Matt’s Comments (group member since Feb 20, 2017)

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

Alex wrote: "Matt wrote: "I like Dale's and Faith's contributions. I'm still, however, going to nitpick.

"They're brave, they're keen, they laugh at fear, they don't speak Elvish and they bring their own sandw..."

OK, I have a SLIGHTLY better understanding of what's going on. :)

I like the "one blurb paragraph per protagonist" technique. Obviously that would be impossible with a series like "Game of Thrones," but for three protags it works fine. By detailing each character separately (basically; there will be overlap, since they're connected), I think you can anchor the reader and not overwhelm them.

You've sort of done that in message 19. If you could bookend your character descriptions with punchy paragraphs about how exciting your book is, I think the whole thing would be eye-grabbing.

I like Dale's and Faith's contributions. I'm still, however, going to nitpick.

"They're brave, they're keen, they laugh at fear, they don't speak Elvish and they bring their own sandwiches. They're also the only offer he'll ever get..."

I'd cut the second sentence. In Faith's previous paragraph, she wrote "the only group eccentric and unemployed enough to answer the call," so it's clear they're lovable losers who'll take any job. Saying it again is redundant.

Also, "brave" and "laugh at fear" are close to being synonymous.

More also: if this group is brave and keen, why don't they have more jobs? "Eccentric and unemployed" makes them sound like also-rans, but then they're described as capable.

I guess Alex will have to inform us of the true nature of the agency.

I like the part about not speaking Elvish and bringing their own sandwiches. It needs another witty line to cap it off, but I can't think of a winner right now. I'm too focused on the sammiches; I've got in mind something like, "The sandwiches are banned in forty-two realms after the 'minotaur diarrhea' incident, but beggars can't be choosers."

Dale's: "As if conventional war wasn't enough, Ben now confronts a few other minor concerns. Like, will his mate Geoff return from Elfland astride a fire-breathing dragon? And can mere firepower hope to defeat a hoard of pointy eared invaders? Our hero knows of only one group eccentric and unemployed enough to answer the call: Chris Gatrell and his Paranormal Defence Agency."

"Minor concerns" - love the understatement.

The first-word "like" doesn't work for me. "Like, I went to the mall, and like, there was this pretty dress, and I was like..." That's what it brings to mind.

I don't want to get too involved, because I've reread the original blurb several times, and I'm still perplexed. Who's the protagonist? Ben? Then what's that about Chris worrying about being framed for his murder? Who's the antagonist? There's an elf queen and a faerie queen, and an old lover who now has a dragon...and there's time travel, and ghosts...it has a lot going on, and the ideas sound dazzling, but I feel like I've been tossed into a magical whirlwind.

If you want your book on Amazon, then KDP is necessary. The real question is: do you want to go wide or not?

If you do go wide, you'll access more markets, but you won't be able to enroll in KDP Select, which has many incentives.

If you don't go wide, you can use KDP Select, but you have to be Amazon exclusive.

There's no right answer. It depends on what strategy you're comfortable with.

Apologies if this is all review, but I don't know what you know. :)

The ebook publishing process on KDP is easy, but I'd still hire a professional to format your file before uploading. Things can get funky inside those files. I've read several ebooks that've skimped on formatting; it's off-putting to come across paragraphs that look like they've been bludgeoned.

"Ring of Fire" (and it burns, burns, burns...good ol' Johnny Cash) - since you have a "car theft ring."

...that's all I've got. If you can give us more details, it'd probably be easier.

Anya wrote: "Matt, please, keep it down. I'm an animagus. I'm just letting people assume that's a pic of my pet or something.

Regarding LitRPGs, I went to read up some about it after you raised it up, and only..."

Yes, that's my conception of the genre. You can do what you want, basically, as long as your story uses recognizable RPG (mainly MMORPG, and/or D&D) rules and themes.

Supposedly you also have to write sentences like this:

"Kobold attacks you for 8 damage! HP down to 92 out of 100."

Not certain if that's an absolute requirement, or if that style is a sub-genre of an already niche genre.

Writing a LitRPG novel does intrigue me, but I'd like to read a fair amount of novels in that genre before I committed - thus the six months. Maybe I'll just do a "trapped in a virtual game" novel and just call it sci-fi and fantasy or a more mainstream genre.

Matt wrote: "Carole wrote: "I bought it because of the hype- an indie writing it while he worked in a bookstore. I was excited- one of us- he made it. Ridley Scott is making the movie. I opened it prepared to b..."

Ah - I see I misspelled your name in a previous message. Sorry about that! :(

Carole wrote: "I bought it because of the hype- an indie writing it while he worked in a bookstore. I was excited- one of us- he made it. Ridley Scott is making the movie. I opened it prepared to be amazed. The f..."

It's on my Kindle, and I'm like 2% into it, but I've been sidetracked by other reading. Like you, I got it because it's so huge it's impossible to ignore. It's like the "one true indie novel" that proves someone can hit the jackpot.

I'm interested to restart it now.

"Matt - You seem a really nice, interesting and easy-going fellow! I appreciate sharing a similar level of writing interests with you, as well as constantly getting inspired by ideas you'd freely toss around your discussion."

Aw, shucks. :) You're not so bad yourself, for a tiny black cat.

"I'd teased with the idea of writing LitRPG-genre stories, but I dismissed it in fear of breaching copyrights issues of those games. I once saw a novel-type book in a bookstore that advertised itself to be a Minecraft novel or something, but I didn't check its author or publisher. Might you, Matthias the magical James Bond-style cowboy, have any tips on how to go about writing and publishing those LitRPG books?"

Again, I've never read a LitRPG, only heard about them, so I have no tips to give. Ask me in six months and I may have a better answer.

However, I'm confused about your copyright concerns. If you create your own world, there shouldn't be any issues.

"Well, and if you wouldn't call synaesthesia as a condition, what would you call it? Mental illness? :)"

I don't know, some people may call it a "great blessing," and be angry at me for using the astonishingly offensive word "condition." We live in sensitive times.

"Also, if you want blackness in your name, get a "W". Or, find another synaesthete who would see/hear/smell black in your current existing name alphabets!"

My last name is Cowper, so I've got my W. Let the blackness descend!

Carole wrote: "Matt wrote: "@ Dale: "It's just that before the indie revolution, that process mostly took place through long years of struggling to get one's work up to publishability, whereas now it gets shoved ..."

Thanks, Carol.

By the by, are you saying "Wool" by Hugh Howey was terrible? That surprises me, because it was such a huge hit. (Then again, so was Twilight, as Alex pointed out.) Why didn't you like it?

@ Dale: "It's just that before the indie revolution, that process mostly took place through long years of struggling to get one's work up to publishability, whereas now it gets shoved out into the world without anyone there to really tell the author, um, sorry, this isn't ready yet."

If it's not ready, the author will receive poor reviews. Then they'll either a) throw a tantrum and say that no one "gets it," and continue to release sub-par work, which will continue to get poor reviews, b) quit self-publishing because they can't take the blows to their ego, or c) hunker down and improve their craft.

I don't see the need to fret about the deluge of content indie authors are putting out. They'll either sink, or swim - or maybe just tread water.

"Its great weakness is that it allows anyone to publish anything, no matter how incompetent, and puts the onus on readers, instead of editors, of wading through the slush pile before finding the gems. I have to wonder what effect that will have on readers over the long haul. Time will tell."

It hasn't had a negative effect, apparently, because self-publishing is capturing more and more of the market, until what people think was Amazon's recent course correction.

Readers are savvy. They know how to search the Internet for recommendations and how to read customer reviews. The voracious readers have Kindle Unlimited, which allows them to drop a book instantly and start another. They'll be fine.

It always seems to be the authors who complain about the "deluge of content." I don't know if I've ever seen a reader gripe about too many options. Then again, maybe I'm hanging out in the wrong places.

Finally, as others have said, trad publishing routinely releases crap and calls it gold. The fact that professionals have handled it means little - a few typos won't dissuade me from reading a good story, but a terrible story doesn't become better because the editing is flawless.

"Ahh, fireballs really won't be a major element in my story, although regarding spellcasting, I'm intending it to be a skill level thing, as well as the wizard being able to decide which of his learnt levels he's going to cast each spell in."

Very RPG-like. Are you aiming for a LitRPG type genre? I haven't read a true LitRPG novel - it's on my to-do list - but I'm aware of some of the conventions.

"Why, would you like there to be a character called Matt who would jump out during the climax and throw a meteor of a fireball and save the day? :)"

Sure, since you asked. Matt is such a dull name, though. How about Matthias, the Flamewielder? A ruggedly handsome rogue of a fellow, with a love of ale, comely lasses, and incendiary magic.

Actually, the climactic battle in my novel "Double Lives" has an epic (read: totally unrealistic) fireball being blasted. It also "solves" a longstanding psychological issue with the protagonist(s). So I've dabbled in fireballs, and will dabble more in the future.

You're a synaesthete? Well....that's interesting! Kind of blows my mind. Here I was talking about it in an abstract sense, not knowing you had the "condition," or whatever you want to call it.

As for my colors: can you add ten parts black to the mix? Black is the color of badassery. :)

@ Dale: "A company should have a somewhat more holistic view."

Data Guy illustrated two instances where Amazon allowed its own income to suffer in an effort to shore up trad publishers. I'd count that as having a holistic outlook, at least in those two cases.

I'm no Amazon cheerleader. They're a giant company with plenty of shady practices. But neither am I a cheerleader for trad publishers. They haven't adapted to self-publishing and ebooks in general, which has allowed self-published authors to catch a pretty insane slice of the market.

I don't see it as a David (trad publishers) versus Goliath (Amazon) type scenario, where we're all supposed to cheer for David. It's more like numerous Goliaths (the big New York publishers and Amazon) wrestling with each other, with each side proclaiming the righteousness of their cause.

The winter doldrums get me, too. My solution: live near the coast. It works out for all seasons - the winters are milder, the summers are cooler. And with the wide-open beach, there's no lack of light.

I once lived in the mountains, where there was snow, biting wind chill, and other dastardly things. It was tough to get through. I learned my lesson.

Amy wrote: "If I change my pen name to I. Writewell do you think I'll sell more books lol?"

Love it! If I saw that name in the Kindle store, I'd definitely check out their work.

Alex wrote: "Matt you get a big thumbs up from me for knowing synesthesia and how to use it in a story, that's some smart stuff there. I'm not surprised though after reading The Clerk.
And who doesn't love fire..."

I learned about synesthesia from Alan Moore's "Top 10." I certainly haven't been combing medical literature to inform myself about rare conditions. What, me do actual research? Outlandish!

That's the thing about writing: you can sound smart, even when you only have the slightest inkling of what you're talking about. :)

I'm thinking of doing "The Clerk 2: Zombie Apocalypse Uprising." Dropping the characters from a quiet literary novel into a mainstream action-packed genre makes perfect sense, right?

*crickets chirp*

*tumbleweed rolls*

Hmm...maybe not.

I can think of several people/things that wouldn't love fireballs:
1.) Ice dragons
2.) People who take the under in the over/under for how many fireballs the spellcasters will sling in the Wizard Olympics
3.) Wives who are tired of their impatient husbands blasting the dinner steaks with fireballs instead of cooking them slowly over a wood fire, because it invariably leads to the meat ending up well done.

Other than these malcontents and gamblers, yeah, people like fireballs. :)

But now I'm curious. Anya, are there really fireballs in your tale? If so, do they pack a meteor-like wallop, or are they more like a slow burn kind of thing? Or can a wizard tailor their blast to their needs?

#fireballdiscussion

@Dale: "Unfortunately, Amazon and other mega-corporations of their ilk are engaged in a race to the bottom, both in terms of price and quality, in order to make their top execs huge sums of money. They get customers to play along because, well, everyone loves low prices. But it is a race to the bottom, nevertheless, and it can't be sustained forever."

But, according to the folks in the linked posts, prices may have gotten too low for Amazon.

As Cate Baum put it: “So if your book is 99 cents, but another book is selling at $2.99 but not as many as you, it’s likely Amazon will recognize the $2.99 book higher in rank because it makes Amazon more money.”

Data Guy also makes excellent points, so much so that I feel the need to paste in one of his comments from the Passive Voice post:

"But I think that Amazon’s general business philosophy provides a pretty good guide to why they might do so: after all, most of their decisions are based on what they think serves Amazon customers best, rather than what serves their suppliers.

By putting a thumb on the scale to keep traditional publishers financially viable, Amazon ensures that Amazon can continue to offer their customers books from a wide diversity of supplier types, in the widest variety of formats.

Keep in mind that indie self-publishers aren’t (yet?) a significant supplier source for certain types of books. Deeply researched journalistic nonfiction, for instance, that requires years of travel and interviewing is often only made possible because a large traditional publisher pays a hefty advance for a book proposal. And peer-vetted scientific research similarly depends upon a variety of grant-funded publishing ecosystems that indies haven’t yet tapped into. Maybe indies will eventually move into those niches and dominate them, too, but until that happens, Amazon customers aren’t well-served by the collapse of traditional publishing.

Self-publishers also don’t yet do a lot of hardcovers, and many can’t afford professionally narrated audiobooks right out of the gate. Amazon customers as a whole buy a lot of both; traditional publishers still fill a lot of those needs, and their absence would impoverish title selection in both formats.

I think there’s historic precedent for Amazon tweaking their own sales mix to protect traditionally publishers from self-inflicted business wounds. I can think of at least two recent instances where Amazon reached deep into their own pockets to soften self-inflicted publisher damage from poor pricing policy decisions that otherwise would have severely hurt many traditional publishers’ long-term prospects for survival.

The first time was when Amazon discounted overpriced traditionally published ebooks down to breakeven on average, earning zero profit themselves and instead passing on to publishers a full 100% of the dollars consumers were spending on traditionally published ebooks.

The second time was when the biggest publishers fought for the right to prevent Amazon from discounting their ebooks, Amazon steepened their *print* discounts instead, giving up a big chunk of Amazon’s own margin on print to keep publisher print sales from collapsing as brick & mortar outlets shrank.

Of course, Amazon didn’t do either selflessly. In both cases, they served their customers better *and* grew their own market share. But I am almost certain that they don’t want to see traditional publishers die out, and today traditional publishers are so dependent on Amazon sales that it’s a very real medium-term possibility."

That's not a race to the bottom. If it was, Amazon would have discarded the whining, "buy my $25 hardcover" trad publishers years ago. But, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, they still want them around because they can do things we indies can't.

It's a race to a point near the bottom, perhaps, but not at the absolute "lower than a snake's belt buckle" bottom.

Again, this is all conjecture. As even Data Guy put it, "As to Amazon’s motives, I can only speculate."

Anya wrote: "Matt - I was surprised to see someone picking this thread up again, but oh, thank you for your very helpful suggestions! Gosh, seems like I'm going to re-work my opening lines again. I adore your e..."

As someone once put it, "Detail is the lifeblood of fiction." It can be laborious to come up with interesting minutiae and trivia - and nursery rhymes! - but it pays off.

Of course, don't overdo it. I'm reading something at the moment that's more textbook than novel - "Diaspora" by Greg Egan. Supposedly a classic, but damn, if I wanted to know that much about astrophysics I'd find a documentary on Netflix to absorb.

"It's quite amusing how relevant your snippet is to my story! :)"

Oh, so the kid does love fireballs, he does want to roast a manticore, and he did have a friend with synesthesia-like powers who moved away? I knew it! :)

I think you can do something with "nursery rhymes." What specific rhyme is the young'un humming, and how can you make it evoke the atmosphere of your world? Since your novel seems fantasy-based, their nursery rhymes will have a different flavor than "real" ones.

You can also integrate the rhyme into dialogue with the doctor, if you deem it viable.

Doctor: "I see you're humming 'The Freedmen's Fifty Fireballs,' little one."

Toddler: (nods enthusiastically) "Fireballs are wicked cool! I mean, wicked hot - I guess. WHOOSH! That's what they sound like! I'm gonna fry a manticore with one when I'm big!" (looks at the doctor with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion) "You said you can SEE me humming? Can you see sounds? I had a friend once who could do that, but he...he moved away." (incoming sniffles)

Doctor: "No, uh, that was just a figure of speech. I can't see sounds."

Toddler: (now even more disappointed, sniffles intensify) "Oh."

EDIT: Then again, if the toddler is sprinkling water, it doesn't mesh well to have him/her humming about fireballs. I'd think continuing with the water theme would solidify it - pun! water isn't solid! - in the reader's mind. Or - yet another thought - maybe a juxtaposition between fire and water (good and evil, yin and yang, blah blah blah) would fit what you're doing.

Of course, I have no idea what your novel is about, so all this may be useless. Just giving you stuff to ponder.

Finally, I liked Dale's trimmed version.

The whole thing is confusing - but then, most things concerning Amazon confuse me.

Amazon has always been about low price. There was even a brouhaha between Zon and the big trad publishers a few years back over what to charge for books.

Now they've gotten their wish. There are acres upon digital acres of low-cost or free books that are just as enjoyable as their $24.99 hardcover competitors.

They seem to have been undone by their cultivation of self-published authors, and are now trying to re-engineer the landscape to reap larger profits.

But what do I know? What does anyone know? Amazon is opaque. We can only guess how their algorithms work or what goals their executives have. It could just be that now everyone is in on the "Kindle gold rush," which means each author's slice of the pie is getting slimmer and slimmer.

Beta Readers: Danita Mayer (http://www.nicheediting.com/)

Used her beta reading service for my first novel, and was blown away. On the spectrum between full-blown line edit and breezy beta read, it was closer to the former.

Tried to get her for my second novel, but she was booked up - not surprising, considering the quality of her work.

Out of the admittedly small number of beta readers I've dealt with, Danita was the best.

Book Formatting: Polgarus Studio (https://www.polgarusstudio.com/)

The only formatter you need. Affordable and easy to work with. Eager to get the finished product right...unlike some others who just want to take your money and then rush out something half-assed.

Also, they're from Australia, where people cook barbies with the blokes and sheilas while the rugby match is on...or something like that. :)