Draft2Digital Adding Fees

If you're an author who uses Draft2Digital for publishing your work, then you already know what I'm about to post. For the rest of you, read on.

Draft2Digital sent out an email this week informing its clients that they're going to add user fees to their platform. The first is account activation fees. Due to "automated content farms" overwhelming them with "slop," (in other words, AI written books) they're requiring a one-time $20 fee to set up an account. Combined with "verification tools and human reviewers," they hope to cut down on those clowns that are abusing the system.

I'm ok with this. Granted, I'm an existing account holder so I'm exempt from this fee. However, the next one hits me, and I'd imagine probably about 90% of the authors who use their service.

There will now be an annual maintenance fee of $12 applied to all "accounts whose earnings from book sales, meaning your net proceeds after D2D's commission, total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period. If you earn $100 or more from your book sales over 12 months, you will not be charged this fee." (emphasis on "net" is mine)

So if your book sales suck, which admittedly is most of us indie authors, you're not pulling your weight. We apparently need to up our game because we're a drain on their margins. As if we're not dealing with enough production costs (editing, typesetting, cover art) and marketing costs (ad campaigns, giveaways, paid reviews, etc.), we now have the added pressure of meeting our digital printer's revenue quota or else pay an annual fee. Swell.

As Smashwords is a D2D property, expect to see their FREE section to dwindle to next to nothing (well, successful authors can introduce the first book in a series for free to lure readers in and hope they can hook them for the rest of the series). In the past, Smashwords published statistics showing that the vast majority (90+%) of books that were purchased from them were books listed for free.

Needless to say, I am unhappy about this. I typically list my books for $2.99. After D2D takes their cut, I get $1.78. So I need to sell 57 copies to avoid the additional $12. If you think that's easy, then you don't know how difficult indie publishing is.

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I Hate Marketing: Goodreads Giveaway

At the end of August, I announced that I was running an eBook (Kindle) giveaway on Goodreads during the month of September. They were running a special (only $99!) whereupon I could give away up to 100 eBook copies, and they would handle everything: picking winners from those who signed up on Goodreads and sending out copies. I recently had acquired a debit card for switching ISPs, so I decided to go for it.

I chose Armistice Day for the giveaway in hopes that if people liked it that they would go on to buy Gateway to Empire.

I was a bit nervous come launch day. What if no one signed up for my book? I've never had a problem giving away things for free. I've given away couches, stairs, books, tapes, toys, 3D printed models, a door, and many more things, but still I worried that somehow either the book cover or the blurb would turn potential readers off.

Silly me. Never underestimate the power of free.

I had 75 people interested by lunchtime, and 120 people signed up by the time I went to bed. What a relief! Over the course of the month, the pace of signups slowed, but by the end of the month I reached 953 entrants! I was psyched!

Now most people don't go through the trouble to write reviews, so I figured that if I got five reviews, it would be a success. So I sat back and waited.

Three months later, I'm here to tell you what the results are.

Ok, there's no way to sugarcoat this. Things didn't pan out the way I'd hoped: I only got 1 review and 3 ratings. The review was good, and the reviewer gave me four stars. The other two ratings were three stars, which I'm completely fine with. And no, it hasn't led to more sales for Gateway to Empire.

The most recent rating came on November 15th, so what happened to the other 97 winners? Shouldn't I have received a bunch of ratings by now? Based on my GR experience, most people at least rate a book even if they don't review it. GR always wants to know what you thought of a book (so that it can recommend other books to buy read). It'll leave you alone if you rate the book. It won't nag you to review it. So my guess is that the bulk of the winners are voracious readers who enter giveaways because their appetite exceeds their wallet. They collect as many books as they can for free. They'll read them all eventually. Or not.

Just to clear, I don't blame GR at all. They handled everything professionally, didn't treat me any different than trad pub authors, and provided me with the statistics I requested.

Am I bummed about the poor review/rating to books given away ratio? You bet! But that's the way it goes. Would I do it again? Maybe, but not until I've had a chance to explore other methods first.

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Anthropic to Pay Authors $1.5 Billion to Settle Lawsuit

Back in June, a judge ruled that Anthropic could use books to train its AI without the permission of the authors who wrote said works. But the case wasn't quite settled. There was still the matter of how Anthropic got the books that it used. Apparently, they were pirated copies downloaded for free.

It seems that the "fair use" principle on which Anthropic's lawyers were hanging their hats on wasn't going to hold up. Since the books were essentially stolen from the authors, there was nothing fair about how they were acquired. To avoid a ruling against them later this year (and possibly being forced to pay even more), Anthropic settled last week for $1.5 billion.

While I think that it's great that the authors and the Authors Guild won, I think that $1.5 billion is a paltry sum when taken as a whole for the entire industry past, present, and future. That last part is what bothers me. As corporations choose AI over people (and I'm not just talking about creatives but software programmers, data analysts, and other technical professions), more and more of us will find ourselves displaced. We'll have to hope that consumers prefer works written by humans over computers.

There are still a couple of cases out there that might be influenced by this one. Newspapers are suing OpenAI and Warner Bros. is going after Midjourney for snagging Tweety, Superman, and many other copyrighted characters. Maybe corporate lawyers will be a bit more successful than those of the Authors Guild.

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J.A. Konrath offers a more detailed analysis of the implications of this decision.

I Hate Marketing - Getting Reviews

I hate marketing; I really do. But I know that "publish it and they will come" is not an effective strategy. I've tried it; many many indie authors have tried it.

So we try to get some reviews. Maybe we ask a friend or they just do it without asking because they realize how difficult it is to get reviews. But that quickly dries up, so we move on.

We submit our ebooks and physical copies—only if necessary—to those few review sites willing to actually read and review indie published books. There aren't many, and so for every book they review they have to say no to a hundred more. I know this firsthand as that's what we had to do here when we were open to submissions—something I hope to do again someday. And after a couple of years, well, you get burned out, or there just isn't time as real life gets in the way. Something has to give, and writing free book reviews is an easy choice to get the ax.

Now some entrepreneurial types figured out how to keep writing book reviews for indie authors. You could pay someone to give you a five-star review on Amazon. Maybe they had a few sock puppets to give you several five-star reviews. Some people did it themselves. Once it got out of control and reviews on Amazon didn't mean shit, Amazon cracked down and only allowed verified purchasers to write reviews. Does it still go on? Maybe. I don't know. But it gave paid reviews a stigma. How would you know if the review was honest?

Well, some people figured out how to do it the right way. I think it might be the norm now. I recently went through the list of reviewers at the Indie View, and there were a lot of paid review sites. But I wasn't ready for that yet.

But the free indie reviews list for sci-fi was short. There were plenty that were MIA or closed to submissions. I did manage to come up with a list of several sites and submitted my requests. That was July. Only one person has replied to say that they're interested. One site auto-replied to tell me to watch their site. Maybe they'd review it; maybe they wouldn't. The rest of them didn't respond at all. I'm not surprised by it really, nor can I blame them. They're probably inundated with requests and don't have the time to reply to them all. I get that. Sometimes people can be rude when you reject their book review request.

I realize that I'm going to have to open my wallet. I've got a debit card for switching my ISP and commiting to an extended period of time. It's found money. But I have to be smart with how I'm going to spend it on marketing. A few indie authors have shared how fast that ad dollar disappears. So I'm going with the biggest bang for the buck. Goodreads (owned by Amazon) is having a giveaway sale. I can give away 100 ebook (Kindle) copies to GR readers (that know to look for giveaways) for $99. The impression I get is that if I get five reviews out of that, it's a success. It runs for the month of September, so I'll report back to let you know how I did.

Want to read Armistice Day? Visit this page during the month of September to enter for a chance to win.

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How to Thrive as a Writer in a Capitalist Dystopia by Russell Nohelty

Full disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter for this book, and even though I have a fair amount of negative things to say, I don't regret it. I found it to be an educational read.

thrive: verb (used without object)

1. to prosper; be fortunate or successful. Synonyms: advance
2. to grow or develop vigorously; flourish.
   The children thrived in the country.

Russell Nohelty is a successful writer, and he wants to share what he's learned about marketing with you. But after reading this book, I've come to the conclusion that "thriving" is not what this book is about. It's about how to survive as a writer in a capitalist dystopia.

survive: to get along or remain healthy, happy, and unaffected in spite of some occurrence.

She's surviving after the divorce.

After reading through all of the health issues (both mental and physical) that Nohelty shares with the reader, his suggestion not to strive for happiness in order to avoid falling into negativity, and the constant drumbeat of how exhausted he is from promoting his brand (blog posts, interviews, podcasts, strategizing his advertizing budget, evaluating what promotions are working, etc.) leads me to believe that he's deluding himself into thinking he's thriving; he's merely surviving.

But "survive" isn't as marketable a word as "thrive." And it's clear to me after reading this book, that Nohelty knows marketing.

And that's where this book has value. Right from the start, Nohelty gives his readers a reality bath. If you have any illusions about your chances of success after publishing your book, then he will wash those illusions away. Once he's done that, he works hard for you to accept things as they are. It's not your fault. Capitalism is a rough system with many evils; it's difficult to conduct commerce in such a system, but it's what we have to deal with. Nohelty doesn't want authors to let the system damage their mental health.

Once that's out of the way, he shares his business experience, matters of personal health, his experiences with social media, makes suggestions about automating your workflow, explains arbitrage, agonizes over the size of his mailing list, crunches the numbers on advertizing ROI, drowns you in marketing philosophy, and tries to get you to focus on what works for you. There's even a clever bit about author archetypes which he and his partner have dubbed "biomes." There's plenty more, but it can be repetitive at times and rambling, and I found myself wanting him to get on with it. But he has to get it all out there because he's trying to make a point and, IMO, he's burning the candle at both ends.

There's a workbook—emphasis on work—that goes with this book that could prove useful. But if you need a guide you can sign up for the service that he and a fellow successful marketer have devised. Nohelty goes into some detail about that in the book, and it stuck in my craw. I don't fault him for monetizing his experience, but I do feel like he's trying to upsell anyone who bought this book. And I don't really appreciate that, but hey, we live in a capitalist dystopia, so it's all fair game.

So if you're an indie writer, should you pick this up? If you've got a routine that you're happy with, then no. If you're content with your writing as a fun hobby, then also no. But if you've got at least three books under your belt, you've sold less than 100 copies (like 99% of us), and you're looking to find out what may or may not be required of you to grow your brand, then yes. It's a sobering look at one man's efforts (one who already had experience with sales and marketing) to grow his brand. Maybe you'll find something in it that works for you.

And Mr. Nohelty, if you're reading this, H.P. Lovecraft never lived in Los Angeles, much less had a salon there.

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Judge Rules AI Can Use Books Without Permission

Yesterday, a judge ruled that Anthropic can use copywrighted material without the author's consent when training its AI. This is a terrible setback for not only the rights of authors and artists, but publishers as well.

One possible silver lining, albeit a weak one, that may come out of this is that literary and artistic content may have to be purchased in order for the "fair use" prinicple to apply. Anthropic may have to purchase a copy of an author's book in order to use it for AI training. The plaintiff in the case insisted that Anthropic used pirated material to create its "central library." In my opinion, getting a few bucks is a paltry sum to be paid by a company that's worth over $60 billion (for the moment, anyway).

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Problems With Draft2Digital

I had every intention to get my latest novel, Gateway To Empire, published in other ebook formats besides the Kindle, but those plans have gone awry. Previously, I used Smashwords to publish all of these myriad other ebook formats, but they were purchased by Draft2Digital (D2D). I discovered that they use a different formatting program than Smashwords.

I attempted to get this done in February, but I struggled to get the D2D software to properly format my manuscript. After weeks of frustration, I decided to take a break. Days turned to weeks turned to months. My attempts this month to try again have met with failure.

In the help section FAQ, here's what I found:

If I format my file myself, will it look exactly the same when you convert it?
No. Ebooks are a reflowable format that allows the reader a lot of flexibility in how they consume content. Draft2Digital's automated conversion process will strip out things that force formatting to be one exact way—embedded fonts, extra line breaks, empty pages, footnotes, or anything the system considers unnecessary to the final file.

I'm not trying to do anything fancy. I just want to get paragraphs to align, a particular quote to be indented, and the information pages (ISBN page, Other books by..., etc.) to line up. So I'm at a loss. I guess I'll keep pounding my head against the D2D wall.

The thing is: I really wanted to get all of the ebook formats set up so that when I contact indie book reviewers I can offer them copies in any format they might want. But now, I can't.

If anyone has any suggestions for alternatives to D2D, please let me know in the comments.

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The Big Five Publishers Have Killed Literary Fiction

Need another reason to support indie writers? Consider reading this post by Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings, wherein they discuss how consolidation in the publishing industry has basically reduced your reading options to what algorithms recommend.

But who needs authors, right? Just let AI do it. 🙄

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Escalators to Hell: Shopping Mall Horrors

This anthology's theme is horror stories that have some connection to shopping malls, those dying bastions of consumerism. Not that consumerism is dead, mind you. It's that we're transitioning from roaming their vast corridors of myriad wares to surfing the digital versions on our phones and laptops. To wit, the editors thought that the demise of shopping malls would make for an excellent theme for a horror anthology. And I thought so too.

The stories cover a wide gamut of horror sub-genres, so it isn't all about gore. There's a "Content Warnings" section—something I've never seen in a horror anthology—which I thought was odd. I mean, it's horror. If your mental health is such that certain things will trigger a traumatic emotional reaction, maybe you shouldn't be reading horror. I know that there are certain aspects that I won't read because of my issues. So I guess a content warning is considerate of the authors, can one find it before purchasing it?

Author representation is quite diverse. While North American authors are present, there are stories from African and Asian authors. Also, there are many non-binary authors in this collection.

Ok, onto the stories. Of the 22 stories in this collection, I liked 15 of them. Of those that I didn't enjoy, a good deal of them were too focused on gender identity, with the mall serving as mere setting. A couple of the others were too esoteric or allegorical to connect with.

On with the good stuff! The opening story, "Hard to Be a Mall God," was excellent. It deals with a demonically possessed escalator. "The Intercessor" shows how retail associates deal with trollish customers. "Why I Won't Eat at the Food Court" is part of the Generation Dead series. It drags in some cosmic horror for teen mutant superheroes to deal with but doesn't forget to add a dash of humor. "A Plague Upon Both Our Houses" is Romeo and Juliet with Zombies in a mall. "A Quick Trip to Ryan's" delves into masochism on a whole another level. "Kim, Ray, Trey, and Morgan" delves into drugs as a mind expanding experience with a dash of cosmic horror.

Some stories confront serious matters. "You Must Drop Buy" tackles the subject of rampant materialism and false promises made by deceptive marketing. In "Poseurs," a teen girl deals with her father's suicide by re-enacting a drama with mannequins.

In case anyone feels I'm being unfair to non-binary character stories, there were good stories that had non-binary characters and authors. These stories didn't lose sight of the objective. For example, "The Basement of Crowley's Artefacts and Interests of the Occult" has some non-binary teens dealing with demonic invocation in the supply room of an odd store in the mall. "Cherry Cola Lips" features a woman reflecting on her first crush back in high school, a girl who wouldn't come out and later disappeared. Rumors are that she was murdered, but the truth is stranger.

My favorite story was the closer, "The Temple of All." Makoma is forced by ritual to take her dead husband's remains into the ancient ossuary. It's a post-apocalyptic story with a touch of Handmaid's Tale where the ultimate act of rebellion is to live.

Yes, I'm glad I read this anthology. While I wish some of the stories were better, the good stories made it worth the price and my time.

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Full Disclosure: I backed this book on Kickstarter and received a digital copy as a reward.

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The Blissful Plague by Brady Koch

Twelve-year-old Maggie, her mother, and their loyal dog, Penny, traverse desolate cities, guided by a well-worn travel book. A chance encounter with a solitary boy, entangles them in the perils of Plantation Oaks, a seemingly safe haven.

As secrets unravel, revealing the reasons behind their endless voyage, Maggie and her mother grapple with their complex past. This poignant tale speaks to survival, resilience, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter, emphasizing the strength it takes to navigate a shattered world.

This is the fourth and final book in Koch's All Our Forgotten Futures series.

Efforts to contain the plague have failed. No cure has been found, and now there's no one left that can do anything about it. In this quiet world, Maggie and her mother are on a roadtrip, visiting all of the landmarks and museums of a world Maggie has never known and her mother can't forget. It isn't much of a childhood for Maggie, but she knows that her mother is trying her best even when she doesn't understand why she does things the way she does.

When they meet Henry, a boy unharmed by the plague, living with his feral family members and neighbors in the woods, everything changes. For her entire life, Maggie has only really known her mother. She had no friends growing up, so Henry is someone special to her right off the bat. Maggie wants him to come with them, but her mother tells her that he belongs with his family, no matter what condition they're in.

The people at Plantation Oaks are familiar to anyone who's read or viewed post-apocalyptic fiction. They're survivors, and their methods are cruel because that's how you survive. As someone who still has a heart, Maggie does what she can to protect Henry and his family from them. And Momma does what she can to protect her daughter.

Koch does a great job portraying his characters. Maggie is what I'd expect from a twelve-year-old girl (having had a daughter of my own), seeking her own space in the world, rebelling just a bit from her mother's rules. And Momma is caught up being a single mom in the apocalypse, carrying a ton of guilt for not being able to give her daughter a normal childhood but putting on a brave face to make sure she has the skills to survive and carry forward.

The Blissful Plague is a heartfelt story, focused on the relationship of a mother and her daughter in difficult times, facing long odds, trying to do the right thing in a world that has forgotten compassion.

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Full Disclosure: I was hired by the author to proofread/edit this book. While you might think I'm biased, I suggest heading over to Goodreads for other opinions.

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