First Cup of Coffee - July 16, 2019

Thoughts today on the rapid-release mentality in self-publishing, how SFF differs from Romance that way, and how writers place value on their own work. I mention how Ed Sheeran's media blitz has affected me in this context. 

Also, I feel I should add that I also follow P!nk on Instagram, because she's awesome. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy and I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Oh, I love that person. I'm not plugging the fountain here. I just refilled it, but it does better if I unplug it while I fill it and then lets it clear its little vents so it can flow free once again. Garden looks pretty good this morning. I'm kind of wish that all this travel didn't happen right in the middle of summer. This is the most beautiful time of year here. It's just such a pleasure to see all the things growing. I put on my wish list for my birthday to get some more gift certificates to places or to get more roses and lilies. My butterfly lilies are really beautiful. I added a photo of those.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Pots of impatience are looking pretty. Kind of looks like we had a little bit of a water overflow here, but I don't see anything obvious.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

It seems like you always have to look and make sure that stuff isn't hasn't popped open or that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Oh, and there I just stepped on a toilebird.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Oh, here's some choya birds over on their side.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

I don't know why the uh I guess it's just instinct that the pack rat's not going to give up trying to take out this particular territory. Probably the pack rat will be delighted that I'm traveling for a few weeks and we'll come back to a little fortress of Toyabers. There we go. Alright, so today is Tuesday, July 16th. We're on the countdown to the travel whirlwind. Heading out on Thursday morning. I could podcast from the airport. I I need to develop a certain level of hubris and not mind that people around me are listening and wondering why I'm talking to myself, you know. Oh, look at this. Uh remember the other day I was complaining that one of my crystal blue lobelia didn't take that it had died, and I tried resuscitating it. Well, it's blooming. I think it's not because I moved pots. Maybe it's because I moved pots. Yeah. All right, never mind. It's because I moved pots. Oh well. Oh well. So, yeah, I've got quite a bit of business done yesterday. I forget how much time promo takes. Uh and it was funny because I'm well, let me back up. Allow me to something. Now I popped off my microphone. Okay. So uh I was asked to do the read a romance month thing uh that Bobby Dumas, Dumas, I think she's Dumas, that Bobby Dumas coordinates. And she'd asked me to do this a while back because their August theme is the magic of reading. Yeah. The magic of reading. So they were looking for people who write books with magic in them. Uh when I I just yesterday saw her final list of authors, and a lot of them don't actually have magic in their books. She could have I could have given her a list of people, but whatever. Anyway, uh so I said that that I would do this, and she sent me the list of things I needed to do, and I glanced at it, and then I looked at it more closely yesterday because I'd promised to get it to her by the 15th. And of course, yesterday was the 15th. I do know what day it is when I have things due. I'd been thinking I'd do it over the weekend, and I thought, oh, no reason I can't do it Monday morning because I haven't gotten notes back from Sarah. So I was sort of at my leisure anyway, and I thought, well, I will do this read a romance thing, and then I will work on the the sex scene book or the blog book. And I'll tell you what, you guys, working on that read of romance stuff took me hours. It took me freaking hours. I couldn't believe how long it were all I had to write an essay, and then there were all of these questions and various things, links to grab and books to recommend, and all these kinds of things. I was like, geez, geez, Louise. So it's alright though. But it was funny because I sent it to Megan Mulrie because she knows Bobby Dumas. And even though Megan's no longer writing, I thought she'd be kind of amused. And she was so funny because she said, Well, that really brought back all kinds of memory. She said it always felt like one more thing. And and she's right, you know, like when you're when you're writing and when you're promoting a book, it does feel like people are always asking you, sorry, I'm moving this pot. I decided to turn it so I wasn't looking at the label. Uh, you know, there's just always these things to do, and it's good because you know, you need to do the promo, but it can feel like a lot sometimes. So it was nice for me to have this sort of buffer time to take care of a lot of these things, stuff that St. Martin has set up for me for promo and other stuff. So today I might, I don't know if I'm gonna work on that book. I'm I keep feeling like I it's it's a bad thing about being a full-time writer. It's a great drawback, is that you get used to having big chunks of time. Uh, whereas when you work full-time and have a career, you get very, very good at wedging work into small spaces of time. So right now I'm feeling like I just don't have time to start anything substantial. Whereas before, in the before times when I worked full-time and traveled all the time for my job, you know, travel didn't feel like that big of a deal to me, is it? You know, it gets to be a habit. So now I'm you know entirely thinking about, oh well, I have to leave in two days, so I can't possibly start on a big project. And it's like, no, actually, I could. Once upon a time, I would have seen two full days before I had to travel is like tons of time. However, I was also stressed, so that's something to keep in mind. So let's see, where was I going with that? I lost my train of thought. Yes, I know you're all saying it to me, and I can't hear you. Well, I was thinking about what I'm gonna work on today, and oh, I was thinking, I don't, I'm going to be home for the next couple of Sundays to do the word horrors blogs. Oh, I I still call it word horse SFF7 blogs. Um, I was thinking about scheduling those ahead though. Maybe I won't. Maybe I won't. I should be able to work on those. The ones in August when we go to Ireland, I will try to schedule ahead. But today I think I will really make an effort to work on the blog book. I am having lunch with Terry Beth, uh, who helps run Bubonicon. She needs a book from me, and I wanted to see her before things get crazy. So we're gonna go down to Midtown Bistro, which is right by where she works, sit outside by the fountains. That's part of my ladies who's who lunches, ladies who lunch lifestyle right now. So yeah, I mean, I've I'm feeling like my life is pretty leisurely right now. And it's interesting because I think for a very long time I was feeling like I needed to be writing all the time to keep the money coming in. And it's a very it's a common perception, it's a common perception more in romance, I noticed, than in sci-fi fantasy. And maybe it's because romance readers are so voracious and read so many books. But I even heard um a couple of my author friends the other day who you know are reasonably successful, and they were saying, Oh yeah, we all need to learn to write faster. We've got to learn to write faster and do rapid release. And I didn't want to argue with them right then, but more and more I'm thinking that that's a uh a it's a deadly cycle to get into the write as fast as you can on rapid release. It's one that serves Amazon and it serves Kindle Unlimited, and I think I really think Kindle Unlimited is going to die. Um I'm not sure how it will come about, but I don't think it's going to last. And I know a lot of people will say that I'm wrong because Amazon makes tons of money on it, but Amazon makes lots more money on other things, and I think it's getting more and more difficult for them to police the scam scammers on it. I think it's going to be easier for them to just nuke that program. And I will dance a happy dance when it does because I think it rewards the wrong things. Um it devalues books, it devalues authors' work, and it puts people into this cycle of rapid release, write as fast as you can, learn to write faster. I can write fast, and it takes it out of me. It's um it's I don't think it's good for us. And it's interesting because in sci-fi fantasy uh, you know, it's very usual for people to take a year or two to write a book. But you know what? The authors in sci-fi fantasy get paid a lot more. The the the value is much higher. So I think that I really got into that with the self-publishing, trying to be hybrid. So writing to both Trad and Hybrid increases the workload, and feeling like if I was writing all the time, that that was helping bring in the money. But you know, the money comes in when it comes in pretty much, you know, without you actually writing. It's one of the cool things about being a writer is that, you know, right now as I sit here talking on my podcast, my books are out there selling on the various platforms. And they've been going up lately. My sales have been really going up. I just did my Google Play sales and they went up significantly over next over last month. Who knows why? You know, it's just one of those things. It could be due to Orchid Throne promo. You know, people see that stuff and then they start looking at my other books. It's one reason why releasing another book does work well to help bump up sales. But, you know, St. Martin's decided for my trilogy Oh, the hummingbirds on the butterfly lilies. That's so pretty. If I thought I could get a shot, I would. It looks oh that's just that's uh so beautiful and graceful, the lilies and the hammer. It might be a she looks pretty heavy bellied, she might be pregnant with eggs. Drink up all that nectar, sweetheart. Yeah. Now she's sitting on the twig looking at me. She's gonna come up and try the Peter. Oh, did you hear? She buzzed and chirped. So anyway, St. Martin's with that trilogy with Forgotten Empires. Um, they were very insistent when we did that deal because I suggested, you know, releasing the books a little closer together so that I could deliver them faster than that. Right there I am saying, oh, let me deliver those books sooner to you than you want them. And they said no, that all of the marketing that they'd done and the studying they'd done indicates that releasing books a year apart it develops develops the best audience. Um you know, and and they they promised, you know, they were like, really, we really believe this is the best thing to do. It gives us time to develop the marketing, to get the promo out there, um, and to make this series be as successful as possible. We we really think they need to be a year apart. And I thought, great, okay, let's do it. Let's do it. Besides, you know, it was that was part of the contract. So, but I'm trusting them. But I've been thinking about that a lot in talking with my friend Miss Minerva Spencer about it, because and she's brought this up a few times when we were at RWA in Denver, we were talking with my former editor at Kensington, Peter Semplebin, and we were just having this conversation, and Peter said something about people putting out a lot of books, basically the rapid release. And he said that he feels like he gets oversaturated by some authors, and he said, the thing is, is he said there are other authors I want to read too. And Minerva's brought that up a few times. You know, she said that really resonated with me. She said, because that's how I feel, and I sure feel that way too. You know, I don't want to read, you know, Susie Smith's, you know, new release every stinking month. I you know, there are other authors I want to read, and you can oversaturate. And I'm thinking, I was planning to talk about this on the blog tomorrow, so this works out well to double up with discussing it here too. Uh I've I follow this, I promise this is related. I follow Ed Sheeran on Instagram because I love Ed Sheeran, I think. You know, love Ed Sharon's music. So I start following him on Instagram, and he has amusing Instagrams for the most part. Uh I I really don't follow many celebrities. Other I I don't even follow my girl Taylor on Instagram. I should. I should, just to be fair, since I'm not sure that it's it's being fair to her with not taking her side on the whole scandal I talked about. Anyway, that's mixed no, never mind. Anyway, Ed Sheeran has been working on this collaborations album, which has now released. But he has said that these were songs that he felt like didn't fit on any of his own albums, and he did these collaborations with a lot of people I haven't heard of, and I feel like an old lady saying that. I'm just like, I've never heard of these young whipper snapper rock stars. But some of them I have. Um, he's collaborated with uh DJ Khaled, who admittedly I only know about because of the third Pitch Perfect movie. Um, but Bruno Mars, I know who Bruno Mars is, and then he did one with um Justin Bieber, and then other people that I don't know who they are. Anyway, so he was releasing these various songs and putting them on Instagram, and you could click on the link in the bio, and I listened to the first couple of songs, and there would be, you know, like first there were snippets of the songs, and then there were um inside looks at the videos, and then there were the actual videos, and then there was the um acoustic version of the song, and it was getting so and I don't follow a lot of people on Instagram, so you know, I I see things pretty much everything on there, like I don't on other social media, but I was feeling like Ed Sharon was pinging me for attention hourly. I mean, all the time. It was like, oh, look, Ed Sharon has something else new up. Listen to this song, look at this video, look at these inside looks and all of this, and then you know, oh, here's the pop-up stores, and now it's oh, go out and buy the album. And I am feeling so oversaturated. And this is one of my favorite musicians right now, with the great exception of my girl Taylor, who I'm definitely gonna follow on Instagram now. I'm tempted to unfollow Ed Sharon. Um, I've come real close to it because it's like, oh my god, Eric, Ed, shut up. And I think it is that equivalent of, you know, like having somebody tugging on your sleeve constantly and asking for the sale, asking for the attention and for the sale all the time. And it's like, well, here you bought this thing and you liked it. Do you want this? You know, I mean, it imagine like if you ate at a restaurant or something and you, you know, bought your, I don't know, your appetizer. You bought a basket of rolls or something, and you started eating your roll, and it was really good. And five minutes later, the waiter comes up to your table and says, Would you like to buy another roll? Would you like to buy uh an entree? Would you like to buy a glass of wine? Would you like to buy um it's just you know, and I noticed too, this is semi-related, you know, that every website you go to now, uh, it's probably because of my settings that I see this, but I get the pop-up window saying, you know, that medium.com would like to send you notifications, allow or block, you know, and I'm like, Block, I don't want your stinking notifications. You know, so it's it becomes this eternal barrage of yelping voices and raised hands, you know, sort of like the cliche shot of the reporters mobbing somebody, you know, jumping up and down, pick me, pick me. I have a question, I have a question, shouting out their questions, you know, pay attention to me, give me the thing I want, give me your money. And I think artists have to be really careful. And I know that I am not a mainstream person, it is my curse and my blessing. So maybe everybody else thinks this whole edge sharing thing has been awesome. But I notice that his Instagram posts have fewer comments on them now. I look every once in a while and just to see what the number of comments is, you know, and that could be my lens of when I'm looking. But it's like I think it's really possible to exhaust people's interest in you, and the solution is not to throw more stuff at them, it's maybe to back off and you know, let them go listen to another musician for a little while. There are other authors I want to read. So that's why I feel like the writing faster and rapid release is not necessarily the solution. It it can work to build an audience and self-publishing. It definitely plays on Amazon's algorithms, so those things are true. But once you build your audience, then you know you want to carefully cultivate it and and grow your audience, and giving them as much stuff as rapidly as possible may not be the solution. So thus endeth our sermon for the day. I'm going to go in and get some things done. I will blog tomorrow. I will try to podcast Thursday. We'll see. If I don't, I'm definitely going to podcast on Friday morning with the inimitable Grace Straven. I'm going to make her do a cup of coffee with me and we'll chat with you all. And we'll that be fun. And from coming, come on. So I will talk to you all later. Take care. Bye bye.