2023 Anniversary Update - Messenger Edition

Alright, so time for the big, talky Messenger update where I go into more detail on a bunch of things. With the jump in Patreon support, my recent aversion to commentary, and Mob being generally available, I did want to provide a bit more depth than I usually do.

So I’m going to cover a variety of topics, including some that I considered (and sometimes half-wrote) making a separate post for over the year.

The first part is going to be an in-depth retrospective on how all the books have gone. Then I’ll meander into various other topics. I also want to avoid this being another “things are shit” post, but note that there’ll naturally be some downer comments in the retrospective, even though I’m just trying to explain things.

But First, Positivity

Before I jump into the retrospective, I figure it’s important to reiterate what I said in the broader anniversary post.

Things have stabilized a lot more recently. Amazon releases are, by their very nature, very spiky. Part of the reason monthly releases are the de facto standard in haremlit (and sometimes other genres) is that it smooths out your income a lot more, and can cushion a bomb because you have more books coming. It matters a lot less whether Amazon is willing to recommend your book for longer (referred to as a “tail”).

Patreon and audiobooks have picked up a lot this year. They’re also proving more stable. Spellblade’s audio sells fairly well even when there’s no release for the series. Something that is impossible on Amazon (Demon’s Throne’s sales are in a pit due to the 18 month+ gap since its last release). I’d heard a few authors speak about the reliability of audio compared to Amazon, but have only begun to understand it myself. My gut feeling is that it’s because Audible is selling audiobooks, not an all-you-can eat subscription that requires an endless supply of new content to keep people subbed.

So I’m feeling refreshed and willing to stick to writing what I enjoy. Less pressure to rush things to a finish and move on, or to trend chase (which I still have no interest in, particularly as the current goblin craze is yawn-inducing to me and feels anathema to anything I’d write anyway).

My overall income did drop and expenses are higher this year, but not as badly as I feared. It’s possible Patreon and audio combined will be half my income next year at the current rate.

Anyway, keep this in mind as I go through each release.

Neural Wraith 2

The warning shot, so to speak.

Neural Wraith 1 did surprisingly well. Like, this was a book I worried would be my worst performer period. It certainly had a slow start. NW1 broke into the Top 1000 of the Kindle store for a few hours. Compare that to the really big guys in harem like Bruce Sentar and David Burke, who have books around the Top 100 for days (or a week-plus). They sell far, far more than me.

The real story behind NW1 was that it had amazing legs. This meant that people kept reading it long after the initial release date, and Amazon kept pushing it. It continued to do well over the six months after it came out, which is why it has far, far more reviews than its sequels. People enjoyed it.

So I figured to do something fun that leaned into the self-contained plot of the first book. After I wrote a short story on Patreon that had a somewhat unsatisfying ending, I expanded that into a complete book. Plots would be episodic with elements that tied into a greater narrative, themes, and the world. This also extended the time before I could end the series.

In the original plan, Book 2 was the “acceleration” book, that established things for Book 3’s big climax in the series. The original idea was that Nick’s investigation into Kraus’s death (which happened at the very start in the original outline) unveiled deep corruption, while the Aesir case was resolved and caused a huge stir. Nick would still stop short of blowing things up and taking down a major corp outright, but unlike in Book 1 where everything calmed down (and the same in the finished Book 2), tensions remained high.

The new plan took away the acceleration angle, and meant I’d need another book to establish the climax if I decided to end the series.

I quite enjoyed writing self-contained books. There were benefits and downsides, and my memories tended to focus on the benefits until I blew things with Book 3. A self-contained book is far lower in complexity, as there aren’t tons of plot threads and character arcs carrying over between each book. Things largely started and ended with each book, only to carry over the characters and end state of the previous entry.

Unfortunately, writing a good mystery is hard. I still have some holes in how I do it and have plenty of room to improve. Sometimes I’d realize I need to rewrite a certain part of the book, only for it to have knock-on effects for the entire mystery. This meant a small rewrite might require me to adjust lots of other stuff, including substantial adjustments to the outline. Book 2 had an entire conference removed, including an appearance from Welk. In Book 3, I rearranged the timing and content of the visit to Asgard (including the handling of RTM’s Archangels).

The other problem was that a self-contained book needs to wrap everything up by the end. In Spellblade, I often push things into the next book. Character arcs and even major plot elements can be shoved back a book so long as there’s still substantial plot progress and battles at the right times. Neural Wraith gave me no leeway. So while I wasn’t writing as much or feeling as tired after finishing a book, there were obstacles I couldn’t predict. This stung me during Book 3, as I vastly overestimated my ability to write it quickly.

But back to Book 2 and its release.

Book 2 actually did fine. At least, at first. All the signs of the disaster coming for Book 3 were there, I just glossed over them.

So this was a warning shot. One that, if I’d noticed it, probably would have caused me to use Book 3 and the protest plot as a lead-in to a Book 4 finale. Instead, I expanded the world, characters, and plot. Only for it to blow up in my face.

Neural Wraith 3

The topic of so much debate and questionable takes about why it did poorly. I don’t agree with many of them, and the data doesn’t really back any of them up. With Mob and HS6 out, plus more time, I have more data (you know, the thing that tells you stuff, instead of making shit up).

My current opinion is that it’s a mixture of audience drift and the algorithm. The audience drift is the same thing I talked about a year ago after Spellblade 5 that made a bunch of people angry. In short, I don’t think my books fit into the current vibe of the genre and a significant amount of readers (particularly newer ones interested in much higher levels of smut) don’t like my stuff. A bunch of them likely read NW1 because of the hype, but didn’t return.

Algorithmically, I think it’s a bunch of issues compounded together. It’s sci-fi, it’s serious, it has less action, it’s less sexy, it’s investigative and episodic instead of action-focused and serialized. This means Amazon struggles to find comparable books, and recommends it less (because when it does, there’s a good chance they don’t like it). The reason why so many authors like to manufacture or follow trends is because it helps Amazon recommend the books (if you like this goblin book, you’ll probably like another almost identical goblin book). Genericism is the goal.

The book itself was a trainwreck to write. I tried to rush it, but also needed to move and had a hard deadline to meet due to planning to take time off in March and go somewhere. All three of those problems met in a three-way head-on crash. I managed to move, but the book’s release date got pushed back and my planned break got nixed (enhancing the burnout I felt and leading in a large part to my long break afterward).

In retrospect, the smart decision would have been to stick with Spellblade 6 (which I ditched after negative feedback on what I’d written and huge worries about getting it done in time) and just push it back to late April. Things may have been far different this year.

But that’s not what happened. In the end, things worked out, kind of. Neural Wraith 3 got done and is a book I’m really happy with, despite some flaws and parts of the outline that didn’t work but that I lacked the time to revisit. The Altnet section needed major adjusting, much like how I changed the middle parts of Book 2, but I instead had to perform emergency surgery to it and just cut out the stuff that plain didn’t work (which is why it’s a short-ish section).

As mentioned above, I wrote this book with plans to extend the series. Mostly because I hadn’t fully cottoned on to the underlying sales problem affected the series. Pre-orders looked decent, too.

There hasn’t been any miraculous recovery in sales. Mob overtook it recently, despite being out for less than half the time, because it benefited from HS6 releasing. This means it’s still my worst release since my Empire books.

With that said, I don’t really plan to ditch the series. I started it as a passion project and still have lots of ideas. I constantly have to fight off ideas and distractions that might draw me to write more Neural Wraith instead of other books. I’m optimistic that I can rely more on Patreon to just write what I want, although I’d be lying if I wasn’t worried that a bunch of people will just leave while I’m working on it and return for whatever fantasy series they want (the dangers of the rapid patron growth I’ve seen lately). Audio doesn’t appear to be a major concern at present, as it’s still doing well enough, even if it’s noticeably softer than my other series (honestly, could have been far worse given how badly Audible fucked up Book 2’s release).

Ultimately, I’ll need to manage this as a passion project between other things. Hence why it’s on the backburner for a while.

Mob Sorcery

The recent complicated release.

Mob is another series I really enjoy writing, although it’s ended up being more complicated than my original plans. It’s still something I’m sliding in between releases and putting up here, though.

The idea of doing a Patreon-centric story was something I tried back in 2021 (I don’t think I’m the only author) and abandoned after poor reception. But my Patreon has stabilized, and it did much better (and might have been a better fit). I decided to try it out because I’d been seeing some opinions (and actual data from Royal Road authors) that Patreon was far more stable and reliable. Particularly at a time when harem output was drastically increasing and with AI being a concern on the horizon. To put it in business speak, Patreon represents the success of my “author brand,” while also freeing me up to write stuff I love instead of chasing the algorithm.

The background to Mob is… complicated. The core ideas date back nearly a decade, as I created an urban fantasy world for a bunch of characters and factions from a fantasy story of mine. Something of a guilty pleasure that never got published anywhere. Over time, the world evolved, grew, and became more than a fanfic of my own work. The problem became establishing a good story. I’d tried a couple of times, but struggled to come up with something compelling. I also felt the world wouldn’t fit in with the shifter craze, as that leaned much more on 2000s-era urban fantasy (stuff like Vampire the Masquerade and other World of Darkness properties), rather than “living with magic.”

Finally, the inspiration hit me with the launch of an Arknights event focused on the mafia. I’d been thinking of a story based around a low-level enforcer rising in power and influence, but wasn’t sure who Vince could work for. The Arknights event helped me create Pola and Alessia, who are partly inspired by Lappland and Texas (although also drastically different). I sought out other mafia influences, too, which is why there’s all the capo stuff. Then I decided to make it an alternate history setting and everything came together quickly.

It also got very positive reception from the people I sent out an early version to. So I elected to push it to Patreon, and everyone seems to love it.

Except Amazon. Pre-orders were very soft (and the sales pattern deviated from what I’d seen previously). Launch day was soft. Non-American markets spurned it (Mob moves almost every copy in the US and Canada). It quickly showed the same rapid falls I saw with NW3. Which is why I got grumpy and some Chinese whispers took place about me leaving the genre (which I didn’t do a great job of dismissing, outside of a paywalled Patreon post). The book bounced back a little, going from disaster to disappointment.

However, it has done surprisingly well in the post-release months, likely due to HS6. Nowhere near as well as Neural Wraith’s post-release sales, but better than I feared given how it was tracking. We’ll see how Book 2 does, but Patreon interest is big enough that I’m not too concerned about it. It feels like there are quite a few people subbed only for Mob.

How well audio does will be interesting. It’s due to come out in January.

Otherwise, I’m continuing with the series, as you’ve likely seen. I keep debating on how long the series should be. I tend toward longer series, as it allows more natural progression and a better world, especially with how my pacing is these days. We’ll see. I have ideas that could easily make it 7 or 8 books.

Plus, the series is plain fun to write and I enjoy working with its world. It’s always a good sign when I finish a book and want to keep writing the series immediately. Time will tell how long it goes for. I’m just ensuring I don’t overcommit, even if it does go for longer. Part of me is optimistic that it might do well starting from Book 2, but it could actually worsen like Neural Wraith.

Heretic Spellblade 6

I talked about how this release went in the recent commentary and not much has changed. Its sales pattern largely matched Neural Wraith 3, with the exception that Amazon actually recommended the earlier books in the series as well as my other books. Mob got a slight bump when it came out. While the individual sales of Spellblade 6 are lower than NW3, the total series sales are better, but I suspect it was helped by releasing two books close together and there are cracks.

This book was an attempt to get more books out faster by reducing the size and scope of each one. I split the original plan for Spellblade 6 in two, with the idea to actually write them together.

Except, as always, the plan collapsed swiftly. After the negative reception to the opening in January, I completely reworked the early chapters and modified the plot elements later on. Unfortunately, I didn’t reassess what that did to the scope of the book. The result was that I vastly underestimated how long the book would be. It ended up being a full-size book, took up way more time, and required a ton of plot doctoring near the end.

Hell, I just finished rereading it and I don’t think I’ve ever felt the urge to make minor adjustments to a bunch of conversations so hard. Lots of little additions or twists, particularly in the first half of the book, would be deeply beneficial. Maybe it’s just the recency of when I wrote it.

Unfortunately, dedicating so much time to Book 6 meant I didn’t make much progress on Spellblade 7 and needed to throw much of it out. I had to rework the outline for it as well, and trying to include more contingency this time. The ending has frustrated me as I try to start Book 7, and I sincerely regret not doing a proper denouement chapter where everyone debriefs in Trafaumh.

Even so, I plan to close out Spellblade next year. I want to close out the current arc, then come back to Book 8 refreshed late next year after I tend to my other series. I wondered if I’d regret writing Mob 2 between books and the jury is still out. Part of me thinks I lost momentum on Spellblade, but I also think the ending of Book 6 kind of screwed me (I’m essentially trying to glue together the ending and where I more or less wanted Book 7 to start).

Spellblade 6 has gotten a softer reception than the past ones, although it’s still broadly positive. The vibe I get largely matches what I expected when I wrote it: the battles are a bit tiresome (for various reasons) even if they work for the plot; some characters are ignored (as my plan to write two smaller books failed); the book doesn’t progress as much as some would have liked, especially after a year’s wait. Hopefully the faster release of Spellblade 7 softens some of that feeling. I don’t think it annoyed people quite as much as Demon’s Throne 3.

2024 Plans

Looking ahead, I have a lot to write. I’m trying to squeeze in Mob chapters between releases and keep it Patreon-centric. But I also need to write extra books for all of my other ongoing series. This includes a return to Demon’s Throne.

I know some people don’t like Demon’s Throne. But I have a personal attachment to it, it’s a popular series (even if it’s largely outside the Patreon crowd), and I constantly get questions about when DT4 is coming out. I get one every couple of weeks on average, I feel, despite mentioning in almost every update post.

The reasons it went on the backburner are quite simple. At the time, it signaled what I know is the beginning of the sales fall I’m still dealing with. I’m also frustrated with where the series is going. Each book leaves problems for the next entry to clean up, because I’m either pushing major events off to improve the existing book (usually for pacing reasons, and always because everything is longer than expected) or my plot doctoring fixes one issue but creates another.

DT2 was a great example of that. By killing Grishaw at the end of it, I basically blew a hole in where I’d go with Book 3. Even teasing the Darus Twins and Varian didn’t help much. I managed to have a cool ending battle, including Rys’s trickery, but didn’t set up the next book.

To be blunt, DT2 made the same error the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy did by killing Snoke in the second film (please don’t debate Star Wars in the comments). I was forced to dedicate a lot of time to establishing a new threat. Oh, and I didn’t do the army building and archipelago politics I originally planned to (for reference, the original DT2 plot had the attack on Castle Aion as the climax, which I moved to the middle of DT3). I also lost a fair bit of audience with the PoV chapters focused on the foxes, while the series still didn’t hit the vibe many wanted from it, which is why it’s often treated like the black sheep.

Ironically, this is literally the point where the original version of DT began to fall apart. The Malus League invasion was a trainwreck and ended horrifically. So I’m much happier with how things played out in DT2 and DT3, even if I made a bunch of missteps getting there.

It’s the follow-up that I need to handle correctly. Because the original version fell apart after this, as I got distracted by Rys’s kids, fox politics (including a long sequence in Pharos itself), and didn’t come up with a proper way to handle the rest of the archipelago. I’ve laid a decent path forward, with the Kinadain politics around the sages introduced and both Morai and Imira have shown themselves. Not to mention other hints of mystery stuff (the cover of Book 6 gives away at least one). The trick is creating a coherent plot to tie everything together, while still resulting in each book being interesting and fun.

Neural Wraith has the opposite problem. I could have sat down and written Book 4 almost immediately using that insane idea I had, and I formed the current outline for the new version of the book not long after (and it’s only been further fleshed out). The main reason I’ve parked it is because I feel it needs some time to rest. I pushed it hard, to the detriment of my fantasy series, and got punished. However far I take it, if I want to work on passion projects, I can’t abandon everything else.

I also keep trying to write 2 books at a time, or at least close together, but I kind of suck at it. At this stage, I’ll likely publish DT4 and avoid pushing it back, then worry about other plans after my break in April.

Oh, and I also want to make progress on a non-harem novel. This one is dropping in priority, but I should do it. A few ideas for it have been competing in my head, but I’m leaning toward one because there’s a very strong vibe of “all litrpg/progfantasy must be fast-paced or the author should fuck off” being pushed in those circles, which I suspect is related to the Iron Prince sequel. Ironically, the idea(s) I have could make a good harem novel (then again, it’s really not hard to convert almost any progfantasy into harem, unless it’s one of the ones with eerily few important female characters – isn’t that funny).

Book Size and Slow Pacing

My books were growing in size, or shrinking their scope, until I started taking control of this problem. This is for several reasons.

One, I’m a little faster at writing due to experience.

Two, sometimes I build up huge epic fantasy worlds, with lots of characters, politics, and complex magic systems. This makes the book longer as I try to include everything, as the book will feel rushed otherwise.

Three, my writing style has become… longer. Slower paced. I let my writing style shift while writing Neural Wraith, adding lots of random details, back-and-forth conversations, and exploring interesting stuff. I used the same style for Mob Sorcery, but with a much stronger focus on relationships (instead of a cyberpunk world and perps). This has resulted in these books having long sections of slow pacing, which need to be spiced up.

The latter has felt like the big problem to me. It makes it harder to accurately plan out how long a book should be, or when I’ll get to certain scenes. The problem here is that if I expect to hit a certain event in 1-2 chapters, but it takes 4-5, the pacing is shot. Sure, the little things might be interesting, but if nobody kicks down the door with a gun in hand, it can be boring. Especially if the plot doesn’t appear to be moving. To me, the idea is to place the “glue” chapters that link up big events at a decent pace.

Unfortunately, I also write intricate books with lots happening. This means that sometimes stuff needs to happen “right now.” Whenever Nathan puts something off until after a battle, and it potentially affects the result, people get mad.

If I had a different writing style, I’d cover some of this stuff in a brief paragraph. “Nathan gemmed his Champions. Everyone was happy and they had a big orgy. So awesome.” There’s a strong tendency to skip over less important details. And sometimes the important ones. I was pretty amazed when I picked up a highly recommended and popular litrpg, only to find the author flat out telling you how the fight scene went, instead of showing it taking place.

The more detail I add, including little character details, the longer scenes take. This has also resulted in a much higher quantity of “talking heads” scenes, where the characters are just discussing something for ages. These aren’t bad, but they can feel frustrating at the time. I aim for 50% dialogue in my books (which appears fairly average based on writing software benchmarks), but sometimes get feedback about the sheer amount of talking. Personally, I prefer talking over just glossing over something. What’s the point of having a cast if they don’t say anything? To me, an action scene that is just people fighting is boring. The same goes for dialogue scenes that skip the minutiae.

The downside is that it’s stretching my series, despite my best efforts otherwise. Mob has taken longer to get where I want it, and I’m genuinely worried about my ability to get to a specific point by Book 4 (and worry about extending the arc to Book 5). I have no fucking clue how I’ll squeeze everything I want into Spellblade 8, but I’m concerned about doing a Book 9.

This problem will also translate into any non-harem books I write. I get away with slower pacing now, because I’m established and people give me a chance. But I’m uncertain of taking the same approach to progfantasy or general scifi. Especially as the lack of harem dynamics means many people will be less interested in side characters.

Anyway, the following topics are much more author-centric. Just a warning.

Kindle Unlimited is On Fire

Time for another downer topic.

For pretty much all of 2023, Kindle Unlimited payouts have been dropping. Explaining in specific numbers always confuses people (KU pages are different to the ones you see on the store, and this confusion is often exploited by less scrupulous authors), so I’ll try to avoid it.

Just know that the payout fell beyond a crucial psychological barrier for July (announced in August). The payout itself fell around 10% from normal values, and was nearly 20% down from its high in September last year (which occurred immediately after Amazon banned authors from uploading ancient .mobi files – totally a coincidence, I’m sure).

To give some idea of the impact, before the fall, most of my books paid close enough to a sale that the difference between KU and buying the book wasn’t a big deal. Some of my longer books even paid more for a KU read (especially Spellblade 5). After the KU drop, the difference is noticeable for my shorter books, and only Spellblade 5 pays more in KU, and it’s close to 3x the length of many harem books published by other authors.

If you’ve noticed discussions about KU by authors this year, this is why. In August, authors in more established genres began to remove completed series from KU and announced this to their readers. The tactic was sound: ongoing series remained in KU to attract new readers, who would then need to purchase the rest of their catalog. With that said, removing stuff from KU in a year where everybody’s doing it tough certainly stirs up some drama.

This triggered some shitflinging between authors, much like happens whenever somebody criticizes Audible. Lots of “this is why I give my children KU” infomercial-like statements, and implications that authors should be grateful to have KU etc. There’s a neverending tide of author drama behind the scenes, which is why I largely steer clear of it, but it’s really obvious when it spills into reader spaces (especially as it’s often the same authors doing the spilling).

I believe the tide shifted a bit because the drop was big, sudden, and had the potential for worse. Amazon only ever reverses course on KU when authors bail, after all. It’s the only leverage we have against them.

In September the rate rose a decent amount, although still lower than normal. The total KU fund stalled as well, suggesting to me that Amazon is propping KU up out of their pocket. I don’t believe the rumor that KU is unprofitable for Amazon, much like I don’t think Youtube loses money. The programs are just too fucking huge. A couple hundred million ebooks are read through KU each year. But Amazon can tweak how much profit they take and how much they pay out to authors.

As always with Amazon, nobody knows why they’re doing this. A prominent theory is that it’s due to AI spam books (and given Amazon actually acknowledged the issue and KU rose a month later, I feel it’s the best answer we have). Others think it’s just Amazon increasing their profits. I’m quite certain it’s not natural behavior, though. The amount Amazon is paying to authors through KU has risen drastically, but if the page rate is falling at the same time, it suggests an obscene rise in the average number of books read by each subscriber. The numbers don’t add up, unless there’s something unnatural happening.

Personally, I can’t really do much or react. Harem is very dependent on KU, in large part due to the quality of the books. Even if I think I write higher-quality stuff, I’m writing in a genre where people have to wade through the rest. I imagine willingness to do so will collapse without KU. I also don’t have any completed series to pull. Finally, I’m nowhere near big enough or popular enough to drag readers with me. The authors who have kept going without KU were drastically outselling me when they were on KU, so I’d be vaporized if I did so.

As for my opinion on KU (if you need it), I think it’s a genuinely good program. All you can eat books is great, and the payouts to authors have been quite reasonable. Again, I used to make more on my longer books than from a sale, so payouts aren’t atrocious if you’re not trying to spam out short books (which is where a lot of the complaints about payout rates have historically come from).

But as I said earlier, authors only have one lever to use against Amazon. Amazon isn’t just competing against other eBook stores, but against other publishers. It needs a huge supply of books to make KU viable, and the page rate affects how willing authors are to use it, as well as their willingness to selfpublish versus find a publisher that probably won’t use KU. The idea behind KU is that a reader always has a new book to read, or that Amazon will have the right book to stop them from cancelling or convince them to resub. Hence why the algorithm for KU books is so damn harsh – they need authors to keep pumping out books.

In short, KU is a deal with the devil. Sometimes, the deal isn’t worth it.

There have been moves outside of pulling books from Amazon, however. The big one has been eBook price rises.

You may have noticed that a lot of authors are increasing book prices to $6 (or $5.99 if you want to be specific). Some small publishers are increasing prices to $8 (such as Aethon). Author groups have always wanted to raise prices, but it doesn’t really work. This time, between inflation and KU fucking up, there’s a much stronger push. I’ve ignored it so far.

However, I expect $5.99 to become the new $4.99. One of the issues with book pricing is that it signals the quality of the book subtly. $2.99 was the old $4.99, but is rarely used due to the perception it’s a bad book (as it’s the lowest price you can pick and still get a 70% royalty). $3.99 became an in-between price, typically used by newer authors or first-in-series. $4.99 may become the new $3.99 in turn.

Sorry if all the prices confused you. In short, even if I’m not that interested in raising the price of my books, failing to do so may be harmful if it causes me to stand out in a crowd of pricier books. Such is the psychology of humans. We assume the cheapest wine on the menu is the worst. For now, I’m still doing nothing.

Oh Patreon, My Patreon

I have a love-hate affair with Patreon. Especially this year.

As mentioned above, I see Patreon as a huge part of my career and stability now. It’s where you can directly support me and it allows me to focus on writing what I love. Plus, the interaction with each chapter is fantastic.

On the other hand, Patreon is suffering a lot of problems. And it appears to be going through a phase that may end in tears.

In harem, Patreon has a weird reputation. Earlier in the year, I saw somebody ask the best way to financially support an author. A bunch of authors chimed in and said “just leave a review, bro” or some variation of it. The one guy who said Patreon (the factual answer to the question being asked) got downvoted. This summed up the attitude a number of authors had toward Patreon.

My own attitude was hesitant, but for a very different reason. See, my experience with Patreon comes from the video game side and youtubers. And there have been countless cases of creators just… fucking off while still taking money every month. Games that are never completed or that are vaporware. Youtubers that promise a huge video, only to stall on it for 18 months while transitioning to a streaming career and end up taking six figures from patrons for nothing. I believe Patreon generates weird behaviors from creators, especially if they find themselves unable to deliver for any reason. Maybe they didn’t set out to scam a bunch of people, but that’s what happened.

This is why I made sure to do pauses on payments in the first 18 months, before Patreon made that really painful to do. Although it was painful before, as I found out when a bug blocked everyone and a bunch of people immediately cancelled their pledges. I felt the pauses kept me honest, even if the income wasn’t massive.

Today, I know that I’m not the sort of person who will mooch off people. Around the time of NW3 (and before the huge rise in support), I sincerely considered beginning the process of wrapping up Patreon (such as removing annual pledges) in case I left harem entirely in 2024. The break between NW3 and Mob Sorcery was a genuine test, but I kept writing.

It’s for a related reason that I don’t have tiers above $10. I initially expected most people to join the $5 tier. Instead, the opposite happened, which led me to start providing more benefits to Messenger patrons (especially once I realized I hate writing short stories). I don’t have anything I could offer to higher tiers and I dislike the idea of having empty tiers. I’m also worried that if a bunch of people signed up to a $20 tier or whatever, I’d feel pressured (by my brain, if nothing else) to find something special for them.

Once again, I’m not quite as worried (although I’m still worried). My attitude toward supporting Patreons with no real content reward has shifted a lot, and I understand that a lot of people support me purely to support me. I mayintroduce a single higher tier. Not sure. Opinions welcome etc.

But now it’s time to talk about Patreon’s issues.

Patreon has always had some weird payment processing issues. So do many donation platforms, and I suspect it has something to do with the arrangements they make to ensure adult content remains. Payment processors fucking hate adult content, after all. We’re lucky that Patreon still supports it and has backed away from any soft moves they’ve made against it in the past.

Unfortunately, those payment processing errors are painful. It was one of those that caused the bug last year that blocked everyone in the free month (Patreon did something when trying to reprocess payments, I think, and it freaked out at all the “freeloaders” in a free month). In August this year, their entire system melted down, with lots of people getting payments declined and some creators being unable to cash out their earnings. I was missed in this mess, but got hit on my private account the next month, when Patreon stuffed something up and I got kicked from all the creators I was supported.

More recently, Patreon overhauled their UI on all platforms. And pissed almost everyone off. There are still some bugs from then (although the poll at least worked the other day, as the last one I did refused to let people vote for more than one option).

One of the big concerns about the UI overhaul is that it’s a change in direction by Patreon. Which hints at serious instability in a platform I’m reliant on.

Right now, I don’t think it’s a sinking ship or a victim of assassination (despite the title of this section). But it’s something I need to keep a close eye on. Patreon’s the most recognizable and trusted name in the monthly donation business, and one of the few that allows adult content. Also, I like most of it. It would just be nice if it doesn’t blow itself up, Unity-style.

The Publisher Love Affair

There’s been a very noticeable shift in opinions on publishers this year, to the point where a lot of authors in harem/litrpg/progfantasy come across as “shilling” for publishers, rather than genuinely supporting authors. It’s a complicated topic, and not entirely due to that, but it’s one with concerning conflicts of interest and a reminder not to blindly trust other authors.

My gut feeling is that the rise in support comes from three big reasons: first, progfantasy has attracted a more mainstream audience (particularly from Cradle, but a certain progfantasy author clique has been actively advertising this way) and they’re the type who view publishers as valued gatekeepers ensuring that the books of the great unwashed don’t despoil their eyes (never mind all the shitty books traditionally published every year). Second, a bunch of litrpg/progfantasy publishers are owned and run by authors, which creates natural fan support. Third, some of the biggest success stories in litrpg are from published works (typically from Aethon) that have come from Royal Road.

Self-publishing vs using a publisher can’t really be distilled down into simple arguments, because there are many types of publisher, authors have different goals, and success isn’t guaranteed for either path. I’ll still have a minor crack at it, because it needs some explaining.

Self-publishing is obvious. You write a book, get your own cover art (hire an artist or use AI), edit it (self-editing, beta readers, hire an editor/proofreader etc), create the ebook/physical version for upload, and then use a selfpublishing platform like Amazon’s KDP to distribute it. Typically, this involves Kindle Unlimited and selling the book. You receive 70% of the sales plus a set rate per page read on KU. In short, self-publishing pays the most per book sold. Oh, but you need to market it (Amazon does some of this automatically using its algorithm).

But a publisher involves finding a company willing to handle all the steps past “write a book” for you, in exchange for a cut of the royalties. The amount of work they do is generally linked to the cut, but not always. Part of the reason selfpublishing took off is that the big, traditional publishers developed a bad rep for not advertising their smaller books (sometimes called the midlist). For every author selling a million copies-plus, there are a dozen selling 5,000 or less. When your publisher contract prevents you from publishing more than once a year and only pays you $1 per sale, with an advance of $5k-$10k, you aren’t making a living off that.

We aren’t talking about traditional publishers in litrpg/progfantasy, though. Not yet (although Tor appears to be taking an interest). Rather, a bunch of small publishers have sprung up: Aethon, Mountaindale, Wraithmarked, Royal Guard etc. Even Podium, a mid-sized audio publisher, has started directly publishing books.

What these small presses can offer to authors is drastically different to a massive publisher. On the one hand, they’re often more in tune with the genre they’re publishing, as they specialize (Royal Guard is currently pumping out like a book a week in harem, for instance, while Aethon is basically the Royal Road-to-Amazon pipeline). They typically take a lower cut (around 50% of royalties, I believe, instead of the 75%+ that tradpub takes).

The downside is that they might not offer the same level of support. Small presses try to profit from every title, whereas big publishers gamble on small authors in hopes they make money off the big ones (kind of like Hollywood). So whereas a tradpub author might get multiple editing passes, a small press might just run a line editor over your Royal Road story and call it a day.

Currently, all of these small presses are heavily pushing the idea that you’ll get “developmental editing” support from them, which you can’t get elsewhere. This is largely true, as development editing is a terrible investment for a selfpub author. On the other hand, this also runs the risk of your development editor editing an outline into something that is indistinguishable from a ghostwritten story. This happens a lot in tradpub when they’re chasing YA trends (as the teenager can’t really write or plot properly). Which will you get? Depends on the publisher, and possibly what they think of you personally.

One thing most appear to be doing quite well is advertising. If they’re taking a large cut of a book, you’d hope they’re pushing it harder than the selfpub author can. Wraithmarked in particular pimps the fuck out of their books with Amazon ads.

To be clear, I don’t think publishers are bad. My concerns with them are that they’re becoming the standard for reasons that many new authors don’t understand, and that a bunch of authors with conflicts of interest are pushing them.

The big issue is that some of these small presses are author-owned. If the author’s friends then start heavily pushing how great publishers are (even if they selfpub), can they really be trusted? Hell, as these are private companies, the risk is that some of these authors have investments in the publisher. And no, I’m not talking about Royal Guard in this case, because I know a bunch of people will probably whine on discord about this if I don’t clarify.

Probably my biggest issue, coming as somebody who likes to keep to themselves, is that small companies can be very, very cliquish. The owner(s) can and will offer better deals to their friends. If they grow to dislike you, or dislike you from the start, they may not offer you the support you expected (such as advertising).

Ultimately, publishing through a company owned by another author requires an immense amount of trust. I’d never make another deal like I did with Audiobook Guild now (and no, that’s not a personal slight against MSE), and that experience extends to other author-run companies.

This is also a reason I’m not too worried about Podium or Aethon (not that I expect to ever use Aethon, but there’s a reason they keep attracting authors who love them). They’re distant enough that they feel like a company, and that’s a good thing in this case. My communications with Podium actually remind me of my old office work, and while I like dealing with the folks there, I’m aware that this is a commercial transaction. The deal I get isn’t based on who I know, and they’re not going to randomly spike me because somebody is friends with an author who has a bee in his bonnet over harem. Hell, a lot of Podium’s current trust from authors is that they’re not repeated the mistakes that Tantor made years ago (i.e. dropping series before completion, leaving the author up shit creek).

The final thing I’ll mention is that publishing does increasingly feel like it’s moving more toward the Japanese light novel model. The Royal Road-to-Amazon pipeline is almost identical to how Japanese light novels get published. You write a book on a popular writing website, get onto the popular stories list, prove you can sustain your writing pace, and get offered a publishing deal. Because this is such a low-stress deal, particularly with Patreon, I expect it’s going to become bigger and bigger. There’s no “write query letters until the sun explodes” like with regular novels, and Aethon is getting big enough that it’s able to sign deals for webcomics. Hopefully they remain a good company as they get bigger, and don’t go the way of some publishers.

Artificial Intelligence in Selfpub

A topic I left for last and rewrote like four times.

The problem with talking about generative AI is that it’s so polarizing that nuance is impossible. It’s also tied with taking away jobs, creating a lot of negative feelings, and that’s not helped by talk of “well, this is just how the world is” tech optimist talk, or calling anyone that isn’t drinking the kool-aid a “doomer.” The topic is dominated by narratives that are frequently divorced from reality. An announcement about a new AI comes out, and it’s a “marketing attempt” because it conflicts with some narrative being pushed by pro-AI people. The reverse applies as well, to be clear.

Which is a problem, because stuff happens and it does affect novels, particularly self-publishing.

I still don’t really have a use for AI and Neural Wraith is on the backburner so I’m not actively researching stuff for that series. My artist is great and reliable, I don’t need AI writing of questionable quality that I have to edit the hell out of, and my audiobooks go through a publisher. Also, I have zero interest in spamming out AI-generated works for a quick buck.

But developments on Amazon are indirectly affecting me:

• Amazon has been struggling to handle a deluge of AI-generated garbage. This takes multiple forms, with the two big ones being outright AI-generated garbage and a new variation of an old scam that steals existing books. These became troubling enough that Amazon acknowledged the issue and took some level of action, something they never did before.
• Authors now need to disclose any use of AI in their books or covers to Amazon, under threat of account ban. To my knowledge, no actual authors have been banned. Nobody knows what they’re using the info for.
• Amazon launched a US-only program that lets authors create AI-narrated audiobooks that will be available on Audible. They will be clearly identified as AI-narrated. These need to be selfpublished through Amazon, and can’t go through Audible directly (presumably ruling out the use of AI by actual publishers). Given the history of Amazon’s US-only trials, I expect this will become available to me sometime around the heat death of the universe, so I don’t have any “moral dilemmas” to consider (and you can probably guess how I’d resolve it anyway).
• AI still can’t be copyrighted, and there appears to be no legislative changes on the table. A billion court cases are in train on this and will take years to resolve the legal questions.

It’s hard to say if Amazon will take any more action over AI. They haven’t made the news for a few months, which means the pressure is probably off them. On the other hand, they might take preventative action if there’s an uptick in AI spam over Christmas. Like any tech company, I’d say they’re pro-AI, but don’t like the negative press from AI abuses.

One of the big things is that AI has slid into use by a lot of people who won’t disclose it due to the negative perception of it. It says a lot that one of the big concerns about Amazon forcing authors to disclose their use of AI was that Amazon might label their books for their AI-generated content. Whether there'll ever be an accurate AI-detector is a topic of heated debate, and I don't care to weigh in other than to say that arguments that it's impossible sound a lot like people saying AI couldn't do the things it's currently doing.

Much of my own focus on AI, beyond observing it, is preparing for what I feel is a raising of the bar. From my observations of the art world, it’s been pretty devastating to commissions, which devastates a lot of artists building their skills outside the corporate world (which often demands conformity to a particular style). Sure, the biggest players can still make lots of money through services like Patreon, but if you want art of a character, you’re highly likely to just use AI than pay somebody and wait months. And even the Patreon queens/kings have competition, as there’s been an uptick in artists using AI to increase their output (some very obviously, as their art style changed drastically due to AI).

This means that as AI improves, I feel that the method to survive amid a flood of AI-generated/assisted works is to establish a more concrete brand. This also means I’ll be more reliant on Patreon or non-Amazon sources in general, because there’ll be more competition for the same eyeballs due to how easy it is to “write” books. If all I’m offering is the same thing, nobody will be interested in supporting me, because why bother? We’ll see how long it takes for AI to become a genuinely useful writing tool, but for now this is where my concerns are.

Staying in Love with Writing

I said AI would be the last topic, but I lied. Figured to end on a higher note.

The hard part about writing for a living is enjoying it. It is a job that I rely on for a living. With Patreon making up more of my income, I need to ensure a consistent supply of chapters. So the pressure to keep churning out “content” increases.

It’s fairly easy to come across people whose attitude is to treat the job like a 9-to-5, or to force creativity. Sit down, churn something out, and it’ll work out. For some people, that works really well. Brandon Sanderson has that attitude and his stories are pretty great, even if some people really get upset over his popularity. Sometimes, I wonder whether the ability to do this also comes down to authors who never worked an office job, so they don’t find this frustrating.

Because it is frustrating to me. I couldn’t say with a straight face that being an author was my dream job if all I’d done was replace my office as a consultant with my home office, and the papers and spreadsheets with novel manuscripts. When people talk about hating their hobby once they make it a job, I imagine the reason is that the stress of a job overtakes the joy of what they enjoyed about it as a hobby.

To me, writing is a way to tell stories, bring characters to life, and express ideas through the fabric of a world I wholly create. I’m looking for an end product I like, but I also want to enjoy the writing in some way. And, yes, sometimes I can enjoy a difficult writing process, in much the same way that Dark Souls is frustrating as hell until you defeat the boss, making it all worth it.

This is part of the reason I’m deeply uninterested in what is becoming the “modern” approach to harem and have largely stopped paying attention to the genre this year. There are probably authors branching out and writing interesting stuff, and maybe some new ones, but it’s drowned out amid a sea of “this is the checklist of a successful story, and it’s your own fault if your book fails when you deviate from it.” I worked at McDonalds in university. I did my time mindlessly following a best practices checklist to assemble cheeseburgers en masses, and have no interest in going back to that.

At the same time, I need to balance stuff I want to write with what people want to read. I get a lot more leeway these days, although the release of Mob shows that’s not entirely true. At the same time, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of harem authors out there that also do their own thing and are doing just fine, even if they’re not brought up as much.

I’ve said before that I write what I do, because I enjoy it. The compromises I make are relatively few these days, compared to 2021, when I worried a lot more. I’m more optimistic now that I’ll be able to keep writing like this than I was earlier in the year, despite how rough things have been. At the same time, I’m more convinced that if things do go downhill, I will find a way to keep doing it, instead of trying to churn out stuff I don’t really enjoy.

I’m not making any hard goals for 2024, because things tend to go awry. If there were any, it’s to remind myself to ensure I enjoy what I’m writing, rather than force myself to do something I’m unhappy with. The end product tends to be better if I’m passionate about it. Although I still need to keep imposing deadlines on myself.

- - - - -

That’s all for the anniversary commentary. It’s fairly long, and went through more than a few revisions.

It’s been an interesting year. I’m optimistic 2024 will be better or at least more stable, and that I’ll have plenty of fun things to write. Hopefully the other reasons for gloom dissipate, at least a little.

I am going to avoid starting any new series, though (other than working on the non-harem thing). My imagination is captured fairly well by my existing series, I think. I just need to finish one. Probably Spellblade first, ideally in time for the next anniversary. Time will tell. Hopefully you’ll be along for the ride and can read next year’s update where I report on my success (although you’ll already know by then).

Oh, and I actually need to start a Discord server. Seriously.