~ *＊*＊* a fox chat *＊*＊* ~ [Now: Favorite snack right now?]

[stella_vigo]

@TheTigerWriter

So, I’m going to start a full-time job in April. Everything in Japan starts in April usually. It’s 4 days a week with occasional 5 days a week depending on stuff.

I know I’ve already said this on your Wattpad profile, but I’m excited for you! Being employed is great (especially in this economy)

@TheTigerWriter

I haven’t been writing much.

Idk how I’ll do the writing life and work life together because it’s my first full time job. I will only have to go in for work on Mondays (my choice. either that or Wednesday, and I didn’t like the idea of going into work in the middle of the week). Other days, I work from home, so that’s nice.

Hmm, I guess if you’re mostly working from home, it’ll be easier for you to switch to writing from working since you’d already be at your computer at home? At least that’s my assumption ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it’s great that you’ll be mostly working remote! I know a few others who’re also working remotely.

@TheTigerWriter

So… questions? Thoughts?

This doesn’t sound like a bad gig at all! I hope it won’t be. Are you planning to stay with this company long-term or are you thinking more along the lines of using them as a stepping stone?

@TheTigerWriter

What’s new with you?

More stress and unfortunately another wave of rejections from companies. Oh well. On the bright side, I did manage to be more productive with my writing in the last couple of days.

[bxllawrites]

i keep coming back and leaving and coming back and then forgetting what i was supposed to do and it’s hectic but i’m slowly making a comeback now

[TheTigerWriter]

@stella_vigo

it’s great that you’ll be mostly working remote

My boss rarely goes into the office himself because he’s busy elsewhere often, so it makes sense he’d allow everyone else to do what they want to do. I can go in, but I don’t think I will XD At least, not every day.

@stella_vigo

Are you planning to stay with this company long-term or are you thinking more along the lines of using them as a stepping stone?

More like a stepping stone. My boss has lots of connections and I’m eyeing a few of them

@stella_vigo

another wave of rejections from companies

Oh no That’s too bad. I’m sure you’ll find something though. Eventually

@stella_vigo

I did manage to be more productive with my writing in the last couple of days.

Nice! I’d say if the writing is a win, then life is good

[TheTigerWriter]

@bxllawrites

but i’m slowly making a comeback now

Nice

Don’t stress yourself out. There’s no pressure. Do it at your own pace

[TheTigerWriter]

Topic: What are the origins of your world?

Yeah, I know, this kind of limits genre, but I want to know some stuff about the origins of your world as I work on the Wiki page of my world.

[stella_vigo]

@TheTigerWriter

My boss has lots of connections and I’m eyeing a few of them

Oooooh how exciting!

@TheTigerWriter

I’m sure you’ll find something though. Eventually

Thank you

@TheTigerWriter

Topic: What are the origins of your world?

Oh this is gonna be somewhat long I hope you don’t mind!

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: one each for the two books I’m working on!

World 1: Idelhen

This world was mostly inspired by this niche genre called artcore. It’s often featured in rhythm games like Cytus, Deemo, and osu!, and originated in Japan. Quite a number of artcore songs aren’t available in popular streaming services, so rhythm game enthusiasts and such would upload the songs to YouTube.

If I were to describe artcore in one word, it’d be “evocative.” It’s the reason why my current story exists because it’s so easy to form daydreams while listening to them! The YouTube thumbnails of many artcore songs would often feature fantastical backgrounds—think castles, magical forests, stuff like that—so it makes the daydreaming even easier. Even the official album covers have this sort of ethereal quality to them.

Take the cover of Xrv by Feryquitous, for example:

or the cover of Sakuzyo’s Selentia:

---

As far as the actual lore behind the world is concerned… that’s what I’m still trying to figure out I use worldbuilding as a more of a tool, so I often don’t think of details unless the plot calls for it. Here’s what I have so far:

Eons ago, when the world was newly formed, the Creator made mankind to serve as stewards over the land and its creatures. He bestowed magic upon them so that they may use them to the betterment of society. However, many misused their gifts to harm others and conquer other lands, so the Creator took back His gifts to humanity, leaving them to toil for their lives.

Seeing how distraught mankind was at losing their abilities, the Corruptor seized the opportunity to lure more down his evil path. He promised power to those who worshipped him. Thus, the first sorcerers were born from a pact between the Corruptor and his followers.

Evil ravaged through Idelhen until the Creator granted gifts to some of His most devoted disciples to protect the realm. They became the first guardians. Through their gifts, they were able to defeat the sorcerers and restore peace. As a reward for their good deeds, the Creator blessed the guardians’ descendants with gifts. Their bloodlines became the Noble Twelve. In the current timeline, however, they have dwindled to the Favored Five.

Idelhen was not always peaceful. In some eras, new sorcerers would arise and new waves of magical beasts would threaten the world. Some members of the noble families would even betray their fellow guardians and misuse their gifts. But no matter how drastic the situations have been, the guardians have always been there to protect the rest of the realm.

Only a very small percentage of humans are born as gifteds, so even though their society has magic, there aren’t enough gifteds for people to be reliant on magic. That’s mostly why Idelhen is technologically advanced by the events of the current story. (That, and the Creator has also revoked people’s gifts for gross misuse before. There was more than one period of time when Idelhen was completely magicless.)

World 2: Draconyn

This came to me in a dream I had in like, fourth or fifth grade? I basically dreamed that there was a marble grave in the middle of a forest, and that grave magically sealed an evil dragon princess. The grave was opened, however, and the dragon princess escaped and raised a dragon army with her magic. The rest of dream ended a bit weirdly—as dreams often do—but I decided to incorporate that world into the third book of my YA portal fantasy series.

A good chunk of the concept will be preserved in this book. Draconyn was an ancient kingdom that nobody knows of or remembers. There’ve been absolutely no records of its existence until one of the main characters, a princess from a serpentine kingdom, discovers a magical book from Draconyn itself. The plot then follows the trio of superpowered humans and the princess and her entourage to rediscover the lost kingdom, but while they’re trying to find it, a mysterious group of mages follows them in an attempt to stop them.

[NotARussianBot]

There are actually two, the waking world and the dream world. The waking world is basically “real life” and the dream world is more ancient and random, influenced by everyone’s memories.

[alenatenjo]

Uhhhhh Honestly your guess is as good as mine

[TheTigerWriter]

okay, so D2D is saying that they will charge you $12 a year to help them prevent AI-slop from infiltrating their space. But if you earn $100 on your books (annually) then you get to opt out of that.

From D2D:

Like many platforms, we’ve seen a significant increase in automated and low-quality account creation in recent years. This onslaught from automated content farms threatens reader trust in indie titles and risks indies being associated with low-quality “slop.”

Annual Maintenance Fee: An annual maintenance fee of $12 will apply to accounts whose earnings from book sales, meaning your net proceeds after D2D’s commission, total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period. If you earn $100 or more from your book sales over 12 months, you will not be charged this fee.

You can read the full article for yourself: here

That is $1 a month.

Anyway, some people on IG were immediately infuriated, calling this a case of punishing indie authors, but honestly, I read D2D’s statement, and I applaud them for having the courage to take this step on an otherwise FREE platform. They probably knew some authors will leave. I mean, how could they not?

Free platform, free EPUB creation service, free ISBN, free distribution (more or less) and it has always been a wonder how they were managing this. They’re support is also really good. I’ve never had a bad interaction with them. Always so helpful and I know it’s a person. Every time it’s a person.

Btw, did you know that for ISBNs in Japan, you basically have to sign over your personal information to be public (name, address, birthday, everything). Not an option for me, no way. I can also go to some other site and pay $85 for an ISBN for one singular book that may not make that money back. Also, no way.

Or I can pay D2D $12 that will hopefully, in the long run, help other indie authors. Honestly, I’m all for it. Good on them.

But I get it some people might not see that as combatting AI, but a way for D2D to make more money. And with this economy, maybe a dollar a month is hard for some people going paycheck by paycheck… So I get it if some people are mad and want to leave.

At the same time, I wish that they would take a deep breath and pause a moment before reacting and removing their books from the platform. I wish they would think about what D2D is actively trying to do.

I also want to mention that I make financial decisions around writing and books based on what I believe is important and what I value as a professional author.

I believe having an author website with a professional domain is important for a professional image, so I’ll pay $48 a year for it. I believe having a professional cover artist is important. I believe having at least one professional pair of grammar eyes on my book is important for quality—line editor.

And I believe that combating gen-AI and protecting honest creatives is important. And I value D2D’s reach in terms of all the platforms you can publish on.

And I’m not paying 85 bucks for a singular ISBN. D2D is the best so far for a third-party distributor even if they don’t have a POD distributor in Japan yet. Someday, they might.

I understand why some people are upset, but I’m staying on D2D.

I’m going to make a post about this on my IG platform, but I have to be careful what and how I say/write this because I don’t want people to think that I’m saying this because I don’t have to worry about being broke each month.

(the one person I saw who posted being upset about this was someone that follows me, and I follow them, so, gotta be…mindful of that)

[CoffeebyNight]

I was one of the people who requested my account to be closed after hearing about the new fees. I spoke with support, and managed to delist my titles but keep my account so I won’t be hit with any fees. We’re heading for a recession and people are reaaaaally feeling it (me included - if D2D wanted to take their 12 bucks from me today, I genuinely could not afford it). I only used D2D as a holding space for some older projects I don’t care about so they could be in libraries. I made a small amount each month from D2D on those old, neglected titles, but not 100USD per year after D2D’s cut.

The bigger issue is not people like me, who have an account and could, in theory, pay the 12 bucks after my royalties. It’s two-fold, IMO:

The first issue is that it does little to stop AI users. There are some AI users who are desperate (hence turning to AI) and they can’t afford the 20 dollars or 12 dollars. However, based on my experience with AI users who generate their books (I’ve had many of them try to get line editing from me), cost isn’t a problem. If they can offer me 1k to edit their book, they can afford whatever D2D asks.

Me yapping on the AI issue. It's lengthy.

A GPT subscription in the UK was, or is, 20GBP a month, less than the account opening fees at D2D. Book publishing is mostly a numbers game, which I proved last year with my “no marketing” experiment. 10 books in your backlist puts you in a better position than someone with one, providing you’re on the same level with genre, marketing, etc. I started last year with 3 brand new pennames, no marketing, and I outearned any expectations I had. For less than 40GBP, an AI user can churn out 50, 100, or even more books in a single month and open their D2D account.

The only upside is that most AI users haven’t figured out what actually drives those sales when it comes to having a large backlist, so they fall flat and don’t outearn folks who write their own books at a slower pace. Those smart enough to hide the AI use behind an actual cover, decent, humanised editing (which I believe some custom GPTs offer?) are those who are outearning human authors.

The second issue is that this will simply drive people back to Amazon and away from libraries. I specifically mention libraries here because this hits readers the hardest, not authors. It’s a shame, but I will also not be going back wide any time soon - KDP is where my income is, and I’ll only be moving if I know I can guarantee the same sales through other platforms. Given my genre, I don’t think that’ll be soon.

Me yapping about alternative approaches

To me, I think a different approach would have been better, although I do understand why they’ve done it. If they were truly concerned about the wave of AI slop, they would simply vet projects for it and reject those that are blatantly AI. One person who queried me about editing proudly had “assisted by GPT” at the front of their book. Obviously this method is somewhat flawed, and not all AI is obvious (and some folks do genuinely just write like AI, especially now that it’s changing the way people talk and write). Covers, however, are obvious, even with GPT’s latest image update.

Alternatively, a limit on the amount someone can upload. I disagree with B+N’s choice to restrict accounts to 100 books. Established, prolific writers can hit that 100 book limit in a matter of years, or even less if they mostly write shorts/novellas. Restrict people so they can only upload 2, 3 books a month. If someone’s like me and can turn out new projects by the day (shorts and novellas), then have them speak with support and it can be on a case by case basis.

TLDR: these fees do almost nothing to stop AI, and hurts readers. I understand it, but I think there were better ways to handle AI.

[TheTigerWriter]

You know, this is what healthy discussion looks like. I’m coming from one end, you’re coming from another end. We both have our reasons and points to make, but neither of us are saying, “don’t do that“ to the other.

Not a lot of people that I know and follow on IG are talking about D2D’s recent decision. Not sure why But those who are, are going the angry route and sounds like they will shut down anyone who decides to give an alternative perspective on the whole thing. They’re just yelling in social media.

That’s why I still haven’t made a post about it

I get where you’re coming from. I understand your view and although unfortunate, I think it’s important and good that you made a decision based on your situation. If you can’t, you can’t

This thing with the AI, I do get your point. Like, it might not do much if anything. I’m kind of playing it by ear right now (note that I can afford to do that). I’ll see after a year, or two if anything changes.

If D2D had said, “guys, we’re charging you 12 dollars a MONTH“ then I think I’ll opt out, unfortunately. I was actually afraid that was the case.

Is KDP really trustworthy for authors? I hear so many horror stories about KDP removing books for no apparent reason, or being an absolute beast to deal with when trying to get an author proof, or just being ridiculous.

[CoffeebyNight]

Yeah, that’s an issue with the entire internet these days unfortunately. I enjoy engaging in discussions and talking about stuff like this, but often, people mistake it for wanting to argue… and I am a very soft person who hates conflict at all costs.

Everyone should make a decision based on their own means and opinion. I disagree with it, so I simply won’t pay it. When I want to go wide again, I’ll suck it up and let them take it from my royalties, haha. For me, it is very much a case of “this doesn’t do what you say it does” so it feels even worse to me as someone who considers 12 bucks a looooot of cash right now.

@TheTigerWriter

If D2D had said, “guys, we’re charging you 12 dollars a MONTH“ then I think I’ll opt out, unfortunately. I was actually afraid that was the case.

This is true! As is, it’s a 1 dollar a month subscription, basically. For a lot of people, that’s not a lot of money. There’s a significant amount of new authors who for whatever reason won’t even earn 12 dollars in a year, so they’ll be paying out of pocket. Whilst it isn’t the hardest figure to earn in a year, 100USD (after D2D’s cut) is considerably harder.

@TheTigerWriter

Is KDP really trustworthy for authors?

KDP is as trustworthy as anywhere. I’ve been publishing for over a decade (with KDP directly) and have never had a single issue. Most of the time, these sudden removals etc are because of people violating ToS, whether they mean to or not. You can’t have friends and family buy your book and leave a review, for example (and they really are serious about that - they’ve been known to detect it not just based on location, but also based on Facebook contacts etc), and you really need to follow the rules if you’re using Kindle Unlimited.

As far as I recall, ordering an author copy is just clicking a button on your dashboard, and it’s been that way since I started. I haven’t ordered any proofs in a long time (nor have I even published paperback in a long time) but it was fine when I used to. The only issue is print quality, though this can happen with all budget printers. Some batches are perfect, and the next might be a bit wonky.

Support has always been fine for me, too, though I’ve not had to deal with them much outside of getting my books marked down as perma-free. I’ve heard through the grapevine that perma-free on Amazon is becoming harder, but I can’t confirm that - some people misunderstand something and run with it, and I haven’t checked it out myself as all my current works are enrolled in KU.

[TheTigerWriter]

@CoffeebyNight

Everyone should make a decision based on their own means and opinion.

Yes! This!

About the 12 dollars a year, I was also afraid, at first, that it was 12 dollars a year per book you have on there. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

@CoffeebyNight

but also based on Facebook contacts etc

My goodness, they really are super serious

@CoffeebyNight

KDP is as trustworthy as anywhere. I’ve been publishing for over a decade (with KDP directly) and have never had a single issue.

Hearing this from you, makes me want to consider it one more time. It’s good for if I want to stick with the free ISBN deal.

What do you do with ISBNs? Do you use Amazon’s?

[CoffeebyNight]

@TheTigerWriter

About the 12 dollars a year, I was also afraid, at first, that it was 12 dollars a year per book you have on there. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

If this were true, I’d be kicking up SUCH a fuss. I think the fees are reasonable, even if I disagree with them as a whole.

@TheTigerWriter

What do you do with ISBNs? Do you use Amazon’s?

I use Amazon’s and have never had an issue. One other thing I want to note about Amazon is that they allow reader complaints for typos/spelling errors, which would be fine if not for US readers thinking UK English is incorrect. This might not apply to you, but just be aware that you might get quality flags for using UK English.

[TheTigerWriter]

But you do need to be exclusive with them, right? You can’t publish anywhere else?

@CoffeebyNight

you might get quality flags for using UK English

Really?

I actually use whatever for one thing: “gray“ and “grey“, and I don’t know which is which XD

[CoffeebyNight]

With Amazon, you have two choices and I’ll go into a bit of detail just in case you were curious about them, but the TLDR is no, you don’t have to be exclusive with Amazon, though it might benefit you if you are - only KU is exclusive.

KDP vs KU rambling

KDP is non-exclusive. You can publish on KDP and then on D2D or anywhere else you want. This is a decent option for people who want to go wide, and it’s how I handled being wide back in the day - D2D did everywhere except Amazon, and I maintained control on Amazon through KDP. You get paid the same way you would anywhere else - for each sale.

KU is exclusive. You cannot publish the same work elsewhere at the same time. You can use KU after being wide, so long as the work is not anywhere else during your KU period (which is 3 months each, iirc). Your book will be available for sale on Amazon like normal, but you will also get income through Kindle Unlimited, where you get paid per page read. The jury is out on if the page reads are paid fairly, but some months my income is 100% from KU page reads.

KU works best for certain genres, and because you get paid per page, it can work out better for looooong works. If you write shorter projects like I do, technically you get paid more for a sale than a read on KU, but you also need people to buy the book. KU gives readers the option to gamble on a new-to-them author for free when they otherwise might not bother.

Using KU or not is a whoooole thing that people have to weigh up on their own. I encourage you to explore both options, and see which you prefer. You don’t need to enrol your entire backlist, it’s on a per book basis. I enjoy being enrolled in KU, but certain genres such as horror often report it’s better to be wide. Romance is the one genre I’d say with certainty benefits from being in KU 99% of the time.

You can trial it, you’re only locked into exclusivity for 3 months at a time.

@TheTigerWriter

“gray“ and “grey“

GrAy for American, grEy for English. Unless it’s names… then it’s a 50/50 on which you want to use. Mostly.

[TheTigerWriter]

Thanks for the KDP vs KU breakdown! I didn’t even realize those were two very different things XD

Now I have this very useful information in my fox chat

I guess that’s why you can publish on KDP through D2D somewhat, just not all countries. Like, I can’t get my book through Japanese Amazon like I can with authors who have published on KDP through KDP. D2D doesn’t have a printer in Japan yet, so I can’t even order my own book through Amazon KDP. But I can get the E-book.

[CoffeebyNight]

I’m glad it was useful. Yep, two very different things indeed! I keep toying with the idea of going wide again, but D2D made the decision for me, haha. It’s all good, I’m exploring additional avenues of increasing my writing income anyways - I just have to start putting things in motion next month.

[TheTigerWriter]

Topic: What’s your favorite snack right now?

Mine’s butter cookies

[LadyOfTheRiver]

My gfs

No but seriously. Crab stick sushi. I make it at home and eat it in buckets