Thanks To YouTube's Recent Announced Changes, The A.L.I.C.E. Files NEEDS Your Help!

With the storms that ripped across the Midwest, I had to relocate and hunker down until crews could start fixing some of the damage in my town. And while I was trying to deal with all of that, I found out that YouTube has just announced new guidelines that have put a massive ticking time clock on our attempts to make The A.L.I.C.E. Files self-sustaining. So if you want to help myself and Alice Liddell claw down a little piece of the sky, and actually keep telling stories to our audience, we really need your help before these new "guidelines" kick in!

Time really is of the essence on this one.

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!

The Changes (And How They're Going To Screw Creators)

Before I explain what's changing, I need to explain the base line of what YouTube requires, and how tough that already is for creators to deal with. So, let's start there! Because there are 2 levels of monetization that creators already have. Those are:

- 500 Subscribers and 3,000 Watch Hours: This opens things like super fans and smaller forms of monetization, but creators don't actually get any of the ad revenue their videos generate.

- 1,000 Subscribers and 4,000 Watch Hours: This opens up the final tier, allowing creators to make ad revenue off their channels.

To break those things down, the first requires you to get roughly 8 hours of watched content a day, every day, for an entire year. To get the second level, you need 11 hours a day, every day, for an entire year. And I make that for a year part explicit because if you go over that 365 day limit, it starts dropping off previously earned hours so you have to try to make them up.

Basically for a small creator to get monetized they need to have some kind of viral success. Because those watch hours? Those don't count if the viewer has a VPN, or they use an ad blocker, etc. So in reality you're going to need 2-3 times that traffic just to squeak by in the first place.

So how is YouTube gonna fuck this up?

The recent announcement that YouTube put out, though, is they are doubling the requirements to earn ad revenue. So that's 8,000 watch hours (or 20 million short views, if that's your thing), which translates to something like 22 hours of people watching your content every, single day for 365 days in a row.

Details of the announcement, and how bad it is for creators, can be found here on Notebook Check.

We Need Your Help (And Here's How To Do It)

First and foremost, these changes go into effect at the end of January 2027, and according to YouTube those who are already partners with the program will be grandfathered in under the new rules. I am suspicious of this, but it gives us, essentially, 4 months to try to hit the current goals so we can get The A.L.I.C.E. Files monetized (which is going to be a necessity for Alice and I to keep it going, much less to expand our scope).

At time of writing, we have 346 subscribers, and we're just shy of 1,300 watch hours. So, essentially, we're about 1/3 of the way to where we need to be. So, the immediate triage that will help us is:

- Subscribe to The A.L.I.C.E. Files

- Watch the episodes (preferably without a VPN or ad blocker to be sure your views count)

- Share the links on your social media channels

- Leave comments and upvotes to help boost engagement so more folks can see us

But what if you want to stop YouTube from putting these restrictions in place, and moving the goal posts for basically any small creator looking to actually become profitable? Well, you can also do some things to yell at YouTube to make it clear how disappointed you are in this announcement, and their proposed policy shift.

- Cancel your YouTube premium membership, and let the site know why

- Yell at them on Twitter (@TeamYouTube and @YTChannelTeam seem to be the best places)

It is, at the end of the day, unlikely that YouTube is going to back off on this, barring some massive backlash from its viewers and larger content creators (and I suggested Twitter because unless you're already a YouTube partner, you can't get hold of them directly). Worse, there aren't really any other places that you can go to make video content and monetize it. I've been looking, and aside from Rumble (which I can't recommend professionally OR politically) there really isn't a website that doesn't use a tip/subscription-based option for paying creators, and people are stretched to the absolute limit as it is.

This is corporate greed, plain and simple. And while I encourage people to raise their voices and yell at the company about it, it's also important to lift up and support the smaller creators who are going to get trampled under this oncoming boot.

So watch things. Subscribe to things. Leave comments, tell your friends, and help all of us out there who are trying to slide under that descending steel door before we're locked out of program eligibility forever... because we're doing our best out here, but most of us aren't going to be able to keep projects like this running if there's no hope that it will ever turn some kind of profit.

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)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (an audio drama channel I launched with Alice Liddell)

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 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 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.

What Publishing Questions Would You Like To See Covered on "Tabletop Mercenary"?

Regular readers around these parts know that this blog is divided into the Craft of Writing, and the Business of Writing. However, I also know that there are folks who function better with audio or video than they do reading through text. And since the 13th episode of my show Tabletop Mercenary is going live this Friday, I wanted to ask everyone here to weigh-in on something.

What are some questions you'd like to see answered on the show?

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!

What Would You Like To See?

For those who aren't familiar with the program, Tabletop Mercenary is a show on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, and I usually put out between 1 and 2 episodes of the show a month. Not only that, but it's also backed up on my Rumble channel, The Literary Mercenary, for those who want to have multiple platforms to check it out on. I started the show about 8 months ago, and my goal with it is to (as the title of the first episode implies) pull back the curtain and explain what all goes on with the business and publishing side of tabletop roleplaying games.

Of course, tabletop RPGs are just a small section of the publishing industry as a whole. As such, a lot of the issues I cover, from affiliate sales programs, to getting good art for your books, to discussing community creation platforms, are things that will be useful for authors outside of the gaming sphere as well. So whether you're just starting out as an author, or you're an old hand with questions about how the landscape has changed over the past few decades, or you're just someone who has questions about publishing today, then my hope is this show will be a resource for folks like you.

So if you're the sort of person who regularly enjoys the content that appears on this blog, consider checking out this series. Not only that, but if there's a topic we haven't covered yet (check the link to the current playlist to see all the episodes out so far), leave it in the comments on one of the videos (or on this blog) so I can see it, and so my publisher can see it. Because those comments are far more likely to get turned into videos of their own in the future!

Lastly, we're currently trying to get the Azukail Games YouTube channel monetized, and we're only about 450 hours of watched content away from that goal! So if you want to do your part to help (and keep this little show going) please watch the episodes we've got up, and share the ones you like on your own social media pages! A subscription won't hurt, either, if you want to stay on top of all our releases, as well!

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 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. 

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!

Authors Hate Marketing Gimmicks Too (But Nothing Else Seems To Work)

There was a film I saw forever and a day ago. In this film a male character dresses as a woman, and so women (including a woman he's very sweet on) let their guard down around him and speak their minds openly. Our lead's crush says something along the lines of, "All this dancing around the subject is exhausting. I wish a man would just say to me, 'I think you're beautiful. Would you like to have sex?' Get it right out in the open and cut to the chase." Then, when no longer dressed as a woman, our protagonist says exactly what she told him she'd like a man to say to her. Rather than finding this forward, open way of speaking engaging and enticing, though, she slaps him for being a cad and stalks away.

This scene (which I believe is from the film Tootsie, but my search-fu has failed me so I can't be sure) comes back to me time and time again whenever I try to market my books to a broader audience. Because everyone says they'd rather have creators who dispensed with the gimmicks and just made a straightforward pitch as to why people should buy their books... until we do that, and get metaphorically slapped for being nothing but a bunch of crass, jaded sell-outs who are only interested in the money.

Seriously... what do you want from us?

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!

Trust Me, We Hate Marketing, Too.

Every writer I've ever met got into the profession because they liked writing. While many individuals have other passions, or other parts of the job they like, I have never met anyone who writes books just because they need something interesting to challenge their marketing skills.

Put another way, most of us like writing books. Most of us hate actually selling books.

Yeah, we like money. We just hate marketing.

Writers, by and large, are people who just want to tell our stories. Most of us are happy enough to be interviewed (rare as that seems to happen to a lot of us), and if we're feeling particularly bold we might be willing to go up to a microphone and do a reading. Some of us can even afford to get a table at a convention, trying to catch the eye of people walking by, judging on a split second from their conversation, tee-shirts, or cosplay whether our books are the sort of thing they'd like to read.

Then there's social media marketing... which is what those of us with little to no budget and a relatively small or niche audience can afford to do. And it is where the frustration of this mixed messaging cranks itself up to 11.

Because if you listen to the majority of people on the Internet, they tell you there's nothing they hate more than deceptive marketing ploys. They don't want creators using giveaways to get their information, they don't want articles and videos on one topic to act as backdoor segues to make a sales pitch, and so on. Those who acknowledge that creators are people with bills to pay (which isn't everyone, of course) usually say they'd rather have a creator just out-and-out pitch their project so they can make a decision on if they want to buy it. No elaborate promises, no big commercials, just say what it is, what the price is, and let them know what they're buying. If they want it, they'll buy it. If they don't, they won't.

In practice, though, nothing gets you more hate as a creator than just showing up and saying, "Hey, I wrote this thing! I think it's pretty cool, so check out the free sample, and consider buying yourself a copy if you like what you see?" It doesn't matter if you follow the rules of the group/forum you're in regarding how often you post. It doesn't matter if you just make a single post about your project. Even when you follow all the niceties and requests set forth in the rules, the surest response you're going to get is people calling you a spammer and demanding you be banned from ever darkening this corner of the Internet again. Because while they might say they just want you to be upfront with your intentions, that is rarely true in practice.

You Catch More Flies With Honey Than Vinegar

While this saying isn't technically true (as I pointed out in my How To Make an Apple Cider Vinegar Fly Trap for those who like DIY content), the metaphor works well enough when talking about marketing. Because as soon as you make it clear you're selling something, people will cover their ears and walk away (or berate you because you expect to be paid for the time and energy you put into creating something). Which means that we often have to pull an Odysseus, and wheel out the Trojan Horse in order to get people to actually consider what it is we're trying to sell.

This video is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I've spent the past year and change writing books for my "Sundara: Dawn of a New Age" fantasy RPG setting, but it can be like pulling teeth trying to get people interested in the project. Even if they play either Pathfinder Classic or Dungeons and Dragons 5E. Even if they've complained they wish they had a different setting to play in. Even if they're fans of my past work. As soon as you say, "Hey, I have a new setting for sale," they scroll on by like I tried to reach for their wallets through their monitors.

That's where this video comes in. It's content marketing, plain and simple.

This video lets the audience see me, the creator. It lets them hear my voice, and makes them acknowledge that a real person was behind this product. I kept it conversational and low-key, just like I was talking with someone around a gaming table. And while my purpose is to get people interested in the Sundara setting, and buy links are provided in the description, I focus on talking about how I removed alignment from the game, and on showing players the possibilities this creates, while also discussing how difficult this would have been to do in a setting that wasn't being built from the ground up. All of that because I want people to engage with the discussion about this setting, and to get them interested in seeing what it has to offer.

You could argue that's less than honest, as at the end of the day the goal is still to get people to buy copies of these splats. However, Shakespeare gotta get paid, son, and if just saying, "I made this cool RPG setting, please give it a look and consider buying a copy of your own?" doesn't move books then I have to do something else. And if that something else is learning how to make videos (a skill I am still trying to come to grips with) in order to come at my potential audience from an unexpected angle, then that's what I'm going to have to do.

Do I want to do that, necessarily? No, not really. It takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to write scripts, rehearse, set up my space, get my cat to be quiet, figure out my tone, edit out flubs, do reshoots, and so on, and so forth. If I had 500-1,000 people (not really a big audience) who were willing to buy a copy of every RPG splat, novel, or collection I released whenever it dropped, chances are good that I wouldn't be making videos on the topic. I probably wouldn't write as many blogs trying to boost my own signal, or spend quite so much time sharing links to all my stuff on social media hoping to bump my earnings high enough to pay my bills at the end of the month. Instead I'd be banging away on the next splat book, the next novel, etc.

But I don't have that audience. And since just showing up and saying, "I've written this book, this is what it's about, here's a free sample so you can decide for yourself if you like it," doesn't do the job, it's time to pull out a marketing gimmick. Because, and this is the truth of the matter, if they didn't get results then we wouldn't use them.

Incidentally, for those who did enjoy the above video, consider subscribing to the Azukail Games YouTube channel. It looks like I'm going to be putting up content their for the foreseeable future, and if we can hit that 1k subscribers and 4k watched hours of content in the past year mark then the publisher it going to be a lot more likely to let me do bigger, more involved productions than the relatively short videos I've been putting up there for the past little while.

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!

Does Your Book Have A Trailer? Here's 5 Reasons It Should

In this day and age, we're all familiar with trailers. However, a lot of us forget that they aren't just for movies. From short infomercials about unbreakable pans, to sneak previews of plays, concerts, and festivals, it's possible to make a trailer for damn near anything. All you need to do is put together a video appetizer, and throw it out there to get people interested in what you're trying to sell.

As an example, thanks to Dungeon Keeper Radio, my novel Crier's Knife now has its very own book trailer!

If you have a book on the market, but you don't have a trailer for it yet, let me list some of the reasons why you should.

#1: Something Different

Everyone has a buy link for their book, or a link to a free preview of the first few chapters... but how many of them have a book trailer? Whether you go full-out with video production, or you stick to audio like I did, the point is that by changing up the formula you can catch people off-guard. So folks who might ignore a buy link, or just a picture of the cover, might click-through to see what a trailer is all about.

Once they've done that, you've got 'em.

#2: It's Good For Your Algorithm

As we all know, where your book turns up in search results is directly dependent on a search algorithm. However, while there are hundreds of factors that go into these digital number crunchers, one of those factors is how many sites link to your book. If your book trailer does absolutely nothing else, it can boost your signal and get you better results as long as you have it available online somewhere, and you make sure that buy link is front-and-center.

Of course, it helps if people are watching your trailer.

#3: People Pay Attention To Video

As technology has increased, more businesses than ever before are making use of video content. The reason is that, psychologically, people respond more to video than to any other form of communication. While images might capture someone's attention for a moment, video grabs them in a way that is much harder to ignore. By making video content, you're grabbing viewers hard, and giving them a pitch that will stay with them a lot longer than all but the catchiest of tag lines.

#4: More People Can Watch Them Than Ever Before

Accessibility is the name of the game, and the bigger your potential reach, the better your chances of finding new readers become. Given that huge swaths of the population have mobile devices where they will watch videos all day, it's quite likely that a trailer will capture their attention in ways that other, static ads never would. And as we all know, all it takes is getting someone to open that door for them to start eyeing your entire body of work... even if that trailer was only for your latest book.

#5: It's One More Thing For You To Talk About

The law of diminishing returns is never clearer than when it comes to you trying to drum up interest in your latest release. The first time you post about it, you'll get a small ocean of likes, shares, and most of your initial purchases. But the second time you post, you'll only get a fraction of that initial response. The third time you post, you're pretty much just down to your diehard fans.

However, whenever there is something new about your book (you were reviewed by someone in an online magazine, your were interviewed on a TV or radio show, etc.), that puts fresh life into your posts. You get more attention when you share fresh news than when you remind folks of something that's already happened, and a book trailer is just one more example of a fresh spin that can get a lot of eyes focused on your work.

Best of All, Getting a Trailer Isn't That Hard

Whether you have a YouTube or Vimeo channel already, or your trailer is being crafted by someone else, they tend to be relatively low-cost additions to your marketing plan. Especially if you have some basic editing skills, and you know where you can find royalty-free sound effects. Best of all, a trailer has the potential to earn you back what you spend on it several times over if it catches on and gets some real power behind it.

There are no guarantees when it comes to selling books, but as far as risky investments go, a book trailer is a pretty safe bet.

That's all for this Business of Writing post! Hopefully it helps some folks out there, and you enjoyed giving my book trailer a listen. For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and be sure to follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. If you'd like to support me, then you can leave me a one-time tip by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or you can become a regular patron at The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. And, of course, if you'd like to get your hands on Crier's Knife, or any of my other books, just head over to My Amazon Author Page!

Writers on YouTube? Prepare For An Uphill Battle

Regular viewers know that something I like to do during Business weeks is to offer some advice on different platforms you can use to start earning money from the content you produce. One of the oldest recommendations I made was detailed in Make Money Writing (By Joining InfoBarrel), and it was joined by the more recent coverage on Want To Make Money Writing? Check Out Vocal! that I added earlier this year. Both of which are still solid examples for text-based income, by the by.

However, if you're an author who's been thinking about expanding your brand into the multimedia sphere, then you might be considering using YouTube as a way to boost your signal, and increase your earnings. After all, YouTube is free to join, gives you lots of tools, and it is accessible by huge numbers of people, so why wouldn't you want your work on it? While joining up as a content creator is not an inherently bad idea, per se, it is one that comes with a lot of strings attached. Strings that a lot of folks just don't think about.

Testing... testing...

What Does It Take To Make YouTube Work?

If you're taking your work to YouTube, whether you're creating audio books of your own work, writing skits, or doing a kind of full-cast drama, it's important to know what it is you're dealing with when it comes to this platform. Because YouTube is competitive, but even worse, they raised their bar for monetization earlier this year.

I actually help out on a YouTube channel titled Dungeon Keeper Radio, and we made an anniversary post detailing the requirements and changes to the platform that we (and all the other creators out there) now had to cope with. Give it a listen, and you'll understand why so many people are frustrated with YouTube.

Short version, for those who didn't give it a listen, is that until your channel has 1,000 subscribers on it, and a minimum of 4,000 hours of total run time over the previous 12 month period, you can't get your channel monetized. That means no ads, and no money, no matter how much work you put in, until you clear those hurdles. Given that it was only 10,000 views to get monetized (a significantly easier bar to clear) until the beginning of this year, that's a fairly major change.

So, before you get too involved in your project, ask how many videos you're willing to make before you can get ads on your channel so you can start getting paid. Because if you already have a fairly big following, and you know your work is popular, you might be able to get this sort of thing up and running within 6 months to a year. However, if you are starting from scratch and you don't have a catalog of popular work, any real fan base to speak of, etc., then you are going to find it is a lot harder getting people to hit that subscribe button than you think it would be.

That is, perhaps, the most important thing to keep in mind here. Because while a lot of platforms require you to get a big explosion of attention in order to make any real money, YouTube requires that kind of viral boom just to get the site to agree to pay you in the first place.

Better As A Supplement, Than A Main

The unvarnished facts are that if you want to make a living on YouTube then you need to have thousands of supporters, and you need hours upon hours of watched content every day. And unless you're a singing sensation, a do-it-yourself guru, or you stumble upon the next viral creepy pasta, you might find that it's tough to get enough views to even cut a check every month.

However, that doesn't mean you can't use YouTube as a supplementary platform for your work.

Which can reap benefits all its own.

For example, if you're using Patreon, then you could make audio book entries on YouTube as a way to give your audience some extra goodies, and reward those who give at a higher tier. If you're recording samples of a book that's for sale already, then you could use the popularity of the video to get a buy link in front of an audience to increase your sales. The same is true if you use YouTube to make promotional videos for your work; if they're successful enough to earn you ad revenue, then great, but if not they can still get you increased sales and visibility for your books.

Hell, you could even use YouTube as a way to talk directly to your fans, answer questions, and keep them up-to-date on your appearances, upcoming projects, and your life. As long as you're entertaining, it will help spread the word. John Green did this to massive success, for folks who've been by his channel.

If you've been thinking that YouTube is going to be that secret gold mine where your unknown work suddenly blows up and makes you an Internet millionaire, then I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it probably won't. Barring the usual zeitgeist that seems to select people at random, anyway. But if you want to make videos, audio, etc. as a way to supplement and boost your already existing platform, then you will probably see a lot more success. And even if your attempt at leveraging YouTube to your ends doesn't work out, well, you likely haven't lost much other than time and energy. Provided you didn't go overboard getting expensive film, sound, and editing equipment, anyway.

Speaking of YouTube, though, if you're a fan of tabletop games and fantasy, please head over to Dungeon Keeper Radio and check us out. We can use all the help we can get reaching our goals!

That's all for this installment of the Business of Writing! Hopefully some folks found it helpful. If you have questions about YouTube, and how you could use it for your brand, then leave them in the comments below. For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive. To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help support me and my work, then you can Buy Me A Ko-Fi as a one-time tip, or go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. Every little bit helps, and there's plenty of free stuff in it for you as a thank you!