Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

I’ve not been writing much of late because I’ve been involved with the process of not only moving all of my work off of Draft2Digital but revising my entire catalog—new covers, adding hardcover versions, updating back matter, all things that needed to be done. Since I had to do certain things as a part of removing work from D2D, I decided that the long-postponed full catalog update needed to happen. I suppose I could classify all this as writing business, which—is an important facet of being a writer.

But this effort has allowed me to reevaluate what I want to do as a writer and where I go next, which I now realize is something I needed to do.

Meanwhile, everything’s off of D2D. I’m now in the process of reestablishing a couple of direct accounts and setting up new accounts with a couple of distributors. It really helps that in one private forum several other writers shared their income sources and, for all of them, D2D was a minor share in this past year. To me, that’s telling.

Now that I’m done with it, what I’m feeling is…honestly, relief. I suspect that I’ve had something niggling at me about needing to move on from D2D for some time now. That it’s exhausted its usefulness for me. I didn’t use it for formatting, sales of hard copies, or for paying anthology contributors—just for distributing ebooks. I think my business mind has been poking at me subconsciously, letting me know that I needed to change things up, especially in the era of generative AI. That while working with distributors is a necessary evil, my writing future when it comes to discoverability depends on doing things differently and moving beyond distributors, while still using a select group of them rather than a scattergun approach and trying to be everywhere.

Before I go into what I am considering doing, let me indulge myself in a minor rant.

For those who say that D2D’s new fees are just the first sign that fee-charging will become a means for sorting out AI slop from genuine human creation, I have…serious doubts. Let me explain.

I’ve been suspicious of some of the justifications people have given for supporting that account maintenance fee, and the other day I realized why. It’s the same sort of language that I’ve seen used to justify charging submission fees for magazines. For spending huge amounts of money on editing for work being submitted to traditional publishing. Criminy, some of these rationales were trotted out years ago for justifying paying huge fees to agents for manuscript evaluations! I was seeing arguments over whether fee-charging agents (above and beyond the cut they take from advances) was a Good Idea since I was a baby writer, with the implication that fee-charging agents would become the norm.

There’s a certain sameness to all of these arguments. An implicit assumption that financial gatekeeping is a Good Thing Which Will Keep The Great Unwashed From Participating In Publishing And Leave More Room For Me.

Ick.

I’m not a fan of gatekeeping in any form when it comes to creative work. One person’s yum is another person’s yuck—and it’s always been that way. Part of my opinion is shaped by my realization a few years back that what I write is not everyone’s cup of tea, no matter how well I write (one particularly painful four-star review from a writing contest slammed that one home, hard—the reviewer did not like how I structured my magic system and the only reason I got a four-star review was due to the quality of the writing, because they judged me using a matrix system). Another part is my firm belief that financial gatekeeping only harms the overall body of creative work. How many wonderful stories are lost because of an author’s financial circumstances? How many authors are unable to find the time and energy to create because they’re working at day jobs that exhaust them?

Eh, that’s probably an argument that will go on forever.

In any case, I’m moving on. Oh, I could pay that damned fee. It’s not like I’m starving in a garret somewhere. But I looked at where I’ve been making sales, especially in the past few years, and decided that I needed a greater flexibility to experiment, both with individual distributors and with creative options. I wanted to cut out the middleman between me and the reader and—that means going direct with distributors. Yes, that means my work is available in fewer venues, but…I wasn’t selling in most of those places, anyway.

The other thing is that I want more security, so that problems with one distributor doesn’t affect my other distributors. I’ve been a loud proponent of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and, well…it was time to walk my talk.

Enough explanation and haranguing about why I left D2D. The theme of this essay is moving on, so…what do I mean when I say I’m moving on?

Well, first of all, I put everything into hard copy on Ingram, with all but two novellas available in both paperback and hardcover. I’ve been following publishing trends, and my sales also suggest that people are looking for hard copies. Ingram also allows for me to sell direct from them, with only printing fees and a small percentage to them—which is a much better return than what I get when one of their distributors sells that hard copy.

I’m contemplating doing something zineish in hard copy with some of my worldbuilding short stories. I did that years ago when I was selling work at bazaars and such, and I’m still mulling over how best to make that work, especially given the price of shipping these days. Perhaps a bundle of separate short stories?

I tweaked the themed samplers I made as part of my newsletter welcoming sequence to hand out as part of a presentation I made as a keynote speaker for my local Soroptimists District Meeting, and people seemed to like that. I plan to make some more with a heavier emphasis on the regional ties of my stories, and try to get them out locally as giveaways during tourist season.

I’m looking at my assorted short stories. Yes, I put the fantasy stories into their own collection, but I want to find a new way to get all of my short stories out. Putting them out through distributors doesn’t really work because of pricing that would make the effort worthwhile. These days I don’t really have the energy to do in-person sales events, where I was selling them. I have unpublished stories that I’m reluctant to send out because…well…visibility and the sheer volume of competition for fewer and fewer slots.

I set up a Patreon and am now trying to figure out what I do next with it. There are several projects that I could run through it in serial form, but…they’re vastly different, ranging from some very oddball western-themed SF to a memoir about horses I’ve known. How best to attract people who would support all of it? That’s something I’m still contemplating.

All in all, though, what my gut is telling me is that I need to find more ways to engage with potential readers. Not just through promotion but through finding means to make a more direct connection.

Where will that lead me?

Well, I’m still figuring it out. Follow along for the journey.

Like what you’re reading? Check out my website at https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com. You’ll find my books there with links updated as I progress through this process. You’ll find some interesting sales at my Itch site—find it here: https://joycereynoldsward.itch.io/. Or if you just want to give me a tip, then feel free to throw a few coins my way at my Ko-fi, https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward. Every little bit helps! And if I get enough pennies, I might…actually make a couple of audiobooks. But that’s a ways off, alas.