Kris Rusch – One Thousand And One Parsecs

#GiveThanks Day Four

(45) I’m grateful for Jordan Peterson and his courage to speak the truth as he sees it, even in the face of incredible opposition.

(46) I’m grateful for the “intellectual dark web” and how they show that there are still intelligent people who can discuss important issues with those with whom they disagree.

(47) I’m grateful for the voices in the alternative media that push back against the gaslighting of the mainstream media.

(48) On a less political note, I’m grateful for Mike Duncan and his History of Rome podcast, which taught me far more about the Romans and their impact on our world than my college education ever did.

(49) I’m also grateful for Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast, which has done the same thing for the history of our modern era.

(50) I’m grateful for Dan Carlin and his numerous podcasts, especially Hardcore History.

(51) I’m grateful for the Writing Excuses podcast, which was very influential in how I developed my writing craft back when I was just getting started.

(52) I’m grateful for the Six Figure Authors podcast and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing podcast, and the excellent marketing and publishing ideas that they give me.

(53) I’m grateful for the Sell More Books Show and how it helps me to stay up to date with what’s happening in indie publishing.

(54) I’m grateful for the Mythulu cards that my wife got me for my birthday, and how they’ve helped me this nanowrimo to come up with some great story ideas.

(55) I’m grateful for Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, and the influence they were in helping me to decide to self publish back in 2011.

(56) I’m grateful for Life, the Universe, and Everything, and how that conference was and continues to be critical in shaping my writing career.

(57) I’m grateful for the writing group that I was fortunate enough to marry into, and the good advice and feedback that I receive from it.

(58) I’m grateful for Quark, BYU’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, and for how it provided me with a community of like-minded geeks and aspiring writers in college.

(59) I’m grateful for Leading Edge and the opportunity that I had to read for their slushpile, back when I was still learning my craft.

(60) I’m grateful for all of the other science fiction conventions I’ve been able to attend over the years, including Worldcon, World Fantasy, FanX, CONduit, and others.

Speaking Out Again

Hello there.

It’s been a very long time since I posted on this blog. I wonder if anyone is still following it. About a year ago, I pivoted from the blog to my newsletter, and while that’s going well, this blog has been mostly neglected.

And it would have continued that way, if not for recent events. I’m talking, of course, about the ~~peaceful protests~~ ~~race riots~~ ~~Marxist insurrection~~ ~~domestic color revolution~~ whatever the hell is happening in the United States right now. But the thing that really pushed me to action was Kris Rusch’s latest business post: Speaking Out.

Until that post, Kris was one of the people I admired most in the publishing industry. I’ve followed her business blog since 2010, and she was one of the most influential people in convincing me to take the plunge and self-publish. It’s been one of the best decisions of my life, not just from a career perspective, but from a personal perspective as well.

In her latest post, however, I feel that Kris went over the cliff with the rest of our fractured country. Here are the parts that got to me:

The letter [Jeff Bezos] posted on his Instagram page from some racist named “Dave” (last name redacted) told Bezos he would lose customers if he continued supporting Black Lives Matter. The letter is breathtaking in its racism…
…the people who bother me the most are the folks who, for economic or political reasons, can ignore the racism and hatred that spews daily from the White House…
I draw the line at hatred, racism, and bigotry in all its forms. I can’t respect a bigot. I don’t want to be near a racist…
If this post makes you feel the urge to write me a screed or tell me that I should tolerate the bigots for the sake of unity, please do me a favor and just leave.

What is a “racist”? What is a “bigot”? To the left-wing ideologues who control the cultural narrative right now, it’s anyone who dares to oppose their radical agenda. The mayor of Minneapolis is “racist” because he won’t abolish the police, in the midst of the most violent and destructive riots that city has ever seen. White people who refuse to literally kneel before people of color and denounce their white privilege in communist-style struggle sessions are now considered “bigots.” Anyone who dares to utter any sort of criticism or counter-argument to the narrative of Black Lives Matter is fired, canceled, humiliated, doxxed, and destroyed.

Does Kris not see this? When you are so ideologically possessed that a “bigot” is anyone who refuses to (literally) kowtow to your ideology, a tolerant and diverse society becomes impossible? When speech is violence and violence is speech, violence will be used to silence speech. Those who are kind to the cruel inevitably become cruel to the kind.

I tried to post a comment on her blog, explaining that some of these “bigots” who have unfollowed her or withdrawn their Patreon support aren’t doing it because they want to “silence” her, but because they feel she doesn’t recognize that they have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with her, and aren’t the bigots she thinks they are. Yes, Kris, it’s important to speak out, but it’s also important to listen.

What happened next was all too predictable. On a blog post about the importance of speaking up, Kris silenced me. The only comments that she has allowed are the ones that fawn over her and tell her she’s right. Typical.

I can endure a lot of bullshit, but two things I absolutely cannot abide: gaslighting and hypocrisy. So ultimately, it was this episode with Kris, a person I used to admire and respect, that spurred me into action.

This blog is going to become a lot more active in the coming weeks and months. The newsletter will still be my main vehicle for reaching out to readers and cultivating fans, but the blog will be a place to share my more controversial thoughts and opinions. That said, I intend to be very deliberate and conscientious about what I post here, and avoid shitposting, spewing outrage, or going off on political rants.

My working assumption is that the chaos engulfing our country will continue to escalate through the 20’s, and that things will get much, much worse before they get better. We may see an American holocaust. We may see American gulags. We are already experiencing the digital ghettoization of libertarian and conservative voices—or, more accurately, voices that refuse to conform to the cultural and ideological narrative of the progressive left.

That said, I am still optimistic about the future. I believe that after the chaos and violence plays itself out, we will return to the core values that make us Americans. The Republic will survive. Liberty will prevail. Enough of us will refuse to go over the cliff with everyone else that we will, when all of this is over, restore our country.

When that happens, the only people with any moral authority will be the ones who refused to bend the knee—the ones who had the courage to speak out at the risk of losing their careers, their livelihoods, and in some cases even their lives. People like Jordan Peterson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Carl “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, and others who stand in the face of cancel culture to call out the lies—the gaslighting and hypocrisy—and serve the truth.

This is my mission statement for my writing career:

To serve the truth and empower my readers to be better people for reading my books.

I cannot remain silent and accomplish this mission. The forces that push us to bend the knee are the ones that compel us to speak out, because we must speak out if we refuse to go over the cliff with the rest of humanity.

I recognize that this is essentially the same argument that Kris was making. And on this point, I think she’s right. Where she goes off is in calling anyone a bigot who falls outside of her narrow echo chamber. I despise echo chambers and don’t intend to fall into any of them.

So I’m going to set some rules.

First, I’m going to assume that anyone who engages with this content is a reasonable person who has come in good faith, no matter their views. No matter how vociferously you disagree with me, I will always strive to see the best in you, and to be generous with the benefit of the doubt.

Second, I’m going to assume that most of my fans and readers are going to disagree, on some level, with the more controversial things that I post here. Some of them will agree and voice support, but others will roll their eyes and click away. I’m not going to fall into the trap of thinking that all good people see the world the way that I do, because that way lies madness.

Third, and most importantly, I’m going to bet that if I keep the first two assumptions on the forefront of my mind with everything that I post here, my readers and fans will stay with me even when I share an opinion with which they vociferously disagree. In today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, that’s a very dangerous assumption to make, but I don’t think my readers are the kind of people who would jump off the cliff with the rest of humanity.

I think there’s still a majority in this country who see the insanity for what it is, but don’t know what to do about it. That’s the person I’m writing this blog for: the one who’s wondering if they’re the only sane one in a world gone mad. Until just a couple of years ago, that was who I was. But now, I believe that even with all the craziness right now, there are a lot more people like us than we realize.

So yeah, the blog is back, and it’s going to get spicy. I may lose a few readers because of it, though hopefully not too many as I keep to the three rules that I listed above.

And if you have any thoughts or reactions, I’m interested to hear from you! Like I said at the start of this post, I have no idea if anyone still follows this blog, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. The newsletter will remain my main focus, but I’ll post to this blog as often as the spirit moves me, which may be sporadic but won’t be never. And I’ll try to keep it as timely and interesting as I can.

2020-01-23 Newsletter Author’s Note

This author’s note originally appeared in the January 23rd edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.

Every week, when I sit down to write the author’s note for this newsletter, I try to come up with something that you’ll find genuinely interesting or insightful. I don’t want to talk about myself too much, since that tends to get boring rather quickly, and I also don’t want to talk too much about writing, since for non-writers that also tends to get boring. Most of my fans probably aren’t professional writers, and those of my colleagues who do subscribe to this newsletter probably just want to keep tabs on what I’m doing and aren’t themselves fans (except for you, J.R. Handley).

Then again, since you’re someone who 1. actually opens the newsletter, and 2. bothers to actually read it, you probably do have some interest in both me and my writing. So I hope you’ll indulge me, because the thing that’s on my mind this week has to do with a couple of blog posts I read by Kristine Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.

I have tremendous respect for Kris and Dean. Their opinions on writing and publishing had a huge impact on my decision to jump into indie publishing nearly nine years ago. That said, their advice has been a mixed bag: some of it ranks among the best writing and publishing advice I’ve heard, but some of it has sent me down the wrong path, sometimes for years.

On Wednesday, Dean wrote a blog post where he explained his big secret:

It actually boils down to one simple thing… I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. Or of my writing, or methods of writing.
I just flat don’t care.

In other words, the grand key to understanding all of Dean’s writing and publishing advice is this: don’t give a damn about anything else except having fun.

All of a sudden, everything began to fall into place; both his good advice (don’t let agents scam you, trust your own voice, don’t let writing groups boss you around, don’t devalue your work) and his bad advice (never revise anything, never read reviews, do all of your own covers, write everything quickly, don’t outline anything, don’t actively promote your books). It all comes down to his core philosophy of not giving a damn.

But is that really the best approach?

Dean’s advice is very good for writing a certain kind of book. But the kind of books that I want to write are the ones that I like to read: books that really stick with you, either because they get you to think deeply about something, or feel deeply about something in a way you’ve never felt before. And I may be wrong, but Deans approach of not giving a damn seems like a terrible way to write those books.

Another thing that Dean always talks about is “critical voice.” Basically, all writers have two voices in their head: one that understands story and makes you want to write, and the “critical voice” that tells you what’s wrong with everything and makes you want to give up writing forever. Maybe he’s right about that. But does it necessarily follow that the only way to write anything is to get your critical voice to shut up?

For the last few years, I’ve been developing a new method for outlining my books. I used to think that outlining is terrible because it takes all the fun out of writing—in other words, exactly what Dean says. Instead, outlining helps me to keep my “critical voice” in check, because when something is broken the outline helps me to see where the problem is, and how to fix it. It also helps me to eat the proverbial elephant one small bite at a time.

Is there a useful place for “critical voice” in the writing process? Can giving a damn actually be the key to writing a better book, or making writing fun again?

This past week, I was writing a new scene in Star Wanderers from Noemi’s point of view. It takes place during the events of Fidelity and Benefactor, when Mariya’s father loses his job and the family doesn’t know what they’re going to do. It felt like a slog until I realized that the conversation between these two characters, Mariya and Noemi, offered a really interesting chance to explore questions of faith, doubt, and the problem of evil. Suddenly, the scene really came alive for me, and the key was asking myself “what can I offer my readers here? What will they take away from this?” In other words, giving a damn actually made the writing more fun, not less.

A few weeks ago, Kris wrote a really interesting blog post where among other things she said:

If a writer isn’t afraid of what she’s writing, then she’s doing it wrong because she’s not stretching herself. You should always reach just a bit, go a place you haven’t gone before.

I like that. And if I didn’t actually care about what you or others thought—if it was all about myself and “having fun”—I don’t think I’d ever really stretch myself as a writer. Or perhaps I would, but not in the right way. I’d be like one of those bodybuilders, with massive pecks and teeny tiny legs.

All of which is to say that I think I finally understand now why Dean Wesley Smith’s writing and publishing advice is so hit-or-miss. And also, that I understand a little better how to write the kind of books that made me want to write in the first place.

Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content

In the last 5-6 years, I’ve noticed a shift in most of the media content that I consume. Content has proliferated at an unprecedented rate, and the churn—or the rate at which new content pushes out old content—has become one of the driving factors for those of us trying to make our careers in this way.

We see it on YouTube, where three or four adpocalypses have massacred various channels, and where copystrikes have become part of the game. YouTubers who don’t put up content every day, like Tim Pool or Pewdiepie, quickly lose views and subscribers even when they do put up new content.

We see it in video games, where companies like Paradox are now making the bulk of their money on DLCs, some of which make the vanilla version almost unplayable. Back in the 90s, a game was a game was a game. You could get expansion packs for some of them, but that was just bonus content, not a core part of the gaming experience, or the business model.

It’s a huge issue in journalism, where the news cycle has accelerated so much that weeks feel like months, and months feel like years now. Remember the Kavanaugh hearings? That was less than a year ago. The Covington kids controversy happened this year. Everyone is in such a race to break the story that the quality of journalism has fallen considerably, but by the time the corrections come out, the news cycle has already moved on. Fake news indeed.

The churn has also become a major thing in the indie publishing scene. For the last few years, the established wisdom (if there is any) is that you need to publish a new book about every other month—preferably every other week—to keep your entire catalog from falling into obscurity. There’s a 30-day cliff and a 90-day cliff, at which points the Amazon algorithm stops favoring your books over new ones. And now, to complicate things, AMS ads are taking over from more organic book recommendation methods, like also-boughts. The treadmill is real, and it’s accelerating.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I can think of a few things that may be driving it. I don’t have any statistics or firm arguments to back it up yet, just a couple of hunches, but it’s still worth bringing them up to spark a discussion.

First, social media has taken over our society, not only in public life, but in personal life as well. Now more than ever before, we use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media to interact with each other. The problem is that these social media sites are incentivized to get us addicted to them, since we are the product they sell—our data, our time, and our eyeballs. Every like is another dopamine hit. Every outrageous headline is another injection of cortisol.

We have literally become a society of drug addicts. The drugs may be naturally produced by our bodies, but big tech has figured out how to manipulate it like never before. And as addicts, we are always looking for our next hit.

That’s not all, though. There’s a feedback loop between the end-users who consume content, and the algorithms that deliver content recommendations to the end-users. When something new gets hot on social media, the algorithms act as a force multiplier to drive it even further. But because of our addiction, and the fact that we’re constantly looking for the next hit, things can fall off just as quickly as they rise. Hence the churn.

It’s also a function of the massive rate at which content is proliferating across all forms of media. I’m not sure how many millions of English-language books are published any year now, but it’s much, much more than it was back when tradpub was the only real game in town. Same with videos, music, news blogs, etc. With so much new content coming out all the time, and so many people on social media ready to share it, the conditions for churn have never been stronger.

But there’s another, more sinister aspect to all of this, and it has to do with the biases of big tech and Silicon Valley. Yes, there is a feedback loop that governs the algorithm, but it goes both ways: the people who write the algorithm can, within constraints, use it to reprogram all of us, or even society itself.

I don’t think it’s a mistake that the churn is worse on sites that are run by big tech, or worse on content creators who depend on the platforms that big tech provides. The authors experiencing the worst burnout all seem to be exclusive with Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, and news sites that are getting hit the worst now (Vice, Buzzfeed, etc) all depended on clickbait tactics to ride the Facebook algorithm.

There are a few content creators who seem to have escaped the churn. As a general rule, they seem to be scaling back their social media usage and developing more traditional income streams, like subscriptions, sponsorships, and email lists. Steven Crowder, Tim Pool, and Pewdiepie are all examples. A few of them, like Alex Jones, Carl Benjamin, and Paul Joseph Watson, are learning how to swim by getting tossed in the deep end. Big tech has deplatformed them, but they’re learning—and showing to the rest of us—that it’s possible to make your own path, even when all the algorithms conspire against you.

S2 E9: Milo Yiannopoulos: Past, present and future

I recently listened to a fascinating interview on the Jordan Peterson podcast, where he talked with Milo Yiannopoulos. Milo fell out of the public sphere when allegations of pedophilia emerged, getting him banned from CPAC in 2018. His career isn’t over, though, and his future prospects look quite bright, especially with the plan he’s been putting together. If he succeeds, big tech and the algorithms will never be able to touch him.

In my post a couple of days ago, I argued that one of the unique advantages of books over other forms of media is that they are timeless. As Kris Rusch puts it, books aren’t like produce—no matter how long they sit on the shelf, they don’t spoil. We are still reading books that were written centuries ago.

If that’s true, then there must be something about books that makes them resilient to churn. In fact, books may be the antidote to churn. That’s basically Jeff VanderMeer’s thesis in Booklife. It’s also worth rereading Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff, where he offers some helpful rules to keep social media and the algorithms from completely taking over our lives.

So as indie writers, what’s the best way to deal with all of this? I’m not entirely sure. Back in 2011 when I first started indie publishing, slow-build and long-tail strategies seemed a lot more viable than they do now. But if there is something inherent in books that makes them the antidote to churn, then there has to be a way to take advantage of that.

I’ll let you know when I find it.

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 Y o g ’s L a w into young writers’ heads: Money always flows toward the writer. Alternate version: The only place an author should sign a check is on the back, when they endorse it.

Scalzi, who is also one of the more outspoken proponents of Yog’s Law, added a corrolary in 2014 in response to the argument that the rise of indie publishing renders it invalid:

I disagree, however, that it means Yog’s Law no longer generally holds. I think it does, but with a corollary for self-publishers:

Yog’s Law: Money flows toward the writer.

Self-Pub Corollary to Yog’s Law: While in the process of self-publishing, money and rights are controlled by the writer.

…

So, Yog’s Law: Still not just a law, but a good idea. The self-publishing corollary to Yog’s Law: Also, I think, a good idea.

Here’s the thing, though: there’s a difference between money that flows to the writer like a meandering stream from the mountains to the ocean, and money that goes to the indie writer first and from there flows outward to the writer’s various publishing projects.

In the last couple of weeks, a massive scandal hit the publishing world when it was revealed that an accountant working at Donadio & Olson, a major New York literay agency, had embezzled millions of dollars over the course of decades from major bestselling authors, including Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club. According to Kristine Katherine Rusch, this is not an anomaly:

Unfortunately, as I have been telling you all for years now, embezzlement and financial negligence is rampant at big name agencies. Almost none have systems set up to prevent it. Of the four agencies I worked with over the decades, two actively embezzled from me.

…

The last time I threatened one of those agencies with a forensic accountant they threw me out of the agency overnight. By the time I got up in the morning, they had severed my relationship with them and informed all of my publishers that the payments should go directly to me. Just the threat of an audit did that. This is one of the biggest agencies with some of the biggest names in the world. Ask yourself why they were afraid of a standard business practice. You know the answer.

…

Sorry, folks. I’m not crazy. I didn’t have a bad break-up. This type of financial mismanagement, the kind that led to the embezzlement, is common in these agencies. It’s becoming visible now, because traditional book sales have declined, and so it’s harder for an agency to pay one complaining client with another (non-complaining) client’s advance.

But here’s what I want you to see. I want you to look again at Palahniuk’s apology.

I apologize for cursing my publishers. And I apologize for any rants about piracy. My publishers had paid the royalties. Piracy, when it existed, was small scale.

Now, I want you to think about how many big-name writers you’ve seen railing against piracy and how it’s cutting into their book sales. I want you to think about how many big-name writers blame Amazon (!) for ruining the book business and causing book sales to decline.

I want you to think about how many big-name writers who have said there’s no money in writing, not like there used to be.

All of those writers have agents. All of them.

Money should not flow to the writer. It shouldn’t “flow” at all. It should go to the writer directly, passing through as few hands as practically possible. When it does have to pass through someone else’s hands, the writer should be able to track it at all times.

The problem with Yog’s Law is that it treats a writer’s cashflow like a bunch of tributary streams, meandering lazily from the mountains until they combine into a mighty river. Only after the river flows into the ocean does the writer see any of that money. How much of it was diverted along the way? Siphoned off by unscrupulous agents or publishers? Lost to things outside of the writer’s control?

Cashflow is the lifeblood of any business, and writing is a business. Writers should know exactly where their money is at all times. A system that allows money to “flow” in such a way that the writer cannot track all of it is a fundamentally broken system, even if it follows Yog’s Law.

Thoughts on series and perma-free

For the last five years, the conventional wisdom among most indie writers has been to write short books in sequential series and make the first book permanently free. It’s a strategy that works, to a certain extent. It’s what got me from making pizza money on my book sales to making a humble living at this gig. However, I’m starting to question that wisdom.

I have two books available for free this month: Genesis Earth and Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I). Genesis Earth was my first indie published novel, a “standalone with series potential” (specifically, a trilogy) written according to the conventional wisdom for breaking into traditional publishing. Outworlder is a very different book: the first in an eight-book novella series, strong enough to stand alone but short enough to leave the reader wanting more. And for several years, it was perma-free.

Outworlder was the first of my books to make it big. It’s gotten tens of thousands of free downloads and driven thousands of sales (I don’t have the exact numbers because I haven’t yet collated all of my sales reports from the past five years, but that’s something I plan to do). It was largely on the success of Outworlder and the Star Wanderers series that I built my early career.

But over time, downloads of Outworlder slowed to a bare trickle, and sales did as well. I could give it a short-term boost by running a few strategically placed ads, but it would always fall back down to a baseline that was simply unacceptable.

Also, when you have a book that’s permanently free, it tends to accumulate a lot of negative reviews. It’s strange, but some people seem to feel more entitled to XYZ when they get it for free, as opposed to paying for it. Or maybe these are the people who try to go through life without actually paying for anything? Who hoard everything, even the stuff that they hate, so long as they can get it for free? I don’t know.

Certainly, that’s not true of everyone who reads free books. But when you have a perma-free book, it tends to accumulate more of the barely-coherent “dis buk sux” kinds of reviews from people who probably weren’t in the target audience to begin with. And over time, that tends to weigh the book’s overall rating down, which unfortunately can be a turn-off for people who are in the book’s audience.

Contrast that with Genesis Earth. I launched it at full price with a blog tour (which I put together myself, among writer friends whom I knew personally and who had readers who would probably enjoy the book). It sold about a hundred copies in the first ninety days, then slowed to a very low trickle—maybe one or two sales each month, if that. Things continued like this for several years.

Then, back in December, I made it free for one month. Downloads immediately shot up, and continued strong throughout the entire month. Even without any advertising, I was still getting maybe 50 downloads per day on Amazon, plus a constant trickle on the other platforms. For the next couple of months, sales of all my other books grew as well

For April, I decided to make it free again, just to see if I could duplicate that kind of success. I haven’t done any paid advertising for it, but I have submitted it to various sites and newsletters that will promote free books. The result? Thousands of downloads, with a baseline rate of more than a hundred downloads per day.

Genesis Earth has never been perma-free, but every time I set it free for a limited time, it’s like I’ve released the pent-up flood waters. In contrast, Outworlder struggles to get any downloads at all, even when it’s free for only a limited time.

Part of this may have to do with the reviews. Genesis Earth has a much better overall book rating, simply because most of the people who read it over the years were the ones willing to pay full price. This also means that the book has grown into its own niche organically, since the people who have bought Genesis Earth also tend to buy other books similar to it. Retailers like Amazon take note of this, and tend to associate these books with each other in things like also-bought recommendations.

This is all just speculation, but when all of this comes together, it seems to result not only in a higher download rate when the book is free, but more downloads from people who are in the book’s targeted audience.

The mos fascinating result of this is that when the book goes back to full price, sales get a small but long-lasting boost. I’ve seen this with Bringing Stella Home, which was free in March. It’s not a huge boost—maybe only five or six books a month—but it boosts all of the other books in the series as well, and lasts for a couple of months. It’s not just Amazon where this is happening, either—in fact, it may be boosting sales on the non-Amazon platforms even more.

Bringing Stella Home is different, though, because it’s a full-length novel (about 110k words, or +300 pages) in a series that can be read out of order just fine. In other words, more of the “stand-alone with series potential” that was the convential wisdom in the old tradpub world. Like Genesis Earth, it has never been perma-free.

So what’s the takeaway?

That maybe the convential wisdom among indies is all wrong. That perma-free actually taints books and makes it harder for them to stick in the rankings, or to grow into their natural audience. That longer stand-alone books with recurring characters set in the same universe may be better for gaining long-term traction than shorter, more episodic books. Also, that the more books you give away for free—not just first in series—the better that all of your books will sell.

My experience is purely anecdotal, and there’s a lot more analysis I need to do before I can say anything for sure. From what I can tell, though, it seems that the best strategy is to write longer, fuller books that satisfy more than they entice, and to use free as a marketing strategy for only a limited time.

In other words, the collective wisdom of KBoards is completely off the mark, and Kris Rusch (who regularly gets vilified on KBoards) actually knows what she’s talking about most of the time.

Like I said, this is all anecdotal and more analysis is required. But I’m very curious now to make some of my non- first-in-series books free for a month, just to see if it has a similar boost. With Bringing Stella Home, for example, a lot of readers seem to be jumping over books 2 and 3 to read Heart of the Nebula, the direct sequel (but book 4 in the Gaia Nova series order). It would be very interesting to see if Desert Stars has an awesome free run as well, resulting in more sales after it reverts back to full price.

Lots of interesting stuff to consider. It’s definitely going to inform my writing and marketing efforts in the future.

Z is for Zenith

Has space opera passed its zenith?

Sometimes, it certainly looks that way. All the major stuff seems to be reprints of past series and reboots of decades-old franchises. Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Ender’s Game, Dune, Babylon 5–all the big names seem to have had their start at least a generation ago. At any science fiction convention, you’re likely to see more gray-haired men than kids in their teens and twenties. And if you go to a publishing conference, new adult, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance are ascendant.

I’ve noticed that people are using the term “science fiction” increasingly to describe stories that don’t have anything to do with space. Dystopian, post-apocalyptic, steampunk, even time travel–all of these subgenres are certainly part of the fold, but they’re very different from the stories about starships and alien worlds. And then you have all the markets for short fiction that have been forced out of business–and even a few larger publishers, like Night Shade Books which is now selling off all its assets (read: authors) to avoid bankruptcy.

I remember going to World Fantasy 2010 in Columbus, Ohio, and feeling dismayed at the complete lack of science fiction. World Fantasy is (or was, at least) the premier professional conference for speculative fiction literature, but all of the attention was going to urban fantasy and steampunk. On the freebie table where publishers often dumped ARCs and review copies of their books, the only space opera stuff I really saw were a couple of titles by Glen Cook and one other guy–and I watched that table hawkishly for the full three days of the conference.

Sometimes, it seems as if it would be so much better if I had grown up in the 80s. That’s when science fiction really had its heyday. But all through the 90s, the genre seems to have been on the decline, much like NASA and the US space program.

So is space-centered science fiction on the way out? Have we passed the glory days, and it’s now just a long decline until it becomes an obscure niche, beloved by some, but enigmatic to others?

In spite of everything I said above, I actually don’t think so. In fact, I think we’re on the cusp of a science fiction renaissance, and that sci-fi geeks like myself will look back twenty years from now and wish that they were born in our era. Here’s why:

1) Scientific discoveries are transforming the way we see the universe.

The day I posted P is for Planets, NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of three Earth-like worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. The existence of alien Earths is not conjecture–it’s a confirmed fact. As our ability to study these worlds improves, it’s only a matter of time, IMO, before we find a world that has life.

We’ve discovered the Higgs-Boson. We’re unraveling the fundamental building blocks of the universe. We’ve built telescopes to look back to the dawn of time itself, and we’re learning more about the cosmology of the universe every year. Perhaps even more remarkably, we understand now how little it is that we actually know–that the entirety of the observable universe is only about 5% of it, and even that’s optimistic.

All of this will take time to trickle down to the popular consciousness, but with all the new discoveries that are happening, I think that’s already in the process of happening. In particular, I think the recent discoveries in the realm of exoplanets and astrobiology are going to shake things up in a major way in the next five or ten years.

2) The privatization of space travel is paving the way for a rapid expansion into space.

The US space program has been plagued with funding problems since at least the end of the Cold War space race. Since the space shuttle program was retired just last year, the only way for our astronauts to get into space is through the Russian Soyuz spacecraft at Baikonur. If NASA had to put a man on the moon, they do not currently have the knowledge or technology necessary to do it.

In the private sector, though, it’s been a very different story. SpaceX has had a number of successful launches recently, most notably sending the first unmanned resupply capsule up to the International Space Station. And just a couple days ago, Virgin Galactic had the first successful test flight of its rocket-powered spacecraft.

It’s sad to see the space shuttle go, but there are a lot of reasons why the program was flawed and inefficient to begin with. By handing things off to the private sector and turning space exploration into a viable business venture, we can hopefully overcome those inefficiencies and eventually make space accessible to the general public.

And then you have the organizations like Mars One that are looking even further ahead to the colonization of Mars. There’s a groundswell of excitement for Martian colonization that is starting to get some real money behind it. Will it go anywhere? It’s hard to say right now, but even if it suffers another decade or two of setbacks, it’s getting public attention, especially from the younger generation.

3) Video games are bringing a fresh new look and feel to the genre.

Not all of the big sci-fi series hail from 70s and 80s. Halo started up as recently as 2001, and it’s a multi-billion dollar franchise with games, books–even Legos. In fact, there are lots of sci-fi video game franchises right now, many of them right on par with other classic space opera. Just look at Starcraft, for example, or Mass Effect, or Eve Online and Sins of a Solar Empire. The number of sci-fi games has been exploding.

In fact, this explosion has been happening for some time. While literary science fiction may have suffered something of a decline back in the 90s, that was the heyday of games like Master of Orion and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Flight simulators like Flight Commander and X-wing proliferated like crazy, while even some of the classic RPGs like Final Fantasy borrowed heavily from science fiction tropes. And those are just a few of the games that I can list off the top of my head!

Whether or not literary sf is on the decline, a whole new generation has been introduced to the genre through the medium of video gaming. This is not just a small niche audience playing this stuff, either–in the US at least, Halo is as mainstream as Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. In fact, you could say that science fiction is more mainstream now than it ever has been, and a lot of that is due to sci-fi video games.

4) The e-publishing golden age is giving us thousands of new voices.

But what about the world of literary sf? Are we in a decline? Do people just not read science fiction anymore? How bright is the future for science fiction literature?

Actually, this is the area where I’m the most optimistic of all.

The publishing industry is changing at the speed of light, much in the same way that the music industry changed about a decade ago. Just as the MP3 revolution allowed all sorts of eclectic yet entrepreneurial artists to thrive without the oversight of record labels, the epublishing revolution is opening all sorts of doors for the enterprising author. And while the changes are driving publishers (such as NSB) out of business, they are enabling authors who only sell in the mid-list range to make a respectable living.

At Worldcon 2011, Ginger Buchanan (senior editor at Tor) asserted that there has never been a runaway science fiction bestseller. In the eyes of New York publishing, that may be true–but New York has a notorious record for missing the catch in pursuit of one big fish. Because of epublishing, whole new genres like New Adult that publishers thought would never sell are now going mainstream.

And even the niches that stay niches are becoming quite lucrative for the authors who can build a decent following. When author cuts out the middlemen and develops a direct relationship with the readership, it only takes a thousand true fans or so become a financial success. As Kris Rusch pointed out so aptly, those numbers may bring only scorn from New York, but for the writers who actually produce the content, that’s a vein of pure gold.

I can’t tell you how many success stories I’ve heard from fellow sci-fi writers over on the Kindle Boards, who started just for the grocery money and ended up quitting their day jobs. But as Hugh Howey pointed out, the runaway bestsellers are not the true story of the epublishing revolution–it’s the little guys who only sell a few hundred copies a month but are earning enough to support themselves writing what they love.

Indeed, we’re already starting to see an explosion of new science fiction, thanks largely to the ease of electronic self-publishing. I’ve only read a few of them so far, but Nathan Lowell stands out among them, as well as my good friend Kindal Debenham. These guys and so many others are bringing a fresh new voice to space opera, revitalizing the genre in ways that simply weren’t economical back in the days of Big Publishing.

So even if space opera as a literary genre isn’t quite large enough to go mainstream, it is large enough to support a wide range of new voices under the emerging business models. And as the epublishing revolution continues to mature, I think we’re going to see a new golden age comparable to the era of the pulp adventure stories.

I’ve been publishing my own work since 2011, and I can attest that there’s never been a better time to be a writer. I’m not quite making enough to go full-time yet, but at the rate things are going, it will only be a year or two before I realize my dream of making a living telling stories that I love. And if they’re the kind of stories that you love too, then that’s great news for all of us!

So has science fiction reached its zenith? I don’t think so. It went mainstream about a generation ago, which was definitely a huge moment, but for the last few decades it’s been in the process of branching out and rediscovering itself. Right now, I think we’re on the verge of a wonderful new renaissance that is going to blow us all away. As a lifelong reader and writer of science fiction, I certainly hope that’s the case. And because of the reasons listed above, I sincerely believe that it is.

If you’re thinking of self publishing, read this. All of it.

I just read a fascinating Q&A on Reddit with Hugh Howey, author of the self-published phenomenon Wool. After six trancelike hours reading through all the comments, all I can say is “wow.”

Okay, I guess I can say a little more. Yesterday, I listened to Brandon Sanderson’s lecture on self-publishing from his English 318 class this year. While I agree with much of what he says, a lot of it is already out of date. Probably the biggest thing is whether it’s still advantageous for indies to go with a traditional publisher after making a name for themselves. In 2011, Amanda Hocking had some good reasons for going traditional. In 2012, Hugh Howey has some very good reasons not to.

The other big thing, though, is this idea of author platform–that to be a successful indie, you have to find some way to drive large numbers of people to your books. Well, not necessarily. Hugh Howey was a nobody for three years, and the title that finally pushed him over the tipping point was the one he promoted the least. To me, that shows:

current sales are not a predictor of future sales, and
a great book will grow into its audience independent of its author.

Granted, there may be a threshold that needs to be crossed before word-of-mouth really starts to kick in, but if a nobody with passable cover art and no author platform can cross it, that threshold isn’t very high–and that’s good news for all of us.

The way I see it, there are three big myths that writers struggle with in making the shift from traditional to indie publishing:

1) The flood of crap books will keep you from getting noticed

This grows out of the paradigm of limited shelf space–that the best way to get noticed is to have your book occupy more space relative to all the other books on the shelf. This might be true in the brick and mortar world, but the rules are much different in the digital realm.

Think about it: how many new blogs are launched every single day? Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. And yet people still find the good content amid the sea of crap. On Youtube, an average of one hour of video content is uploaded every single second. And yet there are still entertainers making a lot of money through their Youtube channels.

The rules in the digital realm are completely different from everything in the physical world. Figuring that out requires a huge paradigm shift, one that even indie writers struggle with.

2) Publishing a book is an event that must be promoted

This grows out of the paradigm of velocity, or as Kris Rusch puts it, the “produce model” of publishing:

Every month publishing comes out with brand new product. Shelf space is limited in every single brick-and-mortar bookstore. Big Publishing makes the bulk of its money during the first few months of a book’s existence. So if a book sits on a bookstore’s shelf until the book sells and that sale takes six months to a year, the bookstore and the publisher lose money.

Better to dump the old inventory on a monthly basis—for full credit for unsold items—than it is to have the inventory sit on the shelves and grow “stale.”

Of course, the flaw in this logic is that digital shelf space is unlimited, therefore books do not “spoil.” No matter how much time passes, an ebook can still be found in the same place.

Therefore, does it really make sense to make a big deal over an indie book release? Maybe to jump start some word-of-mouth, but it’s not like your career is going to be harmed if you do nothing. In fact, it might be better to hold off until you have a few more titles up, so that when you give the first one that push, readers will have something else to read once they’ve finished it.

3) To succeed you need to find a way to “break in”

This grows out of the gatekeeper paradigm, where the system is closed and the few entry points are guarded by a select group of taste makers whose job is to bestow legitimacy on those who meet the qualifications to get in. It’s the concept of patronage, where success comes from being chosen by a wealthy benefactor, and it’s connected with the idea that you haven’t truly “arrived” until <fill in the blank>.

The flaw with this paradigm, of course, is that publishing is no longer a closed system. The gates haven’t just been flung open, the walls themselves have been torn down. The job of the taste makers is no longer to protect readers from the dross, but to lead them to the gems–which is honestly much closer to what it should have been in the first place.

So what does this mean for creators? It means that there’s no longer a system to break into. You don’t need to write better than everyone else, you just need to find (and keep) your 1,000 true fans. Success isn’t bestowed upon you by some higher authority, it’s something that you discover on your own as you hone your craft and build your business.

Honestly, this is one that I still have a lot of trouble with. When I left to teach English in Georgia, in the back of my mind I had this vague notion that I was going into a self-imposed exile, and wouldn’t come back or settle down until I’d “broken in.” Of course, this made me quite discouraged, because it felt like things were out of my control–or worse, that I’d somehow failed.

But listening to Brandon’s lecture and reading Howey’s Q&A session helped me to remember that it’s all still in my control. I don’t need a benefactor, I just need a good plan, if that makes any sense. So right now, I’m thinking things through and making the necessary revisions to that plan. There probably won’t be any big ones–I still think I’m more or less on the right track–but it will be good to update my paradigm.

By the way, the title of this post applies to the Q&A with Hugh Howey, not to the post itself. Though if you are thinking of self publishing, I hope it’s helped out in some way.

Also, I just finished part I of Wool, and it deserves every bit of praise that it’s got. Expect to see a review of the omnibus shortly.

Tomorrow, tomorrow

So, I was going to finish Stars of Blood and Glory today…and then I went and spent some time with an old friend, had some dinner and spent the evening with the missionaries…long story short, I think it would be better just to wait until tomorrow than to do a rush job tonight.

I’ve only got two scenes and an epilogue left, which is very strange, because the novel isn’t even 75k words long yet. Something definitely seems to be missing, and it probably has to do with the storyline of the new characters I introduced. They’re the prince and princess of a futuristic Japanese culture (with a mix of Polynesian elements) that’s built on giant floating cities on a water world that never fell to the Hameji. I think I skipped a little too much on the research, so the culture doesn’t feel fleshed out enough at this point. Also, there’s a whole host of minor characters that I neglected to even give names; in the next draft, I’ll have to work out who they are and how they fit into things.

I’ll definitely finish this book tomorrow, though. There’s nothing stopping me, and I really need to get it done.

After that, the plan is to immerse myself in the world of Star Wanderers. I’ve got to be honest, I’m really looking forward to it. This story came to me like a love child: completely unexpected at a time when I was supposed to be working on other things. And yet, few other projects I’ve worked on have given me so much satisfaction. When I let my mind wander, I inevitably find myself daydreaming about it. And yet, it’s not a story I can force. I tried that once, and it was as if the characters just refused to cooperate; the answer, quite firmly, was “no.”

As for my next publishing project, I’m going to try to get the illustrated version of Journey to Jordan formatted and up on Amazon and Barnes & Noble before the end of the week. It’s a little intimidating, because I don’t yet know how to add pictures in html such that they turn out well in ebook format. However, I think it will be a good learning experience, once I climb the learning curve. Expect to see some news about that very soon.

And as for my New Year’s goal to read a book every week…I know, I know, I missed it last week. But I plan to make up for it with a couple of really good books in the next couple of days. Both of them are indie published, and they’re both really fun reads. The only reason I haven’t finished them is because I’ve been too busy working on my own projects.

So on that note, I think I’m going to retire for the evening with a good book while I wait with baited breath for Kris Rusch’s next Business Rusch post to go live. Have a good night!

Random updates before leaving

I’m spending Thanksgiving with my parents this year, which means I’m leaving for Massachusetts tomorrow…by train. Well, technically, Sunday morning, since the cross-country trains come through Salt Lake City in the wee hours, but to my way of thinking it’s tomorrow and not Sunday. Either way, I won’t be posting anything until Tuesday night, since that’s when I arrive.

You may have noticed that Amazon recently bumped the price of my two short stories, “Memoirs of a Snowflake“ and “Decision LZ1527,” back up to $.99. I decided to raise the price because giving them away for free wasn’t having any sort of effect on sales of my other novels. Sure, it exposed my work to more readers, but I want to be known for my science fiction series, not because of a couple of cute stories that aren’t a whole lot like anything else I’ve written.

However, after reading Kris Rusch’s recent post on this subject, I decided to drop the price of Sholpan to free for the next couple months. Sholpan is a novella taken from Bringing Stella Home, and is a great place to start for my Gaia Nova series. It’s a complete story on its own, but I’m hoping it will drive interest in the full length novel, and later in Desert Stars.

If the price dropping process is anything like it was for the short stories, though, it will be a while before Sholpan is free across all platforms. Amazon doesn’t allow you to set the price to free yourself; you have to get all the other places to do it first, so that Amazon’s bots will detect it and price match. To do that, you have to drop the price on Smashwords first and wait for it to trickle down.

In short, it will probably take three to five weeks for Amazon to make Sholpan free. Hopefully it’ll happen in time for the holiday season, and probably for a month or two afterward.

In the meantime, I just noticed that “Memoirs of a Snowflake“ is on both the science fiction anthology and fantasy anthology top 100 lists on Amazon. Woot! It’s not going as fast as it was when it was free (I think I’ve had just five sales in the past 48 hours), but it’s still going. It will be interesting to see how long it holds up; it would be awesome to crack the top 10 on either of those categories!

And that’s about it. I’ll leave you with the following quote:

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

–Martin Buber