Hitting the Stratosphere Can Suck

During an interview on a late night talk show, Matt Damon told a story. His friend Brad Pitt told Matt he hated him because Matt could take his kids to a public school like any other parent in the U.S. Meanwhile, Brad had to deal with a ton of paparazzi following him and his kids everywhere, and he didn't have any real choice about putting his children into private schools.

I'm starting to see the same types of issues with author friends and acquaintances. Not that paparazzi follows writers around, but your problems change at a certain level of success.

Whereas some writers are making a living, and by living I mean they can pay for a roof over their heads, food on the table, and clothes on their kids backs, others can have their private yacht custom built a la Hugh Howey. This level of money starts a cascade of new problems.

First and foremost is raw professional jealousy from your friends. I've been accused of it, and I've seen it in attitudes aimed toward me. Those people generally don't remain friends for long.

It's a little sad to lose people from your life over something like this. I've been helped by a lot of people. There are some who expected me to kiss their ass forever. There are those who get furious if I exceeded their success. And there are those who have told me to pay it forward to new writers. I really try to emulate that last group.

Then there's family and other relationships, both people you currently hang out with and those you've lost contact with over the years. Funny how these people come crawling out of the woodwork when they hear of your good fortune, often with their hands outstretched for gifts. When you don't give them those gifts they think they deserve, they turn on you.

Or you're back to the same old jealousy issue. Nothing like your mother making snide comments about your spending.

So you start pruning the toxic relationships. The more successful you are, the more you have to prune, and the more isolated you can feel.

On the other hand, you find you need to censor yourself when you're the successful one. How can you talk about the pros and cons of a Boeing jet versus a Cessna jet when your buddy is trying to scrape together the cash to get the transmission replaced on her only car. Then you feel like a fake.

Deep down, I think that's the real fear for most writers. It's not the fear of failure. It's the fear of success.

Success changes everything. The struggle to achieve is easier to deal with than reaching that goal. Because once you reach that goal, you expect things to change.

And we humans hate change with a passion that cannot be matched.

It may sound like I'm blaming the victim, but I've watched a lot of writers sabotage themselves. Hell, I've done it to myself. Because I've already had success in other areas of my life, and I've seen what happens.

Success is lonely. We can't talk about it without setting people off. And next to change, we hate loneliness most of all.

Falling Over Like Flies

I admit I've been avoiding the subject of All Romance E-books/Omnilit over the last month. Mainly, I didn't feel like stirring the pot over a bunch of allegations. I hate to tell folks, but I've seen this before, and I can pretty much guarantee that the money is gone.

I don't mean the owner of ARe stuffed it in an account in the Cayman Islands. I mean it's already been spent. Yes, it sucks dirty donkey dicks. And depending on the laws in various states, maybe, a very miniscule maybe, the legal team going after the owner might seize some personal property as recompense.

However, if you have money due from ARe and feel the need to do something, author Brenda Cothern's attorney has filed a class action suit. You might want to check into it.

Unfortunately, ARe wasn't the only small publisher (yes, they did publish books in addition to being a retailer) to crash and burn over the last month. I personally know of three small/micro publishers to close their doors.

A lot of indie writers are complaining that sales are down, but I really have no anecdotal data to share. I published two novels and an anthology of my own stories, plus had a short in a trad published anthology, over the last seven months after a three-year drought. So, yes, my sales may be down, but probably not for the same reason as everyone else.

Is this all bad? A symptom of something worse happening?

My opinion is we're looking at a market correction. Several companies jumped into e-book publishing and/or retailing under capitalized. It happens all the time when a new market opens up. These companies hit the gold rush period, much as Ellora's Cave did with the erotica market, and their business plans did not take into account the periodic ups and downs of a business. And just like any other business, there had to be a dip in sales after the first surge of e-books.

Think of a brand new business as a rock. When you drop it in a pond, there's a big splash. When that splash lands back in the pond, it sets off a series of ripples. Each ripple becomes successively smaller until the pond's surface is level again.

We're at the point of the indie rock where the splash has landed back in the pond. Over the next few months, we'll see a few less sales, a few more writers quit, a few more small/micro publishers close. Then the next ripple will pick things up, but the rise won't be anywhere near as high as the initial splash.

Since the publishing world moves at the speed of Warp Tortoise, the ripples will probably continue for the next decade or two before the publishing pond stills again.

Then the next rock will hit. And only the deity of your choice will know what that will be.

Barnes & Noble Swirling the Drain

I hate seeing a book retailer falling. I hate hearing the whistling whine a business makes as gravity takes over. I hate the smell of the trash compactor as books are stripped and crushed rather than shipping them back to the distributor.

The Barnes & Noble board fired their latest CEO. This was the guy from Sears Canada, a company that also made the same whistling whine right before it hit the ground.

Hard.

This was the same CEO who wanted to put restaurants and wine bars in Barnes & Noble. Chairman Len Riggio is taking over temporarily as CEO. When the board finds a replacement, the new CEO will be B&N's fifth CEO in four years.

*sigh*

I wish I could say I was surprised. After the late payments in May and the conflicting payment statements in June, I decided to cut my losses. I pulled the Suzan Harden books in June, and the Alter Ego books in July. I really didn't feel like giving B&N my money anymore.

Funny enough, they are still sending me coupons though I quit their frequent buyer program in 2013. In fact, I have been receiving more coupons from B&N over the last six months than I ever did in the eight years I was a frequent buyer club member. And the closest B&N to me is an hour away, which makes the multitude of coupons even sadder.

The saddest thing of all is that B&N was the closest to compete with Amazon for the e-book market, but then they gave up. They had the first color tablet on the market, but they failed to provide other media besides books. Then they locked the tablet, dropped the PC app, and made it nearly impossible to download from their store, much less find the books people wanted.

You can't save a company that's already given up.

Am I a Failure?

The Negative Writer I mentioned a few blog posts ago struck again with a snotty remark. The unnamed website's host had posted a story about Another Writer who'd turned down an auctioned trad deal to indie publish her book. Another Writer had a very successful launch and was kind enough to share her numbers and experiences.

FYI - Another Writer spent approximately $2000 in production costs and brought in nearly ten times that in revenue her first month. (I love seeing an indie do well!)

So of course, Negative Writer made an nasty comment to the effect that no one ever hears about the indie failures.

Well, first of all, very few humans want to admit they fucked up. At least, no one I know will. Heck, even most dogs I know tuck their tail between their legs and hide when they screw up.

But I think there's a deeper question here: what constitutes failure as an indie writer?

According to Negative Writer, anything less than a comfortable six-figure income is failure. (But then, this is the same person who thinks ALL readers owe that comfortable living to Negative Writer.) So by Negative Writer's standards, I am a failure.

Am I really? Should I curl up in bed, sob uncontrollably, and refuse to shower because I sold zero books yesterday?

Yep, zero. Nada. Zilch.

THE HORROR!

Even worse, I brought in less than $5000 for the entirety of 2013! That's below the poverty level! I should just give up!

Maybe I should stop using so many exclamation points instead.

Instead, I'm looking at what I can do better.

Take the Bloodlines series for example.

The stories themselves are good. I especially enjoy the reviews that start with, "I thought I would hate this, but I LOVE it..."

However, the window dressing needs help. DH and I did the best we could on covers with a friend's help, but frankly, they need a serious upgrade. DH and I had a long talk about my publishing business. He's the one who said I needed to start farming out some of the work in order to spend more time writing.

I'm searching for a digital fantasy artist. I have a few names, but I can't do anything until this summer. (Real life expenses have a way of intruding.) I've also have a proofreader, a e-book formatter and a print formatter in mind. What I hope to do is relaunch the entire series when the last three books are published at the beginning of 2015.

In the meantime, I can't do a half-assed release of the Justice series. Not when the short story concerning the main character was in a trad-published anthology. So I'll be putting the cover artist to work right away.

So am I a failure for not doing perfect covers the first time? Am I a failure for not putting out a print edition right away?

No, I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time. I learned a lot from simply trying. I have better tools now. More knowledge. The next time around will be much better.

To me, a failure is someone who doesn't want to improve. Who quits. Who would rather wallow and blame everyone else for their misfortune than figure out what needs to be fixed.

I can't afford mentally to do any of that. Why? Because I means I've wasted the last ten years of my life trying to learn this damn business. Because I don't want to give up using my imagination. Because I like getting e-mails and comments asking, "When's the next book coming out?"

If I give up on writing now, I will climb into my bed and refuse to get out. I've been there before. It isn't pretty. And if all it takes is getting some outside help with cover art, then by [deity of your choice], I'll do it.

Am I or anyone else who took the chance of putting their stories out for public consumption a failure?

HELL, NO!

It takes a lot of guts to expose yourself in this way. Maybe we don't make a zillion dollars. Maybe we don't have a zillion fans. Maybe that was never the intent of some of us to begin with.

Every writer does this for different reasons. Some want fame, fortune or some other form of validation. Some of us simply want to be read.

You're reading this right now. All the way to the end. Which means no, I'm not a failure. Thanks for taking the trip with me.