How is it already the middle of March?
The eternal question isn’t it?
So let’s talk books and bookish stuff today while dog two barks his fool head off at everything that passes by outside.
My books.
Okay, right now we are headed into the home stretch of about half the books still in Kindle Unlimited, leaving KU… does that make sense? The phrasing. I swear sometimes I can’t remember how to string words together.
Those include the last of the stand-alones and the cold and lace series. April 10th will be the last day to get the following books into your KU library if you haven’t already:
Through the Ghost
Sunny with a Chance
Double Coverage
Wicked Game
Behind Iron Lace
In from the Cold
Need You Now
Light from the Dark
Behind Frosted Lace
and
Cold Shadow
And April 24th will be the final day for the Southern Scrimmage Series and the Adventure INK series.
I’ll be all out for the rest of the year.
However, you can go over to Kobo and read everything, including Under a Crescent Moon, free in Kobo Plus.
What else?
Uh, Payhip… If it’s not in KU it’s live on Payhip for 99 cents less if you’d like to buy it. I’d appreciate it if you did. I get the money immediately, not two months from now. As the books drop out of KU I’ll make them live in my store again. I do have a few titles that I haven’t listed to payhip. I need to get those up. The new Light from the Dark is one. The others are books no one seems interested in so I haven’t been too much in a hurry to bother.
I do have a few copies of 3 print books still in stock, they’re no longer for sale anywhere else. You can get them signed and shipped, from my payhip store.
After that, there’s not much else to talk about book wise.
Half of my library is available at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and Payhip. You can read everything on Kobo in Kobo plus with their subscription service. Click the menu above for Stand Alone and Series titles, then click the cover photo for blurbs and buy links.
Now, random shit for the sake of randoming…
Meh, not much to talk about really. Just basic bitching about the state of the book business in general if you want to hear about it.
Amazon posts the pay rates and earnings data on the 15th of the month. So, yesterday they posted for February. I haven’t checked it yet. I usually do a book sales and page read accounting on the 2nd of each month then compare that with the official accounting on the 15th. I usually go to the Excel doc to calculate the pay rate for page reads. Last month, the rate for January had fallen to $0.00403 per page read US currency. That was probably the lowest I’ve ever seen it. It used to hover around $0.0044, something or other. That’s a significant drop when you’re counting thousandths of a penny.
With the rising cost of KU subscriptions and the falling payout to authors… I don’t know why authors stay in it. I mean other than the fact that there’s no real sales in wide release. I can understand the fast food genre of books to that extent I guess. Books have no monetary value any more. Just content. Two or three AI or recycled ghost written stories a month in KU is enough to keep someone in money. But I just can’t do that. And that’s what we’re competing against.
For the record, I write every single word of my books. I struggle with plot and timing and getting the story that I want to tell out of my head. I have never taken a shortcut when writing. Never and I never will. I can write a short story in a week, but that’s just the first draft. The second and third draft take more time. Editing and revisions take time. For longer stories it takes me months, sometimes a year. Writing… creating… takes time. It takes dedication… it takes determination. It literally takes blood, sweat, and tears. And I’m not willing to sacrifice that to compete with AI generated books. And Amazon is quite literally ate up with AI crafted stories by people who couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag.
And that’s the market now.
It’s been that way for a long time.
Now before someone gets their knickers twisted, there are people who can write fast, from scratch. But even they can’t churn out long stories two or three times a month. It’s not possible. Or it’s not good.
Am I angry about it?
Not anymore. I was. For a long time. Now, I’m just sad.
I’m sad because so many writers that started out around the time I did that I genuinely loved their work are now gone. They were either bullied out, or couldn’t compete and just gave up. And that’s the shame of it all.
What makes me angry though, are readers who bitch and moan about the lack of quality books in their favorite genre, but are very quick to tear down the writers and I do mean writers, who are trying, and most times brilliantly, for not meeting their exacting standards. It makes me angry because they don’t like the AI stuff but actively work against those that don’t cut the corners for multiple releases each month.
You can’t have it both ways.
So there are typos… have you read the shit that passes for stories now? You don’t like the grammar… you didn’t like this that or the other… so you bully and one star and actively contribute to the reason writers stop writing.
The cold hard truth of publishing, especially as an indie, is that it costs a fortune, in time, and money, to produce a book. Editors are hard to come by, and expensive. Great editors are not attainable, even if you have the money. One round of editing is not enough, two or three rounds are needed, and all of that costs. Covers, good covers, cost. Promotion costs. The time of relevance for a book now days is less than a week. You have a week and then it’s old and forgotten. A week is not enough time to build word of mouth. I don’t think word of mouth even exists anymore. If you can’t get something on BookTok then you are SOL. (that’s shit out of luck for those that don’t know).
And on top of that, there are literally thousands of new AI written books out every week. If they are well promoted, they hit, make the money, then fade in time for the next book to hit.
There is no competing in this market.
I can say that I probably cost myself my career. I’m not exactly likable. I am socially awkward. I am blunt. I say what I think when I think it. I was bitter and angry and I drove people away. I own that shit. The rest of it… yeah, I can’t compete. I can’t afford to write. I have 33 published books that make no money.
It is what it is… there’s no changing that. I stopped asking for anything. It is what it is.
But now you know at least some of it.
There’s tons more. I don’t have a monkey in any of those circuses so I don’t speak of it.
I’m not saying this to shame people who use AI or read KU. Y’all do what works for you. I don’t use AI but I do have KU because I’m broke as fuck and that’s all I can afford. I get it. I know.
I’m just posting to hear myself post. It’s all about the content. We live and die by content.
This is my content.
You know where to find me.
Peace,
Mercy
