The Pulp Writer Show
Hosted by Jonathan Moeller (author of the FROSTBORN and SEVENFOLD SWORD fantasy series and the SILENT ORDER scifi series), the Pulp Writer Show discusses how to write, format, publish, and sell your novel. Sometimes there are jokes.
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Episode 206: Ebook Pricing Strategies
06/24/2024
Episode 206: Ebook Pricing Strategies
In this week's episode, I take a look at different pricing tiers for selling ebooks, and discuss the pros and cons of each. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 206 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 21st, 2024 and today we are discussing ebook pricing and the pros and cons of different ebook price points. Before we get into that, we will have an update on my current writing projects and some discussion about Question of the Week. First up, my current writing projects. I am pleased to report that I have finished the rough draft of Shield of Darkness. It came in at 111,000 words, which I wrote in 31 days. It’s amusing to look back. The book before that in the series, Shield of Storms, was 6,000 words shorter, but I actually wrote it in 35 days, but that was over December and January and I had taken an entire day off for the Christmas holidays back at the end of 2023. Next up, I will be writing a short story called Disciples that ties into the Shield War series and my newsletter subscribers will get that for free when Shield of Darkness comes out in ebook form, so it's a good time to sign up for my newsletter. After Shield of Darkness is out and published, my main focus will then be Half-Orc Paladin, and I think I'm 25 or 26,000 words into it (I'm not entirely sure off the top of my head). That's where I'm at with my current projects. Good news: the rough draft of Shield of Darkness is finally done. 00:01:20 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. This week's topic: what is your favorite food to eat while traveling? The inspiration for this question was the fact that I traveled somewhere around 1,200 miles in the last week before recording this episode. As you might expect, we had a range of answers. Justin says: nuts. Almonds, peanuts, or mixed nuts, roasted and salted. High in sodium, but non-perishable and high in protein. Like nuggets and fries, you can drive while eating them. Another advantage is the ability to easily put away uneaten nuts for later. And finally, no whining from vegans about the evils of consuming meat while in airport lounges. I have to admit I haven't had that personal experience yet, but I can see how that would be a plus. Our next comment is from Surabhi, who says I'm South Asian, so my award goes to samosa and Pani Puri. I'm pretty sure I pronounced that wrong. Our next comment is from Jesse, who says: hot dogs with pepperjack, jalapeños, and mustard. Weirdly cures most of what ails you. Scott says: sunflower seeds pass time for a for a time consuming or passing the time snack. Beef jerky is a choice for me also. The hardier and saltier, the better. John says: tacos as long as I’m west of the Mississippi and South of Dallas. Burger and fries otherwise. If I'm rolling cheap, I'll pack an ice chest to make sandwiches and chips. Juana says: I like to eat different regional foods, like a candy called cherry mash with chocolate and nuts covering cherry nougat. It used to be available in Kansas only. They don't serve a BLT above Tennessee or sweet cold tea in Maine. Michael says: well, I too am a fan of McDonald's. I usually go for the cheeseburger meal with fries and a Diet Coke. Usually consistent and my innards tolerate them well. Also driving friendly. The Diet Coke does tend to clear out the slight grease from the fries and the burgers- cleanses the palate, so to speak…fine dining at McDonald's. But if I'm near Philly, I always defer to a cheesesteak with fried onions. Alton says: don't eat a whole bag of baby carrots. You won't eat them for years afterwards. Good advice for us all! Juan says: be a foodie. I enjoy finding your remote mom and pop places in towns I drive through and enjoying the atmosphere. Sometimes the food is amazing, sometimes food is bleh, but I get to sit in a quaint spot in some obscure town and read a book, scroll Facebook, or just people watch. You could say that I’m more a “experience the travel” than a foodie person, I guess. I rarely eat in the car. I look for excuses to get out of the car. Typically for me is a 5 hour drive to a particular military installation a few times a year and stopping at different rural towns on the way. Todd says: Jack-in-the-Box breakfast sandwiches, especially when it's not breakfast hours. So if they serve them all day, I know my order is made fresh and it's reasonably healthy. Then I ruin any concept of healthiness with a big old Dr. Pepper. Roger says: bacon, brie, and cranberry mini baguette with rocket/arugula. Gary says: I like tacos from food trucks, pop-ups, or little family-owned shops. Hotel desk clerks know a surprising amount of places to get such things. Michael says: chocolate. John says: burritos. Around the West Coast, In and Out. And Bonnie says: I haven't traveled any real distance in years, occasional work trips under 150 miles. It’s usually a large Dunkin’ coffee and sausage, egg, and cheese wrap. For myself, I think my favorite food to eat while traveling is the McDonald's Chicken McNuggets and fries. I know objectively that McDonald's Chicken McNuggets and fries are not super healthy and I try to avoid fast food in general in my day-to-day life, with varying degrees of success. For that matter, there are far superior fries and nuggets over those obtained at McDonald's. However, McDonald's fries and nuggets offer several advantages to the weary traveler. I can eat them in the car without taking my eyes off the road or getting my hands messy. I don't need them with the dipping sauce. In the airport, I can eat them in the waiting lounge without making a huge mess. So for me that lands in the sweet spot of convenience, flavor, and not making a huge mess in the car while eating it. 00:05:09 Main Topic of the Week: Ebook Pricing Now on to our main topic this week: the topic of ebook pricing, which is often a very sensitive topic, especially among newer indie authors. Newer indie authors will sometimes have spent years or a year or a considerable amount of time writing their book, and they feel they should charge accordingly. Like, this was a year of work. Why should I not charge you $9.99 for it or $14.99? A new Stephen King book is $14.99, so why shouldn't I have that price? If I put a year of work on this or more, then why shouldn't I charge for it accordingly? After all, you can go to, you know, Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts or wherever get a coffee for $5. Why shouldn't the book cost more than a coffee since it's more work to produce the book than the coffee? I think that is thinking about ebook pricing the wrong way. You want to think of price as a marketing tool, not a statement on the worth or quality of your book. Some people will have checked their absolute favorite book out of the library and paid nothing for it and that doesn't mean the book is without value. I think you will want to price your books to move. Look for various options for promotional prices as part of your overall marketing strategy. Having a permanently free ebook isn't the instant guaranteed success it used to be, but it still works and we'll talk about that a bit more later in the episode. How you price the first three books in the series is crucial for later books. Don't disappoint the reader with a giant price price hike like $10 between books one and two in a series. Give them a reason to get further into the series. For myself, for my long series, what I'll usually do is set the first book free, set the second book to $0.99, and then after that, the rest of the books in the series will probably be $4.99. The reason I do that is because if you read the first book for free and get the second book for $0.99, then by the end of those two books you have a pretty good idea whether it will be worth your time and money to continue with the series. Charging the same amount as Stephen King or James Patterson for your book is not great marketing for a new, unknown author, or even for a relatively successful indie author. Stephen King and James Patterson can get away with charging that because they are Stephen King and James Patterson. I am not Stephen King or James Patterson and I'm pretty sure you are not, too. It's best to look at what the best-selling indie authors in your genre are charging and price closer to them when possible. People will very rarely pay premium prices (i.e. over $10.00) for fiction that is not from best-selling trad pub authors and even traditionally published authors have seen resistance to pricing over $15.00 for their books. I noticed about a lot of new books from the Bane science fiction and fantasy publishing house tend to be around the $9.99 mark or even the $8.99 mark, which is much more palatable. One thing to note also is that nonfiction readers are less price sensitive, especially in specialized or technical topics. Those readers are looking for a book that meets a need, so they're more concerned about finding a quality book on the exact topic than how much the book costs. Reviews matter more than price in this case. For example, a nonfiction guide about hiking the Grand Canyon full of instruction, maps, and so forth can command a much higher price than memoir about someone who hikes the Grand Canyon because the memoir is less interesting to that particular kind of reader than someone who needs any nonfiction book about the Grand Canyon. So for the next part of this episode, let's look at the pros and cons of the different tiers of pricing and for the sake of this episode, we've organized pricing into 5 tiers. The first tier of pricing is of course free. The purpose for that is obviously much easier to write a free book. It exposes the book to a greater audience than it might have otherwise. Since storage space is abundant, people don't hesitate if something looks interesting if it’s free because you don't have to worry about hoarding ebooks the way you have to do about hoarding paper books. That said, free has several substantial cons to it as well. You're obviously not making any money off a free book unless the book is free temporarily for promotional pricing or the book is perma-free to promote a longer series and entice people to read future books. For a recent example from my own experience, Silent Order: Omnibus One was very recently free on BookBub and the only reason I did that is because it's the first three books in a 14 books series and I've seen excellent read through from that to paid books in the rest of the series, so it was a good marketing experiment that paid off. But if the only book I had was Silent Order: Omnibus One and there weren’t 11 follow up books in the series, then making Silent Order: Omnibus One free would have just been a waste of my time. The second pricing tier is at $0.99 to $1.99. The pros of this include that $0.99 is a price point where for a lot of people, it would be an impulse buy. They don't think about it very much. It's a good price point for promotions such as BookBub and other book promotion sites like Bargain Booksy, Book Barbarian, and so forth, where if you lower your book to a temporary sale price like $0.99, you can advertise it much more effectively because as we said, $0.99 really is an impulse buy for many people. There are a couple of cons to this, too. The Amazon payouts for this price range are not as favorable. If you set your book to $0.99 on Amazon, you will get only 35%, whereas if you set it between $2.99 and $9.99 you'll get 70%, which we'll talk about a bit more shortly. Some readers feel like books in this price range suggests that the book will be low quality. Again, that's a matter of taste, but if you are temporarily promoting your book, you can get good results for $0.99. One thing to also note as well is that just because Amazon has a 35% rate, some of the other retailers do better. Google Play and Barnes and Noble will give you 70% of the $0.99 price point so you can do literally twice as well in terms of revenue from them and I believe Kobo gives you 45% of a $0.99 book. So you can make more money from them off of the other retailers as opposed to Amazon. One note of caution from my own experience: I wouldn't bother with the $1.99 price point. It seems to be sort of the halfway point between $0.99 and $2.99, where people just generally do not like buying things at the $1.99 price point, at least ebooks. I've had better luck with both $2.99 and $0.99 than I have with $1.99. So that is something to bear that to bear in mind, that I've never had much luck with $1.99 price point. That moves us up to our third tier of pricing, $2.99 to $4.99. The pros: over $2.99 is the more favorable Amazon payout range because then you get 70% of the sales price as opposed to 35%. Because of that, $2.99 is still a pretty common price for this reason, especially for the first books in many series. This price is still less than the smallest size Frappuccino at Starbucks, much less than a gallon of gas, so it is a price range that most readers accept. For myself, most of my novels now are at $4.99. For a while, for like 10 years practically, I kept them at $3.99, but when inflation started getting really bad towards the end of 2021 and through 2022, I moved everything up to $4.99 and I really haven't had many problems with that. I think we're at the sweet point between what is a fair price for the book and a price that the readers also accept as fair, which is an important Venn Diagram to master if you are an indie author. The cons of $2.99 to $4.99 are that the price is too high for promotions like BookBub. If you want to do a BookBub feature deal for your book, you are better off applying at $0.99 or free because BookBub is about discount books, not full price books. If your full price is $2.99 or $3.99 or $4.99, it's going to be hard to sell a BookBub, so $2.99 to $4.99 is generally a good regular price for your ebooks and then only go lower if it's part of a special promotion or if you want to make the first book in the series free. Now on to our 4th tier, $5.99 through $9.99. The pro is that you are still getting good payout rate from Amazon at this price point; you're still in the 70% range, which stops at $9.99 and readers are generally comfortable paying this range if they are already fans of the author and series. I haven't tried to go above $4.99 for my individual novels, because I don't want people to feel like I'm trying nickel and dime them. But I do know indie authors who do, and that it basically comes down to a personal decision if you feel comfortable doing that and your readership would support paying the higher price. The con is of course it's difficult to get new readers and do promotions at this price tier. If you want to do a sale where you make like the first book of your series free, you're dropping down to $0.99. As we mentioned earlier in the show, the jump in price from free or $0.99, to for example, $7.99 might be jarring enough that it will turn off readers and discourage them from buying the books later in the series. Now we come to the fifth and final tier of pricing, $10 and up. Pro is that the readers often accept this price tier for specialty nonfiction or technical books, especially if they are long books with a lot of images, maps, and details. I am thinking about things like RPG source books, travel guides like I mentioned earlier, technical nonfiction that involves a lot of diagrams and maybe like, pictures of engine parts. However, there are a lot of cons with pricing your ebook over $10. The biggest one is that you will only get 35% from Amazon. So if, for example, you set your book at $9.99 and sell it, you'll get about $7.00 depending on the sales tax and size of the ebook file and so forth. But if you set the book at $15 instead of $7.00, you will receive only $5.20, give or take, depending upon conversion rates. So it makes much more sense to price your e-book at $9.99 if you want to go that high instead of raising the price into around $14.99 or $19.99 because you will actually be making less money. You're selling fewer copies and getting paid less per copy, which is not a recipe for success. It also sets expectations sky high, because if you're paying that much for something, you want it to be perfect and it will repel all but the most devoted continuing readers, especially for fiction. If you're writing very specialist nonfiction, you might be able to get away with it, but you will sell fewer copies and probably not make as much per copy. So those are the pros and cons of the five different pricing tiers we're talking about. My thoughts on book pricing have evolved a little bit over the years, but not very much. I think overall if you are an indie author writing genre fiction, the best recipe for commercial success remains to write a long series and then make the first book free, the second book like $0.99, and then the rest of the books in the series to whatever the usual price for the series you set is (whether it's $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, or $5.99). Though to be honest, I would not price an ebook novel $5.99 myself. Your circumstances may vary. If I was starting out today, my advice to a new writer would be basically to do that: write a series and make the first book free, make the second book $0.99. and then keep writing books in the series. For myself, I don't think I would write another series with more than nine books in it because you get a little drop in read-through from book to book. I think Cloak Mage with Nadia is the last series I'm going to write with over nine books in it. I think ideally in the future, my length for a series would be 6 to 8 books and then once the series is over, I start over with a new series and then eventually once I get enough books out in the series, make the first one free, the second one $0.99, and the rest full price. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping to pull together through research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts (transcripts are available for episodes 140 to the present). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 205: SILENT ORDER series Questions & Answers
06/17/2024
Episode 205: SILENT ORDER series Questions & Answers
In this week's episode, I take a look back at my SILENT ORDER science fiction series, and answer twelve of the most common questions from readers about the books. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 205 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June the 14th, 2024 and today we are doing a question and answer session on my Silent Order science fiction series. Before we get to that, we will have an update on my current writing progress and then Question of the Week. My main project right now is Shield of Darkness, a sequel to Shield of Storms and the second book in the Shield War series. Progress has not been as quick as I would like, but there still has been progress and as of this recording, I am about 84,000 words into the rough draft. It really helped that I had a 10,000 word day on June 12th. That really propelled things forward. I'm not entirely sure how long the rough draft is going to be. I think it's probably going to end up around 120,000 words, maybe 115,000 words. We'll see when get there. But I'm still hoping to have it out in July, sometime after the 4th of July. After that is done, my next project will be Half-Orc Paladin, the third book in the Rivah series, and I'm currently 24,000 words into that and I think that one will be around 75,000 words (give or take) once it's done. I’m also 9,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs, but that will come out later in the year. In audiobook news, I’m pleased to report that the collection Tales of the Shield Knight, which contains sixteen stories from the Sevenfold Sword and the Dragontiarna series, is now out in audiobook, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books at the moment, and should gradually be making its way onto the other audiobook stores as it gets through processing. Be sure to subscribe to my new release newsletter because sometimes I will give away individual audio short stories for free from that collection in my newsletter. 00:01:50 Question of the Week Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Our Question of the Week segment is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: if you read mystery novels, what was the first mystery novel you ever read? No, wrong answers obviously, and as you'd expect, we had quite a few different responses. Justin says: A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I was 12. I had chicken pox and was confined to my room. I begged my father for something to read, and he handed me a massive book, The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Two days later, I asked for other books by him. I'm still not a fan of mysteries, but Doyle was a great author. Our next comment is from Ray, who says: Hardy Boys, also Sherlock Holmes for school. As an adult, the first I recall by choice were the Father Blackie Mysteries by Andrew Greeley. Our next comment is from Jake who says: can't remember. It had to be back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. But I agree with you, it's great to diversify in reading. Someone gifted me a copy of Water for Elephants. I would never have read that by choice, but I'm glad I did. Our next comment is from Jeff, who says: Tom Swift books and Hound of the Baskervilles. Tom Swift was even science fiction-ish with their far-out inventions. Our next comment is from Jonathan (not me), who says: the Hardy Boys Hunting for Hidden Gold. The reprinted Flashlight edition was my first mystery read for me by my mom when I was about 8. This would have also been my first mystery that I read independently. When I was 10 through 11, I read the original Hardy Boys While the Clock Ticked. I was too young to know about the different editions of novels until much later, but I was always dissatisfied with the Flashlight version because it lacked the ending that I remembered. It was years later that I discovered the history of the series, which led to me finding and purchasing all or most of the original novels. Our next comment is from Becca, who says: Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys in early grade school. No idea which one, but I had quite a few of them. First adult mystery series was probably middle school and was The Alphabet Series by Sue Grafton and the Joe Grey series by Murphy. My mom really encouraged me to read pretty much anything and everything. Wish you would write more mystery books. They're so great. Thanks, Becca. I am glad you liked the mystery books, so I don't think too many other people did, which is why I have not written more of them. Our next comment is from Justin who says: first mystery novel was The Hardy Boys in grade school. Michael says: not my first, but I really like the Pendergast series by Lincoln and Child. Worth the read if folks haven't tried. John says: The Three Investigators series by Alfred Hitchcock. I don't know where I got the first one. My mom probably got it at a yard sale or something, but I was hooked. Was able to check out the others in the series for my school's library. I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade. Juana says: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Our next comment is from Ann-Marie, who says: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and The Boxcar Children. Jeremiah says: Sherlock Holmes. Andrew says: As a young’un in grade school, I read The Mystery of the Green Ghost. It has stuck with me all these years. As a little more mature reader, I got a hold of The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Quite entertaining indeed. My own answer to this was I think it was Tell No One by Harlan Coben. This was way back in 2001 and I had a long car ride coming up. At the time I didn't read anything except fantasy and science fiction, but I got Tell No One as a present and I didn't have anything else to read while in the car. So I started reading Tell No One during the ride. The book is about an ER physician whose wife was murdered eight years ago. Then one day out of the blue, the physician gets a message that could only have come from her. Suddenly people show up to kill the physician and he finds himself on the run from the agents of a sinister billionaire. I was definitely hooked, and I've read mysteries and thrillers on and off since. I think this was good for me long term since I ended up a writer and it's good for writers to read widely in different genres. You always tell what a science fiction novel, for example, was written by someone who has never heard anything but science fiction. Additionally, when I wrote out the Question of the Week, I did not have Hardy Boys in mind because I was thinking of them as you know, books for children and I was thinking about adult books, but I did indeed read a bunch of The Hardy Boys books when I was a kid, but it was that was long enough going out that I can't clearly recall the plots of any of them, I’m afraid. 00:06:04 Main Topic: Silent Order Question and Answer Time (Note: Some Spoilers for the series in this section) Now on to our main topic of the week, Silent Order question and answer time. Why talk about this now, about a year after I finished the Silent Order science fiction series? Well, the reason for that is Silent Order Omnibus One had a very successful Bookbub feature deal at the end of May. Silent Order Omnibus One was briefly the number 2 free ebook on Amazon US and the number 1 free ebook on Amazon UK. So thanks for that, everyone. As you can imagine, this resulted in a lot of new eyes on the series, which inspired many reader questions, which is funny because I've been getting most of the same questions about the series and its particular idiosyncrasies for about seven years now. So let's have some answers below. First, some basic facts about the series. I published the first five books in September and October of 2017. It ended up at about 14 books, and I published the 14th and final book in September of 2023. All books are available on all ebook platforms. I've dabbled with Kindle Unlimited for it in the past, but not anymore. It's available wide and will remain so. There are also six tie-in short stories to the series that I've given away for free to my newsletter subscribers at various times. Now, with the basic facts out of the way, let's proceed to the most common questions from the last seven years of Silent Order. Question #1: Why do the characters still use kinetic, chemically propelled firearms 100,000 years in the future? By this question, people are usually wondering why at times the characters in the Silent Order are using, you know, traditional guns that fire metal bullets as opposed to like blasters or lasers or plasma cannons or whatever. And the answer is, not to be flippant, but why wouldn't they? People forget that firearms technology has been used for military applications, at least in the West, for at least nearly 700 years. Cannons were used in the 100 Years War and the 100 Years War started in 1337. Firearms technology has been refined and improved considerably since then, and no doubt it will continue to receive refinements and improvements in the future. Additionally, chemically propelled firearms offer many advantages over more advanced weaponry like lasers, rail guns, blasters, or particle weapons, especially for handheld levels of weaponry. A chemically propelled firearm doesn't require electricity or a power source and can't be disabled by an EMP. It's also more durable and rugged than a more advanced weapon, which would almost certainly require delicate electronic components. In fact, some models of firearm can famously be exposed to harsh conditions and continue to function. There's just no way you could do the same thing with a laser. Some devices, some machines are just the apex of their technological niche. Despite all the advanced weaponry available in the 21st century, soldiers still carry combat knives because in a situation where you need a knife, it is the best tool for the job. I suspect chemically propelled firearms dominate their niche in the same way. Question #2: Why isn't the technology in Silent Order as advanced as I think it should be? Well, they do have faster than light travel, artificial gravity, inertial absorption, anti-gravity lifts, shields, plasma weaponry, and ion thrusters. You can't exactly order any of that stuff off Amazon today. Medical technology is rather more advanced as well. The average human lifespan in Calaskar and other “developed” worlds at this time period is about 160 years due to advances in genetic engineering and better understanding of mitochondrial DNA. Cloned replacement limbs and organs are common medical procedures. When a replacement limb can’t be cloned, installing a cybernetic one is typically a one day medical procedure. In the back story of the series, there are five very large Terran empires that rose and collapsed before the start of the series, which is about, as I've said, 100,000 years into the future. Those Terran empires each tended to have more advanced technology in certain areas than is common at the start of the series. One was a lot better at genetic engineering, another built super advanced sentient AI (more on that later) and so forth. When the particular empire fell or disintegrated into smaller successor states, there was some technological backsliding, and some of the more super advanced technology was lost. Question #3: The protagonist Jack March has the same initials as the author, Jonathan Moeller. Was that deliberate? Oh no, it wasn't. One of the original inspirations for the series were the James Bond books, so I chose a name that was the opposite of James Bond. After all, March is kind of the opposite of Bond in the sense of movement versus stasis and stagnation. In the original books, James Bond was always a sort of self-destructive alcoholic who gets somewhat worse as the series goes along and he doesn't have much in the way of character development. By contrast, I wanted March to have much more character change and growth. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that gave Jack March the same initials as me until three or four years into writing the series. The obvious is only obvious in hindsight, alas. Occasionally people say March is an authorial self-insert, but I guarantee you that he is not. If he were, he'd be a cranky middle aged former IT worker who doesn't like to go out very much. Question #4: Why doesn't March sleep with any of the beautiful women he meets in the first four books? Because he didn't want to. Like I said, he's sort of the opposite of James Bond and doesn't like unprofessionalism like that on the job. Also, by the time the series starts, he's old enough that casual flings no longer interest him and ultimately, he would really rather be on his own. It isn't until he meets a woman who truly understands him that this starts to change and the woman understands him because she hates the Final Consciousness just as much as he does. Question #5: Why do the characters still use phones? Well, they're not “cellular telephones” in the way that we think of them. They're more like personal handheld telecommunication and computing devices that are significantly more powerful than anything available today. That said, words sometimes long outlast the original purpose. The word mile originally came from the Latin language and described the distance a Roman soldier could cover with 1,000 steps. There is no longer a Roman Empire or Roman legionaries, but the term remains in use. There's a good chance that the word phone will outlast our current civilization and continue to refer to a telecommunications device just as miles still refers to a unit of distance, even though it doesn't have anything to do with marching soldiers or the Roman Empire. Additionally, phone was the simplest word available and using a sci-fi ish term like a mobile data pad or personal communicator or handheld computer just seemed a bit try hard. I used the metric system for distance in the series because the majority of Earth's population uses it today, so I assume it will eventually win out over time by pure weight of numbers. Question #6: Why does March work for repressive government like Calaskar? Whether or not Caesar is repressive depends on one's perspective. I expect someone from the 1850s or even the 1950s United States would find the Calaskaran government rather liberal and shockingly egalitarian. But many people from 2024 America would probably find it repressive. That said, I think Calaskar is better described as conformist. If you don't criticize the king or the official doctrines of the Royal Calaskaran church, you can say pretty much anything you want, and Calaskar doesn't have anything like the social problems of the 21st century United States, though that is partly because dissidents are eventually encouraged to leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere. Some of Calaskar’s neighbors like Rustaril and the Falcon Republic were originally Calaskaran worlds that split off due to ideological differences. Rustaril opted for a form of socialism that led to its stagnation and ongoing decline, while the Falcon Republic is more hyper-capitalistic and libertarian and therefore very unstable, albeit with a cloned army that steps in and takes over when things get out of hand. Calaskar claims that its government combines the best aspects of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, though opinions differ among the characters in the books whether or not this is actually true. However, the series is mostly written from the perspective of Jack March, and he doesn't much care about everything we just discussed in the previous paragraph. He primarily works for the Silent Order, which is a Calaskaran intelligence agency that answers only to its own leaders and the King. The ultimate mission of the Silent Order is to monitor the elite and upper classes of Calaskaran society, whether political, business, or entertainment elites. If they start acting in a destructive way that will harm Calaskar and civilization, the Silent Order either discredits them, sabotages their careers, or arranges an accident (depending on how severe the particular elite’s brand of corruption is). Obviously, many people would have severe moral qualms about arranging the fatal extrajudicial accident of a corrupt government or judicial official. Since March's own home world of Calixtus was betrayed to the Final Consciousness by its elite classes, he has no problem doing this kind of work. For March's perspective, Calaskar opposes the Final Consciousness and has been the primary rival to the Final Consciousness for some time, which is good enough for him. The fact that life on Calaskar is vastly better than anywhere ruled by the Final Consciousness just reinforces his decision. Question #7: Was this series inspired by the computer game Starfield? I have to admit I LOLed at this question. I started writing Silent Order on New Year's Eve in 2016 and the final book in the series came out in early September 2023. In fact, if I remember it, Starfield came out like two or three days after I published the final Silent Order book. So I can confidently say that the series wasn't inspired by Starfield in any way. That said, I would say that the video games which did help shape my thinking about the books were Wing Commander: Privateer, TIE Fighter, and Master of Orion 1 and 2. All those games were from the 1990s, of course, so I suppose I'm dating myself. Question #8: What actually did inspire the Silent Order series? The video games I mentioned above, for one. Also, the original James Bond books. When I started thinking about writing a science fiction series, I decided that I wanted to do a spy thriller, but in space. The Final Consciousness was sort of the idea of cybernetic space totalitarians. James Bond originally went up against SMERSH and then SPECTRE in the books, but March would go up against the covert agents of the sinister cybernetic Final Consciousness. There are also Lovecraftian themes in the books, as is gradually revealed throughout the series, that the Final Consciousness is in fact controlled by cosmic horrors from another universe. Believe it or not, the various malfunctions of ChatGPT also helped inspire some of the later books. I had established way back in Silent Order: Iron Hand that a true AI always goes homicidally insane. So when I actually did have to run an AI supercomputer character from one of the later books, I based its behavior on some ChatGPT and Bing Chat’s more hilarious public meltdowns, though if I had waited a little longer and based it on Google's AI, the AI supercomputer character could have suggested that the protagonist add glue to their pizza cheese or perhaps eats are real small rocks a day for minerals. The day I wrote this paragraph (which was June 10th, 2024), Apple announced they're adding a bunch of AI stuff to both the iPad and iPhone, and no doubt more AI will soon reach meme status on the Internet. Needless to say, my opinion of generative AI in general is quite low. Question #9: Have the covers for the series changed? They look different on Goodreads. Not only have the covers changed over the last seven years, they have changed a lot. The covers went through five different iterations. At first I did them myself in GIMP and then I tried a couple different variations. During COVID I took a Photoshop class which I admit leveled up my cover design skills significantly, so I tried some character-based covers but they never had the results I was hoping to see in terms of sales. Then in 2022, I saw a Penny Arcade comic that made a joke about how science fiction readers want to see book covers that show spaceships and planets in close proximity. And while this was a joke, I realized it was nonetheless true, so I redid the covers to the current look that features spaceships in close proximity to planets, and the series has sold the best overall with the new set of covers. Science fiction writers...
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Episode 204: Audiobook Sampler Platter!
06/10/2024
Episode 204: Audiobook Sampler Platter!
In this week's special summer episode, I share samples from four of my audiobooks. 1.) Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, narrated by Brad Wills. 2.) Ghost in the Serpent, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. 3.) Half-Elven Thief, narrated by Leanne Woodward. 4.) Stealth & Spells Online: Creation, narrated by CJ McAllister.
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Episode 203: 7 Bad Ways To Start Your Novel
06/03/2024
Episode 203: 7 Bad Ways To Start Your Novel
In this week's episode, we take a look at seven bad ways to open your novel and how to avoid their pitfalls. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 203 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 31st, 2024 and today we are looking at seven bad ways to start your novel. Usually here we have Coupon of the Week. Unfortunately my Internet is currently down as I'm recording this, which means I can't get to my Payhip store and I can't create a Coupon of the Week. So we will resume with Coupon of the Week in June when I start recording new episodes. So now let's move directly to my current writing progress on my current writing projects. I am 38,000 words into Shield of Darkness, which currently puts the Chapter 7 of 24. I have 24 chapters in the rough draft outline, but that will probably increase because I’ll have to split a few of the longer ones in editing. I had hoped to have that out in June. That doesn't look like it's going to happen because I have a lot of home repair to do in June and a couple of multi-day commitments where I won't be able to do any writing. So I think we are looking more likely for some time after the 4th of July in mid-July is when that book will come out. I am also 20,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, which will come out after Shield of Darkness comes out. I am also 6,000 words into Ghost in the Tombs, which will come out sometime this fall, if all goes well. In audiobook news, we are done recording Tales of the Shield Knight, which will excellently be excellently narrated by Brian Wills and that will be a collection of the various short stories I wrote to accompany the Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna series. That is all done and should hopefully start appearing on various audiobook platforms before the end of June. 00:01:44 Question of the Week Now before we get into our main topic, let's go to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics, and this week's question: what was the first smartphone you ever used, and what was the first time you decided a smartphone was useful and not a waste of money? And we had one response for this one. Our first response is from Justin, who says: my work issued me a BlackBerry in 2004. Some folks considered them a first smartphone. I considered it a pain. They figured with that they owed me 24/7 and demanded an answer within 5 minutes to any email. I stopped that by asking how much they were paying me to reply outside of work hours. Then I was brought in for a work reprimand for not replying to an urgent e-mail sent during the day. My defense was that I was driving back from a remote site. When asked if I should be using the device while driving (already a no-no back then) or should I pull over and check every time I got a message, my boss decided that just maybe I wouldn't get in trouble that time, anyway. So far, I was not a fan. In 2011, we switched from Blackberries to Samsung with the first Galaxy S. I was unsure about the change, but the increased battery life and ability to put the phone in my shirt pocket won me over. What made it a true useful tool was when I installed the flashlight app on it. Working in a prison made it a pain to bring in a flashlight. You had to have paperwork and disassembled at every checkpoint to show that there's no contraband being smuggled in. The phone got a sticker and was blessed to pass security scrutiny thereafter. The flashlight was so handy. Now it's part of the OS, but then it needed a separate program to run. Yeah, smartphones have definitely contributed to the erosion of work/life balance, in my opinion. I used to do a lot of support for BlackBerry devices and they were a huge pain. I wasn't terribly upset to see the iPhone and Android displace BlackBerry and you know, sort of push it out of business because those phones, from a support perspective, let me tell you, were a big pain. For myself, it was in 2013 when I got my first smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S3. I hadn’t wanted to get a smartphone, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to find non-smartphones. So I finally bit the bullet and moved into the new technology. At the time, I usually resented it since I just wanted another flip phone. When did I find it useful for the first time? I remember that incident distinctly. I was working in IT support at the time, and the next day I had to go activate some network ports in another building. The building in question had been built in the ‘90s before Wi-Fi, and so every room had something like a billion Ethernet ports in it. But network switches are expensive, and even though the building has a little like 500 Ethernet ports, only 48 of them could be active at any one time, since that was how many ports the network switch had. So when anyone moved offices, an IT support minion (i.e. me) had to go over there and move the active network ports in the network closet. I used to take a notebook with me on those kinds of calls so I could write down the port numbers and then match them up to the appropriate ports in the switch closet. But as I was doing this, it occurred to me that I didn't have to write down the port numbers. I could just take a picture of them and then look at the picture on my phone. This was much more efficient than writing down a bunch of port numbers and that was the first time I saw a smartphone as a useful tool instead of just an expensive toy. The inspiration for this week’s question was a recent email I got from a reader complaining how the characters in the Silent Order science fiction series still use phones even though it's far in the future. 00:05:03 Main Topic: 7 Potentially Bad Openings for Your Novel Now let's move on to our main topic this week, seven potentially bad beginnings or openings for your novel. It is important to try and have the opening of your novel be as interesting as possible, and sometimes writers overdo it a bit when they'll start the novel with a sentence like, “today, I will tell you about the time I died for the fifth time” or something like that where you can be try and be so interesting that it becomes overwrought and actually kind of annoying to read. The flip side of this is you definitely don't want your opening to be boring or do anything that would turn off the reader, because while the ending of your book is important, the opening is also important because that will be what draws the reader in and hopefully compels them to read more and then go on and purchase any sequels. So with that in mind, let's go through seven of the potentially worst openings for your novel. Number one: being vague or mysterious to the point of being confusing. Confusion is bad. It's easy to confuse or baffle readers if you are not careful. The setting, characters, and what's happening all can't be a mystery at the beginning or the reader will have nothing to orient them in terms of what's happening in them in the book, or even what genre it is. It would be best to establish a very strong setting and character first and then have them learn what's happening and feel disoriented alongside the reader, which can work for a vague or mysterious beginning, especially if it's part of some action. You don't want your reader to be confused, but it is sometimes a good idea to have your protagonist be confused, since that will hook the reader and pull them in. For example, let's say we have a convenience store clerk who's coming to work, and as she does, she sees her boss turn into a bat and fly away. This has never happened to her before, and she's immediately baffled and wondering whether she's has a brain tumor or she just saw something supernatural or science fictional happen, and that can and that kind of set out can be a good way to hook the reader and draw them further into the story. The second bad way to start your novel is with nothing. In other words, nothing is happening or things are happening too slowly. Philosophical musings and/or emotional reflections are not a good way to start a book because they're not connected to the plot or character yet and on their own in fiction, they don't mean anything. Your reader has picked up the book to read a fictional story, not your opinions on various philosophies or political platforms or whatever. They don't have any emotional significance or connect to the plot until they're connected to a character in some way, and so you need to establish your characters in your settings and something of the plot before you can have a more philosophical considerations showing up. Something needs to be happening in the beginning to draw in reader interest, like for example with the convenience store. This could also be a way to show, not tell about the characters and setting. With our convenience store clerk, we could have her wake up, look at her credit card bills trying to figure out ways to make more money. That lets us know that she might be in debt and might be having financial troubles and she could be worried about paying to fix her car or finding a better apartment. And so then she's worried about these things when out of the blue, her boss at the convenience store turns into a giant bat and flies away. That helps us establish proper context and character and then since she'll feel realistic and grounded after all that , it may be all the more shocking when she sees something outside of her everyday life. The third bad way to start a novel is what's called an info dump. That is, when in a fantasy or science fiction setting, the writer dumps all of his or her world building onto you right away or if you are writing like a thriller or a historical novel, the writer dumps all of his or her research on you right away. You don't need to give readers all your world building, historical research, or other such research before moving ahead with the plot. Parcel out your world building slowly throughout the book. This can be done in a way to build tension or mystery to keep interest. Remember, the reader generally doesn't need to know more than is necessary to move the plot forward. No matter how much research you do, no matter how much information you require or world building you do, only put enough into the book to move the plot forward. Anything else will just it bog down. The fourth bad way to start your novel is with a cliche, and by cliche we mean starting the novel with “it was a dark and stormy night.” I also strongly recommend not to start your novel with the description of the weather, since that's often lazy writing and sort of a crutch to, you know, sort of for the writer to warm himself up. Don't start with an intro that turns out to be just a dream or a prophecy or something that will be retconned later. Don't start with the character waking up and getting ready in the morning unless you make it interesting. This can work if you do it right, but sometimes it can be clumsy to sort of start where it's like a TV show where there's a record scratch, the screen pauses, and the character says “you might be wondering how I got here” and that can work. However, it's best to only do that if you can do it well and you can do it in a way that's interesting. The fifth bad way to start your book is with a line of dialogue. While this can be done well, it can be a hook to draw on readers, but it's hard to do and it's very easy to annoy or confuse the reader. It can be good for an in media res situation where the character is an intense situation, but you should only do it if it's very clear who is speaking and what is going on. The sixth bad way to start your book is in a way that is stylistically not representative of the rest of the book, such as starting with an omniscient narrator and then switching over to first person for the rest of the book or a book starts with an action scene and the book that is otherwise not very action oriented or starts with a long historical tangent in a book that is very action oriented. And finally, the seventh way to start your book in a bad way is the prologue. Or more to the point, an ineffective prologue. I used to write prologues from time to time, but I personally don't care for them and really have come to consider them extraneous. The kind of information that is included in prologue can usually be better parceled out throughout the book in a way that pulls in the reader and draws your interest. Prologues that don't match the first chapter or immediately tie into the first chapter’s action can annoy and lose the reader. A prologue needs stakes to be interesting, and prologues need to be short and ideally some kind of cliffhanger that gives weight or tension to what you're about to introduce. The absolute worst kind of prologues (in my opinion) are those that introduce a character who disappears and does not reappear for like 200 or 300 pages into the book, by which time the reader has likely forgotten all about that character. So those are several ways to open your book that are less than effective and hopefully that will help you with your own writing to write introductions and openings to your book that are interesting and hold the reader's attention. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.
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Episode 202: 7 Lessons From Defunct Ebook Stores
05/27/2024
Episode 202: 7 Lessons From Defunct Ebook Stores
In this week's episode, we take a look at seven ebook stores that failed, and what lessons indie authors can learn from them. This coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SPRINGTALONS The coupon code is valid through June 4th, 2024. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 202 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 24th, 2024, and today we're looking at lessons from seven defunct ebook stores. We also have updates on my current writing projects and Question of the Week. Before we get into that, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of Dragon Skull: Talons of the Sorcerer (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGTALONS, spelled SPRINGTALONS and of course, as always, we'll have that and the links in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June the 4th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. As I mentioned last week Cloak of Titans is out and selling very briskly on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. The response has been very strong and so thank you all for that, and I'm glad so many of you are reading and enjoying the book. Now that Cloak of Titans is out, my next project is Shield of Darkness and I am pleased to report I am 18,000 words into it as of this recording. If all goes well, I'm hoping to have that out before the end of June, though that might slip to July depending on how much I need to do in real life in June. After Shield of Darkness is out, my next project will be Half-Orc Paladin, the third Rivah book. I’m about 17,000 words into that, and I'm hoping that will come out in sometime in July, if all goes well. After that, I will be writing the third Shield War book and then Ghost in the Tombs. I will start on Cloak of Illusion, the sequel to Cloak of Titans, after Half-Orc Paladin is done and out. In audiobook news, we are almost done with Tales of the Shield Knight, the Sevenfold Sword/Dragontiarna short story collection that will be narrated by Brad Wills. The collection will be available for sale on all the usual audiobook stores. I will be giving away individual audiobook short stories from time to time to my newsletter subscribers. So that is something to look forward to and if all goes well, we are planning to record Wizard Thief and Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling in audiobook in June. That's still somewhat tentative, but it should be happening. 00:02:24 Question of the Week Let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics, and this week's question: should a book in a long running series start with a little summary of what's happened in previous books? Like, you know how a streaming TV series will often have a previously on section of the start of the show? It's usually a little thirty second montage of key scenes and whatnot from the previous episodes. I got to wondering about this because I was talking with someone who was reading Cloak of Titans, which is the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series and overall the 23rd Nadia book and the reader in question couldn’t remember when the character of Doctor Spencer had first appeared in the series and wished the book had included a little previously on summary in the style of a streaming show. So I put this up for Question of the Week and we had a wide range of opinions on this topic this week. Our first response is from Mike, who says: as for my opinion, if it's the show that is in episodes of at least weekly schedule, I usually either just fast forward through that previously on segment or if it's supported by the service I'm watching the show on, I use the skip it feature. I can almost see the use of it if there are very long (as in a year or two) episodes between the previously on feature. Justin says: info dumps may be necessary sometimes (for example, Star Wars), but should be avoided otherwise. Show, don't tell. I personally find prologues describing past events and characters off-putting. A compromise would be a glossary in the back a la Tolkien. That way the people who want more information or need reminders can indulge themselves without forcing people like me to go along. I have to agree here with Justin about prologues. I don't really like them and stopped doing them, except in very rare cases. My least favorite kind of prologue is one that starts a very long book and references a character who doesn't show up again for like 250 pages. Our next response is from Mike, who says: I think if the summary is brief and concise, it is absolutely worth it. I remember with the Lord of the Rings Tolkien did it, but they were not brief or concise, but I'm glad he did it. It also depends on how far apart each book in the series is as to how much information is needed. Kirsty says: I think it depends on how quickly each new book is published. With your books, I don't need a reminder as you write them fairly quickly and not enough time passes for me to need one. However, some authors take longer. This is fine. I have no problem waiting, but when there's several years between books, for me a short reminder at the beginning would be useful. Gary says: personally, I skip over rehash sections in series books. Keith says: a previously on section at the beginning of the book, would be much preferred over the myriad flashbacks throughout the book explaining things that readers of the series should already know. Don't get me wrong, I'm hooked on almost all your book series, but I find myself skipping over repeated discussions and descriptions about events of previous books just to get to the good stuff. That is an interesting dilemma for a writer. It's kind of like a chess fork. A chess fork is a movement situation in chess where you find yourself in a situation where no matter what happens, you're going to lose a piece next turn. You just have to choose which one you're going to lose. And there's something similar with writers for that in how much you reference background events. If you reference background events, people don't like that will get annoyed, but if you don't reference the background events, the people who want to read up on them and be reminded of what happened will get annoyed. So basically, as with so many things in writing, you just get to do what you want and accept that some people will be annoyed. Our next response is from Jesse, who says: I've seen this somewhat frequently in a lot of the fantasy novels I've read. It does really help when said author releases 1-3 books a year in a given series. To your credit, I typically haven't had time to lose all details by the time your next book hits for any given series (minus the Silent Order gap), so well done. Our next response is from MacKenzie, who says: oh boy, having just finished Wheel of Time (ran through the whole thing back-to-back and I have thoughts), to me as a reader, if you need to remind me about characters, then something is wrong. Either the character is insufficiently memorable, there are too many characters to efficiently track, or they are appearing too infrequently. In reading through Jordan’s behemoth, I can pick out instances that fall into all of the above columns. If it wasn’t the fact that I'm a completionist, I would probably have abandoned the project in the final quarter. There is a sweet spot in balancing plot complexity and cast size is undeniably challenging for an author, but that's what separates the ones that keep buying from the ones I let go. Our next response is from Kevin, who says: I would find a brief summary useful, especially when there has been a long period between books. However, this would only really come into play for those of us reading a long series as it is being written. Alternatively, a dramatis personae might be of use to refresh one's mind. Matthew says: with the speed you bring out books (kudos, by the way), people will flow from one to another. If there's gap or natural stopping point in the narrative, I would do no more than two page summary. Michael says: just enough to set the stage with the basis for this story. Hints to previous adventure can be included at appropriate points where they support the actions in the story (and maybe invite readers to check out those books). Cheryl says: yes, books should have a brief summary of the previous book, especially if it’s been a year or so since the last book. Juana says: I like a roundup of events. Susan says: I would love a brief summary of the previous book. I read so much that I need refreshing if it's been a while. If I'm reading the whole series at one time, the summary could be skipped. A different Michael says: I don't think so. I would hope people really a long running series would be familiar with the ongoing storyline. So usually when I talk about Question of the Week, I always say there is no right answer, and that appears to definitely be the case here, where there is a wide range of opinions on this. For myself, I suppose it depends on how well written and concise the “previously” summary at the start of the book would be, and if the author can find a way to frame it in a humorous or entertaining manner, that is probably the way to go about it. 00:08:08 Main Topic: Seven Lessons from Defunct/Diminished Ebook Stores Now on to our main topic this week, seven lessons from defunct or heavily diminished ebook store’s platforms and what to learn from them. The point of this came about when I was thinking about how I've been self-publishing for 13 years now and how I have in fact outlasted some of the stores where I used to sell my ebooks, which is kind of a milestone for longevity, I suppose. Now the point of this episode isn't too gloat about how I outlasted various ebook stores that went out of business. I don't want to do that, but it is to show the lessons that can be learned for indie authors and perhaps businesses in general, from ebook stores that have gone out of business for whatever reason. It may surprise some people learn this, but Amazon was not the first to market for ebooks. They had both predecessors and competitors that no longer exist or exist as a shadow of their former selves. In these failures, there are some valuable lessons about selling ebooks. You can see this in other areas of technology as well, where Apple did not invent the MP3 player category with the iPod or they did not invent the smartphone category with the iPhone. There were numerous devices in both spaces beforehand. It's just the iPod and the iPhone were such a compellingly packaged products that they came to eventually dominate their niches for a time. So the best lesson learned from all this is that direct sales and DRM-free ebooks provide both you and the reader a measure of stability that even many large companies cannot. The first defunct ebook we'll talk about is Sony's ebook store. People may not remember this now, but Sony did have an ebook store and they had an ebook reader device that came out several years before the Kindle. I did know some people who absolutely swore by their Sony ebook reader. Their ereader device was innovative and made people interested in ebooks. Amazon later rolled out the Kindle, which was a much more user-friendly device. Buying ebooks through Sony was a clunky process compared to the one click shopping on the Kindle Store. The Sony store closed in 2014 and its purchased content for users transitioned over to Kobo. What lessons can we learn from this? First is to make it as easy as humanly possible for consumers to buy and receive their ebooks and that being first to market is not a guarantee of success, and you need to match the innovations of your competitors. The next defunct ebook store is Diesel, which was an independent bookstore that launched in 2004 and closed in 2014, and their stated reason for closing was not being able to keep up with larger competitors such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, and others entering the market. And again, we can see kind of the same lessons from Sony there, where being first to market doesn't mean you're going stay king of the market and that it is also important to change your business as business conditions dictate. Our third default ebook store we're going to talk about is Oyster, which some of you may remember. It was shut down in 2016 shortly after being acquired by Google, which has a regrettable tendency to run some of these acquisitions into the ground. Oyster’s business model was to be a Netflix for ebooks. They were praised for this business model and they had a very nice and easy to use website. The lessons to learn were: one, you need to have a great interface to have a great customer experience, and two, it showed the demand for temporary access to ebooks, foreshadowing the future success of the library app Libby. Subscription services are still in the ebook space today, with the two biggest ones being Amazon's Kindle Unlimited and Kobo’s Kobo Plus, which is interesting because I wonder how they'll continue because we'd see how subscriptions are suffering quite badly in the media streaming space for TV and movies, where these services keep getting more and more expensive and generally worse to use with more limited content and a lot more ads. So it'll be interesting to see if ebook streaming services can continue because unlike movies or TV shows, ebooks are much cheaper to produce and stream. Our fourth one is the physical bookstores Borders. Not maybe people know this nowadays, but borders did have its own ebook store for a while, which opened in 2010, but then they switched it over to Kobo branding in 2011. Unfortunately, Borders later went out of business, though Kobo survived that. Granted, Kobo took a few knocks for that, especially in the US, because when Borders went out of business, a lot of people in the US thought Kobo went out of business too, which was not the case. Kobo is still alive and well today and does seem to be very dominant in Canada compared to Kindle. The main lesson learned here is that working with a partner provides some flexibility and saves on costs of maintaining your own platform. And since the platform was already run on Kobo on the back end, the switch was not particularly rough on customers. The lesson for Kobo was that they didn't want to be too dependent on a partner, which is why Kobo in general has tended to work with a lot of different companies over the years. The next ebook store that closed that we should mention is Microsoft. Microsoft did have an ebook store for a while. You could buy epubs through the Microsoft Store and read them in your Microsoft Edge browser. However, it closed in 2019. When the platform closed, purchased books were no longer available. This was darkly satisfying to many people because they could remember Microsoft's attempt to run a music store in the ‘90s and the early 2000s with their Plays for Sure DRM. Eventually Microsoft abandoned its music service and the customers lost access to all their purchased music tracks, which was a considerable scandal at the time, and some people are still quite bitter about this for obvious reasons. The lesson to learn is that ebooks and other digital content aren’t truly owned if you can download, save, and store copies of the files. I sell DRM-free copies on my Payhip store to give readers the ability to do just that. Perhaps another lesson is that it's good not to 100% trust Microsoft, as many unfortunate laid off game developers have learned in the past couple of weeks. The final ebook store is an interesting case because it's part of Amazon. It was the Kindle store in China. For a while, Amazon did have a Kindle store that it tried to run in China, which closed in 2023. It failed for many reasons. One of the main ones was by the time Kindle devices came to China in 2013, there was already too much competition in market, and Amazon couldn't get a foothold. Local culture in China seems to frown upon paying for ebooks and paying for ebooks is not a norm there because piracy is the standard. Another thing was that it is very difficult for a variety of reasons for foreign authors to sell in China, since they have to meet the approval of local government censors and not many books written by foreign authors would pass these standards of the Chinese government. So the lesson learned here is that success doesn't transfer across borders, especially if you're not looking carefully at local market trends and especially given that relations between the US and the Chinese Government are not necessarily at a high point at the moment, and the two countries seem to be moving more and more economically away from each other, so that is also something to bear in mind if you want to sell ebooks in China. So those were seven ebook stores that have failed in the 13 years that I've been doing self-publishing. And so hopefully there are lessons that self-publishers can learn from each of those situations. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 201: Spring 2024 Movie Review Roundup
05/20/2024
Episode 201: Spring 2024 Movie Review Roundup
In this week's episode, I look back at the movies I saw in Spring 2024 and rate them from least to most favorite. To celebrate the arrival of CLOAK OF TITANS, this coupon code will get you 25% off any of the MAYTITANS The code is valid through June 3rd, 2024. PODCAST 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 201 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 17th, 2024, and today we are looking at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Spring 2024. Before we get to anything else, let's do Coupon of the Week. To celebrate the arrival of Cloak of Titans, naturally, this coupon code will give you 25% off any of the Cloak Mage ebooks at my Payhip store. That coupon code is MAYTITANS spelled MAYTITANS and of course, as always, the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. This code is valid through June 3rd, 2024, so if you're looking for a new book to start the summer, we've got you covered. Now for an update on current writing and publishing projects. I am pleased to report that Cloak of Titans is done and it is now out. It should at all the ebook stores and get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. It looks like it's off to a good start, so thank you everyone for that. In audio news, Ghost in the Veils is out, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. As of right now, it should be available at Audible, Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and my Payhip store. It should be showing up on Google Play, Spotify, and Chirp shortly. Now that Cloak of Titans is done, my next big main project will be Shield of Darkness, the second book in the Shield War series, picking up from Shields of Storms earlier in the year. I spent the last couple days writing the outline for that, and if all goes well, I should start on it on Monday the 20th or Tuesday the 21st. It depends on what the weather is, since there are some things I'd like to do outside if the weather is good, but anyway, that will be my new main project. Hopefully that will be out before the end of June. My secondary project right now is Half-Orc Paladin, the third book in the Rivah series, and I am currently about 14,000 words into that. That should come out fairly quickly after Shield of Darkness is done, so probably mid to late July for that book. 00:02:10 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question is inspired by the various comments whenever I post the picture related to grilling: specifically, what is your favorite thing to grill? And we had a variety of responses this week. Our first response is from Justin, who says: my favorite thing to grill is a well marinated sirloin. Garlic, pineapple juice, soy sauce, and herbs in a Ziploc bag for two to four hours, then on a hot grill for a couple minutes per side. Yum! Alas, nowadays it’s mostly chicken legs and pork loin sliced up for chops. Even the cheapest hamburger meat is getting to be too expensive to buy on a regular basis. Sadly, this is definitely true, and I've seen that myself. Our next response is from ABM, who says: is it even camping in the Midwest if you're not grilling a pudgie pie over a fire? For those unfamiliar with this regional delicacy, either sandwich or pie fillings are put between bread in the special sandwich shaped iron before it goes over the fire. It really puts the grilled in grilled cheese sandwich. Jenny says: steak, but only because I have a charcoal grill now. I used to use gas. I think it is better because I find it to be slower and tastier. Bonnie says brats and burgers were my favorite when Hubby was around to grill. Gary says: a pork loin is one of my favorite things to grill. I prefer smoking stuff over grilling. Grilling and barbecue are definitely two different things. There is nothing better than a dry rub pork shoulder smoked for about 10 hours and then shredded. Mark says: we love good old-fashioned burgers and lately have been adding teriyaki grilled chicken thighs to the cooking plan. John says: Chinese style plum sauce ribs. Family recipe. Country style ribs, which is just pork butt cut onto thick strips, marinated 3 days. Catriona says: Lamb chops and sausages. A different Mark says: ribs are my favorite, followed by barbecued chicken. Jesse says: spicy Italian sausages for the most part. Michael says: I find the grilling post interesting because over here in the UK, we tend to call it barbecuing and the term itself is a barbecue. Grilling is what you do under grill in your oven indoors. But regardless, I would say hamburgers! Joseph says: Porterhouse and lobster tails on charcoal grill. Second would be shrimp, scallops, and fish fillets of any kind on charcoal. Breakfast on the griddle, pork and chicken on the smoker all year round. Jonathan says: steak and nothing but steak. A third Mark says: prisoners. I hope he meant that tongue in cheek. For myself, I think it's a good old-fashioned burger. I find half the battle in terms of flavor is to spend ninety seconds melting cheese onto the burger in the final phase of grilling. Toasting the bun separately also helps a great deal. It is remarkable how proper cooking can improve the flavor of many foods. Like, I had eggs for lunch. Eggs by themselves are kind of bland, but if you add some ham and cheese and some pepper to the eggs, it really tastes quite a bit better. I suppose the realization that food tastes better when you prepare it properly is the foundation of five and a half thousand years of cooking and civilization. 00:05:15 Main Topic: Spring Movie Roundup And it's now titled for my Spring Movie Roundup for 2024, our main topic of the week. As usual, everything is sorted from least liked to most liked, and just a reminder that my opinions are in no objective or qualified and are based solely on my own taste and whether or not I like something. The least favorite thing I saw this spring would be Hot Tub Time Machine, which came out in 2010. This is one of the very rare movies I didn't finish. It was just too stupid. Like sometimes if I don't like movie, I'll start playing Starfield or Skyrim or something with the movie still playing in the background, but Hot Tub Time Machine was too stupid even to merit that treatment. I don't object to crude humor on its face. Indeed, much of the absurdity of the human condition comes from the various indignities to which human bodies are inherently subjected. There is something both hilarious and egalitarian in the fact that an emperor and a peasant have to relieve themselves in the same way, and many jokes have made use of that truth. You can get away with a lot of crudity if you're actually funny. But the Hot Tub Time Machine movie, just threw crudeness on the screen in lieu of attempting actual humor. Besides, crude humor ultimately is to storytelling as garlic salt is to cooking: best used sparingly. Anyway, the protagonists were all unlikable. I simply got annoyed enough with movie that I gave up around 40 or 50 minutes into it. Overall grade: F Next up is Wish, which came out in 2023. I did not see that in the theater. I saw it when I turned up on Disney Plus a few months ago. I liked the animation and the voice acting was good, but the movie just did not make a lot of sense. Like there's this wizard-king and people give him their wishes, but then they forget what they wish for, and he does this to prevent civil unrest, or so he says. The protagonist gets mad that the wizard-king isn't handing out free stuff in the way that she likes, so she wishes really hard and then a magic star falls from the sky to help her. This upsets the wizard king, so he switches from using good magic, which is apparently blue and sparkly to evil magic, which is green and sparkly. I guess that that color makes all the difference. Then everyone in the Kingdom sings at the wizard-king until he turns into a mirror. I have to admit that made even less sense as I spoke it aloud. There are movies that don't make a lot of sense but work because it's like a dream or a magic trick since the movie suspends the viewer's disbelief during the tale, and it's only afterward that you realize it didn't make much sense, but that by then it doesn't matter because you're entertained. Unfortunately, Wish doesn't even make sense while you're watching it, and a benevolent wizard king who hoards wishes sounds a lot like the Disney Corporation. It would be hilarious if Disney made Wish as a parody of themselves, but I think their interpretation happened by accident. Overall grade: C-, maybe D+ if I'm in a really bad mood. Next up is Green Lantern, which came out in 2011. This turned up free on Tubi, so I gave it a watch. It was interesting because all the pieces were there to make it a great movie, strong cast with good performances, reasonable CG computer graphics for 2011, and a potentially compelling plot. However, it didn't really gel. I suspect Ryan Reynolds works better as a comic actor than a dramatic one. Additionally, the movie relied way too heavily on a lot of ponderous infodumping to explain the elaborate mythology of the Green Lantern Corps. The classic axiom of fiction writing is to show don't tell, and since movies are a visual medium, it's especially true in movies. The problem was that Green Lantern spent a lot of its runtime telling instead of showing, but I suspect the studio didn't want to take a lot of risks with a movie that cost $200 million to make in 2011 money (before a lot of inflation). Additionally, the movie leaned a little too heavily into its CG. So overall, I would give it a grade of C-. Next up is Avatar: The way of Water, which came out in 2022. The Avatar films are visually beautiful, but they're also profoundly misanthropic, which is sort of a “it would be better if humans were all dead” strain of environmentalism running through it. It's also unfortunate how the movies portraying “living in harmony with nature” as morally upright, because in real life, living with nature means dying before the age of 30 of sepsis, dysentery, various contagious diseases, endemic local warfare, and starvation, often all at the same time. Basically, the history of civilization is five and a half thousand years of humanity trying to find ways to get screwed less by nature. Of course, then we're getting into profound philosophical questions. Do you believe that humanity is made in the image of God with a soul, or is humanity particularly simply a particularly clever breed of destructive chimpanzee? Obviously one’s worldview will diverge profoundly based on how you answer that question, which, let's be honest, is a rather deep philosophical/religious discussion for a movie about blue space elves made by the director of Terminator. On the other hand, maybe I'm just overthinking it and in the world of Avatar, the Na’vi are blue space elves and the humans are just space orcs. Anyway, incoherent philosophical questions aside, the movie is visually stunning, the apex of computer graphics. It's what you get with a $400 million budget overseen by a perfectionist director who directed three of the four top-grossing movies of all time. The plot is a straight continuation of the previous movie. The humans have returned to reconquer Pandora, including a clone of the charismatic Colonel Quaritch from the first movie. It's up to Jake Sully and his family to unite the squabbling Na’vi forest and water clans to fight off the invaders. Unlike the first movie, Way of Water is not a self-contained story, but helps tee up the third movie, which is definitely happening since this one made like two and half billion dollars. I also admire James Cameron's unswerving devotion to the Papyrus font, even after two Saturday Night Live sketches about it. Overall grade: B Next up is The Cutting Edge, which came out in 1992. I watched this because I was told it is considered a classic in some corners. Since it was also free on Tubi, I decided to give it a watch. It's basically the ideal form of the very popular enemies to lovers romance story trope. Olympic hockey player Doug suffers a head injury that damages his peripheral vision, which means he can't play hockey anymore. Meanwhile, Kate is a spoiled and demanding figure skater who alienates every single potential partner, thereby ruining her chances of winning Olympic gold. Kate’s coach Anton seeking out a partner willing to put up with Kate's difficult personality, tracks down the desperate Doug and convinces him to give figure skating a try instead of hockey. As you might expect, sparks and conflicts immediately fly when Doug and Kate meet, and they must learn to overcome their initial mutual dislike (and their obvious mutual attraction) to win the Olympics. Enemies to lovers romance tends to follow a very specific story structure, and this movie nails it perfectly. The actors all did a good job with their parts. Fun fact, Anton was played by Roy Dotrice, who narrated the A Song of Ice and Fire audiobooks. Even more fun fact, the movie was written by Tony Gilroy, who also wrote several of the Jason Bourne movies and created Star Wars: Andor, which are about as totally different from The Cutting Edge as you can get. This man has some range. Overall grade: B. Next up is Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which originally came out in 2021. After the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot didn't work for a variety of reasons, it seemed that Sony they settled on a different tactic, instead decided to continue the original continuity of with the new movies, which in my opinion was a smarter choice. Single mom Callie is having a rough time with her teenage children, Trevor and Phoebe. Callie is out of options when her estranged father dies and leaves her a farm on the outskirts of Summerville, Oklahoma. With no better options at the moment, Callie and the kids pack up and move to Summerville and the bored Trevor and Phoebe began poking into their relics of their grandfather's life. However, it turns out that their grandfather was Egon Spengler, one of the original Ghostbusters, and he had moved to Summerville to keep an eye on a dangerous supernatural threat. With Egon dead, the threat is waking up once more, and it's up to Phoebe and Trevor to finish their grandfather's work and save the world. This was a very well-constructed comedy/horror action thriller. Admittedly, it starts a bit slow in the same style as the original Ghostbusters movie from 1984, but overall, it works. There's a gradual sense that something is increasingly wrong in Summerville. Unlike Green Lantern, this movie doesn't do a lot of infodumping, but instead uses the much better storytelling technique of gradually revealing the worldbuilding as the kids start to investigate the mysteries around their family and their new town. Phoebe and Trevor had the right combination of teenage brattiness and curiosity and Callie was believable as a single mom who had made some questionable life choices and was trying to hang on as best she could. Paul Rudd was also good as an incompetent summer school teacher/seismologist who has nonetheless figured out that something strange is happening in Summerville. The movie leaned a little too hard into to nostalgia, but I liked it. Overall, grade: B+. Next up is The Sign of Four, which came out originally in 1987. I finally had a chance to watch the Jeremy Brett version of the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Sign of Four. Brett was, in my opinion, the best Sherlock Holmes actor of all the actors who have played versions of the character. Amusingly, I think Mr. Brett would have made a good Grand Admiral Thrawn, which is funny because one of the inspirations for Thrawn was of course, Sherlock Holmes. But unfortunately, Brett died two or three years before Heir to the Empire was even written. Anyway, back to the main point. In The Sign of Four, Miss Mary Morstan calls upon Holmes and Watson asking for Holmes's help in unraveling a strange mystery. Her father disappeared soon after returning to England from India, and once a year since then, she has received an extremely valuable pearl in the mail. Her mysterious benefactor wishes to meet her at last and Morstan wants Holmes’ advice as to what she should do. Naturally, there's quite a bit more going on beneath the surface, and Holmes soon finds himself investigating a case involving a pair of eccentric brothers, a one-legged man, a deadly assassin, and treasure that seems cursed to bring misfortune to whoever obtains it. All of the performances were excellent, though given the state of 1980s sound technology, I definitely recommend watching the movie with the captions on. The only thing that I didn't like was that the adaptation removed the fact that Morstan and Watson get engaged at the end but given that the actors wanted to deemphasize Sherlock’s cocaine use (the original story has the famous line “for me there still remains the cocaine bottle”), that's probably why it was cut. Overall grade: A-. And now for the favorite things I saw in spring 2023 and for the first time, it came out to a three-way tie. The first of my three favorite things was Fall Guy, which came out this year, in 2024. I didn't intend to go see this initially, but then I saw the hilarious Saturday Night Live opening Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling did about Barbie and Oppenheimer, and I decided to give it a shot. This is a romantic comedy action thriller and it nails all those genres excellently. The protagonist is a highly regarded film stuntman named Colt, in love with an assistant director named Jody, but Colt is seriously injured in an accident. In the aftermath of the accident, Colt abandons his career and breaks up with Jody. Eighteen months later, the producer of a big budget science fiction epic contacts Colt. It turns out that his ex, Jody, is directing the movie and her career is riding on its success. So he goes to do the stunts for the movie to help her out. However, things soon take a turn for the worse when the movie’s egotistical lead actor disappears, and if Cole can't find him within 48 hours, the studio will shut down the movie and destroy Jody's career. What follows is a romantic comedy that remains funny and turns into a pretty good thriller movie. The running joke about seeing the unicorn was great and there's a bit with Colt crying in his truck that becomes absolutely hilarious. Definitely recommended. It's really regrettable that this movie apparently didn't do well in theaters, but I predict it will have a long and healthy life on streaming. Overall grade: A. The second of my three favorite things is Clarkson's Farm: Season Three, which also came out in 2024. This show has stumbled into a genius formula: display the extreme difficulties of the modern farmer through the lens of an unsympathetic comedy protagonist in the person of Jeremy Clarkson. Like, Jeremy Clarkson is not a terribly sympathetic figure because he's very rich and unquestionably prone to quarrelling because he got fired from one of his old jobs for punching a dude. But by having him run his own farm and deal with all the many, many headaches and heartaches of farming, he becomes a sympathetic figure because he suffers through the same things as every other farmer: failed crops, bad weather, badger-spread diseases, animals dying, government red tape, and so on. And it also demonstrates how hard farming is. If Clarkson's farm loses a lot of money, it doesn't really matter to him because he can rely on his media career. But that isn't true for most farmers, obviously, and Clarkson himself and the show go out of their way to point out that fact again and again. Anyway, if you're not familiar with the concept of the show, in 2019 Clarkson decided to run his farm himself rather than hiring a professional manager and since he was under contract to produce a show...
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Episode 200: Celebrating The 200th Episode
05/13/2024
Episode 200: Celebrating The 200th Episode
In this week's episode, I celebrate the 200th episode of The Pulp Writer Show by asking readers which book of mine they read first. The episode also has a preview of the audiobook of GHOST IN THE VEILS as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. To commemorate the occasion this coupon code will get you 25% off 200THEPISODE That's right, the coupon code will get you 25% off , and it's good through May 20th, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read or listen to, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT Audio file Episode200.mp3 Transcript 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 200 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 10th, 2024 and today we are celebrating the 200th episode of this podcast by taking a look back at how people have found my books. We’ll also close out the show with a preview of the upcoming Ghost in the Veils audiobook. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. To celebrate the 200th episode of this podcast, we're going to have a special coupon code that will get you 25% off every single item at my Payhip store. That coupon code is 200THEPISODE, which is spelled 200THEPISODE and the coupon code and the link to my Payhip will be included in the show notes for this episode. That's right, the coupon code will give you 25% off every single ebook or audiobook on my Payhip store and is good through May 20th, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read or listen to, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on current writing projects. The rough draft of Cloak of Titans is done, and I am about 2/3 of the way through the first editing pass. If all goes well, I am hoping to have that out before the end of May. I've also written a short story called Blood Walk and newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of that short story when Cloak of Titans comes out. So this is an excellent time to sign up for my new release newsletter. You'll get 3 free epic fantasy novels when you do. Once Cloak of Titans is published, my next main project will be Shield of Darkness, which will hopefully come out towards the end of June or the start of July. I am also about 11,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, the third Rivah book, and I will make that my main project after Shield of Darkness is done, so that book will probably come out before the end of this summer, if all goes well. 00:01:57 Main Topic/Question of the Week And our Question of the Week is also this week's main topic. It's a question that I can't answer myself, but I asked because I wanted to talk about it for this episode of the podcast, and the question is, which book of mine did you first read, and how did you come across it (since Cloak of Titans will be, I believe, my 152nd novel)? I expected a wide range of responses and we got them. Our first response is from Roman who says: first one was Demonsouled. I looked for free books when I downloaded the Kindle app for my new iPad and have read everything you've written since. I guess your plan of giving away the first book for free worked on me. That is why I give those books away for free. Our next response is from Dave, who says: I found Child of the Ghosts on BookBub. The title was intriguing. It was also free. I now have an extensive Jonathan Moeller collection on my Kindle Library. Our next response comes from Joachim, who says: Ghost Omnibus One and Ghost Exile Omnibus One were $0.99, so I purchased both. I continued with Ghost Exile, backfilling the Ghost stories later. You would not be able to answer your own question obviously, but would you be able to answer us the following question: what was the first fantasy book you published? That would been Demonsouled back in 2005, when it was traditionally published and later I got the rights back and self-published it for the first time in 2011 and then later made it free. Our next response is from Mark, who says: I found Child of the Ghosts on Kindle. Sam says Frostborn: The Gray Knight. I was looking for a new fantasy series to read after I finished the Codex Alera. Came across it while scrolling through Amazon and thought, huh, why not? Little did I know all these years later I would have an addiction to your novels. Well, there are worse problems to have. I agree very much. Our next response is from Tarun who says: read Child of the Ghosts first on the Kindle web app. Todd says: Child of the Ghosts. Caina is a great Ghost nightfighter. Mary says: Frostborn. I forget why. That seems entirely appropriate, because I wrote Frostborn 11 years ago now. Yes, eleven years ago now, because I wrote it in 2003, so I can barely remember writing it at this point, let alone how someone might come across it. Our next response is from Justin: Demonsouled. Free book offer. Steve says: Iron Hand. If I remember right, it came up as a suggestion on the Kindle app. Sara says: Frostborn. It was $0.99 and then after I finished that series, Child of the Ghosts on a 99 cent deal. Thuvia says: Thief Trap-finished it on September 14th, 2016. I don't recall how I found it, but maybe BookBub? I know the book covers amused me since they're nothing like how Nadia dresses. I have since changed the Cloak Games and Cloak Mage covers, but the original covers definitely did not reflect how Nadia dresses in the series. Our next response is from William, who says: Iron Hand, which I discovered through William King's blog when you posted your blog post on how to write and publish an ebook at no cost using free software. I remember that blog post. That got a lot of traction, especially because I've written an entire book, Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, in order to prove that point. Our next response is from Kermit, who says: the Ghost Omnibus. I was researching the next fantasy author I wanted to read because David Eddings had died. I came across your Ghosts series and decided to try it. Ann-Marie says: Child of the Ghosts. The title caught me. It was part of Kindle's recommendations for things I should try next. I was also getting off of a mystery genre binge so I wanted something different to dive into. I love Caina. She's so cool. Whoops, forgot to add Goodreads says I read it back in July 2017. Kevin says: the first books of yours were The Frostborn Omnibus One on the 21st of April 2017. I came across it on Amazon search while looking for stuff to read in the car whilst waiting for my son to come out of school. It was £0.99, so throw away money really and worth look. Since then I have, amongst others, read a further 103 books of yours to date. So it seems that making Frostborn Omnibus One $0.99 turned out to be a really good idea. Our next response is from Lee, who says: Frostborn the Gray Knight was the first ebook I picked up to read. I started because of the book description. Since then I have read almost every book you have published. Perry says: Demonsouled with the original public domain cover art (the best of the covers, in my opinion) searching for books to add to my Kobo. And I stumbled across Smashwords. I searched for free fantasy books, and your books were near the top of the results. This was just shortly after you started self-publishing. I originally grabbed a whole slew of your books there. I have since purchased and continue to buy your ebooks through Kobo. I get points for being a VIP plus a free book every year from a select list. All your short stories I buy on Kobo as well. Audiobooks I get through your Payhip store. Ah, that takes me way back because way back. In 2011 when I started self-publishing, I couldn't afford cover art of any kind, so what I had to do was look for classic artwork scenes that were in the public domain since you can reuse public domain art freely. You do in fact see a lot of traditionally published books that have old like Renaissance or Baroque paintings, for the cover. That was the original covers Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts, public domain artwork from the 19th century. Our next response is from Lauren, who says: Child of the Ghosts on Smashwords, but I read primarily through Kindle these days. Nadia is my favorite, but I hope to use the Ghost and/or Demonsouled settings one day in our group's tabletop RPGs. Our next response is from Jesse, who says: Frostborn Omnibus One. I was sitting in an IHOP and I had just finished the last ebook in my queue. Google Books suggested it. It was a dollar for three and half books, so I figured why not? Still had half a plate of food to go. I have subsequently bought and read pretty much everything of yours is readily available and actively tracking all the series. Good stuff. I'm glad that worked out because that is one of the better stories I've ever heard of what happens in an IHOP. Our next comment is from Becca, who says: Demonsouled, when it first came out on Kindle. I can remember waiting eagerly for each book in the series. Still one of my favorites. Thank you for all the writing! Rhion says: Demonsouled. I just finished a bunch of Quantrell and Peloquin books and it popped up under suggested reading on KU. Since then, I've read quite literally your entire fiction bibliography, which is just ridiculous. Our next comment comes from Jonathan (a different Jonathan than me) and he says: first book I actually read was the Frostborn Omnibus, the first three books plus The First Quest all bundled into one. I got them on Google Play because I got a gift card for Christmas and I think the omnibus was on sale. So I couldn't resist getting four whole books for cheap, which of course led into the rest of the series and to Sevenfold Sword and to Mallison and to Dragontiarna. Mandy says: I read the Frostborn prequel and found it on the freebie list on Amazon at the time. I read everything released in that universe, as well as the Demonsouled series and am now working my way through the Ghosts series. Our next comment is from Randy, who says: Child of the Ghosts was my first. I was desperately searching for new authors and it was one of about a dozen free novels I picked up several years ago. Caina’s story was so good I finished in one sitting. After I devoured what was available at the time for the Ghost books, I moved on to Frostborn. Then I found you also wrote science fiction. I've read all the different series to date and I haven't been found wanting yet. Well, not true. I'm always wanting the next book. That's why I'm working hard on the next book. Our next comment is from Martin who says: I started with the Gray Knight. I instantly loved it and the rest of the series, at least what was published at the time. When I ran out of them, I looked you up and read the Demonsouled books. After that, moved on to Caina and only recently I moved on to Nadia. I also find they have a lot of readability. Our next comment is from Lauren, who says: Child of the Ghosts, after the third book in the series was out. Found it when searching for a new read on Amazon. Was hooked from there. Marta says: I'm sure it was a Bookbub deal. I think it was the Frostborn Omnibus. Jacob says: The Gray Knight. Came across it after looking for a new series to read after I caught up on the Half-Orc series by David Dalglish. Barbara says: Demonsouled or Child of the Ghosts. It's been so long. I'm not sure which was first. Having been the one to write those books so long ago, I totally understand where she's coming from. Our next response is from Cheryl, who says: the first Ridmark Arban book. Can't remember the name, may have been The Gray Knight? That is entirely correct. It was, in fact Frostborn: The Gray Knight. Our next response is from JKM who says: the first Ghost book and I cannot remember where I came across it. John says Demonsouled on Kindle. Amazon suggested to me way, way back. I picked up a used printed copy I discovered at my local fantasy and science fiction store, Dark Carnival. Shortly afterwards gave it to my son, who enjoyed it as well. That is a deep cut, because Demonsouled was originally published in 2005 in hardback and very quickly went out of print. So I'm impressed that John managed to find one of those copies still floating out there in the used book market. Cathy says: Frostborn Omnibus One. I saw the $0.99 price and thought if I don't like it, I'm only out a dollar. Once I finished it, I started looking for other books by you and have read almost every series you've written. Michael says. I think it was Ghost in the Flames. It was early 2010s (2013 maybe?), and I just discovered the joy of self-published fantasy authors on the Kindle store. As soon as I read it, I was hooked. Bonnie says: Frostborn omnibus. It was cheap, looked interesting, so I gave it a try. Then Tower of Endless Worlds- totally hooked and now I have all the books! Michiel says: Demonsouled. It was free, so I gave it a go and started collecting everything you wrote since then. Jason says: I honestly can't remember. I think it might have been the first Caina omnibus with an Audible audiobook that I played in my car while driving to work. Then the second and I ran out of audiobooks, so I had to start reading them myself. Phillipe says: The very first Caina book, been hooked since. Susan says: Demonsouled. I was searching for something to read, and it sounded good. I have now read everything and am patiently waiting for more. Melinda says Child of the Ghosts. It was free and I was broke and bored. That is why I give away the free books: to entertain people who are broke and bored. Our next comment is from Juliana, who says: the first Ghosts book. Judy says: Child of the Ghosts. I was on Google Play and was recommended. Tom says: The Frostborn Omnibus One, on sale on Amazon. The rest is history. Justin says: The Gray Knight was a suggestion based on what I read on Apple Library. Ashley (who I believe is in fact engaged to Justin) says: My first book was also The Gray Knight and Justin was the reason I started reading this series. So thanks for the recommendations, Justin! James says: Demonsouled on Kindle way back when. It was free and a good name. I mean how Demonsouled isn’t a band name yet, I have no idea. The rest, as they say, is many, many series later. I fully understand. Our next comment is from Juana who says: Frostborn: The Gray Knight. It was in a BookBub offering. Shandy says: I was in a book hangover and saw your Frostborn series on sale on Google Play Books. Omnibus got me and like 100 plus books later, safe to say I'm a fan. Beverly says: Demonsouled. It's been so long. I don't know what led me to get it. Most likely just window shopping for next read and I thought it'd be something I would enjoy. Andrew says Frostborn series. Suggested by Kindle. I've read most of what you've written since. Just can't get into Demonsouled, so don't know why. I've got those books. Just doesn't click. Christopher says: Demonsouled. I got the first book free on my Nook, like I found most of my favorite authors. I also read another one of the first book free ones at the same time, but I didn't like it. I don't remember something about a tower and magic. Then I read the Frostborn series. You were far enough into it that by the time I started I was playing catch up as you released books. I may have had to wait a week or two for the last book to come out. Then I started Cloak Games. That is still in my top three favorite series of all time. Probably top two with Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde. I have read pretty much everything you've written by now. David says: Thief Trap. Found via Facebook ad. Venus says: Thief Trap. Found it doing a search for free urban fantasy on my Nook. So those are some of the first books of mine that people have read and the ways in which they found them. I think we can safely say that giving away the first book in your series for free turned out to be a very good idea. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has read any of my books as, as you probably guessed, have been doing this for a long time. Demonsouled was first published in April 2011 (for self-published, rather); it was initially published in hardback way back in May 2005. So I clearly have been doing this for a long time and I am very grateful to everyone who has read a book or listened to an audiobook or come along for the ride. I'm also very grateful to everyone who has listened to this podcast over 200 episodes. And here's to more interesting episodes in the future. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes with transcripts (transcripts are available from Episode 140 onwards) on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe. Stay healthy and see you all next week. And now let's close out the show with a preview of the audio book of Ghost in the Veils, as excellently read by Hollis McCarthy: Caina gazed at the wrapped bundle in the back of the wagon. Thankfully, no blood had leaked from it. Though perhaps she shouldn’t have worried. Only a few people in Malarae would have recognized the dark green liquid as blood. The wagon itself was nothing remarkable. A bit old and worn, though none of the planks had rotted and the wheels were in mostly good shape. A pair of placid draft horses pulled the vehicle, the animals well-accustomed to the noises and smells of the Imperial capital. The only thing unusual was the bundle resting in the back.It was almost the precise size and shape of the corpse of a grown man. To be fair, it was a corpse. Just not of a grown man. Or a grown woman. Or indeed anything human. Caina didn’t know what it was, but she intended to find out. “Will there be anything else, Countess?” said her seneschal, a Saddaic man named Talzain. He wore the formal black clothes of a Nighmarian servant. Combined with his wan complexion, the outfit always made him look a bit corpselike. “No, thank you,” said Caina. “I should be back in time for dinner with Lord Kylon and Lady Kalliope.” “Yes,” said Talzain. He cleared his throat. “That ought to be…interesting.” “You have a gift for understatement,” said Caina. Kylon and Kalliope had their own errands in the city. When Kalliope had fled New Kyre with her children ahead of the Cult of Rhadamathar, she had taken some money and baggage with them, but she had been forced to leave it behind at the Wrecked Warship near the ocean harbor of Malarae. Fortunately, the innkeeper had kept all of Kalliope’s baggage on hand. Partly because Anastasios was an honest man and partly because he feared the vengeance of Kalliope’s father. Lysikas Stormblade had a formidable reputation, even among the Kyracians living in Malarae. So Kalliope had gone with some of Caina’s servants to retrieve her baggage and buy such things as Nikarion and Zoe might need. Kylon himself was keeping watch over the twins. Caina suggested that he take them riding to see the city, and he agreed. The children, in awe of the father they had never known they had, had made no protest. Ardakh, Sethroza, and the other Cultists were still out there, but if they tried to attack the children in Kylon’s presence, they would regret it bitterly.
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Episode 199: Ergonomics For Writers
05/06/2024
Episode 199: Ergonomics For Writers
In this week's episode, we take a look at some ergonomics and health tips for writers and other sedentary workers. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SPRINGFURY The coupon code is valid through May 25th, 2024. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 199 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 3rd 2024 and today we are talking about ergonomics for writers. Before we get to our main topic, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on current writing projects, and then Question of the Week. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGFURY. As always, that will be in the show notes with a link to the Payhip store. This coupon code will be valid through May the 25th, 2024, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Next up, updates on my current writing projects. I am almost done with Cloak of Titans. I'm currently at 98,000 words. I am hoping to wrap it up after I finish recording this episode (either this afternoon or tomorrow), and so we are well on track to having the book out before the end of May, if all goes well. I am also 8,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, which will be the sequel to Wizard-Thief and Half-Elven Thief, and the third book in the Rivah series. That will probably be out towards the end of July because once Cloak of Titans is done, I want to go full speed ahead on Shield of Darkness (the sequel to Shield of Storms from earlier in the year and the second book in the Shield War series). If all goes well, the next couple of books I publish will be Cloak of Titans, Shield of Darkness, and Half-Orc Paladin. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is recording the anthology of Tales of the Shield Knight for me. We’re about 1/3 of the way through it, I think and making good progress. I'm looking forward to sharing that with you all. I just got the notification that the files for the audiobook of Ghost in the Veils (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) were uploaded, so just a little more proofing and then that should hopefully be available to you as well. So lots of good things to look forward to. 00:02:07 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussion of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is the board game that you've been playing the longest? Board games have many advantages in the modern age. They don't require electricity, they don't need to be charged, and they also have a pleasingly tactile feel that you just don't get from tapping a screen. Sometimes you learn a game when you're a kid and sticks with you ever since. We have some interesting answers this week. Our first answer is from Jesse, who says: I have to say Labyrinth. Played it as a kid a lot with siblings. A year or two ago, my kids got it randomly from a relative, and now it's back. The real precursor to Mario Kart in terms of learning to hate your friends and discovering life is unfair. For myself, I only started playing Mario Kart with my siblings when I was already well into middle age, so we thankfully avoided squabbling over that. If we had played Mario Kart when we were kids, we definitely would have squabbled. Back to Question of the Week. Michael says: I don't really play them anymore, alas. I played chess in school but only so I didn't have to do physical education class. I used to look at the board and immediately resign and then just sit and read a book instead until the teacher wandered over. It used to annoy my opponents who took the game seriously. So congratulations to Michael for devising a chess stratagem that did, in fact get him what he wanted. MacKenzie says: hands down, chess. I may be awful at it, but it's definitely the record holder. Mark says: checkers, because my mum is good at it. Adelaide says: Scrabble for me. Venus says: backgammon. My mother taught me to play. I don't know how old I was. She never let me win. Every time I beat her it was because I had a better game that day. David says it's probably Shoots and Ladders, followed closely by checkers. Grace says: I no longer play the same board games I did as a kid so the ones that I play now with friends. I've played I think Arkham Horror and Quacks of Quedlinburg the most. Both are fun, though Arkham Horror, we've won all of two times. For myself, I think the board game I've been playing the longest is chess. I first learned to play when I think was I was ten and I've been playing on and off ever since. Amusingly for a post about tactile board games, I recently discovered chess.com and I like its large supply of chess puzzles, which are kind of like bite sized chess when I don't have time to play a full game, which is most of the time. However, last night I did have a bit more time to play and so I was able to play six games against actual human opponents on chess.com in about 40 minutes and I lost six times in a row. So it's a good thing I enjoy the game because there's definitely room for improvement. 00:04:45 Main Topic: Ergonomics for Writers Now on to this week's main topic, ergonomics for writers. And let's start this with a disclaimer. I am not a health professional. I am not a doctor. I'm not a nurse. I'm not an ergonomics specialist. For medical questions, you should seek medical advice and verify anything I say with the opinion of actual medical professionals. When starting a new movement or exercise routine, it's a good idea to start gradually, both for reasons of health and to prevent burnout or getting overwhelmed. So that is your disclaimer. I am not a medical professional. But I don't think you have to be a medical professional to notice that desk jobs have a serious problem, and that includes writing. If you're sitting for a long period of time, that can cause a host of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, potentially diabetes, etc. Sitting for long periods reduces your energy levels and can be detrimental to your mental health. Sitting for long periods in the wrong position can make joint, wrist, and back problems worse and cause pain. As an example, back in the old days when I did IT support, I was talking to a coworker who said that he was having back problems and so I made, you know, sympathetic noises and told him I hope he felt better. Then about an hour later I was walking down the hall and I happened to walk past his desk and I saw that he was using his laptop by sitting at the very edge of his chair, and his back was bent at like 45° angle to type on the keyboard. And I was like dude, this explains your back problems. So thankfully he improved his posture a bit after that. If you do have a job such as being a writer where you are sitting for long periods of time, how can you sit in the most healthy way? Changing how you sit is a relatively quick thing to do that will reap long term rewards in terms of potentially avoiding back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain and so forth. Make sure that your chair and desk are set in the correct positions. There are lot of diagrams available to show you, that demonstrate how to have an ergonomic desk set up. You want your elbows to be at a 90° angle. You want your wrist to be neutral or supported. You don’t want them to be bent like T Rex hands. Your back and neck should not be leaning forward. The top of the monitor should be around eye level for neck health and in fact I have my main desktop monitor on this monitor stand I got off Amazon Basics just for the purpose of raising it to proper eye level. You want your knees so your legs are not pulled underneath your chair or resting on your chair casters, since this stresses knee joints. If your legs aren’t long enough to go comfortably to a flat position when sitting normally, footrests work well and aren't very expensive or a large book will work, too. For your eye health, you want to look away from your monitor occasionally to reduce eye strain. Another good solution for the health problems that sitting too much causes is moving. You can have walking breaks where you get up and move for at least a minute every hour. This is an excellent time to get some water to drink or to use the bathroom. Fitness and smart watches or a cheap kitchen timer can be used to remind you to get up or stand. It might be a good idea to pace while taking a phone call, since you're going to be on the phone anyway and if it's not a video call, there's no reason not to stand up and walk around a little bit, so long as you're not irritating your officemates. Sometimes it's a good idea to take a brief walk daily. Some people who work from home use a walk around the block at the beginning of the day and the end of the day to mentally transition away from the workday in the absence of a work commute. Some people have the kind of work where they can do it while on a walking pad (like a low power treadmill) and an adjustable standing desk combination. This setup is a bit more expensive and can cost about like $350 USD for a basic setup and just like standing desks, they don't work for everyone. If you already have a treadmill, you can get a desk attachment for it for around sixty U.S. dollars. The transcriptionist of this podcast has used a walking pad/standing desk combination for about six months now and finds that it helps with afternoon energy crashes. She usually uses it for webinars, Zoom meetings where she don't need to be on camera, and tasks that involve more reading than typing, such as research for these podcast episodes. She can type while she walks, so long as she keeps her pace to under about two mph. She says the key is to think of walking as a supplement to working and not expect it to be the same as walking on a treadmill at the gym. For myself, I've mentioned before that pretty frequently that I use the Pomodoro technique while I’m writing where I'll write intensely for 25 minutes and then take a 5 or 10 minute break. That's also an excellent time to stand up and move around or if you’re me, drop and do some push-ups to help keep carpal tunnel syndrome at bay. Another potential thing to think about is strength training/mobility. People tend to be scared of strength training because they're afraid of injuring themselves, but they really shouldn't be so long as they, you know, do the forms correctly. Strength training, as the name implies, strengthens muscles that support your joints and becomes even more important as we get older, since the human body tends to lose muscle mass as we get older. As little as two sessions of strength training a week have been shown to lead to fewer injuries and greater longevity. Strength training is important in the sedentary job like writing since we don't have tasks to build muscles already built into the workday. Writing is a lot of things, but it's not particularly great for building physical strength. Having a consistent strength routine also means that your body can instantly adapt to challenges like shoveling heavy snow or helping to carry a person in an emergency or getting the bag into the overhead bin on the plane without having to ask for help. As people get older, that kind of thing gets harder to do otherwise. In the case of shoveling, it can put a lot of strain on your heart, so it's best to prepare for these kind of life challenges with consistent strength training. There's a lot of strength training that doesn't require a lot of money or a gym membership. Body weight and resistance band strength training are beginner friendly and free or inexpensive. And as I mentioned earlier, you can totally do push-ups for free with no equipment. Another potential strength training exercise that may work for you is resistance band training. That's great for those who travel often or live in a very small space, such as a typical modern urban apartment. Latex or cloth bands that provide resistance for body weight movements can be found quite cheaply on most major retailers. Some are in the shape of a loop, while others have attached handles. Resistance band training includes exercises for those who are unable to stand at all or for long periods of time. Another good technique is dumbbell only strength training. Dumbbells can actually be used for lower body exercises like squats as well as well as upper body exercises. They are relatively inexpensive compared to a full barbell or strength machines and they don't take up a lot of space, which again is useful if you're living in a small space or place where space is constrained. Sample routines with video demonstrations abound on YouTube, if you’re not sure where to start. Otherwise, you can find online training programs from companies like Street Parking or CrossFit Linchpin for about $20.00 USD per month, and they have structured training routines that have been scaled down to work with just dumbbells. Sitting correctly and moving often sounds like things that shouldn't matter to someone in a job that relies on the mind but physical health and a strong mind are strongly intertwined. People in intellectual jobs, I've noticed, tend to think of themselves as a mind that happens to have a body attached, especially people who are very often heavily into the sciences and engineering. But it's really, I found, the opposite. We are essentially a physical body that happens to have a mind attached to it and the better shape you can get your physical body and physical health into, the clearer your mind will be. I mean, just think about how hard it is to think clearly when you have chronic pain or chronic illness or some kind of medication you have to take to manage those things that interferes with your thinking, gives you cloudy thoughts. Truth is, this has been known for centuries and still confirmed by endless research studies. The Romans had a Latin phrase, “mens sana in corpore sano”: a healthy mind in a healthy body. That sums up how interconnected the goal of both are. Ideally, when you're a writer, you want to prolong your career and increase your energy levels by spending at least a small time each week moving and strengthening the body. Sitting correctly also goes a long way towards preventing back and joint pain, which can definitely hurt your productivity and cause problems in other areas of your life as well. Finally, the most important thing with any exercise program is consistency is more important than perfection here. Start small and keep going. I've often said in this podcast, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the possible, and this is definitely true with exercise as well as writing. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. Once again, a word of thanks for my transcriptionist for helping me pull together the research for this episode. As you might have guessed, she has a strong interest in physical fitness for people who sit at a desk and work a lot. A reminder you that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 198: Seven Inaccurate Movies About Writing
04/26/2024
Episode 198: Seven Inaccurate Movies About Writing
In this week's episode, we take a look at seven popular movies about writing & writers and take a look at what they got wrong. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SPRINGORCS The coupon code is valid through May 20th, 2024. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 198 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 26th, 2024 and today we were talking about seven of the most inaccurate movies about writers. Before we do that, we will have writing updates, Coupon of the Week, and a Question of the Week. So let's start with Coupon of the Week. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Curse of the Orc (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGORCS and that's SPRINGORCS. As always, that coupon code will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through May 20th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects and audiobook projects. I'm currently on Chapter 16 of Cloak of Titans. I'm not sure how many chapters it's going to end up being. My number keeps changing, but I think right now it's 25. I am over halfway through the book and I'm hoping to be past the 70,000 word point by the end of the day, if all goes well. I’m hoping to still have that out before the end of May. I am also 5,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, which should come out this summer. After Cloak of Titans is out, my next main project will be Shield of Darkness, which I know many people have been asking about, so hopefully it will not be too much longer until I start on Shield of Darkness. In audiobook news, Hollis McCarthy is almost done recording Ghost in the Veils, and we should hopefully have that available to listen to sometime in May. Brad Wills is currently recording the anthology Tales of the Shield Knight, which will contain over 15 of the Shield Knight short stories that I wrote for the Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna series, and that should also hopefully be out sometimes toward the end of May or possibly June. So that is where I’m at with my current writing and audiobook projects. 00:01:58 Question of the Week/Update on Starfield from Previous Question of the Week Next up is Question of the Week, which is designed to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is the first fantasy novel you remember reading? After all, if you're hanging around the website of Jonathan Moeller, Pulp Writer, there's a non-zero chance that you enjoy fantasy books. So it seems like a reasonable question, and it was indeed a reasonable question because we got a lot of responses. Our first response is from Justin, who says: believe it or not, the first fantasy novel I read was The Hobbit. My older sisters had pooled their money to buy the paper version of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I saw them reading it, and since my sisters were for once not being nasty to each other and reading together, it had to be good. After they finished The Hobbit, I asked to borrow it. It was allowed to read it as long as I didn't leave the room and wash my hands first. I was eight. Our next response is from Mary, who says: I remember my first reading of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. It was by no stretch of the imagination my first fantasy novel. Our next comment is from Stuart, who says: Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. When I was younger/preteens, I loved adventure books like Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators. I didn't really read much in the coming years, until one day it was raining outside and being bored, I made a nuisance of myself when my older brother was trying to watch TV. He finally snapped, told me to shut up, threw Pawn of Prophecy at me, and told me to read that. The rest, as they say, is history. I went from adding Eddings to Feist and Gemmel and then on to Jordan, etcetera. I will always have a soft spot for David Eddings books, though. So it seems the common themes here will be a sibling rivalry inspiring love of fantasy literature. Our next response is from Grace, who says: does the Magic Treehouse series count? If not, Chronicles of Narnia. Leanne says Dragonriders of Pern. Boy, did I want a dragon! Melinda says Piers Anthony's Night Mare. I was in 6th grade and my friend gave it to me for my birthday. Cheryl says: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. From then on, it was full steam ahead, Feist, Eddings, Tolkien, Irvine, and now most of the fantasy/sci-fi authors that are currently publishing on Kindle. David says: probably The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Kevin says: many, many moons ago it was the Earthsea trilogy by Ursula Le Guin. Then I wandered into TV and films in the sci-fi genre for a number of years, forsaking the written word. My imagination was recaptured more recently, about a decade ago, a decade ago, when a friend lent me a copy of Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Alan says: I've been through most of these mentioned so far though the years but my first introduction to once he was Edgar Rice Burroughs, like Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Pellucidar, etcetera. Then on to Tolkien. Randy says: for me it was The Hobbit. Went on a family vacation with my uncle and his family. I was introduced to The Hobbit. My uncle will read just about every night to my cousins, and as we're all sharing the same room, my sister and I began hearing the story. We got home. I asked my dad if I could read his copy. 50 some odd years later, I'm still devouring as many books as I can. Mike says: I am not sure which one it was, but I believe it was either The Hobbit or The Sword of Shannara. Diana says: The Gunslinger. I said what I said. Venus says: A Wrinkle in Time or Dragonsong. I know that the Pern books are actually science fiction, but I don't recall any of the science stuff that first time I read it. It was the first Pern book I read. The first epic fantasy I recall reading was Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Gary says: I couldn't give you a title or author, but I definitely remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books in the fantasy genre as a young reader. Tom said: Not 100% sure, but this is my best guess. It would be The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Ah, the Chronicles of Narnia. What a series. Juana says: I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Catriona says: The Hobbit after listening to the BBC Radio play adaptation in the ‘70s. Pippa says: Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I've reread them lots too and I've never tired of them. Perry says: Do the Iliad, Odyssey, and Beowulf count? For modern fantasy, would be a toss-up between The Hobbit and The Belgariad. Joy says: the Thomas Covenant series. My boyfriend at the time was into sci-fi and fantasy novels, so I borrowed it and was hooked. A different Glenn says: either Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey or the Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia A. McKillip. I love them both in the same summer while visiting my dad and cannot remember which one came first, but I got hooked on fantasy fiction that summer. Mandy says: The first time I remember reading the left an impression was the Dragonlance Legends series. My favorite fantasy series is Discworld. Gary (a different Gary) says: First one I remember is the Elfstones of Shannara. Also, the Dragonriders of Pern and Crystal Singer series. John says: Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. I was nine years old. It created a lifelong love of fantasy for me. Darla says: A Wrinkle in Time, The Faraway Lurs, and The Runaway Robot were some of the books I read as a kid. Later it was Lord of the Rings and The Dragonriders of Pern and I continue reading to this day. Andy says first ever was the Deverry series by Katherine Kerr. It was a very intense read for 14 year old on an 8 hour drive on a family trip. Sue says David Eddings- all his series, and Anne McCaffrey, Dragonrider series. Brock says Lord of the Rings. Susan says: probably Lord of the Rings, but it’s over 50 years ago. I can't really remember. Edward says The Legend of Huma by Richard A. Knaak. Michael says. Now there's a question! Probably The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or one of the other Narnia books, all of which are obviously epic. And finally, Judy says the White Mountains by John Christopher or anything by Dr. Seuss. So I think we can see it's safe to say that if you have a small children between the ages of eight and 10 and you want to get them into fantasy literature, the best places to start would be either The Hobbit, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or perhaps the Dragonriders of Pern. For myself, the very first fantasy novel I ever read was Magician Master by Raymond E. Feist. What got me into that book was The Betrayal at Krondor computer game, which of course was a classic. After I finished the game, I did some reading. Remember this was way before the Internet, so you couldn't find out anything you wanted whenever you wanted and I was astonished to realize that Krondor was in fact based off an actual novel series. So I got Magician Master and started reading it. Fun fact, years later I realized that Magician Master was in fact the sequel to Magician Apprentice and went back to read the first book. So that was this week's Question of the Week. You may remember that last week's Question of the Week was what new Xbox game I should try. Many people had excellent suggestions. I think I'm going to go with Starfield from all the suggestions last week. The reason for this is that Starfield reminds me a great deal of Wing Commander Privateer from the ‘90s. If you remember, the Wing Commander series of PC games, they’re basically Top Gun but in space. Privateer took the basic flight gameplay mechanic but changed it so you're an independent privateer captain and you had to make your way through the Gemini sector as a mercenary, a merchant, a pirate, a bounty hunter, or some combination of them. You had to buy your own equipment and weapons and find a way to turn a profit in your jobs, since you had to pay for everything. If you played the main plots, you got involved in conspiracy involving a lost alien relic, but you don't have to do any main plot at all. You just fly around the galaxy making credits, fighting pirates, and trading. Starfield basically feels like someone took Wing Commander Privateer, and then added on a Skyrim-esque role-playing experience for when your character is on the ground. I know it got middling reviews, but I'm enjoying the game so far. Perhaps because, at least to my eye, it feels like a massively updated version of Wing Commander Privateer. 00:09:43 Main Topic: Seven of the Most Inaccurate Movies About Writers Now we're 10 minutes into the show and still haven't gotten to our main topic, so I think it's time we should finally do that, which is Seven of the Most Inaccurate Movies About Writers. I decided to do this because I noticed that whenever a novelist or a writer of fiction turns up in a movie, the depiction of it tends to be grossly inaccurate. That's hardly unique to writers. The joke among the military officers, former military officers, and law enforcement officers is that whenever the military or law enforcement turns up on TV, you can have a good drinking game by counting all the inaccuracies and things that they get wrong. So why should writing be any different? I think the difference might be that writing is kind of a more aspirational career, where it's the sort of career that people tend to daydream about, like going off and becoming a writer and so they tend to get a lot of things wrong about that. So with the help of my transcriptionist, we pulled together a list of seven of the most inaccurate movies about writing. There's actually a couple of Hallmark movies on here, and this isn't to bash on Hallmark movies. I think Hallmark movies tend to be about the fantasy of romance in the way that a show like Law and Order is about the fantasy of law enforcement and criminal justice, or a movie like John Wick is about the fantasy of violence or a game like SimCity is about the fantasy of managing a large city. The reality is of none of these things are nothing like the way they're portrayed in fiction, but instead, Law and Order is about the fantasy of what we would like the criminal justice system to be like and John Wick is kind of like, you know, a revenge fantasy of what we imagine we would do if someone actually shot our dog. So with that in mind, let's look at seven of the most inaccurate movies we found about writing. The first one is called Winter Love Story from Hallmark in 2019. It kind of deserves the 22% it got in the Rotten Tomatometer. The plot is a debut writer who wrote a memoir is appearing on a book tour of a famous fantasy author in order to boost her sales. They travel around visiting charming bed and breakfasts with plenty of time to talk about their feelings. The fantasy writer has a dog that he really loves a lot. The movie really revolves more around the dog more than the books. Now, why is this a bad movie about writing? For one thing, it has an unrealistic view of book tours, namely that a debut writer who is writing a memoir (which is a notoriously hard to sell genre) would be given such a lavish book tour paired with an author outside her genre. Cross-genre of sales promotions here in the real world tend not to work terribly well, because someone who wants to buy an 800 page fantasy novel about dragons is probably not going to be super interested in picking up a new writer’s memoir are about her failed dating life. The movie also has an unrealistic view of book marketing and the involvement level and commitment of traditional publishing staff. If traditional publishing marketing staff is marketing 50 plus other writers, they're not going to follow your whimsical book tour and give tons of advice and coaching along the way. Book tours really don't sell very many books in general, to the point where Brandon Sanderson, who is probably the top selling fantasy author in the world right now, stopped doing book tours in 2020 when COVID came along (because you know, everyone had to stop doing book tours). But after all the various restrictions lifted, he found that he really wasn't interested in resuming it because of the physical drain of traveling and it turned out it had no impact on sales whatsoever. Finally, the movie touts the very false belief that the skill of giving heartfelt, heavily autobiographical speeches is the essential skill in marketing your work. Honestly, if you want to sell books, you would have better luck learning how to use Amazon ads or Facebook ads effectively, but I expect that would not make for a very good Hallmark movie. The second movie we're going to talk about is Lost City from 2022, which I actually saw shortly after it came out because it turned up on streaming (I think it was on Prime). I thought it was actually pretty funny, but it was not terribly accurate about the business of writing. The plot is that a romance author is struggling to finish her book. While she's on tour with her famous cover model, she gets kidnapped and the cover model must turn into an action hero and rescue her. The plot very heavily borrows from the 1980s movie Romancing the Stone, which is also about a writer. The scenery in the movie is fantastic and Daniel Radcliffe plays the villain, this insane billionaire who kidnapped Sandra Bullock's character to help find lost treasure and their reactions were pretty funny. It's not a great movie about writing. Even the romance and romantasy (which is a combination of romance and fantasy) authors topping the best seller list right now (as of April 2024) do not have press tours that are more like a fan convention with a budget for sparkly jumpsuits and lighting effects, etcetera. Cover models do not get a lot (or even any) of promotion, attention, or respect from publishers. The cover model is given top billing on the tour along with the author, which just doesn't happen. One side note, what is probably realistic is the publisher trying to discourage tangents in full academic jargon by the author on her history related research interests. You will often find if you're reading a book that involved a lot of research on the part of the author, that the author is going to put that research into the book (whether the reader likes it or not). Our third movie is called Alex and Emma, which came out in 2003. The plot of this movie is that an author with writer’s block has debts to a loan shark he must pay in 30 days or else the loan shark is going to get nasty. He hires a stenographer to help him church out a book and since it's a romantic comedy, you can probably guess what happens next. This movie was apparently very loosely inspired by the story of Dostoyevsky writing The Gambler/meeting his wife but is also apparently heavily inspired by the movie Paris When it Sizzles. Even with multiple sources of inspiration, it still received terrible reviews for an incoherent, unsatisfying plot. And why is this a bad movie about writing? For one thing, it treats writing a book draft in 30 days as a near impossible feat. Not to toot my own horn, so to speak, but I'm going to write the rough draft of Cloak of Titans in under 30 days. If all goes well, it will be well over 100,000 words. There's also once again the cliche that writing already must be autobiographical and reflect what's currently happening in your life in order to be good. If that were true, all my books would be about the adventures of a middle-aged IT guy, which would be kind of boring compared to epic fantasy novels. And another thing that's unrealistic is that the struggling writer gets a $125,000 advance from the publisher, but the publisher won't help him replace a computer when it gets destroyed by a loan shark’s posse. Computers were, of course, quite a bit more expensive in 2003 than they are now, but still they cost a lot less than $125,000. So that part definitely didn't make sense. Our 4th movie is Not Another Happy Ending, which came out in 2013. A writer becomes successful but has writer’s block when she's happy. Her publisher has to figure out how to make her unhappy so she can write again but falls in love with her in the process. And why is this a bad movie about writing? If following around most the successful writers in order to inspire them was the actual job of publishers, a few certain well known fantasy series might have at least one more book by now than they actually do. So we'll just move on from there. The fifth one is a movie that gets made fun of a lot and rather deservedly so: Eat, Pray, Love, which came out in 2010. The plot of this, obviously, is that a reader gets divorced and goes on a journey to Italy, India, and Bali in order to “find herself” and gain writing inspiration. Why is this a bad movie about writing? So many reasons! First, there's a sort of a cliche in poor taste that writers can't be great unless they leave their spouses, that their marriage is preventing someone from devoting themselves to great writing. Although the one thing you say for Eat, Pray, Love is that it's a gender flip as opposed to the way these things usually are in movies where it's the male writer who is being held back by his wife. The reality is that people with stable home lives are more likely to be productive than people without them, and this is true across all fields of endeavor, and not just writing. Another bad cliche is the idea that you need to bankroll a year of travel to luxury destinations in order to find inspiration to write isn't realistic or accurate, and in truth very, very, very, very, very few writers can actually afford this luxury. This type of...
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Episode 197: Payhip vs Shopify For Indie Author Direct Sales
04/22/2024
Episode 197: Payhip vs Shopify For Indie Author Direct Sales
In this week's episode, we take a look at direct selling for indie authors, and compare the pros and cons of Payhip and Shopify as platforms for selling direct. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: 00:00:00 Introduction, Writing Updates, and a Reader Question Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 197 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April the 19th, 2024, and today we are talking about the pros and cons of Payhip and Shopify for direct sales by authors. Before we do that, we will do Coupon of the Week and some updates on my current writing projects. I have some questions from readers and will discuss what I did to celebrate publishing my 150th book. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SPRINGELVES, spelled SPRINGELVES. As always, the link and the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through May the 14th, 2024, so if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now let's have a look at my current writing and audiobook projects. Wizard-Thief, as I mentioned in last week's episode, is done and is out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited and is selling quite strongly. Thank you very much for that. Now that it is out, my main project is Cloak of Titans, the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series. As of this recording, I am about 34,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 7 of 24. I think the final book length will end up being about the length of Cloak of Embers, which was about 110,000 words. Once Cloak of Titans is finished, my next project will be Shield of Darkness, so I will finally be getting to the second book in the Shield War series, which will be a follow up to Shield of Storms from back in January. If all goes well, I think Cloak of Titans will be out in the second half of May, maybe towards the start of June. I'm hoping to have Shield of Darkness out shortly after that, probably towards the end of June. I have also started working on the sequel to Wizard Thief, which is Half-Orc Paladin. That will come out after Shield of Darkness is done, hopefully not too long after Shield of Darkness is done. So that will probably be around the middle of July or so. So that is what I'm working on for books for the next couple of months. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Ghosts in the Veils. That will once again be recorded by Hollis McCarthy. I have Brad Wills working on the Tales of the Shield Knight anthology, which once it’s in audiobook, I’m going to sell it as a bundle on Audible and Amazon and all the other usual audiobook stores. I will also be giving away short stories individually for free from that collection in my newsletter, so that is once again a very good reason to sign up for my new release newsletter. Leanne Woodward has agreed to narrate the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, Wizard Thief. If all goes well, that will probably happen in June. And also in June, CJ McAllister will be narrating the second book of the Stealth and Spells Online Series, formerly known as Sevenfold Sword Online. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. Now we have one question from a reader that is not connected with our other segments. It's from Robert who asks about the Half-Elven Thief series: is this series available in paperback? I'm pleased to say that yes, it is. Both Half-Elven Thief and Wizard-Thief are available in trade paperback. Probably the cheapest place to get them is on Amazon, but I have expanded distribution for them so you should be able to buy it online from a variety of other stores. 00:03:43 Celebrating Book #150 As I mentioned previously on the show, Ghost in the Veils was my 150th book. Thank you for reading, everyone. Quite a few people asked how I wanted to celebrate, the implication being that I wanted to take a trip or something like a cruise, that sort of thing. However, with all respect to the cruise industry, if I wanted to catch norovirus, I could do it much closer to home for far less expense. However, I have established a precedent for celebrating major book milestones like this. Way back in 2019, Dragontiarna: Knights was my 100th book and to celebrate that milestone, I got a Nintendo Switch, which was the first dedicated video game console I had used since 1998 or so. Given that six months later COVID started, that turned out to be a wise purchase because suddenly I had a lot more time for video games. I got to beat a bunch of games I never had time to finish otherwise back in the ‘90s, like Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3, the original Castlevania trilogy for NES, the Super Nintendo Castlevania games, Super Metroid, and I finally finished Skyrim. It wasn't all a retro nostalgia trip because I did finish a few newer games on it as well, like Metroid Dread and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I recently had one of those numerically significant birthdays that are divisible by a large number, so I commemorated that occasion by getting an Xbox. It is a fine game console, but the problem with the Xbox was unlike the Switch, using the Xbox monopolizes the television. I finished the original Halo trilogy on Xbox and Skyrim again, but the whole Xbox monopolizes the television thing was kind of a difficulty for finding time to play it. But then a new device came to my attention: portable monitors. Obviously, most monitors are portable depending on size, but this new sort of monitor is basically a laptop LCD panel with a kickstand. It runs off a USB-C connection for power and you can connect a device to it with a USB-C or mini HDMI. Overall, these portable monitors tend to weigh about as much as an iPad in a case. They were basically intended for business travelers, since they fit easily into a laptop bag and then you can have a dual monitor set up with your laptop while you're on the road. However, it also connects just fine to an Xbox. If you can hold a laptop comfortably in your lap, then a portable monitor is about one third of that total weight. I moved my Xbox over next to the couch, connected it to a portable monitor, and have been using the Xbox that way. It is really quite exceedingly comfortable. Since I've beaten Skyrim a couple of times now, I need to decide on a new long-term game, which is why Question of the Week will be what it is shortly. So the “too long; didn't listen” version was celebrated my 150th book with a sub-100 dollar portable monitor off Amazon. It's really quite enjoyable and thank you for coming along for all 150 books. 00:06:35 Question of the Week It quite naturally segues into our Question of the Week. This week's question: what Xbox Game should I play next? No wrong answers, obviously. The reason I asked this particular question is because I keep defaulting to Skyrim or Halo when I play an Xbox game and would like to try something different. My leading candidates so far are Starfield, Witcher 3, and Dragon's Dogma 1. As you might have expected, this inspired many comments. LG says: I'm glad to hear you’re an Xbox player, too. I like to separate my work/study computer from my gaming space, so having the controller plus TV in another room works well for me. Revenant 2 is my new favorite game. It jumped forward in my “to play” list when Halo Infinite's campaign wasn't personally feeling right. This game has got fantastic narratives, brilliant variety, exciting exploration, and frequent boss fights, it’s souls-like but forgiving, the level/combat/gear systems are great, and there's a totally viable offline/single player mode. Justin says: We are a Nintendo family. Not quite 30 years ago, the PlayStation came out. Amid whining, I had the kids vote on what platform we would stick with. There is no way our entertainment budget could handle more than one. The most complaints have been missing out on the Metal Gear franchise, so that's my vote. Malcolm says 150 books. What an amazing feat. Congratulations. I feel like I've been on the journey with you, having read every book you have written and every series. I particularly enjoyed any book with Ridmark and Calliande and like Dragonskull, the next generation of Arbans. I also thoroughly enjoyed all the Demonsouled books, wasn't so keen on the Cloak and Ghost crossovers, but still a good read. Whatever you do, enjoy this landmark. Have fun. To answer the question, I do not usually play video games, but one that did catch my attention and play through all of them is the Dragon Age games. MacKenzie suggests Red Dead Redemption. The graphics hold up remarkably well. It's astoundingly clear for a Rockstar game and has an amazingly authentic feel to it. I'm not even a huge Western fan, but there's something extremely relaxing about riding out of town into the desert to hunt varmints. I think that is probably why so many people will go hunting in real life. Michael says: Starfield is a great game, but no modding yet on Xbox. Perry says: I haven't owned a console in over a decade, nor have I played any of those games, but my preference would be for Witcher 3. James says: How does Baldur’s Gate 3 not make the list? Best game I've played maybe ever. David says: Fallout 4 was fun. Mark says Witcher. Starfield, I found to be slow to start with. I play Skyrim over and over again. I kind of do that as well. You can always mod Skyrim if you have the anniversary edition and haven't already. Robb says any car racing game. Juana says Witcher 3. Martin says Witcher 3. Becca says Witcher 3. So there are many votes there for Witcher 3. William says Hogwarts Legacy. Jake says: I honestly can't recommend any games, no matter what platform they come in. Xbox, PlayStation, Atari…just not worth it anymore. So I'd skip the games and write a book, maybe continuation of the Silent Order series. That's my vote. Thank you for that advice, Jake, I suspect it might be a little self-interested, but I appreciate that. Next one is from Michael, who says next Xbox game is called: buy a PlayStation. Barton says: only played Witcher 3 out of those, but it was engrossing. Bobby says Starfield and Hogwarts Legacy are both enjoyable as well as Jedi Survivor. And finally, Jim says: Child of the Ghost. Wait…not a game….yet. Thank you everyone, for all the suggestions. I think what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to try Starfield because that comes with Game Pass and I have Game Pass already. If I don't like that, I will I probably start Witcher 3 because I got that one was on super sale like last year for something like 10 bucks and so it's been sitting in my account and I haven't played it. But if I try Starfield and don't like it, I will switch over to Witcher 3. If I don't like Witcher 3, maybe it'll be time for Baldur’s Gate 3. 00:10:40 Main Topic: Shopify vs. Payhip for Direct Sales for Writers But as much as I enjoy video games, I enjoy writing more and this is not a video game podcast. This is The Pulp Writer Show, so I think we should segue over into talking about an actual writing topic. This week's topic is comparing Shopify and Payhip for direct sales or as a direct sales platform for indie authors. And before we dig in, I should have a disclaimer. As you may know from my frequent mention of it on this show, I use Payhip quite a bit and that's how I do my direct sales. That said, I am not sponsored by Payhip. I don't get any stuff from this, whether financial benefits or an affiliate program, that kind of thing. I haven't used Shopify, but we did look into it quite a bit for the show and any opinion I express on this podcast is my own and not influenced by either Shopify or Payhip in any way. All right with that out of the way, let's dig into the topic. First off, why do direct sales? We should probably define that first. Direct sales is when an indie author sells a book using an ecommerce platform like Payhip or Shopify or Gum Road or a bunch of others without going through one of the big stores like Amazon or Apple or Google Play. So why do this? You get a greater cut of the profit than through ebook stores, whereas on a platform like Amazon, you max out at 70% of the sale price is what you get as the author. On direct sales platforms, you can potentially get nearly everything minus credit card fees and platform fees, which is higher than any of the other stores offer. You get paid faster. If you make a direct sale from the author, the author gets the money almost instantaneously, depending on their payment setup. Freedom/control. This is the big one. There is a lot of freedom in doing your own direct sales. It is a lot of work, but then like all forms of freedom, it is often quite worth it. It's much easier to run sales or issue coupon codes, as you know if you listen to the show regularly. Every week I give out a different coupon code for a discount on my Payhip store. It's also very good for people who want to sell online courses or memberships, which is not something I'm interested in doing. People who are interested in doing that usually need to employ an online sales platform such as Shopify or Payhip rather than trying to sell it on something like Amazon or eBay. There are a couple of things to note about trying direct sales. There is quite a bit of learning curve since you have to set up the store yourself and that involves a lot of clicking and uploading and so forth. You also need to learn about things about like Value Added Tax, shipping, file delivery services, etcetera. And if you are selling in the United States, you also have to be careful you comply with whatever these sales tax laws are for your jurisdiction or for where you're selling in the United States. Direct sales don't count towards ranking on other platforms, if that's something that's important to you, if you want your book to be a number one category bestseller on Amazon, direct sales will not help with that. It does take a bit of time to set up and maintain, and it also takes time for readers to get used to it and will not likely be a large portion of your sales, especially at first, since users tend to stick to the platform where they already have built up a library. This is one of the reasons why the Steam game platform is so dominant, because it's been around for a long time and a lot of the users have very big Steam libraries, so they're not super keen on jumping to a different distributor. Readers will need a carrot not a stick to get them to try a new platform, which is one of the reasons why I do those coupon codes all the time. So now to the actual nitty gritty of Payhip versus Shopify. We can sum it up quite neatly by saying it this way: Payhip is primarily designed for digital products. Shopify is primarily designed for physical products, but both are capable of selling either physical or digital products. Shopify allows for greater analytics and customization, while Payhip has a great basic service that keeps the costs low. So in terms of pricing, which costs more? Payhip pricing has three tiers. There is the free tier, which you pay obviously $0 per month and then Payhip takes 5% of each transaction. There is the middle tier, where you pay $29 USD per month and Payhip takes 2% of the transaction. Then there is the top, most expensive tier, which costs $99 USD per month and Payhip takes 0% of the transaction fee. Obviously, you would only consider that tier if you were making more than $1,200 USD a year in direct sales. Shopify does not have a free tier. At the basic tier, it costs $39 USD per month and Shopify takes 2.9% + $0.30 USD per transaction. At $105 USD per month, Shopify takes 2.6% + $0.30 USD per transaction. At $399 USD per month, Shopify takes 2.4% + $0.30 USD per transaction. We can see that with Shopify, you are already going to be paying more out the door. If you're just starting with direct sales, it might make more sense to start with the free tier on Payhip and then look at more costly options on either service as your needs grow and if you need the additional, more expensive features. So let's look at the pros on Payhip. The biggest pro on Payhip is low bar to entry in both terms of cost and in terms of technology needed to create a basic storefront. I've been doing direct sales on Payhip since 2021, and it's a very simple platform to use. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but it's not a huge one compared to something like WordPress or Adobe Photoshop. As we mentioned, the lowest tier plan is free but with a 5% cut of sales. The Pro plan, the top tier that we mentioned earlier, is $99 USD but then there are no transaction fees. It can handle UK/EU Value Added Tax automatically unlike Shopify because Payhip is based out of the UK, so that is built into their platform. Payhip also has some handy features that Shopify doesn't or that Shopify doesn't offer without like a plug-in app, that kind of thing that Shopify offers: settings for selling online courses, memberships, affiliate marketing, and a referral system. When I have had to contact Payhip about some sort of tech issue, I've always found their customer support to be very fast and responsive. As I mentioned before, I'm not being paid to say that. That is just my own personal experience. The pros for Shopify are basically for more advanced users, I think. $29 USD a month for the lowest pricing plan and then plus a cut and plus a transaction fee, that can add up if you have a lot of transactions. I think Shopify is really aimed more toward more advanced users than someone starting out with the basic ebook store on Payhip. However, to be fair, you do get a lot of stuff for that money. Shopify has an advanced website builder feature with more customization options on the pages. It has much more advanced SEO and analytics tools than anything Payhip offers. It is very useful if you're selling physical products. It also offers features to support delivery of physical items, such as customized shopping options based on location. More third-party apps or third-party payment options are available through Shopify (for example, Amazon Pay or Apple Pay). Shopify does offer a lot of customization and it does have a pretty good app store, where if there's a feature that Shopify doesn't have, there's a pretty good chance you can find one of the apps in their store that will sort of offer bolt on functionality for the new feature that you are looking for. So, in conclusion, if you want to do direct sales as an indie author, should you use Payhip or should you use Shopify? And as so often in these cases there is no right answer, there is merely the tool that is best suited for your needs as an indie author and a small businessperson. If you want to be able to heavily customize the site, Shopify offers more options for that than Payhip. If you are primarily selling digital products like I am, then Payhip offers better value, because you can just go with the free tier and still make more money than you would selling for the same price off Amazon. Since I don't really at this time have any interest in selling physical products online, Payhip it is. That said, if you do want to sell printed books or your own merchandise direct, then Shopify is the way to go. But if you don't have any of that kind of stuff and you still want to keep your shop costs low, then Payhip is probably the better option for you since you can use their free tier. So that is a look at Shopify versus Payhip and if you are thinking about direct selling as an indie author, I hope you have found that helpful. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a word of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me to pull together all the research for this...
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Episode 196: Virtual Voice Audiobooks?
04/15/2024
Episode 196: Virtual Voice Audiobooks?
In this week's episode, I answer a reader's question about whether or not I will use KDP's new Virtual Voice program to create AI-narrated audiobooks. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of : SPRINGSHIELD The coupon code is valid through April 30th, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, ! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Update Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 196 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April the 12th, 2024 and today we are talking about whether or not I will use Amazon Virtual Voice to produce audiobooks. Before we get to our main topics, we will have Coupon of the Week, some writing updates, and then a few random questions from readers. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This episode will go live on Tax Day in the US, so let's have a discount on an audiobook. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills, at my Payhip store. That code is SPRINGSHIELD and that is SPRINGSHIELD again and that of course will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April 30th, 2024, so you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now let's have some updates on my current writing projects. I am very nearly almost done with Wizard-Thief. I'm hoping to finish up edits shortly and actually publish it on either April the 15th or April the 16th. So when this episode goes out, I may be publishing it literally as you are listening to this. This book, like Half-Elven Thief, will be available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. Next up, my next main project after Wizard-Thief is published, is going to be Cloak of Titans, the 11th book in the Cloak Mage series. It's not the end of the series; I'm planning that there's probably going to be about 15 books with four more after this one. But we are going to be blowing up a lot of the subplots in this book. So while this is not the end of the series, it will definitely have the feel like the end of a lot of plot arcs. I'm 22,000 words into it, and if all goes well, I'm hoping it will be out sometime toward the end of May and will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Ghosts in the Veils and if all goes well, that should be out sometime toward the end of May. So those are the updates on my current writing projects. 00:02:09 Reader Questions and Comments/Question of the Week Before we get to the Question of the Week, let's have a couple of unrelated questions from readers. Cameron wrote in to ask: I'm just interested in knowing how the name Calliande came about and does it have any meaning? I originally thought up the name Calliande because I wanted a unique and distinctive sounding name for the character, and so I was looking at various French and Welsh names that started with C and were about that length. I was rearranging the letters and swapping the vowels out and I came across that name and I thought, you know, that works, we're going with that. Amusingly, when I first wrote Frostborn, in my head it was pronounced Callian-DAY. But then when I did the first couple of Frostborn audiobooks from Podium way back at the end of the 2010s, Steven Crossley, the narrator pronounced it Calli-AND and ever since then, because that's where the direction he went, the official pronunciation has been Calliande and that's been the way it's been pronounced in all subsequent audio appearances of that character. Our next question is from Scott, who asks about a screenshot of the PC game Pillars of Eternity I posted on Facebook the other day. Scott says: that's on my Steam Wish List, but I haven't gotten to it yet. What do you think of it? I like it. I am enjoying it. I've had it since 2014, but I've decided the time has finally come to buckle down and finish it. If you played the original Baldur’s Gate back in the ‘90s or Knights of the Old Republic or Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment back in the ‘90s, then you will enjoy Pillars of Eternity. It's definitely worth playing. It's also an old enough game now that should work on most systems, and if you have Xbox Game Pass, the game’s owned by Microsoft now, so you have Xbox Game Pass so you can play it as part of your subscription on your Xbox. Now it's time for Question of the Week, which we ask to have interesting discussions and maybe find out some good suggestions for things we might not have thought of otherwise. And so this week's question: if you listen to podcasts, what podcasts do you listen to most frequently? No wrong answers, obviously. MacKenzie says I have four podcasts on consistent subscription: The Art of Manliness, The Black Pants Legion, A Delta Green actual play podcast (content warning for very dark humor), and of course The Pulp Writer Show. Thanks, MacKenzie. Maaike says: currently just one, Kick in the Creatives posted by Sarah Busby and Tara Roskell. Through them I discovered a few more, but I haven't really found the time to really listen to them just yet. I don't know whether I can write or not, but I do know I can draw and paint, so that's what I'm focusing on. Thinking of doing NaNoWriMo though to see how my writing is. It's definitely worth trying NaNoWriMo just for once for the experience so you can see how you enjoy it or not. Michael says only two regularly, The Pulp Writer Show (thanks, Michael!) and the Legend of the Bones, which is an epic, gritty D&D solo play narrative where the dice rule. Perry says The Pulp Writer Show (not sure if you've heard of it) and The Self-Publishing Show (currently on episode 33 of 400 plus). Anne Marie says Cabinet of Curiosities by Aaron Mahnke. Jesse says: mostly Critical Role. Justin says: I didn't start listening to podcasts until I went full time with my current job in 2021. I listen to a bunch now, but most of my regular listens are The Glass Cannon Network, What Culture Wrestling, What Culture Gaming, and Adeptus Ridiculous. It's interesting how I actually haven't heard of most of these podcasts, which I guess goes to show how diverse and widespread the podcast ecosystem is, where if you have a podcast that can be very famous in a specific niche, it might be like THE podcast in that niche, but anyone who's not familiar with that particular subject of interest may have never heard of the podcast. For myself, I did not really start listening to podcasts until 2019, which is when I started listening to some of the self-publishing ones. In the past few years. I have also discovered retro video game podcasts. In that time, I've mostly listened to The Sell More Books Show and the Remember The Game podcast about retro video games, which is quite funny (but it does have some foul language, so if you check that out, be aware of it). 00:06:40 Main Topic: Amazon Virtual Voice Audiobooks Now on to our main topic of the week: Amazon Virtual Voice audiobooks. This was prompted by a question from Reader PML, who wrote in to ask: several of my favorite authors have opted to use AI Virtual Voice to release some of their older titles in audio format. I emailed you a while back hoping for more audio releases for Caina and Nadia. You indicated that audio publishing is expensive and you preferred to release the titles that were not short in length. I totally understand, but I wondered if you have considered releasing your back titles using Virtual Voice. The performance is not bad and I would really enjoy listening to all the books featuring Caina and Nadia. I don't know what the pricing scale is, but it's probably quite a bit less than a live reader. So thank you, PML for that question and for listening to all those audiobooks. If you are not familiar with the term, Virtual Voice is Amazon's new program for creating AI narrated audiobooks. Will I be using Virtual Voice to turn some of my older titles to audiobooks? No. Why? So there's three levels to my answer here. One, is it ethical to use AI for audiobook narration? Two, is AI narration good enough for audiobook narration? Three, does this help visually impaired listeners? I should mention that I have in fact experimented quite a bit with AI narrated audiobooks. Part of the reason I did this was because I wanted to understand the technology so I had an informed opinion about it. Google Play beat Amazon to the punch about two years ago, and I experimented with turning the Silent Order series into audiobooks with their technology, since I don't think the Silent Order series sells well enough to support audiobooks. After that experiment, I didn't think the AI generated audiobooks were good enough to sell in good conscience and just because you're selling something doesn't mean anyone will buy it. More on that to come. So instead, I put those AI narrated audiobooks on YouTube for free. That said, I did turn on AdSense for the audiobooks, so I made a satisfactory, if small bit of money from YouTube ads in 2023. Overall, the response from people who listen to those audiobooks seemed to be that they loved the story (thanks, everyone!), but they hated the artificial voice. Like if they had actually paid for it instead of listening to it for free on YouTube, I could just imagine the complaints. I think a lot of the authors who create Virtual Voice audiobooks and audiobooks using similar products from Google Play or other companies will be disappointed by the response they get for those audiobooks. Like I've said before, audiobooks are basically self-publishing on hard mode. But if you're coming to the market with an AI generated audiobook, it will be even harder to sell than one voiced by a human who knows what he or she is doing. So with that sort of background in mind, let's go on to the details for the answer to my question. One: is it ethical to use AI for audiobook narration? Ethics in AI is a bottomless quagmire of an Internet discussion. Overall, in my personal opinion, I think AI technology creates vastly more problems than it solves and is really nothing more than a very fancy autocomplete. I also suspect there's a bit of a speculative bubble to AI technology like there was with cryptocurrency and NFTs. For a while, all the Galaxy Brain influencer people thought crypto and NFTs were the future, and then the bubble burst and a significant portion of everything connected to crypto and NFTs turned out to be a big old scam and all the Galaxy Brains migrated over to touting AI. I suspect a lot of the AI technology rushed out now has the same speculative bubble effect and when the bubble bursts, some companies are going to be out billions since they spent all that money building infinite crap generators. A lot of people are rushing to shove AI into stuff because it's trendy and not because it's useful, like how (this is a 100% true story), the Washington State Lottery decided for whatever reason to put an AI image generator on its site, which it had to pull down hastily when that image generator started creating deepfake nude images of its users. It is also amusing how some of the really pro-AI Galaxy Brains like to say that the US needs to develop AI or else the Chinese will get it first, as if having an infinite crap generator to make deepfake nudes will somehow determine geopolitical dominance in the 21st century. But all that said, I don't think AI is going to go away. The US courts seem (so far at least) consistent in their opinion that AI is in plagiarism but isn't copyrightable, and there's a wide range of useful activity in the not copyrightable but not plagiarism space. This might change if something gets all the way up to the Supreme Court or if Congress passes some legislation on that or the EU puts out new regulations that the companies have to follow because the EU is such a big part of their market. But for now, that seems to be the position. AI can do useful things that crypto and NFTs can't. Like for example, suppose you're applying to 40 different jobs and you can use ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot to crank out 40 different customized cover letters for your job applications. Given how messed up the job market is at the moment, I could hardly blame someone for doing that. And you see examples of people using generative AI not to create artwork, but to handle data processing type chores (like the cover letters) in clever ways that don't seem to cross any moral or ethical boundaries. So I suspect everyone will have to examine their own consciences and decide where their own line is for generative AI. For me, I decided I'm not going to sell anything that I didn't make myself, or in the case of an audiobook, was made by a human I hired. If I'm selling something, it was 100% written by Jonathan Moeller or 100% narrated by a human I hired, and the cover image doesn't include any AI generated art elements. This is also true of books and stories I give away for free, like my permafree series starters. That's where I've decided my line is going to be with AI usage. I have used AI images for Facebook ads, since ads are low resolution anyway and you often have to change out the image every week or so. Ad images are essentially disposable, and I've heard people say AI art is also disposable, so why not use the disposable products of AI art for ad images? Number two, is AI narration good enough for audiobook narration? All of my criticisms of AI aside, AI voice or Virtual Voice isn't a new technology. It's just improved text to speech synthesis technology and text to speech has been around since the late 1960s. The AI part just makes the synthetic voice sound closer to an actual human voice than the more obviously artificial tones of older technology. It's also pretty good at imitating the real human voice by now, which is why you can go on YouTube and see comedy videos of President Biden trying to make his way through Skyrim or something. Is this AI narration good enough to support creating a paid audiobook? Well, kind of, sorta. It's good enough now that it creates a near perfect imitation of a human voice. The trouble is that the voice is so perfect that it triggers the uncanny valley effect, which is when you encounter something that almost seems human but isn't. It's also really bad at emotion. The best narrators make it sound like they're telling a story, and that means varying the emotion of the voice at appropriate times, even if you're not trying to create a distinctive voice for each character. Text to speech simply isn't very good at that. That's part of the reason I won't use Virtual Voice. I don't feel the end product is of high enough quality to sell. Give it away for free on YouTube? Sure. But sell? Definitely not. It would be good enough for very dry nonfiction things like legal casebooks, geological and oil surveys, that kind of thing. A nonfiction book that required varied emotion like a war memoir, for instance or comedic travelogue would not work at all well with AI narration. And finally, number three: does this help visually impaired listeners? While I don't want to use AI nourish and create paid audiobooks, I would like to see the technology become more ubiquitous and more integrated with ereader apps and operating systems. I think the mission of technology is to help us overcome or ameliorate the inherent frailties of the human condition. That is the best and most ethical use of technology. So I would like to see AI narration eventually become just a button in the ereader app for visually impaired listeners. Like you hit the read aloud button and then the computer reads to you in a voice of your choosing. You'll still have the option to buy a human narrated audiobook if available, but the option to have the device read to you would be there if you want or need to use it. We're already kind of there, technology-wise. All the major operating systems for computer and mobile have read aloud functions. It's just not implemented consistently across the platform and the voices aren't always very good. I won't use Virtual Voice or AI narration to create any audiobooks for sale. Unless something drastically changes in the field, I don't think I'm going to change my mind on that, though of course anything is possible. In the spirit of full disclosure, as of right now (as of this recording on April 12th 2024), I have agreements with four different narrators to produce four different audiobooks, so I think I am literally putting my money where my mouth is. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 195: The Best Writing Software
04/08/2024
Episode 195: The Best Writing Software
In this week's episode, we take a look at the pros and cons of some of the most popular writing software, and a share a preview of the new HALF-ELVEN THIEF audiobook narrated by Leanne Woodward. I'm hoping to start on SHIELD OF DARKNESS soon, so let's look back at some of the DRAGONSKULL audiobooks! SPRINGSQUIRE The coupon code is valid through April 23rd, 2024. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, Transcript 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 195 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is April 5th, 2024 and today we are talking about the pros and cons of different types of writing software. We also have an update on my current writing projects and as usual, Question of the Week. Before we get into that, let's do Coupon of the Week. For this week's coupon, I'm hoping to start on Shield of Darkness soon. So let's look back at some of the Dragonskull audiobooks. The following coupon code will get you 25% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire at my Payhip store and that is SPRINGSQUIRE. Again that is SPRINGSQUIRE and that will be in the show notes. This coupon code will get you 25% off Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire audiobook, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. This coupon code will be valid through April the 23rd, 2024. If you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing projects. The rough draft of Wizard Thief is done. It came to about 74,000 words, which means it is about 15,000 words longer than the first book. I suspect no one will complain. I am now writing Thief’s Favor, an ebook short story set in the world of Wizard-Thief. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Thief’s Favor when Wizard-Thief comes out, hopefully before April is over. I am also 19,000 words into Cloak of Titans and after Wizard-Thief is published that will be my main project and then once Cloak of Titans is done, it'll be back to Ridmark and Andomhaim with Shield of Darkness. In audiobook news, the audiobook of Half-Elven Thief is done, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward. You can get it at all the usual audio bookstores, Audible, and all the others except for Google Play. For some reason, they seem to be having slow uptake on audiobooks for the last couple of weeks, and hopefully that should be cleared up soon. Otherwise, you can get Half-Elven Thief, as excellently narrated by Leanne Woodward at all the usual audiobook stores, and we will include a sample of the audiobook at the end of this podcast episode. So hang around for that. 00:02:13 Question of the Week Now, for this week's question of the week, which we do have interesting discussions on my blog and Facebook page. This week's question of the week was: what was the first musical album you ever purchased with your own money? No wrong answers, obviously. The idea for this week's question arrived because over Easter weekend I helped someone set up a device for ripping LP records to MP3. This was an interesting experience because it was in fact the first time I had ever attempted to use an LP record in any form, since by the time I became interested in purchasing music (more on that at the end of the segment), the LP era was well and truly over. Or was it? I thought it was amusing that vinyl outsold CDs in 2023 because as I learned firsthand, when I was setting up this LP ripper, vinyl is so much more cumbersome and fragile than either CD or streaming. Anyway, we asked people what their first album they purchased with their own money was and here are some of the answers. Malcolm says War of the Worlds LP vinyl. Justin says Rush, A Farewell to Kings on cassette tape. In the mid ‘90s, my daughters found my box of cassettes, a legacy of my military days, and it immediately became theirs. ABM says my first album (well in this case, CD) was Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt. Chris says Grand Funk Railroad, Survival. I’m that old, lol. Bonnie says Chicago Transit Authority and K-TEL Hits of the Month. Had “Cover of The Rolling Stone” on it. Brad says Jaws 1975 and that set me on the path of being a lifelong fan and rabid collector of film music. Venus says: my last day of 8th grade, I bought Annihilator-Alice in Hell and Metal Church-Blessing in Disguise. Same day, same store, same transaction. Cheryl says my very first purchase at the age of 14 back in the ‘60s was an album by the Walker Brothers from a secondhand shop. The first new album was Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stones, 1971. Tom says the Trainspotting soundtrack. Pamela says the Letterman 1968 Going Out of my Head. Michael says the soundtrack for Mad Max-Beyond Thunderdome, a musical feast of Jean Michel Jarre crossed with Tina Turner. On cassette tape, naturally. Scott says Guns and Roses, Appetite for Destruction. Brandy says Sisters of Mercy, Vision Thing. Rhion says I grew up in a college town and by age 4 I had a full, green milk of LPs from the discount bin. By five, I had four. I had my own personal collection and my own stereo because my uncle would go to dorm dumpsters at the end of the semester to grab stereos, et cetera, to refurbish. My first purchase was Oingo Boingo's Only a Lad and my second was Men at Work. They were $0.75 each. I remember because it was $0.25 over my budget. I had to ask for a quarter from my uncle. And finally, John says Leonard Nimoy Sings at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. It had The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins on it. Oh dear. If you have never seen The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, which is a song about Bilbo Baggins sung by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, once you've finished listening to this podcast episode, go to YouTube, search for The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins and watch the music video of Leonard Nimoy singing The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. It is hilarious. Thanks to everyone for their comments for Question of the Week. For myself, my answer for what the first musical album I ever purchased was a bit odd because it was, I suspect it was later than most of the people who mentioned this and the reason for that is I have a very odd relationship with popular music because for some reason I almost always have a hard time understanding song lyrics. Song lyrics usually sound like either monotonous droning or warbling to my ear. I don't know why. My brain just works that way. One of the few exceptions is Johnny Cash, who I can usually understand on the first try without any difficulty. Because of that, I've never really connected with most popular music, whether way back when I was a teenager or in the modern age. To this day, I still gravitate towards the soundtracks of computer games and movies that I like. So the first soundtrack I deliberately purchased with my own money was part of a computer game collection, specifically, the Quest for Glory collection, which came out in 1997 and that came with a CD of Quest for the Glory 5: Dragon Fire soundtrack, which I wanted. I already had all the Quest for Glory games on CD or in some cases floppy disk, but I bought that collection just so I could have the soundtrack CD. 27 years later, I still have it and I listened to that soundtrack while working on the final scenes of Wizard-Thief. 00:07:12 Main Topic: Pros and Cons of Writing Software Now let's venture into our main topic of the week, the pros and cons of the best writing software. I got thinking about this because a few years ago I was at the gym. Usually when I'm at the gym, I go on the treadmill and I bring a tablet with me with an ebook and whether I'm running or walking or whatever, I will read on the treadmill. While I was doing this, an elderly gentleman came up next to me on the next treadmill and asked if I knew of any word processing programs that would work on an Android tablet. Boy, did I have answers for him. I started to describe the various pros and cons of different writing software, and he very quickly got bored, made a polite excuse, and wandered away. However, this is a writing podcast with people who are interested in the business of writing, and so I thought it would be a good topic for this week's show because if you ever want your book to be read by other people, if you're not just, you know, handwriting it in a journal for your own emotional satisfaction, then at some point you will probably have to convert your book to a digital file and you will need a software program to do that, and if you're really serious about writing, you will probably need a word processor of some kind or a similar program. So the first one we're going to look at is one that many indie and traditional writers swear by. It's called Scrivener, and it is a program specifically designed for writing books or novels. The pros: it is designed specifically for writing. It has features for outlining, breaking documents into chapters, and tracking writing goals, etc. It has a one-time cost of $60.00 US instead of a subscription, which is increasingly rare nowadays since everything seems to require a subscription instead of a one-time price. And as an added bonus, they offer a free trial so you can try it out and see if it is to your liking. They offer a student discount, where if you buy it with a valid.edu address, you should be able to get a discount. So now here are the cons. The learning curve on Scrivener is pretty high. For basic writing, for something like Microsoft Word, you just open up Word to a blank document, start typing, and if you just want to do that, then the program will definitely meet your need. Scrivener is a bit harder to learn and you would probably benefit from watching a few tutorial videos on how to use it beforehand. I personally do not use Scrivener, though I don't object to it obviously because I know many indies and tradpub writers who know what they're doing swear by it, but for me it is kind of overkill and I don't use it. If you are thinking about Scrivener, it's probably good to ask yourself, will you actually use the extra features? Because my own writing process is pretty simple. I just type out an outline in one Word document, and then I type out the rough draft in a different Word document, and I don't need fancy outlining software or something like that for my process. That's not to say you can't use fancy outlining software, or that the software isn't good. You might remember last year on podcast I had an interview with Troy Lambert of Plottr, which is a very excellent program designed to help you outline your novel but if that's not something you're interested in doing, then Scrivener will probably be overkill for you. Scribner is probably best for people who take extensive notes on their work, especially if they're trying to organize research based on the chapters where it's needed. It may be best for the kind of people who enjoy curating Notion and Trello accounts and they're able to think about their book in a visual way. It is also good for people who extensively revise blocks of text within a chapter or move chapters around a lot. If that sounds like your writing process, and it sounds like something would be good for you, then it is definitely worth giving the free trial of Scrivener a try. Now let's move on to a more general word processing program and one that probably many people out there are familiar with: Google Docs. That is part of the Google suite of office software. You can do PowerPoint-esque presentations, spreadsheets, and documents in Google Docs. The biggest pro of Google Docs is that it's free. All you need to do is sign up for a free Google account and then you have free access to Google Docs and can start typing. It is very easy to use between multiple devices since it runs primarily in a web browser. If you are using one computer, you can close out and open a web browser on a different computer and use it that way. There are dedicated apps for both Android and iOS devices. It's very easy to share between multiple people and accounts and collaborate in real time, and this is honestly its biggest advantage over Microsoft Office besides the cost. Autosave also works extremely well. However, like everything else in life, there are cons. One of the cons of Google Docs is that it gets really slow with large files. I did try to write a book in Google Docs once and I tried a couple of short stories. The short stories are fine. If you try to write a novel in Google Docs, I found that starts to get really slow after about the 25,000 word mark or so. For obvious reasons, since Google Docs is an online service, it is very hard to use without an Internet connection. Perhaps the most important con of all is to be sure to back up to an additional location. If you lose access to your Google account for whatever reason, that means you lose access to all your files, including the book you were working on in Google Docs. So if you're using Google Docs, it's a good idea, it's in fact an excellent and imperative idea, to download your document every so often and save it in another location. Now let's move on to probably the most common word processing software on the planet as of this recording, Microsoft Word. Full disclosure, that is what I use most of the time. In fact, my podcast notes are in a Microsoft Word document. The pros are that you've probably already heard of it and many people are familiar with this product through work or school. If you've had an office job, you've probably used Microsoft Word at some point. And if you have gone through the modern educational system, there's a very good chance that you used Microsoft Word or Google Docs in school. Another advantage is that it's very easy to find online tutorials from Microsoft Office products. Another advantage is that Word is essentially the industry standard for publishing, which makes it a lot easier to share with the editors, translators, beta readers, etcetera. There are a couple of cons, though. Microsoft, like many other software companies, has been switching heavily to the subscription model, so I believe they still sell individual licenses for Office where it's a one-time fee, but then it's tied to a specific computer forever. If you want to really use Office, you have to get a Microsoft 365 subscription, which is often kind of a bummer if you are on a limited budget, which is why it's good there are free options like Google Docs available. Another con of Microsoft Word is that the program is, at this point, 41 years old. The first version of Word was released in 1983. Obviously, it has changed a great deal since then but feature after feature has been built up and piled onto Word to the point where in all honesty (this is as someone who uses Microsoft Word pretty much every single day for the last 15 years), it has a monstrous maze of overlapping and interlocking features. There's a common meme about how if you try to move a bullet point half an inch in Word, you'll start hearing sirens and explosions outside and your entire document will be messed up. This is not far from the truth. For just straight typing, Word is fine, but for more elaborate stuff it quickly becomes a big headache. Another con is that the real time collaboration features like Google Docs has are definitely lacking, and you really can't do that well with Word. If that's not something you do, it's not something you need to worry about but if you do a lot of collaboration, that is something to keep in mind. Again, in full disclosure, I could sit here for the next two hours and talk about the various bad experiences I've had with Microsoft Word, but the fact of the matter is, I've written 150 novels and I've written most of them in Microsoft Word. So it is right now the program I use to write. So on to the next writing suite of software. I wrote most of my books in Microsoft Word, but the ones I haven't written in Word I've written in LibreOffice, which is a free office suite that you can download for free. It doesn't require an Internet connection once it's downloaded. So let's go to the pros. It's free and open source. The interface kind of sort of looks like Microsoft Word, so if you are familiar with Word, the learning curve is not terribly steep. Some think that LibreOffice is faster than Word. Depending on how your system is configured, LibreOffice can be quite a bit faster than Word, having used both. LibreOffice is probably the best for privacy advocates, especially for those who are concerned about Microsoft and Google storing their work in their cloud services and possibly training various AIs on it. For myself, that's not something I worry about a great deal, because all my stuff has been pirated extensively for years, and as we all know, most of the big AIs out now were trained on pirated data, which they're getting sued about now. From my point of view, the horse is already out in the out of the barn for this, so there's no point in worrying about it. LibreOffice also has the advantage of being interoperable with most file formats. By default, it saves in what's called the open document format, but it is mostly cross compatible with the Microsoft Office formats. The cons aren't quite as many as Google Drive in my opinion, because it doesn't have to be online. Even though the user interface is very similar to Word, it's not identical and some people don't care for it. LibreOffice also has no built-in cloud storage functionality like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, so if you need to store your documents in the cloud somewhere for backup, you have to piece it together with another storage option. Though this is the other side of one of the pros, because LibreOffice does not require an Internet connection in order to work once you have it downloaded. So those are the pros and cons of some different writing software. Which one you pick is up to you and your particular writing needs. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A quick word of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me pull together the research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on the official website at . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week. And now let's close out this week's episode with a preview of Half-Elven Thief, as narrated by Leanne Woodward.
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Episode 194: Writing Advice From Eight Famous Writers
03/31/2024
Episode 194: Writing Advice From Eight Famous Writers
In this week's episode, we take a look at eight pieces of writing advice from famous writers. I also discuss why I decided to change the name of my SEVENFOLD SWORD ONLINE series to STEALTH & SPELLS ONLINE. To celebrate the release of GHOST IN THE VEILS, let's get caught up with some of Caina's older adventures in the GHOST NIGHT series. This coupon code will get you 25% off any of the SPRINGNIGHT The coupon is valid through April 16th, 2024. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 194 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March the 28th, 2024 and today we are talking about eight pieces of writing advice from famous writers and what I think of those pieces of writing advice. So it should be an interesting show. Before we get to our other topics, let's have Coupon of the Week. To celebrate the release of Ghost in the Veils, let's get caught up with some of Caina's older adventures in the Ghost Night series. This coupon code will get you 25% off any of the Ghost Night ebooks at my Payhip Store: SPRINGNIGHT and that is SPRINGNIGHT. And of course that will be in the show notes, along the link to the Ghost Night ebooks on my Payhip store. This coupon code is valid through April 16th, 2024, so if you're looking for some spring reading, we have got you covered. Let's have an update on my current writing projects. As we mentioned with the Coupon of the Week, Ghost in the Veils is done, it is out, and selling briskly. Thank you for that, everyone. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. The reviews so far have been good, and it's been selling briskly. So thank you everyone for that. Now that that is done, my next main project will be Wizard-Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and I am in fact almost done with that. I'm on Chapter 11 of 12 though it might turn out to be 14 chapters in the edit. I would in fact be finishing it tomorrow, but I am taking the weekend off for Easter so hopefully I will get the rough draft wrapped up in the first week of April and the book out and available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited before the end of April. After Wizard-Thief is out, my next two main projects will be Cloak of Titans (I am 17,000 words into that) and then Shield of Darkness, the sequel to of the sequel to Shield of Storms from earlier in the year. In audiobook news, the Half-Elven Thief audiobook is done and I'm pleased to report it was narrated excellently by Leanne Woodward (the first book she has narrated for me). That should be available in the next couple of weeks at all the audiobook stores. Recording will start in a few weeks for the audiobook version of Ghost in the Veils, and that will also be excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. 00:02:20 Question of the Week/Title Change to the Sevenfold Sword Online Series Before we get to our main topic, we will do Question the Week and then an update on my books formerly known as Sevenfold Sword Online. Our Question of the Week was: what is your all-time favorite video game, like the one you keep coming to back play at to play again and again across decades? No wrong answers obviously and we had some good comments on this. Todd said, well, this is an easy one. Diablo and then Lands of Lore. Patrick Stewart really did give the King Richard character gravitas. Sam says Final Fantasy 14, an MMO with an amazing story and an amazing community. Justin says World of Warcraft, though I'm not very good at anything but the Auction House and Conquest of the New World, a DOS turn based strategy game I've played for 30 years now. For myself, I think I might be one of the few people who have played computer games in my generation who never played World of Warcraft. I spent a lot of time supporting it and fixing computers that broke when they tried to run World of Warcraft, but I never actually have played it. Pamela says, I play Lord of the Rings Online every day with my husband. I occasionally go back to Age of Empires. Ross Logan says Morrowind, though TIE Fighter is pretty solid also. For myself, I have played both TIE Fighter and Morrowind and thought they were both great, great games. Jay says XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. John says, played the old Wizardry series in the early ‘80s fanatically. I've played Eve Online since 2006, but lately I just refuel alliance stations. Also used to play a lot of the real time strategy Warcraft and StarCraft games, Age of Empires, Homeward, and also the first Diablo. Becca says the Mass Effect trilogy for me. Michael says, I spent a lot of hours on Skyrim, played it on PS3, 4, and 5, but spent even more time on Final Fantasy 14. They keep adding more DLCs with the newest one and the whole new storyline coming at the end of June. Ultimately, the whole Final Fantasy franchise has been my favorite ever since about 1990. I can relate with Michael there because I have played Skyrim on PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox, but I've only actually beaten it on Switch and Xbox, never on PC. Brandy says all the Diablo games I don't have the hand eye coordination or computer to play much these days. My partner is much more game-oriented, from tabletop to 40K to Fallout, and Franken Fallout. I read a lot, which I suppose works out. As a writer, I support that! Jason says Dragon Quest 9 on 3DS is my ultimate going back to game. I'm waiting for port remaster, aiming to be able to play it somewhere than other on that tiny 3DS screen. Justin says Elden Ring. Before Elden Ring came out, it was probably Diablo 2. Yogi says Skyrim, can't get enough, want a new version come out. Had to get into New World to satisfy that need. Mike says I have not played as much over the last few years, but I enjoyed the Diablo series. A different Michael says, some epic answers here already. Morrowind is my all-time favorite, but not because I keep going back to it. In fact, the opposite. The game moved and impressed me so much that I've never played it again as to not dim the memory with repetition. Also, the old Infocom text adventures, Zork III in particular. For games I keep going back to, probably Master of Magic, Medieval 2: Total War, and Lord of the Rings Online. Rhion says, Master of Magic. I still have my DOS diskettes for it! For myself, I think it comes down to a toss-up between two titles. The oldest one is Master of Magic from 1994, though I think the remake from 2022 is a worthy successor. Admittedly, the 2022 remake took a bunch of patches to get there, but in the original form from 1994, the game also required many patches, so it's just continuing the legacy of the original game. The newer one is Skyrim, which as I mentioned, I've been playing on and off since 2011 and even though I finally beat the main campaign during COVID in 2020, I still keep coming back to the game. Though if we are measuring by the length of time I've been coming back to the game, Master of Magic wins since I first played that in 1994 and Skyrim was first in 2011. A semi-important announcement: I have decided to rename the Sevenfold Sword Online series to the Stealth and Spells Online series. The motivation for this decision came from the many, many, many emails I have received asking where Sevenfold Sword Online fit in between Dragontiarna, or Sevenfold Sword, or if the Calliande Arban NPC in the books will turn out to be the real Calliande Arban from Frostborn. And the answer to all these questions is no, of course not. Sevenfold Sword Online is something totally different than the Frostborn epic fantasy series. It's a LitRPG series with many science fiction elements. The premise is that 700 years in the future, an evil corporation made a virtual reality MMORPG game based on my Frostborn books and a former developer sets out to expose the evil corporation from within by playing the game. It's not part of Frostborn or the other Andomhaim series, but all this confusion is not the reader's fault. It's my fault. By naming it Sevenfold Sword Online, I think I set the table wrong, so to speak. What do I mean by setting the table wrong? Imagine that you sit down to a meal. The tablecloth is the red and white pattern traditionally associated with Italian restaurants. On the table you see a shaker of garlic salt and another of Parmesan cheese. Next to your plate is a pizza cutter, and in front of it is a basket of garlic breadsticks. Your beverage is in one of those red plastic cups that Pizza Hut had back in the ‘90s. Naturally, you're expecting the waiter to bring out a pizza. Instead, the waiter brings out a plate with carne asada tacos and lime and jalapeno tortilla chips. You're going to be very confused. Why is there a pizza cutter next to your plate if you're having tacos? I mean, they could potentially be the best tacos in the history of Mexican cuisine, but it's still weird because you sat down and everything indicated that you were about to get a pizza. By naming the LitRPG series Sevenfold Sword Online, I think I set the table wrong and created incorrect expectations that it was actually part of the main Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, Dragonskull, and the Shield War series. It probably also kneecapped sales for the series, since people assumed it was part of Sevenfold Sword. Therefore, Sevenfold Sword Online has been renamed to the Stealth and Spells Online series. Hopefully this will be a better indicator of what kind of book it really is. Now after talking about all of that, I really want some tacos. 00:08:58 Main Topic: Eight Pieces of Advice from Famous Authors So let's look at eight piece of advice from famous authors and see what I think about them and if I agree with them or not. The first one is from Robert Cormier, who says “the beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” I would definitely agree with that. For instance, when I published Ghost in the Veils, I forgot that in the first book I said that Calliope’s eyes were green and in the second book her eyes were suddenly dark and reader Juanna pointed that out. So I made sure to go back and quickly change the color of Calliope’s eyes to the correct green color in Ghost in the Veils. But you know, a little annoying to make that mistake. It's not a big deal, whereas if you make a mistake in brain surgery, that is pretty much a one and done situation. Our second piece of writing advice is from George Orwell, who of course wrote 1984 and Animal Farm and other classics of dystopian fiction. He says, “writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” I think that applies more to authors who are traditionally published than indies, because I've never found writing a book to be objectively painful. It helps to have perspective. I mean, I used to spend eight hours a day unloading trucks. That got painful, especially when it happened to be 100° out in the summer. By contrast, when I write a book, I'm sitting in my office chair pressing buttons on a keyboard. That is objectively less painful, and I suppose the like the mistake I mentioned earlier about Calliope’s eye color would have been more painful if it was traditionally published and I couldn't just change it myself as opposed to if it was traditionally published and then, well, that's it. It's going to be that way forever now. So I think that writing in general is less painful for indies than it is for the traditionally published. Our third piece of writing advice is from Margaret Atwood. She says, “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” That is also very true. As we mentioned earlier, you definitely don't have to worry about your rough draft being perfect. You just got to get it on the page and then I would also suggest you don't have to worry about your final draft being perfect. You have to worry about being good enough and get it to the point where it is good enough because perfection does not exist in this world. Our fourth piece of advice comes from Stephen King, who says, “Good fiction almost always starts with the story and progresses to theme. It almost never starts with the theme and progresses to story.” If you swap out the word story for conflict, I definitely agree with that because I know some writers tend to worry a great deal about what is my book going to be about when I think instead they should be worrying about what's the conflict in my book going to be and how is that conflict get resolved? Our fifth piece of radio advice is from Elmore Leonard. He says, “Cut all the parts people will skip.” I agree with that very much. The tricky part is learning what the parts that people skip are going to be. So overall you want your book to be not boring and you want to cut out as many of the boring parts as is physically possible to do so. Our six piece of advice is from Neil Gaiman, who says simply, “Finish things.” That is very good advice because I've noticed that a trouble many new and starting out face is actually finishing the books and I often say that when a new writer says, do I need to be working on, you know, my website or my mailing list or my social media or all that? I say no, the best thing to learn how to do is to finish a book, because that is a skill that will serve you well for the entirety of your writing career. If you can't finish the book, then there's no point in having the social media and the website and the mailing list and all that. So learning to finish things is the vital skill for any writer. Our seventh piece of writing advice is from Harper Lee, who said, “I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent, he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” There is also good advice, especially considering she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, which when it came out engendered a fair bit of unfair criticism for her. It is definitely important to have a thick hide when you are a writer. We've all seen the news reports of a writer who gets a bad review on Goodreads and flips out and melts down on Twitter. Or, in the worst cases, drives across the country to confront the reviewer in person. That is always a bad idea, do not do that. The trick to deal with any kind of criticism, especially online criticism, is to just not respond to it. The Internet criticism cycle tends to have a very short attention span, and so if you just wait it out, eventually some other bright shiny object will capture people's attention and that will be that. So the best way to cultivate a thick hide in the in the era of the Internet and Twitter and social media and all that is to learn to not to respond to things. Our eighth and final piece of advice comes from Kurt Vonnegut, who says, “No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” That ties in with our earlier talk about conflict and that is how you indeed see what your characters are made of and how you find the bones of your story. What is the conflict and how will the conflict test and put the characters to the trial and how will the characters grow, develop, and change as a result of the trial to which they have been subjected? If you want your characters to have a happy ending, they have to suffer for it first. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me to pull together the quotes for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on , many with transcripts. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 193: Unsatisfying Book Endings
03/25/2024
Episode 193: Unsatisfying Book Endings
In this week's episode, we take a look at what makes a book's ending disappointing or unsatisfying, and offer tips and tricks on how to avoid that. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGWINDS The coupon code is valid through April 12th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, you can listen to the epic conclusion of the GHOST EXILE series! TRANSCRIPT Spoiler Note: Please skip 11:50-12:53 if you would like to avoid a summary of the ending of the TV series Breaking Bad. 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 193 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March the 22nd, 2024 and today we are talking about how to avoid unsatisfying endings, specifically how to avoid unsatisfying endings while writing your novel. Before we get into all that, we will first have Coupon on the Week and some writing progress updates and then our Question of the Week. So first up, Coupon on the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Winds, as excellently narrated by House McCarthy. That is the epic conclusion to the Ghost Exile series. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Winds for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGWINDS and that is SPRINGWINDS and of course the coupon code will be in the show notes as always. This coupon code is valid through April 12th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, you can listen to the epic conclusion of the Ghost Exile series. Now, for an update on current writing projects. I am very pleased to report that as of this recording, Ghost in the Veils, my 150th novel, is now complete. By the time the show goes live, you should be able to get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. So I'm very pleased that's done, and that's out, and I hope you all enjoyed the book. Next up, now that Ghost in the Veils is done, my main project will be Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series. I am about 42,000 words into that, so about halfway through and if all goes well, I hope that will come out towards the end of April. I am also 14,000 words into Cloak of Titans and that will be my main project once Wizard Thief is finished. In audiobook news, we're currently proofing the audiobook of Half-Elven Thief. That will be narrated by Leanne Woodward and if all goes well, that should be out sometime in April. I'm looking forward to sharing that with you all. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:02:08: Question of the Week Let's go into our Question of the Week. This week's question is what apps and services do you use to listen to music? No wrong answers. Justin says: on my PC, I'll generally use YouTube. The Brave browser removes the ads so I don't have to listen to them. For when I’m away from my PC, I stuffed 128 GB chip in my phone and copied my MP3 files over to it. The basic Android music app handles the music, no problem. When driving, I'll sync the stereo to the phone with Bluetooth. It will play music, navigate, and do hands free calling. I tried connecting to it directly but it seems I can either connect the sound or the charger. Doing both makes for horrible static. Joaquim says: I like to buy MP3 files or CDs. When buying CDs, I try to buy AudioRip CDs on Amazon, else I rip them myself. All MP3 files are on a USB stick which I use in the car audio. At home, I use my laptop with an external Sound Blaster G6 and Sennheiser headphones. I use VLC media player on the laptop. My next comment is from Barbara, who says: Years ago, I purchased the Microsoft Zune because after my research, I determined I got more bang for my buck with it than the Apple product. I still have the Zune, which I haven't used in a while. I also have the app on my computer and that's what I use listen to my music. Unfortunately, I'll be replacing this 10 year old computer at some point and may have to find a different program. That's interesting because about 14/15 years, I used the Zune Desktop Music player as my preferred music player on my PC because I thought it worked better and was faster than any of the alternatives. But I have not thought about that in years, to be honest. Our next comment is from Randy who says: iPhone, iPad, Intel Mac Book Pro, and an Apple Music family subscription. I also have a two terabyte library of purchased music that I keep on a couple of different portable drives, backups because I should think about rewriting my vinyl collection down to MP3 again. I personally thought it was very impressive. Two terabytes because my music library is a mere 59 gigabytes by comparison. Juana says Pandora and Amazon Music. Michael says: I stream from YouTube Music, sadly. Oh well, good to support small independent companies. ( Original response had emojis here to indicate the last sentence was a joke/tongue in cheek). Brandy says: I listen to Pandora or iHeart radio stations from places where I've lived. It probably dates me, but I like either music with limited to no commercials but similar genre groups (and I refuse to give money to Apple if I can help it) or just a straight radio station. Both I leave on the background while I'm reading, cooking, cleaning or painting, etcetera. Jacob says iTunes for the longest time. Then I made the switch to Spotify using a phone, PC, and TV. Jesse says desktop Rhythmbox on Ubuntu for MP3s. If I'm using Pandora, Pithos or Pianobar. Back when I did a lot more Linux stuff, personally I used Rhythmbox a lot on all my Ubuntu computers, so good to see it still being used out there. Elizabeth says: I'm a Spotify gal. It's got almost anything I could look up. It's got some great rain and classical playlist for sleeping. Jake says: I use iTunes on my phone and computer. Finally, Bonnie says: old fashioned FM radio. Hard to beat free, I have to admit. For myself, I use iTunes for PCs, and I prefer to buy MP3 files and music whenever possible. Since I work on my PC for most of the day while writing or editing, that's what I usually use for listening to music. When I'm away from my computer, I use an iPod touch I got in 2021, and when that little device finally dies, I'm going to be very disappointed since Apple doesn't make them anymore and I will have to choose a new service for my portable music playing. I have played Spotify on my phone a bit, but I still prefer having the actual files. Very good discussion, I thought, on this week's Question of the Week. 00:05:50 Main Topic: How to Avoid Unsatisfying Endings for Your Novel So now let's move on to our main topic this week: how to avoid unsatisfying endings for your novel. I've said it before on this podcast and on my various websites, but I think the ending is a lot like the punchline to a joke. The ending ties everything together and makes what happens before makes sense. If you don't have a satisfying ending to your story then that is like a joke with a bad punchline. People just get annoyed by it. People will remember the end of the series (even a very long series) more than the entire rest of the series, and it will ultimately determine how they feel about the entire series. The most famous recent example, I think, is the Game of Thrones show, with Season 8 ending in a way that many people did not enjoy. In many ways, I think the ending of Game of Thrones with Season 8 sort of killed the show’s pop culture dominance. I mean, for a while when the show was at its peak, that was the show to watch. It was the example of prestige television and it was all a lot of people could talk about, but the ending just, you know, really ruined that and sort of subverted and undid the rest of the show. It destroyed the show's popular culture dominance and really led to reduced merchandise sales and tie in games and may be a factor why George R.R. Martin will probably never finish the series because of how badly the show turned out. This is a reminder that a bad ending will make the reader cheated and worse yet, make them feel mocked for ever caring about the characters at all. The Game of Thrones shows is a good example of that. With that in mind, let's look at some of the common problems with endings. One is bad writing. To some extent, bad writing can be subjective. One person's bad writing is another person's brilliant prose. However, there are certain structural things with bad writing and bad plotting that can lead to an unsatisfying ending. For one thing, there are examples where the author doesn't know what the ending is and hasn't been able to figure it out, so it sputters out or ends weakly, or dodges any sort of final battle and event, and it just sort of fizzles out at the end. No one enjoys reading that. Another example of bad writing is a twist that doesn't fit the logic of the book or doesn't make sense. It is possible to do a surprise ending that's satisfying, but it has to be written in a way that resonates with the rest of the story and if you look back at the rest of the story, there is foreshadowing that accurately leads to this ending. If the twist ending comes totally out of left field and makes no sense whatsoever, that is going to lead to some unsatisfied readers. Another big problem is an unfinished series or abandoned cliffhanger, which is why readers have trust issues with unfinished series. With every single series I've written, whether Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, The Ghosts, Cloak Games, or Silent Order, I frequently have people email me every single time a new book comes out to tell them when the series is finished because they only read finished series. Some of that is the fault of publishers who will sometimes kill a series after the second book and leave it permanently unfinished if the second book doesn't meet their sales expectations. Some of this is the fault of certain high name writers who've had every opportunity and all the money in the world to finish their series, yet just can't seem to get around to it. This is a good example of why you need to have a satisfying ending and not leave things hanging. Another good example of bad writing is a good ending that is undone or awkwardly avoided in order to stretch it out to another book or relaunch the series. You have a happy ending. Everyone lives happily ever after, and then you change one of the characters suddenly so that the series can continue. That is something to avoid and to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes from one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, the supreme gift of the artist is the knowledge of when to stop and that includes writing long series. Another potential problem is a confusing ending. Even a well written ending can be a problem if it's confusing. Ambiguous endings can leave the reader, especially casual ones, feeling confused or feeling like they missed something or are disconnected from the characters. Introducing new characters or plot threads too close to the ending so the ending feels crammed, or like it doesn't focus on the main characters or plot, can also be confusing for the reader. Themes and character arcs need to be clear throughout the book, and those need to be resolved with an equal amount of clarity. One potential reason for a confusing ending is things are left unresolved and that can inspire dissatisfaction in the reader. So when you reach the end of your story, it's good to have as much resolved as possible, even if you want to leave something open for the sequel. Another potential problem with the ending is if the ending is too unhappy or too dark. Depending on the genre and the kind of book you're writing, the time to put your characters through hardship and tragedy in order to develop them is in the middle of the plot, not abruptly at the end. If you want your characters to be happy in the end, true, they do have to suffer for it and earn it, but depending on the kind of book you're writing, having them end the book while being miserable and defeated is probably not the best way to go about it. Ambiguous or bittersweet or sad endings have a much higher burden to be extremely well written, and that's one of the reasons tragedy was seen as the highest form of playwriting in Ancient Greek and Elizabethan cultures. A sad ending for the sake of simply having the sad ending isn't as original or edgy as many writers think it is. That said, unhappy endings can work if it fulfills the character arc or set themes of the book, especially if these are well established throughout the story. I think the ending of the TV show Breaking Bad probably is an excellent example of this, because Breaking Bad is the account of mild-mannered chemistry teacher Walter White degenerating into a ruthless drug lord. The series ends with Walter White killed in a shootout while rescuing his former protege and then he dies surrounded by his beloved meth manufacturing machines. By any stretch, this is a very grim and relatively unhappy ending, with the protagonist getting shot to death but it works because it resolves the themes of the story, where White essentially chose this life of violence, and so he brought upon own head. In a sense, it's not happy so much as it is satisfying in that he got to go out on his own terms, defeating his enemies and freeing his former protege from being imprisoned. Another potential good way to have a satisfying unhappy ending is if it moves the other characters to a happy ending or resolution. In other words, the death is not pointless. In the play Romeo and Juliet, obviously Romeo and Juliet both die at the end, but their deaths permit their feuding families to reconcile and put aside their generations-long feud that has caused so much suffering. So while their deaths were tragic, they were not pointless and wasted. Let’s go to the opposite side of an unsatisfying unhappy ending. An unsatisfying, unearned, or abrupt happy ending can be just as unsatisfactory. A forced happily ever after that doesn't feel earned, is rushed at the end, and not explained can be very unsatisfying. One recent example I can think of is a while back, I saw the movie My Man Godfrey from 1936. It's a good comedy movie, a good progenitor of the screwball comedy genre, but I think the ending is kind of weak because the main character and the main female character kind of get together at the end, so it would go well, it's the end of the movie, so I guess they should get get together and get engaged. They seem very ill suited for each other and spent most of the movie bickering, but it was just, you know, the genre convention that the male lead and the female lead were going to get together at the end of the movie. So I think that's one flaw and one unsatisfying part in an otherwise very good movie. Deus Ex Machina is also something to avoid because it leaves the reader feeling cheated or like the suffering of the characters didn't matter. An unearned ending where there are dire consequences throughout the book, but they don't show up, feels, you know, like a cheat where the characters got away with something that they shouldn’t have been able to get away with. Another unsatisfying example of a happy ending is if it all ties up too neatly, where everything just falls into place for no particular reason. Happy endings are generally the most satisfying when they're earned, when the characters really have to suffer and strive and struggle to get to them. So both unhappy and happy endings have their own pitfalls, though in general I do think happy endings are usually easier to do unless you really know what you're doing. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found this show useful. A quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist for helping me to pull together with the research for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 192: Winter 2024 Movie Roundup
03/18/2024
Episode 192: Winter 2024 Movie Roundup
In this week's episode, I rate the movies and TV shows I shaw in Winter 2024. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: MARCHEXILE The coupon code is valid through April 5th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we’ve got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 192 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 15th, 2024, The Ides of March, which we’re traditionally told to beware, and today we are looking at my Movie and TV Review Roundup for Winter 2024. Before we do that, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing projects, and our Question of the Week. So first up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Pact, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook for Ghost in the Pact for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon: MARCHEXILE and that is spelled MARCHEXILE. As always, the coupon code will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April the 5th 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook on this Ides of March, we've got one ready for you. So an update on my current writing projects. I am about 56% of the way through the first edit of Ghost in the Veils. That means the book should be on track to come out before Easter (which is at the end of March this year), if all goes well. I'm also 40,000 words into Wizard Thief, so hopefully that will come out before too much longer after Ghost in the Veils. I’m 11,000 words into Cloak of Titans. So that is where we're at with my current writing projects. 00:01:19 Question of the Week Now on to our new feature: Question of the Week. This week's question is inspired by the fact that I've spent a lot of the last few weeks setting up my new computer and getting it configured properly. So the question is: what is the first computer you ever used? No wrong answers, obviously. Joachim says his first personal computer was an Atari 1040 ST with 1 MB of RAM. I participated in the “religious war” with the Amiga 500 users, which was better and looked down at the MS-DOS PCs, which only has 640 kilobytes of RAM. Justin says: my first computer was a Timex Sinclair. It had two kilobytes of RAM and I forked out $50 for the 16 KB RAM extender module. The manual that comes with it says you will never need this much memory. I use a cassette tape recorder/player to record more programs and it ran a 300 baud. Todd says his first computer was in 1994. I purchased a 486 DX 2 8 megabytes of RAM for use in school. I believe the hard drive was about 250 MB. The monitor weighed a ton. I wrote a bunch of machine code and played Wolfenstein 3D like crazy. Tarun says in 1993 it was a 386 with four megawatts of RAM with Windows 3.1. I played a lot of Prince of Persia and got bad grades in school. Then the computer was locked up. In my educational defense, I did do some Pascal programming. AM says: my first computer was an Apple IIe at school. Getting to play Number Munchers or Oregon Trail on it was some kind of behavioral reward (and a very effective one at that). William says his first computer was a Macintosh SE in my parent’s home office, though “using” is an overstatement since all I did was play a few simple preinstalled games. I also have fond memories of playing the original King's Quest with said parents and something like a Compaq Portable. Rich says Commodore 64 with cassette drive. Didn't have cassette the first day. Spent the whole day punching in code for a blackjack game. My sister walks into the room to turn the computer off, erasing everything. That is a bummer. Juana says: a Gateway. My whole family came to gawk at it, and me setting it up! It had 120 megabytes of RAM. Twice what was the ones that used in the college computer lab! I thought I was set for life. Venus says Commodore Vic20. We played Radar Rat Race and Mom gave us a stack of computer magazines and tape recorder, so we played every game that was in the magazines at the time after we typed in the programs and saved them to the tapes. You are the first person outside my family that ever heard also had one. More on that later. Cheryl says: we got our first computer in the early ‘90s: an Amstrad with an AWA printer. I was doing courses for work, so I needed something to print the assignments, but we also played games on it: Wolfenstein, Lemmings, and Stock Markets. They're the only ones I can remember. Craig says: Apple IIe. I'm oldish. With dot matrix printer and handheld modem, dial-up Internet access, the one you had the dial phone into the holding cradle after you called it in. Tracy says: at college we used the TRS80s. I think she may win the award for oldest computer mentioned in this topic. And Perry says: IBM PC clone at school, a friend’s family had a Commodore 64. Our first family computer was a Commodore 128. For myself, I had the same first computer as Venus earlier in the thread. That would be a Commodore Vic20. It had 20 kilobytes of RAM and the Word file for the rough draft of Ghosts in the Veils, which I'm editing right now, is 355 kilobytes in size. So to load the Microsoft Word document of Ghosts in the Veils in Microsoft Word format, I would need about 18 different Commodore Vic 20 computers. That's like 1 computer per chapter and a half. So it is amusing to see how computer technology has changed quite a bit over time. 00:04:56 Winter 2024 Movie/TV Review Roundup Now to our main topic. We are inching closer to spring, so I think it's time for my Winter 2024 Movie Review Roundup. I got a Paramount Plus subscription to watch the Frasier reboot and since Paramount owns Star Trek and the Frasier reboot was only 10 episodes long, I ended up watching a chunk of modern Star Trek this winter. This was a new-ish experience because the last new Star Trek I watched was Star Trek Beyond way back in 2016. That was only eight years ago, but it's been a very eventful eight years, you know? I did watch a lot of Star Trek back in the 1990s. If you had held a gun to my head and demanded, you know, if I consider myself a Trekkie, I would say no, because I think Gene Roddenberry's socialist/utopian vision for the Federation that he put into Star Trek is fundamentally kind of goofy. The shows and movies were at their best when they stayed away from it or subverted it, like how the Federation can only be a utopia because Starfleet seems to have a Black Ops section that does all the unsanctioned dirty work and regularly runs amuck. Or like how Starfleet seems to have an actual mad science division that cooks up all kinds of nasty stuff. So anyway, these are the movies and shows I watched in Winter 2024, and as always, my ratings are wholly subjective and based on nothing more rigorous than my own opinions. We will go through these in order from least favorite to most favorite. So the first movie I watched was Now You See Me, which came out in 2013. Last year, I compared Adam Sandler's Murder Mystery movie to a C- student, but a fun C- student who everyone likes for his great parties and goes on to have a successful career as a regional sales manager. By contrast, Now You See Me is the sort of moody art student who always wears a black porkpie hat and thinks of himself or herself as deep and complicated, but in fact, they're just confusing. This is an apt comparison for this movie. Anyway, the plot centers around four sketchy magicians who are recruited by a mysterious organization called The Eye to carry out a series of high-profile heists using stage magic. I have to admit, that concept sounds even more ridiculous as I said the previous sentence. Anyway, after the first heist, the magicians become fugitives from the FBI but keep carrying on shows, sometimes staying ahead of law enforcement. The trouble is that nothing they do makes very much sense, and it all falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds. Additionally, the movie overall feels very choppy since they rushed from scene to scene very quickly. The actors all gave very good performances that were entertaining to watch, but honestly, that was about the only thing the movie had going for it. Overall grade: D- Next up is The Marvels, which came out in 2023. This movie was logically incoherent, but actually rather charming and funny. It kind of reminds me of those ‘70s or ‘80s style science fiction movies that don't make much sense, though The Marvels was much lighter in tone than anything that came out in the science fiction space in the ‘60s or ‘70s. The movie got a bad rap because it didn't make back its budget, and apparently Disney rather shamefully threw the director under the bus. But to be fair, the budget for The Marvels was an enormous $274,000,000. To put this into context, the top three movies of 2023 (Barbie, Super Mario Brothers, and Oppenheimer) combined had a total budget across these three movies of $350 million, and together they grossed something like 15 times more than The Marvels did. Anyway, the plot picks up from the end of Ms. Marvel when Kamala Khan, Captain Marvel, and Monica Rambeau discover that their superpowers have become entangled. This means that if two of them use their powers at the same time, all three of them switch places randomly. This makes for a rather excellent fight scene earlier in the movie when the three characters don't know what's going on and are randomly teleporting between three different battles, much to the frequently amusing confusion of all participants. Once things settle down, Captain Marvel and her new friends realize that an old enemy of Captain Marvel is harvesting resources from worlds she cares about. So it's up to them to save Earth from this old enemy’s vengeance. I have to admit, the plot of the movie didn't actually make much sense, but it was overall much funnier than Ant-Man 3 and Secret Invasion. The best thing about the movie was Kamala Khan and her family. Kamala, Monica, and Captain Marvel also had an entertaining dynamic together and the planet of space musicals was also pretty funny. I think the movie's biggest, unconquerable weakness was that it was the 33rd Marvel movie. There are all sorts of theories of why the movie didn't perform at the box office: superhero genre fatigue, everyone knew it would be on Disney Plus eventually, the lasting effects of COVID on movie theaters and the movie business, Disney throwing the director under the bus, Disney inserting itself into the US Cultural Wars, etcetera. All those reasons are subjective and subject to personal interpretation. What I think is objectively quantifiable is that The Marvels is the sequel to a lot of different Marvel stuff: The Avengers movie, Wandavision, Captain Marvel, the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Secret Invasion, and Thor: Love and Thunder. That's like 50 to 60 plus hours of stuff to watch to fully understand the emotional significance of all the various characters in The Marvels. 50 to 60 hours of watching sounds like almost an entire entire semester's worth of homework assignments at this point. As someone who has written a lot of long series, I know that you lose some of the audience from book to book. I think that's ultimately why The Marvels didn't make back its budget. The Marvel movies as a series have just gone on too long and are just too interconnected. Ultimately, I am grateful to The Marvels. Realizing and understanding the concept of Marvel Continuity Lockout Syndrome helped me decide to write something new that wasn't a sequel or even connected to anything else I had written, which eventually led to Rivah Half-Elven and Half-Elven Thief. Overall grade: B- Our next movie is My Man Godfrey, which came out all the way back in 1936. This movie is considered the progenitor or one of the progenitors of the screwball comedy genre. A homeless man named Godfrey is living in a trash dump in New York, though despite his circumstances, Godfrey remained sharp and quick on his feet. One night, a wealthy woman named Cornelia approaches him and offers $5 if he’ll come with her. Godfrey is naturally suspicious, but Cornelia assures him that she only needs to take him to a hotel to win a scavenger hunt by finding a forgotten man, which was a term President Roosevelt used to describe people who have been ruined by the Great Depression and then forgotten by the government. I have to admit, Cornelia immediately reminded me of the way the more obnoxious YouTubers and TikTokers will sometimes pay homeless people to participate in dance challenges and suchlike. King Solomon was indeed right when he said that there is nothing new under the sun and what has been done before will be done again. Anyway, Godfrey is offended by Cornell's imperious manner but after he sees Cornelia bullying her kindly but none too bright younger sister Irene, Godfrey decides he'll go with Irene so she can win. A grateful Irene offers him a job as the family's butler. At his first day at work, Godfrey very soon realizes the reason the family has gone through so many butlers: they are all certified certifiably and comedically insane. In addition to these other problems, Cornelia is harboring a massive grudge against Godfrey for losing the scavenger hunt and wants payback. Wacky hijinks ensue. Fortunately, Godfrey has some hidden depths that he will need, which include being much smarter than his employers. Admittedly, this is not hard. 1936 was towards the second half of the Great Depression in the United States, so obviously the movie has more than a bit of social commentary. The characters joked that prosperity is just around the corner and wonder where they can find that corner. The rich characters are uniformly portrayed as some combination of frivolous, clueless, or malicious. I think the movie was pretty funny, if sharply so, but the big weakness was that the male and female leads were so clearly unsuited for each other but got together at the end of the movie simply because it was the end of the movie. Still, it was definitely worth watching because you can see how this movie influenced many other movies after it. I definitely recommend watching it with captions if possible, because while human nature has not changed in the last 90 years, sound technology has in fact improved quite a bit. Overall grade: B. Next up is Charade, which came out in 1963. This is a sort of romantic comedy, sort of thriller that has Audrey Hepburn playing Regina, an American living in Paris who is in the process of getting divorced from her husband. When she returns to Paris, she learns that her husband was murdered in her absence and it turns out that he was in possession of $250,000 he stole from the US government during World War II. Regina had no idea about any of this, but the US government thinks that she has the money stashed away somewhere. It turns out that her late husband also betrayed the men he worked with to steal the money and they're convinced that she has the money as well, and they're going to get it from Regina regardless of what they have to do. Regina's only ally in this mess is a mysterious man calling himself Peter Joshua (played by Cary Grant), who may or may not be one of the other thieves operating under an assumed identity. I liked this movie, but I think it had two structural problems. First, Regina wasn't all that bright, though she did get smarter as the movie went on, probably out of sheer necessity. Second, it had some severe mood whiplash. The movie couldn't decide if he was a lighthearted romantic comedy or gritty thriller, though finally snapped into focus as a pretty good thriller in the last third of the movie. Amusing tidbit: Cary Grant only agreed to do the movie if Audrey Hepburn's character would be the one chasing his character in their romance, since he thought their age gap would be inappropriate otherwise, because he was so much older than Hepburn at the time of filming. Overall grade: B+ Next up is the new Frasier series from 2023. I admit I had very, very low expectations for this, but it was considerably better than I thought it would be. My low expectations came partly because the original show was so good. Some seasons were stronger than others, of course, but the show had some absolute masterpieces of sitcom comedy throughout its entire run. Some of this was because I think the 2020s are a much more humorless and dour age than the 1990s, so I had my doubts whether the new show could be funny at all. Fortunately, my doubts were misplaced. The new Frasier is actually pretty good. It's interesting that the show's generational dynamic has been flipped on its head. In the original show, the pretentious Frasier lived with his working-class father. 20 years later, it's now Frasier who lives with his son Freddie, who dropped out of Harvard to become a firefighter and consciously rejected his father's love of intellectualism and cultural elitism. The inversion of the original dynamic works quite well. It has some moments of genuine comedy because, like his father before him, Freddie is more like his father than he realizes. The show also avoided the pitfall of bringing back legacy characters that Disney and Lucasfilm stumbled into with Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Disney brought back legacy characters like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones but made them into sad, old losers. Frasier, by contrast, while frequently an unsympathetic comedy protagonist who brings his own misfortunes onto his own head, is most definitely not a sad old loser. He's famous, respected, and wealthy enough that he can afford to buy an apartment building in Boston at the drop of a hat. If you know anything about the United States, you know that the East Coast is the most expensive area of the of the country. Despite that, he remains the same well-meaning buffoon that he always was, the sort of man who, as a colleague aptly says, always goes that extra, ill-advised mile. There's a story that when Ricky Gervais was advising the creators of the American version of The Office, one of his chief pieces of advice was that Michael Scott could not be as incompetent as David Brent was in the original UK version of the show. American culture, Mr. Gervais said, was generally much less forgiving of incompetence than British culture. I thought of this as I watched Frasier because all the characters were in fact extremely competent at their jobs. Even Frasier himself, when he finally gets out of his own way, is a very good psychiatrist and teacher. Anyway, the show was funny and I think it deserves a second season. We'll see if that happens or not. Overall grade: A- Next up is Star Trek: Lower Decks Seasons One through Four, which came out from between 2020 and 2023. As I mentioned earlier, I ended up subscribing to Paramount Plus for a month after I watched Frasier, so I decided to watch Star Trek Lower Decks, since I'm forever seeing clips of that show turning up on social media. Lower Decks is a pitch perfect, affectionate parody of Star Trek from the point of view of four relatively hapless ensigns on the Cerritos, one of Starfleet’s somewhat less prestigious ships. We have the self-sabotaging rebel Mariner, the insecure and ambitious Boimler, the enthusiastic science girl Tendi, and cheerful engineer Rutherford, who nonetheless has a dark and mysterious past that he can't remember. Season Four also adds T’Lyn, a Vulcan whose mild expressions of carefully measured annoyance make her a dangerous loose cannon by Vulcan standards. The show is hilarious because it makes fun of Star Trek tropes while wholeheartedly embracing them. The ensigns run into a lot of insane computers, random space anomalies, rubber forehead aliens, and other Star...
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Episode 191: The Worst Writing Advice
03/11/2024
Episode 191: The Worst Writing Advice
In this week's episode, we take a look at six of the worst pieces of writing advice on the Internet, and explain why you shouldn't listen to them. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGTHRONE The coupon code is valid through March 29th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we’ve got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 191 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 8th, 2024, and today we are talking about bad writing advice. In fact, we're talking about the worst writing advice, but more on that later. Before we get to any of our other topics, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Throne, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Throne for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGTHRONE and that's spelled SPRINGTHRONE. Of course the coupon code, as always, will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through March 29th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we've got one ready for you. Before we get to any of other our other topics, let's first have an update on my current writing projects. I am 81,000 words into Ghost in the Veils, which puts me on Chapter 19 of either 21 or 22. I'm not entirely sure because I think I reused some numbers in my outline, which is obviously something we will fix before we get to the final draft. I am hoping to finish things up next week, if all goes well with the rough draft and then we will be on track to hopefully have the book out before Easter. I'm also 37,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in my Half-Elven Thief series and if all goes well, that will be out in April. I'm also 9,000 words into Cloak of Titans, and if all goes well, that should be out in May, I believe. And then after I write that, that's when I'll start working on Shield of Darkness, the Second Shield War book. As I mentioned in the previous episode, the audiobook of Shield of Storms is now available. It's definitely available on Audible, Amazon, and Apple. It's on my Payhip store. It's on Kobo. I believe it is on Nook Audio. Processing is going rather slowly for the other stores, which is unfortunate, but since most of these sales will probably come from Audible anyway, it's not that unfortunate, but hopefully it should be available on all the other stores before too much longer. 00:02:16 Question of the Week Now we’re going to have a new topic that we're going to do every week as part of the show. It's called Question of the Week. I could hardly claim this is an original idea. I noticed that many blogs and many podcasts do a question of the week feature, but it seems like a good one to add to our show and website here. So this week's Question of the Week (the very first Question of the Week, as a matter of fact): If you listen to audiobooks, what apps do you use? Of course, there are no wrong answers. We had a variety of good answers to this question. Reader JL says: I use Audible. Paid for one year in advance. Use the credits unless the cost of the Audible book is less than the cost of the credit. I've noticed that sometimes this is the case if I bought the book or have it out in KU. That is true. Amazon has this feature called WhisperSync, where if you've bought the ebook you can sometimes get a discount on the audiobook if you buy it directly rather than using an Audible credit. Reader Joachim says: I use Smart Book Player on Android. I only use audiobooks in MP3 format. Reader Adam says: Audible, Graphicaudio.net, direct purchases from authors and/or Kickstarter rewards, Google Play Books, mostly DRM free downloads. Preference is direct from authors or a service which allows downloading titles for archival purposes. I should mention if you buy any of my audiobooks through Payhip, the fulfillment is through Book Funnel, which does allow you to download the MP3s to keep them for archival purposes if you're offline or you don't have access to your phone or computer. Doug says he uses Audible and he just finished Shield of Storms and is now listening to Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation. Tom says he uses the Audible annual 24 credit subscription. That's like 2 credits a month. I realize that’s common for people who work in jobs like construction or industrial jobs where they can listen to audiobooks the entire day, and so therefore will go through quite a few of them. Venus says she listens to Libby or Nook, mostly Libby. If your library has access to Libby or a similar listening service, you can get audiobooks that way. And finally, Bonnie says: Truthfully, I've tried Audible, but I am not a fan of listening to books. Would rather do the reading myself. So as you can see, there are a range of options and opinions when it comes to listening to audiobooks. For myself, I use a combination of the monthly credit from Audible and discount audiobooks from the Chirp daily e-mail. If you do listen to a lot of audiobooks, it might be worthwhile to subscribe to Chirp, because then you could get some bargains on audiobooks in genres that may interest you. 00:04:55 Main Topic: The Worst Writing Advice from the Internet Now on to this week's main topic: the worst writing advice you can find on the Internet. The reason I wanted to do this episode was the same reason I started this podcast. I've been a writer for a long time. Ghost in the Veils is going to be my 150th book, and so I've gotten more experience than I'm not going to say everybody, but I do have more experience than many writers. I decided the podcast would be a good way to share some of that experience in a way that isn't pushing it on people or charging for expensive courses or anything like that. The advice is there if you want to listen to it, and if you don't want to listen to it, that's just fine too. However, the flip side of this coin is that there's a lot of really terrible writing advice out there, like just plain bad writing advice that’s more destructive than helpful. To cover that, I asked for our transcriptionist to do some research for me and pull together some of the worst writing advice she could find on the Internet and then we would talk about it here. She found six particularly bad pieces of writing advice that we would debunk. The first piece of worst writing advice is that writing talent is innate. If you can't be a success right away, there is no point. This is just plainly false. Almost anyone can improve at any skill, and writing is no different with a sustained commitment over time. It just takes practice. A good way to debunk this is to look at the early works of famous writers like Jane Austen, to show that their writing improved over time. Or if you dig heavily into J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, you'll see that the first initial drafts of what would become Lord of the Rings were not super great. By the time The Lord of the Rings actually came out, Tolkien had improved a good deal as a writer. Many authors have a rough first book or even rough first series and then go on to greater success or greater acclaim because they just practice and get better. With practically anything, practice will improve and writing is no different in that regard. After all, if you have a favorite author and you look at his or her first book and then compare it to his or her latest book, odds are you will notice a significant improvement in skill and that will be true for anyone. Number two: you need an MFA (that's a Master of Fine Arts degree) to be good enough to write a book. This is something I could rant about for a significant length of time because I think there are serious criticisms to be made of the way higher education is funded in the United States and serious criticisms to be made of the ways the student loan program works, but that's rather off scope for this podcast, so instead we're going to focus on why you don't need a Master of Fine Arts degree to be a writer. MFA programs tend to lean heavily towards poetry and literary fiction (literary fiction being, you know, fiction that isn't genre fiction, like, you know, mystery, science fiction or fantasy). The stereotype of literary fiction is it tends to be about creative writing professors having affairs with one another and while of course this is a cliche, there is a measure of truth to it. MFA programs tend to be a very homogeneous group of people who value a very specific type of writing/style. Genre fiction is often looked down on and “commercial” is used as an insult by many instructors in MFA programs, which is all well and dandy, but if you're writing literary fiction, commercial fiction has a better chance of being able to pay your taxes and your mortgage. An MFA credential does not guarantee results and employment prospects and is extremely expensive unless you get into a funded program. We mentioned the problem of student debt a little earlier and if you go into a MFA program, you’re going to have a lot more student debt. There's also the opportunity cost of spending two years learning to write in an MFA program. Finally, to illustrate the point, think of your top ten favorite writers and look up how many of them have a Master of Fine Arts degree. The percentage will probably be fairly low. So overall, I would not recommend going into an MFA program if you want to be a writer. The third piece of terrible writing advice is to only write when you feel inspired. This is bad because writing if you, even if you enjoy it, is still a form of work, and if you only do work when you feel like doing work, it's never going to get done. It's good to remember that progress is always better than perfection, and this type of thinking feeds into procrastination. Steve Jobs very famously said when he took over Apple again at the start of the 21st century that real artist ship and the correlate to that would be real writers publish. A good example to look at is athletes in various phases of training and competition. They don't train when they feel inspired. They create a plan and stick to it in order to meet their goals. The structure that comes from plans makes it easier to define your goals and track your results, so it's a good idea to try a disciplined approach to writing, I think and try and write as much as you're able, whether it's 500 words a day or 1,000 words a day, rather than waiting for you to just get inspired. This is true for pretty much any field of work and also writing. The fourth piece of bad writing advice is to only write what you know. If this was actually good advice, then all books would be about writers trying to write and maybe household chores and tax preparation. This would be terrible advice for fantasy and science fiction writers, if taken at face value. Writing using your own knowledge and experiences can make your book more engaging, but think of it as a starting point or way to add texture to your story, not a rule. That said, if you want to write about something you don't know about, you don't actually have to become an expert in it. You just have to know enough to fake it. Remember, as we've talked about in a previous episode of the show, your book doesn't have to be realistic. It has to feel realistic. We want not realism, but verisimilitude, where it feels realistic. You can make it feel realistic with a lot less research than you can to become actually an expert in something. Only writing what you know is a very good way to limit your writing and get less writing done than you would otherwise. The fifth piece of bad writing advice we found was to write based on what's trending so the book will basically market itself. This is a bad idea, because by the time you finish and the book is ready to sell, the market may have already grown tired of the trend and moved on to dystopian mermaid stories or something else. Readers also have a sense when a story is rushed or written in a different way. It's much better to write something that you're excited to write. It's also important to realize that not all categories are equally lucrative or easy to market, though. A book on soil testing methodologies is unlikely to make anywhere near as much money as a romance, for example. The sixth and final piece of bad writing advice we're going to talk about this week is that there is no point in writing now that AI is taking over. Go do something else. A good example of why this is bad advice is the game of chess. Recently I got back into playing chess on a regular basis. I've known how to play the game since I was like 10, I think, which is an increasingly long amount of time ago, but I haven't played in a while. I got back into it after a gap of several years and I was baffled and somewhat surprised to see that there's actually like chess influencers now. I mean, everything else has influencers. I mean, they're like, you know, stationery influencers and video game influencers and packing material influencers. I was astonished to see that there are chess influencers and that they are in fact photogenic young people who post Instagram pictures of themselves playing chess. They have live streams of themselves playing chess, and they get into feuds with each other like every other group of influencers on the planet. Where this relates to writing/AI is that for decades now, it's been literally impossible for a human to defeat a properly configured computer at chess. It can't be done. If you have a chess program that's configured to make maximum use of its resources, it will beat even the best human player every single time and the end result of this is no one cares. The chess community continues on having all its influencers, rivals, and feuds and playing the game because as one of the chess influencers himself said, watching a human play a computer at chess is like watching a human try to arm wrestle a hydraulic press. You know who's going to win. It's boring. No one cares. Everyone goes back to the humans playing each other at chess and the chess engines are there for people who want to play, you know, bots on the Internet. And I suspect that is going to be the case with AI writing. You may get to the point where AI is able to spit out a novel, but it will be like a computer playing chess. It's like, yeah, that's nice, but no one actually cares. Even if AI became a major source of fiction, there would still be many readers out there, given the negative anti-AI feelings that are very prevalent on the Internet, who would prefer fiction written by humans as a preference, just like there are viewers who hate special effects heavy movies like Marvel movies and seek out movies using a lot of practical effects or physical stages. The final weakness with this advice that there is no point in writing now that AI taking over is that legislation regarding AI and copyright is still marked with uncertainty. If you can't copyright the product of an AI engine, there's no point in trying to sell it. So for all those reasons, I don't think that AI is an excuse not to write and that it will probably end up like being a chess engine. Any chess computer can defeat a human, but that really doesn't matter very much. So there we are, six pieces of bad writing advice that you can safely ignore. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com, often with transcripts. Speaking of which, a big thank you to my transcriptionist for helping me to research this episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 190: Factual Accuracy In Fiction
03/01/2024
Episode 190: Factual Accuracy In Fiction
In this week's episode, we take a look at techniques for ensuring accuracy and verisimilitude in your novel. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGSEAL The coupon code is valid through March 19th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we’ve got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 190 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March the 1st 2024 as I'm recording this and today we are talking about how to create the feeling of accuracy in fiction. Before we get to that, we will do Coupon of the Week and give you an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Seal as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Seal for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: SPRINGSEAL and then is SPRINGSEAL and that code will also be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 19th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we've got one ready for you. Now for an update on current writing and audiobook projects. I am as of this recording 48,000 words into Ghost in the Veils, which puts me on Chapter 10 of 22, so almost halfway there. I’m hoping to get to 50,000 words by the end of the day, but we will see what happens. I am also 33,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in my Half-Elven Thief epic fantasy series and that is hopefully going to come out fairly quickly after Ghost in the Veils is done. I am also 5,000 words into Cloak of Titans, which will be my next major project after Ghost in the Veils and Wizard Thief are done. In audiobook news, Shield of Storms is now available, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills. You can get that at the moment at Audible, Amazon and Apple and it should be turning up at the other stores fairly soon once it gets through quality assurance. You can in fact get it at my Payhip store at the moment as well. I'm also pleased to report that Half-Elven Thief did well enough to merit an audiobook and recording for that will be going underway through the month of March. So hopefully if all goes well, the book will be available sometime in April. 00:01:56 Main Topic: Accuracy and Fiction Let's get right into our main topic: the importance of accuracy and fiction. Before that, why do we want our fiction to have some degree of accuracy to it? The reason for that is fiction doesn't have to be realistic. However, it has to feel realistic. It's called verisimilitude, the sensation of something that feels real, regardless of whether it is actually real or not. This is important because it ties into a concept called suspension of disbelief. We all sit down to read a book of fiction, a novel, a fantasy novel, a science fiction novel, mystery novel, whatever. We know that the book isn't real and that nothing in it actually happened. However, what we need to do is suspend our disbelief of what's happening in the book, which is necessary in order for us to enjoy what is happening and it is much easier to keep a sense of disbelief if your book has good verisimilitude, if it feels real. The example I always used to cite this is that if you live in the United States and probably the UK as well, you know they are constantly having problems with the phone scammers primarily targeting older people. One of the famous ones had a person saying that the person in question was late on back taxes and if they did not pay immediately, the IRS would send the sheriffs to arrest them for back taxes. This is implausible for several reasons. One, the IRS, if you owe back taxes, does not start the process by a phone call. It starts by a letter. Two in the United States, sheriff is an elected position, and so if anyone was going to be doing arresting, would that probably not be the sheriff, that would be the sheriff's deputies. And three, even though the sheriff's deputies do have arrest powers, generally, they do not make arrests for back taxes. So right away we see that this scam phone call is implausible for a number of reasons and can be immediately disbelieved by anyone with basic knowledge of either U.S. law enforcement or the way the US tax system works. Now imagine someone did this in a thriller novel or a mystery novel. There's a scene where the IRS sent sheriffs to arrest someone for nonpayment of back taxes. That doesn't feel real if you have any knowledge of the topics, which breaks the verisimilitude, which destroys the suspension of disbelief. The reader will either give up on the novel or hate-read it to the end and leave a bad review. For fiction, you don't have to do as much research as you would for nonfiction, but it is a good idea to do enough research that you can create verisimilitude, the feeling of reality, that won't jar the reader of the book and destroy suspension of disbelief. So why research? Research is not just for historical fiction. Any part of fiction, even a contemporary romance that touches on real life, has details that can benefit from check fact checking and areas are jarring to readers and can take them out of the story and make them give up on the story entirely in some cases, which comes from not having enough verisimilitude to maintain the suspension of disbelief. Additionally, certain genres have extremely high standards for factual accuracy, such as military fiction, historical fiction, or medical mysteries, etcetera. The example I always use for this is Jack Carr’s The Terminal List, which, as a thriller has a lot of military oriented people using a lot of military oriented equipment. I believe Mr. Carr has said in several interviews and podcasts how he spends a lot of time researching all this because his audience tends to be people with expert knowledge of various military weapon systems or law enforcement procedures and they will immediately spot any factual errors and email him many times about this until the end of time. If you're writing in one of those genres, it really does behoove you to do a lot of research. Other genres tend to be a bit more forgiving, such as fantasy and romance, as long as the world has a strong internal consistency. Additionally this is where we get into realism versus verisimilitude. Readers will allow a certain amount of blurring facts if it moves along the story. For example, how long a lab work can take in a police thriller. It's a common plot device where in real life, police and forensic labs typically are backed up for months but in fiction, you can have your detective or your detective’s boss pull some strings and move things along. It's also important to note that plausibility is more important than accuracy. For example, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a Starbucks kiosk at the Milwaukee County Zoo in Milwaukee, WI. But doesn't it feel completely plausible that there would be one since many American zoos do have coffee kiosks? So if you happen to mention in passing that there's a Starbucks kiosk at the Milwaukee County Zoo, that kind of plausible, if inaccurate detail most likely would not jar your reader out of the story. Factual error is often much worse if the plot depends on it. For example, a wrong fact in jury selection in a comment made in passing is less jarring than if it’s the main plot point or if, for example, you're a legal thriller and your protagonist wins using evidence or tactics that in real life would get them thrown out of court or cause a mistrial, or even disbarred. Televised legal dramas are occasionally quite bad at this, where the lawyers win cases using tactics and legal techniques that would get them in enormous quantities of trouble. But if you're writing a legal thriller, the audience tends to be more knowledgeable than average about that kind of thing. So it is a good idea to do research. Some small facts that may seem insignificant can matter a lot to a reader, because they can stand out even to a non-expert. For example, in the United States, most of the states in the country are subdivided into administrative units called counties, which is why we talk about the county sheriff and how counties elect sheriffs and commissioners and so forth. However, in the state of Louisiana, they don't have counties, they have parishes. So if you're writing a book set in Louisiana, and you refer to a county in Louisiana that can jar the reader of the book if they have any knowledge of Louisiana. Another example would be you describe the final section of the baseball game as a quarter instead of an inning. Baseball doesn't have quarters like American football or American basketball does. Baseball has innings, so it's little technical details like that can be something to watch out for because you can trip up on them pretty easily. However, the flip side of this is you can use this as a technique where a factual error becomes an important plot point if you do it deliberately. For example, you can have in a police thriller evidence was stored outside of normal procedure in a way that would break the law in real life because it turns out someone actually was being bribed and the law actually was being broken. A more benign example, someone makes up a call number for the library book and it turns out to be gibberish because the person made it up on the spot, so you don't need the accurate number for the library book. Deliberately working in factual errors like this, so long as you include them in a way that you know what you're doing and it is important for the plot, can be a really neat technique where the reader will feel validated if they spot this error and then it turns out to be important later on, like someone came claims to be from Louisiana and talks about growing up in New Orleans County, only for someone to realize that New Orleans and Louisiana do not have counties. So here are some specific examples of things you may want to research in your fiction to avoid common errors. Number one: location. Distance is a major source of factual error. Movies famously ignore how long it takes to drive across Los Angeles, especially in traffic. You have movies where someone you get from one end to LA to another in like 20 minutes, which if you do it at 2:00 AM, that might be possible, but any other time during the day it's going to be traffic gridlock, and you're going to spend a lot of time in traffic. It takes much longer than 20 minutes to get from one end of LA to another. Another thing to watch out for is languages. A prominent example is Brazil. The dominant language in most of Central America and most of South America is Spanish, so people tend to assume that the dominant language in Brazil is Spanish. It's not; it's actually Portuguese. Many people in Brazil do speak Spanish because all their neighbors speak Spanish, but the main language in Brazil is not Spanish, it is Portuguese, so it's very jarring when shows have police or military officials in Brazil speaking Spanish when they should really be speaking in Portuguese. So that is the kind of detail to watch out for. Location details can also be jarring to people familiar with the location, but not necessarily the general audience. For example, in 2023, Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee closed. I'm pretty sure it's 2023. If you have a book set in Milwaukee in 2024, a person cannot be a student at Cardinal Stritch University because it no longer exists. And in fact, the date of that is probably something I should have researched (Transcriptionist’s note: it closed at the end of their spring semester in 2023). Another famous example was a couple years ago, there was a Christmas holiday movie on the Roku Channel that depicted someone driving to Wisconsin from The Twin Cities and in the drive, the main character drove past a mountain range. I don't know if you've ever been to Minnesota or Wisconsin, but both of them are famously fairly flat and have no mountain ranges anywhere within the state. So that is something a little bit of research or effort would have avoided. Another good thing to research is specific procedures for the military and law enforcement, legal and scientific procedures if you're writing that kind of book. These are often highly specific and detailed and therefore you may have to do more research as a result if you're, for example, writing a legal thriller that revolves around the specific procedures and arcana of the American legal system. People will accept a certain amount of glossing over the more technical details for dramatic tension and avoiding lulls in the plot. Where it feels wrong, and unearned, is if procedures are ignored entirely or warped beyond recognition. Here are some examples from fiction of processes warped beyond recognition. The English department of a major university are awarding tenure based on a competition with other professors. That is not how that works. There's not a tournament of tenure that you can participate in to win tenure. Another example would be a soldier getting out of court martial because he had a heartfelt conversation about bravery with his or her commanding officer at the bar the night before. That is not how any of that works. At that point in the process, the court martial will be well out of the commanding officer’s hands and the soldier in question’s fate would be decided by the court martial. Another example from fiction would be a surgeon receives an award and promotion after convincing her husband to let her perform a risky new procedure on him. That, again, is not how any of that works. Surgeons are not allowed usually (save in cases of, you know, extreme emergency) to operate on family members because they can't be objective. Additionally the surgeon in question would be in all kinds of questions with the Ethical Review Board and if things go really badly, they would end up losing their license and may even face criminal liability. So obviously these are things you want to research. A third and final thing that is sort of broader category is that you want to focus on specific details for things you are researching based on the kind of novel you're writing, like you're writing a legal thriller, you will want to spend more time researching the specific legal details of the story you're writing. If you're writing like, for example, a historical novel about the British peerage, for example in Downton Abbey, the Earl of Grantham is named Robert Crawley, but he is always referred to as Lord Grantham, not Lord Crawley, because he's the Earl of Grantham. Very commonly, historical romance novels are known for not getting this correct, and it often irritates more knowledgeable readers. If you're writing historical fiction, another thing you might want to research is hairstyles, because hairstyles vary widely across historical periods. The final thing to keep in mind is the need to balance your research with the story. We've all read books where it was very clear that the author did a lot of research and was going to share it with us, whether we like it or not, because we'll have info dumps that go on for pages and pages. Too many details and facts are boring to the reader and rarely makes sense in the context of the story. An example would be a character explains 6 or 7 paragraphs explaining local politics to someone who's lived in the town for 20 years. You want to avoid the cliche of “as you know, Bob” information dump. Having someone familiar with the particular profession review your work might be helpful, but unless they're a true expert, they're not going to catch everything. Remember that readers pick up a fiction book to be entertained and not taught. Facts when done correctly, add verisimilitude to the story, help with the suspension of disbelief, and make stories more interesting. And finally I'd say that you want to make a good faith effort of being as accurate as possible, but don't stress too much over it because I find as I'm writing my 150th novel at this point (I speak with a little bit of experience here), that no matter how much research you do, no matter how careful you are, it's just not going to work for everyone and someone is either going to point out something you got wrong or something that doesn't work for them, which is a matter of interpretation. I'd say focus on writing the best story you can and focus on being as accurate as you can, but if you have to pick between the two, focus on writing the best story you can. Though, bear in mind that if you have to make your legal thriller revolve around something that could not possibly happen in real life, then you are not writing the best story that you can. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a quick word of thanks to my transcriptionist who once again helped me pull together the research for this episode. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes of the podcast, often with transcripts at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 189: The Return Of Caina Kardamnos
02/26/2024
Episode 189: The Return Of Caina Kardamnos
In this week's episode, I discuss why I decided to return to the character of Caina after twenty-nine novels. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERINFERNO The coupon code is valid through March 14th, 2024. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 189 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 23rd, 2024 and today we are talking about the return of Caina Kardamnos. Before we get to our main topics, we will have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing projects. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Inferno, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Inferno for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERINFERNO and that is WINTERINFERNO. The coupon code is valid through March the 14th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums and weather, we've got one ready for you. So now for a progress update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is out at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, since I have found that LitRPG books tend to do the best while they're in Kindle Unlimited. It is going a little better than expected, which is nice, and if you want to check out the book, you can read it at Amazon. My main writing project now is Ghost in the Veils, hence The Return of Caina Kardamnos title for this episode and I am 25,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 21. I am also 31,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series and that should come out after Ghost in the Veils. I'm also 3,000 words into Cloak of Titans, the next Nadia book. So the order these will all come out in is Ghost in the Veils needs to come out first because it has recording slot scheduled for the middle of April. So it needs to be done and out by then. I will finish Wizard Thief after that and then Cloak of Titans. In an audiobook news, the recording and proofing for Shield of Storms’ audiobook is done, and it's currently working its way through quality assurance on the various platforms, so hopefully it should be available on your audio platform of choice before much longer. 00:02:07 Reader Comments and Questions Now, before we get to our main topic, let's have a few questions and comments from listeners and readers. Reader NK asks: Hi, I would like to know what LitRPG is. Haven't come across it before and also do we need to complete reading the Sevenfold Sword series before Sevenfold Sword Online to better enjoy this story? In answer your question NK, LitRPG is generally defined as a story that uses the conventions and structures of online role-playing games like MMORPGs. They can be either fantasy or science fiction or blend a bit of both. Typically in these stories, either the protagonist is magically zapped into a game world or is playing the game while trying to balance some sort of crisis in both the game and real life, which is the approach I took for Sevenfold Sword Online. In answer to the second half of your question, Sevenfold Sword Online isn't actually connected to Sevenfold Sword. The premise is that it's 700 years in the future and that an evil corporation has built a hit virtual reality MMORPG using the books of a long dead author (i.e. me) as source material for the setting. In hindsight, I wish I had made the setting completely unconnected to anything else I had written, because it seems to confuse some readers, but too late now I suppose so, hopefully that will answer your question. Now we have a question from reader Justin. For context for that question, I recently had to get a new desktop computer after my old one died and this is in fact the first podcast episode I am recording using the new computer. So if it sounds really weird, I blame the computer, or more accurately, I probably should blame Windows 11. But anyway, with that in mind, here is our question from Justin: Good luck to you with your new computer. I switched to laptops for my computing needs. The lower power draw and portability are handy when you're going off grid. I'm used to you working on three series at once. You put that up a notch. Is this to reduce burnout and possibly writer’s block? In answer to that question, the reason I got a desktop was because I do a lot of cover design and graphic design, which is not always the greatest on laptops because that needs a lot of processing power, a lot of RAM, and perhaps most importantly, a lot of storage. In answer to the writing question, the only thing that's changed is I'm not doing a Ridmark and Andomhaim book every other month. I am going to keep writing Ridmark and books set in Andomhaim but I’ve been writing a Ridmark/Andomhaim book every other month pretty much since summer 2013, so I'd like to change it up a little bit and do more of other things. So while I am going to continue the Shield Wars series and I am going to write Shield of Darkness soon, I'm not going to start writing it until after Cloak of Titans is done, if you remember my order of projects from earlier in the show. I don't feel at risk of burnout or getting exasperated with writing. I just have been writing Ridmark and Andomhaim setting for so long that while I would like to continue writing that I would like to write more of other things as I go along. 00:05:08 Main Topic: The Return of Caina Kardamnos Now to our main topic: the return of Caina Kardamnos. As I mentioned earlier on the show, I'm now 25,000 words into Ghost in the Veils, which puts me also at chapter six in the second book of the Ghost Armor Series, the immediate sequel to Ghost in the Serpent from late 2023. I have to admit that when I finished Ghost in the Sun in the Ghost Night series in 2021 (I believe that was), I thought I was done with Caina. The reason for that was I just didn't have any idea of what to where to go or what to do with the character after Ghost Night. Part of that, I admit, was that Caina had become powerful and influential and I am cynically suspicious of people like that and wasn't sure I could write someone like that as a protagonist. Though that was less a concern as I went on since writing Ridmark and Tyrcamber, and Dragontiarna and then Dragonskull and the Shield War gave me a good bit of practice. So I finally had a good enough idea to return to Caina as a protagonist, and I think it was a confluence of four different ideas. The first idea was perhaps the most obvious one: what if Caina found out she had stepchildren? There are lots of potential story dynamics with stepchildren, but I thought the most interesting setup would be if Kylon had children he didn't know about and the mother Kalliope Agramemnos had kept them secret from him, except Kylon loves Caina and Kalliope is in awe of Caina. So Caina, out of necessity, becomes the linchpin holding this family together, since neither Kylon nor Kalliope can stand each other. There are a lot of potential character arcs and conflicts that can be generated in the inherent tension of that situation. The second core idea came from medieval nobles. If you've read any histories of medieval Europe, one of the main themes of the Middle Ages is that men primarily wielded the political and military power. But some women, by sheer force of will, charisma, tenacity, and cunning came to wield great power themselves. There are in fact quite a few examples. Probably the most famous one nowadays would be Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was married to two different kings and the mother to two more or three (depending on how you count and if you include Henry II’s eldest son, Young Henry, as the actual king or not). She kept her son Richard on the throne of England during his captivity after the Third Crusade and she was one of the chief architects of his release. Had Eleanor lived longer, and her son John listened to more of her advice, probably King John's reign would have been more successful and he would not be remembered primarily in the United States as the cowardly Prince John from that one animated Disney movie with the anthropomorphic animals. Perhaps the most successful example is Margaret Beaufort, who basically engineered her son Henry VII’s ascension to the English throne at the end of the Wars of the Roses, and then served as one of his primary advisors for the entirety of his reign. In fact, she even outlived Henry VII by a year and then lived long enough to advise her grandson Henry VIII for the first year after he became king. A less successful example and contemporary with Margaret Beaufort, would be Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI and mother of his heir. Margaret of Anjou was one of the driving forces behind the Wars of the Roses but lost everything when her husband and son were killed and she died in poverty in France while her enemy Edward IV ruled in England. Blanche of Castile was her son Louis IX’s regent when he went on crusade. Countess Matilda of Tuscany helped force the settlement in the Investiture Controversy and the Holy Roman Emperor, the southern dukes of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Pope all wanted Matilda as their ally. Perhaps the most striking example would be Sichelgaita of Lombardy, wife of the rapacious Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard. Guiscard started out as a penniless, landless knight and ended up conquering Sicily and a lot of Italy. He was known as greedy, cunning, and ruthless. His eventual tomb had the epitaph “Here lies Guiscard, the terror of the world.” It seems that Sichelgaita was in every way suited to be the wife of a freebooting warlord like her husband. Guiscard fought a lot of wars and Sichelgaita usually donned armor to battle alongside him. At the Battle of Durham in 1081 Guiscard’s troops started to break and run while fighting the soldiers of the Byzantine Empire. Sichelgaita rode after the fleeing troops, berating them for their cowardice, and evidently the prospect of her displeasure was so fearsome that Guiscard’s troops turned around and won the battle. It should also be known at this point in her life, Sichelgaita was in her forties and had borne Giscard eight children, so clearly a very resilient lady. So now that Caina is powerful and influential maybe historical events like these can provide inspirations for plot lines. Caina would still occasionally put on a shadow cloak and go out and break into places because this is, after all, a fantasy novel. The third idea was that someone must be in charge. I mentioned earlier that I had misgivings about writing protagonists with power and influence, but I've come to realize that is an incomplete view. The thing about power and influence is that someone is going to be in charge. It's just human nature. No matter how something is organized, someone must be in charge and bear the burden of leadership, and hopefully it will be someone with an eye on the greater good. I've thought about this concept a lot in 2023. I know several people in 2023 who, after much agonizing, left some of the traditional helping professions like medicine and education not because of dislike of the admittedly stressful work, but because the leadership was so stupid and so malicious as to create an unsustainable work environment. Like a leader can be stupid and well-intentioned, and a leader can be malicious and clever and an organization can still function, but stupidity and malice together are unsustainable. Alas, the contemporary United States and United Kingdom have no shortage of malicious and stupid leadership, but that's beyond the scope of the podcast about writing. So in the end, someone is going to be in charge, someone is going to have to wield power and influence. Hopefully it is someone who will act in the name of the greater good (I already did some of that with Caina in Ghost in the Council towards the second half of the Ghost Night series). That can make, in my opinion, for in a compelling protagonist. Fourth and finally, fantasy creatures. Way back in the 2000s when I was originally trying to sell the first Caina novels, all the agents and publishers fulminated on how they didn't want to see any novels with traditional fantasy creatures like elves and orcs and dwarves and serpent men and so forth. So when I wrote the kind of books I wrote them without any of that, which continued when I moved into self-publishing, though I was always a little sore about that, even years later. Now I think I have a firm enough grasp on the setting that I can introduce some traditional fantasy creatures into the Caina books, hopefully in a way that makes sense within the context of Caina 's very well-established world. So those four ideas came together for Ghost in the Serpent, and we shall hopefully see more of them in Ghost in the Veils. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. Our reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com and many of them now have transcripts (note: Episodes 144-189 currently have transcripts). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 188: The Best Ereader?
02/19/2024
Episode 188: The Best Ereader?
In this week's episode, I take a look at different models of ereader devices and try to determine which is the best one. I also reflect on the experience of watching the Super Bowl for the first time in several years. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERRAZOR The coupon code is valid through March 1st, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we’ve got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 188 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 16th 2024 as I record this, and today we are looking at the best ereader devices. I also talk a little bit about what it was like to watch the Super Bowl for the first time in like 20 years. Just a little word of warning, there is some fairly substantial construction noise going on the street outside that may intrude in the background. Additionally, yesterday the computer I use for recording for received a Windows Update that messed it up rather severely, and the processor is constantly maxing out, which means it makes a loud fan noise. So if you hear hissing noise in the background, that is what is happening. I just haven't had time to fix it yet, so between the construction noise and that hissing noise, we are going to have an adventuresome podcast today. Before we get to our main topics, let us do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is going to be for the audiobook of Ghost in the Razor, as excellently narrated by narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Razor for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERRAZOR. That is WINTERRAZOR and that will be included in the show notes. That coupon code will be valid until March 1st, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we've got one ready for you. Now let's have some updates on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, the second book in my LitRPG series, is now out and you can get it at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. After a year’s worth of sales data from the first book, I have concluded that LitRPG really does seem to perform best in Kindle Unlimited and audio so that is where it's going to go. It's currently in Kindle Unlimited and hopefully we should have audio in a few months, but we'll see how that works out and remind you that it’s at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. I'm not sure how long the series is going to be. I am leaning towards making it a trilogy and wrapping it up with the next book, but we will see how Leveling performs for the first 30 days it's out in the marketplace and maybe it would merit becoming a longer series, but if it sells at the level I expected it to, I think it will probably be trilogy. My next big project will be Ghost in the Veils, the second book in the Ghost Armor series with Caina, and I am 8,000 words into that, putting me on Chapter 2 and hopefully that will come out towards the end of March. It does need to come out before April because that's when I have a recording slot scheduled for it, so it does need to come out by then, so it's going to come out by then. I'm also about 26,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and hopefully that will come out fairly quickly after Ghost in the Veils comes out. I am also writing the outline for Cloak of Titans, which would be the eleventh Cloak Mage book, and that will be my main project after Ghost in the Veils and Wizard Thief are out. In audiobook news, recording is underway for Shield of Storms, and hopefully that should be out in March sometime, but we will see how things go. 00:03:17 Reader Comment Before we get to our main topics, let's have a comment from a reader. James says: having just finished the Dragonskull series while waiting for Cloak of Titans, I thought how great it would be if there’s a short story about Gareth’s return home with Niara would be. His mother's reaction would be precious. Just starting on the Sevenfold Sword series. I love all your books and you have totally taken over my Kindle. Thanks, James. I am glad you have enjoyed all those books. In answer to your question, that is a fairly major part of the plot in Shield of Storms, where Gareth and companions return home. Just the difference is in the Shield War series, Gareth and his friends aren't the main characters. They're supporting characters and Ridmark is one of the main characters. 00:03:57 Thoughts on the 2024 Super Bowl Now let's talk about something a bit uncharacteristic: The Super Bowl. I did something I haven't done since the early 2000s, and I watched the entirety of The Super Bowl last week. The reason I did that was that some family members wanted to watch it, and I had no objection. So I watched The Super Bowl. Though to be fair, when I say watched, what I really mean is I had it on in the background while playing Icewind Dale on my iPad for the most part, along with some Skyrim on my Switch. I admit that when I was younger and more insufferable, I would make a point of refusing to watch The Super Bowl. Then I realized such an approach was self-defeating. Professional football is no better or worse than any other form of recreation. Additionally, connecting with people socially is not among my strengths, and very often sports discussions are the low hanging fruit of easy social engagement. That said, I don't exactly pay close attention to professional sports, so here is what I found interesting about The Super Bowl as an outsider, so to speak. I think an observer completely unfamiliar with American culture and professional sports, upon watching The Super Bowl, would conclude it was a 3 1/2 hour block of commercials infrequently broken up by two-minute clips of football. That said, the Christopher Walken commercial was the funniest one and also the one with Dunkin' Donuts. The NFL may not be a cartel in the strict legal definition of the term, but we all know it's totally a cartel, which is a pretty sweet position to be in because you have massive corporations like Apple and Verizon shelling out big bucks. So it's the Apple Music Halftime Show or the Verizon Pregame Show or whatever. I do think from an objective viewpoint that it is rather surprising that football became the predominant sporting event in America. And I think the reason has to do with the football commissioners rather foresightedly seeing the potential of broadcast television in the 1950s and the 1960s. American football, if you look at it from the outside, is this really weird mutant form of rugby with a lot of arcane terminology and non-intuitive rules, and compared to soccer or basketball, it's just a very slow and plodding game. There's 15 seconds of action and then everyone stands around for two or three minutes. It's time for a commercial break, brought to you by Verizon. Soccer and basketball are much faster paced If American football is the imperial system, then European football/soccer is the metric system that everybody else in the world uses. I suspect to really appreciate American football, you have to get into it as a child and grow up with it so all the weird rules become second nature, which is probably why the NFL embraced Taylor Swift so much this year, which did annoy some long-term NFL fans who are not fans of Swift's music. I don't really have an opinion on Taylor Swift one way or another, since I mostly listen to computer game soundtracks, that is my preferred musical genre. But like I said above, I think to really appreciate American football you have to grow up with it. Football doesn't quite have the cultural hegemony it had in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. It's still massively popular, but more and more parents are keeping their kids away from playing it because of the danger of long-term head injuries or because of all the many sketchy things the NFL has done over the years. Though, to be fair, it's not like FIFA is a paragon of business ethics either, so you have more young people who don't grow up with it and therefore can't be bothered to pay attention. But Swift is popular with the young people, and the NFL desperately wants more of the young people watching the games. I don't think the Super Bowl or the NFL season is scripted in advance, but I can definitely see how people come to that conclusion, partly because the NFL's broadcasts are so slick and media savvy that they feel like they should be scripted. I think it's mostly because the human brain has this tendency to see systems and order where there is in fact, nothing more than chaos. Though this year's Super Bowl game was so dramatic, with the Chiefs squeaking out a win in overtime, that it feels like it should have been written in advance. Finally, are football and professional sports the modern “bread and circuses” like they had in the Roman Empire? Maybe. But if they are, is that necessarily even a bad thing? If you look at history, every large civilization has had games and public spectacles as part of the maintenance of social and public order. Some aspect of human psychology really seems to require it. There's lots to criticize about the NFL, but it's certainly better than a lot of the stuff the Romans got up to or early medieval tournaments, which were mock battles that sometimes escalated into actual battles that turned into actual local wars. Perhaps modern professional sports or a more efficient and usually more bloodless method of public spectacle. So I don't really have any grand conclusions here, just observations from an outsider’s perspective made while watching the Super Bowl and mostly playing Icewind Dale on my iPad, though I am pleased to report that in Icewind Dale during The Super Bowl I defeated an ogre with a bunch of Level 1 characters and my thief and my cleric both leveled up during the game. When I talked about this on my Facebook page, my readers had some good comments, so I thought I'd read a few of the few of few of them here. 00:09:11 Reader Comments on the 2024 Super Bowl Our first comments from William, who writing from the perspective of someone in the UK, says: I've seen the Super Bowl described as one of the great shared cultural experiences of the US and one of those times you can enjoy American football even if you're not really into the sport otherwise. It's one of those times you get together with family acquaintances you have few, if any common interests with. I think that's true and that's some good insight there. An opposing comment comes from reader named Mary, who says: I grew up breathing NFL. My sons played football through high school. As an adult, I watched consistently until I moved to an area without many services. Went four years without TV. Ordered a new streaming device and service. I hoped to bring some of those great memories forward. My goodness, what a disappointment. The commercials are heavily pharma-based or bad food. Gambling is another frequent advertisement. You're correct, the advertising is the point. I spend most of my free time reading, a much more immersive experience. Cancelled my service today with relief. So we can also see that the emphasis on ads during The Super Bowl and I think during regular football games as well, really does turn off some viewers. I definitely approve of reading as someone's main form of recreation, though I admit that might be a bit of self-interest on my part. 00:10:24 Main Topic: Best ereaders for 2024 in the US Now let's continue on to our main topic: the best ereaders available for 2024 in the US market. A couple of notes before we start. This is not sponsored. There are no affiliate links here. I'm not getting paid for anything I say here and these are just my opinions and research we are talking about on the show today. Because technology changes so quickly, I want to emphasize that this is current information or current information to the best of my ability as of February 2024, and since I'm based in the US, this mostly applies to the US market. It's definitely a good idea to do your own research when you're buying an electronic device, especially regarding specs, and especially if you have very specialized needs. The information was pulled together with a lot of help from my podcast transcriptionist by combing through user reviews and looking at testing from popular magazines such as Consumer Reports, Wired, PC Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and similar magazines. So I suppose we should start with the obvious question. Why have a dedicated ereader when you can easily read ebooks on your phone or tablet? An ereader does have several advantages that you don't get with a phone or a tablet. For one thing, it's lighter. It's easier to use with one hand, which, depending on the size of your tablet or phone, may be impossible. It also helps with eye strain if you're using a dedicated grayscale ereader. It doesn't have a backlight or it has a much weaker backlight than a tablet or phone will have, and therefore it is generally easier on the eyes, though that can vary from person to person. And it can also help you to focus on reading and minimize distractions, because if you're reading on a tablet or a phone, you might get a lot of notifications coming in from text messages or emails or social media and all that, all of which can pull you out of the book you are trying to read. So if you are a serious reader and you don't mind reading ebooks, it can be definitely worth your while to have a dedicated ereader. So let's look at the most popular model of ereader, which of course in the US and several other countries is the Amazon Kindle. In general, Kindles are superbly integrated with the Amazon ecosystem, but they generally don't work well with non-Amazon or non-Kindle products. I've run into that a few times myself on my Payhip store (which hopefully you will visit soon to get your discounted copy of the audiobook of Ghost in the Razor). I often have to include several different kinds of file formats to work with whatever generation of Kindle people might be using. Additionally, if you use your local library’s ebook service and they use Libby, not all Libby books are available for Kindles. A couple of times I've run into that, where I want to check out an ebook from Libby and it turns out that it's not available for Kindle, which is kind of disappointing because then you have to read it on your phone, which defeats the purpose of this episode. For specific Kindle models, the Kindle Oasis seems to be the high end one, and because it has the strongest backlight, it is considered generally best for reading at night. The Kindle Paperwhite seems to be overall the best reviewed and most popular model. It is lightweight. It weighs less than half a pound and it is waterproof. It has strong reviews from many review publications like Wired and Good Housekeeping and has a major fan following. Finally, the perhaps most esoteric Kindle ereader would be the Kindle Scribe. It's the biggest one, designed for note taking. So that's something that interests you that might be worth investigating, though it would be harder to hold the Kindle Scribe with one hand. After the Kindles, probably the most popular model of ereader in the US is the Kobo family. I'm a big fan of Kobo. Most of my books are available on Kobo, and most of them are also in Kobo Plus, their subscription program. In general, Kobos are best for people who do a lot of side loading, which involves taking ebook files and loading them manually onto your device and people who want a lot of customization. The one weakness of Kobo is that we're not entirely sure how well it will work with the various library services. The OverDrive app is being retired in favor of Libby and Kobo relies heavily on OverDrive because Kobo's parent company, Rakuten, used to own OverDrive for a while until they sold it off. So with OverDrive going away in favor of Libby, it's sort of an open question how well Kobos will integrate with library services in the future. Additionally, it's important to note that audiobooks and magazines from Libby are not presently available for Kobo devices. Hopefully that will change in the future, but that is the case right now. For specific models of the Kobo, Eclipsa is considered the best for people who like to take notes and annotate the actual pages, and it has the feature where you can convert handwriting to type text and then export those notes to Dropbox. The Kobo Clara model is the budget option that still has waterproofing, which is different from the Kindle base model, which doesn't. The Paperwhite does. I don't think the Oasis has waterproofing, but the Kindle Paperwhite does. If you are one of those people who likes to read in the bath and you drop your ereader, hopefully it will survive the immersion till you get it out of the water. Clara does have that waterproofing feature. The most popular model seems to be the Kobo Libra and it's best for those who are not locked into the Amazon ecosystem or another specific vendor. It has a very loyal cult following. It has physical page turn buttons, for those who prefer that feature, and it is highly regarded for its screen clarity. It also has very good battery life, which again is one of those strengths of ereaders over phones and tablets, which tend to be charging every other day, especially because the Libra settings allow you to easily shut off the Wi-Fi, dial back the lighting, and so forth to extend the battery life. So Kindle and Kobo are the big ones, but there's a couple others we should address. One of them is the Nook Glowlight, which is the current ereader available from Barnes and Noble. The tricky part with Barnes and Noble is that while they do have ebooks, it is not really a priority for the the company's current management, which has chosen to focus primarily on physical bookselling and which has apparently kept Barnes and Noble from going bankrupt. So good thing. But they're not hugely as interested in ebooks as they used to be. The Glowlight is best for those who have a lot of Barnes and Noble gift cards to use, since that's a popular present or who already have a lot of ebooks from Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately, it does not integrate very well with public library software like Libby. It can be done, but it is a lot of work and not nearly as easy as it is with the Kindle or the Kobos. And there are complaints of system problems like it's difficult to set up or prone to freezing. Another popular but niche ebook reader is the Onyx Boox Tab, which is a tablet with a color E ink display and the picture quality resembles color newspapers (for those of you who are old enough to remember when newspapers had color pictures). It has a loyal cult following, especially with comics and manga readers, and it has good note taking features. However, the big weakness is it is expensive and costs around $600.00 USD. Now, while we've mostly focused on dedicated ereaders, the truth is that tablets can in fact be very good ereaders if you know what you want and you know what you want to use them for. The advantages tablets have over ereaders is that they are more versatile than ereaders. And if, like nearly all of us, you are on a budget and limited what you can spend, which, let's be honest, is true of everybody, it may make more sense to buy a device that can do many things instead of an ereader which can do just one thing. Tablets are also good for those who aren't committed to a single source for their ebooks. You can easily download apps for all of the main ebook stores on an iPad. You can have the Kindle app, the Barnes and Noble app, the Kobo app, and a bunch of library services such as Libby and Hoopla, and you can enjoy...
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Episode 187: Stop Procrastinating and Write!
02/12/2024
Episode 187: Stop Procrastinating and Write!
In this week's episode, we take a look at tips & tricks for avoiding procrastination while writing. This week's coupon is for the ebook of , which you can get for WINTERDRAGON The coupon code is valid through March 2nd, 2024. So if you're looking for a very long fantasy book to read, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 187 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 8th, 2024 and today we are looking at tips and tricks to stop procrastinating so you can get your writing done. We'll also have Coupon of the Week, updates on my current writing projects, and a few questions and comments from readers. First off, let's have Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the ebook of Dragontiarna Omnibus One, which you can get for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERDRAGON. That is WINTERDRAGON and that will also be in the show notes for this episode, along with the links. The coupon code is valid through March the 2nd, 2024. So if you're looking for a very long fantasy book to read, we have got you covered. Now for updates on my current writing projects. The rough draft of Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is done and I have made good progress on the editing. I am very confident (well, mostly confident) that I will be able to get the book out before the end of February. So watch my websites and listen to this podcast for future updates. I've also written a short story called Damage Per Second that is an accompaniment to the book and newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of the short story when Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling comes out later this month. I am also on Chapter 2 of Ghost in the Veils, which I think puts me at 5,500 words or thereabouts and that will be my main project as soon as Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is done. I am also 25,000 words into Wizard Thief, which will be the sequel to Half-Elven Thief and that hopefully will come out before too much longer after Ghost in the Veils is done. In audiobook news, recording for Shield of Storms is underway. We've listened to some chapters of it and it's looking good, and hopefully that will be out in March sometime. Now a couple of comments and questions from readers. Our first comment is from Cyril, who asks: Have just read all the books in the Silent Order series. Could not put them down. The storylines followed from on from book to book and did not jump about all over the place, backwards and forwards like some of the writers do these days. Any more thoughts on sci-fi books in the future? Will try some of your other works but my main interest is sci-fi. Keep writing. Thanks, Cyril. I'm glad you like the books. In answer to your question, I am not presently planning any new science fiction books, but neither am I saying no to the possibility after I wrap up some of my current ongoing series. Maybe the next series will be a science fiction one. We will see when I get there. Our next question is from Alice who asks: Hi. I love your books but have dyslexia and so listen via audio. So I was wondering what of your books are in audio and what of them you have planned to have done an audio. I just hate starting the series to find out half of it is not in audio. Thanks, Alice. In answer to your question, the completed series that I have an audio would be Frostborn, Sevenfold Sword, Dragontiarna, Dragonskull, Malison, The Ghosts, and Ghost Exile. All those series are complete. Some other ones are ongoing, but they are not complete yet and won't be complete yet for a while. So if you want to listen to completed audiobook series, the ones I just listed off are the best place to start. 00:03:32 Main Topic: Avoiding Procrastination Now let's go on to our main topic this week, which is something I've noticed many writers struggle with, not with just writing, but in many areas of life: procrastination. Why do people procrastinate when they should be writing? And what can we do about it? What can we do to address that? It's a very common, writerly trope that at last I will have two free hours available to write, so it's time to start vacuuming the carpet or to clean the kitchen or to do laundry or do anything except get the words down on paper or the word processor. So let's take a look at why writers procrastinate and what we can do to address those problems. So first off, we need to understand the root causes of procrastinating. Procrastination is generally a short term reward that doesn't feel like a reward. It should feel like you're giving yourself a break, but you're not actually removing the cause of the stress, so you're not actually solving the problem. What will actually make you feel better is the achievement of doing something, even if it's an incremental gain or a small improvement. So what causes people to seek out this short term break in the form of procrastination? One of them is our good old friend perfectionism, also known as the Nirvana Fallacy, where if something cannot be made perfect, there's no point in attempting it, which overlooks the fact (since it's a logical fallacy) that forty percent of a good thing is better than 0 percent of a good thing. Another way people tend to lean on the Nirvana Fallacy that way is if I can't write X number of words per day, there's no point in even doing it, whether that number is, you know 1,000 or 5,000 or whatever. But that overlooks the fact that you know 500 words or 3,000 words or even just 1,000 words or 100 words is still better than 0. Another root cause of procrastination is fear of failure, where people think they won't be able to finish a book or write a good book, so they should wait until they could or they can't market a book or make a billion dollars from one, so they shouldn't bother writing one (which again, is the Nirvana Fallacy right there) or the belief that everything you write is trash, so you just re-edit what you've written over and over again rather than writing new words. This is just something that has to be overcome emotionally. Every writer at any point of any project they've ever written will at some times feel that what they're writing is complete nonsense and they should stop. You just have to learn to ignore this feeling and keep moving. Another root cause of procrastination is the siren call of side quests or busywork, where you can get caught up in planning or outlining or creating series bibles or doing research for your book, or buying software or supplies without a clear plan to actually use them, or reading about writing, watching Tik Toks about writing. All these things give you the illusion of writing, but they don't actually get you anywhere. Some of those activities may be necessary and you may have to do them, but they are not helping you get words down on the page. For example, in a couple of weeks I'm going to have to take an entire day to get my tax paperwork organized and sent into the accountants for tax season. That's going to be a very busy day. That's going to be some work, but it doesn't count as writing and it is very easy to fall through the trap of seeing all these various side projects or support projects for writing as writing, but they're not actually getting any writing done. For this kind of thing to avoid it, it's best to set a clear time limit for these types of activities and do not count them as part of your writing time or writing progress. Now let's look at a couple of different strategies to address these root causes and to defeat them or at least circumvent them. One common tactic is to break down a large and complicated task into smaller pieces. Start with a very small word count that can be done quickly and feels easy like 50 or 100 words, not something larger. There's this book called Atomic Habits by a guy named James Clear that explains the process of breaking down goals into very small pieces and I've seen that strategy work very well for some people. So if you want further details on it, that book would probably be a good place to start. Another useful technique is to change your expectations, or just do it. For example, no editing as you write, no going back and trying to fix what you just wrote. Just get it all down on the page as fast as you can and when the rough draft is done, that's when you go back and edit. Some find the exercises of morning pages from the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron helpful, where you do three pages of stream of consciousness writing every day with no editing, no filtering, no self-criticism. Just get it on the page and then move on. It's also a very good idea to avoid writing adjacent activities during writing time, such as outlining or research or answering emails or social media. All those other various things that can be necessary but sometimes turn into a time sink. Another useful technique is to build a focused environment for your writing. Now, what does that mean? You may want to pick a spot with no physical distractions, such as a spot with no TV, definitely no video games, maybe a place where a lot of people don't walk by (like the spare bedroom in your house), or if you're writing at a university or in public, maybe like a library carrel or a quiet floor of the library away from the main floor. You also want a spot possibly that's away from clutter where you're not seeing other chores you have to do, like bills to pay or laundry to do or that kind of thing. For some people, being around ambient noise or being around other people does actually help them work. This is really not the case for me. I have written large quantities of all my books in coffee shops or doctor’s waiting rooms or other waiting rooms, as I wait to pick people up or to meet people. But it's not something I seek out and I only do it when circumstances compel me to do it. I would rather be writing quietly at my desk with no one around. However, not everyone works that way, and some people actually do derive energy from being around other people who are working. So you could go to a busier area of the library, like a chair or table on the main floor or a coffee shop and write there along with many other people who derive enjoyment from doing that. One key part of building a focused environment is managing tech distractions. While writing, you may want to turn off the Wi-Fi because that reduces the temptation to just, you know, casually check something on Wikipedia and then get caught in a Wikipedia spiral for the next half hour. You may want to create a phone setting that allows calls or messages only from certain contacts to come through. Sometimes when people write they want to turn their phone off, but they don't because they're worried an emergency call from, you know, a friend or family member might come in. So there are options where you can configure your phone to only let messages from your contacts through while blocking you from getting on, you know, Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or any of the other social media time sinks. There are a variety of different phone and browser modes that can be set to limit certain apps or sites or notifications and so forth, because phone addiction is definitely something people struggle with when procrastinating and writers are no different. Another method of battling procrastination is with routine and planned times for writing. It can be helpful to pick a specific time every day and stick to it. If you're going to do this, it's best if you pick a realistic time. Just don't decide right, I'm going to get up at 4:30 in the morning every day and write, because you're probably not going to if you're not already getting up at 4:30 in the morning anyway. If you try that, you'll probably get up at 4:30 once or twice, get too tired to continue, and that will be that. It's probably better to pick a different time in the day. Mornings and lunch breaks tend to work well for a lot of people, since people generally have less willpower as the day goes on and many people have very tiring jobs where they just want to get home, eat some dinner, and then watch some Netflix and go to bed. For myself, I used to write quite a bit on lunch breaks back in the day and that can be a very useful tool for getting some writing done. Time blocking or the Pomodoro Method can be very helpful. I use Pomodoro a lot when writing my books lately, pretty much since oh, like 2019 or so. The Pomodoro Method is where you set a timer and then you spend 25 minutes working on your task to the exclusion of everything else. You take a 5 minute break, then you do another 25 minutes of working on your task to the exclusion of all else with, you know, Wi-Fi off and everything, and then you take a 10 minute break and repeat until you are done or you run out of time and have to do something else. I have found Pomodoro to be very helpful, to the point where on my desk I have a dedicated tomato shaped timer because Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. If your brain works like mine, Pomodoro might be very helpful. Another useful way to avoid procrastination is accountability. You can find an accountability partner in a writers group or find a friend to text your daily word count to. Generally family members, spouses, and romantic partners tend not to work out terribly well as accountability partners for a variety of reasons, so you may be better off using a friend or someone from a dedicated writers group. Writing groups can be helpful. It depends very strongly on the nature of the group. Some of them are very helpful. Some of them have the typical toxic dynamics you often find in a dysfunctional small group, so if you feel a writing group is not right for you, there is no reason to stick around. But there's a variety of different ways you can find writing groups. Many of them meet online or on Facebook. And the final way to avoid procrastination is, if possible, make the task pleasant. Find an environment you enjoy writing in: comfortable, good lighting, comfortable chair, or a chair to enforce a good posture (if you prefer). Some people even set up a separate writing desktop in Windows 11 with its own special background and settings to make them more focused for writing and to remove the habit of, you know, just checking Facebook or Wikipedia or the news for a few minutes. It's often a good idea to pair writing with a task you enjoy, such as drinking coffee. If you have a walking desk or treadmill, you can very often walk slowly and write at the same time. Many people enjoy that and also it's good for physical health as well. If you do enjoy walking and you're willing to dictate, Kevin J. Anderson has an excellent book called On Being a Dictator where he describes his method of using dictation to get his writing done, where he'll take long walks near his house, dictate into a digital recorder, and later pay a transcriptionist is to transcribe it into a Word document so he can edit it. Finally, perhaps one of the most effective techniques for avoiding procrastination is bribery. We all know bribery makes the world go round, whether we admit it or not. Build in a reward, like for 10,000 words, you get a break. Or if you have a streak for X number of days, you can get a treat like new pens or a new notebook or a game or something like that. So it's often a good idea to build in rewards for tasks you might otherwise put off. So those are all our tips and tricks for avoiding procrastination, and I hope you will find them helpful. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a quick thanks to my transcriptionist, who helped me gather all the data for this episode. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 186: Five Book Marketing Tactics That Readers Hate
02/05/2024
Episode 186: Five Book Marketing Tactics That Readers Hate
In this week's episode, we take a look at five book marketing tactics that readers hate, along with five ones they usually enjoy. I also take a look at my advertising results for January 2024. For this Coupon of the Week we're doing one of my older books, specifically the entire . If you use this coupon at my Payhip store, you can get : WINTERTOWER The coupon code is valid until February 22nd, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 186 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 2nd, 2024. Today we're going to talk about five marketing tactics that readers hate. We'll also discuss my ad results for January 2024 and have an update on my current writing projects and have it a reader question or two in the mix. As a side note, this is the first time ever I am recording this podcast on Windows 11. I finally upgraded my desktop computer to Windows 11 in an effort to solve a driver problem that I've been having. It was something with my video driver where it had stopped receiving or the manufacturer had stopped putting out updates for Windows 10 but Windows 11 drivers were available. I've been putting that off for like two years, but I finally thought, well, nothing else has worked. Let's try and upgrade this desktop to Windows 11 and I'm pleased to report that it seems to have in fact fixed my video driver problem, so I am pleased with that. Hopefully it won't totally screw up the recording of this podcast, but I can see the file increasing in size as I record this, so I assume that it is in fact being successfully recorded. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week and this time we're doing Coupon of the Week for one of my older series, specifically the entire Tower of Endless World Series now that we finally have those up on Payhip. The problem was I had created those ebooks way back in 2012 when the software wasn't quite as nice, so I wasn't happy with the formatting, so it was a side project over a week or two to rip apart the formatting and get them all uploaded and you know looking nice, but that's done. If you use this coupon at my Payhip store you can get 50% off the ebooks in the entire series and that is WINTERTOWER and that will be WINTERTOWER, again, that's WINTERTOWER and you can find that in the show notes, along with links to the ebooks on the store. This coupon code will be valid until February 22nd, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read, we have got you covered. Now here is where we are at with my current writing projects. I am almost done with the Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, the second book in My Sevenfold Sword Online Lit RPG series. I just have a couple more scenes to write in the last chapter and then I need to write the epilogue and then the rough draft will be done. It will be about 90,000 words or so. I haven't decided if it's going to be a long series yet or not, because as I've mentioned before on this show, the first book did not do as well as I'd hoped, and with a year's worth of sales data, now I think it's pretty conclusive the market for LitRPGs is pretty much entirely in Kindle Unlimited and audiobook. So I'm hoping to have a audiobook for this soon after it comes out and I'm going to see how the book does and after the first 30 days I will decide whether it will be a trilogy with everything wrapping up with the third book, or if it's going to be a longer series, if it's viable to continue writing it, or if I should just wrap it up with the trilogy and move on. So that will be determined within 30 days after the book is out. After Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is published, my next main project will be Ghost in the Veils and I'm actually 2,000 words into that. That will be the second book in my Ghost Armor series and that will hopefully be out before April because April is when the recording slot for that to become an audiobook is scheduled and I really, really need to have it done by that. I'm also about 22,000 words into Wizard Thief, which is the sequel to Half-Elven Thief back in December and that will come out sometime after Ghost in the Veils, probably not that long after Ghost in the Veils, because I'm pretty far into that book. Since I mentioned before December 2023 was my best month ever for self-published audio, I should probably mention where I'm at with audiobooks. Right now, recording for Shield of Storms is underway and hopefully that should be out sometime in March, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:04:10 Reader Question Now we have a reader question this week from Nico, who asks: Hi, Jonathan. I have read several of your books on Audible (I suppose means he's listened to several books on Audible). Now I'm starting the Frostborn saga. Some time ago I committed a mistake and read the Dragontiarna saga without reading the previous sagas, now I'm starting Frostborn, but it is constantly mentioning Ridmark’s, previous adventures and I cannot find any books of this and I really don't want to make the same mistake as Dragontiarna. Well, first thing, thanks for listening, Nico. I'm glad you're enjoying all those audiobooks. I think what Nico is asking is what is the proper order to listen or read the Ridmark and Andomhaim stories because it seems like he started with Dragontiarna and then went back to the older series. I have to admit, when I wrote these I had in mind that they would each be stand alone and readers could read the series or whatever order they like, but I found in practice after almost 11 years of doing this, that that is not the case and people prefer to read everything in order. The proper order of the series is first the Frostborn series, second the Sevenfold Sword series, third the Dragontiarna series, fourth the Dragonskull series, and now fifth the Shield War series, of which Shield of Storms is the first book. Anything that Ridmark mentions about his previous adventures early in the Frostborn series is not something I've actually written. It's all like a back story to his character at that point that I haven't actually written, whereas if you're reading from Ridmark's perspective in Shield of Storms, and he mentions his previous adventures at that point, there's a good chance that this is referencing events that happen like Frostborn or Dragontiarna or Sevenfold Sword. As I mentioned, I did intend for each of these series to be entirely stand alone, but in practice it actually hasn't worked out that way. Though I am grateful that people keep reading them. 00:06:08 January 2024 Ad Results Now, since it's the start of February and we're a couple days past the end of January, let's see how my ads did for January 2024 because, like it or not, if you're selling something online, digital advertising is an inescapable part of your business model for most people. As usual, I advertised on Facebook, Bookbub, and Amazon. We'll go through that list in that order. First up, my Facebook ads. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, I got back $4.22 for every dollar I spent and 8.5% of the profit came from the audiobooks, which was a big improvement from past months. For the Ghost series, I got back $4.36 for every dollar I spent and 15% of the profit came from the audiobooks, probably because there's a lot more of them. Next up is the Bookbub ads. I've only been advertising Frostborn there, though I might expand that to include the Silent Order series in February and March. For Frostborn, I got back $6.14 for every dollar I spent, with a whopping 49.9% of the profit from the audio. So I very nearly made more from the Frostborn audiobooks than I did from the ebooks in January 2024. Now on to Amazon ads. I tend to target Amazon ads for individual books rather than series. In this case, Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire got back $2.05 for every dollar spent, with 44% of the profit coming from the audiobook. Sevenfold Sword: Creation, which I've been advertising in preparation for Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, got back $2.46 for every dollar spent, with 46% of the profit coming from the audiobook. Half-Elven thief, which currently has no audiobook, got back $3.27 for every dollar spent and finally, Silent Order Omnibus One back $15.60 for every dollar spent. I strongly suspect this was an anomaly due to Silent Order: Iron Hand having a big spike in free downloads for the month of January. So once again, we see that having audiobooks makes it a lot easier to generate a profit on ads, especially if you have a completed audiobook series. Of course, as we all know, the effort and money to get to a completed audiobook series is immense. I suspect that's why AI audio is so alluring to people. Of course, in my opinion, it's a false allure, since I suspect the vast majority of listeners have gone from passively to actively hating AI audio and will actively avoid it, save for circumstances like it's the night before your econ or biology final and you have to drive 12 hours, so you might as well have your phone read the PDF file of your textbook aloud to you, that kind of thing. People do seem to be a bit more forgiving of AI audio in certain nonfiction scenarios like that. But overall, it seems like the listener base for audiobooks still strongly prefers human narrated audiobooks. If you are thinking about doing AI narrated audiobooks, probably should proceed with caution there. So as always, thanks to everyone who bought or listened to my books in the month of January 2024. Since we were just talking about ads, that seems like a good way to segue to our main topic this week: 5 marketing tactics that readers don't like. 00:09:29 Main Topic: 5 Marketing Tactics Readers Don’t Like As I mentioned earlier in the show, online marketing is an inescapable fact of selling things online. If you are selling anything online, be it books or cosmetics or machine parts or nails or anything else, at some point, you're probably going to have to do some online advertising. However, the point of advertising is not to annoy people. The point of advertising is to introduce your product or service to people who would benefit from using your product, your service, people whose lives would be better for having you as your product or service. As authors, we want to introduce our books to people who will read them and enjoy them and have you know, perhaps the troubles of their lives momentarily lightened as they are able to read a book and enjoy an adventure story and take their mind off their troubles for a little while. That is the purpose of online advertising: to get your books in front of the audience that will appreciate them. Now where this goes wrong is if you are using marketing tactics that are annoying. We can all think of examples of very annoying marketing tactics. In the Internet age, the pop up ad is one. If you go on the radio, the ads where the guy talks really fast about used cars and then he has a long disclaimer at the end. On TV or Internet videos, those ads for a pharmaceutical product that sounds like the villain from a Doctor Who episode in the ‘70s like Vondacraz, and how the end of the commercial if you take Vondacraz, there's a list of like 40 seconds of side effects, ranging from horrible tortures to death. Those commercials are also annoying. For books specifically, there are different things you can do in marketing that turns out to annoy your readers, which again is defeating the purpose of advertising. The purpose of advertising is to get your book in front of the audience that will benefit from or enjoy from reading the book. It's not to annoy the reader. Annoying the reader is a failure of advertising. So with that in mind, we would, we're going to take a look at five marketing tactics that readers don't like and then five ones that they do like. So let's start with the five marketing tactics readers don't like, number one among them is when every Tweet/post/newsletter from an author is an ad or promoting the next book. You can all think of examples like that, where you go on an author’s Twitter feed or Instagram feed or Facebook feed and it's nothing but a wall of links advertising in their book. There's no interesting content there, nothing amusing, not even, you know, funny memes. It's just an endless wall of text of links leading to the book and that is both boring and annoying. If you follow an author on social media and then their feed is nothing but “buy my book, buy my book, buy my book” it’s very quickly going to be annoying and you're going to unfollow that author pretty quickly. A subset of this problem is where the author doesn't actually engage with readers on any of these platforms. I get a lot of Facebook comments on my Facebook page and I try to at least like all of them and you know respond to them when appropriate. And so I try to keep up with that. I'm not perfect but you know, I make good faith effort doing it. But if you never engage with anyone on your social media platforms, then what's the point of having a social media platform? Frequency and aggressiveness of promo is also a huge turn off for readers. Aggressive, in your face sales tactics might work in a very limited number of fields, though I can't think of any of them, and they definitely don't work in books and selling books. If you get too aggressive, that is a huge turn-off for readers and they will go elsewhere. So that is also something to avoid. Our second marketing tactic that readers don't like our book marketing/ blurbs that don't work. What do we mean by that? One thing is book marketing or a blurb that gives away too much of the plot. Like if you're advertising a murder mystery and the ad gives away the ending, there's really no point in reading the book now, is there? So you will want to avoid that. Another thing is low energy copy where the book description or the text in the ad is just boring and drags and this is clear evidence that copywriting is a distinct skill from writing interesting fictional prose. So this is why doing a little bit of copywriting and practicing it and maybe taking like a, you know, short course online course on it isn't necessarily the worst idea for an author. Too many cliches strung together as a substitute for book copy, like for example “a sparkly friends to lovers, cozy fall young adult romance for fans of the Gilmore Girls, Happily Ever After guaranteed.” That is just a string of cliches joined together, and that is also boring ad copy. Finally lazy ad copy that doesn't actually reflect the desired audience but just tries to grab the latest buzzwords like “Game of Thrones meets Harry Potter meets The Hunger Games.” What does that even mean? Game of Thrones and Harry Potter and Hunger Games are all very distinct books that are very different from one another. The only remotely tenuous connection between Game of Thrones and Harry Potter is that both had magic, though the magic of Game of Thrones is way different than the magic in Harry Potter and Hunger Games isn't fantasy at all. It's basically dystopian science fiction. So you can see how joining together those different books into “Game of Thrones meets Harry Potter meets Hunger Games” is a very ineffective marketing tactic. The third ineffective marketing tactic is poorly targeted ads/poor category choices, like a nonfiction book with ads targeted for genre fiction. This used to be a fairly serious problem on Amazon where someone would have the bright idea of putting their, for example, their romance novel in a very specific nonfiction category like custom woodworking. Amazon has a lot of little niche nonfiction categories like that, where there are a lot of specialist nonfiction that tends not to sell very much and only a few people who are interested in their specialist nonfiction. So what happened is like this romance author would put his or her book into specialist woodworking and then, you know, sell 2 copies there and you’re number one in the category. Then this author could go around boasting and saying, “hey, my book is number one in its category in Amazon,” even though it's in totally the wrong category and it's in a category of again specialist nonfiction where you only need to sell like you know two or three copies in a week to get to #1. Amazon eventually cracked down hard on that. So if you are publishing your book now, you'll definitely want to make sure it is in categories that at least correspond somewhat with reality. This is also important in advertising because very often new authors, when they try to advertise, will be like, well, I want to advertise my book to everyone who's interested in books, and that is way, way too broad. The number one rule of thumb in digital advertising is that the more narrowed down you can get on your audience, the better your results are going to be. I write epic fantasy for the most part, and when I ever has my epic fantasy books on Facebook, I try to narrow the interest down as much as possible to like you know, people who have read George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, J.R.R Tolkien books in the United States and then I will use a very specific audience like that. Where this can really go wrong is if you are advertising your book to totally in the wrong audience, like for example you have written a really dark and gritty horror thriller and you're advertising it to an audience that enjoys reading happily ever after clean romance. The disconnect will be immense and you will, at best you'll just waste your money and at worst, you'll waste a bunch of money and get a lot of negative reviews. So that's why it's important to dial down your audience in your digital marketing as much as possible, as specifically as possible, because you're much, much more likely to get a better result. The fourth ineffective tactic we'll discuss today is relying on things that used to work but are now obsolete or way less effective than other things a writer could do instead. Add most of these tactics are the expectation that the reader will be the one making the effort, which is a bad idea. You want the process of buying your book to be as smooth and frictionless as possible, to use another common ecommerce term. One example of something that might have worked once but doesn't anymore is book signings as a beginning/niche author. I've never done an official book signing in the (how long has it been now?) in the 13 years I've been an indie author and the 11 years I've been working on Ridmark books, I have never once done an official book signing and I do not think the lack of that has hurt me in any way because it's such an ineffective way to sell books. It's an enormous amount of energy to travel around, haul your books around with you, set the table, network with bookstores and so forth, and at best, you might sell one or two copies. Now, this is different for, you know, really big name writers like, you know Stephen King or Nora Roberts or Brandon Sanderson. They can do a book signing and expect to have a reasonable number of people. But even still it's still a lot of work because, you know, both Stephen King and Nora Roberts are both over seventy I believe, and not that interested in doing a lot of travel anymore. And even Brandon Sanderson, who isn't even yet 50, even after COVID did a lot less traveling, and now just has his yearly convention in Utah. I think it's called the Dragonsteel Convention, where his fans can come and, you know, do the book signing experience and the convention experience. and he doesn't have to travel around the country, because that is definitely something exhausting to do. I'd say book signings, except for very specific and very limited circumstances, are generally a waste of time. Another thing that used to be effective, but is not anymore in the year of our Lord 2024, would be...
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Episode 185: How To (Legally) Find Free & Low Cost Audiobooks
01/29/2024
Episode 185: How To (Legally) Find Free & Low Cost Audiobooks
December 2023 was my best month ever for my audiobooks, so I thought I would take a look at the best places to (legally) get free and low-cost audiobooks. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERHUNT The coupon code is valid through February 13th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we’ve got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 185 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 27th, 2024, and today we're going to talk about how to find low-cost audiobooks. Before we get to our main topic, let's have Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Hunt, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Hunt for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERHUNT and that is WINTERHUNT and that will obviously be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through February 13th, 2024. So, if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we've got one ready for you. So that is Coupon of the Week. Now let's have a current update on my present writing projects. I am pleased to report that Shield of Storms, the first book in the new Shield War saga set in my fantasy realm of Andomhaim, is complete and it is out and published. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. Initial sales and reviews are positive, so thank you all for reading. A few people have asked when the audiobook is coming and recording should start for that on January 29th (Monday). So realistically, probably around March for the audiobook to be available. Now that Shield of Storms is out, let's have a look at my next couple of projects. The next book I publish will be Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, and I am about 2/3 of the way through it. In fact, I think I might be closer to 70% of the way through it and so I am hoping to have that done before too much longer. I've had a year’s worth of sales data with the previous book and I think I've pretty definitively established that the LitRPG market is pretty much Kindle Unlimited and audio so Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling will be in Kindle Unlimited and hopefully in audiobook before too much longer, if all goes well. We will see how that goes. After that is done then I will write Ghost in the Veils, the sequel to Ghost in the Serpent and the second book in the New Ghost Armor series. I think that will probably be out towards the end of March or the beginning of April. It's scheduled to be recorded as an audiobook in April. So, I definitely want to have it out before that happens. I am also about 19,000 words into Wizard Thief, the sequel to Half-Elven Thief in December, and that…lately I've been adopting a model for writing where I have a main project that takes up 80% of my time and then do like 10% projects that I work on in the morning when I have my coffee. By the time I get done with Ghost in the Veils, I will probably be like halfway through or maybe even 2/3 of the way through Wizard Thief. So hopefully it should be out before too much longer after Ghost in the Veils is published. So that is where I'm at with all my current writing projects. 00:03:08 Main Topic: Legal and Cheap Ways to Get Low-Cost Audiobooks So let's move on to our main topic this week: legal and cheap ways to get low-cost or free audiobooks. So why talk about that this month or this episode? Well, looking over figures, it looks like December may have been my best month ever for my self-published audiobooks, which I'm very happy about and now very grateful to all of you for. But as we all know, the economy is not good and it is not likely to improve anytime soon. So, budgets are tight for many, many people and so I thought it would be a good way to take a look at the free and legal ways to get free and low-cost audiobooks because obviously it's fairly simple to pirate audio books. I don't endorse that, and there's also always a measure of risk with that, because very often pirates will use fake pirated material to distribute, like, you know, malware and cryptocurrency scams and that kind of thing. I remember a long time ago, back when I was doing tech support, I had a university student come to me very concerned that her computer had gotten a virus, and so I asked, how did do you think this happened? She said, well, I had to watch this movie for class, so I didn't want to pay for it. So I Googled where to watch a pirated copy of this movie online and I clicked on the first link I got and my computer is now filled with viruses. I don't know how this happened. This was not, needless to say, the most mysterious case I ever had to deal with when I was doing tech support back in the old days. So piracy, aside from the moral and ethical implications, can also carry a measure of risk. By contrast, the methods that we're going to talk about today are legal and should have no risk of infecting either your phone or your computer with various forms of malware or cryptocurrency scams. So let's look at the best way to get free audiobook titles and the best way is the one of the most old fashioned ways: your local library system. I should note what I'm about to say applies strongly to the US, since that's obviously where I live, and that I'm most familiar with how things work here, so obviously things will probably work differently in different countries if that is where you live. In the US, there's usually two ways you can get audiobooks from the library. The library will either use a service called Libby, which is sort of a friendly user interface on top of a service called OverDrive, or the library will use something called Hoopla. Not all libraries will have Libby or Hoopla, though many of them will have some sort of service like Libby or Hoopla that provides ebooks or audiobooks. Be sure to check your local library's website to see if your library subscribes to these resources and to learn more about them. One thing, if your library uses Libby/OverDrive is that there will probably be a wait list for newer titles or titles that suddenly get popular (like the the biography of Oppenheimer that inspired the Oppenheimer movie in the summer of 2023). It's not uncommon for a big release or very popular book or audiobook to have a wait list of a couple hundred people, though obviously if you're looking at older or less popular titles, the wait list will sometimes be shorter or no wait at all. Selection will also vary wildly by library. The trouble with a lot of these ebook subscription platforms for libraries is that they're very expensive because the library’s essentially a captive market for the vendors. Libraries have to subscribe to the Libby platform and then buy additional titles for their patrons. And if you're familiar with the way the publishing industry works at all, you know that library editions are usually much more expensive than regular consumer editions. For example, a book that might cost a library like $9 in print can cost like $85 on Libby for a copy that expires after 26 checkouts or a similar level of set checkouts. That's often why libraries will only have one or two copies of a very popular title, just because it's so expensive. If they just bought copies for everyone who asks, it would rapidly deplete their budget. The checkout and limits are set by the libraries and not Hoopla or OverDrive, so they vary from library to library. Like one library might have four checkouts per patron per month or another library system might allow ten simultaneous checkouts and ten items you can join the wait list for at the same time. It can vary quite a bit from library to library. So as the saying goes, your mileage may vary, but if you are looking for a low-cost way to listen to audiobooks and read ebooks, then the best place to start is probably your local library system. Now let's move on from free to subscription products. Something new that's come up recently is that Spotify is offering audiobooks. They bought Findaway Voices a couple of years ago and basically imported Findaway Voices’ audiobook catalog into their platform, which includes quite a few of my audiobooks. And for a Spotify premium subscription, you get access to a library of audiobook titles included in the cost of an existing Spotify Premium subscription. It comes out to 15 hours a month per individual Premium account or per family account, and depending on your audiobook listening needs, one fifteen hour audiobook might tide you over for the entire month worth of commuting. It is important to note that this does not include all audiobooks available on Spotify. Not all of them are available for this fifteen hour a month subscription and that Spotify does also offer what are called a la carte audiobook sales, where you just buy the audiobook on top of the subscription cost that you're already paying. So, if you're already paying for Spotify for your music listening, as apparently quite a few people do, this could be a fairly cheap way to listen to audiobooks on top of your Spotify subscriptions, as you're paying for that already anyway. Another subscription option is Kobo Plus Listen where you pay about $8 US a month to access a collection of about 100,000 audiobook titles, and for an initial $2.00 a month you can throw in the entire Kobo Plus collection of ebooks. Kobo’s audiobook platform is relatively new, so it tends to have fewer frontlist and bestseller titles. Quite a few of my audiobooks are on there and I think the vast majority of my ebooks are in Kobo Plus as well. So, if you're looking for a low-cost way to listen to audiobooks, that could be a good way to do it. Another option is a platform called Everand, which you may also know as Scribd, because that's what it used to be called until a couple months ago. For some reason, they decided to change their name from Scribd to Everand. Whenever companies do this, it's often very confusing and you always suspect that they paid too much money to an MBA consultant for some bad advice, but that is a tangent and let's not dwell on that. Everand has a slightly lower cost than Audible. It's $12.00 a month versus $15 for the lowest tier of the Audible subscription plan and that also includes ebook access. However, it's not a truly unlimited subscription. There seems to be a limit that isn't advertised based on reports, and it's apparently frequently very frustrating to power users. In fact, back when Everand was still Scribd a couple of years ago, there was a bit of a minor kerfuffle where they started limiting romance power users because romance readers are famous for reading so many romance books and listening to so many romance audiobooks. And so they deliberately dialed that back and throttled it and it was a bit of a problem. Audible also has what's called the Audible Plus lowest tier for their Audible subscription. For $8 a month, you can subscribe to Audible Plus and then you can listen to anything that's in the Audible Plus catalog, which does rotate fairly frequently, and things tend to move in and out of it. For a while, the first Dragontiarna Publisher Pack, which would be Dragontiarna Books One and Two, was in Audible Plus, and that did do a good job of driving sales to the rest of the series, but only the first audiobook was in Audible Plus, so it's kind of a loss leader for Podium to do that. Now onto some low-cost a la carte options, where you’re just paying for the audiobook rather than subscribing. I have to admit my favorite low-cost option is Chirp. If you're familiar with Bookbub at all, Chirp works basically like Bookbub. Every day you get an email listing the low-cost and discounted audiobooks in genres that you indicated you like when you signed up for Chirp. There's no monthly costs, no recurring fees, anything like that. You just get email every day with a list of audiobooks that are currently on sale for a low cost, ranging from like $0.99 to $4.99 (depending on the title), which is usually a pretty good deal. So, if you're looking to stack up on some low-cost audiobooks, Chirp is a good way to go about it. And if you don't mind a bit of a plug, another good way to get low-cost audiobooks is to listen to this podcast. If you will remember from the start of the show, I have Coupon of the Week for Ghost in the Hunt for 75% off, which comes to about…ah, the audiobook will cost you about $3.00. So listen to this podcast and watching for the coupon code is also a good way to get discount audiobooks, since I do use audiobooks for Coupon of the Week pretty frequently. Finally, if you want to listen to some free public domain audiobooks (this is where the book has been in the public domain, and therefore anyone can make an audiobook of it for any reason), check out a website called LibriVox. That is https://librivox.org and it has a large collection of public domain titles which are all read by volunteers, but the quality may vary depending upon the equipment and technical competence of that particular volunteer, but they are free. If you can't find something you want to listen to at the library for free, this might be a good substitution. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I'd like to once again thank my transcriptionist for pulling together the research for this episode. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 184: Why Readers Quit On Books
01/22/2024
Episode 184: Why Readers Quit On Books
In this week's episode, we take a look at why readers quit on a book, and what writers can do to avoid that. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERMAZE The coupon code is valid through February 3rd, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter chill, we’ve got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 184 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 19th, 2024 and today we're going to talk about why readers might give up on a book. Before we get into that, let's have our Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Maze as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Maze for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERMAZE and that is WINTERMAZE. That will be in the show notes along with the link to my Payhip store and the audiobook. This coupon code is valid through February 3rd, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter chill (and it is very cold today), we've got you covered. Before we get to our main topics this week, let's have some updates on my current writing projects. The rough draft of Shield of Storms is done. It was 103,000 words and I am currently editing it. If all goes well, I am very much hoping to have it out either the last week of January or the first week of February (though as I look at my calendar app here, it turns out that it happens to be the same week), so hopefully it will be out sometime around that. I am also 2/3 of the way through Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, the second book in my Sevenfold Sword Online LitRPG series. That puts me at about 62,000 words of a planned 90,000. So if all goes well, that should be coming out very shortly after Shield of Storms. I am also about 14,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and that will come out later this spring because I will need to write Ghost in the Veils first before I finish Wizard Thief. So after Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is done, Ghost in the Veils will be my next major project and we do have recording slots scheduled for both Shield of Storms and Ghost in the Veils, so hopefully those will, when they are done, be in audiobook form before too much longer. 00:02:07 Main Topic: Why Readers Don’t Finish a Book Without any further ado, let's get to our main topic. I thought this week it might be interesting to discuss why readers don't finish a book or why they give up on a book and don't finish it. For me, that is a professional interest obviously, because I want people to read my books and enjoy them and you know, get to the end and then buy the sequel. So I thought it would be interesting to dig into why readers might not want to finish books. As I mentioned before, I have a transcriptionist working on my podcast now, and I'm very grateful for her help. She also did some research among various reader groups to find out why readers might give up on a book. So the first interesting thing to look at is an old Goodreads survey back from 2013 discussing why a reader might not finish a book and it was interesting to break down the numbers. 15.8% will give up after fewer than 50 pages if they don't enjoy the book. 27.9% will give up between 50 to 100 pages. 7.6% will try to make it to 100 pages before they give up on the book. 100 plus pages, people will try to get through is 10.6% and 38.1% of people will finish a book they start, no matter what. Though as an indie author, our interest is in making sure that people like the book enough to buy the sequel, which is not likely to happen if they are getting through the book as a grim slog because they always finish the book, no matter what. So what are some reasons that people will give up on a book or if they grimly grind through to the end because they started the book, what would be reasons they didn't enjoy the book, even though they are committed to finishing it? It turns out the number one reason people give up on a book probably will not shock you: it is that the book is boring. There's not enough action, not enough things are happening to draw the reader in. This is far and away the most common reason that people will give up on a book. Of course what constitutes boredom will vary from person to person obviously, but here are some common themes that we found: the book has too slow of a start or the book has too much info dumping or description at the beginning, the writing is just too confusing/dense, and the pacing is too slow or not enough is happening or action is not flowing. Observant listeners might notice might have noticed that all these things kind of play into each other and they're in fact a bit interconnected. Too slow a start can occur if there is too much info dumping or there is too much description, or the pacing is too slow, or not enough is happening. There is a reason that many writer’s workshops and advice to writers recommend that new writers begin in media res, because it is much easier to hook the reader and hold their interest and then bring them in. That's another reason why writers often spend a lot of time analyzing and obsessing over their story’s opening sentence because they want to make it as interesting and compelling as possible to bring the reader in. So, as an experienced writer (I feel safe in saying that since Shield of Storms will be my 148th novel), what do I do to try and get the reader’s interest? First of all, never ever start with the weather. There's a reason “it was a dark and stormy night” is a cliche. The weather is boring unless it directly impacts the plot in some way. Like just off the top of my head, let's say you're writing a thriller novel where the police are about to stop a drug bust with the Coast Guard on a ship, except the hurricane is coming up and it's raining. That is one of the few times the weather would be relevant to the beginning., but it's a good idea to avoid the weather. Too much info dumping or description at the beginning is also something to avoid and you want to avoid this by parceling out just enough information to pull the reader's interest. It's always good to leave, you know, a few more cards in your hand, so to speak, in terms of plot reveals and to pull in the reader’s interest. It's good to start with action or if not action, since not every genre of fiction lends itself to, you know, shootouts and sword fights and battling wizards and so forth, is also good to start with something that would be emotionally significant to the character, like the main character gets laid off or a long lost family member shows up or something that would be or like the main character’s, you know, son or daughter gets expelled from high school, something emotionally significant that will draw the reader in. And if you can end the first chapter with not so much a cliffhanger, but a bit of a plot hook to continue pulling in the reader, that would be good to do. So, those tips and tricks will hopefully help you avoid a boring beginning to your book, and hopefully a boring book altogether. The next most common reason people gave up on a book was that they simply were not enjoying it. This can be incredibly subjective for many reasons, and so you know, one man's enjoyment is another man's unendurable tedium. However, there are common things that you can avoid to keep people from not enjoying your book. One thing to avoid is not meeting genre expectations, where the more specific of a genre you are writing in, the more people have certain expectations. If you're writing a clean romance, for example, people will become very annoyed if you have explicit sex scenes throughout the book or for some reason you decide to put explicit violence inside a clean romance book, or if you are writing a urban fantasy novel and there is no one using magic and no fantastic creatures, that will very quickly turn the readers off. There are other common plot devices that people dislike, such as contrived misunderstandings or people who behave stupidly to service the plot. The common example of this is the hero suddenly doing something very dumb in the second act to advance the plot or the villain, who has previously been shown as very intelligent, suddenly doing very stupid things to allow the heroes to overcome him. Another thing that people really tend not to like is explicitly graphic violence, especially against women, children, or pets. However, this is once again an area of subjective taste. The audience of people who find those things off-putting and disturbing is perhaps thankfully, quite larger than the sort of audience that prefers to read that kind of thing. So if you do write graphic violence like that, you are automatically cutting yourself out of a significant portion of your potential audience. People also strongly dislike characters who are either blandly good robots or completely unlikable. This is tricky and comes with experience because you don't want to make your characters perfect with no flaws whatsoever. Only God is perfect and that does not apply to human beings, who all have a varied collection of flaws, so it can be tricky to have a character or protagonist who is compelling to the reader, but also has flaws in a believable way and the flaws aren't convenient to the plot, so to speak, which ties into an earlier point. A significant portion of people do not like love triangles, which is funny because there's also a significant portion of people who do like love triangles, though I have to admit I did have a love triangle in the earlier books of the Frostborn series. It goes back to about 2014 now, and so ten years later, I still occasionally get angry emails about this love triangle I wrote to the Frostborn series ten years ago at this point. So that would depend on the kind of genre you're writing in and you would want to make sure that if you want to read love triangle, it might be in a genre that expects that sort of thing, like certain genres of romance. Some readers also find false accusation plots incredibly stressful or anxiety provoking to read. I think this might be a case of being sure that is something that would work in the genre you're writing in, like in police procedurals, private detective fiction, and sometimes thrillers, false accusation plots are a standard trope. Like, you know, the private investigator gets hired by someone who believes they or they or a relative have been falsely accused of a crime and so the private investigator has to solve that. So that is again something to be aware of in the genre you're writing. A subset of the audience doesn't like depressing or overly dark fiction, especially if they are not expecting that tone based on the book’s cover and or jacket copy. That is again would tie into last week's episode, which I think was Episode 183 (Transcriptionist’s Note: Yes, it’s Episode 183) where we talked about how when the important things of cover design is that the cover needs to match the genre and tone of your book in general. So if you're writing a book that's very depressing or tense, it's good to have a cover that will accurately reflect that, but that's another discussion. And one thing that many readers dislike is sex scenes and profanity, though this is a very much a “your mileage may vary” topic. Some reader readers will stop reading the minute any of those things come up, so no matter what you choose to do, you're going to annoy someone. I occasionally get annoyed emails from Cloak Mage readers who dislike how much Nadia swears in those books when she gets upset, but the thing is, in my head I actually dial it down quite a bit because I feel like If I was writing in a more realistic way, Nadia is the sort of person who swear just a lot, especially if she gets annoyed or is angry about something. I actually dial it down from the way she sounds into my head to the way it turns out on the page so truly, your mileage may vary with this topic, and you may as well write what you think will work best for your genre because no matter what you write, it's going to annoy somebody. Another thing that will get a reader to give up on a book is weak writing. And again we've entered the realm of subjective taste about what weak writing may or may not be, but there are some common themes. One thing that annoys people is bad world building and this can be if you're writing a fantasy novel, it can be the world doesn't make sense, if aspects of it are contradictory, or it seems too modern or too pointlessly anachronistic. World building also applies to contemporary fiction, especially crime and thriller fiction, where if you have obvious errors of fact in like how police agencies work or how firearms work or the process of investigating a crime. Anyone who knows anything about those things will spot those errors and probably get turned off. Another thing many readers dislike is overly abstract or conceptual language or a book that is unnecessarily difficult for the sake of appearing clever or important. Aspiring literary fiction writers can fall into this trap quite frequently. People really dislike spelling and grammar mistakes or bad editing, though, to be fair, mileage can vary on this quite widely. Some readers, they have no interest whatsoever in typos. Some will absolutely lose their temper if they find a single typo in a book. So it behooves us as writers to try to have the best editing possible of our books. The thing with this though, is sometimes you will get emails from readers pointing out spelling errors or grammatical errors and it turns out according to the actual rules of grammar they're actually wrong. I've had this several times where someone would e-mail me complaining about a sentence or a spelling and I check it out and it turns out no, I actually was correct, they were wrong, and it turns out they were, you know, taught that way, you know, 50 years ago in 3rd grade and they learned it wrong back then because their teacher didn't know the proper rule and just has stuck in their head ever since. So this is an aspect of being a writer where you'll have to answer with diplomatic tact or not at all if someone emails you complaining about your book’s grammar. Another thing readers dislike is characters who haven't been developed enough to understand their motivations or their actions don't match up with what has been established previously. This will tie back in further to a reason people don't enjoy the book, where characters will act against their previously established nature to advance the plot or the villains suddenly becomes stupid. Another thing people really dislike is clunky political or social commentary of current issues, especially random monologues from characters to express their opinions on a matter. This is something best avoided regardless of your opinion on any contemporary social or political topics. For one thing, it will alienate a significant portion of your audience. Another thing, it's very difficult to do well, and for a third point, it will age your book quite drastically and take readers out of the book. I actually know a very good example of this I can use is the sitcom 30 Rock from the late 2000s and the early 2010s. I think the show's final season or second to last season was running during the 2012 election between President Obama and then former governor and now currently Senator Romney. And so one of the characters on the show was supporting Obama and another was supporting Romney and they tried to have some comedy based off their interactions and their opposing support for these presidential candidates. And the trouble is, it was kind of funny at the time but it's been 12 years since that. It is now very dated. And, you know, the world has moved on to new controversies and new elections several times. Former President Obama is now a former president who occasionally makes former presidential announcements. Mitt Romney is a senator from Utah. And so these jokes from 12 years ago about the election are very dated and just kind of clunky and not funny anymore. So it's good to keep that in mind if you want to comment about contemporary messages in your fiction, it can have many, many drawbacks and can easily backfire and alienate a significant portion of your audience. There's a great quote associated with the movie business that no one really knows who it was really attributed to, but I think it applies to writers as well: If you want to send a message, call Western Union and keep it out of your fiction. A couple of random things as well. since we've covered the big things. Sometimes the print is too hard to read or the reader dislikes the font. This obviously is more of a problem for print books than for ebooks, where if you're reading an ebook you can usually change the font and the size of the font. So if you are making your own paperbacks, as most indie authors do, it's a good idea to pick one of the standard fonts, you know, one of the basic boring fonts that aren't going to annoy the reader who is reading your book. Another thing that can really annoy people is if your ebook is poorly formatted and doesn't render properly on a device, and this generally happens when someone is formatting an ebook and doesn't know how to do it, or they try to get clever with really fancy formatting and forget that it doesn't work universally across all devices, which is why it's usually a good idea to try and keep your ebook formatting as simple as possible, because that reduces the chances that something go wrong on the way a book renders on a particular device. So that is a good roundup of things that may stop a reader from finishing a book. However, if someone dislikes your book for any of the above reasons, remember that all taste is subjective and that no matter how good of a book it is and no matter how well written your book is, there's going to be someone who dislikes it because you can't please everybody. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and enjoyable. Quick note of thanks to my transcriptionist who did all the research. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 183: How To Make A Bad Book Cover
01/15/2024
Episode 183: How To Make A Bad Book Cover
In this week's episode, I take a look at how to make a bad book cover, and things that you should avoid on your book's cover. I also take a look back at my top 10 bestselling books of 2023. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: JANGHOSTS The coupon code is valid through January 31st, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we’ve got you covered! Reference links to books mentioned in the show. The Fellowship of the Ring: My Brilliant Friend: TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 183 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 12th, 2024, and today we're going to talk about how to make a bad book cover. We'll also take a look back at my top 10 best selling books of 2023. Before we do that, let's have this week's Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Child of the Ghosts, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Child of the Ghosts for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: JANGHOSTS. That's JANGHOSTS and that will be included in the show notes with a link. The coupon code is valid through January 31st, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums, we've got you covered. Let's also have an update on my current writing projects. As of right now, I am 97,000 words into Shield of Storms, which puts me on Chapter 18 of 21, though the final draft will probably have a slightly different number of chapters as I move things around. I am hoping to get to 100,000 words before the end of the day when I finish recording this. We'll see how the rest of the day goes. Once Shield of Storms is out, my next book will be Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I am 59,000 words into that and I will finish that up and have it come out relatively quickly after Shields of Storms is released. I'm also 12,000 words into Half-Elven Thief, but that will be a ways off yet because once Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is finished, I want to write Ghost in the Veils first so I can make its recording slot in April. In audio news, as I mentioned last week, the audiobook of Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation is out, as excellently narrated by CJ McAllister and you can get that at all audiobook stores. 00:01:51 Top 10 Ebooks, Audiobooks, and Print Book Sales for 2023 As I mentioned before, I wanted to take a look back at my top ten books and audiobooks of 2023, and I did that because it's time to start figuring out taxes for 2023, which means checking paperwork, making sure your books are balanced, making sure all your receipts are properly organized, filing for 1099s, and all the other various little chores that go into preparing to file your taxes, at least in the United States. It also means finding out the top 10 bestselling books of 2023. So to start with, here are my Top 10 bestselling ebooks of 2023. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that 2023 was the year of the Dragonskull series: #1: Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer #2: Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock #3: Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress #4: Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods #5: Cloak of Dragonfire #6: Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians #7 Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire #8 Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight #9 Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves #10 Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs So basically my best selling ebooks of 2023 were the Dragonskull series plus Cloak of Dragonfire. This bodes well for both Shield of Storms, which is a direct follow up to Dragonskull, and Cloak of Titans later this year. Audio, of course, has become an increasingly important format, so here are my Top 10 bestselling audiobooks across all platforms for 2023: #1: The Ghosts: Omnibus One #2: Frostborn: The Shadow Prison #3: Frostborn: The World Gate #4: Frostborn: The High Lords #5: Frostborn: The Dwarven Prince #6: Frostborn: The Dragon Knight #7: Frostborn: Excalibur #8: Frostborn: The Gorgon Spirit #9: Frostborn: The False King #10: Frostborn: The Dark Warden So for audio, 2023 was nearly almost entirely the year of Frostborn, but people still really like the big omnibus audiobooks like The Ghosts: Omnibus One. Paperbacks for me are a much smaller sales channel than either ebooks or audiobooks. I sell more in both ebook and audio than I do in paperback, but as it turns out, it's really easy to run the report of bestselling paperbacks. So with that in mind, here are my Top 10 bestselling paperbacks of 2023: #1: The Windows Command Line Beginner’s Guide #2: The Linux Command Line Beginner’s Guide #3: The Ubuntu Beginner’s Guide #4: Frostborn: The Gray Knight #5: Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife #6: Sevenfold Sword: Champion #7: Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight #8: Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress #9: Malison: The Complete Series #10: Dragonskull: Curse of the Orcs So those were my top 10 bestselling paperback books of 2023. I don't really write about technology very much anymore, and I stopped shortly before I started recording this podcast in 2019. I enjoyed writing about technology quite a bit, but there are only so many hours in the day and the money is just a lot better for epic fantasy fiction, and there's less research involved, too. That said, I'm glad that people are still finding my tech books helpful enough to buy. My all-time favorite review of the Windows Command Line Beginner’s Guide came from a math professor who said he hated the book, but he couldn't find a better introduction to the Windows Command Line environment, and so he still recommended it to his students. So thanks for reading those books, everyone, and as I said before, I'm still working on Shield of Storms, so hopefully we'll have a new book very soon. 00:05:34 Main Topic of the Week: What Makes a Bad Book Cover? So let's move on to our main topic this week: how to make a bad book cover (from which we hopefully will learn how to make a good book cover). Since I started doing my own covers and spending a lot more time with Photoshop in 2020, obviously this is something I have given a great deal of thought to over the last four years and throughout the entire time I've been self-publishing. So I thought it would make an interesting topic for a show. Let's start off with some specific examples of a bad book cover. One of the most famous ones is The Fellowship of the Ring cover by Barbara Remington, which Tolkien famously did not care for (I’ll include a link to it in the show notes, so you can follow if you're curious). It just looks very ‘60s, very psychedelic, and just not at all related to anything connected to what the Lord of the Rings is actually about. Another fairly well-known example of a bad cover is the original cover of My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, which is a 1950s story about a woman coming of age in the poor outskirts of Naples. But if you look at the cover (especially the cover linked in the show notes), it looks like kind of a romance novel or a story about a wedding. It doesn't at all reflect what the book is actually about. So as we strive to make good covers, one that will draw readers into books, what should we keep in mind? I think there are to start with three key points to keep in mind when preparing a book cover or consulting with your cover designer about what you would like your book cover to do. First, taste is highly subjective and that leads directly to the second point, which is you're not going to be able to make a book cover that everybody likes, just as you are not going to be able to write a book that everyone likes. The point is to write a book that your audience that you have in mind will enjoy and the cover by extension will be a sort of a guide that can help your audience find the book and let them know that this is the kind of book they would like, that the cover will telegraph in essence, that this is the kind of book that particular reader would like. Three, the main thing is to provide key information about the book, namely the author and the title, easily and quickly with a quick preview of the book through the design of the cover. You want, when you look at a book cover, to immediately in a fraction of a second to be able to grasp the three important points: the name of the book, the author of the book, and the genre of the book. Those should all be immediately apparent when you look at the book cover and anything that gets in the way of that is not a good design element for a book cover. So with that in mind, what shouldn't a book cover do and what design elements do you massively want to avoid on your book cover? First of all, you should avoid bad fonts or fonts that are hard to read. It's important to remember that in a book cover, two of the three things that it needs to convey at a glance are the author name and the title of the book. And if you have bad typography on your book cover, that will sink you. In fact, you can almost get away with having a bad looking image for your book cover, so long as the typography for the author name and the title is suitable. So what constitutes an unsuitable font for a book cover? Colors that are hard to read and shall we say overly artistic or overly stylized fonts that are difficult to read. You know something like wingdings or some really overly complicated font with too many flourishes. You want the font to be able to be easy to read. You want the font to be a color that is easy to read and is visible against the rest of the cover. You don't want the font to be too small either, because then that will make it difficult to read. That ideal is even once in a thumbnail on the Amazon website that you can still pretty easily get the author name and the title. You also will want to avoid design elements that clash. We can all think of examples of badly Photoshopped covers where there's like a Photoshop picture of a horse or cowboy or a Scottish Lord or something that is very badly Photoshopped in and doesn't look at all good. Part of that is avoiding images that are poor resolution. If any element of your cover looks pixelated, it's time to have a rethink and choose different elements. This can be a problem if you're getting stock photos from free stock photo sites, which is not the best idea because just because the site says the stock photos are free and licensed for commercial use doesn't mean that they actually are, because there's not really much of a safeguarding process. You're better off using a reputable stock photo site where you pay for credits and then keep a record of what you use. And that way, if there's any legal challenges or troubles you can say, well, the stock photo I got off iStock Photo in 2019. Here's the record of it and then you would be good to go. Even if you have good images, it's important to make sure that the image matches with the genre of the book. If you have an image that does not match the appropriate historical time period of the book or the fantasy aesthetics, that won’t work. For example, you have a Regency romance book set in 19th century England and the woman on the cover is wearing a leather jacket and jeans, that would immediately be a bad cover design element. To return to the topic of The Lord of the Rings, you have a cover of the Lord of the Rings where Aragorn is dressed like a Wall Street broker and Frodo is wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and a backward baseball cap, that would also be a poor choice for cover design. You'll also want to avoid major inaccuracies on the cover. This is not hugely important but it can significantly annoy a subset of readers. Like for example, a cover of Anne of Green Gables where the Anne on the cover is blonde when in the book Anne quite famously has red hair (and in fact it's a plot point, if I remember right). You probably don't want to include ad copy on the cover because that is a waste of valuable real estate. Now granted, if you get, like an endorsement from like a major celebrity or some sort of significant author in your field, it's probably a good idea to put the blurb on your cover then. Like, if you are writing a mystery and say you get, like blurbs from like John Sanford or Harlan Coben or Karin Slaughter or other, you know, major mystery writers, you know, that's probably good idea to put that on the cover. However, if you're picking quotes off Goodreads or Amazon or something to put on your book cover, that's probably not a good idea. And you may not, in fact, actually have the right to do that based on U.S. law, because technically I believe the copyright for the review belongs to the person who wrote it. So that is something to avoid, you know, taking quotes from reviews from Amazon or Goodreads or TikTok or something, though you can probably make an exception if you like, get a major figure in your genre to endorse your book. Finally, you would also probably want to avoid the default templates provided by Canva or Amazon. If you self-publish a book on Amazon and you don't have a cover, you can use one of the premade ones that Amazon provides. But to be honest, these are not very good and they don't look very good, so it's probably best to avoid those if at all possible. You'll also want to avoid book cover design elements that can actively irritate people. One of those is photographs of people, especially if it’s just a stock image. Generally, if you want a stock image to look good as a book cover, it needs to go through Photoshop quite a bit. It needs to, you know, make sure it matches the colors of the background. You might need some color adjustment. You might need some shading. You might need to apply a couple of masks to it to make it look properly good. This is actually one of the reasons why I started using DAZ 3D modeling because it's very hard to find a long string of stock photos with the same character you can use for book covers, whereas with DAZ, as you can generate a character who looks like how you want the character look and then use that over and over again in different poses and so forth and different shadings and different enhancements in Photoshop to keep consistent look across all the covers, which is what I've done for the Caina Ghost series and the Nadia Cloak Mage series, which would be a lot harder to do with stock images. Something else that really tends to annoy people is shirtless men or women in overly revealing outfits. From a purely a publisher’s perspective, this can get you in trouble. If you have a book cover that's showing a little too much skin, the various retailers might reject it or you will be able to run ads on the book, or the system will automatically sort it as erotica, which would limit its visibility on the store and therefore its sales potential. One trend from the 2000s and 2010s that used to be popular but now no longer is, is stock photos where the character’s head is chopped off and you sort of just see them from the neck down on the cover. That was very popular for a while in the 2010s. It is not popular now and people might complain about your cover if you have that on there. You may also want to avoid images are too abstract or too bland. I'm thinking about, like a lot of modern literary fiction covers have just random color swirls on the cover (it doesn't look good) or the rereleased versions of Robert Jordan’s covers for the Wheel of Time. They used to have this really beautiful fantasy artwork on them. Now it's just a vaguely faded symbol from the book. It just doesn't look good compared to the older ones, and I think there was a mistake on the publisher’s part. You will also, in my opinion, very much want to avoid AI art. There's a couple of good reasons for this. One is that a very significant subset of the population absolutely hates AI art, refuses to have anything to do with it, and will not buy anything that uses it. Every time a major company like Wizards of the Coast or Microsoft or somebody uses AI art in some sort of advertisement, there is an immediate backlash on social media and you will want to avoid that. More practically, the copyright status of AI art is still a massively open question. As of this recording, which is January 12th, 2024, there are many lawsuits underway to determine whether or not AI generated art and text is in fact a form of copyright infringement, and as of right now, the question is unsettled. A couple of months ago, Amazon started adding a check box to the KDP Publishing forum where you need to disclose if your book uses AI elements, and I strongly suspect part of the reason they did that was in case there's like a Supreme Court ruling in the US or a major piece of legislation that drastically changes the legality of AI generated art and text. Then they have an easy out to immediately wipe all that stuff off the store and say, well, we do our due diligence about this. You can't sue us. So for all those reasons, I do think it is a very, very good idea to avoid any AI images in any book covers or audiobook covers or anything you sell for right now. 00:17:39 What Should a Book Cover Do? So let's move on from the negative to the positive. What should a book cover do? As we mentioned earlier in the show, the book cover has three missions. At a single glance, it should convey the author name, the book title, and the genre of the book. It is in fact fairly simple to convey a genre in a book. It's just the hard part is making it look good. Like for example, if you have a book with a dragon on the cover, obviously that's going to be fantasy. If you have a book with like a spaceship flying near a planet, that is going to be a science fiction book. In fact, I redid all the covers in my Silent Order series to be a spaceship flying near a planet after I read a joke about that in a Penny Arcade comic where one of the characters of comics says they only buy books with spaceships and planets on them, and I realized that would probably be the best way to convey what the Silent Order series was about. And in fact, sales did go up after I changed all those covers. Other examples would be if you see a man and a woman looking longingly at one another, that's going to be a romance novel. If the character is wearing a long coat and has his or her back to the camera walking down a dark street, odds are you've got a mystery. If it's a highly edited photo of like the US Capitol or the White House or something, and the title is something like, you know, Patriot Fury, you're probably looking at a thriller novel. So there's lots of conventions to convey what genre book is and the best way to learn them is, you know, to read a lot and to look at a lot of different book covers, which is in the modern age, very easy to do as you scroll through Amazon or Apple or whatever. The text should also be as easy to read as possible, especially in thumbnail or smaller images, so you may have to make the text what feels like slightly ridiculously large, but so long as it's reasonably easy to read, then you'll have achieved the mission of the text. And if possible, you want to hint at the plot without telling the story. A good example of that would be like an urban fantasy book where the cover shows a woman wearing a leather jacket and you know, magic glowing things glowing around her hand. So that hints at what the plot is going to be about or like a thriller novel where you see a woman in like a tank top and combat pants holding a combat knife and a pistol that hints that is going to be a thriller novel and she'll be, you know, fighting for her life. Finally, the last point is fairly subjective and hard to do, but, if possible, you want to balance uniqueness with being familiar enough where people understand the genre at a glance. You don't want to copy someone else's design for...
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Episode 182: My 10 Favorite Scenes Of 2023
01/08/2024
Episode 182: My 10 Favorite Scenes Of 2023
In this week's episode, I take a look back at my ten favorite scenes to write in 2023. I also discuss how my advertising efforts fared in December 2023. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 182 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 5th, 2024, and today we're going to talk about the favorite scenes I wrote in 2023. We also have an update on how my ads did for my books in December 2023. This is the first episode I'm actually recording in 2024, so Happy New Year to everyone. If you are listening now, however 2023 treated you, I hope 2024 treats you even better. Before we get to our main topics, let's have an update on my current writing projects. My main project right now is Shield of Storms and I am 71,000 words into it. I'm hoping I can get that out in January. It might slip to February. We will see how the rest of the month goes. My side projects right now: I am also working on Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I am 55,000 words into that. That will come out after Shield of Storms, so February or March depending on how long Shield of Storms takes to write. And I am 8,500 words into Wizard Thief, which is going to be the sequel to Half-Elven Thief from December. Not sure when that one's going to come out. I have to write Ghost in the Veils first because I have a recording slot scheduled for that in April that I really need to meet, but so it will probably be late spring, if all goes well. In audio news, the audiobook for Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation is now available at all the usual audiobook stores except Apple, and it should be showing up there later. It's narrated by CJ McAllister, comes to just under 10 hours long, and it's a very good audiobook and worth the listen. So if you have spare credit to or some audiobook money to use, I recommend giving that a chance, and that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. Before we get to the main topic, let's see how ads did in December 2023. Advertising in December is always tricky, both for authors and regardless of what business you're in because every consumer facing business in the world is dumping a ton of money into ads for Christmas and so the cost gets all screwy. But I'm pleased to report some good results for December. First, let's see how the Facebook ads did. For the Ghost series, I got back $4.82 for a dollar I spent, with 16.7% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, I got back $6.42 for every dollar I spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Malison and Dragontiarna, I got back $1.82 for every dollar spent. For Silent Order, I got back $1.98 for every dollar spent. I think for January, I will shut off the Facebook ads for Malison and Dragontiarna and Silent Order and let them rest until the next time and get a Bookbub for one of them. Next up, let's see how my Bookbub ads did. As before, I advertised Frostborn on Bookbub and for Frostborn I got back $6.52 for every dollar spent, with 37% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Complete series of audiobooks seems to do really well on Bookbub. I need to expand my targeting data for the platform so I can advertise Ghosts there as well, and maybe urban fantasy and perhaps science fiction at some point. Finally, let's look at my Amazon ads. This month, I advertised Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, Cloak Games: Omnibus One, and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation on Amazon ads. I'm not entirely sure how Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation did, because the audiobook came out and I'm not entirely sure what the per sale rate for that is going to be, but I think that ad doubled its money, but I'm not entirely sure. For the ones I am sure about, here's how they did. Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire got back $3.06 for every dollar spent, with 18% of the profit coming from audiobook. Cloak Games: Omnibus One got back $3.63 for every dollar spent, with 22% of the profit coming from the audiobook. So, overall I think it is safe to say that my December campaigns went pretty well. So thanks for reading the books, everyone and hopefully we'll have more books to come very soon. 00:04:15 Favorite Scenes of 2023 (SPOILER WARNING FOR REST OF PODCAST) Now our main topic of the week: my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. First, I should note very strongly that this podcast episode will have spoilers for every single thing I published in 2023, so stop listening right now if you're not caught up and you want to avoid spoilers. That said, I thought it would be interesting to look back at 2023 and talk about some of the favorite scenes to write from the past year. As an added bonus, when I prepared this list, it turned out to be 10 scenes, which is convenient since all the news sites from their top ten articles in December and January anyway. Reminder: spoilers, and there are spoilers after this point. And here are my favorite scenes of 2023, in no particular order. Number One: when Nadia bursts through the roof with Delaxsicoria in Cloak of Dragonfire. That was a fun one to write. I used to joke that I originally intended Nadia's character arc to be a bad person, reluctantly and against her will slowly turned into a good one. But what her plot arc actually turned out to be was Catwoman slowing turning into Gandalf. Exploding through the roof of an athletic complex to save the day while riding a dragon was definitely one of the more Gandalf-esque things that Nadia has done. The scene immediately after that where Nadia, Delaxsicoria, Varzalshinpol, and Tarthrunivor all chase Ferrunivar through the skies of southern California was pretty great as well. Number Two: Caina deduces who Kalliope Agramemnos is in Ghost in the Serpent. I have to admit, for a while I knew it was likely that Caina would have stepchildren she didn't know about since she's married to Kylon, who used to strive to be a model Kyracian noble and Kyracian nobles in general tend to regard abstinence as something to be avoided at best, and a disgraceful vice at worst. Not their most admirable character trait. But for a while I didn't know how to write that situation in a way that would be interesting. If the mother died and Caina was left to raise the stepchildren, that would be lazy writing. It would also be lazy writing if everyone got along. There is an apocryphal story that for a while in the 2000s, all these newly remarried middle-aged screenwriters kept pitching sitcoms where a screenwriter, his new younger wife, and his ex-wife all lived in harmony together. The studio executives, who as a class are not always known for their firm grasp upon reality, always rejected these ideas because they knew a majority of the female half of the audience would absolutely hate it. So a scenario where Caina, Kylon, and Kalliope all got along seemed likely equally lazy writing. But what if Kylon and Kalliope couldn’t stand each other? And Kylon had further grievances against Kalliope because she had never told him about the children? But Kalliope ends up being in awe of and a little frightened of Caina? So the dynamic is that Kylon and Kalliope can’t stand each other, but Caina keeps the peace between them? I thought that might turn out to be pretty interesting to write and Ghost in the Serpents sold enough that I think people agree with me. It's also interesting to write because this is happening while Caina is one of the few people who know how dangerous the Cult of Rhadamathar really is. But more about that to come in future Ghost books. Number Three: Delaxsicoria tells Nadia not to be so hard on herself in Cloak of Dragonfire. The unlikely friendship between Della and Nadia has been fun to write throughout the Cloak Mage series and side stories. From Della’s perspective of course they would be friends – Nadia caught the murderer of her uncle, and Nadia is wound up tighter than a spring and doesn’t relax very much. Nadia, of course, is a little baffled by this, especially since she doesn’t really have any interest in music, which is Della’s great passion. So they have a great dynamic, and we’ll see more of that in future books. Number Four: Sir Telemachus and Niara kill Mharoslav in Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock. This was fun to write because Mharoslav always got away from or at least got the best of the heroes in their previous encounters, including nearly killing Telemachus in the process. Telemachus decided that he would sacrifice himself in seeking vengeance against Mharoslav and save his friends in the process. Then he met Niara. Niara comes from the General Patton school of warfare – dying for your country is a fine thing, but it’s way better to make the other jerk die for his country. Her utter loathing for all wielders of dark magic played into that as well, allowing her to show the way for Telemachus to defeat Mharoslav at last. Number Five: Myotharia versus Xothalaxiar in Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress. I have to admit Myotharia was originally going to die in the final battle of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, but she was such a great character that I felt I could get more narrative mileage out of the poor woman. I always knew from the beginning of the series that Niara was going to have to fight Xothalaxiar for the final time, and Myotharia lost everything to the urdmordar. So I realized that having Myotharia join the fight against Xothalaxiar would give her a sort of emotional catharsis, and help set Niara onto a path other than seeking her own death in battle. Number Six: Thunderbolt. I lucked out with Thunderbolt’s character in the Silent Order series. I charted out the rest of the Silent Order series way back in 2021, which is when Thunderbolt was first mentioned in Silent Order: Royal Hand. I originally envisioned her as the sort of classic Star Trek Evil Sentient Computer, the sort of computer Captain Kirk would have to talk into a logic loop every other week. But then in 2022 and 2023 ChatGPT and Bing Chat came along, and they were terrible! For a while, the various insane ramblings of ChatGPT and Bing Chat regularly made the news. So when it was time to write Silent Order: Thunder Hand, I based Thunderbolt’s personality off some of ChatGPT’s more hilarious public meltdowns, though I left it ambiguous just how insane Thunderbolt actually was and how much of her behavior was just screwing with people to put them off their balance. By the end, Jack March definitely suspected the latter. Number Seven: The Battle of Calaskar. The entire Battle of Calaskar sequence in Silent Order: Pulse Hand was fun to write because I’ve been thinking about it for ages, since I’ve had a clear endpoint for the Silent Order series in my head for a while. I liked how it was able to bring back Admiral Stormreel, the Navigators, the Calaskaran Navy, and a bunch of other elements from the series for the Grand Finale. Number Eight: Gareth Figures out the Dragonskull. I also liked the final confrontation with Azalmora in Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods. Azalmora was such a self-controlled and intellectual villain that I wanted her demise to be intellectual, a sort of a moment of revelation that kills her. When Gareth figures out the nature of the Dragonskull itself and the way the xortami twisted it with their dark magic, he’s able to use that against Azalmora, and in her final moment she understands the true nature of the Dragonskull, albeit briefly. Number Nine: Riordan MacCormac vs Michael Durst. This was a fun scene to write in Cloak of Embers. Durst had been an arc villain over the last few books. He proudly considered himself a monster, but then he had the bad luck to start working for Maestro, who was just as evil as he was but without any of his self-destructive indulgences. So it was little wonder that Durst found himself dragged into Maestro’s orbit, even if he didn’t realize what was happening. (The scene where Durst goes to kill Maestro and instead she talks him into doing exactly what she wants was also pretty great to write.) Even if Durst didn’t want to kill Nadia, Riordan would still have fought him to the death, because Durst represents a rejection of self-control and responsibility, something Riordan finds utterly abhorrent. And unlike Durst, Riordan knew that a moment of reckoning was coming, which was why he practiced and trained so much with Sir Trandor, while Durst simply went begging to the Dark Ones for power, so the final showdown between Riordan and Durst was quite fun to write. And finally, Number Ten: Rivah and the Magister’s Tower. When I plotted out Rivah’s heist of Ramarion’s tower in Half-Elven Thief, I didn’t get too detailed in my outline as to what the inside of the tower would look like. I just knew I wanted it to be as weird and freaky and unsettling as possible, with a lot of Evil Wizard Stuff cluttering up the place. Several people have told me Rivah’s venture into the tower was their favorite part of the book, so I think I succeeded. So those were my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. Thanks for reading, everyone. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoy the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 181: Winter 2023 Movie Roundup
01/01/2024
Episode 181: Winter 2023 Movie Roundup
In this week's episode, I take a look at the movies and TV shows I watched and enjoyed in winter 2023. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Brief Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 181 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December, the 22nd, 2023 and today we're going to talk about the movies I saw in Winter 2023. Careful listeners might notice that I am recording this on December 22nd, which is actually only a day after I recorded Episode 180, which I recorded yesterday. The reason for that is it is the last Friday before Christmas and New Year's today, and I think I'm going to take most of the days between now and New Year's off and spend time with family and hopefully do other fun things. So this episode I was just recording a couple episodes in advance and I believe this episode is going to go out on January 1st, 2024. So if you're listening to this, I hope you have a Happy New Year and however things went for you in 2023, whether good or bad, I hope they are better in 2024. Just a quick update on my current writing projects, since I am recording this episode the day after I recorded Episode 180, not much has changed. I am 40,000 words into Shield of Storms and I hope to have that out in January, which would be later this month (if you are listening to this in January). I am 51,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I'm hoping to have that in February. I am 4,000 words into Half-Elven Thief and I'm not sure when that's going to come out. One additional bit of news since yesterday, it looks very likely we will have an audiobook of Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation sometime in January, if everything goes well. So watch and listen for additional news on that. Since I don't really have any other news since I recorded last week's episode yesterday, let's get into our main topic, which is the movies and TV shows I watched in Winter 2023. 00:01:54 Main Topic: Winter 2023 Movie and TV Reviews As always, I will discuss them in the order that I like them from least liked to most liked and as always remember my opinions about this are subjective. I am not a filmmaker. My opinions are often very, very idiosyncratic and just what I happen to think of a particular piece of work. First up is The Crown Season 6, which came out in 2023. The performances were superb, the actors were excellent, the set design and cinematography was excellent. Everyone involved in the show was at the top of their field and did an amazing job. And I still just didn't like this because it felt a bit ghoulish. For one thing, as The Crown has gone on, it's become less historical and more of a messy soap opera with an increasingly casual relationship with what really happened in the events it describes. For another thing, as I mentioned, I found the show's fixation on Princess Diana’s death to be rather ghoulish. I am old enough to remember her death in 1997, and even then when I was much younger and stupider, I thought the American media's obsession with her death was weird and disturbing, especially since the media fixation on her was the direct contributing cause to her death. If the media hadn't been willing to pay vast sums for photographs of her, the paparazzi wouldn't have chased her and history would be different. A while back I knew a history professor who said that history only starts between 20 to 30 years ago and anything that happened within the last 20 to 30 years wasn't history yet, it was still journalism. I think that is part of what bothers me about Season Six of The Crown. Most of the people involved in the story are still alive. Writing historical fiction about people who have died, who have died is one thing, especially if they've been dead for centuries or even millennia. Only God may judge of the dead, so what those of us among the living think about them is quite irrelevant. But making up fiction about people who are still alive, even if they are major public figures who have unquestionably made some bad decisions, somehow seems libelous, especially since there have been so many articles in both the UK and the US press detailing all the things that Season Six of The Crown got wrong with the historical record. So to sum up, the show is extremely well done, but I cannot help but feel that it's like excellent work done in a bad cause. Overall Grade: D. Next up is Shazam: Fury of the Gods, which came out in 2023. The first Shazam movie was actually pretty good, definitely in B or B Plus territory. The sequel, alas, was quite a bit weaker. It reminded me of watching a really cheesy sword and sorcery movie from the 1980s: fun to watch mostly, but quite dumb. Following up from the first movie, Billy Batson and his foster siblings are now part of the Shazam superhero family and are handling their powers about as well as you would expect inexperienced teenagers to handle phenomenal cosmic powers, except it turns out that the wizard who gave Billy and his family their powers actually stole those powers from the Greek Titan Atlas and Atlas's daughters are ticked off about this and want those powers back. Since this is a superhero movie, let's just say they're not going to settle this dispute in probate court. The product placement for the Skittles candy in this movie was just over the top. In fact, an entire major plot point hinges on a teenage girl’s love of Skittles. One hopes that Mars Incorporated, owner of the Skittles brand, really coughed up for that. Helen Mirren chews a lot of scenery as the chief daughter of Atlas, though she does have a very funny bit with a dictated letter. This isn't her first time in an over-the-top fantasy movie. She played Morgana in Excalibur back in the 80s, though her costume this time covers quite a bit more than Morgana’s various outfits did. The movie also leans way too heavily into the rest of the DC movie universe. I'd say it's enjoyable to shut off your brain and watch all the sparkly fireworks and the scenery chewing, but it’s not very good. Overall Grade: D+. Next up is Clue, which came out in 1985. Big swing and a miss, but definitely a miss nonetheless. I tried to watch this about ten years ago, but the version I watched then didn't have any captions and all the characters talked too fast for me to understand. But I have a much better TV than I did ten years ago and the caption situation has improved, so I gave it another go. This is a dark comedy version of the popular board game Clue. All the classic Clue characters, Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and so forth are summoned to Mr. Boddy’s mansion during a dark and stormy night. Mr. Boddy gloats says he has been blackmailing all of them, distributes the classic Clue weapons of the pipe, the knife, the wrench and so forth, and then promptly turns off the lights. When the lights come back on. Mr. Boddy has been murdered. Mr. Boddy, to be blunt about it, doesn't seem to have been all that bright a bulb. Anyway, madcap hijinks ensue as the guests try to figure out who the killer was. Three alternate endings are included with the movie, which have a different killer in each one. There were some very funny bits in the movie, but overall it really didn't work and it had some oddly heavy-handed commentary about the Red Scare. Tim Curry was pretty great in it though. Fun fact: he did an excellent turn as Darth Sidious in what was then the final episodes of The Clone Wars animated series, and he also played Arl Howe, one of the chief villains in Dragon Age: Origins, which was one of the last video games I had time to play through all the way before I spent the next fourteen years writing like 147 novels. A remake of Clue has been in production hell for like the last ten years. You just know that Hasbro wants to include Clue in their cinematic universe where Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlett team up with Optimus Prime and GI Joe to fight Megatron and the Monopoly guy or something. Overall grade: C Minus. Next up is Murder Mystery, which came out in 2019. This was unquestionably a dumb movie, but it was a fun, dumb movie. Like it's a C Minus student, but it's a sort of C Minus student who everyone likes, throws great parties, and goes on to have a very successful career as a regional sales manager. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston play Nick Spitz and Audrey Spitz, a New York City cop and a hairdresser. Nick has failed the detective exam multiple times and has gotten stuck in a rut, and Audrey really wants to go to Europe so Nick takes her to Europe and they promptly blunder into a ‘40s screwball style comedy about the murder of a wealthy European oligarch and his squabbling heirs. A lot of the comedy comes from the good-natured, but boorish Spitzes contrasted with the sophisticated, wealthy Europeans who promptly decided that Nick and Audrey would make the perfect scapegoats to take the fall for the oligarch’s murder. Wacky hijinks follow. I do have to respect how Adam Sandler uses his movie productions as an excuse to travel to exotic locations with his friends. Overall grade: C Minus. Next up is the sequel to Murder Mystery, the aptly named Murder Mystery 2, which came out in 2023. It's the sequel to the first Murder Mystery and pretty much everything I said about the first one still applies-dumb, but fun. Overall grade: C Minus. Next up is Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny from 2023 and ah, I was very ambivalent about this movie. To be fair, it was better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It had some stuff that was really good and some stuff that just annoyed me. The opening sequence with the train during World War II was great- classic Indiana Jones stuff. The Nazis try to time travel to change World War II is a well-established trope of science fiction, but the twist this time is the villain thinks he understands how the time travel device works, but it turns out that he actually doesn't was pretty good. The car chases were excellent as well, both in New York and Tangiers. That said, the legacy protagonist now is an old loser getting lectured by a more competent younger woman story trope was in full force, and it's a really annoying story trope. Disney seems to just adore the story trope: the Star Wars sequels, Secret Invasion, and now Dial of Destiny, and I suspect a majority of audiences agree with me and don't like it, which is probably one of the significant reasons the Disney Corporation lost a metric gigaton of money this year. Top Gun Maverick was a much better example of bringing back a legacy protagonist. Indy also has this oddly out of character speech where he says he doesn't believe in magic, which is rich considering he has literally seen The Ark of the Covenant melt Nazis, the power of The Holy Grail turn another Nazi to dust, and space aliens. So I would say that Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny was half a good movie and half a weak one. Overall grade: B Minus. Next up is the Barbie movie, which came out in 2023. I saw Oppenheimer in the theater in August after I finished working on Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods and a couple months ago I did finally get around to seeing Barbie. Greta Gerwig is clearly a genius because she figured out how to take the existential anxiety of the modern American woman and convert it into $1.44 billion at the box office. If we could work out how to apply the same principles to generating electricity, we would have limitless clean energy, flying cars, and World Peace. Though I suppose the phrase modern American woman really is a facile generalization. Anyway, I really wasn't in the target demographic for this movie. That said, it is quite funny. It's a fantasy comedy that's a bit surrealistic in places. The set design is superb and done with very little computer effects. Apparently so much pink paint was used that it actually caused a nationwide shortage. As many reviews said, Ryan Gosling almost stole the movie as Ken, which was amusing on a meta level because he's played so many grim action heroes. In the third act, the movie really does beat the viewer over the head with the message. But what else can you expect from a Barbie movie in 2023? The funniest line was “How can she call me a fascist? I don't control the railways or the flow of commerce.” The joke about Proust Barbie not selling was pretty funny as well. Maybe if the Barbienheimer meme continues, in the sequel, Proust Barbie can fall in love with Oppenheimer Ken, and they have grim conversations about existentialism and science. Overall grade: B Plus. Next up is Muppet Treasure Island, which came out in 1996. This is a loose-ish adaptation of the classic novel Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, with many Muppets filling the roles of the characters from the book and Tim Curry playing Long John Silver. Like in the book, young Jim Hawkins acquires a treasure map leading to the buried treasure of a ruthless pirate captain and sets out on an adventure to find it. However, many of the dead captain’s former associates likewise want the treasure, so Hawkins and his allies must outwit their foes. This wasn't quite as good as Muppet Christmas Carol, but still quite enjoyable and funny. Overall Grade: A Minus. Now for the runner up of the best thing I saw in winter 2023 and that will be Loki Seasons One and Two, which came out in 2021 and 2023. I liked the first season of Loki, which came out back in 2021, but it was very obviously the first half of the story so I didn't write anything about it. However, I've seen the second season and the completed Loki show is very good. As I've written before, I don't really like multiverse or time travel stories because the stakes are either too vast or utterly meaningless. Time travel stories are a lot like homemade lasagna: if it's not excellent and not prepared by someone who knows exactly what they're doing, you're going to regret eating it. However, Loki leads hard enough into the concept, and the stakes that the show actually works. Like, I think the key question that every time travel story needs to answer at some point is why the time traveler doesn't just go back in time over and over again until she he or she fixes the problem, like remoting a saved game until you finally figure out how to beat the final boss. If you can time loop indefinitely, why not do it infinitely until you get the perfect outcome? Loki actually comes up with good answer to that question that isn't “because the plot requires it.” Anyway, the show starts with the version of Loki who escaped with Tesseract from Avengers Endgame getting captured by the Time Variance Authority. The TVA is basically the time cops. They guard the flow of The Sacred Timeline and prevent any alternative timelines and realities branching off from the main one. The events that make it out of The Sacred Timeline are determined by the Timekeepers, three mysterious figures who rule the TVA from the shadows. Loki manages to ingratiate himself to his captors, soon realizes that the TVA isn't all what it appears or claims to be, and discovers that big trouble is coming. The show had some good character development for Loki and managed to wrestle with what is in fact some profound philosophical questions. Is there a choice between determinism and free will? Must we choose between either brutal tyrannical order or destructive chaos, or is there another way? On a more prosaic level, some reviews said that the finale of Loki bound Marvel to using Kang The Conqueror as their next major villain, which would be a potential problem due to the actor’s ongoing self-inflicted legal troubles. That said, I don't think that assessment is correct. In my opinion, the ending resolves the story while leaving things wide open for whatever Marvel wants to do (or can afford to do, given Disney's financial woes) next. Overall, Loki was the best non-Spiderman thing Marvel has done since Endgame. It also achieved one of the rarest feats of all in superhero movies: an emotionally satisfying ending to both the story and a long character arc. Overall Grade: A. Finally, the best thing I saw in Winter 2023 was The Shop Around the Corner, which came out in 1940. It is a romantic comedy starring Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Kravlik and Margaret Sullivan as Miss Novak. Mr. Kravlik is the top salesman at Matusek’s, a store owned by the somewhat erratic Mr. Matusek, who kind of reminded me of a marginally brighter Michael Scott. One day Miss Novak comes into the shop and fast talks her way into a job as a sales clerk. Both she and Mr. Kravlik immediately take a dislike to each other, which is ironic because Mr. Kravlik and Miss Novak have been unwittingly corresponding with each other anonymously and falling in love over the last few months, which was something people used to do in the pre-Internet age before Tinder and Match.com. However, big trouble is on the horizon because one of the sales clerks is having an affair with Mr. Matusek's wife and Mr. Matuszek mistakenly blames Mr. Kravlik, who is in fact the most loyal of his employees and the only one brave enough to disagree with him. The movie was both very funny and had a real degree of tension with dramatic stakes. It's a cross between You've Got Mail (which was partially inspired by this movie) and the UK version of The Office. It's a very tight movie, not a single line of dialogue or shot was wasted and the layout of the shots was nearly perfect. In the modern mind, we tend to think of black and white movies as being sanitized and saccharine, but that overlooks that the 1950s and the 1940s were in fact very different periods in American history. Movies from the ‘40s really do have this hard, sometimes cynical, edge to them, without indulging in pointless nudity, graphic violence, or nihilism the way that modern movies often do. Like at one point in the movie, Mr. Matusek tries to shoot himself in despair, only for a teenage boy to stop him. That's dark stuff for romantic comedy. Of course the teenage boy is hardly traumatized by the experience. He definitely leverages the event to get himself promoted from delivery boy to sales clerk. I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. I do recommend you watch it with captions if possible, since sound technology has come a long way since 1940. Overall Grade: A+. So those were the movies that I saw and enjoyed in Winter 2023 and later this year, I will do a roundup of stuff I saw in Winter 2024. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. And once more, have a Happy New Year! Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 180: Did I meet 2023’s writing goals and what are 2024’s writing goals?
12/25/2023
Episode 180: Did I meet 2023’s writing goals and what are 2024’s writing goals?
In this week's episode, I take a look back at my 2023 writing goals and see how many of them I met, while looking ahead to my writing goals for the coming year of 2024. 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 180 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the 21st, 2023 and today we're going to talk about how many of my writing goals I met in 2023 and what my writing goals are for 2024. Before we get into all that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I am 37,000 words into Shield of Storms, the first book in my new The Shield War epic fantasy that I'm hoping to have out in January. We will see if that it turns out to be feasible or not, but I am hoping to have it out in January if possible. I am also 51,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, which will be the sequel, the second book in the Sevenfold Sword Online series, and I'm hoping to have that out in February. I'm also 4,000 words into Half-Wizard Thief, which is the sequel to Half-Elven Thief. I am not sure when that's going to come out, but sometime in 2024 would be my guess. For free short stories, if you want to go to my website jonathanmoeller.com/writer, you will find that I’m giving away 12 free short stories from my Payhip store for the 12 Days of Christmas and all twelve of them are free right now and they will be free through December the 31st, 2023. So if you're looking for a bunch of short things to read during your holiday travels, now would be the time to get them. 00:01:26 Main Topic: 2023 and 2024 Writing Goals So, let's get right to our main topic. Did I meet 2023 writing goals and what are 2024’s writing goals? 2023 without doubt was a year that brought many challenges and changes. So did I end up meeting most of my writing goals? First off, I would like to thank everyone who bought or read or listened to a book of mine this year. Thanks for coming along on the adventures of Gareth, Nadia, Caina, Jack March, and Rivah Half-Elven. That said, I have to admit from February to about mid-July this year was rather a challenging patch. Everyone's got their own difficulties, so I won't ramble on about mine, but I did get COVID pretty strongly in May and that messed up things for a while. Before May I was doing three and a half mile runs on the treadmill three times a week. After COVID I could barely do two minutes before the wheezing got too bad. And most of May and June are kind of a vague haze in my memory. One amusing anecdote to illustrate that time: about halfway through June, I spent most of a day watching a very energetic three-year-old child. We walked to the park in the morning, but it eventually got too hot and he wanted to go back inside. When we went back, he discovered the house's laundry chute and once I stopped him from hurling various small and expensive items down that chute, we compromised on letting him drop one of his stuffed animals down it. This delighted him to no end, and it seemed like good, harmless fun that would keep him out of trouble, though obviously I followed along as he did this to make sure he didn't accidentally lock himself in the dryer or fling his parents’ iPads down the chute or something. So he dropped his stuffed animal down the laundry chute on the 2nd floor, hastened down to the basement to retrieve it, and then ran back upstairs to do it again. Over and over and over and over and over and over. And as I followed him up the stairs for, like, the tenth time, I had the profound realization, deep in my bones that I had gotten in very, very out of shape. For a while I wondered if I was going to fall over and if the three-year old in question would empty out my pockets and drop my keys and wallet down the laundry chute (which in fairness to him, would make a very cool noise), but fortunately I kept my feet. Eventually, the three-year old got bored with the laundry chute and decided he wanted to watch YouTube instead. Fun fact: I did not know before that day, but apparently there are people who make YouTube videos featuring action figures fighting each other and to judge from the millions of views, apparently toddlers love that stuff. Anyway, the next morning when I got out of bed and stood up, every single muscle was very eager to inform me that I had really overdone it the day before. Once the muscle aches had subsided and I had driven home, I set about trying to fix things systematically. The first week in July, I made myself run one mile on the treadmill at the gym every day and the week after that I raised it to 1.1. The week after that I pushed it up to 1.2. I am pleased to report that this week, the second to the last week in December, I ran 3.2 miles on the treadmill every day and I did lose nearly all the weight I gained when I had COVID. Many other problems in real life settled down around mid-July as well, which was a pleasant change. Things improved enough that I did 12 ten thousand word writing days after July. Compare that to 2022, when I did only one. I might have missed some of my writing goals for 2023, I still reached some and even exceeded others. Let's see how I did, then we'll take a look at what I would like to do writing-wise in 2024. 2023’s Writing Goals Number One: Write as many words as possible, but try to publish 1,000,000 new words. I didn't quite make this one. The last time I wrote over 1,000,000 words in a single year was 2020, when I hit 1.27 million words. In 2022, I only did 814,000, but this year, in 2023, I did 929,000 words. So that was a significant improvement and probably was helped a good deal by the 10, no by excuse me, the 12 thousand word days I was able to accomplish in 2023. Number Two: Continue Dragonskull. Not only did I continue with the Dragonskull series, I actually finished it with the Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods this summer. Additionally, thanks to the hard work of narrator Brad Wills, the entire series is also available in audiobook, which is the fastest I've ever gotten a complete series of audiobooks out. Dragonskull was overall the strongest selling series of 2023, so I'm glad I was able to bring it to a satisfying conclusion. Number Three: Continue Cloak Mage. I did get two new Cloak Mage books out, Cloak of Dragonfire and Cloak of Embers. Three would have been nice, but I didn't quite get there. Number Four: Continue Silent Order. I did that as well. Not only did I continue the Silent Order series, I decided to push onward and finish it completely for a total of 14 books, which officially made summer 2023 my Summer of Finishing Things since I finished Dragonskull and Silent Order back-to-back. Number Five: Write in a new genre of fantasy. I did that as well with Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation, which was LitRPG. It didn't do as well as I hoped but I’m about halfway through the sequel (as I mentioned earlier in the show, which I hope to put out in February 2024). So we'll see how that does. I also wrote Half-Elven Thief, which while not in a new genre of fantasy, did quite well out of the gate, better than Creation did, in fact. So I did meet most of my 2023 writing goals and even exceeded the continuing goals for Dragonskull and Silent Order by finishing the series. Let's see what my writing goals will be for 2024, bearing in mind, of course, these wise words that were written some time ago: “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ “ With that in mind, if it is the Lord's will, here is what I would like to do next year, 2024’s writing goals. Number One: Write as many words as possible while trying to hit 1,000,000 new words. I have not published 1,000,000 new words in a year since 2020, but it would be nice if I get over 1,000,000 words. Again, we'll see what happens this year. Number Two: Start The Shield War. I want to start my new epic fantasy series, The Shield War, which will be set back in Andomhaim. Currently, I’m over 30,000 words into it, 37,000 words, I believe, as of this recording on December 21st. So hopefully the book will be on track to come out by the end of January 2024. Hopefully I can get one or two more out in the series before 2024 ends. Number Three: Continue Cloak Mage. I also want to continue the Cloak Mage series. Next up in the series will be Cloak of Titans, which will be the 11th book and I think I will be starting writing that in late spring. I'm not entirely sure how many books Cloak Mage will end up having, but I think it will be 15 or 16 in total. Number Four: Continue Ghost Armor. Next up in this series will be Ghost in the Veils. I am really hoping to start writing this towards the end of February because I have a recording slot scheduled for it in the second half of April, but more on audiobooks in a little bit further on in the show. Number Five: Continue Half-Elven Thief. Half-Elven Thief, I basically started writing on impulse in April or so. For a while I’ve wanted to start writing shorter series that come out more quickly and I gave some thought to writing the entirety of Half-Elven Thief after Dragonskull was done, but then I got sick with COVID in May, as I mentioned earlier and I didn't have the energy to do anything but the bare minimum for a while. So I set Half-Elven Thief aside and didn't think about it again till November when I decided to come back to it and have it be the last book I would publish in 2023. I'm glad that I did. It had a strong response and sold much better than the last two times I tried something really new. I'm about 4,000 words into the sequel and we'll work on it as a side project for a while until I get to a good spot where will become the main project and then I will publish it. Number Six: Continue Sevenfold Sword Online. I almost walked away from this series this summer, but I was persuaded to continue it. I'm about halfway through the second book and I'm hoping that will come out in February 2024 if everything goes well, but we will find out shortly. And finally, Number Seven: new audiobooks for new books. I think at this point in my self-publishing adventure, I'm only going to do audiobooks for some of my new books as they come out. Like, I've done as many of my old books in audio as I think I want or is feasible to do. Frostborn is completely in audio from Tantor and through my ACX productions with Brad Wills, Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna are from Podium publishing as narrated by Steven Brand, The Ghosts and Ghost Exile are done and I did them through ACX with Hollis McCarthy. I could try to get Silent Order, Ghost Night, Demonsouled, or the rest of Cloak Mage in audio, but it would be a massive amount of work that would take years to turn a profit. Doing the Dragonskull audiobooks so close to the publication date of the ebooks worked pretty well, so I think I'm going to do that or as close to that as possible in the future. I have Shield of Storms and Ghosts in the Veils scheduled for recording next year and hopefully I should have good news about Sevenfold Sword Online audiobooks soon. If Half-Elven Thief reaches a certain sales threshold in the first thirty days, I will consider doing audiobooks for that series as well. So that is what I hope to do for writing in the coming year of 2024. As always, thanks for coming along and reading and listening to those books and as always, thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder, you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com and don't forget to visit jonathanmoeller.com/writer and get your 12 Days of Christmas free short stories, which will be free until December 31st. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
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Episode 179: Why Did I Put HALF-ELVEN THIEF In Kindle Unlimited?
12/18/2023
Episode 179: Why Did I Put HALF-ELVEN THIEF In Kindle Unlimited?
In this week's episode, I examine my reasoning for putting HALF-ELVEN THIEF in Kindle Unlimited. I also discuss THE SHIELD WAR, my upcoming epic fantasy series. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 179 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December 15th, 2023, and today we're going to talk about why my new book, Half-Elven Thief, went into Kindle Unlimited. Before we get into that, let's have an update on my current writing projects. First up, as you might have guessed from the opening of the show, my new book, Half-Elven Thief, is out. The last book I will publish in 2023 is now available at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, so if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read that for free as part of your Kindle Unlimited subscription. Now that that book is out, my next big project will be Shield of Storms, the new Andomhaim book, which I will be talking about more later in the show. Hopefully that will come out in January. I'm also almost 50,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, and I think that will probably be out in February, if everything goes well. I've also written about 1,500 words of the sequel to Half-Elven Thief, but I haven't decided when that's going to come out yet. It depends on what happens over the next few months and what the coming year brings us. In audiobook news, Dragon Skull: Crown of the Gods just went live as of the time of recording. It is currently on Audible and Amazon. It should be showing up on Apple in another few days and then hopefully it should be showing up on Chirp, Google Play, Kobo, and the various library services in a couple of days after that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:01:39 Shield of Storms News/ 12 Days of Short Stories Christmas Let's talk a little bit about more about one of those, Shield of Storms. I am now (as of recording) about 11,000 words into it and it will be the first book of my new The Shield War epic fantasy series. If all goes well, it will be the first book I published in 2024 on Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Payhip. I think the series is going to be about six books long. It might get up to seven, but I'm going to try to keep it at six and will be set in Andomhaim immediately after the events of Dragonskull. So what will this book be about? Well, we will have four protagonists and three chief villains. The protagonists: the first protagonist will be Ridmark Arban, who is returning again. He knows that while the Heptarchy might have been repulsed, someday the Armies of the Seven Temples will attack Andomhaim again and that they will use their stronghold on the Isle of Kordain as a base for a new invasion. Will Andomhaim be ready? Ridmark doesn't know, but if you can find a way to wrest the Isle of Kordain from the Heptarchy's grasp, that might go a long way to deciding the coming war. The problem is that the Heptarchy has more warships than Andomhaim and attacking the Isle of Kordain from the sea might bring disastrous defeat unless he can find another way. The second protagonist will be Lika, the leader of the thieves of Teramis, the chief city of the Isle of Kordain, currently ruled with an iron fist by the Exarch of the Heptarchy. Once Tyrannus was the city of the Corsairs, free men who bowed to no king, and certainly not to the High King of Andomhaim. Then ten years ago Warlord Agravhask, exterminated the Corsair Lords, and the Heptarchy has ruled the Isle of Kordain ever since. Lika needs to protect her people until her father is returned, for her father went to the abandoned halls of the Mountain House to seek a weapon to defeat the Heptarchy. She knows that he will return, even though he left eight years ago. Our third protagonist is Niara Arban, who has returned to Andomhaim far different than the one she left, far different and far weaker. The modern Magistri are weak and feeble and no match for the first Magistri who drove back the ancient urdmordar (at least in her opinion), but the realm still has enemies and Niara will show them what war is really like. And our final protagonist will be Nikomedes. He was once an assassin of the Heptarchy, and now he serves the Master of the Mountain House. He still isn't entirely sure about the difference between right and wrong, but he's trying really hard to find out. All he knows is that the Master will make a better world in the end, and if Nicomedes has to kill a lot of people to make that happen, it will all be for the greater good. Now on to our three main antagonists. The first antagonist will be Seziravorna, the Exarch, the High priestess of the Temple of the Crimson and the head Tarkey governor of the Isle of Kordain. It is her task to make the isle a stronghold of the Heptarchy to prepare for the return of the Seven Temples in the decades to come. But so many senior priestesses and battlemages perished in Agravhask’s invasion that Seziravorna sees her chance of complete victory. She will lure the armies of Andomhaim into a final catastrophic battle, and then she will be the exarch not just of the Isle of Kordain, but all of Andomhaim. Our second antagonist will be the Master of the Mountain House. The Mountain House is a dangerous ruin beneath the mountains at the center of the Isle of Kordain, and long the Corsairs have had legend about the mysterious wizard who dwells there and the terrible powers he wields. No one who ever crosses the ruined gate of the Mountain House ever returns, for the master of the Mountain House has been laboring for millennia to prepare a new and better world, even if he has to burn away the old one to make it. Our final antagonist is Urzo and Urzo is…. well….Urzo is hungry. We will find out more about all these characters soon. Anyway, if all goes well, Shield of Storms will be my first book of 2024, hopefully coming out sometime towards the end of January. Before we get to our main topic, I also want to mention our 12 Days of Short Story Christmas. In the lead up to Christmas, I am giving away twelve of my short stories for free through my Payhip store and then will wrap it up with a coupon for a big discount on any of the paid items on the store. So if you go to my website, Jonathanmoeller.com, and look at the top page, there will be many links to the 12 Days of Short Story Christmas and you can get quite a few free short stories. The short stories will remain free on my Payhip store until December 31st, the last day of 2023. So head on over to jonathanmoeller.com and get yourself some free short stories to read during your holiday travels. 00:06:15 Main Topic: Half Elven Thief and Kindle Unlimited Now let's come to our main topic of this week's episode: why I put my new book Half-Elven Thief in Kindle Unlimited. First, I want to say it had a very strong launch, especially for something new and unconnected to any of my previous settings. It wasn't a tie in for The Ghosts or Nadia’s world or anything in Frostborn and Andomhaim. It was a completely new setting with completely new characters. The last two completely new things I've tried in the last couple of years were Covering Fire in 2021 and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation in 2023 and Half-Elven Thief had a stronger first day than both of them and came within two copies of having a stronger first day than both books combined. So thank you for reading, everyone. That means Rivah Half-Elven will join Caina, Nadia, Victoria Carrow, and Moriah Rhosmor as one of my Angry Thief Girl characters. The series with Rivah will have six books. I'm going to work on them as I do other stuff in 2024. I did, as I mentioned, put Half-Elven Thief in Kindle Unlimited, which means it's only available on Amazon. I do regret that it's only on Amazon, but once the series is complete, I will take it wide. I think I have good reasons for this decision, which I will now enumerate in the Internet’s performed format for discourse: a numbered list. Number one: I did this before in 2020 and it worked pretty well. We all dealt with the great COVID panic in different ways, some for better, some for much worse. Myself, I spent 2020 learning how to use Photoshop and writing an entire epic fantasy series (specifically, Wraithshard). I ended up writing all five Wraithshard books in 2020, and I originally put them in Kindle Unlimited and then phased them over to all the other stores in 2021 once their Kindle Unlimited term ran out. This had a very good result in terms of sales and I'm hoping to have something of a repeat with Half-Elven Thief. Reason Number Two: Amazon and its AI problems. Amazon had a bad problem with ChatGPT over the summer of 2023. Scammers were using ChatGPT to churn out content formatted as ebooks uploaded to Kindle Unlimited and then used click farms to harvest page reads. This caused widespread problems, since the best seller lists on Amazon were filled with this AI generated nonsense and the page payment rate for authors plummeted because so many of the page reads were going to these AI generated click farm books. Amazon finally responded by limiting the number of new books an individual author could publish to three a day. Some of the scammers were uploading hundreds or even thousands of new books every day, so this put a serious crimp in their operations. I had avoided Kindle Unlimited entirely for that time, but since it seems to be stable again, I'm willing to give it another try. We'll see how things go. The third reason why I put the short story The Jeweled Curse wide and not in Kindle Unlimited is because then I can give it away for free on my Payhip store. Everyone gets something. Reason #4: The bad economy. Don't believe what you see on the news about good job numbers or investments and so forth. The real economy is very bad and has been that way for some time for many complicated reasons, so subscription services are a really important part of people's entertainment because the value for the cost is in fact pretty good. That's why nearly all of my books are in the Kobo Plus subscription program, and most of my ebooks and audiobooks are in Scribd or whatever Scribd is calling itself now (I think it's like Everand or something like that) and many of my audiobooks are on Spotify. Even though the money from those particular channels isn't always super great, it does add up over time, and it's nice to have a lower cost option for people on tight budgets. Reason #5: Everything else will stay wide. Indie authors sometimes gets stuck in binary thinking about Kindle Unlimited and wide, but why not both? I write enough that I can put books into both on a pretty regular basis. The Shield War series we already discussed, the new Nadia books, and the new Caina books in 2024 will be wide and not exclusive to Amazon, which is similar to what I did in 2020. Wraithshard was in KU, but Dragontiarna and Cloak Mage were wide, and in 2024 the Shield War, Cloak Mage, and Ghost Armor will be wide, but Half-Elven Thief will be in Kindle Unlimited and I think Sevenfold Sword Online will perform better in Kindle Unlimited than it did wide, so those books will be in Kindle Unlimited as well. So that is my reasoning. Hopefully that makes sense. If you are a wide reader, I apologize for the inconvenience, but once the Half-Elven Thief series is finished, it will go wide and the Shield War, Cloak Mage, and Ghost Armor will also all be wide in 2024. Hopefully we will soon see more from Rivah Half-Elven in 2024 as well. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. And don't forget also to go to jonathanmoeller.com and get your free short stories from now until December 31st, 2023. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and see you all next week.
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Episode 178: No More Crossover Series
12/11/2023
Episode 178: No More Crossover Series
In this week's episode, I explain why I won't write any more crossover series in my 2nd decade as an indie author. We also discuss why too long of a backstory can become a problem. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 178 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the 10th, 2023 and today we're going to talk about why I won't write any more crossover series. Before we get into our main topic this week, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Half-Elven Thief is now available. This book will be out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. Amazon seems to have solved many of the Kindle Unlimited concerns I had earlier in the year, and so what I'm going to do with Half-Elven Thief is repeat what I did with Wraithshard back in 2020, where the books first come out in Kindle Unlimited, and then once the series is done (I am planning for six books), then they will go wide to other platforms. So if you are an Amazon and Kindle Unlimited user, you can get that as the last book I have published in 2023. Now that Half-Elven Thief is done, I am writing the outline for Shield of Storms, the first book of the Shield War series, which will be set in Andomhaim and follow up on the results of Dragonskull from earlier this year. I'm hoping to start writing that Tuesday or possibly Wednesday of this coming week. Sooner would be better, obviously. I am also about halfway through the rough draft of Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, and I'm hoping to have that come out early in 2024, if all goes well. In audiobook news, I had two audiobooks come out this past week: Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills and Ghost in The Serpent, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get those audiobooks at Audible, Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, Chirp, and all the usual audiobook stores. Audio for Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods is almost finished. If all goes well, it may yet come out before the end of 2023, though, given how the holidays slow down processing for everything, it might not come out till 2024. But in any case, it will be out soon. If you stop by my website between now and the end of the year, you will see that I'm doing 12 Days of Short Story Christmas, where I'm looking over the most popular short stories I've had over the last two years or so and giving them away for free on my Payhip store until December 31st. I’m doing it on weekdays. As of this recording, I have gone through the first four short stories and tomorrow on Monday the 11th we will be having the fifth of The 12 Days of Short Story Christmas. So if you're looking for free short stories to read, stop by my website and at the end of The 12 Days of Short Story Christmas, I will have a bonus coupon for my entire Payhip store. So I think it would be worth checking that out. 00:02:42 Main Topic: Crossovers Now on to our main topic this week: why I am not going to write any more crossover series. Occasionally I get an e-mail from a reader suggesting that would be cool if Caina met Ridmark in a book or if Nadia went aboard Jack March’s spaceship or crossover like that between characters from different series. Much more frequently, I get emails from readers confused by the Cloak and Ghost series. How did Caina get Nadia’s world? Is this a version of Caina that lives in Nadia's world? How does this affect the timeline of Nadia's books and Caina’s? Didn't Andromache die in Ghost in the Storm? Why is she running around and Cloak and Ghost: Lost Gate? Or I will get an e-mail from a reader who read and enjoyed Malison: The Complete Series and then continued on to Dragontiarna: Knights, only to be confused and annoyed that Tyrcamber Rigamond doesn't appear in Dragontiarna: Knights until Chapter 15, even though at the end of Malison: The Complete Series said that Tyrcamber’s adventures would continue in the Dragontiarna series. Tyrcamber really does arrive in Chapter 15 of Dragontiarna, I promise! Now I'm in my second decade of being an indie author and one of the things I've decided for decade two is no more crossovers. My reasons follow: #1: The Cloak and Ghost books. I'm very grateful to everyone who read and enjoyed the Cloak and Ghost books, but boy did I get a lot of confused emails about them, like a lot of confused emails. I still do on occcasion. The idea that when I started writing them way back in 2018 was that it would be a fun little crossover side project. I figured it would just be a side story where Nadia meets the version of Caina who lives on her world and then adventures follow. Comics do parallel versions of characters all the time in comic books, right? Of course that overlooked the fact that one: hardly anyone actually buys comic books anymore, so it's probably best not to use them as an example. And two: when the Marvel movies started doing the Multiverse and parallel versions of characters after 2019, the franchise basically went off a cliff. But that was in the future yet. What actually followed was many confused questions about the continuity I tried to explain in the prologue of the book, but then I remembered the old adage that if you have to explain the joke, it's probably not funny. The same thing applies to concepts in fantasy novels. If you can't explain it adequately within the book itself, then it's time for a rethink. #2: Malison. Malison actually went pretty well. Thanks for reading it, everyone. The idea for Malison was that it would help set up the Dragontiarna series. When I wrote Dragontiarna, I wanted the story to cut back and forth between two different worlds, Andomhaim and Tyrcamber’s world. Writing Malison also helped me to work out the way the rules would work in Tyrcamber’s world, and then that would lead into the first book of the Dragontiarna series, Dragontiarna: Knights, which also happened to be my 100th novel. Malison did well enough on its own, especially in the box set, that lots of people picked it up in both ebook and audiobook. This did cause an unintentional degree of confusion, since it says at the end of the final Malison book that Tyrcamber Rigamond will return in Dragontiarna: Knights, so numerous people continued onward, and I still get confused emails ever since from people since Dragontiarna: Knights starts with Ridmark's perspective, not Tyrcamber. So now I have a form letter that I copy and paste reassuring people that yes, Tyrcamber does return in Dragontiarna: Knights in Chapter 15 and is one of the chief point of view characters for the rest of that series. So Malison was probably the most successful crossover I ever did, but it still caused confusion. Reason #3: internal setting logic. Very often my settings have completely different internal logic from each other and so a crossover simply wouldn't work. Malison was probably as successful as it was because I deliberately planned it from the beginning to tie into Dragontiarna, so the internal logic of the settings matched. Like when people suggest that Nadia come aboard Jack March’s spaceship, in Nadia's world, magic is real. In March's world, there's no such thing as magic, and even things that appear are magical like the targeting abilities of Navigator or Lysiana’s superhuman intelligence are the result of natural phenomena that are only partially understood by the characters, but are nonetheless essentially the results of applied science. So for characters from these two different settings to cross over, one or the other would have to submit to a completely different set of logic, which would be difficult to write and confusing to read. Like if Nadia went aboard Jack March’s spaceship, would her magic be a partially understood scientific phenomenon? Would magic suddenly come to the galaxy of the Silent Order series? Or would Nadia’s magic stop working, which would be a bad thing, since sudden character depowerment is frequently a sure sign that the author is beginning to run out of ideas. Elves are another good example. I've written a lot about elves in both the Frostborn world and the Cloak Game/Cloak Mage setting, and now I'm about to add more elves in Half-Elven Thief. The elves in Frostborn and the elves in Cloak Games work under extremely different rules. Like, in Andomhaim so far we've had the High Elves, the Dark Elves, the Gray Elves, the Cloak Elves, the Umbral Elves, and occasionally Half Elves. In Cloak Games, we just have the elves and they're way more concerned about the divide between nobles and commoners than they are about High, Dark, Gray, Cloak, and Umbral elves. For that matter, the way magic works in Andomhaim and the way it works in the Nadia-verse is completely different. So the basic premise of some of my settings are incompatible and trying to force them together would create some weird story structure problems. #4: Marvel movie lockout syndrome. The entertainment press has spilled much ink over the fact that The Marvels is the worst performing Marvel movie in the last 15 years. A lot of the opinions about it are wholly subjective and based around whatever social or cultural drum a particular writer feels like beating. But I think two undeniable facts worked against the movie, one of which is very relevant to me as an indie writer. First, it just cost too much. The Marvels cost $274 million to make, and it brought in about $200 million. If your movie costs $75 million to make, a $200 million return is a good return. If it costs $274 million, you are up the proverbial foul-smelling creek without a paddle. To put these numbers into perspective, the top three movies of 2023 were Barbie, Super Mario Brothers, and Oppenheimer, and with respective budgets of $145 million, $100 million, and $100 million, they all cost less to make than The Marvels. In fact, the combined budgets of all three movies put together is only like about 25% higher than the budget of The Marvels alone. Granted, while I wouldn't object to someone giving me $100 million budget for something, as an indie writer, this is not a particularly relevant concern to me. Nonetheless, it is a good reminder of the importance of keeping your costs down while running a business. The second fact that is in fact very relevant to me as an indie writer with 147 novels published, who has written many long series: the movie’s backstory was way too complicated because it was a sequel for too many different things. The backstory to The Marvels…okay, so this is a sequel to Captain Marvel from 2019, but also to Wandavision from 2021, which introduced the adult version of Monica Rambeau and also a sequel to Miss Marvel from 2022 on Disney Plus, which is where Kamala Khan made her introduction, but is also a sequel or possibly a prequel to 2023’s Secret Invasion and in some sense is a continuation of the story is told in the four Avengers movies and the setup for the plot was introduced for the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie back in 2014, with the character of Ronan the Accuser, who also appears in Captain Marvel as the younger version of himself and they're also linked to the X-Men movies and the larger multiverse, and on and on and on. That is a lot of backstory. And if I've learned anything writing really long series is that people are very often completionists. They want to read everything and read it in the order it was written. The downside of this is that the longer something goes on, the more readers or viewers you lose along the way. You can see how this works against The Marvels. It has, like dozens and dozens of hours of movies and TV shows to watch first as its full backstory. That's a big time commitment and an expensive one. For indie authors, if the series goes on long enough, you tend to lose people from book to book as they get distracted with other things or the budget happens to be tight the month the new book comes out. I think Cloak Mage will be the last series I write that has a double digit amount of titles in the series and everything after that is going to be around five to eight books, depending on the complexity and length of the story I want to tell. The problem with crossovers is that it increases the complexity of the backstory exponentially. I ran into that with Malison and Dragontiarna, even though they were both pretty successful and in a smaller way with Cloak and Ghost, even though that was a crossover with no connection to the main storyline for either Caina or Nadia. So as I plunge into my second decade of being an indie author, I don't think I'm going to do anymore crossovers for the reasons listed above, which is why my new book, Half-Elven Thief is entirely unconnected to anything else I've previously written. But of course, when I start at the Shield War next week, it will be a direct continuation of Dragonskull and the Frostborn series. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes on . If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe, stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.
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Episode 177: How To Write Believable Mistakes
12/04/2023
Episode 177: How To Write Believable Mistakes
In this week's episode, I discuss how to write characters who can make believable mistakes, and we also take a look at November 2023's ad results. The episode ends with a preview of GHOST IN THE SERPENT as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. This week’s coupon is for the audiobook of as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: DECCOWL The coupon code is valid through December 20th, 2023, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook for Christmas travel, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 177 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the 1st 2023 and today we're going to talk about how to write believable mistakes. We'll also talk about ad results for November 2023 and end the show with an audio book preview. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Cowl, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Cowl for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon: DECCOWL and again, that coupon code is DECCOWL and this coupon code will be valid through December the 20th 2023. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook for Christmas travel, we've got you covered. So before we get to our main topics, let's have an update on my current writing projects. I am almost done with my next book, which will be called Half Elven Thief. I am in fact hoping to finish it after I record this podcast episode and it's on track to be out before Christmas. My next book after it is published will be Shield of Storms, the first book of the new The Shield War series that will be a follow up to Dragonskull. I'm going to start writing that in December and if all goes well that will be out towards the end of January or perhaps February, depends on how the next couple of months go. I am also 41,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I am hoping to have that come out after Shield of Storms, if everything goes well. We'll see, once again we will see how the years goes. In audiobook news, Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress and Ghost in the Serpent are finished, paid for, and processing. They are working through quality assurance at ACX and Findaway and should be available before too much longer and we will in fact conclude the show with a preview from Ghosts in the Serpent, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. First up, let's have our ad results for November 2023. I had three categories of ads this month: Facebook, Amazon and Bookbub ads. Let's start with Facebook ads. I advertised The Ghosts, Cloak Games, Cloak Mage, Malison/Dragontiarna, and Silent Order. And here is what I got back for every dollar spent. For The Ghosts, I got back $6.10 for every dollar spent, with about 12% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, I got back $7.68 for every dollar spent, with about 5.8% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Of course, Cloak of Embers skews that's a bit, but even without Cloak of Embers the total will be $3.05, with 13.9% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Finally, Cloak Mage: Omnibus One and Cloak Mage: Omnibus Two and audio bundles really help move the needle for the audio. For Malison/Dragontiarna, I got back $2.17 for every dollar spent. And for Silent Order, I got back $2.51 for every dollar spent. So overall a pretty good month for Facebook ads. Next up is Amazon ads. I tried a couple of different things with Amazon ads this month, so let's see how they did. For Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, I got back $2.29 for every dollar spent, with 11.2% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Since I want the sequel to Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation to come out in the first quarter of 2023 like I mentioned earlier in the show, I shifted the first book to Kindle Unlimited and started running ads on it, which one very well. Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation got back $4.20 for every dollar spent. This is a very promising sign for the sequel and honestly makes me wonder if I shouldn't have just put Creation in Kindle Unlimited from the beginning, as much as I did not want to try that. We also tried an experiment with Amazon ads for Cloak Games Omnibus One, even though that is not in Kindle Unlimited. That brought in $2.23 for every dollar spent with 31% of profit coming from the audiobook. It's obviously easier to advertise a Kindle Unlimited book on Amazon ads, but as it turns out a wide book like Sword of the Squire and Cloak Games Omnibus One can also work very well if you have an audiobook, because then you can advertise on the Audible categories on Amazon, which generally cost less per click. Back finally on to Bookbub ads. I'm concerned about the long term direction of Facebook ads and how they're trying to push more AI targeting type stuff, which is why I'm trying to diversify more to Bookbub and Amazon ads. So for this month I tried Frostborn on Bookbub ads. Let's see how we did. Frostborn: $5.09 for every dollar I spent, with a surprising 35% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. This obviously is a very strong result for Bookbub ads, especially since Frostborn has been finished for like six years at this point. I wasn't expecting the audiobooks to do so robustly well from the Bookbub ads, but obviously I am not complaining. So what conclusions can we draw from this? 1: Amazon ads are a bit complicated to use, but in many ways they're the safest. If you don't know what you're doing, you can easily blow a ton of money on Facebook or Bookbub ads and get jack squat in return. The nice thing about Amazon ads is that if they don't work, they don't spend money. It's much harder to accidentally lose a bunch of money on Amazon ads than it is with Facebook or Bookbub 2: Amazon ads and Bookbub ads offer far more granular targeting options than Facebook. The problem with Facebook ad targeting is that you can only really target big name tradpub authors like George RR Martin or Brandon Sanderson, or broad categories like epic fantasy. Like, there's not a single RPG author in Facebook's audience targeting. By contrast, you get super granular with Amazon and Bookbub targeting. 3: If you have a finished audiobook series, it is bonus profit when you advertise the ebooks. Apparently for Bookbub, it's a lot of bonus profit about which I am not complaining. 4: For Bookbub and Facebook ads, you really need to rotate the ad image a lot to avoid creative fatigue, which is Internet ads-speak for people seeing the same ad image over and over and getting tired of it. So you need to change it out pretty frequently, like once a week, unless you don't. Sometimes you get lucky and get an ad which keeps firing and firing. But that is the exception and most definitely not the rule. And as always, thank you for reading. Given how consistently terrible the economy has been the last several years, I am very grateful for all of you who have bought the ebooks and the audiobooks, and I hope to have new books for you to read and listen to very soon. 00:06:41 Main Topic of the Week: How to Believably Write Serious Mistakes Now let's transition to our main topic of the week, how to believably write serious mistakes. The inspiration for this week's episode was watching the news, specifically all the news around the corporate drama and shenanigans at Open AI. As I've mentioned before, numerous times, I am not a huge fan of AI technology. So it was perhaps with an inappropriate amount of entertained interest that I watched the meltdown of Open AI at the end of November 2023. To sum up a lengthy and complicated saga, the board of Open AI for unknown reasons fired its CEO, Sam Altman at 3:00 PM on a Friday afternoon, which is the traditional time corporations like to drop bad news. There was an immediate backlash because Mr. Altman is a relatively well respected figure in his field. The backlash intensified because Open AI is essentially a vassal of Microsoft at this point, and Open AI didn't bother to inform their overlords of what was going on, which meant that the great eye of Microsoft suddenly turned upon Open AI's board in wrath, especially since the move might have tanked Microsoft stock before its quarterly report. Meanwhile, many Open AI leaders quit, a majority of the employees signed a letter calling for the board to resign, Microsoft immediately hired Mr. Altman and the other leaders who quit, but then the board panicked and backtracked, and finally the board quit and Mr. Altman returned. Overall, it was definitely a fascinating saga of corporate politics, and since I personally think Open AI is like one of those evil organizations from James Bond movie (I bet they even have an elaborate Spectre style underground base somewhere), it was enjoyable to watch from afar. But this is the blog of a Pulp Fiction Writer or the podcast of a Pulp Fiction Writer, not a technology, business, or AI themed podcast. Why talk about this? Because there is a lesson for fiction writers in this. The board of Open AI is not stupid or was not stupid. They're all intelligent men and women who are leaders in their fields and yet whatever their goals were in firing Mr. Altman, it’s readily apparent that those goals were not achieved and the results were in fact, the opposite of what they had hoped to accomplish since they quit and Mr. Altman remained as CEO of Open AI. And that provides a good lesson for writers of fiction. How can you have characters make believable mistakes without breaking the suspension of disbelief? Because when a character does something stupid solely to advance the plot, it is annoying, isn't it? Like the intelligent hero who suddenly becomes dumb as a brick, or the cunning villain who suddenly uses loses 50 IQ points at a critical junction in the plot? Probably the most commonly cited example is the heroine who goes into the basement with just a candle to reset the circuit breakers because she knows a serial killer or a vampire, or the Terminator or something is after her or when the hero’s plan only works if the villain suddenly becomes much less clever. That's annoying in fiction because it breaks the verisimilitude. Nevertheless, in real life, intelligent people do dumb things all the time, like constantly. Examples are abundant. No doubt you can think of several dozen off the top of your head without even trying. Just as we would break for verisimilitude and your fiction to have your characters be constantly idiotic, it would be just as strange to have them be infallible, high functioning geniuses. So let's have some tips and tricks on how to have your characters believably make bad decisions. Number 1: emotional pressure. A key reason for many bad decisions is emotional pressure, because for most people, emotions almost always trump logic. The most obvious example of this is a high-powered professional who has an affair with someone in his or her office, only to end up resigning in disgrace when it comes out. Once again, examples abound, and you can probably think of numerous cases from the last few years, whether national or local, political figures or people you know personally who work in your organization. We can think of more positive examples of emotional pressure. A man could have pity on a homeless man and give him his lunch, even though this means he might perform badly at an important task at work this afternoon. Or a woman might be trying to save money, only for her love to override her better judgment and convince her to buy a gift for her grandchild. In fiction, you could use this in many, many ways. Both love and hatred are powerful motivators, and so are envy and resentment. A character could take dangerous risks to help someone that he or she loves, or a character could be so gripped by envy that he or she tries to sabotage her rival in a way that turns out to be self-defeating. In romance novels, characters make decisions from emotional pressure all the time. It's one of the staple tropes of the genre. A good example of characters acting from emotional pressure is the scene at the end of the Lord of the Rings when Saruman tries to stab Frodo and then fails. This is objectively a stupid decision. Even if Saruman kills Frodo, it won't improve his position and if he succeeded in killing Frodo, Saruman will be immediately killed by the enraged hobbits. In fact, Frodo at that point is the only hobbit who doesn't want to kill Saruman for his crimes. So killing Frodo would have been quite possibly the worst decision Saruman could make at that exact moment in time, but it makes sense in the context of the story and Saruman’s character, because at this point Saruman has been devoured by hatred and resentment, and cares mostly about screwing with the hobbits, who, as his twisted mind sees it, have robbed him of the chance to become the new Dark Lord of Middle Earth. So long as the character's emotional reality makes sense to the reader, decisions they make in the context of that emotional reality, even objectively bad ones, will not seem like dumb decisions to advance the plot. Number two: acting on bad information. In computer science, there is a principle called garbage in garbage out. The idea is that if you enter bad information into a computer program, the program is only going to generate bad results. This is also very true of human decision making. To make good decisions, you need to have good information. For fiction writers, this means if you want to have an intelligent character make a bad decision, you can only have them act on bad information. For example, a group of fantasy heroes could be on a quest to find a magical sword that will slay the dragon terrorizing the kingdom. According to the kingdom's wizards, the sword is in a ruined castle in the wilderness, except the sword isn't actually there. The castle is controlled by an evil sorcerer who magically enthralls anyone who enters it. The heroes have made a bad decision by going to the ruined castle since they gained a new enemy in the form of the evil sorcerer, but they thought they were making a good decision. But it turns out they were acting on bad information. You can easily use this technique in non-fantasy genres as well. A detective could be misled by a witness and waste time going down dead ends in his investigation until he realizes the truth. In a further novel, the hero could realize that the informants have been deliberately feeding his agency bad information about potential threats. Acting on bad information is also a common technique in romance novels. Usually romance novels have a plot twist, where the heroine can't get together with the love interest for some reason, and it's often because the heroine and the love interest misinterpret each other's motives. Pride and Prejudice is maybe the one of the oldest examples of this, since Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett immediately attribute wrong motivations to each other, and it takes most of the book for them to work through it and untangle things. Number three: unforeseen consequences. This is a big one and one of the major reasons that very smart people make decisions that turn out to be bad, like the example of the Open AI corporate intrigue I mentioned above. The Open AI board members didn't set out to get themselves booted from the company while strengthening Sam Altman's and Microsoft's grip, but that's exactly what happened. My favorite historical example of unintended consequences has to be US Prohibition. The US didn't just randomly decide to wake up and vote to ban alcohol one day in 1920. The Prohibition movement in the US dated back to the early 1870s, which meant that nearly 50 years of work, public relations, persuasion and changing local laws went into what should have been Prohibition’s crowning triumph, the passing of the 18th amendment in 1920. Except it all backfired, didn't it? The Temperance movement wanted to end alcohol consumption in the United States. What they got instead was an explosion of organized crime, increased distract for public authority, the loss of jobs and government tax revenue coming into the Great Depression, and public opinion swiftly turning against Prohibition. The explosion of organized crime was especially ironic, since many Temperance advocates believed, sincerely and firmly, that the majority of all crime was caused by alcohol consumption, and that most of society’s evil could be traced to the consumption of strong liquor. Some local communities actually sold their jails after Prohibition passed, believing that crime would soon drop to near zero. Alas, the causes of societal evil remain multifaceted and cannot solely be hung on alcohol. The 21st amendment passed in 1933, which was the end of national Prohibition in the United States. Prohibition’s legacy continues in the minimum drinking age (another law often ignored), restriction on the time of alcohol sales, and dry counties where you can't legally purchase or consume alcohol, but the concept of national Prohibition in the United States is obsolete. The Temperance advocates didn't actually foresee the consequences of their triumph, and you can use the same principle in writing fiction. A character could achieve what they set out to do, only to find that unanticipated consequences of their success are more severe than the original problem. In a thriller novel, the heroes could take out the leader of the bad guys, only for the leader’s more confident and dangerous Lieutenant to take over. In a romance novel, the heroine could win a lawsuit or a big business deal only to discover that this damages her love interest’s family business. In a detective novel, the protagonist could finally track down the key witness to the murder, or for the murderer’s lethal attention to be drawn to that witness. Number four: Victory Disease. In military history, there is a concept called the Victory Disease. It happens when an army or commander has won so many times that they have become overconfident, lazy, and start making avoidable mistakes. Sooner or later they run into a more serious opponent and an army subject to Victory Disease will make errors that a less complacent opponent will not. You sometimes see this in professional athletics as well. A superstar athlete or winning team gets overconfident, stops training as hard or gets complacent, and then gets their clock cleaned by a hungrier opponent. So Victory Disease is a combination of overconfidence and complacency, and you can definitely make use of this concept to have a character make an understandable bad decision. In fiction, villains tend to be more prone to Victory Disease than protagonists. Nevertheless, having a protagonist with Victory Disease can force them into internal conflicts and character growth. A good example of Victory Disease is in a protagonist is Batman/Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises film from 2012. When Batman comes out of retirement to fight Bane’s organization, he's so used to winning against criminals and outwitting the police that he doesn't take Bane seriously enough despite Alfred's warnings. This bites Batman hard when he confronts Bane for the first time, and he's forced to undergo character development to get ready to save Gotham City from Bane. You can apply a similar plot arc to your characters. An overconfident character makes a serious mistake and has to recover from it, learning and undergoing character growth in the process. Number five: Fields of expertise. There's a certain kind of public intellectual. They usually have a PhD and all their social media handles, that likes to pronounce upon the issues of the day. They will often say things like “as a scientist, I think” or “as an academic, I think” when commenting upon various issues. What's amusing is that their pronouncements are often...
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