Letters Out For Historical Workshop and News

Sent Letters to Everyone…

So if you signed up for the Writing Historical Fiction special workshop in the Cave Creek Kickstarter and didn’t get a letter from me, after checking your spam filter, write me. In the letter you have the choice to sign up for either the May session or the June session. Totally up to each of you. But those will be the only two sessions.

And all the surveys have gone out for the Writing Bundles Kickstarter which just closed, so get those surveys back quickly if you can. That way we can get out all the awards and books.

Still Under Stay-At-Home Orders…

Looks like most of the country will still be locked in for May. A lot of states are easing up some minor restrictions, like here in Nevada you can now play golf or have non-critical surgery, but that’s it. Looking like for most of us it’s going to be a long summer of writing and learning. Better staying in than taking too many risks at this point.

So keep writing and learning and publishing and stay safe.

I have not yet ramped back up my exercise (steps), but have in the last two weeks started paying attention to what I am eating again. I have discovered like many of you that it is hard to make short term goals when the short term is so up-in-the-air. But wrestling it under control. Thankfully, writing and publishing has always been long-term thinking for me.

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING NOTES…

There have been some more interesting articles about the future from people who are still locked in traditional publishing fairy dust. Almost sadly delusional in so many ways.

One of the biggest printers filed for bankruptcy, lots of people are saying that traditional corporations are going to have to help bookstores and forgive debt, but not sure how that will work, or even which ones have that kind of deep pocket. Distribution system has pretty well shut down, but on a good note, Diamond for comics has promised they will start back up in late May. Fingers crossed there.

One traditional publisher spent this time to change Mass Market Paperback size to a larger and more expensive format. Not at all sure why. Another one has jumped into a subscription service doomed to fail like all the others except Amazon. The subscription service is focused on romance, the same genre that other subscription services could not handle and had to limit. Heaven only knows how bad the publisher’s authors are going to get screwed on that one.

Agents are failing quickly, major contracts from numbers of publishers to writers are not being paid signing or turn-in amounts, or if they are paid at all, the writers are only getting 1/5th. Oh, that’s got to hurt.

Not a word on B&N. Not a good sign either. They have only a few stores open around the country at this point. I’m just hoping Powells in Portland can hold on.

INDIE PUBLISHING NOTES:

All reports I am getting are great. Sales for indie publishers (not small presses wanting to be in the distribution traditional channels) are way up. I had four people just this week contact me about moving from traditional to indie and wanting to learn how to indie publish. That’s why we are doing the Publishing 101 new class starting in a few days, to put all of that information in one place in a step-by-step guide. Got a hunch we might see a lot more traditional writers moving quickly to get up and running in indie.

And this workshop will be good for those just starting off and only have a few books up. You just never know what you are missing.

I had one traditional writer the other day complain that there was no way to get books back from their publisher that had basically gone out of paper print but were still in ebooks. I asked why did they need to? The writer said they wanted to get them to their fans. I had the writer check their contract for omnibus rights. Publishers never buy omnibus rights. I don’t remember such a happy writer when the realization hit that the books really were not lost to time and greed of a traditional publisher, but could be indie published by the writer in omnibus form.

One reason why Kris and I keep harping on learning copyright and contracts.

So indie is booming, sales are growing, and Igot a hunch once we are through all this next year, readers will not be returning to the expensive traditional books. Just guessing.