Fan Art, Sponsorships, And Other Goals I Didn't Expect To Have When I Became An Author

For folks who aren't regular readers, I've wanted to be a professional writer basically since I was in 8th grade. It was the first time I wrote a short story that really affected someone (it was a found-journal style short about a giant crocodile in the Amazon where the author suggested the thing stalking them was more than just an animal, which was inspired by Robert R. McCammon's story Lizard Man), and the feeling was intoxicating. I decided I was going to try to recreate that, and so I started writing more short stories, as well as several novel attempts, and I took every creative writing class or assignment I could get my hands on.

Now, over a quarter of a century later, I've at least figured out how to reliably craft a good story. However, the older I've gotten, the more my personal goals for my career have changed. It's sort of caught me off-guard, as well, so I figured I'd take a moment and talk about it this week, since I feel like professional goals are something a lot of us don't really consider beyond, "Get my book published."

I wouldn't say no, but things like this have become less important to me over the years.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

When You Realize Your Goals Aren't Realistic

I'll admit, when I was young and had yet to even finish my first novel, I had dreams of becoming one of those Big Name (TM) authors. I wanted to be one of those people who made millions of dollars, whose name topped the bestseller lists, and who would have my work turned into hit movies and TV shows. In my mid-20s I expanded that out into having a shelf of awards in my house, showing off my brilliance.

Over time, most of these have sort of fallen by the wayside. Though I would still love to win a Stoker or an Ennie, those are more in the, "Well, it would be nice," category, rather than something I legitimately expect to happen.

Seriously, look at how goddamn NEAT this thing is!

The reason I've given up on so many of these goals I was once striving for is that the longer I've been an author, the more I recognize both how rare these kinds of successes are, and often how little they have to do with the things you're actually writing. I've said repeatedly on this very blog that making sales is a marketing success, and that in the end it's often divorced from the artistic quality of your book. And with every awards scandal that comes across my feed (I'm looking at you, Sad Puppies) the more it feels like awards winding up in the hands of truly deserving, talented creators is a fluke rather than the process working how it's supposed to.

In short, both the idea of becoming a Rich And Famous author, and a multi-award-winning author felt like I was standing out in a field and waving around a lightning rod. Yes, it's certainly possible that I'll catch lightning in a bottle, but it's also possible for me to win the lottery just by buying a single scratch ticket. In the end it sort of felt like striving to make those things happen was just setting myself up for disappointment, and not focusing on what I should be doing; writing the best books I could.

As a lot of folks out there know, nature abhors a vacuum. So while I didn't consciously choose new goals to replace the ones that I felt were too unrealistic, they showed up anyway. And while some of these still feel like long shots, I'm of the opinion they're more achievable than what I had before.

So What New Goals Made It Onto The List?

While I've more or less given up on the life of fame and fortune (it would be nice, but I'm trying to be realistic here), I do have a couple of goals that I think I could manage. Hopefully in the next 5-10 years, but if they take longer, well, it's not like I was going to stop writing, or something.

Let's not get ridiculous... I've been at this since I was 13. You don't put down a habit like that short of anything but the reaper.

Goal #1: Fan Creations

This is a goal I've technically achieved in a few small ways, but it's something I'd like to be able to do more of. The idea that something I made affected a reader of mine so strongly that they wanted to add their own creativity to what I've made, either through the form of writing their own stories, drawing art, or even painting minis styled after a character I made, is one of the sincerest forms of flattery I've ever received.

Perhaps the most notable thing I've seen folks be that excited about is, ironically, some of my own fan stories titled Waking Dogs and Broken Chains, which are about the trials of a renegade space marine in the Warhammer 40K setting. There are even audio versions of these tales, which still give me a chill to listen to, and I highly recommend checking them out (along with more of my work) on the YouTube channel A Vox in The Void.

Goal #2: Be A Convention Guest Of Honor

I've been to my share of conventions over the years, and while I still enjoy them, they're a lot different when you're there for work than when you're there to play around. And if I'm there I'm usually on panels, running games, holding down a table in the dealer's hall, and sometimes all of these things in a single day. However, it would be a feather in my cap to be invited to a convention as a guest of honor. Additionally, it would just be nice to be recognized for my achievements in that way, whether I'm there as an author, a gaming guest of honor, etc.

Of course, it would also be nice getting the perks that come along with such a position. Realistically, I expect I'll be able to manage this for a smaller, regional convention, but it would still be nice for it to happen at a bigger event if and when the opportunity arises.

 

Goal #3: Become An Institution

In the past I thought about essentially being a stand-alone writer who sold enough books that I could pay all my bills, buy a house, and just sort of live that celebrity lifestyle. However, like I said, I know exactly how rare that kind of success is for most people in my profession. But what I would like to do is to create projects that help keep me afloat financially, but which allow me to give work to other creative people in my circles.

This, for example.

I've had a few, smaller examples of this already. Sales of Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, as well as any supplements that use Anonymous Katsodon's art ensure that part of the royalty payment goes right to her. Additionally, Isiah Burt has written two novellas for my fantasy RPG setting Sundara: Dawn of a New Age. Legacy of Flames is a story about a hulking lizardfold warrior, and his unusual mission in the Dragonsbreath Mountains, and Blight Bane's Gambit follows an orc mercenary company as they attempt to solve the riddles of a tricksy dragon in the woods beyond Hoardreach, the City of Wyrms.

Honestly, what I'd love to do is for something to get so large in terms of popularity and earnings potential that it allows me to start hiring people on as staff, or giving them positions are regular contributors, so that we can all share in the bounty. I'm not saying that I essentially want to get successful enough where I can form an LLC and give regular, reliable jobs to all my friends so we can work on our projects together while shielding each other from the roving wolves of capitalism... but yeah, I'd love to be able to do that.

On that note, I feel like the next project with that level of potential might be my Chronicles of Darkness audio drama, Windy City Shadows. If you haven't heard about it yet, check out the elevator pitch at Windy City Shadows, A Chronicles of Darkness Podcast Proposal, and take a look at the Ask Me Anything I put together for it a while back!

Goal #4: Get Sponsorship (And Maybe A Gift Or Two)

This is probably my shallowest, most selfish goal, but we've all got to have one or two of those. However, the idea that things I'm creating are so popular that a company decides that they need to butter me up in order to reach my audience by sending me a free trial of their service, and perhaps a cool present for me to keep in the background of my videos, is something that would be pretty nice, not going to lie.

Whether it's game books, a portable dice tower, an unusual display shelf, filming accessories (I'd love to have a green screen I could break down and store in my closet, as an example), or even something as seemingly random as a cool mini fridge (I like having drinks on hand for when I'm recording), it would just be a mark of pride for me that I was considered well-known, popular, or influential enough to make that happen.

The issue here, of course, is that sponsorship tends to come with a wide reach and a big audience. I don't really command one of those, but every little bit helps. So consider subscribing to the Azukail Games YouTube channel if you haven't yet, and help me keep climbing up that ladder so I can get myself noticed!

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

Writing Rational Characters (Notes From Windy Con)

With all the things that have happened since mid-November, I haven't yet had a chance to touch on some of the pearls of wisdom I brought back from this year's Windy Con. In particular, though, I wanted to share some of the really good points that were made at my last panel of the convention, which was titled Writing Rational Characters. Because it sounds simple... but there was a lot that got covered in the 1-hour time limit we had.

Some of it was depressing, but we soldiered through it.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

What Makes a Rational Character?

While there were a lot of things brought up in the early part of the panel (Ayn Rand's name got thrown around, for example), we all reached a mutually agreed-on definition of rationality when it comes to characters in fiction. In short, a rational character is someone who, using the information and resources they have access to, takes sensible steps to achieve their goals.

Note that the goals of a character don't have to be rational... merely their efforts and actions for reaching those goals.

For example, a character might have the absolutely batshit goal of destroying all life on the world. This goal might be because they are a servant of the god of death and they hope to usher in their lord's victory, or because they believe that pointless suffering of billions can be ended by allowing all of them to ascend to a deserved afterlife as martyrs, but their goal is still the annihilation of all life. That doesn't make them irrational, as a character, as long as they take sensible steps toward actually achieving this goal, and reaching their victory condition.

It does probably make them the villain of your story, though.

Lessons From Reality

A topic that we kept circling back to on the panel was that people, by and large, aren't rational beings. We hold a lot of beliefs that don't make sense, we act out of pure emotion, or we can end up believing some truly out-there nonsense.

This is where we get to that, "according to the information they have," caveat that was mentioned earlier. Of course, "the information they allow themselves to believe," might be a better way to put it.

We had to account for some kind of variable, after all.

Let's take a look at some real-life villains for a moment. The fossil fuel industry has known for about a century or more than their product is causing problems with the environment. They also know that their product is limited in supply, and that even if everything else was going well, it will run out. Knowing this, it seems like the smart move, the rational move, for those who run these companies would be to transition to green, renewable sources of energy. This preserves the planet they live on, it acts as a good PR move, but it does something else as well; it sets them up as the new source of energy that they can literally make forever, turning it into the closest thing to an infinite money machine.

Yet for decade after decade, these companies didn't do that. Instead they spent buckets of cash on disinformation campaigns, on political lobbying, and on suppressing competition. Looking at the big picture, this seems like highly irrational behavior. However, just as with characters in our stories, we need to ask what information characters have, and what they allow themselves to have.

Take our Captain Planet villains. Are they indifferent to the harm their industry and product does, because they're going to be dead long before that bill comes due? Have they bought into their own propaganda, simply not believing any of what scientists say? Do they see a disconnect between that disaster and their job, since they only look at sales figures, or marketing, and thus they're insulated from it? Have they been trained so completely by their own culture to view competition and success in business as the ultimate goal that they simply do not see anything outside of bigger profits, bigger numbers, and who's winning in the stock market?

These things don't make a character inherently irrational. However, for the audience to recognize them as acting rationally, they also need at least a little insight into the character's views and perspectives. The same is true of characters who believe ridiculous conspiracy theories, or who suffer from religious delusions; their actions might seem monstrous, unhinged, or counterintuitive, but the audience needs to know what the character's framework is in order to decide whether or not they're rational.

Characters Aren't Required To Be Rational

The conclusion I reached, and which I felt was important to mention in the panel, is that characters don't have to be rational. Whether we're talking about villains like the Joker, or the shock troopers of a hate mob in your detective story, individuals aren't required to have a cogent set of beliefs that make sense to other people.

However, stories are generally supposed to be cleaner, and more orderly, than reality. Because there are hundreds of examples from our real-world history that would have readers rolling their eyes if they showed up in novels instead of textbooks. While rational characters are certainly a concern, you also need to ask what makes for the best story, what is going to feel like it fits within the conventions of this genre, and what actually follows the plot you laid out.

So I want to end this article with the same piece of advice I ended the panel with. Random chance can always make things harder for your characters, but it should never fix things. So as long as irrational actions, thoughts, and beliefs actively make things more difficult, you're on the right track!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Even Small Goals Can Seem Out of Reach When You're an Independent Creator

One of the recurring themes on this blog has been the disconnect between how the public perceives the earnings of creative professionals, and what those earnings actually look like. Because as I've mentioned time and time again, most people only see famous millionaires (Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, etc.), or fictional authors (Angelica Fletcher, Richard Castle, and so on), so they have an extremely biased view of what a reasonable income would be for someone who writes for a living. And even if they know that most writers aren't bestselling millionaires, they assume that if you're a "real" author that you at least make the same as someone earning minimum wage.

Truth is, most of us don't. What's really frustrating about it, though, is that the numbers a lot of us need to hit to make a living are so low, yet we still can't manage them except through years of sweat, and occasionally lucky rolls of the dice.

Come on, come on... it's not that far!

Before I get into the numbers, you can help me reach my goals by becoming a Patreon patron today! And if you just want to stay on top of all my latest releases, subscribe to my weekly newsletter as well!

Some Examples of Small, Unattainable Goals

Before we get started, I want to lay out some numbers for you. I live in government-subsidized housing in a small town in the Midwest. So, the numbers I'm going to throw around are going to be nothing compared to what authors would need to live in big cities, or pricier suburbs. Additionally, if I make more than $16k in a single year I would lose access to what healthcare I have through the state of Indiana. So I'm not even talking about thriving in many of these situations, just paying bills and occasionally going out for tacos when a new book drops.

Something to keep in mind as I start laying out facts and figures for you.

This is also why I spread my eggs among many baskets.

Let's say I wanted to earn $12k a year. For most people that's a laughable wage that's far below the minimum, but we'll take that as an example. After all, since it's so small, it should be pretty easy to make that, right?

Well, if I wanted to earn $12k a year from Patreon I would need to clear $1k every month. I have over 700 followers on my author page on FB, and over 1,200 and growing on Twitter, and there are social media groups with 100k+ people who see my work on the regular. So, in theory, it shouldn't be too hard to find 100 of them to give me $10 a month, right? or 200 who could part with a fiver? Even a thousand people who could each give me $1 every month, which is less than the price of a Netflix subscription?

At time of writing I have 39 patrons. I deeply appreciate all the help they give me, however, my monthly take-home support from them is less than $300. And even at the highest subscription numbers I ever had on that platform, I never made more than $320 or so per month.

Given there are people making thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month on Patreon, that goal doesn't seem unreasonable. But I've been on the platform for years, and I've reached out in all the ways I can, but it's never grown anywhere near the level I would need it to be at to make a living. You could help that by becoming a patron today, though!

Okay, but what about my books?

Let's move onto the next basket... what about all those books I've written? From my Hard-Boiled Cat mysteries Marked Territory and Painted Cats, to my sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, to my independent books Crier's Knife and The Rejects, I've got a sizable archive of stuff for dedicated readers to check out.

So what would it take to make that very small living just selling those?

Well, I make about $3 or so per sale. There's variation depending on platform, format, etc., but we'll use $3 to lowball it. So, I'd need to sell about 4k books a year to make bank. That's about 1k books per season, or three hundred and change a month. 10 books a day, give or take. And since there's over 300 million people who speak English in the world, surely it's not unreasonable that I could sell at least that many novels per day?

At time of writing, that's just not the case.

From my Ring of Fire books (two cats and the space marines), I get paid once every 6 months. That check has been consistently in the $120 range, which isn't nothing, but does translate to about 40 books sold over a 6 month period. Far as the pulpy sword and sorcery novel and the independent short story collection, I'm lucky if those move any copies at all these days. Doesn't matter where I link them or how I promote them, they're just a tough sell, and I don't have any companies backing me up on the marketing for those two.

Again, it's not an impossible number... it's just one that feels impossible to reach without the next best thing to divine intervention. Almost as impossible as actually getting people to read the books and leave reviews. You only need 50 of them for Amazon to start promoting you to other browsers, but the best I've managed to do is 25, and that's on the oldest novel I have out. None of the others have even broken 20 yet (though anyone who decides to finally leave their rating and review could make a big difference there).

What about all those RPG products you work on?

One of the biggest earners I have is the sheer bulk of RPG supplements I put out every month (all of them collected on a pin board for the tabletop folks reading this). With roughly 120 supplements with my name on them out at time of writing, one would think that I make all sorts of bank off of them. After all, even if my royalties are a small cut of the overall sales, they've got to add up when we're talking about such a large archive, right?

Yes and no.

While my royalties and affiliate earnings have gone up over the years as the archive has grown, we're still talking very small numbers. The largest amount I receive from any of my supplements is $1 per sale, and that's only for a handful of titles. The rest range from $0.10 on the smaller end, to $0.60 on the larger end (such as for Ironfire: The City of Steel that you see above). So after 4 years or so of hammering away on title after title every month, what does that add up to? On average, between $200-$250 a month. Sometimes it's higher than that because I was part of a big bundle or a popular deal, but that's the range I'm looking at right now. And I didn't start regularly earning over $200 a month on those sales until May of 2021.

So I'd basically need to increase the earnings on those five-fold just to make less than minimum wage. A feat that, all other things being equal, could take me 20 or so years of additional labors.

All of These Things Require The Audience To Act

One of the unfortunate truths about being an author is that I actually possess very little power to change my own situation when all is said and done. Because it doesn't matter how many novels I churn out, how many blog updates I write, what conventions I attend, or how I tweak my keywords... because at the end of the day what makes or breaks creative professionals is you. The audience.

Without you, we are nothing. You are the crowd, and our rise or fall is determined by your whims alone.

Are you not entertained!?

So if you made it this far and you want to help, there's a lot of things you can do. If you have the spare dosh consider becoming a Patreon patron, or buying some of my books and games. If you're broke (just like me and everyone else), consider leaving a review of anything of mine you've enjoyed. Follow me on my social media links below to help boost my signal, and share around any books or supplements you think are cool. Hell, check out my Vocal archive and give it some reads (since it pays me based on how many reads my work gets)! There's over 200 articles in that archive, and you're sure to find something you like and want to share with your social media circle.

And remember this whenever it comes to other creators out there who make the things you like. Because except for some very notable exceptions, we're trying to ice skate uphill and could use the help.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!