THE BENEVOLENT FIRE HOSE

The World Wide Web is bursting with advice on how to do literally anything. Experts abound, and they're not shy about waving their opinions around.

Take writing, for instance.

Would you like a little advice and encouragement? Check out YouTube. You'll find more than you can handle. A LOT more.

Here's a list of five channels I think you'll find worthy of investigation. Simply navigate to youtube.com and type the name into the Search box at the top.

First up is Big Red Stripe. Yes, it's all about movie scripts, and a lot of this information is likely to be useless to you. (For now, at least. You ever think about writing a movie?) But plenty of his content concerns story and character and plot, basic stuff you'll be wrestling with in the process of throwing novels at KDP. Movies are high-concept and start fast (conflict on page one or go home). If you're interested in making KDP pay off, you should probably be writing high-powered category fiction—just like popular movies.

Next: Alyssa Matesic. She's an editor and knows what publishers want. No, I get it—you are your own publisher. What do you care what trad pubs want? Well, easy: They want what readers want, so they can sell it to them. And you want that information too, so you can sell stuff to your readers. Lots of basic plot and character info on this site.

Next: The Oxford Writer. Basic stuff about story, etc.

Then: Bookfox. Oh, God, the stuff keeps coming! Lots of detailed material here.

Finally: Patrick Walsh | Writer. He's a ghost writer and editor who likes to get his hands dirty by correcting faulty word ink. Plenty food for thought here.

There are many, many others, of course, folks who will provide you with enough material to warp your pretty little mind. You could seriously fall down the rabbit hole here, so watch yourself!

I'm not kidding, boys and girls.

Writers have to write, at some point, and listening to folks yammer on about how to write doesn't really count, fascinating as it all might be.

(It’s been said you have to write a million words before you can be trusted behind a keyboard. How’re you coming with that assignment?)

So pace yourself, okay? Binge a bunch of this stuff, ponder what sounds useful, and jump clear!

You've got things to do, right?

APOSTROPHE CATASTROPHE

Nearly ten years ago I offered a post called "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" listing some of the mistakes in English I found jarring at the time. (And I still do.) But now here's something new that torques my muffin: Using the wrong single quote to stand in for an apostrophe at the beginning of a word.

For instance, the graphic for a live assemblage of MSNBC hosts says:

    MSNBCLIVE ‘25

Presumably, the ‘25 is meant to be a contraction of 2025, so that the five can rhyme with live without getting a couple extra syllables in the way. If that's the case, the graphic should read:

    MSNBCLIVE ’25
    
Hardly noticeable, I know, but doing it the first way is simply wrong. A left single quote is not an apostrophe. And now that I'm tuned to it, I see cases of this mistake all over the place. (And now you will, too.) It's especially annoying in big posters using odd character sets.
    
MS Word (as well as LibreOffice, which is what I use to write books) thinks that a single quote at the front of a word like 'til or 'bout is the beginning of a quoted word. The program doesn't seem to mind that you've failed to complete the task by putting another single quote at the end, like 'til' or 'bout'.

(I once used an old DOS word processor that had a grammar check feature that would flag problems like unpaired quote marks.)

If, on the other hand, you construct your works in HTML, you know you have to include the proper tag: ’

If you insist on using smart quotes (aka curly quotes) in your work, you'll need to trick your word processor to get it right.

Calling up an apostrophe in Word, etc., is a no-brainer in the cases you normally use an apostrophe: contractions like can't or won't or don't. The program selects the correct mark: a right single quote.

The program appears to believe the apostrophe is the end quote of a single quoted word, but is not disturbed that the front-end quote is missing.

So, how do you fix this? How can you force your word processor to do the right thing?

Having a character directly in front of the quote mark causes the program to select the proper smart quote: the right-side quote.

Which means, to get the correct mark at the beginning of a word, you first have to place a phantom character in front of the quote, then delete it later.

One way is to get into the habit of typing xx in front of an apostrophe, then using a universal deletion at the end of the day, taking out all cases of xx. But to be sure you're not introducing errors by removing a sneaky instance of xx you need to keep, you'd have to curate each deletion. The nuclear option, Replace All, would be unavailable, for safety's sake.

Sounds tedious.

How 'bout this: use as your throw-away character something closer to the quote key (in qwerty, at least) that is unlikely to come up naturally: [[ or ]] or [].

That way, [['bout becomes 'bout, along with the others, and you'll have the luxury of clicking Replace All.

Or: Take each case as it comes up and nail the apostrophe before moving on.

Or: Avoid front-end apostrophes. Use till in stead of 'til, and so forth.

Of course, you could also do everything in straight quotes (the way I write these blog posts), but I'd be against that. I like the look of smart quotes in e-books. Makes the words look like printed text.

Same for right-margin justification. This blog (like most Internet text) uses a ragged right margin.

But I've read comments by readers that say they don't like ragged right margins in e-books—makes them look amateurish. Some folks claim they would refuse to read a book that didn't have right-side justification.

Sounds petty to me, not to mention it limits your selection of entertainment.

(Like avoiding movies in black-and-white. Or refusing to watch animated TV shows because you think all cartoons are for kids.)

The very real problem of right-side justification in an e-book is that in a large size font things get all wonky. Enhanced typesetting, available from Kindle Create, yields automatic hyphenation, which goes a long way to fixing the problem.

The other Kindle e-book problem is the dash. I don't use em dashes, but sometimes I try to get away with en dashes, surrounded by spaces. (I used to like non-breaking spaces. Not sure how Kindle Create handles those guys.)

Probably better to eliminate all dashes in e-books. Get your kicks in the paperback version, where all things are allowed—because all things are fixable before dumping the manuscript into a PDF file prior to POD.

But I digress.

ONE WAY FORWARD

I'm going to suggest a strategy for success in the Kindle Direct Publishing world, but I need to stress that this advice is just a theory. This is not something I'm doing, but it is something I think I ought to be doing.

Perhaps the hardest nut to crack is the question of visibility. If folks don't know you have a book out there, they won't buy it. Simple as that.

I plan to skip over this thorny problem for now.

Getting folks to buy your books is mostly about having books—lots of books—listed on your Web page.

(You have a Web page, right? Or at least a blog where you can post about your books and provide links so folks can buy them. The one you're reading right now is from Google's Blogger. It's free and easy to set up. You just need a gmail account, which as I'm sure you know is also free.)

Readers of ebooks suggest they like books to run at least 70,000 words, which I grant is a substantial commitment for a writer. But this is just the beginning.

In my plan, you need to write multiple books, all with the same cast of characters. Think series television. Aim for an open-ended series, not a trilogy or tetralogy—you want a series with no end in sight.

One particular character may dominate a given book, but each of the other characters should be ready to take on the load for the sake of variety. If one of those other characters has a deeply-held personal interest, it may be possible to peel that character off and star him or her in a related series.

Same thing with what may be considered "guest star" characters. They pop up in a book, dominate the action (along with the regular cast), then they can go off to set up their own domain in a series that may run mostly parallel to the main series, one where another cast of regulars will share the load.

(In television this is called a "back-door pilot.")

From time to time there can be combo novels where characters who have split off can return to the main branch and participate in a larger plot. In this case, the returning character may bring along some or all of his own series characters. Theoretically, it should be fun to watch all those people interact. A combo book could easily run longer than typical, say 100,000 words.

Each off-shoot series can mine a particular vein in an overall world, exploiting similar elements but perhaps with a different emphasis. More action in one, more humor in another, more romance, more baffling puzzles, and so forth. Think "cozy" and "hard-boiled" in the land of mysteries: sub-genres of the overall category.

And category is the key word.

We're not talking literary novels here. Mystery, horror, science fiction, etc., is where you want to set up your business—category fiction with strong plots and vivid characters. Fast and easy reads. Not necessarily over-the-top, but operating from a position where you can see the top and it's not that far away.

It's a matter of degree. Let your sales be your guide. If you push the boundary and that series sells better than the others, you have your marching orders.

(Should you choose to accept.)

Maximum success relies on maximum writing. The idea is not to swing for the fences but to establish a world where your readers can feel comfortable. You don't need to have best sellers, just a steadily thickening cadre of readers who like what you're doing and will pony up some dough to stay in the game.

Here's a bonus: Once your series is established, shorter books might find a place.

If your brainstorming session comes up with an idea that appears perfect for a shorter hunk of fiction, I think it would be fine to publish something in the five, ten, or twenty thousand word range—a sort of reward for loyal readers.

Price it very low and often make it free in the Kindle Select plan. And include the wordage category right in the cover image: "a Blister-World Short Story," or "a Crazy-Eddie Novelette." Make it abundantly clear you're not trying to palm off a literary snack as a full-length novel.

(Some readers can be awfully touchy...)

The short piece may concentrate on a single character in your series stable. Or, you might introduce a guest character you're not sure can make it in a longer book. Then let reader comments confirm that thought.

Or lead to another popular hero with his or her own series.

About pricing in general: It might not be a bad idea to make the first volume in a given series free from time to time, to rope in new customers. Follow-on books could be discounted, perhaps, for a limited time, but not ever handed out for free.

(A substantial number of readers will wait a long time for a given series book to go free if there's a precedent for that happening. I say, make 'em pay!)

You could experiment with an entire series that goes for premium prices and see what happens. A lot of people have mixed feelings about items they find in what they might consider the bargain bin. ("If it's this cheap, how good could it be?") A higher price might actually sell more copies, but you won't know that until you try it.

Should you use a pseudonym if you cross genre boundaries?

Up to you, but it might make sense to change names to help brand a very different sort of output. Should your "butterfly" series come out under the same author's name as your "fire-breathing dragon" stuff? Maybe not.

Children's books and hard-core porn under the same name? I believe that's a no-brainer. Don't limit yourself, okay? But there's little to be gained by outraging sensibilities. (Or is outraging sensibilities the brand you're going for?)

What I'm proposing here is an enormous amount of work, I know, but five books (350,000 words) should be enough to establish one main series and one off-shoot series. Then go from there, letting sales be your guide.

There is a good chance that by the time five books are out the strategy will already be bearing fruit, and that should give you the incentive to carry on. It all depends on the quality of the books you write and on your ability to drag readers to your list of available titles. Readers who like what you're doing may rope in others by word of mouth.

We're looking now for the snowball effect to kick in.

One last thing: I must point out the obvious. While this multi-book open-ended series strategy is a reasonable bet for success, it's not the only viable path. It's true, a high output of books should enhance your visibility. But maybe you have another way to rise above the noise level. And with that in mind, perhaps you want to write stand-alone novels in a variety of genres, including full-on literary works.

Go for it.

Or you could do both: Write stand-alone stuff under your own name; write series books under one or more pseudonyms.

The main thing is to get started. If you want to write, plop yourself down in front of a keyboard and go to it. (You could maybe even start today.)

However you want to proceed, write the best books you can. This is your actual career, not a silly game to con the internet crowd.

This is not a drill, folks. It's the real thing. Treat it that way.

THE GAME

Let's talk about why you're here reading these words.

Maybe you came across a dog-eared paperback I wrote, or a ratty old magazine with one of my stories in it, and you're wondering if this idiot is still alive.

Yes, the idiot is still alive.

(And congratulations on discovering this blog. Simply running a Google search for "Thomas Wylde" is likely to fill your browser's screen with links to a fashion line created a few years back by Paula Thomas. Stuff about "skull scarves" and suchlike.)

Others of you are not the least bit interested in who I am or what I'm up to, you just want to investigate independent publishing. You have questions like: Is this real? Can anybody do it? Should I do it?

The answers are yes, yes, and maybe.

(For some idea of how to do it, see my recent post HOW I WORK NOW.)

But let's take a look at the maybe.

If you just want to get a nice-looking trade paperback (or hardback) copy of your work to adorn your bookcase or coffee table, indie publication is ideal.

In the old days, you'd have to sign up with a vanity publishing outfit, supply them a ream of spoiled paper, and end with a garage full of boxes containing almost completely unsaleable books. A lot to go through if you merely want a couple copies to impress your friends and relatives.

Not to mention the annoyingly high price for this service.

In contrast, less than a day after uploading your book to Kindle Direct Publications you could be ordering POD copies at the author's discount price. EZ/PZ.

Pay nothing but the cost of the books ordered.

On the other hand, let's say you're a working writer wondering if it would make sense to step away from traditional publishing and go indie. The answer is far less clear.

If you produce nothing but scathing, too-hot-to-handle material no "real" publisher would ever touch, be advised: KDP has standards, too. Set up your camp too far beyond the pale, they might also decline to publish your stuff.

But suppose you write more mainstream artifacts of literary chatter.

The way I see it, the main reason to go indie is to take yourself out of the queues formed up in front of editors and agents—the gatekeepers. You could spend a lot of time in those lines, getting nowhere.

The people you have to impress may end up producing a lot of ordinary books, but not one of them is looking for ordinary books. They all demand extraordinary books. They'll tell you they need to fall in love with your manuscript, or it's not worth their time and effort. After all, their egos are on the line. Agents have personal relationships with editors, and editors all have bosses to please.

Indie pub lets you escape that gooey mess, but it adds a lot of other problems.

A trad publisher is a machine packed with elite professionals: editors, proofreaders, art directors, coders, printers, warehouse workers, distributors, advertisers, and sales staff. There's a budget set for manufacturing and selling your book, money that fuels the machine. These people know their stuff. They have guys who can pick up a finished book and tell you how many copies it's going to sell, based solely on the cover art.

You, on the other hand, have nothing. When you're indie pub, you're strictly on your own. Nobody but you has the least stake in whether or not your life's work finds even one reader. Your book will not be stacked face-out on a shelf in a local bookstore waiting for customers to stumble across.

Sounds a little bleak, doesn't it?

Well, if it makes you feel any better, the average trad-published writer may himself get scant help from that energetic publishing machine. Little or no advertising. Maybe half a dozen copies of your paperback shelved spine-out at bigger bookstores.

Assuming bookstores continue to exist in the future.

But at least the actual physical books will be out there, somewhere, for a little while, before having their covers torn off and the rest pulped or trucked to a landfill.

(Are you absolutely sure you want to be a writer?)

At this point, the words "don't quit your day job" seem fitting.

I'm old. I don't have a day job. Or more precisely, my day job is "being old." You may have different circumstances.

So, can anybody beat the odds in this game? Sure, it happens.

Next time: I propose a particular writing strategy for handling indie pub.

STEALTH MARKETS

The other day I discovered one of my books on Ebay, going for about twice the price of a POD paperback on Amazon. And I'm pretty sure it was offered as a new book.

I guess that's a thing that can be done these days: Find a book offered as POD on Amazon (or some other place) and put it up yourself for a higher price.

If somebody orders it, buy a POD copy off Amazon, then slam it into your own box to ship to your customer.

And pocket the difference.

In the case of the guy on Ebay, he'd get $12 profit from his customer, and I'd end up with a buck's worth of royalties from Amazon.

Interesting.

Later, I noticed new copies of my stuff on the Walmart website, although I'd have to say their prices are closer to the Amazon prices I set with KDP.

The good news, your stuff could end up on many more commercial sites than you even knew about. You just won't be reaping the full rewards for your literary labors. "Resellers" could do very well with this new publishing model.

Now the question: Should you do it yourself?

Here's a thought: Make the offer on your own site (or blog), but provide your book-seeking fan an autographed copy with a personalized inscription.

Guys on Ebay can't match that. At least, not with your authentic signature.

Now the ethical question: Would you buy "author's copies" at a discount from Amazon and resell them yourself at a higher price? With or without value-added scribblings on the title page?

Does KDP have a policy to cover this? It's not impossible that they do...

Or will have, in the near future.

HOW I WORK NOW

When I started this blog, it was all about HTML. I wrote books in code (to be exact, HTML tags) in a text editor. (I ended up in Notepad++, which I still use for writing blog posts, like this one.)

But in HTML you have to hassle with the OPF file and two different tables of content, not to mention front-end code to describe the text in Web-based publishing language.

I don't do that anymore.

Now that you can publish Print On Demand versions of paperbacks and hardcover books on KDP, I've changed my methods.

I compose in a free word processor from an app suite called LibreOffice (I was using OpenOffice, but apparently that version is no longer supported). I design the book for a particular page size (usually 5" x 8" or 6" x 9"), and fiddle with each page for the best look, before exporting the whole mess to PDF files, ready for submission to KDP. (You can do this easily in LibreOffice's writing app; not sure about OpenOffice.)

Then I modify the paperback version for e-book use and run it through Kindle Create. This way you get "enhanced typesetting," which means automatic hyphenation.

For e-book use, you need to delete your table of contents (if you've used one; novels mostly go without). You also need to remove that row of asterisks you ought to put between sections of chapters when that break occurs at the end or beginning of a page.

(I use three asterisks in these situation despite the fact new sections start with an un-indented first paragraph where the first three words are set in bold.)

Section changes usually mean a jump in location or time; you don't want your reader to miss this when it happens. Why confuse folks unnecessarily?

In an e-book, there are no page breaks. You just get a space tween chunks (along with whatever you can manage in the way of indents and the use of bold or italics at the beginning of new sections; you have to mess about with Kindle Create to find out what is possible here).

I still use GIMP2 to make book cover images. For POD versions, you also have to deal with spines and back covers. Back covers are usually just text. I'd have to look into whether it's possible to use images there.

KDP hard covers are called "case laminate" for front cover art--no dust jackets. More traditional hard covers are available from IngramSpark. They used to charge $25 (or more) to submit a book for POD, including updated editions. But right now (or from now on, I'm not sure) they've dropped the upfront fees.

On their Web site you can calculate the cost for a paperback or hard cover, including shipping. A 5x8 paperback running 276 pages with standard service and basic shipping would run you $9.16. A rush order paperback delivered residential next day is $81.58. The same book in case laminate hard cover would be $13.13 standard service basic shipping. A proper hard cover with a dust jacket: $15.83 standard, $97.83 rush next day. YMMV

The last time I checked on KDP the price you have to set for a trade paperback POD could easily exceed twelve or thirteen bucks, assuming you want to harvest a dollar's profit for each copy sold. But this includes some technical stuff about distribution. I think you could get a better price with limited distribution without retail stores in the picture.

(I'm just ball-parking these figures. I'll know more when I put up my next book and clue you in with up-to-date details.)

And there are other publishers of POD editions to consider. A quick Google search brings up nearly a dozen, all with competing features.

And for that matter, there are lots of other ways to publish ebooks. KDP just happens to dominate the market. Might have something to do with the Amazon's domination in the retail universe.

BACK FROM MARS

When I was a teenager, my buddy and I used to haunt the used book stores in Glendale, CA, mostly looking for English literature and science fiction. In one place we visited often, the owner remembered us and our taste in books. Whenever we would come in he would say, "Hey,boys. Back from Mars?"

So if that's your question, the answer is: "Why, yes. I'm back from Mars."

Been a while, I know. My last post here ("Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!") was nearly nine years ago. Maybe some day I'll get into what happened in the meantime.

(And maybe I won't.)

In the meantime, I've kept writing (mostly; see the post called "Discipline"). As a result, there's been a few new items put up on KDP.

(I'll have to relearn how to add thumbnail images of stuff, linked to Amazon.)

HOT MINUTE is a one volume version of HOT STATUS and MAD MINUTE, inspired by my Army hitch at an air-defense missile base out on Sandy Hook, NJ. (They all got dismantled after the first SALT agreement, on account of there were nukes involved.)

And VERTIGO NATION, fiction in the category of guns-and-politics, about a group of neo-Nazis trying to figure out how to support Donald Trump should he lose the 2020 election and need help defending himself in a White House he was unwilling to vacate.

Also, there's a sort of crime novel called HALF-PRICE HIT MAN: BLACK FRIDAY. The first of several in that series. It's going up soon.

I'm making notes on a sequel, so I'm holding off posting the first volume in case I need to make adjustments that would be useful to the second book.

I realize this thinking smacks of procrastination. It's always possible to throw up a revised version of anything on KDP. It's one of the most useful features of independent publishing. But what if the worse thing happens, and the first volume gets a lot of downloads? Do I really want to swap big things around in a second edition? I'll let you know how that works out, when it works out.

Okay, that's enough for now. Let's see if I can post this thing...