Dealing with Competing Objectives

By James M. Jackson

Both the Story Structure class I teach, and the Revision and Self-Editing class have lessons on constructing scenes that work. Some ideas I try to impart are that

1. Every character in the scene has a goal (or goals) they are pursuing.

2. Some of those goals are in conflict.

3. If there is no conflict, there is no scene.

What happens if there is only one character in the scene? Two things are possible.

Most often, the character is trying to overcome obstacles left in her path by other characters who aren’t in the scene. For example, our Lead is preparing to leave the house, but before doing that, always follows a ritual of tapping for good luck and safe travels the St. Christopher medal nailed to the right of the door to the garage.

Except, the medal is missing because someone stole it.

The other possibility is that the individual has competing or conflicting goals. That would describe the situation I found myself in earlier this year with two goals.

Goal #1 – expand the number of potential readers for my Seamus McCree series and Niki Undercover Thriller trilogy.

Goal #2 – prioritize my work time for efficiency to allow more time to focus on joyfully enjoying life.

Let me explain how these two goals arose. I’ve heard many authors say they write because they must. I write because I want people to read what I write. If you told me no one would read my story, I wouldn’t bother writing it. I suppose it’s an ego thing—probably not something to be proud of, maybe not even something I'm supposed to say out loud. But I am who I am, and that person likes an audience, enjoys engaging with that audience, likes to feel there is a reason for spending all those hours writing, when I could well be doing something else.

According to Bowker, they issued ISBNs to over four million titles in 2025. Adding to that the books published on Amazon without an ISBN, I’ll bet we’ll have close to five million books published in the U.S. last year. With all those new books available, not to mention the millions of backlist books, “Build it and they will come” does not work.

So, to get people to read my stuff, I need to market the books. That takes money (fine, as long as the books bring in more than they cost) and time (to create newsletters, blogs, advertisements and monitor the same).

Which brings us to Goal #2. I enjoy virtually nothing about the process of advertising books. I don’t enjoy creating ad copy, researching comparable novels to get my advertising in front of their readers; I don’t enjoy learning multiple ad platforms, I don’t enjoy creating graphics, or videos, or … the list goes on.

There is a Grand Canyon gulf between these two goals.

I am giving up trying to be all things to all readers. Unlike with my financial investments, where I spread my risk across multiple asset classes, for my books, I’m following Andrew Carnegie’s advice to “put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.”

I have decided that the best way for me to reconcile my goals is to focus my marketing efforts on one specific venue: eBooks on Amazon. Oh, sure, I still offer paperbacks, and you can order signed ones from my website. And yes, audiobooks are still available. Henceforth, backlist eBooks will only be available on Amazon, either through purchase or through “free” reads for those who pay for Kindle Unlimited. I’ll continue to offer new releases to a wider eBook audience for a limited time.

So, if you are a Kindle Unlimited reader, I invite you to pick up either the Seamus McCree series (8 books, 2 novellas) or the Niki Undercover Thriller trilogy from where you left off, or start with the first book in each series (Ant Farm and Niki Undercover).

That’s my Grand Canyon: ego on one side, sanity on the other. What are your competing objectives in your life or writing? Drop your thoughts into the comments. I’d love to know.

* * *

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with brains and bite, including the Niki Undercover Thriller trilogy and the Seamus McCree series. To learn more information about Jim and his books, check out his website https://jamesmjackson.com. You can sign up for his newsletter (and get a novella and two free short stories featuring his protagonists).

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL

 

by Linda Rodriguez

 

“The point of [⁦@DanaKingAuthor⁩’s] post was to remind writers that we are, usually, at the bottom of the industry hill. This would be the hill down which shit rolls.” — ⁦@sdparker7 

http://www.dosomedamage.com/2022/09/do-you-ever-think-about-quitting.html?m=1 

I finished and revised a number of poems yesterday, as well as writing one long, weird one that I think will turn out to be pretty strong and will fit in the current manuscript, To Mend the Broken World. A relief that, since I've suddenly been writing poems for the next book, which I think will be a revisitation of passionate love. I may well have enough poems to make up the current book, but I know there are gaps within it that must be filled. 

I feel as if this sudden efflorescence of poetry is a presage to work on a serious novel. (I find myself thinking ever more approvingly of Graham Greene and his division of his work into serious books and works of entertainment. Also, I remember Alan Moore talking about writing as magic with its power to change the world.)

I have fooled myself in recent years into thinking that I had to focus on one or the other, but why? Writing is a fool's game anymore, a crapshoot in a mob-owned casino where the odds are always stacked against you and the dice always weighted. So, why should I adhere to the industry's unuseful limitations? 

Write what I want, what I feel like writing, literary fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, mystery, thriller, historical novel, family saga. What was it Whitman said about contradicting himself because he contained multitudes? I have a few good years left to write a few good books, and I might as well please myself and enjoy the process, because it's highly unlikely that I'll achieve any real success or financial reward the way the industry has devolved so badly in recent years. Witness the recent federal trial against Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster and the ridiculous (and sometimes blatantly dishonest) statements of the executives of both publishing conglomerates under oath on the witness stand.

I want to show the reality of life today, spotlight important societal issues, offer some hope and love in an increasingly dark and destructive world, and limn a possible solution or better future here and there. All too often, we live in a world cursed by our own actions, and I do believe, at the base of everything, I am called to be a blessing, as we all are. What we decide to do with that calling determines ultimately who we become.

After all, it's a simple matter of choice. We are choosing who we will be with every action, every word. I choose to fight the copious dark, both within me and without. I can probably never defeat it, but I can provide a spark, a lamp for the treacherous path.

Linda Rodriguez's fourth Skeet Bannion mystery, Every Family Doubt, the follow-up to Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, Revising the Character-Driven Novel, and her co-edited anthology, Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging, will publish in 2023. Her novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and books of poetry— Dark Sister, Heart's Migration, and Skin Hunger—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book, Midwest Voices & Visions, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships.

Rodriguez is past chair of AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus and Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and member of Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.

Confessions of a “Gentleman” Author Turning Into a Businessman

by James M. Jackson

A “Gentleman” Farmer is someone who has a country estate, part of which he farms more for pleasure than for profit. He often loses money on the proposition, but the pleasure outweighs the costs. Well, you’re all smart people, you can extrapolate to what I mean by “Gentleman” Author. And I have to admit, I was one.

The Seamus McCree series first appeared in print in 2013 when Barking Rain Press published Bad Policy. As a new book-parent, I was thrilled to see my words available for people to buy. I wanted them to like it, sure, but I also wanted people to buy it to show their approval of my work.

To that end, I had a release party (Jan paid for the cake shown as an illustration), I contacted bookstores to do signings, I wrote a whole bunch of blogs for people talking about this, that, and the other to bring attention to the book. I shared the expense of an ad in the Malice Domestic bulletin with two other Barking Rain Press (BRP) authors (BRP also chipped in). I spent time looking for people to review the book. I attended numerous conferences, participating and moderating panels.

When Barking Rain Press published Cabin Fever in 2014, I now had a series! I hired a publicist to arrange bookstore signings (I hadn’t had a lot of success with Bad Policy) and to run a social media campaign. I did a ton of blogs, and I gave away 100 copies of Bad Policy at that year’s Left Coast Crime. I continued to attend conferences and participate in panels. I handed out bookmarks, and I schmoozed with well-known authors, and I met lots and lots of people who enjoyed my love of a good mystery.

And with all that effort, I really didn’t sell a lot of books. Meaning, at the end of those years, I had substantial tax write-offs. Now, I’m a finance guy, and so at my core, I know this kind of tax write-off is not a good thing; it only means my fellow taxpayers are subsidizing my “enterprise.” Given current tax laws, better I should pay more taxes because that would mean I was actually earning money.

But hey, I’m in this for the long term, right? Amazon lost money for years building its customer base. Consider it: author James M. Jackson – a micro Amazon. Attractive, don’t you think?

So, I made a calculated decision that instead of bringing out the next in the Seamus McCree series using a small publisher, I would pay for the things Barking Rain Press had done for me (mainly cover design and editing) and earn 100% of the royalties instead of sharing them with the publisher. Then just before I had Ant Farm ready to publish, Amazon came out with the Kindle Scout competition, and I thought: who can market my novel better, Amazon or me? I entered the Kindle Scout competition with Ant Farm and won.

Kindle Press published the ebook in 2015. I created the Wolf’s Echo Press imprint to handle print copies of that book. Although published third, chronologically, it appears first in the series, so a prequel. And I sat back and waited for Amazon to do its magic—but that’s a story or two or three for another blog. Let’s just say it didn’t turn out to be everything I hoped it would be.

Maybe after three years of being a fiction author, I’d had my quota of authorial fun, or maybe it was the dawning recognition that I had a good product (average Seamus McCree book ratings at Goodreads is 4.4 and at Amazon is 4.7), with very limited visibility. People can’t buy it if they don’t know about it, and the fun things I had done to market the books were not getting the job done.

As I started mentally moving from Gentleman Author to Businessman Author, I had the opportunity to regain my rights to Bad Policy, which I did in the first half of 2016. It had been three years, and the ego massaging high of having a book published by a traditional publisher was long gone. I thought I could make more money from the book if I took over marketing it myself. That decision has proved correct, as my earnings for Bad Policy in the first year of regained rights exceeded my net earnings from the three years the publisher controlled everything.

Later in 2016, I went full indie publisher with the fourth Seamus McCree, Doubtful Relations, and had Wolf’s Echo Press publish both the print and electronic versions.

Not quite three months ago, I regained the rights to Cabin Fever. In one $0.99 promotion in June, I sold more ebooks than I had in the previous three years. That’s not the same as making more money—to obtain those sales I paid for a variety of ads, and the sales were at a discounted price. However, Business Author is evaluating the ROI (return on investment) of the ad buys (over 200%), monitoring the effect on other series books (more sales for all the books), analyzing Kindle Unlimited pages read (a substantial kick to pages read).

Here’s an example of Gentleman Author compared to Businessman Author thinking. Gentleman Author is invited to a book-signing opportunity in a community 5+ hours away. Some interesting things are happening in the city; I’d get to see some author friends; I’d meet readers and sell a few books. Jan would come along to see the sights. Let’s sign up!

Businessman Author does the math: Cost of gas alone $50 (ignores wear and tear on auto). Overnight at a hotel (say $150). Meals out – no biggie, I’ll treat that as a date with Jan anyway if she’s going to go along. Will I make over $200 profit on books sold? Using a 70/30 split with the venue, I’d need to sell more than fifty books to break even—which has never happened for me at this type of event. Before I became the publisher of all the print versions of my books, it would have required me to sell more than 150 books to break even. Those calculations ignore what I would spend for the opportunity: eleven hours driving, six hours at event. That’s seventeen total hours that could be spent writing or editing the next book (or even relaxing).

That is not to say I won’t spend time doing unprofitable things. I will—IF they are how I want to enjoy life, or if it’s how I choose to give back to individuals or the writing community in general that has been so supportive of me. Those exceptions I will make consciously. {The opportunity above did not make the cut.}

My transition isn’t complete – nor do I want it to be complete. I write for enjoyment and will stop writing if I stop enjoying everything it entails. However, as I choose how to spend time and money, Businessman Author will be sitting on my left shoulder, whispering into my ear.

Advice About Publishing Your Novel

Linda Rodriguez wrote this blog three years ago. It contains vital information for all new writers or those who are trying to get published. For the benefit of our community of writers, we are happy to republish today.                     E. B. Davis

I receive emails regularly from people who’ve read one of my novels, such as Every Hidden Fear, or have even just read about them, in which they ask me how to get their own novels published. Usually, they know just about nothing of the business of publishing, which surprises me. If you took a year or so to write a book that you hoped to publish and sell, wouldn’t you owe it to yourself to research and learn something about the business of publishing that you hope to join?

I always try to answer with a detailed listing of things they can do to educate themselves about the business and to begin to connect with the professional literary community. I have posted information on my own blog about various such resources and contests for unpublished manuscripts, but since I know we have a number of aspiring writers, many of them Guppies, reading Writers Who Kill, I’ve decided to write this blog post.

I would hope that most of those who’ve been involved with Sisters in Crime and their Guppies chapter would have learned most of this information, but I’m constantly surprised to find people whom I thought would have this information who don’t. The world of mystery writers is much more welcoming than other literary worlds, I know, but even here I think it can be easy for those of us who have been around for a while to assume that our aspiring writer friends know more than they do. And it’s hard for someone to ask even generous friends about something they’ve never heard of. So if this is all stuff you know, congratulations. This post is for those who may not have had as much chance to learn about the business as you have.

Here’s my resource guide to publishing a novel. It won’t get you published, but it will give you a good foundation in the business of publishing/being a professional novelist and get you started in the right direction.

Pitching a novel to a major publisher today can be very difficult without an agent. Most of the New York trade publishers won’t look at novels unless they’re represented by an agent. Smaller specialized presses, literary presses, and university presses will take unagented queries during their open submissions period, if they have one. Often they can be the best bet for a first novel that’s not necessarily a commercial or genre novel. Poets & Writers has a database of small, literary, and university presses.

http://www.pw.org/small_presses?perpage=* 

Many of these won’t do novels, so you’ll have to sort through them.

Here’s a list of 16 small presses that do novels. 

https://www.thebalance.com/small-and-independent-press-profiles-1277429

You can also do an internet search for small presses that specialize in your particular genre of novel, if you write in one of the genres.

For agents, I would suggest that you check the website of the Association of Author’s Representatives. http://aaronline.org/    

This is the professional association of reputable agents. It’s very easy to get involved with folks who call themselves agents and are really running scams to part authors from their money. Members of AAR have sworn not to do this stuff and are kicked out if they do, so you can trust them.

Another good site to educate yourself and protect yourself from scammers is Writer Beware. http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/  

This is a site provided by the SFWA, with support from MWA, as a service for all authors, science fiction, mystery, or not.

But the first thing you want to do is to get current copies of Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer magazines. These magazines often talk about which publishers are looking for what kinds of books at the moment. P&W focuses more on the academic and literary writer, while WD focuses more on the commercial or freelance writer. If your library has them, also read back issues of P&W, The Writer, and WD. You’ll learn a lot about the business that way.

Look for professional authors groups to join. There are groups for children’s writers, mystery writers, romance writers, sf/fantasy writers, etc. These groups are usually tremendously helpful in learning the publishing business and making useful contacts. If there is a chapter of a professional writer’s organization near you and it’s not your kind of writing, it can still be useful to you in learning the business. I once belonged to the local chapter of RWA, Romance Writers of America, though I didn’t write romance. I learned about agents, what editors want, what is and is not acceptable behavior in the publishing world, what are and are not good contracts, and tons of other things that became useful to me. Now, we have a chapter of Sisters in Crime here, and I’m active in it, but that time in RWA laid a very good foundation for me. The same goes for SFWA or any of the others. The purposes of these organizations are to help their members with the business of publishing and being a professional—and that’s very similar across the boards.

A book I always recommend to students and aspiring writers is Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life. I’ve written about this book before on this blog.

http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2012/05/visualizing-success-as-writer.html 

It’s the best book I’ve seen for looking at how to be a professional writer and work on getting published, how to get established within the literary community, how to make a career as a writer without living in NYC, and much else.

If I were you, friend with a book manuscript under your arm, I’d start with these resources. I’d also go to every writer’s appearance/reading/event that occurs in your town if it’s a small one or a good selection if you live in a big city with an active literary community. Buy a book, if you can. Introduce yourself to the writer. Follow up with emails or mailed notes talking about what you liked about their reading or book—not asking for help with your own. Friend writers on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter. Don’t spam them about your own book. What you’re doing is building relationships within the community of writers. These are the folks who can answer questions for you or later (if you’ve built a good, real relationship) give blurbs that will help your book sell. Basically, my advice is to educate yourself about publishing and become a contributing member of the community. Getting a novel published is a long, hard haul, so arm yourself with information and allies.

The best single piece of advice I could give, however, is this—make sure you write a good novel. Get professional feedback and revise, revise, revise until it shines before you ever try to send it out. I suspect that a certain number of folks who are looking for a publisher for their novel have never had anyone professional look at it and haven’t done much with revision. (I know that’s not the case with our Guppies readers, fortunately.) Writing is an art and a profession. Learn about publishing, the business, while you learn about writing, the art and craft. Editors and agents have long memories. They know each other and talk to each other. Don’t stick out in their memories or get your reputation from sending an amateurish manuscript out. Make sure that what you send is the very best it can be, submitted in the most knowledgeable and professional way you can.

Best of luck!

Five Lessons Learned as a Nano-Press

by James M. Jackson

What is a nano-press? Small presses are often defined as with revenues of less than $50 million. Micro-press frequently refers to the physical size of the books (often pamphlets or comics). Wolf’s Echo Press revenues are WAY BELOW the $50 million mark, so I thought that I should come up with a distinguishing term, and nano-press sounded about right.

Last year, I decided to produce an anthology of novellas set in the lowcountry of the southeast U.S. I invited three author friends who knew the area well to participate with me. The result is Lowcountry Crime: Four Novellas. It’s on Kindle pre-order for only $2.99. Once it’s officially released the price jumps to $3.99. Hurry! Hurry!

Now, the lessons:

1. Deadlines are there for a reason.

Authors are busy people. They often have multiple current writing projects, need to do their own marketing, and many have jobs in addition to their writing. For this anthology to succeed, I set target dates for each major step in the process for both the authors and the publisher: the initial submission from the authors, the first round of edits back to the authors, the second and final revisions, when the publisher owed proof copies to the authors, and when they had to give their okay.

2. Everything takes longer than expected.

I was dealing with three pros, and my first inclination was to develop a nice tight timeframe to move the project from conception to completion. The sooner revenue began coming in from book sales, the quicker authors could earn out their advances.

And then I reflected on my corporate life when I managed people. I had learned through experience that each of us has built-in biases when we estimate how long something will take. A manager’s job is to adjust the estimate for each person’s bias. Some people pad their estimates. Whatever they say can be shortened by some percent. Others assume everything will go perfectly; their estimates must be lengthened to reflect reality.

I know how long something should take, and that’s how long I want it to take. Of course, it takes longer because stuff does happen. Because I know my tendencies, I took my original timeframe and added significant “extra” time. Sure enough, we needed most of that slack.

3. The last 20% takes 80% of the resources.

Getting something close to correct takes considerable effort, but if you want to get it right, it takes a lot more effort. I didn’t measure the specific time each task took, but I suspect a version of the 80/20 rule is applicable to the effort of producing a book for publication.

I know that perfection in an 85,000-word document is impossible. However, the quality of this book reflects directly on me. Not only did I write one of the novellas in the anthology, I helped edit the others, and a quality product may lead others to want to work with me in the future on projects—or if I screw it up, convince them not to work with Wolf’s Echo Press. You can only make a first impression once!

Which means that I spent considerable time trying to ensure we had no typos (I suspect at least one is still hiding. Please let me know when you find it.) Laying out the manuscript for print meant looking at each page, finding ways to eliminate orphans, making adjustments such as inserting soft-hyphens when justified lines spaced too broadly.

And then there was all the time spent in setting up the distribution process. Choosing appropriate meta data, keywords, developing the description readers will see when they look for the book.

Etcetera. Etcetera. Thank goodness I knew my tendencies and set the timeline with “room to spare.”

4. Order Matters.

Consider this nightmare scenario: despite sign off from the publisher’s proofreader and the author, you discover a homonym somewhere in the book. My experience is that readers will tolerate a typo or two, but if they find a homonym or a character whose name changes, it pulls them right out of the story. They read it twice and then discount the author’s intelligence, the publisher’s quality standards, mentally mark down the number of stars they will give the book in their review, start looking for other errors. Not good; not good at all. We want entertainment on every page, not scrutiny of every page.

Fortunately, most homonyms have about the same number of letters as the correct word. But, let’s say it’s a name change. If this error were caught anywhere early in the process, it would be a small matter to make the fix. Late in the process, it requires change to both the print version(s) and the electronic version(s). And in the print version, if you are unlucky (I was), the change from (say) Jennifer to (say) Jess, shortens the text enough to cause one fewer line, which in turn leads to an orphan on some later page.

Decision time. Let the layout go with the orphan, or change the initial document, the print layout, and the file transferred to the distributor(s)? Of course I changed it, but it was all extra work caused by timing.

When I looked at the print proof version of the book, I discovered a major (to my mind) issue. No one—author, proofreaders, publisher (that would be me)—had noticed that one of the novellas used straight quotes (mostly) instead of curly quotes. As I paged through the paperback proof looking for anything that might be a problem, the $%^&* things jumped off the page and smacked me in the nose.

I immediately knew what had caused the problem (the author had returned edits using a program that did not recognize curly quotes) and how to fix it. However, not only did I need to fix both print versions of the book, I had to fix the two electronic versions as well—and do it in a manner that didn’t screw up the direction of the curly quote in, for example, ’cause. [Checking for the straight quote issue is now part of my processing checklist when I go from document to print layout.]

5. The mystery community is generous.

Unlike much in life, the mystery community does not consider writing and reading to be a zero-sum game. One person’s success does not take away from anyone else. We root for each other and help each other along the way.

Other nano-publishers were generous in sharing their experiences in publishing anthologies. Some people generously offered to proofread the manuscript for the thrill of finding errors and because it allowed them to read the stories first. Thank you for your eagle eyes.

I’ve had the chance to work closely with three fine authors on this project (Polly Iyer, Jonathan M. Bryant and WWK’s own Tina Whittle) and see how they each crafted stories using the lowcountry setting and instructions that the novellas were to be “north of cozy and south of noir.”

Lastly, I do want to thank readers who take the time to leave honest online reviews. I think I speak for all authors and publishers when I say we couldn’t do what we do without you, and we appreciate the reviews you write to help others know of our work.

*****

Save 25%: Lowcountry Crime: Four Novellas is available for Kindle pre-order until 2/7/17 for only $2.99. The print edition is available for pre-order online or at your favorite bookstore.