The Hanged Man

Are you familiar with the tarot card The Hanged Man? He's from the Robin Wood Tarot Deck, which is available here.

He means "Life interrupted. Change in your point of view."

This has happened. Not so much the 'change in point of view', but the life interrupted thing? 100%.

That means this won't be about publishing options. You know what those are. We've all of us peered at the various modes, venues, pros, cons, contracts, pitfalls and deathtraps. And wondered if maybe, just maybe, the grass isn't greener in someone else's pasture. I've come to the stunningly obvious conclusion that there is no right answer. Only the right for you answer. And I still don't know what's right for me. That's all I have on the subject because Hanged Man.

Except. It isn't the man that's hanging. Nope. It's my house. Look.

That's our boat. And our home. High and dry on the hard. At Christmas time, a key component on the drive leg (part of the engine) broke and we could no longer put the boat in reverse. Not a problem, unless you want to dock. Ever. Or get out of dock. Think of trying to get your car into or out of your garage without reverse. Now do it on ice that's moving under you. Yeeeeeeeeah. Clearly, this has to be fixed. Got into the process of fixing that itty, bitty broken part only to find the metal of the drive disintegrating. Seriously. BIG chunk of metal was gone like something had taken a bite out of it. Apparently Poseidon takes what sacrifices he wants and in this case, he needed a chunk of cast aluminum for something. We went from $10 part needing repair to having to replace the entire drive leg. That isn't a $10 part. Multiply by 300.

Anywho. The leg was ordered from the UK, ransomed from customs, and delivered. The boat yard gave me a haul out date and time. And here I am. Took three people to get the boat out of dock to make the trip. Docking here in Port Townsend was a bit like playing bumper cars, but I limited it to bumping my boat and the dock, not anyone else's boat - all under the eye of the local Coast Guard station. Sigh.

My brain is all boat right now, because I'm paying by the day for that spot on dry land while I replace that drive leg, and my family is scattered to the four winds because we can't live in our home while it's in the yard. So I'm crazier than usual. Sorry. Still. The trip up did have it's good points. I even had help navigating.

Photo credit to Emily Olesin, friend extraordinaire who was willing to get up at 5AM to help crew the boat several hours north to our haul out.

Also: Happy Friday the 13th!

5 Pros & Cons of Self-Publishing

I am one of the self-publishers in the bordello; some call us "author-preneurs" or "indie-authors." Some have other less than awesome names for us, but thhhpppp on them. There are advantages and drawbacks to this path, just as there are with Traditional Publishing. Since I don't have firsthand experience with NYC, I'll defer to my housemates and stick to what I know.

Here are my Top 5 Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing:

Pros:

• Control: For better or worse, you have the final say in 90% of what, when, and how your book is unleashed on the world. It's awesome. It's frustrating and frightening. It's an enormous time-suck. If you're not comfortable with managing processes and owning accountability, this ain't the path for you.
• That missing 10% goes to technology, distributors, and collaborators.
• Content: Whether you write super-niche stories or last month's trendy genre, nobody is going to tell you "you can't." How well your book is received by the public is something you can influence but not control. Accept that. 
• Pay for an editor, please, for the love of any Divine Being, pay for an experienced editor. A dev editor is good, a proof editor is a bonus. A copy editor is a must. 
• Deadlines: They are yours to set, to meet, to watch fly past, or to constantly adjust. Because self-publishing does require you to collaborate with other people at various points, you can't be completely blasé about schedules and dates. But if you're a slooow writer like me, you can create a release plan that accommodates your sloth-like creative process. If you're one of those super-fast writers who can churn out quality books quarterly or faster, then there is nothing to stop you from doing so.
• Ownership: Of your name, your world, your characters, your rights, your time, your everything. Want to release an audio version of your book? Do it. Want to branch into graphic novels? Go for it. Want to finish out the series even though sales have declined? The fans will thank you. Prequel? Novella? Why not? No asking permission. No worrying about conflicts of interest or interest in general. You're limited only by time and resources.
• Do-Overs: That cover you loved last year fall flat with buyers? Redo it. Those super-modern references now out of date? Change 'em. Find all the typos after you hit "publish"? Fix 'em, reupload. 

Cons:

• Financial Investment: Like any start-up, don't expect to be in the black in your first year. How quickly you can build a large backlist directly affects how long it will take you to earn a profit. Maintaining a profit depends on how often you release new books. 
• Predators, Plagiarists, and Pirates: Yes, it's a Trad Publishing problem too. They have legal departments and parent companies with teeth. You have a bookmark file of the DMCA & Take Down Notices to deal with Pirates. You pray for enough readers who care to tell you if chunks of your work are showing up in someone else's book, blog, anthology, or toilet paper roll. You're hooked into at least a half-dozen self-pubbing communities to stay abreast of the latest predatory practices, people, and tech. 
• Brick & Mortar Placements: Don't expect to see your book on an actual tangible shelf anywhere, especially not a national chain or airport kiosk. You might be able to swing it with local indie shops. Part of it is stigma (there is a lot of shitty self-pubbed work out there, not gonna pretend otherwise; OTOH, there's a lot of awesome work out there too). Part of it is the Unsolds and Returns bookstore business model. Part of it is bookstores' slow adoption of the Expresso Print-In-Shop-On-Demand technology. Yes, there are ways to get your book in a store. Is the ROI worth it? YMMV.
• Conventions: Not every book convention welcomes self-pubbers. Even if we provide our own paperbacks and/or manage the sales of said books. Initially, convention organizers simply didn't know how to incorporate self-published (and at the time typically e-book-only) authors, promotions, and sales into their traditional Con model. Self-publishing has been around long enough now that the know-how is there; however, the desire isn't. It is 100% marginalization.
• Translations/International: So.Many.Boobytraps. Beyond the expected distribution challenges and finding quality translators, there's a quagmire of legal differences. It's not impossible, and there are authors who have success in non-English markets. But this is a time you really, really want to hire a boutique firm who deals with everything for you.  If you can connect with a US agent who specializes in foreign rights sales, that is a sweet spot for many self-pubbers.

So, is self-publishing something you want to try? Check back every day this week to see what other self-publishers, hybrid-published, traditionally published,and micro-press published authors have to say.  You may find a mix of options is the best path for you.

Why I Like Being Hybrid

Happy Mother's Day to everyone, whether your mom was good or terrible, still with you or not, and whether anyone's ever acknowledged your own mothering. Special love and gratitude to both my own mother - the blonde in our family photo there - and to my second mother, my aunt sitting next to her. I'm blessed to have you in my life!

Secondly, we have a winner in the WORD WHORES REBRANDING BAKEOFF! Okay, no pastry items were involved (more's the pity), but we sorted through name suggestions from numerous sources and voted on our favorite.

The new name?? THE SFF SEVEN.

I like it a whole bunch! The change will kick in next Sunday, May 15. We'll keep you apprised!

In the meanwhile, we have seven winners! People who kindly brainstormed name ideas are:

Sullivan McPig
Stacy McKitrick
JanetLee
Heather
Kevin Reitz
B.E. Sanderson
Lynne Facer

You get to pick any book from any of the SFF Seven! Comment here to let us know the book and format preferred, along with a way to privately contact you to send it. Thank you, everyone, for playing!

In other news, to celebrate the upcoming release of THE PAGES OF THE MIND (and the concurrent release of THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN), Book One of the entire series, THE MARK OF THE TALA, is on sale for only $2.99. If you've been thinking about getting caught up on the series, now's a great time to get started!

Amusingly (or not, really) I saw a customer review somewhere that said they'd bought the book at the sale price, but then "the author raised the ebook price to $9.99 for the subsequent books." So, yeah, I know that MY PUBLISHER, Kensington, has the standard ebook price set at $9.99, which is a lot for the current market. I can't do anything about that. That's a drawback of traditional publishing - which is having a publisher, like mine in New York City - that was established before newer publishing models, and focuses on print book production, distribution and sales.

It's kind of interesting to me that self-publishing has become so well-established and prevalent these days that readers assume the authors set prices. But I also understand that these things are not transparent to the average reader. 

This week, we'll all be discussing the different forms of publication and which work best for us. We've got a variety of publishing paths in this group, so there should be a nice variety in the discussions. 

For my part, I consider myself to be hybrid at this point - which means I have books both with my traditional publishers and that I self-publish. I'm ever so grateful that I have the option to do both. A lot of authors who've been successful in the traditional publishing model had difficulties with the drawbacks there - price-setting, yes, but also long lead times, corporate politics, books going out of print, never to be resurrected, etc. With self-publishing so much more accessible and acceptable these days - and here I'd like to tip my hat to the intrepid writers who truly blazed this trail and made it so smooth and even for later-adopters like me - being a hybrid writer makes a great deal of sense to me. 

There are a lot of things I do like about traditional publishing, and I'm forever glad I both took that path and had the opportunity to do so. That's something important to remember - many authors who self-publish took that path because the doors to traditional publishing remained firmly closed to them, for a variety of reasons. For them, it wasn't a "choice" so much as the most viable alternative.

Similarly, however, authors who did take the traditional path are not stupid. And I feel I have to say this because I've been told to my face by more than one person that I'm stupid for going with traditional publishing instead of self-publishing, where I could have more control and make more money. I have many good reasons for making the decisions I did. One of them is that money isn't everything. It's not even the most important thing. 

Also, we decisions we do for complex reasons, many of them in the privacy of our hearts and minds. Chuck Wendig once said that, when people criticize him for going with traditional publishing when he could be making more money self-publishing, he feels like they're saying he should have married someone other than his wife.

I asked him if I could quote him here on that because that's a perfect analogy of how it feels. Nobody else can make these choices for us, these powerful decisions that affect the course of our lives. Second-guessing those choice, particularly by someone who hasn't been inside our skulls, hasn't walked in the quiet of our hearts, is simply inappropriate.

So, this week, as you hear each of our seven weigh in on the various publishing paths, keep that in mind. The kind of publishing that will work best for you is the one that works for YOU. Educate yourself. Weigh the options. But choose according to your heart, mind and gut - not someone else's.

After all - you'll be the one married to your decisions. 

What Happens While You're Making Other Plans

 

You know the saying life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. It defines my relationship with long term planning. Yes. I need a plan, it provides direction without being as bossy as the GPS in my car. Plans, for me, have to be loosely held otherwise all life gets crushed out of them.

Owning the boat we do and living aboard it were long term plans that came to fruition. Publishing - also a long term plan that worked. Sorta. In true plot-twist fashion, nothing quite works out the way you'd envisioned. I'd imagined a long string of scifi titles to my name by now. Instead, the publisher asked for anything that wasn't scifi. Well okay. There's that bossy GPS after all, yelling at me that I'm taking a left NOW into other genres until I find home.

The reason the cat in the sunbeam is up there is that he illustrates one of the finer points of long term planning. Every single one of us tucks our hopes and ambitions and drives into our goals. Those goals reflect some of the finest points of our aspirations for ourselves. And then the universe hands us a situation that shows us that our priorities weren't what we thought they were. Or maybe I'm just a terrible planner. Point is, the elderly gentleman above has set his paws on his path out of this life. It's a long slope for him, one that could take another year to two years, if I'm lucky. The trade off is that I'm on call for him 24x7. Medications. Shoveling food into him. He cannot be left for more than four hours at a time. I understand it's a little like having itty bitty kids - cause he gets me up every few hours of the night to tend him. And not a bit of this was factored into my long term plans. Any plans, really. Sure. I still have long term plans and I am still working toward them. But let me stress how this guy getting sick utterly altered what I believed were my priorities.

Most of us think we understand our priorities. I'd submit that we don't. Not entirely. We're human and we operate from a particular blindness that assumes everyone and everything we love will remain the same - unchanged. Forever. Intellectually, we get that's not true. But until the severe mental illness strikes you or one of the people you most count on in the world, until that panicked midnight emergency run somewhere with someone you'd trade places with in a heartbeat, your priorities haven't been put to the test.

Every one of us are going to run into bumps in the long term planning road. It's why I've learned to hang onto my plans loosely. Because when life happens, it sometimes pays to examine your fistful of plans and cast aside any that no longer make sense. Once you've done that, though, the vital thing is to keep going. Creep toward the goal. Crawl if that's what you have to do. Just keep moving in the direction of the dream. Whatever it may be. That's where you'll find me. Out there hobbling along my road, muttering at my GPS to shut the fuck up.

WHEW! A LOADED PLATE OF PROMO

Okay, this topic really rings for me because I just got done with back to back promo gigs. In the last weeks of June to the first weeks of July I was promoting the 2nd e-novella in the Deacon Chalk series SPIDER'S LULLABY. I had about three days off and then it was right back into promoting the 2nd novel BLOOD AND SILVER (which came out last Tuesday and is kicking ass at a bookstore near you so go get it! *end shameless plug*)

Speaking of which here is my pic for this post.

THAT is James DiNonno and he is the cover model for the Deacon Chalk series. You are welcome ladies.

Back to the subject at hand.

When it comes to promo I just about killed myself for book one. I wrote something on the lines of 30+ guest blogs and interviews with an average word count of 1500 words. I sent hundreds of emails to get review copies in the hands of bloggers. I facebooked, tweeted, and blogged. I also did my fair amount of conventioning and author events. Moving around the Southeast wherever I could.

It was a LOT of miles, a lot of hours, and a LOT of words.

It was also a LOT OF FUN. I had a blast. But I was tired by the end.
I'm an old man. 42 this year and still running a business, having a family, AND writing books. Plus, some of you know my family had a personal tragedy that happened just around this time last year that rocked the state of our household. We are better now, but it was a lot for us to go through.

So the point of this ramble is that I cannot think of anything I need to do that I am not. I work my ass off to promote the books and get the word out.
But here is some advice for those of you with books to promote.
MAKE FRIENDS WITH BOOK BLOGGERS.
Seriously. They are gold when it comes to letting the reading public know about your book. Bloggers are like the CNN of the publishing world. The publishers, for the most part, are doing big stroke promotion for your book (if any at all) while they are selling someone else's also. Bloggers are targeted. They work close to the readers and they can make your book a bestseller.
They love authors, they love books, and they love to share. Bloggers do what they do out of love and they get no respect from publishing by and large. And you read blogs, we all do. They rock.

That's all for now folks, I have to get back tot he wordmines. I am working on not one but TWO all new manuscripts that I would like to get done before Dragoncon in 2 1/2 weeks!

HEAD DOWN. MAKE WORDS.

GETTING THERE IN THE RIGHT BOAT (a metaphor about small press publishing)

Publishing nowadays is a big ocean. That ocean has a lot of waves and even some storms.  If you wanna be a writer then you have to pick the right boat to get you across that ocean.

 (yes, I know that is a pic that has NONE of the ships I am about to use as a metaphor....don't get lippy)

You have six big cruise ships that can carry you across. They are hard to get onto and they go in one direction, which is great unless you decide to change your destination.  You want to go somewhere else? Welllllllll, tough.  Those are the big six publishers. The "New York" publishers.

You can also get out in your own tiny speedboat of independent publishing. You can move faster, dart around obstacles, and basically pick your destination and head there, changing your mind in mid trip. However, it takes more work, you can't just set sail and then sit back. A big wave can come up out of nowhere and knock your boat off course. And sometimes the real truth is your boat may not take you all the way across that ocean. You may not make it to your destination.

In between the cruise ships and your own speed boat though are a number of choices, an entire armada of ships of all sizes who can take you damn near anywhere you want to go....if you match the right publisher to the right destination.

These are small presses. They are publishers who run from tiny "couple of books a year" presses to publishers who can get you the same placement and distribution as New York can.

Most small presses, the good ones (cause we are NOT discussing the craptastic scam "publishers" out there. Be informed before you sign for goodness sakes, we have the internet these days, do your research.), are solid businesses. They have contacts and resources and the means to build your career. They can take you to your destination or even just part of the way.

Maybe you need developing as a writer. You wrote a good book, but you still need some seasoning...a small press can develop you.  Maybe you have a book that is good, but so tuned into a specific sub-genre that a big time publisher can't risk it, that is something a small press can do.

Small presses are great. I have many friends who run small presses or write for them. And hell, there is something to be admired in someone deciding to strike out on their own and make a business.

Here are some of the small presses I like. This is NOT a comprehensive list. It's not even a recommendation, just a bit of advice/opinion.
(the names of the presses should be links...if they don't work just use your Google-Fu)

Samhain Publishing.
Mostly e-book, mostly erotica and romance but now with a great new horror line, I really like Samhain. I don;t write for them, but everyone I know likes them and they seem like good folks. And, if you write horror, definitely a place to look into.

Kerlak Enterprises
Run by Allan Gillbreath this press is at a LOT of conventions. Allan is good peeps. They do a good amount of books and really seem to be pushing harder every day. I'll be doing a story in an upcoming anthology from them this winter.

Seventh Star Press
Another publisher who really works the convention circuit. Their books are really good looking and everyone I know who pubs through them is super nice. They mostly put out fantasy but do have some urban fantasy and others.

Bell Bridge Books
My good friends Kalayna Price and John Hartness are with Bell Bridge. They both love them. I will say they have a great presence online and at shows. Their stuff seems to be pretty top notch.  Like I said, both my friends are really happy to be with them.

One Buck Horror
If you have a short horror story then look into this publisher. They do collections of short fiction every quarter in a 5-story collection in e-release.  Chris and Kris are AWESOME. Easy to work with, nice, friendly. And they pay pro rates and ON TIME which is huge. My short zombie story is in their special edition ONE BUCK ZOMBIE (.99 cents everywhere fine ebooks are sold......end shameless promotion)
Working with them was an absolute pleasure.

So look into small presses, you might find your boat man.