First Cup of Coffee – February 5, 2019

One Reply to “First Cup of Coffee – February 5, 2019”

1. I’ve never heard of this guy, but I hear a lot from people who self-publish that it’s getting continually harder, particularly for those who are just starting out now or were on the low-end of the readership scale (as Amazon makes it more and more of a pay-to-be-seen environment).

   Doesn’t think someone can live on 85K? – eyes them sideways. How much do they think the average family brings home?

   Our personal strategy for me quitting my day job was to learn to live on less, with the expectation that I’ll make little or nothing at writing, especially at first. We aren’t quite as crazy as some of the FI/RE people, but we’ve always been frugal-minded and high-savers anyways (though I do wish we lived in a smaller/cheaper house). There IS a trap in our culture where people are strongly encouraged and trained to spend however much money they make, with even high-income families living paycheck-to-paycheck. I’m always astounded at some of the people I know (whose dual-income salaries I can guess at) that still complain about money problems. Where does it all GO?

   [time passes]

   I went and found his post, and it seems a very one-sided sort of view. His main proof that people should self-pub is that he made more money on the tail-end of a series that he self-pubbed than he got from the earlier trad-pubbed books of the same series. Except, uhm, for the whole, he already had an audience when he self-pubbed, and most people don’t, part.

   Now, if he wants to encourage authors to insist on better contracts, particularly regarding audio rights and backlists? Fine. (Also, I thought it was weird that he doesn’t mention foreign rights at all, since that seems to be a large chunk of money that traditional authors get and most self-pubbers don’t)

   [more time passes]

   So, interesting sidenote, apparently his wife used to a run a small publishing company (originally for his books, and then branched out to other authors), which then went under after failing to pay authors/failing to deliver books ordered for some length of time. More interesting? That series he uses for his proof example? Was originally self-pubbed by his wife’s company, which for some reason he leaves out of the reddit post altogether. He also doesn’t mention his lucrative (according to an article) traditional deal he got for his next published series.

   Also, I still don’t recognize his books, but he seems to be very active on Reddit, so perhaps that is where the impression that he’s a really big deal in fantasy comes from? I mean, maybe he is, and I’ve just missed it somehow — I’m just saying as someone that regularly trolls the fantasy shelves in bookstores for new reads, they’ve never caught my eye, nor can I recall hearing about him prior to this. *shrug*

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