First Cup of Coffee - Selling Shovels to Miners 11/07/25

Writerly Advice on how to make smart business decisions as a writer, and how to avoid pitfalls - like DEBT. Are special editions business savvy? Is buying 500 special editions business savvy? You are a miner being sold a shovel, and it's important to inquire whether you can afford the shovel or not. In other news, Among the Thorns line edits will need to take priority over Magic Reborn, which will now be here at the end of the year. Stay tuned for Lust, Lies and Ley Lines. More information on that coming soon...

Speaking of special editions, you can find the Owl Crate signed edition here

A very beautiful hardcover edition can be found here

The audio book can be listened to here

And Kindle Unlimited has Never the Roses digital version!

Your friendly neighborhood author is doing author-ly things this upcoming month! Hummingbird House is officially OPEN FOR BOOKING🕊️
🕊️ Book your next writer retreat at Hummingbird House in Santa Fe here🕊️

Upcoming Events ~
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Tuscon Festival of Books is March 14th-15th this year! See you there *Wink*

📚Books📚

Preorder MAGIC REBORN here

Among the Thorns will be here July 14th - Preorder NOW

STRANGE FAMILIAR is live

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books!

As always, thank you for watching! If you've made it this far in the show notes, I applaud you! DM with any and all questions you may have for an upcoming video.

Transcript

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web of line edits, kind of broke me, and I got very tired and fell into a pit of despair. being successful in the publishing industry, Means being able to pay our bills. Good morning everyone. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Oh. So good. Today is. Say it with me, people, and say it with pride. It is Friday. Hoo! And it's just been an up and down week. Overall good week. But boy, it has been it has been a lot this week. the fantastic news in the US is that, Tuesday, the elections were great for the forces of good. We have a socialist now as mayor of New York City, which is fantastic. New York will remain a city of immigrants. A city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants. And as of tonight. LED by an immigrant. A lot of seats flipped blue wave throughout the country. And I was wrong when I said we were electing a new governor. We went to vote, and there were just a few bond questions on the ballot. Apparently, next year, when our governor was up, I was thinking, why haven’t I more? And of course, city of Santa Fe was supposed to elect a new mayor, but I think it was inconclusive. But we didn't get to vote on that anyway, because we're just country cousins to Santa Fe. I think Albuquerque faces the same issue with Albuquerque Mayor. Catching you up on line edits for Among the Thorns. So I got my notes back on Among the Thorns. There was a very big ask that felt overwhelming and not like something I could do in that space of time, and I wasn't sure at all how to handle it. So I mainly handled it through drinking and crying on the shoulders of my friends and my agent, which actually helped. Never underestimate the value of such things. the upshot is, is I talked to Agent Sarah on Tuesday afternoon. And we, came up with a strategy which really, I should say, Sarah came up with a strategy because she is amazing and awesome. And she was able to translate the ask from my editor into something very concrete and doable. And she said, help out if you do this. She said, try doing just the first couple of chapters, in this way and see if this answers what she's looking for, because, Jim Sorensen had a great analogy for it, that the fix ended up being more like changing the shirt instead of amputating the arm. And once I could get past the I don't have time to amputate the arm. Besides which, then my story will have only one arm. I was able to change the shirt. So I did that. I spent, Wednesday morning doing the revision, as Sarah suggested. It sent that in. And love all around. My editor was thrilled. Assistant editor was thrilled. I got the, very nice compliments on how good I am at taking editorial notes, which. Thank you. Sarah. And I thought, well, then I can just knock out the rest of these line edits and get them done. And off my plate. I tried to push for a fourth editing hour yesterday, but then I got caught in a a web of intensive line edits. I made it through 240 pages of 446. But this web of line edits, kind of broke me, and I got very tired and fell into a pit of despair. So. But I feel much better today. So it's a it's a good reminder that, you know, when you're tired, things are always look worse. I've thought about asking for more time. Among the thorns, these were sort of my back and forth. Because I'm trying to finish Magic Reborn in time for the, November 30th release date. And the thing is, is that's going to be a crunch, no matter what, I'm going to continue on one that's live among the thorns, today and this weekend and reevaluate Monday. I did look to see, and it is possible for me to push the release date of the magic report, and I'm sorry, it'll still be by the end of the year. I'll lose my preorder privileges, but I think I've mentioned that, lust, lies, and ley lines. I need to set up the preorder for that and for books two and three of that to come out next year. This is my whole plan. If I could set up those preorders this month, then push the Magic Reborn release date into December. Sorry. Gosh, I really did not want to. But I can tell that I'm also pushing really hard and probably harder than is wise. Yeah. So, and then if they remove my privileges, I think I'll be okay. Right? You know, I just can't make, you know, preorders. But they will take away the ones I have. I'll. I'll have to make sure to meet those deadlines. But, I want to say, I think I can, because I've learned nothing. Well, I have learned haven’t I? Anyway, you all will be the first to know as soon as I get, Lust lines and ley lines up for preorder. The exciting, cover artist is working on the cover. So as interns are proofing, she's going to try to sell audio rights for it. the other thing I want to talk about is on one of my common themes. Selling shovels to miners. my previous agent she would say that there was a reason. The streets of San Francisco are named for the shovel salesman and not the miners. And that's because the big money is in selling shovels. Not everybody strikes gold, but everybody need shovels, right? The moral of this story being you have to be aware as an author, particularly as an indie author. that people are trying to sell you stuff because they can make money off of you. And so today I am talking about special editions, It's a company there, facilitating the printing of special editions. And they did a demo for 500 special edition books, hardback foil cover and papers and sprayed edges. And it is basically $5,000 for 500 books, $10 a book before shipping. And because these things are almost certainly being shipped from China. Shipping is not inconsiderable. Is it cost effective? Yeah. If you could sell your special editions. Right. And that was what several other people weighed in, so. Well, they can sell their special editions for 50 or $60 at a convention, so they make a very good profit on it, which is great and sounds good. But the thing is, apparently there were a lot of conversations around this where some newbie or authors were saying that they didn't think they could sell 300 special editions. And of course, the fewer copies you get, the more it fills up. you know, I don't know if I could sell that many special editions. I don't know if my readers really want special editions. I think there are those who do. But I, I do have a feeling that the special edition trend is kind of going down. That's the thing is, they're nice to have. And this is what I want to talk about is, as an author, do you need to have special editions of your book? And I am aware that I'm saying this as I've got a couple of very pretty hard covers over my right shoulder. Oh, and over my left shoulder of the old great edition of Double the Roses and my publishers versions of them, US and UK editions. yeah, it's nice to have the pretty copies. And yes, they do move in different audiences and different circles. But the other thing you have to think about when you figure in all of these costs is $10 a book before shipping, but then that's shipping it to your house. You also have to get it to the convention, and you may have to pay drainage at the convention, which is usually X number of dollars per pound. And special editions weigh more. Plus your time and trouble, you know, schlepping them back and forth for something that if you know you're going to sell them, you know you have the preorders and so forth, that's great. But also, this is a tremendous investment from the publishing side of your business, right? Week, especially if you're an indie author, you know, you have the writing side of your business and then the publishing side of your business. So this is taking on a huge piece of the publishing side of your business. It's a huge investment. It's a risk many business choices are risk, but you try to, limit how risky they are, right? You try to, confine how much you are in the red in your business. these are things to keep in mind if you are making savvy business decisions, right. if you take a chance on your $5,000 plus of debt, will you be fine? I don't know. I do know, of authors who have maxed out their credit cards. debt is you have to be careful. I mean, I feel like that's saying something that everybody knows, but nobody observes. Going into debt puts you on the back foot and you’re forever trying to make it up. There's investing in your business, but then there is hanging yourself out there. Which is why so many small businesses fail, right? It's a ridiculous number. I don't know, like offhand now, but it's So this is interesting. For 2025 data. It shows that. The survival okay. So this this is the survival rate here, 20%, 20.54% of businesses fail in their first year after opening, 49.4 fail in their first five years, and 65% in their first ten years. And they even say on here, this is a much better survival rate than the frequently cited myth that half of businesses fail in their first year. However, 50% fail in the first five years. So just because you've made it through the first year doesn't necessarily mean you're free and clear. And same with ten years. We've learned that there's no such thing as too big to fail, right? I think the question to ask is if you're thinking about paying for special editions, and I know people who are you need to know, not just if you can afford it. I mean, that's that's the thing, you know, look at the money. Can you afford to lose that much money instead of looking at what you can make? It's like, can you afford to lose the 5000 plus and still be okay? But then you'll also need to look at why are you doing this? Why do you want special editions? Like I'm not sure my readers want special edition, so I'm not really inclined to invest a lot of my time and energy and effort and money into producing a special edition, unless I know that there's a need for it. I think one reason why a lot of people do this kind of thing is because they see successful authors doing it. So, like, I have an author friend who sells out all of her books at every convention. She has this massive audience, and it would be easy for me to say, I want to be like her and have all of these beautiful hardback books and sell out all of them at the convention and pay for my convention. And plus and that would be great. But the thing is, is that's her audience. That's her kind of book and that's her kind of success. The fact that I don't do that doesn't actually make me less successful as an author. I've been an author for much longer than she has. For example, there are things that I have achieved, awards and status that I've gotten that she has not. And it's fine. It's fine. We have different kinds of writer careers, and what I worry about is that people tend to go for the appearance of success, rather than building it up from the bottom. And I've talked about this for many, many years. Like I was never interested in doing one of those book boxes deals. But it used to be that you could, like, buy into one of these 20 or 30 or 50 book bundles that would sell for $0.99 and you would in exchange, get on the USA today bestseller list and be able to call yourself a USA today bestseller. And they they started eliminating those books as candidates for the list. So I don't think anyone does that anymore. And besides that, we're scammers scamming travel salesmen, who were not delivering. People would buy in and you would have to buy them for a lot, like $1,000, and then they would not necessarily deliver. I wanted to see if I could get on the USA today bestseller list on my own, And I did, I think Never the Roses is a beautiful book. It debuted at number 29 on the USA today bestseller list, but a whole lot of people bought it because it's beautifully packaged. Bramble did it, you have to look at what you're trying to do. Why do you want to be successful and being successful in the publishing industry, Means being able to pay our bills. Really. And it does. The other stuff is shiny and fun, but in the end, we want to be able to make a living, right? We want to be able to pay our bills. We want to be not in debt. So if you're thinking in terms of shiny special editions or other things that will cost you a lot of money, think about who's selling it to you. Remember that they are not your friends. They have their Paul now they want your money. And also think about why do you want it? But how is this going to further your goals, what you are trying to do. All right, on that note, I'm going to go work on I'm on this Orange line edits and I will talk to you all. Tuesday. You all take care. Bye bye.