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— 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.

— Mark Paxson

When I started my writing journey around 20 years ago, I came up with what I believe was a simple idea for my first novel. Since then, my ideas have become more and more complex. It’s one of the reasons I have struggled with writer’s block — the idea that I cannot see these more complicated stories to completion.

I have a half dozen half-completed novels that I struggle mightily with when I dip my toe back in every now and then.

And so it is today. I’m about to publish a novella and a short story collection. And with those nearing fruition, I started turning towards something else while I wait for that process to wind down.

A couple of days ago, I started reading a story I started in 2015. One that could be, should be, a novel. As I’m reading it, I love what I’ve done with the first 7 or 8 chapters, which span almost 20,000 words. I’m concerned though that maybe there are too many darlings in the story. Ultimately, however, my biggest concern is that I have bitten off more than I can chew with this effort. In two different ways.

First, can I write the path these characters are taking and get to the ending. I think I can do that. It’s the second issue that is problematic.

I start stories with a certain flow, a certain vibe, and then I become convincned that I can’t carry that flow or vibe through to the end. There are things I’m doing with this story that … well … it’s a dystopian story where I can kind of make up the rules as I go. It’s led to some fun stuff, a certain amount of freedom in the telling, but once started, I feel like that fun and freedom and rule-making needs to carry through each chapter. And it’s a hard thing to do.

I’m torn between cutting to the ending, which will leave it as a novella and with a whole lot of holes in the possible story, or gritting my teeth and grinding through a longer version of the tale. Something that has baffled me so far whenever I try to sit down with this story. Which way do I go? I want to tell the full tale, to not skip ahead to the ending. I want to fill those holes up with the kind of vibe I started the story with. But I don’t know if I can do it and, eventually, doing so might lead to this being an epic tale of many, many words. Requiring much more patience and effort than I may be willing to give.

Do you ever have this experience? You start a story. It’s going great and then something gets in the way and you begin to wonder if you can actually pull it off. If you can get your head around all of the details and the possibilities and the realities of the story itself?

If you do … what do you do about it? I’d love to hear your thoughts because I have to figure out how to finish this tale that I really, really like and do it right.

-Berthold Gambrel

H.R.R. Gorman and Peter Martuneac were discussing this the other day, and I thought it was an interesting question for writers. Would you rather a reader:

1. Give up on your book only a little way in (say around 5%) and never say anything about it…
2. Or, they read the whole book, but give it a scathing one-star review?

Personally, I’d prefer the latter, especially if the review can be thorough and document what the reader didn’t like. Reviews that consist of nothing more than “I hate this,” or similar are useless. But if somebody really tore into it, and explained in detail why they didn’t like this character or that plot element… well, that could actually be useful in future writing projects.

What do you think?

I am quite content to be an amateur author and self-publisher of speculative fiction stories. I enjoy everything I do as a writer and publisher, and avoid everything I don’t. And if I don’t make much money doing so, I don’t lose any either. So, I’m happy. But maybe a little bored.

Back when I published my first three novels, in 2015, there seemed to be the potential for something to happen. For lightning to strike. What did I know? In 2022 I do know. And what I know is that I’ll not be missing any buses to fame and fortune if I hold off self-publishing my new novel for a year while I try selling it to a traditional publisher.

A year and a half or so, ago Mark Paxson wrote about his efforts to get his novel The Dime traditionally published, You can read about his journey in these posts:

A New Journey

A New Journey, Part II

The Journey Continues

I’m embarking on that same journey through what is often called “Query Hell” more or less as a lark. Not having been hatched yesterday, I know that my odds of selling my novel are pretty close to zero. However, I think there is something to be said for simply having tried.

One motivating factor for me was that the British SFF publisher Gollancz had, in June, opened a one month long submission window for manuscripts by unagented authors. Since I wrapped up my novel in June, I researched how a manuscript should be formatted, and sent mine out to them, along with a cover letter and synopsis, as requested. I gather that they expected to receive 1,000 plus manuscripts during the month and hope to get back to everyone within 6 to 9 months. Which is fine, since it gives me a nice 6 to 9 month window to find an agent for my novel while I await word of its fate, with no temptation to fold early and self-publish the story.

For agents, I found a list of 141 agents accepting science fiction on the web site reedsy here: https://blog.reedsy.com/literary-agents/science-fiction/

I went down the list, copying only the info on agents who are accepting queries and open to the works of non-published writers. I then viewed the websites of their agencies to see their profiles to get a feel for what they were like and what type of stories they were looking to take on. I found 31 agents that I thought worth querying and rated each as to how promising they struck me. I also noted how they wanted the queries – letter only, letter & 5 pages of the manuscript, or letter and 10 pages, or if they used the query tracker web app instead. All this was the work of a few hours over two days.

Then I researched on how to write a query letter. There are plenty of guides online and on YouTube that tell you not only how to do it, but what not to do as well. Alexa Donna has a number of good YouTube videos that you can find here on the entire process: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexaDonne/search?query=query%20letter

I wrote a hundred variations of it (just a guess) before settling on my current one.

I also wrote a 1,000 word synopsis of the novel for Gollancz and any agents wanting to see one.

In short, I think I did my homework. Or as much of it as necessary. I was never a lad for homework.

While there is no reason not to send queries out to everyone on the list all at once, I’m only sending out four a month. Sent out the first four yesterday. Better to savor the joy of the journey. And, with having to wait on Gollancz before I could self-publish the book anyway, I figure that I might as well spread out the query process, renewing my hope every month with a new batch of query letters. We’ll see how that goes…

Though I read Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness in high school, half a century ago, one image remains…

“The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line… we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush… In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen.”

I am quite sure Conrad was thinking about querying when he created this image.. Ah, the romance!

All that remains is for me to mutter, “The horror. The horror” six months from now.

I know that readers of this blog have gone through the same process, and no doubt some have succeeded in finding publishers. And there are probably others who are considering giving it a try. So how did you find the experience? Do you have any suggestions for others who would follow you down this path?

There is a slim chance I might speak at a local writing event in November. Slim because I’m terrified of public speaking. But a chance because I am committed to overcoming my fears.

I have an idea for what I would want to talk about, but I’m curious. If you had to fill an hour, including time for questions, and could talk about anything related to writing, what would you want to talk about?

— Mark Paxson

I’m reading a book recently published by F.L. Rose, one of my favorite indie writers. The book is called The Point of Us. I’m waiting to complete it before I reach any conclusions about the quality of the story, but I’m pretty certain it’s gonna be a good one. I’m gonna skip the description of what the story is and go right to my question for this post.

One of the main characters in the story is a writer, a pretty successful novelist. At some point, there is a discussion of writers and why they do what they do and the conclusion is … that it is all about vanity.

So … that’s my question. Do we do this for vanity? Do we slave over our stories and put them out into the world for vanity’s sake?

I’m of mixed minds on this. On the one hand, I write strictly for my own internal reasons. I don’t believe it has anything to do with vanity. I write because I want to see if I can do it. Turn an idea that forms in my head into a story with a beginning, middle and end, and is … readable. I don’t know. I write because I want to and I want to see that idea through to the final words.

But then … when I post it on my blog or publish something via the Amazon monolith, why am I doing that? The story hasn’t been blessed by the gatekeepers. No agent picked it up. No publisher. I am swimming free and clear of the gatekeepers and still putting my words out there into the wide, wide world … and why am I doing that?

Why do you do it?

In our last video chat we began a conversation about why we read. Maybe a better question for us indie authors is why do we publish?

Years ago, before technology turned the publishing world upside down, there were vanity publishers. Places a writer could go to pay thousands of dollars to have their book “published,” which typically meant getting boxes and boxes of copies of their books that the authors than had to try to figure out how to sell themselves.

Now, vanity publishers have been replaced with KDP and Ingram Spark and SmashWords and countless other platforms that allow us to publish our books with almost no cost up front. (And there are still companies like the old-fashioned vanity publishers — places that promise to publish your book for a small fee of several thousands of dollars and then leave you hanging with no support, no marketing, no nothing.)

The question remains though, regardless of how easy it has become to publish, why do we do it?

For me, I want to reach readers and hope to grow my audience and get more people reading my stories. But why? What does that mean to me if they do? Why should it matter? Particularly in the modern world of indie publishing, where there are so many books getting published it’s virtually impossible to be seen and to be read by anybody other than those who already know you.

I think there’s some truth to F.L. Rose’s thoughts as expressed in The Point of Us. There is some vanity involved. The first definition of “vanity” is “excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.”

When I read that definition, I begin to reconsider the idea that I publish for vanity. I’m far from “excessive pride in or admiration” of my writing. But I typically do like the end result. My biggest reason for publishing and sharing my stories is to … just put them out there and see if readers like what I’ve come up with. But still, there is a feeling of confirmation when I get a positive review, there is still a good feeling in the cockles of my heart when somebody has something good to say about something I’ve written. If I were to publish and none of those good things were ever said or shared with me … if I just published into a void without reaction or response … I most likely would stop publishing. And if I stopped publishing, I’d stop writing. Because at the end of the day, I write to share and to get a reaction.

Is that vanity?

Is that why we write and why we publish?

Last month I posted about Google’s offer to convert the ebooks published in their Play Store into audiobooks for free. Unlike most audio books that use human narrators, these books would be generated using Google’s AI technology to convert the text into the spoken word. Google suggested that it would best for non-fiction books, but I decided to convert my fiction books anyway, since I don’t think my style of writing demands a lot of dramatic reading. And it was likely the only way I could enter the popular audiobook market. It has now been a month; so how has this experiment fared?

I offer my ebook catalog of 11 titles for free, and since Google was offering to create my audiobooks for free, I was happy to offer my audiobooks for free as well. In May 2022, the first month of their availability, with 11 titles available, I sold 434 audiobooks, in addition to 293 ebooks.

Ebooks first. My peak sales of ebooks to date on Google was 836 copies in October 2021 and they have been declining since then – 643, 633, 459, 409, 303, 390, so that May’s 293 sales total is more or less in line with that gradual decline. The audiobooks didn’t seem to have affected ebook sales one way or another.

As for audiobooks, well, with 434 books sold in one month with no advertising – I only posted their availability on my seldom visited blog two weeks ago – I have to believe that I’ve tapped into a whole new market. Only one audiobook has a rating, and though it is a 5 star rating, the jury is still out on how the AI generated narration fares with audiobook listeners. However, from my own listening, I am optimistic that they are good enough now, and will only get better as time goes on, since Google said that they will update the files automatically as their technology improves.

My standard is “Good Enough,” which is to say that all things considered, something is indeed good enough, even if it may be a couple percentage points short of perfection. If you hold yourself to a higher standard, then perhaps Google’s AI generated audiobooks may not be up to your standard. That said, I have listened to samples of audiobooks with a voice actor who uses different voices for different characters, and found it annoying. It seems that my golden standard for audiobooks is my dad reading bedtime stories to us as kids. I do know that the AI does a better job of reading books than I did with my own kids. So I think my audiobooks are good enough.

To take advantage of this technology, you have to offer your ebooks on the Google Play Store, though of course, you can charge money for them, and for the audiobooks as well, if that is your policy. Selling books for free is a magnitude or two easier than selling them for money, so your results will vary.