The Author I Am (Advice and Evidence for Indie Writers)

For a good while now I've been trying to steer clear of writing too much about writing. It's a little self-centered and frankly I don't know that many people are interested in hearing about my job. I don't expect you to come home from the factory or the nursing home (I work at one of those for my day job) and write a long series of posts about it. I don't think I should either.

Occasionally, though, I get the itch to update anyone who is interested on what's happening with me and my career and to share my experiences. The things that work and don't might be useful to you if you're an indie writer or are thinking of becoming one. Maybe not, but this is my disclaimer: nothing I say is presented as gospel. Also, nothing I say is intended to be bragging on my part. I'm just as surprised as anyone that I've sold book one.

But first, a little about who I am.

I am not a structured image. I don't do PR and have gimmicks and stuff like that. This is the only joshuaguess.com you'll find; infrequently updated and just a sort of informal blog. Not that I don't intend to build a "real" website at some point, but that's just not a priority for me. I like interacting with my fans who so often become my friends via social media. A professional website might be pretty and all that jazz, but I much prefer joking around with readers on Facebook and Twitter. It's more personal, faster, and much easier.

There are a lot of paths for authors to take. I suggest trying out whatever methods suit you. I don't have the resources to quit my job and take up writing full-time, so there's no media blitz from me. I don't have a lot of time to write as it is. I'm not spending any of it trying to write regular stuff on my blog solely to appear cute or to gain attention.

You might be able to do that. The Bloggess is a great example of that kind of writer. She's as honest and straightforward as it's possible for a human to be. She's a brilliant writer that used her platform and considerable talent to make a name for herself. Then she wrote a book that sold like hotcakes. Which is a lot, because hotcakes are fucking delicious. Jenny (that's her real name) does one or two regular features on her blog and they work well. I think that's because she developed them organically over time.

She does her own PR, and it's as darkly funny and brutally filthy as the rest of her work. I love it. She comes across as genuine in every way, and that's a huge part of why people love her.

That's not easy to do. Some authors tend toward self-aggrandizement, talking about their work incessantly. Those are the ones who have photo shoots with lots of, uh, cleverly posed pictures. They're the ones who have silly gimmicks on their web pages that are written in a way or from a perspective specifically designed to create an impression about what kind of person they are. Maybe it's a "rant" section to create the idea the writer is a tough customer that tells it like it is. It might be the author writing a blog post or review from the perspective of a fictional character once a week. There are a lot of them. And for those people that may work.

As a reader, that turns me off. So I don't use them as a writer. But, hey, whatever tickles your pickle.

To me, being genuine is the most important thing. I may tone down what I say and not get into details of my points of view, but by and large what you see is what you get. I think authenticity is vital to the reader. You might read something I've written and think I'm a huge dick afterward, but you'll know for sure that you come to that opinion honestly. I don't put on a show to try and lure you in.

What does all this mean? Nothing, except that your image is a part of how your reader perceives you. It isn't just your writing. I only want you to think about that going forward.

That's the advice part. Now for the evidence.

Totally separate from all of the above is the pure numbers of how I'm doing at this point in my writing career. Some people are appalled at anyone divulging the amount of money they make. I told you all months ago that in 2011 I made just over $6000 in royalties, all from my eBooks. A lot of my fans, friends, and family were stunned by that number. Put it in one lump sum like that and it seems like a lot of money to make for someone typing on his couch while watching Hoarders.

And you know what? That's exactly the right reaction. I still don't quite believe it myself. I chalk it up to a ludicrously supportive fan base, some dedication on my part, and metric tons of sheer luck.

Which makes the next bit a little strange: At the end of November, I will get a check from Amazon that will bring my total income for 2012 to just shy of $11,000. I have no idea what October will bring in sales, and as I'll be getting paid the October royalties at the end of December I'm not even going to guess.

For a bit of clarity I beat last year's royalties by the end of June. Halfway through the year and I'd made as much as the entire previous year. I attribute this, again, to my (growing) fan base, my dedication, GIGATONS of luck, and the addition of Kindle Select into the mix.

There's a lot of back and forth about Select and I'm not rehashing it here. Google arguments about the program if you're interested. As for me, my audience has grown tremendously over the last ten and a half months of being in the program. I've given away somewhere near twenty thousand books in that time. I've had higher sales each month in comparison to 2011. I've grown my fanbase organically--that is, by word of mouth and through getting books out there to eReaders--instead of through ads or blog posts or reviews or guest spots on so-and-so's website. I'm not nay-saying those things, by all means do them if you feel the need. But they take up time I just don't have.

I am absolutely floored by the growth in my income this year. Most of it has been eaten by medical bills from when I had my appendix removed as well as a dozen other nibbling costs over that time. But the point is, I had the money to cover them. Select had a lot to do with the jump in my income. Every bit of analysis I can do on my numbers supports that. Might not work for you, but it's worth keeping tabs on.

In short, the things that work for me: engaging my fans directly, which I can fortunately still do as I'm not some big name with millions of fans. I tend to just be myself, which does turn some people off but creates surprisingly fierce loyalty among the remainder. I've made some good friends that way, and people see me as more than a carefully-crafted image or just some faceless neutral voice saying, "I wrote this book. Reading it would not be unpleasant for you, fellow human."

I'm a person to them, which is good given I actually am a person. I'm certainly not a complex computer program sent from the future to slowly gain your love and trust as a public figure only to make the inevitable slide into a cyborg apocalypse that much easier. Perish the thought. I don't know what you're talking about. Who said cyborgs? Not this infiltration unit, that's for sure.

And I think I'll end here. Like my grandma always says, "Leave them asking for more...information on whether or not you're an agent of Skynet."

Lots of Free Books (and the release of Book Five!)

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the newest addition to the Living With the Dead family:

This New Disease, book five.

As I'm sure some of my regular readers have guessed, I'm doing another big giveaway to celebrate the release of my new book. While This New Disease will still cost $3.99, you can get the first four books absolutely free starting on the morning of Sunday, September 9th. That's right! Starting tomorrow and through Thursday you can get all four individual volumes of LWtD free on the Kindle store, as well as Year One, which collects books one and two and contains a lot of bonus material.

So, please, share this post and let your friends know. Take the free books, buy the fifth one if you like, and enjoy!

Links!

With Spring Comes The Fall, book one.

The Bitter Seasons, book two.

Year One, which collects book one and two, plus has a TON of bonus material, including five short stories, a behind the scenes look at LWtD, and a whole novella set in the LWtD universe. It's a deal. Especially because it's free.

The Hungry Land, book three.

The Wild Country,  book four.

The LendInk Disaster [Updated]

[Updated for clarity on a small but important point. Important to me, anyway]

I usually avoid much topical discussion here, but since the recent events involving eBook lending site LendInk involve many self-published authors like me, I want to weigh in with my two pennies.

For those of you who don't know, LendInk was (the site is still down as of right now, so we'll stick with the past tense) a site where Kindle and Nook users could search through every book on both those platforms and try to find a person to let them borrow it using the 'lending' feature. For the record, this is completely in accordance with the rules set by Amazon and Barnes & Noble, so LendInk wasn't doing anything wrong.

The basics of the story are this: a bunch of authors found LendInk's website and were like "Ruh-Roh, this isn't Amazon/Barnes & Noble, yet my book is listed here!"

Apparently not a lot of investigation went on. Instead, Twitter happened.

If those initial authors had done a tiny bit of digging, they'd have discovered that LendInk was not, as they simply assumed, pirating every eBook in existence. Instead it was just a meeting place for people who wanted to borrow books from each other, much like a book club.

So a ton of authors assumed that all the pretty pictures of book covers meant PIRACY OH NOES and decided to send out tons of DMCA notifications and various other means of getting the site shut down. A few of them even threatened the page admin for LendInk--from what I understand, a disabled veteran--and I firmly hope the jackasses who did that get in all the legal trouble they deserve.

The real gist of this post, other than to decry the thoughtless actions of people that were too lazy and angry to bother taking ten minutes to figure out if they were actually being pirated, is that even if LendInk were pirating their work, I don't think it would be that bad.

Let me explain.

An author friend of mine actually sent me an email about LendInk as all this was happening. As someone who pays some bills with his writing income, my first reaction was to be upset. Not because I have any reason to, but just a gut instinct. After a few minutes I remembered that the whole reason I started Living With the Dead in the first place was because J.A. Konrath convinced me that piracy could actually be a good thing. [Update/Edit: I want to make it very clear that the friend who sent me the email in question was NOT one of those spazzy people who freaked out. Her publisher was even concerned about copyright issues, but instead of going on a rampage, she acted responsibly and did her homework. Less than an hour later she sent a second email with the right information. She didn't call for anyone's head or try to join the Twitter jihad. I meant to put this in the original post but the words kind of got away from me. I feel the need to correct now because I worry she thinks I was lumping her in with the others. I'm not. She's full of win, and I'll fight any man that says different.]

See, Konrath is one of the pioneers of digital self-publishing. Early on, he gave away his books as DRM-free files. As the free copies multiplied across the interwebs, his sales generally went up. I know, that seems to fly in the face of what the movie and music industries have been saying about piracy, but it was enough to convince me. That's why I started the blog and gave it away for free online. People like free. Sometimes a whole lot of them.

My guess is that the people who most viciously attacked LendInk were probably the ones who needed it most. Reasonable professionals (or at least semi-professional) will take the time and effort to make sure they're being infringed before invoking the deadly forces of internet censorship. Those folks tend to be the ones who make money writing. I won't swear to it, since I haven't researched the people who did this to a legally operating site, but I'd bet money that most of them are indies who really need the sales. Self-publishing is hard and often thankless. I can see someone struggling to make a name and some money getting royally pissed that a website was stealing their stuff.

Except they weren't. And if they'd taken a minute to think about it, they would have realized how wrong they were. I mean, if freely available versions of our work were a bad thing, then why the hell would anyone do free promotions? I do them on Amazon regularly, and they boost my sales. Piracy is essentially the same thing; giving it away for free. Sure, true piracy is out of your control, but there are seven billion people on this planet. If a few hundred thousand of them pirate my books, and that means a few thousand actually pay for them as a result of their popularity, then I'm a happy camper.

Granted, that scenario hasn't happened for me, but it's preferable to committing career seppuku. That's what is happening to the authors who took part in this. Their short-sighted behavior and terrible attitudes, on the internet for all to see forever and ever, are tantamount to giving up writing. There's already a backlash against many of them on Amazon as people deliberately sabotage their pages with one-star reviews. I don't think that's right, but as an author I'm biased.

All told, it's a bad situation. Maybe LendInk could have avoided this by putting a huge disclaimer on their homepage stating that they were affiliated with Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but the fault isn't theirs. The blame has to put squarely where it belongs: on my peers. As independent authors, we are business owners. It's our responsibility to know exactly what the particulars of our agreements with Amazon and other platforms entail. We have to be careful not to give in to instant rage and righteous indignation. We have to make sure that when we make a stand, it's based on fact.

To do otherwise makes us look like ignorant amateurs. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've put in too much time and love into my work to let that happen.

Just a thought.

The End

The title of this post says it all. I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I've come to the decision to give up writing. It's been a hard time, but I think this will be the best thing for me and my family.

...

Nah, just screwing with you. Things are actually going really well! In fact I'm working on a lot of stuff at the moment, and as I promised the other day I want to share some news with you. Awesome news!!! <---see, three exclamation points worth of awesome.

Four or five years ago I started working on a concept for a story, a comic book. I'm a comic nerd from way back, and I've always wanted to try my hand at one. With some excellent feedback and a few very clever ideas from some close friends, I came up with a conceptually finished product. A story. More, a storyline planned out for at least a hundred issues. I even worked with an artist friend of mine to create a fully finished comic, but he was unable to complete more than the first stages. You know how that goes; family duties, full-time work, etc.

I thought the comic was dead for about two years, but recently reconnected with another old friend who was aching to do some comic book art. After some discussion he agreed to take it on, and he has been working on the blue lines and finalizing character designs for more than a week now.

Once the comic is penciled we'll start looking for someone to digitally ink and color it, and after that we'll print up physical copies for submission to some comic companies. If that doesn't work out we have other plans, but I'm hopeful. Not expecting miracles, but hopeful anyway.

As for the title of this post, it's the name of the comic. The End.

It's a story that grew from my love of villains, good villains, complex and damaged people with reasons and layers for the terrible things they do. I don't want to give it all away, but my hope is that once we've got some finished product I can convince my artist to do a few pages for an ashcan book, a sort of sneak peek at the story. I want to share it with you. I want to capture your imagination. I want you to fall in love with the characters as readers just as much as I have as a writer.

Worst case scenario, I don't get a publisher. That's pretty likely given how many submissions Image, Dark Horse, and the others who accept them receive. Don't worry: one way or another, you'll get to read The End, no matter what else happens. It's very near and dear to me. Work on the first issue is at very early stages, as I said, but I'm hoping to go farther with this. Cross your fingers, wish upon a star, and all that jazz.

Josh

My Heart In Aurora

As I was at work this morning, at exactly 5:47--I had just looked at the clock--my boss comes up to me and tells me about a shooting at a midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises. She told me about it mainly because I've been incessantly talking about the movie for the last two days at work, prattling on about how excited I am to see it. 

Since then I've felt this awful sadness whenever I think about seeing the movie. I'll be going out with my wife and best friend on Sunday morning. It isn't often I get truly emotional about things like this. When Virginia Tech happened, I felt bad for the victims but it didn't hit home for me. Maybe because I've been thinking about going to see the final Chris Nolan Batman film, putting myself in that chair mentally for weeks now. Maybe that's why I feel such serious disquiet about the shooting. 

Not that twelve people's deaths isn't enough. You hear about these kinds of things on the news and your brain transforms it into a sense that it won't happen to you. My brain is telling me that it could. That could have been me, my wife, my best friend Patrick. We live in Kentucky, of course, but the idea is the same. One minute we might be enjoying the film, the next just gone. 

The randomness of it staggers me. So senseless and terrible. I write a lot of deaths into my work, some of them gruesome and truly awful. I talk about the waste of it and the loss of human potential and love and wonder that happens when a person passes away. 

And I feel that so much right now. As if those folks were my friends. 

I posted a tweet about the shooting when I got home this morning, expressing love for all the victims. Shockingly, one of my fans on my author page on facebook responded to that tweet when it was posted there. She says here that she and her husband were in the theater when the shooting started. They ran like hell to get away. 

That struck me hard. We live in this huge world, but the connections between us are so startlingly close. Here I am, a guy trying to entertain with his words on his couch in central Kentucky, and I almost lost someone that supported me. Someone I didn't know but was there as a part of my life anyway. It's weird and wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. One single degree of separation from this tragedy. 

I found myself feeling genuine relief that the lady in question and her husband made it out okay. She's a reader--describing herself as a 'loyal reader'--but before today she was a profile on a page. A number in my 'like' column. Now she's someone that I know, a person whose potential and impact on the people around her, including myself, could have been gone in a blink. 

Is there a point to this? I don't know. I'm feeling more grief for an event outside my own personal sphere of experience than I have at any point since 9/11. I want to do something for those people, and for Jaqueline Lader, the fan herself. I wish I could help. Even if just to give comfort to the injured, to the families of the slain. Maybe it's selfish because I think it would make me feel better, but I also deeply want every one of them to know that I care. We care. 

Human beings let unimportant things get between us too often. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. In the wake of tragedy it's vital that we remember that we're all human. I don't know what drove the killer to act as he did, and I'm sure the media will have theory after theory and people all over will place blame on whatever issue is their pet peeve. 

I don't want to do that. I don't care what made him do it, and I don't care what happens to him now other than hoping justice is served. I care that all too often we see awful things happen and get sucked into argument and finger-pointing. We forget the real human impact of the event itself. My hope is to avoid that. It may be a silly dream, but I want to see sympathy and love for all those affected to a degree that no one can imagine. 

Surely, if one man can cause so much pain, ten thousand--ten million--of us can at least begin to heal it. 

Excellent Authors and Friends

I promised I'd post this today, and I feel pretty good that I'm doing it. I've been meaning to mention some of my author friends again, as it's been a long time since I've done that. So while you're waiting for Monster to come out, please check out each of these links.

Annetta Ribken can be found at Wordwebbing, which is her website and blog. Normally I'd link to all the stuff Netta has written, but the list is pretty long. Instead allow me to point you to her Amazon author page, where you can peruse her works.

Netta and I became friends after she read the first installment of Living With the Dead and contacted me on facebook. She has been a font of great advice, wisdom, and deeply inappropriate humor for me. She's awesome and talented as all hell, one of the few authors I know that excels equally as an editor and writer. If you're having a hard time picking one of her works to read, let me suggest her novel, Athena's Promise. I've read several of her collections of flash fiction, but this novel has a special place in my heart, as she allowed me to beta read it. It's fun and funny, with moments of beauty and darkness. You won't be disappointed.

Lori Whitwam theoretically writes romance, but I'll be damned if she can't bend genres better than almost anyone I've read. Her debut novel, Make or Break is damn good. But it's the novella she wrote for my Year One collection of Living With the Dead--Monsters Unmasked--that really and truly blew me away with her talent. Maybe because I read it before her novel. Monsters is a sort of romance set in a world overrun by the living dead (my world, in fact) that manages to convey the most vile deeds a human being can do, yet show the strength and power one woman has to overcome them.

Lori is, much like Netta, snarky and hilarious. She has been a sounding board, and our mutual love of dogs and being as smart-assed as possible has been sort of a bonding experience. I've been promised that when she and Netta take over the world, I'll be spared. Even if I have to work as an oiled-up manservant.

If you already have Year One and don't want to spent the money to buy Monsters because it's in that collection, then consider buying Make or Break. Or if you're feeling generous and want to support a talented lady, go ahead and buy both.

Joseph Paul Haines  is the third person (counting the above ladies as the first two) who just wrecks my brain with how good he is. Joe wrote Marooned under the name P.J. Druce, a young adult novel that I also beta read. When Joe and I first became friends it was through Lori and Netta, and the ladies suggested I buy Joe's short story collection Ten With A Flag. I did. Then I bought the collection Brave New Worlds just because he has a story in it.

Joe is awesome. I mean that on a lot of levels. He's supremely capable of creating darkness and making you enjoy it, and I couldn't have been happier with Marooned. That book is a lot like Joe himself--complex, honest, and layered in ways that keep you interested.

It's hard to put into words how much I want you to support these folks. As writers they're awesome, but as people they're even better. I can't explain how funny and fun they are, because that's like trying to map out why your best friend is your best friend with dry words and no context.

It helps that their personalities come out in their work. You get to see pieces of them in their characters: Lori, snarky romantic, Netta as the take-no-shit badass with a heart full of hope and love, and Joe studying the things moving around in the shadows but laughing at them instead of cringing away.

I support them. If I won the lottery I'd fulfill a dream of mine and start a publishing house just for indies. I know that seems like a contradiction, but it isn't. I wish I could give them advances and pay them to do the thing they love full-time, do a lot of the work for them, promote and advertise. Because they're worth it as authors and people.

But I can't do that. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when I'm making Stephen King money someday. For now, all I can do is urge you to take a chance, spend on their books what you would spend on a cup of overpriced coffee, and let them take you away for a while.

You'll enjoy the trip.

'Monster' and Real Life Things

I've been meaning to write this post for a while. I've been working on Monster, the sequel to Beautiful, for almost a year. In fact, it will be a year in a few weeks. I want to let you all know the status of the book and why it isn't done, and you can throw metaphorical rotten fruit at me in the comments if you like.

First, please understand that I am extremely busy. I write two Living With the Dead books a year, each of them the length of a novel if not in the same format. That's more than a lot of full-time writers manage. And I'm not full-time at this. I work a regular job as a nurse aide, and that figures in to the problem.

About this time last year the way our schedules are set at work changed. Now, being a CNA is a hard, physical job. It's also pretty emotionally draining. Ever had a loved one pass away or deal with a long-term, serious illness? That's rough for a lot of people. Imagine doing it every day.

Right now I work four days and am off two, rinse and repeat. That means that I get two days off with my wife out of every six weeks since my days off change with each cycle. So not only have I been exhausted by work, but I've been trying to spend the time I have at home with Jess, between writing LWtD and trying to work on Monster.

I'll be honest: for the last year I've been struggling to even move at times, because I'm physically and mentally worn out. I changed the schedule for LWtD so I had a free day every four in which I could research, because I just didn't have the focus to write and research, much less the time.

And the big one, the one that will probably have my mom calling or messaging me shortly after I post this because she's my mom and she worries...

I've been depressed. Not depths-of-my-soul despair, the kind that keeps people in bed, but it has been there. It has been a struggle for me to get out of the low points that the depression has been trying (and occasionally succeeding) to put me in. Don't worry about me, please; I'm okay. I'm dealing with it and over the last few weeks I've been able to get to a much better place.

But these are the reasons that Monster isn't done. I'm stretched thin and trying my best, but on top of everything else this book has become something much different than what I originally planned. It's darker, more focused on the consequences of the main character's choices, and it's hard for me to write it for that reason as well as all of the above. The book won't be out this month or next, I can be pretty certain of that. All I can ask is for your patience and maybe a little understanding.

I've also been meaning to post some links to some other Indie authors you might enjoy, but I'm saving that for my next post. I want to give them all a place to shine without my emo inner child overshadowing them. I'm going to post that tomorrow for sure, so you'll at least have some damn good fiction to read while I work on this book.

I'll also be doing a post about Monster itself within the next week, what you can expect and why it's a very different book than Beautiful.

Back to work.

Josh