The Underground Authors

 “Many hands make light the work.”

—Unknown

We all know that it is easier for a group tackle a project than it is for us to tackle it by ourselves. With rare exceptions, of course.

The Publishing Business

That’s why publishers have an army of people putting out a book: purchase editors, copy editors, proofreaders, book designers, cover artists, marketing committees, formatters, printers, distributors, sales people, and, of course, the company executives.

Is it any wonder the big corporate publishers charge $10 or $15, or even more, for an ebook that probably cost them less than $5 to actually produce?

Independent Author-Publishers have learned, over the years, it’s best not to try and do everything. Mostly because if they did, they wouldn’t have much time left to write. 

One reason Brandon Sanderson and James Patterson are so prolific is because they have an army of people doing all of the non-writing stuff. Which leaves them all the time in the world to write. (Yes, I know, they do participate in marketing efforts.)

The Underground Authors

One afternoon back in June of 2020 I got an email from Caleb Pirtle III inviting me to join an author co-op he was organizing. The purpose of the group would be to promote each other’s books. And thus The Underground Authors were born.

In those early days, we supported each other by buying and reviewing books; and talking each other up on social media, our blogs, and to our mailing lists.

Beyond the Sea

Last year, we decided to put out a short story anthology to highlight our work in one place. And thus Beyond the Sea was born.

Twelve stories by twelve writers, all inspired by the picture that became the book’s cover.

It’s a phenomenal collection, if I do say so myself. Twelve imaginative, touching, thoughtful, and exciting stories — all created from looking at one picture.

Author and reviewer Lisette Brodey wrote:

I chose this book because I’m someone who always looks for stories in photographs and paintings. So, seeing this anthology, where each author was inspired by the same photograph, immediately grabbed my attention.

All of the stories, greatly ranging in genres, were well written. Of course, I have some favorites, but to mention them here, for me, would be to discount the other stories, which I don’t want to do.

What really stood out for me was the collective talent, the beauty of the imagination, and the endless possibilities of an abandoned / lone boat. And who knows, while you’re reading, you may end up writing your own story.

Pick up a copy on Amazon. And see for yourself. All profit goes to charity. Good stories for you and cash for Team Rubicon.

Who Are The Underground Authors?

There are 12 authors at present in the group. Below are the names, which you can click or tap, and go to their Amazon US pages.

Caleb Pirtle III

Linda Pirtle

Cindy Davis

James Callan

Breakfield & Burkey

Kelly Marshall

Richard Schwindt

Jinx Schwartz

Michael Clifton

Ronald E. Yates

N.E. Brown

CW Hawes

CJ Peterson left the group last year to focus her efforts on her own publishing company. We miss her enthusiasm and contributions, but wish her much success.

Working together. Sharing thoughts and advice. Getting help when needed. Just having someone to talk to. Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary venture.

The Underground Authors. I’m glad I’m a part.

Next week, I am going to talk about the newest project to come from the pens of The Underground Authors: The Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles. Stay tuned!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer; as well as an armchair philosopher, political theorist, and social commentator. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

The Serial Novel

Last week I mentioned my intention to serialize the working draft of my next Pierce Mostyn novel, The Medusa Ritual, on my website. That plan is still in the works. I’m thinking of 18 weekly installments issued during February, March, April, and May. Then in June I’ll publish the revised novel in ebook form.

Why serialize a novel? Why not? As near as I can tell, the serialized novel has been around since at least the 1700s. It is generally agreed that the overwhelming success of the serialization of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens from March 1836 to October 1837 established the commercial viability of serialization as a publication format.

During the Victorian Era, in general, the highest paid authors were the ones favored for serialization. If your book wasn’t chosen for serialization that usually meant you were considered a mid-lister.

During the pulp era, magazines often serialized novels. In fact, many pulp era novels never saw print in book form and languish in often rare and deteriorating magazines. Today, however, there are publishers seeking to remedy that situation and you can find pulp era serialized novels now coming out as ebooks and print on demand paperbacks.

Recently, I bought an ebook of Robert James Bennet’s lost race novel Bowl of Baal, serialized in All Around Magazine from November 1916 to February 1917. This is the first book publication of the novel.

Rex Stout’s lost race and subterranean world novel, Under the Andes, was originally serialized in All Story Magazine in 1914. It didn’t see book form for over half a century.

In 1932, Weird Tales published the only Jules de Grandin novel Seabury Quinn wrote in 6 installments from February to July. The novel didn’t see book form until many decades later.

However, not just obscure novels were serialized. As mentioned above, Dickens made serialization financially lucrative for publishers and authors. All throughout the Victorian era and well into the 20th century very popular novels first appeared as serials — many which are considered classics today.

In addition to Dickens’s novels, below are a few other classics that were serialized initially:

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

And the list can go on and on.

So if serialization was so popular, what happened? I think a major answer lies in the demise of the print media. First radio, then TV, followed by the internet have damaged interest in print. Magazines and newspapers have suffered the most, and those were the vehicles that serialized novel length fiction all throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.

A second reason lies in what serialization tended to do to a novel. Things that were not considered good writing:

• Excessive length
• Too much repetition
• Plot lines that didn’t go anywhere
• Excessive melodrama leading to cliffhangers

One reason the novels were revised for issuance in book form. However, publishers (and even readers) think novels have to be a certain length, and so to achieve that length some of that “bad” stuff was kept to pad out the novel.

So is there a future for the serialized novel? I think there is. Writers seeking ways to drum up interest in their work and to secure for themselves an audience, are exploring whether or not serialization will help to that end.

After all, most TV series are nothing more than serialized “novels”. So if we can watch our “novels” in installments on TV, why can’t we do so again in our reading material? No reason, really.

So I’m going to experiment with the serial novel. And I hope you’ll participate in this adventure by telling me what works for you and what doesn’t. Because, I am after all writing the book for your entertainment. I want you to enjoy it. And you can help me to achieve that end.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

From Reader to Writer

Readers become writers when at some point they say to themselves, “I can do that.”

Or they just know the writing life is for them. An intuitive sort of thing.

With the advent of viable e-books, a new breed has risen up. I call them the gold rush writers. They see writing as a get rich quick scheme. And there are quite a few who are making significant piles of money. But as with most prospectors in the gold rush, most writers aren’t making those piles of money. In fact, it’s the middle man who is: the man who sold shovels to prospectors, and the ones selling covers, and formatting and editorial services to writers.

For myself, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t read. My mother read to me when I was young, and, even though she wasn’t a very good reader herself, she instilled in me a love for reading that has never left me.

Along with never remembering a time I wasn’t reading, I don’t remember a time when I wanted to be anything but a writer.

Unfortunately, my parents were of a practical bent and writing was just too dreamy and artsy-fartsy for their tastes. I got no encouragement from them to write.

However, a person who truly wants to write can’t be held back and I did write some during my school years, got one or two things published in the school lit mags, had a play produced in high school, a poem published in a fanzine, and that was about it.

After school, life and family responsibilities took over and the writing got pushed to the back burner.

The bug, though, had bitten and in 1989 I wrote my first novel, a mystery, Festival of Death. The book took me a year to write, but I wrote it. When finished, I sent it out, got a rejection slip, took another look at it, and decided it needed work, as most first novels do, and put it in the drawer.

I made a few more attempts at fiction. Had one or two pieces accepted in fanzines. And then switched to poetry.

Never in a million years would I have thought of myself as a poet, but it was via poetry that I found my initial writing success.

During the 1990s, and into the new century, I wrote several thousand poems, had hundreds published (mostly in e-zines), and eventually became a “name” in the small world of English language Japanese-forms (we’re talking about haiku, tanka, and renga).

The Internet is fragile and its content ephemeral. What is here today, is gone tomorrow. And most of my published poetry is no longer extant. The myriad of pixels have vanished. The e-zines are gone.

As I approached retirement age the fiction bug bit me again, but this time very hard. Poetry didn’t provide a big enough canvas anymore. I wanted the space a short story or novel provided. I wanted to create interesting characters and saddle them with impossible problems.

And so it was, I gave up poetry and returned to fiction. I had many false starts. Mostly because I thought I had to outline my novel. And I can’t outline worth a darn. When I finally learned there was such an animal as the “plotless” novel, and such a creature as the pantser — I knew I could finally write fiction. After all, I never planned my poems. I was a pantser poet. Why not a pantser novelist?

I never looked back. My first novel as a pantser was a monster of 2000+ pages. A sprawling cozy catastrophe completely un-publishable as originally written — it nevertheless broke the ice.

I’m now revising and publishing The Rocheport Saga as a series. There are currently seven volumes, with more to come.

Next was Festival of Death. I love Tina and Harry and couldn’t let them languish. I hauled the original manuscript out of the drawer, kept the first chapter and the ending, and rewrote everything else. A much, much better novel the second time around, I went ahead and self-published it. And have chronicled many more adventures of Tina and Harry, Tina being Minneapolis’s most unusual private eye.

The life of Lady Grace Hay Drummond-Hay is every feminist’s dream. I don’t understand why no one has written her biography. A fascinating woman who lived in fascinating times: the period between the two world wars. A prominent and well-known journalist in her day, it’s sad to see she is virtually unknown today.

She became the inspiration for my own Lady Dru alternative history novels. Of which I currently have two.

I’ve always loved horror and have several short stories and the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation series published.

And as long as I have breath there will be more ideas coming from my pen, and that makes me want to jump out of bed every morning and get to work.

The e-book revolution has allowed me to realize my dream. I’ve had enough rejection slips in my day to know I don’t like them — and to know they come from the subjective whim of another person, a person who just so happens to have the title “editor”. But a person who puts his or her shoes on the same way I do.

Editors aren’t infallible, nor are they omniscient. They make mistakes and their knowledge of the marketplace is limited. Most are in fact simply buyers for their publishing houses. And as such tend to be very conservative and not willing to take any chances.

Today’s e-book revolution puts the work of writers before readers — and lets us readers make the decision concerning a book’s future.

However, while writing is easy for me, marketing is a nightmare. And no writer hoping to get his or her work read can avoid marketing. Somehow we writers have to get our books before readers. And we readers will never know a book is out there unless someone tells us it is. There are just too many books for us readers to possibly know them all.

I once read that 3000 new books appear each day on Amazon. Amazon, however, only promotes those books on which it can make money. In the end, those are darn few. Most books, therefore, languish in Amazon’s dusty book basement. And many good books, sad to say, are sitting on those dusty shelves.

Why are good books not seen? Mostly because the author isn’t marketing them, or isn’t marketing them effectively.

Some authors believe in the magic wand. They say, “I’m a good writer and my friends like my book. It’ll sell.” Then they’re disappointed when it doesn’t. And it doesn’t sell because too few people even know it’s out there. One book in a sea of millions is the same as one needle in a haystack. There are no magic wands.

Marketing is difficult. It has few established rules, involves a lot of guesswork, and many years of experience. It also takes money. Maybe not a lot. But if a writer doesn’t have the money, then any amount is a lot.

I’m in that category. I don’t have a lot of disposable income. Therefore, I have to think harder and smarter about marketing. I just can’t throw money at the problem in the hopes of finding a solution. And I know there are no magic wands. I am going to have to do something to get people to find my books. And I want them to find my books. I want more readers. I think my books are good reads. Others think so, too. Those that have found them, that is.

IMO, Patty Jansen has laid out the best course for indie authors to follow if they want readers and would like to make a living from telling stories. It’s my plan to get more readers and hopefully make a few bucks while I’m at it. Art for art’s sake is fine. But it’s better if lots of people can appreciate it — and that takes marketing. And while I’m at it, you can find all my books here.

Even though I’ve moved from reader to writer I’m still a reader. Reading is my favorite form of entertainment. The number of books is endless, they’re fairly easy to find, and one can read anywhere and at anytime.

Currently, I’m reading the delightful Flaxman Low occult detective tales and Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin stories.

Let me know what you’re reading. And the more obscure the book, the better! If the book is by an indie author, and I like it, I’ll give the author a little free publicity.

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, happy reading!

Book Review: A Quiet Life in the Country

Superb indie writers abound. Many readers complain about the indie revolution and all the crappy books out there. Granted, there are a lot of crappy books being published. But they aren’t all indie. A very sizable portion of them come from the corporate giants on their never-ending quest for the next blockbuster.

Some of the best books I’ve read this year and last year were written by indie authors. And some of the worst books I’ve read last year and this year were published by the big corporations. In this day and age, who publishes a book is no guarantee of the book’s quality.

Last week, I reviewed indie author Agatha Frost, who writes contemporary cozy mysteries. This week, I want to take a look at cozy author T. E. Kinsey, who started out going indie and then accepted a publishing deal from Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon imprint.

When I picked up a copy of A Quiet Life in the Country it was #1 on Amazon’s list of Bestselling Cozy Mysteries. That was on 2 July 17. As of yesterday (7 August), the book was #15. A long ride being in the top 20.

So what makes Kinsey’s 1908 aristocratic sleuth, Lady Hardcastle, so popular? To me the answer is simple: appealing characters, humor, and good storytelling.

The same combo that works for Agatha Frost, works for Mr Kinsey. In fact, it’s the same combo that pretty much works for every author or book I like.

The only downside to A Quiet Life In The Country is that the pacing tips towards the glacial. What saved the book for me was the humor. The jokes and puns and banter made the slow spots bearable.

The storyline is the same as in all mysteries. Lady Hardcastle and her servant, who is also her friend, have moved to the country after a life of adventure. And then they stumble across the body and then another.

Through a ruse they are allowed to work with the police detective. Eventually Lady Hardcastle and the detective solve the murders.

All pretty standard. Which is why character and humor are so important, as well as good storytelling — which turns the already familiar plot into something interesting.

Highly recommended! Get yourself a copy of A Quiet Life In The Country. You won’t be sorry.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

The Parasitic Middleman

During a Gold Rush, Sell Shovels.

In 1848, Samuel Brannan ran through the streets of San Francisco with a glass bottle filled with gold dust, yelling gold had been discovered out at Sutter’s Mill.

He is generally credited with starting the California Gold Rush. And became California’s first millionaire. Yet he never panned or mined for gold.

A few days prior to his hype with the bottle of gold, having learned gold had indeed been discovered by the American River, he’d bought every pickax, pan, and shovel he could find. In nine weeks, by selling his goods at exorbitant prices, he made $36,000. That’s equivalent to the economic status 18.5 million dollars would bring someone today.

Many icons of American business got rich in the Gold Rush and never touched any gold, except to take it from the miners.

Levi Strauss had a dry goods business by which he did quite well for himself. He also sold miners the forerunners of what became Levi jeans. He eventually left California, went home, and became exceedingly wealthy selling jeans.

Phillip Armour opened a meat market in Placerville, then took his profits back to Chicago and founded Armour Meats. And increased his wealth many times over.

John Studebaker sold wagons, made money, and returned home to make wagons for pioneers and later on Studebaker automobiles. I remember those cars and I still love them.

Henry Wells and William Fargo started a bank for miners, at least the ones who made some money. Today, Wells Fargo is a leading American bank.

During the California Gold Rush, the middleman, the merchant, the one who offered services, that’s the person who really made the money. Not the prospectors.

Fast forward to today and a different kind of Gold Rush. The indie author/publisher revolution. There are thousands of writers and hopefuls and wannabes all clamoring for the dream of writing and publishing the Great American Novel. That one book that will let them quit the day job and retire to the Bahamas.

Sounds a little bit like the Gold Rush, doesn’t it?

Today’s indie authors are the prospectors and an army of service providers are making money hand over fist off of these poor and sometimes naïve dreamers.

So who are these service providers who’ve convinced so many, many writers they can’t live without their services? Let’s name a few of them.

Sellers of Writing Software Programs. Seriously? I need software to write my book? Whatever happened to pencil and paper? Or the keyboard and the word processing program on my computer? 

Now I’m not going to say Dragon, Story Mill, Easy Writer, or Story Weaver can’t help you write. But before you spend money, maybe money you don’t really have, ask yourself if you really need a software programmer and his toy to help you write your book. Just think of the thousands of writers before you who didn’t use such programs and got along just fine. Some using an ink pot and a steel dip pen or a quill even. Maybe you can too.

Grammar, Spelling, and Editing Software. I see some value to this. But honestly, can’t people do a better job? Give me one serious beta reader with an ear for cadence and a knowledge of grammar and who can spell. I’ll pit that person against an army of programmers and software running simply on rules.

Formatting Services. When I started in the indie writing business. I’ll admit I was loathe to spend money. First off, I’m not rich. Secondly, I already had the California Gold Rush scenario in the back of my mind. So I spent $25 for Legend Maker to make my ebooks. It’s a simple program and requires only simple formatting of my typescript. In less than an hour I can format my text and in less then 10 seconds get an epub and mobi file. Now if I had to pay a formatter for my 20 books… Hm, probably a lot more than $25.

Cover Artists. Yes, we all need covers. But seriously, have you taken a look at indie book covers lately? They are so genre similar, they all look just the same. Like the ticky-tacky houses and people in Malvina Reynolds’s song “Little Boxes”. It is no wonder Mark Dawson’s readers said the incentive to buy his books didn’t come from the covers — but from the blurb! By a 5 to 1 margin! The lesson here is simple: don’t spend big bucks on a cover. Spend time crafting your blurb.

Professional Editors. Recently I’ve heard all manner of arguments as to why I need a professional editor to edit my book. It’s as though the editor is going to teach me how to be a better writer. But editors aren’t writers. They’re essentially critics. They served a need for traditional publishing to make sure a manuscript, if accepted, was salable. In other words, that it met the publishing house’s criteria for salability.

Which means, an editor is not primarily a teacher of writing — but a fixer for the publisher.

Now I’m not saying an editor can’t be helpful. But if you need a content editor to massage your manuscript into something that is genre and reader acceptable, maybe what you really need is time spent learning the craft of writing.

Stephen King shows us the path to becoming a writer: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” I don’t see the word editor anywhere in there.

The indie movement is direct from writer to reader. The reader will tell you what he or she likes. So recruit them to be your “editors”. Not some academic or someone the Big 5 laid off. Trust your readers. If they don’t like your book, no amount of work from an editor is going to help it.

And I can’t see spending money on a line editor. Find a beta who will do that for you. Preferably someone older who knows how to spell.

We indies broke free from the tyranny of the corporate publisher. Why do we want to saddle ourselves with all the crap the corporations imposed on us? Makes no sense to me.

Review Services. Kirkus is making money off indies to the tune of $500 per review. Wow. That’s incredible. So are outfits like Reader’s Favorites. Pay them money and get a review. They won’t guarantee a 5 star review. But honestly, you think they want to give less than 5 stars and have disgruntled writers bad mouthing them?

I’m not saying these services can’t help sell books. But are they truly any different than the now discredited practice of buying 5 star reviews? Organic and honest reviews by readers are what really sink or float a book. And to get them takes time.

Discount Book Marketers. These outfits are more prolific than mushrooms after a rain. For a fee, they will tweet your book and post about it on Facebook and send it out to their mailing list (along with scores of other books). The problem I see with these outfits is that they encourage indies to constantly offer their books for free or 99¢. And in the long run that trains readers to expect from indies nothing but free or 99¢ books. Very bad for business that mindset. 

I’ve come back to the position that if I don’t value my work, who will? If I offer everything I write on the cheap, what does that tell readers? If I barrage my mailing list with free offer after free offer, how can I expect them to buy my books? I’m competing with myself by offering them free books! Not a good business practice at all. Save your money and stay away from these folks. This writing business is really about building a reader base. Not selling books.

Writing Courses. Writing courses have been offered since ever. Everyone who thinks he or she can write has at one time offered one. There are good courses and bad courses. Just like everything else.

However, I do think you are better off taking a good writing course than resorting to an editor for every book you write. Learn the craft of writing. If you don’t know the basics of storytelling, a writing course can help you with that. And that’s about all it can do. The rest of it is back to Stephen King. Read lots. Pay attention to what you like and don’t like about what you read. And write lots. Putting into practice what you’ve learned from reading. 

Writing is hard work. Fun work, but hard work. Writing is not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time to develop the craft. A potter doesn’t throw a perfect pot the first time on the wheel. Take the time to learn the craft. 

Marketing Courses. These are legion now. Many, many successful indies are putting together courses to teach their fellows the path to success. And charging big bucks to do so. And, as with anything else, some are good and some are bad.

One so called expert got her claim to fame by being a New York Times bestseller. The problem is, the book that did it for her was in a multi-author box set and her name wasn’t even in the advertising! Cheating if you ask me. Yet, she is a respected expert on marketing. Go figure.

Another novelist wrote a few books that apparently sold well or made number one on some list. Now he no longer writes fiction, just sells his course on fiction writing success. Ugh.

So be careful. Vet the person you are going to take a course from or buy books from or get advice from.

The best advice for the money I’ve gotten to date was free. A blogpost by Australian indie novelist Patty Jansen. Wish I’d had that information 3 years ago. You can read it here.

Not everything that shines is gold. Not everything of value costs big bucks, although sometimes you do get what you pay for. We indies are the prospectors. So remember this: the worst time to buy a shovel is on your way to the gold field. Get it before you leave home and take it with you.

As always, comments are welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

The Free Book Glut

Announcing all the free books in the latest author newsletter.

Free books are everywhere on the internet. The independent author-publishers are glutting the market with freebies. Why? Because writers are glutting the market with themselves and in the heat of competition to be seen, they’re giving away the store.

Now don’t get me wrong. I welcome the new technology that enables anyone who has a book inside him or her to publish that book once it’s been written. After all, this is the age of social media and books are a form of social media. They convey thoughts, feelings, imaginings, dreams, and hopes. And today’s technology makes it all that much easier for a writer and his or her audience to interact with each other. And I think that is a good thing.

What I am beginning to have a problem with, however, is the current mania of giving away books to try to secure an audience. I can’t help but think the practice is going to have long term detrimental effects on the indie movement. Here are some concerns:

• The devaluing of books and thereby the writer’s craft. After all, if a book is free it can’t have much value — can it? And if a writer gives away his or her work, he or she can’t think much of it — can they?
• The creation of the expectation that indie books should be free. Because, after all, the big corporate publishers don’t give anything away for free.
• Glutting the market with more books than readers can possibly read. Too much of a good thing is, well, too much!
• The self-delusion of writers, who are not very good, into thinking if they give enough away somebody will read their work. When in truth, they should find a different hobby or occupation. One they are much better suited at.
• Writers deluding themselves into thinking if they give enough books away, people will love their work and buy their other books so the writer can live his or her dream and quit the 9 to 5.

The latter two points above not much can be done with. Those fall under the umbrella of self-realization. Unfortunately, even bad writers can become popular — which only fuels the problem.

Nevertheless, the first three points we writers, as a collective, can do something about.

I ran across an interesting article with comments on the subject of book giveaways the other day. Here’s the link so you can read for yourselves: http://selfpublishingadvice.org/opinion-why-indie-authors-shouldnt-give-away-free-books/

When I first started self-publishing, the debate among indies was permafree or 99¢ for the series starter. Back before 2014 I think permafree made sense as there were not so many indie authors and free actually got traction. Even so, I said there was no way I was going to give my book away for free. The Big 5 don’t do it — why should I?

Then the tsunami hit. Starting in 2014, indie authors began coming out of the walls, the woodwork, the light socket, you name it. Indie authors were everywhere. To get traction, book services began springing up overnight offering to promote their books — if it was free or 99¢ — on Twitter, Facebook, and to their mailing lists. Of course, the services weren’t free. An author had to pay for those. Pay to give away books. Hm.

Yet, I could see a certain logic in the giveaway mania that was developing. The free first book in a series was a sample of good things to come. Give away the first book and build your mailing list and reap the harvest of good things. And that has worked for some.

However, seeing the glut of indie authors and the many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of books being given away for free — I’ve started re-thinking the free strategy.

For myself, I have to admit I’ve read few of the free books I’ve downloaded. That doesn’t mean I won’t read them at some point in time because I might. But I’m not reading them now. And of course that’s what all of those authors want me to do. Read their books now and buy all of their other books. Sorry folks. It ain’t happening.

Why? Several reasons:

• Some simply can’t write.
• For others, the style puts me off.
• Some are okay, good even, but the price of the other books is too high. The writing isn’t good enough for me to spend that much money.
• Some don’t have any books to follow up with from their freebie. So why offer the first book free?
• I have over a thousand books on my iPad. And more on my computer. Most are free. Most are classics. That’s a lot of very good stuff to read. The freebie offerers are competing with thousands of good books no longer in copyright and available for free.
• My time is limited. I write and I read. I read what my contemporaries write to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on. But my contemporaries have a lot of competition.

So if I, as an author and a reader, am not reading in any great number the free books I download — why should I expect people to read mine? That is a very good question. And my conclusion is that of the 1000+ copies of my books that I’ve given away, probably few have been read. I’ve garnered a few reviews, so I know at least 5 of those freebies were read. For which I’m very grateful and thankful.

As a strategy, giving away a free book in the traditional private detective mystery genre to drum up sales of my series and build an active and supportive mailing list doesn’t seem to be working all that well. I think I have a few fans developing and I’m very pleased. But nowhere near a thousand.

Granted, there may be things I need to be doing that I’m not to turn those folks on my mailing list into rabid fans. And in fact I know there are because I’m learning more and more on the business end each day. Hopefully in time I will turn my mailing list into that group of rabid fans.

My goal, though, is not to become a bestselling author. My goal is to build a sustainable and dependable income from my writing. I don’t need fame and glory. If it comes, wonderful. But I don’t need it. I’m not sure I even want it.

So I’ve been rethinking the free book strategy. And I’ve decided that I’m going to move away from it. In the long run, I think giving away books cheapens them. Makes them less important. It develops an expectation on the part of readers that indie authors should give away their books for free. And I don’t want to be part of that — because it’s self-destructive. Writers lose and readers lose.

Writers lose because if an author can’t make money to at least cover his or her costs, that writer will stop writing.

Readers lose because the vast choice currently before them will go away. And once again readers will be at the mercy of corporate giants deciding what they should read. And who wants that?

Readers will lose again because the cheap books will go away and the mega-priced big corporate offerings will remain. I mean $15 for an ebook? Seriously?

The glut of free books may satiate readers and may even turn them off from reading. And who wants that?

My new strategy is a modification of the free book approach. It’s the sampler.

On Saturday morning, when I go into the grocery store, there are all manner of nice ladies wanting to give me samples. Cheese, meat, dips, spreads, crackers, you name it. They don’t give me the whole product. Just a sample. If I like the sample, I’ll probably buy whatever it is to give it a further test drive at home.

When I buy a car, I get a test drive. A sample of the driving experience in that car. No car dealer gives away a free car. If I like the drive, I have to buy. So why not apply that to my books, which I worked very hard at producing?

That’s my new approach. Give a sample of my writing and hopefully whet their appetite for more. Give them the invite to buy. Because we almost always value what we buy more than what we get for free.

In the process, I also hope to weed out the freebie grabbers. Those readers who’ve grown fat on freebies and expect indies to give them more and more and more.

If a freebie grabber does snap up my sampler, at least they won’t have the entire book. Just a few chapters, that they probably won’t read anyway. If they do, they’ll have to pay to read the rest of the story.

So that’s the circle I’ve traveled. No free books to free books to no free books. Just a delicious tidbit. That test drive to hopefully get folks to buy.

After all, I’m a business and no business stays in business by giving away the store.