It's Getting More Expensive to be Independent

 So Draft 2 Digital sent me an email recently telling me that they'll be charging me twelve dollars a year to be on their platform, if my books aren't making a hundred dollars a year. Now I don't know about y'all but with all the fees they charge already, I'm not sure if this is an expense I want to take on.

At the current rate, they take 70% of my book sales so that even if I sell ten books in a month, I get like four dollars. To get to a hundred dollars, those sales would have to stack up. So I'm thinking that maybe I retrieve my books from mass circulation and put them on kindle unlimited only and whatever other sites I choose to use. 

The thing is, before they put up these changes, they made sure to merge with smashwords which is the site with the second most amount of traffic and which has a lot of useful features. So if I remove my books from Draft 2 Digital, I probably won't be able to just publish on smashwords independently.

My thing is, am I really benefiting from wide release even now? Most of my sales are from Amazon with honorable mention to Barnes and Noble. I can just take down my books from D2D and publish direct to these websites...

right?

I'm finding more and more and I know you're noticing it too, how the imperial overlords are trying to get us to price the little man out of everything. Are they pushing us to have to use Amazon nem? It feels that way honestly. I feel herded. I feel the dark presence of capitalism, seeking to reduce my quality of life minute by minute.

Or maybe I'm losing my mind...

I don't think so though. I don't think losing your mind is as easy as capitalism would like us to think. To me, 'losing your mind' is equivalent to 'having an independent thought'. Anyway, I'd really like to know your solutions to getting around these problems. I know you're experiencing them as well. Let me know in the comments.

Book Marketing - We Hate It, But It Has To Be Done

Hi guys. 

As you know, I started this blog to share my experiences in writing, the good, the bad and the ugly. 

I was thinking the other day, that in light of the pandemic, that while I've had a really good season of paid work, my own books have suffered from lack of attention. So today, instead of finishing my allotted word count, I hopped over to Canva and made some videos.

Here is one, reintroducing my books and my writing to you. 

Enjoy.

 

Also, feel free to visit my author page and browse.

Kisses.

Publishing A New Book When You're Not a Well Known Author Can Be Suckage Major

I missed a day, I know. I figured I need to give you guys a break so you can catch up with all the other blog posts. It's a lot, I know.
So today we're talking publishing. I launched a book late 2017, from Pronoun - god I miss that site - In Search of Paradise...and I gotta say, the experience doing a book launch this year, from Draft to Digital is totally different.

For one thing, you practically have to sign in blood, and perform a human sacrifice in order to get a book listed on Amazon now. And apparently, they no longer even list a pre-order book - or at least, not according to my lovely publisher. That means you can't get Cinderella By Any Other Name on Amazon until Valentine's Day.

I don't know why this is. I figure it's because Amazon is a wholesaler as well as a retailer and therefore tend to favor their own products before the rest of us. It's the only explanation I can think of for why they keep making it harder and harder for books to be listed, or found on their sites, why they keep removing people's reviews...just generally making life difficult for authors.

Anyway, forget Amazon. Here is a list of retailers from whom you can preorder Cinderella By Any Other Name.
iTunes
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
Indigo
Angus and Roberson
Mondadori