Misconception #2
Since I started this misconception thing with the previous post, might as well add another: publishing agents are waiting in their office amid a pile of rejects (the slush pile is now electronic and the agent probably works from home, but hang with me, I’m trying to paint a mental picture here) and they read your book and suddenly find their faith in humanity restored. Okay, maybe that’s not your conception of an agent, although your scenario probably does involve the agent finding your manuscript a diamond in a pile of crap. Let me dispel this conception with one simple truth: agents suck. The whole publishing system sucks. Don’t take it personally if you’re an agent. The industry and the way agents have been set up as the gatekeepers doesn’t position them for success, especially with the decades-long consolidation of the major publishing houses. A few bestselling authors keep those houses alive and allow agents and publishers to put others in their catalog, knowing they’ll get marginally advertised and most likely won’t make it anywhere near a bestseller list.
Why then do I say agents aren’t set up to succeed? Let’s start with volume. If you’ve queried agents, you know that 40-50% of them never respond to your query, which is a simple letter and often a synopsis - in other words, nowhere near the length of a manuscript. Responding, even with a negative, takes time from reading the books they do solicit. These factors aren’t their fault, for the most part. There are only so many books they can read, which crowd out the queries and responding to them. If you think I’m parroting statistics from the Interwebs, go back on this blog about four years and read where I wasted a precious summer querying about four dozen agents after researching several hundred. Am I a victim of sour grapes? Actually, as I’ve said before, I’m very happy as an independent publisher and glad it worked out this way.
What else? They suck because even though they don’t work for the publishers, they’re at the whims of those publishers. If the publisher decides to focus one of their imprints on Armenian vampire detective romances, that’s what the agents start looking for. Is that the agent’s fault? Of course not. At that point, though, the agent might feel more like an employee than an independent worker.
The problem with this model is that finally (at least for today), some agents do suck. They have a political or personal agenda that causes them to focus only on books and authors that meet their area of focus and they are most definitely NOT waiting for your book to appear in their slush pile if you don’t match their beliefs. If you think I’m exaggerating, go check out the bios on #mswl. The shift in the industry over the past few decades toward BIPOC and LGBTQ authors and topics has been well-documented elsewhere. Does the industry trend influence the agents or the other way around? A mix of both, I think, since this publishing model attracts true believers and creates a loop. The agents have targeted conformity with their beliefs over quality and true diversity. Leveling the field to include others is admirable but tilting it the opposite way doesn’t create diversity. In fact, it carries on the lack of diversity, just pointing it in a different direction. As a notable blogger I follow likes to repeat, “The only true diversity is diversity of thought.” Something to think about.
In the meantime, it’s best to realize agents aren’t waiting for your book and if you do happen to find one who wants to represent you and advance your career, take advantage of it and make sure that agent is a good fit with you as an author, your book’s genre, and most importantly, you as a person.
Misconception
One misconception of authors, at least one I've always had, is that the author's circle of friends is deeply invested in their books and keen to read new stuff. Let's clear that up and say I have some in my circle who read my stuff and more who don't. Maybe I need new friends. Just kidding, of course, they're my friends for a variety of reasons beyond reading and writing, but I do envy writers who list a whole page of people who read their drafts, offer feedback, and just generally support their fits of writing and publishing. I’m sure this type of support system is more prevalent in an academic setting and in writers’ groups, the latter of which I’ve joined in the past. I say all this to communicate a little of what it means to do something that is mostly a solitary venture by nature and dispel some of the "romance" of writing, if you will. If you're an author reading this, I hope you have that extra bit of support. For my friends and family who give me that encouragement, it means more than you know. Thank you. I originally wrote this post as part of the author’s notes for The Drop: Season Four but decided it to be a little too heavy-handed for that medium and more appropriate for this. I hope it’s not too self-serving and please don’t read this as a cry for help. I merely intend it to be a reality check for authors who might hold this particular misconception about the life of a writer.
C + P
What am I reading these days? I started Crime and Punishment last week. It’s a book you normally see described as, “Widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, novels ever written.” As far as Dostoevsky goes, the only other work of his I remember reading is Brothers Karamazov, and that was several decades ago. Might be worth another go-around. Anyway, I’m about a hundred pages in. Raskolnikov, no spoilers here since it’s actually in the title, has committed the crime. The writing is mesmerizing. Let’s just say Dostoevsky’s style is massively different from my own. The page-long (or more) trains of thought inside Raskolnikov’s head seemed over-the-top at first, but now clearly convey his character and inner turmoil. The man is quite mad, at least so far, and I’m guessing the inner turmoil will be matched against the outer in due course. I can see why the book is so highly regarded. I can also see that the style might not be for everyone. I’ll update you more on my progress in the coming weeks.
One More Time
It seems like I say this every time I do it and I’m going to say it again. One more time. If you’re writing something that’s going to be professionally published, maybe something like a book, it’s well worth the time to read it aloud. To yourself. To someone else. You will find so many things to remedy along the way. The main items I find useful are flow and repetition, which you don’t notice when reading in a regular, silent fashion. I can’t count the number of times I’ve changed wording because what’s on the page doesn’t sound right, like the way a person talks or how I describe a scene. Wrong word usage sticks out. When a character is speaking, they’ll use contractions and shortcuts in speech, and saying those words out loud helps me detect where I missed those. I also find plenty of repetition in word usage. The most common is using the same word, or a form of it, twice in a very short window, like a paragraph or two. It’s especially noticeable if it’s not a common word. Those occurrences also tend to slip past the goalie during normal reading. This is such a critical part of editing my books that I can’t stress enough how much every writer should do the same. It’s not the final pass through the book for errors, but trust me, it’ll catch most of them.
A Good Start
Yes, I went ahead with writing the start of The Drop: Season Five. Like I said last time, I have the initial scene in my head and I decided to go ahead and put it down on virtual paper. I’m about two thousand words in already and my goal is to make it so I don’t want to stop when the time comes to get back to Season Four. What’s left to do on that book? Well, after The Wife finishes reading it (and she says it’s the best of the series so far, but hey, she’s biased) I’ll do another read-through myself, this time aloud. Then maybe one more - we’ll see. And after that, it’s time to publish. As you can see from the landing page on this site, the cover is ready to go. The biggest consumer of time will be formatting, including the audio version. Still a lot to do, but in the meantime I can work on the next book in the series.
Season Five?
Should I really start writing The Drop: Season Five right now? Over the weekend, I finished my pass through Season Four and now The Wife is reading it. I value her feedback as the first reader of my books and she usually finds a few typos along the way. When she’s done I’ll go through it again, this time reading it aloud to nail down flow and consistency. In the meantime, what to do? Yesterday morning I went back through the previous books in the series and summarized some important info I need to write the next book. I’m sure there are some other things I could do, like entering Assignment Day into more contests, marketing ideas for all the books, etc. The problem in doing those things is that I’ve got the start of the book in my brain and I like to strike while the proverbial iron is hot. I don’t know that I’m ready to write the whole thing yet, especially since I have Season Four to release next month, but at least I can start getting these ideas in motion.
Editing, Editing
What am I up to these days? As you can tell, I’m spending my time editing. Last week I began my initial edits of The Drop: Season Four draft, which included adding some scenes, editing others, and spicing up the ending. I’ve mentioned before that as I write a book, I keep a document with bullet points on what I’ve already figured I’ll need to go back and edit. I do it that way, unless there’s a hugely major problem where I need to rip out a chunk of the book, since it allows me to stay in the flow of writing. Yes, I do go back and change minor things along the way if I need to, but for the most part I save any editing for later. Monday of this week I started the first straight read-through of the book after making the major changes here and there in the manuscript last week. So far, so good. I think this book is in good shape and shouldn’t require any further great efforts to modify, just the normal editing. That’s what I’ll be working on for several more weeks and then I can get the book out in September.
Paper
Assignment Day came out last week but the physical copies, aka paperbacks, didn’t arrive until yesterday. Don’t worry, I’m not going to wax too philosophical here. Many essays and more recently, social media posts, have proclaimed the joys of holding a physical book in one’s hands. From the library to the beach, a real book offers an experience different from the electronic version. I read both types and as I’ve said here before, the overwhelming majority of my sales come from eBooks. It’s not even close. Still, there’s something about opening a box and seeing your book for the first time as a - well, as a book. I have to say the cover turned out fantastic and looks even better in real life. Last night when I showed The Wife, she asked if I was happy with the formatting and how it looked. I replied that I better like it since I’m the one who did it all. And yes, I’m happy with it.
Stalled
I was starting to wonder if Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited reporting was broken. I have six books on KU, which means people with a KU subscription can read those books for “free.” I put that in quotes because you’re paying for the monthly subscription, so it’s not really free. The six books include three - Sunset, Sundown, and Sunburst - that I published a decade ago. They honestly don’t get a lot of traction and I should probably go back and put them in a boxed set. The problem with that is the time commitment because I’d have to proof them again, which means I’ll probably make editing changes, and it’ll just snowball from there. The other three books on KU are of course the first three seasons of The Drop. Where was I going with all this anyway? Oh, yeah. KU reports almost up-to-the-hour on how many pages of your KU books people are reading. The books have done pretty well this year and it’s rare to have a day where nobody is reading at least one of them. Except for this week, where the reporting showed zero pages read for several days in a row. This morning I got some numbers again, which is good since I was about to contact Amazon and see what’s going on. Why the dropoff? (pun intended - see what I did there?) Maybe it’s because in the US school is starting up again. Fewer people are vacationing as summer winds down. It’s hard to say, but it was definitely a weird week.
Other Tasks
When you release a book, there are a number of additional tasks to go along with it. If only it was as easy as hitting the return key and boom, the book is out there and you’re done. There’s the social media to update. The website. BookBub. Goodreads. Entering contests. Author profile on multiple sites. Proofing the audiobook and releasing it. That’s what I’ve been doing this week beyond the mere publication. And I still have more to do. For instance, I haven’t even considered what kind of ad to produce and when to start running it. Maybe I’ll get AI to help me out this time and see what it comes up with.
Assignment Day
Today is the official release date for Assignment Day! I posted it on Amazon last Friday to allow it to process through the system over the weekend and now it’s for real. As I said before, I’m happy with how the book turned out. It’s been so long (relatively speaking) that I wrote it, I’m trying to remember the ins and outs. I recall making some changes to streamline the story late in the process, like trimming down a virtual adventure with Corb and Ruben in the Swiss Alps. Also, a few things to resolve questions and explain some things toward the end. As I formatted the book last week I was able to skim the story and follow the plot, which made me feel good about it. It’s now out in the world and time for me to announce on social media and stuff, as well as updating this site for the release.
Getting Closer
I thought I’d be done with the formatting for Assignment Day by now, but for some reason it feels like I’ve been spinning my wheels on this. The entire cover is almost done, but I need one more render to fix a font issue on the paperback spine. I’m using AI, which means I get a limited amount of generated images per day. I even upgraded to pay for Grok and still didn’t get more images. Not sure if I’ll keep paying for that if I have to wait 24 hours just like the free version. Anyway, some of the wheel spinning is really doing things like coming up with keywords and categories, which take a little research. I’ve also been coming up with ideas for The Drop: Season FIve, usually at night when I’m falling asleep, and in the mornings I take time to write those down. Obviously lots going on this week and I hope to get Assignment Day out next week.
Extra Space
One of the formatting reviews I do with a manuscript is to check the last sentence of every paragraph and look for an extra space after the final punctuation mark. Yes, it’s tedious. It’s better than the alternative, though. How do they get there? Moving stuff around, splitting a big paragraph into two, deleting text, or even just hitting the space bar unintentionally. You might ask, “What’s the big deal? Nobody will ever notice an blank space the width of a character. It’s invisible.” Thanks for asking. I’ll tell you why it’s a big deal. Taking at least an hour to check for those spaces saves frustration and extra work. While they are certainly not noticeable when you’re reading, they throw off the paragraph. What does that mean? I’ll give you an example. I uploaded an eBook manuscript a couple of years ago and flipped through all the pages using the Kindle preview app to make sure everything looked good. I found an instance where that extra space at paragraph end caused the final word to drop to the next line. In other words, the space made the word too long to fit on that line of text. This caused a big blank on that line and an orphan on the new line. I fixed it and re-uploaded the manuscript. As I continued , I found another. And another. I must’ve uploaded that manuscript at least five times. Same thing can also happen to your print version. If you’re formatting your own book, take a tip from an idiot who learned the hard way: get rid of the extra spaces.
Done, d-u-n done
That’s a wrap on The Drop: Season Four. The draft is done, or as I like to say, it’s done - d-u-n, done. I finished the last sentence just a few minutes ago, upending my normal routine and writing first before posting here. I think the draft turned out well and sets up next season nicely. I have some thoughts on a few things to improve, all minor and nothing requiring a major rewrite. The book currently clocks in at 77k words, which might increase slightly. If I decide it needs another chapter for some reason, that will edge the count closer to the 80k mark, but I don’t see that necessity at the moment. How did it turn out compared to when I started writing it? A bit different. I’d planned on making the bulk of the book about two players but decided early on I’d grow weary of that arrangement and so would readers. That’s probably the biggest thing that deviated from my original plan. I surprised myself with a couple of developments along the way and hope they surprise the reader as well. Most of those come from the characters and how they behave and interact with one another. To me, that’s the nice thing about writing without a scripted outline, and no, I’m not knocking that approach. I just feel these books work better when I have an overarching structure and let the characters move about within it. So for now, this book gets to marinate a little bit before I go back for my first round of revisions. I think this calls for a toast.
On the Go
We drove down to San Antonio on Friday for my niece’s wedding, which was on Sunday. I wrote quite a bit on Saturday, more than I expected. Then on Monday I did NOT get up at my regular time and we drove home. So how did writing on the go…go? I felt good about getting some stuff down on virtual paper Saturday, but am so close to the end of this book that I really wish I’d had time to write Monday. I have the ideas and key points in mind to wrap it up, which should happen this week. Writing on the go can be a mixed bag.
Almost There
I’m getting close to the finish for The Drop: Season Four. Today I’ll cross 70k words in the draft, which puts me probably less than 10k away from the end, depending on the story left to tell. That means I should be able to finish by the end of July, or a few days into August at the outside. I like how the story is unwinding and now I need a finale with some fireworks. Not literally, of course. As I’ve mentioned before, once the draft is complete, I’ll let it sit in the virtual drawer for a bit while I work on publishing Assignment Day. That won’t take terribly long, so I’ll probably look at ways to advertise better. Also, I can do a little brainstorming on Season Five. Although I already have the framework in mind, I want to have some other ideas in place before the writing commences. Lots of things going on this month and next. All good.
Remembering
A technique I use when writing a draft, which I’m sure is not unique, is to keep a list of things I need to change when I start editing the book. The reason I do this is because I prefer to keep writing than to go back and edit during the writing process. Most of the things I list are relatively minor and easy to fix. For example, right now I’m writing The Drop: Season Four. I made a note the other day that says, “What about the jackets? Where do they go after the frozen lake?” Yes, I realize that’s cryptic to you. To me, it means I need to insert some info in a few parts on that particular clothing item. Does it require a lot of effort? No. Do I care about jackets? Yes, because the reader will wonder what happened to them. If I don’t like a chapter or more and need to take the book in a different direction, do I wait until the editing process? No. That requires more effort and I tend to do that while drafting. Not that I won’t do it in the editing room if I need to, but in my little world I try to make the draft as complete as possible and use my list to fix the minor imperfections. How long is the list? With a lot of my books, I had probably twenty bullet points at the most. This book has less than five so far. I’ll add more, I’m sure, especially as I start wrapping up plot threads. Keeping the list means I don’t break my flow of writing. That’s how my brain works. Will it work for you?
AI Cover
I mentioned in the last post that I had Grok create a cover for Assignment Day. There’s more to it than that simple phrase, so let’s dig in on how it really went. All of this happened in fits and starts. Each day I went beyond the tool’s image limit since I’m using the free version and it’ll only generate so many things at a time. That’s fine. If I really intended to use the tool on a regular basis I’d pay for the added capacity and the processor time these things consume. Anyway, the first part was easy. I prompted Grok for the front cover of a book using the description I gave it of the book’s plot. It returned six images, only four of which I could see due to the image limit mentioned above. I liked the first two, the third not so much, as well as the fourth. I asked The Wife for her opinion and she also liked the fourth. I asked Grok to make a few minor changes, such as removing some meaningless words above the title (seriously, I don’t know where they came from) and make the character in the picture to be of high school, not junior high, age. It returned a really nice update and that’s where the problems started. I asked for a high-resolution, print-ready version of the cover and it said sure, I’d be happy to do that. And then it produced a completely different cover. I said no, that’s not it, I liked the one you produced before that. It gave me another variation. And so on. I finally uploaded the image of the one I liked and had downloaded and it agreed that was the one it should’ve been using. Anyway, I now have a cover for the book. I might even put it on the front page of this site and see who notices. Grok has offered to create the spine and back cover. Let’s see how that goes.
The Middle
Here we are just after the mid-point of the year and it’s time to review how things are going relative to the goals I set out in early 2026. Here they are with my updates:
1. Publish First Step - Done! And done in spite of having my appendix removed in January as I was in the midst of putting the cover and everything else together to get this book out the door.
2. Publish Assignment Day - Almost there - I generated a cover with Grok that I really like. As soon as I’m done with the draft of The Drop: Season Four that I’m working on, my next task is to format and publish this book. It’s been languishing too long and it’ll be fantastic to add this to my catalog. It should be published by August.
3. Write three seasons of The Drop - This one is on course. I’m 80% done with writing my second novel this year and I don’t think it’ll be a problem to get in a third.
4. Publish three more seasons of The Drop - It’ll be close on whether I can get this one done. If I start drafting a new season in August I might squeeze in the third published book of the year by December. Of all the goals for the year, this might be the one that I barely miss.
5. Enter First Step and Assignment Day into at least three contests each - I’ve done so with First Step and gotten great reviews. It picked up the Gold Book Award from Literary Titan and a must-read from Reedsy Discovery. The Reader Views award won’t be announced until late November. Once Assignment Day is published I’ll be sure to enter it into some contests.
All in all, I’m tracking well for my goals. We’ll check in again at the end of the year and see how things turned out.
Bad Ad
My recent ad for The Drop hasn’t been winning many clicks. In fact, last weekend it didn’t get any. Not to be discouraged, though, I have a new idea for the ad, which I’ll run this weekend. Part of the mystery of this way of advertising is finding the thing that causes people to take a chance and click on it. In this case, it could be the ad itself. Or it could be the audience I’ve specified, since BookBub targets the ad toward people who’ve shown interest in the authors I specify. In other words, it takes time to find what works. As I mentioned recently, it took several months to refine ads that produced results for First and Next Time. It’d be nice if I could say there’s a science to this and results are guaranteed, but that’s not the case. Just another part of being an independent author.