johnwilker.com

I am a Creator

No One Cares what You Don’t Like

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And you shouldn’t either.

I get a daily stoic email and this gem was one of them.

We have so many strong opinions. Especially about things we don’t like. We don’t like it, and we want you to know that we don’t like it—that musician, that politician, that restaurant, the way that so-and-so talks. 

It’s almost like we take pleasure in the misery these things cause us. Needless to say, this is not Stoic. You think Marcus didn’t have things he didn’t like? Of course he did. Seneca, too. But they worked to get from a place of hate or dislike to what the Stoics called “indifference”—almost Zen-like nothingness towards what displeased them. 

Malcolm Gladwell asked Joe Rogan (in their epic interview on Rogan’s podcast) what kind of comics he didn’t like. Rogan responded that he actually didn’t have any. 

One of the things I’ve gotten really good at as I’ve gotten older is not paying any attention to things I don’t like. Just letting it slide right out of my brain and onto the floor, I’m not interested. It’s just, I spent so much time when I was younger and stupider, worrying about things I don’t like, being upset at things I don’t like—well that sucks, why do people like that, what is wrong with them? And then I realized, like, what a gigantic waste of resources that is, just a huge waste of energy. I don’t care anymore. You know as long as they’re not stealing material, as long as they’re not you know doing something terrible to other comics, victimizing, as long as they’re not doing that, I really don’t care. If they’re doing well, good luck.

“We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing,” Marcus Aurelius wrote, “and to not let it upset our state of mind—for things have no natural power to shape our judgments.” Beautiful.

(Too bad Rogan apparently doesn’t like science, letting it slide out of his brain to be replaced with nonsense and worse, dangerous crap. This post was started in March 2021, before Rogan went full-on health risk. Be like Rogan in that you simply move on from things you don’t like. Don’t be like Rogan in every single other way.)

I’ve struggled with this. I say struggle because especially on the internet (Facebook and Twitter) it’s easy to get sucked into sharing what you hate. Someone posts about something they like and you see it, someone comes in with how much they hated it.

No one cares that you hated it, Chad.

More to the point, your hating of it doesn’t mean someone else can’t love it, and there are exactly zero times that it’s ok to try to steal someone’s joy.

Creators know this.

It’s common among writers to tell newer writers to never read reviews. It’s awesome and heartwarming to see someone say how much they love what you create. That feeling is so easily trampled by the person who leaves a negative review because they didn’t like your writing style, or use of pronouns, or your main character’s sexuality. None of that is actionable. It’s all subjective. That person could have left their star rating without explaining, or simply said it’s not for them. They never do.

Be better.

I’m not perfect. I’m working on it. I will be forever.

I try to leave honest reviews and preface subjective issues so that it’s clear that it’s a ‘me thing’ so that the objective issues shine more brightly. After all, those are the things the creator can choose to address.

More to the point, and I think more importantly when I see someone on social media post about something they liked that I didn’t enjoy. I keep scrolling. We all should work harder on this part.

COSine 2022

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My first in-person thing of 2022 is this weekend! I’m equal parts excited and nervous, but mostly excited.

I’ve got a table in the dealers room all weekend so if you’re nearby come say hi, sit in on some awesome panels, meet cool folks.

Speaking of panels. I’m moderating my first panel this weekend. That’s the root of most of the nervousness. I’m looking at this entire weekend as a great opportunity to practice my stoicism.

Come again?

:) While I’m 100% certain I’ll never attain a mastery of stoicism, I like the calmness it can help impart. One of the tenets is that you accept what is in your absolute control, and let what isn’t in your direct control not bother you.

So what is in my direct control?

  • I’m going to try to be the best moderator I can
  • I’m going to try to be the best panelist I can
  • I’m going to try to be the best salesperson I can

That’s it. Everything else is beyond my control.

Will people buy my books? I can’t say.

Will people enjoy my moderation of the panel? No idea

Will people like my answers on the panels? Shrug.

All I can do is my best at those and accept that the rest is out of my control and not worth worrying about.

Welcome to 2022

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The survival gear is on aisle two. Bladed weapons, aisle five. We hope you are ready for the final entry in the 2020 trilogy.

Hopefully, you’ve read my 2021 write-ups. If not, feel free, or don’t :) The tl;dr; is that I scraped by on conferences, barely. Much thanks to my awesome communities. I had my best year as an author.

So. What do I have planned for 2022?

Well, more of the same, mostly.

Writing-wise. I want to get (at least) four books out.

  • Space Rogues 10: Rogue Enterprises
    • Written, going through revisions before heading to the editor
  • Space Rogues: Rogue Enterprises Book 1
    • Writing, about 1/3 done
  • Grand Human Empire Book 4
    • Not started
  • Expedition Inc. Book 2
    • Not started

I’m going to focus my efforts on balancing and my promotional efforts. I think with more GHE books, I’ll be able to spread things out a bit more and leverage that new backlist. Plus with launching a new entry point into the Space Rogues universe, I hope that brings in new readers.

I’m really excited about launching Rogue Enterprises!

I’ve got a few in-person things booked, and I think that’s it. Unless these already booked things kindle some new love, I don’t think in-person events are worth my time. I don’t care to be known as (Yet another) writer on panels, etc. Depending on the event and the audience, a table might still make sense, but yeah. The jury is out on in-person events.

Conferences.

  • 360|iDev is already on the books (Hotel contracts yo!). It’ll be in-person with a hybrid component.
  • 360|AnDev is almost certainly going to happen. We haven’t locked down the plan yet, but no reason to think it won’t take place in July per usual.
    • I haven’t synced up with Chiu-Ki yet, but 2021 went OK. I’d like to get back to in-person, maybe add a hybrid option.
  • Chicago Roboto is… Probably going to happen. My co-chair is awesome and I think we’ll rock it. I had initially hoped to put it late April, getting it back into it’s spring time frame, instead of late fall. That doesn’t seem realistic with omicron burning through the country.
    • I haven’t synced up with Victoria on this, but I have no reason to think we won’t do it.

One thing I’ve decided with conferences this year is to recognize the realities in the communities I serve. In both, conferences are valuable, but there just isn’t much brand loyalty.

I see much more loyalty in the iOS/Mac community, likely because 360|iDev has such long legs and has been such a big part of a lot of people’s lives and careers. But even so, that only goes so far. For the Android community, it’s much more pronounced.

None of that is said as a complaint, more an admission of something I didn’t want to acknowledge. Acknowledging this fact, I hope, will help me plan the conferences accordingly. I’ll evaluate pricing and what’s offered. Gone are the days (mostly) of attendees being scrappy one and two-man shops with the next awesome game or app idea.

So that’s the gist of my plans for 2022. After 2020 and 2021 I’m not thinking too big or expansive right now. Let’s hope us and our democracy survives the year and then we’ll see.

2021 in Writing

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So wrote up my year of reading here. This post is about my business as a novelist. You can read about my conferences here.

Every year, since I began tracking number, I set a revenue goal for my writing business. Since I have only really been ‘business-ing’ this for 3 years the goal had always been a bit randomly generated. A number I’d like to see based on the last year and where I felt I needed to be.

The TL;DR; for this year is that I hit that number 3 weeks ago. I set a small stretch goal just to update my tracking data and even though I’m writing this the week of Christmas, I’m certain I’ll make that number as well. (Future me: I reached it the week of Christmas)

Ok, so. Charts and numbers ahoy!!

Year tracking of book revenue

My 2019 numbers are mostly filled in post year. I didn’t really start tracking until mid-2019 and only really dialed in my GoogleSheet fu in 2020. Plus in 2019 I didn’t track my expenses as well, so in reality, my actual profit was closer to $13,000. One of my goals this year beyond hitting my goal of $36,000 was to get there with less spend. Below 50% was my goal. NAILED IT.

The big thing that this year reinforced was the power of making the first book in a series free. Yes, you give away a shit ton of books, a high percentage of which will never get read or will be read years later. 2019 you can see I tried that strategy (In a less organized fashion) while 2020 I moved to trying to run ads against full price first in series. 2021 I went back to permafree. The results certainly seem to speak for themselves.

I do find it interesting and heartening that while my free units have fluctuated, my sold units haven’t that much. Later books in the Space Rogues series are $4 vs. $3 which I think helps. Also I’ve sold a lot more omnibus’ which are $8 and $10.

Widely Wide

I put a significant amount of effort into strengthening my wide position.

Sales by platform
Sales by platform

Amazon is still my biggest store, coming in roughly 60% of my sales any given month. I don’t run AMS ads and don’t do any paid newsletters that are amazon only. They really are just huge. My goal is still to get Amazon consistently under 50%.

Amazon will always be a factor (unless we’re lucky and something changes) so while I want less eggs in that basket, I’m ok with that market growing so long as the others do too. I read exclusively on a Kobo reader (and you should too). Next to the paid newsletters I’ve put as much energy and money as I can into both Kobo and Barnes and Noble internal promotions. Apple too when I can, but they’re…. Apple, so ¯\_(?)_/¯.

New Markets

This year I finally made the effort to upload my books to Smashwords. They’re a distributor like Draft2Digital but also have their own store. I didn’t expect much, but my motto right now is to put my books into any marketplace I can. You can’t even see their portion of the bar charts above, Smashwords made enough for a nice meal or two, so that’s something. Smashwords is now part of my upload process, so we’ll see if their piece of the pie increases in size.

Paper or Pixel?

Paperback vs. Ebook sales
Paperback vs. Ebook sales

This matches my experience to be sure. I don’t buy paper books anymore unless there’s a specific reason. The first release of a fellow self-publisher, a signed copy of something, etc. Otherwise, I am 100% bullish on ebooks.

Having moved several times in my life, I just don’t want 15 boxes of books, weighing hundreds of pounds each. Or having to secret 5 books in every box to distribute the weight. I’ve done both.

Living in a 100+-year-old home that doesn’t have a whole lot of closest/shelf space, as much as I love the look of a bookshelf, having one isn’t practical. My home office is barely big enough for me, LOL.

Plus of course, since I read mostly genre fiction, and when I read on paper is was almost always mass-market paperbacks which are decidedly less visually appealing on a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf (IMO).

This chart doesn’t include Ingram Spark because I don’t track sales there. Their system is so antiquated it’s a monthly email with a PDF and spreadsheet. Plus with their shitty unlimited return policy, I just don’t bother. If I did track them the paperback pie slice might… might creep up to 2%.

Actual Writing

So, in the realm of actual writing, what did 2021 look like? Well, I released the first three books of the Grand Human Empire series. I also released two Space Rogues stories. I finished the first draft of Space Rogues 10: Rogue Enterprises. That’ll come out early spring ’22. I’ve also begun writing the first book in the next part of the Space Rogues universe. Rogue Enterprises book 1.

My goal for next year is the same as this one. Get 3 or more books out. 5 might be a stretch but we’ll see. I really want to get most of Rogue Enterprises 1 done before the end of the year. so we’ll see. There’s a notion that 20 books at a reasonable price that each sell a unit a day, brings in around $50k in revenue. Based on my data I don’t think I’ll have to wait until I have 20 out, but either way that won’t be long.

I’ve too long neglected Expedition Inc. so getting the second book in that series out, is a priority.

One thing this year really opened my eyes to is the value of multiple series and (I hope) entries into series. Space Rogues to date, has more or less needed you to start at the beginning. You could jump in anywhere and just not know the characters as well. Space Rogues 10 sort of ‘ends’ that first story line of the team. Rogue Enterprises 1 opens a new door for people to enter the universe. They won’t need all the back story to enjoy it, but if they like it, I hope they’ll go back and read the first 10 books.

The other plus of multiples series is I can leverage paid newsletters better by spreading the exposure across series. There was a pretty noticeable drop off from efforts in January compared to those in November. More series allows me to let one rest while I promote another.

Seeing Other (or Any) People

So, coming out of 2020, I was able to get some in-person events back on the calendar. This year was light, I had a table and did two panels at MileHiCon, I participated in the CAL Christmas CO-Op. I backed out of the 20books vegas author day because, well schlepping all my booth stuff plus books didn’t sound fun. For a while, they were pushing that everyone who came in got 2 months of Kindle Unlimited which I don’t approve of. Lastly, I just didn’t want to spend a day barking at other authors while they barked at me, LOL.

Going into 2021 I’ve got a few things already set up. I’ll be at COSine ’22 in Colorado Springs in January. I THINK I have a table at StarFest Denver, guess I’ll find out eventually. I got into LTUE but had to decline as we’ll be busy that weekend. I’ll do the CAL Co-Op again because it’s pretty fun. This year was a bust income-wise, but the previous year went well. I had a spot in Denver ComicCon 2020 and of course, womp womp. When the company that took over ramped up efforts for this year, I must have missed the email because I never got notice to apply for their smaller event in 2021. While I was bummed and frankly annoyed, I was also at peace with it. We had plans I’d have had to miss, and well I just wasn’t sure it would be worth it to me.

Speaking of worth. Moving forward, I think I’ll likely reduce my in-person stuff. I initially thought I wanted to increase it, but the reality is that while it’s fun to sell books in person, it’s not the best use of time. There are two aspects to in-person stuff. Hand-selling at a booth and speaking on panels.

Hand-Selling. I’m likely to focus on this when I do in-person stuff. For one thing, I want to get better at it, but for another, I think it’s the best use of my time. The potential to sell to someone who might become a super-fan is there, but so is just the opportunity to sell to a genre fan. A sale’s a sale.

Speaking. More and more I realize this isn’t that valuable. So far at least it’s been at genre events where the bulk of the attendees aren’t writers, and so a panel on writing doesn’t fill the room or serve much purpose. We’ll see how COSine ’22 goes. I’m on four panels that are less business and more craft, so that might change my mind. We’ll see. The downside is if I have a table, I have to leave it with a sign that says ‘come back later’.

At the end of the day, I don’t want my writer persona to be “Speaks at events”. I want to be “Writes awesome books” Some authors like the latter or at least let the latter be more of their identity than actually producing work. That’s not me.

So….

So that’s it. 2021 was a very solid year for my writing. The income is mostly stable and I’m looking at 2022 with an eye towards higher revenue and income and allowing writing to contribute more to the household. 360|Conferences struggles, it’s a high cost, low margin thing (when you’re not O’Reilly or an Event Apart) so writing can help make that a bit less stressful for Nicole and I.

I’m excited for 2022, despite the Pandemic looking like it’ll be with us a good part of the year (Thanks conservatives and ‘free thinkers’ you just keep shitting in the pool and smiling).

2021 In Reading

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So I’ll write up a Year in Writing a little later. But having just completed my annual Goodreads challenge I figured I’d highlight some of my favorite reads of the year. In all I read 45 books (my target) this year. A bit more since I’m reading a friend’s manuscript right now and that doesn’t get logged into GR. This is just a highlight real. I’m not a book blogger. With very very few exceptions, everything I read this year I enjoyed.

Utopia for Realists.

This was a late-year read. I can’t recommend this book enough if you’re at all curious about how our society (America but also the human race as a whole) can get past our current capitalist dystopia.

The saddest part of this book is just how close we’ve come more than once to breaking free of our self imposed dystopian lifestyle only to just miss it.

I’ve been a proponent of UBI in particular for a long time, so the studies cited were great to learn about. We could do it, right now. There’d even still be money left for the pentagon to waste.

The author puts a lot of dense material into a downright enjoyable format. At no point did I feel like I was slogging through theory or formula mundanity.

How to Resist Amazon and Why.

My local indie bookstore paired with the author and publisher to give out copies of this book. I walked down for a copy. I also bought the ebook version, because, well the print on the book is TINY!

Anyhow. If you’re at all curious (and you really should be) about some of the crap Amazon does, take a look. It’s a fun read, written by the owner of an indie bookstore.

Reading this definitely helped nudge me to shopping elsewhere whenever I can.

The reality is. Amazon isn’t our friend, and isn’t good for anyone but Amazon.

Hunters: Spinward Fringe Broadcast 16.

The Spinward Fringe series is one of my all-time favorites. It’s long-running, enjoyable, packed with characters I really like.

I stumbled on to this series ages ago when self-publishing on the Kindle was a bit newer.

I’m really glad he’s taken his work wide and hope it’s working out well. If you’re a space opera fan, check this series out.

Ep.#1 – “Aurora: EV-01” (The Frontiers Saga – Part 3: Fringe Worlds).

Another of my favorite long-running space opera series. Some entries are slower-paced than others, but overall I still very much enjoy each entry.

I wish Ryk would take his work wide, I hate having to buy on amazon and convert it to a Kobo usable file. But such is life and I’ll support him as best I can.

This series is now… 31 books long. As a writer, I can only hope to create a universe as rich as his. As a reader that LOVES series, I hope he never runs out of adventures for these characters.

Heir to the Empire (Original Thrawn Trilogy).

This was a re-read. I read the entire trilogy this year. I’ve read the trilogy a few times, and was due. I’ll be honest I haven’t read the new “Non-legends” Thrawn trilogy, simply because I like this Thrawn and am not interested in a version of him that isn’t this.

Every time I read this trilogy I think what a missed opportunity for Disney/Lucas in not using this trilogy either wholly or as the basis of their new trilogy of movies.

This series will always for me, be the canon of what happened next after Return of the Jedi.

There are so many more, forty, to be exact but writing something about each one… sounds exhausting. I hope you enjoyed the books you read this year, and met whatever goal you set for yourself.

Onward to reading in 2022!

Audiobook Update!

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Audio is a big deal. Or so I’m told.

I admit I’ve never been an audiobook reader.

I’ll also admit, I’m not one of those snobs that look down on audiobook readers. If you’re consuming books, you’re fuckin’ awesome. Keep doing it.

So, that said. If you didn’t know, you’ve been able to get ‘The Adventures of Wil Calder‘ for a while now anywhere you can get audio, including direct from me. Same with ‘Big Ship, Lots of Guns‘.

And now… ‘The Behemoth Job‘ is available as well!

AND!

‘Stay Warm, Don’t Die‘ should be out before year’s end.

The Behemoth Job is working its way through the myriad pipes and mazes of the audio storefronts. The audio link on the book detail pages will update as more stores come online.

If you’re an audiobook reader, I’d love your help in spreading the word. I’ve let audio languish a bit, mostly as a result of lack of backlist. Now that that is changing, I want to promote my audiobooks. Help a brother out, check ’em out, tell your Scifi loving friends, etc.

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