Tag: self publishing

State of the Blog — Aug 2024

Amazingly, it has been almost four years since I started this blog. It has become such a part of my life that I have a hard time remembering the days when I didn’t send my thoughts out to the internet on a semi-weekly basis.

I strive to document my process, if only for the curiosity of other writers—from my Razor Mountain project documenting the first draft of a novel, to my NaNoWriMo series, to my current series where I’m spending the year writing and submitting short fiction.

My “State of the Blog” posts document the blog itself. I used to do these every six months, but I switched to a yearly schedule in 2023.

Previous Posts

Metrics

  • Years blogging: 4
  • Total posts: 473
  • Total followers: 149
  • Monthly views: 299 (average over last 3 months)

The Year of Short Stories…and Less Blogging

The fairly obvious narrative when comparing the stats to 2023 is that the blog has slowed down considerably. In my first three years, I averaged 126 posts per year, which is about 2.5 posts per week. This year, I produced only 95 posts, or 1.8 posts per week, and the daily posts during last year’s NaNoWriMo even skew that a bit higher compared to the rest of the year. Sheer posting volume isn’t the be-all, end-all for a blog, but it does have an impact. All other things being equal, more posts make the stats go up.

I did plan to reduce my post frequency in 2024, although I ended up posting even less than I planned. Part of that was the intrusion of non-writing priorities. I moved to a new house, and my family and day job have kept me plenty busy.

Part of it was that I didn’t have a project like Razor Mountain, which lent itself to frequent posts. My “Year of Short Stories” series was, in some ways, the replacement for my Razor Mountain series, but that’s one post per week and occasionally less.

Another explanation for these statistics is the sort of content I’ve been posting. Razor Mountain (and the NaNoWriMo series, to some extent) had the advantage of an ongoing story to bring readers back on a regular basis, as well as the “development” portions that were more focused on the writing process. I’m very purposely excluding my actual fiction from my “Year of Short Stories” series, because you can’t sell first rights to a story if it’s already been publicly published—even on a blog. I’m writing approximately the same amount, but less of it is blog fodder.

I also don’t expect that “Year of Short Stories” is always the most exciting content for my readership. I hope it provides some value, if only for writers to compare to their own experiences and expectations, but I do it partly for myself. It gives me a record of what I’ve been working on, and motivates me to keep making progress every week.

New Content

Seeing the WordPress graphs go up is not the most important thing in the world, but I would like to feel that I’m providing something interesting for more readers. To that end, I have been thinking about how to spruce up the blog and post more. However, I am still committing the bulk of my writing time to work that isn’t going up on the blog. I think it’s the only way to progress my writing career. So, I want to post more things that readers like. I just don’t want it to take too much time or effort. Easy, right?

My first new experiment is the Story Idea Vault series, which started this past week. I’m excited about this, because I think most writers like prompts and ideas, and these are easy posts to write. I have huge documents full of story ideas, so I could write weekly posts for years without running out. This also gives me a good excuse to do a little brainstorming every week or two, in order to come up with new ideas.

And while I haven’t been posting as much in 2024, I’ve developed a backlog of half-finished posts. I may put a little more time into finishing some of those to give the blog more life. Still, what I would really like to find is another ongoing series that focuses more on the craft side of writing, as these are the type of posts that have mostly been MIA in the past year.

Razor Mountain

I was recently contacted by one of my old beta readers for Razor Mountain, wondering about the status of the story. I was a little sad to tell them that it’s effectively on hiatus.

As much as I enjoyed the experiment of writing a novel in public, the first draft is really only half of the work. To make it the best book it can be, I would need to dedicate months of effort to revision and critique. That would be a nice second act to the Razor Mountain series, and I do think it’s important to shed light on that part of the process. There is depressingly little writing about the struggles of editing and revision (and not just the grammar and copy-editing parts).

Unfortunately, writing Razor Mountain in public means that it would be very difficult to get a traditional agent or publisher interested in it. Unless the blog suddenly blew up and got millions of views, traditional publishing doesn’t want something that people have already seen. And despite my best efforts, I just can’t get myself excited about self-publishing.

I understand, at an intellectual level, that self-pub is a significant chunk of the landscape these days, and that it’s the way that many authors make their careers. Even so, I grew up in the era where traditional publishing was the only game in town, and I still have a certain…romanticism?…bias?…toward trad pub. Could I feel satisfied with a physical copy of my book, if I hadn’t first convinced a jaded, chain-smoking agent and an overworked, sassy editor that the book was worth spending time and money on? I don’t know. Say what you want about my biases, but we all have to follow the path that feels right. For me, that doesn’t include self-publishing, at least for now.

I haven’t given up on properly finishing Razor Mountain, but I won’t be picking it up again in 2024. I’m enjoying writing short fiction and getting involved in all the aspects of writing from idea to submission. It’s fun and satisfying to produce a heap of stories in the time that one novel would take. That doesn’t mean Razor Mountain is dead. It’s sleeping. I just need to figure out how to get excited about it again.

Thanks for Reading!

If you’re one of my regular (or even occasional) readers, know that you’re appreciated. As writers, we’re all throwing words out into the world and hoping that someone will read them. You doing that for me may not feel like much, but it’s nice to be heard.

If you have any thoughts about Words Deferred, or more generally, what you’re looking for or enjoying in blogs, feel free to drop a comment and let me know.

The Internet Archive Lawsuit

For those who aren’t aware, there is a lawsuit brought by four book publishers against the Internet Archive over their “National Emergency Library” initiative, which ran for about 3 months in 2020. During that time, the IA allowed unlimited lending of the books they had digitized. The updated program, which is still in effect, allows one person at a time to “check out” books, copies of which are supposed to be held in reserve by partner libraries.

The initial judgement was handed down recently, and it was not in favor of the IA. The judge ruled that the programs did not fall under fair use protections, and the IA would need permission from publishers to make such programs legal.

People Have Opinions About This

Author Chuck Wendig wrote a post about it—apparently he got hit by one of those social media firestorms that just keeps flaring up periodically—and says that he opposes the lawsuit. Meanwhile, Nathan Bransford (author, former agent and current freelance editor) fully supports the lawsuit, and links a Twitter thread by Nate Hoffelder explaining why the IA’s programs are bad for authors.

There are a couple reasons each camp has to support the publishers or the Internet Archive. The supporters remind us that at the beginning of the pandemic, many library systems shut down their physical buildings, and the “National Emergency Library” program was only active for a few months to help people who otherwise would have gone to those libraries. The current program is designed to limit the copies lent out in a way similar to existing libraries, so it’s less problematic. And, of course, the handful of very extreme “all-information-must-be-free” people are shouting the things they always shout, namely that most copyright and intellectual property law is bad for the human race and should be abolished.

In the opposite corner, the arguments are almost exclusively for authors’ rights. The IA ran a program that did nothing to compensate the authors of the books lent out, and was therefore pure enablement of piracy. Even the more restrictive program, while supposedly reserving library copies for each copy lent out, doesn’t have stringent controls and isn’t working with the publishers. (It’s worth noting that libraries do pay for books, and authors get a cut of that. There are systems for this that have been worked out over the years and strike a pretty good balance between compensating creators and making books available to a lot more people.)

Of Course, There Are Caveats

I do not see many people arguing in favor of the big publishers, which is telling. The truth is that authors and consumers both often feel like they’re being abused by the remaining handful of publishing conglomerates. Nobody is all that excited to go to bat for them, aside from the paid lawyers. But publishers are often the ones who end up fighting battles that benefit authors, for the simple reason that authors mostly get paid when publishers get paid.

Finally, the library systems of today have some pretty big flaws. While the advent of e-books has made it possible to borrow from libraries without getting off the couch, publishers also took the opportunity to make e-book lending far more advantageous to themselves, requiring additional payments after an amount of time or number of borrows. Plus, you have Amazon controlling a huge swath of e-books and outright refusing to lend, smaller presses being much harder to find at your local library, and a ton of people in the rural US (and certainly throughout the world) that do not have local library systems available to them.

My Thoughts

I’m somewhat inclined to forgive the IA for the brief run of the “National Emergency Library.” The beginning of the pandemic was a bad time, and nobody really knew how it was going to go. However, I have to acknowledge that I come at this argument from a place of privilege. I worried about a lot of things during the height of the pandemic, but I had a steady job.

The vast majority of authors don’t make enough money from their writing to live above the poverty line. That means they mostly aren’t wealthy and have to rely on other income streams, like spouses or other jobs. It also means that many authors work hard and struggle to eke every dime out of their work. Authors went through the pandemic just like readers, but the IA’s arguments don’t seem to worry about how authors might have been affected by the uncompensated lending of their work.

In terms of actual law, it seems pretty likely that the IA will lose their appeals. To win, they would need to carve out some new territory under fair use, and this doesn’t seem like the kind of judicial climate (especially if it gets to the Supreme Court level) where that is likely to happen. I like a lot of other things the IA does, and I hope this doesn’t hurt them too badly.

While I feel strongly for fellow authors, I don’t have much sympathy for the big publishers. They’ve made e-book lending worse than it could be, in misguided attempts to crank up profits. This would be a great opportunity to reevaluate and improve the relationships between publishers and libraries.

E-book lending theoretically solves a lot of the problems of locality that physical libraries have. It would be great if libraries had a little more legal authority to force reasonable deals with publishers for lending (and maybe even prevent companies like Amazon from locking out lenders altogether).

If we’ve learned anything from the digitization of movies and music, it’s that you can’t eradicate piracy. From Napster to Kazaa to BitTorrent, fighting pirates is like playing whack-a-mole. Some people are determined not to pay, and digital goods are just too easy to copy. The way to fight back is to make your legally-sold digital product as cheap, easy-to-use, and high-quality as possible.

Why Write Short Stories?

Recently, I’ve been looking for ways to write more. I’m currently in the middle of my serial novel, Razor Mountain. A novel is a huge commitment, and while it can be immensely satisfying, it can also feel like a slog sometimes when it’s all I’m working on. So I decided to do something I hadn’t done in years—start writing short stories again.

This is the first post in a series I’ll be doing about short stories—reading, writing, editing, and submitting. Modern fiction has become really fixated on the novel as the most prestigious form of fiction, but novels are just one of the many shapes a story can take. Short stories have a lot to offer.

This week, let’s get into some of the advantages of writing short stories.

Write More

At the risk of controversy, I think that great writing is more about execution than ideas. A great idea is the foundation of a story, but we’ve all read stories with an interesting premise that just fell flat. Likewise, a master of the craft can sometimes make a great story out of a very mundane premise.

Most writers have piles of ideas and just not enough time to figure out the story for each one, let alone actually write it. Even very prolific writers usually don’t manage more than a couple novels per year. For slow writers like me, that kind of pace is impressive. But how many of us only have a couple story ideas per year?

One of the joys of writing shorter stories is that you can write them quickly. A thousand-word flash fiction story can be drafted in a single sitting. Short stories are easier to outline and prepare, if you’re the sort of writer who prefers to do that. Even if you would never dream of jumping into a novel without a thorough outline, you might be tempted to try exploratory writing on smaller stories.

Finish More

Listen to your crazy writing uncle, Chuck Wendig, and finish your projects. Finishing your stories forces you to practice every step in the writing process, and practice is what helps you become better.

Of course, if you’ve ever played a sport or an instrument, you’ll know that the best way to practice is through purposeful repetition, especially of the basics. That’s why you run drills at football practice or play your scales and arpeggios every day.

The truth is that it’s hard to practice writing through novels. Short stories are great because they take you through the full cycle of writing, from ideation to draft to editing and critique and final polish. The shorter the stories, the more you get to practice all of these things. And beyond honing your skills, you can also develop a better understanding of what you like and dislike; what your strengths and weaknesses are; what styles and themes you enjoy.

Publish More

Short stories aren’t only an opportunity to practice your craft and explore more ideas. They also represent more chances to publish.

If you’re going the traditional publishing route, it can take months or years to write a novel, then months or years more to get an agent, go through revisions, get an editor, go through more revisions, and (hopefully) actually get published. If you’re self-publishing, you need to take on the editing and publicity yourself. Either way, a lot of effort goes into the publication of a novel. Even scarier, many authors write several books before they come up with something that catches an editor’s eye or climbs the Amazon lists. Each novel takes a lot of effort and carries a lot of risk of failure.

By contrast, there are hundreds of active publications, anthologies and contests that accept short story submissions. You don’t need an agent to represent you, and the turnaround time is typically measured in weeks, not months or years. Because each story takes less work, it represents less risk of failure. Authors who write a lot of short stories aren’t phased by rejection letters. They know that they can just submit that story somewhere else. They might have five, ten, or more stories out for submission at any given time. And while some of those stories might never find a home, others will, and may even find a long life through anthologies and reprints.

Short stories are not as lucrative as books. You’d have to sell a lot of stories to match the a single mid-list advance. But they provide more opportunity to get your work, and your name, out there for others to see. There is a small (but not insignificant) advantage when you’re able to list a few recent publications in that cover letter for your novel submission.

Level Up

For better or worse, modern authors tend to measure success by novels. But if you think short stories are beneath you, you’re wrong. Great short stories can be every bit as artful as great novels, and while building a big cohesive story in a novel can be challenging, the brevity of short stories can be equally demanding.

If short stories don’t sound fun to you, you might be surprised. Short work provides the opportunity to play, and to try out all sorts of new ideas and techniques. And if you’re trying to get better at writing (as I think we all are, perpetually), each short story is an opportunity to level up.

Should We All Be Selling Fiction NFTs?

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ve probably heard a bit about NFTs. The news outlets and crypto bros are all incredibly eager to tell us about just how much money this or that JPEG was recently sold for. The only thing more popular than gawking at these huge sales is writing blog posts trying to explain in layman’s terms what the heck an NFT is, or why the heck anyone would want to buy one.

As authors, it feels like we’ve been living in a technological revolution for a while now. We’ve seen a huge transformation of the publishing industry in the past decade or so. Traditional publishing and distribution channels shrank while self-publishing and online distribution became viable options. Could the recent rise of NFTs represent yet another way for authors to sell their work?

For as much talk as there has been around NFT visual art and the (ugh) “metaverse,” there is comparatively little discussion of monetizing the written word. Although the latest NFT craze has been around visual digital art, there’s no technical limitation stopping other types of art from being “NFT-ified.” An NFT itself is able to hold only a tiny amount of data, but the way NFTs are typically used is more as a glorified digital certificate of authenticity, and it can point to almost anything. So let’s take a look at what fiction NFTs might look like, and whether they seem likely to be a viable way for authors to sell their work.

Downsides

Publishing fiction and building an audience is already a challenge. Most of us aren’t looking to make it even harder, so it’s important to look at the downsides of using NFTs.

Minting Ain’t Free

NFTs use cryptocurrencies and blockchains as their bedrock (usually the Ethereum chain and its native currency, Ether). You’ll need a cryptocurrency wallet, and you’ll need some cryptocurrency in it. That means you’ll need to buy crypto with real money. You’ll need to pay gas fees. You’ll probably also need a browser extension or a wallet with built-in browser to interface with the exchange and set up your listing.

If that last paragraph sounded like technobabble to you, then you see the other cost: complexity. If you haven’t been involved with cryptocurrency and/or you’re not very computer savvy, getting all of this set up can feel like a pretty big undertaking. Plus, the world of crypto is full of hacks and scams (try looking up “rug pull” or “stolen NFT”), so jumping into it without a good understanding of what’s going on can be risky.

No Silver Bullet

Huge sales of NFTs have drawn big headlines because they make for exciting news, but anecdotes should not be confused with statistics. Like cryptocurrency, the NFT marketplace seems to be pretty volatile. It’s fueled by speculation, sentiment and hype.

A few people have tried to fight the hype with research, and what they’ve found is that most NFTs don’t sell for more than a hundred dollars (and that’s before fees). Most artists who jump in aren’t getting rich. It’s not even clear if the average artist breaks even. There are a few people selling for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, but is that really any different from Stephen King or E. L. James in the traditional publishing world?

Simply minting an NFT is no guarantee you’ll make money, and it’s certainly possible to lose some.

An Ideological Minefield

Cryptocurrency and NFTs aren’t exactly mainstream yet, but they’re getting more attention and press. And there are plenty of institutions and investors hyping them (often with holdings that stand to benefit from that hype). But there are plenty of others who are just as loudly pointing out the dangers: energy consumption, unstable and insecure technology, lack of regulation or oversight, and more.

In a world that is increasingly polarized, this is a natural ideological battleground—a tangled web of political beliefs, complicated technology, and economics. Having money at stake rarely makes people more objective.

It’s fair to say that announcing a venture into this arena will be met with excitement by the true believers, and scorn by the skeptics. Be ready to deal with that, and hope that the audience who gets excited is big enough to make it worthwhile.

Upsides

So far, NFTs don’t seem like a great deal. They’re certainly fraught with challenges. But there are some possible advantages too.

Novelty

NFTs have name recognition. They’re relatively new technology that’s attracting a lot of attention. And for those who are interested, they feel a bit like being involved in a sci-fi future.

If you’re the sort of person who likes experimenting with new, technology-infused forms of storytelling (like interactive fiction), then NFTs may be an exciting new playground. And the readers who are interested in new forms of storytelling may be more likely to jump the technical hurdles and be willing to support an NFT project.

This article from Lit Hub suggests that at least a few authors are making money by using NFTs to experiment with form and function, or at least provide a novel (heh heh) marketing twist for their writing projects.

Another Potential Income Stream

One of the oddities of NFTs, at least where digital art is concerned, is that they don’t actually provide legal or physical ownership of the thing they represent. They’re a digital note that can’t be easily forged, and point to the digital item of your choosing.

An NFT could be used as a way to sell the rights to a story or a novel, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be used more like autographed promotional materials or Patreon rewards: a bonus or collectable for invested fans. Minting an NFT of a story doesn’t mean the buyer owns any legal rights to that story, and you could still go on to publish it yourself.

Be aware, however, that blockchain information is inherently public. A typical NFT points to the item it represents at a URL that anyone can access. Since many publishers want “first” rights, minting an NFT of a piece of fiction may severely limit the rights that you can subsequently sell.

Conclusions

I’m personally pretty skeptical of NFTs and their cryptocurrency underpinnings, but it is a fact that it is now possible to mint NFTs for our art (or at least tangentially related to it). If nothing else, I think it’s always good to know what options are out there.

What do you think? Would you ever consider making NFTs of your fiction? Do you think there’s a market for it today? What about in five or ten years?

How to Get a Book Cover

I’ve done my outlining and prep for Razor Mountain. I wrote my author profile and my book description. I’ve got a couple of chapters in revision, just about ready to go. But I don’t have a book cover.

Why Yes, I Am an Old Man

I grew up in a time where traditional publishing was effectively the only publishing. Self-publishing was basically a scam where unpleasant little corporations tricked authors into spending a bunch of money to print a tiny run of their book that would be available nowhere and bought by nobody.

In that strange and distant age, there was an oft-quoted adage: “In real publishing, money always flows toward the author.” If you’re in traditional publishing, that’s still generally true, but we now live in a world where self-publishing is definitely real publishing and a viable strategy for many authors. But self-publishing means that the author is taking on all of the tasks that were once managed by a publisher, and taking on all the risk that entails. In self-publishing, money doesn’t always flow toward the author. In many cases, you have to spend money to (try to) make money. For me, at least, that takes some getting used to.

Those costs can include a variety of things: copy editors, content editors, proofreaders and sensitivity readers; indexing; book design and formatting; marketing; and cover design. The folks at Reedsy have a good post on how these costs can add up, although they should be taken with a grain of salt since they make their money as a marketplace for exactly these kinds of services.

As an old man who still thinks traditional publishing is pretty cool, I ended up accidentally backing into self-pub in the form of an experiment. I wanted to write a serial novel, putting it out into the world as I wrote it (more or less). There are only a handful of authors that could get a traditional publisher to sign on to a project like that, and let me tell you, I am not one of them. Publishing a serial novel has its own unusual considerations, but at the end of the day, it’s self-publishing, and it involves many of the same considerations that self-publishing any other novel would.

If you’re looking at self-publishing and you need a book cover, what are your options?

DIY

You can do it yourself. But should you?

The obvious advantage of this strategy is that it costs no money, and you have complete control of your cover design. The disadvantage is that it will cost your time, possibly materials, and the quality of the output is going to depend entirely on your skill. If you are a visual artist, this might be feasible for you. Just remember, book covers are a specialized art. Even if you are great at painting, drawing or visual design, it won’t necessarily be easy to create a great book cover.

Before you embark on crafting a book cover, look around for good reference material. Browse Amazon or Bookshop, or go to your local independent bookstore and snap photos of covers you like. Consider your book’s genre and the feel you want the cover to have — thrillers are going to have very different covers from romance or memoir, for example.

There are also services that help to make the process easier. For example, Canva has a book cover design template, along with a variety of pre-built cover designs, free and paid. You can change any of the elements to suit your own needs, from fonts to colors to pictures or illustrations. If you need pictures, you can try searching a free stock photo site, like Pexels. These sites have photos that you can use without paying royalties. Don’t use any pictures without a clear statement of copyright and conditions of use!

If you have experience or are willing to put in the time to learn, professional design software can give you even more creative control. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are industry-standard tools that require a purchase, or you could use a free tool like the powerful (and goofily-named) GNU Image Manipulation Program — GIMP.

Canva book cover templates

Friends, Family, and Freelance

For most of us, it’s just not feasible to create our own book cover with a high-enough level of quality. However, you might know someone with the artistic skills you lack. Do you have an artist friend, family member, or coworker whose work you respect? Consider offering them a commission. For the amateur artist, it may be fun to work on a project that actually pays, and it’ll be far less expensive for you than other options.

Be aware though, that you’re going to have to collaborate. You don’t want to end up poisoning an existing relationship if you end up disagreeing on the design. Treat this as a professional relationship — make sure to be really clear about what you want, how much you are paying, and how much freedom you’re giving your artist to adjust and improve the design based on their own artistic sensibilities.

And yes, you should almost always pay. Even if your artist is a friend or family member, they’re doing a professional service for you. You’re trying to make money by publishing — it would be a disservice to your artist to not compensate them for their contribution to your success. Look at freelancer and professional rates, and make sure you’re offering a reasonable fee that you both can agree on. (Occasionally, you may have a hard time convincing your artist to accept compensation. Consider something more personal than cold cash — take them out for a nice meal, or give them a gift you know they’ll appreciate.)

Professionals

This is a broad category, but I’m considering this to cover any artist you do not personally know, who gets paid for their art in any way. This includes amateurs who take commissions, professional freelancers, and commercial services.

If you want to find a freelancer, you can browse sites like Reedsy or Fiverr for artists who are specifically advertising their book cover design services. These are the folks who are mostly likely to have experience in this specific field of design, and some examples for you to look at.

If you have favorite artists on an art site like DeviantArt, you might consider asking them if they’ll create a cover for you on commission. Just be aware that many excellent artists will have never created a cover before, and may not be interested. Even if they are, you’ll want to have a detailed description of what you want.

Finally, there are the corporate options. These are companies who employ professional artists who specialize in book covers. This can be the priciest choice, with some cover options costing upward of a thousand dollars.

On the cheaper end of these services are pre-made book covers. These are somewhat like the Canva templates: professionally-designed covers that can be customized with title and byline. Some services will let you specify minor tweaks to things like the font and sizing of the text, but these are mostly what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

If you’re willing to pay for the most expensive options, you can buy a custom book cover design from one of these services. You provide your input to the company, and they come back with one or more designs. You then pick what you like and make adjustments until it’s just right. This is the most expensive kind of cover design service, but you’re paying for strong creative control and high-quality art and design to get a professional product.

When Ryan Lanz, whose blog I follow, posted his cover reveal, he shouted-out his designers, Damonza, who offer pre-made and custom-order covers. There are at least half a dozen other companies who do similar work that are easy to find with a Google search. I won’t recommend any of these, since I haven’t worked with them and can’t vouch for the quality of service. However, they all have galleries of their work that you can browse to help you make a decision.

Making the Right Choice

Many writers, myself included, want to spend as much time as possible refining their craft — writing! But if you’re going to self-publish, there are business considerations, and you have to take them seriously if you want to maximize your chances of success. As often as we say “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” people do exactly that.

Remember that a book cover is a business decision. You have to decide how important your cover is, and how much time and money you want to put into it. You also need to consider the resources available to you. Maybe you can’t afford a custom professionally-designed cover, but you have an artist friend who is eager to help. Maybe you can sock away a smaller amount of money for a commission or freelancer. Maybe you’re an artist as well as a writer, and you’re willing to put in the effort to make something great in Canva, Illustrator or GIMP.

How about you? Have you self-published? If so, how did you get your book cover? Were you satisfied, or would you try something different next time? Let me know in the comments.