Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that it promises to be a wonderful one, preferably with a general upward slope.

Apparently I’m not feeling very verbose with my introduction, so let’s just get into it.

The Failed Technomancer

Copyedits are basically done! I say “basically” because I’ve already applied all the copyedits that I’ve received. On my original schedule I would be turning in that draft to my editor today to begin formatting on the ebook; unfortunately, my original schedule has been delayed a little bit, but I guess the good news is that gives me a little bit of extra time to fiddle and tweak, make sure The Failed Technomancer reads really well.

Now, why is my original schedule getting shifted around a bit? The cover art is taking longer to polish than originally predicted. After talking with my artist and my editor, things should work out fine and the book should be published in February (as originally predicted), and I don’t think anyone can be pointed to as at fault (although I wouldn’t point any fingers anyway, except at myself). Delays just happen, unfortunately. I’ll take this experience and plan for more time with the next book.

As soon as I have the cover art I look forward to sharing it with you all. Regardless, I should have something more substantial to share next week, as with the copyedits completed I can finally prepare some sample chapters!

As a final note on The Failed Technomancer, I should begin audio recording this week. I am on involuntary extended vacation right now—a storm of snow has delayed my homecoming—and all of my recording equipment is at home. That said, I fully predict I’ll be home by tomorrow afternoon at the latest, and I most likely will start recording no later than the day after I get home.

A Tangential Audiobook-related Note

I’m sure that many of you have read (or at least heard of) Brandon Sanderson’s discussion on the current state of the audiobook. (It was a major portion of his “State of the Sanderson 2022” blog post, published December 22, 2022.) Those that haven’t read the article have likely listened to Daniel Greene’s summary (linked here).

My very short paraphrase of this discussion is that Audible, despite having a lot of good stuff going on there, is being very shady with royalties paid to authors. Specifically, industry standard for digital products is to pay the author (or creator, company, etc in the case of non-book products) a 70% royalty on sales. Audible only pays 40%, and only that if you agree to sell exclusively on Audible—if you don’t, that royalty gets slashed to 25%.

Obviously this is an issue that needs to be fixed—many have described Audible as doing the near-equivalent of strangling authors, particularly indie authors and anyone small-time. Hopefully bringing a lot of attention to this issue, especially through big-hitters like Sanderson, will help fix it, and hopefully the encouragement of competitors in this market space (like Spotify and Speechify, also mentioned by Sanderson) will create a better market for everyone involved.

I’m basically repeating what other people have said, and I don’t really have anything new to bring up in this conversation. So why am I mentioning it?

First, though my platform is very small (and exclusively focused on writing and publishing—don’t expect me to make posts on the political uproar of the hour), this is an important issue that I would like to help magnify however I can.

Second, I want to acknowledge that I am in the group that has little real choice other than Audible for audiobooks—and, really, Amazon in general for all things self-publishing. At least, based on the research that I have done, I can go exclusively through Amazon (for ebook and audiobook) and enter the best market for self-publishing authors looking to build up a living, or I can touch other, smaller markets and effectively guarantee that I won’t make as much money. By agreeing to go through Audible and Amazon exclusively, I add my tiny influence to shore up their near-monopoly, albeit with my teeth gritted. But I just don’t see any real options in any other direction, at least not with my ultimate goal being to turn writing into a living. So many other publishing options pretend to be independent but ultimately rely primarily (or wholly) on Amazon/Audible, and others just don’t provide as good of a service or a product, or don’t have a market that would let me sustain myself and my family.

(And yes, despite referencing both companies separately, I am aware that Audible is owned by Amazon.)

So, with those things stated (and acknowledging that I am very new to all of this and still learning a lot), I will be going all-in on Amazon and Audible, while excitedly watching the much, much bigger fish in this ocean make waves.

Inner Demons Feedback

Anyway, back to my stuff. I received my manuscript evaluation back from my editor, and with it comes good news and bad news.

The primary bad news is that my editor recommends that I switch from using third person omniscient narrator to third person limited narrator, and I agree with her. The amount of rewriting this will take will probably prevent me from hitting my original (and, admittedly, very hopeful) goal of self-publishing Inner Demons in late 2023. Oh well. I’d rather make the book the best it can be and keep myself on a good book-a-year schedule, rather than rush it for some insane two-doorstoppers-a-year schedule.

However, the good news is that the book is solid. The themes and emotional core are strong, the characters are working, and most of my fixes other than the narrator are pacing issues in the first section of the book before the inciting incident kicks off. I really, truly believe that, once polished, this book will become a favorite for many people, especially people who think a lot about personal identity and finding yourself, or choosing who you want to be.

So my new schedule, once I’ve finished the audiobook and final publishing steps of The Failed Technomancer, is to take some time to revise Inner Demons, plan for 2024 publication, and then finish the Robot Cannibal Apocalypse trilogy/series afterward. I predict that Grand Odyssey will be my first project after completing Robot Cannibal Apocalypse—the Third Realm universe will be craving a new entry by that point—but that’s so far into the future I can’t predict anything with real certainty.

At least I have far more ideas than time to write, I suppose.

Final Odds and Ends

There’s a chance that I might maybe possibly will be renting a table at FanX SLC this year. At least, based on very limited research I think I could make the experience affordable and at least break even. Plus, it sounds fun! But it’s something that’s nearly a year away and that I want to think on more.

Would you be interested in seeing debut, self-published authors at fan conventions? I know I, personally, rarely visit booths and tables that don’t belong to authors I’m already familiar with, but maybe I’m in the minority with that mindset. I don’t know.

Conclusion

That was a bit longer than usual. If you made it to the end, thanks for being here, thanks for sticking with me, and here’s to an exciting 2023!