Well, I guess it’s that time of the week again where I sit down and go over what’s been going on with me over the past week!
First up, though…
A Few Notes
- I threw up a post yesterday about social media and my future plans for it and my website here. It’s a really important post, so I highly recommend you read it. (Or, if you don’t feel like reading or prefer audio, you can now watch it on my YouTube channel, which is a new thing I’m doing!)
- The audiobook for Revelations, the third book in The Becoming Series, is currently 50% off through Audiobooks.com!
Writing
I got decent bit more done this week than I did last week in the revisions for Bloodlines, thank goodness! Still running a touch behind, but I’m slowly playing catch-up! I managed to write 6,181 words in the book this past week, which was an improvement over the week before by something like 2,000 words. Still not as much as I’d like, but at least I know what I should aim for over this week! Part of what slowed me down was reworking a scene while inserting yet another fully new scene too.
Total word count for this month so far: 27,319 words
Editing
Editing was a bit slower this past week than it was the week before, racking up only 233,683 words. I think a lot of that had to do with not being under the gun trying to finish things with a short deadline. I think I might end up breaking one million words this month!
Total word count edited this month so far: 993,438 words
Reading
Read a good deal this week, though I only finished one thing. But there was plenty of other things to read that weren’t books, so here’s a few!
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
Yet another read for the Gothic Tradition class. This was lengthy, so I actually finished it a little late, but I wanted to wrap it up just so I could say I completed it. I…didn’t really like this one, to be honest. Walpole’s book was much better than it.
“What Can We Learn From Barnes & Noble’s Surprising Turnaround?” by Ted Gioia
I’ve been watching B&N’s turnaround for a little bit now with very high hopes, because the last thing I want to see is a book world dominated wholly by Amazon. Ted Gioia covers B&N’s recovery very well, not only giving a rundown of what was going on with B&N before the new CEO took over but the moves said CEO took to help the company not just recover…but actually grow.
Brandon Sanderson’s State of the Sanderson 2022, in which he goes on a tear about Amazon/Audible and ACX. An excerpt:
However, they [Audible] treat authors very poorly. Particularly indie authors. The deal Audible demands of them is unconscionable, and I’m hoping that providing market forces (and talking about the issue with a megaphone) will encourage change in a positive direction.
If you want details, the current industry standard for a digital product is to pay the creator 70% on a sale. It’s what Steam pays your average creator for a game sale, it’s what Amazon pays on ebooks, it’s what Apple pays for apps downloaded. (And they’re getting heat for taking as much as they are. Rightly so.)
Audible pays 40%. Almost half. For a frame of reference, most brick-and-mortar stores take around 50% on a retail product. Audible pays indie authors less than a bookstore does, when a bookstore has storefronts, sales staff, and warehousing to deal with.
I knew things were bad, which is why I wanted to explore other options with the Kickstarter. But I didn’t know HOW bad. Indeed, if indie authors don’t agree to be exclusive to Audible, they get dropped from 40% to a measly 25%. Buying an audiobook through Audible instead of from another site literally costs the author money.
Watching
I actually haven’t done much watching this past week, outside of random YouTube videos from channels I subscribe to. So tune back in on this topic next week, when I’ll hopefully have gotten the chance to sit down and watch what’s been released of season one of The Last of Us!
Listening
My listen-to-more-new-music project continues apace this year.
According to Last.fm, this past week I scrobbled 222 tracks, which consisted of 23 different artists and 26 different albums. Of the artists I listened to, 57% of them were new, and of the albums 77% were new. I think those are actually pretty good stats so far!
For those interested in that sort of thing, you can see my entire last.fm profile right here. Feel free to follow me over there! I don’t really interact much, mostly just scrobble and track my stats, but I do like looking at my followers’ profiles for new music suggestions! (And if you don’t use last.fm, I can’t recommend it enough—I’ve been on the platform since 2008, and it’s great!)
What have you been reading, watching, and listening to this month so far? Let me know in the comments! Maybe I can get a good new suggestion or two for something new to check out on my end!
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I really like this type of update! Also, your version of “slow” when it comes to editing is so much more faster than mine, lol.
I’m glad you like this kind of update! I was trying to come up with something that was a little different (at least for me) because I’m fully aware I don’t post enough on here, so I’m trying to change that. I figured something like this, where I do a rundown of my week and the kinds of stuff I’ve been doing and soaking in (with music and books and such) would be a fun way to do it, especially since I can kind of compile it and add to it through the week!
And yeah, I edit pretty fast, probably because I read pretty fast! It helps that I do it full time, though I’d LOVE to primarily write full time instead if I could to be a little less reliant on other people for my income. My book income is, like, ten percent of what I make every month, so I’m hoping to increase that eventually!