It’s been a little more than 13 years since I self-published Mr. Olcott’s Skies, my amateur astronomy memoir. Since then, I’ve released 18 titles of various lengths, most of them full-length novels. Over that time I’ve changed as a writer – for the better, I’d like to think – and expanded my reach beyond the sci-fi genre with gratifying results. In June of this year, I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my first novel, The Luck of Han’anga (Book One of the War of the Second Iteration), by marking down all my work to a mere 99¢. My 13th year, in a month with a Friday the 13th – it seemed like a can’t-miss promotional activity. And it worked pretty well. Books were sold, more than five hundred all together – not bad at all for a month in which sales are usually very low.
It’s been a little more than 13 years since I self-published Mr. Olcott’s Skies, my amateur astronomy memoir. Since then, I’ve released 18 titles of various lengths, most of them full-length novels. Over that time I’ve changed as a writer – for the better, I’d like to think – and expanded my reach beyond the sci-fi genre with gratifying results. In June of this year, I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my first novel, The Luck of Han’anga (Book One of the War of the Second Iteration), by marking down all my work to a mere 99¢. My 13th year, in a month with a Friday the 13th – it seemed like a can’t-miss promotional activity. And it worked pretty well. Books were sold, more than five hundred all together – not bad at all for a month in which sales are usually very low.
The promotion was also something of an eye-opener. Of the sci-fi and fantasy titles that sold, the overwhelming majority were books two through five of the War of the Second Iteration series, with a handful of the coda Where a Demon Hides and the standalone novel All That Bedevils Us. Book One of the series, mentioned above, barely achieved double-digit sales. The only way to interpret that, really, is that a crowd of existing readers, who have over the years picked up that first book, decided to commit to the rest of the series when the price made that choice extra attractive. A good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure it can be characterized clearly as one or the other. For the record, I’m delighted that so many readers have decided to commit to reading all five books, and that does raise the hope that they’ll go on to the two follow-ups, and possibly the unrelated titles. But that realization, that this large-scale reduction in price didn’t actually bring in a lot of new readers, did trigger an assessment of where things stand.
The result of that accounting wasn’t exactly encouraging, and came at an unfortunate time.
The writing year started out on an awkward note when the annual accounting revealed that book sales the previous year had fallen off considerably (I just broke even on expenses). The current year has shown little promise of reversing that trend. And then the current work in progress ran off the rails. It’s the third book in the Children of Rost’aht tetralogy, and its plot unfolds at the same time as the second book, The Best Laid Plans. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to be a much larger challenge than I expected (thus rendering the title of Book Two somewhat ironic). As I was working my way through this unexpected problem, news came of Meta stealing a vast library of books to train its so-called AI chatbot. Nor was the Meta theft an isolated incident. All these books were scraped from a pirate site that I thought had been shut down. Three of my books turned up in the database provided by The Atlantic and I have no reason to doubt that more – if not all – of my books have been used for AI training by Meta and its competitors. It seems to be S.O.P. to use pirate sites for chatbot “training,” to avoid at least getting permission from authors. Book piracy is an unfortunate fact of life, and one that is rarely open to permanent resolution, but being reminded of it in such a blatant fashion was unpleasant, especially considering the other ongoing matters.
So, the realization that my best efforts at book promotion were not doing much to increase readership, absolutely necessary to increase book sales, on top of these other situations, opened that box in my brain labeled Self Doubt. It’s the sort of realization that leads to heavy drinking and/or a change in life goals. Well, as it happens, I’m a cheap drunk, and I’ve never known drowning my sorrows to be very effective – the bastards being such strong swimmers. And I already know that giving up writing will do me far more harm than excessive alcohol consumption.
I never expected to find myself facing a “where do I go from here?” situation on the threshold of my seventh decade of life.
And yet – here I am, still working on that troublesome Book Three, pleased to find that it has finally developed a life of its own and is developing as I’d originally hoped. The breakthrough, when it came, provided a huge boost to my morale. Also, here I am sending out a new weblog essay. In other words, I’m still writing. And you might very well wonder why. What could possibly keep someone motivated to write, under such circumstances?
In her introduction to Bird By Bird (a book absolutely all writers should read), Anne Lamott provides the answer to that question; I’ve never seen it stated more clearly. “Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do – the actual act of writing – turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”
Every time I reread that passage, the truth of it rings more clearly. I write because it’s what I do. It’s too much a part of who I am to ever really give it up. If the words of Ms. Lamott don’t ring true for you as well, are you really a writer? It’s the truth for me, and so my answer was, and remains, yes.
Under Desert Stars 
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