Federal regulations on this are just making it hard for people to find work, and restricting the number of companies that will hire the work done.

The Crisis Comes Home

Today is the 151st anniversary of day 2 of the three-day battle of Gettysburg. I finished reading The Killer Angels this morning, Michael Shaara’s brilliant retelling of that critical conflict. It is sobering, and sad, almost tragically sad if you are a Virginian, which I am.

Adding to the complexity of my emotions on the subject is the recent–entirely justified–wave of anti-Confederate sentiment in the US. While I was raised to believe that the War of Northern Aggression was a states’ rights conflict (and it was), I have come to understand through a good deal of research that Shaara is right when he has Tom Chamberlain, Colonel Joshuway Chamberlain’s brother, say:

It would never have come to war if it weren’t for slavery, would it?

I believe it would not. And slavery cannot be countenanced. It was a blight and a stain on this country that required–and may yet require–blood to expunge.

I am a man who tries hard to find the reasons for the conduct of his opponents, and to respect them even if I cannot agree with them. I respect Robert Lee, and James Longstreet, and Stonewall Jackson. I cannot agree with them. What I would have done in their place, I do not know, though I suspect I’d have been much as they were. Likewise had I been Reynolds or Hancock or Chamberlain, I’d have been as committed in the other way (though not nearly as brilliantly as they were).

On the subject of Lee, though, Shaara paints a picture that is very disturbingly familiar to me. The Union occupied the high ground at Gettysburg–don’t get me started on how–and Longstreet especially wished to avoid any conflict that would require the Confederacy to fight entrenched artillery up a steep grade. His idea was for them to refuse to fight altogether, to move south and head for Washington, cutting off supply and communications, and forcing the Union to fight on ground of the Confederacy’s choosing. Had they done this, we would be having a quite different conversation right now.

But Lee couldn’t do it. His pride and the pride of the army–a key, perhaps THE key component of their successes to that point–would not allow him to make the only sane choice, which was to withdraw, and fight another day. It was by far the better option militarily, but perhaps it couldn’t have been done and keep the army intact. I don’t know. No one does. It didn’t happen, and the second day of Gettysburg made Chamberlain famous, and the third day Pickett, for similar reasons (though far different results).

I’m in crisis at the moment. I have three careers right now, mortgages, teaching, and writing. I make money at all three. I’d like to continue, but I don’t quite know how. The way forward was once quite clear, but it has fogged, and I don’t know the ground any more. I am Lee, staring up at the Union artillery, looking at the formation, and I can’t see any other way to go than the way I’m being forced to go. I don’t want to go this way. I rejected this way once, and it was wonderful, and liberating, and successful. But now I mistrust myself, my confidence is small, and my mind cannot see a way to go where my heart insists. Jeb Stuart, once such an advantage, has left me without communication, without intelligence of the ground or the enemy. I am blind. I may be stumbling into disaster, and have no way to know it.

I apologize that the above is very vague. It is impossible for me to be less so; there are other people involved and other delicacies of position that will not allow me to publicly state the details of the whole affair. I can only say that I feel so much like Lee, with Longstreet at his elbow, telling him “we can’t go that way. We must not go that way. There is another way that will work. Trust me,” and Lee still staring up that hill, determined to take it. I am terrified that there is Big Round Top, just off the southern end of the Union line, and if I were just to see it, just to understand in a flash that that way will work, that way is the victory, then the assault need not happen and the flower of my army need not be uselessly cut down.

Or, maybe it isn’t there. Maybe there is no such hill. I’m equally terrified of that, because then I will have refused the only battle that could save me.

Over the next week, I’ll have to commit to fighting this battle, one way or the other. I pray so very hard that I will not in the end say, as Lee did, “It was all my fault. But I do not see how I could have done other than what I did.”

 

P.S. The truth is that life is not a narrative. It need not match up to what has gone before. It need not follow a script. However romantic it may seem to me to be a character in a great sweeping drama, the fact is that I am a little man in a little place whose actions are of little importance. Nothing that happens in my life today will be anything like as permanent and catastrophic as Pickett charging up the hill. I do know that. Still, stories are powerful, and in my mind nearly omnipotent. I do still believe that mine will have a happy ending.