Witty News & Musings

If you write books long enough (and you write more than one) at some point you're going to find yourself in the position that I'm in right now...which is stuck. 'm waiting on my editor to finish the edits on my upcoming romance novel, so my mind isn't totally free to...

his may surprise you.
But I’m one of those RARE writers who needs a touch of inspiration to get the muse off of her ass and the creative juices flowing. Why would I need to be inspired, you ask, when I get to spend hours on end with crazy people…in my head??? Well, here’s another little secret, sometimes the literary industry can be a real downer. I mean valium downer. At least 12 times a year, I’m on the verge of quitting. Of those 12 times, I quit at least 4 times for a total of 6 hours, give or take 15 minutes. Sometimes I’m just a plain old Lazy Maisy. Sometimes I need a positive way to procrastinate.
Whatever your reasoning or situation, have I got some information for you!

So, Amazon surprised me this morning with the announcement that they were changing the royalty structure for Kindle Unlimited. I know there are a lot of sour pusses out there, but as for me, I couldn’t be happier.
What’s it all about?
Amazon is changing the royalty structure so that when people borrow books in Kindle Unlimited, they will get paid by the number of pages read. Under the former structure, authors got paid a flat fee if the reader read more than 10% of the book.
The 10% structure significantly favored authors who wrote shorter works of fiction–novellas and short stories–which are flooding Amazon these days. Many people are writing serial short stories, and novellas like crazy. The shorter works allow them to produce a greater number of products and making a killing off the old system. Meanwhile, authors like me, who can only publish up to two books a year because of book length produce larger works in a smaller time frame and really missed out on the chances to earn in this evolving ebook market.

So I’ve decided that I have been really dropping the ball on my blogging duties. To remedy the situation, I am forcing myself to get in a habit of blogging every day by commencing, starting today, the 365 day blog-athon. Every day for one year, barring severe illnesses or amputations, I will sit at my computer and write a blog about writing, my new work in progress, the publishing industry, self publishing (how great it is or how much it sucks, depending on the moment), encounters with readers, reviews, books I’m reading, whatever.

My Grandma Pearl once told me there are two kinds of men: the ones who will make you count your blessings, and the ones who will make you want to start counting from zero to forget they ever existed. Mitch Wiggins fell in the latter category. He made me determined to...