One of the most frustrating things about being a professional author is trying to explain to people just how difficult it is to wring blood from the stone when it comes to actually making enough money to pay bills at the end of the month. Because there's a big difference between knowing that most artists, "aren't making it," and really looking at the numbers.
Because, as Kameron Hurley says, traditional books only sell about 3,000 copies over their entire lifetime. 250-300 copies in their first year. Indie books do even worse, with a lifetime average of about 250 total sales. And if you're self-published? Well, according to The Guardian chances are good you make less than $500 a year from your work.
Oh don't worry... shit gets worse from here.
For all the folks out there who are thinking that it seems impossible to make a living just from book sales unless you're one of those lucky outliers who make the news (those 100k-1 million sales in the debut month folks you see on the front page), that's because it is. Even generous contracts only allow you to make a couple bucks off of a book sale, and if you're selling a few hundred books a year, that's a nice little bonus check, but it isn't going to keep the wolf from the door. Especially if you only get one check every 6 months or so, like a lot of authors do.
So How Do Authors Pay Their Bills?
The short answer is that authors have to do something beyond just waiting for people to buy their books. Unfortunately chances are good that every single thing you just thought of has factors stopping it from actually working out in an author's favor without a lot of luck. Most of the things I've seen folks suggest when I talk about making ends meet include:
- Handselling books at conventions
- Starting a YouTube channel/podcast
- Running a blog/creating Internet articles
- Releasing free fiction to hook readers into buying into your catalog
In theory, all of these are sound ideas. The problem is that most of the time they either do very little to help, or they can actively hurt you.
Again, the numbers don't lie.
Let's start with handselling books at conventions, signings, and similar events. Can you do that? Absolutely! Can you make a profit? Potentially. The issue arises when you take into consideration the costs associated with this activity, and how many copies you need to sell just to break even. Because first, you need to buy the stock to have it on-hand (which can be anywhere from $50 for a small number of books to $100 or more if you're stocking up). Then once you have your stock you need to pay a table fee (usually another $100 or more), get yourself to the event (gas, tolls, time taken off work, etc.), and often buy a badge if one isn't included in your merchant fee. Then if the event is too far from home, you need to get a hotel room for the stay (and even smaller events can quickly rack up $200-$400 for a weekend).
Can you cut some of these costs? Absolutely. You can share table space with other authors, get friends to split hotel room costs with (or focus more on local events), volunteer for panels to get your badge compensated... but at the end of the event, you're going to have to sell enough books to cover your costs. And if you're making, say, $5 a sale then at minimum you'll have to move 20-30 copies before you break even for a small event with cut corners. If you didn't cut costs? You might need to sell 50+ copies at even a small event before you make any profit at all.
For bigger events? You might end up paying hundreds of dollars just to be there and be seen when all is said and done. Not unlike how after paying lighting specialists, travel costs, etc., smaller bands often owe money to their record label for tours instead of walking away with money in their pockets.
And for the other options? Well, technology has changed the way that works. In the old days you could easily make money with ads on your site if you had a steady audience, but these days everyone has Ad Block on. And if you're on a site like YouTube it can take months to literal years of work before the site decides you're worthy enough to be monetized. Podcasts often pay a fraction of a cent on a listen, requiring thousands of listens a month to make any money whatsoever. And while planting a hook with free fiction is a good idea, it takes time, effort, and energy to write that, and there's zero guarantee it's going to even be seen, much less entice a purchase from a reader.
So how do we do it? Well, with help from our sponsors mostly.
For Less Than $1 a Day, You Can Help Feed a Starving Artist
While the changes that hit the music industry in the digital age isn't a 1 to 1 comparison of the changes in publishing, there are a lot of similarities. The biggest one is that a lot of us need some form of sponsorship, or even an affiliate sales deal, just to make our ends meet.
Sometimes that means we get paid to produce a particular type or style of content. For instance, I recently received my first sponsorship from SHM Publishing who made sure my Pathfinder character conversion guide for the Catachan Jungle Fighters got written. I have both an Amazon and Drive Thru RPG affiliate link that, if I wasn't slapping it onto basically every product I mention in a blog or article (my own products and others), there's no way I'd be able to buy groceries. And while I haven't been given an appearance fee for an event yet (real talk, most people don't know who the hell I am), I have rubbed shoulders with bigger names who get fat checks from events to show up as a guest of honor.
But the biggest sponsors most authors can have? It's readers like you.
That sounds like a line dropped from a PBS script for being too sappy, but it's true. Without folks supporting me on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, or leaving occasional tips in my Ko-Fi cup, I would never be able to keep doing what I'm doing. And even with a small but dedicated following, it's a slog making it through the months a lot of the time.
So for folks who want to help make sure that I keep making content, whatever form it takes, there's some things you can do to help.
- Leave a review of any book you've read to boost the signal.
- Read some articles in my Vocal archive. If you find something you like, blast it on your social media pages so more people see it. They're free to you, and I get paid based on traffic!
Trust me, I wish that I could just sit back and crank out book after book for folks' reading pleasure. Sadly, the fickle finger of the zeitgeist hasn't landed on me, and thus I have to make sure I keep that hustle going. Any and all help in making sure the sweat is worth something is greatly appreciated.
And if you'd like to sponsor a creator like me, feel free to reach out! I didn't pick the name The Literary Mercenary for nothing, and I'm always interested in a business proposal.
If you've ever watched a fight scene in a movie, or even read one in a comic book, you have an intrinsic understanding of the idea behind the Balance of Power. In short, this balance is a measure of how tense a particular scene is with regards to the capability of those participating. If we see Superman show up in an alley where a guy with a gun just stole an old lady's purse, then we know that mugger doesn't stand a chance because there is literally nothing he can do to actually hurt Superman. As such, there's no tension in this scene.
But if you have random Joe Nobody try to play the hero? Well now we've got a real, dangerous situation. Mugger's got experience and a weapon, but Joe might be a little faster than he's expecting, or a little stronger than your average passerby. Suddenly the situation is a toss-up, and now you're feeling the tension because who is going to win isn't a foregone conclusion.
Ryan Hollinger does a deeper dive on this with a dissection of the movie Old Boy, which you should definitely give a watch.
However, the idea of the Balance of Power is something you should keep in mind when it comes to your stories as well... and for more than just the fight scenes! Because without that inherent tension, your readers may start losing interest, or they're going to start asking questions you don't want them asking.
And as always, if you want to stay on top of everything I'm doing, make sure you subscribe to my weekly newsletter! Updates go out on Sundays. And for folks who want to help me keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron... because even a little tip in my jar really does help.
The Balance of Plot
Most of us understand that we need to have a challenge when it comes to a fight scene, but too often we forget that the same tension needs to be applied to the rest of the story we're telling as well. It is, for example, the reason Sherlock Holmes stories are told from Watson's perspective rather than from the great detective's... Sherlock knows what's happening 5 minutes after someone walks through his door. Half the time he merely needs to read a letter, or glance over someone's hands, to fit all the clues together. If we read the stories from his perspective, there wouldn't be any mystery to them at all.
So instead we ride along with Watson as he attempts to follow in his friend's footsteps. Because just like Watson we may see the mystery, but we can't always put the pieces together. But just as the good doctor occasionally has moments of great insight, so we might catch the deeper meaning of a clue from his description of the events. This keeps the mystery tense, even though we're pretty sure as readers that Holmes already figured everything out and is waiting for his grand reveal.
And if you need more examples, I've got a few in here!
For those who haven't read my short story collection The Rejects (which you should do as soon as you can, by the by), the story "Suffer The Children" is a great example of this. Our protagonist Malachi is an old-fashioned, Old Testament angel. His antagonist, in this case, is a guy kidnapping children. Not some kind of devil from the deeper hells, not a lost god buried in the sands for a thousand years... just some guy who's kidnapping children and offering them up as sacrifice to a cult of Moloch.
An angel versus basically any mortal is not even a contest. However, what lends the plot tension is that for all of Malachi's power, he is held in check by the rules that govern his very nature. It is not possible for him to go against those rules. Which, for the purposes of this story, means that he can't intervene if the children in question have not been dedicated to one of the Abrahamic faiths. So while he can watch, track, investigate, and understand exactly what is happening, he has to wait for the kidnapper to slip up. And when he does, well, the Lord didn't have any mercy near to hand on the day that he made Malachi for his singular, ugly purpose.
There Needs To Be Doubt and Tension
Most protagonists are going to be good at something, whether they're elite soldiers, half-devil bounty hunters, werewolf enforcers, or ancient vampires. No matter how strong, swift, skilled, or smart that character is, you need to establish that Balance of Power in the plot in order for what they're doing to seem like something other than a foregone conclusion.
Whether that's forcing the character to fight against impossible odds, to try to solve a mystery that might be beyond their skills, tying one hand behind their back through an injury, curse, or other weakness, or simply making them chafe under the rules that govern their very existence, you need to establish that tension.
Because if the protagonist could accomplish something with relative ease and little chance of failure or danger, why are we bothering to tell this particular story in the first place?
As most folks know, I tend to have a lot of irons in the fire at any given time. And while my latest novel Painted Catsjust dropped, the noir mystery sequel to Marked Territory where we follow NYC alley cat Leo on the latest case that's grabbed his curiosity, I've got another book that's going through layout and preparation right now!
So I thought I'd give you a bit of a preview of that one today... especially since it's pretty different from my most recent releases.
A broken man, in a broken world. What's not to love?
What's "Old Soldiers" About?
The new book takes place on an Earth that's been devastated by its first interspecies war with an alien fleet. Contact was made with an alien species called the Hyperion (an energy-based life form that remains inscrutable to humans even after the war), and it went poorly. Humanity had to devise every doomsday weapon it could, and fling them right into the Hyperion's teeth... and one of those weapons were the Myrmidon. Alien-human hybrid soldiers who could interface with captured technology, which grew to superhuman size, displayed highly advanced strength, and which boasted a number of other strange abilities... the Myrmidon may not have been the force that turned the tide, but they did their part.
That's all ancient history, though. The novel picks up nearly a decade after the end of the war, with humanity trying to put the pieces back together. Most of the Myrmidon didn't survive, and those who did have found themselves in a world that wasn't made for them. Tools of government propaganda, they are simultaneously regarded as heroes, and feared as dangerous weapons that might go off at any moment. Suffering from night terrors, and the burden of knowing he can't save his brothers and sisters from ending their own lives, Pollux is just trying to hold his life together.
When an assassination attempt goes awry, though, it's like he's finally woken up! Reflexes programmed into him by countless drill instructors kick back on, and it's like he's come out of a dream. Someone is gunning for him, and possibly for those closest to him. Gathering the others to his side, Pollux intends to get to the bottom of the conspiracy... and those who woke the sleeping giants will wish they'd just let these old soldiers fade away.
And since we're all thirsting over 9-foot-tall pale creatures created by weaponized weird science at time of writing, fans of Lady Dimitrescu may find themselves feeling right at home as we follow Pollux and the few comrades-in-arms he has left.
EDIT: Old Soldiers is now live, and ready for you to purchase your copy if you enjoy the preview!
A Snippet, For Your Reading Pleasure
The Babylon Gate had been a symbol
of hope, once upon a time. A huge edifice built from heavy gauge
materials, the Gate had originally been fronted with a bas-relief of
angels frolicking in polished clouds. It had been a promise of safety
for everyone who entered. That promise had never been tested, though,
and as the years fell away, the Babylon Gate had faded. Now the
angels leered from their perches, and the laurels on their brows had
withered and darkened like forgotten funeral wreaths. All told, the
Gate looked like an ancient mausoleum for some long-dead titan,
rather than a passage to safety from the threats of the world above.
I was twenty meters from the gate
when its halogen eyes blinked to life. The search lights swiveled in
recessed sockets, squealing as they brought their beams to bear on
me. I stopped, hunching my shoulders as a gust of wind drove a slick
of rain against the back of my neck. An alarm warbled from the Gate;
a buzzard with a craw full of cancer. I held my hands up, and
listened for the tell-tale clank of the remote defense system coming
online. Despite the entrance's appearance, I knew the guns were
regularly cleaned, and regularly used.
“Identify yourself,” the Gate
demanded, a bored voice demanded from the inset speaker system.
I straightened my shoulders, and
snapped off the appropriate reply. “Pollux, Myrmidon, 698254.”
The Gate was silent while it
considered my request. One minute passed. After two minutes, the
Gate's eyes rolled back behind their protective cauls, and the street
was left in relative darkness. Two minutes after that, the cannons
slid back into their protective sheaths, and a low groan came from
the base of the Gate as one of the walking doors shuddered aside. I
lowered my head, and entered.
The inside of the Babylon Gate had
seen even less maintenance than the outside. The foot lights
flickered like dying fireflies. The rubber mats had rotted away in
places, exposing the concrete underneath. Floor vents that had once
been smooth and efficient creaked like broken shutters, and belched
noxious clouds of decontaminating mist as I walked past them. The
Argon-72 stung my eyes, and tried to crawl up my nose as I splashed
through a puddle of stagnant water. I stepped through a sensor array,
and no alarm bells went off. Either it had decided I could pass, or
the array was dead.
The concourse beyond the intake hall
was built to the same, grand dimensions as the rest of the Gate, but
whatever looks it had left were lost in the shadows. Load-bearing
caryatids watched me pass with their tarnished, marble eyes, and
rusting copper nymphs rasped nonsense words at me from dried-up
fountains as air blew through their empty pipes. Old shards of glass
crunched under my boots, and a few moldering sleeping bags sat
slumped against the walls like discarded cocoons. Ashes and soot
stained corners where campfires had been lit. I paused, standing on
the south side of a column. All I heard was the muted noise of the
outside world, and all I smelled was the damp must of an unused
place. I doubled my pace, picking my way down dusty corridors, and
striding past old, stone benches carved to look like ancient wood. I
crossed the central mosaic without glancing down at the faded map of
the city's boroughs, and approached the Hundred-Yard Stairs.
The Stairs were the central feature
of the Babylon Gate, and they had been designed with the city's
population in mind. While not quite as wide as their namesake, the
Stairs could swallow a battalion without hesitation. The steps had
been carefully carved to minimize falls, and despite both extensive
use and subsequent neglect, they were bedrock solid. Most of the
brass handrails had been destroyed, and a majority of the light
sconces had been shattered, but the stairs themselves were as strong
as they'd ever been.
I descended quickly. The first and
second landings were empty, but the sour ghost of toke smoke left
behind by pipe users haunted the rafters, and chafed at the inside of
my nose. I paused on the third landing, and checked the hieroglyphics
on the walls. They'd changed since I'd last been down this way.
The mural of the red serpent on the
far wall had been the most recent piece of artwork four months ago.
It had been marked out, with black X's drawn through the eyes by
whoever had taken the turf from the Scale Kings. A black, upraised
fist with spikes on the knuckles had been stamped over the serpent,
but the Brass Knuckle Brotherhood's tag had been crossed out with a
green paint pen. Two crude skulls with lumpy berets were drawn a
little further along the wall, their jaws open in either screams or
laughter. The artist had more enthusiasm than talent, but the mark
got the point across. I touched my thumb to the paint, and felt the
residual moisture beneath the skin. The new tribe had marked its
territory no more than three days ago. I turned away from the urban
cave paintings, and continued my descent.
I smelled the next landing before I
saw it; a mix of body odor, and burning industrial waste. The floor
space was clotted with supine forms. They reclined on busted
cushions, leaned into corners, and sprawled with their heads on
folded coats. Flick torches and strike-anywhere matches flared,
warming glass pipes and ceramic bowls. Chapped lips sucked at half a
hundred poisons, and blew out little pieces of the tokers' souls in a
chemical rainbow. I took shallow breaths through my mouth, and tried
to keep as much of the haze out of my lungs as possible. A few eyes
rolled to follow me, but most of the hop heads either didn't see me,
or figured I was part of their self-inflicted stupors.
Downwind from the addict's lounge
was the cot shop. Ragged curtains hung from twine nets strung across
the ceiling, providing minimal privacy for the minimal space you
could rent. Some of the residents let out loud, wet snores I could
smell from the center aisle. Others made noises that told me the
occupants were wide awake, and engaged in vigorous activities. A boy
with a for-rent look glanced my way from a cane chair at the end of
the hall, and the two clock girls opposite him raised their heads
when they heard my boots. The girls' eyes went wide, and the boy
swallowed hard. I gave them a nod, but didn't slow my pace.
There was more, of course. Even
after midnight, the Stairs were jiving. The gambler's hall had faro
at one end, and dice at the other. On the next level down, a juke
played party ballads while patrons dipped drinks out of an all-sorts
barrel. Some people spilled their drinks when I walked in, and a few
spit them out. A couple of the patrons froze in their seats, and at
least three of them legged it down the stairs like I was some kind of
specter. No one drew a weapon, though. It seemed that whoever the new
management on the Stairs was, they were smart enough to keep the “no
bullets, no blades” rule that had been common practice ever since
the McNamara Bloodbath had shut the whole place down two years back.
I was most of the way to the lowest
level by the time a welcoming party met me. There were six of them,
and they were all local boys. They wore dirty dungarees bloused into
steel-toed boots, and each one had a gear belt slung around his hips.
The only other thing universal about them were their green berets,
each one set with a skull. Some were Jolly Roger medallions, others
were hoodoo fobs, and one had a unit patch where the skull was
wearing its own cap, but every one of them had their band's flash
firmly pinned in a place of honor. They rounded the base of the
stairway, and were five steps into their charge when they came to a
stumbling halt. They were breathing hard, but none of them seemed
tired. They all had weapons, but hadn't drawn them yet. I stopped
four steps up from the front-runner, a burly bruiser with a heavy
scar across the bridge of his nose, and gave the pack a once-over.
“Help you?” I asked.
“Got word we had a Gate crasher,”
the leader said, his words coming a little short as he tried to get
his breathing back to normal.
“I'm just passing through,” I
said.
“Got to pay the toll,” one of
the others said. He was rangy, younger than his compatriots, and I
could see the chip on his shoulder quite clearly from where I was
standing.
“Is that right?” I asked the
leader, tilting my chin toward the loud-mouth.
The party's speaker shrugged his
left shoulder, and gave me a you-know-how-it-is smile. His right hand
never strayed far from the sidearm hanging at his hip.
“Way I remember it, you paid to go
up. Coming down was free if all you did was sight see.”
“New management, new rules,” the
back-seat talker said. A few of the others nodded, but no one said
anything.
“Is that the way it is?” I asked
the one with the nose scar.
“That's the policy,” he said.
I nodded once, showing him I
understood. The others relaxed slightly.
“What's the toll?” I asked.
The leader named me a figure. The
others nodded approvingly. The young gun in the back was grinning,
showing two poorly-formed silver teeth in his top row. I smiled, and
approached the group until I was a single stair away. I rested my
hand on the railing, a ten centimeter-thick bar of wrought iron
bolted to the concrete. I rocked my hand gently, and the railing
didn't wobble.
“Here's my counter-offer. Get out
of my way, or I will make absolutely sure five of you won't be doing
anything but popping pain pills and shitting in a bag for the next
four months.” I squeezed my hand into a fist, and the railing
twisted out-of-true in my grip. I pulled, and four support bolts
snapped off like dandelion heads. “The sixth goes to the cold room.
Any one of you tries to drag iron, I make him eat it. You receiving?”
I looked from one face to the next.
The street soldiers had seen their share of trenches and blood, and
anyone who was part of a crew that took the Stairs would need some
serious hard cases to keep control of such sought after territory.
They were fighters, and had probably been fighters most of their
short lives. I watched as they looked at the malformed piece of pig
iron in my hand, and re-calculated their odds of survival. A
sallow-faced shooter took a smoke out from behind his ear, lit it,
and folded his arms. One of his compatriots slid his hands into his
back pockets, rolling out his neck like he was bored. His pulse beat
hard in his neck, though, putting the lie to his relaxed pose. The
others followed suit, leaning against the walls, tucking their thumbs
behind their belts, or lacing their hands behind their heads in a
show of getting their breath back. The kid in the back was squeezing
his pistol's grip hard enough to turn his knuckles white, but when he
looked in my face, he saw something that made him let go like the
weapon had given him a shock.
The team's point man looked at the
others, then back to me. He blew out a long breath, and stepped
aside. I let go of the railing, and it thudded into place with a
heavy clang. I nodded, dusted off my hands, and brushed past them. I
didn't run, but I tuned my ears for the sound of metal clearing
nylon. No one pulled the pin. I was out the front door two minutes
later, standing on the upper deck of Babylon Proper.
Would You Like More of My Work?
While Old Soldiers isn't out yet, I have plenty of other stuff you can sink your teeth into while you wait for it!
If you're a fan of super soldiers and you want something short and snacky, check out my recent (and free) piece Waking Dogs, a World Eaters tale from the Warhammer 40K setting. Or if you'd prefer some fantasy fiction with a military bent, take a look at The Irregulars, a Pathfinder Tale of mine from Paizo. There's also my short story collection The Rejects, if you're one of those rare folks who genuinely enjoys short stories. And if you prefer audio, my story Almost was dramatized by A Vox in The Void, a channel you should really give some love to.
If you're looking for some books, there's my cat noir mysteries Marked Territoryand Painted Cats that I mentioned above, as well as my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife that came out a few years back. That's by no means all of my work out there right now, but if you want to check out everything else I've been a part of, give my Amazon author page a glance and I'm sure you'll find something to fit your tastes!
If you've read most modern fantasy, you're familiar with the Masquerade. It is, in short, the idea that the vampires, werewolves, fey creatures, witches, wizards, etc., move among the masses without being seen by the general population. Whether it's by magic, by constantly staying in the shadows, by manipulating media to make their very existence seem ludicrous, or just the idea that a majority of people will not believe what their own eyes tell them, the Masquerade is a common theme in a lot of modern fantasy because it serves two, important purposes.
The first is that it allows the author to keep our world, and its history, intact. If the supernatural community was kept behind the curtain, then as far as we know our history happened more or less how we think, giving the writer carte blanche to make edits and changes as the story progresses. This immediately gives the audience a foot in the door, as they know the real world, and can add the fantastic elements to it as the story progresses. The second thing it does is that it creates the illusion that this fantastical world could exist right under our noses. All you need to do is walk down the right alley on the right night, and you could find yourself in this world, too.
Oh dear... just how did you wind up in a place like this?
However, there are writers and readers alike who've grown sick of the Masquerade. They want modern fantasy stories where the magic and the monsters walk out in full daylight, and where there's no secret about who and what they are. And while you most certainly can do that, it is by no means an easier task to accomplish. The Masquerade does a lot of unexpected heavy lifting for you, and removing it means that burden falls squarely on your shoulders.
Before we get into it this week, make sure you sign up for my weekly newsletter to stay on top of all my releases. Also, speaking of unusual modern fantasy stories, my second hard-boiled cat novel dropped, so if you enjoyed my Maine coon heavy Leo's adventures in Marked Territory, then you are going to have an absolute ball with Painted Cats!
You Will Need To Re-Write History
In The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe a man drops a golden scarab through a skull nailed to the end of a tree branch. The difference between one eye socket and the other, once the characters take 30 or so paces out in a particular direction, is the difference between an empty hole in the ground, and finding a king's ransom in buried treasure.
That situation is sort of what you deal with when you do away with the Masquerade. Because it's going to change history, and the further back you go, the more changes will be made.
The difference a few inches can make.
As an example, say that supernatural creatures have only been in public for a short period of time. This is, more or less, the sort of setup we have in True Blood. For while vampires have been around forever, they finally stepped out of hiding (along with a lot of other creatures), and the world is still changing to reflect this impact. But all the time they were hiding behind the curtain? Well, that history remains intact.
But go further back with it, and see how that alters things.
For instance, what would happen in vampires came out of hiding in the 80s? Or if werewolves were public knowledge in the 60s? After decades of being part of the world, how does their presence alter things? Are certain types of movies just not allowed to be made due to public outcry, with schlocky trash considered vamp-sploitation? Have civil rights progressed for supernatural creatures? Can they serve in the military, or in public office? Has science been able to understand anything about these creatures? Can lycanthropy cure cancer? Is there a push to use more plastic and aluminum in public spaces so that fey creatures aren't hurt by touching iron? Are vampires limited in the places they can live due to the widespread nature of churches? Are there hate groups that focus on these creatures?
You could go back even further, too. What effects did these creatures have on world events like the Great Wars? Are they found across the world, or only in certain places, and how has that shaped culture there? Have laws needed to be changed for life sentences (or life appointments) for creatures that are functionally immortal? The earlier the Masquerade dropped, the more the presence of the supernatural will alter the course of how the world developed.
You're Generally Better Off Making Your Own World
My two cents on this issue is that if you don't want to do a massive amount of world building for an alternate historical timeline, but you still want a modern fantasy world where elves, orcs, shapeshifters, etc. are a part of the day-to-day world, then you should just make your own, unique setting. Because at the end of the day it's usually a lot easier than trying to ask how things would have been different of Rome had been ruled by elves, and the Germanic tribes had been united by orcs come down from the mountains, and how that changed the events of the past few thousand years on Earth.
On the one hand, this is not a small undertaking. You need to dope out finance systems, technology, political relationships, cultures, and a thousand other things just to make the world feel like a real, lived-in place. At the same time, though, you're free to make those things regardless of what Earth's actual timeline was like, and without trying to mold our real world history, nations, etc. to fit what you're trying to do with your fantasy. It gives you total freedom to get as weird and wild as you want to!
Yeah, Smith and Wizards just dropped this beauty. You wanna talk trash now?
Unless your story needs our real world to act as the foundation for some reason (either to provide that extra escapism of the fantasy within reality, or to try to make a statement on how history might have gone differently with one or two fantastical alterations to the timeline), you shouldn't feel tied to using the world we all know and live in. Because unless it's required that you have New York, or Chicago, or Tokyo as a touch stone for some reason, don't tie yourself into knots to make them part of your setting.
Instead, take us to new places we've never seen before. Places where elven private eyes carry spell-slinging side arms, where werewolf orcs act as muscle for the mob, and where gnomish scientists try to crack the code of creation using a combination of ancient spells and a large hadron collider. Because that's going to be way more interesting, refreshing, and unique than another Shadowrun homage where in the year 20XX the event happened, and now there's ogres, trolls, elves, etc. in the real world because we want them here now.
