And no, these e-readers are not broken. Their batteries hold charges, the screens still display text, and their buttons are responsive.

Yet once Amazon withdraws support, these Kindles’ core features will disappear. Users will lose access to the Kindle store, and registration will fail after a reset.

The result: A device that once served as a personal library becomes a plastic lockbox.

What’s worse is that there is no technical necessity behind this power grab. It’s a brazen display of control.

As many have been warning for years, digital media always came with strings attached. When you purchase a physical book, it remains yours regardless of the publisher’s politically motivated mood swings.

But when you purchase a digital file tied to a platform, continued access depends on that platform’s cooperation.

That’s a reality which has just hit home for countless Kindle users.

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“Should I edit while writing, or wait until the draft is finished?”

At first glance, both approaches seem reasonable. One promises more polished prose from the outset. The other emphasizes forward motion. You’ll find experts advocating for both schools of thought with equal confidence.

Yet the results tell a different story.

Writers who edit as they go tend to stall out. Authors who finish first drafts quickly are more likely to improve faster.

That pattern reveals a deeper truth: Editing and drafting are separate processes that require different mindsets.

Drafting comes from the right brain. When composing, you are discovering the story, weighing character decisions, and testing ideas in real time. Even if you outline, that just means you’re exploring with a map. Imperfection is not only expected; it is necessary. After all, this is where you get the suck out.

Editing is left-brained. It demands precision. You have to slow down, evaluate word choices, and refine language. No sentence can escape your scrutiny. Every paragraph must be judged for clarity and effect.

Trying to do both at once is like trying to play classical music in your head while the radio blasts a progressive rock song.

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Print is dead. No, eBooks are dead. Audio books are taking over. All the money is in subscription services. Until it’s in serializing free first and charging later. Now that A.I. has entered the arena, the forecasts of doom have come rolling in.

And panic follows in their wake.

Those with a sense of history know there’s nothing new under the sun. Entrepreneurs in every industry will tell you that formats, sales channels, and marketing platforms are in constant flux.

Yet in an ever-changing market, two principles remain constant. They governed publishing a century ago when oldpub seized their paper monopoly. They ruled it a decade ago when Amazon achieved dominance. And they will continue to guide it long after the current A.I. disruption has run its course.

Those rules are:

1. Find your customers

2. get the stories they want into their hands.

Everything else is quibbling over details.

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But the once-revolutionary platform that allowed indie authors to build careers gradually created the conditions for newpub to destroy itself.

A.I. has flooded digital shelves with books produced at a pace no author can match. Whole genres swell to bursting with books assembled in mere hours. Some are harmless curios. Others are cynical attempts to game KDP’s rankings and search algorithm.

Amazon has seemed content to let discretion be the better part of valor.

But not for long.

For a couple of years now, Kindle Direct Publishing has required authors to disclose A.I.-generated content when manuscripts are uploaded or updated. This method of self-reporting remains voluntary, mainly on the honor system.

It’s no wonder why Amazon’s enforcement of their A.I. disclosure policy has been relatively lax. Look around online, and you’ll soon come upon countless humorous stories of automated services falsely flagging War and Peace or the Gettysburg Address as “mostly machine-written.”

What the A.I. slop merchants have missed is that, like LLMs themselves, A.I. detection tools are advancing rapidly. After all, the companies developing them have strong incentives to improve their accuracy. They realized a while back that the main fault with current tools is they’re basically the same models as the LLMs they’re being tasked with ferreting out.

In other words, they’re built to imitate human writing, not to spot imitations. The current generation of A.I. detection tools are basically saying, “We have investigated, and exonerated, ourselves.”

What’s coming down the pike is a whole other animal. One well-placed tech worker in a Fortune 500 company informed me that the tools they’ve got in beta right now are uncannily accurate at clocking A.I. output. They’ll be even better when they exit training and launch, which will be soon. Once those systems mature, every major platform will integrate them. They’ll have no choice.

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In this case, a 78 percent A.I.-generated title billed as authored work slipped past oldpub editors and onto major UK retail platforms. But readers noticed, and as you’d expect, their immediate reaction was swift and hostile.

It turns out that the big publishers don’t know better than their readers after all. Predictably, oldpub scrambled to run damage control, along with calling for more regulation. But imposing additional platform restrictions won’t solve the underlying problem: in a word, hunger.

Because readers are starving for authenticity.

For years, the common wisdom in oldpub and newpub alike held that volume was the key to success. Massaging the robot to move rapid-release titles was the winning strategy.

Now the algortihms have evolved from selling books to producing them. And the publishers who used to swear by the robot find themselves cursing it.

That reversal should not surprise anyone who’s been paying attention. The same pattern has already played out across film, television, and music. The collapses of those industries showed us that removing all effort from production drops quality to zero.

Contrary to common misperception, the latest A.I. book scandal did not create this problem. What it did was expose it. Because readers’ response exceeded rejection, approaching closer to revulsion. They demonstrated an intuitive understanding that most establishment gatekeepers lack:

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The fact that this question comes up so often reveals widespread confusion about what editing is meant to accomplish.

Many writers treat the editing process like a checklist:

1. Finish the draft

2. hire an editor

3. make final revisions

4. publish.

That mindset leads to wasted time, muddled revisions, and manuscripts that still feel off even after multiple passes. The key to avoiding those pitfalls is understanding the right editorial sequence.

A developmental edit addresses the structural level: plot, pacing, character arcs, and thematic consistency all fall under its purview.

A line edit focuses on the sentence level, refining tone, clarity, and overall language use.

Each type of editing servess a distinct purpose, and each depends on the other being handled at the right time. Dev edits come first; then, when the structure has been made sound, editorial focus should move to the line level. Reversing the order creates problems that add up quickly.

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Overshadowed by the more famous horror tales of H. P. Lovecraft, it often gets filed away as a black sheep of his catalog. But that oddball reputation sells it short. For beneath its episodic structure and surreal imagery lies one of the most important bridges between mythic fantasy and cosmic horror ever written.

Revisiting it now, years after first picking it up, revealed just how much Lovecraft’s novella influenced my approach to storytelling.

Unlike Lovecraft’s better-known tales of dread, hisDream-Quest unfolds less like a descent into terror and more as a pilgrimage through an alien dreamland. Randolph Carter’s journey across the Dreamlands reads like a distorted echo of older questing tales, yet every step forward introduces new layers of uncertainty. The archetype of a hero seeking a distant goal is there, but the ground beneath him never stops moving.

That instability is the first of many worthwhile lessons the novella has to teach us.

Many modern stories rely on clearly defined rules that govern their settings. Readers are given systems to learn and maps to study, with the unintended consequence of making outcomes easier to anticipate.

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This bit of stunt hiring has been framed as audacious by fans and detractors alike. But all the hype just stirs up controversy around a rather conventional decision. Colbert has written professionally; at least for the small screen, and he did have a small job on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. As for the political implications, the apalling Rings of Power has well acquainted Tolkien fans with Hollywood’s contempt.

The truth is that when studios contemplate returning to Middle-earth, they almost always circle the same well-trodden territory. We know they are playing it safe because there has yet been no talk of adapting the one Tolkien tale guaranteed to shock audiences.

No, I don’t mean “Leaf by Niggle.” The woefully passed-over story in question has been a key part of the legendarium since the earliest days, has been a best-selling book in its own right, and features the darkest, most intense, and most challenging themes in Tolkien’s whole corpus.

That gripping story is, of course, The Children of Hurin. And its absence from the big screen says more about Hollywood’s artistic cowardice than it does about the source material. If there was ever a Tolkien story suited for a bold and uncompromising adaptation, it is the tragic saga of Turin Turambar.

And if there is one living director equipped to bring Turin’s tragedy to the silver screen, it is Robert Eggers.

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After years of breathless hype about A.I slop dominating the book market, a growing number of readers have begun moving in the opposite direction. They are seeking out books marked, certified, and advertised as written by human hands.

Some are even willing to pay more for the privilege.

At first glance, the trend seems like a niche reaction. But dig deeper, and you find an emergent pattern. The appetite for human writing never went away after all. It was just buried under an avalanche of disposable text.

Over the past few years, digital platforms have trained readers to expect endless volume at minimal cost. Subscription models, algorithmic recommendations, and rapid-release strategies encouraged unregulated consumption. To say that quality took a backseat to quantity would be an understatement.

A.I. accelerated the enslopification of literature. A large language model can now approximate a creative labor that once required months of drafting and revision in minutes. Entire bodies of work can be produced at a scale that dwarfs even the most prolific human authors.

Yet unchecked abundance carries a hidden cost.

Readers are beginning to notice that many of these A.I. stories come off as interchangeable. Sure, the prose scans smoothly enough. They’ve got serviceable dialogue, and the plots hang together. But a vital ingredient is missing.

The mark of a great book used to be that its ideas would stick with you long after you turned the last page. And while A.I. has proven it can string two sentences together, its stories, themes, and characters often fail to linger in the reader’s mind. Instead, the story is consumed and forgotten to make way for the next fix.

It turns out that the early critics of A.I. were wrong about storytelling being immune to automation. But what we’re seeing a few years in is that the chief limitation of LLMs is a relative inability to make their stories stick.

Automated text can ape human technique just fine. What it can’t quite manage yet is convincingly imitating human intention. An author chooses one word over another for reasons that extend beyond algorithmic probability. Those choices snowball over the course of a book, resulting in a voice that can’t be reduced to a logic tree.

And readers are picking up on that shortfall. Which explains why author certification has gained traction.

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Some cave to the temptation and skip the big-picture edit. “I’ll fix a few typos,” they tell themselves. “Maybe run a grammar check; then my book will be good enough to publish.”

But as I learned firsthand, that decision costs more than it saves.

This chart tracks the same period from launch for 4 of my sequential books. By way of context, not to flex, each of the first three bars measures sales in the thousands. Now, it’s expected in the publishing industry for book 1 in a series to be the biggest seller, then for each successive book to sell about half as many copies as the last. Book 2 was an outlier in this case, so let’s set it aside. Books 1 and 3 show the pattern we’d expect.

Then book 4 launched and sold not half, but one-quarter as many copies as its predecessor.

Here’s the point: I did some serious digging into why book 4 stumbled out of the gate. And what I found made me facepalm. See, in the run up to releasing book 4, I found myself in the biggest time crunch of my career. Facing a major missed deadline, I succumbed to the allure of corner-cutting and launched without a dev edit.

Only after the damage was done did honest readers tell me that a single structural quirk in Act I was speed bump that inhibited their further reading. And if my most loyal audience members found that hiccup a hump to get over, how many others saw it as a road block?

Suffice it to say, that blunder taught me a valuable lesson. So learn from my mistake; here’s what a dev edit can do for you …

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The Silmarillion opens in an entirely different register.

Before any kingdoms rise or their heroes take up arms, The Silmarillion begins with creation through music. And instead of shady outsiders on a sinister errand, the first conflict comes through rebellion born of discord. The repercussions of that cosmic drama echo through every age that follows.

That choice alone sets J. R. R. Tolkien apart from nearly every writer who came after him.

Most subsequent fantasy authors adopt ascending world building, proceeding upward from small beginnings, Tolkien employs descending sub-creation that builds downward from first principles. Every event feels grounded in a rich and fully realized history. The result is a legendarium unmatched for its consistency in breadth and depth.

Readers can immediately feel the weight of that history, even when they cannot fully articulate why.

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But is that grim appraisal true?

It turns out the answer is “no.” Watch author Hilary Layne dismantle that zombie meme in her recent video:

As Layne shows, the so-called causal link is a cultural mirage. Muckraking journalists conspired to convince the public that exposure to digital carnage produced IRL mayhem. No rigorous study ever substantiated the claim. Playing Doom or Call of Duty will not make you a school shooter. Human behavior is far too complex for such reductive reasoning to hold.

So, why the panic?

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The readers who keep coming back to Herbert’s far future often face accusations of nostalgia. But their return visits are driven by an attractor that’s growing rarer by the day:

A grand sense of scale grounded in firm conviction.

Unlike many current sci-fi and fantasy authors, Frank Herbert did not build his setting for the sake of spectacle. Arrakis feels ancient, dangerous, and, most strikignly, alive.

Herbert interwove ecology, religion, and politics in ways that pay higher dividends the more attention you pay them. Every faction emerges organically from its own history. And each decision ripples along a web of interrelationships that makes the outcomes impossible to predict.

Or rather, practically impossible for most, but not quite for some …

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California has taken the lead on new legislation requiring age verification at the operating system level. Other states are following close behind, each advancing variations on the same premise.

And the end goal is to turn your device’s OS into government spyware.

For decades, the internet has operated on a simple assumption. Users could access most services without presenting formal identification. Certain platforms might request an email address or a username, but the underlying system remained largely anonymous.

That condition made the internet unpredictable, unruly, and sometimes risky. It also made it open in a way that previous communication media never were.

That era is fast closing.

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Yet a great deal of essential crowdfunding knowledge still eludes many authors. This post will endeavor to fill in many of the most common skill gaps, helping more authors to crowdfund with confidence and success.

Without further preamble, here is your newpub novel crowdfunding guide, presented step-by-step.

Important note: No crowdfunder is an overnight success. Preparations should start at least one month (preferably three months) before launch.

1. Validate Your Idea

Before launching, confirm there’s interest.

Actions:

1. Write a short summary (hook) of your novel.

2. Identify the genre and target readers.

3. Share the concept with:

• writing groups

• social media

• newsletter subscribers

Goal: Make sure people actually want the book before asking them to fund it.

2. Prepare Your Book Content

Recommended preparation:

1. Finish at least the first full draft.

2. Write a full synopsis.

3. Create a compelling book blurb.

Commission:

• Cover mockup

• Character art

• Campaign banners

These assets will power your Kickstarter page.

3. Set a Realistic Funding Goal

Your goal should cover production and fulfillment.

Typical costs for a typical 60K-word novel:

• Editing ~$2,000

• Cover design $150+

• Printing depends on quantity

• Shipping varies widely (research rates for every country you will ship to)

• Kickstarter fees ~8–10%

Tip: Add ~10% buffer for unexpected costs.

4. Design Reward Tiers

Backers fund projects because they receive exclusive rewards.

Example tiers (all include Digital Art Pack [phone and desktop wallpaper versions of all novel art assets]):

• $5 - Bookmark, pin, other small, inexpensive-to-produce item

• $10 - eBook

• $20 - Paperback

• $40 – Signed paperback

• $45 – Hardcover

• $65 - Signed hardcover

• $150 - Character named after backer

Good rewards make backers feel special but are easy for you to deliver.

5. Build Your Kickstarter Page

Your page should quickly answer:

1. What is the book about?

2. Why should people care?

3. Why are you the right person to write it?

Key sections to include:

• Hook / tagline

• Short synopsis

• Author introduction

• Reward tiers

• Stretch goals

• Timeline

• Shipping

• Risks & challenges

Important: Have a 1–3 minute video introducing the book.

6. Build an Audience Before Launch

The main reason some campaigns struggle is because they’re launched too early.

Starting 4–12 weeks before launch:

• Grow an email list.

• Post progress updates.

• Share character art or snippets.

• Run a Google Ad targeted for clicks (starting 1 month before launch).

Aim to have 30–40% of funding pledged in the first 48 hours.

7. Launch the Campaign

Typical campaign length: 30 is days (21-24 days is better).

Launch on a Tuesday or Thursday at 10 AM US Eastern (remember that Kickstarter’s review process can take 2-3 business days).

During the campaign:

• Post updates every few days.

• Answer backer comments quickly.

• Announce new stretch goals as each is unlocked.

Update ideas:

• Excerpt reveals

• Character introductions

• Livestream Q&A

Promote on:

• Your social media

• Newsletter

• Guest spots on blogs, YouTube channels and podcasts with 10x more subscribers than your platform

Consistency is key (have newsletters, blog posts, or live stream/podcast guest spots scheduled at regular intervals during the campaign).

Important: Have all stretch goals ready to go before launch. Stretch goals keep people excited once you reach initial funding.

Stretch goal ideas:

• Bonus interior art

• Book enhancements (sprayed edges, cover foiling, etc.)

• Nothing that requires creating a new product (failing to meet such a goal reduces future opportunities to earn income from that product).

That about covers the basics. Of course, there’s much more to learn. If you’re interested in crowdfunding your next project, you can join the many authors who’ve benefited from my crowdfunder coaching. Please note that initial queries should be made/consults scheduled no later than one month before your planned launch date. After that point, coaching yields rapidly diminishing returns as campaign details are necessarily locked in.

One early success story from my online writing fellowship the Court of Kairos was the first Kickstarter by dynamic writing duo The Brothers Krynn.

With the Court’s help, the Steelhearts project nearly tripled its initial goal.

Following their success, the Brothers Krynn have now launched their own Patreon. There, you can get insider looks at their works-in-progress, YouTube shoutouts, exclusive Discord access, and more!

So support up-and-coming newpub authors. Claim your membership today!

Sega entered the 5th console generation with momentum from the Genesis. Nintendo initially stuck to its legendary SNES hardware, which enjoyed a second wind from bringing new tech to classic franchises. And in a surprise turn, a new contestant by the name of Sony entered the ring with PlayStation ambitions and an axe to grind with Nintendo.

History remembers Sony as the clear victor. But back in the High 90s, the outcome wasn’t written in stone. The story might have unfolded quite differently.

During the early planning stages of the Sega Saturn, Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske pursued a partnership with Silicon Graphics. The proposed arrangement involved a powerful RISC-based processor designed to accelerate 3D graphics. Kalinske reportedly secured a handshake agreement before negotiations collapsed back in Japan.

That lost opportunity still fascinates gaming historians.

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But just preaching neopatronage would be empty signaling without the willingness to participate. So today, we give the spotlight to a promising new author who has taken the leap and embraced the same model used by successful authors and indie game developers alike.

Introducing Glorybound: Tyranny of Stone by Tyler F.M. - Now funding on BackerKit!

The Soul Of The World Cries For Aid …

The life of a man-at-arms isn’t all that Callan hoped it would be. Instead of fighting great battles like the heroes of old, his days were spent babysitting new recruits and aiding supply caravans. But after uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy, his life of monotony would be quick to change.

Together with a reformed bandit, a usurped prince, a regretful father, and a man who claims to be a wizard, Callan must put his life on the line to seize his dream. But fate is cruel: if Callan leaves home now, there might be nothing left upon his return.

Tyranny of Stone is only the beginning of a much larger undertaking. Not only is it the first book in a series, but the first world of an expansive universe.

That said, high quality requires funding. This campaign’s goal is to not only fund the book, but to upgrade it with stretch goals such as hardcover editions and an audiobook … and additional funds will be redirected into cover artists, editors, voice actors, and additional art to make Glorybound all that it is destined to be!

Support neopatronage, help launch a worthy new author’s career, and join your fellow readers in laying the cornerstone of an exciting new fantasy world!

Back Glorybound: Tyranny of Stone now on BackerKit.

The Thrawn novels, written by Timothy Zahn, have long been hailed by fans as the true Star Wars sequel trilogy. Beginning with Heir to the Empire, Zahn’s novels revived the franchise in the early 1990s and introduced Grand Admiral Thrawn, the only villain from outside the films to rival Darth Vader for infamy.

Those books offered what Disney desperately needed back in 2012: a tested story with widespread fan approvl.

Instead, Disney erased the whole Expanded Universe and launched a new trilogy beginning with The Force Awakens. Initially greeted with scattered, nostalgia-driven applause, TFA is now regarded as even worse than the intentional lore desecration of The Last Jedi and the cinematic spaghetti that was The Rise of Skywalker.

Despite early financial success, enthusiasm for the new trilogy died quickly. Box office totals declined from one installment to the next while fan sentiment degraded into open hostility.

But what if Disney had instead adapted Zahn’s trilogy?

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The Specter of Empire, Book III of the Arkwright Cycle, is officially here!

Both the eBook and paperback editions are now available. And you can get them directly from the Kairos Publications store or through Amazon, whichever you prefer.

In this thrilling finale of the Arkwright Cycle’s firt groundbreaking season, the war for Thysia escalates as old bonds shatter and new alliances form. Ancient forces that long lurked in the shadows step forward, but the cost of confronting them may prove higher than anyone imagined.

If you’ve followed the epic saga from the beginning, you know what’s at stake. And if you’re just discovering it, now is the perfect time to jump in.

You can grab your copy here:

Kairos Publications Store
eBook and paperback editions available now.

Amazon
Also available in Kindle and paperback formats.

Elite members of the Court of Kairos who got first access to the Specter of Empire beta draft already gave enthusiastic feedback. And I’m eager to hear what you think once you’ve had the chance to dive in.

If you enjoy the book, one of the most helpful things you can do is leave a quick review on Amazon. Reviews help new readers discover the series and make a huge difference for independent authors.

Thank you again for your support. Every reader who picks up one of these books helps make projects like this possible.

And stay tuned. Because there’s much more coming soon.

The switch did not fool fans. Backlash spread across social media. Voice actors protested, and the company quietly removed the A.I. dub soon afterward.

On the surface, this story might seem minor. Amazon got caught dubbing with A.I. Fans complained, and the platform pulled it down. Crisis resolved.

But look closer, and a much larger conflict comes into focus.

For decades, English dubs relied on a familiar system: Writers adapted dialogue from the manga. VAs interpreted characters, and directors guided their performances. The whole process required close coordination between translators, performers, and engineers.

And entertainment corporations would love to eliminate all of those human elements.

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