Stephen M. Holak's Blog

Yeah, I've been remiss in blogging for a while, and I have a pile of excuses. The biggest one weighs the least, a 7-pound 19.5 inch eating and sleep-punctuating machine named Greyson Anthony Holak, delivered two-and-a-half weeks early on April 24th, in what they call a "precipitous labor." (He shot out in 4 minutes.)

Let me modify that a bit: he weighed the least 8 weeks ago; he doubled his birth weight since then, "grazing" 12-18 times per day and hitting the 97% percentile in length and weight.

This is what he thought of his circumcision. Sorry about that, little buddy.


Writing slowed down over the winter, but the last few weeks I feel like I'm back in full stride. The Dark Paths of the World, the sequel to The Winds of Heaven and Earth, is about 85% through first draft. I had targeted this spring for publication; the reality is it will be later this year. It's a deeper and much more complex story than TWOHAE, and it's a challenge, but I'm happy where it's going. Sorry about that, but I think you'll find it's worth the wait.

I also researched, outlined and wrote about 30,000 words of an unrelated stand-alone SciFi novel in my infinite spare time this winter, which I'll turn my full attention to once I complete TDPOTW--probably early Spring 2015. More details and a reveal on that later. (Why did I jump over to another book project in the middle of a series? If you're a writer you understand; an itch formed while I was researching the subject, characters and ideas scrabbled and clawed to get out, and I couldn't get relief until I purged a certain volume of it from my head.)

There's a big promotion going on this week for The Winds of Heaven and Earth; the Kindle Edition is available for free download on Amazon through 6/23; check it out if you haven't read it, and tell your friends to check it out if you have. Currently it sits at #8 in Epic Fantasy on Amazon, which is pretty cool.

World Cup? Uh, go Team USA, I guess. (Not much of a fan.)

Later, Peeps.

My post last week about the hedging legacy publishing houses are beginning to show over committing to print editions in author contracts was intended to be a one-off--until I saw a blog post by an aspiring author that motivated me to follow up on it with a second installment.

In the post (I'm keeping it anonymous because I have not contacted the author for permission to publish her name), the writer details her journey: crafting her work, query letters to agents and publishers, discouraging and encouraging rejection responses--the same story all of us have experienced or heard of a thousand times.

She receives a response from what looks to be a legitimate publisher that loves her work. They open a dialog, which initially appears encouraging, then the process bogs down when she has her legal resource review the offered contract and negotiate changes. The two sides begin to pull apart and negotiations break down, and the writer eventually rejects the offer. The details aren't as important as the core issue here (in my opinion).

I think the publishing world we've evolved is inverted now from the one we've seen in the past. The queries--to both agents and publishers--the rejections, the slush pile crushing your work--those are artifacts of the past, the legacy process.

Self-publishing should be the first option now. The go-to. Why should a writer with a well-crafted story spend months or likely years shopping his or her story around, experiencing the heartbreak, frustration, and rejection? What do the legacy houses have to offer anymore--and is it worth the price? In my post last week, I documented the dry-up of the one legitimate service they had to offer: getting your book into one of the few remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores.

"Hybrid" authors like Hugh Howey have turned the legacy process on its head. The reader base has become the new slush pile. Readers are the gatekeepers now. A writer can self-publish his work, and if it's good and gets discovered and the writer has deserved success, the traditional publishers come knock on the author's door expressing interest. Which, by the way, puts the writer at a distinct negotiating advantage.

Every day a story sits unpublished on your hard drive is a day wasted. Every day your work sits under a slush pile is a day lost. Why wait for the publishing house's overworked lackey to read and make a quick decision on your work when you have the the true judges of a story's viability--the readers, thousands of them--ready and willing to pass judgement? If you believe in your work, get it out there take that chance.

You have nothing to lose but time and money. That book could be earning you money as well as feedback. If your stuff is good, it will find a market. And it's something the legacy houses think will sell, they'll come knocking on your door.

Just ask Hugh.

Lots of interesting things going on in the publishing world this week, both in the general industry and on the home front. This post wound up being pretty long.

Hang with me.

First up . . . (Steve climbs on his soapbox.)

An article by Rachel Deahl in Publisher's Weekly last Friday outlined a growing concern by literary agents that the legacy publishing houses were beginning to shy away from committing to print editions of authors books. Here's a summary excerpt:

". . . with some [agents] expressing concern that the big houses are starting to hedge on print editions in contracts.

While e-book-only agreements are nothing new—all large publishers have imprints that are exclusively dedicated to digital titles—a handful of agents, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, said they’re worried that contracts from print-first imprints will increasingly come with clauses indicating that the publisher makes no guarantee on format. The agents say this is a new twist to the standard way of doing business."

I'm not going to go into any more details or comment on the gist of the article; I encourage you to read it if you want more depth and context.

But.

This sets the stage for the uncomfortable possibility that publishing houses will evolve their standard contract language to set up the scenario of releasing titles as (low-cost to produce) ebooks first, and only doing print runs if the book sales justify it.

I have to ask: why the f**k would we (authors) even consider signing a contract with a legacy publishing house at this point? The old guard claims to offer--for a typical royalty rate of about 17%--getting your book distributed to one of the few remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores, editorial,  artwork, and formatting services, and marketing.

Let's take a look at those.

Unless your name ends in Grisham, King or Koontz, and your first name is John, Stephen, or Dean, respectively  you do not get a pile of books prominently displayed at the the front of the store or in the window. If you're a "mid-list" author, which most are, you get one or two copies of your work stuck spine-out on a shelf in the appropriate genre section, where a reader on an expedition to those wilds may find it if they look hard enough, and your title or name intrigues them. I ask you, Legacy House, if you take that meager crumb away, what's left?

Editorial services. Have you looked in a legacy-published book lately? The work by the few remaining and over-tasked editors in the industry doesn't exactly shine. Take Dan Simmons or Stephen King's last few books. (Love you guys,  but did you even get read by an editor before going to print?) For a flat fee, an independent author can hook up with many of the excellent editors the death throes of the legacy publishing world is casting adrift. My editor, Rebecca Dickson, is not only a rock star of an editor, she cares about the story, about me and my career, about making me a stronger writer. I'm not just a cog in a machine to her, even though our relationship is contractual, book-by-book.

And that's also key: a flat rate / book contract. I pay her fairly for her time and work, and then I'm free to earn whatever I can from the book--no royalties, no percentages, no ties.

And another thing. It's my work, my book. I'm free to incorporate or discard her changes and suggestions (though I rarely reject any of her edits; I'd say I keep better than 99% of her markup.) With a legacy publishing arrangement, the publisher owns your work. You either write what they want, or your book doesn't get printed. And, again, your relationship is royalty-based; you get the scraps off their table when they say say (or their mystical bean-counters say) their up-front costs are recovered. (Of which you're likely to pay another 15% of that to the agent who negotiated the contract for you.)

Artwork. Again, you can make suggestions. You can hold your breath till you pass out. You can jump up and down and wave your arms and rant and rave. But the publisher will put out the cover they want, not the one you want. This is a big deal to writers, and I've seen a lot of discussions on a lot of forum boards that vent frustration over lack of control in this area, and pure joy and relief over the control and freedom of publishing your own work with your own cover brings.

For a few hundred bucks--or less--you can commission a very talented artist to create exactly the cover you want. Or you can do it yourself. I did the front and back cover for The Winds of Heaven and Earth myself. Will it win awards? Probably not. Does it convey the mood and theme of the book? I think it does. And it was a lot of fun to do. And if I decide in the future I want something different or that the cover is hurting book sales, I can change it. Or hire someone to do it for me.

Interior format, layout. Yeah, formatting for both print and Kindle is a pain, but once you learn to build and tweak templates in Word, it's cookie cutter. And again, at the end of the day, it's what I want.

So what's left? What do we get out of the 83% of the book's revenue that you guys collect?

Those two spine-out editions in the crumbling bookstore up the street. Or, at least, we used to.

Let's do it with some numbers. Just talking eBooks here, to make a point

Let's say I write a novel, and the publisher releases it in digital format, and in the first year it sells 5,000 copies (I wish.) Assume it's priced at $4.99, which is typical for a mid-list author. That's $25,000, of which the publisher gets 83% or more. That leaves me $4,250. My agent gets 15%. I'm left with $3,600. I pay a third in taxes. That leaves me $2,400. Less than 50 cents per copy sold. And, still, no distribution in a bookstore, no control of cover, little editorial leverage.

Now say I publish that on my own. Being transparent here, my royalty earnings from Amazon on that title price are 70% (yup, that's right. 70.) My take-home gross is now $17,500, over four times what the legacy house would pay. My agent's cut is,well, zero, since I don't need one to self-publish. Subtract two grand for editing and cover services, and I have about 15K left, and after taxes about ten.

Now we're talking two bucks a sale versus fifty cents. Even priced at $2.99, I'm making over a buck and a half a sale, for the brow-sweat of a half-year's work.

I feel a whole lot better about self-publishing now.

I ask again, why f**k would I sign with a legacy house?

Moving on.

I'm a big admirer of Amazon.com, not just for their estore and amazing customer service, but for the opportunity they provide for Independent authors to publish and sell their work--they were probably the main catalyst for the self-pub explosion and the death blows to the legacy publishing business. Jeff Bezos rocks.

Now Amazon has come out with an amazing program, a win-win for both readers and authors, called Kindle Matchbook. For authors and publishers that voluntarily opt-in to the program, readers who purchase or have purchased print editions of books can pick up the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free.

I chose free for my books. Most Idie authors I discussed this with agree; the idea is that if you already paid for my work, I'm not going to charge you for the convenience of reading it in the medium of your choice. A few authors disagree, saying this is no different than charging for hardback and paperback editions of a book. I say that's bullshit; paper costs to print. eBooks cost almost nothing (literally, a penny or two depending on the size) to distribute. Make your digital stuff free if someone paid you. You need to keep the readers happy.

You can see a list of titles eligible for Matchbook on Amazon, so if you bought a print book through them in the past, check it out. (Waves hand in shameless marketing plug.) You can also discover the book's eligibility on that title's Amazon page as well.

Finally, on the home front. The Dark Paths of the World, the sequel to The Winds of Heaven and Earth, stands at about 72,000 first-draft words. It's shaping up nicely, though it's trending to be a lot longer than WHE. Still targeting early spring.

Have a great Halloween, keep it reasonable on the candy intake, and watch out for those Facebook giraffes.

Great interview with me on book blogger Louise Wise's website; get to know me and my new novel's protagonist:http://www.louisewise.com/2013/10/an-interview-with-steve-holak-author-of.html

This post isn't about Oscar Wilde--I don't really like his work, though I love many of the quotes attributed to him. Truth be told, I just wanted to use the play title for the post title because I always thought it was cool--and wanted to throw the factoid out there that there were even more puns and subtext in that play then most realize; circumstantial evidence has come to light that "earnest" was likely a slang term for "homosexual" back in the day, the day being the late 19th century. (Wilde was arrested for same; people were a bit touchier about those things back then. No, that wasn't a pun.)

But, as Arlo Guthrie would say, "That's not what I came here to talk about today." What I really want to do is toss down a few stone tablets from the mount about a reader's obligation to the independent or self-published author.

"Obligation" is a strong word, and it's not even the correct one; but it's the closest term I could think of in the fifteen-minute publishing deadline I give myself for these blogs. But there is something we (Indie authors) need form you (the readers).

Indie authors don't have the marketing machine of the Big Six (five, whatever) publishing houses behind them. We don't get posters on trains trumpeting out new work. (You know who you are, Dean.) We don't get a stack of books in the front window of the few remaining brick-and-mortar bookstores. (You know who you are, Steve.) We don't get many reviews from the top review sources that the BS-backed authors do.  We don't get much of anything, although to be fair to traditionally-published mid-list authors, they have to do almost the same amount of self-promotion we do, but at least they get a spine-out volume or two of their work on a genre shelf somewhere in the store.

What we Indie authors need are reviews. Word of mouth. Help with growing our fanbase. BS authors, at least the bigger ones, get some of that from the publisher. Indie authors do too--because we publish ourselves. But bad books don't sell and books people want to read do, so after the initial push the ball starts to roll on its own. For the indie author, the push has to be a bit louder and more sustained. A good work will find an audience, as long as it finds fertile ground and gets some water until it takes root.

All we're asking is to help spread the word about us. If you read something from me or another Indie, go on Amazon or Goodreads or both, and write a review. Tell your friends. Trumpet it on Facebook and Twitter. Everyone knows when the new Stephen King book gets published, but only a small group on my FB and Twitter and blog followers know when mine does. We-I need your help to expand our audience. If the book fell short, we need to know about it so we can make the next one stronger. If you like it, your friends and others you know that may enjoy that topic or genre need to know, because they're not going to see the ad on the train. Throw a recommendation their way.

It's a mutually-beneficial thing. You can help grow and sustain the base of Indie authors in your genre, giving you more choices and more great stories to read, and we get to reach a wider audience and expand our success--some very good writers may even stay the course who may be sitting on the fence ready to drop out because of discouraging sales numbers. There are many Indie authors that are as good or better than those published by the BS, but they don't get advances on contracts to sustain themselves. They need early-and-often word of mouth, and a bit more help passing the word than Steve King or Dean Koontz.

If you read a work by an Indie, I ask you to please fire up your browser before you forget, and leave a review to guide others on the merits of the story. And if you liked it, help the author pimp it a bit.

We really could use your help. Dean and Steve are doing okay, as far as I can tell.

On the home front,  The Dark Paths of the World, the sequel to The Winds of Heaven and Earth , is north of 60,000 words and looks like it's going to be a monster of a tale. Still targeting an early spring release.

On the Winds : this week is a heavy promotional week. I'll be sponsoring a promotion on Goodreads for an autographed print version from 10/24 through 10/31 (US and Canada only; overseas package mailing rates are a bit too steep for me. At least until I reach Steve and Dean's success levels.)

On 10/25. an interview with me will be featured on author and book reviewer / blogger Louise Wise's "Wise Words" site. And on 10/26 through 10/31, I'll be dropping the Winds Kindle edition price to 99 cents. Good time to grab it.

Now back to work. (That was for you as well as me.)

Here's the rough front-back cover concepts  for The Dark Paths of the World, the sequel to The Winds of Heaven and Earth.

Yeah, yeah; I know we're a long way out--DPW just topped 45,000 words, so I'm not even a third of the way through the first draft, but it's starting to pick up steam and I'm pleased at the way the story's turning out.

Thoughts?

Hey, remember me? Things are settling down now, but it's been a busy week or two. With the launch of The Winds of Heaven and Earth in the rear-view mirror, and a few promotions put to bed, I can take a breath and turn my full attention to The Dark Paths of the World, the second book in the Keystone, Lodestone, Clarion series.

As exciting as it was to see the book in print and watch the first sales and reviews trickle in, I'm looking forward to getting into a gentler rhythm and just letting the creative juices flow. I'd like to have DPW out by mid-spring, and as of this writing it's about one-fifth of the way through the first draft. I stated in an earlier post that picking up an in-flight story is a lot of fun: no world-building or character development to get bogged down in, since those elements have already been established and planted in the reader's mind; it's just pure action and movement. Even as early on as it is in the tale, the story rips.

And on the promotions: I put up A Fairy for Bin Laden as a free Kindle download for five days (with a preview of WHE as bonus materiel), and it did pretty well, but not as well as some of the previous giveaways of the novella.

But the promotion I'm really pleased about was the Goodreads giveaway. I put up a signed copy of the print version of WHE as a seven-day drawing, and over 750 people entered with about half of them adding the book to their "To Read" shelf on Goodreads. The exposure from that promotion was phenomenal  and based on the response from that I'm planning on making that a regular monthly item.

The winner was Stacey F from Bridgeville, Delaware. Congrats, Stacey--enjoy!

Remember: independent authors don't have the marketing machinery of the Big Six publishers behind them; we depend on word-of-mouth and reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. The biggest favor you can do me--or any Indie author--is to leave reviews and spread the word about books of ours that you like to your friends and fellow readers.

Happy reading!

Now back to work.

Publication of a new book is exciting for any author. I can't imagine becoming so jaded that the blush is off the rose--insert your own mangled metaphor here--to the point where holding the initial printed copy of your work doesn't raise your heart rate. Even Stephen King and Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling and all those mega-selling authors still get a thrill when the stork drops in. At least I hope they do. If you don't, Steve, Dan, J.K., sit in my seat for a bit and remember what it's like.

The first one, though . . . that's gotta be up there with holding your baby for the first time.


All right--chill. Maybe it isn't, but in the moment . . .

I had that pleasure, that rush today when I tore open the package and inhaled the scent of paper and new ink. Ran my fingers over the cover. Flipped through the pages and skimmed words that are so familiar now I'm practically a walking audio book. Unless you've been there, you can't imagine the thrill.

The Winds of Heaven and Earth has physical form.


Everyone who's written a book will tell you how much work it is, how much dedication and commitment it takes to pull it off.  Even after you've typed "The End," there's a f-ton of work to do. The tunnel stays dark for a loooonnnnggg time, and just when you think you'll never come out, you see a stray photon or two, then a few more, and soon things brighten and you pop out the other end into clear bright sunlight and the world is fresh and new again.

Enough sentiment. Time to get back to work.  I've already downloaded .pdf proofs and made what I hope are the last revisions; with this print proof I need to go through and confirm structure: page breaks, headers, spacing, margins, page numbers, etc, and upload any corrections along with my revised materiel.  Then a day or two for the publisher review, and one more online pass as the final formatted work before I give approval for the book to be made available for print and distribution.

I'm still targeting next week, September 19th--International Talk Like a Pirate Day, (no, the novel is not about pirates, though it has a lot of nautical themes and there is a big battle between sailing ships, a la Master and Commander) for the formal launch though I'll release the Kindle Edition early on the 16th, and offer 5 days of a free download of A Fairy for Bin Laden to celebrate (with a generous excerpt of The Winds of Heaven and Earth as backmatter in that eBook) beginning on 9/19.

But . . . this. This thing I'm holding is me. My sweat, blood, guts. Train rides and late nights and weekends; time stolen from friends and family and self.

If you're a writer, you know it doesn't end here.  There's the new work in progress. Then the next book, and the next.

But now, for just a few more moments, I'm going to savor this.

Ha! Title got your attention? Don't be ashamed; we're all weak.

Just a short post to keep my toe in the water. I'm heads-down with a lot of things, so my posts have been few and far between--but as a writer it's important to keep active and visible in social media.

The Winds of Heaven and Earth is wrapping. My editor and I are in the final stages on the final chapters, and all the formatting, cover art, back and front matter, blurbs, ISBN and all that fun peripheral stuff is done. Once the last chapters are added, the long pole in the tent will be ordering and receiving the proof copy of the print version for review and approval.  The Kindle version isn't dependent on that, so it may ship a week or two earlier.

I'm tentatively targeting September 19th--International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Why?  Because. Because the book has a lot of nautical themes and imagery, and just because I think it's fun. We'll see. Avast, ye hearties. Arrrrrr . . .

Work on the sequel, The Dark Paths of the World is coming along, slowly but steadily. (I saw the other day in my notes that the original title was Through the Dark Paths of the World. Hmm. Maybe. Have quite a while to decide; that's looking like a spring 2014 release. The title comes from the quote "“The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.” And there's a lot of dark paths in the book.)

I launched another project to fill my infinite spare time. I went though a lot, and learned a lot while wrestling with the setup/ formatting / uploading / proofing for the different mediums (print and Kindle / eBook.) I decided that other Indie authors would benefit from my experiences, so I'll be publishing a step-by-step guide to this process, hopefully by the end of the year. No working title, but it will be something like "Self-Publishing Your Book to Amazon: A Step-by-Step Guide to Formatting and Publishing Your Work to CreateSpace and KDP."  I need a shorter WIP title. I think "SPP" works.(Self-Pub Project.)

The average price for an eBook, as reported today by Digital Book World, is an all time low: $6.33. Fist pump.

Have a safe and fun holiday weekend.

Although I was sort of happy with the original cover of The Winds of Heaven and Earth, I felt it was too placid; it didn't convey the sense of fate-driven helplessness that the Moby Dick quote that inspired the book's title warranted:

“Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?”

I also wanted to amplify the nautical themes that emerge in the work, and thematically link it with the look and feel I already developed for the second book.

So I changed it.

The front cover is below, and then a shot of the complete jacket.

My editor Rebecca and I are 40 chapters of the book's 55 through the editing, so we're about 75% done; I'm still targeting a September publication date.

Please visit my new website if you haven't, http://stephenmholak.com


Full jacket: