If 2023 was me dipping my toes into the lake of “trying new publishing things,” then 2024 is me diving into the deep end.
I chose indie publishing for freedom, and yet I’ve found that I have unnecessarily shackled myself to an ideology. I kept my books in Kindle Unlimited/KDP Select because that was “where the readers are” and what was supposed to make the “most sense” from a money point of view, too. But Amazon slashed KU payouts and there is just a constant low rumbling threat that they will do so again. IngramSpark decided to force upon authors a larger wholesaler discount and their shenanigans with returns have made it a risk for authors to accept returns, which in turn leads to indie bookstores not wanting to carry our books.
I threw off the shackles of traditional publishing, thinking I was embracing creative control. And yet I then locked myself down in a cell with Amazon and IngramSpark and believed that this was “the only way.”
But then Campfire added monetized stories and I also found Ream Stories. Some part of me was still determined to define “success” as an indie publisher as Amazon Rankings or Bestseller List. But isn’t that the kind of ideology that I wanted to escape when I decided against traditional publishing?
Exciting news! Several of my books have been nominated for the Indie Ink Awards! Voting opened yesterday and runs until December 31st!
In celebration of this, you can purchase A LAKE OF FEATHERS AND MOONBEAMS directly on my webpage and using the discount code INKAWARDS when you hit the “Buy Now” button! This discount is ONLY available on my website!
I've found a cool way to set up direct sales on your own website with minimal effort and basically no coding. But my personal website is all hand-coded by me, and so I decided to take it one step further and integrate it with Middleman and how I use the yaml files to keep my website organized as my catalog grows. Read on to learn more about my setup combining Lemon Squeezy's Checkout Overlays with yaml and ERB in my favorite static site generator, Middleman.
Now that NaNoWriMo is behind us, and I'm in the home stretch of finishing SMOKE AND STEEL (just completed chapter 23 out of 25!), I've found the time to work more on the Campfire project of STARS AND SOIL, as I mentioned in my last update.
Well, between yesterday and today, I've added four more character profiles to the project!
NaNoWriMo is over! How did I do? I would say I did “alright.” Did I hit 50k? Yes. Did I hit my goal? Not so much. But I am trying to have compassion and kindness for myself.
[note: the last section of this post deals with triggering topics, it is marked. as such.]
Personal recap
This year I participated in a group challenge with the people at the Campfire Discord. We were assigned teams, we had weekly “stumped” chats where we could talk through some of the story issues we were encountering, weekly check ins, regular writing sprints and rallies, and it was amazing. I don't think I would have gotten as much done without it.
Honestly, I probably would have skipped NaNo this year if it weren't for the people of the Campfire discord. I had just finished a massive revision/edit on a tight deadline and was feeling creatively drained after releasing Stars and Soil. But the Campfire discord was hosting a bunch of “Preptober” events, and I decided that even if I wasn't going to do NaNo, why not at least use that to get a head start on Smoke and Steel? And then I started to have so much fun that I said “Yes, NaNoWriMo is happening.”
Today, I officially published STARS AND SOIL on Campfire and plan to release the rest of the SCIONS AND SHADOWS books on Campfire. Right now, STARS AND SOIL is exclusive to Campfire.
You might be asking, “Why? Why isn't it available on Amazon or elsewhere?”
Well, there are many reasons I could go into that are “why I'm not publishing on this specific book on Amazon....” That's a really long list and a depressing one. What I want to talk about instead is why, specifically, Campfire. This is not an argument against others but an argument for Campfire.
Recently, I was selected as one of the first authors monetized on Campfire Explore! And as of today, you can now read STARS AND SOIL exclusively on Campfire!! If you do not know about Campfire, it is the writing and world-building software that I have primarily used for several years now. I love it for how easy it is to organize and keep track of all of the moving parts when it comes to world-building. When I first signed up, it was known as “Campfire Blaze,” and in the short time since then, it has added so many amazing features and made so many improvements. I firmly stand behind them as a company that creates author-and-reader-focused software.
When they announced last year that they were adding in a monetization feature that would allow authors to not only share their books but to share the elements and pages that authors had worked on with readers, too, I was way too excited.
I have spent several months trying to find the perfect method of keeping track of where I am in editing my novel. I mostly now use TickTick's Kanban feature to move stuff back and forth in the swim lanes, and TickTick's Gannt timeline to plan what days I will do what. But that still leaves me with a “are we there yet?” for “when will I be done? How much more must I do?”
So I started looking for integrations for TickTick with various data viz solutions. And apparently, the TickTick API is... lacking. And the integrations in Zapier and IFTTT were not that stunning, and I couldn't find a way to make it a data source for excel.
So, instead of, you know, editing, I set about to make the perfect novel editing tracker complete with :jazz hands: progress bars :jazz hands:.
I have difficulty with focus, concentration, staying on task, and both long- and short-term memory. I have no idea, honestly, how I get anything done. But the last few days, I have been using “WorkingHours” time tracking app to give me some sort of insight into what I get done and how long I spend on it.
