You call it vanity, I call it artistic liberty

I wonder if writers who scream the loudest against self-publishing are actually afraid of their own power?

Over the long haul, the hard worker gets a bigger audience. Talent is plentiful, cheap, and nearly worthless. Ideas are worthless. Sure, there will be the lucky strikes here and there, but in this new entrepreneurial era, those who work will win.

There's a reason traditional publishers take 85 percent of the money. There's a lot of work involved in selling a book. With the self-published writer closer to the revenue stream, the writer should be working way harder than they do when earning 8 percent or whatever. Trad publishers scare all the writers into hustling because there's the threat of being dropped if your sales tank. And, it's obvious but truer than ever, writers who don't check their email, don't get on the forums, don't build a mailing list, and are disconnected are layers and layers away from their audience. It's almost a direct feed these days--you can't just sit in your little cottage by the sea and post out masterpieces. J.D. Salinger wouldn't have a chance today.

Call it "vanity," "self-publishing," "independent author," "cooperative imprint," whatever. I've come to view as more of a libertarian action, taking responsibility and directly benefiting from my own labors or enduring the disappointments of my own failures. It's still a hard road, and I want to earn a few hundred more rejection slips before I go to the Great Word Processor in the Sky. But right now I love that direct connection with the audience.

Besides, I'm a writer. Being vain is one of the job requirements.

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Skull session

Review of The Skull Ring and interview with Scott Nicholson at Ebook Reviews Online.

The Best of All Flesh edited by James Lowder, which contains my story "Murdermouth," has been short-listed for an Origin Award.



Just finished with High Country Comicon, good attendance, and good to see people spending some money and having a little fun. Plenty of talented artists are out there toiling away and making it happen. In other news, still working on revisions to Speed Dating With The Dead while continuing with the young-adult series.

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Comics, funny books, graphic novels

Whew, what a week. Putting together the final pieces of the Grave Conditions comics project. We'll end up with three digital issues and one trade paperback of about 90 pages. I am pleased to have Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Stephen Susco, William Harms, Sergio Castro, Kewber Alves, Louis Bermer, Chad Blevins, Shane Kirshenblatt, and more in it. More than a year in the making, with the corpses of a few artists laying by the roadside, I have to say I am pleased with all the hard work, talent, and vision in these stories. I'm not sure I want to undertake another such project, but now I am glad I did it.

We'll have digital issues out starting in April, with the trade paperback coming out in early May. The Dirt trade paperback will likely be out in May as well. In addition goes the regular writing and revising. I have also decided to release the supernatural thriller DRUMMER BOY in April and the psychological thriller DISINTEGRATION in May. That's all for now--getting ready for the big comic convention tomorrow. Fun, art, and a lot of moving tables and chairs!

By the way, thanks for all your support on the ebooks--they are still selling steadily, which is why I've decided to release more.

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Serious Jones

Tomorrow I head for the Pamlico Sound for a couple of days of rest, relaxation, house renovation, and being sort of near my daughter's school trip to the beach. While I have plenty of work to do, I won't have Internet access...and the wireless card is busted on my laptop. That cry you hear may be the shriek of withdrawal. My life revolves around the Internet and wireless communication, which is funny since I'm one of the least-plugged-in people you can imagine. I don't even have a real cell phone, just one of those TracFones that cost about a quarter a minute (and, yes, I have the 59-second conversation down to an art form).

If you need to get in touch, you can't even go the message-in-a-bottle route because of environmental consciousness. So just yell real loud. If you didn't notice I have been away from the computer for two days, you obviously are missing out!

On the other hand, I hope to get the rewrite of Speed Dating With the Dead done, as well as some editing work.

Signed skull and digital crossbones

We've been gung ho on putting together digital projects, but I just received a case of The Skull Ring paper copies yesterday. I'd forgotten the thrill of cracking a case and seeing that stack of beautiful, shiny covers with my name on it--it still has that stamp of reality that an ebook can't quite match! Signed copies are $9.95 and available for order through Haunted Computer.

I'd also like to thank author Stephen James Price, who is working hard to put together digital versions of the various comics projects. I'm really pleased to have Grave Conditions finally come together, and we'll be doing digital releases of single issues and collecting all into one trade paperback. This has been a large project, and herding a number of creative types makes herding werecats seem like child's play. All in all, I think we'll be satisfied even though we probably won't earn a dime.

In other developments, I hope to get Write Good or Die out soon, so if you're an aspiring writer, you should grab it, because this is definitely advice you won't get in most places. I'll also be running the blog as an organic, interactive writing manual, so we can all learn together. I'm sure there will be some pub-industry talk as well.

Here's the cover mock-up for Grave Conditions #1, with art by Alberto Aprea:

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Debbi Mack's Identity Crisis

My friend Debbi Mack's mystery thriller IDENTITY CRISIS is available as an ebook and trade paperback from Amazon. She introduces a hard-edged heroine Sam McRae as she protects a legal client and runs from the mob. A great new series from an indie author.

WRITE GOOD OR DIE should be wrapped up this week, so if you like writing, you're welcome to drop in and join the interactive writing-advice manual. And who doesn't want to be a writer?

What are you willing to do?

A thread in the Kindle Boards forum asked authors "What are you willing to do (or give up) to be a successful writer?"

I already feel like a successful writer because I am taking steps to find whatever audience I deserve. I had six books on the shelves (one is still clinging to the late stages of being in print), and I never was able to "quit the day job," but the money from Act I of my career helped get me a house. I measure success differently these days, because I am already pretty content with my life, though I do have the goal of cutting out that trip to the office every day.

Self-publishing books for me are not a way to get attention, assuage my ego, or get instant gratification. I have over 500 rejection slips and I still get them. I still want to publish in a major press. But now I have a baseline for what my work is worth and what the rights are worth. I believe this is a viable foundation for a lasting career, because I can track how much income I can expect to make and how many books it would take to make a living. My sales have increased to the point where having six novels out would equal my take-home pay from my day job. Of course, this ebook enterprise doesn't have a retirement plan or health insurance. If the U.S. adopted nationalized health care, I'm sure I would join the hundreds of thousands of people who would immediately follow their dreams instead of taking the "safe route."

Well, no route is safe. Amazon could cut a deal today with major publishers and drop all indie authors. The continued recession could lead to the death of $250 handheld reading devices. Ebooks could become seen as free content and few writers would even stay in business. Ebooks could evolve into interactive experiences requiring large and skilled production staffs, adding audio and video, that make printing and shipping a paper book look like a walk in the park. The ebook market could reach the saturation point when most every book ever printed floods the market in the next few years.

There are no guarantees, and even the experts are already weeks or months behind what is actually happening in the trenches. All I know is to act on the evidence I see before me: Publish X number of novels and get X number of sales per month and earn X dollars. Publish in New York to stay visible and reach the paper audience, because it is the ebook audience of the future. Write stories without regard to narrow commercial considerations, because now they are lasting works of art instead of three-month shelf products. Write without bitterness over an industry that some feel conspires to keep writers locked out.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's excellent blog "Freelance Survival Guide" muses on the various business considerations of the writing life, as well as the ephemeral notions of success. She says it much more succinctly than I can but the gist is success will change over the course of your life and career. For me, there are measurable goals of sales, income, and the reaching, serving, and satisfying of an audience. But no check I've ever received has matched that feeling of typing the last line of a story and sitting there all sick and shivery and tense and dewy-eyed and whispering, "Nailed it."

There is only one thing I'm willing to do to be a successful writer: write.

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