First Cup of Coffee - September 9, 2022

A bit on audiobooks and the relativities of going exclusive with Audible vs. wide - and *how* to go wide if you do that. Also some (bad) news on the midwinter holiday fantasy romance anthology and a question for you all.

Interested in Author Coaching from me? Information here: https://jeffekennedy.com/author-coaching

Preorder SHADOW WIZARD, Book One in Renegades of Magic, continuing the epic tale begun in DARK WIZARD. https://jeffekennedy.com/shadow-wizard

ROGUE'S PARADISE is out today! (https://jeffekennedy.com/rogue-s-paradise). Buy book 1, ROGUE'S PAWN, here! (https://jeffekennedy.com/rogue-s-pawn) and book 2, ROGUE'S POSSESSION, here! (https://jeffekennedy.com/rogue-s-possession).

ORIA'S GAMBIT now available in audio on Scribd here! https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/571010481/Oria-s-Gambit LONEN'S WAR - now in audio! - is available wide. Buy links here https://jeffekennedy.com/lonen-s-war and in audio on Scribd here https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/558914129/Lonen-s-War

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Transcript

00:00.98
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I am here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.74
jeffekennedy
Ah, today is say it with me friday! whoo! it is Friday september ninth nine nine good day nine being the number of. Well the number of man but we like men anyway, right know the number number of the human the completion. Ah, one of my favorite numbers. So um, how is everyone there. I understand this is recording quietly. Um, which means I need to project I don't know why it's recording quietly I I definitely have it set to be using this microphone array which of course it is because otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear me at all because. Microphone would be in the house but I don't I'm not sure why it's not recording with more sensitivity. Um, so there we are let's see so what's going on. Um. I think I still have conference brain and a lot of stuff that happened at world con is ah staying at world con because it's a blur. Ah I had so many great conversations with people. Um, really nice to.

01:47.40
jeffekennedy
See people. Um in person I mentioned this before I haven't seen since Pre pandemic. But yeah, really had great conversations with um with. I Won't even name name speak I was about to start naming some names. But then it's like ah but then I'll forget people.

02:08.52
jeffekennedy
Ah, um, exciting news and that we have set dates for the nebula conference. It will be next June that's all I'm going to tell you right now but we do have dates. We have a hotel we are going to be in person also hybrid.

02:27.90
jeffekennedy
Ah, had a board meeting yesterday. We got a bunch of stuff handled that was great. Um, so yeah, things are exciting I'm working on naming the next grand master pretty excited about that.

02:46.86
jeffekennedy
And another secret special thing that I want to do sifwa wise that you'll hear about if I get to have it happen. So um, I'm noticing if you're on video. Ah, you will probably notice too that apparently I'm lately all about Blue. Ah, my dress is blue I did my nails blue this time I've got my blue Headband in it's making my eyes look Blue. Um I have those eyes that like go green or gray or blue depending on. My mood and what I'm wearing combinations there of ah none of which has anything to do with writing and publishing sorry you guys sorry you all ah have to get back to ah focusing. Now I'm hyper awarere of how often the phrase you guys has used ah we were watching last night. Hacks We watch. Apparently we'd like gotten part way through the second season and then forgot to keep watching it of the perils of being. Non-religious watchers of things. Although I do wish that our streaming system would like tell us right off you were watching this last time but because we bounce around to the different subscriber channels. They don't tell us that.

04:18.11
jeffekennedy
So anyway, really liked Hacks. It's great with Jean Smart who's very smart and when I had a point there something about Hacks ah See. It's probably a good combination of conference brain and book brain too because I am closing in on the ending of Shadow Wizard. It's um, yeah, you know it's funny because it's like all y'all who say how would you like that one who say that. If you have an outline if you know what you're writing before you write it. It's so much easier. Um I say Pish Tosh to you because I know how this book is ending I know what the next actually no specific things are happening in the next chapter which is not something I generally know. And it's not going any faster so it's absorbing a lot of my mental Bandwidth which is as it should be but um, I'm hoping crossing fingers that the revision will go smoothly.

05:32.10
jeffekennedy
Yesterday I kind of fried out in the third hour ran out of words nothing in my brain. So I started going through and dealing with my square brackets those of you who've been listening for a long time know that as I'm drafting. If I can't think of a word or if I don't want to name somebody right away or if I think I'm using a word too often. Ah, or if I need to weave something in earlier I put it in square brackets and then I can do a search so I look to see and I had something like one hundred and sixty six square brackets which is probably. A good sign because it means I was drafting fast. Um, and now I've winnowed it down considerably I think um I won't look to see what it is but I know less of a hundred and it might be something and like the sixty s now so I did winnow out a lot. Um naming a couple of. Characters who turned out to be fairly major characters did a lot of the the heavy lifting there.

06:39.47
jeffekennedy
1 of my um, enduring questions as I'm writing is did I give this character a first name or a name especially in the bonds of magic and renegades of magic world because people are referred to by their titles. Um, either is like wizard or familiar. But that no also is like their rank you know Lord or Lady El-Adrel that sort of thing. So a little birdie up here kind of one that must be passing through kind of a different one tapping on the grape barrbor.

07:18.29
jeffekennedy
Happy for them to eat those bugs. Um, yeah, So sometimes I like don't actually give them names or if I do I'm not certain if I did and I'm not meticulous about. Putting those things into the world bible to which I should which is for me a spreadsheet. So um, yeah, so I ended up having to name a few people. There is one character that. I went ahead and named even though I'm not sure if she'll ever reappear and did I put it my spreadsheet probably not so anyway. Um Yeah I Know what's going to happen I Just really need to ah focus on getting those words down and Then. Um I don't think it's going to take a whole lot of weaving in of stuff to to get her finished.

08:24.83
jeffekennedy
Let's see what else is going on showed you all the checkbooks yesterday. Thanks for the lovely comments on them and ah I I also. Wonder if I should admit this? Ah I I found a mistake in gray magic when I was listening to the audiobook and it was a mistake that to my chagrin somebody else had tried to point out to me. They didn't say it in so many words though. Um, and. So this is one of the difficult things about when people reach your work is they'll say they often suggest fixes without being specific about what the problem is and I know that ah Mary Robinette had a ticktok not long ago. Um. Talking about the different types of critiques that you get and what the problems really are that people are identifying and it was smart because she's smart but this it it can be a problem because people will say and and in this case, this is what happened was. Ah, someone who's a wonderful reader for me and another author who I you know adore ah she had said you might consider specifying this this or this and I went looked at it and I'm like why? Why do I have to specify that I don't understand and so I I did a little bit of tweaking on it.

09:53.43
jeffekennedy
But I didn't understand the problem which was that I had a character in 2 places at the same time and if she had told me that if she had said it seems like this character is in 2 places at the same time instead of saying you might create more distance between them. Ah. These incidents or make it clear. She'd said something like that whereas this character's in the same 2 different places at the same time which he was he absolutely was so I went in and fixed it. And I am putting up a new version of gray magic with a few other fixes that I identified so and with the link for shadow wizard at the back. To get that uploaded. Get that formatted uploaded. Um I've been working on so bonds of magic all 3 books she says holding up 4 fingers 3 books ah are all in audio and I did them in.

11:08.30
jeffekennedy
So sorry this is going down I'm going to go down the audio book rabbit hole but some of this stuff I really had to ask around and find out about ah so audible will do and exclusive if it's kind of like Kindle select you know Amazon loves to do this exclusive thing. So if you. Put it in exclusive. They'll give you 70% royalties which is still not phenomenal. You all, it's um, that's what I was going to say about hacks ah funny. They used you guys several times in hacks and especially in that last episode. So. It wasn't that important. Ah so an an audible used to require that you keep your book in there for a really really long fucking time um a year or more and now they've backed off of that and you can do it for just ninety days so I did because the books came out with staggered releases. You know as my audio book narrator finished them. Ah I kept dark wizard and bright familiar in the exclusive for ah significantly longer than three months and then once gray magic was done with her three month stent then I pulled them all out of exclusive and that was like at the beginning of August so I could upload them wide reader has jeffie uploaded them wide. She is not.

12:45.31
jeffekennedy
1 of the things I need to get to so ah yeah, so one of the things that I've discovered by asking around is I ask people like which retailers do you upload to and some people sell directly through their website. Which I would like to try to do ah but I have to find someone to compile the audiobook because when the narrator delivers them to you. They deliver them chapter by chapter I should ask my narrator if she knows of a format or a packager for that. Um.

13:24.44
jeffekennedy
Because you can also put them up on Youtube and some people just have samples up on Youtube and other people put the whole book up. Um, and then once you get to your um, 1000 followers subscribers and like 4000 views then you start making money they they monetize it. So um, so the thousand might be a thousand subscribers. Yeah, but the nice thing about having ye old podcast ye old first cup of coffee is that I have a lot of views at this point. Um. Many subscribers which has never been my primary objective. But if I start putting the audio books up. Um that should accelerate quickly from what everybody else is saying so that's like another thing I need to do that's on the business list. The other major undertaking is to get our taxes assembled. Um, we are at this point where we're doing the October filing and yeah, where does the time go so I may spend a lot It's supposed to be rainy this weekend which is a good thing because. I might just do a marathon of crunching all the numbers for the accountant I have it all. It's just a matter of going through and compiling it and identifying what everything is for. So I think that's what I will do.

14:59.70
jeffekennedy
This weekend we were thinking about going fishing on Sunday but because of rain not and I have a couple of meetings. So I don't think I'll work on the book this weekend give my give these brains. A little bit of a break.

15:22.25
jeffekennedy
And um, yeah, next thing I'm looking for looking towards to travel wise is not until first week of November when I'm going to world fantasy con and I did fill out my programming survey for that for those of you who were. Tracking the fact that I was saving that for after Wilton. Um, so yeah, I'm looking forward to these couple of months at home and the next thing that I'm going to be working on which sorry all of you who hate it when I do this. Is ah the new secret project. We got a a choya here if you're on video I'll hold it up so you could see little choya bur. It's hard to see to a good background but it's here on the table next to a grape. So. Feels like a story of something that happened overnight choia burrs ah should be like all on the other side of the wall. Um I'm definitely distracted aren't I sorry you all.

16:32.66
jeffekennedy
And I don't even remember what I was saying before I spotted the choya look a squirrel a grape. Um, yeah, oh the secret project secret I need a code name for it. I know you all have suggested code names for me. Ah, and unfortunately my working title is. Totally indicative of what it will be so I need to come up with um, a good secret title to reference it because I am going to write the whole book agent Sarah wants to take it on submission. She's very excited about this idea which those of you who have been with me for a long time know is no. See it. It just never is as part of the business. But ah yeah, I'm going to write the whole book. She's going to take it on submission if it doesn't sell then um and if it doesn't sell quickly. Then I will self-publish it and it'll be a new series in the new world and I'm excited about this I am um hoping that it will be an easy right? and here I contradict myself from the beginning of the podcast because I know essentially what the story is.

17:46.42
jeffekennedy
Ah, and this is a rare case where I absolutely do have my characters in mind but I actually have something of a plot arc I know I know what is the world coming to. But I do have a plot in mind and it's um, okay well I'll tell i. I may have told you all this already. This is sounding familiar. The thing is is it's based on a movie plot and and so so it's already there and I asked Melinda Snodgrass brilliant screenwriter and plot break ah teacher she. Conducts these things and so I was thinking about asking her to do a plot break with me on this book and and I asked her I said well if I know that I'm following the essential structure and beats of a movie should i. Use that or should I you know like throw that away and and you know move away from that and she kind of gave me the head tilt I love Melinda she gives me the head tilt and she says well if you already have the movie structure. Why would you not use that I was like okay, thank you, thank you? So that'll be my as soon as I finish shadow wizard um I'm going to watch this movie again and I'm going to write all the beats and but I make a oh I feel like it's a dirty word I'm going to make an outline. Um.

19:18.79
jeffekennedy
And so it's going to be an interesting exercise and I am oddly excited about it. So so that's my plan for the next few weeks oh I know ah some of you have been asking about the holiday anthology and ah, we're not going to do it. That's the short answer is we are not going to do one. Um, we we talked about it. We had a group lined up um, Grace and I have talked about numerous times. Grace is just so behind the eight ball at this point um that she just could not commit to doing it and I didn't want to do it without her. And the others who wanted to participate were also feeling pressured so we're not doing it. However, capital h however I am thinking about doing something of my own like a holiday story. Um.

20:13.72
jeffekennedy
Midwinter holiday fantasy story ah and putting it out for Christmas-ish The only problem is is I don't know what I would do so this is where you all come in if you have a vote if you have a suggestion let me know, um. And I will it will seriously consider it because it would be nice to it would maybe not be very long but get something out there. So on that note I am going to go finish this fucking book I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and. I will talk to you all Monday you all take care bye-bye.