Abandoning Amazon, Saturday, and a Homerun from Dean

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Dean Hits One Out of the Park
* A Thought on Abandoning Amazon et al for Direct Sales
* Saturday
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate, they stop being writers.” Charles Bukowski

“I sit alone, in a room, and make stuff up. That’s my job description. I have, without a doubt, the easiest and best job in the world. It is a giant myth that my job is hard work.” Dean Wesley Smith

“[W]hen we are really creating art, we are doing it from the back of our brains, typing fast, buried in the story.” Dean Wesley Smith

“In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style….” Ray Bradbury

Dean Hits One Out of the Park

For those like me, who long for the days when Dean Wesley Smith actually talked about writing, you’re in luck.

Today he brought forward an old post he first wrote back in 2009. (I remember that it later became part of his Killing the Sacred Cows books.)

Read the rest of this Journal post or not, but don’t miss Dean’s post. See “The Myth That Writing is Hard” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/the-myth-that-writing-is-hard/.

Then print it out. Then bookmark it. Then go buy Dean’s Killing the Sacred Cows books if you don’t already have them.

A Thought on Abandoning Amazon et al for Direct Sales

There is a lot of talk recently about the benefits of direct sales. To my mind, Dean Wesley Smith started the talk. To be clear, nobody advises an all or nothing approach to selling from your own site, but I’m sure some will go that way, or think they should.

Direct sales are wonderful. You can charge less and put more money in your pocket. I’ve been selling (yeah, I know, licensing, not selling) books direct from StoneThreadPublishing.com (with discounts) for a few years now.

So by all means, set up a Shopify store (or whatever storefront you want to use) if you can afford to do so.

But keep selling through Amazon, and keep selling through every other venue available to you.

The daily traffic on even Dean Wesley Smith’s and Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s websites combined isn’t a drop in a thousand-gallon tank compared to the traffic Amazon gets every half-hour.

I suspect even Kobo, Apple, B&N and even the much smaller ones get far more traffic than the Dean & Kris show gets.

Not to mention, for every one person who’s marching against Amazon because it’s, you know, huge and successful and treats workers well, there are an untold number who shop there almost every single day. I’m one of them. I have absolutely nothing against people or companies who succeed.

Chances are, buyers who are loyal to Amazon or to Kobo or Apple or (bless their hearts) B&N or the others will continue to shop in those venues whether or not your books are there.

Also, chances are those buyers will have a much better chance of “discovering” you and finding your books at their favorite store than they will ever have of finding them on your website.

So by all means, set up your personal store on your own website. Or on a publisher website, like https://StoneThreadPublishing.com.

But don’t quit the successful “day job” that is you selling your stories through the massive etailers. Even after your own site takes off, however you define that term. Cutting off all those other sales venues would just be silly.

Saturday

We returned to the expansive estate sale. It was as wonderful as I noted last time. I almost bought two boxes of S&W .32 caliber ammo, but then I noticed the boxes were marked “wad cutters.” Uh, nope.

For any beginners out there, wad cutters are relatively inexpensive ammunition. There is the brass casing, and there is a soft lead projectile, cut off flat at the top of the casing.

Wad cutters have long been lauded as good practice ammo, and I guess some shooters swear by them. I am not one of those. Problem is, they’ll leave lead residue in your barrel. It affects the lands and grooves (rifling) in the barrel and it’s difficult to clean out. You have to use a wire brush, repeatedly. The problems they cause are not worth the cheaper price, and I advise strongly against buying them.

Anyway, we bought a bunch of other stuff, including a piece of art masquerading as a small rectangular table with two kinds of inlaid wood making up the top. An absolute gem.

It will eventually become my new writing table, dedicated to my writing ‘puter and my propensity for living other lives through my fiction.

We were back home by 10:30, and I headed out to the Hovel to write. Didn’t get much done, though. I allowed too many other concerns (the new table, etc.) to interfere. I’ll get back on the story today.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “If American States Were Real People” at https://dyingwords.net/if-american-states-were-real-people-as-generated-by-ai/. Garry likes playing with AI, but never to generate fiction.

See “A Risk Worth Taking” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/08/a-risk-worth-taking.html. A fun article (aside from the stupid “kill your darlings” bullship), plus a good question.

See “Character Type & Trope Thesaurus: Doomsday Prepper” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/character-type-trope-thesaurus-doomsday-prepper/. And how stupid will the rest of us look when it happens?

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 910

Writing of Blackwell Ops 9: Cameron Stance
Brought forward………………………… 4087

Day 1…… 1595 words. To date…… 5682
Day 2…… 2101 words. To date…… 7783
Day 3…… 2573 words. To date…… 10356
Day 4…… 1588 words. To date…… 11944
Day 5…… 2135 words. To date…… 14079
Day 6…… 2019 words. To date…… 16098
Day 7…… 3067 words. To date…… 19165
Day 8…… 1562 words. To date…… 20727

Fiction for August……………………… 27243
Fiction for 2023………………………… 141790
Fiction since August 1………………… 27243
Nonfiction for August…………………… 21650
Nonfiction for the year……………… 171550
Annual consumable words………… 313340

2023 Novels to Date……………………… 2
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 73
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)… 232
Short story collections…………………… 31

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.