Arrrrrrrrrggghhhhhhh!
OK, now that that’s out of the way … If you have not started getting your tax ducks in a row, for those of us who have enough income to worry about taxes, now is the time. If you don’t have to worry about taxes on your writing income, then you should probably still make sure your other revenue and expense documents are at least findable. It makes your life less stressful, which means more mental space for writing.
I released a short story set last week, after the Thanksgiving sales surge. I anticipate slower sales for the set, because 1) they are unrelated to anything else I’ve written, and 2) story sets tend to sell fewer copies, slower. However, having two releases in comparatively quick succession will help keep my name in the upper half of Amazon’s rankings. These were all stories I’d either written for anthologies and they didn’t quite fit, or I wrote them on a whim and decided to sell them. Likewise my next release, which will be a short novella inspired by some songs and by a question in the Familiar-verse.
How often should you have releases? There used to be rules of thumb. Those seem to have gone sailing, although “good stuff, several times a year” leads to more sales than “one magisterial work every four years.” Too many uploads too quickly (3-4 per day in a batch) seems to trigger trouble at Amazon, possibly Kobo/Rakuten and B&N as well, because of the AI spam fiction problem. If at all possible 3-4 releases per year is very good, more per year if they are high quality, are even better, but we are human. Life happens. Readers are more forgiving if they get new, good stuff a few times per year compared to A) lots of less-than-good stuff, or B) lots of promises and a book every three or four years, if then. Note that I’m talking about genre fiction. Literary fiction has different reader expectations, and too many releases too quickly still carries a stigma. “Great work requires great time” is still an unspoken (or occasionally shouted) rule in literature. [Carefully ignores Dickens et al]
Look over your covers and general patterns in the market. I was not pleased to find a quasi-reverse-harem F/M/M/? shifters novel with a cozy romance cover. The reader would have to catch the clue in the cover copy, then read the two introductions to be clear that this is a spicy LGBTQ+ multi-partner romance, not what the cover suggests. And the author knows this, which is why there are two introductions outlining content level and the structure of the shared world (Omegaverse). I hope this is not a trend. Please be clear what your cover is signalling, and to whom. What trad/small publishers can get away with and keep readers is not what we indies can do. Peeved or shocked readers are not good for repeat sales, or any sales if they get unhappily surprised too often.
The good news for a lot of us is that books are more counter-trend for economics than are other small luxuries. Books are inexpensive escapes, especially genre fiction. We are competing with video games (although, the way some game platforms and designs are going …), streamed programs, movies (although, the way Hollywood is going …) for beer money. However, sales will still be a little slower next year, because it is an election year. Amanda, Sarah, Pam, Karen, other long-time indie pros can attest that elections are uncertainty generators, and so people tend to keep they money closer to their wallets.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go write a little. Around household messes, Day Job, winterizing the house, getting ready for the holidays, and a few other small, minor details.
AaaaaaRRRRRRrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!
Mad Genius Club 
10 responses to “The Last Month of the Year”
As part of a larger writing community in Central PA, I regularly see the comic-style, brightly colored, charming cover art on books that I KNOW are hard core pornography. I know the authors!
I don’t mean a kiss as porn either. I mean, it starts on page three and you wonder how the main characters — assuming you don’t promptly put the book down — have the time to solve their plot problems when they’re always romping in bed.
It’s very confusing and many of us don’t like this trend. Librarians have complained to me about this when we talk about the trend.
It can’t go away too soon.
I almost wonder if, in print, it is a way for people who like really, really spicy or odd stuff to read the books in public without getting strange (or concerned) looks. A print version of “on an e-reader, no one knows what you are reading.”
That could be. It’s camouflage.
It makes me long for the days of man chest or spread-eagled flowers. The more chest or completely opened blossoms with the stamens and pistols in full view, the more likely the book was to be spicy. It wasn’t a perfect measure by any means but the cover did give a clue.
You have to wonder if the increase in porn consumption is a side effect of a crash in hook up culture, and a significant decrease in trust in others. You know, the “Everyone talks about it, but nobody is actually doing it.” Long romances and courtships with little actual contact tend to reduce bad decision making.
You are exactly correct. Why struggle with a real relationship where you might have to -gasp! – pay attention to your partner’s needs over yours when a book boyfriend (hate the term) delivers without asking for anything. At all. It’s all about you.
Plus the pornification of everything makes all kinds of possibilities that used to be unthinkable become, well, sort of okay.
I have seen that on the fan-fiction site Archive Of Our Own. Badly-written porn gets orders of magnitude more reads than the best-written non-porn. I mean that literally; 10, 100, even 1,000 times more reads. I haven’t seen any well-written porn there; probably because good writing is simply not necessary.
I put a lot of work into writing the best I can, only to see lazy slop get far more reads. AAARRRGGHHH!!! indeed. ☹️
Yep. The fic with the most kudos in the Mass Effect category on Ao3 is a six hundred-something word bit of erotica of the most popular pairing in the fandom, and it’s been read over 15,000 times. (Admittedly, said fic has been around since 2011, so it’s had a lot of time to accumulate readers.)
Meanwhile, I’ve seen fics that are considerably longer, have interesting ideas and concepts, and well-written original characters have hit counts in the hundreds, at best.
Hey! That’s me! But I write original instead of fanfic so AO3 isn’t be best place for me.
Woot. Three releases last year. I shall try for four next. Possibly five.
AI spam fiction. I’m assuming most, if not all, of the You Tube audio stories of 15 to 120 minutes in length are exactly that. Some of them make flesh and blood fan fic look like Shakespeare.