Category Archives: Publishing
Episode Six of Crystal Blade is Live
I hope this doesn’t bug anyone but I’ll be mentioning each new episode (I have got to stop calling them chapters) as I post them so that interested readers can simply click and go straight to the episode page.
Episode 6: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C32WTWBJ
In other news my new knee is officially one year old today, whee. I can walk a mile in a half hour (working on improving that—I would like to do a 5K this year) and apart from some garbage left from the adhesions I have full mobility and no pain. The other knee is holding steady, although now that I’m able to move around more easily it is starting to get a little achy more often. Once it gets regularly painful I can go back in to TMI and get gel shots—my surgeon said that ideally he’d like to get me into my sixties before we replace that knee (and we will have to replace it—it’s a matter of if, not when). Works for me.
Oh, and I’m also officially in menopause, whee! Got to find a really good Crone t-shirt…
Crystal Blade Is Officially Live
And it’s official. The first five episodes of Crystal Blade are now available on Kindle Vella, may the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on my soul, and the first three eps are free. I’ll be posting three episodes a week on a M-W-F basis until the story is done, and thirty days after that I’ll take everything down and publish it as an ebook and print book.
So if you want to check out the continuing adventures of Crystal and the Buff Lords right the heck now, head on over!
- Crystal Blade Home Page: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0C2PHK17L
- Episode One: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2P9ZZTF
- Episode Two: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2P8SJWW
- Episode Three: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PD2YCJ
- Episode Four (paid): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PF1TT2
- Episode Five (paid): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PB471S
And Now We Wait
Five chapters of Crystal Blade have been uploaded to Vella (Chapter Six needs more editing than I’m capable of doing right now) and are currently chugging through the ‘Zon. I’ll get Chapter Six whipped into shape tomorrow and uploaded, then I’ll start my two chapters a week upload schedule (and may I just say that my fanfic experience is coming very much in handy right now).
Also, the image at right is the story’s avatar. I think it says “fantasy romance” well enough and goes along with the title (and the five-pointed star was an unintended bonus that refers to the Buff Lords). I’m really hoping this does well because my ‘Zon income is a joke at the moment. The custom text AMS ads are still not serving (I’ve created automatic ads for all my titles so at least some ads are getting served) and my sales are wretched.
All of which is just convincing me to put all of my titles wide sooner than later. KU is clearly compromised and I’m not making anything near what I was making from it last year, and with Kobo starting KoboPlus (their version of KU that doesn’t require a title to be exclusive to Kobo) I would have a bit more stability and might even make more money if I went wide. Plus I wouldn’t have to worry about the ‘Zon abruptly yanking my author account because someone else had posted one of my books on a pirate site.
But for now I’m happy and pumped about Blade. With a good tail wind I should get it finished by the end of the month, then I can get started on Crystal Reflection, High Tide, and To Love a Wild Swan.
Goodbye February
Welp, I didn’t make quite what I’d hoped to from Amazon this month but I did make three figures so that’s something. As I release the ECS omnibus wide and promote that and To My Muse on FB (althought I intend to take the course I bought on FB ads first—no point in throwing good money away on badly formatted ads) it’ll be interesting to see if sales pick up.
And of course once the ECS omnibus is out that should start making money from the readers who refuse to start a series until it’s completed. This doesn’t make sense to me considering how many series get abandoned because they don’t make enough money, but it’s their money and their choice.
And I’m sure there are some people who are looking at my income and thinking, “But romance is supposed to be a gold mine—why aren’t you raking it in?” Because the romance market is hypersaturated, to be honest, and people who are raking it in either are a name, have a rabid fan base, or have so many books out that they can make decent money from just a few KU pages reads on each title. I’m working on creating the rabid fan base and having a buttload of books available, myself, but that takes time.
Then again, I already have sixteen full-length titles out there and will be released at least another four this year, so I’ve got momentum on my side.
The AI As Writer
I had my writing group Zoom meeting Tuesday night and since the bulk of them are SF or fantasy writers we were discussing the closure of Clarkesworld to submissions because they’ve gotten absolutely hosed with AI-written subs in the last two months. Apparently other magazines are following suit until they can figure out how to handle this sudden surge of stories, or whether they should go invitation-only (which is problematic because slush, while a pain in the ass to go through, is also the best way to discover amazing new writers).
Me being me, I couldn’t understand why someone would go to these lengths because it seems obvious that swamping a magazine with AI-written stories of dubious worth would just backfire on them. J explained that a lot of these “writers” think that the only important part of a story is the idea, and the actual creation on the story was scutwork that can be turned over to an AI.
Yeah, no. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Any writer gets tons of ideas during the day. The real job is figuring out which ideas would actually support a plot, and then creating a gripping, well-written story based on that plot. And so far, that can’t be done by AIs.
J went on to say that apparently some of these “writers” are using ChatGPT and other AI language engines to create a side hustle; one even told an editor, “I’m doing this because I need money.” That hollow laughter you hear is from all the writers throughout history who know that selling your work in trad publishing, even if it’s the best damn story or novel of the year, is a crapshoot, and even if you do sell it you won’t make a lot of money off it unless you’re a big name. But there’s still this popular concept that all writers make tons of cash so they’re probably thinking, “I came up with a great idea—I’ll have ChatGPT write a bunch of different stories for me based on that idea, send all of them off, and the money will come rolling in.”
Once again, yeah, no. The only way I can see that as maybe working is if these “writers” put their AI-created works into KU with the hope that enough people will be intrigued to at least read a few pages. But that also assumes that the work has a genre-appropriate cover and attention-getting blurb, and even then it might not get them a lot of traction because KU was bursting at the seams with titles even before these yahoos thought they could game the system and build publishing empires for themselves based on AI writing.
Now, is there a place for AI in writing? Sure—my friend Jerry uses image AI to come up with inspiration for locations and characters, and he’s been very happy with using some AI text engines to do research. But he doesn’t use the AI images on his cover, and he still has to sit down and do the actual writing himself.
Another actual, award-winning writer suggested that some of these people may be the type who simply want to watch the world burn. They cant believe that any creative work is good, so they churn out this machine-assisted drivel to prove it and smile as it causes magazines to close submissions and editors to scramble for a way to handle the avalanche. And I do suspect that those people’s work are included in said avalanche, but I think the bulk of AI-written works are just someone trying to game the system and make a quick buck.
This will shake out over time and hopefully magazines and other publishers will develop a way to shunt the mechanical dross off to one side before their slush readers are driven to despair and tequila. But in the meantime it’s going to cause a lot of issues on both sides of the publishing divide so trad publisher writers had better buckle up, because this is going to be one bumpy ride.
Yeah, Still Not Seeing The Joy in Vellum
I’m sure Vellum is a great tool for people who want a one-stop-shop for great ebook formatting and don’t want to be mucking around with the book code. But one of the reasons I bought this app last year was because it came touted as, “You can export multiple publishing formats from a single file!” I took that to mean that I could store Amazon, Smashwords, and Google Play-specific pages in the same file, then select which pages I wanted to include when it was time to compile an ebook.
Yeah, no. Vellum will compile multiple ebook formats for Kindle, Apple, Nook, Kobo, Google, Generic Epub, and 5×8″ print and that’s faboo. Except that they seem to think that you’ll be using the same content for all those formats and no, I don’t—back matter links for Amazon and Smashwords/Google are completely different.
But I’ve already uploaded To My Muse to Vellum and I’ve been editing as I’ve checked pages to make sure that no weird formatting issues popped up (and they did, by the way), so I guess the wide version of Muse will be a Vellum edition. I really do need to move all of my publishing work up here to the desktop anyway so I’ll suck it up and go with the three platform editions like I did with Calibre, I guess.
No Writing Over the Weekend
Instead, I tweaked my Amazon ads and got rid of the non-performers, then pulled on my big girl panties to start learning how to use Vellum because I’d like to use it in compiling the wide versions of To My Muse and the Esposito County Shifters omnibus.
I can see why a lot of people like Vellum so much—it’s definitely easy and puts together great-looking ebooks. But I’m a little annoyed that I’m going to have to do the same thing I did with Calibre and create three different book files for Amazon (because I need Amazon-specific links in the back matter), Smashwords (because I need a Smashword-specific language on the copyright page along with the Smashwords ISBN, as well as back matter links that go to my website), and Google Play (with the Amazon copyright page and the Smashwords back matter links).
If there’s a way to keep all of those in Vellum and generate book types with selected pages can someone please tell me how to do that because I have combed through the Help pages and there doesn’t seem to be a way to select which pages should be included in a compile (that part I did like about Scrivener).
Weekends Are For Bookwork
Namely taking a good look at my AMS ads and ruthlessly culling anything that hasn’t brought in any sales in the last six months. Ads are easily my biggest expenditure, and while I don’t mind spending on them I want them to work for me, not gobbling up income without bringing in sales.
I’ve put limits on every portfolio so that when a certain amount is spent it pauses until the next month, but ads aren’t something you can just set and forget—you need to keep an eye on them, make sure they’re working, and prune them when they stop. It’ll be interesting when I crunch the numbers tomorrow for the taxes to see how much I spent on ads in 2022 versus income. I suspect the ratio ain’t gonna be all that great, another reason to start getting ruthless with the pruning.
So yeah, tomorrow is going to be dedicated to getting the tax numbers ready for the accountant, and next weekend I want to set up the closet in our bedroom (it’s a large walk-in space so I won’t be cramped) and start recording Shadow of the Swan as an audiobook. I’m also trying to work out how I want to sell it—I would prefer not to use Audible, especially since they’ve reduced the costs of audiobooks on their own stick, and Jeff Bezos doesn’t need any more of my money anyway. I know I can start a Shopify story and deliver the audiobook file via BookFunnel, but Shopify also takes a big chunk out of the audiobook cost and I don’t actually need a separate store—that’s what my website with its book pages is for. PayHip has also been recommended to me—apparently PayPal is the absolute best way to do it but it’s supposed to be a nightmare to set up for digital items. Must do some more investigation while I’m getting the audiobook ready.
And Here’s February
The ice outside is melting thanks to the rain that’s currently falling, although that’s predicted to freeze later tonight, but tomorrow will be in the 40s and we don’t need to go anywhere until Friday anyway so as long as we have heat and power I’m good.
Now that you’ve had the weather report from the clavicle of Texas, here’s my to do list for February:
- Finish and release Shifter Woods: Claw
- Finish Crystal Blade
- Prep and launch my Patreon (which requires writing a short story—I think I’m going to write about Fyodora and Callum’s arrival in Egypt, much to Henry’s dismay and Louisa’s amusement)
- Start recording the audiobook of Shadow of the Swan
I’m also toying with the idea of releasing a serial story on Vella. Remember that contemporary romance idea I had that turned into an SF romance? It would lend itself to an episodic form and I could definitely release at least one 2K episode a week. But I would have to ruthlessly outline it first to make sure that I didn’t wind up boxing myself into a corner halfway through the story and annoying the readers. I may work on the outline this week and see if I can get it into shape.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to churning out 3K for the day, whee…
Being a Small Business Owner is Tough
I wish I could say I started out in indie publishing as part of a carefully coordinated plan to jump from being a traditionally published author to being an indie author. Truth is, I did it on a bet—another writer challenged people to write an 80,000 word book, get it professionally edited and covered, and publish it in six months. I said, “I’ll do it in six weeks” and that became Empress of Storms, still my most successful book to date by orders of magnitude.
And Empress took off like a freaking rocket. I now realize that I was surfing the last months of indie publishing’s golden age; if I could go back in time to 2011 or so I would skip working with my original publisher entirely and publish all my books myself because people were making bank on ebooks back then. In three months Empress made more than all of my books with Evernight had combined. As I am not stupid and would like the Brit to be able to retire someday, I decided to jump into indie publishing and turned that bet of a book into a series while I waited for the Olympic Cove books to age out of my contract with Evernight.
Empress was the only book that earned me five figures, however. That golden age of indie books raking in tons of money is long gone and nowadays the market is glutted with indie books. If you want to make a career out of indie publishing, you have to realize that you are now a small business owner who needs a good, solid business plan to manage all the hats you have to wear.
As such, I’ve paid for courses on how to make Amazon and FB ads work for me, I have an accountant who tracks my assorted income streams and is worth her weight in gold come tax time, I’m on social media mainly to promote my work (and chat with people at the same time because an account that is only about SELL SELL SELL quickly gets ignored), I keep an eye on marketing trends and how to recognize the next big thing, I’m constantly tweaking blurbs and SEO terms to get better visibility, I read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s business of writing blogs religiously and joined 20 Books to 50K™ in order to learn how to improve my business acumen and sell more books (don’t get me started on registering copyrights, designating a executor for my literary estate, and all the legal paperwork that comes along with this gig)…
…and man, I’m tired. I’m hoping to get to the point eventually where I can afford a virtual PA who can help me with promotion and social media, but at the moment I’m doing it all myself plus all of the other things I have to do (cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry, budgeting, managing JJ’s needs, etc.). I’ve been able to streamline some processes, and clawing back weekends so that I only do bookwork instead of writing then has helped, but I really need a nice break at some point where I can sit around somewhere warm and drink margaritas.
That being said, I wouldn’t trade this for traditional publishing. Yes, indie is a ton more work but with all the effort I put into it I also reap all of the rewards. The bulk of the purchase price of a ebook goes to me, not to some publishing company in NYC who may or may not be showing me my actual royalty numbers. And when I start selling audiobooks (coming soon, I promise), I’m not going through ACX. I’ll most likely use BookFunnel as my fulfillment app and sell them via some sort of storefront app (I really want to sell ebooks, print books, and audiobooks directly from my website and use PayPal as the payment app but apparently PP is wickedly difficult to implement that way. I may need to find a PP wizard to help me out with that).
So yeah, lots of work, lots of tiredness, but in the end I believe the payoff will be worth it. Still want a vacation and a margarita, though…
Nicola Cameron Writes 