Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

My latest short story from Curiosity Never Killed the Writer: Goldenrod Is Here. This was written for a Reedsy prompt. It didn't win, but I had fun writing it!

Not much impact in my area. Maryland has had a few cases, but so far they've all been at the southern end of the state, near DC, where I don't go these days. We're keeping an eye on the situation and taking reasonable precautions, because my wife is immuno-compromised and would it could be bad if she caught this bug, but otherwise life goes on pretty much as normal. That said, I'm trying not to think about the value of my retirement account while this plays out. :-P

My new article from The Writing Cooperative: Integrating Action Into Dialogue

Carmel wrote: "Nicely done, Dale. Thanks for sharing your experience."

Thanks, and my pleasure!

A Medium "something good" note: My Slackjaw story How I Eliminated The Scourge Of Free Time And Made $12.37 A Month Freelancing is breaking personal records. I thought it would do well, but I'm astonished at how well it's doing. It's been online for just over 2 days, and already it has 615 views, 323 reads, a 53% read ratio (which is high for a story with so many views), and 51 fans.

How good is this? Only one of my stories, Writing Cooperative piece "Clean Up Your Language," has more fans (62), and it's been out there for nearly a year. "Free Time" is currently my 18th most viewed piece (those ahead of it have all been out there for some time) and my 11th most read story.

So far, it's made $8.08, which may not sound like much but most of my stories are in the pennies range after 2 days. If it earned at this rate for an entire month (which it probably won't, but it's fun to think about), I would earn about $120 this month on that one story alone.

As for claps, "Clean Up Your Language" has 455 after almost a year. "Free Time" has 960 after just over 2 days.

What's different about this one? I think it's the publication. According to this list, Slackjaw is the 45th largest Medium publication. Writing Cooperative is #24, but they've had a lot of growth in the past couple of years, so they may not have been quite that large when I published a lot of my stories with them. All but 2 of my stories that have more views than "Free Time" are WC stories.

But Slackjaw may have a more engaged readership. We're talking humor here, and people do enjoy humor. Writing pieces may attract subsets of writers, depending on their subject. They are also "work" pieces. Humor stories are just plain fun, kick back and relax and laugh stuff, so they may have wider appeal across the subscriber base. Funny thing though. "Free Time" is basically a writing piece, although completely facetious. Maybe I tapped into a lot of frustration among writers!

On the other hand, this story was a lot more work than the others. My original draft wasn't rejected by the editors, but they asked for three rounds of revisions, one major and two minor. They only accept email submissions (they don't use the regular Medium process even for writers accepted into the publication). Each submission took over a week to be processed and get a reply. This story was literally two months in the making between the time I wrote the first draft and the time it was published. That's faster than print but a lot slower than e-publications, in my experience.

So . . . that's the story. If you like to write humor, I'd definitely encourage you to give Slackjaw a try, but do read their guidelines carefully, plus the other material they have on writing humor. Read some of the pieces they've published, too, to get a sense of what they like. Then write your best material for them, and be prepared to work with an editor to refine the piece.

Good luck!

My Slackjaw piece, How I Eliminated The Scourge Of Free Time And Made $12.37 A Month Freelancing, is finally online!

Sam (Rescue Dog Mom, Writer, Hugger) wrote: "When Medium changed their payment method, I believe it was to put more money in their pockets than in ours. Just my opinion. I believe at least half of us earn half as much as we used to.
Hugs to a..."

I know I'm making less, but my output is down somewhat, so it's hard to tell for sure.

My response to Erica's invitation: Tiny Treasres. Thanks, Erica!

Paul wrote: "While I agree with most of these changes, I'm confused about the sketchbooks/notepad one. It seems crazy to turn off an entire segment of creators just because IngramSpark is bad at policing outlie..."

I think they just don't want to be in the business of producing what are basically blank books. There is a market for such books, but maybe they don't belong in the same marketing category as books containing content?

D.J. wrote: "I downloaded a book from Amazon the other day which cost me 99p. I told my husband about it and he said it sounded like something someone had copied from Wikipedia. It took me about five minutes to..."

The one that surprised me was books created by AI. I don't know why that should be surprising. Not much is anymore. But, well, I guess I wasn't expecting it.

My posting on Medium is a bit sporadic of late, too, but somehow I keep going. For example, here's my latest from Don't Wake the Mage: Hunting Party.

Yep. I really liked their example for item 5: Books listed at prices not reflective of the book’s market value. For example: a blank journal
listed at $99.99.

Somebody really does that?

Well . . . I guess somebody would try, but who would buy it?

Apparently, there are "authors" out there doing nefarious things, and IngramSpark isn't going to take it anymore. They send out a general notification today saying in part:

As of April 27, 2020, the below criteria describes the types of content that may not be accepted going forward:

1. Summaries, workbooks, abbreviations, insights, or similar type content without permission from the original author.

2. Books containing blank pages exceeding ten percent, notepads, scratchpads, journals, or similar type content.

3. Books or content that mirror/mimic popular titles, including without limiting, similar covers, cover design, title, author names, or similar type content.

4. Books that are misleading or likely to cause confusion by the buyer, including without limiting, inaccurate descriptions and cover art.

5. Books listed at prices not reflective of the book's market value.

6. Books scanned from original versions where all or parts contain illegible content to the detriment of the buyer.

7. Books created using artificial intelligence or automated processes.

We reserve the right to remove content that fits the above criteria without prior notice to the publisher. Any fees paid on behalf of publishers for titles removed due to the above criteria will not be refunded. This change of service is effective April 27, 2020 and is reflected in our IngramSpark User Guide V4.

Thanks, Alex and Carole!

I got another honorable mention from the IU folks for my flash fiction story on 10/19/2019. There was also good news for two members of my workshop, Pat Mills got her first honorable mention for 9/7/2019 and Jeremy Cook got his second win for 9/21/2019. If interested, the winners' list is here.

Thanks Magnus!

Alex wrote: "Congrats, Dale, you're doing well with Medium"

Thanks! Yep, I'm on a roll. I manage to top $20/month most months. ;-)

Honestly, I'd love to get above $50, and have done so on rare months, but I think the only way to do that consistently is post a story a day, and that's more than I can manage right now.

Justin wrote: "https://medium.com/@JustinBienvenue

Following you. Haven't had time to read yet, but with luck I'll get to it soon.

Thanks again, folks, and here's another little victory: I finally got my foot in the door at Medium's premier humor publication, Slackjaw. They aren't as big as Writing Cooperative, but they are in the top 50, with over 100,000 subscribers, and they're fairly picky. I had to do a couple of rewrites before they accepted my piece, but it was worth it. My story should appear in 1 - 2 weeks. I'll post the link when it does.

IU continues to announce Editor's Choice winners. I picked up another one for my story in the 7/6/2019 contest, "Angry Bird," which can be seen here on IU or here on Medium. This is the first and so far only time a story of mine has won both Reader's Choice and Editor's Choice. It's my most outrageous flash fiction story ever, which may explain why!