Cyan LeBlanc’s Posies & Peacocks talks about what’s up lately.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been plugging away at various different stories as as well as trying to move. Yes, I moved over Labor Day. Now I have an office where I can spend all my time writing (and working-because I work from home).
One of the other things I did was joined a webinar for serialized fiction. While many traditional reader still prefer to read their books in full, more and more authors are going to a ways to break away from traditional self-publishing which has been dominated by Amazon for years. Yes, Amazon is easy but they are taking more and more away from the authors – holding them prisoners. And if they decide they don’t like you, they will ban you. Once that happens, authors are stuck with no options.
Amazon takes a huge chunk of profits. IngramSpark takes even more. In Facebook author groups, I continue to see authors getting kicked off Amazon for content issues. Books are banned because of cover art — did you know that some authors have to change book covers because they created it using the PRO version of Canva, which gives them the usage rights to the images. It is becoming stressful to even publish on Amazon because I (like many authors) are afraid of our accounts being cancelled. What to do?
While Amazon is where most authors make the majority of their income, there are other avenues available for indie writers and authors. We can create storefronts of our own and sell eBooks. *Paperbacks are a different beast because we still need a press (POD—print on demand) for them. Another option is the subscription concept, which over the last year has been increasing popular—especially in the romance genres.
This is where the webinar come into play. For a while now, I tossed around the idea of serialized releases and recently began three different ones on this Substack, as well as setting up a Patreon account and Ream Stories page. While all three do the same (all with their pros and cons), I’ve learned that I like the simplicity of having everything under one roof: blog, serials, website, news, etc.
Serialized releases are more like a television show. You read a chunk at a time, once a week or twice a week, and it takes all of maybe 10-15 minutes at a time rather than sitting down and digesting a 300+ page book. That’s a commitment to me, so I better love the book for me to spend 2-3 days on something. 10-15 minutes is a more manageable amount of time to give something a week.
Currently, I have three stories that are going on at the same time:
FanBoy – A free memoir based story that is posting once a week.
Good Clean Fun – an experimental queer erotic horror that is posting once a week (currently, this is under the paid umbrella but considering moving it to free or free after X amount of time).
Girl/Mistress Expanded Universe – an in depth dive into the popular Sapphic BDSM series I have been working on (currently, this is for upgraded subscribers).
Will these stories be released on eBook or paperback? I am not sure at this point. I’m still trying to find ways to break away from Amazon but still allow my work to be cataloged on places like Goodreads which need ISBNs and ASIN numbers.
The point of any author is to make money and while I want to make money, I don’t write for money. It just takes money in order to release good books – I see a lot of writers who are saying “fuck the editing” and just releasing their books. I could do that also, but I’d prefer not to give a bad name to indie, self-publishing authors. That is the entire reason I set up the serialized publishing of my work, so I can help subsidize the future editing for books (whether I create a store or stick with Amazon).
Now back to writing… I’ve got stories to tell.