Industry Prediction for 2016: Collaboration

I’m about three months late on this year’s state of the digital publishing industry address. [shrugs] But I’m still early for last year’s taxes. First, let us reflect on last year’s post, Ebook Subscription Services are Doomed. Remember Oyster? The Netflix of books? Okay, enough reflecting on the past. Suffice to say I’m freakin clairvoyant. I’m Deanna … Read more Industry Prediction for 2016: Collaboration

What the Wattpad? Making Money from “Free”

wattpadFor the love. First they tell me “tree hugging isn’t a paid profession,” and now writing isn’t either? I pick all the wrong careers. Nothing beats sitting in front of a liquid crystal display jamming my fingertips repetitively into alphameric and numeric buttons all day long to create a splay of digital information from here to timbuk-twitter. Working in my pajamas. Rejecting routine hygienics. Washing up only for weddings. An occasional tree hug. It’s the perfect life.

Franzia to FishEye

But the trick is to make enough scratch to not live from one box of wine to the next, and today’s market is a mixed bag. On the one hand, higher ebook royalties bring the sweet life into focus. If a writer can purge enough enjoyable content from brainpan to Amazon/Kindle in $2.99 chunks then said writer can upgrade from Franzia to FishEye, even with a relatively small following (say 15,000 fans).

On the other hand,

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Diesel vs. Steampunk: Publishing Ethics

Dieselpunk VS. Steampunk by nitr0gene
Dieselpunk VS. Steampunk by nitr0gene

[dropcap2]W[/dropcap2]hen it comes to ethics, the RedneckGranola is driven by a prime directive — “stick it to the man.” Basically, greed and injustice demand civil disobedience. Thus sneaking food into a movie theater that charges two dollars for popcorn is unethical, while a theater that charges six dollars demands that I sneak in food to support the cause of the globally popcorn-oppressed. Simple. (a 200% markup is business, a 1000% markup is oppression).

But when it comes to the self-publishing ethics and marketing ethics of my upcoming novel, where do I draw the line? It has been said that “a duck is a duck is a duck.” But one could also respond, “duck, duck, goose,” so you can see my problem. (Truly mine is a dizzying intellect.) When writing a dieselpunk, weird Western, pulp adventure story there are two main options available for its marketing:

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