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- [DIGEST] Gimme some candy
[DIGEST] Gimme some candy
Your weekly stackable roundup
In the least surprising news of the week, I like Halloween. No, I don’t eat many sweets, and no I don’t like dressing up, and no, I don’t particularly enjoy random people coming to my house, but there’s something about those three things in concert with each other that I do like. Maybe it’s the fact that everyone agrees for one night that you can be weird and it’s okay.
Every other day of the year we’re encouraged to conform, but on Halloween we are told to let our freak flags fly, and that doing so will be rewarded with candy. That’s kind of cool.
To celebrate the spooky season, I’ve been reading this very cool book on cemeteries called Over My Dead Body by Greg Melville, and I learned some neat facts.
Did you know, for instance, that cemeteries have a long history of doubling as urban parks, and that Central Park took its inspiration from somebody saying “Well, maybe we do the whole graveyard thing but without the dead people?”
It kind of takes a bit of the fun out of that story about Mary Shelley having sex in one if a lot of other people probably did too since they were popular hangout spots.
How about this one? Did you know that in 30 years Facebook will have more dead people on it than living ones, and is probably already the largest cemetary in the world?
I thought it would be a creepy book on graveyards, which is my vibe, but it turned out to be a book about urban planning and capitalist greed, which is also my vibe because I contain multitudes.
If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.
1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.
2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.
Yo, what is happening to my body right now? I have felt bunches better in the past couple of days. My goal was to be a 3 by the time I went to 20books and it all comes crashing back to Earth, and I think I am there, though just barely. I felt so good I was singing to the dogs when I got up the other day. What is even life? Is this what healthy people feel like all the time? How do y’all complain about anything ever if your body just…works like it should? Wow.
WHAT I WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week, I’m crossposting an article I wrote for our excellent Author Ecosystems Substack about how to use Kickstarter for every ecosystem.
Before I headed into the sewer to chase down a mangled rat, I needed equipment. I stopped by a pet shop and picked up a carrier, some rat food, and bandages to tie up the animal’s wound. The attack happened almost a day ago, which meant that if the rat was bleeding out, it might be dead already, and that would complicate things. I was not a master necromancer, and I preferred not to hang around those weirdos.
“You want some bedding?” the cashier asked. “Rats really love our empty nester bedding.”
“No, thank you,” I replied. “Just the carrier and the feed.”
“What about some hay? Or a toy? We have a really nice wheel. Usually for hamsters but rats—”
“No,” I said more forcefully. The happy cashier’s face dropped to an intimidated scowl. I looked at the counter and saw a little fluffy plush cow. I placed it on the register. “All right, maybe just one.”
She perked back up. “Excellent. And thank you for shopping at Pet Stop.”
All back chapters used to be only for paid subscribers, but I unlocked my archive this week, which means all chapters of The Godsverse Chronicles are now free for all subscribers.
You still only get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog by becoming a paid member. You can start your membership with a 7-day free trial.
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME THIS WEEK: In my effort to be everywhere all the time at the expense of my sanity, here’s where you can catch me this week.
LIVE Q and A - TODAY @ 1:30 PT/4:30 ET - Join me at the Direct Sales for Indie Authors 1-Day Event today! I’m talking all about Substack and doing a 30-minute Q and A at 4:30 PM ET/1:30 PM PT. REGISTER FOR FREE
9 SEXY TAILS OF THE KITSUNE - I wrote a story for the new Luminous Ages anthology on Kickstarter right now. My story is neither sexy or about the Kitsune, but it is a pretty haunting one about the White Cloth Demon. BACK THE CAMPAIGN
UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week, I’m talking about the two major subscription models that seem to be working for authors right now. I thought this article was launching last Wednesday, but I forgot about the Author Ecosystems crosspost, which doesn’t show up on my schedule until AFTER it’s posted. That is not very good UX, especially since you can’t change it once you set it, but whatever.
There are basically two models you can use to build the continuity part of your author business.
We often call this “subscriptions”, which is wholly accurate, but the reason I call it continuity is because we wouldn’t say “I have a subscription to AAA”. Instead, we generally call this a membership fee.
As such, a subscription is not broad enough to define the entirety of this category, even though it is basically the same action people take across all available options
In publishing, I see two types of continuity programs working well right now.
ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.
Business-y:
and fix their business in public, accesses their creative reserves, and explores two paths to AI prompting.
crafts their business world, has adventures in sales through a B2B-cession, and learns lessons from a failed startup.
makes a great acquisition, talks team structure with Sprout Social’s director of social media, and dissects how the Cash app grows.
Publishing-like:
sparks a connection with readers, uses their newsletter to connect readers with their characters, varies their theme, and deals with imposter syndrome.
and turn witchcraft into a full-time income, is mindfully angry, and starts to clean when things get messy.
releases Mary Shelley’s notes on Frankenstein, reflects on six months on Substack, and explains Substack sections.
believes in your creative voice, doesn’t porcu pine for Ernest Hemingway’s war crimes, and highlights the dictionary people.
Culture-ish:
loves and leaves Cairo, finally feels satisfied, tells a grief tattoo story, and stops optimizing for their wedding.
traces Britney Spears’s journey from bad girl to bad mother, learns everything they need to know from a sci-fi novel, and gives a backstory on butts.
gives the five deadly sins of supermarkets, rejects life to pursue perfection, and internalizes sexism.
asks if anything easy and fun can also be worthwhile, turns an apple into an orange, and understands their trust capacity.
discovers their pain scale, makes friends online, and explores addiction through Matthew Perry’s untimely death.
feels grounded, is fooled by joyful randomness, explores Michelangelo’s mental health, and is not too ugly to find love online.
Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.
UPCOMING KICKSTARTER: If you care about direct sales at all, you must have this two-volume guidebook to mastering direct sales for authors.
and I have been working on this book for basically our whole careers. This book contains a combined 25 years of hard-won practical experience from building our own direct sales empires and helping hundreds of authors build them, too.
If Author Ecosystems is the lens by which you look at direct sales, then Direct Sales Mastery for authors is the guidebook. Whether you are just thinking about direct sales or you want to take your business to the next level, this is a must-read book, and it’s available exclusively to Kickstarter backers. It won’t be on retailers for several months after we deliver it to Kickstarter. If you want to get ahead of the curve and hit 2024 running, then we hope to see you behind the backer wall.
If you like what I’m doing around here and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. You also get access to my YA alien invasion novel, Invasion.
Aliens are invading. The Earth is doomed. The end of the world is a bad time to fall in love.
Joshy is a normal kid from an average town suffering through a mediocre road trip with his family. He's positive this vacation will be just as bland and uninteresting as every one that came before it.
Then he meets Debra. She's everything he's ever wanted in a girl. She's smart, funny, and radiant. They love all the same things, right down to the same obscure comic books. There's a definite spark between them.
Literally.
The moment they finally kiss, a bolt of electricity from Debra's mouth knocks Joshy unconscious. He wakes up to a shocking truth.
Debra is an alien. Worse yet, another race called the Globorians are about to invade Earth and enslave all of humanity. Now, Joshy and Debra must race against time to stop the Globorian plot and save the planet before it's too late.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.