Every struggling creator who asks social media why he’s not rolling in money and accolades gets the same litany of answers:

Readers don’t buy books anymore. Audiences have no attention spans. The algos bury anything remotely original.

The consensus is that most people would rather scroll through thirty-second videos than spend money on worthwhile entertainment.

That’s an attractive theory. Because it explains disappointing results while laying responsibility elsewhere.

It’s also contradicted every hour of every day.

Read the full post on Substack.

The Bartz v. Anthropic copyright case concerned books which A.I. firm Anthropic downloaded from pirate libraries while developing its models. The resulting settlement is expected to pay roughly $3,000 per eligible title, with authors and publishers splitting the money when both hold relevant rights.

Which sounded good, until authors checked who’d claimed the rights to their books.

The Authors Guild reports that writers whose books went out of print years; even decades ago, were claimed by their former publishers as part of the settlement.

Now, the Guild has asked publishers to withdraw claims on books that haven’t sold or produced royalty statements in more than ten years.

The trope of a dispute over serious money arising from a dusty clause buried in an old contract drives many a mystery thriller and courtroom drama. But now real life is imitating fiction.

And every author should take notice.

Read the full post on Substack.

Finally, he finds out that his mentor betrayed him.

And the next chapter picks up three days after the bombshell dropped.

And you’re surprised when beta readers tell you the big reveal blew over like a gentle breeze.

It’s understandable why many new authors get blindsided when their gut-punch scenes barely tickle. After all, the big twist and the whole sequence of events leading up to it had enormous effects on the story.

“How much bigger could it get?” they ask.

And they’re asking the wrong question. Because usually, the problem isn’t a matter of initial impact, but of aftershocks.

I know, because I help authors fix that issue all the time through my professional editing services.

Read the full post on Substack.

Now, Amazon are the ones imposing new limits.

As of September 21, Kindle Direct Publishing now limits users to creating two new titles per format per week. If you are unfamiliar with KDP, that’s two eBooks, two paperbacks, and two hardcovers. For reference, the previous ceiling was ten.

Amazon claims they implemented the new restrictions to maintain “a positive publishing experience for all authors.”

Translating from Corporate to Human, what Amazon means is “We are fighting a desperate rearguard action to maintain a shred of credibility amid the A.I. flood.”

It’s all in the timing. Amazon first imposed stricter publishing limits in 2023, when LLMs were first going mainstream. Around the same time, KDP started requiring authors to disclose A.I.-generated text, images, and translations.

File that requirement under “Too little, too late.”

Read the full post on Substack.

Veterans of the series wanted to make a spiritual successor called Armed Fantasia. Instead of waiting for a major publisher to decide whether anyone wanted such a game, they went to Kickstarter.

And the audience answered. Unequivocally.

A joint campaign for Armed Fantasia and another JRPG called Penny Blood raised ¥379,328,385. At the time of funding, that sum was roughly equivalent to $2.6 million.

Armed Fantasia found a receptive audience, which attracted a publisher.

And now the publisher has killed it.

Akifumi Kaneko, creator of Wild Arms, led the project alongside other series veterans. The developers pitched a new “Westernpunk” RPG built around exploration, gadgets, vehicles, and turn-based combat.

And 18,000 people turned out to pay for the game in advance.

Now, the Kickstarter wasn’t intended to 100 percent cover both games’ productions. Instead, the fan-raised funding would enable Kaneko et al. to build working prototypes. The next phase of the plan was to attract industry investment to take the project the rest of the way.

And that plan seemed to have worked. 505 Games signed on to publish Armed Fantasia. The conventional industry perspective would consider that outcome a win.

Which is what makes what happened next especially revealing.

In March, Kaneko announced that the team had sent working samples of the main scenario, core gameplay systems, and other key game elements, to 505. That done, his team set to work completing the game.

Fast forward to this month: 505 Games’ parent company Digital Bros announced that they had discontinued development of Armed Fantasia. The company cited multiple gameplay revisions, changing market conditions, and the need for additional funding, as contributing to their decision.

But whatever the reasons, the takeaway is that one publisher vetoed 18,000 fans.

Read the full post on Substack.

ONE LAST DAY

I’ve spent the last several years exercising creative independence on a scale I can control. That calculus included the The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Edition and the stretch goals that made it even more deluxe.

The campaign has concluded with the Special Edition and three stretch goals funded. So if you missed the campaign, you can still get the best version of SD10, but only for one more day. Seize your last chance now.

As is our custom, the Court of Kairos held Council once more. August’s convocation aired some of our deepest questions yet, on matters ranging from how to maintain the confidence to keep writing while purging one’s million words of suck, to speculation on Doom crossing over with Looney Tunes.

If you were unable to attend the August AMA, or you wish to hold a metaphorical glass to the Council chamber door, you may contemplate the questions raised by our Council members.

Question: been writing my outline/ semi first draft, and it’s slow going/ deteriorating in quality fast ... Do I keep embracing the suck and getting the suck out?

Answer: As authors JD Cowan and David V. Stewart join me in saying, every author starts out with one million sucky words in his head. The only way to be rid of those one million words of suck is to get them out of your head by writing them. Only once all million sucky words have been drained from your mind through your pen and contained on a page will your writing not suck.

So yes, the only way to rid your writing of all suckage is to keep writing until you have purged all one million sucky words.

Read the full post on Substack.

LAST DAY FOR SD10

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign ends tonight. We’ve already unlocked two awesome stretch goals to enhance the special edition, and a third that will make this gorgeous book even better is in reach.

Don’t miss your last chance to get the crowdfunder-exclusive editions. Back the campaign now!

This entertaining and informative series gives you a front-row seat in the verbal operating theater as I painstakingly dissect and reassemble writing submitted by real authors live on-stream!

If you’ve wondered exactly how a professional editor operates, speculate no longer. Word Surgery is here to dispel editing misconceptions, help authors improve their writing, and entertain viewers of all walks of life.

Watch the premiere episode here:

Our next fun and informative episode goes live tonight at 6 Pacific/7 Mountain/8 Central/9 Eastern. Don your scrubs, and join us in the OR!

And if you are brave enough to put your writing under my knife, you can submit your work for a chance to be featured on the show here.

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign is even closer to unlocking the Hazeroth portrait interior art! And with less than $750 and 30 hours to go, we need your help to make this special edition even more magnificent!

Every pledge moves the needle. So if you’ve been waiting to back Souldancer, pledging now will help add Hazeroth’s image to everyone’s SD Special Edition. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign now!

The main character wakes up, showers, gets dressed, eats breakfast, drives across town, parks, walks into the office, greets the receptionist, rides the elevator, and finally enters the conference room where the story really starts.

Because that’s where his boss gives him the impossible assignment. Or tells him he’s fired.

Now, consider which events in that sequence the reader actually picked up the book for.

Starting the book before the story starts is a problem that plagues many novel drafts. The author has imagined a sequence of events and dutifully records them in chronological order.

Is the sequence logical? Yes.

Is it also boring? Hell yes it is.

In early, out late is yet another problem that readers, including beta readers, frequently misdiagnose as slow pacing. It’s a problem I’ve gotten quite good at spotting and fixing in the works of authors who engage my professional editing services.

Here’s a hint: The solution isn’t to streamline the sentence-level prose so Sarah no longer “walks slowly across the crowded parking lot toward her car” and instead “crosses the parking lot.”

Read the full post on Substack.

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign is closing in on funding interior artwork of Hazeroth. And with less than $1,000 and 60 hours left to go, we need all hands on deck to make this epic edition even better!

Every pledge makes a difference. So if you’ve been waiting to back Souldancer, acting now will help add Hazeroth’s dread likeness to everyone’s SD Special Edition. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign now!

Pretend they did, and give them the corresponding levels anyway.

Director Naoki Hamaguchi recently stated that FFVII Revelation will occasionally offer players the option to automatically raise their party to the recommended level for a given area. This feature is perfect for people who prefer watching semi-interactive CG movies to actually playing games.

They got the idea from player feedback on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Some gamers skipped its profusion of side quests and mini-games, only to learn the hard way that their characters were under-leveled for the main plot.

And the answer Square Enix came up with is to award experience points absent the actual experience.

You may laugh. But the auto-level button holds more far-reaching implications than just another version of journo mode. In fact, it may represent the logical conclusion of a change that began thirty years ago.

Read the full post on Substack.

Speaking of stories that benefit from close attention, the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter is now down to its final three days.

This campaign offers the definitive anniversary hardcover of my Dragon Award-winning novel, along with new artwork and the brand-new Soul Cycle novella. This is the edition I’ve wanted to put on readers’ shelves for ten years. And now, readers like you are making it happen!

When the campaign ends, the exclusive rewards go with it. The time for waiting is over. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign before it’s too late!

What they failed to anticipate was A.I. stealing their identities.

Earlier this summer, paranormal romance author Tamra Westberry received what should have been welcome news. Another writer had recommended her latest novel, Project Erebus, after seeing it in a roundup of new releases.

There was only one problem: Westberry did not write a novel called Project Erebus. Yet there it was on Amazon, attached to the profile for her pen name, Tara West.

What was more, the book reused character names from her previous fiction. Its cover resembled those of her real books. Someone had even produced German, French, Italian, and Spanish translations.

Readers who were none the wiser bought it. Some even left reviews. And an author who had spent years building a readership suddenly found a book she never wrote associated with her name.

Thriller author Noelle W. Ihli recently fell victim to an even more brazen version of this scam. Her novel The Last to Drown had a counterfeit paperback attached to the Amazon listing for the real book. It carried the same title and an almost identical cover.

Readers ordering what they thought was Ihli’s novel instead got the forgery, which cost $5 more than the genuine paperback.

When confused readers contacted Ihil, she filed an IP claim with Amazon, who to their credit removed the fake book.

Other writers have reported A.I.-generated books appearing directly on their author pages. Some imitate their style and genre. Others don’t even bother.

One romance author’s page got infested with six fake children’s books about cartoon animals.

Read the full post on Substack.

Souldancer was first published in 2016, years before generative A.I., and readers voted it the first Dragon Award winner for Best Horror Novel. Ten years on, we’re producing the definitive anniversary hardcover alongside a new Soul Cycle novella.

Only four days remain to help us launch the Soul Cycle’s second decade. If you’ve considered backing SD10, don’t wait. On Friday night, the campaign ends, and both special hardcovers vanish for good. So back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign while there’s still time.

Recently I broke down the numbers behind Akuma No Ran, a Kickstarter campaign that raised $530 against a $2500 goal.

What interested me most about that campaign was that a lot of their numbers looked pretty decent.

The average pledge was $38. Prelaunch followers converted to backers at 31 percent.

But the campaign was weighed down by bigger problems. For one, it didn’t get enough qualified followers. And it didn’t help that the campaign page could have delivered a more effective pitch.

Today, we’re tackling that second problem. Let me show you what I would have done differently.

Read the full post on Substack.

And to see my advice in action on a campaign that funded in 3 hours and has more than tripled its original goal, check out the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Edition on Kickstarter.

Claim the Souldancer Special Edition and the new companion novella The Other Side of Fear before the campaign ends. Back SD10 on Kickstarter now.

Still, that solemn pronouncement took a while to reach fruition. But the experts looked at the arrival of Generation Z and concluded that Zoomers, at last, would deliver the coup de grace to physical books.

After all, Zoomers grew up with smartphones. They consumed stories through social media. And besides, they could load thousands of novels on a Kindle instead of keeping a single battered paperback in a side pocket. Surely the generation raised online would finally make print obsolete.

Instead, young adults’ growing penchant for buying physical media is extending to books.

New research from Cambridge University Press paints a striking picture of American readers born between 1997 and 2012. In 2025, 66 percent of respondents identified themselves as readers, up 14 percentage points from 2022.

More surprisingly, 65 percent reported reading at least one print book during the previous year, up from 59 percent.

It’s official: The most digitally native generation in history is becoming more attached to analog books.

And in another twist nobody saw coming, the internet may be part of the reason why.

Read the full post on Substack.

The same idea behind this post informs the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign.

Ten years after its original publication, my Dragon Award-winning novel is getting its definitive hardcover treatment, alongside the new companion novella.

This anniversary edition was conceived as a book worth keeping on your shelf. If you want a thrilling story you can devour on your phone while making the deluxe hardcover your new conversation piece, back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign on Kickstarter.

Authors know too much about their own books.

If you doubt it, think about your own book. Why does the villain hate the hero? What happened twenty years before chapter one? How did the current king overthrow his predecessor without spilling one drop of blood?

You know all the answers.

The reader, in contrast, knows none of them.

That knowledge gap causes one of the most common yet little-known problems I find in new authors’ books.

They write stories that make perfect sense to them. But they only give the reader half the information that’s needed to understand it.

Suppose your protagonist, let’s call him Mark, has been avoiding his older brother for the last hundred pages. He won’t answer his calls. His brother shows up to a party, and Mark leaves without a word. When a mutual friend suggests they bury the hatchet, Mark brusquely changes the subject.

Of course, you know exactly why: Five years ago, Mark’s brother caused the car crash that killed their father.

The problem is, you don’t inform the reader of that fact for another fifty pages.

From your point of view, Mark’s behavior has been consistent since page one. But from the reader’s perspective, Mark has been shunning his brother for no apparent reason.

So when you lay all the cards on the table, expecting the reader to have a “surprising yet inevitable” epiphany, what the reader thinks is …

Why didn’t he tell me that before?

That’s the kind of problem I look for when providing author clients with my professional editing services.

Read the full post on Substack.

GIVE READERS A STORY WORTH KEEPING

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign celebrates my Dragon Award-winning novel with a definitive anniversary hardcover. And it brings readers a brand-new Soul Cycle novella, The Other Side of Fear.

Add the special edition to your bookcase, and support independent fiction. Back the campaign on Kickstarter.

Now, Sony’s customers have issued a rebuttal.

And they brought receipts.

This development comes as Sony challenges a class-action lawsuit over the language they employ to sell games on the PlayStation Store. The plaintiffs argue that terms like “buy” and “purchase” imply ownership of games; not limited licenses to access them.

Say want you want about Sony’s reply; they didn’t mince words. The company argued that “reasonable consumers would not be misled” into thinking they own the digital games they buy.

To steel man Sony’s position, their software licensing agreement does state that PlayStation software is licensed.

But win or lose in court, Sony’s lawyers can’t make customers like losing ownership.

And now the company’s messaging problem has worsened considerably.

Read the full post on Substack.

BACK THE BOOK, OWN THE BOOK

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign exists to bring readers lovingly crafted physical editions they can treasure for keeps. Not just of my Dragon Award-winning novel, but also the new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

Own these historic volumes on your terms. Back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Edition on Kickstarter.

Now the numbers are in, and the news isn’t good.

A new study looked at more than 14,000 self-published novels sold on Amazon between 2023 and 2026. Researchers found significanat amounts of A.I.-generated prose in about 20 percent of those titles.

More than 2,000 books were flagged for being over 50 percent A.I.-generated. Almost 1,000 exceeded 90 percent.

Even worse, the A.I. books weren’t just languishing there unread. The study found that almost 20 times as many titles reported sales during its three-year time window. But quarterly revenue only rose by half as much.

At first glance, those figures sound like the nightmare scenario writers have been told to dread. Even an author who can write at pulp speed to launch a novel a month can’t win on volume against guy who generates one in days using prompts, slaps on a similarly machine-generated cover, and upload it to KDP.

But it turns out that volume might be the wrong metric.

Read the full post on Substack.

BACK A BOOK WITH A HISTORY

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Campaign presents readers with a literary achievement ten years in the making. Because of its ten-year history, you know this book is real. And the anniversary campaign gives that history the fitting capstone of the definitive hardcover edition!

If you want crafted books from a real creator supported directly by you, the reader, back the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Edition on Kickstarter.

Of all the mistakes new authors make when planning a crowdfunder, one of the easiest, and most common, is approaching exclusive rewards as though they were bonuses.

What many get right is focusing on a single book to headline the campaign first. But the same bad habit that causes infinite manuscript polishing syndrome kicks in, and getting the main book’s presentation perfect dominates these authors’ attention. So only when it’s past time to start building out the campaign’s rewards do they get around to thinking about other items.

When faced with that last-minute crunch, most inexperienced crowdfunders lurch to one of these opposite extremes:

Read the full post on Substack.

The Other Side of Fear is now available as a standalone hardcover only through the Souldancer 10th Anniversary campaign.

Claim The Other Side of Fear exclusive hardcover before it’s gone. Back SD10 on Kickstarter now.

Apparently, everybody forgot to tell bookstores.

Books-A-Million, America’s #2 bookstore chain, is having another banner year. Customer transactions are up, new stores have exceeded expectations, and the company plans to open fifteen more locations.

And even more surprising, it isn’t any overhyped self-help book or celebrity biography that’s driving physical book sales.

It’s good old fiction.

Along with manga and graphic novels, fiction has been one of the biggest causes of Books-A-Million’s growth this year. CEO Terry Finley described sales as “an inch deep and a mile wide.”

That statement suggests the results aren’t coming from one or two blockbuster titles propping up the rest of their business.

Readers are buying lots of different books. And the latest numbers suggest this growth isn’t limited to a single bookstore chain. New publishing industry data released yesterday show total sales rose 3.9 percent during the first half of 2026. And contra the sticks-in-the-mud who tell us only nonfiction is important, adult fiction grew more than twice as fast.

And the story doesn’t end there. Sales increased 8.2 percent through June, including a 19.3 percent jump that month alone. Not to be left out, trade paperback sales were also up 8.4 percent.

That’s before we even get into manga …

Read the full post on Substack.

Ten years after readers made my hit novel Souldancer a Dragon Award winner, I’m bringing it back in a definitive hardcover edition alongside the new companion novella The Other Side of Fear.

Back it now on Kickstarter.

But all too often, they don’t take enough time to think through how the characters will solve those problems.

Take a fantasy novel in which the hero needs to enter a fortified city unnoticed. The guards know his face, his enemies control the gates, and getting caught means death. That’s a compelling predicament with hefty consequences for failure.

How’s he gonna pull this one off? readers wonder as they eagerly flip pages.

Then it turns out the hero has an old smuggler buddy. That smuggler happens to have a secret tunnel into the city, and he agrees to lead our hero through it to repay an old favor.

Problem solved, right?

Superficially, yes. Each part of that sequence is plausible. The smuggler and his debt to the hero might even have been established earlier.

Yet that scene can still leave the reader cold.

Why?

That’s the type of question I ask when helping clients via my professional editing services.

Read the full post on Substack.

The special anniversary edition of my Dragon Award-winning adventure Souldancer has been ten years in the making. The Kickstarter is live now, featuring the hardcover novel, the companion novella The Other Side of Fear, and more.

Help bring the Soul Cycle into its next decade. Back Souldancer on Kickstarter now.

It was easy to dismiss the analog revival as nostalgia …

… until Zoomers likewise started buying old media.

A Canadian physical media retailer says his video game sales have surged since Sony announced their ill-conceived plan to stop making new PlayStation discs. Some physical game prices have jumped dramatically as buyers scramble for copies.

Nor is this phenomenon limited to games. American CD sales jumped almost 46 percent in the first half of 2026. Vinyl climbed to 21 percent. Sales of other supposedly obsolete formats like DVDs and cassettes rose more than 73 percent.

To be sure, streaming still dwarfs all physical media. But consumers are rediscovering what the convenience of digital media blinded them to these past years:

Read the full post on Substack.

OWN THE SOULDANCER 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

The Souldancer 10th Anniversary Kickstarter is live, featuring definitive hardcover editions of my Dragon Award-winning novel and a new companion novella.

These physical editions are made for you to keep. So claim yours today. Back the campaign on Kickstarter.

Streaming killed theaters, executives said. Zoomers would rather watch their phones. Besides, making original movies was too risky. The studios convinced themselves they had no choice but to spend ever-larger sums exploiting familiar franchises.

Then 2026 came, and Hollywood had its best summer in years.

How good? Domestic box office receipts hit $4.61 billion between May and August, up 26 percent from last summer. Which was the biggest since 2013. Though to be precise, higher ticket prices mean attendance is still below pre-Corona-chan levels.

But the total take is the least interesting part of the story. What’s far more important is how Hollywood pulled off such a surprise comeback.

Because this summer, moviegoers broke the industry’s most cherished, and wrongheaded, assumptions about them.

Twenty-six-year-old Curry Barker made Obsession for less than $1 million. Before directing a feature, Barker and his brother amassed millions of views on their YouTube horror shorts.

Now Barker has parlayed that millions-strong audience into more than $500 million in ticket sales.

Nor is he the only one.

Read the full post on Substack.

LAST CALL FOR THE LABOR DAY SPECIAL

Finding readers first and bringing ambitious projects directly to you is what made the Souldancer 10th Anniversary Edition possible. And today is the last day to claim the special Labor Day Bundle on Kickstarter.

The Labor Day Special ends tonight. Don’t wait. Claim it on Kickstarter.