Money, Money, Everywhere

January 31st was this week, so writers are starting to get their 1099's and are digging through their shoeboxes for receipts in preparation for doing their taxes.

Blog posts are popping up, and in general, writers are whining. A lot.

- I don't make enough money self-pubbing.
- I don't make enough money trad-publishing.
- Amazon is charging us too much.
- Amazon is giving free money to scammers.
- Barnes & Noble refuses to pay me.
- Barnes & Noble can't go under because AMAZON!
- Apple could compete if they'd get off their asses.
- Kobo needs to buy Barnes & Noble.
- Wal-Mart will save us!
- Wal-Mart won't save us!
- I launched a book for free and I don't understand why it's not making money!
- I can't live on $30 a month!
- I can't live on $10,000 a month!

*ahem*

It's gotten to the point, I don't read many other writers' blogs any more. Things change, and you gotta roll with those changes. And more than a few of my colleagues have a tendency to throw temper tantrums when things don't go their way.

So...

Let's talk about money with the caveat that I'm not whining here.

My yearly income has slowly dwindled from 2013. The fault, the responsibility, is solely on me. I've had some life rolls. I've made some bad decisions, namely putting other people's needs before my own. So I haven't gotten much writing finished or published. In fact, the only new pieces I had out in 2017 were the seventh Bloodlines novel Ravaged and the short story "Unexpected" in Sword and Sorceress 32. That's totally on me.

For 2017, I hit my lowest total income level since I started writing fiction professionally in 2011. As much as I love indie publishing (and I had to laugh at this when I entered the final numbers into my spreadsheet), a super large chunk of my income actually came from trad publishing.

ASP E-books   $ 506.53
ASP Paperbacks $ 42.13
Trade Royalties (e-book and paper) $ 413.92

TOTAL $ 962.58

(If you really need a comparison, my income in 2011 was $ 131.40.)

The circumstances remind me that I need to diversify my income streams some more. They also remind me that I need to FINISH more stories. Starting them is easy. Finishing them, publishing them, and getting them out into the world is the hard part. And I've got a ton of stories and series started that really need to be finished.

For 2018, I'm working hard to do both. Angry Sheep Publishing has been accepted as a Google Play vendor, and all the currently published Suzan Harden books are uploaded and for sale. Since Wal-Mart is using Kobo, there's not much I have to do there yet.

In the meantime, I've laid out a schedule with the idea of publishing one book a month. Notice I didn't say, "Write one book a month." No, I have a couple of dozen stories, both novels and shorts and in both names, that I'm several thousand words into I just need to finish. I slightly missed January's deadline, which should have been the release of A Modicum of Truth. But considering it's my first book to cap out at over 100K words, I'm not feeling too bad at the moment. I delivered it to my formatter Tuesday night, so hopefully it'll be released by the second week of February.

While I'm waiting on the e-book files for Justice #2, I've jumped back into editing Sacrificed. The Bloodlines fans have been incredibly patient over the last seven years, and it's way past time to finish this series.

And about once a week, I spend a couple of hours on the 888-555-HERO series. After the project crashed and burned in 2015, I'm ready to get this out into the world. I'd forgotten how much fun it had been!

Here's what my schedule looks like:

February - A Modicum of Truth
March - Sacrificed
April - Hero De Facto
May - Hero Ad Hoc
June - Hero De Novo
July - Reality Bites
August - Ghouls in the Grocery Store
September - Resurrected

Maybe, just maybe, I'll get A Matter of Death done by Halloween. But I'm not holding my breath. LOL

Nor does any of this include Alter Ego's books. She hasn't put anything out for two years now because it's hard to feel sexy when life is a shit storm around you.

And that's all the complaining you'll hear from me. When life throws lemons at you, it's time to make some lemon bars!

How Do You Define Success?

Lately, I've had people say things about me hitting  the New York Time Best Seller List. Or signing TV or movie deals. Or in the case of DH, making enough money we can pay cash for a little bungalow in Waimea, Kauai.

But these are other people's definitions of success. They are not necessarily mine. Why? I know how some of this stuff works and they don't.

1) Best Seller Lists

First of all, in cases like the NYT and USAToday, the books that make a bestseller list mean that they sold more copies relative to the millions of books available for sale in a given week.

What a lot of people don't realize is that most bestseller lists are manipulated. For example, the NYT separated adult and kids' books when the Harry Potter dominated the charts ten years ago. They separated hard covers/mass market paperbacks/e-books decades ago for the same reason.

During the erotica boom in 2012, Barnes & Noble weighted their best seller list so erotica books didn't show on their Top 125 unless they were published by a trad publisher.

Also, a bestseller can be bought--if you have six figures to spend and you know which stores the list makers pull their numbers from.

So if there's so much manipulation, is my book making the bestseller truly a success?

2) Movie/TV Deals

The odds of a book being turned into a movie or TV are astronomical. I know several writers who have sold options on their books. (A option is an exclusive license to purchase the right to make a movie and/or TV show based on your story.) Not one of the book authors I personally know has had a movie or TV show filmed yet.

Even bestselling authors don't always have their stories turned into film right away. Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire traveled around Hollywood for two decades before the film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt was finally made. At one point in that eighteen-year journey, Cher was considered for the role of Lestat.

So the odds of one of my books being adapted is next to nil at this point.

3) Money

I'm not going to deny that having extra spending money is very, very nice. I've had it; I haven't had it. But I have learned it's not the end-all, be-all. Yes, the bungalow in Waimea is our dream. If it happens, great. But I've not going to drive myself insane or work myself to death to achieve it.


Each person needs to define what success is to them. Maybe one of these three things defines success to you. If so, more power to you. I hope you find what your looking for. Just don't let other people decide what your success should be. Trust me; it's a sure way to make yourself miserable.

When a CEO Has No Concept of Social Media

For the record, I have nothing against traditional publishing. My regular readers know that I advocate READING AND UNDERSTANDING YOUR FUCKING CONTRACT before you EVER SIGN IT! But that's the former lawyer in me talking.

I also have nothing personal against Steven Zacharius, CEO and President of Kensington Publishing.

But apparently, Mr. Zacharius has something against me as an indie published writer according to an article he wrote in the Huffington Post. His diatribe about how I don't make any money, how I don't have any editing done, how I can't get quality cover art felt pretty damn personal. But I let go because I had a deadline...

Until a Kensington writer crafted a blog post aimed at readers saying how she was not rolling in gold. Apparently, she was being hit up quite a bit for free books. I would link to it, but within four hours of her post going live, it was taken down.

And that one big difference about indies. We talk money. We talk business. We give each other recommendations on services. But then we have our big girl and big boy panties on. I've got friends who make a lot more than I do. I have friends who make a lot less. And frankly, y'all know what I made last year.

Trad publishers don't want writers talking about their contracts. The scary part is they treat their writers like employees when they are independent contractors. Unfortunately, many writers accept this treatment because they are afraid they will be blackballed. And shunning was a real problem when trad publishers were the only game in town.

But the game has changed, folks. Big time.

Why did the Kensington author take her post down? I can only speculate in my own warped mind, but there's another problem.

Whatever you post on the internet takes on a life of its own. Even though she took the post down, it was cached. And copied. And spread. And discussed. Including at The Passive Voice.

And Mr. Zacharius responded at TPV.

All I can say is if I were Kensington's PR person, I wouldn't have any hair left after he was done. He apparently didn't know who hangs out at TPV. Sure, we're all writers. But we are also attorneys, doctors, psychologists, accountants, game designers, military vets, and teachers, just to mention a handful of the occupations. And a great many of us have been trad published.

One person published at Kensington was brave enough to comment though she did it anonymously because she's trying to get her rights reverted and fears retaliation. PG posted her comment as a main post because he felt it was important. And it is important because it shows Mr. Zacharius isn't talking to the people he needs to--those already under contract with his company.

However, J.A. ("Joe") Konrath took the questions Mr. Zacharius posed at TPV and crafted his own answers on his blog. Mr. Zacharius has said in Joe's comments that he's sending a reply to Joe, and Joe has said he will post the reply.

Can Mr. Zacharius have a meaningful dialogue with writers, or will he stick his other foot in his mouth? It should be a very interesting and entertaining Monday indeed.