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FRIDAY, JULY 19, 2019


SIX THINGS WRITERS NEED TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT


Some things don't change.

When I got my start in this biz, way back in 2002, writers had to get a lit
agent to get a publisher, then they did what their publisher told them to do.

That way of doing things was terrible for lots of reasons, including (but not
limited to):

 * Agents missing good books.
 * Publishers missing good books.
 * Publishers owning rights forever.
 * Publishers screwing up promotion.
 * Sales numbers following you.
 * Having no control during the submission process.
 * Having no control during the publishing process.
 * Having no control after the book comes out.

The "having no control" parts actually apply to all of the above. Though writers
can set goals such as "I'll query three agents by July 20th" actually getting an
agent is out of our control. 


I've blogged at length about the differences between goals and dreams, but TLDR:
goals are within your control, dreams are what you want but beyond your control.


While self-pubbing has allowed writers unprecedented control over how we publish
and promote, there are still four things beyond our control that writers seems
to get stuck on.


Here are six things writers need to stop worrying about. 




1. REVIEWS


Don't get me wrong here: we need Amazon reviews. 


I do NOT recommend any paid service that says they'll get you reviews. There are
too many ways that can go wrong, and too many ways Amazon can take it the wrong
way.


I DO recommend making your book free to get more readers (and more reviews), and
building a newsletter list where you can send books to fans to get reviews.
NEVER ask for 5 star reviews. Ask for honest reviews.

But while reviews are needed to help sell books, and while getting good reviews
is helpful, writers should not read their own reviews.


Someone else's opinion of you and your work is none of your business.


Keep repeating that until it sticks in your head and you start to believe it.


I have a caveat here. If you have over 50 reviews, and your book averages less
than 3 stars, start reading reviews, because chances are there is something
wrong with your book that people are picking up on. Read the reviews, fix the
book, unpublish it, and republish it under a new title (in the description state
it was previously pubbed under the original title.)


But unless your reviews overwhelmingly suck, do not read them. 




2. CRITICS


Fuck critics. Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, critique.


Anyone who gets paid to review someone else's art is a bottom feeder. Artists
create. Jackasses tear down what artists create.

Are you a professional critic and don't like me saying that? Welcome to how it
feels to be judged by a stranger, asshat. Now go eat a cold bag of dicks and
re-evaluate your life, because you are a waste of carbon.


Don't read critics, don't kowtow to critics, don't support critics, don't send
your book anywhere in hopes of being reviewed by critics.




3. YOUR PEERS


I remember starting out, and how important the acceptance of my peers was. I
wanted blurbs. I wanted to be praised. I wanted to be liked.


Unnecessary, all of it.


You should go to conventions and meet like-minded authors and have
coffee-break/beer-rant conversations with them. If you find a kindred soul, you
should trade manuscripts with them for critiques (they aren't critics, they are
fellow artists) and attempt co-writing a few times. It's helpful, and fun, and a
nice break from all of the lonely solitude of being a writer.


But it's okay if you don't make any lasting friendships, or co-write any
stories, or trade manuscripts. 


It's even okay if your peers don't like you.


Other writers aren't necessary for you to succeed in this business, and their
acceptance of you isn't necessary for you to feel good about yourself and your
career.


Friends in this biz are great, but don't worry if you don't have any.




4. AWARDS


There's a phrase for a bunch of like-minded people who get together for the sole
purpose of mutual gratification.


Circle jerk.


Awards are self-congratulatory seals of approval from peers that say nothing
about the quality of the writing. Some are nepotistic. Some are fraudulent. Most
are popularity contests that don't even require the voters to read your work.

The subjective opinions of a certain group of people at a certain moment in time
say nothing about the value of your work. Having won an award won't do much (or
anything) for your career.

Do you remember who won the Pulitzer for Lit in 2008? The Nobel in 2011? The
Booker last year?


Neither does anyone else. 


Winning an award feels nice for five minutes. Losing an award feels shitty for a
few days. Neither makes your book any better or worse.


Put awards out of your head. They don't mean anything.



5. CONTESTS


Don't enter contests.


I say this having judged contests, having held contests, and having submitted to
contests (I actually just entered the Kindle Storyteller UK contest, because I
pubbed a book at that time and it only costs a keyword to enter, which took all
of 30 seconds, and because there may be some readers looking to read entries,
which can't hurt sales.)


Paying to enter a contest is a waste of money and hope. No one cares if you win,
and losing feels bad.


Don't do it, unless it requires zero effort and money. And if you do enter a
contest like Kindle Storyteller, forget it as soon as you enter; you won't win.




6. BESTSELLER LISTS


Once upon a time, every author I knew hoped to hit the NYT bestseller list. Me
included.


Then I figured out how the NYT list worked and realized how stupid it was.


Once upon a time, you sold a lot of ebooks appearing on the Amazon bestseller
lists. Discoverability and visibility had a direct connection to more sales. I
no longer believe that's the case.


So stop worrying about getting on any kind of list. It's beyond your control
anyway.


Instead, focus on finding the sweet spot between ebook price and sales. 




So ends this rant. If you agree or disagree with any of these, I read and
respond to all comments.

Posted by JA Konrath at 12:11 PM 42 comments:
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2019


NEW PUNCTUATION?


So let's talk about punctuation.

Like all writers, I have preferences.

Actually, preferences may not be strong enough a word.

I have rules. Things I do, over and over.

My rules may be a little unorthodox, but they work for me, and my readers don't
seem to mind.

I like the Oxford comma. Without it, things can get confusing. For example,
consider my favorite blogs: Stomp Out Racism, Children Are Precious and A
Newbie's Guide To Publishing.

Obviously the Children blog and this blog are not racist, but without the Oxford
comma, it could be misinterpreted.

Sometimes I don't use a comma even when I could and maybe should. This sentence
is an example; I could have used a comma after Sometimes, comma, and could.

I often omit commas when using nouns and pronouns. I think Hey Phil! and me too!
read better than Hey, Phil! and me, too.

I dig run-on sentences even though they should be broken up into smaller
sentences because I believe writing has a beat and a flow like music and
sometimes you want that extended guitar solo sentence to get a point across or
make the reader feel something.

I like dashes. One of my things is to use a dash to interrupt action--

--then continue the dash on the next line. Breaking the flow can be as effective
as a non-stop flow.

I like the semicolon; it's like a super comma that holds the sentence together,
unlike a period which brings things full-stop.

Not a huge fan of exclamation marks. I try to limit each novel to a handful and
always go back and check to see how many I can remove.

Occasionally I like the exclamation point/question mark jumble. Especially when
a character is like WTF?!??!

When time passes in the same scene (I prefer scenes to chapters--savvy readers
know I rarely use chapters) and my POV doesn't change, I'll put an extra line of
space between paragraphs, or separate them with a centered #  #  # or *  *  *.

Hammet turned to him, a smile playing across her lips. "Do you think you can
tame me, Tequila?"

"I can give it my best shot."



*  *  *

Hammett's fifty foot Viking sports yacht was worth about half a million US
dollars, according to its former owner, who mentioned that before she killed
him.

I don't like speaker attribution.

Speaker attribution isn't punctuation. But it functions in an identical way.
Punctuation is used to help us understand the meaning and intention of words and
sentences. Speaker attribution--he said, she asked, they screamed--helps us
understand who just spoke, in a similar way.

I've used speak attribution for much of my work, because it's easy. People say
it is invisible; we view it the same way we view a period, subconsciously noting
it and arranging the story we see in our heads accordingly.

But he said really is a waste of space, a waste of words, a waste of time.

The work-around I've used (I've done several stories and novels without any
speaker attribution) is to insert action to make the reader aware of who just
spoke.

"It's a simple trick." Joe picked his nose and wondered how that got up there.
"And it brings extra imagery to the scene."

A part of speaker attribution I particularly dislike is he thought.

In a first person point of view, it isn't really necessary. Depending on the
story rules you set at the beginning, internal monologue may have nothing to
distinguish it at all, other than the words themselves. Often, limited internal
monologue is used, the writer can put it in italics, without needing
attribution.

I hope the readers understand what I mean.

But interior monologue in third person POV gets tougher to pull off without
interruption.

I'm a staunch believer in "One POV per scene". I don't head-hop in the same
scene--unless it is set off properly, usually by using a new scene heading (I
prefer to name my scenes by the character, location, and time, rather than by
chapter), or in rare cases I separate fast-paced head hopping with the triple
hashtag or triple asterix, like I do when time passes.

But when writing WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI (currently free on AMAZON) I encountered
a problem I'd never run into before.

I have three main POV characters, and three minor ones. All are in third person.

When you do interior monologue in third person, your choices are italics, or
speaker attribution, or both.

Unfortunately, the amount of interior monologue in WHTL was so excessive in this
story, that over one third of the book would be in italics, and all the he
thoughts/she thoughts was wasting words and space.

These were duplicitous characters who lie to each other, to themselves, and even
to the reader.

I had entire pages of italics.

This was the opposite of invisible. It was glaring and obvious and repetitive
and it irked me. And on an ebook, where old folks like me crank up the font size
to Jumbo because of our failing vision, a page of italics and become four pages
of italics, and then it no longer looks like italics.

This wasn't the smooth storytelling I wanted.

So I got to thinking.

We use quotation marks to set off dialog.

Why can't there be a similar mark to set off interior monologue?

So I tried using the tilde. ~

~Will a tilde work to set off inner thoughts?~

It sort of worked. But when I tried to get the advice from some friends on Skype
chat, the double tilde drew lines through the words.

That made me think of the formatting problems I could face when releasing an
ebook, with page after page of strikethrough words.

Damn coding.

But thinking of coding, made me think of the obvious.

The diple. <

The French use the double diple <<, aka guillemets, to set off dialog instead of
using quotation marks.

<Maybe I can write a book using single diples for interior monologue.>

What really sold me on it, though, was how the diples could do more than just
show inner thoughts. They became an essential element of the story, with a big
twist ending for readers paying close attention.

<That's actually cool.

<Why not give it a go?>

So I went back and adjusted the first 30k words to use diples rather than
italics and he thoughts, and then I began to write using diples.

<Wow. It's soooooo easy writing with diples.>

After a few thousand words, using diples became so natural that I wished I'd
been doing it my whole life. To be able to pop into a character's head so
quickly and easily and obviously made the writing tighter, smoother, and
faster-paced.

I still had a problem, though. Would readers find it as invisible as I did?

Just to make extra sure readers knew this was intentional and not some
formatting error, I decided to put an author note at the start of the book. Here
it is:

AUTHOR NOTE 1

Storytelling isn't static. It evolves.

Movies have been enhancing their artform for over a century. Black and white
films became color, which became Cinemascope and 3D and IMAX. Silent films
became talkies, which became stereo and surround sound and Dolby Atmos with
dozens of speakers. 

Are these just gimmicks? Maybe. 

But they also assist in immersing the viewer in the story.

For the sake of immersion, WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI utilizes some unique
punctuation. 

The diple. <

The diple dates to ancient Greek writing. It has been a staple of computer
language, and Internet communication, for over forty years. 

Quotation marks announce dialog to the reader. WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI uses the
diple to announce characters' thoughts.

<I hope it enhances the story, rather than distracts.

<If not, I hope you can forgive me.

<I also hope you forgive me that this is only half a book. This is the first
90,000 words of a much longer novel. So be warned; it will end on a whopper of a
cliffhanger.

<Are new punctuation and cliffhangers just gimmicks? Maybe. 

<But this will pay off. In a big way.

<Trust me; you can't possibly imagine what happens until you read it for
yourself.>

And off I went.

Early reader response has been encouraging. People quickly get used to it, and
the diples become invisible, just like any good punctuation mark.

But when I pull the Big Reveal at the end of BOOK 2, people will be like "Oh,
shit! That's why he did it! I should have guessed it!"

Win-win.

But of course nothing is truly win-win. I fully expect some readers to hate the
diples, and to hate the book. Some already have.

I'm cool with that. I get irritated by Cormac McCarthy's lack of punctuation,
because it isn't alerting me if someone is speaking so I have to reread the
sentence to get the meaning.

I believe the only reason to reread a sentence is to savor it. Not because you
can't understand it.

But McCarthy sells a shit ton more than I do, so my opinion hasn't hurt his
popularity.

If some people want to hate the diples, it's cool.

If you want to hate the diples, it's cool.

<But I bet you also move your lips when you read to yourself.>

Ha! I jest. You can dislike a new style of writing and your opinion is valid and
I won't judge you.

<You pinhead.>

See the potential yet?

When used for lying and hypocrisy, it's so simple. When used to share info with
the reader, it's so simple. When used to add tension to a scene, it's so simple.

Read WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, currently free, and let me know what you think.

<And by all means, try a writing exercise using diples for interior monologue.

<It's a lot more fun than you might think...>

Posted by JA Konrath at 10:48 AM 24 comments:
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FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 2019


30 FREE EBOOKS


I'm back in the self-promo game, and I decided to return to ebook marketing with
two big ideas.

The first is a promo for my 180,000 word thriller duology, WHAT HAPPENED TO
LORI.

I blogged about it at length. In a nutshell, I wrote a very long thriller with
some unique punctuation and tried to pace it like clickbait, and then I split it
into two books. The first, I released for free. The second will debut on August
30 for 99 cents.

I wanted to see how many readers I can reach by debuting a novel for free, and
how many will stick along for the second book if it is super cheap. So far, so
good.

My second idea is an offshoot of an idea I had last year. A newsletter swap.

That's when a few promo-savvy authors all put their ebooks on sale at the same
time, then link to each other in their newsletters. It's win-win. Writers can
reach other writers' fans, and the fans (engaged readers who signed up for the
newsletter) get something cheap or free.

When we did it last year, we also had a landing page that we could all link to
on social media.

This year, I upped my game.

Instead of doing this with five authors, I've done it with twenty-five.

And instead of every author having to trade cover art, links, and book
descriptions, I made a landing page, www.freethrillerebooks.com, and no one had
to upload anything, or spend time on formatting newsletters with a lot of extra
jpgs and links.

Here's a screenshot you can click on it to visit the site.




All the authors had to do is make sure their ebook was free on Amazon.com from
June 21-25 and email me their ASIN, then send out a newsletter and post the URL
on social media.

Everyone is sending out their newsletters today and tomorrow. Here is the
language I'm using.

"J.A. Konrath here. If you haven't picked up my brand new free ebook, WHAT
HAPPENED TO LORI, you can get it by going to www.freethrillerebooks.com. And if
you have gotten LORI, thank you, but please go to www.freethrillerebooks.com
anyway, because a group of two dozen bestselling thriller authors have come
together and we are all giving away free ebooks from June 21 until June 25. So
check it out, and share it with your friends, family, co-workers, pets, etc."

I have no idea how this promotion will do, but I'm hopeful. My email marketing
provider, Mailerlite.com, sends out my newsletters. They are great to work with,
offer simple-to-use analytics, and are half the price of my old service,
Vertical Response.

Plus, with Mailerlite, I pay monthly for unlimited emails, rather than buying
credits for emails like I did before. That means I can schedule AutoResend
campaigns (it automatically resends the newsletter to subscribers who didn't
open it a few days earlier) without any extra cost.

Seriously, I love Mailerlite. It's simple to use, really cheap, and their
customer service is top notch and available to chat 24/7. If you decide to
switch over to MailerLite based on my praise, use this link and I get a referral
perk.

After web goddess Maddee at Xuni.com set up the www.freethrillerbooks.com
website for me on WordPress, I figured out how to quickly add ebooks with a few
clicks. Listing those 30 ebooks took about 45 minutes.



So my future time investment is minimal, my monthly monetary investment is
rolled into my monthly newsletter fee, and the other authors don't pay me
anything and no one has to do much work to send out bare-bones newsletter.

That's the kind of marketing I love. Free and easy.

But will it work?

I dunno. But I think it's worth trying.

There were some costs setting this up. There were also some obstacles. The
Amazon "Add To Cart" button doesn't work for all visitors, and I wasted a lot of
time and money trying to get it to work. I had to learn about WordPress and
plugins and the Amazon Associates OneLink program. I did a lot of brain-frying
testing with HoxxVPN to view the site as someone would in Canada or the UK. And
I also paid for help, and wound up scrapping that idea and going in another
direction entirely.

But now it is done. And I can use it however and whenever I like. I can change
the URL and title and background and do a 99 Cent Erotica promotion, or 10 Free
Horror eBooks, or Dystopian Sc-Fi on Sale, or 15 Serial Killer Books That Will
Scare You Silly.

Doing newsletter swaps with authors, and having the live URL for linking to
social media, is a way to reach many more readers than I can on my own. The sunk
costs are paid, and I can maintain it for almost no cost just by renewing URLs
once a year.

Feel free to spread the word. And if you are an author with a big newsletter
list and are interested in giving this a try, shoot me an email.

Posted by JA Konrath at 9:30 AM 16 comments:
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SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2019


WRITER'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH HATERS


Hey! An axe!

Let's grind it.

Back in 2013 I wrote a post about critics. Four years prior to that, I did
another post about critics.

It's time to revisit.

Like all breakthrough technologies, the Internet has improved life for a lot of
people.

We now have a fast and easy way to reach other people who share our interests
and ideals. We have unrestricted access to information. We can entertain
ourselves, educate ourselves, make some money, improve the world, and make life
better.

And then there are the haters.

The first human who invented fire: "Look! I can harness this wondrous new
technology that can keep us warm and cook our food to prevent disease and
protect us from predators!"

The first critic: "It sucks and you're an asshole."

I understand some fundamental concepts concerning genetics. As a species, we
must band together to reproduce. We're wired to seek out each other, to share,
to empathize, to help.

But we're also tribal. That means we're fiercely protective of our tribe, and
suspicious of others. In fact, we're suspicious of everything, because knowing
what is good and what is bad could save us from terrible deaths.

Somewhere along the evolutionary path, hating a rival group of Homo
heidelbergensis because they might kill us all and steal our food was beneficial
to our survival.

And somehow, in just three hundred thousand short years, that led to people
hating one another for their skin color, religion, sexual identity, country of
origin, politics they follow, way they dress, sports teams they watch, and art
they enjoy.

Everyone has an opinion. And I truly believe all opinions are valid.

Those opinions may not be defensible (XY, you have zero say in what XX decides
to do with their bodies.) Or they may be defensible (We are going to destroy the
planet if we don't reduce human-caused greenhouse gases.)

No matter your opinion, right or wrong, you are entitled to it, and entitled to
shout it out everywhere. Even if you are an ignorant pinhead.

Free speech is required in society. It allows ideas to be exchanged and debated.
Asshats who are relentlessly negative, clueless, bigoted, stupid, raised-wrong,
and incapable of using logic, reason, common-sense, or facts to form their dumb
opinions, must still be allowed to voice those dumb opinions.

And you, as an open-minded skeptic with a thick skin, are allowed to calmly and
dispassionately engage and refute those opinions without ad hominem attacks or
any other fallacious endeavors.

Unless you are a public figure.

Some public figures should be openly criticized, and should defend themselves.
Those we elect to serve us should suffer the slings and arrows of voters with
opposing viewpoints, so that they may better govern. Unleash your inner hater to
comment on the injustices you perceive due to unequal representation in
politics. And, through town halls and public debates and social media, discourse
can happen between those who govern and those who elect them.

This is required.

But other public figures aren't allowed that opportunity.

If you play sports, professionally, you will be publicly hated, and so will your
team.

If you are an actor or director, you will be publicly hated, and so will the
movies and shows you are involved in.

If you make music, you will be publicly hated, and so will your music.

Create YouTube videos that you pour your heart and soul into even though you
don't make a dime? Publicly hated.

The down votes and dislikes and mean comments will always follow you, because
people have opinions and they believe if a series finale doesn't live up to
expectations its just as enraging and terrible and worthy of a petition as the
twelve million tons of plastic dumped into the ocean every year.

Unlike the sociopath politician, who probably doesn't want to have to deal with
the finicky voters and would much rather govern with absolute control, but must
engage sometimes because there are laws in place, other public figures have one
rule and one rule only when dealing with criticism.

Shut up and take it.

Some moron can take twenty seconds to write a venom-filled screed that publicly
lambastes something you worked on for ten months, and your options are to ignore
it, or ignore it.

That seems one-sided and unfair, doesn't it?

I'll watch sports figures getting roasted on Twitter for a bad play, and my
first reaction is, "Wow, not a single person slinging the hate could ever play
professional sports."

How do I know that is 100% true? Because unless you are in MMA, professional
sports players don't trash talk each other. They are respectful in public.
Probably because it would bring negative press. But maybe part of it is because
they know how much work it takes to become a professional sports player, and
there is respect there.

You'll never see me give a one star review to anything. I'm an artist. I know
how hard art is. Even art I don't like. Even if the art is demonstrably
terrible.

Even though the Internet makes it sooooo easy.

I could spend every waking hour bashing other artists. I could even make a
living at it (no one misses you, Roger Ebert.) I could even do it anonymously.

But I don't do that.

Others do, though.

This is because, from an evolutionary standpoint, we are still fighting with
other tribes over who gets to hunt in the mammoth breeding grounds. And by
fight, I mean face-to-face combat to the death.

But modern technology lets us vent that pent-up aggression instantly and without
consequence. And not at people taking our food, but at people who created a
prequel we didn't like.

Face-to-face? Ha! You'll likely never meet whomever you are criticizing.

And if they have the temerity to fight back? They can't do that! They're a
celebrity! They have to take criticism and not respond, because that's their
job!

Welcome to the Internet. Technology that could improve humankind, reduced to a
megaphone for schoolyard bullies.

For the insecure, the quickest way to feel better about yourself it to put
someone else down. Especially someone who won't defend themselves. This will
never change. There will always be haters. And artists will always have to
ignore it and never engage with those haters.

That said, I'm a writer, with a blog about writing and publishing, and this blog
gives advice based on years of experience, hard work, deep thinking, and how I'm
feeling based on what I had to eat today.

So here is the Writer's Guide To Dealing With Haters.

RULE 1: Don't Read Your Reviews

I know that this is easier said than done. Especially when you first put a book
out there, and you are desperate for feedback. Resist the temptation to read
what people are saying about you. Their opinion of you, and of your story, is
none of your business.

RULE 2: Do Not Engage

Okay, you're human, and you accidentally read a 1 star review where some baby
compared your book to a giant pile of horse shit except your book would attract
more flies. Then this baby goes on to spout a whole bunch of lies about your
book that are just plain incorrect.

It doesn't matter. Don't respond. No matter how tempting, you cannot defend
yourself. It will always backfire.

RULE 3: Don't Write Negative Reviews

This should go without saying. You shouldn't bash your peers. Or anyone, really,
except for politicians. Treat people on the Internet like you would treat them
if a friend introduced you at a party. Always.

RULE 4: Pyt

This is a Danish word, sort of a combination of "shit happens" and "no big
deal." You don't need to get over it, because it was never a thing in the first
place.

We don't have control over how other people act. We do have control over how we
react. As a writer, you will get reviews. If something is inevitable,
unchangeable, and impersonal, the most you should react is by shrugging, maybe
with a knowing little smile.

Pyt.

RULE 5: Haters Gonna Hate

What Peter says about Paul reveals more about Peter than Paul. That bad review
has nothing to do with you. Someone with a very small mind and a very unhappy
life needs to attack art to feel better about themselves. Who cares? Not your
problem. You don't have to deal with them. And it isn't going to hurt your
sales, or harm other peoples' opinion of your book.

Do you know why? Because you have bought and enjoyed books that others have
given one star. If you don't care, no one else cares.

To sum this up in one sentence; Ignore critics because people suck, be a nice
person, and if you run into anything negative, pyt.

Q: But Joe! What if I have legitimate problems with some work of art and I want
to protect people from making the same mistake I did?

A: Take a good long look in the mirror and keep repeating "Nobody cares what I
fucking think" over and over until you go hoarse. Because nobody cares what you
fucking think. You aren't protecting others. You're being a petty, selfish dick.

Q: But Joe! What if I'm writing thoughtful, heartfelt opinions, backed up with
examples and logic?

A: Save that for reviews of art that you like. Writing positive reviews is
encouraged. Hate should not encouraged, ever. You're not marching to save the
rain forest. You're annoyed because you feel you wasted some of you leisure
time. Get over it.

Q: But I'm allowed to say what I want!

A: Here's a litmus test:

Would you say it directly to the artist's face, live on stage in front of ten
thousand people?

If not, don't post it.

Would you say it directly to the artist's face if the artist was a mixed martial
arts expert and had their teeth clenched in rage?

If not, don't post it.

Would you say it directly to the artist's face if you knew their mother just
died and they couldn't stop sobbing?

If not, don't post it.

Would you say it directly to the artist's face no matter what?

If so, you're a douchebag. Fuck off.

Now go read WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, by latest novel, which debuted for free.

If you hate it, cool. Write a review anyway. I promise you won't have to say it
to my face. :)

Posted by JA Konrath at 10:21 AM 22 comments:
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TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2019


AN EMAIL TO JACK ON HIS BIRTHDAY


Hey Jack.

Cool name.

My name is Harry McGlade. I heard you've read about me.

The guy who writes about all the awesome shit I do, J.A. Konrath, also known as
Joe, told me it's your birthday today.

Happy birthday!

I remember turning 15. Best year of my life. I was on top of the world, and so
happy all the time that you couldn't smack the smile off my face with a hockey
stick.

Joking. Being 15 sucked sweaty balls.

School was brutal. I was pudgy, short, had a high voice. Got picked on. Had to
deal with bullies. My grades were shit, and my merry-go-round of foster parents
were always riding my ass about that. I didn't have any close friends, and I had
no love life at all. I'd never kissed anyone. Never even had a date. Every day
was a living hell.

You couldn't pay me a billion dollars to go back in time and be a teenager
again. You know why?

Because you don't have a billion dollars, Jack. And time travel is impossible.
You should know that.

If time travel was possible, there would be time travelers everywhere, walking
around acting like "Look at me, I'm from the future, and I got an iPhone 37! I
can use it to call Moses!"

But we don't see that. Because there are no time travelers. And because Moses
isn't real.

Neither is Santa. Hope I didn't spoil that for you.

Where were we? Oh yeah, you brought up time travel billionaires.

C'mon, Jack. You can't come at me like that, bro. Bragging about having all that
money and a time machine. That's insane!

(But if you actually do have a billion dollars and a time machine, hit me up.)

WTF was I talking about?

Right. Being a teenager was tough. I bet it's even harder for you. Transgender?
Dude, I don't even know you, but I can imagine all the shit you have to deal
with.

Actually, I CAN'T imagine it. No one can imagine it, unless they've gone through
the same thing.

You're super brave, bro.

When I was your age, I was confused a lot about a lot of things. There was no
one who understood me. I liked boys, and girls, and pretty much everyone no
matter how they identified, and I didn't understand why. And back then, there
was no internet. I couldn't find other people like me. Bisexuals were called
faggots and got spat on. There term 'pansexual' wasn't even invented yet. People
actually thought gender was fixed. They really believed that who you were
attracted to was a choice, like you could turn off what turned you on.

What a bunch of backwards-ass pinheads. And some folks still haven't caught up
to modern reality. Sad.

So I got a lot of hate and a lot of weird stares when I was your age. Or people
tried to fix me. Like there was something wrong with me. Like my feelings were
wrong, because they were different.

Turns out, there was nothing wrong with me. I liked what I liked, and that was
fine. I am what I am, and my feelings are just as valid as anyone else's.
Problem isn't me. It's the world.

People fear and hate and laugh at and try to change the things they don't
understand. It's an unfortunate aspect of human nature. They think we need to
look and act a certain way, and if we don't fit that mold, we're freaks.

That's garbage.

I never had body dysmorphia, so I don't know what that feels like. No one does,
unless they go through it. I bet it's hard. I lost my hand. And even though its
gone, sometimes I can still feel it. Phantom Limb Syndrome, it's called. Weird,
huh? But you can't really understand it unless it happens to you.

For the record, I DO NOT recommend losing a hand. Just clarifying that. Had to
relearn how to wipe my ass. Took four months. Four dark, messy months.

Worst part? I bite my fingernails. You don't want to bite the brown nail, buddy.
Yuck Factor One Billion.

But pretty funny. Gotta laugh at yourself sometimes.

Anyway, the world has gotten a little better since I was your age. There are
still asshats everywhere, but there are some good people, too. I've got a BFF
named Jack Daniels that you know about. She's pretty cool. Her husband Phin is
cool, too, and the dude is smoking hot. They accept me for who I am, and don't
judge.

It's hard to find people who don't judge. I bet it's really hard for you. When
you were a kid, everyone treated you like a girl. You had a girl name. You still
have girl parts and girl hormones, and you know that doesn't feel right, and
people don't understand.

And now you're telling people that you're not that girl with that old name,
you're someone else. You're really a man named Jack.

Cool name. My buddy, Jack Daniels, would be real proud of that.

Gotta be tough to feel one way when the world sees you another way. Kinda like
Bruce Wayne, and when he grows up he realizes he's the Batman. Maybe he's always
been the Batman, but the only one who understands him is Alfred. No one else
does.

Is it me, or did Bruce and Alfred have a gay vibe? Maybe it's me.

Anyway, I bet people have a hard time trying to understand you. I bet you don't
even understand you sometimes.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and you've figured it all out and you've got your shit
together and Everything Is Awesome like in the Lego Movie (I couldn't get that
effing song outta my head for weeks—I actually thought about suing those little
plastic bastards).

If you have figured it all out, let me know your secret. Because I'm 54 years
old and I'm still confused about a lot.

But some things I do know. I'll share a few of these things with you, as a
birthday gift. Which is great for me, because it doesn't cost me any cash.

I know you didn’t ask for advice, and I get that. I’m an old white guy, and most
of the problems in the world are caused by old white guys. What the hell do I
know about anything?

Well, I don’t know much about what it’s like to be you. But I know a little
about what it’s like being me. Maybe some of it applies.

So let the Harry McGlade Wisdom commence...

Life gets better as you get older. You have more control over things, and you
can find where you fit in. Right now you have to put up with stuff. You're not
an adult yet. You live at home. You have to go to school. You don’t feel right
in the body you have. But when you get older, things change. You aren't forced
to do as much, you get to make all your own decisions, and life gets better. I
promise.

There are people out there who like people like us. And there are people who
love people like us.

Never trust a fart. I just shit myself the other day, in line at the theater to
see the new Godzilla. I blamed the smell on the old lady behind me, and then
flushed my underwear down the toilet in the movie theater bathroom, which
clogged it up and caused a big shitwater flood. Some kid came in and slipped on
it and got all soaked with shitwater--dude was wearing white too--and it was so
funny I couldn't stop laughing. So, actually, that story has a good ending.
Unless you were that kid. But, truth, kid looked like a real d-bag and probably
deserved it. Also, Godzilla was fun.

Where was I? Oh yeah, life lessons.

Pets are the best.

There will always be people who don't understand. But there are always people
who do understand. Find those people. Those are your people. And the ones that
don't understand, forgive them. They don't get it.

Everyone is a consumer. But you also need to give back. Everyone takes. Not
everyone gives. Be a giver.

At the same time, no good deed goes unpunished. Sounds funny, but it seems like
every time I do something nice, it comes back to bite me in the ass. For that
reason, never do anything and expect to be thanked. If you help someone, do it
because you feel they need help. Don’t expect anyone to be grateful. Haters
gonna hate, no matter how nice you are.

Never buy a burrito from a food cart. You're just paying for diarrhea.
Explosive, sudden diarrhea. The kind that fills up your socks. The burrito may
smell good, but resist, dammit! It's a hot zone of tasty viruses waiting to turn
your colon into a firehose.

Don't litter. People who litter suck.

My life philosophy is this: Learn what you can. Pass along what you've learned.
Leave the world a better place because you lived. And have as much fun as
possible.

So do lotsa fun stuff. Whatever your thing is, do your thing. I like to fish
(Catch and release, and fish don't feel pain. Look it up.) I like some sports. I
don't like camping, except the shitting in the woods part. I love media. Not
news media. Pop media.

Movies (The Abyss is my fave), TV (Invader Zim, ATHF), music (Neil Diamond and
Judas Priest, don't judge) videogames (Adventure for the Atari 2600 is still the
greatest videogame ever made and don't fight me on this), and of course, books.

My fave fiction books are The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker (read that and see
how much Konrath stole from that guy), and Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
(Konrath stole a shitload from that guy, too). But a caveat; Silence of the
Lambs probably has the WORST depiction of a transgender person ever written. The
villain kills women to wear their skins. I'm pretty sure that isn't common in
the LGBTIQ community. I've never seen it, and I've seen A LOT.

Best non-fiction books are Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (that will scare the hell
out of you) and Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon. You should get your parent
to read Far From The Tree. Konrath's father was gay (he's dead now) and Joe
raised a kid with developmental and behavior disorders, and this book helped Joe
understand both his Dad and his son much better.

What other wisdom can I impart on your 15th birthday? I'm full of wisdom. I'm
also full of beer and pizza. Chicago has the best pizza. Anyone who tells you
different is wrong.

Forgive people who are wrong. Sometimes you'll be wrong. When you are, admit it,
and apologize.

What else?

Learn to forgive yourself. I'm still working on that. I've done a lot of stupid
shit. Like, a whole lot. But torturing myself with regret is pointless. I've
made mistakes, but I've learned from them, so I guess I had to make them, even
though they hurt like hell.

Life hurts like hell sometimes.

When you feel bad, talk to someone about it. And if you're feeling really,
really bad, talk to a professional. A doctor. I've popped so many Zoloft in my
life that when I piss on a flower bed, the flowers starting singing like a
Disney movie. But the correct, prescribed meds can help with depression. So can
a good shrink. No shame in that. We all need help sometimes.

Wear sunscreen. If you don't get the reference, Google Baz Luhrmann.

Never give up. You know Konrath wrote ten books and got over 500 rejections
before he got published? He spent a decade of his life feeling like a failure
because he couldn't sell anything. But he kept at it, he never quit, and
eventually Whiskey Sour sold to a big publisher in New York.

And now Konrath has sold more than 3 million books, and the ungrateful asshole
doesn't pay me a single dime. Bullshit, right? I'm the best thing in those
books! Everyone knows that!

What other gems can I bestow upon you on this happy day of your birth? Did I
mention pets are awesome? Did I talk about poo enough times? Poo is funny when
you're 2 years old, and it's still funny when you're 102 years old. Hell, I'm
wearing a diaper right now. Not for any medical reason, but the bathroom is like
fifteen steps away from my desk.

I think that's everything I know.

Konrath is going to send you a Dropbox link, which has all of his books. You
know I'm in more than just those drink books, right? Shit, have you read Banana
Hammock? That whole book is all me! Timecaster? The Chandler series? I'm in all
of those, and more. If you want the whole list, check my website.

When you get the Dropbox invite, accept it, and you can download all the .mobi
files of all the books for free, then sideload or upload them to your Kindle or
preferred reading device. I'd give you instructions, but you're 15. Figure it
out yourself, smart guy.

And that's it from me. Your parent emailed Konrath and said you read his books
and your birthday was today. Pretty cool parent. But that cool parent probably
didn't expect me to write you instead of Joe. Especially me swearing and talking
about the Hershey squirts every four sentences.

But you've read my books, so nothing in this email should shock you. Might shock
your parent, though. Tell them not to be pissed at me.

Lemme know you got the Dropbox link, and if you have anything to pass along to
Konrath, I'll tell him.

I'm raising my beer right now and toasting your transition, if that's what you
decide to do. I'm guessing it won't be easy. But it wasn't easy for the Batman
either. It wasn't easy for me growing up pansexual, or losing my hand. It wasn't
easy for Konrath, dealing with all those rejections. It wasn't easy for that
d-bag kid at the movie theater who got soaked with shitwater.

If life were easy, nothing would have value. It's the hard stuff that makes us
realize how strong we are.

And you're strong. You're stronger than I'll ever be.

Happy birthday, Jack.

Cool fucking name, brother.

Best,

Harrison Harold McGlade


Joe sez: I've posted this email with the permission and encouragement of Jack
and his parental unit.

If you aren't familiar with my work, and couldn't grasp the context, it's
written in the POV of one of my characters, Harry McGlade, who happens to be in
a few dozen of my books.

Jack chose to call himself Jack because he likes another one of my characters,
Jack Daniels. Which is the coolest thing one of my readers has ever done. I wept
when I heard that. I'm teary-eyed right now.

When I began this blog in 2005, I decided it would be about writing and
publishing. I didn't want it to ever get political or personal. Different people
have different viewpoints, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and
whether I agree or disagree with your ideologies has nothing to do with the
focus of this blog.

But, you see, this blog post IS actually about writing.

I'm a 49 year old white straight male. When I grew up, the media was full of
white, straight males. I was represented in books, movies, music, on TV, in
comics, and pretty much everywhere.

I have never known what it feels like to be discriminated against. And I don't
know what it would be like to grow up without seeing anyone similar to me in the
media.

When my father was 49, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died at 50. Dad was
openly gay toward the end of his life, but for most of it he was closeted. He
married a woman because that's what he thought he was supposed to do. His
doctors, his church, his parents, treated homosexuality as a bad choice, as a
sin, as a mental disorder.

Back in 1972, my father went to a university to get “help” for being queer.
Aversion therapy, they called it. They showed him a slide show, and whenever a
homosexual act was depicted on the screen, they literally shocked him with
electricity.

Disgusting and barbaric? Yes. Did it really happen? Yes.

My father was told by EVERYONE that his sexual preferences were wrong, and he
believed them. He went to this “treatment” in the hope he could get “better.”

Many years later, we all know that homosexuality is not a choice, and it is not
a disease, and there is nothing wrong with being queer. It’s natural, healthy,
and should be viewed positively. Dad eventually embraced being gay, married a
great guy, and lived happily for years before cancer took him.

My father was born with those feelings, and they were normal, and I understood
why he divorced my mother, and I had a great relationship with him. But society
made him afraid, ashamed, and feeling like he needed to be fixed. No one ever
told him he was normal. They treated him differently. They made him feel bad
about himself. And when he was growing up, he had no positive representation in
the media.

After my father died, the main character in my thriller series, Jack Daniels,
discovered her father was gay. I did this to honor my dad.

There are some who say that a straight white guy shouldn't write about anything
other than straight white guys. I can understand this viewpoint. As I mentioned,
I truly don't know what it is like to be discriminated against. How can I
truthfully and honestly represent what I can never understand?

That said, I also wrote a book about Satan imprisoned for a century in an
underground government facility. I have never been imprisoned for a hundred
years. And I have never met Satan. I write about serial killers, and cannibals,
and active shooters, and cops, and veterans, and scientists, and clones, and I
am none of these things. I make shit up for a living.

As my career has advanced, and I've become older and hopefully wiser, I've tried
to show more diversity in my books. My readers are diverse, and they want to
read about more than white cis guys. So I try to write positive characters from
different of points of view and walks of life. I write about people of colors
and races that don't match mine. I write about people with different gender
identities. I write about people with disabilities. I write about people with a
variety of sexual preferences.

In short; I write about people.

So, for National Pride Month, I'm giving everyone reading this blog a writing
exercise.

See? I told you this was about writing.

Your homework is to look at your Work In Progress and ask yourself, "What am I
showing my readers?" And, more specifically, "What am I showing my readers who
aren't representative of me?"

Look for diversity. Look for stereotypes. Look at the positive role models, and
the negative role models, in your words.

Consider who is reading it, and what they'll think.

Because guess what? The LGBTQ+ community reads books. People with disabilities
read books. People of color read books.

If you white cis guys want them to read YOUR books, maybe you should think about
your characters a bit more.

And for those who aren't white cis guys, for people everywhere on the gender
spectrum, for people of of all races, colors, cultures, and religions, for
people with illnesses and disabilities, for women, and for the LGBTTQQIAAP
community; we need to hear your voices. I think I'm a pretty good writer, but
I'll never be good enough to really understand your struggles, your triumphs,
your perspectives. You need to write books to enlighten people like me about
what it's like to be you. Also, please feel free to write about white straight
guys, even if you aren't a straight white guy.

And for all you bigots, for people who hate others because they are different,
for all the bullies, for the haters, for the homophobes, for the misogynists,
for everyone who nurses prejudice in public or secretly, for those who make fun
of people who are different so they can feel better about themselves, I have a
message for you, too. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. We need
to hear your small-minded ideas. We need you to express your fears and
insecurities by lashing out at those who don't agree with your ideologies.

Ha! Kidding! You bigots can fuck off. Keep your hateful little circle jerk to
yourselves. You can come sit at the adult table again when you've opened up your
small, petty minds to a concept called equality.

We've come a long was since 1972. But we have a long way to go.

Everyone deserves acceptance. Everyone deserves representation.

And most of all, every writer should have a fan as cool as Jack.

Happy birthday, bro. I agree with Harry McGlade. You're braver than I'll ever
be.

Posted by JA Konrath at 10:26 AM 13 comments:
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SATURDAY, JUNE 08, 2019


TRYING SOMETHING NEW AND DIFFERENT


I recently wrote what I believe is my best work. It's an epic gearshift thriller
duology, and took more than a year to plan and write.

Me, the guy who wrote SHAKEN in 9 days, spent twelve whole months carefully
crafting a story.

I was so jazzed at the final result that I gave it to my agent to sell, thinking
I had a big, marketable bestseller with a huge hook and unpredictable twists and
water-cooler-talk potential. A book that would generate lots of buzz and word of
mouth and sales.

My agent sent it to 47 North, Thomas & Mercer, Simon & Schuster, Harper, Tor,
Blackstone, Kensington, and Del-Rey.

They all rejected it.

Admittedly, this surprised me a bit. Not a whole lot, because I know this series
isn't easy to pigeonhole.

First of all, it's long. Over 180,000 words for the duology. Paper costs money
to ship and print, and a 500 page hardcover book could be prohibitively
expensive for the publisher, and the reader, who would be shelling out $30+
(twice, once for each book in the series) in a shrinking hardcover market for an
author who has never had a NYT bestseller.

Second, I invented a new type of punctuation for this series. I think it's
pretty invisible, and it makes telling this story much simpler and smoother, but
it is still pretty odd, possibly even haughty.

Third, the first book ends on the mother of all cliffhangers. That might piss
off readers, and reviewers, who would have to wait a year to see how everything
turns out.

Fourth, it's a gearshift thriller. Gearshift narratives are always risky. Not an
easy sell.

Fifth, even though I've sold three million books worldwide, I've been a bit
outspoken about legacy publishers, and some of them might be stoking resentment.

So while I was a little disappointed I didn't get a big offer, deep inside I
knew that if a publisher did go for it, they likely wouldn't have any idea how
to make this series a hit.

But I think I have an idea that could work. Maybe being solo and nimble and fast
can be a big advantage, like a tiny mammal in a world if dinosaurs. I can make
changes instantly. I don't form decisions by committee. I don't need 18 months
to prepare a release. I can slip this in just in time for summer.

These publishers don't share my vision.

But I believe there's an audience out there for this series. A potentially large
audience.

I just need to figure out how to find that audience.

BOOK 1 is currently available on Amazon.

Then, at the end of summer, I will release BOOK 2.

Of course, BOOK 2 can be pre-ordered right now on Amazon.

Click on the covers for more info.


               

Now let's have a quick Q and A:

Q: What's the pitch for BOOK 1?

A: Here's the jacket copy:

Three people.
Each has a secret.
Each has an agenda.
All three are liars.

One of them committed a terrible crime.
One of them is on the run.
More than one of them is a killer.

These three people are about to find out what happened to Lori.
And they're going to wish they never did…

WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI – BOOK 1: GENESIS
Is she dead? Or is it much worse?

ABOUT THE BOOK
What Happened To Lori is a gearshift thriller series comprised of two 90,000
word books. This unconventional thriller bombards the reader with intriguing
questions and eye-popping scenarios, pulling you deeper and deeper into a
complex--yet highly entertaining--web of mystery, secrets, sex, double-crosses,
lies, voyeurism, torture, and deceit, leading up to the biggest mind-blowing
twist in modern genre fiction.

Book 1 sets the scene, introduces the main characters, and pulls you into a
wicked plot involving a missing woman who is presumed dead, her obsessed
grieving brother, her off-kilter ex-con husband, and the mysterious mercenary
her husband hires to replace her...

You may think you have it figured out.

You're probably wrong.

What Happened to Lori will stay one step ahead of you right until the epic,
unexpected, universe-shattering conclusion.

Welcome to the modern thriller. It will blow your mind.




Q: Why not release both parts at once?

A: There's a copywriter term known as the curiosity gap. Essentially, it's the
discrepancy between what someone knows and what they demand to know. The goal is
to keep someone engaged without boring or discouraging them.

If you know your sex terms, its like edging.

So I'm literary edging.

That's what I tried to do with WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI. How we read and absorb
information has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years, with the rise of
the Internet and social media. I wanted to write a book that used traditional
narrative structure, with conflict, rising action, and resolution, and full
character arcs, and good vs evil, and engaging storytelling, and do it in a
thoroughly modern way.

But I also wanted it to function as literary clickbait. Episodic TV has become
the norm, with story arcs that aren't resolved until the season finale. We surf
the net, going from site to site, our dwindling attention spans eager for new
tibits of information.

Why not try this style with books?


Q: You said it's a gearshift novel. What's that?

A: BOOK 1 is a Did He Do It? love-triangle thriller with some unconventional
elements, like the punctuation and the structure.

BOOK 2 is absolutely insane, and goes someplace wildly unpredictable. The story
shifts gears, hence the term gearshift. A few movies that do this are Something
Wild, From Dusk Till Dawn, Full Metal Jacket, and Psycho. These films begin with
the viewer thinking they are headed in a certain direction, and then they turn
on a dime and become something... different.


Q: What do you mean it has unconventional punctuation?

A: You'll understand it when you read it. I hope it catches on. It makes writing
a whole lot easier, and much less intrusive for the reader.


Q: Are you doing that clickbait curiosity gap thing right now by not telling us
what you mean?

A: A little. I'll give you a different example. Speaker attribution is
intrusive. Saying "she said" after a line of dialog is supposedly invisible to
the reader, but it's also a waste of the reader's time, and a waste of words on
the page. Why should we have to read words to understand who is speaking?

I don't use speaker attribution in WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, but that's not what
I'm referring to here. There are ways around speaker attribution that don't
involve new punctuation.

In LORI, I did something else. Something I've never seen before.


Q: And you think readers are going to like this?

A: Some will. Some won't. In fact, I expect that some people will absolutely
hate this book. Hate it more than any book they've ever read. Because of the
punctuation. Because of the structure. Because of the cliffhanger. Because I
keep posing more and more questions and trickling out answers like crumbs to the
starving.


Q: Sounds like more clickbait talk.

A: In a way, it is. I've written and sold decent thrillers since 2003. I wanted
to try something more provocative. More modern. More catchy.


Q: So I'm guessing readers will be able to order Book 2 for around ten bucks,
right?

A: Book 2 is available for $4.99, which is about average price for an ebook.


Q: In your titles you have (Mind-Blowing Twist Thriller Duology). That sounds
like title stuffing.

A: It's not. I purposely named this series Mind-Blowing Twist Thriller Duology.
I think it's catchy and will stick.


Q: Do you have a marketing plan?

A: I do.


Q: Didn't you just do a blog post about marketing plans not working?

A: I did. But it ain't science if you aren't constantly testing your hypothesis.
Here's my plan for Lori.

1. Publish BOOK 1 for free on Nook and Kobo, and for 99 cents on Amazon (since
you can't publish free books on Amazon.)

2. Price match on Amazon so it becomes permafree.

3. Write this blog post to explain what I'm doing.

4. Put the links for the books on my website.

5. Write a blog with a deeper explanation, and spoilers, on
www.WhatHappenedToLori.com. I'm using a blog instead of a webpage because it
will allow for comments, and I'm hoping people will want to discuss this series
because it's so insane.

6. Send out my newsletter touting BOOK 1 for free. Anyone who wants to write a
review of BOOK 1 can send me a link to their review with the email header LORI
REVIEW before July 31, and I will send them BOOK 2 for free, before it is
released to the public. So you will get the juicy, secret deets before the rest
of the world, and all you gotta to is write a review.

7. Mention on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Advertise with Ebook Booster,
Goodreads, BookBub, Twitter, and Facebook.

8. Do a newsletter swap with several other authors. More on this in an upcoming
blogpost. I've done successful newsletter swaps in the past (that's where you
get some authors together, everyone puts their books on sale at the same time,
and everyone promotes everyone else's books in their newsletters.) I've come up
with a simple and innovate way to make this much easier for all involved, and
infinitely repeatable with minimal work.

9. Keep doing ads and newsletter swaps and asking for reviews, maybe do some
podcasts and Facebook videos, until as many people have heard of this series as
possible.

10. See what happens. If I get a lot of pre-orders for BOOK 2 and make a few
bucks, I can put a pre-order link for a spin-off series in the backmatter of
that and continue writing books in this literary universe. It's a fun, albeit
complicated, world to write in.


Q: What if this bombs?

A: If the sales suck and the books are poorly received and reviewed (which I
would guess is mostly because readers hate the cliffhanger at the end of the
first book) I can just unpublish BOOKS 1 & 2 everywhere, and publish solely on
Kindle Unlimited as a single, super-long novel for $6.99. That would be like
starting from scratch, eliminating all ranks and all reviews. All I've wasted is
a few months and a few hundred bucks in ads.


Q: What if you're getting a lot of downloads and leaving money on the table?

A: I can raise the prices on one or both books whenever I choose to.


Q: Do you actually think this will work?

A: I dunno. I can't even guess. It all comes down to luck. But if I fail, it
will be my failure on my terms.

I've released dozens of books, and I always release them the same way. Here's a
chance to do something different. Something that no publisher can do. Something
I've never seen any other self-publisher try.

Plus, this story is uniquely suited to this sort of release.

So I'll give it a shot, stay diligent, and cross my fingers.

Please read WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI BOOK 1 and review it. Even if y ou hate it. I
am curious who is in CAMP HATE, and who chooses CAMP LOVE.

You can help by spreading the word. Get on social media and tell your followers
that WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI BOOK 1 is free.

You can upvote my Reddit post here.

See those square symbols beneath this blog post, next to the comments? Please
click on the t and the f to share this blog post on Twitter and Facebook.

Posted by JA Konrath at 7:02 AM 35 comments:
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TUESDAY, JUNE 04, 2019


YOUR BOOK MARKETING PLAN WON'T WORK


So you wrote a book.

Hooray.

Now you should celebrate. Enjoy the moment. I suggest craft beer. My go-to is
barrel aged stouts, invented and perfected by Goose Island. But Prairie Artisan,
The Bruery, Alesmith, Founders, Stone, Central Waters, Epic, Boulevard, Oskar
Blues, and Avery also work well. More suggestions welcome in the comments.

Now, after celebrating, you are creating a marketing plan.

You're nervous, but you've been an avid student, devouring everything you can on
how to sell books. And you've discovered a lot of chatter about a lot of things,
including:

SOCIAL MEDIA

The catchall go-to for all authors. You have two Facebook pages, a personal one
and a public one. You're on Twitter. You're on Instagram and Tumblr and
Pinterest and Flickr and Reddit and 4chan and 8chan and Kboards and Goodreads
and Blogger and you are constantly posting new and interesting content because
you're smart enough to know that yelling "BUY MY BOOK!" doesn't sell anything.

Guess what? Posting new and interesting content doesn't sell anything either.

When was the last time you actually bought anything because someone liked it on
Facebook? Or retweeted a product link?

Your social media isn't going to sell much for you. This blog gets millions of
hits a year. You're one of them.

How many books of mine have you bought? Can you name any? What's the latest one?

Sure, maybe some of you have, and you'll comment that you have. But for every
comment I get, there are thousands of hits from those who don't comment, and
don't buy shit. I track my sales when I do a new blog post. The needle doesn't
move.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

You're not going to sell a lot of books on social media. While social media does
help inform fans that you have a new book out, or something priced cheap, it
won't amount to many sales.

That's not to say you should ignore social media. But it isn't going to cover
your car payment. Stop thinking it will.

HOW-TO BOOKS

There are a shitload of How To Become An Amazon Bestseller books for you to
spend your time and money on, and you may think that reading them will give you
some secret insider knowledge of how to sell a million ebooks.

Those books are full of shit.

First of all, check the book's Amazon ranking. Then check the other books that
author wrote, and their rankings.

If they aren't in the Top 1000, their advice isn't working.

Second, if you know how to write a bestseller, why aren't you writing bestseller
after bestseller? Why are you writing How-To books?

Makes no sense.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT HOW-TO BOOKS

There is no book you can read that will help you improve your sales to a degree
that was worth the time and money you wasted on it.

Feel free not to believe me. Feel free to tell me about the book that helped you
sell a zillion copies. But beware: I'm gonna check your rank and post it and
make you feel stupid.

ADVERTISING

Throw money at the problem, right? Nevermind that all advertisers acknowledge
that success is sporadic, efforts require constant tweaking and diligence that
could be better spent writing, and the only difference between advertising and
gambling is that gambling has a better return on investment.

I mean ALL advertising. Can it work sometimes? Sure. Is it worth the risk, the
time, the money, the emotional investment?

I say no.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT ADVERTISING

You're doing well if you break even. And while you can crow about the
intangibles of "finding a new fan who buys your whole backlist" the fact is that
any serious attempt to explode your sales using ads will require you spending a
LOT of time tweaking them, and a LOT of money buying them.

I've spent tens of thousands on advertising over the years. NOTHING is
guaranteed. They all require a lot of thought and effort. And all the effort you
spend on ads is less time you spend writing.

MARKETING SCIENCE

Why are books special snowflakes? Why not treat your book like any other
commodity and sell it using a good old business plan? Do a SWOT analysis. Use
Strategic Thinking. Identify your target audience and reach them using a
combination of advertising, give-aways, contests, publicity, and identifying
influencers that you can partner with.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT MARKETING SCIENCE

You are someone's target audience. You are actively marketed to every day of
your life; online, on TV, while you commute, listening to the radio, shopping,
dining out, travelling, pretty much every waking hour.

How many books do you buy based on any of the above?

Answer: few to none. Which brings us to...

PUBLICITY

If you can get on NPR and get your book reviewed in People Magazine and get
Jay-Z to retweet you and get a guest spot on Johnny Carson you can sell a lot of
books.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT PUBLICITY

If you manage to do any of the above--and you probably can't--but if you can,
you WILL sell some books... in the short term. Once the publicity ends, your
sales will go back down. Look at any viral sensation for confirmation. When was
the last time you bought a PSY album?

Smaller publicity like local radio or podcasts or blog interviews really don't
move the needle much, and they aren't worth pursuing. You don't need a
publicist. You don't need a press release.

SO WTF? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SELL BOOKS!?!

Luck.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT LUCK

No one can predict what will sell. If they could, every book would be a hit.

Everyone can tell you why a book sold well after it has already sold well,
pointing to various things that were done that they claim led to the book's
success. They are full of shit.

NOTHING guarantees success.

Not quality.

Not past success.

Not a big advertising budget.

Not a big marketing budget.

Not publicity.

Not social media.

Not any sort of plan that you read anywhere.

You can write the Best Book Ever, do Everything right, spend a Fortune, and not
even come close to making any sort of money.

SO HOW DO I IMPROVE MY LUCK?

That's the question, isn't it?

I've driven myself half-insane trying to figure out how to sell ebooks. And I've
sold a lot. But, like many, my sales have slowed down over the years. I used to
make $800k a year. Now I make less than half of that.

Why?

Well, the reason I broke out and made major money was due to pure luck. Amazon
created the Kindle and allowed authors to self-pub with DTP (now KDP). I was
uniquely suited to exploit this new type of media because I had ten shelf novels
that publishers had rejected, and I now had the opportunity to self-publish them
while undercutting traditional publishers on price. Then, as ebooks grew in
popularity, I got my backlist back and was able to leverage a whole lot of cheap
books into a whole lot of money.

I still make a lot of money. But when Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited, my
income cut in half, and has never recovered.

Luck again. Amazon giveth and Amazon taketh away.

I have gotten some decent publicity in my time. It never moved the needle on
sales.

I've had a very popular blog. It never moved the needle on sales.

I've experimented. A lot. I've done interactive ebooks (Banana Hammock and Stop
A Murder), I tried Kindle Worlds (now defunct), I've had three pen names, I've
combined some of those pen names so I had a consistent brand, I tried starting
two ebook businesses, I've done book tours, I've done blog tours, I've traveled
to 42 states, I've collaborated with over a dozen authors, I've tried many
different genres (thriller, sci-fi, erotica, mystery, horror), I've done short
stories and novellas, I've edited an anthology, I've done audiobooks, I've
advertised, I've had some big publishers, and I've won a few awards. Plus, I
think I write pretty good books.

And all that really counted was Amazon inventing the Kindle, and me luckily
being perfectly suited to exploit that new opportunity.

Luck.

It came down to luck.

And now I have a giant backlist, and Amazon is so well run it continues to
recommend my books to readers, and I still make a great living.

More luck.

But...

It is possible to improve your luck and sell a bit more than random chance.

While I've poo-pooed all of the above strategies, they aren't all entirely bad.
None are a magic bullet. None will guarantee sales. But if used cautiously, in
moderation, you can give your sales an occasional boost.

Here are the things you need to do, in order of importance.

WRITE A LOT OF BOOKS

The bigger your backlist, the better. And if the books are quality (great
writing, great covers, great descriptions) then that will help. Pricing also
helps. I have found that I make more money going exclusive with Kindle Unlimited
than I do going with with other publishers. I've found that the best price point
is between $2.99 and $5.99, depending on length and age (newer is more
expensive).

HAVE A NEWSLETTER

You may no longer need a webpage as an author. More important is having a
Facebook page and a Wikipedia page. But you should be allowing people to sign up
for your newsletter. And you should be sending out one newsletter a month.

What should you put in your newsletter?

ANNOUNCE SALES, NEW RELEASES, and PRE-ORDERS

You should have a social media presence, at the very least Facebook and Twitter.
And you should engage people with enlightened conversation and content on these
platforms. But every once and a while, mention when you have a book that is on
sale, free, available for pre-order, or recently published.

The people who follow you want to know that. So tell them on social media, and
with your newsletter.

ADVERTISING IN MODERATION

Why is it the authors who claim to make a killing by advertising their books are
the ones selling books about how to advertise?

You should certainly experiment with AMS, boosting Facebook posts and Tweets,
Google Adwords, Ebook Booster, BookBub, and any others that are out there. But
here's the caveat; before you use any ads, look at other writer's ads and then
check the sales rank of their books using those ads that you want to try. If
GuaranteedEbookBestseller.com offers you a one-time only deal of advertising on
their site for $99, check to see what books they are promoting, and check their
ranks. That'll tell you how well that service works.

BE CONSISTENT

My career has been all over the place, and I've tried so many new and different
things. I've learned from my many failures, and if I had to do it all over, I'd
tell my younger self:

"One brand, one genre, stop experimenting, stop being a perfectionist, and just
write five good books a year in the same series. Make sure they are
professionally edited and formatted, have great covers and descriptions, keep
length under 75k words, and make sure they have updated, clickable
bibliographies in the back matter, pre-order pages for the next release, and
newsletter sign-up forms."

That's it. That's the sum total of my years of knowledge and experience.

Doing that, along with a minimal social media presence and some moderate
advertising, and maybe you can attain a following and make six figures a year.

Maybe. It still comes down to luck.

Stop worrying. This is all out of your control.

Stop trying to find the answer. There is no answer. No answer, no logic, no
reason, not even any scientific cause and effect.

It's all luck.

So focus on the writing. It's the only thing you have true control over.

Keep writing good books until you get lucky.

That's your marketing plan.

Posted by JA Konrath at 1:46 PM 59 comments:
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2019


ON WRITING SHIT


Back when I was on the conference circuit giving speech after speech about how
to get published, I'd always preach that the most important thing a writer can
do is, "Don't write shit."

It's 2019, and I may be ready to take back those words.

On axiom that I haven't considered taking back (yet) is that I never do anything
that doesn't work on me.

That's worth explaining.

More than a decade ago, in the early noughties (so nice to finally have a word
for the 2000s), I used to attend a lot of conferences, conventions, and book
fairs, and every author seemed to be armed with an endless cache of bookmarks.
Naturally, these bookmarks had info about the book they were selling; cover art,
description, a blurb or two, links to the author's website.

Some were self-printed and looked cheap. Some were slick and professionally
done; either the author shelled out some bucks, or the publisher did.

In any case, these giveaways had a time cost and a monetary cost, and a lot of
authors used them to promote. The freebie tables were full of them. They served
as a conversation starter and ice-breaker when meeting potential fans, and maybe
some readers took them home and used them to remember which books they wanted to
buy.

Maybe. But I doubt it.

I say this because I've been the recipient of hundreds of bookmarks, pressed
into my hands by eager authors, and they never made me buy a book. I never even
used a bookmark in my life; I dog-ear paperbacks and use the jacket flap for
hardcovers to mark my page. So when I got a bookmark, it went into the garbage.

As the years went on, I began confronting authors about bookmarks. Partly
because I was a know-it-all prick in my younger days, but partly because I was
genuinely interested in human nature and helping other writers.

Whenever someone handed me a bookmark, I'd ask, "Have you ever bought a book
because someone gave you a bookmark?"

Some authors told me they did. But at least half of them would go wide-eyed with
self-realization, and I got the chance to witness their moment of "Why the hell
am I doing this if it doesn't work on me?"

Bookmarks don't work on me, so I don't give them away.

I don't click on Facebook ads, so I don't buy Facebook ads.

I've never gone out of my way to go to a booksigning, so I no longer do
booksignings.

And so on. I'm not saying that these things don't ever work for other authors.
But if it doesn't work on me, I don't do it.

The converse is also true. We all need to pay a lot more attention to why we buy
books. How did you hear about it? How many steps between your awareness and the
point of sale? What were the factors that lead to you buying? And so on. Someday
soon I'll do a more detailed post about how we convince ourselves to buy stuff.

But today I want to talk about writing shit.

It seems like a no-brainer, right? If you own a restaurant, your food can't
suck. There are other things that contribute to a restaurant's success;
location, decor, pricing, service, cleanliness, menu, etc., but the one thing a
restaurant needs to do is serve decent food.

At least, it makes sense to believe that.

It also makes sense to believe that your book has to be good. We all work hard
on our writing, and I've never met a writer who doesn't care what readers think.
We want to entertain and impress. We want to make lifelong fans.

And that starts with a good book.

Or so I used to believe.

I had a very popular post ten years ago debunking the so-called Tsunami of Crap.
TLDR: there are billions of books to read, a few more million shitty ones won't
destroy reading as a pass-time.

I still believe this. But I've begun to refine it.

Going back to the restaurant analogy, I am blessed to live in an area where good
eateries abound. I have favorites, depending on the food type. Every so often, I
have a mediocre meal or experience at a place I normally enjoy, and I usually
give the joint a second chance. If I have two bad meals, I don't ever go back.

But I'm beginning to believe that this doesn't translate to readers and books.

People are creatures of habit. I just went to jury duty, and while waiting to be
called I sat at a table off to the side. A woman joined me, and we spent three
hours on our respective Chromebooks, then left for the lunch break. When I
returned, I purposely changed tables, moving one to the right, because I know
that people always return to the seat they had earlier and I like to consciously
break that evolutionary quirk of human nature.

The woman who sat with me earlier sat with me again. Not because I'm a thrilling
table-partner--we didn't really talk. But she saw me as her reference point, and
sat in what she thought was her old seat, not even knowing she was one
table--about twenty feet--over to the right. Another juror approached us and
mentioned we'd moved over a table because he came back and was irritated his old
table had been taken.

Interesting, ain't it?

We are creatures of routine and habit. We gravitate toward the familiar, because
it is safe.

So now I'm going to tie all of these disparate points together.

My wife, Maria, reads a lot more than I do. She loves thrillers, and goes
through 3-5 per week, getting most of them on Kindle Unlimited. If an author she
likes isn't free on KU, she will spend up to $6.99 for the ebook. But never more
than that. She has favorite authors whose ebooks are released by publishers for
more than seven bucks, and she won't read them until they are on sale.

She's been doing this for years, like clockwork.

Not coincidentally, she is my audience. Both literally--I write books intended
to please her--and figuratively, because Maria represents my average reader.

So while I normally tailor my efforts to things that work on me, like never
giving away bookmarks, I've taken to tailoring book-related stuff to things that
work on my wife.

And I've noticed an interesting habit of hers.

When Maria is reading a mystery series, she keeps reading it.

Forever.

She will audibly complain, at midnight in bed while finishing a novel on her
Kindle, about how shitty the book she just finished was...

...and then she immediately gets the next book by that author. If it isn't for
sale yet, she'll preorder it.

Like me, she'll give a restaurant two tries before walking away forever. One bad
meal is a fluke. Two bad meals means we'll never go back. But with books, her
capacity to endure and even devour bad writing is eye-opening.

Maria doesn't abandon authors.

Maybe she keeps hoping they'll go back to writing the way they use to write,
when they first hooked her.

Maybe she reads so much that she forgets who wrote what and when she sees a
familiar name she reads it because she forgot the last few experiences were bad.

Maybe it's just easier to ride with the devil you know than the one you don't.

Actually, I'll ask her.

Joe: Hey babe, why do you continue to read an author if their last book was bad?

Maria: Because I like their characters.

Joe: What would make you stop reading an author?

Maria: Too expensive. Multiple bad books.

Joe: How many bad books before you quit an author?

Maria: I dunno. Four.

Joe: Have you ever actually quit an author?

Maria: No. Wait, yes. One. He became too expensive. And he changed genres.

Joe: You read about five book a week?

Maria: Yeah.

Joe: How many are sub-par?

Maria: Two.

Joe: And you keep reading those authors anyway?

Maria: Yes. I forgive them. They had a few crummy books, but I hold out hope the
next one will be better.

My takeaway: My wife has read thousands of books, and the sole author she
abandoned was because he dropped out of Kindle Unlimited. She kept reading him
even when he switched to a genre she didn't enjoy, and kept reading him even
though his quality went down. Ultimately though, price was the ultimate reason
she left him.

According to her numbers, 2/5 of the books she reads are below average, and she
STILL READS THOSE AUTHORS!

Mind officially blown.

In most cases, it takes me 2 to 3 months to write a 80k word novel. About 1/3 of
that time is rewriting/polishing/fixing/tinkering/making it better.

But I'm beginning to think I'm wasting a full 1/3 of my writing time.

My first drafts are pretty good. They're lean, and fast, and the character arcs
and plot rarely need tweaking. The rewrite polish is mostly spent on
housekeeping stuff; adding color, exploding certain scenes, adding more drama to
the climax, salting in a few more jokes, changing word choices, putting in a few
more clues or callbacks.

And sometimes a book is short, say around 60k words, I'll spend time expanding
some scenes or adding a few to beef it up to 70k+, because I want to give good
value to the readers who still pay for my stuff rather than read it via KU.

So I spend a full 1/3 of my time as a writer trying to make a grade B book into
a grade A book.

I think I'm wasting my time.

Why write longer? Why write better? What's the benefit?

Readers will forgive me if I phone-in a book. Or four. Especially with a series.
As long as my first 12 are solid, I could probably make the next 6 mediocre, or
even shitty, and most of my fanbase will stick with me.

Now, I'm not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems,
story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on, even though Maria forgives
authors for those indiscretions, and according to here they happen in about half
the ebooks she reads.

I'm talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers,
whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2.

Seems like a gigantic waste of time. And speaking of...

I just spent an ENTIRE YEAR writing a novel. Not SHOT GIRL, which took three
months (1/3 of which was spent polishing it). I'm talking about a book that
hasn't come out yet.

I'll blog more about this epic 180k word novel in a future blog post, because it
challenged me more than anything I've ever written, and I refused to settle for
anything less than a perfect translation of the story I saw in my head.

But now that I've finished that giant novel, I'm wondering if I wasted an entire
year. Rather than torturing myself to try to get something perfect, I could have
done four novels that were great. Or six novels that were pretty good. Or eight
novels that were mediocre. Or ten novels that were shit.

And if I'd done ten novels that were shit, that likely would have made me the
most money out of all the options above.

I can't explain how big of a mindjob that is to me. It is so counter-intuitive
to everything I've learned as a writer, and everything I've learned about
self-promotion.

Better isn't actually better.

More is better.

Faster is better.

Flash beats substance.

Loyalty trumps all.

Because we no longer need gatekeepers, were are the guardians of our own
quality. And the reader I count as representative of my core audience is pretty
much telling me that I don't have to try so hard, because she'll repeatedly
forgive me.

This almost always bears out with Big Name Authors. Authors who have been around
for twenty years and always appear on the bestseller lists. Some of them--not
all, but some--get terrible reviews by readers on the latest books. Comments
about "phoning it in" and "cashing a check" and "not the series I loved ten
years ago."

Yet the books keep selling. A three star average doesn't stop a bestseller.

So does that mean McDonald's wins? Quantity over quality? Mediocrity over
excellence? Cheap and fast over a richer experience? Are we such creatures of
habit that we'll stick with a writer in decline just because we had happy
memories of a book of theirs they wrote in 2003?

Well, hell, I think so. Much as I hate it.

And not just because Maria feels that way. I realize I do the same thing. I just
ordered the new Thomas Harris novel, even though the reviews have been bad, and
even though I didn't enjoy his last two books. But I loved his first three, so
I'll continue to buy him.

And, newsflash, the new Thomas Harris is every bit as jawdropping as the
reviewers are saying.

But will I buy his next one? Yep.

I've been to 42 states, and the best hamburger in the country is at The
Assembly, which, gratefully, is close to my house. I'm a burger connoisseur.
I've eaten them everywhere.

I've been to The Assembly four times this year.

But we've gotten fast food burgers at least twenty times.

Fast and cheap and mediocre beats teriffic.

Have you ever stuck with a TV series even though it dropped in quality?

Sure you have. We all do.

Everything I know says I need to stop spending so much time rewriting. And I
also think I spend too much time in the planning stages of writing; working on
outlines, making sure I have enough twists, cleverly seeding in clues for the
big "a-ha!" moment.

I am wasting my time trying to turn "good enough" into "great." Which,
ultimately, is a subjective, arbitrary notion, because I've struggled to make
books as perfect as I can make them and there are those that still don't like
what I've done. I get one star reviews, same as every other author.

Which begs the question; if I get one star for something I worked my ass off on,
it's not like that reader could give me less than one star if I didn't work as
hard on it, so why am I bothering?

So... should I just write shit?

There are books I've picked up, self-pubbed and legacy-pubbed, and I can't even
get through the first few pages without cringing because the writing is bad.

And I mean objectively bad. I mean being able to take a red pen and point out
why the sentence doesn't work and why the paragraph isn't needed and why the
story doesn't actually start until page 15.

But many of these authors outsell me.

There's also a good chance that I'm wrong. What I consider "objectively bad" is
really subjective, because I'm a huge pile of neuroses and riddled with envy. If
something is that popular, it can't be bad.

Can it?

I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I published a book less than a grade
C. I'd feel lousy. I love writing, and I wouldn't want to release something I
wasn't proud of.

But I could live with Bs. I was fine with getting Bs in school. Why put in all
that extra work to turn a B into an A when I won't lose readers for a B?

This moment really hit home for me two years ago, when I rewrote my first three
novels. I blogged about it.

In a nutshell, I created a character named Phineas Troutt when I was in my early
twenties, and wrote three novels with him as the protagonist. They didn't sell
to publishers. Years later, I used Phin as a supporting character in my Jack
Daniels books, which did sell.

All of my other early rejected books found their way onto KDP, and some of them
have earned a lot of fans and a lot of money. So I thought I could release my
first three novels with minimal work and make a quick buck.

It didn't work out like I'd planned.

When I began to polish them, I realized how shitty they were. I was young and
didn't know what I was doing. So I rewrote all three, and because it was
Experienced Joe fighting with Newbie Joe over what could stay and what needed to
be fixed, it took me longer to rewrite them than it would have taken to write
three books from scratch.

I'm proud of the rewritten books. I think they are among my best work.

But they didn't sell as well as my Jack Daniels books.

My time would have been better served writing Jack Daniels instead.

I am 100% convinced that I could have self-pubbed my original novels with minor
changes and made the same amount of money as I've currently made on those books.
The reviews would be justifiably bad, but it would have benefited my career
because I'd have new six books out instead of three, and the three new JD books
I would have written would have sold more copies, and the three old Phin books I
didn't rewrite would still make a few bucks and my fans would forgive me.

What does this mean for writers?

Do we write books that are good enough and then move along, or do we hold onto
those books until we can make them better? If all signs point to readers being
forgiving and sticking with authors, shouldn't we be listening?

I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to test my hypothesis.

SHOT GIRL took three months. Lots of research, lots of planning, a good deal of
polishing.

CHASER is my next Jack Daniels book.

I'm going to start writing it on July 1 and see how quickly I can finish, and
I'm not going to follow my normal routine of taking a month to make it better.
I'll get it proofed and get that sucker out there and see how it compares in
sales and reviews to my other books.

This isn't unusual for me. I wrote SHAKEN in nine days. Amazon published it
without a single change.

I think I need to get out of my own way, stop letting perfect be the enemy of
good, and see what happens.

Let me take a moment here to bring up a salient point; I'm an established writer
with a fanbase and over 70 books that have sold over three million copies
worldwide and have tens of thousands of positive reviews.

I like to think that I've written some good, even great, books. My numbers bear
this out. Longtime fans will stick with me if I write something so-so.

But what if the first book of mine that a reader discovers is so-so? Will they
go on to read more of my work? Or does it end right there?

I have no idea. And I'm not sure how to test this idea, other than write a
mediocre stand-alone under a pen name and see how it does.

That seems... counterproductive.

Which probably means I won't be able to release something I'm not happy with
under my own name. My ego won't allow it, even though my brain says it's the
smart move.

What do you guys think? Spend a lot of time to make something a little better?
Or stop wasting time trying to turn a good book into a great book and hope your
fans are as forgiving as my wife?




Posted by JA Konrath at 8:13 AM 60 comments:
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