What Self-Publishing Has Taught Me

It’s important to preface this essay with a caveat: I have various mental health issues, and cogent reasoning has been only marginally possible through a thick treacle of fatigue, anxiety, depression and myriad other maladies that have messed with my head for quite some time now. It’s very possible many of the issues and problems outlined below have been the result of normal things perceived through the frosted wobbly haze of my “challenges”, and the process of self-publishing is indeed a profitable breeze for most normal people. I’m afraid without a guide or proxy to assist, I’ve been on my own and had to work my own way through as best I can, which frankly isn’t saying much.

Anyway … to begin…

I wrote a book.

Then I wrote another and another, and before I knew it I had several novels done and dusted. Much of the time the words came easily, especially when I wasn’t battling foggy medication-induced mind-mangling. I learned the specifics of beta reading, editing and proof-reading, and before long I was performing said duties on not just client work but my own projects as well. I had colleagues who read what I wrote, and liked it a lot. Not neighbourly types or family members who humour you with platitudes—genuine dyed-in-the-wool critical eyes who’d point out all the pitfalls and shortcomings I’d missed, and before I knew it I had not just writing, but genuine literature on my hands.

It was therapeutic. It was good.

I felt as if I had accomplished something, which when you’re drifting on a tumultuous dark sea of confusion and illness, is a Really Good Thing™.

I sent one of my manuscripts off to an agent. I just knew they’d love it, love my writing, and one of their ranks would take my work under their wing and champion it to the right publisher, who would make it soar. I felt confidence for the first time in a long time.

Weeks turned into months, and finally there was the rejection slip. Oh well. Next crowd. Rejection slip. A year passed and the rejection slip pile simply grew. I remained confident. The trick was to find that special someone who was searching for a voice like mine. More rejection slips. Enough to dry my frustrated eyes. What were they seeing that I couldn’t? Or what was I seeing they couldn’t? I live off welfare and can’t do much in the way of “normal” work—writing seemed one way I could earn an income. Why were these people failing to see the commercial value of what I was sending them?

Something had to give, so I decided to delve into the challenge of self-publishing. There were plenty of companies advertising services for self-publishers. I researched. Sent emails. Even received phone calls. For the first time, I was grateful I had no money and couldn’t afford the services on offer—what a load of rubbish I came across. So many promises, such spin, execrable amounts of expensive nonsense. I was in this to make money, not spend it (especially seeing as I didn’t have any to spend anyway). So many snake-oil salesmen prowling the wings for unwary prey.

With the prospect of pay from a publisher via an agent rapidly diminishing, I chose to use my background in desktop publishing and go it alone. I created cover art, page layout and design to make my novel work as a printed book, before reformatting it to suit being an eBook. Job done, and uploaded to Smashwords for the eBook and Createspace for the hardcopy

Boom—one of my novels was out there in the big wide world.

There’s something special about getting your first ISBN, something quite magical about a barcode assigned just for your creation. I had hoped validation as an author would have come in the form of a contract with an agent, but instead it arrived in the mail as a hardcopy from Createspace. There it was—my creation made manifest. I thought it looked quite handsome, the pages a crisp white and filled with my words designed to shape thoughts, form characters, excite and entertain, so haughtily rejected by myriad would-be agents.

I’m not a salesman. Not for me the straw boater and cane, peddling to the masses. My mental health makes me appallingly shy (I genuinely have Social Anxiety Disorder, which largely condemns me to the house and away from dread “other people”), so rushing up to strangers and extolling the virtues of what I have to offer just isn’t one of my faculties. Nevertheless, in this day and age, the self-publishing author—like the painter or film-maker, or frankly any other creative profession—becomes the salesman. I don’t want to sell books, I want to write them. I’m an author, not a retailer! How does someone stuck at home sell books? I turned to Twitter and Facebook. I promoted. I found people who would spruik on my behalf. Thousands of people were reached. It was amazing. Thanks to Smashwords, my book was in every online retailer of eBooks, from Nook to Apple iBooks, Kobo to Scribd and beyond. Thanks to Createspace, my book was firmly ensconced in the Amazon universe, available in the US and UK and Australia, as well as Japan and Brazil and France, but not in Japanese or Portuguese or French, as I don’t have the kind of resources to afford a translation service. Coverage had been attained (in English anyway), success seemed assured.

Think again.

There are literally millions of new books out there, and it’s inevitable getting lost in the noise. Any author might have a Unique Selling Point (USP) for their novel, but it’s going to remain unheard unless a sales voice also has cut-through. In a sea of clamouring authors and publishers, that kind of cut-through is going to cost the kind of bucks that in many cases just makes it not worth it.

In the months since launch, I’ve spent $95 on paid promotions on both Twitter and Facebook. For that trouble, I’ve earned tens of thousands of “impressions” and $12 cash (after all up less than a dozen sales). I’m behind, and by the looks of things, getting into profit just isn’t going to happen despite continued promoting. Someone might suggest spending a bit more—say, $700—however not only do I not have $700 to piss against the advertising wall, and given everything I’ve researched, I remain unconvinced that kind of spend would return over $700 in revenue anyway. “You’ve got to spend money to make money”—yay, unless you don’t have any money to spend to begin with. Is that it? Is it not enough to slave over creating a book in the first place?

In the world of self-publishing: absolutely not. The book itself is only a minor cog in a much larger machine that still only maybe sees a return at the end.

Not that my book would win any prizes, but it’s not rubbish, either. Yet, I can’t convince folks to part with a measly dollar to read it. Is my writing truly worthless? Are people not interested in the thriller genre any more? I guess all they need for their fix is to turn on the TV news these days. Oh well.

So, I can only conclude it’s my fault (it always is, it seems), and I’ve screwed up somewhere. Maybe I can write good narrative prose of car chases, gunfights and terrorist attacks, only to suck at writing sales copy. It’s probably true—I never wanted to be a copywriter for magazines or newspapers flogging stuff, and attempting to write spin to sell my book seems to be a weakness or blindness on my part. Nobody’s sent me a demand notice ordering me to cease my wilful acts of promoting, so it can’t be that bad, but translating spin into sales just isn’t me.

Here’s the worst part: all this promoting, all this sales hustling, and I’m not writing. Not a word. I started on a sequel, but I’ve been spending all my time online, trying to find people who will buy my book, and my sequel (and other works) remains untouched. Self-publishing has transformed me from capable author into incompetent hustler. I’m not a salesman, I’m an author (I have a barcode and everything to prove it, too). I want to earn money from what I write, to lift me from below the poverty line, off welfare and into the guise of a self-reliant individual. My mental health needs it, and my ability to buy groceries needs it, too.

I need an agent who understands what I am as well as who I am, who believes in what I write and its ability—armed with cut-through in promotions designed by professionals who are sensational at promoting—to sell. Too many agents judge a writer’s ability on a few paragraphs or pages from a single manuscript. What if what I’ve written elsewhere is what’s needed to convince? It’s insane, it’s blinkered and it’s self-defeating. There are some extraordinarily wonderful authors out there who do very well. There are also some atrocious hacks who make good money, not because they’re lucky, but because they’re backed by agents and publishers who know how to sell, even if what they’re selling is really bad. I don’t know how to sell. I’m an author, not a salesman, and selling is not my job. I need a salesman—an agent who can work with a publisher to translate my writing into sales. Even if I’m a hack, surely it isn’t that hard? It’s done all the time. What’s another hack? Am I a hack? I didn’t think I was, and neither did my manuscript assessors, but maybe they’re wrong and I’m wrong and it turns out I’m the hackiest hack who ever hacked. That doesn’t mean what I write is unsellable. In some cases, quite the opposite.

Something else I have learned is to stick with it. Despite the disheartening lack of response, despite the shortcomings when it comes to alternatives to social media promoting (I don’t have mailing lists or any ability to cold-turkey contact bookstores to ask them to stock my book which I’d have to pay money I don’t have to get manufactured and shipped), I’m determined to not give up, either. Stay the course. I have to believe in the fullness of time word will continue to trickle out, and those individuals out there anxious to read something like what I’ve written will finally track my book down, buy it and enjoy it. Maybe some of them will leave reviews, and with those to hand, some of the best kind of cut-through might be achieved. Everyone who has reviewed it so far has been deeply appreciative and impressed, so there’s hope.

Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. Just keep going.

My mental health is in such a state at the moment that I can’t write prose fiction even if I wanted to. It’s a kind-of writer’s block, and comes and goes to varying degrees. It’s my particular demon I have to bear. I’d love to get on with the sequel. I have it all mapped out, and reckon it’d be a corker of a read. Then again I thought the first was a corker to read as well, and all I get to see of it is languishing in a too-quiet corner of the world, pining for some love.

I guess the self-publishing route is good if you’re well resourced, well-connected and a natural at selling. For me it has been a route of frustration and expense I can’t afford, and the chances of me trying it again are extremely remote. The frustration has been nothing compared to the Quest for an Agent^®, but I remain convinced that special someone is out there. Like readers, it’s about finding them, and helping them to find you.

Whither Writing? Or is that Wither Writing?

The autotelic creator is someone who creates for the sake of creation. The painter who paints without regard for selling. The musician who performs even if there is no-one to listen. The writing who can’t help but pour out their heart and mind onto a page that could remain unread.

Even an autotelic creator needs to eat, so sometimes they dip their oar into the mainstream and turn their hand to something they feel the “market” might like. For many, it’s not a place they either like or feel any sense of belonging, but still respect as a necessary evil so their own existence may be perpetuated or more comprehensive resources afforded.

A fortunate autotelic creator is one whose creations align closely with the commercially attractive. Tragically, there are also those who lived their whole lives creating wonders, only to be “discovered” long after their death (e.g. Vincent van Gogh). The worst are the ones who are never discovered—their anonymity in life continuing after their death.

Now in our own time, the accessibility and ‘democratisation’ of information has arisen, providing new curses (e.g. ‘alternative facts’) as well as new blessings (e.g. online art galleries, self-publishing eBooks and YouTube). Never before have creatives had access to potential audiences as they do now.

The flipside to that accessibility is economics. Never before has there been pressure applied to authors, musicians and artists to provide their creativity free of charge. The perpetual argument is to provide something for free is to raise awareness of that creative amongst a potential market.

Long ago I was told in no uncertain terms to never give anything away, as to do so was to undervalue my own work. A small sample was fine, but an entire work? Never!

I’ve adhered to that principle since, knowing full well there are numerous individuals out there who consider anything other than free as too expensive, and the world owes them a living. They’re welcome to live in that fantasy land if it makes them happy, but going to a restaurant and asking for a free meal is not only a slap in the face for the individuals responsible for cultivating, harvesting, refining, transporting ingredients, and then all the actual preparation, it’s just plain rude. Why should a work of art or writing or music be any different?

Again—free samples are fine, but not an entire work.

I write and I create art. Music and I parted ways a long time ago, but I still listen to it with a passion that frequently rivals my passion for art and writing. I will continue to write and create art. There have been instances where I have been paid by a person for my art and my writing. There is hope. I haven’t earned nearly enough to make a living off that creativity, but I continue my efforts in the hope that goal may one day be realised.

Perhaps my greatest fear is one day my energies will decline and I can no long write or draw or paint. I’ve already gone through horrific dry-spells thanks to depression, anxiety and a raft full of medical problems, and it has only been through tremendous effort I’ve been able to emerge through the other side of those tribulations. The old saying “use it or lose it” only makes me anxious about every time my hand is stayed—I fear the withering effect of demoralisation. Regardless, I will continue to create. My hope is what I create continues to be worth creating.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!

When I first came to self-publish, I continually came across how-to guides, pretty much unanimously cautioning against developing a habit of checking sales metrics.

“Don’t let sales bother you, just promote, promote, promote while you’re writing your next book!” was the basic message. I thought to myself for morale purposes that was probably sensible, as poor sales (or no sales) can impact momentum or even incentives to continue working. After all, why bother writing a book for the purpose of publishing if no-one is going to read it?

So … I didn’t let metrics worry me. Ever so occasionally someone would pipe up and ask how the book was doing, and I would go to Smashwords dashboard or Amazon Author to see rankings, but despite my author ranking and book ranking being line graphs with a few serious ups and downs and ups again, Nielsen Bookscan data was insisting I hadn’t sold anything, which given a couple of folks have told me they’ve bought my book, alongside the author and sales rankings roller coasters, isn’t actually true. Talk about confused.

Smashwords tells me how many visits I’ve had to the page, how many sales and how many previews there have been downloaded. Not many. I didn’t think there would be – for promotion I’m relying solely on what I can muster for free, except a single paid book promotion that started in mid-November flooding Twitter for a month with links to the book’s page on Amazon, not Smashwords. It was an interesting experiment, especially considering Amazon don’t provide page-view metrics. My author ranking went up, my book ranking went up, but Nielsen Bookscan continued to insist not one book had sold. To this day I have absolutely no idea whether my paid promotions yielded any results. Until that far-flung day arrives when someone breaks down to tell me, I won’t be paying anyone anywhere for more paid promotions. I have far better things to spend money on.

Someone muttered something about Ingram, which I understand is an alternative to Nielsen, but I’m stumped how to find out data from that source. It doesn’t matter anyway, I hark back to that original advice – don’t sweat the metrics. Just write.

I used Smashwords to start with, as they distribute to pretty much every ebook retailer except Amazon Kindle. Ebook sites I’d never heard of before were reportedly stocking my novel and became potential sales sites. Woo! I used Createspace for the hardcopy of my book, as they’re a part of the Amazon empire, and thus handled the hardcopy for Amazon and the ebook version for Kindle. Createspace also have the infrastructure to supply libraries, bookstores and all the rest, though I have no way of telling which bookstores and where. Their reckoning on up to six weeks has passed, and there’s no sign of my book in any bookstore in Australia. Maybe it’s just America, but I have no way of knowing. So there’s the frustration, and the wisdom in that original advice of ignoring the metrics, and just keep writing.

I don’t have the resources to advertise my book the way some people do. If only I could sell something, I’d have the money to promote my book. Hmmm … I wonder what I could be selling? How about some books?

Aargh.

There’s a little voice in the back of my head telling me I’m wasting my time worrying about earning anything from all this – if they’re not going to admit how many they’ve sold then there’s no way to tell how much of potentially my money they’re pocketing for themselves, after all, they’ve got hungry shareholders to feed or some other excuse. It’s tricky to not become cynical, because ultimately it’s about placing one’s trust in a large company, and if anything, large companies are even less trustworthy than gangsters, drug dealers, politicians and others involved in organised crime.

Still … ignore the metrics and just keep on writing. Just keep producing properties. Content is king.

Bollocks – selling is king. Just look at the “music” industry.

It has been a very educational journey, and while agent after agent completely fail to recognise my writing ability, boldly confessing so with every rejection slip they send me, some day someone will “get” my work well enough to want to represent me so I don’t have to worry so much about all this silly “self-selling” nonsense. No folks, my responsibility isn’t to sell, it’s to create. If you’re not up to the selling part and want me to do it, then I don’t want you in my circle, and you can do without the percentages. I want someone who will take my work and make it sing, and they can take a percentage of the resulting sales as their payment. It’s a system that has worked for centuries. It’s not a system that’s broken, so anyone trying to “fix” it is in effect attempting to game it for their own predatory proclivities, by my reckoning.

I check my metrics again. Still nothing. Stop checking metrics! Just keep writing.

Why do I feel I’m like a hamster on a wheel? All effort but going nowhere?

Just keep writing. Just keep running.

Oh well, at least it’s keeping those spectators outside my cage amused.

Broken

I once wrote a story based on observations I made of some friends of mine. The story evolved, and eventually I had something that not even my friends could identify themselves as, which to my mind was best. The story grew and evolved again, and after a while and quite a bit of gestation, I had in my hands a fully formed novel, suited for young readers.

It’s a tale of a kid who’s a very keen sportsman, but is outgrown by his fellow team mates. He looks to what’s around to help his shortcomings. What he discovers helps him enormously, but he inadvertently finds himself the target of bullies.

I was a target of bullies since I was very small, so bullying has become an important part of my being. Being softly spoken, gentle and kind, humble and non-assertive makes me appear weak and vulnerable in the eyes of some, so I become a target very quickly. Writing this story became for me a very cathartic experience, and I’m glad I wrote it. It became far more than just that though, and everyone who went through it, from beta reader to test subject really appreciated it. I reckoned I had something special on my hands.

Kid-lit is a tough nut to crack publishing-wise. Every other parent who’s read something to their youngster at night seems to think they can do better, so numerous publishers are inundated with all manner of works, to the point where their submissions departments will not accept children’s books at all.

Regardless, I sent the manuscript away. First to an agent, who in typical fashion rejected it without explanation or clarification why. Then I sent directly to a publisher who had an opening for this sort of thing. One morning six weeks later, an email arrived from that publisher with an approval to print. There was even a contract attached to the email. I was expecting a rejection slip or nothing at all, and instead an actual bona-fide contract turns up, accompanied by extremely favourable comments about how well it was written and how commercial it was.

The author’s dream. I was thunderstruck.

Throughout the day, I had my regular weekly medical appointments, which are never fun. I had left the contract to read that night, swimming through the day on a genuine high. None of the dire grind of serious specialists around me seemed to matter as much.

Finally I arrived home and settled down to trawl through the contract to make sure everything was in order. Uncharacteristically, I even printed it out. This was serious. I read the document, and then after my addled brain started to ring alarm bells, I read through it again.

There it was in black and white. I’m an unknown. They don’t want to publish my book without my help. They were insisting on a co-operative effort, and that included funding. They had their hand out – an astonishing sum. Far beyond anything I could have even remotely hoped to put my hand on. My high crashed. The contract was useless. This wasn’t “publishing” my book, this was printing it for me. For the same price I could have paid self-publishing site Createspace to print thousands of copies and then made TV ads to air promoting the title and paid for freight to bookshops all over the world.

I went to bed that night broken. Six weeks. Six precious weeks. Did I mention medical specialists? Yup. I’m not going into details, but I don’t have all the time in the world. Far from it. Six weeks is for me an awfully important amount of time. Submitting to someone else now, and not just six more weeks (one publisher was asking for six months!) but add weeks for the holiday season and all sorts of other things, and I wouldn’t hear from anyone until after my medical problems become centre-stage in my life, probably for months, possibly for the rest of my life, in the new year.

To my mind, the opportunity has passed. The story will go untold, quietly put away, my softly-spoken voice made even softer. My, how the publishing world has changed. I had hoped my work would reach those who would benefit from its lessons, mindfully written so as to resist being preachy or didactic, instead being entertaining, insightful, heart-warming and memorable. A publisher was vital, as kid-lit requires specific distribution and marketing expertise unavailable to self-publishing. Instead, my writing falls silent and still, vague glimpses emerging only as blog posts, observations made on social media and the occasional email. My self-published novel Terror in the Ranks isn’t selling despite efforts, my resources too limited to take measures needed to penetrate where needed to secure sales.

Continued approaches to agents go unanswered, even those advertising for new authors. Direct applications to publishers may still go out, but by the time some publishers might find it in themselves to respond, so much more precious time will have passed, and passed right into time I can’t deal with worrying about publishing books. Some publishers choose not to respond at all, as if such discourtesy is an appropriate gesture in any professional relationship.

The lesson learned is it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are, and it doesn’t matter how good your book is, even when it has already been green-lit for publication. If you’re not a hustler – and a wealthy one at that – more than you are a writer, your own book will go nowhere.

I love my creations. They are my children. I will love them always, even when it seems being good enough is still never good enough.

I’m broken.

It’s a Jungle Out There!

Well, this is exciting.

I haven’t been down this track before, so I’m learning as I’m going, but so far so good.

A relative has very generously provided funds for me to buy paid promotions on Twitter, and now ads are going out for my novel Terror in the Ranks.

There are any number of advisory blogs to be found on the internet when it comes to writing. Blogs on what it takes to be a writer, blogs on how to write, blogs on what to write, blogs on how to be a better writer, blogs on how to publish, you name it. Taking it all in is like walking to the shore with a whisky tumbler and trying to drink the ocean. Of course, the difference between knowledge and wisdom is knowledge is what you get from reading, wisdom is understanding what to read.

A lot of advice reckons social media is a waste of time for promoting a book. Instead, promoting the brand – the author – is far more important and valuable, so social media should be about connecting to subjects the book is about. To my mind, that might be effective to a point, but unless the author has a team of people, it’s an easy way to be spread too thin, especially if the author writes across genres and target audiences.

So … I’m experimenting. We shall see what this campaign does. My Twitter followers are a diverse bunch, with some following my writing, others following my art. I retweet the campaign tweets for them, but I have less than three thousand, as opposed to the half-million the campaign is targeting. Wow!

Fingers crossed someone will like what they see and have a read. I already have a sequel in the works…

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

I have to deal with mental health issues. Amongst a panoply of challenging aberrations is depression and anxiety. It’s really no fun and frankly I don’t recommend it to anyone.

I am receiving professional treatment, which is a Good Thing. Part of that treatment involves pharmaceuticals, which I dutifully take every day. My current run requires two tablets which are supposed to relieve me of depression and alleviate my anxiety. Instead, my depression and anxiety are as rampant as ever, and my writing ability has vanished. More specifically my ability to write fiction has vanished, my medication genuinely obstructing any capability to imagine.

I don’t dream. I sleep (fitfully, partly because of another condition that periodically wakes me), the occasional nightmare the only visions of the night, but imaginings and wonder, my escapes from the humdrum despair of the here and now, elude me.

Yesterday I was able to get my health care professional to change my meds, but this isn’t something that just happens straight away. I have to go with a week on half my current dose, and then another week on quarter, and then I’m able to transition. Whatever comes next I welcome – provided my imagination returns. I have three unfinished novels to get on with, four if I include a sequel to one book currently under publisher consideration, and I’d really like to get on with them. I can’t write, I can’t draw or paint or create imaginatively, and it is as frustrating as it comes.

I beta read. I edit. I consider other people’s projects dispassionately, disconnected, like an unfeeling machine, treating the syntax of words intellectually rather than emotionally. Maybe it has made me a better editor, maybe not. I construct what I do write methodically, re-typing everything because another symptom of my meds is a ghastly lack of coordination, even worse than my usual Asperger’s-driven clumsiness, rendering my first pass close to unintelligible.

After my consultation however I feel a glimmer of hope, a promise of improvement, a return to passion and fire, soaring visions and stories aplenty to pour onto page after successive page. Just that prospect is enough to dampen the temperament of my depression for a time.

Hope itself can indeed be a powerful medicine.

Being a Writer in the Early 21st Century

When I was growing up, books were precious. There wasn’t any internet, and the planet was shrinking only slowly. There were vinyl records, cassette tapes, radio and television. We went out the movies, until the late 1970s when video cassettes became available and cinemas starting reeling under the impact of stay-at-home families. Letters were posted and took days to arrive on the other side of the city, weeks before arriving on the other side of the world. The first words of French I ever learned were “par avion”, because that was printed on the little blue sticker you had to attach to the envelope that was going to be sent via “air mail”.

Television news proudly announced things like “via satellite”; overseas telephone calls had to go through an operator and cost a fortune; faxes were new and expensive and slow; libraries had little pieces of cardboard with book information laboriously typed or handwritten kept in drawers you needed to go through to find where your title was on the shelf; bookstores were everywhere and books – especially good books – were affordable, but only just.

Even when I was small, I knew I had to write books. Not big, colourful books with few large-type words and bright illustrations, I had to write books with lots of quality words like the grown-ups read (and I quietly read too). I loved books. The library was a happy place for me. What I didn’t know and couldn’t find out was the process to take something I’d hand-written on sheets of paper and transform it into the beautifully formed lettering all cleverly typeset on those cleanly trimmed pages of a bound volume. It was a mystery that stayed with me until aged about 14, when I saw a documentary that described the process.

I was in awe of authors. They took pages they’d clattered out on their typewriter to big publishing houses and eventually their toil appeared on shelves in bookshops, accompanied by large displays, book signings, printed ads in newspapers and much notoriety. I wasn’t interested in being centre of attention, I just wanted to see words I’d created in bound volumes and enjoyed by people.

I wrote. I wrote a great deal. I wrote all the time, and bided my time while I wrote, knowing that one day my words could end up in bookstores, beautifully typeset in lovely bound volumes that would be a joy to touch, to hold and to read. Despite my efforts, there were impediments. My laboriously hand-written books were thrown away by parents looking to clear space on shelves for more important things. I lost a pile of them to a flooded house one year. I gave one book away to a friend. I re-wrote what I remembered of my lost works, knowing others would never return.

Writing was what I did, but I also had a working life, which was nothing to do with writing. That working life took over, and while some writing continued, not a great deal was accomplished. After that, working life was interrupted by ill health. I stood blinking in the dust wondering what I could do now my abilities were severely limited. I wondered if maybe returning to writing was an answer.

So, I wrote again. Small bits at first, little shorts, notes, memories of old stories long gone. Then out came a novel. Then another. In the space of ten months, I had four novels, with a fifth, six and seventh started. I looked around, and realised the world was a very different place to how it was when I started writing. Bookstores were scarce, printed books more a luxury than a necessity. Cassettes and vinyl were gone, their successors also fading. Skype made international calls as cheap as bandwidth, and it didn’t really matter where in the world people were, they were all connected via the internet. Air mail had subsided because everyone was sending email that took moments, not weeks. Books had evolved, too. Now there were e-books as well as printed books, and they were cheap! Some were even free! I questioned how any author could make a living from writing if books were so cheap. Sure, the cost of manufacture had plummeted, but the margins were so small!

My problem is since asking that question, I haven’t actually found an answer. There are innumerable blogs and articles filled with wisdom and advice, but the majority of these are directed at people who are made to be book sellers, book promoters, author-branding experts and hustlers of every shade. I don’t want to be any of these things, I want to be a writer. I want to write. I don’t want to be a hustler, a shill, a salesman or anything that’s not a writer, because I am hopeless at those things and in spending time and effort doing all of that, I’m not writing. Even publishers these days ask “and what are you going to bring to the effort of selling your book?” to which I feel I want to respond “Isn’t that your job? Just let me write!”

I have to admit I’m feeling a little dispirited about the modern landscape of writing. I keep getting told “content is king”, but as a content creator, I don’t feel that for a minute. All I feel is content I create, whether it’s writing or my art, is barely considered and largely ignored because it’s not being offered for free after being trumpeted from the mountaintop.

I suppose this is the price paid for the “democratisation” of content. Any fool can publish a book these days, and judging by some of what I’ve seen out there, many often do. No longer is there that rubbish-filter of a publishing company editor. Content is no longer king. How it’s sold is king now, which only goes to reward the salesman, not the content creator.

I’ll go on writing. I like my content, and feel it has a place and role out there in the world. I’d rather not give it away, as I think it has value and merit, despite there being a growing number of people who feel that anything other than free is too expensive. There will always be those who want something for nothing. Back in the days of audio cassettes and “via satellite” announcements, many of those people were typically labelled “thieves”. These days, they’re regarded as “entitled”.

Some day I might find an answer. I certainly hope so. I’d dearly love my writing to pay my way in the world, but isn’t that the dream of writers everywhere?

“Terror in the Ranks” interview

So Terror in the Ranks is quite confrontational in some places. The language, the story, the characters. Where did all that come from? What was your inspiration?

There had been a spate of attacks in France by Islamic-State jihadists, psychopaths, fruit-loops, you name it, and having had such a magical time in France myself a few years ago, I became quite angered and distressed that such a wonderful country could be so damaged. The carnage was so pointless, the victims totally innocent, and the consequences so predictable. This was added to my existing anger at the deliberate and appalling devastation of ancient treasures throughout the Middle East in the name of resetting history for Islamic State’s new era, just like Pol Pot had done in Cambodia and numerous other hard-line despots, delusional imbeciles and self-appointed messiahs over the centuries. Rather than rattling off yet another political polemic to add to the noise however, I figured transposing some of that nastiness closer to home, and stirring it up a bit with some of the home-grown nastiness that raises its ugly head from time to time.

Terror in the Ranks is set in Australia. Why should somebody in – say – the United States be interested?

Being an Australian story isn’t actually that important. I wrote something I reckon most readers will enjoy regardless of where they’re from. Yes, there’s a certain patter in there that’s going to be unfamiliar to some, but there’s no danger of “Crocodile Dundee” Australianisms to defeat readers. Ultimately, the story, the circumstances, and underlying messages have every chance of resonating in the USA, Canada, the UK as much as anywhere else.

What about the language?

I make no apologies for [the protagonist] Aaron being a potty-mouth. He’s bitter and angry, but mix that with devoted and passionate and you have a powder-keg combination that can propel a story better than a Mister-Clean good-guy hero. Ian Fleming knew that well when he created James Bond, but rather than Aaron being a cold-blooded misogynist, I figured his flaws were better being about manners and distaste for authority figures. He actually has a deep and abiding respect and appreciation for women, so is a bit of an opposite to Bond in that respect. I’ve also kept the overall language in a form that’s not difficult for non-Australians to comprehend, and I found it rather fun mixing present-tense first-person for Aaron’s chapters and past-tense third-person narrative for all the other chapters.

There are some pretty big reveals in Terror in the Ranks. What’s your favourite?

Without spoiling anything, my favourite is Australia’s “dirty little secret”, the object of attention by the bad guys. It’s an absurd nonsense of course, but if a reader can suspend that disbelief, the stakes go through the roof.

Are there any strong female characters in the book?

I’d like to think most of the women in the book are strong in their own ways. The book is very masculine – no argument there – but being such doesn’t require subjugating, objectifying or ignoring females. I’m also a bit averse to depicting women strutting around like men in order to paint them as strong. Female strength differs to men’s, and I’m confident I’ve depicted some of that.

Are there any characters based on people you’ve known in real life?

Actually, my antagonist is a distillation of a handful of people I’ve encountered, and then turned up a notch. I’ve known some pretty bad people in my time, so I’ve had a few different sources of inspiration there, and since a thumping good baddie is the measure of any great yarn, I figured putting as much as I could into him was going to help most. Fielding was based on a woman I met many years ago, as was Carlyle. Aaron is any number of characters I’ve come across over the years reading an assortment of books, mixed with the sort of individual I would expect to capably deal with a crisis such as the one depicted in the book.

Do you think there’s room for a sequel or series of books?

It’s not something I deliberately set out to establish, but I wouldn’t say no to the idea. I guess it depends on the market reaction to Terror in the Ranks first.

What else are you working on?

I have some junior fiction (mercifully minus Aaron and his inappropriate language) in the works, with two being looked at by separate publishers at the moment and a third in the running for a publishing prize (if I win, they publish the book) with a third publisher. I’m working on a fifth novel at the moment, which is an historical fiction, also for younger readers. When I’m not writing I’m creating art. I’m always busy.

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Terror in the Ranks is available to preview and purchase as a hard-copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Createspace, or as an e-book from Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other retailers.

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Recent review:

Terror In The Ranks is a rollicking good read from the first page to the last. You won’t know what hit you – in a good way.

A fast paced thriller depicting the worst that could happen when the ‘monster within’, those already entrenched bigoted, xenophobic forces seize advantage in the growing climate of fear and paranoia that is constantly being fuelled by a very real threat of terrorist atrocities on Australian soil.

Nationalistic forces seize advantage and begin to take power with a well-coordinated first strike designed to effectively decimate Sydney’s police and military forces and destroy government communication networks. They simultaneously target and slaughter Muslim families in a series of brutal murders that strike fear into the entire Muslim community.

But the plan begins to unravel when hard-bitten cop Superintendent Aaron is recruited at the highest level of police hierarchy still functioning. He gathers his resources to halt the carnage and restore order. Along the way he is reunited with Commander Jennifer Fielding and amidst all the violence and bloodshed an old attraction is rekindled. They join forces and soon find they must battle on two fronts with the discovery the treachery has infiltrated the very heart of government.

The reader is left wondering, could this scenario possibly be based in truth masquerading as fiction? With several ‘would be’ ISIS jihadists behind bars in Australia awaiting trial on terrorism related charges the reader begins to wonder, could this home grown threat to Australian democracy actually happen? Or is it fiction after all?

If you love a scary thriller, read Terror in the Ranks. You may not be able to sleep right away but you will love it. I know I did.

—Joss Morey (author, Boomer Junction)

Smash!

For some inexplicable reason, the first time I heard about Smashwords, I developed an instant gut feeling it wasn’t to be trusted.

Now, months later and I’m not only perfectly happy to admit I was utterly wrong about that*, I’m in lurve.

My initial expectation was since I have all the marketing aptitude of a blade of grass, I would send my written work out into the world via a publishing house. You know – the type of place run by clever people of distinction with experience and business acumen. Far better than someone who sometimes walks around with his underpants on his head**. I could trust them to take my scrawlings and transform them into market gold via their brilliant advertising capabilities, distribution models, genius cover design and typography, and point-of-sale displays courtesy of their comprehension of product cut-through and target demographic metrics. Meanwhile, I would stay out of the way, thereby guaranteeing not scaring people away after turning up to something with my underpants on my head (it’s not a habit, I swear****).

I still live in hope that publishing via a publisher may occur with some of my writing, but at the same time dire poverty has forced my hand to self-publish something of my own in the (admittedly pathetic) hope that I could earn some coin a little sooner than the expected 12 to 18 months it takes a publisher to go from accepting a manuscript to printed-book-on-shop-shelf-earning-something.

So … thanks to the awesomeness that is the Australian Writers’ Forum, I learned about self-publishing e-books. Coming as I had from an environment where I had been surrounded by print books and little else, there were things I’d never heard of before, such as “Kobo”, “Nook” and “Smashwords”. Being a little shy of violent things I thought: Smash? That can’t be good!

Despite whatever reason they elected to call themselves that, once I finally swallowed my fears (and a stiff cup of tea), I registered and went through the process. The trouble is I blinked, and lo! it was all done! Here was the e-book version of a novel I had written that was up and going and distributed to mysterious places with curious names like “Scribd”, “Tolino” and “Flipkart” on my behalf. Amazing. Astonishing.

Smash!

Then I thought to myself: all right … that didn’t kill you, so do what you can to make it as pleasant a process as possible for visitors and prospective buyers. Smashwords recommended doing an interview. My Social Anxiety Disorder instantly dove for cover under the table, taking me with it, but when it turned out the interview came with written questions, my system relaxed enough for me to get up from under the table*****, sit down and fill it in.

You can read it here if you want: Smashwords interview

The best part: some totally and utterly awesome individual has already come along and purchased a copy.

How wonderful is that?

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* Serves me right for listening to my gut. Stupid gut. Shut your … er … just shut up.

** All right, it was just the once***

*** Twice, but the second time was as a joke****

**** This is a lie

***** Yes, of course I bumped my head.