First Cup of Coffee - January 19, 2024

A historical perspective today on the LKH bruhaha this week regarding self-publishing, including Gen X cane-shaking, salacious gossip, and insight into how profoundly the publishing landscape has changed in 30 years.

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Transcript

00:01.41
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.87
jeffekennedy
Ah, excellent today is say it with me people. It is Friday whoo. Um, December December nice try Jeffie January January Nineteenth ah um it's been. Ah. Busy week for me for no good reason I feel like I've just had lots of errands to do trying to get back on schedule a big thing before I forget tomorrow is the SFWA HEA Quest starting at Nine Am Pacific time great lineup several panels all online if you were already a nebula registrant you can attend for free if you're not you can attend for the low low price of $10 what a bargain. Ah. Some great panels on business. Um editors fighting off burnout dealing with newsletters that kind of thing also some networking time. So if you're around online please join us. I'm also excited to tune in for a panel on taneth lee on Sunday I registered for that and I'm interested to see how that is apparently they're gonna do a new anthology of Tanneth Lee and um, talk about.

01:46.69
jeffekennedy
Influences what a great influence she was on so many of us died tragically young. Yeah I have a whole shelf full of catholicly books and otherwise I want to talk a little bit about the the Laurel K Hamilton deal this week and which involves some retrospective on like watching the internet come online. It's a gen x episode today here at first cup of coffee first my report on amethyst run. I've been doing pretty well this week I had a great day on Tuesday um, and that I've been going down again yesterday was not great I did at least work count wise I went to writer coffee tried to get words beforehand it helped some. Um, yeah, still not quite in the the groove there. But um I don't know I'm kind of looking at the thing where it seems like as much as I try to get myself so I can do 3000 words a day have i. I wonder if it's truly sustainable for me I seem to do much better at 2000 words a day or I seem to default to that if you're on video you'll see I'm also drinking a little bit of vitamin c and water I'm feeling ever so slightly under the weather. Not much. But.

03:21.70
jeffekennedy
Tis the season right? So I am at midpoint on Amethyst Run which is always a pivot for me both story wise but also speedwise I do tend to speed up towards the latter half of the book which. Ah, for those of you who are newer to such conversations is how it should happen if if you've correctly set up the structure of the early parts of your story then the later parts of the story should fall into place.

03:58.73
jeffekennedy
The number one thing I look at when a writer complains about having a saggy middle of the book or a slow middle or not being able to fight through the middle you look at that first act and you look to see if all of the stakes are properly set up. Because if everything's set up then the rest of the book should cascade from there especially following the midpoint pivot won't spend a lot of time on that today but food for thought I can talk about it more if you want me to.

04:34.66
jeffekennedy
Ah, so um, so yeah, big kerfuffle in the writing community this week and I almost hesitate to say anything because I feel like everybody is weighing in and I.

04:52.20
jeffekennedy
Have mixed feelings about this. Um I think there is a certain social media value to people weighing in and being on the side of outrage that is not always tremendously useful.

05:14.80
jeffekennedy
I know well I won't go into that too much, but every time I see ah some other author weighing in going. Oh yeah, I'm outraged too. It's like are you really outraged I mean maybe you really are but mostly you just want to be. And with all the other people saying how outraged they are anyway allow me to fill you in because I do know that there are shockingly enough many people who listen to this podcast who are not aware of the online curfuffles. Many of which seem to be occurring on threads now which is making me regret joining threads. Ah alas, so but it originated on Tiktok where Laurel K Hamilton um put up a. 3 minute tik to video talking about self-p publishing and for those who don't know Laurel K Hamilton she is um I would say one of the you know the first bold voices in urban fantasy. As we know it? Ah, the first time I went to like a world fantasy conference and people said that charles de lint had invented urban fantasy I was really kind of shocked because it was like I thought it was loyal K Hamilton um she was one of my entry points I first read. Um.

06:46.26
jeffekennedy
Guilty pleasures in 1990 something like that I'm glad I checked I had the wrong decade guilty pleasures came out in 2002 I know I read it when it was new. Ah and she continued on with that series which was. The Anita Blake series and it was at the time so unusual and so fresh with Anita Blake being a necromancer and having an affair with a vampire and a werewolf and if this sounds. Tired and done. It's because it's been done and made tired since then when she first wrote it. It was like nothing else and it was amazing. Ah, and and it was yeah people just gobbled it up.

07:39.60
jeffekennedy
And I was a huge huge fan of Laurel K Hamilton for a very long time and with her other series. The Merrie Gentry series but she really started to spiral out of control and in the in the books um, kind of jumping the shark losing the plot. Ah, and and I love reading sexy stuff but she would go into these pages and pages and pages of these sex scenes that kind of didn't really go anywhere and did not advance the plot and there were a couple of it happened in both. Series that there were certain overall trajectories big goals that the characters would like fail to make any progress towards because they were so busy having sex and it I fell off the series after a while. Um. But what really became a problem for me was that um she started a blog. You know as I was talking this timeline was fucking me and so I went to look again. And I was right guilty pleasures first came out in 1993 um I hate how like these like Amazon does that where they replace the the dates and it becomes very confusing old. It's like which addition is it I wish they were better about listing that metadata.

09:08.15
jeffekennedy
So 9093 okay, I'm glad that my memory was that good because I remember that time in my life. Um, and most of all I remember that the internet was very very very very new ah and so new that you know. Blogging hadn't really kicked in until later than that. Um people were still figuring out what to use the internet for ah I've told this story I'm not sure I've told it on the podcast. But um. Very early I was living in a small town in Wyoming working at the university and so we had the internet and so forth and I was at work and I wanted to go see the bare naked ladies and I looked up bare naked ladies tickets. And it immediately started opening all of these porn sites and back then that this is cane shaking. You're walking up pill in the snow both ways we did not have pop-up blockers. We didn't have we didn't know that that was even possible and so all of these windows started. Spontaneously opening like and they were opening faster than I could close them again and I was like no no and it was all of these very raunchy pictures. Ah um, yeah, such were the early days of internet searching so

10:35.84
jeffekennedy
Um I can't remember I think I can figure it out. So I mean this is like all of this you know ancient history now right? thirty years ago but um she went through some big changes in her life and in around 4001 ah, she ended up divorcing her husband maybe a little bit before that married a guy who was a huge fan of her books and she became. Very much more interested in exploring sexual themes in her books and in her life and she had ah she started a blog which in the early days. You know it was like it's almost hard to explain what it was like. Because it was before that things had been so opque opaque you know it was hard to obtain books. You might not be able to get the next book in the series. You know you could ask your bookstore to order it. Maybe they would maybe they wouldn't you'd end up coping various bookstores and newstands to like find the next book. Um, and you would read like maybe magazine articles about people. But you didn't have this window into them that we do now for better or worse and Laurel K Hamilton started this blog which as a huge fangirl I was delighted to read.

12:10.48
jeffekennedy
But it went like way over the top rambling and I some of the stuff and it was like things I didn't necessarily want to know now we are familiar with this phenomenon but at the time it was revelatory. And I remember having dinner with a work colleague while we were traveling and trying to explain to her what reading this blog was like so um, you know and then there were several things that happened there was a big conference. Where and this was like around that that same era maybe a little bit later where she um because she was like very much into these very sexy things. She went up on a stage in front of a huge audience wearing a very short skirt and bent over while someone else pointed a leaf blower at her. To blow up her skirge and reveal her very sexy lingerie. Um, it was a time people sorry and I still haven't gotten to my point I am rambling here on my on my vlog my video log right? ah. So Lo K Hamilton put up this tikt to video right? and I haven't been following her closely for a lot of years but she went off on self publishing and people are taking this very much as her stomping on self publishing writers.

13:46.91
jeffekennedy
And I do think that it came from a place of of good intentions. But it also came up from a place of profound ignorance which is very true for a lot of these authors who have been in the business for 30 years and that's part. Why I'm telling this whole story is that it is difficult to communicate to the youth of today? Sorry um, just how profoundly the world has changed for us with the advent of the internet with the. Incredible marketplace that is self- publishing ah for us and I remember when I was shopping my first book in you know the mid 4007 bad area. Um, that some of my friends said. Well, you could always self-publish and it's the wave of the future and I'm like yeah but I'm not ready for the future. It wasn't it I yeah I could say that I was probably a coward. Ah certainly my bestie grace drvan. Ah. Did I pronounce it? Well so the transcript will get it right? It still won't ah she ended up going into self publishing and doing very very well in some ways she was forced into it in a way that I was not I I didn't want to do it unless I was self unless I was forced. Um it.

15:17.65
jeffekennedy
Wasn't there wasn't the same kind of cachet to it then and and it mattered to me it mattered to other people and I think it's still a factor even though so many indie authors want to say that it does not matter to them and I mean. Obviously I'm hybrid I self-p publishish I'm very proud of my self- publishished books. Um, and I want to say that it doesn't matter to me that there is still some bias against those books but how can that not how can that not matter to us. Um, you know we could say we'd laugh all the way to the bank but you know it's still you you want that validation and what Laura K Hamilton ended up saying and then she did a couple of follow up videos. Which is all very very on brand with her because she has always done stuff for attention. She loves having people paying attention to her and I say that without rinker. Um, you know if she could put up. She's not doubling down. In fact, the most recent one from yesterday. She apologized for for being ignorant and saying that she you know had she been talking to the wrong self-p publishlished writers because in her initial screte which I realized I still haven't detailed I apologize. You know she basically said don't self publishlish you know, try traditional publishing first and.

16:47.11
jeffekennedy
You know that and she was talking about how as a traditionally published writer that she has a marketing team behind her and all of this sort of thing seeming to be blissfully unaware that she is a 3 decades established best selling author which she later acknowledged. So I mean she is listening to what people point out to her and it was unfortunate that she kind of did this in the first place but you know all of her advice was not terrible because I do see a lot of self- published authors. Going out there. They don't want to wait. They want to to get rich quick and this is not all of you but there are some who do this and we all know that it's there. Um, they if not get rich quick. They just want to be able to quit their day jobs right? and. Totally sympathize with that. But sometimes the books are not ready and when you self-publish you don't always know that they are not ready. Ah, and maybe it doesn't matter because sometimes books that are half biged still do well. But this is where she's coming from is this idea that to take your time and to give yourself um the opportunity to to try these things um a standard refrain.

18:17.12
jeffekennedy
Among the in Indie author community and which I've talked about before is that traditionalist publishing is evil that it takes all of your money. Ah I give out a shout out here to CM Nascosta who has. Put out a couple of very nicely balanced door marks on the whole thing which is that that what we have to keep saying there is no one true way different pens work for different kinds of authors and neither one is. Perfect neither and it that and it's the spectrum right? if we look at either end neither traditional publishing nor self publishing is the ultimate answer where everybody gets to romp around in. Filmsy flimsy robes and play Harps all the time right' there's a lot of work. There's downsides to both. Um, there are self-pubished authors out there like CM Nascosta who have made an amazing career for themselves have a huge platform. Are doing tremendously. Well and that's fantastic and then there are self-published authors who are not and maybe they're even writing great books and they're still not finding their audience. There is no sure formula and so it's very easy.

19:45.76
jeffekennedy
For people to become upset and to go online and say why is Laurel K Hamilton you know saying why is she stomping on indies she actually wasn't stomping on indies I I watched the Tick Tock videos she was saying that. She thought traditional publishing was a better path. She has simply been corrected now and she acknowledged that and she apologized but not everything she said was entirely wrong that and she's basing it on her experience which is thirty years old right. And also based on serendipity right? which is something I talk about a lot that it is difficult for people who have been tremendously successful to recognize the role of serendipity in their success that they were in the right place at the right time with the exact right thing. Laurel K Hamilton hit it right? and now she has this faithful audience a platform that she will just always sell books she can write anything and she will continue to sell books. That's how it works um, but.

20:58.55
jeffekennedy
This idea that that this is the way that I did it and this is what happens a lot with very experienced successful people in any field is that they they try to reverse engineer right? They it comes from a good place. They say oh. Yes, I'm very successful and I have these people who admire my success let me reverse engineer how I got here and explain so that other people can do the same thing and dear reader does not work doesn't work that way you can't reverse engineer it. Ah oh it. That's enough for today I could talk about this more on Monday but um, yeah I think I've made my points and I've already gone long. So I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all on Monday you all take care bye bye.