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— 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.

Section MMX, paragraph a, clause ii, of the Rules For Writers specifies that a story shall have a depth of not less than….

Just kidding. Here at WSW, we don’t think much of so-called “rules for writers.” This is purely an exploration of a question Chuck Litka brought up in response to my post on my writerly dream. Namely, how much depth should a book have?

By “depth,” I mean both things like re-readability as well as how many subtle nuances it has.

There are some stories that are fun, but don’t really bear multiple readings. There are other stories that are so incredibly dense you can’t even tell what they’re about without consulting reference books.

In my opinion, it’s better to write the former than the latter. But best of all is to write something that works as a story, but can also be re-analyzed over again and reveal new facets.

One example of a book like this is Dune. The main plot of Dune is actually very simple. (In the broadest terms, it’s the same basic plot as The Lion King.) But everything else about Dune is not very simple. The world of Dune is full of complex political ideas, Islamic influences, environmentalist themes, abstract philosophical concepts, and some really trippy things that are probably best chalked up to being written in the 1960s. Herbert himself said the book had many different layers.

If you like Dune, you can re-read it multiple times to follow all these different threads. But if not, you can still think of it as a book about a guy on a quest to avenge his father and claim the throne and leave it at that.

Note that I’m not saying a story needs to have this level of depth to be great. Right Ho, Jeeves is one of my favorite books ever, but I wouldn’t call it multifaceted. It’s just fun, plain and simple.

But say you want to write a fantasy epic of immense depth and complexity. It needs some serious of world-building. Or what about literary fiction? Should you work to fill it with layers of meaning and symbolism?

And maybe the most critical question of all: how much “depth” in fiction is in the eye of the writer, and how much the reader? Hemingway said of The Old Man and the Sea: “The sea is the sea. The old man is the old man.” This hasn’t stopped many people from saying otherwise. So maybe every book is as deep or as shallow as the reader wants it to be.

When and why might the dream of being a writer dies and you decide to call it quits?

For some authors their dream dies when they can no longer write. Like when they are dead. Or when health issues prevent them from writing, despite their desire to continue on. Sometimes real world events in their lives do not allow them the time and/or energy to write. But for some writers, it is a conscious decision to lay down the pen.

For traditionally published authors the end may come when they can no longer sell their books to publishers. When new contracts are not offered. You’re only as good as your last book, so if sales disappoint, new contracts may not be offered and self-publishing may be too daunting or simply unappealing to continue writing. Since writing is a side-hustle for most authors, moving on frees time for other endeavors, even if it means leaving the dream behind.

Much the same dynamics may end the career of self-publishing authors as well. Though in this case, it would be the readers who are either not finding or not buying their book or books in any appreciable numbers. Disappointing sales may lead an author to decide that writing and self-publishing is simply not worth their time, effort, and in many cases, their money.

In both these cases, authors may still have stories to write, but they, or their publisher, don’t see a market for more stories. Books cost money to be produced. Most lose money, so they can’t be published by companies or writers willy-nilly.

On the other hand, a lack of new story ideas may cause both traditional and self-published authors to put down their pen. The spring of their inspiration runs dry leaving them with nothing new or interesting to write. Now this could simply be a case of “writer’s block” that will pass, but only time will tell. In any event, a writer is left waiting for an inspiration that may never ever come.

Another reason for quitting is that an author finds that the pleasure of writing is gone. Writing no longer gives them the satisfaction and joy it once did. It has become a chore, even, [yikes!] a job. And given that for most authors writing is a very low paying job, an author may decide that writing needs to be more than a job to be worthwhile, especially if they don’t have a book contract to fulfill. Or thousands of fans clamoring for the next book.

Or perhaps the writer finds that the need to write – that strange passion – that drove them to spend oh, so many hours pursuing something so iffy as writing stories has been sated. Looking at what they’ve written, they may decide that it’s sufficient. Enough is enough, there is no need to write more. They have nothing left to prove. They have a the hill they’re willing to die on. A legacy that they are willing to be remembered for.

Most likely, when an author draws a line under their dream of being a writer and lays down their pen, it is for more than one reason, it’s a mixture of many different reasons and emotions as well – sadness and relief, regret and pride, and hopefully, a sense of moving on.

I have some experience in endings.

I have been an artist all my life, and indeed for half a dozen years, a very successful starving artist, starving being the operative word. But even when I decided to take down my shingle and stop selling my paintings I continued to paint. However, as the years went by, less and less so. I had taken to painting from imagination rather than photos or life, having no interest – or perhaps not enough talent – to paint from life, so when my wellspring of imagination no longer produced new ideas, I could either just revisit old ideas, or stop painting. I didn’t want to paint the same thing over and over again, so I pretty much stopped, save for painting my book covers, which is more of a chore than a joy. Aiding and abetting this decision was the fact that I had painted something like 2,000 paintings of various sizes, styles, and in mediums over the last 30 years and still have maybe 1,500 of them in a closet under the stairs. I have my hill to die on.

That said, I would like to paint again. I hope to return to painting. But for that to happen I will have to come up with something new to paint, or a new way to paint. But if I don’t, so be it.

I sense the same thing may be happening in my writing as well. Ideas are increasingly hard to come by. I was delighted to be able to assemble a new novel out of several discarded ones this past winter. But while parts of it were fun to write, other parts were more of a chore than I would like – and while I would like to think the story is my best, being my latest, I don’t think it is my favorite, which is discouraging. In short, I fear that my well of inspiration is slowly drying up, just as it did with painting. Still, I have written and self-published 10 novels, 3 novellas, with another novel written and ready to be published. So, if or when it comes time to put down the pen, I have that hill to die on for my books as well. But hopefully not just yet.

So how about you? Do you envision a day when you will no longer be able or want to write? How do you think the end will come to you? Will you die in harness, or call it quits for any of the reasons above, or others I haven’ thought of?

Audrey Driscoll

First, my thanks to Mark for starting this topic. All writers start with a vision or intention that could be called a dream. Those of us who actually complete a book and get it published one way or another get to live that dream. And naturally it changes as we pursue the journey.

In one or more of our WSW video chats, I admitted that until I was in my forties, I assumed being a writer was something you started when you were young or not at all. But then I had an idea for a novel that I could not let go of. “Why not?” I thought. In November 2000, I started writing, and spent the next decade in the grip of a happy obsession.

Did I get published? Yes, but not the way I originally thought I would. During the dizzy first year of writing, I thought of course my book was supremely publish-worthy. Agents would be falling over themselves to snap it up. I even wondered if my holiday time from work would be enough for a book tour. (Remembering this, I blush and giggle.)

The pinnacle of Dream 1.0 was where I would be interviewed on one or another radio (yes, radio!) program on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). That’s still my outlet of choice for information and music. I’ve heard many author interviews. The well-read, well-spoken host asks the author what inspired their book, and the two go on to have a civilized and witty chat. To me, that would have been the ultimate in validation.

Well, it didn’t work out that way. In 2010, I published my first novel myself, as an ebook via Smashwords. Over the next decade, I went on to publish six more books, on Amazon as well as Smashwords, and in print as well as ebook.

By now, I’m onto Dream 3.7, at least. I no longer intend to submit or query. I’m content with the way I publish. I’m lucky that I don’t need to depend on any income at all from my writing. I call all the shots.

But what is my long-term dream?

Like Mark, I hope my books will be read and even reread. Like Berthold, I hope my characters and their experiences will linger in the minds and imaginations of readers. That readers will close my books with a sigh of contentment and a wave of biblio-bereavement. My first novel was inspired by another writer’s story. I would be delighted if a future writer found enough substance in one of my works to be similarly inspired.

–Berthold Gambrel

This is in response to Mark’s post about his dream as a writer. Mine is somewhat similar to his. After all, who wouldn’t want to write something that people go back and re-read?

But as I thought about it; there’s a bit more to it than that for me. Bear with me; it takes a little while to explain.

First, if you read my personal blog, you may know I write lots of book reviews. And I have an idiosyncratic style of reviewing. I like to ponder the story behind the story, even try to find allusions, references and subtle things in the text. I don’t feel like I’ve done my job as a reviewer unless I can say I’ve figured out something about a book that isn’t obvious. (I think I only succeed at this about 10% of the time.)

For this reason, I like a good, meaty book that has layers to it. A lot of things to analyze. Something that someone could write a whole essay about. It doesn’t have to be long, but it has to have something really compelling in it.

And, by extension, this is the kind of book I want to write, too. I want to write a book that a reviewer could sit down with, take apart, analyze, critique, and maybe find a few subtle points that add some depth to it. And even when they’ve finished doing all that, they still feel like they haven’t said everything there is to say.

Basically, I want to craft the sort of book I enjoy reviewing. A book that has something in it that makes you feel you could just go on and on and on about it…

What’s your dream?

— 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?

Over the last six months I’ve been experimenting as a writer/publisher. And I thought I would share my experiences.

Let’s start with paperback books. Starting out I took Amazon’s word and made my paperbacks 6”x 9” and I thought glossy covers would be nicer. Well, 6”x 9” might be the most popular size, but I don’t think that’s the case for fiction. Because I am toying with the idea of trying to get my books into a small selection of SFF orientated bookshops, I decided to redo my books in the 8”x 5.25” format with matte covers, just like all the cool kids have. Having put out a dozen paperback books, redoing the books was not a great project, though for my longest ones, I had to reduce the type size to that of mass market paperbacks. Now, you can’t just change the size of published books since it is baked into the ISBN code. You need to unpublish your old versions and publish the new versions as new books. And here’s a pro tip; I discovered that Amazon will no longer let you link ebooks and paperbacks if the metadata does not exactly match. Since these were new editions, I listed them as 2^nd editions, and since the ebooks are either 1^st edition or have no edition number, I now cannot link the two versions. Given the fact that I’ll sell half a dozen paperback books in a year, I’m not losing sleep over it. Just be aware of it, should you do the same.

Next up, audio books. I have, in previous posts, suggested that if you are self-publishing wide, and don’t offer your books on the Google Play store you should. At last count over 60% of my sales came from Google. And that was before audio books. As I wrote earlier, Google is offering, for a limited time, to convert ebooks in the Google store into auto-generated audio books – for free. In May I took them up on that offer. For most of the last six month I have had a dozen audiobook titles on offer. In those six months I’ve sold, that is to say, given away, more than 4,500 audio books, without lifting a finger to promote them. They’ve accumulated over 50 ratings, and the audiobooks rate as well as the ebooks, with no complaints as to the quality of the audio narration. Of course selling books for money is a lot harder, BUT, since you can convert your ebooks on Google for free, (I did so just a couple of weeks ago) there is no reason why you could not sell your audiobooks for the same price of your ebooks, which would likely be significantly less expensive than most audiobooks. With audiobooks being the fastest growing segment of the book market, I think it’s an opportunity you might want to seriously consider if you don’t want to spend what human narrators charge – two to five hundred dollars per finished hour. Most novels run around 12 hours in audio form or more. Do the math.

My third experiment was withholding my standalone novel, The Girl on the Kerb, that I wrote at the start of this year, from self-publishing. Instead I submitted it to an English SF publisher during a month-long open window for writers without agents. Since I can’t publish it until I hear that they rejected it – in six to nine months – I decided to use the time to see if I could find an agent for it. I have sent out four query letters on the first of the month since July 1. So far, that’s 16 query letters. I have received 4 form letter email rejections and no requests to look at the manuscript. Let’s just say that I’m not holding my breath – but it was always a lark; a nothing ventured, nothing gained sort of thing. Recently, I hear that Orbit Publishing, a division of one of the big publishers, is going to start offering a line of ebooks and audiobooks, without paper editions, and I understand that this line will be open to authors without agents as well. I plan to submit The Girl on the Kerb to them, if possible. That said, I have already painted the cover for my self-published version of the book, so I’m all set to release it sometime in the first quarter or half of next year if things work out like I expect they will. In short, I’ve got my 2023 novel in the can. That said, I plan to spend six months querying any other standalone novels I manage to write before self-publishing them, because well, why not? The gold rush of self-publishing is long over. There is no hurry to get something out there, no boat to miss or train to catch.

I’m not a lad for seeking publicity, but this year I once again entered one of my books in the Self Published Science Fiction Blog-off. I’m hoping to get a review and a little publicity out of it. I didn’t last year, but maybe I’ll have more luck this year. I really wanted to enter my one fantasy book in the far more popular fantasy version of this contest, but I never found the date to enter until the deadline had passed. Next year.

Upcoming experiments include going over all the metadata on all my platforms and adding as many tags as possible to describe my books. For example a book may have only “Space Opera” for a tag, but I’m going to add tags like “Free Space Opera” and maybe “Free SF Book”, etc. This is probably self-publishing 101, but I’ve been rather dismissive of tags. No more. I gather that is how people discover books now, since they’ll never find them simply by scrolling the lists provided.

Next up, if I ever write a new standalone novel, it is going to be a fantasy. Fantasy outsells science fiction, and there are far more agents, editors, and publishing houses looking for fantasy than there are for science fiction. Since I write old fashioned romances using planets as the required exotic lands, I’m going to bury any science fiction elements and just market them as fantasy. Why not reach for the largest potential audience you can when starting out with a blank page?

I have not spent any out of pocket money on my self-publishing efforts. My modest royalties from Amazon cover my modest expenses, which are essentially the author copies of the paper books and postage that I send to my beta readers. I am, as I mentioned above, I’m toying with the idea of spending a chunk of change to get my books into bookshops by offering them as free samples. The idea is a mix of advertising and creating a (tiny) lasting legacy by having my books on some book shelves somewhere years after I’m dead. I hate spending money, so we’ll see about this ide.

There are many ways to promote your books, and networking with other authors is a good one. Newsletter swaps are pretty popular – if you have a newsletter to swap. Sending books to reviewers and YouTube book channels is another — but that’s not really my thing. What have you been experimenting with to promote your books? And how has it worked for you?