Category Archives: Publishing

Jul 2 2012

What is a Story? (Part 2)

Several months ago I asked the question, What is a story? After getting some feedback, I came up with the following definition: A story is an event or series of events that changes a noun (a person, place, or thing).

I was satisfied with that definition and myself for a while before it occurred to me, can you write a story where the purpose of the story is to find change in a verb? That is, can the point of the story be for the action to change?

I still find change to be a necessary component for a story, even if the change is to leave one state and then go back to the way it was before. Of course, that’s still change; two changes in fact. But if you have a scene where nothing changes, all you have is an image, not a story.

Anyway, I decided to see if I could write a story where nothing changes but the action. I think I have accomplished that task, thus rendering my previous definition moot, or rather, incomplete.

I have a couple of short stories I plan to put up on Smashwords by next week. Once I get it posted, I’ll let people know where to find it. It’ll be free, of course.

Until then, as a bit of a writing challenge, see if you can come up with a story where the only thing that changes is the action of the story.

Jun 19 2012

Hopes To One Day Write For Food

The title for this post I stole from myself. It is one the vanity subheadings off a writer’s forum I frequent at Absolutewrite.com. It’s funny how such a simple statement about one’s desire to attain one of the basic necessities of life is so insurmountable in the context of the writing profession. Most of my friends are fairly amazed at what an austere lifestyle I manage to lead. And lot of that can be credited with the amazing set of supportive friends that I do have.

The statement implies I would like to write for a living, so not just write for food, but write as if it were my job that pays all the bills. As cheap as I manage to live, it will still take a whole lot for me to earn a living at writing. In this post, I’ll describe my living expenses and show that even I probably will never be able to earn a living off my writing.

First off, I have been given a house to live in.  It’s a long story, but speaking of one of the basic necessities of life: shelter. I have managed to finagle for free at the moment. Really, it is a perk of my job in helping run a hotel, but even if I were to quit that job, my friends would let me stay in the house if I wanted. So we can pretend that I don’t have a mortgage or have to pay rent. I do have to pay the utilities and for the upkeep and such. Basically my friends own the house without a mortgage, they pay the taxes and that’s it. So as long as they don’t see any other expenses, I can live in the house.

My housing expenses consist of:

Gas & Electric: $100

Cable internet (no TV): $50

Water, sewer, garbage, other town expenses paid on same bill: $100

Or about $250 a month, sometimes a bit more, but why quibble considering how cheap it is? At some point, I will have to invest in some sort of upkeep, but for now the house is not falling apart. Though it c0uld use some carpet in the living room and bedroom. At the moment, it’s just a bare wooden floor. I’ve pulled up all the staples and stuff that could stick in my feet, but it’s pretty ugly. Doesn’t bother me, but most people like their houses to feel cozy or whatever. I mention this only to point out that I wasn’t given a palace to live in. It’s a partially remodeled, one story bedroom; maybe 600-700 square feet. And I haven’t bothered to finish remodeling it.

Next, I have a PhD in Math, so I have student loans. Fortunately, I was paid to go to school in a lot of ways with scholarships, teaching classes, and even some grading assignments. I walked away from 11 years worth of school with about $32,000 in loans. That’s actually amazing. Most people under those circumstances have between 200-300 thousand dollars in loans. More than they can ever pay off with the degree they get, but that’s another story and one of the reasons I am no longer in the field of education. That’s a lot of preface to say my student loans are an extraordinarily low $200/month.

The last category is the actual food category and for good measure I’ll throw in clothing. I probably spend about $350 dollars a month on this. Food itself, I’d guess $200-$300. I honestly don’t keep track. Once or twice a year I’ll buy a new pair of shoes/sneakers for work/play. A couple of cheap Chinese Walmart shirts for work per year. Shorts in the summer. So after all is said and done, I’d say I probably average at least $350 a month for food and clothing. If I were to keep track, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were under estimating and it turned out to be $400, but for now, let’s just go with $350.

So there you have it. I live on about $800/month. I would guess this is atypical for most people not living with their parents. I actually need this money to survive, so to earn a “living” I have to account for taxes, and I’m not going to get into the tax return nonsense, I’m just going to point out that I’d need to gross a little more than $1100 to earn $800 cash. We can pretend that future income tax returns go into the upkeep of the house. Sound fair? For simplicity, I’m sticking with that.

Now the question is, how much does one have to sell to be able to live like the glorious king that I live like?

At the moment, I am selling Dim Speak for 99 cents. Is it worth that? I think so. For an unproven author and a book that was not edited by a professional, I think that price is more than fair in terms of the “risk” a reader incurs for taking a chance on such a novel. If someone orders the book at Smashwords, I get about 79 cents per copy, and if someone orders at Amazon, I get about 35 cents per copy.

Thus for me to earn a “living”, I’d have to sell about 3150 copies at Amazon per month. Clearly, that’s ridiculous. Those are George R. R. Martin type numbers. Even if we pretended that I sold a small percentage from Smashwords, I’d have to sell  around 3000 copies to live like a pauper.

Suppose now, I sold the book for $2.99. At this threshold, Amazon gives the author 70% minus a small fee for the kindle transfer, so I would get about $2 per book (plus a few pennies). At this price the Smashwords royalty rate is comparable to Amazon’s, and I’d get about $2.30 per book. Things are looking up. I would only need to sell about 550 copies at Amazon, or let’s pretend about 500 copies between the two distribution methods.

Though it might not sound like a lot, those kinds of sales would put me in the top 5 or 10 in the fantasy section at Amazon pretty much round the clock. A lot of good authors are not selling at these rates. They might be if they have a backlist with five or ten books to draw from, but if they have one book like me, not so much. This is why I haven’t really pushed Dim Speak. I figure why spend a few hundred in advertising, with only one product to sell. I need to have more to offer readers to justify that sort of expense.

Another common price point is $3.99 retail, or about $2.75 from Amazon and about $3.05 from Smashwords to the author. Monthly sales to earn a living is about 400 copies per month.

This price seems a bit high for my current copy of Dim Speak. As I said, my current work is an amateur endeavor. I wouldn’t feel right about charging such a steep price. Then, again, I spent the better part of three years off and on working on the project, so if someone else said they felt they deserved that much for their work, I wouldn’t argue.

I hope this gives people an idea of how difficult it is for an author to actually earn a living from writing alone. In this context, it seems even more daunting. I guess I’d better get to work!

Jun 8 2012

Doing Well, but not TOO Well

I know! I know!

I keep meaning to get back here and blog more, but I really have been focusing on my writing. And since I don’t have any real fans anyway, I’m not really disappointing anyone but myself.

That is a firm rationalization, if I ever saw one, and I challenge anyone to poke holes in my logic.  ;)

I have amped up my writing in lieu of blogging. Almost two weeks ago, I finished the first draft of Blood Speak, my sequel to Dim Speak.

I then wrote an erotica short story. I did that mostly for fun. It’s surprising what kind of filters one must assuage in order to write about sex. I’m sure it’s easier for others, but I had to set aside some of my own writing norms. It was very educational. And since the story makes me giggle, what more can one ask of erotica? Besides, uh, hrmmm, never mind.

Next came the congestive heart failure of one of my best friends. She’s 43 and wound up in the hospital for four days. I had to work 50+ hours that week, since she owns the hotel I work at. In fact, there was a 72 hour period where I worked every minute of the day at some point, except for the 45 minute span from 11:15pm to midnight. 35 hours in three days, not bad, right?

Anyway, now that that disaster has passed…

What? Oh, yeah,… My friend is now walking around with a battery pack that is prepared to zap her back to life in case her heart stops. Apparently, in three months they’ll be implanting something in her chest to do the same thing. For now, she has to heal a bit, but she is alive and claims to be doing better.

So anyway, now that that disaster has passed. Yesterday, I started a novella in my Dim Speak universe. I have three of them planned. I want to release Blood Speak and these novellas by the end of the year. This will finally give me some product to sell. I have not bothered to advertise Dim Speak, because what’s the point? With only one book for sale I’d spend hundreds in adverts for only one product. If I’m going to spend money on such a thing I should have a number of items for sale.

This week, I also submitted Dim Speak to Evolved Publishing.  Since I’ve only sold six copies (and have given away two). If a small press were to pick it up, I wouldn’t have any qualms about revising it one more time with a professional editor. (No offense to Kaitie, who edited it for me line-by-line for free! Thank you once again!) Additionally, I like Evolved Publishing’s author-centric co-op model. It is precisely the type of business model that I think will be the future of publishing. If you haven’t heard about the sort of work they’re doing, you should check it out.

They promise a three week turn around. We’ll see if anything comes of it.

Also starting yesterday, I began the edits to Blood Speak. Alas, I am already a couple of months behind on my schedule for this book, but such is life.  I’d like to spend the rest of June and July doing a second draft while working on the novellas mentioned above.

In last post, I know, three weeks ago,don’t remind me… In my last post, I mentioned learning something about my own writing process. I found that first drafts are really hard for me and I work much better and faster when editing and rewriting. I have decided to do my best at keeping more than one project going at a time. Preferably, a first draft project where I can scrape together 500-700 words a day, which seems to be my limit on most days. And an editing project where I can edit/rewrite some amount. I hesitate to put a word goal on such things because it will vary so wildly with the state of the previous draft.

These two processes takes different parts of my brain. They overlap a bit, but I think I can be most efficient if I work on two things at the same time. I’ll have to blog the results later.

Just for kicks, here’s an edited line from the first page of Blood Speak:

Well, the genocide AND the three Angels I was suspected of harvesting while staying in Heaven had been enough to get me banished. That’s why Faith and I were here. She wanted to prove I was innocent of the harvesting charges. I was probably guilty of the genocide though.

Feb 28 2012

Phase One: Steal Underpants

After all my talk and meandered musing about how I should release my first novel, I finally sat down for a couple of days and formatted Dim Speak for the meat grinder on SmashWords.  Considering how many hours I spent formatting the manuscript, I am thankful I know the simple tricks to removing all the tabs and double spaces at the end of each sentence using the search and replace feature, or else I’d still be tapping away at all the things that were proper formatting when I was in grade school and high school.  I apparently had 6167 instances of putting two spaces after a period (or other mark) ending a sentence.

I don’t think the process will be too bad the next time around.  It just took a lot of time because I made sure I went through and did everything correctly.  Fortunately, I sat down and re-watched some English dubbed Japanese anime while performing the conversion process.  That way, I only had to pay attention from time to time, yet gave my brain something to do.

The actual hard part of uploading was coming up with a concise, as in 400 character (not words, characters!), description of the book. This took me almost an hour.  I think I finished with 393 characters.  What do you think:

Chip found himself worlds from Earth, attacked by a dragon, prisoner of the Angels, suspected of murder, and suddenly able to “speak” with plants. What would you do? Chip tries to run away, following the omens of Faith, the most dangerous, complicated, maybe-not-fallen Angel in Heaven. Long before Faith is able to forge Chip into a warrior, the fate of the Angels ends up in his shaky hands.

My diligence with the formatting paid off, as my book was accepted the first time around without any errors.  I must now wait for the human check to go through and make sure all is well.  I presume this will take a few days.  After that, I’ll be in the their “premium” catalog which will allow the book to be sold by Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Kobo, along with a handful of other distributors.

After uploading, I fumbled around the dashboard a bit to get a feel for what was going on.  I decided I should sign up for one of SmashWords free ISBNs for ebooks.  By the time I did this, I had my first download.  Within 10 minutes of me uploading my book someone had already checked out the free sample.  I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked, after all, my book is now listed first in the “newest” category under general fantasy.  If I’m lucky, It’ll stay on the first page for a day.

I started to look into the publishing process for the Kindle and less than an hour later I received an email stating that I had made my first sale.  Apparently, whomever checked out the free sample felt it was good enough to blow 99 cents on the rest of the story.  So I made my first sale!  And I don’t even know who it is to thank them, so I will just do that here:

Thank you mystery person!  Every time you buy a book, you become a patron of the arts.  You’re allowing someone to go one step closer to being able to work full time on their passions.  You’re the best!

As for the price, I don’t expect to charge much more than 99 cents ever.  Unless I magically become famous and start selling thousands of copies.  Should that be the case, then I’ll know the story is worth more, until then, I need to do everything I can to encourage people just to check out the free sample.  So yeah, GO HERE for the free sample.  I set it for 20% of the book, so you can get in a fair ways before you have to make a purchase decision.  Though honestly, I think the middle and ending are better than the beginning.

You are, perhaps, wondering about the title to this post.  It references the Underpants Gnomes from the second season of South Park.  (This is back in 1998!)  The Gnomes had the following business plan:

Phase One:  Steal Underpants
Phase Two:  ?????
Phase Three:  Profit

At the time, Matt Stone and Trey Parker were riffing on all the internet companies that were collecting millions in investment dollars with no business plan capable of making a profit.  They were prophets because two years later the internet bust came along and put a stop to all the crazy investing.  Alas, there still exist companies with the above business plan.  Twitter anyone?

How does this relate to me?  Well, I have completed Phase One:  Write Novel.  Next is Phase Three:  Profit.

Oh wait, it’s Phase Two:  Marketing.  This is going to be harder than writing the book.

Feb 26 2012

Acknowledgments

I wrote the “acknowledgments” section of my book, “Dim Speak”, yesterday.  I decided that these people deserved to be acknowledged here as well.  I am still hoping to self-publish Dim Speak as an ebook by the end of the month.

So without further ado, I offer thanks to the following:

I cannot thank two people enough for the successful completion of my first novel. First, I must thank Kaitie (not her real name) for her editing services. She spent weeks criticizing a draft line by line. Her keen eyes made this story flow so sweetly. Second, I must thank Ed G. for numerous discussions on the universe within which I am creating. His comments and questions help me keep the back stories consistent and the meta questions clear. My deepest thanks goes out to both of them for their help.

Whether they realize it or not, most people, would not be where they are without the aid and support of many friends or family. I am no different. I tend to be a very private person and keep my closest friends to a small list. I honestly weep at the thought of losing any of them. They know who they are, but I think I’ll take the time to list them all in the next book.

Even with such a small cache of friends, there are a special few that have taken turns holding me aloft my entire adult life. Without the following paragons of virtue, I would truly be a shell of who I am today. In order of appearance: John Mack, Gloria Coffman, Kim and Charles Winslow, and Michael Stessin. I owe all these people a debt that can never be repaid.

Jan 20 2012

Talking About My Brand

I really don’t like talking about myself in the “I’m so great” hype type of sense.  If I plan to self-publish, I guess I need to do a little chest thumping every now and again, but it really isn’t me.  One of the things holding me back from getting my work “out there” is I’ve been struggling with my brand.  I’ve been collecting all sorts of information on what I should and shouldn’t do.  All sorts of advice on how to market myself and so on.  I think the best piece of advice I’ve received is the traditional, “be who you are” advice.

I’ve been trying to pigeon-hole my first book in the traditional book way.  I’ve started the sequel and found I’m struggling with the “book” mentality.  I don’t seem to write that way.  I’ve written part one of book two and started part two.  Each of these first five parts taking about 100 pages as a substory all its own.

Let me back track about five years and start where I started writing again.  I started with a space opera that went nowhere.  I wrote 160,000 words in two years and no end was forth coming.  The problem lay in the way I was writing the darn thing.  The first “book” consisted of seven stories (novellas if you will) that were complete (in the first draft sense of complete) on their own.  Each told a mini-story about a series of galactic events.  So I had seven stories that I could put together and call a book, each progressing the over arching story, but the seven stories themselves didn’t tell a story.  That is, there was no reason to call those seven together a book as opposed to six or eight.  Essentially there was a missing layer of story that prevented the first book from being a book.

Then I switched to a fantasy story that I’d been wanting to write for nearly twenty years.  I’ve spent the last (going on) three years writing this story, I’ve found something similar happening.  The first book, while a complete book this time, is broken into three distinct story parts.  Each making sense on their own as a sub-story.

Over this same period of time, I have been getting more and more into Japanese Anime and Manga.  I really like the serialized episodic story telling.  Essentially, that’s the way I’ve been writing.  A story arc, followed by the next arc, and so on.  The nice thing about this type of story telling is that it goes on as long as the story needs.  It doesn’t force itself into a certain size, it doesn’t force itself to wrap up all the loose ends before the next arc begins.  Stories flow one into the next.  Unfortunately, I’ve been trying to write this way, only trying to press the story into a book form as well.

After doing a little research into the way things are being marketed on the Amazon Kindle, I’ve decided to release my work the way it ought to be released, namely, episodically.  More and more serialized fiction has been appearing on the kindle, so it seems there is a market for the stuff.  I had thought about this a lot last fall, but a couple of months ago, I heard an interview with Sean Platt and David Wright (actually the interview was with one of them and I don’t remember which one it was).  They’ve written a post apocalyptic serial that seems to be doing quiet well, and it’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about trying myself.

So when considering my so-called “brand” I think I will specialize in episodic fiction.  It just seems to make more sense for the way I write.  The nice thing about this type of writing is that I can take an episode and make it an aside to build the characters that support the protagonist.  A technique I really enjoy in the Japanese Anime/Manga story telling form.  It really gets the reader invested fully in all of the characters, and I want to do the same thing.

Dec 13 2011

Fear and Writing

Writing is a funny thing.  I spent nineteen years with an idea in my head.  Then I spend over 2.5 years writing the story behind that idea and now I feel afraid to release the novel, Dim speak, into the wild.  What’s strange, I don’t fear people not liking it or criticizing it.  I think it’s a bit of an odd duck as far as novels are concerned and such things are always polarizing.  I fully expect it to get wildly differing reviews.

What I think I fear the most is charging money for it.  I fully believe artists should be compensated for their work.  They should be able to make a living at their passion.  I fear taking people’s money and having them find no artistry in the work.

Mind you, I didn’t write a literary novel.  I didn’t write Dim Speak with the intent of, well, whatever intent there is when writing a literary novel.  Depressing the reader and beating them over the head with a singular theme if I’m not mistaken.  Seriously, that’s all I ever get out of the classics, and I wanted to write something completely the opposite of that.

I wrote a fantasy parody. Non-derivative, both in the sense that it is not a parody of another work and it doesn’t spoof for the sake of being silly.  I try to write all the gags in the context of a serious story, which from time to time, does not take itself seriously.  Again, that’s the point, because one of my goals in this work was to write a parody of life itself.  We can’t take it seriously all the time, or we’d all just go bonkers.

My two biggest influences, not surprisingly, come from my teenage years of reading.  Piers Anthony and the first dozen or so Xanth novels, along with another dozen or so of his books.  And Robert Asprin with his Myth series.  Alas, both of these authors loved their puns, while I loathe puns.  They’re what finally made me give up on the Xanth novels; too many puns running around.

Asprin was less prolific with them, allowing me to read just about everything he wrote.  His Myth novels, while a whole lot of fun, suffered from consistency.  However, that wasn’t the point of those stories.  The Myth novels were about friends and their relationships with each other.  I find the friendship between Aahz and Skeeve to be one of the most influential in my real day-to-day friendships.  Those are the type of relationships I personally seek.

Dim Speak has no puns, but I tried to land it squarely in between these two authors’ works.  I like to think the story is serious in the way most of the Xanth novels are serious and fun in the way the Myth novels are fun.  I also like to think I kept the story consistent.  I don’t foresee the savvy of the modern reader forgiving the gaping plot holes for which Mr. Asprin was guilty.  Most importantly of all, the story is about the friendship between Chip and Faith.  Because these two are of the opposite sex, naturally there will be an extra layer of sexual tension, at least for Chip, but my ultimate goal is to create a friendship between the two characters as deep as the one between Aahz and Skeeve.

I think the bulk of my fear comes from my childhood misconceptions about these works.  Twenty-plus years ago, I treated these kinds of books as silly diversions, nothing deep and meant to be fun.  I didn’t recognize the artistry.  As an adult, now that I have written a story like this for myself, I know I am attempting to follow in the steps of giants.  I think my biggest fear is that it will take another twenty years for me to capture the same artistry that Mr. Anthony and Mr. Asprin managed to capture.

Oct 19 2011

Book Cover Update

I have been conversing with an artist the last couple of weeks about the cover of my up coming novel Dim Speak.  She has already sent in a first draft, first print?  I’m not sure what the equivalent artistic vernacular would be.  I am well pleased with this version, but as with anyone with a vision that has someone else interpret it, I made a couple of small suggestions/requests.  I am confident it will effectively portray the tone of the novel once finished.

Speaking of which I have been giving a lot of thought about what Dim speak is in terms of genre.  I can’t really think of anything except straight fantasy.  I guess some would call it High Fantasy since it takes place over the course of three different worlds, but High Fantasy is also called Epic Fantasy and I wouldn’t describe this novel as what I would envision as Epic Fantasy.  I’ve already complained on this blog that I find Epic Fantasy much too verbose for my tastes.  At its core, my book is a “buddy novel” between a young man and an Angel, so I don’t waste a lot of time in the story waxing poetic about the environs and stick with the dynamics of the two main characters and their relationship.

If I had to create my own fantasy sub-genre, I suppose it is more “Blue Collar Fantasy”.  There is no epic quest.  The fate of two species does wind up in the hands of the protagonist, but that’s toward the end of the story and not why he sets off on his adventure in the first place.  It is more of a happenstance of being in the right place at the right time at the beginning of the story.  Who knows, maybe I can create my own sub-genre.

Oct 5 2011

Book Cover

Still haven’t gone in search of an artist for a book cover.  I’m kind of dreading this.  I suspect I’ll find this to be the worst part of self publishing.  I think it’s because I’m such a lousy artist myself.  I can draw poor stick figures, but I don’t think something like that would pass the muster in terms of attracting positive attention to my novel.  All the same, I fear that I’ll be willing to accept anything because I’m such a poor artist.

I would be willing to wager that a fantasy cover is the hardest or generally most expensive kind to procure.  In most genres, you can take photos and free clip art from a number of sites and mock up a cover.  Fantasy covers on the other hand tend to be drawn, and not usually cartoonish either.  They tend to be well drawn artwork.  The kind of artwork that an artist would expect to be paid for and deservedly so.

I have “Mark’s List” from Smashwords.  This is a list of people who have volunteered cheap service rates for Smashwords authors.  I guess I’ll find out soon enough how difficult finding a fantasy cover really is.

Sep 25 2011

Advice to the Reader: Genre is Dead

By saying that “Genre” is dead, I am not saying “Genre Fiction” is dead.  In fact, I think it’s more alive than ever.  If any flavor of fiction needs to worry about dying, it is literary fiction.  Since the publishing industry is spinning around like toilet water in mid flush, I think literary fiction is going to have troubles finding a market among the ebook world, and you know what?  I’m okay with that.  Most literary fiction is boring and repetitive.  I won’t miss it.

OOPS!  Yeah, I’m a genre snob just like everybody else, but I’m learning.  And for some good reading, I suggest you do too.

Now, what I mean by Genre is dead, I mean the literal concept of genres are dead.  And you as the reader should learn to be to be okay with that.  Don’t worry, they’re not going anywhere overnight, but they are fading away.  Well, not fading, blending is more like it.

First off, straight genre fiction seems to already be gone.  You can no longer find a fantasy novel to enjoy.  You find Epic fantasy, Dark fantasy, Urban fantasy, Science fantasy, Heroic and Mythic fantasy.  Sci-Fi is no longer Sci-fi, it’s Apocalyptic, Post-apocalyptic, Space Opera, Space Western, Military Sci-Fi, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and numerous other sub-punks.  Mysteries are no longer mysteries, they are Cozies, Police procedurals, Noir, Hard Boiled.  And a new one I heard last week:  Malice Domestic, which I am assured by a friend of mine who writes mysteries this is the same as Cozies, but can we really take that risk?

All these sub-genres seem pretty ridiculous to me, but many people grab hold as if it’s a war worth fighting, so who am I to say they’re wrong?  Personally, I like to read a little something from a lot of different genres and I think this is going to become the norm because without the publishing industry forcing all writing into little pigeon holes.  Writers are going to get more creative.  They’re going to cross genres a whole lot more.

Take, for instance, Murder at Avedon Hill, by P.G. Holyfield.  In the same way that people who read literary fiction dislike genre ficiton, many of the people I know who read the Mystery genre wouldn’t give this book the time of day, because (Gasp!) it’s a fantasy novel.  Nevermind the fact that this is simply a matter of setting.  There really isn’t much of the story preventing this from being written either in a modern small town, or to be closer to the original vision, a medieval town.  Sure you can nit-pick here and there about the fantasy elements, but the fact remains this is just a mystery novel.  The audio book, available for free in the link above, is just fantastic and amazingly well produced.  To get this book traditionally published, Holyfield had to shorten it, and muck it up a little.  Once I found that out, I couldn’t muster up the nads to buy the paperback, sorry P.G..

Another prime example is Scott Sigler’s Galaxy Football League series which starts with The Rookie.  Also available as a free audiobook.  Scott opted to sell the book himself as a collector’s edition hard cover.  Granted Scott Sigler is a NY Times best selling author and can muster up the 2000-3000 fans to buy such a print run, but my point is made.  He gets to sell his book vision intact, which he describes as “Star Wars meets Every Given Sunday meets The Godfather”.  Three genres that I don’t care for:  Space Opera, Sports, and Gangster all blending together to make one super-cool story.  Thanks Scott!  Now I’m on the hook for 6-7 hardcovers!

So as writers get more opportunity to write what they want and begin mixing things up, the reader is going to have to evolve along with them.  Well, that’s not totally true.  Genres aren’t really going to die.  There will still be plenty of your basic subgenre writers out there, but if you want some really interesting reads, open up your mind a wee bit more, and see what people are writing now that they’re losing the traditional publishing yoke.