Fog and Publishing

It’s a quiet, misty morning. Miss B made her feelings known early, and nosed me out of bed. Boxnoggin and I could have easily slept another few hours, but Miss B is an old lady and wanted her breakfast. So here we are. At least there’s coffee…

…and news just landed in my inbox that Draft2Digital is buying Smashwords. Of course I breathlessly raced to a few fellow writers to discuss, and the prevailing feeling seems to be “better than Amazon buying it just to turn it into a zombie cesspool of harassment like they did to Goodreads.” It looks like the erotica component of Smashwords, with their relatively new self-tagging system, will get greater distribution (for non-“taboo” stuff, i.e., the Very Bad, No One Will Touch This For Good Reason, What’s Wrong With You things) and to my mind that’s a good thing. The Smashwords store (in all its, ahem, glory) will probably remain for the “taboo” stuff, which is also a good thing.

The big consideration is this makes D2D even more of a viable alternative to KDP, and that is a distinct good. Amazon is the elephant in the room, and a nasty one at that. Competition may be unwelcome to Bezos, but for authors it’s a gat-damn boon. I’ve been waiting for a market correction to deal with Amazon for a long while, and while this isn’t it (D2D’s still far too small to truly challenge the behemoth) it’s at least a step closer.

For readers, this means greater variety; anytime we get alternatives to Amazon it’s a net good for consumers too. So I’m cautiously hopeful.

What excitement first thing in the morning, eh? I’m only three-quarters of the way through my coffee, even.

Yesterday’s Tea with Lili is up; in it, I talk about NFTs, the recent Gumroad thing, types of publishing, and self-care. Not in huge depth, since it’s only fifteen minutes. I’m liking the short format, though it’s not what Twitch recommends. Apparently one isn’t a real streamer unless one does it for hours per day, but I don’t have that kind of time. I’m still playing with schedule, format, and a couple audio issues, so we’ll see what happens.

Also, the cover reveal for Sons of Ymre is up over at Patreon, too. All subscribers got the cover reveal early–just one of the ways I say “thank you” to my beloveds.

I suppose I’d best get some brekkie, and get the dogs walked. I might even get to run before the vapor burns off, which will be nice despite the risk of seeing Pyramid Head through the drifting cloud. Of course, if I did see something like that, I’d already be running, so the reasonable reaction (running away) would be a no-brainer. Of course, if he was menacing another poor civilian, I’d probably have to Get Involved–a particular pastime of mine, attempting to aid underdogs.

I would probably die early and messily in a video game. Or who knows, maybe I’m an NPC. Now there’s a story idea, albeit one I don’t have time for at the moment.

Happy Tuesday, everyone. It’s starting out rather a doozy. Can’t wait to see what happens next.