Methods To Support Authors You Like (While Still Boycotting Amazon)

So, I wanted to start this week's post off with an apology. My last installment about how you could support authors by using the Kindle Unlimited platform while still hurting Amazon's bottom line was based on some faulty information on my part, and I took it down before it had a chance to spread any further than it already had. I know we are all trying to ensure our money doesn't go to causes and companies we don't want to support, and I didn't want to give anyone incorrect information.

That's also why this week I wanted to put together a follow-up for all the things you can do to support authors who may be facing hardships as more folks turn their backs on Amazon as a distribution platform. And while not all of these will apply to every author out there, there should be something on the list you can do to keep the writers in your life fed and sheltered so they can keep working hard on the next story for you and all your fellow readers!

And I may not have even covered all your options here!

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! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Option #1: Buy Somewhere Else

This seems obvious, but sometimes we get so narrowly focused on our normal shopping patterns that we forget there are still traditional bookstores out on the market. So if there is an author you want to support, but you're not going to Amazon, make sure you try alternative dealers. For example, my books Old Soldiers, Marked Territory, and Painted Cats are all available at Barnes and Noble, and you can get hold of them for about the same price if you've been meaning to check them out for yourself!

This goes for any merch your favorite authors put out that isn't just books. Whether it's tee shirts, stickers, hoodies, or something else, if they're selling through a site you aren't boycotting, consider grabbing an item or two to tide you (and your favorite writer) over.

Option #2: Buy In-Person

Most authors who have signing events, or who come to conventions, will have books on-hand for you to buy. This isn't news to most folks, but the major advantage of hand sales is that authors get to keep a majority of the value of the sale, rather than a bookstore gobbling it up to give them a pittance. So if an author in question is going to be at an event you're attending, or just somewhere local, consider showing up to get your copy... and for bonus points, hand them cash to cut down on charge fees!

Option #3: Support Their Free Work

While a lot of us write books, we also produce a lot of extra stuff as well. So if the authors you like put out podcasts, blogs, free short fictions on websites like Vocal, or if they run a YouTube channel, make sure that you consume and support those things as well! This has the added benefit that you're saving money, getting a bunch of extra things to enjoy, and the author you like is still getting paid at the end of the day.

For the record, folks can find a ton of free fiction of mine in my Vocal archive, and I've got audio dramas along with a lot of game-related stuff over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel... so subscribe to both of those if you haven't, and go through the archives when you've got time!

Option #4: Subscribe and Leave Tips

Very few of us actually depend on our book sales to handle 100% of our bills, and at this point in our lives a lot of authors have some kind of crowdfunding platform to help us cover our expenses. So in addition to following your favorite writers on all of their social media sites (Facebook, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and so on), and interacting with what they share there, take a moment to find out what crowdfunding websites we use. Some of us are on Patreon, some of us have Ko-Fi, some of us might even use Only Fans (we don't judge here), so find out where the creators you like are making things, and toss them a little support if you can! Even if it's just a few bucks a month, it makes a big difference if enough people do it!

Incidentally, you can find me on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, as well as on The Literary Mercenary's Ko-Fi, if you want to help me keep my records in the black.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

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. 

When Your Framing Device Invades Your Story (The Subtle Brilliance of The Magnus Archives)

A while back I wrote about framing devices in the aptly titled Does Your Story Need A Framing Device? However, I recently came across a particularly clever subversion of expectations in a fictional series regarding turning the framing device (and the cliches that came with it) to really enhance the world building of the series in an interesting, meaningful way.

Mild spoiler warnings ahead for the subtle brilliance of The Magnus Archives.

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 The Frame Is Part of The Picture

For those who didn't listen to the first episode of the show, linked above, The Magnus Archives is an anthology horror podcast that follows the efforts of those employed in the archives of the Magnus Institute. Found in London, England, the institute records and catalogs encounters with the strange and supernatural, and the stories we're hearing are several of the written accounts being put on-tape by employees. This is why the audio has a strangely old-school sound, and why we can hear the day-to-day goings on in many of the recordings.

So far so normal for a horror podcast, right? After all, in a strictly audio format, this kind of framing device plays into the metanarrative quite well. We can keep the voice cast relatively small, because it's the same researchers over and over again, and we can focus on the tension of the tales as they're in (essentially) a journalistic format, with survivors of these events telling their stories to someone who will listen.

Pretty basic stuff, really.

Now, this format isn't perfect. Firstly, there's the way the narrator's voices and cadence alter when they read the stories from witnesses, giving us a more heartfelt performance to listen to. We can write that off, though, as just something that comes with the format. Not only that, but as the plot progresses the narrators get stuck-in with supernatural plots in their own right. They're chased by monsters, they have to make bargains with terrible creatures, and the tape recorder always has to have a contrived reason to be present in order for us to hear what's going on. Maybe it's someone surreptitiously recording a conversation with their boss (who may have ulterior motives what what he's doing), or they want to leave a record in case they disappear... but generally speaking, we overlook the presence of the tape recorder because if it wasn't running, we wouldn't hear the unfolding narrative as the audience.

What The Magnus Archives does, though, is take these things we've largely overlooked because they're a part of the format, and it weaves them into the narrative, and the world building.

This is where the minor spoilers begin, so proceed with caution.

For starters, it's revealed that not all the statements in the archives are recorded in this way... only the stand outs. Only the ones that compel the reader. And reading these statements is more than just an exercise in the strange and bizarre; it changes the one doing the reading. It brings them into the story, and into the person who gave the statement, which provides an organic explanation for what we all previously thought was just a dramatic performance to keep the audience interested. Additionally, while some incidents of the tape recorder being turned on surreptitiously are explained, other times the characters actually point out that they didn't notice it was running until that moment. They wonder where the hell it came from, and how it came to be there. This jars us out of our complacency, as the listeners, and it makes us question all the times the tape recorder's presence was never explained, and it makes us wonder why the mysterious force behind this device (for there certainly is such a force) chose for us to hear that conversation, or that interaction.

This twist sends us reeling, as the audience, because it uses assumptions we had made and ignored, which plays into the themes of the show. After all, so many of the strange and supernatural events aren't seen by most people, and they so often shrug and look away... it's only when something becomes too much for them to write off that they have to acknowledge something out of the ordinary is occurring, and this stab to our sense of structure and the place of the framing device throws so many of our assumptions out the window, and has us questioning everything!

There's no real advice in this week's update... I just wanted to call attention to this bit of sleight of hand because it's one worth hearing, and adding to your own toolbox if you can!

For Fans of Audio Fiction...

If you're a fan of audio fiction, and you are looking for some unique offerings, then I want to remind you to head over to the Azukail Games YouTube channel, as well as to my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary. The former has nearly 50 short audio dramas, many of which are interconnected, telling tales in dark fantasy worlds, sci-fi war zones, and noir back alleys. The latter has longer stories that are dramatized versions of several of the tales found in my short story collection The Rejects, which I'd also recommend lovers or short fiction check out!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

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 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. 

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!

Cut Unnecessary Words, and Tighten Up Your Writing

The words on the page are like the ingredients in a stew; it's all about the balance they create for the overall flavor. While readers might overlook an occasional crunchy bit of dialogue here, or a congealed lump of exposition there, if you end up using a lot of filler then it's going to make it really obvious how much extra stock is in your book when it comes time to finally dig in.

There's a lot of culprits when it comes to any piece of work, whether it's a short story, a novel, or even an audio drama. And while they might be all right individually, much like adverbs, they can sneak up on you, and bloat your word count.

Don't apologize... just cut!

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

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

The Usual Suspects

During my school days my parents divvied up their responsibilities. My father was primarily my math and science tutor, while my mother checked my English homework. One night it was just my father and I at the dinner table while he went over my letters for the night. He pointed out at least half a dozen times I'd used the word that, and told me to remove them because they wasted space, and added nothing to what I was saying.

At the time I was annoyed at the criticism, mostly because I was a middle schooler, and it was already too late in the evening for me to do anything even if my homework was done. With that said, in the years since then, I've recognized the wisdom in this criticism. This word is one of several on my list of filler words I try to eliminate, but as with the italicized example a sentence ago, remember you aren't trying to eliminate the use of entire words; just learning to recognize when they aren't necessary.

Okay? Okay.

So, who's on the Most Wanted list?

We've already mentioned how that tends to creep into our works, but what other culprits do we have to deal with? Well...

- However- This is one I'm particularly bad about. It takes up a lot of space, and it's a favorite for folks who tend to rely on sentence splices when their thoughts are going a mile a minute.

- Though- However's partner in crime, though is a word that's often used to avoid the need to end one sentence, and begin another one.

- Very- For those who remember Dead Poets Society, this is a word we know to side eye. Getting out of the habit of relying on this word by replacing the need for it (very tired becomes exhausted, very pretty becomes stunning, and so on) is the best way to clear it off the page.

- Actually- This one is perfectly fine in dialogue, but most of the time you can kick it from your sentence if it's outside of quotation marks. It shares this distinction with its more polite cousin quite.

- Really- This word can serve a lot of functions, but your story is often better for cutting it out as many times as you can. As with many of the others, this one can lend authenticity to dialogue, but should be spare outside the words and thoughts of your characters.

That's 7 words on the hit list. It doesn't seem like much, does it? Go through something you've written, though, and start eliminating them. Then compare the word count of the manuscript before and after. If you had a short story, you probably managed to cut out two dozen words or more. If you're looking at a novel? You might have just chopped out several thousand words by the time you got rid of every instance you didn't need.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, consider checking out my show Tabletop Mercenary if you've ever thought about becoming a TTRPG creator, but you want a glimpse behind the curtain before you just jump into the deep end.

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 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. 

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!

The Reason Social Media Sucks For Everyone These Days (Not Just Creators)

Social media these days sucks. That's probably a statement you've heard before, and it's the sort of statement that sounds like the usual old person griping about how things have changed since their day. You hear it with fashion, movies, music, and every other aspect of life, so of course people are going to complain that social media was so much better when they were young, and in the prime of their life.

As someone who depends on social media for at least part of my living, though, you aren't imagining it. It really does suck more now than it did before... and if you're a creator, that's a storm that just might sink your boat.

And it doesn't look like it's going to get better any time soon.

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!

The Enshittification of Everything

I really wish I could take credit for this term, but alas, I cannot. Enshittification, or to use its more polite term according to The Chainsaw platform decay, is basically a microcosm of the capitalist mindset on fast-forward.

So how does it work?

Well, the first stage of the cycle is where you create a platform, and do everything you possibly can to attract a huge user base to it. You charge little to no fees, you provide great features, you keep it open to as many people as possible, and most importantly you provide something of value to your audience. Maybe you're a search engine that gives fast, accurate results, an online storefront that gives you access to a massive amount of products at a low price, or maybe you're a social media platform that gives people a smooth timeline, ease of use, and the ability to connect to all of their friends.

Once a platform has made itself valuable to the users (often by running at a deficit, or by barely breaking even), that's when it starts altering its priorities. Maybe your social media site or your search engine starts slipping in more ads. It's subtle at first, but they're bringing in revenue, and they aren't too big of an eyesore. Maybe your video streaming platform ads a second ad at the beginning, or has several ad breaks throughout longer videos. Maybe your digital store now has "recommended" products at the top of your search results that are paid placement from clients who want to make sure shoppers see their stuff first. The platform isn't terrible yet, but it's taking its first steps down the path to hell.

Just sign here on the dotted line, if you will...

The decay continues as the platform's greed increases. Now the platform is choking off the signal for average creators, trying to squeeze money out of them to force them to pay for ad space. This also stops users from seeing anything from their friends, family and community. The platform increases the cost to bigger clients for ads as well, making it a huge pay-to-play market. In the end, no one other than the platform is getting anything out of this arrangement.

By the time you reach the end of the decay cycle, you have a platform that is rotten to the core. It's trying to squeeze its clients, its users, and the service it was providing is being actively degraded as it tries to charge you for more, and more, and more. And when all is said and done, there will come a point where everyone on both sides of the corrupt middleman dusts off their hands and simply says, "No more." They abandon the platform, moving on to somewhere else, and leaving the platform without the blood and treasure it needs to keep itself alive. Maybe it backs up and readjusts its course, but it's entirely possible that the platform just dies, leaving a power vacuum for something else to try to take its place.

This is Happening To Social Media Before Our Eyes

If you've been watching the trash fire that is Twitter, then you've seen this kind of action in real time. While the platform had its flaws before Musk took over, he put on the gas on the enshittification process. He started removing features users liked (and firing a lot of people to reduce the overhead), charging for things which were previously included (the ongoing saga of how much users would have to pay for the blue check mark), and actively alienating both users and clients with the way the platform was run.

Twitter is, of course, not the only platform dealing with this kind of decay.

We see it with Facebook, where user signals don't travel nearly as far as they once did, and creators are constantly encouraged to pay for advertising if they want people to see their posts. We see it on Reddit with the removal of fixes and work arounds that helped keep many communities functional. We see it on YouTube as they enact more and more stringent guidelines on many creators if they want to be monetized, eliminating entire genres of content off the platform, and leading to a bizarre kind of doublespeak as people try to avoid invoking the wrath of the algorithm.

And we're all suffering from this. The users in our audience, the creators writing books, running blogs, and making videos, and the companies who want to find a place to sell their products or sponsor us as creators... we're all getting squeezed.

And it's why so many of us rely on straight crowd funding these days.

I've got the numbers myself, just from my own little corner of the Internet. In ye olde days, I could share a blog post from Improved Initiative, or even from right here on The Literary Mercenary on just Facebook, and it would usually get around 400 hits just from the groups I shared it in. That was my bottom floor. If it was a popular topic it could get up to 800 or 1,000. If I also shared it on Reddit, I could easily see it climb to between 1,500 and 5,000 hits.

These days? I'm sharing my articles in more than double the locations on Facebook, and it generates about 20-50 hits. On Reddit I'm also going into more subs than I ever did in the past, and I'm lucky if a single post even breaks 1,000 hits. For something to get more than that it has to really catch the attention of a community, and start a small firestorm of replies, shares, etc. And even then, the reactions from the community are worth so much less than they were in the past, making it a monumental task to even be seen, much less to make sales.

So What The Hell Are We Supposed To Do?

As I said back in Why Writers Hate All These Twitter Alternatives (Hint: It's Because They're Useless), all of us are caught in the whirlpool of the drain of enshittification. It's not just Twitter, or Facebook, or Reddit, or YouTube. It's not just Amazon, or Netflix, or any other titan of industry... it's all of them. They grow as big as they can, crush their competition so they're the biggest name in town, and then they start turning the screws until eventually there's no more blood left in the stone.

So what are we going to do? Unfortunately, the answer boils down to, "Try our best to survive."

And that also means we need to rely on our audience more than ever.

Surviving has a lot of aspects to it. On the one hand, we need to try to navigate the changing faces of the platforms we're already using, even as they decay right under our feet. On another hand, we have to try to keep an eye out for replacement platforms that give us more tools, a more direct connection to our audience, or which help us find a bit of breathing room. And while we're doing all of that we still need to find time to actually create new content, write new books, or whatever else it is we're doing.

And let me tell you... it is exhausting trying to navigate a sinking ship day in and day out while also keeping an eye on the horizon for a more seaworthy ship, and remembering to play enough music for people to hear us. And most of us could really use a life preserver right about now.

Support The Literary Mercenary

For folks who just want to do their part to help keep me making more content, please subscribe/follow me in these locations:

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

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, 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!