“Why should we publish you?”

So writers devoted untold hours drafting query letters and courting agents. It’s hard to conceive of now, but not too long ago, getting in front of an audience meant signing a book deal with gatekeepers in Manhattan. That meant convincing them your book deserved access to their paper distribution monopoly.

Because as author J.A. Konrath observed, at the end of the day, oldpub was never in the story business. They’re in the lumber trade …

… which has become apparent as oldpub is forced to contend with authors who already have their own readerships.

A Bookseller report on the growing number of successful indie novels describes oldpub houses having to change their longstanding strategy. Now that newpub authors have learned to build audiences of their own, the tables have turned.

Once, big publishers demanded authors explain why oldpub should sign them.

Now, successful newpub authors are demanding to know why they should sign with oldpub.

Read the full post on Substack.

SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

The Kickstarter launches September 1, featuring early bird rewards and a crowdfunder-exclusive hardcover of the new novella.

Follow the Kickstarter now to be notified the moment limited rewards go live!

After all, Disney’s name graces movies, television networks, cruise ships, theme parks, streaming services, and enough merchandise to fill all the empty storefronts in your town’s dead mall.

Surely, MBAs would say, that empire sprang from brilliant brand management.

Yet history tells a different story. Instead of setting out to build a brand, Walt Disney resolved to create characters people would gladly spend hours with. Their stories came first, Walt’s empire followed.

These days, studios and publishers ignore that lesson. They’re far more apt to begin with grandiose plans for a cinematic universe nobody asked for. Somewhere, probably near the end of the planning meeting, somebody remembers that a story should probably accompany the product.

Read the full post on Substack.

SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

The Kickstarter launches September 1, featuring early bird rewards and a crowdfunder-exclusive hardcover of the new novella.

Follow the Kickstarter now to be notified the moment limited rewards go live!

For decades, Dark Sun fans awaited their grimy, gory setting’s return. Wizards of the Coast technically made an attempt in 2010, but that was Fourth Edition, so it didn’t count.

Now, WotC has finally answered longstanding demand. The postapocalyptic wasteland of Athas is coming back in 2027.

Wizards even took the extra step of billing Dark Sun 3.0 as mature content. The prelaunch marketing campaign featuring shrink-wrapped books positions Dark Sun as the hardcore setting for grown-ups who can handle dark themes.

And it was working. Early buzz spread through the gaming scene like wildfire.

Then the game’s executive producer opened his mouth.

Greg Bilsland told TTRPG Insider that the new Dark Sun is being run through even more sensitivity readers than usual. It is ostensibly their input that led him to say that the setting will not need to “focus on elements such as slavery” to feel oppressive. “There are other forms of oppression out there,” he said.

Translated from Corporatese, the company that disowned the original setting as “problematic” is now bringing it back after sanding off (pun intended) the unapproved kinds of misery.

The problem is that Slavery was not window dressing in Dark Sun. Athas’ city-states ran on the peculiar institution. The economy, the social hierarchy; the whole texture of daily life was informed by it.

SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

The Kickstarter launches September 1, featuring early bird rewards and a crowdfunder-exclusive hardcover of the new novella.

Follow the Kickstarter now to be notified the moment limited rewards go live!

Read the full post on Substack.

The protagonist has a clear goal, and his motive for pursuing it make sense. With each scene, he moves closer to what he wants.

Perhaps a little too close. Because beta readers complain the hero waltzes from victory to victory.

So the author does what comes naturally: He raises the stakes.

The villain gets a power boost. Then he moves on from attacking the the hero’s hometown to threatening the whole kingdom.

Surely, the author assumes, readers will find the story gripping. But for some reason they can’t articulate, they still say the protagonist is coasting.

The real reason is a common yet subtle difference pro editors have learned to spot right away: Higher stakes do not automatically mean higher difficulty.

Think about it. A character can face down catastrophic consequences without ever having to make a hard choice. Sure, readers may grasp the severity of the situation on an intellectual level. But tension is emotional, and they know when they’re not feeling it.

Read the full post on Substack.

SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

The Kickstarter launches September 1, featuring early bird rewards and a crowdfunder-exclusive hardcover of the new novella.

Follow the Kickstarter now to be notified the moment limited rewards go live!

But since one word not in big tech’s vocabulary is “enough”, Adobe kept pushing to further leverage their indispensability.

A viral post on X by author John A. Douglas offers us a striking example. John downloaded an Adobe free trial, canceled before it expired, but still got billed for a subscription. When he tried to cancel again, Adobe slapped him with an early termination fee for $99.95.

Ordinarily, one billing dispute from a fleeced customer wouldn’t tell us much about a corporation. To err is human, no one at a megacorp is as dumb as everyone at a megacorp, and social media has a way of magnifying edge cases.

But what makes John’s case an exception, to the tune of 1.6 million views and counting, is Adobe’s recent settlement of a federal lawsuit over similar dodgy subscription practices.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission accused Adobe of hiding early termination fees. Regulators alleged that the company actively put hurdles in customers’ way when they tried to cancel.

Adobe denied wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $75 million penalty and give away $75 million worth of free services. Despite this slap on the wrist, Adobe’s annual plans still have early termination fees approximating 50 percent of leftover subscription balances.

To understand how we got to the point where big software firms can mug their customers and effectively bribe the feds to avoid admitting fault, it’s helpful to remember how people once bought software.

Read the full post on Substack.

SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

The Kickstarter launches September 1, featuring early bird rewards and a crowdfunder-exclusive hardcover of the new novella.

Follow the Kickstarter now to be notified the moment limited rewards go live!

And all the while, independent film makers produced videos in their bedrooms, aspiring to break into “real” show business.

Now, after multiple years of surprise flops from Big Franchise X and one season of YouTubers-turned-director blowing up out of left field, Hollywood is seeking to hire independents.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

Last week, Rolling Stone divulged studios’ growing interest in YouTubers who’ve amassed considerable audiences outside the studio system. Hollywood has turned from paying influencers for film promotions to giving them their own movie deals.

For more than a century, hopeful entertainers had to convince industry gatekeepers that they deserved access to the mass audience. Now, at last, the creator economy has flipped the old arrangement on its head.

A kid with a camera and an internet connection can shoot his own material. He can get financing on Kickstarter, distribution on YouTube, and marketing through social media.

So instead of big studios deciding who merits an audience, audiences themselves now choose who deserves their attention.

Read the full post on Substack.

SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES

Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.

The Kickstarter launches September 1, featuring early bird rewards and a crowdfunder-exclusive hardcover of the new novella.

Follow the Kickstarter now to be notified the moment limited rewards go live!

The assembly line.

That’s true, as far as it goes. Ford dramatically increased production while reducing costs. The moving assembly line transformed manufacturing and changed the modern world.

Yet focusing solely on the assembly line misses the larger lesson.

Ford’s real breakthrough was recognizing that automobiles would always be toys for the wealthy unless ordinary people could afford them. And that one conviction guided practically every major decision he made.

Because instead of setting out to build a better luxury car, Ford figured out how to build a car that millions of Americans could own. The Model T may not have been the fastest automobile on the road. Nor was it the prettiest. But, it was dependable, easy to repair, and, most importantly, affordable.

Ford took that approach because he understood a principle that many businesses overlook: Often, success in the market goes not the most impressive product; instead, it’s the one that normies can adopt.

Indie authors should pay heed to that lesson, because it’s one they persistently stumble over. Many put years into building elaborate worlds, crafting intricate magic systems, and devising sprawling mythologies. What they forget is to ask themselves a simple yet essential question:

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning novel. Don’t miss out on early bird rewards, exclusive editions, and collector’s items! Follow the campaign now on Kickstarter.

Always left unsaid is progress toward what?

Yes, downloading games is faster. And discs do take up shelf space. Most players already buy digitally anyway. So, it’s argued, eliminating obsolete plastic gives consumers what they want.

It turns out that by eliminating physical media, video game megacorps are progressing toward outright monopoly status.

Sony announced that physical disc production for new PlayStation games will end in January 2028. Now, a Dutch consumer group has accused Sony of abusing its control over digital PlayStation sales. The lawsuit alleges that games on the PlayStation Store can cost substantially more than physical copies, with the plaintiffs claiming differences as high as 47 percent.

But the dispute gets more interesting. The Stop Killing Games movement and preservation group DoesItPlay? have thrown their support behind the suit.

If you’re, a PlayStation owner, you’ve always been able to buy a disc from a retailer, borrow one from a friend, find a used copy online, or sell your used game. And each of those options limits Sony’s control over the transaction. The disc on your shelf can change hands without their permission. More importantly, the retailer selling that disc competes with Sony for your money.

One change that tips the balance of power fully in Sony’s favor is getting rid of the disc. Total ownership of the game retail channel and the platform it’s played on belongs to a single entity.

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning novel. Don’t miss out on early bird rewards, exclusive editions, and collector’s items! Follow the campaign now on Kickstarter.

The characters have goals? Check. Brisk dialogue? Check. Major transformative event? Check.

Yet when the scene ends, the reader wonders Why did I just read those ten pages?

The reason why those scenes come off as pointless can easily elude readers and the author alike comes down to a common cognitive bias. Specifically, the author is too close to the material to see the root cause. And readers are emotionally invested in it. Because that emotional investment is foundational to reading.

That’s why 99 percent of new authors will go looking for flaws in the plot, when the real source of the problem is a character who occasioned the misfiring part of the plot.

The stereotype goes that right-brained creative types, like writers, have an aversion to math. Regardless, there’s a ratio that every writer should memorize: ten to one.

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning novel. Get the inside track on exclusive editions, limited rewards, and collector’s items! Follow the campaign now on Kickstarter.

First, Apple gave us instant access to music. Shortly thereafter, Amazon placed a world of books at our fingertips.

Then every tech company handed the keys over to algorithms. The idea was that machines could learn your tastes well enough to choose what you should watch, listen to, and read before you even knew what you wanted.

Hard as it may be for older folks to believe, a whole generation has now been raised in that algorithmically gatekept world. And to the shock and confusion of the tech bros, they’re rebelling against it.

A recent Hollywood Reporter piece documents Gen Z’s growing fascination with analogue tech. As we’ve covered before, Zoomers are buying vinyl records, print books, Blu-ray discs, and other media that Big Tech did its level best to leave on the scrap heap of history.

At first glance, this phenomenon looks like just another nostalgia cycle. Young people have always rediscovered fashions from bygone years before their birth. And taken in isolation, the individual data points don’t amount to much. But if you zoom out and look at the profusion and distribution of retro tech re-adoption reports, it’s hard not to see a trend.

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning novel. Get the inside track on exclusive editions, limited rewards, and collector’s items! Follow the campaign now on Kickstarter.

You handed over your money at the brick and mortar store, brought the disc home, and watched it at leisure. Nobody at New Line could barge in four years later and decide your copy was no longer under license.

Now, Google has done the digital equivalent.

A Google customer recently discovered that the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions he purchased in 2022 had disappeared from his digital library.

According to Google support, the films were no longer available in the company’s catalog. The customer was reportedly offered neither a refund nor compensation because the purchase fell outside Google’s 120-day refund window.

Let’s think about what happened.

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning novel. Get the inside track on exclusive editions, limited rewards, and collector’s items! Follow the campaign now on Kickstarter.

Don’t misunderstand, those tools have their place. But they also distract authors from the key lesson that propelled Amazon from online bookstore to trillion-dollar megacorp.

Jeff Bezos once explained Amazon’s success in a single sentence:

“The number one thing, by far, that has made us successful is obsessive compulsive focus on the customer, as opposed to the competitor.”

Notice what he didn’t say. Bezos did not credit superior advertising. Neither did he praise clever branding or brilliant marketing campaigns. Nor did he attribute Amazon’s rise to chasing every passing trend.

Instead, Bezos argued that Amazon succeeded because it relentlessly asked one question:

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

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Movies were supposed to kill books. Then radio was predicted to deliver the death blow. Surely, the experts told us, Television would put paid to reading. When those prophecies failed, the “Print is dead” crowd went all-in on video games, smartphones, and social media.

Breathless reports circulated of late claimed to have brought proof that Generation Z would deal reading its death blow. But dig into the evidence, and you see that it paints a more complex picture.

A recent article in The Conversation argues that much of the panic over Gen Z’s reading habits stems from looking in the wrong places. Past surveys asked if young people identify as readers. Now, researchers have examined how Zoomers actually consume stories.

The result surprised everyone. Many members of Gen Z who insist they “aren’t readers” nonetheless regularly consume books, audiobooks, manga, fan fiction, and serialized stories across multiple formats.

It turns out that people don’t stop loving stories just because they exit legacy distribution channels.

For decades, the publishing industry assumed bookstores were synonymous with books. Then Amazon launched the Kindle. Hollywood conflated theaters and movies, only to get schooled by streaming. Journos equated news with newspapers. Now the vast majority of younger people get their news online.

Each time, observers confused a change in distribution for a decline in demand. And they’re making the same mistake with reading.

Read the full post on Substack.

The classic adventure returns ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

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That’s a critique all authors cringe to hear, and it’s one of the most common complaints beta readers make about new authors’ books.

Many writers jump to the conclusion that the problem is simplicity. So they rewrite the ending, inventing a bigger surprise or adding another layer of misdirection.

And all too often, none of those changes solves the real issue.

Take a close look at twists that disappoint readers, and you’ll often discover the author spent far more effort concealing information than directing attention.

Imagine our overworked detective from previous examples spending 200 pages investigating suspects. Every clue casts suspicion on the struggling businessman who stood to inherit the victim’s fortune.

Then in the last chapter, the gardener who to that point served as window dressing confesses out of the blue.

And readers shake their heads, muttering “I knew it.”

Technically speaking, they didn’t solve the mystery by following the facts of the case. Because the author didn’t give them enough clues.

What they did was intuitively use a mystery heuristic popularized by Roger Ebert:

Read the full post on Substack.

The next adventure begins ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

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Generation Z were expected to accelerate the death of the movie theater. Instead, they’re reversing it.

Recent reporting from independent theater owners paints a surprising picture. Attendance has rebounded to, and in some places surpassed, levels not seen since before Corona-chan’s visit.

Much of the resurgence has come from younger audiences turning out for films like Project Hail Mary and Obsession. That box office heat is even rubbing off on blockbusters like the new Spider-Man flick and yes, Christopher Nolan’s controversial adaptation of The Odyssey.

The numbers don’t lie. Zoomers are catching new movies in the theater instead of waiting a few weeks for the streaming debut. That sudden turn has caught many industry observers off-guard.

It shouldn’t.

The assumption that convenience always wins has been one of the defining mistakes of the streaming era. Because while convenience may solve certain problems, ease has never been the same as value.

Consider the streaming revolution’s unintended consequences. Movies are now interchangeable. The way streaming platforms are structured, assembly line slop crowds out masterpieces from bygone eras. Streaming a movie is now analogous to turning on the radio while scrubbing the sink, which the second-screening phenomenon demonstrates.

The net effect: Entertainment has degraded from an event into background noise.

But somewhere along the way, Zoomers rediscovered that theaters offer a level of commitment that streaming cannot match.

Read the full post on Substack.

The next adventure begins ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

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But amid the flash and bluster of recent blockbuster movie seasons, Hollywood’s old promotional model effectively folded.

A recent piece on the marketing campaign for Tom Cruise’s latest film revealed that Hollywood studios are replacing traditional critics with online influencers. Instead of courting newspaper reviewers, they are inviting hundreds of social media personalities to exclusive screenings. The underlying logic is that audiences now place greater confidence in familiar internet faces than legacy media tastemakers.

The majority of commenters who see the fall of critics as another victory for influencers misunderstand the full magnitude of what’s happened.

For most of the twentieth century, institutions controlled attention because they controlled distribution. Newspaper and magazine editors and TV network executives decided which reviewers got national audiences. Therefore, they chose the handful of critics who set audience preferences.

The internet has now turned that dynamic on its head. Most people now follow reviewers whose tastes match their own. They discover pop culture commentators through YouTube recommendations, Instagram reels, and TikTok clips.

It used to be that institutions introduced people to influencers. Now, online influencers are institutions.

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The next adventure begins ...

Celebrate the 10th anniversary of my Dragon Award-winning horror adventure novel with the definitive anniversary edition.

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The June convocation of the Council of Kairos delved deep into the finer points of writing technique and story distribution. The second matter is where we begin presenting the questions from the AMA:

Question: If you wanted to turn your book into another medium other than an audio book, what would be the most impactful and moderately affordable right now?

Answer: A major but seldom-discussed reason why so many creators pick novels as the initial vehicle for their stories is that books have perhaps the lowest overhead of any commercial medium. The next most affordable is probably graphic novels, which involve production costs one order of magnitude higher than novels instead of two or three.

Bonus: Please enjoy this clip from the stream!

Now on with our questions:

Q: Which media adaptations would you avoid?

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The deep lore of Tolkien. The brutal action of Berserk!

Read The Burned Book now.

When a struggling company wants to grow, the go-to approach these days is to buy another struggling company.

You might take it for granted, but that one trend says far more about today’s economy than most job numbers or inflation reports.

The proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. is billed as a necessary effort to compete in an increasingly fragmented industry by forming yet another media giant. Supporters argue that pooling resources will benefit both companies. Skeptics argue that merging two megacorps under pressure just gives you a larger megacorp under pressure.

Yet even that debate misses a more interesting historical trend.

It’s easy to mistake consolidation for innovation. The results can look similar if you squint. After all, both produce a flurry of hype and activity.

The tell is that only one creates new value.

Read the full post on Substack.

The deep lore of Tolkien. The brutal action of Berserk!

Read The Burned Book now.

Here’s the rub: Usually, those authors are right. Maybe they have a scene packed with action, major revelations, and gripping character moments.

And nonetheless, the story somehow feels like it’s standing still.

What that apparent contradiction should tell us is the problem isn’t a lack of action. Instead, it’s a lack of transformation.

Many beginning writers judge a scene according to what events take place in it. Professional editors evaluate the same scene by what is different after it.

What’s the difference?

Read the full post on Substack.

The deep lore of Tolkien. The brutal action of Berserk!

Read The Burned Book now.

Not only is that definition obsolete, it has been for years. What’s changing now is people are finally starting to notice.

This month, the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery sparked another round of debate about the future of Hollywood. Studio execs argue that larger companies are better equipped to compete under rapidly changing conditions. Meanwhile, critics of the merger point out that combining struggling giants could just as well create a bigger struggling giant.

What both sides miss is that their preoccupation with whether Hollywood is too big glosses over the fact that the age of entertainment conglomerates is over.

It’s easy to overlook that the mass market isn’t a necessary constant dictated by economic laws. Instead, universal shared culture resulted from quirks of twentieth-century technology.

When Americans had three television networks, a handful of national magazines, and one local newspaper, practically everyone consumed the same culture. If you wanted to reach millions of people, you only had a few routes, each of which was gated. Whoever controlled those artificial bottlenecks reigned as de facto tastemakers and kingmakers.

It sounds facile to say, but the internet really did change that equation. At first, many assumed the worldwide web would just give us the same institutions, but bigger.

Read the full post on Substack.

The deep lore of Tolkien. The brutal action of Berserk!

Read The Burned Book now.