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On Flying too Close to the Sun

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It was bound to happen, really. I got ahead of myself.

I got in the habit of picking a date at semi-random to include in the backmatter for a book, as the release date for the next book. Then I’d set up the pre-orders everywhere so that when book X when live, there was a link in the back for book X+1 so readers could place their pre-order right there, easy peasy.

It worked so I kept doing it.

Well, it worked until it didn’t. This is the story of when it didn’t.

‘Big Ship, Lots of Trouble‘ was given a release date of August 26, 2021. I picked that date…. Sometime early 2021 or maybe late 2020, I can’t recall.

I set about writing the book. It wasn’t as fast a process as in the past.

This release ran into a few things that caused problems. Things I could have accounted for had I been more on the ball.

  1. I took longer than planned to get a first draft done, and longer still to get revisions completed. No real reason other than dragging my feet.
  2. Because I took so long to get the revised draft ready for my editor, she couldn’t get the manuscript back to me until august 20th. 6 days before release. That in and of itself wouldn’t be an issue. I’ve worked with tight timelines and can hunker down and review all edits in a matter of a few days. Except I also…
  3. Picked a stupid date. 8/26 is the day after my biggest conference of the year. This year it was hybrid so I was juggling in-person things and online things. It was a rush right up until it started, to get butts in virtual and real seats. Had #1 not delayed #2, I could have put the book to bed before the conference started and been fine. EXCEPT, I didn’t squared. There was simply no way to get the manuscript and review changes while starting the all day in-person work of the conference.

So, I punted. Thankfully Amazon eased their pre-order push penalties during the pandemic.

Sadly, that wasn’t the worst part. This being the first time I’ve had to push a pre-order, I screwed it up. I made a list of every place I needed to update. I thought I’d checked them all off (I had, but still screwed it up). It turned out that I messed up Google and Kobo. Somehow I had them checked off, but didn’t save or something. They both released the book on 8/26. Both Google and Kobo require a file for pre-orders, which means authors use a placeholder. Something that basically says, “You got this by accident, please let the store know so we can fix it.” Had it been a store with asset-less pre-order I’d have been nagged about adding a file and likely caught my mistake. Since technically Kobo and Google had a file, they released it. Annoying, but really not their fault.

Amazon has a pretty robust (surprisingly) setup for this where I could beg them to push an update, which includes the file and an email saying that the reader got the new file.

Google and Kobo, not so much. I finally got replies from both that users would get new files, but no idea if they’re notified, etc. Kobo took about two weeks, slowly going back and forth over email, with a bit of prodding on my end. I actually didn’t know google had released until I got a support email. From that point on they were quite fast in making things right.

In the meantime, the first review on Kobo was from a nice person, mad about the placeholder, who left 1 star. Something tells me they won’t update their review… :(

Lesson learned. The final file for ‘Big Ship, Lots of Trouble‘ does not have a link to a pre-order. I’ll update the file when I have a pre-order for subsequent buyers, but right now, no.

I suppose it was inevitable. Screw ups happen, and juggling Rogue Publishing and 360|Conferences sometimes overlaps in annoying ways.

To my readers, I promise I’ll do better and apologize for the hiccups.

WIP Thursday (Bet you thought I forgot)

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I sorta did, if I’m being honest!

I was hustling to get ‘Side Hustle Tango’ out the door because I cut the timing really close with my editor, oops!

Plus I was finishing ‘Big Ship, Lots of Trouble‘ and have started ‘Ghosts of the Past’ Plus my conference company is ramping up as conference season comes upon us.

‘Ghosts of the Past’ is proving to be quite fun. I’m really enjoying digging into Jax and Naomi’s lives.

The door that lead to the hallway beyond slid open and Rudy rolled in. The navigation droid has a steaming cup in one hand, the other folded against the cylindrical torso. He offered Jax the cup, “Here.”
“Thanks.” He took the cup. The interior door slip open and the tall British guy rushed out. He hurried through the waiting room, a single sob escaping his lips before he was out the hatch and into the hallway beyond.
“That might be a new record.” Jax said as the outer door slid closed.
Rudy’s optic sensor followed the man then turned to Jax, “She’s still making them cry?”

This book opens shortly after ‘Side Hustle Tango‘

How To Resist Amazon and Why

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How To Resist Amazon and Why

I’ll start with this, I still spend a fair bit of money at Amazon. I get a monthly Subscribe & Save box, I still pay for Prime, etc. This isn’t “STOP USING AMAZON RIGHT THIS MINUTE! THROW YOUR KINDLE IN THE TRASH!” It’s not that. Don’t throw your Kindle in the trash… at least until you order a Kobo reader, LOL.

This is more about educating ourselves.

That said, I don’t read books on a Kindle. I look for things on other sites first before ordering from Amazon now. I most definitely don’t use any other Amazon tech; Ring, Eero, Alexa, etc.

I got the paperback for free from my local indie bookstore, Book Bar. I bought the ebook so I could more conveniently read it and support the author, and the indie publisher.

I encourage everyone to read this. As a consumer, I like to be informed and since our only real recourse is to vote with our wallets, being informed is a must. It’s a shame that I’m of the age that I remember Amazon displacing fatbrain.com for all my computer book needs. I remember my first (and many subsequent) Kindles. I remember becoming an author and understanding how Kindle Unlimited works and being disgusted.

No tech company is perfect, but some at least try to not be evil. More and more I find that Amazon is not only trying to not be evil, they lie and mislead so we don’t know they’re doing it.

Go get this, read it, get to know the company you give money to. Maybe you’ll be ok with what you read, that’s fine. I just think we all need to know a lot more about Amazon.

Because I have a paperback I don’t need, the first person to comment with a way to reach you, will get it. I’ll mail it wherever you desire (within reason)

My Not a Hot Take on Basecamp

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A friend shared this.

You should 100% click on it and read the thread. Do it in another tab though, I’m not done here!

Matt’s thread reminded me of something. First, I don’t care for DHH, I never have. He struck me as a white tech bro that thought he could do no wrong, and that his hot takes were printed on gold foil.
But whatever, there’s plenty being written about Basecamp’s implosion, go find it. What this thread reminded me of is an interaction with someone I consider a friend now.

Years ago, 10 or so. An attendee at one of my conferences had an issue. I don’t remember it was, some confusion around something. He wasn’t entirely right, nor was I. We went back and forth over email for an hour one morning of the event. It was getting more and more heated. I’m sure had it continued he’d never come to another of my events again, likely making sure everyone knew how he’d been treated.

I didn’t want to be wrong, I technically wasn’t. I certainly didn’t want him to have the last word.

As I said, this was happening during the conference, I was at the registration desk, he was somewhere in one of the rooms. Something in my head clicked and it occurred to me that I was being dumb. My ego had stepped in and wasn’t letting any other part of me get a word in. I could feel the flush in my cheeks as I typed out angry responsese.

somehow, thankfully, I realized there was no downside to “taking the loss” on this. The customer wasn’t entirely wrong and making him feel whole on the issue cost me nothing beyond being “Wrong”. At the end of the day, who cared? My customer did, but did I? Or was I just reacting to a perceived attack? It was the latter, and it took over an hour to realize that.

During the next break, I tracked him down and apologized. I addressed the issue, we agreed on a resolution. Like that it was done. He was happy his issue was addressed. I was happy that a customer was happy. We’re friends now, he comes to my conferences still all these years later. I know if I need something he’ll do what he can to help, same as I would for him.

I don’t know all of what’s going on at Basecamp, but do know this could all be solved if DHH and Jason took a minute to take their heads out of their asses. To listen to their employees openly without commenting. Without digging in. They’ve built a team of outrageously talented and passionate people. By now they’ve lost a lot of them, and that will continue.

My heart breaks for the Basecamp folks now looking for new opportunities. I’ve talked to enough of them over the years to know they loved what they did and who they did it with (and for).

Lift Off! ‘Here, There Be Monsters’ is Live

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Space Rogues book 8 Paperback

Today’s the day! If you pre-ordered, your copy magically appeared on your device around midnight!

If you haven’t pre-ordered, well, now you can regular order! And You should.

I’m really happy with how this one came together.

As the Beastie Boys say, “No Sleep, til Brooklyn!”

I’m almost done with my loose outline for the 3rd book of the Grand Human Empire series. I’ll be starting the first draft in a few days! If you haven’t taken a look at that series you should, I think you’ll like it :)

2020 In Review

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You know, I thought losing TGIF on ABC was a blow. Only getting one season of Firefly seemed like a mortal blow. Enduring the hot mess that is Star Trek: Discovery and Picard has felt like walking pneumonia.

All practice for 2020 (and it’s looking like at least most of 2021). Talk about a shit show. There isn’t much in 2020 that I’m planning to remember, but it did have some bright spots.

This is fairly long so here’s a handy little table of contents

Conferences

Rocking the Home Office for 360|AnDev 2020

On the Conferences front. 2020 was horrible but not as bad as it could have been. Around March I was thinking about what closing up shop would look like, and how I could financially manage that. However, I was lucky enough to be able to pivot all three conferences to online-only. The Grand Hyatt (please book a room there if you come to Denver, they’re awesome) was understanding and didn’t enforce their contract. I know they couldn’t have really, without a lawsuit, but it’s nice that it didn’t even come to that. It was “Of course, we get it. We hope to see you in 2021.” My other venues were even more ok with it as they closed so problem solved on that front, LOL.

All three Conferences were a success. 360|iDev even had the same turnout as last year, while the other two had 40% drop-offs in numbers. Of course, cutting tickets by 50-70% meant that even with a good turnout, income was slashed. The saving grace was that expenses were next to nothing. If there is a silver lining it’s that. While I didn’t get to pay down much debt, I didn’t add to it and didn’t have to dip in again. I focused on keeping the accounts flush vs. paying down debts too aggressively. So far, it’s worked.

A bad part is that a lot of people just tuned out for the year, which is understandable (Some neglected to tell me until pretty close to the event, but oh well, I’m flexible). Others were “Zoomed out” by summer, also understandable. I’m beyond thankful for those who still came out; attendees, speakers, and sponsors. It meant a lot and kept me in business. It was also fun as hell. For each event, I had an awesome group of volunteers helping tackle emcee duties. We had music between sessions, folks were able to still branch off and chat separately either on slack or via our tool that allowed for impromptu breakouts.

It wasn’t all awesome of course. I had to apply for a PPP loan which was helped for sure, especially as things were shutting down and we just didn’t know what the next month, let alone four.. er… eight, would look like. I’m looking forward to applying for forgiveness on that, someday. I also had to apply for the non forgivable EIDL loan, so that sucks, I was hoping to make a dent in the debt we’ve accumulated in the previous years, but instead added to it. But we (so far) have survived. I’ve been able to continue paying myself throughout all of 2020, which at the end of the day is a big win in 2020.

Looking forward, I honestly don’t know what 2021 will look like. I’m hopeful that by July we can start gathering safely in-person. That really all depends on vaccine production/distribution, and people accepting that a vaccine isn’t full of Bill Gates’ nanotrackers or 5G or whatever. Realistically I’m mentally working on one more year of online-events and how to make them even more engaging and fun for folks.

On an entirely personal note. As much as I missed seeing people who have become good friends at the conferences. I loved getting up, working out, and then walking into my office to rock the event. Much less stress (though not without hiccups) than the in-person versions.

Writing (,The Business of)

Luckily the pandemic hasn’t been a huge gut punch to my writing. Well, to my actual writing. To the business of writing….

So as to not bury the lede, you can see above that income from writing rose. Not a lot but upward trending graphs are almost always better than downward. Of course, profit was way down this year. The goal I set for this year was to hit (or break) $36,000 in writing income. Got close, but fell just shy.

In looking over the numbers a few things struck me. 2019 wasn’t very advertising heavy. I don’t know how I did so well without ads honestly, but there it is. Conversely 2020 was a lot of learning about advertising which has a high cost associated with it. I expect my 2021 ad spend to be significantly less. My intent this coming year is to dial in/back my ad spend and focus on releases and building my newsletter subscribers.

In addition to ads 2020 had a lot of new/different expenses, some likely to be one-offs, a membership to 2022 Worldcon for example. Others are new and recurring expenses; editors, audiobook narrators, convention booths, cover art, etc. The more books I get out in a year, the more those costs rack up.

Speaking of Cons

I went into 2020 with the plan of it being my ‘year to be more out in public’ I applied for author alleys and expo halls where I could. Got into several, and of course, everything was canceled. Or rather, most things were canceled. Some went online-only like MileHiCon, which was nice. I was on a panel, and had a waste of money ‘vendor booth’ Others like Starfest, really never canceled, just kind of didn’t happen, then announced 2021 dates. I had/have a booth there.

A bright spot was that I was accepted for a vendor booth at Denver Pop Culture Con for 2021. YAY!! Then they preemptively canceled. I get why, and it was the right decision I’m sure, but still sucks. Their future is uncertain so who knows if there will be a 2022 or not. Starfest (now scheduled around the same time) is likely to follow suit, who knows if they’ll send an email or not. Who knows if they’ll refund my author alley, acknowledge it, etc. shrug.

Cons are something I was really looking forward to exploring more. Dialing in my booth presence and pitch, and meeting other authors, etc. That’s likely on hold until 2022. As much as it was nice that MileHiCon went online, I won’t be paying for “booths” at online events, but will try for panel spots still.

Books

I did have my best launch ever, with “A Guy Walks Into a Bar” so that was nice! I’m hoping to beat that with “Here There Be Monsters” (Have you placed your pre-order?)! I’m hopeful that each new book gets bigger and bigger launches, because, well that’s a good thing, folks are still interested and more are joining them.

I’ve also had some luck with the merch store I set up. I want to push that more both for the merch which isn’t all that profitable but is awesome, and books which I get 100% of the proceeds vs. 50-70% royalty.

It’s my hope that over time direct book sales pick up, as well as other goodies. The more I can divest from Amazon without hurting income, the better. It’s more technical and not for everyone, but it’s nice to sell someone a book directly from here and see them come back for more. The online stores keep authors separate from our readers.

Being “wide”

I’ve written about being “wide” a few times. This year my wide efforts expanded to include audiobooks. I’m really stoked about taking my audiobooks wide, though the downside is coming up with the money to pay for narration in advance, so that’s a new budgeting entry. I’m happy that at least based on sales prior to leaving ACX I’d recouped what I’d have paid directly for Space Rogues 1, and made about half what I’d need for Space Rogues 2. Audio may slow to one release a year, we’ll see.

This year I also moved from being an Amazon Kindle reader to using a Kobo Clara. As such, much of my advertising energy was focused on driving business not just from Amazon, but specifically to Kobo, then Barnes & Noble. That means Facebook ads which are awesome at sucking up your money and delivering nothing. I’ve gotten better over the course of the year with my targeting, but a costly experiment for sure. With Apple’s changes (Very much happy about that) I’m guessing my FB ad spend will diminish further. We’ll see.

Overall I’ve had good luck diversifying myself from Amazon. It’ll be interesting to see how sticky that will be as I try to reduce my expenses a bit in the ad space.

2020’s breakdown is definitely pleasing. I don’t have a hard and fast goal for Amazon’s percentage, but below 50% would be I think the best. What’s especially pleasing is that while I’ve reduced my dependence on Amazon, my income has gone up. Proof you can do it without selling your soul to Jeff Bezos.

Writing (, The Craft Of)

So yeah, the business of writing, at least the in-person/glad-handing part has sucked. The business of actually writing, however, well that’s actually going well. Really well.

I got two Space Rogues books out, plus launched a new series. So a three-book year, which is good. I’m hoping to get to a four release a year schedule; one in each series, plus a wildcard. That’s aggressive, but the plan is for writing to replace conferences as my main source of income. To get to that end, I have to produce and keep the back catalog working for me.

2021 will be a good year for releases;

  • “Here There Be Monsters” (Space Rogues)
  • “Any Job Will Do” (Grand Human Empire)
  • “Side Hustle Tango” (Grand Human Empire)
  • and (I hope) “Airport of Mystery” (Expedition Inc.)
  • Plus a To Be Titled Book 9 in the Space Rogues series.

I’m excited about the launch of the Grand Human Empire series. Not only will I be trying out a launch with a second book already completed and in the pipe, but with a new series, I can start building a more diverse back catalog. I’ve found with Space Rogues that many readers can’t handle the present tense. It breaks their brains somehow, no idea why or how. Their loss. The Grand Human Empire is more traditionally written in the past tense.

It’s Not Always Rosy

I launched ‘Island of Secrets‘ under a pen name and in a new genre. It’s been a struggle to get traction. I’m hoping that a second book will help there, but also plan to invest more of my marketing attention there. I was a bit let down when I released it because I distributed ARCs and got some great potential reviews, but when it came time to actually post them, almost no one did. Out of 17 odd people who signed up to read and review, only 3 delivered. One, who wrote an awesome review in the review portal, never published elsewhere, making it mostly useless. :( Such is life.

Community Stuff

I’m still an active (Though retiring in 2021) member of the Board of Directors for the Colorado Authors League. I’ve been on the board since 2018, initially to manage the Festival of Books. That got squashed, then the Pandemic hit. As much as I like being on the board, I ended up being “The Web Guy” for our new platform (which is powerful but mostly a POS), so I’m leaving that in ’21. I’ll continue my membership because I think it’s good to have some professional memberships.

Speaking of, I also joined the SFWA in March. I don’t find much value outside the name however. I’m hoping that changes, but it seems the group is mostly focused on their traditionally published members and members who are submitting short works to zines. Neither of which are of the slightest interest to me. But like CAL, I think there’s some value in being a member just to have that network.

I’m still on the Organizing Committee for Denver Startup Week, and intend to stick around. This year obviously, we went 100% online. Which was interesting given our normal size and scope. What is already the largest free entrepreneurial event in the world, became the largest online entrepreneurial event in the world. We hosted dozens of panels and talks on zoom, Monday through Friday. Live streaming those to Youtube. It was a bold lift and with only a few hiccups on Monday went off perfectly! We did an amazing thing.

I’m still wrangling the awesome cats that are the Ignite Denver Committee. I miss that group a lot. We held our last in-person Ignite Denver in March, the night before our venue, the Bug Theatre (Please support them if you can) close to events. The group went in our own directions, focusing on ourselves, two of us got married, etc. So we didn’t even put effort into trying an online Ignite Denver. This past summer Kat, Jared, and I hosted a live review show to benefit the Bug and raised $300 for them, it was a blast!

Family

On the family front, Nicole and I are doing fine. I already did my jobs from home, so no major impact there. Nicole was already doing 1-2 days a week at home when she could, and has had remote jobs before, so had an office already set up. So when her job pulled the trigger she was up and running on day one. The dogs already being homeschooled helped too. I feel for my friends with kids.

It feels like 20 years ago, but we went to Africa at the beginning of this year. Nicole climbed Kilimanjaro, I got to celebrate my birthday in Zanzibar with some great friends. I honestly can’t believe that was this year, it feels so long ago.

More recently, we bought a new car, a Rav4 Hybrid. I like it. It was bittersweet to say goodbye to the Audi. We’ve had it for almost 15 years, loving every minute. I still miss the power of the turbo and the manual transmission, but in buying the Rav4 I realize my time a being even a little bit a “Car guy” seems to have passed. It’s just a thing to get me places. The more comfortable the better but I don’t need power, I don’t need that throaty roar. So that’s a thing.

Otherwise we’re hanging in there, trying to support local restaurants and businesses. Seeing the 3-4 people in our bubble of trust once in a while. With Winter here I suspect even our scant trips to local breweries will be greatly reduced, which bums me out.

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