An unlikely savior - #HolidayRomance #SelfPublishing #Homelessness

 

For my promo post today, I have a bit from my story Slush: A Holiday Romance. This title represented my very first foray into self-publishing, nearly five years ago.

A lot of books under the bridge since then! I’m still fond of this gentle tale, though, about a rich guy who’s rescued by a homeless young woman.

You can get a copy (only 99 cents!) at Smashwords, Amazon, BN or Kobo.

Blurb

Hot shot Boston lawyer Ian Pierce has everything but peace of mind. Christmas Eve finds him alone, wading through the slush to his BMW so he can drive back to his lonely luxury apartment. Then everything goes black. He awakens with an aching skull to find himself in a freezing, boarded-up garage occupied by a street kid. At first he blames the dodgy-looking youth for his troubles, but before long he realizes the raggedy girl who rescued him from the gutter may well be a Christmas angel in disguise.

Excerpt

“Hey, mister – you okay?”

The youthful voice filtered down the deep, dark hole to Ian’s flickering awareness.

“Urgh.” That was his own voice, a groan that kicked up pounding echoes in his head. Irritated by his own incapacity, pushing the pain aside, he tried again.

“I – uh – I don’t know...” He forced his heavy eyelids open, blinking to dispel the maddening blurriness, and tried to focus on the pale face hovering over him. “What – what happened?”

“I think you were mugged. I found you unconscious in the alley, lying in the gutter next to some fancy car.” The teenager had a thin face with a toothy grin. A knitted Bruins cap pulled low over his ears hid the kid’s hair. His breath condensed into white clouds when he spoke.

A shiver wracked Ian’s body. Even that slight movement exacerbated the throbbing at the back of his skull. Damn, it hurt! And it was freezing in here!

“Where am I?” Ian tried to sit up, impatient as always with any kind of weakness. “Ow – shit!”

He sank back onto something yielding, breathing hard. A damp smell of mold assailed him, mixed with hints of motor oil and wood smoke.

“Better not move,” the kid counseled. “You might have a concussion.”

Ignoring this advice, Ian managed to work himself into a half-sit. The softness beneath him was an old mattress, covered with a stained woolen blanket. He leaned against a plywood wall. Cold seeped through the thin barrier from the winter night outside, all the way through his coat and his shirt. His back muscles cramped and he shivered again. He glanced around the dim, crowded space, noting that the other walls and the floor were bare concrete.

“Here – try this.” The younger man grabbed a thick wad of newspapers from a pile in the corner

 

“Tilt forward – yeah – that’s right.” He slipped the papers into the space between Ian’s back and the wall. They worked surprisingly well as insulation. The kid smiled, showing those even white teeth once again. “Better now?”

Ian nodded, then regretted it as the pain in his head surged. “How did I get here?”

The teen’s laugh was high and girlish as he gestured toward a rusty supermarket cart parked near the door in the plywood partition.

“You’re joking!”

“Nope. A sled might have been better on a night like this, though.”

“But how... why...?”

The kid gazed at him, hands on his hips. “I couldn’t leave you there in the slush, could I? You would’ve froze to death, no question.”

Ian peered more closely at his savior. The teen – well, he might have been twenty, twenty one at most – looked plump in his miscellany of sweaters and sweatshirts. Underneath the bulky layers, though, he was slightly built. His hands, wrapped in orange mittens, were small. Bright red long johns showed through the holes in his ragged jeans. Despite the inclement weather, he wore no boots, only dirty sneakers, which looked soaked through. That observation made Ian realize how wet and cold he was in his own clothing.

He shivered again. “Don’t you have any heat in here?”

The kid shrugged. “I could light a fire, I guess. I don’t like to do that too often – makes it more likely someone will figure out I’m in here. But I suppose nobody’s going to be prowling around on Christmas Eve, ‘specially when it’s so miserable out.”

He dragged a battered oil drum with a deeply dented lid into the center of the room and started piling on bits and pieces of wood from a box near the newspapers. Then he crumpled some of that paper onto the top and struck a match.

The merry flames made Ian feel marginally better. The ache in his occipital region faded a bit and the numbness shrouding his brain cleared. He began to remember, brief impressions at first, then whole scenes.

Take a long walk off a short career

by Giselle Renarde

I listen to podcasts while I clean the kitchen. Self-publishing podcasts, mostly. That's why the notebook on my fridge is covered in titles of books I want to write.

Books like: The Lazy Writer's Guide to a Sustainable Long-term Writing Career.

If I actually wrote that book I don't think anyone would buy it, so I probably won't write it. Mind you, I've written a lot of books nobody buys, so maybe I will. We'll just have to wait and see.

What brought this idea to mind in the first place? Most of the marketing advice geared toward authors (in the self-publishing sphere in particular) is stuff that I'm either way to lazy or way to cheap to put into play. Maybe I should call my book The Cheap-Ass Writer's Guide to a Sustainable Long-term Writing Career. Because, lazy as I am, I'm ten times cheaper.

There are a number of authors who make a mint self-publishing. They exist. They do. But the vast majority of those uber-earners work waaaaaaay harder than I'm willing to work. That, or they spend way more money than I'm willing to spend.

If I funneled hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of dollar into Facebook advertising maybe I'd make more money. Or maybe I'd be out hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe if I purchased pricey advertising slots on bookish newsletters I'd sell more copies of my books. Or maybe I wouldn't.  I'm not the kind of person who likes to take risks. Just ask my sister how it works out every time she tricks me into going to the casino with her. I am not a gambler. In my mind, expensive advertising is always a gamble.

My book would be incredibly controversial. It would go against all the advice you'd typically get from those in the know. But what it really comes down to is how you want to live your life. I think a lot of advice is aimed at people whose idea of success is vast financial gain. If you want to earn a lot of money, you should be prepared to work hard and make sacrifices.

My advice would be geared toward people like myself: writers who are in it for the long haul, but who want a pretty peaceful life, who aren't expecting to make millions in their first year, or probably ever; people who are laying the groundwork for a slow and steady career as a writer.

You can work really hard if you want to. You can wake up at 5 in the morning to write until your brain melts. But the thing about writing 40 novels per year is that it's really fucking tiring. Maybe you can do it for a couple years, but most people aren't going to find that type of production schedule sustainable across the decades. And instead of backing off and just writing... oh, say, 30 novels per year... a lot of authors burn out and stop writing completely.

I don't want anyone to think I'm tearing down authors who make a quick buck and then ride off into the sunset. Earning a shit ton of money is a huge accomplishment--and it's certainly an accomplishment I have yet to accomplish.

My goal was to earn enough money from writing to pay my bills. I'm not a shifting goalposts type of person. I don't feel the need to earn more money this month than I earned last. I just need to keep afloat, and I can do that because I've being doing this work for more than 10 years. Every book is an investment. I couldn't pay the rent with my earnings in year one. Not sure I could have done it in year five. I've had a variety of part-time jobs over the course of my writing career, but the writing was never my part-time gig. The minimum-wage jobs were the part-time gigs. Writing came first.

Like I said: I don't think anyone would buy my guide to a sustainable writing career. Most people who are prepared to take ten years to reach their ultimate goal can probably figure out on their own how to get there. But maybe it would be encouraging for people like me to know that you can be a writer without being a go-getter. That's okay. You don't have to feel bad if you don't earn much or you don't release a book a week. It's still possible to make a living from your writing. It just takes a while.

But if you're lazy (like me), you'll wait.

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in well over 100 short story anthologies, including prestigious collections like Best Lesbian Romance, Best Women’s Erotica, and the Lambda Award-winning collection Take Me There, edited by Tristan Taormino. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, Cherry, Seven Kisses, In Shadow, and The Other Side of Ruth.

Hybridizing My Platform (#selfpub #indieauthor)

When I first entered the realm of erotica and erotic romance, it was just before self-publishing really came into its own. So, like any author of the time, I was of the mind that my book was to be published traditionally or not at all. I didn’t even consider the possibility of going indie.

I got my novella picked up by a small publisher and started my journey into the publishing world. Right around the time of publication, I was headed to a conference and wanted more to show for myself than just one novella… so I decided to take a one-time-only leap into self-publishing with a short story.

Well… I kind of got hooked.

I sold another novella to my publisher, but the rate they moved for publication seemed glacially slow compared to self-publishing. As well, I wanted to expand my platform with more short stories, which my publisher didn’t work with. So… I jumped back into self-publishing.

I did a lot of reading and researching on how to do it right. I still fucked up a number of times. Over the years I got better at it, and started to bring in professionals — I now have an editor for all of my books, as well as a cover designer.

Even though I was hooked on self-publishing, I kept my first two novellas with my publisher. In the back of my mind, I had come to understand I wanted a hybrid platform — a mix of self- and traditionally-published books. I didn’t really know why, exactly, I wanted this, but I knew I did. I think it was still a hang-up of the “old” way of thinking, that traditional is a mark of quality.

Along the way, I came to know more than a few authors that self-published, but hated the process of doing so. Either it was too technical of a process or they just wanted to spend their time writing or for whatever reason just wished someone else would do it for them. Concurrently to hearing this repeated refrain, I was also asked to review books or to promote books on my blog. Quite often, I’d find that the core story was quite good, but the formatting was terrible, the cover was bland, or the great story was lost in clumsy writing. This helped me clue in that there is still a great need for publishers in this modern book industry.

Thus began the long, slow process of starting up a publishing company for erotica and erotic romance. Deep Desires Press launched at the start of this year and we have a few titles out already — and our publishing calendar is booked solid into late summer, and then spottily to the end of the year. Some of the authors who have come to us had a go at it with self-publishing and are hoping that the professional polish of a publisher will help, and others have never self-published and only want their book released by a publisher. Everyone has their own reasons for submitting to us.

Here’s a little secret, though. Lisabet mentioned in her post this week that publishers don’t know much more than authors do when it comes to promoting books. She’s right. I know a lot — after all, I have three pen names and over seventy titles published — but there’s still no magic formula to it all. However, if both a publisher and an author promote a book, that’s double the promo efforts — and perhaps to different audiences — which can only help with getting word out about your book. Working with a publisher is a team effort. That applies to more than just promotion — we work with your to strategize your publishing plan, to get your book in top-notch shape, and to get a cover you’re excited about.

It’s been a challenge to start up a publishing company in a time where small publishers are folding and authors are left out in the cold. We’ve made sure to build our company on transparency, trust, and professionalism. I think that’s come through in what people have said to us in working with us.

We believe that we can adapt quicker than the publishers that have folded and we believe that our professional output gives our authors a competitive advantage over self-published authors. However, at the same time, we’re not a cutthroat business. We understand that authors have hybrid platforms that include self-publishing and perhaps other publishers — I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t support that — so we allow authors to promote their external works on their platform with us (usually through our author interviews or through retweets on Twitter).

So where does this leave me? I’ve recently gotten the rights back for those two novellas I sold to my publisher, and the plan is to rewrite them (as they badly need it) and publish them through Deep Desires Press. However, I don’t want to overrun the publisher with my own works — I don’t want it to be “Cameron D. James and His Pen Names Press”. So, even though I own a publisher, my platform will still be hybrid. When I have a piece ready for publication, I’ll make the determination as to whether it fits best with Deep Desires Press or as a self-published title. (To date, for the first seven months of 2017, only one title is by one of my pen names.)

Self-publishing still has its place, even for me. This past weekend I wrote a novella. (Yup, a whole novella in two days. I wrote 16.5K on Sunday.) It’s a time-sensitive project about a fictionalized president who falls for a gay lover. Given the political turmoil in my neighbouring country, it’s to my advantage to release it ASAP. Thus, it’ll be a self-published project that should be out in a day or two. Some of the projects I have on my plate will go to Deep Desires, some will be self-published, and still others might go elsewhere.

My understanding of my career — and my desire for a hybridized platform — has only solidified over the past year. A hybridized platform helps expand an author’s reach and increases their opportunities. I am not and never will be a 100% self-published author — and, likewise, I’ll never be a 100% traditionally-published author. Each author’s journey and choices are their own — and this is the one that makes the most sense to me.


Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Erotic Love & Carnal Sins: Confessions of a Priest (co-written with Sandra Claire). He is also the publisher and co-founder of Deep Desires Press, a publisher of erotica and high-heat-level erotic romance. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Control! (#selfpublishing #kdp #smashwords)

By Lisabet Sarai

I published a book this afternoon, on Smashwords and Amazon KDP.

The process took about three hours, including creating a cover and wrestling with Word formatting. Oh, there was also some time consumed by a power outage that killed off our router for a while.

Of course, this volume—Divided We Fall—is just a 7500 word short story. A novel would have taken me longer, simply to get the formatting right. Nevertheless, self-publishing is definitely the way to go if you’re the type who likes instant gratification.

That’s not the main reason I’ve embraced the process, though. The most desirable aspect of self-publishing is the way it gives you almost total control.

You have control over the price. I’m convinced that many of my romance novels would sell much better if my main romance publisher didn’t charge so much (six or seven bucks for an ebook novel!), but there’s nothing I can do about that. My contracts state quite clearly that the publisher has final say over the selling price.

In addition, for a self-pubbed book, you can change the price when you want, if that suits your marketing strategy. Especially with Smashwords, it’s extremely easy to set up a discounted price for a limited period of time, or even make the book free for purposes of promotion. Amazon requires a bit more time and work to modify prices, and is rather hostile to free stories, but I gather even that can be arranged if you can document that the book is free on other platforms.

When you self-publish, you have control over the cover. Granted, this is a mixed blessing when you have only basic graphic arts skills, like me, but at least I don’t have to put up with covers that I hate. (If I have to look at another waxed, muscular male torso, I might vomit.) Most of my self-published books have simple covers based on a single stock photo. However, at least they don’t look like every other book that’s out there. Furthermore, if I decided it might be worth it, I could always pay to have a professional cover designed. And it would be exactly the way I wanted it. I wouldn’t have to negotiate with the art department, or accept a bland cover just because it matches the style of an imprint.

Finally, the most important kind of control, for me, is control over content. When I’m working on a book that I intend to self-publish, I don’t have to please anyone but myself. I can break genre rules right and left, if that suits me. I can use any sort of sexual terminology and portray any sort of erotic activity, without either being censored or accused of being coy. I don’t have to satisfy an editor or convince anyone that my book “fits” the publisher’s image or supposed readers.

I truly love the freedom of self-publishing. I should say that I consider publishing with Excessica to be self-publishing as well. Their cooperative model means that authors have full control over, and responsibility for, content, price, cover, editing and release date. Excessica handles the final formatting and submission to different publishers, plus adds the book to their own on-line store, and takes a 10% cut in return. I appreciate having someone more skilled handling these tasks, and am happy to pay for that.

So what’s the down side of self-publishing? It’s often claimed that self-published work sells more poorly than books released by publishing houses. Maybe that’s true for some people. As for me, all my books sell poorly. I think the titles I have with Excessica are probably my most popular right now—not counting Raw Silk, which continues to find new readers eighteen years after its first publication.

Obviously you’ve got to put in more effort editing your self-pubbed books. If you’re not confident about your own grammar and spelling, you need someone else to help. However, I’ve read (and reviewed) plenty of traditionally published works that suffered from inadequate editing. Signing a publishing contract does not guarantee that you’ll get great editing—nor does it free you from the ultimate responsibility for your words.

Self-pubbed books used to get less respect, but it’s not clear to me that this is still true. Many authors with stellar reputations are going the self-pub route for at least some of their work. I recently read a wonderful self-published title by K.D. Grace, for instance.

If you think that a publisher is going to be much help with marketing—sorry, but you’re deluding yourself. Publishers may have their own branded channels—web site, Facebook page, Twitter account and so on—but honestly, they are as clueless as the rest of us regarding the magic formula for selling books. You’ll have to market a traditionally published book as actively as a self-pubbed one, without having some of the same tools.

I could go on, but I’ve got three other blog posts to write today, so I’ll let my fellow Grip people expound further. (I’m especially interested to read what Cameron has to say, given that he has just started a publishing company.)

However, I’d like to share the blurb for my new book with you, because it’s a charity volume in response to the recent U.S. Election.

All proceeds from the book sales will go to Planned Parenthood. Right now they need all the help they can get!

Divided We Fall by Lisabet Sarai

Multiracial erotic romance, 7500 words

Hate takes too high a toll

Linh’s three year old brother has wandered out of Viet Village into Niggertown. Despite the danger, she has no choice but to go looking for him in hostile territory. She manages to convince the rifle-toting guard at the entrance to the black ghetto to help her search, using a mixture of bribery and bravado. As they comb the desolate streets of Niggertown, seeking any trace of Duy, Linh discovers that the barrio’s inhabitants aren’t necessarily the violent, drug-addled brutes she’s been taught to hate, and by the time Linh and Steel have rescued the injured toddler and spent a long night hiding in a derelict building, she has come to understand who are their real enemies.

Get your copy at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/699997

The Bright Side of Rejection

by Giselle Renarde

It always bugs me when I rant to a friend and they tell me to "look on the bright side." I don't want to think about silver linings when I'm ranting. I just want to rant.

But after a few weeks or months or years go by, I can usually look back on whatever I found rant-worthy and realize I learned something from the experience. That's especially true of business affairs.

Like most writers, I've been on the receiving end of quite a few rejection letters. I've never been one to rant about rejection. When you're a creative, rejection's part of the profession. But it used to make me sad. Of course it did. Doesn't anymore, by the way. If you're just starting out in the writing business and you're wondering if the sting of rejection ever lessens, well, yeah, it does.  At least, it has for me.

That said, I don't send manuscripts out to publishers as much as I used to.  I was browsing through a calendar from a few years ago, and I found there was a period when I was sending out one manuscript per day. These weren't all novels, obviously. There were lots of websites that published erotica back then. And I submitted short stories to erotic anthologies, when I tend not to do much anymore.

Now I self-publish most of my work. Why, you ask? Not because I can't get published. My work has appeared in nearly 200 short story anthologies. I've been published by 2 of the Big 5, plus Oxford University Press. I'm nothing special, but I have accomplished that much.  Did it pay the bills?

Not so much.

Does self-publishing pay the bills?  Well, actually, it does. It isn't easy. In fact it's a lot of work. I've had to acquire a multitude of new skills. So the money aspect is a big one, but you know which other factor is up there with money?

Trust.

I just don't trust most publishers anymore. I've been shafted too many times, by presses large and small.

When I started writing, I submitted work to every call for submissions I saw. I've had poetry published, and an academic paper, and a touching anecdote in Chicken Soup for the Soul. If they were offering money, I could whip up a story. (Although I never was paid for that academic paper, come to think of it.)

Over the past decade I've been published by... you know, I've lost track. Probably a dozen websites, more than 20 small presses, the aforementioned big wigs, Hustler Fantasies. One of the biggest reasons I publish my work myself instead of taking my writing to publishers is that... well, first of all, most of the small presses I used to work with went out of business. Almost ALL the websites closed down.

Of the few publishers who do still hold rights to some of my books, three no longer pay me. And not because my books don't sell! Deadbeat publishers come up with all sorts of reasons for falling behind on author payments. "Oh, I'm so disorganized! I don't have time to keep track of these things! I'm terrible with spreadsheets!"

Alternately, there's: "What are you talking about? I don't owe you money."

Or my personal favourite: simply failing to respond to any email I send over the course of YEARS.

I won't name names because the funny thing about deadbeat publishers is they can always seem to find money for lawyers. And there's one publisher in particular that has been incredibly litigious and very much a deadbeat press, and I can't help remembering being so disappointed, many years ago, when I submitted a book to them... and it was rejected.

A close call indeed.
~~~~~

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in well over 100 short story anthologies. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, Cherry, In Shadow, and The Other Side of Ruth.

Want to stay up to date? Visit http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com
Sign up for Giselle’s newsletter: http://eepurl.com/R4b11

Garbage

by Giselle Renarde

I started hearing this song on the radio a couple months back--"Only Happy When It Rains." I kept thinking how much I enjoyed it. The lyrics spoke to me and I liked the sound.

Last Friday, by chance, I caught a concert of indie and alternative rock on PBS. One of the bands performing was called Garbage. That's how I found out who'd been singing that song on the radio: Garbage.

That's how I found out when the song came out: 1995.

I was in high school in 1995. If I could go back, I'd spend my teen years listening to grunge and punk and... I don't know. I still don't know what's cool. When I was a high school student I listened to a classical radio station and Broadway musicals. My best friend in Grade Nine loved Iggy Pop. I should have followed her lead.

Anyway, doesn't matter. I can't go back in time. The point I'm trying to make is that this song is 20 years old, but it's new to me because I didn't listen to cool-kid music back then. Everything we create--as artists, musicians, writers--isn't just new the day it comes out. A song is new forever to new listeners. A book is always new to new readers.

I know we're talking about obscenity this week, but I can't help piggybacking on Cameron's post because he makes so many salient points. The point I'm particularly interested in is this: just because Amazon is huge doesn't mean it's the be-all and end-all, especially for those of us who write erotica.

Cameron mentions faring better at other vendors writing erotica that's so dirty Amazon won't have it. This has been my experience too.

But wait... there's more!

In my experience, having a big backlist (haha, yeah I know) doesn't do you a lick of good at Amazon. Amazon's algorithms favour what's new. And new, to Amazon, doesn't mean NEW TO YOU. It means PUBLISHED THIS WEEK. Once a book's been available for more than a month, it might as well not exist unless you've got a steady stream of sales to keep it afloat. Some authors have that. I sure as hell don't.

Things are different at the other stores--Kobo, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, all those. Not that I'm particularly a fan of any ebook retailer, but I do prefer the ones where my books sell not wildly, but consistently over time.

Tax-wise, I don't know how royalties are reported in other countries, but here in Canada royalties from artistic works or inventions are reported on a T5--a statement of investment income. That's how I like to think of my books: as investments. I don't expect to do the work today and get paid for it consistently at two-week intervals. That work needs to pay off over the course decades. After I die, it'll keep earning money for my heirs (okay, my cats).

Most of my readers don't know I exist yet. They haven't found me. I haven't found them. Some of them haven't even been born. Twenty years from now a reader will find something I wrote tomorrow and it'll be new to them. I'll be new to them.

You can't be forever new with a vendor that consistently sweeps books under the rug. Discoverability is important. But ultimately? Stores will come and stores will go. Readers and writers will stay.

And as long as we're talking about sex and depression (are we?), I just released a lesbian erotic short called Bobbing for Peaches and I'm telling you about it because it's free at most ebook stores.

Just a little gift to readers.

books2read.com/u/31glWa

You're not going to screw yourself...

by Giselle Renarde

A couple months ago, my mom bumped into a family friend she hadn't seen in a while. The friend asked, "What's Giselle up to these days?"

My mom proudly replied, "Giselle is a self-published author!"

When she told my sister and I this story, we burst out laughing.

My mom said, "What? Self-published--isn't that the good one?"

Classic Mom. My work has been published by imprints of Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins and even Oxford University Press, yet my mother goes around gleefully telling the world I'm a self-published author. "Isn't that the good one?"

Self-publishing has generally been more lucrative for me than placing my work with small presses. That's what my mom had latched onto, in conversation. My sister and I tried to explain the snobbery that still exists in the worlds of reading, writing, and publishing. If you go around saying you're a self-published author, most people hear "I suck and nobody's willing to publish my work."

I won't speculate as to whether I suck (my opinion of my writing varies with mood), but over the past 10 years my work has appeared in well over 100 print anthologies. That's in addition to ebooks placed at far too many small presses. I don't say any of this to brag, only to convey that there are people out there willing to publish my work.

Or, there used to be.

So much has changed since I first started writing. Just today, I got word another anthology my short fiction was accepted for has been scrapped by the published. That's FIVE cancelled contracts this year.

As I've probably mentioned, I never set out to be a writer. I started writing on a dare. I'd just been laid off from my job in the big bad business world and was having a bit of a quarter-life crisis. I felt like I needed to pick a career and stick with it.

Ten years ago, I couldn't see this far into the future. I never imagined I would self-publish my work. The erotica world seemed dominated by websites, magazines, smallish presses and largish presses. I wrote short stories to answer calls for submissions. I'd never read an ebook, but I started writing them for small publishers. I'm not saying everything I wrote just magically got published. Trust me--I saw my share of rejection letters. My book Ondine was probably rejected by 6 different publishers. But it needed to be. I got great advice from some very caring editors and improved the book incrementally.

I'd only been writing a few years when author acquaintances started opening their own publishing houses catering to niche markets. I liked the idea of getting in on the ground floor (worked well for me with eXcessica), and I also wanted to support fellow authors who were beginning their own ventures. So I submitted a few works here, a few works there.

Pretty soon, I had ebooks (short stories/novels/novellas) placed with... oh, easily 20 different publishers.

That wasn't my first mistake, but it was probably my biggest.

I've never been an all-your-eggs-in-one-basket type, but Homer Simpson's got a good point when he says, "What would you have me do? One basket for each egg?"

There comes a point where the baskets themselves become too much to carry. In writing terms, how do you keep sending new work to 20 different publishers? If you slack, you're not going to satisfy fans at that publishing house. Putting out new stuff gets eyes on your backlist. Without those eyes, sales stagnate.

There was a point where I had a bunch of royalty cheques coming in for less than $10 each. And then less than $2 each. If I'd consolidated all those efforts with one publisher I really trusted, I think I'd have fared much better.

The trouble is, with the exception of a small handful of publishers, I wasn't working with people I had a lot of faith in. That's dangerous. Some publishers seemed to take their jobs less seriously than I took mine. That's extremely dangerous. That's when you get into publishers who don't bother to send you royalty reports. Or payments. Because they don't feel like it or whatever.

One thing I've learned over the years is that you don't need to be good at business to run a business. Just because you've decided to become a publisher doesn't mean you're going to behave professionally. I've witnessed more than one publisher treat authors like shit behind the scenes. I had a reader email me one time to say they were having trouble downloading a book and when they wrote to the publisher, the response was basically, "Are you some kind of idiot? You're too stupid to figure out how to download a book?"

You think I'm exaggerating. I wish!

The real kicker? This particular reader was also a well-respected book reviewer. Save me, Jebus.

When I first started out, I found publishers on the Erotica Readers and Writers Association website and then looked them up on Piers Anthony's site to find out all the dirt. Of course, I couldn't research the startups. They were too new. No data available.

I strongly encourage authors to do their research. Find out who you're getting into bed with. If you trust no one, get into bed with alone. Like Alison Tyler says: "You're not going to screw yourself." (that's not an exact quote, btw)

Wow, I sound really down on publishers. I'm not. I've found great success and incredible support with some. But not all. Most of the publishers I've worked with haven't been jerks. They've done their best, just like I've done mine, but the money wasn't there. Sales were crappy, so we parted ways. That's business.

I'm not sure what the takeaway is, here. Do your homework? Don't get into bed with acquaintances? Don't spread yourself too thin? I don't know. I still make too many mistakes to be giving anyone advice.

The Author Brand

As my co-blogger, Lisabet, discussed yesterday, building an author brand is quite complicated.  Primarily, you need to consider what a reader will associate with your name — and the clearer and more direct the association, the better.

In the traditional publishing world, authors stick to one genre or sub-genre under their name.  If they choose to explore a different genre or sub-genre, they often choose an alternate pen name.  For example, I’m a huge fan of James Rollins thrillers — but when he wanted to give epic fantasy a try, his publisher forced him to choose a different pen name (James Clemens) so as to not dilute the brand associated with the name James Rollins.  Romance author Nora Roberts also writes mystery under the name JD Robb.

There are some exceptions, of course, in the traditional publishing world.  PD James, mystery author, wrote the sci-fi novel, The Children of Men, under the same name.  While I haven’t read her mystery books, her one sci-fi novel wasn’t a grand epic of futuristic starship battles.  Rather, it was the tale of one man in the near-future, who meets a pregnant woman in a world that’s been gripped by total infertility for decades.  I would imagine the writing style, tone, and general plot structure resembled her mystery novels — and, so while The Children of Men would be a departure from her brand, it likely didn’t dilute it that much.  (Also, she wrote only one sci-fi novel — if she had wanted to write a series, she likely would have chosen a new name.)

I’ve noticed, though, that self-publishers often don’t follow the same procedure.  I think it’s because self-publishers can put out whatever they want, whenever they want.  They aren’t beholden to a publisher who can say, “You know what... this really doesn’t fit what readers expect from you... can you write something else?”  The self-publisher can put out non-fiction, romance, sci-fi, mystery, and more under one pen name because no one is going to tell them different.

Personally, I think this is a big mistake.  Readers get an unclear picture of what to expect from the author, which can lead to disappointment down the road.  It can also lead to serious problems... I came across one author who writes erotica and children’s picture books under the same pen name.  I don’t know why this author thought that was a good idea.

For myself, I write gay erotica (and sometimes gay erotic romance) under the pen name Cameron D. James.  I currently have two other pen names that handle different genres (and I’d rather not link them here to my erotica output).  It helps me stay clear about what is and what isn’t acceptable to say online.  As my erotica persona, I can talk about hot older men fucking skinny twinks, and maybe share some pictures on Tumblr depicting such things.  But if I was publishing my other stuff under the same pen name, then I couldn’t do that, as readers of the other genres wouldn’t want to see hot gay sex.

But a brand comes down to more than just the genre.  As Lisabet said yesterday, it includes specifics of what the reader might find in your stories.  Your pen name may be associated with BDSM, paranormal, power differentials, or more.

This is where I struggled with Cameron D. James.  I started as an erotic romance author with my novel, Autumn Fire.  However, I quickly learned that while my publisher classified me as erotic romance, Autumn Fire was clearly more in the erotica category.  So I was promoting myself as an e-rom author and getting bad reviews from e-rom readers who felt the novel was clearly erotica.  It certainly didn’t help that I self-published an erotica short story, then sold another e-rom novel to my publisher (and that one was also really more erotica than e-rom).  So I floundered for about two years, trying to determine my brand and my voice.

Finally, I said, “Fuck it,” and classified myself as an erotica author.  My erotica was doing better than my e-rom anyway.  But deciding my brand was as an erotica author wasn’t enough.  I still needed to define my brand further, to differentiate myself from other erotica authors.  Most of my stories feature older/younger pairings — and those that don’t will usually feature something similar (like a bulky football player and a skinny twink cheer team member).  So, I’ve taken that and kind of run with it.  I don’t always stay 100% true to my brand, but it does help focus what I do with my writing, how I promote myself, and how I interact with readers.  And I have no doubt that the readers appreciate it — because a quick glance at my brand can tell them if they’re likely to enjoy my stories or not.

Branding isn’t only about guiding the reader; it can also guide the author.  When I begin a new project, I make sure it fits into my brand — which can inspire ideas.  Since I know my brand primarily features older/younger, I start a new project by thinking of a hot older/younger pairing or situation that I haven’t explored yet.  Once I figure it out, the ideas tumble out from there and soon I’m excited to start the new project.

Branding is smart business advice, and I fear it’s something that’s being largely overlooked in the self-publishing world.  I wonder if some of the many self-pubbed authors that complain of eternally-low sales would do much better if they could brand and define themselves.  While there is certainly a whole lot more that goes into creating a professional author identity and high quality products, branding is a key element that cannot be ignored.


Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Go-Go Boys of Club 21: The Complete Series.  He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats.  To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Change by Giselle Renarde

One quarter, three nickels, three dimes

See all that money? I found it on the street last week. Okay, that's a lie. Two of those nickels were on the floor of the bus. I am not above picking up bus floor change. I will pick up any change. It's free money.

Two years ago I set up the Street Change Challenge. Sounds like a charitable initiative, but it's not (except inasmuch as I am a charity case).

Can't make this shit up.

Here's what happened: in November 2012 I received a royalty cheque in the amount of $1.90.  Yes, one dollar and ninety cents. That covered three months' earnings from one of the publishers I was working with at the time. They recently returned my rights on the three short stories they had under contract.

I wonder why.

Haha, no I don't. They told me why and they weren't douchey about it: I hadn't sent them a new manuscript in years and old stuff stops selling after a while. Returning my rights made good business sense for me and for them. No hard feelings on my side, and I hope none on theirs.

A royalty cheque for $1.90 was nothing unusual for me, unfortunately, but that particular cheque got the cogs cogitating. You can't get a coffee at Starbucks for $1.90.

Writing isn't a hobby, over here. This is my career.  Pretty dismal.

But it inspired my tongue-in-cheek Street Change Challenge.

In 2012, I proclaimed that if I found more than $1.90 on the sidewalk in three months, I would quit writing and turn to picking up coins as a profession.

In 2012, we still had pennies in Canada.

I never did report my findings, so I'll do it now. Actually, it was a close call that came down to the question of whether or not Canadian Tire Money should count toward my total. It's not true currency, but that red loyalty program bill was the tie-breaker. Without the 10 cents in Canadian Tire Money, my total came in just under $1.90.

The Street Change Challenge was kind of an exercise in ridiculousness. It doesn't take any special skill to pick up change off the sidewalk. Does it not take skill to write a book?  Shouldn't a person who writes books for a living earn more than someone casually picking up nickels off the floor of a bus?

I love a good deal. I love getting something for nothing. I'm happy to go out of my way to buy stuff on sale. I regularly walk when a subway ride would be faster because the $3 fare is too high. Hey, if it's more than $1.90 I can't afford it!

My girlfriend often asks me, "Why don't you pay the subway fare and spend that saved hour working? Isn't one hour of your time worth more than $3?"

My initial reaction is NO, but I don't tell her that because she'll say I'm devaluing my time and thus denigrating myself... which is probably true. Sometimes when I'm chasing the lowest price on milk (keeping my eyes peeled for loose change on the sidewalk), I ask myself, "Would my time be better spent writing?"

I've decided there is no measurable answer to that question. When you're a writer, you can't calculate what your time is worth the way people with hourly earnings can.

Writing is a crapshoot. You can quote me on that, and I hope you do. Writing is not a job--it's a gamble.

It happens that I'm not a gambler (I don't even buy lottery tickets), so it's kind of weird that I do this for a living. There's no way to predict whether a book will hit it big or sell ONE copy (the one you bought yourself). I like certainties. I like math. I want to be able to calculate the value of my time, but it's constantly in flux because this industry changes so damn fast.

When I started writing erotica in 2006, I was a short story writer answering calls for submissions for print anthologies. If you're an erotic fiction writer, you know what that world looks like these days.

*crickets*

You probably signed contracts two years ago for anthologies that are stuck in the queue of a halted production schedule. Generally speaking, contributors don't get paid until after the book is published. That's a long time to wait for $50.

Math is my friend. I can't help calculating what I might earn self-publishing a short story in the time it takes a print book (that my work may or may not be selected for) to make it to market.

But, like I said, it's a crapshoot.  In order to do the math, you need to be able to count on something, anything... and you just can't, in this industry.

Two years ago, my goal was to find $1.90 in change on the sidewalk. Nowadays I'm concerned with paying the rent and putting food on the table. I'm working with fewer publishers. I only send work to houses that make me money, otherwise I self-publish--something I thought I'd never do back in 2012.

I realize now I spent too many years sending manuscripts to publishers that earned me next to nothing. I didn't listen to the math. I felt a sense of loyalty because they'd taken a chance on me early in my career, or because they were nice people.

I don't do that anymore. I know I sound like a total dirtbag, and maybe I am a total dirtbag, but who benefits if a book doesn't sell?

One Down

By Lisabet Sarai

Our topic for the coming fortnight is “Realizing Goals (or not)”. The theme could hardly be more timely, for me. This past weekend, I realized a goal that had been on my list for a quite a while. Finally, I self-published a book.

It’s not much of a book, mind you – just a 5K holiday short story – but I’m still feeling pretty proud of myself. For years I have been trying to avoid the whole self-publishing issue. I told myself that I didn’t have the time to futz around with formatting and cover creation. That I should be spending my time writing new fiction as opposed to worrying about mechanics. That I needed a publisher to support me via marketing, promotions and cross-over from other authors. That nobody would read my indie books anyway because the whole world knows that self-published fiction is crap.

Excuses, plain and simple. The main reason I didn’t self-publish earlier is that I was scared it would be too much work.

I was wrong. Aside from the inevitable frustration of trying to beat Microsoft Word into submission, everything went smoothly. The Smashwords platform turned out to be amazingly intuitive, with lots of information and guidelines for newbies. Amazon KDP isn’t nearly as well-designed, but after getting things set up for Smashwords, the extra effort required to convert the book for upload to Amazon was almost trivial. The whole process, for both sites, took about half a day, including creation of my cover.

Of course there were extenuating circumstances. I’d already written and edited the story. I’m confident enough in my technical writing skills that I don’t worry too much about grammar and spelling issues. I’d previously found a cover image, too, a single photo that I knew would be easy to convert to a cover simply by adding the title and author text. (When it comes to graphic arts, I know my limitations!)

Other factors helped me realize this goal, too, especially my recent experience publishing through Excessica. The Excessica co-op is halfway between a traditional publisher and self-publishing. The author is responsible for her own editing, formatting and cover. On the other hand, Excessica handles the format vetting, uploading, distribution and financial arrangements.

I started working with Excessica when several of my erotic titles went out of print due to a split with the previous publisher. Both Bangkok Noir and Exposure don’t fit the mold of erotic romance. The first, in particular, is one of my darker, more extreme works. Excessica seemed like the perfect venue.

So I’ve done some book formatting in the past few months, and I’ve made a few simple covers. To go from there to full self-publishing wasn’t such a major step.

However, more important than these concrete experiences, I’ve undergone a change of attitude. I’ve been pretty annoyed over the past year as my erotic romance royalties have dwindled, to the point where they didn’t even cover my marketing expenses. Meanwhile, I often find romance conventions a Procrustean bed; I’m forced to slash, stretch and contort my initial ideas in order to make them acceptable to the romance audience (or the publisher’s perception thereof). The process of editing my most recent romance novel, The Ingredients of Bliss, was especially painful, as the editor required me to suppress my heroine’s (admittedly rampant) sexuality in order to make her more faithful and committed. I did more rewrites on that book than on anything else I’ve written in my entire career.

The book was released in September. I wrote dozens of blog posts. I had articles on national news sites. I did two blog tours. I gave away gift certificates and even a few free copies.

A few days ago, I received my royalty statement for October. Want to know how many copies of The Ingredients of Bliss I sold?

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

As I’ve joked on the ERWA Writer’s list, I’m thinking of changing my tag line. My new slogan? “Too raw for romance, too sweet for smut.”

In any case, I’m ready to try some new approaches, because I’m not getting the benefits I expect from working with a traditional publisher.

Does that mean I’m going to self-publish everything from now on? Probably not. The amount of work involved in self-editing and self-publishing a novel far exceeds what I spent on Slush: A holiday romance. To some extent, this story was a throw-away effort, an experiment. I’d originally planned to give it away free, in fact, a kind of gift to my readers. Then I figured, why not give self-pubbing a go?

I don’t expect to get rich from this. In fact, the royalty percentages in self-publishing are not much different from what I get from publishers. (The only way to get 70% from Amazon is to publish with them exclusively.) I plan to promo this story like crazy, though, then see if it affects my other sales.

Probably my current feeling of self-satisfaction is my greatest reward from this endeavor. I managed to overcome my internal resistance and do it.

The next goal up? Trying to write a series, something else I’ve deferred for a long time due to laziness and fear.

Wish me luck!

[I don’t want to turn this post into promo, but if you’re interested you can see the cover I created for Slush, and read an excerpt, on my blog.]