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My First and Last Starfest Denver

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My trunk loaded with books for Starfest

Last weekend was my first and last Starfest Denver. It was my first because I didn’t learn about it until 2019, but I missed the window to sign up and signed up for 2020 (sad trombone). It was my last because after 45 years, the family that runs it is retiring from cons.

It ran from Friday afternoon through Sunday evening.

I went in with a few goals.

Primarily I wanted to practice my hand-selling. That went well, I handed people books when they stopped by. I still need to dial in my pitch but got better at it. My friend Todd a few booths away has his sales approach down pat, it was impressive to watch. I learned though, that his approach isn’t mine. He was able to hold people at his booth for upwards of 10 minutes, excitedly explaining his series, the characters, etc.

My secondary goal was to eliminate stock. Between Stocking up for events that didn’t happen or I had to miss, my shelf of books in the garage was overflowing. I wanted to clear those shelves of old covers, old back matter, etc.

My booth at Starfest Denver

To accomplish that, I set some really aggressive discounts. If people bought 10+ books, they got them for $5 ea. which was in a few cases at a loss for me, and in most cases a tiny profit. Very much a loss leader approach.

It worked. I moved 6 or so 10+ orders. Folks literally just said, “I’ll take one of everything.” I came home with very few copies of anything and completely sold out of Space Rogues 1.

Book People

I was really impressed by the Starfest crowd. Despite my pricing experiment, I outsold every in-person event I’ve been to previously, by orders of magnitude. Even if they didn’t buy a paperback, they took cards and bookmarks to get ebooks.

It’s truly bittersweet how much I enjoyed Starfest since this was it. There were/are rumors the organizers might sell, but who knows if that’ll happen or if it’ll still be the same event.

I’m really glad I went, and wish the organizers, fans, and creators all the best in the future. I’m sure many of us will cross paths elsewhere.

Our Love Hate Relationship with Creators

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This post was started in 2018 and has been brewing ever since.

I saw this in a Facebook group I’m a part of. It’s a group of “Power Users”. I see posts like this in this group, and just about every writers/readers group daily if not more frequently.

I highly doubt the person who posted this would be happy to be paid for their labor every 6 years. I know I wouldn’t.

According to the post, this person is willing to pay one whole measly dollar a month. So $12 for software. This post is about 1Password, which I love and happily pay for and encourage everyone to use and pay for. So $12 for software that keeps your passwords, credit card numbers, and anything else you put into it, safe. Safe and synced across your laptop, iPad, and iPhone. Safe in an encrypted volume, the company takes seriously and makes clear they have no access to. Twelve bucks?

Let’s say Mr. One dollar a month grudgingly pays and uses 1Password for ten more years. Does he think $120 is enough? Could he live on what he makes in a month for ten years? I couldn’t.

Consumers are so disconnected from what they consume now. We happily, joyfully pay for a new iPhone every year, but an app better be free or maybe $1, total, lest we complain. Much of this is laid at the feet of Apple, Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc. Companies with platforms, that push the creators to the bottom to grow their platforms. They’ve trained consumers to not think twice about a new Mac, or latest Pixel phone, or a $400 kindle. But do nothing to educate consumers that the app they love was made by someone that plans to pay their mortgage, and it is worth more than a dollar. Or when a book that takes months to write, hundreds if not a thousand dollars to produce, is more than $2. “I won’t pay more than $2 to read a book on my two hundred dollar Kindle.”

And it’s everywhere. People bitch at me that a conference that’s 2 days, 2 tracks, with international speakers, lunch included, is $399. “That’s like twice what I’m willing to pay.” Yet these people make software and expect a high hourly rate or high annual salary.

The other day there was a post on the Denver Post’s Facebook page. One person commented that they’d apparently used up their free viewings online, so couldn’t read the article. Most of the comments were either “Here’s how I don’t pay the post for their work” or defending the idea of not paying by pointing out how ‘easy’ it is to not pay them. It was disheartening. These folks want the news, but not to support those that create it.

The common comparison is a cup of coffee, which is fine, it’s a legitimate comparison. For me though, it’s “How do you expect your fellow human to survive? Would you rather have nothing than pay for things? Would you prefer something free where you’re the customer and your data is in the hands of a Venture Capitalist?”

We want an amazing and bug-free app, a great well-edited book with a professional cover, a game that’s on par with the AAA studios, but you don’t want to spend more than one or two bucks for it? As someone who created things; conferences, and now books, it’s frustrating. I sympathize with my friends who make apps and games, or write or make clothes, or anything.

If this still isn’t resonating with you, look at it this way,

You go to work every day but surely would stop if your boss said, “We’ll pay you this week, but you’ll be expected to work the next six for free. Maybe on the seventh week, we’ll pay you again, but only if you show that you’ve spent that time doing twice your normal work.”

This is basically what we’re telling every single person who’s trying to make a living making things. We value their efforts so little we don’t want to pay for them, and if we do, we want to then own their creative efforts indefinitely. But hey it’s new iPhone time, gotta stay up late to place my order…

I’d love to see us move to a place where we’re happy to buy something knowing that we’re helping someone make a living. If you can’t afford it, that’s fine, save up, or don’t get it, etc. But don’t tell someone their creative efforts aren’t worth anything.

Ten Space Rogues Books!

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So, my patrons are probably finishing up Space Rogues 10: Rogue Enterprises about now. It comes out for the rest of the world on the 27th.

Sorry. Want early access, you gotta pony up. Which you should, there’s lots of awesome stuff for patrons over there! :)

Anyway. Ten Motherfucking books.

Original Space Rogues Book cover
The 1st cover of Space Rogues Book 1

When I wrote ‘The End’ in November of 2016, winning my first NaNoWriMo, I never woulda guessed I’d be here. With ten books in this series, three in another, and one I just keep neglecting, sorry team Expedition Inc.

I’d toyed with writing for decades, never seriously giving it enough energy for take-off. I played with it after we moved to CO, writing at lunch at Illegal Pete’s on the 16th St. Mall. I’d doodle story ideas in a notebook, rarely getting past that point.

Current Space Rogues ebook cover
The current cover of Space Rogues Book 1

After 2016 I couldn’t ignore it. Not only did I feel proud of what I’d done, but I realized I had the ability to tell a story, and knew there were more inside me.

Space Rogues was released too early. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I put it up having only given it a once over with Grammarly. The cover as you can see was hella homemade.

While I was working on getting a second book written, I was also trying to get book 1 in a more professional shape.

Flash forward 8 years and here we are. Space Rogues 10: Rogue Enterprises wraps up what I guess I consider Phase 1 of the Space Rogues Universe (SRU. LOL!). I’ve written and am about to send Rogue Enterprises Book 1: Long Days, Short Knights, to my editor. The Rogue Enterprises Series is Phase 2 of the SRU.

On top of that, I’ve released 3 books in the Grand Human Empire series, with the 4th the next book in the queue to write.

Expedition Inc. Is being neglected and I feel bad about it. I promise I’ll get the next book out for that one. Probably after GHE4. I’ve actually got some heavy notes on what that book will be.

This journey has been fantastically amazing. I never would have expected that not only could I get a book out, that I could get out almost 15, but that I could make money doing it. Writing, much like conference organizing isn’t high a margin profession (I have a type, I guess), but with writing, things are a bit more in my control.

For those that have followed along on this trip, buying (Hopefully liking) my books, reading this blog, or my newsletters. I can’t thank you enough. Being a creative is hard, our society has a love-hate relationship with creativity. More on that maybe later, who knows.

For this post, I want to end on ‘Thank You’

Ignite Denver 37 is tonight!

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Whenever someone asks, “How old is Ignite Denver?” Or any variant of that question, I scratch my head.

You see, when I started Ignite Denver, we did a few a year. Then another nearby Ignite launched and started doing like monthly or every other month. So I did too. Despite the distance, the two cities share a lot of the same awesome people.

View from a camera at Ignite Denver

The problem is 6 a year is a death march. We didn’t it for long, the other city slowed down sometime after us.

Then we thought, “Ok, let’s just do quarterly” So we did that for a year or three… but even that proved tough. Sometimes not, but sometimes it was “Oh, god. We have to do this again so soon”

So we kinda settled on our current pattern. Three a year. Early (February-March), mid-ish (June-July), and late (September-October).

It works. The team and I have moved into a rhythm where Ignite Denver isn’t that stressful of a thing. We enjoy each other’s company, and love bringing awesome Denverites to the stage to share.

Ignite Denver Speaker on stage

Join us!

The committee needs another member or two. Keep things fresh, keep the workloads light and evenly distributed. It’s fun, we meet a few times a year to eat and drink and talk about things, otherwise, it’s mostly over slack.

Oh, and we have hoodies… so there’s that. You know you want a hoodie!

Drop me an email!

Las Vegas

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Last week I went to 20booksto50k in Las Vegas. My first-ever writing conference. It was fun. I learned a lot.

Las Vegas

Las Vegas isn’t messing around. I saw several folks forcefully handed masks when walking into casinos. I did see a fair number skate by or do the ol’ mask under the nose thing (Talk about next-level asshole), but overall Vegas isn’t taking chances.

I can’t blame them, I’m sure 2020 was devastating. Even now we saw lots, I mean LOTS of empty retail spots and almost as many “we’re short-staffed, sorry.” signs.

That said, Vegas is already back to bro clouds and woo girls. Nights are crowded and loud, days are chill outside those doing walks and crawls of shame. Each morning walk to the nearest Starbucks, we saw the vomit and spilled drinks of the night before being hosed off as the city reset.

Neon

Nicole went with me as a little mini-vacation since we haven’t done much leisure-ing in 2021. We hit up the neon museum, which is 100% worth it. It’s just outside the strip central, a short Lyft ride away. Go at night, seriously. It was a blast. So much amazing and interesting Vegas history.

20booksto50k

The reason for the trip. So the gist is that when the (facebook) group started it was around the idea that if you wrote 20 books, and each made like $7/day/365, you’d make $50k/year. While the group is strictly the business of writing the conference tackles both business and craft.

Craft

I have to say the craft talks were actually the weakest. I suspect some of that is simply the pool of talent the organizer uses. While the presenting authors are indeed quite successful, many found success early on Amazon and have successfully ridden that wave (Almost exclusively via Kindle Unlimited). That’s not a knock at all, but also I don’t think some of them have as firm a grasp on their genre’s as they might think, based on their talks.

Again, not a knock on anyone’s skills or anything, just an oversight I think in the organizing. There are a lot of folks who’ve started more recently, that could have probably presented more interesting and timely information. One talk about writing a long series was really just a “My writing journey story” Which was ok, but not what was advertised and as Space Rogues 10 is almost finished, continuing a long series was front of mind for me.

My name tag from the panel I sat on
My brush with fame (Another post)

Craft is tricky, which is why the group doesn’t deal with it. One session, in particular, was about writing space opera, a topic near and dear as that’s what I write.

The panelists, to a person, were writers of military Scifi, and a lone Hard Scifi author, all of whom simply drop their stuff in space opera because as a category on amazon it helps their sales.

The entire panel was each of these authors, explaining how they justified their stuff being space opera. I’ll grant that ‘space opera’ as a category is pretty nebulous, but military scifi isn’t space opera. The fact that two of my characters are ex-military, doesn’t make my stuff military scifi.

Such a missed opportunity. There weren’t many like this, but there were a non-zero number and each one just reinforced my decisions (Decisions and reasons why, below).

Business

The business talks were far less hit or miss. I took many, many pages of notes around how to improve my newsletters (Something I plan to work on for the conferences as well), direct sales, in-person sales, and more. This week I’ll be trying to sort all my notes into actionable to-do list stuff.

There were a few business ones that were nearly “Be in KU, end of session” but by and large the business talks were by authors who take this business seriously.

Cool Kids Club

20books is very much a cool kids club. This isn’t wholly bad, but definitely leads to blind spots. Several sessions were essentially the speaker or panelists talking about themselves or filling time with barely formed ideas and as I said above, “Be in KU” type things that showed a lack of any truly deep understanding.

The reason I say it’s not wholly bad is that it the conference is Craig’s and he can do what he likes. It’s centered around the community that has formed around the group, and that’s the garden from which he picks talent.

As someone involved in community, it bummed me out. There was very much a cool kids and everyone else vibe. The everyone else’s spent the week scrabbling for attention and fawning over the ‘celebrities’. Something that always rubs me the wrong way.

Decisions

So, will I go back? No. Craig goes to great lengths to make sure the conference is accessible. Sessions are live-streamed on Facebook and made available on youtube later. While the sessions can be hit or miss, I’m not looking for ‘my tribe’ or new friends really (new friends are great but I have lots of ‘online only friends’ already).

I’m in this to make a living and learn from those doing better than me, and that can be accomplished with the livestreams/recordings. I’ll post about my opportunity to be on a panel and why that might be the only reason I’d entertain going back to Vegas, in the next post.

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).

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