The Quiet Year Behind, but What's Ahead, By M.L. Buchman

Note: I’ve been doing this here at Romancing the Genres for several years now. If you’re in a retro mode or want to peek at my last year’s prognostication (or want to see how right/wrong I’ve been in the past), visit: https://romancingthegenres.blogspot.com/2022/12/what-year-2023-will-be-by-m-l-buchman.html.

Looking forward, I see a couple of very clear trends. None of these are shocking news. I’ve pegged them before because the indie industry has largely stabilized. Not completely, but the Wild West of its first ten years now lies solidly in the past.

Success in the near future, as I see it, is a little about tools and a lot about strategy. So, think of this more as a wandering set of random observations and suggestions than predictions.

TRANSLATIONS

In 2021, I said we were 2-3 years from universal—on the fly—translations: choose a title, choose a language, start reading.

I know people who are now doing AI translations without a professional bilingual proofreader, but I can’t imagine how annoying those are to read. Clean-up is still needed.

So, auto-translate isn’t here yet…maybe by 2025?

But affordable AI translation backed by a professional bilingual proofreader? Oh yeah, so doable now. I’ve already started that with the first one live by the New Year if all goes well.

 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The pandemic effect continues. All of those programmers stuck at home were able to deeply focus on advancing AI tools and WOW did the landscape shift fast.

I also said that it would an exciting time for IP lawyers—and is it ever! Look for legal wranglings to continue for the foreseeable future.

Do you use AI for idea generation? Fine.

Do you use it to create cover art or actual words? Wow, are you ever walking into a world of potential hurt. LLM (Large Language Models, the way AIs work) are trained by, you guessed it, feeding them lots of language (or images or whatever).

Developers have two choices:

One, only feed it works legitimately in the Public Domain? The LLM will sound / look beyond archaic (because it was filtered from works created seventy years past the death of the author or from low-grade fan fiction [if it was high-grade they would need to copy other’s worlds]).

I even try not to read any books over a few decades old to avoid sticking my writing voice hideously in the past.

Train your LLM on modern materials? You’re stealing copyright according to the initial bits of case law and a little thing called the Berne Convention of 1887 ratified by 181 of the 195 countries of the world. (Hot tip: You can avoid all that mess by limiting your LLM sources to Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, and a few choice others.)

Just yesterday as I write this, Sports Illustrated was shamed into taking down a whole series of magazine articles written / generated by AI, complete with AI-generated profile pictures and bylines. Yep, the times are going to be interesting. (Shamed before the lawyers had a chance to come after them.)

AI-Audiobooks

These and translations appear to be the only AI elements steering clear of the whole legal wrangle over how they were trained. It’s an economic way to create additional IP from your deep backlist.

Again, like a translation, it can be posted simply as it’s generated, but a proof-listen and edit is still highly recommended. Is “lead” pronounced “leed” or “led”? Does “read” come out “red” or “reed”? That alien race name in your SF masterpiece…Cthulhu anyone?

But these translations are still cheap / free and a great place to start.

ADVERTISING

I’d previously noted the collapse of the “advertising churn” model. The number of people living on the churn (spending $250,000/year to make $75,000/year because the rest gets pumped back to the ad company) has collapsed. I’m sure there are people who are still managing that, but far fewer than ever before. Readers are ad saturated.

My take on it is that ads can still be effective, but rarely anymore in a saturation mode. Targeted ads, intended to build audience and new fans, seems to be the way to go—as maybe it always was.

Remember, a fan isn’t someone who you managed to churn or discount a book into their hands. A fan is someone who finds you and thinks, “Oh, I like this kind of stuff.” Then, with proper handling (which I’ll get to in a minute), they buy a second and a third book. By the end of the third book, you are well on the way to turning them into a true fan who will now go and plow through your backlist and join your newsletter to see anything new coming.

If you’re still living in the ad churn, ask yourself this, “Been sleeping well lately?” I wouldn’t be.

PANDEMIC

As I write this, we’ve just survived 2023, the Year of the Post-Pandemic Craze.

Writers who were smart about business loved the Pandemic. Not only did we have an excuse to stay home and write, but after people burned out on the Netflix catalog, they bought books. Lots of books.

Then because of a minor miracle of science (called building a major vaccine in under a year instead of the more typical decade), the populace finally declared the pandemic to be over (well before the experts were ready). I read an article yesterday that the US population alone was estimated to have banked about $20 trillion (that’s $20,000,000,000,000) in savings during the Pandemic. They drove less, they ate out less, and they sure didn’t fly anywhere.

In 2023, it’s estimated that they’ve burned through $19 trillion of those savings. They played, they partied, they traveled far and wide, they had a great time.

There was one thing they were not doing—reading books.

Many, many authors saw their income halve overnight, and remain that way throughout 2023. (Mine dropped, but thankfully not like that.)

I expect 2024 to find some modicum of balance as the US and others are forced back to work, as college loan payments return, and budgets are once more a matter calling for some attention.

That’s good for writers, so I’m hoping for a better 2024 as are many others.

 DIRECT SALES

I harped on this at length last year (see the link at the top to revisit the discussion, https://mlbuchman.com if you want to see what I did). The only thought I’ll add to that is Do it! Do it now!

Yes, it’s a total pain in the ass. Sure it makes you a higher percentage of the cover price for each sale, which is offset by the time it costs you.

BUT it gives you direct connection to your fans.

Re-read that sentence. Here, I’ll force you to: It gives you direct connection to your fans.

You get their e-mail and that’s your ticket for the long term. You get to coax them into the second and third purchase that turns them from reader to fan. The importance of the chance to market them directly can not be overstated.

Why?

See the next topic.

DISCOVERABILITY

For the last five years or so, a friend and I have had a two-hour cross-country brainstorming session every month (And in September we met up for five days and really shorted our brains out.) In the past, we started every conversation with, “How do we break publishing?”

This was the relevant question over the last five years as we sought ways to leverage new tools in creative ways. I even built a mini-conference designed to give the software vendors more ideas and clearer feedback (several of the ideas have since appeared on their platforms).

But those platforms have stabilized. Sure, they’ll continue to improve, but they’re now about how to create or distribute a book better, faster, cheaper—rather than how to do it at all.

So, we’ve started asking a new question, “How do we break discoverability?”

Because that’s the current challenge. If you aren’t asking yourself that question daily, or at least weekly, you’re failing as the manager of your small business of being an author. Constantly ask yourself, “Other than writing high-quality stories, what can I do to improve my discoverability?” (Hot tip: If you aren’t asking the question, you’ll never find an answer.)

Personal Example 1:

I’ve started new fan outreach initiatives: bonus scenes, recipes from the books, cast lists, and readers club videos. To see what I did, visit: https://www.mlbuchman.com/fan-club-freebies/. Feel free to join!

Personal Example 2:

For eight years I wrote a short story a month and gave it away for free for a week. People read them in droves, and then bought them in droves until they were a third of my income. But after over a hundred stories (there were some years with Christmas bonus stories), I wasn’t feeling as inspired as I had been.

I planned to stop the monthly Ides of Matt short stories, but first I asked the magic discoverability question.

In answer, I came up with Thrill Ride – the Magazine. It’s an opportunity to expose my stories to the fans of the authors I bought stories from. It’s a win-win discoverability tool. https://thrillridemag.com. (By the way, submissions are open through 12/31/2023 at midnight.)

My second best advice?

Think, think hard, about creative ways that you can “Break Discoverability” and reach your fans in your own new and creative ways.

AND MY BEST ADVICE (my same final paragraph as last year and the one before that and…)

Ask: How much time am I spending writing?

It better be over 25 hrs/wk if you’re a full-time author. Over 10 hrs/wk if you’re still in the aspiring mode.

Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! is more effective than the next book for ensuring that your backlist grows, your future expands, and you’ll be in the best position to take advantage of 2024, 2025…

Note: my webstore is live at https://mlbuchman.com.

 

USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. "Matt" Buchman has over 75 novels, 200 short stories, and 50 read-by-author audiobooks. From the very beginning, his powerful female heroines insisted on putting character first, then a great adventure.

PW declares of his Miranda Chase action-adventure thrillers that: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” About his military romantic thrillers: “Like Robert Ludlum and Nora Roberts had a book baby.” He is also the founder and editor of Thrill Ride – the Magazine.

A project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50’ sailboat, and bicycled solo around the world…and designs quilts. He and his wife presently live on the North Shore of Massachusetts. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.