Change is the only Constant

This month’s blog is a little off-kilter. I don’t have a release to tell you about yet, and next months release is too far away for me to give you anything concrete beyond the basic idea. It’s like the Punisher married The Shadow’s daughter and they had a baby girl who worked with Batman and Wolverine. That sounds about right.

However, that’s next month, and I’ll get more into The Wraith then. I don’t have a title for the series yet, but when I do, I’ll post in on my https://www.facebook.com/jefferyhhask... so make sure you follow me there, or in the attached group to find out more.
On to the blog.

I grew up in Alaska. A little town called Ketchikan to be exact. If you Google it, you will see some the most amazing and beautiful scenery on Earth. Trees for days, ocean, wildlife, you name it.

The only downside to the little island I lived on was that it was a little island. At its height, it had 13,000 people on the whole island and about 9,000 in the city. When I joined the Army in 1991, it was down to under 8,000 but it hung in there over the years.

The main industry in the 80’s was logging and fishing, but as new regulations came into play, those industries died out (not for lack of need, just too expensive to operate in K-town). What replaced it was tourism. It had its own ills, but I won’t get into that.
Before I go too far off track let me say this, Ketchikan is an island. To Quote Harrison Ford, “It’s an island babe, if you don’t bring it here, you won’t find it here.”

That means everything from milk, to comic books, to gasoline, to lumber, all had to be shipped in. Yes, you read that right—lumber. On an Island full of trees, we had to ship in our own lumber.

The entire time I was growing up (Pre-internet) everything was so damned expensive unless you were rich, you lived a very modest existence. Those with money would actually fly to Seattle and buy food at Costco, then fly back. Because even after airfare, it was cheaper.
Then 1991 came and went and a little old thing called “The World Wide Web” happened. Do you know what everyone on the island learned almost overnight?

Shipping wasn’t nearly as expensive as we had been led to believe. The local business in Ketchikan, either through collusion, or ineptitude had gouged their customer base for years, sometimes raising prices as much as 500%. When I left to join the army gas was 2.67 a gallon… in 1991. I got to Seattle, and it was 97c. Milk was 4 dollars a gallon and tasted like water. Down in the lower 48, it was a buck a gallon and tasted like ambrosia.

Things started going downhill for the local companies as the WWW, and the Internet allowed people to order things online for their actual price and then pay a couple of bucks to have UPS send it second-day air (the only available option at the time).

Then Wal-Mart opened a store, and it all went downhill in a hurry. You see, the local business, those rich people I spoke of (I’m not painting rich people as evil, there were plenty of good ones), they were rich because they had fleeced the townspeople for years.

After Wal-Mart opened, almost overnight, nearly every business in Ketchikan went out-of-business. They had a chance, they could have changed their ways, but they insisted that things still as they were. They blamed Wal-Mart and later, Amazon, for their woes. They never pointed at themselves and said, “I dun screwed up.”

One of the hard lessons I’ve learned in my life is accountability. Something you hear a lot of middle managers speak about but only in the context of their workforce, never for themselves.

If I write a book, and it sucks, it’s on me, no one else. I can’t blame you (my awesome readers and I would never, ever blame you). I can’t blame my cover designer (she is my wife, that would be stupid), I certainly can’t blame Amazon. If not for them I wouldn’t even have a career.

No, only me. What does this have to do with writing, you ask? Publishing is at a crossroads. For the last few years, the media and the Big-5 have done their very best to convince the world that Amazon is at fault for their decline. That Jeff Bezos is the devil (he may be, I don’t know him personally. I do like how he went from the son of a single mom to the richest man in the world, very American), that Amazon is evil, and New York Publishing is as pure as the driven snow.

The problem is, New York Publishing is like my hometown business. They have been screwing over authors and the general public for years. Offering a limited amount of product for an exorbitant price and telling people that it was because of this factor or that factor, not greed (the truth).

To put it simply, Wal-Mart opened, and now they are going out of business. I don’t feel bad for them in any way. If not for them I would have been a writer decades ago. Like everyone else, though, I believed the Big Lie™. That only the very best writers could be published, that only people with something important to say could be published. Despite VOLUMES of evidence to the contrary, this message was so pervasive, it sank in.

I’m writing this because I feel like it’s important for everyone to know the story of how this has happened and how to keep it from happening with whatever industry you’re in. You have to adapt, be willing to change, be willing to modify what you do when it no longer works.

As for me, I publish superhero novels. The ones I would have loved to read when I was a kid. Heck, the ones I would love to read today! I’ll not likely ever be traditionally published again (I had one book with Kindle Press before they closed up shop) and I’m okay with that. I love what I do. I love people loving what I do. To me, this isn’t just living the dream; this is inventing a new one.
If there was ever a person who was meant to write about superheroes, I really think it was me.

Thank you all for your wonderful support. Next stop… #1 superhero author on Amazon!!!!