[TANSTAAFL: Do you read this blog?  I’m not asking if you like the posts, just whether you read them!  If so, don’t be passive.  React.  Write a comment—chew me out if you like (no foul language, please).  You can even receive a free ebook—see the bottom of the “Free Stuff and Contests” webpage; or write an honest review of one of my ebooks in exchange for the ebook.  In general, buy, read, and review some of my books.  Your participation motivates me and helps defray the costs of this website and my ebook releases.  Be active.  Help indie authors provide you with inexpensive entertainment.  It’s a two-way street, folks!]

#341: New books coming in 2014.  I can’t stop writing them.  I’m addicted now.  I know some of you are enjoying them, so please tell your friends and acquaintances.  My first release of 2014 will be Aristocrats and Assassins.  Yeah, I know, it sounds like historical fiction, but it’s another entry into the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” (C&C are aging—aren’t we all?—but they still have many cases left that you will enjoy hearing about).  This time the NYPD homicide detectives struggle against a terrorist who is kidnapping members of the European royal families.  His motivation is a frightening warning about how far terrorist organizations might go in order to bring Western civilization to its knees.  A pre-release extract will appear here soon.

In case you haven’t noticed, all my novels so far are related, points on a continuous timeline from 2014 (The Midas Bomb, the first C&C novel) to the far future (Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in your Hand!, the end of “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”), even though I often talk about three series within this group (“The Clones and Mutants Series” is the third).  In 2014, I’ll start producing some stand-alones, novels that are independent of this timeline (don’t worry—C&C will also have another mystery to solve).  These stand-alones will introduce new protagonists and stories about their struggles and successes.  Two on the immediate horizon are sci-fi thrillers (surprise, surprise!).  In future “News and Notices,” I will provide a few more teasers.  Who knows?  Maybe new series will come from them.

#342: Successful indie authors.  There were 150 KDP Select (Amazon) authors who sold more than 100,000 ebooks in 2013.  That’s 15 million ebooks sold outside of traditional publishing venues, and those are just the top 150.  By the time you add in everyone else (like yours truly), you’d expect the number to be in the multiple tens of millions.  In other words, 150 indie authors have won the lottery (> 100,000 ebooks sold).  I don’t how many have won the consolation prize (> 10,000 ebooks sold).  Moreover, from my limited sampling of fellow authors, many are mixing and matching successfully—books traditionally and indie published, ebooks and pbooks published, and turning old pbooks into ebooks.

Publishing is in turmoil.  Authors used to being spoiled by traditional publishers (e.g., Patterson and King) are starting to worry and are lashing out.  Some are even calling for government bailouts.  On the other hand, indie authors like me are worried that the ebook growth curve is flattening out and that there are too many authors and not enough readers.  Perhaps 2014 will be pivotal in that new advances will bring together traditional and indie publishing paradigms to make the former more fair and agile and the latter even more accepted.  Costs of the traditionally published book have to come down in order to compete.  And all indie authors should strive to make their product the best they can in order to compete.  Readers reward good, original, and entertaining writing, no matter what its source, and that’s what books are all about—entertaining the reader.

#343: How I write.  Although I’ve described the steps in my writing process here and in blog comments elsewhere, one thing I haven’t emphasized is my most important tool, my list of what-ifs.  I’m a full-time writer now, but in a previous life I needed to earn money to support a family.  I certainly didn’t become rich as a scientist, but my family was better off with this choice than if I had embarked on an official writing career in my early twenties.  I had to be content to collect story and character ideas during that previous life.  Many of the story ideas are just questions I pose to myself: What if X? or, What if instead of X, we have Y?  It doesn’t take too long to jot down these questions.  Try it.  What takes time is to organize them, because many of the what-ifs in my case were related.  Moreover, when writing a book, I might choose to answer several of them.  Try it.  Coffee house napkins are good for jotting what-ifs down, by the way (mom and pop’s and Peets are better than Starbucks).

I have no regrets about not being able to write extensively until later in life.  I have a wealth of writing material that I’ve collected, not to mention life experiences gathered from living and traveling abroad and experiencing much of the USA as well.  Although I don’t speak Chinese (I speak to Detective Dao-Ming Chen in English), I’m fluent in Spanish (Detective Rolando Castilblanco and I often carry on conversations in that language) and have a nodding acquaintance with Russian (arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin’s native tongue) and a few other languages (while writing the novel Soldiers of God, I even tried to learn a bit of Gaelic and Latin, but wasn’t very successful).  I’m not beating my chest here—I’m only trying to say that I have a nodding acquaintance with a few secondary languages present in our American melting pot that helps me add a bit of color to my prose.

#344: Konrath and me.  Of course, by becoming a full-time writer later in life, I was lucky to have the bridge from traditional publishing to indie publishing and cross it, which was neither acceptable nor truly possible before the digital internet age.  The inimitable Joe Konrath is one of those authors who led the way across that bridge.  Joined by Barry Eisler and others who have found many successes in indie publishing land (can’t say that I have), he often advises indie authors just like me to keep trucking (see the blog listed on my “Join the Conversation” webpage).  Just recently, he offered his publishing predictions for 2014.  I agree with most of them.  In particular, he promises some new personal initiatives involving libraries and downloads that sound interesting, although it’s not clear how they will play with Amazon’s KDP Select, which requires exclusivity.

My one problem with Joe is the naivete evidenced in two statements.  To quote: “So far we’ve been lucky.  With KDP Select and BookBub, [indie] authors have been able to get visible without reconnecting with longtime readers.”  Huh?  KDP Select is a vehicle for authors who have NO longtime readers to give away their ebooks periodically in order to improve name recognition.  BookBub is similar, because its key requirements are that ebooks be free or discounted by at least 50%, be the best deal available, and be offered in discount for a limited time only.

Why is Joe being naïve?  Because giving away ebooks NO longer works.  Giving away your ebooks now provides negative visibility—it only shows the world you’re a schmuck who works his butt off and then gives away the fruits of his labor to readers who want the good things in life to be free.  But the freeloaders have already loaded up their Kindles.  The KDP Select/BookBub model no longer works because the market is so flat and saturated that an indie author can’t even give away books anymore—ergo, he will not be deriving any name recognition by giving away ebooks.

I’ll admit that I fell for the KDP Select model.  I’ll still use it, I suppose, but not for giving ebooks away, because Mark Coker’s Smashwords has done absolutely nothing for me.  I’ll complete “The Clones and Mutants Series” to a trilogy on Smashwords by adding No Amber Waves of Grain, but that’ll be the end of my participation there I think.  Since all my future ebooks will be exclusively Amazon (download their free reading app for your non-Kindle device), I might as well use KDP Select, which requires exclusivity, but if Joe comes through with his library and download plans, maybe I’ll end the exclusivity.  It’s not required, by the way.

My goal in life is to entertain readers, as many as possible.  My ebooks are all reasonably priced—many enjoyable hours of reading for very little investment—but I’ll no longer give them away.  I’m willing to offer them at reduced prices to libraries (I already do so on Smashwords, and maybe in the future via Joe’s initiative), but I no longer will be a schmuck.  Indie publishing allows me to keep costs to a minimum.  I already pass those savings on to you, dear reader, but I still have to support this website and pay out certain expenses in order to release my ebooks.  I maintain an open mind about all new ideas in this new, crazy intenet and digital publishing world, but I can’t afford to be a schmuck any longer.  Sorry about that if you’re looking for free reading material from me—TANSTAAFL.

#345: Google+ v. Facebook.  The word is out that Facebook is going to be much more commercial and start charging for everything they can.  Pox on their house!  Friends and fans on Facebook will still see my blog posts are shared there, but I’m going to begin cutting down on the time I spend on FB (I already have).  Please note that this is nothing personal against you—it’s just that Zuckerberg et al are becoming too greedy for their own good.  I’ve had a problem with their programming, continuously changing format, and privacy options for some time.  It’s time to try something new.  I’ve resisted Google+, mainly because I don’t fully understand it, but many people have recommended it to me.  I’ll see how that goes.  (By the way, I’ll never use Twitter—I can’t say anything worthwhile in 140 characters and I don’t need to follow what any political or pop star manages to say in 140 characters either.)

In libris libertas….    

This entry was posted on Friday, January 3rd, 2014 at 4:00 am and is filed under News and Notices from the Writing Trenches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.