This is going to be a rather long post. I’ll preface it with some demographic trends among my generation, then tie that in with my situation and how I got here. From there, we’ll see where it goes. I was born in the early 80s, which technically makes me a Millennial, though it doesn’t always… Continue reading A Change in Direction
Tag: indie publishing
Why money should not flow to the writer
Yog’s law states that money should flow to the writer. It’s an old aphorism in the publishing industry, from a time when self-publishing was synonymous with vanity publishing. According to this 2003 post by Theresa Nielsen-Hayden: For years now, we’ve been dinning Yog’s Law into young writers’ heads: Money always flows toward the writer. Alternate… Continue reading Why money should not flow to the writer
Mid-May update
Holy cow, it’s been forever since I’ve written a proper update. For a while there, it seemed to be nothing but more of the same. Then I got caught up with all the other things that come along with writing and publishing, and the blog sort of fell by the wayside. Don’t worry, I’m still… Continue reading Mid-May update
Thoughts on #AmazonClosed and disappearing KU reads
There are a lot of scandals happening in the indie publishing world right now. The latest one has to do with Amazon deleting KU reads from March: some authors have seen their page reads retroactively revised down as much as ninety percent. The speculation is that this is connected with Amazon deactivating several customer accounts,… Continue reading Thoughts on #AmazonClosed and disappearing KU reads
Is there a “summer slump” in book sales?
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been crunching the data from my last seven years of indie publishing, and it’s yielded some very interesting information. Here’s another graph that I managed to pull out: This graph shows all of the monthly averages for royalties earned and units sold, across all my books, from… Continue reading Is there a “summer slump” in book sales?
Seven years of ebook pricing data
Last October, Dean Wesley Smith wrote an interesting blog post on the subject of pricing. As an indie writer (or really, as a small business owner in general), pricing is one of those things that’s constantly on my mind. Pricing too high can be fatal for any business, but pricing too low can be a… Continue reading Seven years of ebook pricing data
Thoughts on Mark Coker’s 2018 Publishing Industry Predictions
January is a time for making forecasts and predictions, and Mark Coker of Smashwords certainly did not disappoint. I have a lot of respect for Mark Coker, not only for being one of the pioneers of indie publishing, but for continuing to share his data and insights with us over the years. That said, I… Continue reading Thoughts on Mark Coker’s 2018 Publishing Industry Predictions
What I would do if I were starting out now
In a word, short stories. Write a bunch of short stories. One or two a week if possible. Keep that up for a year or two, tapering off at the end to transition into novels. But keep writing short stories even after novels have become the main focus. Make a serious effort while writing short… Continue reading What I would do if I were starting out now
Rethinking free
I recently read an interesting blog post on Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, about how, how not, and whether to make your books free. The conclusion he comes to is this: Free is short time, limited supply, and never on the major bookstore shelves. In other words, no permafree, no free pulsing, and no publishing free… Continue reading Rethinking free
Updating my backmatter
I read an interesting post on the Bookbub Partners Blog a couple of weeks ago, where they shared some of their findings on backmatter optimization. “Backmatter” is all the stuff that goes in the back of the book, like teasers, first chapters, buy links, author bios, and the like. Way back when I first started… Continue reading Updating my backmatter