Blood Eternal Press Release Day!📰🎉

You’re getting this newsletter a week early because today is PRESS RELEASE DAY for the Blood Eternal audiobook and I didn’t want you all to have to wait a week with this exciting news

Here’s the official press release

And here it is in pretty picture form, if you prefer:

👉 Here’s the link to pre-order it on Audible! 👈

And this takes us directly into our new featured section:

Indielife: Why have you released it only to Audible???

Those of you who don’t use Audible/Amazon for audiobooks will notice that we didn’t do the release “wide,” but exclusively to Audible.

While we are only doing this for the first three months, there are very good (for some value of “good” 🙄) reasons to do so.

If you release your books as “Audible Exclusive,” you get paid out 70% of royalties. If you publish your audiobook “wide” (to all platforms) then Audible pays you a mere 35% of royalties. Now, you might think, “Well, the income from the other platforms will make up for that.” That’s what I thought, when I decided to go wide for the first three audiobooks I made…

However. It doesn’t work out that way in real life. The combined income from Libro.FM, Chirp, Overdrive/Libby works out to less than $30 twice annually, which just doesn’t come near to the income that Audible/Amazon yields.

So now we hit the ethical quandary place. My whole soul wants my audiobooks to be available in libraries, and through Libro, who supports indie bookstores. And in general I am anti-monopoly. So that’s what I want to do.

But if I do that, I don’t make enough money to pay off my investment in making good audiobooks. Making audiobooks isn’t cheap, and I have taken the most expensive path because I’m an audiobook person and I couldn’t make an audiobook I wouldn’t enjoy listening to. (And that has led to getting to work with Amber Fuckin’ Benson, which make it one of the best decisions of my life, as she has brought Noosh to life better than anyone else could.)

So, having started by going the ethical route, and paying the price for it, my publisher and I have decided to walk the “middle path” this time. We are going to start Blood Eternal out as an Audible Exclusive, and make the best royalties from the early sales burst.

Once that plateaus—as it sadly inevitably will—we will take Blood Eternal wide (and make a big fuss about it, so that people who have been waiting can ask their libraries to get it through Libby). My income will drop precipitously…but my soul will be happier about things 💖

And this is the thing about being an indie author. (Or, like me, someone who works with a small publisher who is willing to work with you about business decisions.) If you are an author with a bigger publisher, you have made the decision when you signed the contract that you are aligned with their ethics, and then you don’t have to think about it further. But for me, I am having to wrestle with ethics for every decision no matter how big or small. And that is really exhausting and frustrating—no matter what, you feel like you have chosen wrong every time.

So by going this middle road—start exclusive, then go wide—I am hoping that for once I will feel like I made the right choice as both a business woman and a person who holds her ethics strongly 🛣️

If you don’t fancy the idea of having to play this game with your livelihood, I strongly suggest you keep submitting your manuscript to agents and publishers and try to get trad pubbed. Indielife is all about these kinds of tough choices and frustrating outcomes.

Anyway, here’s me having a cupcake to celebrate!

No Ravenlife Segment today

I’m skipping the Ravenlife section today because I want to spend that time on working on Chapter 7 in Blood Depths, and I don’t think any of you will argue with that decision. But I do have a lot of plans for future features and honestly kinda excited about this new part of the newsletter—so thank you all for requesting it!

I’ll be back in two weeks with a more usual newsletter. In the meantime, if you are not an Audible user, feel free to email me if you want to be put on a list to be the first to know when Blood Eternal goes wide…

OK, I’m gonna go write! You go read the press release and/or pre-order Blood Eternal at Audible (if you use that platform) and then go be good or be good at it! 😘

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

GET SOME SHORT STORY ACTION:

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS: