It's a little bit over two years since I decided (arbitrarily and with little experience to inform the decision) that self-publishing is the writerly route for me. It was an unwise decision, in the sense that it was made with little wisdom, but it seems to have been a fortuitous one all the same. I certainly wouldn't retract it. Anyway, as I did last year, this seems a good moment for a little analysis.
The angle I want to take is considering what might have happened had I decided differently - this seems to me the best way of evaluating the decision I actually made. I hope that in doing so I can get a little closer to pinning down exactly why this route is right for me, and why it might (or might not) be right for you.
Let's start with where I'm at in reality. The Second Realm is approaching 3,000 total downloads at Smashwords, and presumably there are also some people reading it on this blog (though it's hard to estimate how many). This has been achieved with very little in the way of promotion - nothing more than a handful of tweets around the release of each new episode, plus this blog (on which more tomorrow) - but the downside to that is that it hasn't made very much money. Immortal Remains has made a few bob with even less promotion, but generated very little persistent interest - an average of 2 'sales' and 5-6 samples per month.
In some ways, it's a bleak, penurious picture - whether or not there's any money in writing, there doesn't seem to be any in how I'm doing it. On the other hand, some of those 3,000-odd downloads represent actual people actually reading my writing (I know this because very occasionally one of them will tell me so, and it always makes my day). Remember this, because it will be important later on.
Now let's turn the clock back to March 27th, 2011, and the start of this blog (no, I'm not going to link to the first ever post - I daren't even look at it for fear of how terrible and naive it probably is...). And let's pretend that I ignored, dismissed or lacked the guts to follow up on the Konrath/Eisler dialogue 'Be the Monkey' which put me on this path.
At that time, I had two novels drafted, one unmarketably bad (The Death of John Collins, a.k.a. the death of physical description) and the other unmarketably weird (Bad Romance, a.k.a. the one about stalking Lady Gaga). I had no platform to speak of and very little awareness of the flaws in my portfolio.
There was some light just around the corner, though; about a month later, I started work on Heaven Can Wait, which is probably the first publishable thing I ever wrote. Still, the first draft was bad enough that I've now done seven redrafts of varying levels of severity, as I've learned and grown as a writer. The book is currently on submission to a smallish new publisher whose business model I like the look of.
We'll go with a 'best plausible case' scenario. I decide on the strength of initial feedback to start shopping Heaven Can Wait to agents. I get lucky; someone takes an interest in the first six months despite the first draft's bloated first act and helps me chop the whole thing into shape (and has the patience to deal with my inevitable temper tantrum when confronted with the weaknesses of my writing). We spend six months on this part of the process, that being the least amount of time I can imagine three or four harsh editing passes taking.
Duly whipped into shape, the manuscript goes on submission and gets lucky again - it lands on the right editor's desk on the right day, the beginning grabs them and I come away with a sale. Say another six months. A standard advance (about $5,000?). By this point, it's coming up to Christmas of last year. If the publisher takes the standard year or two to get round to actually publishing my book, it might be out for Christmas 2013.
All of this, of course, assumes that I don't get fleeced, scammed or ripped off anywhere along the line, and all the relevant businesses manage not to collapse. It also assumes that no part of the process is so stressful that I give up (I have some anxiety issues which would probably have made contacting and dealing with agents hellish).
Right now, in May 2013, I'd have some money in my pocket (though how much, I have no idea), but no published writing. The only people who'd have read any of my work would be beta readers, agents and editors. The publisher would be expecting me to start building my platform, but probably giving me very little support to do so.
And I'd still be between six and eighteen months away from having anything published. On a best plausible case. It could easily be several years more. I'm not saying that makes the indie route better all round, but it's definitely better for me. I think if I felt it likely that I'd have to wait five years to show anyone my stuff, I probably wouldn't bother trying. My writing would just go in a desk drawer. I suspect I'm a lot freer to write and do what I want - and to learn at my own pace - than I would be on other models.
So yeah, self-publishing might have been a decision made with little wisdom, but it was definitely the right one. Not that I haven't made some mistakes along the way, but that's a post for another time.
Showing posts with label Immortal Remains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Immortal Remains. Show all posts
Monday, 6 May 2013
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Oooops...
This is what a depressing start to the year looks like for a writer:
That's a clip from the spreadsheet where I track downloads for episodes of The Second Realm. The numbers (below the second black line) are the total downloads for each individual episode, with this one, the most recent (published on December 31st), at the bottom and boxed in red.
That string of zeros prompted me to publish this whinge, which I now need to fully and publically retract. It's not just that it's a kinda whingy post (and in my defence, it's hardly the most whingy thing I could have written in the circumstances - I was trying to analyse the problem); it's that I made a couple of discoveries on Sunday which go some way to explaining the problem, and both of them are mistakes on my part for which I owe an apology...
Firstly, the link at the top of the right-hand column of this page you're looking at now, the one which is supposed to go to the hub page for the current season of The Second Realm, was broken. I apparently failed to check it or make use of it for three whole weeks, which speaks pretty ill of me. Given that my only marketing activity is this blog, and that link is the main and most visible way for people to discover my actual writing, this can't have done me any favours. So, sorry about that.
A broken link, though, is just a dumb mistake. The more serious error is my failure to notice the 'recommended price' that Smashwords displays for books published on their pay-what-you-like (PWYL) service. I didn't know this existed, and somehow I've managed to publish two PWYL short stories, and visit their Smashwords pages several times each, without noticing.
Worse, this means that the default value was left up. The default value, regardless of publication length, is $4.95. Now, I'm aware that there are writers out there who disagree with me on this, but I think that's a pretty outrageous price for a 10,000-word short story, particularly one that's available for free elsewhere.
The 'recommended price' feature actually exists so that Smashwords can put a price on PWYL books when it ships them out to its partner distributors (Apple, Sony, Kobo etc.), because none of them have the facility to offer PWYL through their stores. You don't get the ability to change the default until after you've published the book (and the setting is hidden away in a sub-page of the main settings page), which is how I missed it during publication. There's no option 'Don't show recommended price on this book's Smashwords page'.
Given that I've blogged more than once about my enthusiasm for PWYL models, I wouldn't hold it against anyone to have viewed that default recommendation as an act of unspeakable hubris on my part (particularly if I didn't know it was a default). The whole point of PWYL is leaving the decision about price up to the reader.
PWYL is about asking the reader the question, "What do you think this is worth to you?"
Putting a recommended price on a PWYL book is basically changing that to "I think this is worth this much, what about you?", a question which is cognate with "Do you think this is worth this much?" At best, that second question is the same as non-PWYL sales have been asking since the dawn of capitalism. The best one can hope for with a recommended price is no advance in consumer psychology over ordinary capitalism.
But trying to put myself in a reader's perspective, I think I'd regard it as rather worse. I'd be very put off to see a recommended price on a PWYL book; I'd feel like the author was telling me 'I trust you to come to your own decision about this, but only if you live up to that trust by agreeing with me'. It's a weird and deeply unpleasant combination of emotional blackmail and hypocrisy.
In fact, given that the PWYL model seems to be on the rise, I'd view it as a shallow act of bandwagon-jumping, trying to keep the 'protection' of the fixed-price model while grabbing the fad of PWYL.
Therefore, I hereby reject any 'recommended price' for any of my PWYL publications. I've set the numbers on Smashwords as low as they'll go (which, unfortunately, is still $0.99), and I'm going to write to Smashwords and ask for the option to hide the recommended price on the SW page (though it's a bit adjustment to ask, so I'm not hopeful). Unless and until that option becomes available, I'd like you all to ignore the recommended price completely. Please?
That string of zeros prompted me to publish this whinge, which I now need to fully and publically retract. It's not just that it's a kinda whingy post (and in my defence, it's hardly the most whingy thing I could have written in the circumstances - I was trying to analyse the problem); it's that I made a couple of discoveries on Sunday which go some way to explaining the problem, and both of them are mistakes on my part for which I owe an apology...
Firstly, the link at the top of the right-hand column of this page you're looking at now, the one which is supposed to go to the hub page for the current season of The Second Realm, was broken. I apparently failed to check it or make use of it for three whole weeks, which speaks pretty ill of me. Given that my only marketing activity is this blog, and that link is the main and most visible way for people to discover my actual writing, this can't have done me any favours. So, sorry about that.
A broken link, though, is just a dumb mistake. The more serious error is my failure to notice the 'recommended price' that Smashwords displays for books published on their pay-what-you-like (PWYL) service. I didn't know this existed, and somehow I've managed to publish two PWYL short stories, and visit their Smashwords pages several times each, without noticing.
Worse, this means that the default value was left up. The default value, regardless of publication length, is $4.95. Now, I'm aware that there are writers out there who disagree with me on this, but I think that's a pretty outrageous price for a 10,000-word short story, particularly one that's available for free elsewhere.
The 'recommended price' feature actually exists so that Smashwords can put a price on PWYL books when it ships them out to its partner distributors (Apple, Sony, Kobo etc.), because none of them have the facility to offer PWYL through their stores. You don't get the ability to change the default until after you've published the book (and the setting is hidden away in a sub-page of the main settings page), which is how I missed it during publication. There's no option 'Don't show recommended price on this book's Smashwords page'.
Given that I've blogged more than once about my enthusiasm for PWYL models, I wouldn't hold it against anyone to have viewed that default recommendation as an act of unspeakable hubris on my part (particularly if I didn't know it was a default). The whole point of PWYL is leaving the decision about price up to the reader.
PWYL is about asking the reader the question, "What do you think this is worth to you?"
Putting a recommended price on a PWYL book is basically changing that to "I think this is worth this much, what about you?", a question which is cognate with "Do you think this is worth this much?" At best, that second question is the same as non-PWYL sales have been asking since the dawn of capitalism. The best one can hope for with a recommended price is no advance in consumer psychology over ordinary capitalism.
But trying to put myself in a reader's perspective, I think I'd regard it as rather worse. I'd be very put off to see a recommended price on a PWYL book; I'd feel like the author was telling me 'I trust you to come to your own decision about this, but only if you live up to that trust by agreeing with me'. It's a weird and deeply unpleasant combination of emotional blackmail and hypocrisy.
In fact, given that the PWYL model seems to be on the rise, I'd view it as a shallow act of bandwagon-jumping, trying to keep the 'protection' of the fixed-price model while grabbing the fad of PWYL.
Therefore, I hereby reject any 'recommended price' for any of my PWYL publications. I've set the numbers on Smashwords as low as they'll go (which, unfortunately, is still $0.99), and I'm going to write to Smashwords and ask for the option to hide the recommended price on the SW page (though it's a bit adjustment to ask, so I'm not hopeful). Unless and until that option becomes available, I'd like you all to ignore the recommended price completely. Please?
Monday, 7 January 2013
Well, that was disappointing...
Immortal Remains, after just over 5 weeks, has 19 downloads on Smashwords, of which only 7 are the complete story, of which only two were paid for (though those two sales did generate fractionally more money for me than 'Heaven Can Wait' did in four months back when it was in print).
The latest Second Realm episode has done even worse - zero Smashwords traffic after a week.
This is a fairly sharp kick to the optimism that 2012 gave me. It's tempting to fall into despair and worry that the 2300-odd downloads of Second Realm episodes so far have all been either by bots or people who aren't willing to continue to support my work when it's not absolutely free.
This time last year, that's probably where my thinking would have ended, and I'd have gone away to cry in a corner somewhere. However, I think there is actually another possibility; that people really aren't used to the Pay What You Like model. After all, the only real difference between The Second Realm 4.1 and 3.4 (which has, at time of writing, been downloaded 63 times) is that a reader has to click a few more links to get access. 4-1 is still available for free, it's just that you have to 'buy' it for nothing first.
The problem I'm running up against is that my following on Smashwords is quite opaque to me. My total download numbers go up by 30-50 most weeks, but I have no idea how many of those are real people, and of those who are real people I have no idea how many are fans coming back for the next episode as against people stumbling across a free short story and taking a copy just because it's there. About the only thing I do know is that almost none of those downloads represent people who are interested or passionate enough to leave reviews (hint hint ;) - and my thanks to the one fan who has left a review on Immortal Remains <3).
One possibility that has occurred to me in particular respect of the new Second Realm episode is that my regular readership - whatever its size - all value my work enough that they do want to give me some money for it (or at least feel that they shouldn't keep reading without giving some indication of support), but don't feel able to spare the money at the moment. It's a slightly comic, implausible idea, though (and, guys, if you are in that situation, take the story for free, because there'll be other opportunities to support me and you support me best by reading my work and telling others about it). Here are three data points I have noticed which might be of some minor interest:
First, downloads of earlier Second Realm episodes continue to rise more or less on the same trend as before. In fact, last week (being a launch week for a new episode) was the best overall since mid-November, in the wake of the last episode release. It actually looks like what happened was that the new episode aroused the same amount of interest in prior episodes of the series as all the other episodes have done when new, the number for the week only ending up low compared to other release weeks because there weren't the dozen-or-so downloads of the new episode to make up the difference.
Second, two people have added episode 4-1 to their Smashwords libraries without buying it. Now, I don't actually know what being added to a library means, except possibly that people are marking the story as one to come back to, but it must surely indicate someone taking an interest. Most of the Second Realm episodes are in 8-10 libraries (though 3-4, the finale of season 1, is still only in 3), but it is early days for 4-1.
Lastly, the overall position is less positive. Average numbers have been in a slow decline since the summer, and I don't think the pattern of downloads indicates the presence of a large dedicated readership; there's no obvious pattern at all to which episodes have more downloads than others. Episode 1-4 has 60-odd more downloads than its predecessor, and more recent episodes seem to come in pairs; 2-2 and 2-3 are separated by only 10 downloads, but each is 50+ downloads separate from its other neightbour - and the same is true of the next two pairs, as well.
So it's very difficult to get a handle on what's going on. If you think you know (and particularly if you're a regular Second Realm reader on Smashwords but haven't got the new episode yet), I'd love to hear from you with ideas. I can't rule out the possibility that this is just a post-holiday slump, with everybody working their way through the books they got for Christmas before getting back to more regular habits, but that flat zero is quite unsettling. Talk to me, folks!
The latest Second Realm episode has done even worse - zero Smashwords traffic after a week.
This is a fairly sharp kick to the optimism that 2012 gave me. It's tempting to fall into despair and worry that the 2300-odd downloads of Second Realm episodes so far have all been either by bots or people who aren't willing to continue to support my work when it's not absolutely free.
This time last year, that's probably where my thinking would have ended, and I'd have gone away to cry in a corner somewhere. However, I think there is actually another possibility; that people really aren't used to the Pay What You Like model. After all, the only real difference between The Second Realm 4.1 and 3.4 (which has, at time of writing, been downloaded 63 times) is that a reader has to click a few more links to get access. 4-1 is still available for free, it's just that you have to 'buy' it for nothing first.
The problem I'm running up against is that my following on Smashwords is quite opaque to me. My total download numbers go up by 30-50 most weeks, but I have no idea how many of those are real people, and of those who are real people I have no idea how many are fans coming back for the next episode as against people stumbling across a free short story and taking a copy just because it's there. About the only thing I do know is that almost none of those downloads represent people who are interested or passionate enough to leave reviews (hint hint ;) - and my thanks to the one fan who has left a review on Immortal Remains <3).
One possibility that has occurred to me in particular respect of the new Second Realm episode is that my regular readership - whatever its size - all value my work enough that they do want to give me some money for it (or at least feel that they shouldn't keep reading without giving some indication of support), but don't feel able to spare the money at the moment. It's a slightly comic, implausible idea, though (and, guys, if you are in that situation, take the story for free, because there'll be other opportunities to support me and you support me best by reading my work and telling others about it). Here are three data points I have noticed which might be of some minor interest:
First, downloads of earlier Second Realm episodes continue to rise more or less on the same trend as before. In fact, last week (being a launch week for a new episode) was the best overall since mid-November, in the wake of the last episode release. It actually looks like what happened was that the new episode aroused the same amount of interest in prior episodes of the series as all the other episodes have done when new, the number for the week only ending up low compared to other release weeks because there weren't the dozen-or-so downloads of the new episode to make up the difference.
Second, two people have added episode 4-1 to their Smashwords libraries without buying it. Now, I don't actually know what being added to a library means, except possibly that people are marking the story as one to come back to, but it must surely indicate someone taking an interest. Most of the Second Realm episodes are in 8-10 libraries (though 3-4, the finale of season 1, is still only in 3), but it is early days for 4-1.
Lastly, the overall position is less positive. Average numbers have been in a slow decline since the summer, and I don't think the pattern of downloads indicates the presence of a large dedicated readership; there's no obvious pattern at all to which episodes have more downloads than others. Episode 1-4 has 60-odd more downloads than its predecessor, and more recent episodes seem to come in pairs; 2-2 and 2-3 are separated by only 10 downloads, but each is 50+ downloads separate from its other neightbour - and the same is true of the next two pairs, as well.
So it's very difficult to get a handle on what's going on. If you think you know (and particularly if you're a regular Second Realm reader on Smashwords but haven't got the new episode yet), I'd love to hear from you with ideas. I can't rule out the possibility that this is just a post-holiday slump, with everybody working their way through the books they got for Christmas before getting back to more regular habits, but that flat zero is quite unsettling. Talk to me, folks!
Friday, 28 December 2012
Publish Something!
Well, this is going to be the closest thing I have to offer to a wrap-up for the year. Because of an organisational cock-up on my part, the first episode of Season Two of The Second Realm, Through the Fire and Flames, won't be available until Monday, so I can't put this post out then, as I was intending to.
Here's the short version; at the start of 2012, I had two publications available, 'Heaven Can Wait', which had seen all of about 5 sales, and the first episode of The Second Realm, 'I Can See Clearly Now'. Unfortunately, I have no record of how ICSCN was doing at that time, but if memory serves, it was on somewhat less than 50 downloads total. I didn't start tracking my figures at all until the end of March, around the time I published the fourth episode, and I don't have detailed numbers from any earlier than late May.
However, in 2012, I published 10 whole episodes of The Second Realm, plus the standalone short, Immortal Remains (which isn't getting much love, at least as yet). I did unpublish 'Heaven Can Wait', though I'm hoping I'll be able to re-release it soon. In total, The Second Realm has now seen (at time of writing) 2,259 downloads, which means I can be pretty confident of claiming that for the year, I've seen 2,200 downloads across the 11 episodes - an average of 200 each.
In fact, since the series' total word count is around 110,000, I can claim one download for each 50 words published. It's a long way short of what I predicted back in June, but I've already discussed the drop-off a bit, and I openly acknowledge that my blogging and general public activity has been too low in the last three or four months to change that in any substantial way.
Overall, though, I'm happy with the year. I suspect if I could really get my head around what's happened, I'd be ecstatic (though as I said back in June, the time-frame of this kind of success always dilutes its impact). If you'd told me this time last year that I'd see average downloads of 200 per episode in 2012, I'd have taken it. Depending on my mood, I might well have told you you were being stupid.
Because if there's been one really palpable effect of this initial success - and success it is, however small - it's this: my last significant period of depression was back in January, before the publication of episode 2 of The Second Realm. I'm pretty sure it was caused in part by a sense of creative and career stagnation in the last couple of months of 2011. Since then, it's been up and up and up.
I've also learnt a great deal; some of the things I've tried for self-promotion (notably tweeting and various guest blog-type activities) have failed to produce any kind of noticable effect. On the other hand, my rare periods of regular activity on here have corresponded quite closely to steeper periods of growth in download numbers, so I know I need to blog more (I'm drawing up plans at the moment for a really concerted effort).
On top of promotional tactics, I've learned about design, practiced my secondary skills like formatting, editing and writing marketing copy, and, of course, written a lot. I wrote the better part of 100,000 words of The Second Realm this year, plus Immortal Remains (8,000 words), three novellas at about 20,000 words each, and the first draft of my PhD thesis at 70,000 words. And that's not counting the 55,000 words I wrote for NaNoWriMo.
All of this has been really good for me, and the bulk of it has also been fun. I don't have a good idea of what it's done for my authorial platform (though given that Immortal Remains has only made $9 so far, not as much as I might have hoped - it's early days yet), but those 2,200 downloads on Smashwords can't all be robots, and given how they're distributed across the series, I think there's at least some grounds for saying that some people must be reading me.
So, by way of a recommendation to ALL my writer friends, for 2013, I'm saying publish something. Doesn't matter what; by the end of 2013, get your name out there. If you can sell to a publisher, and the deal's good, go for it, but if not, self-publish something. A short. A novella. Get it out there.
It's exposure, it's practice, it will help your understanding (and everyone else's) of the business, it will thicken your skin, and it's just satisfying. It's the start of your career; we talk a lot about how 'being a writer' isn't a mythic status, but something everyone who writes deserves. Being a career writer, though, means being in print, or online, or anywhere else you can be read.
Now, obviously I'm not saying you should rush into print. Don't cut corners. If your main project is massive and still thirteen months from completion, don't just chuck a few chapters to save time and publish next December. Take a break at some point, write a short, edit it and put that out. It shouldn't take more than a month to get a short story ready for print, if you're proactive about writing it and you find a decent beta reader or editor (shout-out to my heroic trooper of a beta, Lynne Hunt, who's read well over a hundred thousand words for me this year).
I've argued before that every writer should self-publish at least once, and I stand by that, but I also think that however you want to publish, 2013 is the year it stops being OK to wait for publication. We've seen the first print-only deal for a book that became a hit as an ebook, which means that trad houses are starting to wake up to the idea that they can still make money from books without having the ebook rights - and we authors can self-publish as a step on the road to trad publishing (though I maintain there are big changes I want to see before I'm willing to go to a trad house - more on those another time).
And there's no reason to worry, I feel, about the risk of releasing something with a flaw you missed during editing. After all, I did that with 'Heaven Can Wait', and I don't think I've suffered for it. If you publish something that's flawed, it will not be an eternal blight on your name. It will sink without trace and be forgotten in a month, and you'll be free to try again.
Don't publish expecting to make any money, mind - I've made less than $10 this year, though I rather hope to make more in 2013 - but publish, because the longer you wait to start publishing, the longer it will be before your publishing has any effect.
For my own part? Well, I mentioned above that I believe regular blogging is the best way I can bolster my download and sales numbers. I'm aiming to have new content on here twice a week every week (except maybe the first couple of weeks of November - NaNo week and NaNo detox week ¬_¬). Eleven episodes of The Second Realm, two to four other publications (starting, I hope, with 'Heaven Can Wait'), and then eighty-some blog posts.
If I'm going to publish that much this year, then surely you can manage at least one thing, right? Go for it, and good luck!
Here's the short version; at the start of 2012, I had two publications available, 'Heaven Can Wait', which had seen all of about 5 sales, and the first episode of The Second Realm, 'I Can See Clearly Now'. Unfortunately, I have no record of how ICSCN was doing at that time, but if memory serves, it was on somewhat less than 50 downloads total. I didn't start tracking my figures at all until the end of March, around the time I published the fourth episode, and I don't have detailed numbers from any earlier than late May.
However, in 2012, I published 10 whole episodes of The Second Realm, plus the standalone short, Immortal Remains (which isn't getting much love, at least as yet). I did unpublish 'Heaven Can Wait', though I'm hoping I'll be able to re-release it soon. In total, The Second Realm has now seen (at time of writing) 2,259 downloads, which means I can be pretty confident of claiming that for the year, I've seen 2,200 downloads across the 11 episodes - an average of 200 each.
In fact, since the series' total word count is around 110,000, I can claim one download for each 50 words published. It's a long way short of what I predicted back in June, but I've already discussed the drop-off a bit, and I openly acknowledge that my blogging and general public activity has been too low in the last three or four months to change that in any substantial way.
Overall, though, I'm happy with the year. I suspect if I could really get my head around what's happened, I'd be ecstatic (though as I said back in June, the time-frame of this kind of success always dilutes its impact). If you'd told me this time last year that I'd see average downloads of 200 per episode in 2012, I'd have taken it. Depending on my mood, I might well have told you you were being stupid.
Because if there's been one really palpable effect of this initial success - and success it is, however small - it's this: my last significant period of depression was back in January, before the publication of episode 2 of The Second Realm. I'm pretty sure it was caused in part by a sense of creative and career stagnation in the last couple of months of 2011. Since then, it's been up and up and up.
I've also learnt a great deal; some of the things I've tried for self-promotion (notably tweeting and various guest blog-type activities) have failed to produce any kind of noticable effect. On the other hand, my rare periods of regular activity on here have corresponded quite closely to steeper periods of growth in download numbers, so I know I need to blog more (I'm drawing up plans at the moment for a really concerted effort).
On top of promotional tactics, I've learned about design, practiced my secondary skills like formatting, editing and writing marketing copy, and, of course, written a lot. I wrote the better part of 100,000 words of The Second Realm this year, plus Immortal Remains (8,000 words), three novellas at about 20,000 words each, and the first draft of my PhD thesis at 70,000 words. And that's not counting the 55,000 words I wrote for NaNoWriMo.
All of this has been really good for me, and the bulk of it has also been fun. I don't have a good idea of what it's done for my authorial platform (though given that Immortal Remains has only made $9 so far, not as much as I might have hoped - it's early days yet), but those 2,200 downloads on Smashwords can't all be robots, and given how they're distributed across the series, I think there's at least some grounds for saying that some people must be reading me.
So, by way of a recommendation to ALL my writer friends, for 2013, I'm saying publish something. Doesn't matter what; by the end of 2013, get your name out there. If you can sell to a publisher, and the deal's good, go for it, but if not, self-publish something. A short. A novella. Get it out there.
It's exposure, it's practice, it will help your understanding (and everyone else's) of the business, it will thicken your skin, and it's just satisfying. It's the start of your career; we talk a lot about how 'being a writer' isn't a mythic status, but something everyone who writes deserves. Being a career writer, though, means being in print, or online, or anywhere else you can be read.
Now, obviously I'm not saying you should rush into print. Don't cut corners. If your main project is massive and still thirteen months from completion, don't just chuck a few chapters to save time and publish next December. Take a break at some point, write a short, edit it and put that out. It shouldn't take more than a month to get a short story ready for print, if you're proactive about writing it and you find a decent beta reader or editor (shout-out to my heroic trooper of a beta, Lynne Hunt, who's read well over a hundred thousand words for me this year).
I've argued before that every writer should self-publish at least once, and I stand by that, but I also think that however you want to publish, 2013 is the year it stops being OK to wait for publication. We've seen the first print-only deal for a book that became a hit as an ebook, which means that trad houses are starting to wake up to the idea that they can still make money from books without having the ebook rights - and we authors can self-publish as a step on the road to trad publishing (though I maintain there are big changes I want to see before I'm willing to go to a trad house - more on those another time).
And there's no reason to worry, I feel, about the risk of releasing something with a flaw you missed during editing. After all, I did that with 'Heaven Can Wait', and I don't think I've suffered for it. If you publish something that's flawed, it will not be an eternal blight on your name. It will sink without trace and be forgotten in a month, and you'll be free to try again.
Don't publish expecting to make any money, mind - I've made less than $10 this year, though I rather hope to make more in 2013 - but publish, because the longer you wait to start publishing, the longer it will be before your publishing has any effect.
For my own part? Well, I mentioned above that I believe regular blogging is the best way I can bolster my download and sales numbers. I'm aiming to have new content on here twice a week every week (except maybe the first couple of weeks of November - NaNo week and NaNo detox week ¬_¬). Eleven episodes of The Second Realm, two to four other publications (starting, I hope, with 'Heaven Can Wait'), and then eighty-some blog posts.
If I'm going to publish that much this year, then surely you can manage at least one thing, right? Go for it, and good luck!
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Immortal Remains
'Heaven fallen, Heaven spent,
Who's to say where the Old Gods went?'
Barrin doesn't know what a God is, or Heaven. All he knows is the game the village children play to the timeless nursery rhyme. When the game chases him out into the dangerous wilderness beyond the gresha-fence, he disturbs an ancient cairn. Within, he finds a strange, glittering stone that awakens all kinds of ancient memories.
* * *
'Immortal Remains' is available NOW at Smashwords, and you can pay what you like for it. I trust you, dear (potential) reader, to decide what the story is worth to you, both in terms of the experience you're expecting or hoping to get, and in terms of how much time you'd like me to have for writing.
That's not a crude attempt at blackmail, by the way. I'll keep writing, one way or the other, because it's more than a thing I do - it's part of what I am. I couldn't stop writing if I wanted to. But if writing pays the bills, I don't have to spend 20+ hours a week working a day job just to stay alive. That's twenty more hours I can spend every week on my writing, on being a better and/or more prolific writer - over 1000 hours gained every year, which could mean up to a million extra words of output (theoretically :P).
I've discovered that provided I have enough money to live on, plus enough to keep me in confectionery and pop, then writing is basically all I need to ensure my happiness. As such, I've already had most of the value I expect to get out of 'Immortal Remains' for myself - I've had the experience of writing it. If there's anything else I want from the story, it's for people to read it and respond to or engage with it. I'll admit that my ego could certainly use the boost of a few well-considered reviews ;)
Anyway, that's why there's no minimum price on 'Immortal Remains'. You can have it for free if you want (and particularly if you can't afford to give me any money for it, go ahead and read it). If you've never read anything of mine before and want to take a change on the story without any outlay, go ahead (though I do have ten other free short stories available...). I can hardly expect you to make a judgement about what my work is worth without having read any of it, and I've no right to impose my judgement about what my work is worth on you (after all, of course I think it's brilliant XD).
So there you go: read, enjoy, pay or leave a review if you like. I hope this can be the beginning of a long and happy literary relationship for us :)
(Special note of thanks and pluggage: 'Immortal Remains' was edited by my good friend Sally Fildes-Moss, of Proof Improved. I highly recommend her services if you need any copy-editing or proof-reading.)
That's not a crude attempt at blackmail, by the way. I'll keep writing, one way or the other, because it's more than a thing I do - it's part of what I am. I couldn't stop writing if I wanted to. But if writing pays the bills, I don't have to spend 20+ hours a week working a day job just to stay alive. That's twenty more hours I can spend every week on my writing, on being a better and/or more prolific writer - over 1000 hours gained every year, which could mean up to a million extra words of output (theoretically :P).
I've discovered that provided I have enough money to live on, plus enough to keep me in confectionery and pop, then writing is basically all I need to ensure my happiness. As such, I've already had most of the value I expect to get out of 'Immortal Remains' for myself - I've had the experience of writing it. If there's anything else I want from the story, it's for people to read it and respond to or engage with it. I'll admit that my ego could certainly use the boost of a few well-considered reviews ;)
Anyway, that's why there's no minimum price on 'Immortal Remains'. You can have it for free if you want (and particularly if you can't afford to give me any money for it, go ahead and read it). If you've never read anything of mine before and want to take a change on the story without any outlay, go ahead (though I do have ten other free short stories available...). I can hardly expect you to make a judgement about what my work is worth without having read any of it, and I've no right to impose my judgement about what my work is worth on you (after all, of course I think it's brilliant XD).
So there you go: read, enjoy, pay or leave a review if you like. I hope this can be the beginning of a long and happy literary relationship for us :)
(Special note of thanks and pluggage: 'Immortal Remains' was edited by my good friend Sally Fildes-Moss, of Proof Improved. I highly recommend her services if you need any copy-editing or proof-reading.)
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