editing makes one cranky

Monday Capabilities

Well, the holidays are officially officially over and it’s back to work. Which means Miss B has turned her nose up at her brekkie, though I can hear her tummy rumbling from where she lounges resentfully in my office, and further means that I somehow forgot, in my first attempt at making coffee, that I needed to actually put ground coffee in my Bialetti.

In short, it’s a goddamn Monday.

I’m not too worried about B–every once in a while, a dog just doesn’t want to eat kibble at a particular moment. She’s not going to starve and there’s nothing wrong with her, she just wants human food instead of kibble and wet, and she’s not going to get it. Both dogs sometimes disdain breakfast until after walkies.1

I’m looking over the list of Things to Do Today and internally weeping. I think Past Me was extremely generous in her assessment of my Monday capabilities. There’s the top to bottom revision on The Poison Prince to begin now that all the fresh scenes are written, there’s the upcoming “three things about characters” post for Tuesday’s Haggard Feathers, a Soundtrack Monday post to prep, the day’s Latin lesson2 to stamp into the ground, and the ever-popular walkies for said dogs.

Which are going to be fun, since it’s a somewhat stormy day. No lightning, but rain and a bit of wind, so the cedars are tossing their arms with damp glee. Both Sir Boxnoggin and Miss B will be beside themselves the entire way through their walk; neither like the wind’s invisible fingers touching their hindquarters. Miss B will dislike the wind taking liberties with her skirts, Boxnoggin will be verklempt at the rain and prancing to keep his delicate paws high and dry.

In short, they’re both going to be unlivable, and I think I’ll temporarily put off Boxnoggin’s harness training for runs alongside his human. It’s too much to ask him to focus on two things at a time–running properly alongside me and ignoring the rain. Dogs, like very young humans, do better when you set them up to succeed instead of fail.

I woke up with the strange urge to listen to Lucifer Rising, so that’s what’s going to be playing while I work for a little while. When it gets a little brighter, I’ll be out the door, but for right now, there’s coffee (finally! I remembered to put the ground stuff in! a small victory, but victory nonetheless!) and a few more things to do.

Mondays. I never quite get the hang of them until they’re almost over. At least there’s the finish line to look forward to, no matter what else happens today.

Fewer Books of Less Quality

We are in the throes of the shopping season. Stress and tension are everywhere, from the aisles where tired, overstimulated children cry to the checkouts where overwhelmed parents, counting their pennies, feel the sick thump of what if I forgot someone or what if I can’t afford what Little Spawn wants? It’s just as bad online, too, and the usual “Should I have run a holiday sale, what price points are good, things are ordered and I have to stand in long queues to ship them” discussions are afoot on author loops and social media.

This year I’m also seeing a lot of discussions about ebooks. Specifically, the question “Should I lower my ebook prices in the new year?” has been asked at least five times (and counting!) on different loops and in different social media I’m privy to.

I’ve typed some shorter answers, but I figured why scatter them all over the map when I can put them all in one place?

So. Generally, my TL;DR answer is “…no.”

You already know my thoughts on the convenience of ebooks (without concomitant protections against theft) leading to massive entitlement and piracy. The convenience has YET another unpleasant aspect, made monstrous by Amazon’s business practices.

The race to the bottom in ebook prices is terrifying for any author trying to earn a living. The way the industry is currently set up, either you starve because your ebooks are priced too low for you to get a reasonable return on the investment of time needed to produce a quality product, or you up your production schedule and end up burning out, in the meantime risking cranking out heavily compromised texts that could have been great if you’d had the resources to take the proper time and care with them.

Or, if you price your books reasonably in line with the time and effort spent, you can be inundated with nasty emails calling you a sellout or accusing you of “taking advantage” of readers somehow. And, as a bonus, informing you that your books are going to be stolen in “protest.”

Fun times for all.

Here’s the thing: low across-the-board ebook prices are not good deals. You end up getting fewer books of less quality in the long run, not just because of writer burnout and starvation, but because that’s the way the business model is set up. That’s what it’s engineered for.

Amazon’s success means it’s been able to impose a number of conditions on the market. Amazon profits on volume when prices on ebooks are kept artificially low, because they don’t care what you’re buying as long as you’re buying a lot of it. Authors do not benefit–they work themselves into the ground or the grave, or they quit publishing because they literally can’t afford to keep going. That means readers don’t benefit either; the quality fiction you crave gets harder and harder to find because selling algorithm bumps is profitable as all get-out and/or because the writers experienced and talented enough to provide that quality fiction have been driven out.

Who does benefit from this? You guessed it–Amazon. They profit both coming and going. There’s a fresh crop of hopeful new baby writers willing to be fleeced each season, the plagiarizers and page-stuffers pay Amazon for the privilege to play, writers are working themselves into burnout, and it’s all going into Bezos’s pocketbook. The ‘Zon gets their cut of even a $.99 ebook, you’d better believe it, and enough of those going out the door is a nice chunk of change. Who cares if it’s readable, if it’s quality, if it’s what you actually wanted? You’ll buy anything, according to Amazon, as long as it’s cheap.

Now, Amazon’s done some good things, largely without wanting or trying to. I suppose you could find a few beneficial effects in any cancer if you narrow your focus enough, too. And I’m sure a lot of people will say “books are a luxury anyway, nobody who creates them deserves to make a living because it’s not a real job.” I’ve heard it all, from “all authors are rich anyway”1 to “but if books aren’t less than a dollar apiece people will HAVE to steal them, you just hate FREEDOM.”

But if you’re a fellow publishing professional looking for advice on ebook prices this fine holiday season, take it from someone who’s been in the game for a little while and saw the first explosion of ebooks and witnessed the race to the bottom afterward: Price your books however you damn well please. I’ve raised some of my prices recently to better reflect the time and energy spent on writing and taking the books through quality control; I haven’t been sorry and haven’t noticed any dent in sales. In fact, pricing my books to reflect the quality I try to put into each and every one has had a somewhat salutary effect, I’d say, because it’s clear I respect myself and my work and Readers tend to follow suit.

Trad, indie, and small publishers all refine price, discounts, and deals all the time. It’s part of the game, and self-publishers should do the same. There may come a time when I look at the industry and say “yeah, prices are outta control, I’m dropping mine.”

But today is not that day.

Amazon profits immensely from the race to the bottom in ebook pricing, and has been doing everything possible to keep it going. Nobody else gets a good shake out of the deal, and we’re all somewhat at the mercy of the elephant in the room. Until the rapaciousness of their business model provokes a reaction and a shakeup, it’s pretty much every self-publisher for themselves, not least because getting writers to work together for better conditions is like herding caffeine-crazed hyperactive felines.2

In the end, very little will change until readers are tired of swill choking the gunnels and their purchasing habits change as a result. When a market reaction comes, it’s going to be quite painful for a lot of people and I’m not looking forward to it. In the meantime, though, I’m going to price my books to reflect a fair value for my time and experience, and I encourage any of my peers considering the question this holiday season to do the same.

And I wish everyone, publishing pro, Reader, or anything else, a low-stress holiday full of good food and free of family or other arguments. This time of year’s awful on everyone; I say we all go to bed until New Year’s.

I know we can’t, but it makes me feel better to contemplate the prospect. Over and out.

A Teaser, For Reasons

Already this morning I’ve cut a PDF teaser for Finder’s Watcher. The full book’s been sent to the publisher and I’m hoping to hear back from them once the holiday crunch is over. There’s no reason why subscribers–both newsletter and otherwise–shouldn’t have something nice for the holidays as well, though, so I decided to do a up a little taste for you. Every subscriber–newsletter, Patreon, or Gumroad–will get the teaser. I’ll do my best to make sure they all drop at the same time, too.

And don’t worry. The book is finished, so if the publisher doesn’t want it (for whatever reason) it can be edited, cover art can be found, and it can be released otherwise. I just wanted all the Watcher books to look the same, especially if I want to write another one.

Just to keep my hand in, I suppose.

It was a chilly night. Sir Boxnoggin did his level best to wriggle under the covers with me. It’s hard out there for a slick-coated dog, I guess. Miss B, of course, has enough of a coat that she gets up several times a night to lie on the cool tile of the loo floor, but poor Lord van der Sploot has to make do with cuddling the human. He’s also very terrier, which means he likes enclosed spaces. He’s somewhat catlike–if there’s a box, he’s checking it for fit, and whether or not it fits, he sits.

I awoke in a very specific mood, one that can only be served by coffee and listening to Florence + the Machine. She’s like Jandek, I have to be in just the right space to listen, but when I am, absolutely nothing else will do. So it’s the Ceremonials album this morning, after which the itch should be scratched enough to draw blood and let it recede.

I have coffee, and drinking it means I get to cross an easy item off my to-do list. Today’s the day I make some decisions about Haggard Feathers, too. I think, going into the New Year, I’m going to hive off some writing about writing and let there be a subscription. I might even set up a dedicated mailbox for that, but I haven’t decided yet. God knows I get enough mail otherwise. Going through old writing posts for the second volume of Quill & Crow is a good idea, too.

In all my copious spare time, of course. I should also get together a book of collected short stories.

ANYWAY. I’ll invent all sorts of things to keep myself out of revision today, it seems. Which is why I must make a list, check it a few times, and settle into working through.

It’s Tuesday. Let’s punch the day in the throat together, my friends.

Quasi-Surprise Week

Well, this week is… not going the way I thought it would. First there was Quasi-Surprise Jury Duty (not a surprise, but I’d forgotten about it entirely until my phone reminded me, which happens for Certain Things I Don’t Like Thinking About) and then I slept for twelve hours and woke up with body aches, a full nose, and a mild fever.

The cold I’ve been fighting off knows that yesterday was high-stress, and it has chosen to put up its banners and ride to war.

So it’s going to be that kind of week. Of course.

Edits for the second book of the epic fantasy trilogy are underway. Today is for setting up the workspace and cleaning, as well as getting myself back into that headspace. If my language acquires a certain formality, we all know what to blame now.

Of course, I am often a formal creature, when I don’t know someone well. Those manners are built to keep everyone in the room on an equal footing and make sure I don’t overstep; they are a comforting way for me to show respect and be careful of other people. I know manners can be deployed as weapons when punching up, and I like doing that, but I also like using them just as a matter of course.

Anyway. I had plenty of things planned for today, including writing some thoughts about Bede (oh, my GOD, but Christianity is a TRIP) but that’s just… not gonna happen. I’m knocked off-center and hideously out of breath.

I will say, however, that I’m looking at moving away from Twitter. Not entirely, but there was a conversation this morning about deleting tweets past a certain age, and it resonated with me. There were a few options I considered; one was Semipheremal, which needs some programming know-how to deploy, and the other, recommended by a couple fellow authors, was TweetDeleter.

I loved the idea of Twitter when it started, and I’ve made some relationships there I am loath to lose. But… honestly, it’s a hellscape, full of bad-faith actors and unregulated shittery. I’m pretty sure I’m going to set TweetDeleter to erase everything over a year old. Right now I have it set between one and a half to two years, just because I like to ease into things.

The major draw of Semipheremal is that you could choose certain parameters–a tweet with more than a hundred likes, frex–and keep those while deleting other old tweets. But then I started thinking… you know, if a post of mine gets over a hundred likes, it’s a sure bet that the asshats looking to troll, hijack, and harass aren’t far behind. Plus there will inevitably be accusations of “deleting to cover things up”, which are par for the course with Photoshop and screencaps running around nowadays.

And of course I’m only a semi-public person, not a government official whose words and boosts should be recorded for posterity and for the people the government is claiming to serve. So I’m feeling like it’s an ethical choice to use the service in the first place, and to set a time limit on how long those things stay active in the second.

So I’ll probably drop the time limit down to a year. Of course, I’ll keep stuff on my Mastodon, where most of my microblogging goes anyway.

In any case, I should get moving. Waking up full of snot and body aches was not quite optimal, and I’m going to be drinking ginger and lemon in hot water by the bucketful to try to get this crud washed out of my system. Some searing hot curry wouldn’t go amiss, either.

And with that sorted I can step back into a preindustrial society, take a look at the architecture of a book, and start trimming, tweaking, and expanding. thank the gods nobody’s going to be in the office until after New Year’s, that means I have a reasonable amount of time to get this beast into better shape. 150k now, 200k by the time I’m finished, I’m sure.

…even just typing that made me tired. Maybe I should schedule a nap, too.

On the Holidays

I hate the holidays. Publishing shuts down, you can’t get an answer out of anyone–unless it’s “I’m salaried and clearing my desk before I get a vacation, but you can work right through because you’re freelance, can’t you?” Also, the shops are full of overstimulated children with misbehaving parents clamping down quite unreasonably upon them, both stressed because they can’t service the TV-fueled expectations of gross consumerism. And let’s not even talk about the racists at the dinner table that nobody will challenge because “holidays” and “let’s all get along.”

Fuck getting along. Racists deserve to be challenged wherever we find them, kids shouldn’t be dragged through holiday crowds, no parent should be tormented into stress-related breakdown because they can’t afford whatever toy is hot this year for their spawn, and I won’t repeat what I think should be done about publishing.

You can tell I’m in it today. I’m pushing to get the zero of Finder’s Watcher done, or at least hit the 50k mark for NaNo that will give the book enough critical mass to drag me across the finish line, then it’s straight into bloody revisions for that epic fantasy. Which means I’ll be producing a novella’s worth of text in just under two weeks; tell me again why I do this to myself?

Oh. That’s right. It’s my job, and if I don’t write, we don’t eat. Simple!

I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m simply remarking upon suboptimal conditions.

At least the dogs let me sleep in a wee bit today. Though I have to leave the house to pick up last-minute supplies for Thursday I can do so at my own pace, and–thanks be to all the gods–it’s raining. Which means the dogs will be miserable during walks and hurrying to get home, but at least I’m in a good mood.

What’s that? Good mood? Oh, yes. This is just a particularly sharp-edged good mood. I’m not upset, I’m just testing my sword’s keenness and eyeing the battlefield. And I don’t have to spend my holidays with racist fucks because I stopped speaking to those “family” members long ago. Not only that, but I did finish a zero lately, so I can use that fact to batter at imposter syndrome.

You can tell it’s the last week of NaNo; my Week Four guide will go up around 2pm PST. You can sign up to get it on my Substack, Haggard Feathers; I’ll be taking next week off while I recover and choke up a steaming lump of revisions. I’m thisclose to writing “Rocks fall, everyone dies,” and throwing up my hands.

We all know I won’t, but threatening it makes a book behave most of the time, so one works with what one has.

It’s Tuesday. If I buckle down now, I won’t have to leave the house again until next week. Wish me luck, dear ones, and I hope your day goes smoothly.

Me? I’m buckled in my armor, my sword is sharp enough, my charger is ready. Onwards and upwards, indeed.

Time It Right

I’ve only twenty minutes before I have to shove the icepack back into the freezer and hop in the shower. I don’t care if my plantar fascia hurts, I have to run. I have been going mad with the enforced rest, and tomorrow is a release day.

That’s right, tomorrow, Incorruptible is released to the world for your delectation at midnight tonight. Remember, you can download the first six chapters here for free.

I already have release day nerves, so I’ve been pushing myself pretty hard this morning. If I can get tired enough I might even be able to sleep tonight. I finished the zero of Damage late last week. It’s only around 46k, but there’s plenty of room for expansion if it gets sold as a category.

I’m trying to work out what comes next. Orphaned and out of contract is never a fun place to be as an author, especially in this economy. It’s one of those days I think I should pack it all in, become a plumber or something, and only write for home consumption, so to speak.

Don’t despair, dear Readers. The feeling is normal, I get it right before every release day. You’d think it would get easier to deal with, but each time it wears right through the carpet and cuts a groove in my mental floor.

In any case, I have Hell’s Acre, Memory Game, and HOOD‘s Season Two open in Scrivener. The last needs a stiff reread to get back into the groove, and if I push I might get a zero out in the next month. That would be nice; I’ll probably work on Memory Game next since I’m still in a suspense/thriller mood.

But in the meantime, I’m going to finish icing my heel and stagger for the shower. Getting back to work after finishing a zero is always an exercise in stubbornness, like hopping in to jump double-dutch. I never quite got the hang of that, but it didn’t stop me from trying. One day I’ll time it right.

Over and out.

No Nap Required

It’s not even 11am and I need a nap. I’m on my second jolt of coffee and have already spent an hour and a half in the car.

No nap will be taken today. There’s too much to do, between school starting for the Little Prince and the hour spent in the car daily.

It will be nice when I don’t have to commute anymore. Really nice.

I suspect I won’t get a lot of fresh wordcount today, but I have a very small, very slight revision pass on a Certain Book I Can’t Tell You About Yet. Hopefully there will be good news on Incorruptible soon, too–as well as a teaser, as soon as all the preorders are set up.

I do so love giving you guys teasers.

I’m sure there’s a million things more to do, but I think I just want to sit and stare for a moment. Get a good breath or two in me, and maybe even some fleeting Zen. Then I’ll make a list, because it’s a day when nothing on earth will get done if I don’t write it down.

At least the dogs have been walked and the second coffee jolt seems to be doing its duty. No nap required–at least, not for the first few hours. We’ll see what happens when three PM rolls around.

Over and out.