Category Archives: Publishing

It’s Wednesday. You Know What That Means

May 17

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Crystal Blade Episode 18: That Escalated Quickly is now available at Vella. Help a writer out and read the story, okay?

In other news I’m busily plowing through Shadow of the Swan in Vellum to make sure the formatting is accurate, and I have to admit that this story holds up well. I probably went a little overboard writing in a Victorian style but it’s still fun and engaging, and The Crimson and the Black is a pure romp. When I get around to working on To Love a Wild Swan I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with Louisa’s cousin Nessa and her unwilling Seelie Sidhe fiancé. I’m still toying with the idea of giving him a boyfriend who also takes a fancy to Nessa, but I’m not sure how that would fly with readers of this series.

Then again, Fyodora is pan and there was a FF love scene in Crimson, there are gay and lesbian couples in the supporting characters, and nobody’s complained about that. I think it might be fun for Nessa to join an icily handsome Fae and a (literally) hot djinn in a menage.

Posted in Crystal Blade, Vella

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I Do Love a Productive Monday

May 15

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  • Got Crystal Blade Episode 17: Loose Lips Sink Ships up at Vella
  • Finished editing Blade Episodes 21 and 22
  • Got them saved on Vella so I have a full two weeks’ worth of episodes to post every M-W-F
  • Started working on Blade Episode 23 and got a goodly chunk of it done
  • Did a very necessary food shop
  • Swept and vacuumed the downstairs
  • Finished shaping a double gallery setting—next up is building V-shaped prongs and attaching those and a bail
  • Made dinner
  • Updated both blogs (sorry about the delay with this one’s posts)

All in all, I feel like I successfully adulted today.

Posted in Crystal Blade, Thoughts from the Bench, Vella

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Nobody Ever Tells You How Much Paperwork There Is In Indie Publishing

May 12

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Crystal Blade Episode 16: Children Are Our Most Valuable Resource is now available at Vella. Because maybe you’re not going out tonight and need something to read, I dunno.

I am also delighted to announce that people are starting to pay for Crystal Blade eps and not just read them using their free tokens, so I’ve got that going for me. Now if I could just rustle up some contract work and send Ramón home for two weeks things would be magic.

In other news I’ve got a weekend full of business work ahead of me (I need to start a business PayPal account so that I can sell books and jewelry through the website, start reading Zoe York’s books on the business side of indie romance publishing, update all of my income/expenses spreadsheets, and tweak my Amazon ads), plus I really need to do a big stock-up shop and give the bathrooms a deep clean.

I keep thinking that eventually I’ll have a weekend where I can just relax, read, watch TV, that sort of thing. I still remember a Sunday many years ago when the house was clean, I’d gotten all of my tasks done for the week, I didn’t have any jewelry projects on the go, and I spent the afternoon on the couch reading. It was freaking magical. I would like to experience that again.

Posted in Business of Writing, Crystal Blade, Personal, Vella

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The Writer At Work In the Garage

May 10

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Crystal Blade Episode 15: A Ball Is an Excellent Way To Make New Friends is now available at Vella. Go check it out.

As you know, Bob, when I’m not slaving over a hot computer during the day I’m usually out in the garage making jewelry, and I’m currently working on an exceptionally fun custom order. It’s a sterling pendant setting that will hold a large marquise cut (oval with pointed ends) rutilated quartz that’s been faceted. I get to use prongs for it and make my own double gallery setting with V-shaped prongs on each end to hold the points securely. It’s complex but the result should be gorgeous, plus this is excellent practice for me in using prong settings.

Which leads me to say that I would cheerfully shank someone for a real jeweler’s bench right now with the cutout and catch drawer because man, I am tired of dropping teeny things on the floor (like, oh, the bur container that came apart while I was bringing it down from a shelf and scattered the burs all over the floor. I still can’t find two of them and my curses are still ringing in Plano). Dropping things, BTW, is a regular occurrence in every silversmith’s life, which is why the cutout and the catch drawer/sling were developed in the first place. But my bench is a regular workbench from Harbor Freight with a particleboard top screwed into a metal frame so I can’t even make a cutout myself.

Oh, well. I can dream. And keep an eye on local sales groups to see if I can pick up a used one. In case anyone wants to buy me an early birthday present, this bench would be ideal. And in the meantime I’ll keep plugging away on my Harbor Freight table (and keep looking for those last two burs, goddammit…).

Posted in Crystal Blade, Thoughts from the Bench, Vella

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Parsing Reviews

May 5

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Crystal Blade Episode 13: Question Authority is now available at Vella. Go do the thing.

So let’s talk about reviews. Unlike a lot of writers, I do read my reviews (mainly because I have to post links to a review on the relevant book’s page here). I try not to let the bad ones bother me because everyone is entitled to their opinion and my stuff isn’t going to appeal to everyone. More importantly, over the years I’ve gotten a fairly good handle on how to parse them.

Like in the case of Shifter Woods: Claw. So far it’s gotten three four-star reviews. All of the reviewers liked the story, they didn’t have anything negative to say about it, which *phew.* But the fact that the last and longest entry in the Esposito County Shifters series has only been getting four stars instead of five tells me that I screwed up somewhere.

And I think I know what I did wrong. The original plot of Claw was for the FMC Angela to have no idea what shifters were and to find out to her shock that she was half-shifter when she wound up in Esposito County. But when I was working on the outline I realized I would have to spend a lot of time on her coming to grips with her ancestry and learning about shifter culture for the story to make sense. There was no way I could cram all of that AND a romance into a novella. And the whole point of the Shifter Woods novellas was that they were novellas, meant to be read in an afternoon.

So I pivoted. Angela now knew about her shifter heritage but for Reasons™ had never shifter or interacted with other shifters. And even then I had to skip over a whole two weeks of activity in order to keep the story novella-length.

That … was a mistake. I should have just let the story be as long as it needed to be, cover the events of the intervening two weeks, and give it a richer, fuller feel (in my head there were coffee dates with the MMC Matt’s beta, there were goofy but sweet little interludes with Matt, and Angela coming to terms with her mother’s decision to eschew shifter culture). Even with my edits I missed the novella cutoff and turned Claw into a (very, very short) novel at 42,000 words; in hindsight it really should have been around 60K at the least. But I needed to get it out ASAP so I bit the bullet, and I think that’s why it’s only getting four stars instead of five.

The nice thing about being an indie author is that I can revisit this story at some point and add in those missing two weeks. Not now, mind you—I have to finish Crystal Blade and get to work on High Tide/Hurricane Warning (looking at you, Susan). But if I can carve out some time late in the year, I will see about revisiting Claw and expanding it the way it deserves.

Posted in Crystal Blade, High Tide, Hurricane Warning, Shifter Woods: Claw, Vella

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I’m Going Wide. Again.

May 4

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I have made a decision.

Last year, I enrolled most of my books in KU. It made sense at the time—my income from non-‘Zon outlets was okay but nothing to write home about, and I saw a five-fold spike in my book income when I went with KU. Plus I was getting exposed to a much larger reader group, which could only be a good thing.

Since September, however, my KU reads have been dropping steadily. Worse, various goings-on at Amazon have reduced the payout for KU page read, and it does not look like things are going to improve any time soon, if ever. You can read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s excellent analysis of the Amazon situation for a more in-depth explanation, but the short version is: Amazon’s new CEO doesn’t care about books or readers, so KU payments are getting jacked around and the program is no longer worth it for a lot of authors.

I am one of them. I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise, but I do this job (and it is a job) for money. To quote Preeti Chhibber:

“The thing is that writing is actually work. We romanticize it, and it is a wonderful thing to get to do professionally, but it is work that makes a lot of money for a lot of people — just not the people who actually do the work.”

She was referring to the WGA strike but her words can be applied to indie authors as well. Much of our income is tied to big companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al because they have the ability to put our books in front of far more readers than we could reach on our own. And they have made a pretty penny on our work.

But when Amazon’s new CEO decides that books aren’t important, that attitude starts impacting KU payouts. And when an indie author is only making pennies a day on KU reads, there’s no reason to keep our books in KU anymore (in case you didn’t know, having a book in KU means that it can’t be available anywhere because it has to be exclusive to Amazon).

This is not me being greedy, by the way. I know that a lot of people think writers are rich, but we’re not. Most writers don’t actually make a living wage and the millionaire outliers are just that, outliers. The rest of us have to have day jobs, additional income streams, or an employed spouse to cover the bills.

Thing is, I would like my employed spouse to be able to retire someday, and the only way to do that is if I’m making enough money with my books to support us, since I love writing and will continue to write until I drop dead over my keyboard. This means I need to put my books where they have the best potential to be purchased by readers. And right now staying in KU, much as I hate disappointing readers who pay for it, is costing me that potential income.

Long story short, I’ve turned off all of my KU automatic renewals. Once books finish their current KU cycle I will be uploading them to Smashwords/D2D and going wide. I’m letting you know this so that if you want to read one of my books while it’s still in KU, you can. Here’s the schedule  of when each book finishes its current KU cycle. I’ll be uploading them to Smashwords/D2D that day and they should be available on B&N, Kobo, Apple, Google Play, and other platforms a few days later:

  • All books in the Hidden Empire series: 5/18/23
  • All books in the Two Thrones and Olympic Cove series: 5/20/23
  • Stealing Dmitri: 5/20/23
  • Trickster: 6/21/23
  • A Theory of Crystal: 6/21/23
  • Crystal Shard: 6/24/23
  • Behind the Iron Cross: 7/3/23

One bright side—I have authorized my books to be available in Kobo Plus, which is pretty much the same thing as Kindle Unlimited except that my books don’t have to be exclusive to Kobo. And I suspect a lot of indie authors who are tired of the KU rollercoaster will be doing the same thing. If Amazon decides to shut down KU at some point, you should be able to sign up for Kobo Plus and find many of your favorite authors there.

In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone who’s read my books in KU over the past year. I appreciate your patronage so very much and I’m sorry if this puts a crimp in your future reading plans. Hopefully Kobo Plus turns out to be as successful as KU was for the first few years and will provide you with as much reading material as you desire.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start reformatting a lot of books.

Posted in Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Publishing

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The First of May

May 1

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Crystal Blade Episode 11: Nobody Puts Baby In a Corner is now available at Kindle Vella. So, like, go read it.

Also, let me wish a blessed Beltane to all who celebrate, and please enjoy my favorite (and definitely NSFW) video of the day with a song by Jonathan Coulton (it’s a pity YouTube took down the WoW version).

Posted in Crystal Blade, Uncategorized, Vella

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The Business of Writing

Apr 29

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Crystal Blade Episode 10: Be a Dragon is now up at Vella. So now you know.

I’m working on a five year plan for Belaurient Press and what I want to do with my writing. I really do need to start thinking like a small business owner and not just a writer if I want to be successful and make any money, which means I need things like a five year plan.

I know, fascinating, but this is what it’s like to be an indie author. I need to come up with the money to start an LLC for Belaurient Press, which will help me at tax time, and I need to start buying ISBNs so that I can release the print versions of my books on IngramSpark, which gets them into more bookstores and libraries than Amazon. I can do that retroactively with the titles I already have as long as I make sure the IS versions aren’t distributed to Amazon.

I also really, really need to start releasing audiobooks. The nice thing about having done voiceover for various educational packages, plus producing a podcast for six years and those long-ago singing lessons is that I have a good voice for audiobooks and I know how to produce the audio files. But this will involve setting up a table in the closet (I need sound muffling) and bringing my laptop and microphone in there to start recording. It’s just a matter of doing it, but I have so much else to do in your average day that it keeps slipping my mind. Maybe if I turn it into an evening project, that might work better.

I’ll also have to kick the cats out of the bedroom which they won’t like. But they want to keep eating and have a roof over their heads so they’ll just have to put up with it.

Finally, I need to get the Patreon started. The roadblock with that is, I need to have something to give away to patrons, ideally a short story a month. Which requires—you guessed it—more time on my part. What would be really useful right now is to have someone who could help me schedule everything I need to do and maybe take over the social media promo stuff. If I could afford a virtial PA I’d hire one—I know a few who are absolutely amazing and who could really help me.

But I need money for that. Which means I need to sell more books. Which means … my career is a frigging vicious circle, isn’t it? Oy…

Posted in Audiobook, Crystal Blade, Vella

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The End of the Month Is Approaching

Apr 27

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I didn’t mention yesterday but Crystal Blade Episode 9: An Intimate Family Dinner was released yesterday on Vella. At least I finally got it into my head to call them episodes and not chapters.

I have to admit, I was really hoping to have Blade finished by now, but between various stressors and a couple of bouts of Not Feeling Well I just wasn’t able to get it done this month. Which is annoying because I would really like to publish something every month and have Amazon keep promoting me, but I’m starting to think that this may not be realistic for me.

At least, not at the moment. I’m tired. My last vacation was January 2017 and it has been go go go ever since then. I would dearly like to have one week where I didn’t have to do anything, cook or clean anything, or take care of anything. Basically, I want to go on a cruise. But to do that we not only need enough money to pay for the cruise itself but also for the week of time Ramón would need to take off from work (not having PTO really sucks). Which means I need to sell a lot of books. Which means I need to write more new books to keep myself in Amazon’s sweet spot. But I’m tired. You see my dilemma.

At least the sterling silver jewelry I’ve been making recently has been selling, which is something. Frankly, I’ve made almost as much from that as I’ve made from writing this month. Part of me thinks that’s sad, and part of me is just damned grateful that I have another income stream. And all of me knows that things could be so, so much worse so I should just shut up and be grateful for what I have.

Posted in Crystal Blade, Thoughts from the Bench, Vella, Writing

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Crystal Blade Ep 8 Is Up

Apr 24

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It’s over here if you want to read it. And I’ve discovered something—not exactly dismaying, but it explains a few things.

I have had people reading through the paid chapters, bless all of you who did that, and I had expected to make a tiny bit of money for those reads. But my Vella dashboard keeps reporting $0 royalties on episode reads.

So I did some digging. It turns out that Amazon offers you 200 free tokens in order to get you reading Vella chapters, which is great. I took them up on that myself, and I bet a lot of people have done the same thing. Except that those free tokens don’t count towards royalties so you have to burn through them and then actually buy some tokens before the author starts seeing any royalties on their dashboard.

Which is … yeah, annoying. I wish they’d explained that right off the bat because I’ve been reading friends’ Vella stories and it turns out that they’re not getting any moola for my reads. It also means that I’m going to burn through these as fast as possible so that I can buy some more and, you know, actually pay for my reads.

Technology. *shakes head*

Posted in Crystal Blade, Vella

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