Random Thoughts

If you’ve ever wondered how a story evolves from a rough idea into a full-blown series, Half a World is exactly that kind of journey.

It didn’t start with a perfectly mapped-out plan. Like most things, it started with curiosity… and a lot of questions.

Where the Ideas Come From
Some of the concepts in Half a World came from going down unexpected rabbit holes.

Take, for example, the idea of extreme machinery—like a nuclear-powered locomotive capable of traveling across continents in a broken world. That kind of concept sticks with you. The sheer scale, the danger, the engineering behind it—it all feeds into the kind of gritty, high-stakes environment that defines a post-apocalyptic setting.

Even if those ideas don’t make it directly into the story, they shape the world. They make it feel bigger, harsher, and more real.

Real Places, Real Inspiration
Not everything comes from imagination alone.

Sometimes it’s a place. A moment. A view that sticks.

A jetty in South Florida, for example—once a quiet, familiar spot—now closed off after a hurricane. That kind of change, that sense of something lost or altered, is exactly the kind of feeling that finds its way into the series.

On the other side of that same stretch of water is Casey Key, a location that directly inspired scenes in Half a World. Real-world locations ground the story, even when everything else is falling apart.

Launching the Series
The journey officially began with Book 1: Less Than Half.

What started as an idea turned into something real—available to readers, open to feedback, and immediately tested in the real world.

There’s always that moment when you hit publish and wonder what comes next.

Reviews start coming in. Rankings shift. At one point, the book even hit #54 in New Release Dystopian Science Fiction. Not bad—but like any author, the goal is always to keep climbing.

And then comes the next step: keep writing.

Expanding the World
From there, the series grew quickly.

• Book 2: Half a World pushed the story forward, taking Jake Reynolds into even more dangerous territory—across the Atlantic, with no safety net.
• Book 3: Half a Life went out to beta readers, bringing deeper development and a more complex story.
• Book 4: Half Way Home followed, expanding both the stakes and the world even further.
• And beyond that, the series continues to grow—with more books already in motion.

Each installment builds on the last, not just in plot, but in scale.

The Role of Feedback
One of the most important parts of this journey hasn’t been the writing itself—it’s been the people along the way.

Beta readers play a huge role. They catch things you miss. They challenge ideas. They help shape the final version of the story.

Sometimes, those connections go beyond the page.

Meeting readers in real life, talking through ideas, hearing what resonated (and what didn’t)—that’s where the story really sharpens. It becomes less about what you think works and more about what actually lands.

And one thing becomes clear:
Every author needs honest feedback. Not just praise—but real reactions.

Writing Isn’t Always Clean or Linear
There are delays. Rewrites. Entire sections that need to be reworked.

Sometimes a book takes longer because it requires more research. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes you step away briefly—only to come back sharper and more focused.

That’s all part of the process.

What matters is momentum—and continuing to move forward.

What Comes Next
The Half a World series is still evolving.

New books are in progress. The story continues to expand. Characters are pushed further, into harder choices and more dangerous situations.

And like any good post-apocalyptic journey… there’s always something worse waiting just over the horizon.

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If you haven’t started the series yet, now’s a good time to jump in.

Because this world? It’s only getting bigger.

This was a fun question to get asked. The answer is because the author who writes him is old-school and carries one!

My military career spanned the late 80’s and early 90’s. This was a time when the “9mm wars” were taking place and every manufacturer was competing to be the new military-issue handgun. In the end, the Beretta 92 won out and was issued as the M9.

This was a terrible choice.

It looked good on paper. It was an American-designed-and-made pistol aimed primarily at law enforcement service and civilian use and had the requisite 15-round magazine and full metal frame. The large ejection port in the slide reduced feed jams and it was accurate enough to meet the military’s standards.

Until you took it to the field. Nothing against the police, I’m friends with many of them, but they don’t often get down in the dirt for extended periods or live in the field for days on end. In other words, they stay clean. Their weapons do as well. So the 92 worked fine for them, it was even highlighted in the Lethal Weapon films by Mel Gibson.

But that giant ejection port on the 92 was nothing but a dirt funnel for grunts low-crawling through mud and sand, and although they had no way to predict it when they chose it, the grunts of the 90’s and 00’s saw a lot of dirt and sand. The 92 soon became a one-shot-and-jam weapon, and soldier confidence in its reliability plummeted. Many of the soldiers I served with kept it wrapped in plastic until they might need it, reducing it to an annoying burden.

I grew to hate it, so I looked for the best alternative.

After trying several I was steered toward the Browning BDM by a respected armorer. The BDM stands for Browning Double Mode and that translates into it having two trigger actions. It’s a little complicated, but I’ll try to make it simple here.

 Along the top left-rear edge of the slide, there’s a round drum with a screw-slotted head offering two options; “P” and “R”. (P=Pistol mode and R = Revolver mode) Turning the screw to align with a “P” on the slide adjusted the lockwork to make the BDM behave like a Double-Action/Single-Action trigger system. When the shooter sweeps the trigger back, the hammer cocks back and releases firing the first shot. The slide then cycles in recoil, cocking the hammer and resetting the trigger to the rear for a crisp single-action pull for the next one. This is how most other pistols of that time worked.

But the BDM had another option. Turn the selector to align with an “R” (for revolver) and the gun behaved somewhat like, well, a revolver. There was no multi-chambered cylinder of course, but the trigger pull was now the same long, smooth stroke as a revolver. And, like the same revolver, you can thumb-cock the exposed hammer for a crisp single-action pull. This is approximately the same trigger action as most DA/SA revolvers in police service use. There was also a safety that doubled as a decocker when the BDM was in pistol mode.

The magazine had a flathead screwdriver tab that the shooter could use to adjust the mode they wanted.

I liked the versatility, durability, and the accuracy. I also noticed that while there were several options out there many of the operators I worked with were quietly buying BDM’s for field use. I still saw the flashy 10mm and .40’s at the range, but when it was time to suit up the BDM was their go-to weapon of choice. (That and the 9mm round can be found just about anywhere in the world, which was a factor for some of us)

So I now have one that’s been to several countries. I beveled the well a bit for easier mag swaps and outfitted it with tritium sights, but other than that it’s the same as the day I bought it.

It never let me down.

So when it came time to outfit Jack it was an easy choice. These days the polymer frames and trigger safeties of the various Glocks rule the land, but I’ll take my full-size all-steel 15+1-round field-proven workhorse over them every day.   

Why don’t you have audio books yet?

I get this question a LOT. I want to have audio. I need to have audio.

But the process of producing audio is a serious one, especially if you have a dozen books out already. I can’t just a few of them, right? I have to do them all or the series would go unfinished for that reader/listener. It’s not fair to them to do only some of them. So I was looking at not only a significant cost but also a serious amount of time to produce the entire series. That was one issue. The second was that I really didn’t like the distribution choices out there. These problems made Audio something I tended to kick down the road.

But things have changed.

Let’s look at the issues involved.

Cost.

Cost for audio narration ranges widely. From my research a quality narrator can run you several hundred dollars per finished hour of work. My novels are long by most industry standards so I was looking at mid-four figures to produce one book. The ROI of that process would take years to make up.

Finding a narrator.

There are several ways to do this. Reedsey has a list of vetted narrators and they all have samples you can listen to. Findaway Voices has a similar “Marketplace”. I played around in both and found some voices that I could see fitting the stories I write. But that led to the next issue.

Availability.

The good narrators are busy. Most of them are booked for months if not years in advance.  With a library of a dozen books, with more on the way, it was going to be next to impossible to nail down enough time for one of those narrators to do all of my existing books. And what about future books? Could I publish them in all the other formats and then wait months or even years for that narrator to be available again?

So what to do?

The ideal narrator is one that can produce an audio book rapidly and at a cost that produces a return on investment in a reasonable time. They would need to be available to work whenever the book was ready, no getting sick or worse; dying, and remain in business for the life of the author’s career.

There’s only one person that fits that description: Me.

If I’m going to produce over 20 books in a short amount of time by myself, I need some help.

I’m told I have a distinct voice. One that would be good for audio. Most people don’t know what they sound like until they actually record themselves with good equipment and play it back. So I played around with the equipment I bought for podcasting and determined that yeah, maybe they were right.

(Personally I think I sound like a Gen-X Darth Vader, but if that’s what works so be it.)

So we have the voice issue solved, we just need to solve the time issue. Between writing and ScribeCount I have very little time to record. I would have to find a short-cut.

An author friend of mine directed me to a company called 11Labs. Through them I am creating an AI voice of myself. I never thought I would do this as I didn’t think an AI voice would do justice to my books, but I have to say the samples that I’ve heard cannot be easily separated from the real thing. If I weren’t listening with the goal of separating the real voices from the AI voices I probably would not have noticed for some time.

If I can produce my books with the same level of quality it will solve my problems with getting my entire library out to those of you screaming for audio. I know it’s not your preferred choice, and please understand that it’s not mine either, I would much rather have a real narrator, but for the reasons I’ve outlined this is the best option for getting the books produced and out to you. I would rather have this than no audio books at all.

The bonus in all this is that my AI voice will improve with every new book I push through it, until eventually there will be little to no difference between. My AI voice is also available anytime I need it, all I need to do is upload the completed manuscript to it and push a button. So in the near future Audio books may hit the shelf as fast as the ebook and print versions do. I intend to make them available everywhere I can, including my own website store.

So for those of you waiting for the audio version of my books, they’re coming.

That’s a win for both you and me.

I’m often asked how I got started in this whole being-an-author thing. The answer involves a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of luck.

I was always a big reader. I carried one with me wherever I went. My teachers were constantly taking books away from me in class. My parents would often admonish me for bringing a book to the dinner table. I was more interested in what the characters were doing than the adult conversations they were having. I was often told to put the book away but not every time and I see now what they were doing. Letting that reading habit flourish has paid off well.

By the time I hit high school, I was penning short stories of my own. I’d often base characters on my friends, making them characters of themselves and placing them in the oddest of situations. These hand-written stories (this was before computers and email were a thing) would then get passed around the school for a few weeks and then I’d do it again. It was a fun distraction from the schoolwork that I only took a half interest in.

The writing took a break for several years of jumping out of planes and visiting the unfriendly parts of the world while serving in the military, but returned once I came home and became a flight medic. There’s a lot of downtime between calls and I would fill that time writing stories.

One day I was covering for a guy stationed at a firehouse. If you’ve ever seen the inside of one there’s the usual row of recliners parked in front of a TV. After the day’s training is over it’s not unusual to have a movie marathon going while we all wait for the tones to drop. Since the movies were almost always interrupted, I tended to hang back and write.

While we would all go on medical calls the fire guys (and girls) would return to the station while the medics took their patients to the hospital. It would often be hours until we got back.

That’s where I made my mistake. But I’m glad I did.

I left a full manuscript behind one night, one that I was editing, to go on a call. When we got back the TV was off, it was oddly quiet, and my manuscript was missing. I found it in the day room, where a long row of firemen were reading a page and then passing it to the guy in the next chair. I protested, but it was twelve against one.

Later that night the lieutenant found me and handed the pile of dog-eared paper back to me.

“It’s good, you should send it in.”

“Thanks, but it’s just a hobby.”

“Shouldn’t be.”

My partner on the escape pod agreed, and he hounded me about it for the rest of the month. So I looked into it. What did it take to get a book published in 2008? I had no idea.

I often wonder if I’m in control of what it is I’m doing, or if I were to let go of the wheel I would have still ended up on the same path.

Like most self-published authors I tried going the trade route first. I queried, revising the letter for every agent and publisher out there. With a career in full swing at the time, a special woman entering my life and the progression of middle age making itself known, the writing dream was a hobby with a lottery ticket option. I never dreamed it would get beyond that.

While waiting for editors and agents to respond I ran across an ad for Trafford  Publishing. (This was before they were swallowed up by Author Solutions) and had a few copies made of my first book Closure. Sales were predictable and that was okay, I could still point at it on the shelf and say with all honesty that I had written a book.

Then I got a call from an editor at a major house. She liked the book and wanted a full manuscript. I mumbled something barely intelligent, hung up, and immediately Googled her. To my amazement I found out that she wasn’t just an editor, she was Vice President of the company. Someone who had been in the publishing world for over 30 years. When I started breathing again I told myself to step back. I knew the odds were still long, so I kept doing what I was doing and educated myself about the business a little more every day.

I’m very lucky that I did. While I was waiting for that editor to come back I was also reading Joe Konrath‘s blog. I examined KDP as it grew. I read blogs by other authors who had traveled this path before me. I learned about agents. I learned about contracts. The world of publishing was undergoing a huge change, and the timing could not have been better.

The editor got back to me in a couple of weeks and said she loved the book, BUT she had a few changes. I made them. She suggested more. I made some more. Then she suggested that I change the major twist in the story, the McGuffin, basically turning it into a clone of every other book in that genre.

I took a deep breath…and said no.

She made an offer. A good one.

I said no.

I stopped sending out query letters.

I deleted my list of editors, agents, and publishers.

I printed off Joe’s blog and read every word with a highlighter in my hand.

I read other blogs. I discovered Joel Friedlander. I discovered Kboards. I discovered The Passive Voice.

And I kept writing.

I met Derek Murphy at Creative Indie and he made me an awesome cover.

I wrote and re-wrote my blurbs.

I experimented with Select and read more blogs.

I stopped lurking and started joining the conversations.

And all this time I kept writing. Sales trickled in and then steadily grew.

After book three came out I went permafree with book one. Eight months later book four came out and I hit publish on it with a Bookbub ad of the permafree the same day.

That month I made well into five figures.

My wife and I discussed it. Two weeks later I quit my job and bought a new laptop.

That was twelve years ago. I now have twelve books out under Randall Wood and several more under a pen name. I built and launched ScribeCount, an indie author reporting service, in 2021.

I make my living as a writer now. I write Monday through Friday and play on the weekends.

It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and that’s saying a lot.  

I have great fans who write me awesome fan mail. So much I can spend a good hour every morning answering it all. It’s a first-world problem but one I love to have.

Now I’m working on a three-book post-apocalyptic thriller. It’s huge, close to 300,000 words by the time it’s finished. For me, that’s equivalent to three full-size novels. It’s also nothing like my Jack Randall series which is what my readers love the most. So it’s a big gamble, but one I feel will pay off.

That many words require a lot of time. Which I have less of since launching ScribeCount. My days are now divided evenly between the two with ScribeCount often winning.

But I’ve noticed something that happens to other successful self-published authors. They fade away from the internet.

 I’ve watched others who found success before me slowly disappear from the self-pub internet world. We’re constantly told by each other we need to blog and promote and tweet and Facebook and Pin and …..whatever, to increase/maintain our audience.

There’s some truth in that. From a business point-of-view, it makes sense. But sometimes I think you need to look at something strictly from a reader’s perspective.

Why do those successful writers disappear from the blogs and chat rooms? Is it because they’ve learned what works and no longer need to frequent them? Or is it something else? Do they have a dedicated fan base that they know will help them sell their books? Or do they know something that the others don’t?

We’re told to write 80% of the time and promote the other 20%. I always thought that was good advice and in the back of my mind knew it was a sliding scale in relation to a given author’s success. Now I’m wondering just how much that scale differs, and in what direction.

I follow a lot of my fellow authors. The successful ones blog less and less as time goes by. They seem to fade away from the other social media sites as well. This is contrary to what we are told we need to do, yet these authors seem more and more successful with every new book.

Why?

They have found their audience, and they are reaching them directly. Like everything else in the self-publishing world, we’re seeing a change. Where before an author had to spend a large part of their time marketing the ones that did that well can now dial back and focus on that loyal following of dedicated readers they cultivated. This has led to the Newsletter and Direct Sales taking the place of Facebook ads and Bookbub deals. Direct sales are becoming a more important part of that author’s career. Where Amazon and KDP once ruled, there is now BookFunnel and Shopify.

It’s a natural progression.

So I’m adapting to meet that change. With ScribeCount now up and running I can focus on writing books again. I’ve revamped my website (Nice, huh?) and started a newsletter. I’ve made all my books available here and will most likely have a bigger online store in the near future.

It feels good to be writing again.

So that’s how it all started, and how it’s currently going.

I’m excited to see what happens next. If you’d like to follow along with me on my journey sign up for the newsletter. I’ll check in about once a month or whenever I have a new book coming out. There will probably be a free story in there every once in a while along with some other giveaways. I’ll try and keep the pictures of Henry to a reasonable level.  

“What inspired you to write Closure?”

This is the question I get the most and I wish I had an incredibly insightful and deeply inspiring answer to offer in return. Something that would just blow the reader’s mind with its awe-inducing wisdom and prompt them to inhale the rest of my writings for more of the same.

But I don’t.

At least I thought so. The inspiration for Closure comes from a dark period in our nation’s history. One that has unfortunately been repeated several times since. The Maryland Sniper shootings of 2002.

At the time I was a paramedic, spending many hours a day meeting people on what would be the worst days of their lives and fighting to get them through it. While doing so there was someone else a few hundred miles away doing the exact opposite. My partner and I spent our time between calls following the story as it played out across Virginia and Maryland.

It was different from Columbine or any other mass shooting we had heard of up to that point. Mostly due to its randomness. That, and the fact that nobody had voiced a reason for what they were doing. The combination of the two was unnerving and my partner, who like me had an interest in such things philosophically, uttered this; “Why can’t they at least shoot someone who needs it?”

Now, “Who needs it” is of course different depending on who you are speaking with, but in 2002 we were not long after 9-11 and the country was divided on several things. We were gearing up for a second war in Iraq. The politicians were capitalizing on the fear generated by 9-11 to implement laws that overstepped what most would consider our basic freedoms and the gap between the haves and have-nots was getting wider every day. There was a lot of uncertainty, and with that always comes fear. So, most people had no problem coming up with a list of people that they felt we could do without. Maybe not to the point of shooting them in the streets, but the frustration was certainly building, and it has only gotten worse since.

His statement made me think. “What if they did?”

And an idea was hatched. From that idea, Sam Shepherd was born. I don’t think Sam’s frustration was different from the frustration we feel today. Sam’s pain just happened to be very close to home and he had the skills to do something about it. I think I had the outline done by the end of the week.

The idea sat for many years before it was turned into the book Closure.

But that was then and this is now.

It’s been years since the Maryland shootings and the frustration level has grown both in real life and on the pages of my books. The Twelve Shepherds picks up Sam’s mission in today’s world. I get fan-mail from readers that wish what happened in the books was happening for real. I respond with two words.

I don’t.

Change at the barrel of a gun is always short-lived and I would hate to see it tried here in the United States. Let Hollywood do it, there’s no need to bring things to that level. The question everyone should ask is “How does that end?”

I’m glad that people are enjoying the books, but they’re just books.

Let’s keep them that way.

I wrote a version of this essay around ten years ago. It was my answer to the ever-repeated question of authors being better off self-publishing or pursuing a traditional deal through an existing Big Publishing House (BPH).

Back then we had a resource known as AuthorEarnings, a now-defunct website created by best-selling author and self-publishing guru Hugh Howey and a statistics guru then known only as Data Guy, (Paul Abbassi) in an attempt to expose what kind of money authors were really making. Hugh’s data raised quite a bit of controversy, with rebuttals coming from several trade-publishing supporters such as Mike Shatzkin, Dana Weinberg at DBW, and agents such as Donald Maass calling the whole study such things as “incomplete”, “a stellar example of what not to do”, and saying that it “raises more questions than answers”.

Sidenote: Abbassi ended AuthorEarnings in 2005, taking the data that was provided to him by many indie authors with him. He then founded BookStat in 2007, which services mainly Big Publishing Houses and charges them fees that are well out of reach of the indie authors that helped him.

This is his reply when asked about the future of Author Earnings:

“Bookstat.com is totally separate commercial business from Author Earnings, with an informal agreement to occasionally provide some aggregate data to AE on a pro-bono basis,” he wrote. “Like Bookscan, Bookstat’s customers are generally businesses with at least $10 million in annual revenues, to be able to afford Bookstat.com yearly subscription fees.”

There has not been a free Author Earnings report since 2018.

Bookstat was acquired by Podium Audio in 2022.

The Covid 19 plague called into question much of Bookstat’s reporting.

I didn’t argue Hugh’s numbers then, and I’m certainly not going to do so now. Most people took those numbers and twisted them to support whatever agenda they had at the time. One thing that I did notice in the many responses was the insistence by the trade-pub crowd that the numbers meant little, that it was simply not how the trade publishing world worked. They said this while offering no data to support their argument. Regardless, they failed to see (or tactfully ignored) the main question that the reports attempt to answer.

Is a new writer better off pursuing a trade-pub deal, or going it alone with self-publishing?

A lot of things have changed since then. But one thing that hasn’t is the way that the Big Publishing Houses view their customers. They may view writers differently, but that is only because they have to. Today they view them in two groups; writers that are aware of the option/advantage of self-publishing, and those that are still in the dark and view the BPH’s as their only option.

But that’s a separate topic, one that I’ll pursue at a later date. For now, let’s talk about how the BPH views its customers.

Notice that I didn’t say readers. Why? Read on.

It’s now accepted that publishers no longer view the reader as their customer, the customer for the publishing industry is now accepted to be the bookstore. The reader is viewed as a persona, a variable to plug into an algorithm in an attempt to find the next 50 Shades of Grey.

So, from a BPH point-of-view, what kind of reader are you? Most would answer by genre; I like Thrillers and Science fiction. I think trade-pub sees the reader in an entirely different way.  To trade-pub, you the reader fall into one of three categories;

                The Casual Reader: This is the reader who divides their entertainment time and money among several other different sources, be they TV, Movies, or Newspapers, in addition to Books. They stick to authors they know, usually best-selling names, and rarely divert from them. Their busy lives and short supply of free time limit their reading to less than 12 books a year. Price is not much of an issue due to the low volume of books they purchase. They prefer Paperback and Hardcover or are late adopters of e-books. They are also the group least likely to try an unknown self-published author.

                The Voracious Reader: This is the reader who spends his entertainment time and money on books and little else. They put one down and immediately shop for the next one. They make up the smallest percentage of the reading public but spend the most dollars-per-person by a large amount. Most were early adopters of the e-reader, and due to their reading appetites seek out lower priced books. They are the group most likely to try an unknown self-published author.

                The Defensive Reader: This reader prefers to get their entertainment from sources other than books, reading perhaps one or two a year at the most. However, they are by far the largest population of readers out there. They read mostly for social reasons; when the Casual Readers in their social group are all talking-FaceBooking-TicToking about a book they will not hesitate to pick it up. They are driven by Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). They are the group most likely to be seen reading the hot book-of-the-moment, and also the ones telling the world via every social connection they have what it is they are reading, thus promoting it even further. The Defensive Reader is what makes a book a blockbuster. By their nature they are nearly impossible to market to. The Defensive reader requires a Casual Reader to stimulate their reading/purchasing of a book.

What’s changed in the last ten years is the wide adoption  of social media and the rise of the “influencer”. One influencer can equal dozens or even thousands of Casual Readers. This despite their actual knowledge of the book itself or the expertise of that influencer in relation to the book’s subject. One viral ad/video can work the same way. Clicks and Likes trigger FOMO, and FOMO leads to defensive reader engagement.

Most industries would target the voracious consumer as logic states they would be their most valued customer. If your product were candy bars this would be true. Books however, are much different in flavor and ingredients. They also cost a significant amount of money to produce and a different recipe is required every time. It is much more profitable to make one candy bar that everyone likes and sell it millions of times than it is to produce millions of different candy bars and sell one of each to millions of people.

As book prices rose, voracious readers found other means than buying new to feed their habit. Libraries, used book stores, book swaps, etc. In example, for every reader who bought Stephen King’s latest in either hardcover or paperback, there were probably fifty who didn’t buy the book new but read it anyway.

To test this, I visited my local library when King’s book Kennedy came out, I reserved it on the library list, and was informed that I was number 234 in the queue. That means 234 people who wanted to read his latest, but weren’t willing to pay retail for it, were willing to wait behind 233 others. Ten years later and I still have yet to receive a call telling me it is now my turn. With low-priced ebooks, these readers are buying again since it’s so cost effective. Here is where Big Pub is making a big mistake, again. By slapping high prices on ebooks, they are discouraging this group. The Author Earnings reports proved (to me) that this “shadow” market was now being served by indies.

Consider this quote from Mike Shatzkin, made on his blog titled “Vendor-managed inventory: why it is more important than ever“, April 23, 2013;

                “Looking at the store’s records for the month, 65% of the units sold were single units: one copy of a title. Only 35% were of books that sold 2 or more. (I didn’t ask the question, but that would suggest that 80-90 percent of the titles that sold any copies only sold one.)

                Then, the following month, once again 65% of the units sold were singles. But only 20-30 percent of them were the same books as had sold as singles the prior month. Upwards of 70% of them were different titles. And upwards of 70% of the ones that sold one the prior month didn’t sell at all.”

What Mike is describing is Casual Reader purchasing activity. A book a month and a different title each month.

If you combine this statement with the reader personas, then add in the economics of book production and distribution, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that the targeted reader for the BPH’s, the one they spend their marketing efforts on, is the Casual Reader. Once you realize this every baffling practice adopted by Big-Pub falls into place; the select list of big-name authors, the monthly new releases, the high cost of trade-pub ebooks, the purchased coop space, the limited marketing push for new authors, the six-month shelf life, the lack of marketing for the existing mid-list. It all makes sense now.

More importantly it leads to this; There is an upper limit to how many Casual Reader Authors a publishing house can have at any one time.

Following this profit-maximizing strategy is the way they position themselves for the elusive blockbuster novel. This is the book that attracts the Defensive Reader, the reader who was the real target all along. Once this happens that book becomes pure profit for the publisher.

While the Casual Reader is the target for all the Big-Pub marketing, the end-goal is always the Defensive Reader that they cultivate. Whether it be by word-of-mouth, social networks, influencers, viral ads, or just peer pressure, they are the trigger that produces the blockbuster. It’s a trigger that Big-Pub cannot pull on their own. The Voracious Reader, and the authors they read, are viewed as the unfortunate cost of reaching the Casual Reader. The six-month trial period a new author/title gets is simply how long it takes Big-Pub to determine whether or not the Defensive Reader has been triggered and FOMO has come into play or not.

Trade-Pub lives in fear of losing the Casual Reader. If a Casual Reader were to become a Voracious Reader that would lead to less Casual Reader Authors being read, Big-Pub does not produce enough of them, and if they did, the cost of reading them all would be very high. If this were to happen it would reduce the chances of the blockbuster trigger being pulled. This is why Big-Pub regulates the release of Casual Reader Authors titles, slowing them down to a schedule that prevents the Casual Reader from becoming anything else. The Defensive Reader is an elusive animal, but their numbers are HUGE. 50 Shades of Grey did a lot to support this, most readers admitted that they had never read a book in that genre before, yet the book sold millions of copies.

This is further supported by the hand-written note made by Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon and Shuster at the time, on the margin of an E-mail made to Eddie Cue of Apple in regard to the Big 6-Apple price fixing case;

                “Higher prices slows Ebks/casual purchaser/keeps retailers/stops authors leaving”

The Apple/Big-6 case pointed to just how afraid the publishers were. Price is usually the defense of a collusion charge, but the real reason is simply that Amazon can do something that they cannot; target the Voracious Reader.

In the beginning Amazon was like most on-line businesses, they just had a more forward-thinking guy at the helm. He saw a future for books that they did not. Amazon was the first company that had a motivation to turn Casual Readers into Voracious Readers.

Jeff Bezos modeled Amazon around the idea that selling one unit each of a million products would make the same amount of money as selling a million units of one product. Books were the perfect product for this, particularly in digital format. The only thing he lacked was the means and the content. This lead to the invention of the Kindle (the means) and the creation of Kindle Direct Publishing (the content). Amazon simply needed more content, a tsunami of it if you will, than the BPH’s were willing to produce.

The BPH’s biggest fear is due to the fact that they have no way to copy or compete with this. If they join Amazon (without the aid of collusion) they lose a large degree of control (read; Pricing). Remember, Trade-pub depends on the Casual Reader > Defensive Reader > Blockbuster Model. They count on the Grisham’s, Patterson’s, Brown’s, and King’s, to keep them afloat and provide the funds necessary for them to throw mid-list spaghetti at the wall hoping for the next 50 Shades to stick.

To be fair, Amazon, and the self-publishers they enable, are doing the same thing. Most are also hoping to trigger a blockbuster. They are just doing so by way of the Voracious Reader > Defensive reader > Blockbuster Model. The big difference is that while doing so the authors are keeping their copyright, maintaining complete control of their product, publishing on their own schedule, writing what they wish to write, giving the readers longer than six months to discover them, and according to Hugh’s data, making a lot more money while they do it.

As soon as writers realize that Big-Pub is not even looking for the next John Grisham, and is only looking for the next E.L. James, will they still go the way of the query letter? Will they still waste months on submissions and hand over 15% of a lousy advance to an agent, all while they wait a year or more for their book to get its six-month chance at the lottery, a lottery that may not even exist as they think it does? What will the mid-list authors currently under contract do with their next book?

What will the Big Publishers do when the quality writers no longer submit their work? What will happen when the successful self-published authors refuse to be cherry picked, turning down million dollar offers, leaving their agents, leaving their publishers, or simply never sending a query at all? Without content and a steady supply of fresh spaghetti to throw at the wall, what will they do?

We’re now 14 years into this business we call self-publishing. The BPH’s have been thoroughly disrupted yet are maintaining a lose grip on the print market. The new reality is that there is very little that a BPH can do for an aspiring writer that the writer cannot do for themselves. As more authors realize this, the less of a hold the BPH’s will have on the publishing world.

When that happens there will be nothing left but the writers and the readers, as it should be.

Randall Wood is a former Special Operations Medic and the author of the political thriller Closure.

That’s a loaded question.

In 1994 Tom Clancy published a book titled Debt of Honor. The plot involved the rise of a shadow government in Japan that was intent on returning it to its pre-WWII empire. I’ll skip the first several hundred pages and tell you that the book ends with a 747, one flown by a radicalized Japanese pilot, crashing into the Capitol building and killing almost every member of the United States government’s leadership. The book was a best seller.

A few years later terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center, killing over 3,000 people and sparking two wars that would kill hundreds of thousands more.

In 2018 I published Rebirth, the final book of my Twelve Shepherds saga. It ended with a mob of angry citizens storming the Capitol building and killing several members of the country’s leadership.

Two years later that happened for real. Several people died. Thousands are in prison. Three years later, as I write this, we are still dealing with the people who caused it and the fallout of their actions.

I’m not saying that the two situations have any direct correlation. Nor am I saying I have the audience or influence of Tom Clancy. Both books are works of fiction. Neither were written to radicalize anyone or start any form of armed rebellion or government change. I don’t feel that I, or the stories that I write, have that kind of effect on people.

But it only takes one.

I’ve started multiple stories since Jan 6^th, 2021. None of them made it to the finish line. I’ve become a bit gun-shy with my words. I’ve dabbled in other genres, ghosted a few stories for other people, and compiled a large folder of story outlines. Most of them will never see the light of day. Obviously, there was a disconnect somewhere, and I didn’t know how to overcome it.

I needed a break. So I looked for something to do until this gun-shyness went away.

One of the things an indie author needs to do is tend to the business side of producing and selling books. To accomplish that I list my books on over 57 different sales platforms. I advertise them on a dozen others. There’s also the website to maintain, social media to keep up with, reader correspondence to take care of, and the occasional conference to attend. In between all this, we somehow find time to crank out the words.

Since I wasn’t writing I looked for some non-writing thing to do. I keep a folder of miscellaneous ideas so I pulled it out and thumbed through it. There’s an idea for a better stop-stick for the police to use. Another for improving the way we plumb houses. A third for a pan that cooks bacon perfectly every time.

And then I found a napkin with the idea for a reporting service outlined on it. Several actually. I read them twice and decided to see if I could make it a reality.

That was in 2021. Over the next few years, I found a business partner, recruited a team of developers, and produced a minimally viable product. We called it ScribeCount.

What it does is simple. It saves me, and a slew of other indie authors, a ton of time.

57 sales platforms is a lot. If you were to ask me “How many books did you sell yesterday?” I would have to visit each of those platforms, download a spreadsheet, upload it into an Excel pivot table, crunch the numbers, and then produce an answer. By the time I’m done doing that, the number is already antiquated.

ScribeCount automats that process. Then it makes lots of pretty graphs and charts that show me what I need to know. Then it lets me filter that data so I can see everything all at once, or drill down to a single book on a single platform in a single country. Once we had that done we turned to ads. We now track them as well and display that information in the same dashboard. It’s something I’ve wanted since I started this adventure back in 2009.

It’s been a welcome distraction, one that I’ve needed.

BUT….I’m still a writer.

Just because I was ignoring the voice in my head doesn’t mean she shut up. Quite the opposite.

ScribeCount is to the point that it no longer dominates my every waking moment. As a result, the voice has gotten louder. I’ve been “staring out the window” (as my wife puts it) more and more these days. There’s a pad of paper on the nightstand and another in the car. Ideas form. They get expanded on. Plots follow and characters are being born. New ones to go with the old ones.

Jan 6 is being dealt with, and it’s not my fault. It’s time to move on.

I’m currently wrapping up a four-book post-apoc series. It’s written in the first person and unlike anything I’ve done before. I’m enjoying writing it and will probably be sad when it’s over.

But once it is I have plans for Jack, and Dayton, and Larry, and Sydney, and a slew of new characters. Outlines are done. Chapters are stacking up. The front page of the paper is feeding the muse again and this time the output is good. I’m averaging 2,000 words a day and steadily increasing. I found a new cover artist. I rebuilt the website. (What do you think of it?”) I’m looking into making an AI version of my own voice for Audiobooks.

What I’m saying is…I’m a writer again.

So brace yourself. Books are coming.