Second Day of Challenge…

The Fiction Writer of 2025…

Back in traditional days, when I came in, fiction writers had employees called “agents”who jumped to the writer’s beck and call and fetched drinks and chased money. They lived off of 10% and then 15% of what the author made and never said a word about a writer’s work. That was not their job. Writers were the artists, agents did the scut work.

Writers built careers over dozens and dozens of novels, sometimes moving houses regularly. They did none of their own promotion because publishers had sales forces and there was only one way to sell books and that was through what was called the trade channels.

That system was pretty much destroyed in the distribution collapse of the mid 1990s, agents started seeing themselves as petty gods, and publishers would no longer allow an author to grow. Two books and you were out.

And then with the final consolidation, the big conglomerates started understanding that the copyright of a book on their spread sheets could earn than a lot more money than publishing it for the most part. And now it 2025, agents are scammers and traditional fiction publishing is a lost cause.

Publishing delivery systems of fiction change every fifty years, and in 2010 or so, the change from mass market paperbacks to electronic books started the transition. Traditional publishers, built on paper books, hated this and priced electronic out of sight for consumers, thus opening the door for the indie publishing movement.

Indie publishing is when authors take control of all aspects of their own work. From a person who worked and got screwed a lot by traditional publishing and ripped off by agents, this taking control was like a breath of fantastically fresh air.

So now fifteen years later, the transition has been made to electronic books (yes paper still exists just as magazines still existed after the switch from pulps to mass market in the 1950s.

But the myths of traditional publishing for writers still hold in places, killing thousands of possible writing careers, sadly.

So I want to be clear here on my opinion of what it takes to be a successful, making a living fiction writer in 2025.

— Prolific. At least four novels and a bunch of short stories per year without missing a year.

— A decent web site.

— Kickstarter campaigns to start the promotion of a new book or series.

— A Shopify store and not only get your books on it, but merch for your branding.

— An unending quest to learn and be a better storyteller.

— An intense desire to learn sales copy and genre branding.

— Willingness to learn promotion like making things exclusive only to your store. Not ads for the most part.

— Willingness to try to learn social media no matter your failed attempt in the past. Get kids to help you.

There are a ton more things a writer can do to help get their work out there. All takes time and learning and all is possible.

I just shake my head at writers who stop at learning branding or merchandise or licensing. Those ares will be the biggest income streams a writer has from 2025 forward.

Learning and Such…

The codes for the 12 Day Holiday Sale are still active and will be until Monday, so just a few more days. See my post from last Sunday for the full 12 things being offered. And speaking of branding, two classes for 2025, both giving out videos every Monday morning for the entire year. One is called PUBLISHING MONDAY and the other is called BITE-SIZED BRANDING AND TRADEMARK. Both are still half price in the 12 Day Holiday sale.

Day Two… Short Story Challenge…

Day one might have been the hardest from the writing perspective, but day two turned out to be a challenge from the world. Ended up having to drag my four-hours-of-sleep sorry ass out of bed to do business stuff that I had hoped had gone away. Nope.

So a short nap before lunch at 2, then back in here for more business stuff and some fun email.

Kris and I were leaving at 4 pm, me to do grocery shopping and Kris to exercise in the gym. I knew we would not get back until 8 pm or after, so I figured at 3:30 pm I had better at least get a story started.

In thirty minutes, I came up with a title by smashing two other half titles together. “A Lost Darkness.”

For some reason lost to my creative voice, I typed under that title “A Marble Grant Story” and banged into it forgetting at first that Marble Grant is always first person. (Been a long time since I had written a Marble Grant story.)

Managed 350 words before we left.

Got back at 8:30, took a two hour nap, watched some television, and then managed to get to my writing chair around 12:30 am.

Finished the story with one break at 2:30 am. It ended up normal for Marble Grant at about 2,200 words. So story #2 in the file. I kind of like it because it works on a number of levels many readers will not get. But the levels made me happy. (grin)

And I decided Kris will read the stories when I have ten for a collection. I didn’t feel strong enough to have her putting red marks on my stories every day after this long of layoff. More than likely I was, but taking no chances. Critical voice is a nasty beast for all of us.

With Kris reading them in groups of ten, it might be the 20th or so before I start putting them up for free on my new store. Stay tuned.

Word count for the day of consumable words (emails do not count… bummer, did a lot of those…).

Story… 2,200

Blog…  1,000

Introductions and such… 300

Total 3,500. Considering the day, I will take it!!