Storytelling versus Story-selling

An excellent dilemma to be facing, certainly

Photo by Zephyr Thomas

Recently I tried to join a website that promoted authors based on the content they wrote, providing a place for readers to find the sort of books that they enjoyed in a wide range of genres. I say tried to because ultimately it was unsuccessful; not only was I unable to gain any of the exposure that I was looking for, but the site has since been shut down entirely. While it didn't exactly go as planned, the experience was worthwhile for a number of reasons. As part of the signup process, I was asked basic information like how long I'd been writing (an important thing to know for many readers?) along with advice to give to other aspiring authors. This confused me for a little while, since it's still a new thing for me to consider myself an author at all, much less one that would be able to dispense advice of any kind to anyone. But that's what they wanted, so who was I to say no? What came out kind of surprised even myself, so here it is:

Stick with writing and work through discouragement as best you can. Most of all, decide if you want to sell books or tell stories, as the requirements for both are very different. If you have a great story that editors or agents tell you won't sell, give it away for free. You were meant to tell that story in one way or another, and how can you tell who will be affected by the reading of it?

One of the major things I thought about a lot before deciding to become a public, published author was how to make my books available to people. I knew right away that traditional publishing was off the table, which was ironic considering that I had wanted to become a published author since I was very young. I hadn't ever considered self-publishing, though, since it wasn't a thing back then. The most straightforward method of self-publishing nowadays is to simply list them on Amazon, usually under the Kindle Direct Publishing system, granting access to Kindle Unlimited, and then be done. Amazon's enormity will ensure that people will see and read your book, at least for a little while. But I also knew right away that Amazon was off the table. The company is in no way aligned with my values, and as a family, we haven't shopped with Amazon for years, so why would I allow them to profit from my writings instead? I knew a different solution was needed.

Early on, I had considered simply giving away every book for free. Every ebook, of course. Cory Doctorow is an author that I used to really admire; his positions on information security, government freedoms, and technology really resonated with me and I enjoyed his books from Little Brother all the way through Pirate Cinema. But not any farther than that, I couldn't even finish Walkaway. Regardless, one of the unique things he did at the time was to make all of his ebooks available online for free (as in beer). Anyone could download them, in any format, with no restrictions. If you wanted a copy on your Kindle or Nook, you still had to pay the store for that privilege, but if you were comfortable with sideloading, you could stand to read a great deal of great writing for no cost to you. Of course, being who he was, he also made his books available for free as in speech, and opened all of them up with a Creative Commons license such that fanfictions and other derivative works were not only possible, but endorsed. I'm not sure I'm quite ready for copyleft, but the idea of making what I write available for free was very intriguing. The cost of ebooks is, after all, zero, despite what Amazon might want you to think with "delivery fees" on Kindle downloads. What better way to get readers interested in my books than to give them away for free?

That's already the norm, though, at least for more experienced authors. "Series starters" are the first book in the series (trilogy!) available at no or low cost while the rest of the books are full price. Readers don't know what they're getting themselves into, especially with a new author, so this is an easy way to find out what an author is all about at minimal investment. I liked the idea, but wanted to extend it to all of my books, not just the beginning of each series. Which is kind of ironic since I've ended up only releasing series starters so far, going wide in the truest sense of the phrase!

I was hesitant, though, to give up all possibilities of recompense when it came to ebooks. I wanted to be able to make money on what I do, so I wanted to take advantage of some of the marketing opportunities that are available for indie authors. Ways to reach a bigger audience and get my name out there so people can see my book and ultimately buy it. I tried it out with Octave of Stars, submitting it to two such opportunities, each with fairly large reach and reputability. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that my writing doesn't measure up to the rigorous standards needed for even self-published authors nowadays. It's no secret that I don't use professional editing services, instead performing rigorous self-edits and reading each story aloud several times to catch all the issues and errors (which will literally always do the trick. I find many typos in the AAA books that we read as a family, and they get worldwide distribution! I use commas in a dialect-accurate manner and it's too bad, so sad). Octave was rejected both times, but all the while readers were telling me how great it was, how refreshing that I didn't rely on the usual tropes of a YA urban fantasy book and tried to make something different. That was when I knew for certain that I was truly meant to be a story-teller rather than a story-seller.

But I still had a direct sales storefront, so what to do with it? I next explored the intersection between giving things away and being compensated for them (like a podcast) through setting up a pay-what-you-want model for stories instead (PWYW). I had followed the Humble Indie Bundle since its beginning, through the change to just Humble Bundle since Indies weren't important anymore, then to their inevitable buyout and now being just Humble. Which they aren't even that anymore, but oh well. I watched the stats for each new bundle, how people were willing to pay millions of dollars more than they needed to download games that had already been out for years, and do it consistently, too. Devs and charities all benefited. Other great examples of this include Bandcamp and itch.io, where creators can let people download their content for free or pay if they judge it to be worth it. By looking at the amount of support that musicians like virt receive, I think there’s definitely something to be said for it.

The first iteration of the ZMT Bookstore used WooCommerce as its basis, which I don't recommend unless you're willing to be pretty technical with it. In order to enable PWYW transactions, you had to pay a large fee for an extension, which I learned later was just a bundle of code that would modify existing functionality. I could have done it myself if I was willing to get down into it. But I wasn't, so there you go. The current framework of the store uses Payhip, which I've been nothing but happy with so far, not the least reason being because it allows PWYW right out of the box, no extra anything needed. And it succeeded, too, as several of my recent ebook transactions have been above the minimum price that I had posted. People will support you if you give them the means and the reason to.

Next alternative idea, subscriptions. If you use Substack for any length of time, even as a reader, you'll be asked repeatedly about subscriptions. I think that's why they're called Substack, because you sub-scribe to people's stacks. I had always thought the stacks were under something else, like a tower of stacks. Anyway, the idea sounds great, writing and getting paid for it, but it also implies that you write things that people want to read. A large number of people, too since you want them to give you enough money to be able to make it worth their while and yours. I went back and forth about that, too, even had subscriptions enabled here for a very brief time, before I decided that Substack, Inc. was not a company that I wanted to be supporting monetarily. Which goes back to that original problem. 

Not to mention the pressures of having to maintain a subscription reader base. You have to write things that people are willing to pay money for, and you have to do it regularly and consistently. Which has always been a struggle for me. I'm not a stay-at-home dad who can write while the baby naps, or a retired gent who has plenty of time to write in between my own naps. I do work from home, which eliminates my commute time, but that work-from-home job is full time, plus I have two teenage children who need my daily attention, and a struggling garden and 7 acres of land to take care of, and church and community obligations, and so on. It takes me weeks or months to write anything meaningful at all, so adding additional expectations to give people their money's worth? To turn a phrase, "Oh no."

So what does this all mean for you, a reader of this fine, free, pretty irregular publication? What is the point of all this rambling? It's an outline and a vision. In order to maximize the balance between my story-telling and my story-selling, I've decided to go forward with this plan.

• All stories from ZMT Books will be available to read for free, either here or on another site. Proper ebooks won't, those will still be available from the Payhip store and other storefronts like B&N and Kobo. But, the cost will be minimal, and you will still get bonus material if you buy directly from me.

• This Substack publication will always remain free. Octave won't be put behind a paywall, and neither will Paper & Feathers when it comes out later on this year.

• Print books will still cost money, of course, and will still have extra stuff that isn't in the ebook version or the bonus bits. 

• A subscription plan will be available for dedicated readers, once again through the Payhip store, that will grant access to everything, even the extra print bits, and DRM-free downloads of every story and audio recording that I produce.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the fact that I'm here to share the ideas and the stories that God has given me with the world. I can't do that nearly as easily by charging $2.99 for a book that no one has ever read, from an author that no one has ever heard of. Recently we were browsing the DVDs at Goodwill and my daughter picked up a movie that we'd heard of, but never watched. My wife said that if she hadn't seen it, we weren't buying it. That's the essence of what I'm doing here. I'm not asking people to pay for a book before they read it, but afterwards. If you check out a book from the library and love it, you buy a copy for yourself. If you read a story here on Substack or on Campfire and you want to get a downloadable copy to put on your Kindle to take on a plane ride across the ocean, you can. If you know a teenage boy who doesn't like to read anything and want to give them a copy of Octave because it has plenty of action and the guys are actually capable, then you can. It's all about options. And that will make more of a difference than paid editing, an expensive cover design, and all the marketing in the world.