Author Archives: kingmidget

— Mark Paxson

Over at her blog, Audrey put up a post about what makes her close a book before she reaches The End. Her list of four includes: animal abuse; graphic violence or grossness as the point of the book; a hateful main character; long sections of action unrelieved by dialogue, description, or backstory.

I thought I’d bring that conversation over here because it’s an interesting topic for writers to consider as they write their stories. Not that I think one reader’s view of the road blocks is determinative. No, definitely not that. And Audrey mentions in her post how reading a book is a complex thing, an interaction between the writer’s imagination and the reader’s imagination. The result of that interaction is that the experience, the outcome, may just be different for every reader.

But, still, there are good reasons a writer might want to consider the possibility of road blocks. Each of Audrey’s road blocks is legitimate and likely held by a lot of readers. People don’t want to read about animal abuse (or child abuse), and endless graphic violence can turn off a lot of people. And, of course, one of the rules of writing is that there has to be something appealing about the main character. Right?

I commented on Audrey’s post about one of my road blocks and decided to post a few more here. But … before I do that, let me first acknowledge that I almost never have a “did not finish” on books that I read. I almost always power my way through to the bitter end. Although, I did one time stop reading a book with less than ten pages to go because … I. Just. Didn’t. Care. Anymore. Nope. I didn’t care what happened to the characters. I didn’t care how the author wrapped things up. I just didn’t care. So I stopped reading.

And that’s the first road block.

1. Characters and/or a story line that I don’t care about. Yes, that’s vague and very specific to me. What am I going to care about? How can the writer know? I have no idea and I can’t really explain what it is that I’m looking for, but I’ve got to care about what I’m reading. Good luck writers of the world!
2. Too many characters introduced too quickly. This really is at the top of my list, and it’s what I mentioned over on Audrey’s blog. If ten pages in, you have introduced 15 different people to me, I’m not really going to be very happy. Even worse, is if they have similar names or similar relationships. You know, like Andrew, who has four sisters — Ann, Anna, Annie, Annalisa. And Andrew’s best friend is Anthony. Stop it already!
3. Taking too long to expose what the story actually is. I’m not sure how I select books to read, but frequently I do so without reading the blurb. Or, if I read the blurb, I don’t immediately start reading the book. It may sit in the stack for a month or two before I crack it open and, by then, I have long forgotten what the blurb disclosed. As a result, frequently, when I start reading, I have no idea what the story is actually about. And it absolutely pisses me off if the author doesn’t get into the story line and disclose something that gives me an idea pretty early on. Seriously, if I get to page 50 and I still have no idea what I’m reading and why I’m reading it, I’m going to start wondering why I’m bothering when there are other books in that stack.
4. Too much description. How much is too much? I don’t know. I just don’t need or want a lot of description in what I read. See above about the importance of the reader’s imagination contributing to the outcome of the story for that specific reader.

The thing about this list, as I state above, is that none of these things typically rise to the point where I close the book and don’t finish it. And it’s a good thing in some instances. For example, the first time I read Kite Runner, I wanted to close the book after the first 20 pages or so. I read the first chapter (or was it two?), and I had no idea what I was reading. But I didn’t, and that book is now in my list of favorite books. I’ve read it several times since and still enjoy it.

That’s why I think I finish almost everything I start. I may miss something spectacular if I put a book away before it’s time. Yes, FOMO is a real thing!!

One final comment regarding Audrey’s list. I totally get people who don’t want to read about abuse and violence, particularly if it feels egregious and unnecessary. Those things, however, are not on my list of road blocks to reading. Instead, those things frequently draw me into a story. It’s like with movies — most of my favorite movies are intense and dark and, yes, violent.

Sadly, violence and abuse are a part of the human condition and I don’t want to shy away from those things when I read or watch. In my current stack of books to read the next couple of months is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I read it a few years ago. I will never recommend it to any other reader. It is the most brutal book I’ve ever read. Over 800 pages of the most horrendous stuff I’ve ever read. One of the main characters is absolutely beaten and brutalized throughout his life. But … here’s the deal for me … buried in those 800+ pages of brutality is the potential for hope and for love. And I need to read it again to see if my memory is correct about that — to remind myself of how it ended and that hope and love are always there.

So … if you haven’t commented over on Audrey’s post, now that you’re here, what don’t you want to read when you’re reading? What do you shy away from when you’re writing? Do you think about the reader’s experience and imagination while you’re writing?

— Mark Paxson

When I published my first novel back in 2012, I ran several promos on EReaderNews Today. Some were free promos, some were .99 promos. the end result of those promos was that thousands downloaded that novel and I actually made a couple thousand dollars on the book.

When I published a YA novel in 2021, I looked forward to running a promo on ENT and watching the sales soar. Well … that’s not what happened. My promo produced 11 downloads of the book. At .99, that meant I didn’t even reach $4 in earnings for a promo I paid someting like $40-50 for.

In August, I published a domestic thriller novella. I published it on Draft2Digital, as I’ve discussed here several times. D2D provides access to various promos the different e-book retailers and I’ve signed up for those. Unfortunately, D2D and the retailers don’t always let you know if you were selected for one of their promos. So … I have no idea what, if anything, has happened with those promos. Except that I haven’t seen any uptick in my sales.

Somewhere along the way, I read something about Written Word Media — another paid promo option. Like most, they have an email list and promise to include your book in an email that will go to hundreds of thousands of readers. So … I decided to try again.

First up, on November 30, my new domestic thriller novella. The promo cost $65 and promised an email to over 200,000 readers. The day the promo ran, I got about a dozen new downloads. In the days since, there have been more, bringing the downloads for that book since November 30 to about thirty. Meaning, I may make $20 on a promo that cost me $65.

I also ran a promo for that YA novel. This one was only $25 and promised to be sent to over 100,000 readers. As of this writing, that promo produced 4 downloads. So … $25 produced about $1.30 in revenue.

This simply is not a workable concept anymore. (I’d love to hear if other writers out there have experienced better success with these.) I’m convinced that the problem is that the market is just absolutely over-saturated at this point.

And, of course, there’s the other dynamic … do people actually read these emails and buy books from them. Well, obviously, a few do, but is it a meaningful number who do so? It’s not looking that way. I also wonder just how many people on their email lists are other writers, who signed up so they could run their own promo.

Anyway, I’m done with getting sucked into these promo sites. Next up is that I’m going to try some Facebook ads and see what happens. Oh, and I’m also going back to my earlier books and will be publishing them through D2D, to get away from the Amazon monopoly with those as well.

— Mark Paxson

In response to Berthold’s post, I have thoughts.

When I first started writing, I was a regular on a website called Toasted Cheese. It’s still around and produces one of the best literary e-zines there is. But, back then, I remember posting something about whether stories have to have “a point.”

So … let me back up a bit more. Back to high school. I hated English class because we were always asked to analyze what the writer meant. What their point was. And all I thought was … maybe the writer wrote the story or the poem simply because they wanted to write a story. Must every story have a point?!

I still feel this way. But when I asked this question on Toasted Cheese, the response I remember getting was something like “yes, every story has a point even if you don’t think there is one.” Yes, even my stories … had a point, whether I intended a point or not.

And that just continues to rankle me. With one exception, I haven’t stories with the intention of making a point. I just write stories based on an idea and to see what I can do with that idea.

Which brings up Berthold’s question. Depth. I feel like this is related to whether or not a story should have a point. Sure, some stories have a point. That doesn’t mean all stories have a point. Nor do all stories have to have “depth,” which, to be honest, I’m not sure what that actually means.

I now this. My first novel was what I believed was a simple story. Since then, my ideas have got more complex, more layered. But not necessarily more “depth.” At least as I understand the term.

One of my current works in progress is a dystopian take on the U.S. in the near future. It has some complexities to it, but ultimately is a simple tale. Recently though I read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, which are also a dystopian tale. They provide me with some ideas for even more complexity, and more depth to the story I’m working on. And I think about that and wonder if I want to go there. Do I really want to write something other than the “simple” story I thought of when I started this thing? Do I really want to include within the story ruminations of human nature and how people can get to the point where they get to in my story? Or do I just want that stuff to happen organically.

That’s where I have a difficulty with “depth” in stories. Frequently, I feel like the author uses a chain saw where a scalpel would have done. The “depth” or the “point” becomes so oppressive that it destroys the story that is really what I want to read. My preference is that a story be the story and that readers take from it what they will. Even if one reader says “ah, yes, the moon is made of green cheese,” while another reader says “now I understand the Pythagorean theorem.”

This is the beauty of writing. Of fiction. A writer writers. Readers read and take from it what they will. There doesn’t have to be a point. There doesn’t have to be depth. Except for that which the reader gets from the words on the page.

— Mark Paxson

When we started this blog a few years ago, I had an idea of creating a community of writers that helped each other. Something much larger than it has become.

I had big plans for having resources that helped other writers, writing exercises, chats, and posts that invited conversation and a give-and-take, not just between those of us who write here, but including other writers who stopped by now and then.

It hasn’t quite turned out that way. I blame myself mostly because I haven’t done what it takes to make this a destination location for writers. I’ve been derelict in sharing its contents on other social media platforms. I’ve been derelict in posting regular writing exercises. And I’ve been derelict in expanding the resources page and sharing resources more regularly via blog posts as well.

I’m wondering at the moment whether this is an effort worth continuing. I enjoy our video chats. They always end with me motivated to keep plugging away at both writing and helping other writers. I enjoy reading what other writers have contributed to this blog. But the conversation and interaction have not been as broad as I had hoped.

So … I’m pondering the future of this blog. What are your thoughts?

— Mark Paxson

I was thinking about this today and came up with a bit of a different response to this question. Sure, I have the normal dreams. A bestseller. A whirlwind book tour. Seeing one of my stories on the big screen. I mean, seriously, I rarely go to the theater anymore, but when I do, there invariably comes a moment when I visualize one of my stories up there. And I kind of like that idea.

But today, a completely different idea came to mind. When I was a kid, I re-read a lot of books. As an adult, however, I don’t re-read books that much. I’ve re-read Everything Matters by Ron Currie, Jr., a vew times. I’ve read Racing In the Rain by Garth Stein a couple of times. I’ve read one of Wally Lamb’s books two or three times. I’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road several times.

I’ve gone back and read some of my early favorites. Like Man O’ War, a book I read repeatedly as a child. It’s about the greatest racehorse that ever stepped out on the track. I went back and read it a few years ago. I re-read Dune recently because of the remake of the movie. I don’t know, though, that I’ll ever re-read Lord of the Rings again. I have re-read some of Stephen King’s books over the years — The Shining in particular.

For the most part now I don’t go back and re-read a book. It’s steady movement forward, trying to find the next diamond in the rough. The next book that will make me cry. The next one that makes want to never stop turning the pages.

And that’s my dream. For one of my books to be the type of story that readers want to re-visit over the years. Not just a one and done story, but something that sticks with them. That makes them feel something that they wouldn’t mind repeating every now and then.

What’s your dream?

— Mark Paxson

As I wrap up a couple of months of publishing two books through Draft2Digital, I’ve learned a few more things about this whole process. Not all are related to Amazon sucking, but … wait for it.

First, patience is a virtue, particularly when it comes to publishing books. Unfortunately, it is a virtue that I lack at times. When it comes to publishing books, by the time I get to the publication part, I’m ready for the thing to be over. I want my book out there. And I don’t want to go through some things I know I desperately need to do.

So, with my collection of short stories, I put the stories together, formatted the whole thing correctly. Did everything I was supposed to and uploaded the content and the cover. Pushed publish on the e-book. Waited for a proof copy of the paperback and barely skimmed it to make sure it looked right and then approved the paperback.

And so … days later, I was flipping through it to read a portion for my podcast and I discovered a typo in the table of contents. Damn! I went a little deeper and found a few more typos and then I discovered … formatting issues. A couple of the stories were in 12 pt font instead of 11 pt. font and there were a couple of paragraphs in one story that were lighter and a different font altogether. That last one in particular is something that I know that I did not do. But there it was.

I went back to the source document on my computer and all of those problems were in it. Ugh!!!

Here’s the thing about D2D. They only allow one free content correction every three months and apparently my original upload counted as my first one. I had to wait three months before I could correct the content. Or pay $25 for the privilege of doing so. I thought about it for a day and paid the $25.

The corrected content, however, does not update immediately. Oh, it did for the ebook within a day or two, but the paperback? 10-14 days.

The other problem was that, once I approved the proof (foolishly), I ordered 50 author copies (even more foolish). So, I had 50 copies coming with those typos and formatting issues and I didn’t want anything to do with them. But it was too late.

Until D2D screwed up on the shipping. the order was split into two separate shipments. One with 42 books and one with 8 books. The shipment with 42 books has never showed up. But I did get two shipments of 8 books. (Yes, you can’t make this up.) I’ve now asked for the remaining copies to be cancelled and for a refund because they failed to deliver them in a timely fashion and I don’t want them. And now, I’m waiting patiently for confirmation that the corrected content has made its way through their system.

But, back to the title of this post … why does Amazon suck? Until now, I’ve published everything through KDP. It’s quick. It’s easy. Books are available on Amazon’s website almost immediately, but they don’t tell you a thing about availability on other platforms even if you choose the expanded distribution network.

I recently discovered a couple of my KDP-published books were available on the websites for Powell’s and Books-A-Million. I have absolutely no idea if I ever sold any of those books on those platforms because Amazon simply does not tell the author anything like that.

And there’s more. They won’t publish the ebook for the short story collection because some of the content appears for free on my blog. But! They will publish the paperback.

And there is still more. Publishing a paperback on D2D as easy as with KDP, but Amazon does not make the book available as quickly as it does for KDP books. Other platforms like Barnes & Noble had my paperbacks for these two books available within a couple of days of my D2D publication date. Amazon? 10-14 days.

You know there’s more, right? Here’s what they did with my novella after they published it. For at least two weeks, the price went all over the price, but always above my list price, which was $9.99. For a few days, Amazon’s price for the novella was $13.40. For a couple of days, it was around $12.50. this from the company that won’t retail an ebook if it’s available cheaper elsewhere on the internet. They were intentionally pricing the paper above the price other platforms were selling it for.

And then there is this. Amazon delivers a KDP book within two days of order. On my short story collection, they alert purchasers that it may take one to two months for the book to ship. On some level, I get this since it’s coming from a POD entity that isn’t theirs, that they have no control over. But come on.

It is very clear that Amazon does everything it can to put up road blocks for independently published authors who choose to use a different publishing platform. Which is disgusting and why monopolies are bad, bad, bad, bad.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in learning about publishing wide (which is what this is called) and you’re on Facebook, there is a group there called Wide for the Win. It has lots and lots of writers on it and there are daily posts with information about how all of this works.

— Mark Paxson

This morning I woke to another email from D2D. Today’s issue is this. My short story collection consists mostly of stories I’ve published on one of my blogs. I note that in the front matter of the book.

Amazon will not publish anything that is available for free elsewhere on the web, so … Amazon won’t be making my book available. Oh well.

The thing is that D2D asks this question before publishing and warns that Amazon won’t publish anything that is freely available elsewhere, or even available at a lower cost. I just didn’t figure Amazon will catch it. Lesson learned — they did. But again … oh well.

As I journey through the adventure of publishing with a new platform, I learned something new this weekend. First, the good news. My novella is done. Ebook available everywhere. The paperback is done and available … well, some places.

I set a publication date of August 29, thinking that meant the book would be available at on-line retailers that day. Nope. That just means that’s the day the Draft2Digital makes it available to retailers and those retailers can take up to a couple of weeks to put it up on their websites. So … the novella is up on one, waiting on another, and who knows on the smaller retailers that I don’t even know about.

With that done and out of the way, I moved to finalizing a collection of short stories I decided to publish as well. The process went so much more smoothly the second time around. Until it didn’t.

Here’s what I learned. Kobo and Apple will not accept any books that include reference to their “competitors.” So, when I uploaded the ebook and pushed publish, I got an email a couple of hours later letting me know that Kobo and Apple had rejected it.

Why?

Because on the “Also by” page, I include my social media references and I also mentioned that I now have a podcast and I described the podcast as being available on Spotify, Apple and other podcast platforms. I also mention at the very end of the collection a story I included that had previously been published as an ebook only for Kindle.

So … I deleted those offensive references and have pushed publish again. For both the ebook and paperback. I have to laugh at Kobo and Apple’s policies. Like it’s going to hurt their business if a book includes a reference to Amazon or Kindle or Spotify. Just kind of ridiculous.

— Mark Paxson

My journey through new publishing platforms has produced a winner. To recap … I’ve used KDP (and the old CreateSpace) for everything I’ve published until now. But I wanted to give expanded distribution a try and get away from Amazon’s dominance.

Because Draft2Digital (D2D) is completely free to set up, while IngramSpark (IS) charges a fee for set up (unless they’re running a special, which they are this summer), I started with D2D. The e-book set up went remarkably easy, but it does over at KDP as well. For whatever reason, it is easy to accept a Word version of a manuscript, a PDF for the cover, and produce an e-book.

The advantage of D2D over Smashwords, is that D2D does all of the necessary formatting to be able to publish it in all of the different e-book formats. Just upload a Word document and it’s basically done. My e-book is now available on seven different e-book platforms with three more to come.

Which brings me to the paperback. Just as with KDP, it simply is not as easy to upload a manuscript and get to a suitable document for either D2D or IS.

When I went to the print book page for my book, D2D disclosed that their print book platform is in beta and that you have to send an email asking to be included. I’m not thrilled with a beta project, but sent the email anyway.

While waiting for a response, I started the paperback process over at IS. I did all the account set up stuff and arrived at a page that said my account setup was 100% complete and I could start the book process. So, I did, but it wouldn’t let me upload anything because my account set-up wasn’t complete! I tried it a couple of times without success so I sent an email to customer service. They responded and asked if I was sure the account setup page said 100% complete. I assured them it did and was told my issue required a higher level of customer support. So, I waited.

While I waited I got the email from D2D that I could do my paperback there. Ignoring my qualms about the beta aspect of it, I went over to D2D and started their process. I was able to get to the point of uploading the interior. And well…

D2D allows you to upload in several different formats. I started with Word. When I was able to review it on their digital viewer, there were a number of problems, including the page numbering was screwed up and they had monkeyed with the paging of the front matter, leaving the first page of the story on the left-hand page. There are some editing tools they have to address these kinds of problems, but none of those tools worked to change anything.

I tried uploading the PDF instead, thinking that a PDF is pretty much frozen in place, so the issues that cropped up with the Word version shouldn’t be there. Nope. Exact same issues.

So … another email to customer service with D2D.

And I waited. I sent an email to IS asking when I would hear something. I got no response for four days. Meanwhile, D2D got back to me and encouraged me to try the editing tools, which I already had tried. And while I waited, I finally heard back from IS that my account issue had been resolved.

So … with D2D blocked, I went back to IS. I uploaded the interior. I got an error message that there were embedded fonts that needed to be unembedded. I have no idea how to do that, even looking at Google. I sent it to my sister who unembedded them. I uploaded it again and got an error message that all fonts have to be embedded. Sigh. I mean, really … sighin’ sigh.

Back to D2D … I had an two day conversation with several writers on Twitter. Each of whom have used D2D and/or IS. Yesterday, I decided to strip out all of the page and section breaks from the Word document and put them back in only where they were really needed. I converted that new version to PDF and uploaded to D2D and … bingo!!! It went through. The page numbering is correct. The first page of the story is on the righthand page.

But now I needed my cover re-sized. I just got that new cover and uploaded it today. Everything was accepted and the proof copy is on its way to me.

Why does this have to be so hard? What publishing horror stories do you have? What do you do to try to avoid this pitfalls?

Oh, and one other thing. At the same price point, my royalty on the paperback from D2D is $1.00 more than from IS.

— Mark Paxson

Last year, I put up a few posts about my efforts to get an agent for a novel I published last year. None of those efforts were successful and I tired of the process rather quickly and went with self-publishing. I used the KDP platform for the e-book and paperback, like I’ve done with everything I published (except for one book I’ll discuss more below).

Chalk me up as one of those writers who isn’t happy with the Amazon monopoly. While it’s great that Amazon provides such access to indie authors, it comes at a price. Almost complete exclusivity. Whatever it is that their expanded distribution network does, it’s never produced any sales for me. And their exclusivity doesn’t do much for my bottom line.

Yes, I’ve had some page reads through the Kindle Unlimited program, which I believe you can only access as a writer if you commit to Amazon’s exclusivity. But it’s never been enough to make a huge difference.

I recently finished a novella and I’m also putting together a collection of short stories that will be published shortly after the novella. The platforms I’ve considered using to break out of the Amazon rut were Smashwords, Draft2Digital (which is merging with Smashwords in a few months), and IngramSpark.

I know writers who use Smashwords exclusively. I tried it once with one of my early books and found the process of formatting a manuscript to be able to feed it into their program that produces an e-book in all the different e-book variations to be mind-numbing and complicated. I didn’t really want to go through that again. But … I did think about it.

Audrey Driscoll recommended Draft2Digital, or at least suggested looking into it. So, I did. I liked what I saw. No charge to setup and they produce both e-books and paperbacks and even have an audiobook option (sort of). Added bonus — they take less than Amazon does for e-books.

Smashwords promises wide distribution of e-books across the various platforms. So, too does Draft2Digital. And IngramSpark. Here are the platforms Draft2Digital can send an e-book to:

BorrowBox, Vivlio, Baker & Taylor, Tolino, Scribd, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Hoopla, Bibliotheca, and OverDrive.

You can select whichever of these you want your e-book to be marketed on. I selected all of them. Preparing the manuscript and uploading it along with the cover was remarkably easy. Even easier than KDP, which is ridiculously easy when it comes to an e-book. And 1000% easier than Smashwords (unless they’ve improved their process since I tried it around ten years ago).

Within a few hours, the book became available for pre-order on half of those platforms. The interesting thing is that Amazon requires documentation and information that none of the other platforms do. I hade to answer several questions, describe my previous publishing experience on Amazon (in terms of publishing there) and indicate that this book was not already available on Amazon. And then, eventually send an email to Draft2Digital that confirms everything I said in response to the questions asked on their website.

Once I submitted all of that, the approval from Amazon came pretty quickly, but the book still doesn’t show up there. So … we will see.

The easy part was over. I switched to the paperback and … learned that Draft2Digital’s paperback publishing is still in beta and you had to send an email asking to be let in to the beta. I sent the email, but then decided I wasn’t sure I wanted to publish during the beta.

I switched over to IngramSpark to publish the paperback. They have an equally wide distribution for paperbacks and one advantage to both Draft2Digital and IngramSpark is that bookstores are more willing to take paperbacks from them. Some bookstores refuse to take paperbacks from Amazon. So … I started the process.

I went through all the account set up and got to the page where the site confirmed my account set up was 100% complete and I could go to My Dashboard and start working on the book. I did that, went through a couple of screens that are similar to KDP’s and Draft2Digital’s and just before I got to the point where I could upload the manuscript and cover, I got a popup. “Thou shalt go no further until you complete Account Setup.” Okay, it wasn’t quite that biblical, but it was close. I clicked on the link to complete setup and it took me to the page that says my account setup is 100% complete.

And that’s where my paperback resides at the moment. I got a response back from Draft2Digital that I can enter the hallowed halls of their paperback beta and I have communicated to IngramSpark’s customer service to find out what’s going on over there. The first response asked me if the Account Setup page really told me that it was 100% complete. I went back and looked and said, “yes!” The next response was that this would require a higher level of customer care than he could reply. That was 24 hours ago. Here I wait.

I may start the Draft2Digital Beta and see how that works for me.

I’ll provide an update as things progress, but for now, even with the complication over the paperback, I’m cautiously optimistic about this path I’ve opted for with this book. Wider distribution (hard as it may be to believe, not everybody has a Kindle), ease of publication.