lisa rabey writes stuff issue #7 indie publishing
Dear Internet,
It’s been a slow week. I was busy after work every night but one last week. Evenings tend to be my prime writing time, so I feel a bit defeated I didn’t get much work done. I saw Bad Kitty this past weekend so that chewed up my weekend. I came home late Sunday morning from that visit, and I could have written but I choose to be a couch potato instead. Tuesday is writer’s group so hopefully work will get done.
I checked my submission calendar the other day and I’m coming up two months since I got back on the writing horse. It feels good to be creative even during lulls. Practice will help but I’m not being proactive in carving out that kind of time to practice. I just keep reading old work over and over in the attempts to possibly clean it up and writing less new stuff.
I spoke about this balance last week and haven’t really put more thought into it. But I should take this hobby seriously and stop dicking around the internet (namely reddit) and get work done.
I swear to god I wrote about my friends Colleen and Kelly in a previous issue but I went through back issues and couldn’t find a mention. This is issue #7 so looking for the mentions didn’t take long but nothing. I also checked my other newsletter but by damned didn’t find anything there either!
Here is the background:
Colleen and Kelly are successful indie pubbed writers. Colleen is extremely prolific (she wrote three or four series at last count plus standalones) and made a living doing it for a while. Kelly is active in several large writing organizations, wrote a few books, and is a librarian in her day job. When I told both of my intent to write and publish books and short stories, they came at me with a barrage of questions ranging from “what is your goal?” and “how do you define success?”. These are difficult questions to answer. It’s been nearly two months since I spoke to them about these topics and I continue to struggle with these answers.
I have come up with a few things tangentially related:
Practice to become a better fiction writer aka write more
Have a consistent writing schedule (If possible)
Not take rejection seriously
Try to not self-sabotage
Take critiques seriously but be mindful of if it truly applies or not to the piece
Take classes/webinars as needed
In an earlier issue, I talked about having nom de plumes. This is common in indie and trad publishing worlds, typically to separate out each nom de plume to a particular genre which is extra helpful for prolific authors (see Colleen above) who write across genres. In several writing related mailing lists I’m on, it’s not uncommon to see an email signature with the name of the author’s government name, website, social media, and their nom de plume’s name, website, social media.
I got this wild hair up my ass to take one of the nom de plumes I came up with recently and have them as the primary writer. I gave them a website, email address, and a Twitter account. Maybe ½ dozen people know this name is me. I’m not advertising it to any of my social media and newsletters. If you find out the name, don’t tell anyone.
For twitter, I trolled the people I’m following on @heroineinabook and pulled out accounts I really liked, namely authors, journalists, bookstores, publishers, a few friends, and other interesting accounts and use that as my base list for my nom de plume’s Twitter. I follow nearly 1000 people at @heroineinabook and I was able to narrow it down to 200 on nom de plumes account. I’ve gotten a few followers back but I’m betting most are bots. It’ll take some time to “build up my network” and I plan to engage more on Twitter on the nom de plumes account than my primary one.
The nom de plume is not going anywhere else. No FB. No IG. No TikTok. No newsletter. No Mastodon. No Linktr.ee. The landing page of their website just has their bio. It’ll be a static page with the only updates the links to pieces that are published.
I loathe to be on Twitter but majority of the writing community is there. There is a small one on Mastodon but managing two Mastodon accounts would be overwhelming while on Twitter it’s pretty easy.
I talked this wild hair with Bad Kitty last week and she also agreed it was a good idea. Yes, Lisa Rabey is a fine and sturdy name but I cannot shake all the damned case. This just feels right.
Would I change my government name to this if proven successful? Not thinking about that now. Just want to get some work out there.
(After all of this, I won’t be linking to the pieces published but I will sure tell you about them!)
I think about indie vs trad publishing a lot. This ties in the question, “what do you want to do with your work” and “how do you define success.” Honestly, for commercial breaks, I was too impatient to query an agent, attempt to sell it to publishers, and see if it would be bought. I wanted it out into the world. Now.
Thus, commercial breaks is indie published. What does this mean? I wrote the book; paid for someone to edit it; produced the book and sell it via Amazon. In short, except for the editing, I’ve done everything myself.
There are pros and cons between indie or trad publishing but the main one I hear from other indie authors is to own the rights, get a bigger cut of the profits, and have total control. All appealing things. Just like trad publishing, indie publishing is not without risks. And for some, those risks are worth it.
Almost all indie authors pub their books on Amazon via KDP (their publishing arm) and list their books via Kindle Unlimited. Amazon unlimited is a subscription based service that allows you to read thousands of books. (Regardless, if you’re on KU or not, people can buy your books.) It’s like a library except it’s one you pay for. I don’t know the cut of the profits for KU books since it’s a flat rate fee to access Amazon’s Kindle catalog, but I do know is that majority, if not all, indie authors want to get in on the action. (Now that I think about it, it’s probably to introduce the audience broadly to an author’s work.)
(commercial breaks is on KU and is available for purchase at $2.99 for Kindle and $10 for the paperback.)
While there are other avenues for generating income, promotion, and success, nearly every single indie author I’ve come across is on KU.
It all sounds great until this floated across nom de plume’s Twitter account Tuesday morning:
If you don’t want to click through the twitter thread, in short, this author’s work was removed from Amazon and her account closed for some kind of violation. She was not given what violation is and her request for resolution has been denied. I don’t know how much of Amazon publishing she was dependent on for income but the thread seems to indicate a lot.
This is scary and it’s not happening only to Selena as others chimed in on the thread that it also happened to them or they knew someone who was banned from KDP.
Am I jumping the gun here? Maybe but it is something I need to have on my horizon. Writing is no longer putting words on figurative paper but a whole business and brand.
Submission update
30 submissions which includes 11 rejections, 2 acceptances, and 1 withdrawal.
Publication
chap book: commercial breaks
Snippets
This snippet is an outtake from a story I’m working on called The Petition of the Gods. It’s rough but it’s def something I want to finish and have edited before submitting:
The invitation was pushed gently into the mail slot and landed on the floor with the loudness of a feather.
It laid there for what could have been an eternity, if eternity were only a few hours old, while she paced around her flat to ignore its presence. The envelope’s arrival is always sudden and silent, the delivery person is never seen - though she had her suspicions it was Hermes, for who else would be given the task of the most important of deliveries but the FedEx of the Greek pantheon?
While she never heard the barest of sounds when the invitation hit the floor, she always knew the nanosecond of its arrival: tiny hairs on her body would stand to attention like focused antenna and time seemed to freeze for a split moment only to come roaring back to life like a speeded up film.
lisa x