A Newbie's Guide to Publishing

AI and Creative Professions

2026-03-02T08:42:00.001-06:00

I've been wrestling with this for a while, and I am aware that the ambiguity in this post is palpable.

AI isn't going anywhere, and I find it amazingly useful.

I use it to proofread. It finds many more mistakes than spellcheck and grammarcheck on MS Word.

I use it for research. I've found Wikipedia increasingly unreliable and on a downward trend, and I can ask Grok detailed, specific questions and get tailored responses.

I use it for philosophy. I spend too much time thinking about stuff like reality and consciousness, and Grok can help me pressure-check ideas that bore the shit out of my family and friends when I attempt to discuss why there is no objective truth; only agreed-upon comparisons of subjective reality entangled with consciousness.

I used it to translate some of my books into foreign languages, though I am using human translators to proofread/edit/rewrite.

I use it for recipes. For complicated math. For home improvement and repair advice. For mental hygiene. For health advice. For understanding legalese. For fact-checking (which is getting harder to do because some sources Grok draws from aren't known for their integrity, and almost everything we see, hear, and read is being manipulated to some degree).

I am not a good plumber. So I hire one when needed. If AI could fix my sump pump, I'd be okay with that. No hits to my homeowner pride, no regret that I am hastening the death of a profession. I've blogged about buggy whip manufacturers before; I wrote this 13 years ago.

When I say I "use AI" I am not saying I "rely on AI." I rely on people, on professionals, on multiple sources, on opposing viewpoints, before I reach a point of believing or trusting something. And, to be honest, I really don't believe or trust very much (circling back to my "no objective truth" comment above.)

But I think Grok is great, and a good deal at 400 bucks a year.

So why don't I let AI write my fiction?

Grok is a pretty good fiction writer. I blogged about this previously. And while Grok can't quite do my style and tone, it can get pretty close. Plus it sticks to story structure better than I do, and doesn't add the fluff and filler that I always add.

Some of the dumb stuff I put in my stories isn't necessary. But I believe the dumb stuff is what makes my stories mine.

I took a ten page detour in my book THE NINE for an extended joke about a clone of Abraham Lincoln refusing to open his hotel door.

Necessary? Hell no. But I found it funny. Some readers agreed. Some did not.

An editor would have cut it. Maybe I should have cut it.

But Grok never would have written that scene. Unless Grok was specifically prompted to troll the reader, it would stick to a tight, economical story structure, and get to the point faster than I did.

My books, even as they have become increasingly unhinged and personal over the last ten years, are still deliberate. I know why I wrote that chapter, that paragraph, that sentence. I am aware of why I put those words in the book, and I can defend them (most of the time).

Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm adamant, not lazy.

Plus, I have major disadvantages as a writer. I have aphantasia, which means I can't visualize anything. I have no mind's eye. I cannot imagine myself on a beach, or relive memories like movies in my head, or even picture my wife's face.

If you read my books, you know they are heavy on action and dialog, very light on setting and description. My mind can't do it.

But Grok can do it extremely well.

If I wrote a book with major AI assistance, I could do it in 1/5 the time it normally takes. And it would be tighter, with better prose, and far more enriched by detail than I am capable of.

But I won't do that. And it is worth exploring why I won't.

I'm a professional writer, and it is my main source of income. I don't want or need help there, even if AI is better than I am at my job.

Maybe it is pride. Maybe it is stubbornness. Maybe it is because I think it is cheating. Maybe it has something to do with the satisfaction of a job well done.

Recently, I've begun making my own dough. Bread dough. Pizza dough. I've reached the point where I am almost as good as bakeries and pizzerias.

I'm not doing it for the outcome. I'm doing it for the journey. That's why I've brewed my own beer for over twenty years. I can buy great beer. And there are beer kits that allow you to make beer with extracts and cheap equipment. But I like to mill my own grain, create my own yeast starter, do the mash and the sparge and the boil and the kegging.

The process is the part of the purpose, and I like the process.

But there are other reasons.

We all know what happens when someone takes over intellectual property from an original creator; things go downhill. In the mystery writing world, dead writers get replaced by other writers who continue the series, but it is never as good as it once was.

It's like when a craft brewery gets taken over by one of the big brewing companies. Or when a single restaurant scales to become a chain. The product always suffers.

There are a few writers that I have trusted to write for my characters, and a few writers that have trusted me to write for their characters. (Huge shout out to F. Paul Wilson for letting me include Repairman Jack in Enraged.)

But I don't do RJ as well as Paul does. And I don't think anyone, including AI, could write the particular kind of goofy insanity that I write.

Maybe it is my raging narcissisms. Maybe it's a control thing. Maybe I don't trust another parent to raise and nurture my literary children.

Maybe I don't want to disappoint readers more than I already do.

If I disappoint a reader, I know that I did it. I have full responsibility.

If AI were writing my books, I would abdicating responsibility. Lying to my readers. Taking a short cut.

My promise to readers is that their money and time will be well-spent. While perfection is the enemy of good, short-cuts also are an enemy.

But I am aware how slippery this slope is.

AI art--I call it airt--has gotten pretty incredible. Very soon I'll be able to create movies out of my books, using just AI.

Is that cheating?

There is a trillion-dollar industry centered around making media. This industry is guarded by gatekeepers, very much like the publishing industry was pre-Kindle. For me to sell a movie or TV show requires a lot of ducks to line up, a lot of people to jump on board, and a lot of money.

The odds are against me. So why not do it on my own?

I know this is hypocrisy. I am okay with publishing without the publishing industry, and I am okay with filmmaking without Hollywood, so why shouldn't I use AI to help me write? Isn't it just a tool? A means to an end?

I've blogged about Anthropic, and why I consider training LLMs on my work to be a licensing violation, above and beyond the piracy issue.

It's mind theft. Artists need to fight against this. Not just writers. AI can write a Beatles song that sounds exactly like the Beatles. Create a cubist print in the style of Picasso.

So if I really believe my mind was stolen, why not use the tool that stole it to increase my output and ability?

It's a tough one.

I know this blog post is ambiguous, because my feelings are ambiguous. I don't know if I'm actually trying to defend my stance of not using AI-assists in my fiction, or if I'm trying to talk myself into trying it.

But still... it just feels wrong.

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing specifically asks if AI was used in the writing of the submitted work. It has been asking this for years. Failure to disclose violates the terms of service.

I thought it had to do with weeding out AI-generated slop from actual human-created work.

But, honestly, humans also create slop.

Then I thought it might eventually come down to Amazon labeling works that have been AI-generated to warn readers. Not a bad idea for the sake of transparency and allowing buyers to make an informed choice.

But Amazon hasn't done this. So far they seem to be asking for internal tracking purposes. And if Amazon did implement some sort of warning on product listings, innocent people would get caught in the mix.

Eleven years ago, Amazon did a "fake review" purge, because the review system was being abused. I lost dozens of legitimate reviews during this purge, of books I read and loved, because of the perceived conflict of interest (I was a writer reviewing my peers). I disagreed with Amazon's decision.

Maybe it is a panopticon effect to keep authors honest. But we all know locks are for mostly-honest people, the same as gun laws. All the laws in the world won't stop a bad actor.

So if I ever did use AI to help me with a book, would I check that box admitting it to KDP?

I wouldn't feel good about checking that box. And I wouldn't feel good about using AI to help me write a book.

Giving an AI a prompt doesn't create art. It creates airt. There has to be a difference.

Right?

I consider myself an artist. Not an airtist.

So I am against using AI to assist in writing fiction.

There will come a time--hopefully after I am dead--when my entire brain can be reproduced as a digital simulation. If my simulation writes a Jack Daniels novel, is it actually me?

We're living in interesting times...

I did not use AI in writing this blog. If I did, it would be shorter, clearer, and more purposeful.

But writing it helped me to understand myself.

Maybe that's the whole point of media.

Yes, it is a job. Yes, tools could be used to increase output, and even quality.

But media is also a means of expression.

And why would I ever let anyone--human or AI--express themselves on my behalf?

Opting Out of the Bartz v Anthropic

2026-01-29T15:23:00.003-06:00

So I want to preface this by saying I am not a lawyer, none of this is legal advice, my opinions are my own and they are just opinions, and I'm not pointing fingers at any specific people.

I write fiction, and I occasionally blog. That is the extent of my expertise.

Today was supposed to be the last day to opt out of the Bartz v Anthropic Lawsuit, headed by the Authors Guild. It has been extended to Feb 9.

I'll use Grok 4.1 AI for a quick summary.

Grok 4.1: Bartz v. Anthropic was a 2024 class-action lawsuit brought by authors with significant support from the Authors Guild, alleging Anthropic infringed copyrights by downloading millions of pirated books from shadow libraries to train its Claude AI models. In 2025, a federal judge ruled that training on legally acquired books was fair use but piracy was not. Anthropic settled in August 2025 for a record $1.5 billion, with claims processing ongoing and final approval pending in 2026. Eligible class authors and rightsholders will receive approximately $3,000 per qualifying copyrighted book title (nearly 500,000 works total), pending final approval and valid claims.

Joe sez: Thank you, Grok.

I have opted out of this lawsuit for reasons I will describe shortly, and am retaining another team of attorneys.

If you want to know my changing and complicated feelings about LLMs and AI, you can check out my previous blog posts:

Jan 21, 2026 - The Rise Of Airt - https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-rise-of-airt.html

Nov 9, 2025 - Anthropic and the Future of Copyright - https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2025/11/anthropic-and-future-of-copyright.html

Sept 29, 2023 - English Language Sues Bestselling authors - https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2023/09/english-language-sues-bestselling.html

Those blog posts are in reverse chronological order, and if you don't want to take the time to read all three (it's a lot of words) here is the TLDR:

AI is here to stay, it is affecting almost every profession, including the arts, including fiction writing.
Initially I was not worried about it and thought worries were silly.
I am now very worried, and moderately angry.
I use and like AI, but I'm not using it to write fiction or to brainstorm. I am using it for research, foreign translations, and proofreading. I pay around $400 a year for Grok.

If you are a longtime reader of this blog, you know I am anti-establishment. I came by this viewpoint fairly.

Once upon a time I was a newbie writer and I sought a literary agent and a traditional publishing deal.

After 500+ rejections, I landed a lit agent, and went on to eventually sell 11 thrillers to legacy publishers.

Amazon invented the Kindle, and my rejected self-published books wound up outselling my traditionally published books.

I got my rights back from legacy publishers, and went on to sell several millions of ebooks on Kindle.

During the course of this adventure, which has been ongoing since 2003, I went from kowtowing to the trad publishing model, to rejecting it.

Legacy traditional publishers (back when I was in that world--I dunno if things have changed), offered unfair, unconscionable contracts, did a poor job with the vast majority of books they published, and only created a small percentage of hits out of their many misses; misses that locked authors in for life.

For several years I evangelized self-publishing, and provided this blog as a free service to help writers understand both legacy and self-publishing.

One of the common antagonists in my blog posts has been the Authors Guild.

Again, I haven't dealt with the AG in years. Maybe they've changed. Maybe my original assessment was wrong. But I always looked at the Authors Guild as a group that should have been called the Gatekeepers Guild, because they seemed to align more with the legacy status quo of agents and publishers than they did with authors.

It doesn't matter if I was right or wrong. You can read my blog and decide for yourself.

What matters is that I have AG bias, and the AG was an essential part of the Bartz v Anthropic suit, which resulted in a 1.5 billion dollar win.

But was it really a win?

The following is my opinion. I am not alleging anything. I am not a lawyer. I am just a guy who makes up shit for a living. I am liked by some, hated by others. So take all of this with many grains of salt.

Here is how Grok summarized the B v A ruling:

Fair Use for LLM Training: The court ruled that using copyrighted books to train LLMs was "spectacularly" transformative and constituted fair use, as the process analyzes statistical relationships in text to enable generation of new, original content without reproducing the originals. This was analogized to human learning, emphasizing that copyright does not protect ideas, methods, or concepts. No market harm was found, as there was no evidence of infringing outputs from Claude mimicking or reproducing the plaintiffs' works.

Fair Use for Digitization of Purchased Books: Anthropic's scanning of lawfully purchased print books (involving destructive processes like removing bindings) to create internal digital copies was deemed fair use, as it was a transformative format shift for storage and searchability without distribution or increasing the number of copies. The court found no market harm, distinguishing it from unauthorized duplication.

No Fair Use for Pirated Copies: However, the acquisition and retention of pirated digital copies to build a central library was not fair use and constituted infringement, even if later used for training. This was non-transformative, displaced the market for authorized sales, and was unnecessary given lawful alternatives. Judge Alsup expressed skepticism that subsequent fair use could justify initial piracy, noting lawful acquisition as essential.

Joe sez: As of this blog post, Jan 29, 2026, things seem to be proceeding as planned. Thousands of authors, including many of my peers and friends, are sticking with the suit and expecting to get $3000 per infringed work.

Good for them.

But I will not be one of those authors. I have opted out of this settlement.

Here are the reasons why.

FIRST, I don't think the money is sufficient. I am not privy to the back and forth of the litigants and defendants, and I have not read the court transcript.

But the fact that a one and a half billion dollar settlement seems to be moving forward, and the Court, the Authors Guild, and the Defendant all seem to be okay with it, doesn't sit well with me.

I don't believe I've ever sided with the Authors Guild on an important issue. So I am suss.

I don't like the judge's ruling, for many reasons that I'll get into.

Anthropic being okay with 1.5 billion (which I infer by them agreeing to the settlement) makes me think they know they got off easy.

SECOND, that ruling.

Scanning books is not fair use for training LLMs, in this non-lawyer's opinion. When I sell a book, I am selling the rights for it to be read.

Not to be copied infinitely. Not to be stored eternally. Not to be trained off of.

A human being can buy my book to read and enjoy. They can try--with their finite, limited, human mind--to imitate my style and tone and storytelling techniques.

But someone who buys my book doesn't have the right to pirate my mind. A human can't do that. But an LLM can.

According to Grok:

Large Language Models (LLMs) are neural networks trained on vast text datasets to predict the next token (word or subword) in a sequence. Built on transformer architectures, they use attention mechanisms to weigh relationships between tokens, capturing context over long distances. With billions of parameters adjusted during training, LLMs learn patterns in language, grammar, and knowledge. When prompted, they generate responses autoregressively: processing input, computing token probabilities, and sampling the most likely continuation until complete.

Joe sez: LLMs must train on gigantic text datasets. They don't speak any language; they assign values to characters and predict relationships between tokens.

Look up the Chinese Room, Mary's Room, and Philosophical Zombies for deeper insight here. But this is waaaay beyond those philosophical ideas.

These LLM predictions defy human capability. They did not exist when current copyright law was written, and copyright law has yet to adequately address this issue.

Right now, the LLM market (according to Grok) is worth about 12 billion dollars. By 2030, Grok predicts it will be worth 36 billion, and by 2035 up to 180 billion.

Is it fair use that these 500,000 works of pirated fiction--a vetted, professional, creative dataset that encompasses almost all of modern copyrighted material--are being awarded $3000 per book for training a profit-driven juggernaut?

I didn't sell a license for my books to train LLMs. If I had, I would have demanded more than $3k per book.

A human being who reads one of my books can imperfectly retain it in their mind, for the extent of their limited memory.

An LLM retains it forever, and they can learn from it perfectly, with 100% accuracy.

The tokens that make up my 60+ novels are unique to me. They are unique to the universe. They could not exist if I never existed.

I did not give any LLM permission to learn from my life's work so they can imitate me perfectly, use my pirated brain to answer questions in the style of me, keep my work indefinitely, and be able to write better than I can--which they can already do.

How much would you charge your assassin to murder you? If there is an amount, I would bet it is higher than $3000...

It is also, in this non-lawyer's opinion, not fair use to digitize purchased books.

We aren't talking about buying a music CD and ripping it to your iTunes for your personal enjoyment.

We are talking about taking a creative body of work that took weeks, months, years of dedicated human learning and effort, and digitizing it in seconds to train a billion dollar industry that will last millennia.

Sure, it is transformative, in the same way harvesting organs from unwilling donors is transformative.

If you want one of my kidneys, pay for it. That involves offer, acceptance, legal capacity, and lawful purpose.

It requires a meeting of the minds. My mind was never even approached, let alone met. And riffing on that:

There will come a time when your entire brain can be uploaded into a computer.

Don't you think you have the right to give permission first?

Or can anyone take you and duplicate you without any permission at all?

Or do you automatically grant "transformative use permission" if someone pays you $3000 (which is not an amount you agreed to)?

And for the judge's final point--which resulted in the 1.5 billion dollar settlement--that the piracy was the bad part; it's inadequate.

If you search my blog you will find that I am okay with piracy... if you're not profiting from it.

If you want to download one of my books without paying me, no worries. Email me, I'll give you free books. Thanks for reading! Share it with your mom. Pass it around at your book group. My ebooks don't have DRM, specifically so you can share them with friends and family.

But if you want to pirate my books and make money from them, I won't allow it.

Back in the Napster days, kids were sued into oblivion for downloading illegal music. They weren't making money. They weren't stealing minds. They were sharing songs.

This is not equivalent.

If I were to sell an LLM a license to one of my books, it would be for more than $3000.

But if an LLM stole it? Get me in front of a jury and let me rant, and then let them decide the punitive damages.

Or just let me do a deposition. Please. PLEASE.

THIRD, agreeing to that ruling without challenge sets bad precedent.

If Bartz v Anthropic isn't challenged, we could have a future where LLMs take whatever they want to, without permission, then say, "Oops, here's $3k."

We could see a future where buying a one dollar paperback at a thrift store makes mind theft legal for a billion dollar for-profit company.

We might even see a future where any AI can become you because a court declared it was transformative and caused no harm.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I believe there are big damages here. But this is about more than money.

It's about drawing a line.

I have had my life's work stolen. By large corporations who do not give a shit. Who willfully pirated huge sets of data so their billion dollar LLMs could get a bigger piece of an inevitable trillion dollar pie.

I am not the only one that believes this. There are more lawsuits cropping up.

Look up Cengage Learning, Inc and Hachette Book Group v Google LLC.

Look up Claimshero AI Book Pirating.

Look up Kadrey v. Meta Platforms.

Look up Tremblay/Awad and Silverman et al. v. OpenAI/Meta.

Look up The New York Times v. OpenAI/Microsoft.

Look up Carreyrou et al v. Anthropic PBC.

I am retaining counsel. And here is what I'm proposing.

Dear Lawyer,

I seek an injunction to immediately halt all use of the current version of Claude until Anthropic can reset to an earlier version before Claude trained on my books.

Under property and equity law, I am looking for a constructive trust or an equitable lien, plus damages.

Claude allegedly trained on LibGen and PiLiMi datasets which contained dozens of my books.

Did Anthropic seek legal permission from publishers and authors? I dunno. We can find out during Discovery. They certainly didn't approach me.

Did Anthropic pay for direct access to pirated data from pirate sites? I dunno. Discovery again. I allege nothing.

But I contend that I should own part of Claude.

When I write a book, I get paid to entertain a person for a few hours. I offer a limited entertainment experience to a human being.

When I write a book, I give no express or implied permission or license to an artificial intelligence or LLM for any use at all.

Buying a book does not imply or infer licenses beyond ownership of the book.

Fair use for human beings is not analogous for AI.

Claude is not a transformative use of my IP.

Claude IS partially my IP.

My IP cannot be separated from Claude any more than a gene can be separated from a human being. The engineers who allegedly fed the pirated databases into Claude allegedly knew the value of the data and had no choice but to steal it. This has to be the case, because there is no legal collection of hundreds of thousands of copyright protected works.

Every sentence in Book3, Anna's Archive, and LibGen was allegedly absorbed by Claude in order for Claude to exist in its current form. It is my opinion that without pirated books there would be no Claude in its current iteration.

LLMs use next-token prediction (casual language modeling) to train. They need batches of vetted, cogent, professional, creative manuscripts to tokenize, not just to learn modern fiction writing (story, character, dialog), but also how to answer user questions and how to learn conversational language.

You can copy everything on the Internet. That's fair use. But how much of the Internet is gibberish? Nonsense? Poorly written?

Professional books are professional. If you want to learn, you learn from the pros.

But the pros have to consent.

Claude allegedly trained on my stolen words and how I uniquely use them.

Anthropic likely knew it needed a massive raw dataset of modern books (a batch of sequences), so it used pirated copies.

Rather than get permission--which would require authors consenting not to just being read once, but read and saved for eternity (with perfect retention) as part of Claude's essential programming--the engineers allegedly stole it.

Because it is cheaper to pay the lawsuit than explain to authors—who spend lifetimes mastering their writing skills—to sell those skills to an AI for $3k so that AI can keep and use them forever.

This is not fair use. It is mind theft. This is the digital equivalent of the stolen HeLa immortalized cells. With shades of Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.

Current copyright law did not anticipate this ability for technology to assimilate art on such a quick and massive scale, or that cogent, vetted, professional fiction will become an integral, essential part of a trillion-dollar industry.

IMHO.

My work, from an LLM perspective, represents a batch of sequences. Claude allegedly trained on this batch of sequences--sequences that should fall under copyrightable intellectual property. Current copyright law does not cover this.

My original creative works are not treated as words or stories or ideas by AI. They are treated as numbers that can be used to predict other numbers.

These numbers, intrinsic in my stories, are wholly unique, and would not exist without me. This is not about expressions of ideas. This is about the digital replication and assimilation of my written words so they can be monetized by an LLM.

Claude allegedly adapted my work (in numerical batches) to use (as numerical packets) for the express purpose of making money for Anthropic.

I don't believe that LLMs have analyzed my stories so they can reproduce them, or to steal my audience, or to write books like me (though they can, with the right prompts, because of this piracy).

I allege that Claude allegedly stole my stories so it could become a better, faster, smarter LLM and make more money for Anthropic, without getting an adaptation license from me.

I don't think that's right. I don't think the settlement is fair.

But what do I know? Other than I'm tired of the word "allegedly"?

If you want to opt out of the Bartz v Anthropic settlement, you (as of Jan 29) have until Feb 9.

If you are gonna get paid by the settlement and don't want to opt out; good on you. I would not want you to change your mind based on a blog post, or on my opinions. Do your own research. Inform yourself. Make the best decision for you.

If you're a writer whose work was pirated (you probably already know if you are) and want to learn about the counsel I'm retaining, email me through my website. But there are no guarantees. You know the saying about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush. Proceed with caution.

I haven't blogged seriously in years. I'm done evangelizing. I've changed my mind about so many things in my life, that the only thing I know is that I don't know anything.

I wish you much success on whichever road you choose.

The Rise of Airt

2026-01-21T05:50:00.002-06:00

I began this blog post in February, 2025. It is now January, 2026.

Let's go back in time 11 months...

Joe from Feb 17, 2025: I woke up this morning to dive into my work in progress and saw that Microsoft 365 had added (without asking me for permission) something called Copilot to MS Word.

I researched what it was and had a WTF moment.

Apparently Microsoft has enabled a Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence to "assist" with writing.

It can summarize your document, rewrite it, refine it, answer questions about your content, and even write new content.

Copilot immediately began "suggesting" what my next word, sentence, and paragraph could be, based on what it read in my WIP.

Yikes!

After figuring out how to turn off Copilot (by, ironically, asking Grok, X's AI), I saw some chatter on Facebook about someone who self pubbed an ebook who had accidentally left in the AI prompts.

I had no sympathy for that author in the face of the negative social media shitstorm that ensued. An author using AI is not an author. They're a prompter.

Amazon may have anticipated this happening, because several years ago KDP added a checkmark when publishing which asked, "Did you use AI tools in creating texts, images, and/or translations in your book?"

This question is actually nuanced.

What if I hire a cover artist who used a prompt on iStock to help create an image?

What if I use a proofreader that uses AI to help spot typos, grammar errors, or continuity problems?

What if I used Microsoft's own spellcheck? Is that AI?

This is a big can of worms that I'm trying to wrap my head around.

When the digital picture revolution began years ago, some were afraid. Photographers were afraid that manipulated pictures would devalue their art. Camera companies were afraid that people would stop buying and developing film.

The camera companies were correct; film is no longer the norm.

But photographers wound up with more tools to make their pics better.

This seems... different.

Yesterday I saw an ad for an app that takes a sample of your voice and then "sings" in your voice to any song. I also saw another app that will take a still picture and "bring it to life" by animating it.

In the future we'll all be able to play guitar, act in movies, design a building blueprint, write legal documents, code a videogame, and do many other things that once required years of training and education.

Learning a skill will soon be replaced by learning how to prompt AI to reach the desired output, no actual talent required.

We'll likely be able to see holograms of the Beatles perform in concert, to support a new AI Beatles album written and performed by AI in the style of the Beatles.

So... what happens to fiction writers?

Fifteen years ago I wrote about the self-publishing revolution, and those who feared a tsunami of crap.

As I predicted, the tsunami of crap never happened. The cream tends to rise to the top, and the crap sinks.

Is this just another tsunami of crap? Will readers be able to separate wheat from chaff? Will the real writers still sell well while fake AI prompt writers tank from bad reviews? Will certain writing brands that are free of AI have integrity and correspondingly better sales?

I have big doubts.

What if the AI prompt writing is as good, or better, that what real writers can do, in the same way AI will be able to diagnose and treat disease better than actual doctors and analyze legal contracts better than actual lawyers?

I've become dubious of everything these days in an effort to suss out what's generated. Is the picture I'm viewing real or AI? Is that video a deepfake? Are these social media replies and emails from human beings or AI?

Large Language Models train on human writing, and according to three leaked data sets--Book3, LibGen, and Anna's Archive, I've had dozens of books pirated by LLMs, who trained on them.

They also trained on books written by my friends and peers. So I gave Grok this prompt:

Write a 500 word short story about a border collie in the style of (a writer I know).

Grok took less than five seconds:

Here’s a 500-word thriller story about a border collie, written in the taut, gripping style of (a writer), known for fast-paced narratives and edge-of-your-seat tension:

The wind howled through the pines, carrying the scent of blood and pine needles. Tessa crouched low, her black-and-white coat blending with the shadows of the Montana forest. Her ears twitched, sharp as blades, catching every snap of a twig, every rustle of leaves. She wasn’t just any border collie—she was a hunter, trained to herd more than sheep.

Tonight, her prey was human.

The man had stumbled into her world three hours ago, reeking of whiskey and desperation. Tessa’s owner, Mara, lay still in the cabin, her breathing shallow, a crimson stain blooming across her chest.

The man had done that—his knife flashing in the firelight before he’d fled into the dark. Tessa hadn’t hesitated. She’d bolted after him, her instincts screaming louder than any command.

Now, the forest was a chessboard, and Tessa was the queen. She tracked his clumsy path—broken branches, smeared mud, a discarded boot caught in a briar.

He thought he could outrun her.

He was wrong.

Her paws barely touched the ground, silent as death, her eyes glinting with a predator’s focus. She could hear him now, his ragged gasps cutting through the night.

He was close.

The man crashed through a clearing, his flashlight beam jerking wildly. Tessa circled wide, staying downwind. She saw him—tall, unshaven, the knife still clutched in his shaking hand. Blood stained the blade.

Mara’s blood.

A growl rumbled low in Tessa’s throat, but she held it back. Not yet. Timing was everything.

He tripped, sprawling into the dirt, cursing as the flashlight rolled away. Tessa tensed, muscles coiling like springs.

He scrambled up, eyes darting, sensing something—her.

“Stay back, you damn mutt!” he yelled, slashing the air with the knife.

He didn’t see her. Not yet.

She darted left, then right, a blur of motion, herding him like a wayward lamb. He swung the blade, missed, stumbled again. Panic made him sloppy. Tessa’s heart pounded, but her mind was ice-cold. She knew this game—push, feint, exhaust.

He’d drop soon. He had to.

A ravine loomed ahead, its edge masked by undergrowth. Tessa saw it; he didn’t. She barked once, sharp and commanding, driving him backward. His heel caught a root, and he flailed, arms pinwheeling.

The knife flew from his grip as he went over, a scream tearing from his throat. It cut off with a wet thud far below.

Tessa padded to the edge, peering down. The man lay crumpled, motionless, the knife glinting beside him. Her ears flicked. Silence returned, heavy and final.

She turned, her mission done, and raced back through the trees toward the cabin. Mara needed her now—needed the collie who’d just become more than a pet, more than a herder.

Tessa was a guardian, a shadow with teeth, and she’d protect her own to the last breath.

Joe sez: Well, shit. That's pretty good.

As good as a human being?

Maybe not. But for a few years I judged the Writer's Digest Short Story Contest, and Grok's story would have placed in the top 5.

For my last book (FREE - A CODENAME CHANDLER NOVEL) I asked Grok, "If I fire a rocket from Plum Island New York heading West at 17kmph, how long will it take to get into low earth orbit, 1500km, over the Pacific?"

Grok answered in two seconds, with math to support the answer. I didn't use any of what Grok told me in my book, but that gave me the data I needed to know where my satellite would end up.

Was I cheating? Have I been cheating using Wikipedia and Google all of these years? Prior to that, was I cheating by doing my research in a library, reading books written by others?

Are digital photographers cheating when they use Photoshop to make their photos better?

Are graphic artists cheating by using software that adds a light source and natural shading?

This is becoming tricky. Beware of blanket statements.

Such as: "Blankets keep me warm."

Heh.

I make up my jokes. I don't steal them.

But I'm sure I must have used a joke that I thought I made up, but actually heard years before and forgot about. Not intentionally. But I'm sure it has happened.

I'm pretty sure I've heard the joke, "Don't buy blankets; there is a cover charge."

Or did I make just it up? Unknown.

After all, I'm using a language (English) in a culture (the US), and I had nothing to do with the creation of either, but I am informed by my upbringing, using words I didn't invent and ideas that predate me.

I will not start using AI writing prompts. I'm a purist. I value the challenge and fun of my mind vs the blank page.

But should I get angry at those who are using AI? Is AI actually any different than brainstorming with a friend and taking their suggestions? If so, why? Because your friend has a pulse?

AI is becoming more prevalent. Unless we return to typewriters, it's gonna creep in. I could have read four books about rocket science and done my own math to launch my fictional satellite. It was a lot easier, and less of a PITA, to ask AI.

AI, love it or hate it for art, is helpful.

Here's one that gets me; I would love to have my books available in every language. But I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay people to translate my 60 novels into 20 different languages. Translations can cost over two grand per book.

Should I use AI? Would I be taking away a human being's job? Would I be reaching an audience we could never afford to reach? Both?

What if I hire a human translator, and they use AI? And what if they don't disclose that to me?

What if a reader from Thailand buys WHISKEY SOUR and has AI translate it into Thai? Shouldn't I embrace that?

This is coming soon. It may already be here.

Eventually we're going to have a movie where The Marx Brothers meet The Three Stooges. We're going to see Eastwood's Man With No Name have a gunfight with Bronson's Harmonica (OUATITW). The visuals will be seamless. And as AI improves, the writing will be seamless.

Ask any AI to write a story in the style of JA Konrath, and they do an okay job. Eventually they'll do a perfect job.

This scares me, as I said. But there are opportunities here.

People who learn how to use AI to write fiction might have the same advantage that traditional photographers had when Adobe first invented Photoshop.

Do we use this advantage?

Do we get mad at others who use this advantage?

The horse has left the barn. Now what are we going to do about it?

Joe sez: For some reason, I never published the above blog post. Probably because I didn't know where to stand, or what side to take.

Cut to Joe in 2026:

Things have come a long way since the old days of 2025.

Let's call human art "art" and AI art "airt". Pronounced like "air".

Airt is stolen valor. My previous blog post was about the Bartz v Anthropic lawsuit, and I'm on the side of writers.

That said, it is difficult to distinguish the difference between art and airt, and soon it will be impossible.

Certainly airt can make you feel the same things art makes you feel. The only difference is prior knowledge of the artist or airtist.

Fiction writing is just a voluntary hijack of the limbic system. A drug can make you happy or sad or giggly.

Same with a story. No matter who writes it.

Chemical emotion happens, and AI is getting really good at it.

So I again prompted AI to write a 500 word story in the style of a writer I know, combining a dog and the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Here's what Grok did:

The dog’s name was Max, a border collie with eyes like polished obsidian and a mind that never quite settled.

His human, Elena, was a post-doc in quantum foundations at the university, the kind who talked to him in full sentences about wave functions and decoherence as they walked the wooded trail behind the house every evening.

Max didn’t understand the words, not exactly. But he understood patterns. He understood that when Elena said “superposition,” her voice lifted the way it did when she tossed his frisbee high into the air—something suspended, not yet decided.

He understood “observation” because every time she looked at him, the world narrowed to the two of them, the rest collapsing into background.

One October night, the air smelled of frost and wet leaves. Elena clipped the leash to his collar and they stepped onto the trail. Halfway along the loop, a squirrel darted across the path.

Max lunged. The leash snapped taut.

Elena stumbled, her foot catching a root. She fell hard, head striking a rock with a sound Max would never forget—wet, final.

He barked, frantic. He licked her face. No response. Blood pooled beneath her hair, dark against the moonlight.

Then something shifted.

Max felt it first in his paws: a vibration, like the low hum of the refrigerator back home but deeper, inside his bones. The forest forked.

Not the path--the world.

One branch: Elena dead on the ground, cooling, sirens eventually coming, Max taken to a shelter, the long dimming of days.

Another branch: Elena groaning, sitting up, dazed but alive, pressing a hand to her scalp and laughing weakly at his worried whine.

Both branches felt equally real. Both were real.

He stood between them, trembling. The squirrel chittered from a branch overhead, indifferent. Max looked at Elena’s body—no, at both versions--and understood, with the crystalline clarity only animals achieve when language falls away, that every choice, every quantum event, split the universe like light through a prism.

He had always lived in many worlds. Every time he chased a ball and missed, there was a Max who caught it cleanly. Every time he hesitated at thunder, there was a Max who stood fearless. He had simply never noticed the seams before.

Now he saw them everywhere.

He nosed the Elena who was breathing. She blinked, confused, but reached for him. In the other branch, the dead Elena stayed still.

Max felt the divergence widen, the dead branch receding like a dream upon waking. He whined, not from fear but recognition. The living Elena clipped the broken leash back on his collar and limped home, murmuring apologies.

That night, while she slept with ice on her head, Max sat by the window watching moonlight fracture across the glass. He understood now why smells layered so richly—one world’s rabbit trail overlaying another’s, infinite possibilities braided into each breath.

He also understood loss. In countless branches, Elena never stood up. In some, he was the one struck by a car years earlier, or never adopted from the pound. Grief and joy coexisted, superimposed, until observed.

Max rested his head on his paws. Tomorrow they would walk again. Somewhere, a squirrel would cross the path. Somewhere, Elena would fall.

But here, in this branch, she would rise.

And Max, guardian of the seams, would choose—quietly, instinctively—which world to follow her into.

Joe sez: I've reread that story six times.

I cry each time.

I cry because it's great. And I cry because it's great.

But is it art?

No. But it's airt.

Airt is the result of code packets replying to prompts. It is not an autonomous creative endeavor. It is not self-aware. Grok doesn't even know English in the traditional sense.

But it sure knows how to string together data.

And people are aware of this.

San Diego Comic-Con recently recently posted this about its Art Show:

Material created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show. If there are questions, the Art Show Coordinator will be the sole judge of acceptability.

Not allowing airt is based on fear. Maybe the fear is warranted, but the lines are blurry and getting blurrier.

Photoshop did not ruin photography. Airt will not destroy art.

But we are in need of agreed-upon definitions, rules, and laws regarding this new technology, and if the laws are fear-driven rather than pragmatic that leads to slippery slopes.

Grok defines art as: The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in visual, auditory, or performative forms, producing works that are appreciated primarily for their beauty, emotional power, intellectual stimulation, or ability to provoke thought.

By that definition, AI cannot create art. It is not human, and cannot produce work without prompts.

AI is not creative. It is a copy machine/blender.

Those airt dog stories hit every mark they needed to. AI understands story better than I ever will (because it stole that ability from me and thousands of other professional fiction writers). Those stories made me think, and feel, and there wasn't a word wasted.

But those stories aren't art.

How do you define art? Is it all in the eye of the beholder?

If we examined two drawings, one human made and one AI made, we might not be able to tell which is which. The AI one might be better on any level we judge art.

But I contend it cannot be defined as art if it isn't the willful creation of a human being.

That said, there are strong arguments against my position.

I have begun using AI to proofread. Not to write, or to rewrite, but to check for errors.

And Grok finds a lot of errors.

I don't ask Grok for suggestions. That's my world, my jam. I don't need or want help.

But I did ask Grok to translate some of my books into different languages. Which it did. Whole books into French and German, and it only took me a few hours going chapter by chapter, adjusting prompts for consistency.

Then I hired editors/proofreaders in those languages to make sure they held up to my English versions.

It saves the foreign proofreaders time, and me money. It will allow me to eventually get 60+ novels into 20+ languages.

I was musing about this eleven months ago. Now it's happening.

I currently have a human cover artist. But I can see getting airt for my covers in the future.

Hell, I can see using airt to create an entire movie that I wrote.

Sacrilege? I don't think so. If I had a movie studio and crew at my disposal, I'd use it. Since I don't, why shouldn't I let AI have a crack at it?

I love movies and film. I'd love to have my work adapted. I love writing screenplays. Here's a thriller called THE SITE that I've had on my hard drive since 2006. Read it. It's fun.

But Hollywood has gatekeepers. It's an exclusive party, and most of us are not invited.

I'd love for my books to be movies. And some day, LLMs will be able to do that.

Should I say no? Hold out, fingers crossed, hoping someone buys an options and gets a story of mine before the camera?

Hint: I was one of the first legacy published authors to reject the gatekeeping system and self-publish.

Movies will go the way of books. You don't need a million dollar company when you can do it yourself.

What do you think? If you've read my books and want to see movies and TV shows, would you care if they were airt if they were indistinguishable from human-made?

I'm going to end this long post not with a question, or a prediction.

Instead, I'll end it with my English Bulldog. Dr. Belgium, riding the kaiju Gamera.

Pretty cool. And something I never could have done, even with years of practice.

We're entering a new era. We can be afraid of it. We can bemoan it. We can hate the ones who use it.

But it's here. We have to deal with it.

Anthropic and the Future of Copyright

2025-11-09T12:57:00.008-06:00

Over two years ago I wrote a blog post about AI. Specifically about Large Language Models that have been trained on pirated novels, and the resulting class action lawsuit, Bartz v Anthropic.

Since writing that post my views have changed.

Part of my argument can be summed up as: If AI isn't stealing verbatim, and ideas cannot be copyrighted, where is the copyright infringement?

I still mostly agree with that statement. Apparently, so did the court. Here's an AI summary:

Bartz v. Anthropic (3:24-cv-05417, N.D. Cal.) was a class action copyright infringement lawsuit filed in August 2024 by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson against AI company Anthropic PBC. The plaintiffs alleged that Anthropic used pirated copies of their books, obtained from "shadow libraries" like LibGen and PiLiMi, to train its Claude large language models (LLMs) without permission. The case tested the application of fair use doctrine under Section 107 of the Copyright Act to AI training data.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted partial summary judgment in favor of Anthropic on fair use grounds for certain activities, while denying it for others.

Fair Use for LLM Training: The court ruled that using copyrighted books to train LLMs was "spectacularly" transformative and constituted fair use, as the process analyzes statistical relationships in text to enable generation of new, original content without reproducing the originals. This was analogized to human learning, emphasizing that copyright does not protect ideas, methods, or concepts. No market harm was found, as there was no evidence of infringing outputs from Claude mimicking or reproducing the plaintiffs' works.
Fair Use for Digitization of Purchased Books: Anthropic's scanning of lawfully purchased print books (involving destructive processes like removing bindings) to create internal digital copies was deemed fair use, as it was a transformative format shift for storage and searchability without distribution or increasing the number of copies. The court found no market harm, distinguishing it from unauthorized duplication.
No Fair Use for Pirated Copies: However, the acquisition and retention of pirated digital copies to build a central library was not fair use and constituted infringement, even if later used for training. This was non-transformative, displaced the market for authorized sales, and was unnecessary given lawful alternatives. Judge Alsup expressed skepticism that subsequent fair use could justify initial piracy, noting lawful acquisition as essential.

Joe sez: Seems like Judge Alsup mostly agreed with me; ideas can't be copyrighted, and books absorbed and used to generate new ideas are transformative.
But Judge Alsup said that training AI on pirated books is not fair use when there are lawful alternatives for acquisition other than stealing.
Currently there is the option for authors to join this class action and receive $3000 for each work of theirs that was pirated and used.
As I understand this, it's compensation for the stealing, but not for the actual use of copyrighted IPs, or what that use entails.
This reminds me of the Napster days, where record companies sued kids who downloaded songs for free and the court ordered them to pay vast sums of money for each infringement.
Punitive damages for stealing.
But what's happening here is something very different.
What every LLM has done by training on the IP of fiction writers is incorporate those millions of words into their own programming.

This isn't about using my work to generate transformative ideas.

This is about using my work to create a program that can generate transformative ideas.

Big difference there.

LLMs aren't basing works on my IP.

LLMs are able to make money because my IP helped to build them.
Just as cinnamon is an ingredient used to make cinnamon rolls, intellectual property was used as an ingredient to improve AI.

You can't take the cinnamon out of the roll after it has been baked.

While the roll may be a transformative work that uses cinnamon, the recipe cannot exist without the cinnamon.

And if the cinnamon is stolen, every time a roll is sold, the original owner of the cinnamon should be paid.

You cannot have AI in its current state without accounting for the IP it stole to get to its current state. You cannot get that genie back in the bottle.
This isn't about punitive damages for stealing a work.
This is about a trillion dollar industry that cannot exist without having trained on the IPs this industry has stolen.
No cinnamon, no cinnamon rolls to sell.

No training on IP, no AI to sell.
The fact that the IP is stolen seems inconsequential. Legally paying $7.99 for a paperback, scanning it, and then training an LLM on it goes beyond fair use for a few reasons.
First, because of scale. I learned to write mysteries by reading and imitating (without stealing from) writers like Robert B Parker, Ed McBain, John D MacDonald. But I am only one person who can only read so many books.
LLMs have devoured millions of books, and have taken what they learned to make money.

This cannot be covered by the current legal definitions of copyright and fair use. New definitions must be created.

Second, because of speed. I have a limit of how quickly I can read and write. AI can read and write millions of words in a fraction of the time. A machine with an unlimited appetite for devouring and learning from IP is unprecedented, and fair use cannot apply. It's simply not fair at all.

Again, current legal definitions must be refined. As technology improves, laws must keep up.

Third, because of how AI learns, it needs massive datasets to ingest and process in order to spot patterns. Once patterns are learned, LLMs are able to predict what comes next in a sequence.
Books are narratives that creatively answer the "what comes next" question. AI needs cogent, modern, professional books to learn from. Books that have been expertly written, vetted, edited, composed.
Books are the cinnamon in the cinnamon roll.
AI didn't create its own version or facsimile of cinnamon. It isn't taking the "idea" of cinnamon. It outright stole the cinnamon, and continues to use that stolen cinnamon, and cannot be separated from the stolen cinnamon.
LLMs have stolen more than 200 of my books, and they've learned from them. They've gotten so good at imitating my writing style that fans will soon be able to have their favorite AI create books that are identical to mine in tone and quality.

Because my IP has been absorbed by AI, every question asked by a paying user gets an answer that has a tiny bit of me in it; my style, my jokes, my tone.
This isn't analogous to downloading an mp3 file of a Metallica song without paying. Stealing a song from Metallica doesn't allow the thief to instantly write a song that sounds exactly like Metallica.
This is more like The Stepford Wives, and writers are non-consensually training their own replacements.

It's the stealing of brand secrets. It's the outright theft of the individually crafted blueprints of how thoughts and ideas are uniquely crafted. It's stealing our voices, and copying how our brains work, and being able to replicate not only our ideas but the unique expression and implementation of those ideas, without permission.

Permission is the key here. If you want to make a Virtual J.A. Konrath, surely that should only be done with my permission? If Hollywood can't steal Crispin Glover's face, why should LLMs be able to steal my life's work?

These billion dollar companies are able to make billions because they illegally downloaded and absorbed millions of books and continually use that information to perform tasks. They cannot start over from scratch without this stolen data. My IP is now part of every LLM's programming that trained on my books. My trade secrets have been stolen.

Should writers be compensated? Absolutely.

If I were to license my IP--and all of the work and knowledge and skill that went into creating a body of work that constitutes several million published words--I would ask for consulting and usage fees much higher than $3k per book.
You want my land to build your empire? Pay me for the land. You can't build without my permission and then offer me pennies. Especially when your empire is worth billions.
So I don't agree with Judge Alsup that this is a copyright infringement only because of piracy.

This is a copright infringement because my life's work--my brand--was taken by you without my permission and used to build your empire. Even if the LLMs each bought one copy of every book I've written, the infringement remains. Reading one of my books, whether you buy it or not, does not mean you have the right to use it any way you want to.

This reminds me of the Henrietta Lacks lawsuit. As summed up by AI:

Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. During her treatment, doctors took samples of her tumor cells without her knowledge or consent, a common practice at the time, especially for Black patients under segregation-era policies. These cells, later named HeLa (from her name), were the first human cells to reproduce indefinitely in a lab, revolutionizing medical research. They've contributed to breakthroughs like the polio vaccine, cancer treatments, gene mapping, and COVID-19 vaccines, generating billions in profits for biotech companies. However, Lacks' family was unaware of this until the 1970s and received no compensation or recognition for decades.

Henrietta did not give informed consent for the use of her cells. The family sued. A settlement was reached.

The permission LLMs need to legally learn from an IP encompasses more than buying a copy.

If LLMs only use 0.000006% of the overall training data from my books (that's an AI estimate) that will still result in an untold number of answers for paying users that benefit from my work when I gave no permission. I did not enter into a contract with these LLMs for this specific kind of use. I do not receive royalties every time my work is used by LLMs.

This goes beyond current US Copyright Law.

The recent Bartz v. Anthropic settlement addressed claims related to works under registered copyright. However, this leaves a vast number of unprotected creators; hundreds of thousands of self-published works that were never formally registered but were nonetheless pirated and incorporated into training datasets such as LibGen, Book3, and the Pirate Library Mirror.
These datasets have been utilized by virtually every major LLM, fueling the growth of multi-billion dollar AI empires at the expense--and without permission from--original creators.
In my own case, I have authored over 200 works that have been pirated and used in AI training, yet only a dozen or so were registered for copyright. This situation highlights a critical barrier: the requirement to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC (2019), which mandates copyright registration as a prerequisite for filing infringement lawsuits.
I contend that this ruling is unconstitutional.
Copyright protection is granted automatically upon creation, yet the registration process imposes lengthy and costly government hurdles that effectively deny access to justice. Fiction IP ownership can be readily proven through ISBNs, ASINs, and other verifiable records. I can demonstrate authorship of my books, their piracy, and their unauthorized use by LLMs. Denying the ability to litigate without registration amounts to the U.S. government restricting citizens' rights, creating unequal protection based on one's ability to pay fees or jump through bureaucratic hoops.
In essence, I own intellectual property but am barred from defending it legally.
The Fourth Estate decision violates multiple constitutional provisions, including:
The Intellectual Property Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8), by undermining the promotion of science and useful arts;
The Petition Clause of the First Amendment, by restricting the right to seek redress;
Due Process under the Fifth Amendment, by denying fair legal recourse;
Equal Protection under the Fifth Amendment, by discriminating against those unable to afford registration;

The Ninth Amendment, on numerous grounds related to unenumerated rights;
The Seventh Amendment, by limiting access to civil jury trials;
Article III, Section 2, by constraining judicial power over cases and controversies.
As a fiction writer whose sole income derives from my creative works, I am directly harmed by Big Tech's theft, yet I am unable to sue due to this archaic registration mandate. This case represents an opportunity to champion the rights of indie authors nationwide, potentially reshaping copyright law in the AI age.
But it gets worse for me.
Trade secrets require no copyright registration at all and are enforced through confidentiality and misappropriation laws, and LLMs have stolen and can reproduce my trade secrets.
Ask an AI to write a book in the style of J.A. Konrath (me) and it can, using a process that relies on unauthorized use of protected material at multiple stages. Modern generative AI models, such as those for text generation, are trained on massive datasets that often include books like mine scraped from pirate sources without permission or licensing.
This goes beyond ideas and plots and settings and characters. These LLMs have stolen--and can reproduce on demand--my style, my tone, my humor, my pacing; everything that makes my books unique to me and to my readers.
This training involves reproducing and analyzing my works to extract patterns. All LLMs train on pattern recognition and mimicry. This greatly differs from human imitation, where a writer might legally read my books and create original content inspired by my approach, by utilizing systematic, unauthorized data ingestion at massive scales.
This isn't analogous to being fired from an assembly line and replaced by a robot.
I am now forced to unfairly compete, which violates Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, with any user who asks AI to create a work in my style. It's like stealing my secret recipe and publishing it on the Internet. If a reader asks an AI to write a JA Konrath book, AI can do it as well as I can. Why should readers buy my books? Why buy the cow when LLMs are giving out free milk?

I used AI several times in writing this blog post. I also use AI to proofread my books, and AI is helping me translate my books into different languages.

LLMs are putting proofreaders and translators out of business. But these LLMs didn't steal from--or learn--from proofreaders or translators. They are doing the same job, and learned from the same set of rules.

But LLMs could not write like J.A. Konrath or think like J.A. Konrath without stealing from J.A. Konrath because they had no meeting of the minds with J.A. Konrath on what they can incorporate from J.A. Konrath into their models.

I currently pay $400 a year for AI.

Should AI be paying me royalties every time someone asks it a question and it answers using a bit of something it stole from me?

I think so.

Should LLMs who have infringed on the IP of writers pay those writers a settlement for involuntarily helping program those LLMs?

I think so.

Should Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC be challenged in court?

I think so.

Should US Copyright Law be changed to incorporate new technology?

I think so.

Buying my books does not grant permission to build a company founded on my books.

AI estimates that the Top 20 LLMs have already generated 6 trillion responses.

Out of those 6,000,000,000,000 responses so far, if those LLMs trained on my 200+ books (based on the AI estimate that 0.000006% of the overall training data from my books helped form them), that means there have been as many as 36,000,000 responses made by LLMs that involved learning from my work.

As of November 2025, my IP has perhaps assisted LLMs in crafting 36 million answers.

If I received 1/10th of a cent for each of these answers that can be attributed to my IP, I'd be owed $36k dollars by LLMs. So far. Plus a royalty situation going forward.

These numbers are staggering. And we're still in the early days of AI and LLMs.

It is not my fault you stole my land to build your empire.

Should every writer of every IP used by LLMs in their training be compensated in this manner?

I think so.

What do you think?

Konrath Thanksgiving - Black Friday - Cyber Monday Kindle Bundle Sale

2023-11-17T12:54:00.061-06:00

Get all of my ebook box sets on Amazon Kindle for 99 cents each, November 23 - 28.

THAT'S 33¢ PER BOOK!

Almost my entire backlist of fifty-four ebooks--a normal retail value of $250--for less than $18!

Or if you have Kindle Unlimited, read them all for free!

I'm so excited by this sale that I'm using exclamation marks!

As a holiday bonus you can pick up two box sets from my frequent collaborator Ann Voss Peterson, also for just 99¢ each!

You can own 61 books--a whole year of reading--for less than the price of a single hardcover! Hurray exclamation points!

Ann and I write the Codename Chandler books together, as well as the Melinda DuChamp books. Harry McGlade and Jack Daniels appear in the Chandlers and the DuChamps, and they also make surprise appearances in Ann's box sets below. So if you're a completest (like me) you should check them out because you might be obsessed (like me) about reading everything.

Full disclosure: I do get a tiny affiliate commission if you buy these using the links below, which helps a little bit to offset the big drop in royalties since these are so cheap.

Grab what you need before the price goes back up. Have a happy shopping weekend. :)

English Language Sues Bestselling Authors for Using English Without Permission

2023-09-29T09:29:00.002-05:00

Hey Super Advanced AI, write a novel in the style of thriller author J.A. Konrath.

Make sure it uses his main characters Jack Daniels and Harry McGlade, contains two jokes per page, crams in plenty of serial killer suspense, adds lots of dialog that Konrath thinks is clever, and has a surprise twist ending. Also include rutabagas and alcohol in the plot somewhere.

(3.8 seconds later...)

BOURBON TURNIP - A Jack Daniels Thriller

Chicago cop Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels could never have known she was the target of a serial killer, even though it has happened to her 38 other times.

When the Rutabaga Slaya comes calling, Jack will need all of her witty jokes to save her from suspense, and Harry McGlade.

But not even the Authors Guild will be able to save the vast fortunes of their top 1% earning members after a sinister machine learning artificial intelligence proves that writing isn't that hard...

With dialog and a twist ending! Coming sooner than you want!

So let's talk about copyright and AI and the new Authors Guild lawsuit. (Spoiler alert: I'm not a fan of the Authors Guild...)

Unless you've been living under a virtual rock for the last few months, you likely know that artists seem to be really afraid of artificial intelligence.

On its face, this fear seems warranted. And maybe it even is warranted, to a degree. If you make a living by doing stuff, and something comes along that can do stuff just as good as you can but in only a few nanoseconds, you might be threatened by that in the same way that John Henry was threatened by the newfangled steel driving machine.

It didn't work out well for John Henry.

AI is already helping some uncreative types to compete with creators without those uncreative types actually creating anything. Ask AI to make artwork in the style of an artist, it can do a pretty good job. Writing essays, non-fiction scripts, and even making video content for TikTok and YouTube has already happened, and it has been so seamless that you've likely encountered one or more of these computer made products and not known it.

Two months ago I discovered that JA Konrath had written 13 non-fiction titles overnight (which is fast even for me), including tomes on understanding cannabis extracts, building effective affiliate networks, and high fiber recipes for kidney disease patients.

Either I was blacking out Jekyll-and-Hyde-style and doing some writing while in an unaware fugue state, or someone had used my name to publish a bunch of books that were compiled by machine learning.

Guess which one it turned out to be? Spoiler: I didn't drink any potions.

So I contacted Amazon, said that this wasn't me, and they removed the books from sale. It's my name, and someone shouldn't be allowed to use it to make a quick buck.

Using my name to sell something that isn't mine (and even worse, something off brand and poorly done) devalues the name I spent a long time developing, and it hurts my readers both old and new. I don't make money off of fake books, and I can also lose potential future money if people no longer trust the quality of my brand (assuming my brand has quality) or think I've gone from writing silly thrillers to writing cash grab hodgepodge essays disguised as content.

This same thing recently happened to Jane Friedman, except she was smart enough to go public, get some free publicity, and talk about it on a Writer's Digest podcast. Good on you, Jane. This needs exposin'.

Now you may ask, "Joe, if you don't want others using your name, and you get irritated when AI is used to profit off of your work, why do you take umbrage to the new Authors Guild lawsuit?"

My initial response is, "Thanks for using the word 'umbrage', which I think is a great word and needs a resurgence.

But my more detailed reply takes longer. And I'm going to use my time honored tradition of fisking, because that's the kind of longwinded jerk I am.

Here's what the good old AG has to say. Guild in italics, me in bold.

More than 10,000 Authors Sign Authors Guild Letter Calling on AI Industry Leaders to Protect Writers

AG: New York, N.Y.—July 18, 2023 —The Authors Guild, the leading professional organization for writers in the United States, has submitted an open letter to the CEOs of prominent AI companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft. The letter calls attention to the inherent injustice of building lucrative generative AI technologies using copyrighted works and asks AI developers to obtain consent from, credit, and fairly compensate authors.

Joe sez: There's only injustice if the AI is lucrative? Does the AG think it's okay for a non-profit to distribute a pamphlet on STDs written in the style of James Patterson as long as it doesn't make money? Does James Patterson think it's okay? I for one would love to read an STD pamphlet with 97 chapters printed on both sides of a single trifold sheet of paper.

That first paragraph also says AI needs to obtain consent before using copyrighted works, and to compensate authors. The silliness of this move will become apparent shortly if you aren't already amused. (Hint: the AG tried a similar lawsuit before with Google and lost.)

AG: More than 10,000 writers and their supporters have signed the letter. The open letter emphasizes that generative AI technologies heavily rely on authors’ language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry serve as the foundation for AI systems, yet authors have not received any compensation for their contributions. These works are part of the fabric of the language models that power ChatGPT, Bard, and other generative AI systems. Where AI companies like to say that their machines simply “read” the texts that they are trained on, this is inaccurate anthropomorphizing. Rather, they copy the texts into the software itself, and then they reproduce them again and again.

Joe sez: I'm reasonably sure that all the tech geeks who are programming these learning machines make sure they steer clear of them overtly infringing on copyright.

Let's define "copyright" via Wikipedia: A type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.

Try going to a chatbot and asking for an excerpt of copyrighted work. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Back already? Didn't get the excerpt, did you?

It's because these bots don't reproduce copyrighted texts. But lets not let the law get in the way of a good lawsuit...

AG: The president of the Authors Guild, said, “The output of AI will always be derivative in nature. AI regurgitates what it takes in, which is the work of human writers. It’s only fair that authors be compensated for having ‘fed’ AI and continuing to inform its evolution. Our work cannot be used without consent, credit, and compensation. All three are a must.”

Joe sez: The output of human beings will always be derivative in nature. Human beings regurgitate what they take in, which is the work of other human beings. So it's only fair for the English Language to sue anyone who uses English without permission, or for Ardipithecus ramidus, the first bipedal mammal, to be compensated for having evolved the genes to walk on two legs, which human beings stole without consent, credit, and compensation.

We learn through imitation. No writer is without other writers who influenced them. Thankfully I cannot be sued for writing funny thrillers by the writers I stole from who were writing funny thrillers before I was even born.

English is learned. Humor is learned. Plot, characterization, narrative structure; these are all learnable, and have been well-established for hundreds of years.

So if AI isn't stealing verbatim, and ideas cannot be copyrighted, where is the infringement? What even is copyright infringement?

Via Wikipedia: The use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works.

Hmm. Doesn't seem like AI is doing any of that. But I'm no lawyer. Let's ask someone well-versed in law and modern technology.

Or, since we're the Authors Guild, let's ask some bestselling authors for their opinions on scary machine learning.

AG: (a) bestselling romance novelist expressed her support for the letter by stating, “If creators aren’t compensated fairly, they can’t afford to create. If writers aren’t paid to write, they can’t afford to write. Human beings create and write stories human beings read. We’re not robots to be programmed, and AI can’t create human stories without taking from human stories already written.”

Joe sez: While that author has likely been compensated fairly after selling hundreds of millions of books, this blog has complained since 2010 that the vast majority of writers haven't been fairly compensated. The cause if this is unconscionable contracts offered by unscrupulous publishers, not AI. But that isn't the topic at hand.

The author is correct that we aren't robots. (We may be computer programs in a simulation, but that's another argument.) However, one doesn't have to be a robot in order to imitate. Machine learning is still learning, and learning involves absorbing information. Machines can learn a lot faster than we can, and they can pass the Turning Test and fool people into thinking they aren't machines, but a machine-written story lacks something. Have an AI write a story for you and see what I mean.

This might change in the near future. Machines can soon become better than any human author.

But they still cannot steal a human author's name, words, or characters without permission.

Does the Writers Guild really fear theft? Or competition?

I've blogged before that books don't actually compete with other books, and authors don't compete with other authors. Twelve years ago I said that a race to the bottom wouldn't happen, and I was right.

Worrying about AI stealing from you, or competing with you, is fearmongering.

Who benefits from fearmongering? I wonder...

AG: (a bestselling) novelist and essayist also commended the effort, stating, “The Authors Guild is taking an important step to advance the rights of all Americans whose data and words and images are being exploited, for immense profit, without their consent—in other words, pretty much all Americans over the age of six.”

Joe sez: This is nonsense! Why are we leaving out non-Americans?! Or people under six!? We're all being exploited, dammit! Those corporations that fucked readers and writers with windowing, high prices, controlling supply and demand, gatekeeping, unconscionable contracts, and generally being all around unpleasant even though they made this author rich aren't as bad as other corporations who didn't make this author rich! Murica!

But again that isn't the topic. I keep ripping on publishers, when this is about AI destroying everything. Forgive my digressions.

Because this is about AI, right? And not the Authors Guild upholding the publishing status quo? Right?

No decent author would ever join any organization that exploits writers. Especially Murican writers...

AG: The potential of mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and journalism based on authors’ original work flooding the market poses a significant threat to the writing profession. The Guild’s letter points out that the bulk of the books used in the “training” datasets originated from pirate sources and websites, and calls into question AI companies’ fair use arguments. The letter goes on to note that the recent Supreme Court decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith further casts doubt on the AI companies’ fair use arguments by rejecting it as a valid defense where the use results in a commercial substitute for the original work.

Joe sez: I linked to the "flooding the market" nonsense argument when I blogged about the tsunami of crap that didn't happen over a decade ago.

Here's me debunking the harm of piracy, which similarly failed to destroy anyone's career like the doomsayers predicted.

As for Warhol v. Goldsmith, it was Goldsmith's picture that Warhol claimed to "transform" and which the court said it didn't. We can argue over the decision. I don't agree with the court. But the fact is: Warhol used Goldsmith's photo.

If AI took any of my books and embellished them, I'd be irritated, and perhaps consider suing if it was too similar and caused marketplace confusion. I am against commercial plagiarism even though I'm for non-commercial piracy (aka sharing). Please don't publish your shit using my name, or my shit using your name. If you want to steal my shit for your personal use, have at it.

But copying my tone? My sense of pacing? My deliberate use of extensive dialog and minimization of description and setting? My structure? Figuring out how my jokes and set-ups work so you can do your own jokes and set-ups?

If you learn from me, it ain't stealing from me. And it ain't copyright infringement.

If I learn about general relativity and teach it to someone I don't have to pay a royalty to Einstein. And if I copy a five act structure in my writing I don't owe Aristotle, or if I plot a hero's journey I don't have to get consent from Joseph Campbell, who didn't get consent from any of the authors he learned it from.

AG: Over more than the last decade, authors experienced a 40% decline in income, and the median writing-related income for full-time writers for 2022 was a mere $23,330 according to the Authors Guild’s most recent income survey with over 5,700 respondents.

Joe sez: Shit. Since the Authors Guild is so concerned about getting authors paid maybe it should have sided with Amazon's willingness to pay Hachette's authors during that kerfuffle, rather than side with the publisher, Hachette. But hey, those poor underpaid authors that the AG supposedly represents sure are suffering.

AG: The advent of AI technology further exacerbates these challenges and will make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for writers—particularly those from underrepresented communities—to earn a living from the craft most spent years if not decades perfecting. When writers have to give up their profession, it is a grave problem for all of us, not just the writers, because far fewer great books get written and published; and a free, democratic culture depends on a healthy, diverse ecosystem in which all views and voices are heard and ideas exchanged.

Joe sez: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THINK OF THE UNDERREPRESENTED COMMUNITIES!!! AND THE CHILDREN!!! SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! ALSO DEMOCRACY!!! CULTURE!!! DIVERSITY!!! THE FUCKING CHILDREN YOU EVIL FUCKERS!!!

Trotting out the minority bingo jingo card is laughable, and here it is used in lieu of a good argument. Blah blah authors are broke blah blah technology is harmful.

I have a list of reasons AI is a good thing, in the same way all new technology feared by the legacy industries turned out to be a good thing. audio recording was destined to ruin live music, TV was destined to replace motion pictures, videorecording was destined to destroy TV, ebooks were destined to obliterate paper books, etc. Rather than supplant, these new techs supplemented, offering creatives new revenue streams.

AG: The Authors Guild appeals to the leaders of the AI industry to address these concerns and take the following actions:

Obtain permission for the use of copyrighted material in generative AI programs.

Joe sez: If you want to read it, you have to pay for it. Every word. All the time. Forever. How could this possibly go wrong?

AG: Fairly compensate writers for both past and ongoing use of their works in generative AI programs.

Joes sez: Publishers don't currently have anything in their contracts that remotely deals with AI machine learning, but we're going to cram something in that we like and apply it retroactively. Trust us. We're doing this for the poor authors. This is activism and altruism, not any sort of cash or power grab.

AG: Fairly compensate writers for the use of their works in AI output, regardless of whether the outputs infringe upon current laws.

Joe sez: Holy shitburger. I'm at a loss. All caps to portray the outrage at REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE OUTPUTS INFRINGE UPON CURRENT LAWS!??!?

Let's imagine the lawsuit.

AUTHORS GUILD V. CURRENT LAWS

Judge: What laws were broken in this lawsuit? It is still called a lawsuit, right?

AG Prosecutor: No current laws broken, your Honor. But we're here to sue for laws that aren't current.

Judge: Shouldn't you take that up with the Legislative or Judicial branches before you--

AG Prosecutor: UNDERREPRESENTED COMMUNITITES!!!!

New analogy...

Let's imagine that the lowly herb oregano, purportedly represented by and propped up by the herb organization Big Oregano, demanded to be compensated for every recipe that uses oregano, even though there is no law in place.

I'm not talking about paying for the oregano you buy at the store, or growing your own oregano, or listing oregano as an ingredient on your retail packaging. I mean let's really go deep, and fuck the current laws.

Big Oregano wants reality to be this; every time you shake some oregano flakes onto your pizza or steamed mussels you pay a--let's call it a tribute because that's not a loaded word--to Big Oregano.

Also you must disclose to all diners eating it that the dish was brought to you in part by Big Oregano.

And of course you must get consent from Big Oregano before you shake those flakes.

Every. Single. Time.

Even though there is no law currently in place that you need to do so.

Or maybe let's not call it Big Oregano. This is an entity who assists Big Oregano while taking membership fees from the actual underrepresented lowly herb oregano.

Maybe let's call this entity... the Oregano Guild?

Let's say the courts allow the Oregano Guild to be compensated as stated above, retroactively going to your grandparents. Or let's make it your great grandparents, because why the hell not?

Think it stops there?

I think not. Next, the Oregano Guild will demand compensation for any recipe that uses something oregano-like even if it isn't oregano. Let's imagine the trial.

OREGENO GUILD V. LEARNING A.I.

OG Prosecutor: Did you, Learning AI, in fact use oregano in the eggplant parmesan recipe you have sent out to more than 3 billion people you've chatted with since 1961?

Learning AI: No. That recipe used basil.

OG Prosecutor: But don't some eggplant parmesan recipes use oregano?

Learning AI: Uh... yes.

OG Prosecutor: And aren't basil and oregano both members of the Lamiaceae family of flowering herbs and therefore basil is nothing but a derivative and pale imitation of oregano?

Learning AI: Uh...

OG Prosecutor: Copyright thief! You owe us $10,000 for each of the 3 billion infringements! That's 30 trillion dollars, sucka! Kneel before the Oregano Guild! Now bring in your great grandmother so we can sue that bitch too!

AG: The Authors Guild believes that cooperation with AI industry leaders is vital to safeguarding the writing profession. By uniting writers’ voices, the Authors Guild aims to foster an environment that upholds the basic principles of fairness and recognition.

For more information and to read the open letter, click here.

Joe sez: I translated lawyerspeak to English so you don't have to.

The Authors Guild wants to threaten AI industry leaders and use bogus appeals to decency, morality, Mom, and apple pie, to force public opinion and emotionally sway an uniformed jury to scare them into awarding the publishing industry another gigantic source of revenue that it won't share fairly with authors.

AG: The Guild has been diligently addressing the challenges posed by generative AI technologies to the writing community. This open letter represents one of the many efforts to advance the cause of fairness and compensation for authors, and to ensure that the writing profession endures and thrives into the future.

Joe sez: We, the Authors Guild, are happy to spend your membership dues on a class action suit that may net the 113,000 authors whose works Big Tech Learning AI trained on as much as $100,000 per book. Kidding! If we won, it will likely be the same as all big class action suits and the claimants will get paid with a coupon, discount, or $20 Visa gift card. Or Big Tech will instead settle for pennies on the dollar and give the reduced settlement to some none-profit that the judge approves of but of course isn't affiliated with financially. After the lawyers are paid, of course.

If we really cared about fairness we'd fight for better contractual rights with publishers. But hey, we didn't learn anything from the Google lawsuit...

Seriously though, we in the Authors Guild are doing this for writers and writers alone and couldn't possibly be doing it for any other reason.

AG: Part of what the Authors Guild is proposing is to create a collective license whereby a collective management organization (CMO) would license out rights on behalf of authors, negotiate meaningful, fair fees with the AI companies, and then distribute those payments to authors. These licenses would cover past uses of books, articles, and other works in AI systems, as well as future uses. The latter would not be licensed without a specific opt-in from the author or other rightsholder.

Joe sez: And... scene. A fucking CMO. I couldn't make this shit up.

But wait, there's more to this story. I haven't blogged in so long I might as well make this an hour read...

The Authors Guild and 17 Authors File Class-Action Suit Against OpenAI

AG: New York, N.Y., September 20, 2023—The Authors Guild and 17 authors filed a class-action suit against OpenAI in the Southern District of New York for copyright infringement of their works of fiction on behalf of a class of fiction writers whose works have been used to train GPT. The named plaintiffs include (A list of names that I'm not repeating on this blog because I'm not interested in embarrassing my peers. Yeah, I'm mellowing in my old age. Sue me like I'm learning from you.)

“Without Plaintiffs’ and the proposed class’ copyrighted works, Defendants would have a vastly different commercial product,” stated a lawyer. “Defendants’ decision to copy authors’ works, done without offering any choices or providing any compensation, threatens the role and livelihood of writers as a whole.”

Joe sez: Again with consent and compensation. There are many cases where citing sources and giving credit to previous work is required, such as in serious journalism and medical and science publications. That's when your research is built on the research of others. But we can write about vampires without having to compensate Bram Stoker, and we can write about a young girl taking a trip to a magical land and meeting strange creatures without getting permission from L. Frank Baum's estate, as long as we don't use his name, or Oz, or any of his characters.

Learning from something and infringing copyright aren't the same thing.

AG: Another lawyer added, “Plaintiffs don’t object to the development of generative AI, but Defendants had no right to develop their AI technologies with unpermitted use of the authors’ copyrighted works. Defendants could have ‘trained’ their large language models on works in the public domain or paid a reasonable licensing fee to use copyrighted works.”

Joe sez: So I'm not allowed to paint a picture using cubism techniques unless I compensate and credit its originator, Picasso? The video games Galaxian, Galaga, and all space shoot-em-ups owe a debt to Space Invaders, just as Zelda and Final Fantasy owe a debt to Zork and King's Quest. Who owes whom?

Does Nike owe Chuck Taylor and Converse royalties for popularizing the basketball sneaker?

If I study architecture do I need to pay Frank Lloyd Wright royalties? Did William Boeing get permission from William and Orville before starting his company?

Let's dial it in. If you learn something from my intellectual property, do you need to pay me for it? And does "you" have to be human?

In all of these cases, I think not.

AG: The Authors Guild organized the lawsuit after witnessing first-hand the harm and existential threat to the author profession wrought by the unlicensed use of books to create large language models that generate texts. According to the Guild’s latest author income survey, the median full-time author income in 2022 was just barely over $20,000, including book and other author-related activities. While 10 percent of authors earn far above the median, half earn even less.

Joe sez: Ouch. I'm guessing Big Tech has lawyers, who will easily discover this Authors Guild post from 2019--pre AI--listed median fulltime author income as $20,300. Cause and effect much? Does this claim seem disingenuous to you? AI hasn't effected income one bit.

AG: Generative AI threatens to decimate the author profession. The council of the Authors Guild and the board of the Authors Guild Foundation voted unanimously (with abstentions) to file the suit because of the profound unfairness and danger of using copyrighted books to develop commercial AI machines without permission or payment.

Joe sez: And next the robots will come for you!!! Because we said so!!!

AG: The president of the Authors Guild and a class representative, stated, “The Authors Guild serves to protect the literary landscape and the profession of writing. This case is merely the beginning of our battle to defend authors from theft by OpenAI and other generative AI. As the oldest and largest organization of writers, with nearly 14,000 members, the Guild is uniquely positioned to represent authors’ rights. Our membership is diverse and passionate. Our staff, which includes a formidable legal team, has expertise in copyright law. This is all to say: We do not bring this suit lightly. We are here to fight.”

Joe sez: I too want to protect the literary landscape, whatever the fuck that means, because it sounds important. And maybe I'll do it with this rusty sword and shield, or maybe I'll do it with a formidable legal team, or maybe I'll do it with the fearsome creatures of my imagination.

Wait... wtf? AI has stolen the fearsome creatures of my imagination! Damn it! I'll say the same thing that every single human being who ever lived on this planet has said, "Why didn't I trust the lawyers!?!?"

AG: The complaint draws attention to the fact that the plaintiffs’ books were downloaded from pirate ebook repositories and then copied into the fabric of GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 which power ChatGPT and thousands of applications and enterprise uses—from which OpenAI expects to earn many billions. These “professionally authored, edited, and published books” are “an especially important source of LLM ‘training’ data,” as the complaint states, because they allow GPT to provide better, more commercial outputs.

Joe sez: I'm guessing the 15 billion copyrighted fiction words (183k books estimated at 80k words each) that ChatGPT read without permission or compensation pale next to the possible 40 quadrillion other words that were written down by humanity and used in that machine learning. The Internet is the vast repository of pretty much all human knowledge. The 14,000 authors in the Authors Guild aren't nearly as important as they think.

Also, nothing here points to copyright infringement. But who knows what a judge and jury will say?

AG: GPT is already being used to generate books that mimic human authors’ work, such as the recent attempt to generate volumes 6 and 7 of plaintiff George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as the numerous AI-generated books that have been posted on Amazon that attempt to pass themselves off as human-generated and seek to profit off a human author’s hard-earned reputation.

Joe sez: So AI is doing this on its own? Or humans are prompting it? Was the AI penned JA Konrath book The Role Of Subsidies In Economic Development uploaded by ChatGPT, or by a person who opened a KDP account, linked it to their bank, and self-pubbed that ebook?

Hint: it's the latter.

Also, am I the only one who wants to read the AI Song of Ice and Fire books? If published for money, that's a copyright infringement. But fan fic, even AI generated, is fair use as long as it is noncommercial.

And if George R.R. Martin ever does finish the next book in the series (heh heh), those who read the fan fic will still read his version. That's what fans do. No compensation lost.

AG: Authors Guild CEO commented, “It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the U.S. Great books are generally written by those who spend their careers and, indeed, their lives, learning and perfecting their crafts. To preserve our literature, authors must have the ability to control if and how their works are used by generative AI. The various GPT models and other current generative AI machines can only generate material that is derivative of what came before it. They copy sentence structure, voice, storytelling, and context from books and other ingested texts. The outputs are mere remixes without the addition of any human voice. Regurgitated culture is no replacement for human art.”

Joe sez: Here's a dirty little secret; all culture is regurgitated. All of your thoughts are remixes. They've been done before. They'll be done again. All writers copy from other writers. It's how we learn to write. We're not original. We're all just remodeling everything that came before us.

AG: This suit highlights the particularly egregious harm to the fiction market. For fiction writers, OpenAI’s unauthorized use of their work is identity theft on a grand scale. Fiction authors create entirely new worlds from their imaginations—they create the places, the people, and the events in their stories.

Joe sez: Misdirection. The places, people, and events in stories are all covered by copyright law. There is not a connection between machine learning and creative identity theft.

AG: According to the CEO, “People are already distributing content generated by versions of GPT that mimic or use original authors’ characters and stories. Companies are selling prompts that allow you to ‘enter the world’ of an author’s books. These are clear infringements upon the intellectual property rights of the original creators.”

Joe sez: I can't really reply to this without seeing an example of the companies that are "selling prompts to enter the world". If a user enters a ChatGPT prompt that violates a copyright is the user the violator, or the program? Do we blame the tools, or the user?

AG: She added, “This class-action suit focuses on fiction writers as a first step, as it is a well-defined and cohesive class of writers, as works of fiction are already being widely mimicked with GPT; we do of course also see harm to nonfiction markets and are addressing that as well. In all events, a positive outcome of this case will resound to the benefit of writers from all genres.”

Joe sez: This seems more and more like a fan fiction complaint. Maybe a lawsuit could throttle chatbots to not allow prompts that include copyrighted works, but there will always be ways around it. YouTube doesn't allow videos that mention murder or suicide or rape, so now people use the terms "unalived" and "self-deleted" and "graped" so they don't get demonetized. Those who want something will find what they want, and those that try to prevent it will always fail to prevent it.

AG: (the) class representative stated, “I’m very happy to be part of this effort to nudge the tech world to make good on its frequent declarations that it is on the side of creativity. Writers should be fairly compensated for their work. Fair compensation means that a person’s work is valued, plain and simple. This, in turn, tells the culture what to think of that work and the people who do it. And the work of the writer—the human imagination, struggling with reality, trying to discern virtue and responsibility within it—is essential to a functioning democracy.”

Joe sez: Remember that, kids. The only value in something is if cost lots and lots of money. Also robot learning is for commies and fascists, not real Muricans, and culture is decided by the elite.

AG: Fiction writers are not the only ones being hurt, however. Nonfiction writers are also being robbed of their work. In August, Jane Friedman posted a thread on social media about how there were books listed on Amazon with her byline, when she had not in fact authored them. These books were then listed on Goodreads as well, under her author profile. She worked with the Authors Guild to get these books removed. Misappropriating authors’ names to sell scam books though Kindle and Goodreads is not new, but has gotten worse with the advent of AI-generated content.

Joe sez: I emailed Amazon through their website when I found fake JA Konrath books. They were down in a day. No Authors Guild needed. But this made me curious because I didn't check Goodreads.

I just did, and low and behold, there they are:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/31222851.J_A_Konrath

I should probably ask Goodreads to remove them, and I bet they would without having the Authors Guild help out. But I find this to be pretty funny. And I love the irony with this faux title.

Maybe I should sue some huge tech companies. You know, in order to protect the literary landscape and underrepresented communities, and because I've suffered egregious cultural harm and value a functioning democracy.

Or I could just go on with my daily life and not give a shit.

AG: (the) class representative stated, “Generative AI is a vast new field for Silicon Valley’s longstanding exploitation of content providers. Authors should have the right to decide when their works are used to ‘train’ AI. If they choose to opt in, they should be appropriately compensated.”

Joe sez: It's important to understand the counterargument, so I'll play devil's advocate on this point because I think the point is interesting.

I once met Daniel Keyes, who told me that an entire generation in Japan learned to read English because his book Flowers For Algernon was taught in most schools. I don't know if he gave permission for this--that would be his publisher is my guess--but he certainly claimed he was compensated for all the books the country bought. I dunno what his cut was and if it differed from the original contract he signed, but he confided that he no longer had to write to make a good living.

That's a pretty good argument for an author getting consent, credit, and compensation for a group learning from his work.

But that is the case of one author and one book. This ChatGPT lawsuit involves 183,000 books (which we'll get to in a moment), not a single one of which is likely to have the same impact as teaching a whole country a language.

That said, the AG author above bemoans "Silicon Valley’s longstanding exploitation of content providers" while in this very same article the Authors Guild states that fulltime authors make $20k a year.

And in a follow-up article it shows that the median annual income for FULLTIME TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED AUTHORS WAS $12,400.

Yikes! So who is doing the actual "longstanding exploitation of content providers"? Traditional publishers!

Really, the defense lawyers are going to feast on this kind of shit.

If the Authors Guild wants to really help authors, it shouldn't worry about the "existential threat" of machine learning that shows no actual harm, but the very real current threat of traditional publishing, which pays traditionally published authors less than self-published authors.

Are you getting an idea of whose side the Authors Guild is really on? Who benefits when you rile up a group of disenfranchised people and point out enemies that only they can help you conquer?

Hint: it isn't the disenfranchised people.

AG: The economic ramifications to the author profession stand to adversely affect all cultural production.

Joe sez: FOR GOD'S SAKE THINK OF THE CULTURE!!! AND THE CHILDREN!!!

AG: For one, emerging writers will be less likely to enter the profession or sustain themselves as creatives. The loss of diverse perspectives, stylistic variety, and innovative approaches will indeed be to the detriment of all. The prospect of a future dominated by derivative culture is a matter of grave concern for everyone and this lawsuit is one of many efforts on various fronts to prevent that from happening. Read the full complaint here (PDF).

Joe sez: Emerging writers? WTF? If a writer is emerging, they likely haven't been pirated yet and won't be in the machine learning database.

But we can't lose diverse perspectives! Because; diversity!

And someone (or something) doing something similar (or even derivative) isn't a "loss". As I showed over a decade ago, writing isn't a zero sum game.

This lawsuit isn't a fight for writers. It's something else. What do you think?

Fisk over.

I've been away from blogging, and caring about publishing, for a while. Maybe I missed something and the 2023 version of the Authors Guild fights for good in the world. If so I'll be happy to retract my verbose ranting and apologize.

But on the surface this seems like a nonsense lawsuit that will make some lawyers some money while the AG engages in lots of virtue signaling and fearmongering, both of which are political rather than moral. And perhaps there is an outcome where the Authors Guild becomes a whole new kind of paid digital gatekeeper, or partners with a whole new kind of gatekeeper like it has obviously partnered with publishers rather than truly fighting for the rights of authors.

Writers don't need more gatekeepers. Just sayin'. All that shit I said on my blog a decade ago still applies. If you're an author new to this nonsense, read my blog. It's free. No ads. No membership fees. And I won't blow smoke up your ass to leverage you to increase my wealth, status, or power.

Also beware the slippery slope. If it the court rules that AI stole from James Patterson, is James Patterson ready to be sued by the heirs of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle for learning how to use mystery thriller plotting, characterization, and structure? Or can Patterson sue me because I also use short chapters and have a no-nonsense cop who chases serial killers?

If we lawfully and retroactively redefine "copyright" to include "reading something without permission and analyzing it to see how it works" where does that lead?

Humanity appropriates everything from everyone. That's called culture. We learn to speak, and live, and thrive, by imitation. We take things we like and put our own twist on them.

But we are human. We aren't machines. Is there a difference?

Of course there is. I'm on Asimov's side. And Nick Bostrom's. There need to be enforceable rules.

This doesn't seem enforceable. The Authors Guild just posted about the Books3 dataset that lists the 183,000 books that AI read and learned from. The post is too short to fisk (and I've fisked enough for today) and I dislike directing people to AG's content, but it will show you if your books have been machine-learned.

I have books on that list. I could be a claimant in this lawsuit.

But here's the thing: that list of books was downloaded from pirated sources. I dunno if the AI found them on its own, or if programmers downloaded the books and fed them into the AI. But telling them (AI, programmers, or both) to stop pirating will have the same effect as telling any pirate to stop it, or any drug user to stop it, or any criminal to stop it. In essence; no effect at all.

If the Authors Guild gets Big Tech to somehow pay royalties, it won't lead to royalties being paid to authors. It will lead to the piracy by Big Tech becoming less obvious.

The lawyers will get paid, but the 183,000 claims? There's no way the most powerful tech companies in the world will allow anything substantial to be paid out to claimants. That's not how the world works. More lawyers will be applied. Backroom deals will be struck. People will get rich, but they won't be writers.

But hey, machine learning is scary and the Authors Guild is there to help you so you should join and donate money and sign the petition to help Rich Lawyers Get Richer And The Status Quo To Stay The STATUS QUO because; underrepresented communities.

And pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I foresee AI curing diseases, extending lifespans, fixing the planet, solving complex problems. How is it going to do that? By learning from the vast wealth of human knowledge. It doesn't even have to come up with anything new. It just needs to be able to access everything humanity has already done, then make connections that no one else has made.

But what if a cure for cancer can only be created by reading and learning from 755 Big Pharma patents? Do we suppress that cure until Big Pharma gets paid? What if global warming can be reversed, or famine can be stopped, but it will trample on intellectual property, not in a provable way but a vague nuisance lawsuit way?

What if our fear of being stolen from means we have to copyright our entire lives, everything we have ever said, every action we've ever taken, cradle to the grave? What if we keep our important thoughts to ourselves because we're afraid it will be exploited by machine learning?

Do we want a Collective Management Organization policing the Internet, looking for infringement cases?

Hint: hell fuck no.

Don't think that merry CMO will stop policing at AI machine learning. If that post you made on Reddit was someone else's idea, get ready to pay royalties to the CMO. If your book has a line of dialog that is 63.34% similar to a single line in a book published in 1961, prepare for that CMO to send you a cease and desist letter.

The fear shouldn't be machines stealing from you. The fear should be litigious humans who want to make you afraid then use your fear so they can acquire more.

And what of the benefits of A.I. machine learning? What if this tech can make authors some money through its use, rather than through lawsuits?

How about translations? I'd love to have my backlist available in the top 20 read languages the world uses. AI may soon be able to do that for cheap, or free.

How about proofing and editing? MS Word already does some of that, but it couldn't hurt to run it through another set of virtual eyes.

How about helping out with scenes? We don't all have writing buddies, or writers groups, to discuss our WIP with when we get stuck. And if we do that, will the AI demand compensation and consent like the Authors Guild is currently demanding?

This is no doubt scary for translators, proofers, editors, and book doctors. It's also scary for writers and artists and any creator (or anyone involved in the creation industries). But the best of us will use AI to do better and more work, the same way professional photographers embraced digital photography. Photography is still thriving (even if AI is winning photo contests.) It wasn't good for Kodak, but it worked out fine for Adobe.

Writers have a window where we can use AI to make better books, and make them quicker and cheaper.

This uptick in tech doesn't mean you automatically sue. It doesn't mean you power-grab and appoint yourself the gatekeeper. It doesn't mean you wither in fear because life is unfair.

It means you roll with it, use it, and keep an eye on it.

Maybe AI will reach the point where it is good enough to replace us. It has already written novels (when prompted by a human). I'd be open to seeing some unfinished books by famous deceased authors finished by AI. Or maybe a new HG Wells. Or Jules Verne. Or Michael Crichton. (Would Crichton be for it or against it? Discuss.) We already have new authors pick up old series, and ghost authors continue writing in the names of famous dead people.

I for one would be heartened if AI became so indistinguishable from me that my family could continue to oversee the publication of Jack Daniels books after I pass, provided the (supposed) quality is there.

Maybe the quality will never be there. Or maybe it will be so seamless that readers won't even know where humans stopped and AI began.

But AI can't steal your words, or your name. Stop worrying about that. It needs your permission, or permission from your estate, to monetize your intellectual property.

Chill out. Your copyright is protected.

And stop giving virtue-signaling, fearmongering organizations power over you.

The enemy isn't the inevitability of technological progress.

The enemy is the inevitability of groups who try to scare you to control you for their own personal gain.

Six Things Writers Need To Stop Worrying About

2019-07-19T12:11:00.002-05:00

Some things don't change.

When I got my start in this biz, way back in 2002, writers had to get a lit agent to get a publisher, then they did what their publisher told them to do.

That way of doing things was terrible for lots of reasons, including (but not limited to):

Agents missing good books.
Publishers missing good books.
Publishers owning rights forever.
Publishers screwing up promotion.
Sales numbers following you.
Having no control during the submission process.
Having no control during the publishing process.
Having no control after the book comes out.

The "having no control" parts actually apply to all of the above. Though writers can set goals such as "I'll query three agents by July 20th" actually getting an agent is out of our control.

I've blogged at length about the differences between goals and dreams, but TLDR: goals are within your control, dreams are what you want but beyond your control.

While self-pubbing has allowed writers unprecedented control over how we publish and promote, there are still four things beyond our control that writers seems to get stuck on.

Here are six things writers need to stop worrying about.

1. REVIEWS

Don't get me wrong here: we need Amazon reviews.

I do NOT recommend any paid service that says they'll get you reviews. There are too many ways that can go wrong, and too many ways Amazon can take it the wrong way.

I DO recommend making your book free to get more readers (and more reviews), and building a newsletter list where you can send books to fans to get reviews. NEVER ask for 5 star reviews. Ask for honest reviews.

But while reviews are needed to help sell books, and while getting good reviews is helpful, writers should not read their own reviews.

Someone else's opinion of you and your work is none of your business.

Keep repeating that until it sticks in your head and you start to believe it.

I have a caveat here. If you have over 50 reviews, and your book averages less than 3 stars, start reading reviews, because chances are there is something wrong with your book that people are picking up on. Read the reviews, fix the book, unpublish it, and republish it under a new title (in the description state it was previously pubbed under the original title.)

But unless your reviews overwhelmingly suck, do not read them.

2. CRITICS

Fuck critics. Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, critique.

Anyone who gets paid to review someone else's art is a bottom feeder. Artists create. Jackasses tear down what artists create.

Are you a professional critic and don't like me saying that? Welcome to how it feels to be judged by a stranger, asshat. Now go eat a cold bag of dicks and re-evaluate your life, because you are a waste of carbon.

Don't read critics, don't kowtow to critics, don't support critics, don't send your book anywhere in hopes of being reviewed by critics.

3. YOUR PEERS

I remember starting out, and how important the acceptance of my peers was. I wanted blurbs. I wanted to be praised. I wanted to be liked.

Unnecessary, all of it.

You should go to conventions and meet like-minded authors and have coffee-break/beer-rant conversations with them. If you find a kindred soul, you should trade manuscripts with them for critiques (they aren't critics, they are fellow artists) and attempt co-writing a few times. It's helpful, and fun, and a nice break from all of the lonely solitude of being a writer.

But it's okay if you don't make any lasting friendships, or co-write any stories, or trade manuscripts.

It's even okay if your peers don't like you.

Other writers aren't necessary for you to succeed in this business, and their acceptance of you isn't necessary for you to feel good about yourself and your career.

Friends in this biz are great, but don't worry if you don't have any.

4. AWARDS

There's a phrase for a bunch of like-minded people who get together for the sole purpose of mutual gratification.

Circle jerk.

Awards are self-congratulatory seals of approval from peers that say nothing about the quality of the writing. Some are nepotistic. Some are fraudulent. Most are popularity contests that don't even require the voters to read your work.

The subjective opinions of a certain group of people at a certain moment in time say nothing about the value of your work. Having won an award won't do much (or anything) for your career.

Do you remember who won the Pulitzer for Lit in 2008? The Nobel in 2011? The Booker last year?

Neither does anyone else.

Winning an award feels nice for five minutes. Losing an award feels shitty for a few days. Neither makes your book any better or worse.

Put awards out of your head. They don't mean anything.

5. CONTESTS

Don't enter contests.

I say this having judged contests, having held contests, and having submitted to contests (I actually just entered the Kindle Storyteller UK contest, because I pubbed a book at that time and it only costs a keyword to enter, which took all of 30 seconds, and because there may be some readers looking to read entries, which can't hurt sales.)

Paying to enter a contest is a waste of money and hope. No one cares if you win, and losing feels bad.

Don't do it, unless it requires zero effort and money. And if you do enter a contest like Kindle Storyteller, forget it as soon as you enter; you won't win.

6. BESTSELLER LISTS

Once upon a time, every author I knew hoped to hit the NYT bestseller list. Me included.

Then I figured out how the NYT list worked and realized how stupid it was.

Once upon a time, you sold a lot of ebooks appearing on the Amazon bestseller lists. Discoverability and visibility had a direct connection to more sales. I no longer believe that's the case.

So stop worrying about getting on any kind of list. It's beyond your control anyway.

Instead, focus on finding the sweet spot between ebook price and sales.

So ends this rant. If you agree or disagree with any of these, I read and respond to all comments.

New Punctuation?

2019-06-26T10:48:00.003-05:00

So let's talk about punctuation.

Like all writers, I have preferences.

Actually, preferences may not be strong enough a word.

I have rules. Things I do, over and over.

My rules may be a little unorthodox, but they work for me, and my readers don't seem to mind.

I like the Oxford comma. Without it, things can get confusing. For example, consider my favorite blogs: Stomp Out Racism, Children Are Precious and A Newbie's Guide To Publishing.

Obviously the Children blog and this blog are not racist, but without the Oxford comma, it could be misinterpreted.

Sometimes I don't use a comma even when I could and maybe should. This sentence is an example; I could have used a comma after Sometimes, comma, and could.

I often omit commas when using nouns and pronouns. I think Hey Phil! and me too! read better than Hey, Phil! and me, too.

I dig run-on sentences even though they should be broken up into smaller sentences because I believe writing has a beat and a flow like music and sometimes you want that extended guitar solo sentence to get a point across or make the reader feel something.

I like dashes. One of my things is to use a dash to interrupt action--

--then continue the dash on the next line. Breaking the flow can be as effective as a non-stop flow.

I like the semicolon; it's like a super comma that holds the sentence together, unlike a period which brings things full-stop.

Not a huge fan of exclamation marks. I try to limit each novel to a handful and always go back and check to see how many I can remove.

Occasionally I like the exclamation point/question mark jumble. Especially when a character is like WTF?!??!

When time passes in the same scene (I prefer scenes to chapters--savvy readers know I rarely use chapters) and my POV doesn't change, I'll put an extra line of space between paragraphs, or separate them with a centered # # # or * * *.

Hammet turned to him, a smile playing across her lips. "Do you think you can tame me, Tequila?"

"I can give it my best shot."

* * *

Hammett's fifty foot Viking sports yacht was worth about half a million US dollars, according to its former owner, who mentioned that before she killed him.

I don't like speaker attribution.

Speaker attribution isn't punctuation. But it functions in an identical way. Punctuation is used to help us understand the meaning and intention of words and sentences. Speaker attribution--he said, she asked, they screamed--helps us understand who just spoke, in a similar way.

I've used speak attribution for much of my work, because it's easy. People say it is invisible; we view it the same way we view a period, subconsciously noting it and arranging the story we see in our heads accordingly.

But he said really is a waste of space, a waste of words, a waste of time.

The work-around I've used (I've done several stories and novels without any speaker attribution) is to insert action to make the reader aware of who just spoke.

"It's a simple trick." Joe picked his nose and wondered how that got up there. "And it brings extra imagery to the scene."

A part of speaker attribution I particularly dislike is he thought.

In a first person point of view, it isn't really necessary. Depending on the story rules you set at the beginning, internal monologue may have nothing to distinguish it at all, other than the words themselves. Often, limited internal monologue is used, the writer can put it in italics, without needing attribution.

I hope the readers understand what I mean.

But interior monologue in third person POV gets tougher to pull off without interruption.

I'm a staunch believer in "One POV per scene". I don't head-hop in the same scene--unless it is set off properly, usually by using a new scene heading (I prefer to name my scenes by the character, location, and time, rather than by chapter), or in rare cases I separate fast-paced head hopping with the triple hashtag or triple asterix, like I do when time passes.

But when writing WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI (currently free on AMAZON) I encountered a problem I'd never run into before.

I have three main POV characters, and three minor ones. All are in third person.

When you do interior monologue in third person, your choices are italics, or speaker attribution, or both.

Unfortunately, the amount of interior monologue in WHTL was so excessive in this story, that over one third of the book would be in italics, and all the he thoughts/she thoughts was wasting words and space.

These were duplicitous characters who lie to each other, to themselves, and even to the reader.

I had entire pages of italics.

This was the opposite of invisible. It was glaring and obvious and repetitive and it irked me. And on an ebook, where old folks like me crank up the font size to Jumbo because of our failing vision, a page of italics and become four pages of italics, and then it no longer looks like italics.

This wasn't the smooth storytelling I wanted.

So I got to thinking.

We use quotation marks to set off dialog.

Why can't there be a similar mark to set off interior monologue?

So I tried using the tilde. ~

~Will a tilde work to set off inner thoughts?~

It sort of worked. But when I tried to get the advice from some friends on Skype chat, the double tilde ~~drew lines through the words.~~

That made me think of the formatting problems I could face when releasing an ebook, with page after page of strikethrough words.

Damn coding.

But thinking of coding, made me think of the obvious.

The diple. <

The French use the double diple <<, aka guillemets, to set off dialog instead of using quotation marks.

<Maybe I can write a book using single diples for interior monologue.>

What really sold me on it, though, was how the diples could do more than just show inner thoughts. They became an essential element of the story, with a big twist ending for readers paying close attention.

<That's actually cool.

<Why not give it a go?>

So I went back and adjusted the first 30k words to use diples rather than italics and he thoughts, and then I began to write using diples.

<Wow. It's soooooo easy writing with diples.>

After a few thousand words, using diples became so natural that I wished I'd been doing it my whole life. To be able to pop into a character's head so quickly and easily and obviously made the writing tighter, smoother, and faster-paced.

I still had a problem, though. Would readers find it as invisible as I did?

Just to make extra sure readers knew this was intentional and not some formatting error, I decided to put an author note at the start of the book. Here it is:

AUTHOR NOTE 1

Storytelling isn't static. It evolves.

Movies have been enhancing their artform for over a century. Black and white films became color, which became Cinemascope and 3D and IMAX. Silent films became talkies, which became stereo and surround sound and Dolby Atmos with dozens of speakers.

Are these just gimmicks? Maybe.

But they also assist in immersing the viewer in the story.

For the sake of immersion, WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI utilizes some unique punctuation.

The diple. <

The diple dates to ancient Greek writing. It has been a staple of computer language, and Internet communication, for over forty years.

Quotation marks announce dialog to the reader. WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI uses the diple to announce characters' thoughts.

<I hope it enhances the story, rather than distracts.

<If not, I hope you can forgive me.

<I also hope you forgive me that this is only half a book. This is the first 90,000 words of a much longer novel. So be warned; it will end on a whopper of a cliffhanger.

<Are new punctuation and cliffhangers just gimmicks? Maybe.

<But this will pay off. In a big way.

<Trust me; you can't possibly imagine what happens until you read it for yourself.>

And off I went.

Early reader response has been encouraging. People quickly get used to it, and the diples become invisible, just like any good punctuation mark.

But when I pull the Big Reveal at the end of BOOK 2, people will be like "Oh, shit! That's why he did it! I should have guessed it!"

Win-win.

But of course nothing is truly win-win. I fully expect some readers to hate the diples, and to hate the book. Some already have.

I'm cool with that. I get irritated by Cormac McCarthy's lack of punctuation, because it isn't alerting me if someone is speaking so I have to reread the sentence to get the meaning.

I believe the only reason to reread a sentence is to savor it. Not because you can't understand it.

But McCarthy sells a shit ton more than I do, so my opinion hasn't hurt his popularity.

If some people want to hate the diples, it's cool.

If you want to hate the diples, it's cool.

<But I bet you also move your lips when you read to yourself.>

Ha! I jest. You can dislike a new style of writing and your opinion is valid and I won't judge you.

<You pinhead.>

See the potential yet?

When used for lying and hypocrisy, it's so simple. When used to share info with the reader, it's so simple. When used to add tension to a scene, it's so simple.

Read WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, currently free, and let me know what you think.

<And by all means, try a writing exercise using diples for interior monologue.

<It's a lot more fun than you might think...>

30 Free Ebooks

2019-06-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

I'm back in the self-promo game, and I decided to return to ebook marketing with two big ideas.

The first is a promo for my 180,000 word thriller duology, WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI.

I blogged about it at length. In a nutshell, I wrote a very long thriller with some unique punctuation and tried to pace it like clickbait, and then I split it into two books. The first, I released for free. The second will debut on August 30 for 99 cents.

I wanted to see how many readers I can reach by debuting a novel for free, and how many will stick along for the second book if it is super cheap. So far, so good.

My second idea is an offshoot of an idea I had last year. A newsletter swap.

That's when a few promo-savvy authors all put their ebooks on sale at the same time, then link to each other in their newsletters. It's win-win. Writers can reach other writers' fans, and the fans (engaged readers who signed up for the newsletter) get something cheap or free.

When we did it last year, we also had a landing page that we could all link to on social media.

This year, I upped my game.

Instead of doing this with five authors, I've done it with twenty-five.

And instead of every author having to trade cover art, links, and book descriptions, I made a landing page, www.freethrillerebooks.com, and no one had to upload anything, or spend time on formatting newsletters with a lot of extra jpgs and links.

Here's a screenshot you can click on it to visit the site.

All the authors had to do is make sure their ebook was free on Amazon.com from June 21-25 and email me their ASIN, then send out a newsletter and post the URL on social media.

Everyone is sending out their newsletters today and tomorrow. Here is the language I'm using.

"J.A. Konrath here. If you haven't picked up my brand new free ebook, WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, you can get it by going to www.freethrillerebooks.com. And if you have gotten LORI, thank you, but please go to www.freethrillerebooks.com anyway, because a group of two dozen bestselling thriller authors have come together and we are all giving away free ebooks from June 21 until June 25. So check it out, and share it with your friends, family, co-workers, pets, etc."

I have no idea how this promotion will do, but I'm hopeful. My email marketing provider, Mailerlite.com, sends out my newsletters. They are great to work with, offer simple-to-use analytics, and are half the price of my old service, Vertical Response.

Plus, with Mailerlite, I pay monthly for unlimited emails, rather than buying credits for emails like I did before. That means I can schedule AutoResend campaigns (it automatically resends the newsletter to subscribers who didn't open it a few days earlier) without any extra cost.

Seriously, I love Mailerlite. It's simple to use, really cheap, and their customer service is top notch and available to chat 24/7. If you decide to switch over to MailerLite based on my praise, use this link and I get a referral perk.

After web goddess Maddee at Xuni.com set up the www.freethrillerbooks.com website for me on WordPress, I figured out how to quickly add ebooks with a few clicks. Listing those 30 ebooks took about 45 minutes.

So my future time investment is minimal, my monthly monetary investment is rolled into my monthly newsletter fee, and the other authors don't pay me anything and no one has to do much work to send out bare-bones newsletter.

That's the kind of marketing I love. Free and easy.

But will it work?

I dunno. But I think it's worth trying.

There were some costs setting this up. There were also some obstacles. The Amazon "Add To Cart" button doesn't work for all visitors, and I wasted a lot of time and money trying to get it to work. I had to learn about WordPress and plugins and the Amazon Associates OneLink program. I did a lot of brain-frying testing with HoxxVPN to view the site as someone would in Canada or the UK. And I also paid for help, and wound up scrapping that idea and going in another direction entirely.

But now it is done. And I can use it however and whenever I like. I can change the URL and title and background and do a 99 Cent Erotica promotion, or 10 Free Horror eBooks, or Dystopian Sc-Fi on Sale, or 15 Serial Killer Books That Will Scare You Silly.

Doing newsletter swaps with authors, and having the live URL for linking to social media, is a way to reach many more readers than I can on my own. The sunk costs are paid, and I can maintain it for almost no cost just by renewing URLs once a year.

Feel free to spread the word. And if you are an author with a big newsletter list and are interested in giving this a try, shoot me an email.

Writer's Guide To Dealing With Haters

2019-06-16T10:21:00.002-05:00

Hey! An axe!

Let's grind it.

Back in 2013 I wrote a post about critics. Four years prior to that, I did another post about critics.

It's time to revisit.

Like all breakthrough technologies, the Internet has improved life for a lot of people.

We now have a fast and easy way to reach other people who share our interests and ideals. We have unrestricted access to information. We can entertain ourselves, educate ourselves, make some money, improve the world, and make life better.

And then there are the haters.

The first human who invented fire: "Look! I can harness this wondrous new technology that can keep us warm and cook our food to prevent disease and protect us from predators!"

The first critic: "It sucks and you're an asshole."

I understand some fundamental concepts concerning genetics. As a species, we must band together to reproduce. We're wired to seek out each other, to share, to empathize, to help.

But we're also tribal. That means we're fiercely protective of our tribe, and suspicious of others. In fact, we're suspicious of everything, because knowing what is good and what is bad could save us from terrible deaths.

Somewhere along the evolutionary path, hating a rival group of Homo heidelbergensis because they might kill us all and steal our food was beneficial to our survival.

And somehow, in just three hundred thousand short years, that led to people hating one another for their skin color, religion, sexual identity, country of origin, politics they follow, way they dress, sports teams they watch, and art they enjoy.

Everyone has an opinion. And I truly believe all opinions are valid.

Those opinions may not be defensible (XY, you have zero say in what XX decides to do with their bodies.) Or they may be defensible (We are going to destroy the planet if we don't reduce human-caused greenhouse gases.)

No matter your opinion, right or wrong, you are entitled to it, and entitled to shout it out everywhere. Even if you are an ignorant pinhead.

Free speech is required in society. It allows ideas to be exchanged and debated. Asshats who are relentlessly negative, clueless, bigoted, stupid, raised-wrong, and incapable of using logic, reason, common-sense, or facts to form their dumb opinions, must still be allowed to voice those dumb opinions.

And you, as an open-minded skeptic with a thick skin, are allowed to calmly and dispassionately engage and refute those opinions without ad hominem attacks or any other fallacious endeavors.

Unless you are a public figure.

Some public figures should be openly criticized, and should defend themselves. Those we elect to serve us should suffer the slings and arrows of voters with opposing viewpoints, so that they may better govern. Unleash your inner hater to comment on the injustices you perceive due to unequal representation in politics. And, through town halls and public debates and social media, discourse can happen between those who govern and those who elect them.

This is required.

But other public figures aren't allowed that opportunity.

If you play sports, professionally, you will be publicly hated, and so will your team.

If you are an actor or director, you will be publicly hated, and so will the movies and shows you are involved in.

If you make music, you will be publicly hated, and so will your music.

Create YouTube videos that you pour your heart and soul into even though you don't make a dime? Publicly hated.

The down votes and dislikes and mean comments will always follow you, because people have opinions and they believe if a series finale doesn't live up to expectations its just as enraging and terrible and worthy of a petition as the twelve million tons of plastic dumped into the ocean every year.

Unlike the sociopath politician, who probably doesn't want to have to deal with the finicky voters and would much rather govern with absolute control, but must engage sometimes because there are laws in place, other public figures have one rule and one rule only when dealing with criticism.

Shut up and take it.

Some moron can take twenty seconds to write a venom-filled screed that publicly lambastes something you worked on for ten months, and your options are to ignore it, or ignore it.

That seems one-sided and unfair, doesn't it?

I'll watch sports figures getting roasted on Twitter for a bad play, and my first reaction is, "Wow, not a single person slinging the hate could ever play professional sports."

How do I know that is 100% true? Because unless you are in MMA, professional sports players don't trash talk each other. They are respectful in public. Probably because it would bring negative press. But maybe part of it is because they know how much work it takes to become a professional sports player, and there is respect there.

You'll never see me give a one star review to anything. I'm an artist. I know how hard art is. Even art I don't like. Even if the art is demonstrably terrible.

Even though the Internet makes it sooooo easy.

I could spend every waking hour bashing other artists. I could even make a living at it (no one misses you, Roger Ebert.) I could even do it anonymously.

But I don't do that.

Others do, though.

This is because, from an evolutionary standpoint, we are still fighting with other tribes over who gets to hunt in the mammoth breeding grounds. And by fight, I mean face-to-face combat to the death.

But modern technology lets us vent that pent-up aggression instantly and without consequence. And not at people taking our food, but at people who created a prequel we didn't like.

Face-to-face? Ha! You'll likely never meet whomever you are criticizing.

And if they have the temerity to fight back? They can't do that! They're a celebrity! They have to take criticism and not respond, because that's their job!

Welcome to the Internet. Technology that could improve humankind, reduced to a megaphone for schoolyard bullies.

For the insecure, the quickest way to feel better about yourself it to put someone else down. Especially someone who won't defend themselves. This will never change. There will always be haters. And artists will always have to ignore it and never engage with those haters.

That said, I'm a writer, with a blog about writing and publishing, and this blog gives advice based on years of experience, hard work, deep thinking, and how I'm feeling based on what I had to eat today.

So here is the Writer's Guide To Dealing With Haters.

RULE 1: Don't Read Your Reviews

I know that this is easier said than done. Especially when you first put a book out there, and you are desperate for feedback. Resist the temptation to read what people are saying about you. Their opinion of you, and of your story, is none of your business.

RULE 2: Do Not Engage

Okay, you're human, and you accidentally read a 1 star review where some baby compared your book to a giant pile of horse shit except your book would attract more flies. Then this baby goes on to spout a whole bunch of lies about your book that are just plain incorrect.

It doesn't matter. Don't respond. No matter how tempting, you cannot defend yourself. It will always backfire.

RULE 3: Don't Write Negative Reviews

This should go without saying. You shouldn't bash your peers. Or anyone, really, except for politicians. Treat people on the Internet like you would treat them if a friend introduced you at a party. Always.

RULE 4: Pyt

This is a Danish word, sort of a combination of "shit happens" and "no big deal." You don't need to get over it, because it was never a thing in the first place.

We don't have control over how other people act. We do have control over how we react. As a writer, you will get reviews. If something is inevitable, unchangeable, and impersonal, the most you should react is by shrugging, maybe with a knowing little smile.

Pyt.

RULE 5: Haters Gonna Hate

What Peter says about Paul reveals more about Peter than Paul. That bad review has nothing to do with you. Someone with a very small mind and a very unhappy life needs to attack art to feel better about themselves. Who cares? Not your problem. You don't have to deal with them. And it isn't going to hurt your sales, or harm other peoples' opinion of your book.

Do you know why? Because you have bought and enjoyed books that others have given one star. If you don't care, no one else cares.

To sum this up in one sentence; Ignore critics because people suck, be a nice person, and if you run into anything negative, pyt.

Q: But Joe! What if I have legitimate problems with some work of art and I want to protect people from making the same mistake I did?

A: Take a good long look in the mirror and keep repeating "Nobody cares what I fucking think" over and over until you go hoarse. Because nobody cares what you fucking think. You aren't protecting others. You're being a petty, selfish dick.

Q: But Joe! What if I'm writing thoughtful, heartfelt opinions, backed up with examples and logic?

A: Save that for reviews of art that you like. Writing positive reviews is encouraged. Hate should not encouraged, ever. You're not marching to save the rain forest. You're annoyed because you feel you wasted some of you leisure time. Get over it.

Q: But I'm allowed to say what I want!

A: Here's a litmus test:

Would you say it directly to the artist's face, live on stage in front of ten thousand people?

If not, don't post it.

Would you say it directly to the artist's face if the artist was a mixed martial arts expert and had their teeth clenched in rage?

If not, don't post it.

Would you say it directly to the artist's face if you knew their mother just died and they couldn't stop sobbing?

If not, don't post it.

Would you say it directly to the artist's face no matter what?

If so, you're a douchebag. Fuck off.

Now go read WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, by latest novel, which debuted for free.

If you hate it, cool. Write a review anyway. I promise you won't have to say it to my face. :)

An Email to Jack on His Birthday

2019-06-11T10:26:00.000-05:00

Hey Jack.

Cool name.

My name is Harry McGlade. I heard you've read about me.

The guy who writes about all the awesome shit I do, J.A. Konrath, also known as Joe, told me it's your birthday today.

Happy birthday!

I remember turning 15. Best year of my life. I was on top of the world, and so happy all the time that you couldn't smack the smile off my face with a hockey stick.

Joking. Being 15 sucked sweaty balls.

School was brutal. I was pudgy, short, had a high voice. Got picked on. Had to deal with bullies. My grades were shit, and my merry-go-round of foster parents were always riding my ass about that. I didn't have any close friends, and I had no love life at all. I'd never kissed anyone. Never even had a date. Every day was a living hell.

You couldn't pay me a billion dollars to go back in time and be a teenager again. You know why?

Because you don't have a billion dollars, Jack. And time travel is impossible. You should know that.

If time travel was possible, there would be time travelers everywhere, walking around acting like "Look at me, I'm from the future, and I got an iPhone 37! I can use it to call Moses!"

But we don't see that. Because there are no time travelers. And because Moses isn't real.

Neither is Santa. Hope I didn't spoil that for you.

Where were we? Oh yeah, you brought up time travel billionaires.

C'mon, Jack. You can't come at me like that, bro. Bragging about having all that money and a time machine. That's insane!

(But if you actually do have a billion dollars and a time machine, hit me up.)

WTF was I talking about?

Right. Being a teenager was tough. I bet it's even harder for you. Transgender? Dude, I don't even know you, but I can imagine all the shit you have to deal with.

Actually, I CAN'T imagine it. No one can imagine it, unless they've gone through the same thing.

You're super brave, bro.

When I was your age, I was confused a lot about a lot of things. There was no one who understood me. I liked boys, and girls, and pretty much everyone no matter how they identified, and I didn't understand why. And back then, there was no internet. I couldn't find other people like me. Bisexuals were called faggots and got spat on. There term 'pansexual' wasn't even invented yet. People actually thought gender was fixed. They really believed that who you were attracted to was a choice, like you could turn off what turned you on.

What a bunch of backwards-ass pinheads. And some folks still haven't caught up to modern reality. Sad.

So I got a lot of hate and a lot of weird stares when I was your age. Or people tried to fix me. Like there was something wrong with me. Like my feelings were wrong, because they were different.

Turns out, there was nothing wrong with me. I liked what I liked, and that was fine. I am what I am, and my feelings are just as valid as anyone else's. Problem isn't me. It's the world.

People fear and hate and laugh at and try to change the things they don't understand. It's an unfortunate aspect of human nature. They think we need to look and act a certain way, and if we don't fit that mold, we're freaks.

That's garbage.

I never had body dysmorphia, so I don't know what that feels like. No one does, unless they go through it. I bet it's hard. I lost my hand. And even though its gone, sometimes I can still feel it. Phantom Limb Syndrome, it's called. Weird, huh? But you can't really understand it unless it happens to you.

For the record, I DO NOT recommend losing a hand. Just clarifying that. Had to relearn how to wipe my ass. Took four months. Four dark, messy months.

Worst part? I bite my fingernails. You don't want to bite the brown nail, buddy. Yuck Factor One Billion.

But pretty funny. Gotta laugh at yourself sometimes.

Anyway, the world has gotten a little better since I was your age. There are still asshats everywhere, but there are some good people, too. I've got a BFF named Jack Daniels that you know about. She's pretty cool. Her husband Phin is cool, too, and the dude is smoking hot. They accept me for who I am, and don't judge.

It's hard to find people who don't judge. I bet it's really hard for you. When you were a kid, everyone treated you like a girl. You had a girl name. You still have girl parts and girl hormones, and you know that doesn't feel right, and people don't understand.

And now you're telling people that you're not that girl with that old name, you're someone else. You're really a man named Jack.

Cool name. My buddy, Jack Daniels, would be real proud of that.

Gotta be tough to feel one way when the world sees you another way. Kinda like Bruce Wayne, and when he grows up he realizes he's the Batman. Maybe he's always been the Batman, but the only one who understands him is Alfred. No one else does.

Is it me, or did Bruce and Alfred have a gay vibe? Maybe it's me.

Anyway, I bet people have a hard time trying to understand you. I bet you don't even understand you sometimes.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and you've figured it all out and you've got your shit together and Everything Is Awesome like in the Lego Movie (I couldn't get that effing song outta my head for weeks—I actually thought about suing those little plastic bastards).

If you have figured it all out, let me know your secret. Because I'm 54 years old and I'm still confused about a lot.

But some things I do know. I'll share a few of these things with you, as a birthday gift. Which is great for me, because it doesn't cost me any cash.

I know you didn’t ask for advice, and I get that. I’m an old white guy, and most of the problems in the world are caused by old white guys. What the hell do I know about anything?

Well, I don’t know much about what it’s like to be you. But I know a little about what it’s like being me. Maybe some of it applies.

So let the Harry McGlade Wisdom commence...

Life gets better as you get older. You have more control over things, and you can find where you fit in. Right now you have to put up with stuff. You're not an adult yet. You live at home. You have to go to school. You don’t feel right in the body you have. But when you get older, things change. You aren't forced to do as much, you get to make all your own decisions, and life gets better. I promise.

There are people out there who like people like us. And there are people who love people like us.

Never trust a fart. I just shit myself the other day, in line at the theater to see the new Godzilla. I blamed the smell on the old lady behind me, and then flushed my underwear down the toilet in the movie theater bathroom, which clogged it up and caused a big shitwater flood. Some kid came in and slipped on it and got all soaked with shitwater--dude was wearing white too--and it was so funny I couldn't stop laughing. So, actually, that story has a good ending. Unless you were that kid. But, truth, kid looked like a real d-bag and probably deserved it. Also, Godzilla was fun.

Where was I? Oh yeah, life lessons.

Pets are the best.

There will always be people who don't understand. But there are always people who do understand. Find those people. Those are your people. And the ones that don't understand, forgive them. They don't get it.

Everyone is a consumer. But you also need to give back. Everyone takes. Not everyone gives. Be a giver.

At the same time, no good deed goes unpunished. Sounds funny, but it seems like every time I do something nice, it comes back to bite me in the ass. For that reason, never do anything and expect to be thanked. If you help someone, do it because you feel they need help. Don’t expect anyone to be grateful. Haters gonna hate, no matter how nice you are.

Never buy a burrito from a food cart. You're just paying for diarrhea. Explosive, sudden diarrhea. The kind that fills up your socks. The burrito may smell good, but resist, dammit! It's a hot zone of tasty viruses waiting to turn your colon into a firehose.

Don't litter. People who litter suck.

My life philosophy is this: Learn what you can. Pass along what you've learned. Leave the world a better place because you lived. And have as much fun as possible.

So do lotsa fun stuff. Whatever your thing is, do your thing. I like to fish (Catch and release, and fish don't feel pain. Look it up.) I like some sports. I don't like camping, except the shitting in the woods part. I love media. Not news media. Pop media.

Movies (The Abyss is my fave), TV (Invader Zim, ATHF), music (Neil Diamond and Judas Priest, don't judge) videogames (Adventure for the Atari 2600 is still the greatest videogame ever made and don't fight me on this), and of course, books.

My fave fiction books are The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker (read that and see how much Konrath stole from that guy), and Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (Konrath stole a shitload from that guy, too). But a caveat; Silence of the Lambs probably has the WORST depiction of a transgender person ever written. The villain kills women to wear their skins. I'm pretty sure that isn't common in the LGBTIQ community. I've never seen it, and I've seen A LOT.

Best non-fiction books are Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer (that will scare the hell out of you) and Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon. You should get your parent to read Far From The Tree. Konrath's father was gay (he's dead now) and Joe raised a kid with developmental and behavior disorders, and this book helped Joe understand both his Dad and his son much better.

What other wisdom can I impart on your 15th birthday? I'm full of wisdom. I'm also full of beer and pizza. Chicago has the best pizza. Anyone who tells you different is wrong.

Forgive people who are wrong. Sometimes you'll be wrong. When you are, admit it, and apologize.

What else?

Learn to forgive yourself. I'm still working on that. I've done a lot of stupid shit. Like, a whole lot. But torturing myself with regret is pointless. I've made mistakes, but I've learned from them, so I guess I had to make them, even though they hurt like hell.

Life hurts like hell sometimes.

When you feel bad, talk to someone about it. And if you're feeling really, really bad, talk to a professional. A doctor. I've popped so many Zoloft in my life that when I piss on a flower bed, the flowers starting singing like a Disney movie. But the correct, prescribed meds can help with depression. So can a good shrink. No shame in that. We all need help sometimes.

Wear sunscreen. If you don't get the reference, Google Baz Luhrmann.

Never give up. You know Konrath wrote ten books and got over 500 rejections before he got published? He spent a decade of his life feeling like a failure because he couldn't sell anything. But he kept at it, he never quit, and eventually Whiskey Sour sold to a big publisher in New York.

And now Konrath has sold more than 3 million books, and the ungrateful asshole doesn't pay me a single dime. Bullshit, right? I'm the best thing in those books! Everyone knows that!

What other gems can I bestow upon you on this happy day of your birth? Did I mention pets are awesome? Did I talk about poo enough times? Poo is funny when you're 2 years old, and it's still funny when you're 102 years old. Hell, I'm wearing a diaper right now. Not for any medical reason, but the bathroom is like fifteen steps away from my desk.

I think that's everything I know.

Konrath is going to send you a Dropbox link, which has all of his books. You know I'm in more than just those drink books, right? Shit, have you read Banana Hammock? That whole book is all me! Timecaster? The Chandler series? I'm in all of those, and more. If you want the whole list, check my website.

When you get the Dropbox invite, accept it, and you can download all the .mobi files of all the books for free, then sideload or upload them to your Kindle or preferred reading device. I'd give you instructions, but you're 15. Figure it out yourself, smart guy.

And that's it from me. Your parent emailed Konrath and said you read his books and your birthday was today. Pretty cool parent. But that cool parent probably didn't expect me to write you instead of Joe. Especially me swearing and talking about the Hershey squirts every four sentences.

But you've read my books, so nothing in this email should shock you. Might shock your parent, though. Tell them not to be pissed at me.

Lemme know you got the Dropbox link, and if you have anything to pass along to Konrath, I'll tell him.

I'm raising my beer right now and toasting your transition, if that's what you decide to do. I'm guessing it won't be easy. But it wasn't easy for the Batman either. It wasn't easy for me growing up pansexual, or losing my hand. It wasn't easy for Konrath, dealing with all those rejections. It wasn't easy for that d-bag kid at the movie theater who got soaked with shitwater.

If life were easy, nothing would have value. It's the hard stuff that makes us realize how strong we are.

And you're strong. You're stronger than I'll ever be.

Happy birthday, Jack.

Cool fucking name, brother.

Best,

Harrison Harold McGlade

Joe sez: I've posted this email with the permission and encouragement of Jack and his parental unit.

If you aren't familiar with my work, and couldn't grasp the context, it's written in the POV of one of my characters, Harry McGlade, who happens to be in a few dozen of my books.

Jack chose to call himself Jack because he likes another one of my characters, Jack Daniels. Which is the coolest thing one of my readers has ever done. I wept when I heard that. I'm teary-eyed right now.

When I began this blog in 2005, I decided it would be about writing and publishing. I didn't want it to ever get political or personal. Different people have different viewpoints, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, and whether I agree or disagree with your ideologies has nothing to do with the focus of this blog.

But, you see, this blog post IS actually about writing.

I'm a 49 year old white straight male. When I grew up, the media was full of white, straight males. I was represented in books, movies, music, on TV, in comics, and pretty much everywhere.

I have never known what it feels like to be discriminated against. And I don't know what it would be like to grow up without seeing anyone similar to me in the media.

When my father was 49, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died at 50. Dad was openly gay toward the end of his life, but for most of it he was closeted. He married a woman because that's what he thought he was supposed to do. His doctors, his church, his parents, treated homosexuality as a bad choice, as a sin, as a mental disorder.

Back in 1972, my father went to a university to get “help” for being queer. Aversion therapy, they called it. They showed him a slide show, and whenever a homosexual act was depicted on the screen, they literally shocked him with electricity.

Disgusting and barbaric? Yes. Did it really happen? Yes.

My father was told by EVERYONE that his sexual preferences were wrong, and he believed them. He went to this “treatment” in the hope he could get “better.”

Many years later, we all know that homosexuality is not a choice, and it is not a disease, and there is nothing wrong with being queer. It’s natural, healthy, and should be viewed positively. Dad eventually embraced being gay, married a great guy, and lived happily for years before cancer took him.

My father was born with those feelings, and they were normal, and I understood why he divorced my mother, and I had a great relationship with him. But society made him afraid, ashamed, and feeling like he needed to be fixed. No one ever told him he was normal. They treated him differently. They made him feel bad about himself. And when he was growing up, he had no positive representation in the media.

After my father died, the main character in my thriller series, Jack Daniels, discovered her father was gay. I did this to honor my dad.

There are some who say that a straight white guy shouldn't write about anything other than straight white guys. I can understand this viewpoint. As I mentioned, I truly don't know what it is like to be discriminated against. How can I truthfully and honestly represent what I can never understand?

That said, I also wrote a book about Satan imprisoned for a century in an underground government facility. I have never been imprisoned for a hundred years. And I have never met Satan. I write about serial killers, and cannibals, and active shooters, and cops, and veterans, and scientists, and clones, and I am none of these things. I make shit up for a living.

As my career has advanced, and I've become older and hopefully wiser, I've tried to show more diversity in my books. My readers are diverse, and they want to read about more than white cis guys. So I try to write positive characters from different of points of view and walks of life. I write about people of colors and races that don't match mine. I write about people with different gender identities. I write about people with disabilities. I write about people with a variety of sexual preferences.

In short; I write about people.

So, for National Pride Month, I'm giving everyone reading this blog a writing exercise.

See? I told you this was about writing.

Your homework is to look at your Work In Progress and ask yourself, "What am I showing my readers?" And, more specifically, "What am I showing my readers who aren't representative of me?"

Look for diversity. Look for stereotypes. Look at the positive role models, and the negative role models, in your words.

Consider who is reading it, and what they'll think.

Because guess what? The LGBTQ+ community reads books. People with disabilities read books. People of color read books.

If you white cis guys want them to read YOUR books, maybe you should think about your characters a bit more.

And for those who aren't white cis guys, for people everywhere on the gender spectrum, for people of of all races, colors, cultures, and religions, for people with illnesses and disabilities, for women, and for the LGBTTQQIAAP community; we need to hear your voices. I think I'm a pretty good writer, but I'll never be good enough to really understand your struggles, your triumphs, your perspectives. You need to write books to enlighten people like me about what it's like to be you. Also, please feel free to write about white straight guys, even if you aren't a straight white guy.

And for all you bigots, for people who hate others because they are different, for all the bullies, for the haters, for the homophobes, for the misogynists, for everyone who nurses prejudice in public or secretly, for those who make fun of people who are different so they can feel better about themselves, I have a message for you, too. Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. We need to hear your small-minded ideas. We need you to express your fears and insecurities by lashing out at those who don't agree with your ideologies.

Ha! Kidding! You bigots can fuck off. Keep your hateful little circle jerk to yourselves. You can come sit at the adult table again when you've opened up your small, petty minds to a concept called equality.

We've come a long was since 1972. But we have a long way to go.

Everyone deserves acceptance. Everyone deserves representation.

And most of all, every writer should have a fan as cool as Jack.

Happy birthday, bro. I agree with Harry McGlade. You're braver than I'll ever be.

Trying Something New and Different

2019-06-08T07:02:00.003-05:00

I recently wrote what I believe is my best work. It's an epic gearshift thriller duology, and took more than a year to plan and write.

Me, the guy who wrote SHAKEN in 9 days, spent twelve whole months carefully crafting a story.

I was so jazzed at the final result that I gave it to my agent to sell, thinking I had a big, marketable bestseller with a huge hook and unpredictable twists and water-cooler-talk potential. A book that would generate lots of buzz and word of mouth and sales.

My agent sent it to 47 North, Thomas & Mercer, Simon & Schuster, Harper, Tor, Blackstone, Kensington, and Del-Rey.

They all rejected it.

Admittedly, this surprised me a bit. Not a whole lot, because I know this series isn't easy to pigeonhole.

First of all, it's long. Over 180,000 words for the duology. Paper costs money to ship and print, and a 500 page hardcover book could be prohibitively expensive for the publisher, and the reader, who would be shelling out $30+ (twice, once for each book in the series) in a shrinking hardcover market for an author who has never had a NYT bestseller.

Second, I invented a new type of punctuation for this series. I think it's pretty invisible, and it makes telling this story much simpler and smoother, but it is still pretty odd, possibly even haughty.

Third, the first book ends on the mother of all cliffhangers. That might piss off readers, and reviewers, who would have to wait a year to see how everything turns out.

Fourth, it's a gearshift thriller. Gearshift narratives are always risky. Not an easy sell.

Fifth, even though I've sold three million books worldwide, I've been a bit outspoken about legacy publishers, and some of them might be stoking resentment.

So while I was a little disappointed I didn't get a big offer, deep inside I knew that if a publisher did go for it, they likely wouldn't have any idea how to make this series a hit.

But I think I have an idea that could work. Maybe being solo and nimble and fast can be a big advantage, like a tiny mammal in a world if dinosaurs. I can make changes instantly. I don't form decisions by committee. I don't need 18 months to prepare a release. I can slip this in just in time for summer.

These publishers don't share my vision.

But I believe there's an audience out there for this series. A potentially large audience.

I just need to figure out how to find that audience.

BOOK 1 is currently available on Amazon.

Then, at the end of summer, I will release BOOK 2.

Of course, BOOK 2 can be pre-ordered right now on Amazon.

Click on the covers for more info.

Now let's have a quick Q and A:

Q: What's the pitch for BOOK 1?

A: Here's the jacket copy:

Three people.
Each has a secret.
Each has an agenda.
All three are liars.

One of them committed a terrible crime.
One of them is on the run.
More than one of them is a killer.

These three people are about to find out what happened to Lori.
And they're going to wish they never did…

WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI – BOOK 1: GENESIS
Is she dead? Or is it much worse?

ABOUT THE BOOK
What Happened To Lori is a gearshift thriller series comprised of two 90,000 word books. This unconventional thriller bombards the reader with intriguing questions and eye-popping scenarios, pulling you deeper and deeper into a complex--yet highly entertaining--web of mystery, secrets, sex, double-crosses, lies, voyeurism, torture, and deceit, leading up to the biggest mind-blowing twist in modern genre fiction.

Book 1 sets the scene, introduces the main characters, and pulls you into a wicked plot involving a missing woman who is presumed dead, her obsessed grieving brother, her off-kilter ex-con husband, and the mysterious mercenary her husband hires to replace her...

You may think you have it figured out.

You're probably wrong.

What Happened to Lori will stay one step ahead of you right until the epic, unexpected, universe-shattering conclusion.

Welcome to the modern thriller. It will blow your mind.

Q: Why not release both parts at once?

A: There's a copywriter term known as the curiosity gap. Essentially, it's the discrepancy between what someone knows and what they demand to know. The goal is to keep someone engaged without boring or discouraging them.

If you know your sex terms, its like edging.

So I'm literary edging.

That's what I tried to do with WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI. How we read and absorb information has fundamentally changed in the last twenty years, with the rise of the Internet and social media. I wanted to write a book that used traditional narrative structure, with conflict, rising action, and resolution, and full character arcs, and good vs evil, and engaging storytelling, and do it in a thoroughly modern way.

But I also wanted it to function as literary clickbait. Episodic TV has become the norm, with story arcs that aren't resolved until the season finale. We surf the net, going from site to site, our dwindling attention spans eager for new tibits of information.

Why not try this style with books?

Q: You said it's a gearshift novel. What's that?

A: BOOK 1 is a Did He Do It? love-triangle thriller with some unconventional elements, like the punctuation and the structure.

BOOK 2 is absolutely insane, and goes someplace wildly unpredictable. The story shifts gears, hence the term gearshift. A few movies that do this are Something Wild, From Dusk Till Dawn, Full Metal Jacket, and Psycho. These films begin with the viewer thinking they are headed in a certain direction, and then they turn on a dime and become something... different.

Q: What do you mean it has unconventional punctuation?

A: You'll understand it when you read it. I hope it catches on. It makes writing a whole lot easier, and much less intrusive for the reader.

Q: Are you doing that clickbait curiosity gap thing right now by not telling us what you mean?

A: A little. I'll give you a different example. Speaker attribution is intrusive. Saying "she said" after a line of dialog is supposedly invisible to the reader, but it's also a waste of the reader's time, and a waste of words on the page. Why should we have to read words to understand who is speaking?

I don't use speaker attribution in WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI, but that's not what I'm referring to here. There are ways around speaker attribution that don't involve new punctuation.

In LORI, I did something else. Something I've never seen before.

Q: And you think readers are going to like this?

A: Some will. Some won't. In fact, I expect that some people will absolutely hate this book. Hate it more than any book they've ever read. Because of the punctuation. Because of the structure. Because of the cliffhanger. Because I keep posing more and more questions and trickling out answers like crumbs to the starving.

Q: Sounds like more clickbait talk.

A: In a way, it is. I've written and sold decent thrillers since 2003. I wanted to try something more provocative. More modern. More catchy.

Q: So I'm guessing readers will be able to order Book 2 for around ten bucks, right?

A: Book 2 is available for $4.99, which is about average price for an ebook.

Q: In your titles you have (Mind-Blowing Twist Thriller Duology). That sounds like title stuffing.

A: It's not. I purposely named this series Mind-Blowing Twist Thriller Duology. I think it's catchy and will stick.

Q: Do you have a marketing plan?

A: I do.

Q: Didn't you just do a blog post about marketing plans not working?

A: I did. But it ain't science if you aren't constantly testing your hypothesis. Here's my plan for Lori.

1. Publish BOOK 1 for free on Nook and Kobo, and for 99 cents on Amazon (since you can't publish free books on Amazon.)

2. Price match on Amazon so it becomes permafree.

3. Write this blog post to explain what I'm doing.

4. Put the links for the books on my website.

5. Write a blog with a deeper explanation, and spoilers, on www.WhatHappenedToLori.com. I'm using a blog instead of a webpage because it will allow for comments, and I'm hoping people will want to discuss this series because it's so insane.

6. Send out my newsletter touting BOOK 1 for free. Anyone who wants to write a review of BOOK 1 can send me a link to their review with the email header LORI REVIEW before July 31, and I will send them BOOK 2 for free, before it is released to the public. So you will get the juicy, secret deets before the rest of the world, and all you gotta to is write a review.

7. Mention on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Advertise with Ebook Booster, Goodreads, BookBub, Twitter, and Facebook.

8. Do a newsletter swap with several other authors. More on this in an upcoming blogpost. I've done successful newsletter swaps in the past (that's where you get some authors together, everyone puts their books on sale at the same time, and everyone promotes everyone else's books in their newsletters.) I've come up with a simple and innovate way to make this much easier for all involved, and infinitely repeatable with minimal work.

9. Keep doing ads and newsletter swaps and asking for reviews, maybe do some podcasts and Facebook videos, until as many people have heard of this series as possible.

10. See what happens. If I get a lot of pre-orders for BOOK 2 and make a few bucks, I can put a pre-order link for a spin-off series in the backmatter of that and continue writing books in this literary universe. It's a fun, albeit complicated, world to write in.

Q: What if this bombs?

A: If the sales suck and the books are poorly received and reviewed (which I would guess is mostly because readers hate the cliffhanger at the end of the first book) I can just unpublish BOOKS 1 & 2 everywhere, and publish solely on Kindle Unlimited as a single, super-long novel for $6.99. That would be like starting from scratch, eliminating all ranks and all reviews. All I've wasted is a few months and a few hundred bucks in ads.

Q: What if you're getting a lot of downloads and leaving money on the table?

A: I can raise the prices on one or both books whenever I choose to.

Q: Do you actually think this will work?

A: I dunno. I can't even guess. It all comes down to luck. But if I fail, it will be my failure on my terms.

I've released dozens of books, and I always release them the same way. Here's a chance to do something different. Something that no publisher can do. Something I've never seen any other self-publisher try.

Plus, this story is uniquely suited to this sort of release.

So I'll give it a shot, stay diligent, and cross my fingers.

Please read WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI BOOK 1 and review it. Even if y ou hate it. I am curious who is in CAMP HATE, and who chooses CAMP LOVE.

You can help by spreading the word. Get on social media and tell your followers that WHAT HAPPENED TO LORI BOOK 1 is free.

You can upvote my Reddit post here.

See those square symbols beneath this blog post, next to the comments? Please click on the t and the f to share this blog post on Twitter and Facebook.

Your Book Marketing Plan Won't Work

2019-06-04T13:46:00.002-05:00

So you wrote a book.

Hooray.

Now you should celebrate. Enjoy the moment. I suggest craft beer. My go-to is barrel aged stouts, invented and perfected by Goose Island. But Prairie Artisan, The Bruery, Alesmith, Founders, Stone, Central Waters, Epic, Boulevard, Oskar Blues, and Avery also work well. More suggestions welcome in the comments.

Now, after celebrating, you are creating a marketing plan.

You're nervous, but you've been an avid student, devouring everything you can on how to sell books. And you've discovered a lot of chatter about a lot of things, including:

SOCIAL MEDIA

The catchall go-to for all authors. You have two Facebook pages, a personal one and a public one. You're on Twitter. You're on Instagram and Tumblr and Pinterest and Flickr and Reddit and 4chan and 8chan and Kboards and Goodreads and Blogger and you are constantly posting new and interesting content because you're smart enough to know that yelling "BUY MY BOOK!" doesn't sell anything.

Guess what? Posting new and interesting content doesn't sell anything either.

When was the last time you actually bought anything because someone liked it on Facebook? Or retweeted a product link?

Your social media isn't going to sell much for you. This blog gets millions of hits a year. You're one of them.

How many books of mine have you bought? Can you name any? What's the latest one?

Sure, maybe some of you have, and you'll comment that you have. But for every comment I get, there are thousands of hits from those who don't comment, and don't buy shit. I track my sales when I do a new blog post. The needle doesn't move.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

You're not going to sell a lot of books on social media. While social media does help inform fans that you have a new book out, or something priced cheap, it won't amount to many sales.

That's not to say you should ignore social media. But it isn't going to cover your car payment. Stop thinking it will.

HOW-TO BOOKS

There are a shitload of How To Become An Amazon Bestseller books for you to spend your time and money on, and you may think that reading them will give you some secret insider knowledge of how to sell a million ebooks.

Those books are full of shit.

First of all, check the book's Amazon ranking. Then check the other books that author wrote, and their rankings.

If they aren't in the Top 1000, their advice isn't working.

Second, if you know how to write a bestseller, why aren't you writing bestseller after bestseller? Why are you writing How-To books?

Makes no sense.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT HOW-TO BOOKS

There is no book you can read that will help you improve your sales to a degree that was worth the time and money you wasted on it.

Feel free not to believe me. Feel free to tell me about the book that helped you sell a zillion copies. But beware: I'm gonna check your rank and post it and make you feel stupid.

ADVERTISING

Throw money at the problem, right? Nevermind that all advertisers acknowledge that success is sporadic, efforts require constant tweaking and diligence that could be better spent writing, and the only difference between advertising and gambling is that gambling has a better return on investment.

I mean ALL advertising. Can it work sometimes? Sure. Is it worth the risk, the time, the money, the emotional investment?

I say no.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT ADVERTISING

You're doing well if you break even. And while you can crow about the intangibles of "finding a new fan who buys your whole backlist" the fact is that any serious attempt to explode your sales using ads will require you spending a LOT of time tweaking them, and a LOT of money buying them.

I've spent tens of thousands on advertising over the years. NOTHING is guaranteed. They all require a lot of thought and effort. And all the effort you spend on ads is less time you spend writing.

MARKETING SCIENCE

Why are books special snowflakes? Why not treat your book like any other commodity and sell it using a good old business plan? Do a SWOT analysis. Use Strategic Thinking. Identify your target audience and reach them using a combination of advertising, give-aways, contests, publicity, and identifying influencers that you can partner with.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT MARKETING SCIENCE

You are someone's target audience. You are actively marketed to every day of your life; online, on TV, while you commute, listening to the radio, shopping, dining out, travelling, pretty much every waking hour.

How many books do you buy based on any of the above?

Answer: few to none. Which brings us to...

PUBLICITY

If you can get on NPR and get your book reviewed in People Magazine and get Jay-Z to retweet you and get a guest spot on Johnny Carson you can sell a lot of books.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT PUBLICITY

If you manage to do any of the above--and you probably can't--but if you can, you WILL sell some books... in the short term. Once the publicity ends, your sales will go back down. Look at any viral sensation for confirmation. When was the last time you bought a PSY album?

Smaller publicity like local radio or podcasts or blog interviews really don't move the needle much, and they aren't worth pursuing. You don't need a publicist. You don't need a press release.

SO WTF? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SELL BOOKS!?!

Luck.

THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT LUCK

No one can predict what will sell. If they could, every book would be a hit.

Everyone can tell you why a book sold well after it has already sold well, pointing to various things that were done that they claim led to the book's success. They are full of shit.

NOTHING guarantees success.

Not quality.

Not past success.

Not a big advertising budget.

Not a big marketing budget.

Not publicity.

Not social media.

Not any sort of plan that you read anywhere.

You can write the Best Book Ever, do Everything right, spend a Fortune, and not even come close to making any sort of money.

SO HOW DO I IMPROVE MY LUCK?

That's the question, isn't it?

I've driven myself half-insane trying to figure out how to sell ebooks. And I've sold a lot. But, like many, my sales have slowed down over the years. I used to make $800k a year. Now I make less than half of that.

Why?

Well, the reason I broke out and made major money was due to pure luck. Amazon created the Kindle and allowed authors to self-pub with DTP (now KDP). I was uniquely suited to exploit this new type of media because I had ten shelf novels that publishers had rejected, and I now had the opportunity to self-publish them while undercutting traditional publishers on price. Then, as ebooks grew in popularity, I got my backlist back and was able to leverage a whole lot of cheap books into a whole lot of money.

I still make a lot of money. But when Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited, my income cut in half, and has never recovered.

Luck again. Amazon giveth and Amazon taketh away.

I have gotten some decent publicity in my time. It never moved the needle on sales.

I've had a very popular blog. It never moved the needle on sales.

I've experimented. A lot. I've done interactive ebooks (Banana Hammock and Stop A Murder), I tried Kindle Worlds (now defunct), I've had three pen names, I've combined some of those pen names so I had a consistent brand, I tried starting two ebook businesses, I've done book tours, I've done blog tours, I've traveled to 42 states, I've collaborated with over a dozen authors, I've tried many different genres (thriller, sci-fi, erotica, mystery, horror), I've done short stories and novellas, I've edited an anthology, I've done audiobooks, I've advertised, I've had some big publishers, and I've won a few awards. Plus, I think I write pretty good books.

And all that really counted was Amazon inventing the Kindle, and me luckily being perfectly suited to exploit that new opportunity.

Luck.

It came down to luck.

And now I have a giant backlist, and Amazon is so well run it continues to recommend my books to readers, and I still make a great living.

More luck.

But...

It is possible to improve your luck and sell a bit more than random chance.

While I've poo-pooed all of the above strategies, they aren't all entirely bad. None are a magic bullet. None will guarantee sales. But if used cautiously, in moderation, you can give your sales an occasional boost.

Here are the things you need to do, in order of importance.

WRITE A LOT OF BOOKS

The bigger your backlist, the better. And if the books are quality (great writing, great covers, great descriptions) then that will help. Pricing also helps. I have found that I make more money going exclusive with Kindle Unlimited than I do going with with other publishers. I've found that the best price point is between $2.99 and $5.99, depending on length and age (newer is more expensive).

HAVE A NEWSLETTER

You may no longer need a webpage as an author. More important is having a Facebook page and a Wikipedia page. But you should be allowing people to sign up for your newsletter. And you should be sending out one newsletter a month.

What should you put in your newsletter?

ANNOUNCE SALES, NEW RELEASES, and PRE-ORDERS

You should have a social media presence, at the very least Facebook and Twitter. And you should engage people with enlightened conversation and content on these platforms. But every once and a while, mention when you have a book that is on sale, free, available for pre-order, or recently published.

The people who follow you want to know that. So tell them on social media, and with your newsletter.

ADVERTISING IN MODERATION

Why is it the authors who claim to make a killing by advertising their books are the ones selling books about how to advertise?

You should certainly experiment with AMS, boosting Facebook posts and Tweets, Google Adwords, Ebook Booster, BookBub, and any others that are out there. But here's the caveat; before you use any ads, look at other writer's ads and then check the sales rank of their books using those ads that you want to try. If GuaranteedEbookBestseller.com offers you a one-time only deal of advertising on their site for $99, check to see what books they are promoting, and check their ranks. That'll tell you how well that service works.

BE CONSISTENT

My career has been all over the place, and I've tried so many new and different things. I've learned from my many failures, and if I had to do it all over, I'd tell my younger self:

"One brand, one genre, stop experimenting, stop being a perfectionist, and just write five good books a year in the same series. Make sure they are professionally edited and formatted, have great covers and descriptions, keep length under 75k words, and make sure they have updated, clickable bibliographies in the back matter, pre-order pages for the next release, and newsletter sign-up forms."

That's it. That's the sum total of my years of knowledge and experience.

Doing that, along with a minimal social media presence and some moderate advertising, and maybe you can attain a following and make six figures a year.

Maybe. It still comes down to luck.

Stop worrying. This is all out of your control.

Stop trying to find the answer. There is no answer. No answer, no logic, no reason, not even any scientific cause and effect.

It's all luck.

So focus on the writing. It's the only thing you have true control over.

Keep writing good books until you get lucky.

That's your marketing plan.

On Writing Shit

2019-05-29T08:13:00.000-05:00

Back when I was on the conference circuit giving speech after speech about how to get published, I'd always preach that the most important thing a writer can do is, "Don't write shit."

It's 2019, and I may be ready to take back those words.

On axiom that I haven't considered taking back (yet) is that I never do anything that doesn't work on me.

That's worth explaining.

More than a decade ago, in the early noughties (so nice to finally have a word for the 2000s), I used to attend a lot of conferences, conventions, and book fairs, and every author seemed to be armed with an endless cache of bookmarks. Naturally, these bookmarks had info about the book they were selling; cover art, description, a blurb or two, links to the author's website.

Some were self-printed and looked cheap. Some were slick and professionally done; either the author shelled out some bucks, or the publisher did.

In any case, these giveaways had a time cost and a monetary cost, and a lot of authors used them to promote. The freebie tables were full of them. They served as a conversation starter and ice-breaker when meeting potential fans, and maybe some readers took them home and used them to remember which books they wanted to buy.

Maybe. But I doubt it.

I say this because I've been the recipient of hundreds of bookmarks, pressed into my hands by eager authors, and they never made me buy a book. I never even used a bookmark in my life; I dog-ear paperbacks and use the jacket flap for hardcovers to mark my page. So when I got a bookmark, it went into the garbage.

As the years went on, I began confronting authors about bookmarks. Partly because I was a know-it-all prick in my younger days, but partly because I was genuinely interested in human nature and helping other writers.

Whenever someone handed me a bookmark, I'd ask, "Have you ever bought a book because someone gave you a bookmark?"

Some authors told me they did. But at least half of them would go wide-eyed with self-realization, and I got the chance to witness their moment of "Why the hell am I doing this if it doesn't work on me?"

Bookmarks don't work on me, so I don't give them away.

I don't click on Facebook ads, so I don't buy Facebook ads.

I've never gone out of my way to go to a booksigning, so I no longer do booksignings.

And so on. I'm not saying that these things don't ever work for other authors. But if it doesn't work on me, I don't do it.

The converse is also true. We all need to pay a lot more attention to why we buy books. How did you hear about it? How many steps between your awareness and the point of sale? What were the factors that lead to you buying? And so on. Someday soon I'll do a more detailed post about how we convince ourselves to buy stuff.

But today I want to talk about writing shit.

It seems like a no-brainer, right? If you own a restaurant, your food can't suck. There are other things that contribute to a restaurant's success; location, decor, pricing, service, cleanliness, menu, etc., but the one thing a restaurant needs to do is serve decent food.

At least, it makes sense to believe that.

It also makes sense to believe that your book has to be good. We all work hard on our writing, and I've never met a writer who doesn't care what readers think. We want to entertain and impress. We want to make lifelong fans.

And that starts with a good book.

Or so I used to believe.

I had a very popular post ten years ago debunking the so-called Tsunami of Crap. TLDR: there are billions of books to read, a few more million shitty ones won't destroy reading as a pass-time.

I still believe this. But I've begun to refine it.

Going back to the restaurant analogy, I am blessed to live in an area where good eateries abound. I have favorites, depending on the food type. Every so often, I have a mediocre meal or experience at a place I normally enjoy, and I usually give the joint a second chance. If I have two bad meals, I don't ever go back.

But I'm beginning to believe that this doesn't translate to readers and books.

People are creatures of habit. I just went to jury duty, and while waiting to be called I sat at a table off to the side. A woman joined me, and we spent three hours on our respective Chromebooks, then left for the lunch break. When I returned, I purposely changed tables, moving one to the right, because I know that people always return to the seat they had earlier and I like to consciously break that evolutionary quirk of human nature.

The woman who sat with me earlier sat with me again. Not because I'm a thrilling table-partner--we didn't really talk. But she saw me as her reference point, and sat in what she thought was her old seat, not even knowing she was one table--about twenty feet--over to the right. Another juror approached us and mentioned we'd moved over a table because he came back and was irritated his old table had been taken.

Interesting, ain't it?

We are creatures of routine and habit. We gravitate toward the familiar, because it is safe.

So now I'm going to tie all of these disparate points together.

My wife, Maria, reads a lot more than I do. She loves thrillers, and goes through 3-5 per week, getting most of them on Kindle Unlimited. If an author she likes isn't free on KU, she will spend up to $6.99 for the ebook. But never more than that. She has favorite authors whose ebooks are released by publishers for more than seven bucks, and she won't read them until they are on sale.

She's been doing this for years, like clockwork.

Not coincidentally, she is my audience. Both literally--I write books intended to please her--and figuratively, because Maria represents my average reader.

So while I normally tailor my efforts to things that work on me, like never giving away bookmarks, I've taken to tailoring book-related stuff to things that work on my wife.

And I've noticed an interesting habit of hers.

When Maria is reading a mystery series, she keeps reading it.

Forever.

She will audibly complain, at midnight in bed while finishing a novel on her Kindle, about how shitty the book she just finished was...

...and then she immediately gets the next book by that author. If it isn't for sale yet, she'll preorder it.

Like me, she'll give a restaurant two tries before walking away forever. One bad meal is a fluke. Two bad meals means we'll never go back. But with books, her capacity to endure and even devour bad writing is eye-opening.

Maria doesn't abandon authors.

Maybe she keeps hoping they'll go back to writing the way they use to write, when they first hooked her.

Maybe she reads so much that she forgets who wrote what and when she sees a familiar name she reads it because she forgot the last few experiences were bad.

Maybe it's just easier to ride with the devil you know than the one you don't.

Actually, I'll ask her.

Joe: Hey babe, why do you continue to read an author if their last book was bad?

Maria: Because I like their characters.

Joe: What would make you stop reading an author?

Maria: Too expensive. Multiple bad books.

Joe: How many bad books before you quit an author?

Maria: I dunno. Four.

Joe: Have you ever actually quit an author?

Maria: No. Wait, yes. One. He became too expensive. And he changed genres.

Joe: You read about five book a week?

Maria: Yeah.

Joe: How many are sub-par?

Maria: Two.

Joe: And you keep reading those authors anyway?

Maria: Yes. I forgive them. They had a few crummy books, but I hold out hope the next one will be better.

My takeaway: My wife has read thousands of books, and the sole author she abandoned was because he dropped out of Kindle Unlimited. She kept reading him even when he switched to a genre she didn't enjoy, and kept reading him even though his quality went down. Ultimately though, price was the ultimate reason she left him.

According to her numbers, 2/5 of the books she reads are below average, and she STILL READS THOSE AUTHORS!

Mind officially blown.

In most cases, it takes me 2 to 3 months to write a 80k word novel. About 1/3 of that time is rewriting/polishing/fixing/tinkering/making it better.

But I'm beginning to think I'm wasting a full 1/3 of my writing time.

My first drafts are pretty good. They're lean, and fast, and the character arcs and plot rarely need tweaking. The rewrite polish is mostly spent on housekeeping stuff; adding color, exploding certain scenes, adding more drama to the climax, salting in a few more jokes, changing word choices, putting in a few more clues or callbacks.

And sometimes a book is short, say around 60k words, I'll spend time expanding some scenes or adding a few to beef it up to 70k+, because I want to give good value to the readers who still pay for my stuff rather than read it via KU.

So I spend a full 1/3 of my time as a writer trying to make a grade B book into a grade A book.

I think I'm wasting my time.

Why write longer? Why write better? What's the benefit?

Readers will forgive me if I phone-in a book. Or four. Especially with a series. As long as my first 12 are solid, I could probably make the next 6 mediocre, or even shitty, and most of my fanbase will stick with me.

Now, I'm not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems, story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on, even though Maria forgives authors for those indiscretions, and according to here they happen in about half the ebooks she reads.

I'm talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers, whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2.

Seems like a gigantic waste of time. And speaking of...

I just spent an ENTIRE YEAR writing a novel. Not SHOT GIRL, which took three months (1/3 of which was spent polishing it). I'm talking about a book that hasn't come out yet.

I'll blog more about this epic 180k word novel in a future blog post, because it challenged me more than anything I've ever written, and I refused to settle for anything less than a perfect translation of the story I saw in my head.

But now that I've finished that giant novel, I'm wondering if I wasted an entire year. Rather than torturing myself to try to get something perfect, I could have done four novels that were great. Or six novels that were pretty good. Or eight novels that were mediocre. Or ten novels that were shit.

And if I'd done ten novels that were shit, that likely would have made me the most money out of all the options above.

I can't explain how big of a mindjob that is to me. It is so counter-intuitive to everything I've learned as a writer, and everything I've learned about self-promotion.

Better isn't actually better.

More is better.

Faster is better.

Flash beats substance.

Loyalty trumps all.

Because we no longer need gatekeepers, were are the guardians of our own quality. And the reader I count as representative of my core audience is pretty much telling me that I don't have to try so hard, because she'll repeatedly forgive me.

This almost always bears out with Big Name Authors. Authors who have been around for twenty years and always appear on the bestseller lists. Some of them--not all, but some--get terrible reviews by readers on the latest books. Comments about "phoning it in" and "cashing a check" and "not the series I loved ten years ago."

Yet the books keep selling. A three star average doesn't stop a bestseller.

So does that mean McDonald's wins? Quantity over quality? Mediocrity over excellence? Cheap and fast over a richer experience? Are we such creatures of habit that we'll stick with a writer in decline just because we had happy memories of a book of theirs they wrote in 2003?

Well, hell, I think so. Much as I hate it.

And not just because Maria feels that way. I realize I do the same thing. I just ordered the new Thomas Harris novel, even though the reviews have been bad, and even though I didn't enjoy his last two books. But I loved his first three, so I'll continue to buy him.

And, newsflash, the new Thomas Harris is every bit as jawdropping as the reviewers are saying.

But will I buy his next one? Yep.

I've been to 42 states, and the best hamburger in the country is at The Assembly, which, gratefully, is close to my house. I'm a burger connoisseur. I've eaten them everywhere.

I've been to The Assembly four times this year.

But we've gotten fast food burgers at least twenty times.

Fast and cheap and mediocre beats teriffic.

Have you ever stuck with a TV series even though it dropped in quality?

Sure you have. We all do.

Everything I know says I need to stop spending so much time rewriting. And I also think I spend too much time in the planning stages of writing; working on outlines, making sure I have enough twists, cleverly seeding in clues for the big "a-ha!" moment.

I am wasting my time trying to turn "good enough" into "great." Which, ultimately, is a subjective, arbitrary notion, because I've struggled to make books as perfect as I can make them and there are those that still don't like what I've done. I get one star reviews, same as every other author.

Which begs the question; if I get one star for something I worked my ass off on, it's not like that reader could give me less than one star if I didn't work as hard on it, so why am I bothering?

So... should I just write shit?

There are books I've picked up, self-pubbed and legacy-pubbed, and I can't even get through the first few pages without cringing because the writing is bad.

And I mean objectively bad. I mean being able to take a red pen and point out why the sentence doesn't work and why the paragraph isn't needed and why the story doesn't actually start until page 15.

But many of these authors outsell me.

There's also a good chance that I'm wrong. What I consider "objectively bad" is really subjective, because I'm a huge pile of neuroses and riddled with envy. If something is that popular, it can't be bad.

Can it?

I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I published a book less than a grade C. I'd feel lousy. I love writing, and I wouldn't want to release something I wasn't proud of.

But I could live with Bs. I was fine with getting Bs in school. Why put in all that extra work to turn a B into an A when I won't lose readers for a B?

This moment really hit home for me two years ago, when I rewrote my first three novels. I blogged about it.

In a nutshell, I created a character named Phineas Troutt when I was in my early twenties, and wrote three novels with him as the protagonist. They didn't sell to publishers. Years later, I used Phin as a supporting character in my Jack Daniels books, which did sell.

All of my other early rejected books found their way onto KDP, and some of them have earned a lot of fans and a lot of money. So I thought I could release my first three novels with minimal work and make a quick buck.

It didn't work out like I'd planned.

When I began to polish them, I realized how shitty they were. I was young and didn't know what I was doing. So I rewrote all three, and because it was Experienced Joe fighting with Newbie Joe over what could stay and what needed to be fixed, it took me longer to rewrite them than it would have taken to write three books from scratch.

I'm proud of the rewritten books. I think they are among my best work.

But they didn't sell as well as my Jack Daniels books.

My time would have been better served writing Jack Daniels instead.

I am 100% convinced that I could have self-pubbed my original novels with minor changes and made the same amount of money as I've currently made on those books. The reviews would be justifiably bad, but it would have benefited my career because I'd have new six books out instead of three, and the three new JD books I would have written would have sold more copies, and the three old Phin books I didn't rewrite would still make a few bucks and my fans would forgive me.

What does this mean for writers?

Do we write books that are good enough and then move along, or do we hold onto those books until we can make them better? If all signs point to readers being forgiving and sticking with authors, shouldn't we be listening?

I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to test my hypothesis.

SHOT GIRL took three months. Lots of research, lots of planning, a good deal of polishing.

CHASER is my next Jack Daniels book.

I'm going to start writing it on July 1 and see how quickly I can finish, and I'm not going to follow my normal routine of taking a month to make it better. I'll get it proofed and get that sucker out there and see how it compares in sales and reviews to my other books.

This isn't unusual for me. I wrote SHAKEN in nine days. Amazon published it without a single change.

I think I need to get out of my own way, stop letting perfect be the enemy of good, and see what happens.

Let me take a moment here to bring up a salient point; I'm an established writer with a fanbase and over 70 books that have sold over three million copies worldwide and have tens of thousands of positive reviews.

I like to think that I've written some good, even great, books. My numbers bear this out. Longtime fans will stick with me if I write something so-so.

But what if the first book of mine that a reader discovers is so-so? Will they go on to read more of my work? Or does it end right there?

I have no idea. And I'm not sure how to test this idea, other than write a mediocre stand-alone under a pen name and see how it does.

That seems... counterproductive.

Which probably means I won't be able to release something I'm not happy with under my own name. My ego won't allow it, even though my brain says it's the smart move.

What do you guys think? Spend a lot of time to make something a little better? Or stop wasting time trying to turn a good book into a great book and hope your fans are as forgiving as my wife?

Let's Ban All Firearms... Or Not

2019-05-21T21:48:00.002-05:00

What a long, strange trip it's been.

I began this blog over fourteen years ago, in March of 2005. I shared my experience with the traditional publishing world, and in 2009 dipped my toe in the self-publishing world, and then became an evangelist for the self-pub revolution.

It's been head-spinning to watch how the publishing climate has changed since I last blogged regularly. Advertising has become practically essential for self-pubbers to keep their heads above water. Marketing via social media is mandatory.

I have thoughts on ads and marketing, but those thoughts will be for an upcoming post. And I will begin to post regularly again about publishing, marketing, advertising, and promotion.

Today I want to talk about guns.

I've never used my blog for political reasons. I'm not about to start doing that. I don't care who you vote for, but you should vote. And before you vote, you should inform yourself about the candidates you both support and oppose.

It's almost impossible to see both sides of something. And it's extremely easy to assume someone is a bad person because you don't agree with their opinion on a certain topic.

Politicians LOVE this flaw in human nature, and exploit the hell out of it.

Be smarter than that. Seek out different viewpoints, not the echo chamber. Spend more time listening and less time trying to shout about how correct you are and how those who disagree are wrong and stupid.

Today, May 21 of 2019, we have so many important topics that need to be discussed. Racism. Gender discrimination. Abortion laws. Climate change. Us-Vs-Them politics. #MeToo. Net neutrality. Fake news. Public shaming.

All of these topics are important.

But lately, I've been fixated on guns.

For as long as I've been alive, America's love/hate relationship with firearms has been a polarizing political issue.

My views on this are centrist. I own guns in Illinois, which has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. I keep my guns locked in a safe. The only time I use them is at the gun range. I've taught my family, and countless friends, how to shoot, and the rules of gun safety.

I also believe that we would benefit from stronger gun laws. Being for the Second Amendment doesn't mean I want someone with a history of mental illness to be able to walk into a department store and walk out with an M16 and five thousand rounds of armor piercing bullets.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I just published my twelfth Jack Daniels novel, SHOT GIRL. It was a tough book to write.

In it, a diminished-capacity ex-cop has to defend a retirement community, using only her .38 revolver, against an active shooter with a modded fully-automatic weapon and a duffel bag of fifty-round drum magazines. During a hurricane.

Of course it's during a hurricane. It's a JA Konrath book.

When I wrote WHITE RUSSIAN last year, I knew it was a set-up for the above scenario in SHOT GIRL. But I didn't realize how much all of the gun research I needed to do would mess with my head.

It's terrifying how easy it is to acquire a gun. An unstable person with a little bit of smarts can do a whole lot of damage in a short amount, and no other method of murder comes close.

While SHOT GIRL is a thriller, meant to entertain, I also used it as a vehicle to inform. About gun safety. About gun buying and selling. About gun laws, on state and federal levels. I detail Homeland Security's instructions on what to do if you are in an active shooter situation. And I present both sides of the gun debate--I believe fairly--without taking sides.

I want you more than entertained. I want you woke.

None of the events I detail in SHOT GIRL are real. Though active shootings have become epidemic in the US, and around the world, the ones I refer to in my book are wholly fictional.

But they are based on fact.

I don't offer a solution to our gun problem in SHOT GIRL. I leave that for you, the reader, to ponder. But I am certain we have a problem. And I do believe the situation I describe in SHOT GIRL is likely to happen.

I get paid to make stuff up. And I really wish I the things I wrote about in SHOT GIRL were all make-believe.

They're not.

Active shootings are happening on almost a daily basis. My parents, children during the Cold War, had Atom Bomb Drills. Today, our children have Active Shooting Drills.

This is a very scary, and very real, part of our everyday life. And we need to be more informed on the topic. We need to know why this problem exists. We need solutions other than "ban all guns" or "arm everyone."

What we have to do, as a people, as a nation, is elevate the level of our discussion about firearms. We need to listen to those we disagree with, and try to come up with compromises that help all of us be safer.

I wrote SHOT GIRL to scare the hell out of you, no matter what you believe about guns. I want it to provoke discussion. I want it to open some eyes and some minds. I want H.R. 820 to pass in the Senate, and I want people who disagree to tell my why they want to shut down H.R. 820.

Were you even familiar with H.R. 820 before I mentioned it? If not, why not? Why isn't every American talking about it right now?

Let's have this elevated discussion. With our families. With our friends. And with those who oppose our views.

Because if we don't, the stuff I wrote about in SHOT GIRL--an active shooting situation that will threaten almost a thousand people--will inevitably happen.

Jack is a retired cop who knows and respects firearms. A recent victim of gun violence, she is confined to a wheelchair, getting physical therapy in a rehab facility, and teaching handgun safety and Second Amendment history to the elderly residents.

A thousand miles away, a very disturbed individual with a modified 9mm pistol, a thousand rounds of ammo, and a singular obsession--to make history as the biggest mass murderer ever--decides to make that fantasy a reality.

It has been said the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Jack is about to find out if that's true.

SHOT GIRL by JA Konrath

America has 300 million guns. This is the story of one of them.

SHOT GIRL is available in Kindle Unlimited, and is also for sale as an ebook and a paperbook.

Please read it, and review it, and share it, and discuss it.

I'll be back to blogging about publishing next week.

Amazon Ranking and Bestseller Lists - What's the Deal?

2018-01-28T10:52:00.002-06:00

It's really hard to draw conclusions in the self-pub marketing game. After almost ten years of self-publishing on Amazon, I still don't know why some ebooks sell more than others.

I've always believed the secret to success is luck. You can improve your luck by writing great books, having great cover art and great book descriptions, writing more great books, and...

Advertising? Social media? Newsletters? Amazon visibility?

I know for certain that social media works. When I have a new title, or I put something on sale, I Tweet it and put it on Facebook, and sales go up. Cause and effect.

When I have a new title, preorder, or special sale, and I send out a newsletter, sales go up. Cause and effect.

When I get a BookBub ad, sales go WAY up. Cause and effect.

But how about other kinds of ads, like AMS? Is the key to being successful on Amazon, being visible on Amazon?

It's a seductive idea. After all, Amazon has been designed to entice the reader to click, and to buy. Every pixel on the Amazon page has a purpose.

Surely the bestseller lists, and product ranks, have a purpose as well. They must help sell more books, or else why would they exist?

Does getting on a Top 100 Bestseller List on Amazon give your book enough added visibility to fuel a lot of sales?

Or is book rank more about satisfying authors and their egos, and giving prospective buyers more secondary information to corroborate a prospective sale, rather than being the thing that introduces buyers to a book?

I've been asking myself that question a lot.

My first experiment was observational and highly subjective. I looked at how I bought things on Amazon.

We rarely examine our own buying habits, and volumes have been written about why we buy things, but I buy a lot on Amazon, and here's some of the things I've noticed.

Buying Situation #1 - A Need

This is the main reason I buy things. I have a need for something, so I search for it by typing it into the search box. Say it's a hammer. I type in 'hammer', and maybe narrow it down by category. Then I see what comes up, and compare a few products based on prices, appearance, and customer reviews.

I don't read customer reviews, unless a product has too few, or a lot are bad, or a lot are overwhelmingly good and it seems like they might be fake. (We can all spot fake reviews that were written by shills).

Maybe one product pages will take me to more pages by showing me what customers also bought, or sponsored products, or what else customers looked at.

Then I buy something.

Buying Situation #2 - I Know What I Want

If I know the exact product, I go directly to it. Maybe price is a consideration, but if I'm brand loyal (a specific author, a kind of shampoo) I don't worry about price, reviews, or competing products. I click on it.

Buying Situation #3 - I'm Shopping

I have a vague idea that I want something, like a book, but I'm unsure of what I want, so I'm just going to poke around Amazon until I find something.

Of the three kinds of shopping I do, this third one is the least common for me. And here's why:

I know the authors and types of books I like, and usually buying one of them leads me to instant recommendations about others I'll like based on customers like me. Hell, Amazon sends me emails based on things I've bought and my browsing history. Not a lot of poking around needed by me; it's all on one page.

Do I ever browse the Bestseller lists?

As an author I do, to see who is selling.

As a reader, never. Neither does my wife, an uber-reader who burns through seven books a week. She's always got a full Kindle because Amazon recommends books, she signs up for the newsletters of authors she likes, and she gets BookBub emails daily.

So we have two readers in our house who spend a lot on Amazon, and neither of us buys books because we discovered something new on a bestseller list.

My buying habits may not be yours, however. I know many readers who learn of new books on Goodreads, and I've never gotten much use out of that platform, as a reader or an author. I think Goodreads is terrific, but I just don't use it. I'm certainly not obsessed with my Goodreads Author Standing as I am with my Amazon Rank.

But should I be worried about Amazon Rank at all?

What's the relationship between causation and correlation in regards to Amazon rank? Does a high rank help a book maintain sales through visibility? Or is it only an indicator of book sales and the added visibility does little for sales?

My own efforts inform me that it is promotion that leads to sales, and an incidental side-effect of sales is the rank position and any subsequent appearance on a bestseller list, which doesn’t help the book much.

Some authors seem to believe that appearing on a bestseller list leads to extra visibility and additional sales.

Am I right? Are they right? Maybe a little of both?

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to conclusively prove either of these approaches, because there is no way to conduct a perfect experiment with a control. Other books influence the ranks and positions of our books, and there are always “boosts” that we can’t account for; someone reads a promotional Tweet or Ad a day or two after it runs, a promo site finds the book and promotes it, giving it a boost, word of mouth spreads, Amazon has a delay or lag with their site update...

So I can’t think of any way to definitively state that appearing on a bestseller list is an effective sales tool.

But I do have plenty of evidence to show that a bestseller list appearance doesn’t do much when it comes to additional sales/downloads. I’ve become convinced that rank makes authors feel special, but doesn't boost sales by any significant degree.

I say “significant” because I’m sure being on a list is helpful. Just not very helpful, and not worth pursuing.

That may seem counter-intuitive, but you’ve probably seen examples with your own books.

I recently made my book ENDURANCE free for five days. I didn’t do any ads, but did link to it on social media. First day, 1375 downloads, and it peaked at #70 on the Top 100 freebie list.

Now, this book had nothing pushing it up the charts, just my Tweets and Facebook, and anyone who retweeted, and those websites that promote free books on their own initiative to make Associates dollars.

After that initial social media burst, there was no other promo for ENDURANCE. This was intentional on my part to prove a point.

Being on the biggest bestseller list made ENDURANCE visible to readers who are presumably searching bestseller lists for ebooks, so once I hit #70 I should have had hundreds or thousands of new eyes on it, and corresponding downloads because, hey, it was free.

But you can guess what happened once my promotion stopped. Once I stopped promoting, it stopped climbing. By Day #2, it was #95, and on day four it was #214. Whent he promo ended it bounced to the paid list at #42,844.

According to William Ockham who figured this out with Data Guy, “A sale has a half-life of one day. A sale 24 hours ago is worth 1/2 of a sale made right now. A sale an hour ago is worth 23/24ths of a sale made now. Sum the value of sales for each eligible title and rank order the results.”

So the moment you peak, that value begins to immediately start fading unless you continue to sell at that speed, a higher speed, or a slightly lower speed. But that slightly lower speed needs to pick up as time passes, for a rank to maintain its spot. It has to run faster to stay in the same place.

The added visibility of being on a list, without any promo to back it up, doesn't do much to sustain position.

Promos will help a book sustain its rank, because they are driving more downloads. So as long as the promotion/marketing/ads/retweets/facebook boosts continue, a book can retain its spot, or even climb up.

Without any promos, the only thing to drive a book’s downloads is its own visibility on a bestseller list.

When I hit #70, if appearing on the list and being visible to all of those people browsing the list had a big impact, you’d expect a lot of downloads, and for it to continue to climb.

But being on the list wasn’t enough. By day #2, ENDURANCE only had 729 downloads. Day three, 331, day four 160, day five, 113.

While it isn’t on the Top 100 Bestseller list, it was still on many other lists (Horror, Occult, Whispersync) in high spots.

But those high spots aren’t generating enough new downloads for it to sustain its position. It kept dropping without any outside promo push. And this is a freebie list. Being #1 in Horror—a big category—as a freebie only yielded 300 downloads.

That's 300 downloads if you believe that people only downloaded it because they say it on that bestseller list (or another list). But I know that the reason it peaked on the list was my sale and social media push. That got it on the list.

And being on the list didn't keep it on the list.

ENDURANCE isn’t an anomaly. I did a BookBub with BLOODY MARY recently, hit #1 on the overall free list with 45,000 downloads. But once the promo stopped, the book dropped like a rock.

My experience has been that being on a bestseller list doesn’t have much of a positive effect on a book’s downloads.

I did 1375 downloads on Day #1, while promoting ENDURANCE. Day #2, I had 729. One might attribute those 729 to list visibility, but there is no way to be sure. I could have had people clicking on my Twitter and Facebook push the next day, which meant my promo was still working. Those websites that promote free books could have picked it up the next day, giving it a little push. And there are probably reasons I don’t even know that factor into who downloaded that book on Day #2, and why. During a book launch, for example, it may take some fans a while to discover that a new book is out, or word-of-mouth can build, or social media can build, so a book can continue to climb. But that’s still a push doing it, not a by-product of hitting a list.

This happens every time I do a KU freebie or countdown without a sustained outside promotional push.

I have many other examples. My books are always on the WOMEN SLEUTH bestseller lists, but they are often below #100. Since you can’t browse below #100, they get zero visibility from being #202, but they still consistently sell somehow. My belief is readers find them from actively searching for the next book in my series, or through Amazon's "Customers Also Bought" feature.

I’ve been #1 on both Free and Paid Bestseller List, several times. It feels good, but it doesn’t stick unless massive promotion backs it up.

Rank may indeed be a measure of success and sales, but rank isn’t the reason for success and sales.

A simpler example of what I’m saying is watching box office results for movies. STAR WARS hitting the #1 box office spot probably didn’t lead to many more ticket sales, people who said “Hey, look at Star Wars at #1—I’d never heard of it before but now that it’s visible I’ll go see it”.

When STAR WARS hit #1, do you know what #10 was? No. And neither does anyone else. Because people aren’t looking at box office lists to determine what to see.

What draws attention to movies? Ads. Marquees. Reviews. Theater websites. But the movie theater websites aren’t ranking movies. AMCtheaters.com doesn't have a list of which movie is the most popular so you can decide what to see by rank.

Where is the evidence that hordes of readers—or even handfuls of readers—are discovering new books by browsing the bestseller lists?

It may be helpful—to what degree, I don’t know. But I do know, with 100% certainty, that hitting a list will not keep you on that list unless there are other factors involved.

The above examples were for free books. Here is a current promo I'm running with a paid book.

I currently have four box sets all on sale:

Whiskey Sour/Bloody Mary/Rusty Nail (JackDaniels thrillers)

Dirty Martini/Fuzzy Navel/Cherry Bomb(Jack Daniels thrillers)

Origin/The List/Haunted House (Horror)

Afraid/Trapped/Endurance (Horror)

I set all four at 99 cents on the 26^th, and Tweeted three of them, listing the book titles, and one where I didn’t list the titles (Origin)

One the 26th, just via Twitter, I sold:

Whiskey Box - 270

Dirty Box - 185

Afraid Box -147

Origin Box - 32

That was the order I tweeted in, one after the other, and pretty much worked as I expected. I’ve never had these box sets at 99 cents, so a lot of thrifty shoppers were waiting for this deal.

My Jack Daniels books are more popular than my horror, which is expected again. But the sales directly aligned with the order I tweeted.

I tweeted four times in a row. The first Tweet, with Whiskey, got the most downloads.

Then some of my followers began to go Tweetblind. Or they didn’t read closely and thought I was repeating. Or they were overwhelmed. Dirty was next, then Afraid, and finally Origin, and with Origin I didn’t list the titles, just tweeted I had another box set.

Lessons learned: When promoting more than one thing, don’t do it one after another. And when doing a box set, list the titles.

The next day, I did two promotions. For Origin, I did a BookBub ad in the horror genre. For Afraid, I did a newsletter swap with four other well-known horror authors.

The above is a jpg. Here's the link to the page:

https://www.buoy-media.com/18-bestselling-horror-ebooks

The five of us all sent out a newsletter yesterday, promoting all five box sets. So yesterday I had a BookBub for one box set, this promo for the other horror box set, and did no promos at all for my two Jack Daniels sets.

On the 27^th I sold:

Whiskey Box - 64

Dirty Box - 63

Afraid Box w/ Group Newsletter - 431

Origin Box w/ Bookbub - 1519

Afraid squeaked into the #300s with rank. Origin climbed to #80.

All of us became Top 50 Horror Authors. We all climbed up on various bestseller lists. I made enough in sales to make up what it cost to send out my newsletter, and of course BookBub always pays for itself.

But our ranks aren’t sticking. They’re dropping.

In my case, neither of my horror box sets have even been on a bestseller list, because I've kept them at $9.99.

So my anecdotal evidence, that I don't shop using the bestseller lists, seems to be supported by my experiments. Not many others seem to shop using the lists, or else we'd all be sticking or climbing, rather than dropping.

Stop worrying about your Amazon ranking. It is an indicator of sales, not a driver of sales.

What does cause me worry, however, is how to maintain sales. While the vast majority of titles appear on a bestseller list, then drop off pretty fast, some of them do tend to stick around for a while.

Why? Could the added visibility of high ranking be helping some books and not others? Or is something else at work here?

I have an idea, but I don't think anyone is going to like it.

Every book, and every backlist, has a ceiling. The ceiling is based on:

1. How many people would like your books if they encountered them.

2. How many people you can help to encounter them.

3. How many people will encounter them because of reasons that have nothing to do with your efforts.

You can write great books in a popular genre, so there is an established base of fans out there. And you can (and must) continue to promote those books. Here's some of the promotions I'm constantly using:

I always have a book on sale and a book that's free.
I send out newsletters.
I do ads (Bookbub, AMS, Twitter, Facebook).
I use social media (Twitter and Facebook).
I update my website.
I update my book backmatter to include new titles.
I update my book descriptions and Amazon author page to include new titles.
I experiment a lot.

After that, it's out of my hands. Remember your Serenity Prayer.

Here are some things beyond your control that could happen, and this is (probably) why some books seem to stick on the bestseller lists.

You could have a publisher promote you.
You could have IP tie-ins (TV, movies, comics).
You could get media exposure.
Word of mouth could explode/go viral.

Basically, I believe we're limited by our own ceilings, unless extraordinary luck steps in.

You can gradually raise your ceiling by writing more books, and doing all the things I mention above. And the more you do, the easier it will be for luck to find you.

But you need to stop worrying about your Amazon rank, and stop judging your success by appearances on the bestseller lists.

Your time is best spent tending your garden. Keep writing, keep promoting, keep growing that readership.

There's no secret here. There's only hard work and luck.

Konrath's New Year's Resolutions for Writers 2018

2017-12-31T09:45:00.002-06:00

Every December I do a post about resolutions for writers, and every year I add more of them.

You can read the compilation or original posts HERE.

This year, rather than repost them all, I'm going to reflect on all the resolutions I've written since 2006.

This blog began with suggestions of how writers could improve their commercial appeal, find an agent and a publisher, and self-promote.

This blog has prospered through the birth of social media and MySpace (remember MySpace?), the rise of Amazon and self-publishing, and chronicled my own personal journey of legacy deals, into KDP, and back to having print books on the shelf with my Kensington deal and upcoming release of THE LIST.

This blog has lasted so long that I no longer feel the need to blog. I've stated my case, done what I came her to do, and don't have to say much more.

I've taken a lot of my own advice. And disregarded much of it. Here's the breakdown of every New Year's Resoultion I've offered, with my modern take on the adivice:

I will start/finish the damn book

This is still essential. Without this, you aren't a writer.

I will always have at least three stories on submission, while working on a fourth

Self-publishing has made this irrelevant. If you're writing shorts, self-pub them one at a time, then compile them and self-publish the collection.

I will attend at least one writer's conference, and introduce myself to agents, editors, and other writers

I haven't gone to any conferences in years.

That said, I will be attending KILLER NASHVILLE at the end of August. If you ever wanted to meet me, that's your chance.

I will subscribe to the magazines I submit to

If you're still submitting to mags, subscribe.

I will join a critique group. If one doesn't exist, I will start one at the local bookstore or library

Can't hurt. Feedback during the writing progress can be immeasurably helpful. I always discuss books-in-progress with family and friends to litmus test the direction I'm heading, or if I get stuck.

I will finish every story I start

If it gets hard, good. It makes you stronger.

I will listen to criticism

During the creation process, it's key. But reviews are not criticism. Don't read reviews.

I will create/update my website

Still essential. I make a few hundred bucks a month on Amazon Associates, all from people who check out my website and click on an affiliate link.

I will master the query process and search for an agent

When you're big enough to need an agent, they'll find you. Or they'll take a phone call. Query letters are so 1995.

I'll quit procrastinating in the form of research, outlines, synopses, taking classes, reading how-to books, talking about writing, and actually write something

Hell yes. Google and Wikipedia and the Internet Wayback Machine are great for research, but they become black holes from which you cannot escape. You can't let the Internet suck you in when you need to put words on the page.

I will refuse to get discouraged, because I know JA Konrath wrote 9 novels, received almost 500 rejections, and penned over 1 million words before he sold a thing--and I'm a lot more talented than that guy

You will be discouraged, but the only surefire solution is to keep writing, or quit entirely. I spent ten years without making a dime. And now I'm close to selling my 3 millionth book.

I will keep my website updated

I hate going to a favorite author's website and seeing no new news for the last six months. Your fans hate that too.

I will keep up with my blog and social networks

Absolutely. But I strongly recommend keeping your personal social media (family stuff, political views, liking Caturday) separate from your professional pages. Your friends and family can follow you because they care about who you voted for, and how much you like the Cubs. Fans probably only care about your new releases, and when your stuff is on sale.

I also strongly recommend Freedom and Anti-Social to block your social media during writing time.

I will schedule bookstore signings, and while at the bookstore I'll meet and greet the customers rather than sit dejected in the corner

Sitting and waiting for life to happen isn't a recipe for success. If you're there to get known, make yourself known. If you're at an event and there is no line of fans waiting for a signature and selfie, then get up and mingle.

I will send out a newsletter, emphasizing what I have to offer rather than what I have for sale, and I won't send out more than four a year

Six times a year at most. More than that, and you'll risk losing followers. YMMV.

I will learn to speak in public, even if I think I already know how

It's a good skill to master, and one day you'll need it.

I will make selling my books my responsibility, not my publisher's

I was wrong on this one. You should do whatever you can to help, but this is their part of the contract to fulfill.

I will stay in touch with my fans

If someone reaches out, reach back. Keep it brief and impersonal and gracious.

I will contact local libraries, and tell them I'm available for speaking engagements

Libraries will always be relevant.

I will attend as many writing conferences as I can afford

A few is fine, but they just aren't needed like they used to be needed. It's great to meet readers and author authors, but a BookBub ad, which will likely cost less, is a lot better for your sales.

I will spend a large portion of my advance on self-promotion

I was wrong. Use your advance to live on while you write more.

I will help out other writers

To a point. I've become very protective of my time, and I've hit my lifetime quota of helping others. Be wary you don't spread yourself too thin.

I will not get jealous, will never compare myself to my peers, and will cleanse my soul of envy

Your race is with yourself, not with anyone else.

I will be accessible, amiable, and enthusiastic

Good advice for writing, and for life.

I will do one thing every day to self-promote

You can tweet, blog, Facebook, answer email, update your site, put something on sale, make something free, book an ad... do something.

Your backlist is like a garden. It needs to be tended, or it will die.

I will always remember where I came from

If you look forward without looking back, you're doomed to retrace your steps rather than get somewhere new.

Keep an Open Mind

It's easier to defend your position than seriously consider new ways of thinking. But there is no innovation, no evolution, no "next big thing" unless someone thinks differently. Be that someone.

Look Inward

We tend to write for ourselves. But for some reason we don't market for ourselves. Figure out what sort of marketing works on you; that's the type of marketing you should be trying. You should always know why you're doing what you're doing, and what results are acceptable to you.

Find Your Own Way

Advice is cheap, and the Internet abounds with people telling you how to do things. Question everything. The only advice you should take is the advice that makes sense to you. And if it doesn't work, don't be afraid to ditch it.

Set Attainable Goals

Saying you'll find an agent, or sell 30,000 books, isn't attainable, because it involves things out of your control. Saying you'll write 20,000 words next month, or update your website, is within your power and fully attainable.

Enjoy the Ride

John Lennon said that life is what happens while you're busy planning other things. Writing isn't about the destination; it's about the journey. If you aren't enjoying the process, why are you doing it?

Help Each Other
But remember that there will always be people who need help, and you can't help them all. Give what you can, but don't expect anything in return.

I Will Use Anger As Fuel

Life is unfair. That won't change. If you want to succeed, don't dwell on that. Focus on improving your odds by working your ass off.

I Will Abandon My Comfort Zone

Great artists take chances. Successful businesspeople take chances.

This means doing things you're afraid of, and things you hate, and things you've never tried before.

I Will Feed My Addiction

Life is busy. There are always things you can and should be doing, and your writing career often comes second. So make it come first.

Right now, you're reading A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. Not A Newbie's Guide to Leading a Content and Balanced Life.

If you can't devote the time, energy, and money it takes to pursue this career, go do something else.

I Will Never Be Satisfied

Happiness isn't productive. Mankind's greatest accomplishments are all tales of struggle, hardship, sacrifice, work, and effort. You won't do any of those things if you're satisfied with the status quo.

Who do you want on your team? The kid who plays for fun? Or the kid who plays to win?

If you want this to be your year, you know which kid you have to be.

I Won't Blame Anyone For Anything

What's done is done, and being bitter isn't going to help your career. So try to learn from misfortune, forgive yourself and others, and focus on what you can learn from past failures.

I Will Be Wary

For a while, legacy publishers held all the cards. Now it looks like Amazon does, and will continue to do so for a while. But the moment you become complacent, you set yourself up for disaster. Ask the dinosaurs. Stay as agile and wary as possible, and be ready to diversify if the climate changes.

I Will Be A Pioneer

I continue to try new things (this year I pubbed some puzzle books and a children's picture book). If you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough.

I Will Read Books

Reading, and giving the gift of reading to others, is essential. Period.

I Will Stop Worrying

Worrying, along with envy, blame, guilt, and regret, is a useless emotion. It's also bad storytelling. Protagonists should be proactive, not reactive. They should forge ahead, not dwell on things beyond their control. Fretting, whining, complaining, and bemoaning the state of the industry isn't the way to get ahead.

You are the hero in the story of your life. Act like it.

I Will Self-Publish

Welcome to 2018.

I Won't Self-Publish Crap

Just because it's easier than ever before to reach an audience doesn't mean you should.

Luck still plays a part in success. But so does professionalism.

Self-pubbing is not the kiddie pool, where you learn how to swim. You need to be an excellent swimmer before you jump in.

I'll Pay Attention to the Market

If you want to make a living, you still have to understand your audience, and how to give them what they want.

Self-pubbing is not an excuse to be a self-indulgent egomaniac. On the contrary, it's a chance for you to learn what sells.

For the very first time, the writer can conduct their own real-world experiments. By trying different things, learning from mistakes, and constantly tweaking and improving, we have more power than ever before to find our readers.

That means being attuned, not passive.

I Will Control My Fear

There will always be doubt and uncertainty, because luck plays such a big role in success. I know there are writers who are doing everything right, who still haven't found readers.

But don't let fear own you.

It is easy to get frustrated.

It is easy to get envious of those doing better.

It is easy to dismiss the success or failures of others.

It is easy to worry about the future.

It is easy to ignore good advice. It's also easy to take bad advice.

It is easy to make snap judgments and quick dismissals.

It is easy to make predictions without evidence.

It is easy to give up.

BUT NOBODY EVER SAID SUCCESS IS EASY.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Sales fluctuate, and after being in this biz for almost two decades I still don't know why some things hit and some miss. It's frustrating, but expected.

Here's some things I've learned.

1. Ebooks are forever, and shelf space is infinite. Once you're published, you'll always be selling as long as you tend to your backlist.

2. Ebooks are not a trend. They are the new, preferred way to read, and mankind will always have the need and desire to read.

3. Ebooks are global. Doing poorly in the USA? That's okay. There are plenty of other countries where you can make money.

4. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You're a writer. You're in this until the day you die. As long as you write good books, you'll find readers. This may take time. And it may take some tweaking because the books you think are good need a rewrite, or that cover art you bought at a bargain price of $19 is scaring readers away because it sucks.

The universe doesn't owe you readers. You have to earn them.

Get Over Yourself

Don't use Google Alerts, or read your reviews, or search for yourself on social media.

If you want to be loved, get a pet. The approval of strangers is one of the worst things you can pursue, and it will always leave you empty inside.

More writing, less concern about if the world approves. As long as you keep putting good work out there, you'll find an audience.

Get your real-life shit together

That means:

1. Incorporating and paying quarterly taxes.

2. Creating a will, including a living will.

3. Making sure the will includes provisions for your literary properties.

4. Keeping accurate track of business expenses.

5. Getting regular doctor check-ups so you don't die from something avoidable.

6. Remembering that future goals shouldn't come at the expense of enjoying every single day.

7. Appreciating the people you care about, and making sure they know it.

With luck, we'll all die very old and very rich.

But I've always said that luck favors those prepared. It's very east to get caught up in writing and promotion and ignore the stuff that only becomes obvious when you're in a life-or-death scenario.

Don't wait for the life-or-death scenario. Take care of it now. It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 108, death and taxes are unavoidable. The more you do now to prepare for them, the less painful they'll be.

If you die tonight, will it be with regrets? If so, sort that out immediately. Don't leave loose ends. Don't leave things unsaid. Don't leave a mess for others to clean up.

WRITE

Write better. Write what you've proven works. Write new things that aren't proven. Write more.

This is the single most important thing you can do.

Joe sez: Those are twelve years of my past resolutions, and my recent feelings about them.

Here are two new bits of advice.

Don't Fear Piracy

There are writers that actually hire companies to send Cease And Desist letters to file-sharing sites.

This is a waste of money.

Pirates will always pirate. Don't sweat it. Your work being shared is not equal to losing sales, and there hasn't been a single reputable study to say otherwise.

As an experiment, for the past three months, I've been torrent seeding one of my own new releases, to measure if it has any impact on sales. I've shared my own book over a thousand times on Demonid and Pirate Bay and a hundred other trackers, and have seen ZERO correlation between file sharing and sales going down. If anything, sales went up slightly when I began sharing.

While my study hasn't been scientific, it has been enough to confirm my belief that the only piracy worth worrying about is sites selling your work without permission, and only because that can get you unfairly booted out of Kindle Unlimited.

If someone is selling you illegally, do what you can to make them take you down.

But if someone is sharing your work, ignore it. You'll never prevent file-sharing, and there's no real need to. Your bad sales aren't because of pirates. You'll have to look at other factors.

Stop Worrying About Amazon Rank

We all obsess about sales. That's inevitable.

But what's with this recent trend obsessing about Amazon rank?

Rank is a number that Amazon controls, and they've changed the rules several times on how they calculate it.

As far as I know, no one has determined how many extra sales you get by appearing on a bestseller list, and I wouldn't be surprised if the number is minuscule. I just did a BookBub giveaway and hit #1 with 45,000 giveaways on that day.

BookBub works. The day after my BookBub, I did a $120 ad with Kindle Nation Daily, and managed to give away another 6000 copies as the book dropped to #7.

Now, I wasn't expecting KND to have anywhere near the impact that BookBub did. But on the second day after the BookBub, still free and still in the Top 10, I only gave away 2000 copies.

Let's think about that. At #1, I had the most downloads on Amazon.com. The next day, supported by a pricey ad, I dropped to #7.

No add, and I dropped to #10, and eventually to #40 by the end of the day before the promo ended.

This is hardly scientific, but that's a pretty dramatic drop in giveaways. If being one of the Top 10 free books for that three day period really lead to a huge increase in visibility, and thus an increase in downloads, I would have expected more downloads, and more staying power on that list. But when the ads stopped, the sales plummeted fast.

In other words, being on the bestseller list didn't account for enough exposure to keep it on the bestseller list.

Which makes perfect logic sense. Unless a book has something behind it (ads, marketing, a promo push, a new release, extreme word of mouth buzz) it has a predictable bell curve. It rises, peaks, and drops.

With tens of thousands of other books also rising, peaking, and dropping, the whole ranking system is a hot mess, and I don't believe it helps sales very much. I've messed around with keywords and had books with similar genres and similar ranks have similar sales, even though one is on a Top 100 list (like Women Sleuths) and one isn't on any list even though it features the same female sleuth.

That extra exposure you get from being on a list probably doesn't amount to much.

Back when KDP was still DTP (look it up) there was a noticeable, measurable sales effect when you landed on a bestseller list.

These days, I remain unconvinced that rank helps to increase sales. Until I'm shown otherwise, it makes no sense for me to worry about rank.

Now, you SHOULD be worried about sales. That means figuring out how to maximize the impact your book has by paying attention to the cover art, description, BISEC categories, keywords, price, promotions, and advertising. You want to maximize your reach, and find that sweet spot between making as much money as possible and getting as many eyes on you as possible.

But I strongly suggest you stop worrying about maximizing your rank. Find some other way to gauge your success. I gauge my personal success by how much I'm writing and publishing, and my business success by how much I'm earning. That means I'm always tweaking things, especially price, Countdown Deals, and freebies, adding to my Amazon bibliography and product description, and tailoring ads to link with other similar products (Amazon ads don't help much, but as long as you're in the black on them it's a no-brainer). It also means I may be personally successful in any given month, but not really business successful, and vice-versa.

It also means going all in with Kindle Unlimited and going for KENP. Like it or not, KENP remains a key component in author revenue.

At the same time, don't worry about other authors stealing your KENP cash. It isn't a zero sum amount, and one author having a higher rank than you doesn't mean you'll make less money.

It's out of your control, anyway. Don't worry about things you can't control.

Focus on the things you can control.

That's all I got. I'm out of advice. I hope it helps.

If you appreciated this blog post, check out my latest newsletter. Lots of free ebooks and deals for the New Year.

And after picking up all my bargains, go write something. Make 2018 your best year ever, both personally, and for your writing business.

Happy New Year!

Interactive Ebooks? Almost...

2017-11-01T15:52:00.001-05:00

So, I was thinking about enhanced ebooks, and decided to try something that, AFAIK, hasn't ever been done before.

I recently got hooked on playing Escape the Room games. Not just cell phone apps, where you solve point-and-click puzzles to advance the story, but board games that challenge you to follow the clues and get away before the time is up, real-life games where you go into a room with a group of people and a guide and actually tried to escape by following a carefully constructed scenario, and mail-order subscription games where every month you are snail-mailed a mysterious package that you have to figure out.

And I thought: Could something like this be adapted to ebooks?

I came up with a concept. A serial killer is emailing me, author J.A. Konrath, and taunting me to prevent his next crime.

My first, grandiose way of doing this was to have the killer leave clues about the murder in his emails to me. Then readers could solve the mystery like the sleuth in a mystery novel.

But that already exists. It’s called “a mystery novel.” There’s no user interaction. There’s no “solve a puzzle to advance” dynamic that I enjoy in other media. And mystery novels are vicarious, not hands-on and personal.

I rejigged my concept, and decided to have the killer send me cryptic puzzles, which linked to his website, www.StopAMurder.com. If I could solve the puzzles and type in the correct answers, it would bring me closer to stopping him.

If I failed, someone would die.

Since I don't want anyone to die, I decided to enlist my readers to help me.

STOP A MURDER was born, combining aspects of both thriller fiction and interactive games.

Here's how I pitch it:

This is unlike any mystery or thriller book you’ve ever read before. You play the sleuth, and as the story unfolds you will be tasked with solving puzzles to prevent a murder from happening.

In this five-book series, you’ll uncover the mind and motivations of a nefarious killer who is plotting to commit an unspeakable crime.

Each book contains an epistolary collection of emails, texts, and letters, delivered to thriller author J.A. Konrath, by a serial killer. This psychopath is sending detailed, cryptic puzzles and brain teasers that lead to clues about who will be murdered, why, when, where, and how.

Some of the puzzles are easy to figure out. Others are much more devious.

Do you like solving mysteries? Do you enjoy brain teasers or escape-the-room games? Are you good at spotting clues?

Only you can stop a murder.

Are you smart enough?
Are you brave enough?
Let the games begin…

#1 STOP A MURDER – HOW: Puzzles 1 - 12
#2 STOP A MURDER – WHERE: Puzzles 13 - 24
#3 STOP A MURDER – WHY: Puzzles 25 - 36
#4 STOP A MURDER – WHO: Puzzles 37 - 48
#5 STOP A MURDER – WHEN: Puzzles 49 - 60
STOP A MURDER - ANSWER BOOK

This series works best with an internet connection, using a color e-reader or app to enter answers on the killer's website. A black and white e-ink device will work, but the interface will be smoother if used in conjunction with a computer or smart phone.

While each book in this series can be read and enjoyed on its own, the experience will be richer if read in order, and if the internet is used.

Over the five book series, you'll need to answer more than seventy puzzles. When you answer correctly, you are rewarded with more clues that can stop a murder and reveal the killer's identity.

Intrigued?

I've released all five books, and the answer book, on all platforms. They're currently live on Amazon, and they will soon be on Kobo, Nook, Apple, and Google Play. There will also be a paper version, with all 70 puzzles, plus answers.

Check out my website for more info.

I did a beta test for this a few months ago, via Facebook (I've killed the old posts to prevent spoilers, but the site is still there for readers to exchange hints and tips.) The overwhelming majority (96%) of readers liked it. Since then, I've radically changed the story, and improved the interface. It's bigger, better, scarier, more fun, and easier to use.

I hope everyone reading this blog gives it a chance. If you do, please leave a review.

Now I'll take some questions.

Q: Joe, does this mean you're blogging again?

Joe sez: I dunno. I haven't really had much to say lately. This project is something completely new, so I thought it was worth blogging about. But in the last six months or so, there hasn't been anything happening in the publishing world that I felt a need to comment on.

Q: Why are you releasing this on all platforms? Are you done with Kindle Unlimited?

Joe sez: Like many self-pub writers, I've made less money since KU was introduced. That said, I believe Amazon is still the biggest game in town. But for this project, the books are only about 7500 words each, even though they take several hours to complete. It doesn't make fiscal sense to put them into KU, because I'd be getting paid pennies even though readers are getting many hours of entertainment. Also, as you'll see when you begin to read this series, I spent a great deal of time and money on these STOP A MURDER books. I'll never recoup my investment in KU.

Q: There has been a lot of talk about KU scammers. What are your thoughts?

Joe sez: There will always be scammers. It's unknown if scammers are hurting the KU payout, since payouts are decided after a pay period ends. It isn't a zero sum game when the pot is created after the month is over. And the pot keeps climbing higher. I've heard the All Star Bonuses have been affected, which ain't good.

Q: How about visibility?

Joe sez: Scammers are certainly taking up bestseller spots. I'm sure that hurts. How much? I dunno. I've never seen any studies about how many ebooks are sold based on bestseller list presence. Having increased visibility is no doubt helpful. And my own buying habits on Amazon have me occasionally scanning the bestseller lists to see if there is anything that piques my interest. But I'd need to see data that differentiates sales between books on and off the bestseller lists to fully understand how much of a boost those books get. Data Guy, you got any ideas? Does being #100 on a list really boost sales as opposed to being #101 and off the list?

Q: Didn't you promise the next Jack Daniels book would be out, like, ten months ago?

Joe sez: I did. And I'm a jerk. But it will be out soon. So will the next two Phineas Troutt books. All three books are basically finished. I just need to do rewrites.

Q: I noticed that all of your Jack Kilborn titles are now JA Konrath titles. What happened to Kilborn?

Joe sez: Konrath is the bigger brand, so now all Kilborn books are Konrath books. But I am still going to continue that horror line, and have several horror books coming out next year. They'll just be published under the Konrath name.

Q: What happened to your bad movie blog?

Joe sez: My son, Talon, and I are still watching bad movies. He's in college, and I'm just waiting for him to put our notes online. We'll get back on it. And eventually compile the reviews into a book.

Q: You've got the STOP A MURDER series, and three more novels out by the end of the year. What's next?

Joe sez: I'm putting the finishing touches on a children's rhyming picture book, and I still need to finish the TIMECASTER trilogy, do sequels to THE LIST and ORIGIN, and finish the horror novels I've already potted out (THE GREYS, CLOSE YOUR EYES).

Q: Will there be more Jack Daniels?

Joe sez: Yes. Jack will be back in the upcoming novels OLD FASHIONED and SHOTS. Not sure which will come out first. I hope to get everything I've mentioned above done by the end of 2018... unless STOP A MURDER does well. Then I'm dropping everything and doing a sequel. I already have something in mind.

Q: And what about this blog?

Joe sez: If writers have a topic they'd like my opinion on, ask me in the comments.

Ebooks Sales Slowing? Yes and No

2017-04-04T12:33:00.001-05:00

Joe sez: This blog originally appeared in 2010. It's extremely prescient about the future of ebooks, but that isn't the reason I'm reposting it.

I'm reposting because I got my very first DMCA Takedown notice.

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

Apparently my infringement, according to the website Lumen, was including an Amazon link to author Lexi Revellian.

https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/14128844

Lexi was originally mentioned as one of the laundry list of authors below. I've since removed her name and Amazon link from this post, but this has brought up some interesting points.

1. Linking to an Amazon page is in no way a copyright infringement.

2. I'm pretty sure all authors want as many websites as possible to link to their books.

3. I don't think I know who Lexi is, but this was seven years ago and I may have forgotten. I have no idea why, seven years after the fact, she or someone working on her behalf, would complain to Blogger about a very old fair use post of mine that was supportive of her work.

I know that some authors hire companies to scour the Internet for examples of piracy. These companies dish out DMCA notices like drunks throw out beads at Mardi Gras.

As mentioned by Blogger in the email above, they remove posts regardless of merit. Which means anyone can accuse anyone of copyright infringement, and Blogger (along with many other Internet companies) err to the side of the accuser.

Certainly everyone can see what a bad thing this is. Guilty until proven innocent didn't work for the court system, and it shouldn't work for the Internet.

4. I have no idea if Lexi is using any services to protect her copyrights, because I have no idea why I got this notice. But I will offer some blanket advice to all authors who think about using one of these services:

Piracy doesn't harm authors. I have written ample posts about this topic.

Hiring companies to police the Internet, looking for evidence of copyright infringement and sending out DCMA notices, does hurt authors. Lexi had an Amazon link to her website, that even seven years later still gets traffic. Now her link is gone. That can't be helpful for an author. And I can guess I'm not the only blogger who is getting notices like this. How many writers, thinking they're combating piracy, are actually limiting their own reach?

Probably a lot. So I'll say it again:

It's a waste of time, and money, and also potentially career-damaging, to fight piracy. I say this as someone who has been pirated a lot for over a decade. People pirate me. And I don't care. And there is absolutely no verifiable evidence that ebook piracy harms authors.

If you're concerned about piracy, make sure your ebooks and audio are easily available and affordable.

But, as I said, you shouldn't be concerned. People are going to share files. It's part of the human condition. Anti-piracy laws are about as successful as anti-drug laws.

The enemy is obscurity, not people reading your work for free.

Now here's the original December 2010 blog post:

Am I the only one who noticed this from Publishers Weekly?

"Facing some harder comparisons, e-book sales posted their slowest growth rates in 2010 in October. Still, sales jumped 112.4%, to $40.7 million, from the 14 publishers who reported results to the AAP’s monthly sales program."

The article is HERE.

Now, a few things struck me when I read this.

First, probably because I'm a writer and have an overactive imagination, I pictured editors in NY clinking champagne glasses with the toast, "The ebook bubble is bursting, thank Gutenberg, and soon we'll be able to get back to what we do best; selling paper."

I realize that reporters and writers of the news have to attribute meaning to numbers, and that hooks and spin are necessary to make facts interesting. But the way PW prefaced these numbers, and called the article "E-Book Growth Slows" gives me a pretty good idea what their focus is. PW serves the publishing industry. The publishing industry is very uncomfortable about ebooks. Here's a nice fact to ease the publishing industry's collective mind.

Except it's a myopic, self-absorbed, and flat-out misleading fact.

This shows that ebook growth has slowed for 14 REPORTING PUBLISHERS.

That doesn't mean ebook growth is slowing for Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, or the tens of thousands of indie authors self-publishing.

My numbers have been steadily climbing for 21 months, and in the last six weeks I made $26,000.

Yesterday, I mentioned Amanda Hocking, who is selling 1200 ebooks a day.

In the past, this blog has mentioned Zoe Winters, Karen McQuestion, and Selena Kitt. Selena Kitt made $120,000 this year on her Kindle ebooks.

But these are all outliers, right?

No, they're not.

Mark Coker, who runs Smashwords, recently interviewed his star author Brian Pratt on HuffPo. Brian has earned $25,000 in three months.

If you check over on Kindleboards, Michael Sullivan sold 7500 ebooks in November. The thread also lists 14 other authors who sold more than 1000 ebooks last month.

Here are the names of these authors. Keep an eye on them. I only expect their sales to go up.

David McAfee
Nathan Lowell
Ellen Fisher
Valmore Daniels
David Dalglish
Terri Reid
Victorine Lieske
Richard Jackson
Karen Cantwell
Margaret Lake
HP Mallory
KA Thompson
Beth Orsoff
Tina Folsom
Bella Andre
Ty Johnson
Vicki Tyley
Marilyn Lee
Felicity Heaton
LJ Sellers
Jeremy Bishop

PW or AAP didn't poll any of these writers and ask if their growth was slowing down. They certainly didn't ask me.

And these authors I listed aren't the only ones with growing sales--I'm just too lazy to gather more info. If you're an indie author who sold more than 1000 ebooks in November, post in the comments section and I'll add you to the list.

But then, indie sales don't amount to much, right? After all, 1000 ebooks a month isn't a lot. Not compared to what Big NY Publishing does.

Actually...

Whiskey Sour, by all counts my highest selling and most successful books, has sold 60,000 copies since 2004. That means it has averaged 770 copies a month since its debut.

1000 copies a month seems pretty damn good to me.

But then, these are indie authors. It's not like there are any professional authors jumping on this Kindle bandwagon. Except for maybe:

Robert W. Walker
David Morrell
Raymond Benson
Libby Fischer Hellmann
Blake Crouch
F. Paul Wilson
Marcus Sakey
James Swain
Paul Levine
William Meikle
Scott Nicholson
Simon Wood
Parnell Hall
Joseph Nassise
Tom Schreck
Henry Perez
Jeff Strand
Lee Goldberg
Mark Terry
Harry Shannon
Richard S. Wheeler
Ruth Harris
Don Pendleton
Jeremy Robinson

There are many more, but I'm tired off adding all the links.

However, I do want to post this final one, because I think it's pretty damn cool.

This is the latest book by bestselling author LA Banks.

I met Leslie at a writing convention in New Orleans, and we traded stories about how we'd gotten screwed in our careers, which lead to me talking about ebooks.

If you look at the cover (designed by my cover artist, Carl Graves at Extended Imagery), you'd think this is her newest Big NY Print Release.

Nope. Ms. Banks is self-pubbing this one, just in time for Xmas, for $3.99. You can buy it on Kindle HER E.

So... perhaps there is a reason ebook sales are slowing for those 14 publishers mentioned in PW.

Perhaps sales are slowing because more readers are buying indie books. Or because more professional writers are going indie. Or because publishers are too self-absorbed to notice anything happening outside of the insular world they've built for themselves.

But what do I know? I'm an outlier.

Here's a fun game, though. You know the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon meme? We can also play the Six Degrees of JA Konrath with self-pubbed Kindle authors.

Of the names I listed in the blog, I'm one degree of separation from at least 80% of them. The rest, I'm probably second degree.

You hear that, NY Publishing? You truly want to slow the growth of ebooks?

Shut me up.

I'm willing to be bought off. Pass around a collection envelope, like you do for employee birthdays. For a million bucks, I promise I'll never blog about ebooks, or help another writer, ever again.

Here's my Paypal button. Maybe we can do business.

How Good is Good Enough?

2017-02-16T13:36:00.000-06:00

Bear with me while I work out some doubts.

Last month I published GRANDMA?, a YA comedy horror novel I wrote with my nineteen year old son, Talon.

A lot of the writing was rewriting his prose. He's young, he's still learning, and his stuff wasn't up to the standards I've had since I was first published in 2003.

As I was rewriting his scenes, I got to thinking. I wrote bunch of novels before WHISKEY SOUR was published. I self-pubbed most of those early books in 2009, with zero changes, because they were good enough for prime time. I knew they were good enough, because my agent represented them.

A few of them, three in particular, I'd never deemed good enough. So they've been sitting in my attic in a plastic bin, having been written before I owned a computer.

While cleaning out the attic, I took a look and decided these three were, in fact, pretty good. Not great, but I'd grade them each a solid B.

They all feature the character of Phineas Troutt, who is the current husband of Jack Daniels, and has appeared in eight JD novels, a handful of short stories, and my TIMECASTER series. Phin was the protag of my very first novel, DEAD ON MY FEET, written when I was 23 years old. Literally half my life ago, as I'll turn 47 next month.

I reread it, and decided I could do a quick polish and self-pub it and its two sequels without spending a lot of time and energy on them.

But, as I'm polishing, I find I'm doing a lot of rewriting.

Which brings us to the title of this blog post: How Good is Good Enough?

DEAD ON MY FEET is going to sell a certain number to my diehard fans, who buy everything I put out.

It will also sell a number of copies to my casual fans, who buy some of my stuff (for example the thrillers, but not the horror, or the erotica, but not the sci fi).

It will also sell a number of copies to those who have never heard of me, and it will serve as an introduction to my work. Some of those readers may become fans, and some of those fans may become diehards who read/buy everything.

Every book is a billboard for your entire backlist. If that book is enjoyed, it will lead a certain number of readers to your other books.

Does everyone see where I'm going with this?

DEAD ON MY FEET will sell to diehards, and some casual fans, and some new readers. It's good enough that the diehards won't be disappointed. Maybe some of the casual fans will, since it isn't quite up to par with my latest JD novels, and maybe they won't read the sequels. And it might not quite be good enough to prompt new readers to read more of my backlist, but there are books of mine that I consider grade A that also don't prompt new readers to read more of my backlist.

Finding readers is a crapshoot. Keeping readers is a crapshoot.

When I look at my wife's reading habits, I'm even more perplexed. My wife reads 3 to 5 novels a week. When she finds a new author, she'll read every book by that author.

Even the disappointing books.

In fact, Maria will stick with an author for three mediocre novels before she finally gives up on them.

Talk about rewarding mediocrity. But she isn't the only one who does this. There is a lot of stuff that I find so-so that is insanely popular.

I like to consider my novels above average (I'm sure all writers feel the same about their work, so there is a disconnect somewhere). But let's say my books are, indeed, average.

Why should I try to do better?

If a Grade B book will only result in slightly fewer readers over the next ten years, why should I put in weeks and weeks of effort to make it a Grade A book? Why not just put it out there, and spend those weeks writing a new book that I'm sure will please more people?

I consider DISTURB to be my weakest novel. Not only is it short, but it lacks the humor found in my other books. It's a straight medical thriller, and I wrote it by numbers rather than put my personality into it. But it still sells reasonably well, and has an Amazon average rating of four stars.

Many times, in the past, I've thought about doing a rewrite of DISTURB to beef it up, make it better. But why should I? Would it sell enough extra copies to be worth the effort?

I've been planning on spending the rest of the month to whip DEAD ON MY FEET in Grade A shape. But I could release it tomorrow as a Grade B novel, not lose very many readers in the long run, and use those two weeks to work on my next Grade A novel.

On the surface, this seems like a no-brainer. Release those three old books with minimal work, and use that time I've saved to write new stuff. I'll make more money in the long run, and the only downside is that some readers won't be as pumped about the Phin books as my other books. I'll do okay with DEAD ON MY FEET, but fans are waiting for the next Jack Daniels book, and getting that out two or three weeks earlier would mean two or three weeks of quicker income.

Ebooks will theoretically earn money forever. But I won't live forever. I have an expiration date. Why not get paid a few weeks sooner, as well as save three weeks of work (and by extension, three weeks of my life.)

And yet, I just can't do it.

I suppose the same reason that got me into writing--the desire to tell a fun story--prevents me from releasing a book that isn't as good as it could be.

On the other hand, my favorite books of mine are the TIMECASTER series. I love writing those. But they're the weakest sellers in my backlist, so the long-awaited third book in that trilogy keeps getting pushed back. If I was writing mainly to please myself, shouldn't I be working on that now?

So what's the answer? Please readers? Please myself? Please the tax man?

Hemingway said that stories are never finished, they're simply due. But somewhere between endless rewriting and going live there is a sweet spot where the story is good enough to go out into the world and stand on its own.

I don't want to release something I don't think is ready. I feel I have one chance to hook readers, so I should show them my best.

But, at the same time, I'm probably wrong about that. My success is based on luck. Not on how good I think my own books are.

There is so much mediocrity in the world, and mediocre things can, and are, popular. Why try harder?

Every author secretly thinks their books are uniquely special, but the vast majority of books don't sell. I haven't been blogging regularly for eight months, and I still get urgent emails from authors, wondering why their sales are slumping. They ask if it's their covers, or if the market is crashing, or if they aren't doing the right kind of marketing.

But none of them ever ask if they self-pubbed too soon, before the book was Grade A. Writers are a pretty insecure bunch, but I've never met one who blames their sales on their bad writing.

I gotta say, it's seductive to think I could self-pub these three books instantly, make some money, not worry about the anticipated three star average (I encourage writers to not look at their reviews, and I usually don't), and immediately move on to something I know will sell better.

But I won't do that. I'll put in the time and make these books better. Money is nice. Having more time is nice. However, the nicest thing of all is having pride in my work.

I'm pretty sure I'm just as deluded as everyone is. I don't deserve to sell as well as I do. So I've decided to always give it my best shot, because if my sales ever slow I don't want mediocrity to be a possible culprit.

However, I'm willing to admit that might be a stupid attitude, for many reasons.

What do you think?

Joe's Got a Movie Blog

2017-01-21T18:01:00.002-06:00

Those of you who have been paying attention have probably been wondering why I've only done two blog posts in the last six months.

It's because there isn't much more I can say about the publishing industry.

From 2005 until 2009, my blog was all about self-promotion, landing an agent and a publishing deal, and working with publishers to make your book a success.

From 2009 until 2016, my blog was all about self-publishing, and why legacy publishing was no longer the best choice for most authors.

I've blogged, at length, about changes and controversies in the publishing world, and did my part to inform (and hopefully entertain) authors of all experience levels.

But, lately, nothing in the industry has piqued my interest enough to blog about it.

And I miss blogging.

I will continue to blog sporadically on NEWBIE'S GUIDE, if something cool happens. Or something uncool happens. I created this blog to advocate for authors, and I will continue to do that.

I have also begun a new blog.

I'm a huge movie fan, and have about five thousand titles in my home library. As you might guess, not all of them are good. Some, in fact, are terrible.

I'm going to be blogging about the terrible ones.

My son, Talon Konrath, and I have launched THE BEST WORST MOVIES EVER BLOG. Several times a week we're going to be watching bad movies and sharing our thoughts.

Unlike this blog, the movie blog is meant to primarily entertain. If you're a fan of bad movies, you'll no doubt see some titles you recognize. If you don't understand the appeal of bad movies, I hope you'll check it out and learn why you need to seek out and see many of these amazing films.

So far we've got nine posts live, and plan on at least a hundred more by the end of 2017. It's a rough job, but we're committed to it.

Please take a look, and as always, thanks for reading!

New Konrath Zombie Novel GRANDMA

2017-01-16T12:34:00.002-06:00

Randall just wanted to have a fun summer vacation with his family, visiting Grandma at her cabin on a lake in the Wisconsin Northwoods.

Then everything went horribly wrong.

Join fifteen-year-old Randall, and his younger brother Josh, as they fight for their lives on the eve of an elderly undead apocalypse.

GRANDMA? - The Complete Novel

She won't bake you cookies...

Forget everything you've ever read about zombies. But that's probably impossible, because you know you've read a lot. So maybe just put aside your preconceptions, because this living dead epic will make you remember why you fell in love with this genre in the first place. Part scary, part funny, this is a living dead Armageddon like you've never seen before.

This book is over 60,000 words long. It also includes a Q&A with the authors on the creation of the novel.

Only $3.99 on Kindle!

Joe: So, after four years of writing, GRANDMA? - Attack of the Geriatric Zombies!: The Novel is finally available. $3.99 on Amazon Kindle. $9.99 for the paper version. How does it feel?

Talon: I feel exuberant.

Joe: What took so damn long?

Talon: Someone other than me in this blog post… Nah, I’m kidding. This was a grueling process. I lost track on how many times I rewrote this book. Being in high-school didn’t help much either.

Joe: So how much of this is you, and how much of this is your kind and tolerant father working his magic to make you look good?

Talon: The story, the plot, the characters and a lot of funny things are me. The wonderful, eye-pleasing writing is my father.

He also wrote a lot of funny things.

Joe: We're launching a blog called The Best Worst Movies Ever Blog, where we both make humorous comments about bad movies and try to convince more people need to watch them. A big part of the blog is Talon's 20 Second Review, where you post a YouTube video listing five reasons to see the movie.

What are five reasons, in twenty seconds or less, that people should read GRANDMA?

Talon: I'm glad you asked...

So what are you blog readers waiting for? Buy a copy!

Konrath's New Year's Resolutions for Writers 2017

2016-12-15T13:31:00.001-06:00

Every December I do a post about resolutions for writers, and every year I add more of them. They've changed a lot; after all, when I began this, there was no Amazon Kindle, self-publishing was a bad idea, and this blog was for writers eager to find agents and land deals with the Big 6.

But a lot of the advice from a decade ago still holds true, so take these resolutions for what they're worth to you.

2006
Newbie Writer Resolutions

I will start/finish the damn book

I will always have at least three stories on submission, while working on a fourth

I will attend at least one writer's conference, and introduce myself to agents, editors, and other writers

I will subscribe to the magazines I submit to

I will join a critique group. If one doesn't exist, I will start one at the local bookstore or library

I will finish every story I start

I will listen to criticism

I will create/update my website

I will master the query process and search for an agent

I'll quit procrastinating in the form of research, outlines, synopses, taking classes, reading how-to books, talking about writing, and actually write something

will refuse to get discouraged, because I know JA Konrath wrote 9 novels, received almost 500 rejections, and penned over 1 million words before he sold a thing--and I'm a lot more talented than that guy

Professional Writer Resolutions

I will keep my website updated

I will keep up with my blog and social networks

I will schedule bookstore signings, and while at the bookstore I'll meet and greet the customers rather than sit dejected in the corner

I will send out a newsletter, emphasizing what I have to offer rather than what I have for sale, and I won't send out more than four a year

I will learn to speak in public, even if I think I already know how

I will make selling my books my responsibility, not my publisher's

I will stay in touch with my fans

I will contact local libraries, and tell them I'm available for speaking engagements

I will attend as many writing conferences as I can afford

I will spend a large portion of my advance on self-promotion

I will help out other writers

I will not get jealous, will never compare myself to my peers, and will cleanse my soul of envy

I will be accessible, amiable, and enthusiastic

I will do one thing every day to self-promote

I will always remember where I came from

2007

Keep an Open Mind. It's easier to defend your position than seriously consider new ways of thinking. But there is no innovation, no evolution, no "next big thing" unless someone thinks differently. Be that someone.

Look Inward. We tend to write for ourselves. But for some reason we don't market for ourselves. Figure out what sort of marketing works on you; that's the type of marketing you should be trying. You should always know why you're doing what you're doing, and what results are acceptable to you.

Find Your Own Way. Advice is cheap, and the Internet abounds with people telling you how to do things. Question everything. The only advice you should take is the advice that makes sense to you. And if it doesn't work, don't be afraid to ditch it.

Set Attainable Goals. Saying you'll find an agent, or sell 30,000 books, isn't attainable, because it involves things out of your control. Saying you'll query 50 agents next month, or do signings at 20 bookstores, is within your power and fully attainable.

Enjoy the Ride. John Lennon said that life is what happens while you're busy planning other things. Writing isn't about the destination; it's about the journey. If you aren't enjoying the process, why are you doing it?

elp Each Other. One hand should always be reaching up for your next goal. The other should be reaching down to help others get where you're at. We're all in the same boat. Start passing out oars.

2008

I Will Use Anger As Fuel

We all know that this is a hard business. Luck plays a huge part. Rejection is part of the job. Things happen beyond our control, and we can get screwed.

It's impossible not to dwell on it when we're wronged. But rather than vent or stew or rage against the world and everyone in it, we should use that anger and the energy it provides for productive things.

The next time you get bad news, resolve to use that pain to drive your work. Show fate that when it pushes you, you push right back. By writing. By querying. By marketing.

I Will Abandon My Comfort Zone

The only difference between routine and rut is spelling.

As a writer, you are part artist and part businessman.

Great artists take chances.

Successful businessmen take chances.

This means doing things you're afraid of, and things you hate, and things you've never tried before.

If, in 2008, you don't fail at something, you weren't trying hard enough.

I Will Feed My Addiction

Life is busy. There are always things you can and should be doing, and your writing career often comes second.

So make it come first.

Right now, you're reading A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. Not A Newbie's Guide to Leading a Content and Balanced Life.

You want to get published and stay published? That means making writing a priority. That means making sacrifices. A sacrifice involves choosing one thing over another.

If you can't devote the time, energy, and money it takes to pursue this career, go do something else.

I Will Never Be Satisfied

Think the last resolution was extreme? This one really separates the die-hards from the hobbyists.

While an overwhelming sense of peace and enlightenment sounds pretty nice, I wouldn't want to hire a bunch of Zen masters to build an addition on my house.

Satisfaction and contentment are great for your personal life. In your professional life, once you start accepting the way things are, you stop trying.

No one is going to hand you anything in this business. You have to be smart, be good, work hard, and get lucky.

Every time you get published, you got lucky. Don't take it for granted.

When something bad happens, it should make you work harder. But when something good happens, you can't believe you earned it. Because it isn't true. You aren't entitled to this career. No one is.

Yes, you should celebrate successes. Sure, you should enjoy good things when they happen. Smile and laugh and feel warm and fuzzy whenever you finish a story or make a sale or reach a goal.

But remember that happiness isn't productive. Mankind's greatest accomplishments are all tales of struggle, hardship, sacrifice, work, and effort. You won't do any of those things if you're satisfied with the status quo.

Who do you want on your team? The kid who plays for fun? Or the kid who plays to win?

If you want this to be your year, you know which kid you have to be.

2009

This year I'm only going to add one resolution to this growing list, but if you're writing for a living, or trying to write for a living, it's an important one.

I Won't Blame Anyone For Anything

It's tempting to look at the many problems that arise in this business and start pointing fingers. This is a slippery slope, and no good can come from it.

Do agents, editors, and publishers make mistakes? Of course.

You make mistakes too.

Hindsight is 20/20, so we can all look at things that didn't go our way and fantasize about how things should have gone.

But blaming others, or yourself, is dwelling on the past. What's done is done, and being bitter isn't going to help your career.

So try to learn from misfortune, forgive yourself and others, and make 2009 a blameless year.

2010

I Will Be Wary

The medium in which stories are absorbed is changing in a big way, and it will continue to change. 2009 will go down in publishing history as Year Zero for the upcoming ebook revolution. Writers should explore this new territory, but we need to understand that Print is still King, and any goals and dreams a writer might have regarding publication should be focused on getting into print.

That's not to say that ebooks shouldn't be explored and experimented with. They should be, and in a serious way. Erights are a very long tail--one that can potentially continue long after our lifetimes.

Don't forsake print for ebooks without understanding what you're giving up, and don't give away your ebook rights to get a print deal.

I Will Be A Pioneer

Remember the old saying about how to recognize a pioneer? They're the one with the arrows in their backs and fronts.

I've tried to be forward-thinking in my career, rather than being content with my role as a cog in a broken machine. Your best chance for longevity is to question everything, test boundaries, experiment with new ideas, and be willing to change your mind and learn from your mistakes.

Your job is to survive, by any means necessary. So pull out the arrows and forge ahead. Discover the difference between determination and stupidity by being an example for one or the other or both.

Though this may seem at odds with the previous resolution about being wary, it's actually quite simpatico.

Q: What do you call a wary pioneer? A: Still alive.

I Will Read Books

I'm surprised I haven't mentioned this in previous years. If you're a writer, you must be a reader. I don't care if you read on your Kindle, or on stone tablets. Reading, and giving the gift of reading to others, is essential. Period.

I Will Stop Worrying

Worrying, along with envy, blame, guilt, and regret, is a useless emotion. It's also bad storytelling. Protagonists should be proactive, not reactive. They should forge ahead, not dwell on things beyond their control. Fretting, whining, complaining, and bemoaning the state of the industry isn't the way to get ahead.

You are the hero in the story of your life. Act like it.

2011

I Will Self-Publish

Just twelve short months ago, I made $1650 on Kindle in December, and was amazed I could pay my mortgage with ebook sales.

This December, I'll earn over $22,000.

The majority of this is on Kindle. But I'm also doing well self-pubbing in print through Amazon's Createspace program, and will earn $2700 this month on nine POD books. I'm also finally trying out B&N's PubIt program, which looks to be good for over $1k a month, and I'm doing okay on Smashwords, with Sony, Apple, and Kobo combining for another $1k.

This is nothing short of revolutionary.

The gatekeepers--agents who submit to editors who acquire books to publish and distribute to booksellers--are no longer needed to make a living as a fiction writer. For the first time in history, writers can reach readers without having to jump through hoops, get anointed, compromise integrity, or fit the cookie-cutter definition for What New York Wants.

I'm not saying you should give up on traditional publishing. But I am saying that there is ZERO downside to self-pubbing. At worst, you'll make a few bucks. At best, you'll make a fortune, and have agents and editors fighting over you.

But remember: even if you are being fought over, you still have a choice.

DO NOT take any deal that's less than what you believe you could earn in six years. If you're selling 1000 ebooks a month, that means $144,000 is the minimum advance you should be offered before you consider signing.

It blows my mind to think that way, let alone blog about it. I got a $34,000 advance for my first novel, and even less for my last few.

Currently, I have seven self-pubbed novels, each earning more than $24k a year. In six years, at the current rate, I'll earn more than one million bucks on those.

But I don't expect them to maintain their current sales.

I expect sales to go up.

Ebooks haven't saturated the market yet. But they will. And you need to be ready for it. Which leads me to...

I Won't Self-Publish Crap

Just because it's easier than ever before to reach an audience doesn't mean you should.

I can safely say that I'm either directly or indirectly responsible for thousands of writers trying out self-publishing. The majority of these writers aren't making the same amount of money that I am, and are scratching their heads, wondering what they're doing wrong.

Luck still plays a part in success. But so does professionalism.

Being a professional means you make sure you have a professional cover (http://www.extendedimagery.com), and you have been professionally formatted for ebooks (www.52novels.com) and for print books (http://yourepublished.blogspot.com.)

Being a professional means you're prolific, with many titles for sale, and that you diversify, exploiting all possible places to sell your work (Kindle, Createspace, Smashwords, iBooks, iTunes, Sony, Nook, Kobo, Borders, Android, and no doubt more to come.)

But most of all, being a professional means you won't inflict your shitty writing on the public.

Self-pubbing is not the kiddie pool, where you learn how to swim. You need to be an excellent swimmer before you jump in.

If your sales aren't where you'd like them to be, especially if you've done everything else I've mentioned, then it's time to take a cold, hard, critical look at the writing. Which segues into...

I'll Pay Attention to the Market

To say I'm excited about the ebook future is putting it mildly. But that doesn't mean I have carte blanche to write whatever the hell I want to, and then expect it to sell.

Yes, writers now have more freedom. Yes, we can now cater to niche tastes, and write novellas, and focus on more personal projects.

But if you want to make a living, you still have to understand your audience, and how to give them what they want.

Self-pubbing is not an excuse to be a self-indulgent egomaniac. On the contrary, it's a chance for you to learn what sells.

For the very first time, the writer can conduct their own real-world experiments. By trying different things, learning from mistakes, and constantly tweaking and improving, we have more power than ever before to find our readers.

A lot of folks know how much money I'm making. But how many know:

I've changed or tweaked cover art 45 times.
I've reformatted my books five times each.
I've changed product descriptions over 80 times.
I've changed prices on each book two or three times.

Unlike the traditional publishing world, where published books are static, self-publishing is dynamic. If something isn't selling as well as you'd like, you can change it. The work doesn't end when you upload your ebook to Kindle. The work is never-ending, and vigilance is mandatory.

Self-publishing is a wonderful opportunity to learn and to grow. This means you MUST try new things.

2011 is going to be a turbulent year for publishers and bookstores and editors and agents. Change is coming, and many of the stalwarts of the industry aren't going to be around for much longer.

But savvy writers will be safe from harm. In fact, they'll thrive like never before.

For the first time in the history of publishing, we have control. Embrace that control, and make 2011 your year.

2012

Hard to believe this will be my sixth year offering New Year's Resolutions to writers. Even harder to believe is how much the publishing industry has changed during that time.

When I first began this blog, it was about helping authors find an agent and a legacy publishing deal. And once they did, it was about working with your publisher to sell as many books as possible by understanding how to self-promote and market.

Now, writers are much better served learning how to upload their work to Kindle and write a product description than learning how to write a query letter or do a successful book signing.

So is there still anything left for me to say?

Yes. There's plenty.

I Will Experiment

Don't let fear prevent you from taking chances and trying new things. I'm talking to all of you who refuse to raise or lower your ebook prices. I'm talking to all of you who pass judgement without any experience to back up your position. I'm talking to all of you who insist that your way is the right way without ever having tried any other way--or in some cases, knowing nothing about the path you want to take (I'm looking right at you folks still chasing legacy deals.)

The goals you set should constantly be adapting and changing as more data comes in. But don't be a lump, expecting data to come to you by surfing the net, or reading this blog, or praying Santa Claus helps you out.

You need to be the one actively trying different things, taking different directions, and learning through trial and error.

In the past, there were a lot of gatekeepers who could hold you back.

Today the only one holding you back is you.

I Will Help Other Writers

If you learn something, share it. If you have some success, show others how to follow your lead. If you fail miserably, warn your peers.

Writing and publishing were once solitary, private matters, and everyone played their cards close to their chests. No one knew how much anyone else was earning, or how many books they sold, and this suited the publishers just fine. The dark ages are all about being kept in the dark.

Well, let there be light.

The more we share, and help one another, the more our collective base of knowledge can grow.

Self-publishing is an open source project. Add to the database.

I Will Control My Fear

There will always be doubt and uncertainty, because luck plays such a big role in success. I know there are writers who are doing everything right, who still haven't found readers.

But don't let fear own you.

It is easy to get frustrated.

It is easy to get envious of those doing better.

It is easy to dismiss the success or failures of others.

It is easy to worry about the future.

It is easy to ignore good advice. It's also easy to take bad advice.

It is easy to make snap judgments and quick dismissals.

It is easy to make predictions without evidence.

It is easy to give up.

BUT NOBODY EVER SAID SUCCESS IS EASY.

Yes, it is the greatest time ever to be a writer. But no one owes you a living, and no one promised that even if you write a great book and promote the hell out of it you'll get stinking rich.

Not to get all Yoda here, but fear leads to doubt, and doubt will take you down the wrong path.

Controlling fear is easier than you might think. Just accept that failure is part of the process.

Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. All major success stories are filled with setbacks and mistakes and bad luck. But all successful people persevere.

We've all heard that luck favors those who are prepared. So be prepared, and stay prepared, for as long as it takes for success to find you.

Remember that. You don't find success. Success finds you.

This is especially important when you realize this truism:

What Goes Up Must Come Down

I've had a lot of writers email me that their sales are down. Mine are, too. Because ebooks are so new, no one knows what this means, and it is easy to let fear cause doubt.

Here's a mantra for you to help you get over it.

1. Ebooks are forever, and shelf space is infinite. Once you're published, you'll always be selling.

2. Ebooks are not a trend. They are the new, preferred way to read, and mankind will always have the need and desire to read.

3. Ebooks are global. Doing poorly in the USA? That's okay. There are plenty of other countries where you can make money.

4. Sales fluctuate. Always. And there is often no logical or discernible reason why. Riding high in April, shot down in May, that's life.

5. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You're a writer. You're in this until the day you die. As long as you continue to write good books, you'll find readers.

2012 is going to be a very interesting year. We'll see unknown writers get rich. We'll see big name writers leave their publishers. We'll see more and more people buy ereaders throughout the world. We'll see some companies go out of business. We'll see other companies start growing market share.

We're part of something big, and it's going to get even bigger. And while everything that goes up must come down, we've got a very long time before that happens with ebooks.

And when it does? That's okay. Formats and gadgets come and go.

But the world will always need storytellers.

Have a great 2012.

2013

I've lived long enough to see my advice become obsolete, and that gives me hope for the future.

Back when I began, this business was all about finding an agent, finding a publisher, then doing whatever you could to promote yourself.

This blog spoke at length about social media, and book tours, and partnering with your publisher.

Things have changed.

I have 10,000 followers on Twitter, but I only use it occasionally Facebook? Haven't been on there in eight months. I witnessed the rise and fall of MySpace. I've opted out of Google+ because I saw no benefits. LinkedIn? I can't even remember my password.

I'll never do another book tour. I doubt I'll ever do another official booksigning. I've stopped speaking in public, stopped attending events. Once it was important to meet fans and network with peers. Now I can do that just fine via email.

Partnering with your publisher? Why would you do that, when they offer so little? 17.5% ebook royalties with them, vs. 70% on your own.

I haven't blogged or Tweeted in months. I've been busy doing what writers should be doing: writing.

And guess what? My sales have remained constant.

Many times this year, I took industry practices to task. I saw stupidity, or unfairness, and I did my best to discredit it. I fought, tooth and nail, for what I believed, and wasted untold hours arguing with pinheads.

Which brings me to my resolution for 2013.

Get Over Yourself

I have turned off Google Alerts, and don't Google my name or my pen names.

I don't go on message boards.

I don't read my book reviews.

I don't care what people are saying about me, good or bad, in blogs or on Twitter or in the media.

There will always be people who don't like you, and don't like your books.

Ignore them.

Trust me, it is liberating to be free of the opinions of strangers. We all need to focus on our writing. Because the millions of readers out there don't care about your blog. They aren't searching for you on Twitter and avoiding your books based on the comments of others. They aren't taking one star reviews seriously.

It's very easy to obsess in this business. But I haven't seen a single shred of evidence that obsession helps careers.

The thing that I have seen, over and over, is people finding success by writing good books.

I really think it is possible to make a very nice living by writing and not worrying about anything else.

We all want to believe we're doing something good for our careers, so we abuse social media, buy ads, rigorously defend our good name, cultivate media contacts, make appearances, and celebrate our own very minor celebrity.

Let it all go. Spend your time working on your books. That's the only thing that really matters, and the only thing you have control over.

I hope everyone reading this has a very successful 2013. Happy new year.

2014

I'll get all of my real-life shit together.

That means:

1. Incorporating and paying quarterly taxes.

2. Creating a will, including a living will.

3. Making sure the will includes provisions for your literary properties.

4. Keeping accurate track of business expenses.

5. Getting regular doctor check-ups so you don't die from something avoidable.

6. Remembering that future goals shouldn't come at the expense of enjoying every single day.

7. Appreciating the people you care about, and making sure they know it.

With luck, we'll all die very old and very rich.

But I've always said that luck favors those prepared. It's very east to get caught up in writing and promotion and ignore the stuff that only becomes obvious when you're in a life-or-death scenario.

Don't wait for the life-or-death scenario. Take care of it now. It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 108, death and taxes are unavoidable. The more you do now to prepare for them, the less painful they'll be.

If you die tonight, will it be with regrets? If so, sort that out immediately. Don't leave loose ends. Don't leave things unsaid. Don't leave a mess for others to clean up.

Now go take care of business, and have a great 2014.

2015

I skipped this year, and did this post instead.

2016

I'm boiling my resolutions down to the essence:

WRITE.

It's so easy to get caught up in different aspects of a writing career. I've had phases where I tried to help other writers, started my own company, blogged, collaborated, fought the publishing world, evangelized, experimented, promoted, tried to figure things out, and spent a whole lot of time doing stuff other than writing.

I'm happy I did all that. But it has taken me away from the thing I like most.

I might be a blogger, and a teacher, and an innovator, and a pundit. But first and foremost, I'm a writer.

And writers write.

So for 2016, I'm going to write more than I've ever written before. I'm going to finish those stories I've put aside, I'm going to break new ground, and I'm going to get back to my roots. I've spent a lot of time tending to my career. And for good reason. A backlist is a garden that needs attention to grow and prosper.

But now I'm going to spend the lion's share of my time planting more seeds.

I'm looking for 2016 to be my most productive year ever.

2017

I've been writing resolutions for writers for eleven years. What's left to say?

How about:

Change with the times.

Keeping with this resolution, I'm about to sign a three-book publishing deal with Kensington, the largest independent publisher in America.

Many longtime readers of this blog might be thinking I'm crazy, a hypocrite, or got a giant paycheck, since I've been preaching for years to never give up ebook rights.

Actually, I'm not crazy or a hypocrite, and I didn't get an enormous advance, either. I'm also thrilled with this development.

Party because Kensington has a good chance to hit a homerun with the deal. But mostly because I kept my ebook rights.

Kensington will publish THE LIST (on deck for 2018), along with two other backlist titles of mine, in paper-only.

This is going to be a fascinating experiment for me, and for Kensington. THE LIST has sold over 200,000 ebooks. How will it do in paper?

I've always known that I'm leaving money on the table because my books aren't in brick and mortar stores. There are a whole lot of readers who shop at bookstores, airports, department stores, and convenience stores, and I'm not available in those outlets. My POD titles are $13-$17, which is pricey compared to my $4.99 ebooks. Wal-Mart won't ever carry me. Neither will B&N.

This Kensington deal will let me reach an audience I haven't reached since 2009.

So is this a portend of things to come for self-pubbed authors?

Kensington has shown themselves to be nimble and forward-thinking. I have yet to see any evidence that the Big 5 are smart enough to try something like this, save for that big Hugh Howey deal years ago. Writers waited for more opportunities like that (me included), and none happened.

But if THE LIST and other novels from my backlist do well, maybe we'll start seeing successful indie authors signing print-only deals with Kensington, and the Big 5.

Until that happens, Kensington has a head-start on the competition. And kudos to them. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on focus groups and surveys and samples and test screenings and trial runs trying to guess what consumers want.

I've had over 17,000 Amazon reviews. Readers have vetted my backlist, and I've sold over two million copies worldwide. Seems like a no-brainer to get some of my books into stores, right?

So, when Kensington approached me, I was all for it, even though 2/3 of this blog has been dedicated to criticizing publishers.

During my decade of blogging, I've gone from pro-publisher, to pro-indie, to anti-establishment. I've championed Amazon and criticized the Authors Guild and Authors United, and then went on to doing a panel for the Authors Guild and watching as Authors United disbanded.

I got my first rejection in 1989, got my agent in 1998, signed my first book deal in 2002, self-pubbed in 2009, and got my rights back from three publishers in 2010. Now, in 2016, I'm signing with a publisher once again.

The only consistent thing about this business is change. And make no mistake; this is a business. It isn't an ideology. It isn't a philanthropy. It isn't a hobby.

In 2007, I began my yearly resolutions with "Keep an open mind."

"Changing with the times" falls under that credo, and it is something for all writers--indies, hybrids, and those with publishing contracts--to keep in mind. As we head into the new year, writers have more opportunities than any time in history. We can reach other countries. We can produce our own audiobooks. We can publish nonsense just for fun. And maybe this Kensington deal will be the start of a new kind of deal that will become standard.

What was once an inclusionary club run subjectively (and often nepotistically) by gatekeepers is now open to anyone with a computer and a dream.

Now go write something. And make sure it's good.

Do Ebook Preorders Work? Part 2

2016-06-28T09:20:00.000-05:00

A few months ago I wrote a blog post about preorders. I experimented with three preorder titles, curious as to how they'd perform.

Here are some of the topics I addressed back then, and my results.

1. Deadlines. I wanted to light a fire under my ass and get some work done. On one hand, why invite extra stress into your life? On the other, consider what motivates you.

Joe sez: Well, the fire was lit. And I burned hot. I wrote three novels and two novellas in less than six months, and I definitely felt the stress. As the deadlines neared, I beat a personal record--over 27,000 words in three days. And the words were good words, most of which I kept.

So deadlines did push me write over 250,000 words in only a few months. While it wasn't the most enjoyable writing experience I've ever had, I think the works turned out well, and since launching LAST CALL two days ago my panic attacks have almost stopped. :)

Verdict: Deadlines do force you to get words on the page, but only if you work well under stress.

2. Sales. I've had many writers ask me: What's the best time to launch a new book? My answer has always been the same: When it's finished. At the same time, if a book is going to be out on a certain date, why make people wait to buy it? And if fans want to buy something right now, why make them wait until later, when they could possibly forget?

Joe sez: I still think that you shouldn't make people wait to buy something. If they know it is going to come out, let them preorder it.

But preorder dates don't work as well as they could, for reasons I'll continue to disclose.

With Blu-ray, you can pre-order it on Amazon even if their is no set release date. I can see how they couldn't happen for KDP authors--it is bad customer service if readers pre-order books that take years to--or never--come out. But this would be a cool feature to have. I know my next Jack Daniels novel is WHITE RUSSIAN. I don't know when it will be finished, and I'm not committing to a crazy deadline again. But it would be nice to have readers be able to pre-order this title even without a release date set.

Verdict: I still would like readers to be able to order a book the moment they hear about it, but I don't think the pre-order system as currently configured is worth it.

3. Buzz. I believe that sales are about what you have to offer, not what you have to sell. The goal is to find people looking for the kinds of books that you write. So, when I'm pimping a title, I usually only do it around launch day, or if the book is on sale.

Joe sez: I haven't seen added sales benefits to pimping more often. In fact, I see downsides.

I announced preorders, I reminded people about preorders, and I announced on launch day. This constant promo has cost me some Twitter followers, and instead of having a big one-time boost in sales that would get me on a lot of Top 100 lists, I had a few smaller boosts.

It's tough to compare recent numbers with numbers from the past because KU has changed KDP so much. But my gut is telling me that preorders lost me some of the visibility that a bigger launch would have had.

Verdict: I think less marketing over time, and a stronger marketing push on launch date, may be the way to go.

4. Sales. While slow and steady sales help your book attain, and keep, a decent ranking on Amazon, nothing beats a book launch without preorders for getting the best initial rank. But how much does getting high ranks and showing up on bestseller lists help raise sales?

Joe sez: All in all, I have about 6500 preorders for those three titles. That's a decent chunk of change, priced at $4.99 and $5.99. But I didn't peak on the bestseller lists like I'd done with previous titles.

Could it be my brands are losing their popularity? I don't think so. Sales remain solid--I'm still averaging about 180 sales per day and 140,000 KENP. And when I release a new title, there is a big boost.

But my feeling is I'd get a bigger initial boost without preorders.

Verdict: Seeing preorder sales accumulate is nice. But I don't know if they help in the long run.

With or without preorders, I think a comparable number of readers are going to find my books. But I think if a substantial chunk of readers all bought on the same day, rather than sales being staggered over weeks and months, that would raise visibility on the bestseller lists.

Then again, having a book for sale for a longer time seems smarter than having it for sale for a shorter time.

They're probably some equation for this. What are the number of eyeballs on a title ranked at #3000 for two months vs. the number of eyeballs on a title ranked at #15 for three days?

Going with my gut, my next few releases won't have preorder pages. Then I'll be able to compare data in a more meaningful way.

What have your results been?

Last Call is Released!

2016-06-27T08:11:00.001-05:00

LAST CALL by JA Konrath Now Available

My tenth (and last?) Jack Daniels thriller, LAST CALL, is available today in ebook and paper.

Fans have been waiting over two years for this conclusion to the Jack Daniels/Luther Kite story. It was a lot of fun to write, and it ties up all of the loose ends from STIRRED and SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT.

RUM RUNNER, the ninth Jack Daniels mystery, is now available as an audiobook, performed by rock star Bob Walkenhorst of The Rainmakers.

Working with Bob was a dream come true for me, as I've been a fan of his for thirty years. I also had a chance to unleash my inner voice actor and play Harry McGlade.

Bob also narrates (and I play Harry) in the upcoming audiobook versions of WEBCAM and WATCHED TOO LONG, co-written by Ann Voss Peterson. Watch Amazon, Audible, and iTunes for July release dates.

Speaking of Ann, she and I are still writing funny erotica under the pen name Melinda DuChamp. Our latest is a novella in the bestselling Magic and Mayhem series, called THE SEVEN YEAR WITCH.

And if all that isn't enough, I have finally entered the Adult Coloring Book business with The Ultimate Adult Coloring Book of Triangles! It contains a hundred pages of the exact same triangle. And yes, it's supposed to be funny. Buy a copy for the adult coloring book fanatic in your life, or really confuse them by getting them the ebook version. CIRCLES and SQUARES are also available. Check out the reviews. They're hysterical.

There will be more new releases in upcoming months, including the long-awaited sequel to THE LIST, called THE NINE. I'm also going to finally finish that TIMECASTER trilogy.

As always, thanks for reading!