(Sorry, readers. This one isn’t for you… but you’re welcome to stick around and continue to read if you would like!)
Dear writer,
Let me open with a “Happy Holidays!” because life is hard, our choice to write often makes it harder, and spreading good cheer is never a bad thing. Right now, a lot of you are probably looking over your year in review and wondering what has happened? Where has time gone? Why didn’t things, like our writing, work out quite like we planned?
Here’s my year in review:
I published seven novels plus one anthology story, and I wrote approximately 450,000 words. That number is a lot lower than I prefer. I needed to take some time off to breathe. I have breathed, and I’m feeling much better for backing off. Still, seven novels is a huge accomplishment. (Fun fact: most of them had been written in the prior year, so I was doing a lot of publication and little writing.
When honest, I’m disappointed in myself for only writing 37,500 a month. (This is an accomplishment, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and I know this.)
I had just wanted to spend my time doing more of what I love, which is writing.
Now, to be fair, I lost an entire month because I was romping around Australia, and I am not going to regret the trip. It’s just difficult for me to put that into perspective sometimes.
No matter how much or little you write, it’s easy to be your worst enemy. It’s easy to compare yourself to another author and go “Bah humbug!” Why did that person do better? Why didn’t I do better? Why? Why? Why?
I get it. It’s hard… especially when I’ve been dealing with a year of people stealing art my designer did, riding my tailcoats (through directly lifting concepts my designer did), and so on.
This is the art that was most commonly stolen, by the way. Some liked to claim they designed the cover when they did not. Others stole the post, typography layout, etc, etc, etc to ride tailcoats that way.
I made the decision to allow the water to flow under the bridge. So, if you find a cover that looks highly reminiscent of this one… just walk away. It is a shame that the author has no ethics, and it’s a shame that the designer has no ethics… but the reality is this:
I would rather be writing.
The cover the author had made, modeled after mine, is a very poor rendition. (It, frankly spoken, is a dumpster fire I would never put on one of my books even if somebody paid me to do it.)
The joke is ultimately on them.
But that’s the shit we put up with in this industry. Those who can’t succeed on their own try to mimic the successful, hoping they can get a slice of the pie.
That’s not all that encouraging, is it?
Here’s the deal:
If you put together a beautiful cover, like the one Rebecca Frank did for Moon Tamed, you have stacked the cards in your favor. Yes, it’s more expensive. (The knock off, that was so poorly designed I almost died of laughter, cost around $200. The designer has a reputation of stealing/lifting designs. Nobody cares because they’re cheap.)
Don’t be cheap. Yes, a solid Rebecca Frank cover is going to cost you at least $750 as a general rule.
But her covers sell.
That $200 shit job by a non-creative hack who couldn’t design their way out of a cardboard box?
It might “sell” to Kindle Unlimited users who have lost all hope of getting an actually good book.
Yeah, that’s harsh.
Here’s the deal: it’s okay. Somebody stole my art… again. I’m used to it.
Suing won’t do me any good. The designer is so cheap, the art is so poor… and I’d never heard of the author until the drama found its way to my door, which ultimately means they won’t have any money to pay any damages. When people see the covers, if they’ve seen mine… they know which one is the original. (Nobody would steal the concept of a cover so poorly designed and implemented. Nobody.)
The quality difference is that severe.
And this is okay. It’s water under the bridge.
It’s really easy to get caught up in the flood when it’s your cover in question… or if you just like the author who got hit.
But here’s where the love letter to you writers comes into play: it’s okay. Let it be water under the bridge. Spare yourself the heartache. Yes, you’re allowed to have your feelings hurt or be annoyed because of someone else’s lack of ethics… but the faster the fouled water flows away, the happier you’ll be.
It’s okay to decide “no, I will not waste my energy on petty people without a creative bone in their body.”
If you have written a great book, you can put a beautiful cover on it with expectations of it selling. Yes, you have to follow marketing rules.
That’s where the hilarity of this whole situation comes into play: Moon Tamed is not a popular nor marketable title. The cover is not popular (to market)… or even at all truly marketable.
It is a slipstream paranormal and light science fiction novel with sweet undertones.
Not many people want to read sweet paranormal, especially not when it has a science fiction twist.
The author who stole the cover design concept… wrote a novel about an abusive relationship. It’s rather… smutty. I got rapey vibes out of it, which is not my jam lately. No, I didn’t check out or buy the book. I read the sample, which was all I needed to do. (I would not have purchased the book under any circumstances. The writing involved significant dictionary misuse, the characters were pretty dreadful, and the vibe was a rapey clusterfuck wrapped in abuse. Not my jam.)
Moon Tamed’s art is completely unsuitable for books like that.
Note: there is an audience for books like that, I am just not that audience, nor do I wish to be that audience. Do you when it comes to your reading interests. That’s none of my business. Unless you’re writing/reading about certain morally bankrupt subjects and taboos, in which case… yeeeeah. I’ll stop myself there.
The joke is ultimately on the author who thought it was a good idea to use Moon Tamed for “Inspiration”.
Their blindness to the tone of the cover made me sad, because it wasn’t at all the heart and soul of the original cover, which was sweet in nature.
Their novel is not at all sweet. It’s basically a handbook on how to abuse your partner. (I would not recommend this book to anybody. It’s… okay on the writing front. It abuses vocabulary to a significant degree, to the point I wanted to suggest that they hire an editor with a foundation on what words actually mean to help them slay their ineffective purple prose…)
Their decision, from top to bottom, was a cluster fuck. (But once again, the joke is on them… they paid money for that cover…)
Their decision to write a below par book and use a below par cover (with the completely wrong tones for what they’re writing) does not hurt me in the slightest. Here’s the thing: I wrote a sweet, gentle book with minimal conflict lines for those who needed a warm hug on a bad day. The book is meant to soothe the soul.
It’s not meant to have a breath-taking plot loaded with action and adventure. (I really wish paranormal and urban fantasy had more room in it for soul-soothing books. I really do wish that. It would make my life a great deal easier.)
So, ultimately, the only loser is the author, who made the decision to put the exact wrong type of book underneath a cover designed for a completely different purpose.
If you are in search of something with fairly mild conflicts and is meant to be a warm hug on a sad day, then you might like Moon Tamed.
That was a whole lot of words to unpack many years of learning: my love letter to you is a reminder that you do not have to be involved in the drama. You can turn and walk away.
Turn off messages. Don’t bother checking your feed. Focus on writing better books, hiring legitimate designers, like Rebecca Frank, to give you quality art.
Take your time. Write what you want to write, aware that market books will be where the money is. But if you like flash fires and trope chasing, do that. Just be aware that if you’re wanting to make money, you have to balance your heart and your marketing.
It’s okay to stay a hobbyist if you want. You don’t need a cover if you’re just writing for the love of writing. (It’s only when you want to sell the book that you need to put away your childish things and take the route of professionalism.)
Write because you love to write.
It’s okay.
Here are all the mistakes I’ve made in the past years as I clawed my way up from making less than a hundred dollars a month to being able to support a family of two in Silicon Valley.
1: If a lot of authors claim a service provider is a cheat or scammer, believe them. Scammers are very skilled at making the victim look like they are the wrong party. Believe the victims.
2: Be wary of courses. If the course leaders are not profitable authors and also not corporate marketers who moved into authoring, be wary. A lot of scammers are authors who couldn’t make the cut, so they ‘teach’ instead. A lot of them aren’t teaching good methods, resulting in a lot of lost money across the board. Review point #1. Consider why the author quit. Were they chasing more money in coaching? Did their genre dry up? A genre drying up happens. Is the author someone others hold prejudice against due to things outside of their control, including skin color and sexual inclinations?
All of these things matter. Some of my favorite course providers left the writing business due to their genre drying up. Others are extremely successful and want to help others while also making money. Neither of these things are wrong.
But if something smells like trash, there is a reason for that.
While this is not always the case, if you see a coarse leader heavily working with “co-writers”, there is very probably something rotten under the surface.
Be careful out there.
3: Hoping to use a lesser cover and recovering it later to make the book take off…
Yeah. This has never worked for me. For me, release week is the most critical time for a book’s sales. Outside of a few, I have always sold the most copies during my initial release week. It very rapidly trickles to one or two copies here and there.
This is normal.
If you can’t afford that $750 for a Rebecca Frank cover. or from another actually skilled designer who understands marketing.. wait until you can.
For me, Rebecca Frank covers more than double my sales. (I have done this test before… I have run covers on different scales of quality, and without fail, the Rebecca Frank quality covers always outperform the others by a huge margin.)
Reviving a book from a failed launch is expensive, and I do not recommend it unless you have at least five books in a series. If a trilogy fails because of the cover’s quality, it’s very difficult to revive it, even when finished.
Advertise it with the hope of making profit, but understand that the book world truly does revolve around your release week.
4: Failing to Advertise
… I am not the most confident of people, especially when it comes to paying money to advertise my books. I’m cautious. Because I’m cautious, my marketing efforts usually pay off. But a lot of my passion projects never see the light of day in terms of advertising because of my tendency to withdraw if I don’t think something is marketable.
Moon Tamed? Almost never advertised. (I’m advertising it right now because I’m trying, very hard, to give that pen name and my sweet books a chance.
Bernadette Franklin? Almost never advertised. (I don’t write sex, and the romantic comedy is sweet and shark jumpy, and I just don’t feel there is a broad audience for it.)
I am not currently advertising Bernadette Franklin at all. I should probably change that, but the reality is? I expect to lose money… and I’d rather lose money buying covers for passion projects.
Susan Copperfield? I’m not advertising Susan after the Vampire of Montana debacle. I’m writing them at this stage because Patreon users are paying for the pen name / series. I probably will never advertise the Susan Copperfield books again, not even on Bookbub.
That shit has sailed, at least for now. If it comes back to port, I will think about it. I’m only finishing it because I hate leaving things undone.
This is a “my opinion” thing, but I do highly recommend that authors finish the series they start, even if they wrap with one book rather than the six they planned. Reader trust is a real thing, and if they stop trusting you to finish series, they’re going to stop buying your books–or only buy you when your series have been completed.
I’ve watched more than a few friends slam out a bazillion book ones without ever finishing anything… and then they wonder why the readers left.
They left because the series they want never made progress, and they tired of reading maybe promising book ones.
Putting something on the back burner is fine. I do it all the time… but every few years, you need to move some of those projects to the front burner. (See: Old Secrets.)
5: Don’t expect validation from other authors/writers in this field.
There is so much competition, even among the friendly competitors, that validation is just not a thing you’re going to get. If you can insert into your brain that the only validation you need is a sale, that… would be for the best.
Readers will do their best to validate you all the time, especially if you’re their favorite author. That is fabulous, and it’s a wonderful feeling, and it’s something we should all strive for. (Being someone’s favorite author, that is.)
But the reality is… I have seen so many knives in the publishing community that you are truly better off easing back and doing your own thing… quietly and from your personal safe space.
Most of the people who get attacked in the publishing industry are people who picked sides, did something real damned stupid (like implying that they are the only writer who can write dragon shapeshifters, as an actual example of something that happened), or fucked around and found out with trademark registrations (see: Cocky Gate), or was Just a Dick (too many examples to list.)
I mean, the designer and author behind the Moon Tamed debacle recently might have (and might be…) being attacked despite me showing up on social media to ask people to please not.
(I do not approve of or wish for anyone to start a lynch mob in my name. So please do not, even if you do locate the piss-poor cover and the author/designer behind it.)
If either party had ethics, it wouldn’t have happened in the first place… and you’re not going to be instilling ethics in either of them.
That’s a hard lesson learned.
Just walk away. It’s much easier on your blood pressure and your health.
This career is a hard one, but know that no matter who you are or where you come from, I am cheering for you. I don’t view you as competition. You’re a colleague. If you write in my genre and sell more books than I do, you have earned that. Keep going, and may you find all of the wealth your heart desires!
So, in an industry full of perils, I want to leave you with this:
Only you can write YOUR story. Even if it has a trope-filled plot, only you can write a story the way you do.
Everyone has a story to tell. Sure, sometimes that story isn’t really marketable or fit for publishing, but tell your stories. Enjoy the process. Write something.
There is only one you, and while you may share characteristics and traits with somebody else… write you. Write differently.
Be a person where you can’t make a pen name without being outed solely because you write like you write.
Don’t just try to be somebody else.
Be you.
Have a happy holidays, and may you find the love in a letter that came out more like a train wreck than anything else.
It’s there, you just have to dig a little to find it.
~R.J.
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