Author: Daniel Madison

How to Crowdfund Your Book

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Money: it’s the reason everyone watching this video became a writer. Maybe not directly, but because of what money can buy: things like dignity, love and happiness.

But money can be a hard thing to come by as a writer. And while writing a book is generally free, especially if you only order ice water at the Starbucks where you spend each night writing after work, publishing and selling one that doesn’t just go onto your blind grandmother’s bookshelf isn’t.

If you want to create a good cover that wasn’t made in MS Paint, you need money. If you want someone to tell you you shouldn’t have the main character calling someone a dumb slut on the first page, you need money. If you want to fight a lawsuit claiming your publishing company established an unprecedented hostile work environment that violated dozens of labor laws, equal opportunity statutes and fire codes, you need a lot of money.

But there’s a shining light at the end of this dark tunnel. And it’s one you don’t have to escape by selling drugs or whoring your body, though I won’t dissuade you if you’d rather follow that strategy. No, instead, today we are going to explore the wide world of crowdfunding. We’ll exploit people’s charitable nature on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

There are a few different websites you can use for crowdfunding: Kickstarter, IndieGogo, Onlyfans. But I’m going to give more general advice in this video that will apply, whether you use a variety of web platforms, or if you’re just collecting change on the subway.

Personally, even though I own and operate a publishing company that makes a steady stream of revenue and now has a business license, I still use crowdfunding for most of my releases. For the sake of this video, we’re going to focus mainly on one crowdfunding campaign I did for the novel Game Theory, a drama about a math prodigy who has to use his intellect to overcome his sexual addiction.

Step One: Set clear, realistic goals

An author and a reader have a sacred bond, like a husband and wife. So if you’re not going to be open and transparent and you breech that trust, you’ve got to be really careful you don’t get caught.

To be clear, your best bet is to simply be honest. State your expenses. Tell your investors you need, for example, $1000 for a professional book cover and $10000 for a sensitivity reader to remove all the hateful language. Those are believable numbers and your readers will know they’re getting what they are paying for.

Now, one way to get around this is to create multiple crowdfunding avenues, with different URLs to different sources even though the links appear the same, so it always looks like you’re a little short on funds on the different crowdfunding websites. Anyway, that’s how I got four hundred thousand dollars to spend on editing and marketing Game Theory.

Step Two: Identify Your Core Group of Funders

Once you know your budget, you need to know who you will target your campaign toward. If you just target your pitch to fantasy readers, nobody’s going to bite. If you target it toward fantasy readers who feel there isn’t enough realistic depictions of what medieval sex felt, sounded and smelled like, you might do a bit better.

But how would you go about finding those people in the first place without compromising the contents of your hard drive? Well, when I was planning how to crowdfund for Game Theory, I knew that people who were interested in math and also sex addicts was way too broad a group, so I needed to narrow down who I sent emails and newsletter to.

In the end, I decided to spam the comments of Numberphile and other math YouTubers comments section to build traffic to my various Kickstarters.

Step Three: Get Corporate Sponsors

Even with lots of small donations, it will be tough to reach your fundraising goals without a few big spenders. And small businesses are a great way to get that. Of course, while companies and corporations have all the same legal rights and much more political power than people, they lack our basic sense of charity. They’ll want something in return.

Call it selling out if you will. But some strategic product placement could get you to reach your goals quickly. For example, I got a local sandwich shop to put a QR code for a sandwich coupon on the back cover of a novel about one woman’s fight with anorexia.

For Game Theory, all I had to do was set the climax of the story in a local sex shop and put a link to their website on my website for twenty years or until I pass away.

Step Four: Focus on what the individual funders will get in return

Now, going back to individual funders, they’re going to want a little perk in return. Things like tote bags, pens, scratch off tickets.

For Game Theory, a donation of $20 dollars got you a mention on social media. A donation of $50 dollars got you a free copy of the book. A donation of $1000 dollars got me to name one of the characters after you.

You have to be careful, though. It turned out James Forsyth of San Diego didn’t like that I named him after a serial sex offender.

Step Five: Connect your book to a cause

But an even more powerful motivator than swag is virtue signaling. The only reason most people read in the first place is prove they’re better than everyone else so it goes hand in hand with charity.

For Game Theory, I obviously reached out to the sex addiction support community, hoping they’d mention my book on some of the organization’s websites, but that backfired because apparently graphic depictions of hardcore sex is a big trigger for that crowd.

So I diversified by making several characters Jewish, I gave my main character neurodivergent tendencies, and I added in a subplot about fracking.

Bad Reviews, Writer Feedback and Basing Characters off Real People: I Answer Reader Questions About Being a Writer

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Asa A. writes:

John, My son is an aspiring writer. But whenever I try to tell him I wish he’d branch out from writing stories about small animals being tortured, he gets very upset. As a writer, what kind of feedback do you value most from readers?

Feedback can be a tough thing. I became a writer for a few reasons, but mostly so others would like me and pay attention to me and constantly tell me how awesome I am. But of course, you can’t expect all people to respond to your work that way. Some people are just idiots who don’t understand good writing, and some are people who do understand good writing, but just want to insult you because they think it’s funny or they want to put you in a negative light to promote their own writing.

In any case, the feedback I like is when people tell me my work turned their life around. As a good friend once told me, saving a life is as exhilarating as taking it away.

James D. writes:

John, my marriage is falling apart and it’s largely your fault. My wife inexplicably loves your books but I don’t see the appeal. I feel like I couldn’t really love someone who likes what you do. So my question is, What’s your favorite book you’ve written? If I read that and liked it, it might just save this marriage.

That’s a tough choice. While Spilled Milk was the first book I published on an actual label, and Twilight was, for some reason, my financial breakthrough, I’d have to say Zodiac was the book I was most proud of. For those who haven’t read it, the novel is about the Zodiac killer, a fictional serial killer who plans to kill twelve different people over a twelve-year period, using each animal of the zodiac. I thought it was a clever concept and I really had to get creative and push myself as a writer to think of ways a rat, a rabbit and a rooster could be used to kill someone.

Emily W. writes:

John, my coworkers were upset that I wrote a fictional short story for an online magazine that used their real names and addresses. Should I not have done this? Do you base your characters on real people?

– Oh, all the time. Pretty much any villain I write is at least somewhat loosely based on my father or the prostitute who helped raise me. If there are women in my life who, you know, I’d like to have sex with but can’t because they’re married or lesbians or certain laws prohibit me from doing so, I find it helps to live out that fantasy in my writing.

Eva E. writes:

John, writing for me is just a hobby at the moment. I have a great job designing algorithms for healthcare companies that decide which patients should live and which should die. But part of me wants to make writing a full-time job. I worry about deadlines, though. How do you deal with the pressure of meeting deadlines?

This really was never an issue when I was a young writer. I was so motivated and on so many productivity-enhancing amphetamines that I wrote faster than my editors could keep up. But in my middle age, I have slowed down a bit.

There are some small hacks you can use. You can tell your publisher you misread the date, you can tell them your kid got sick, or you can puff out the middle section by copying and pasting excerpts from the Canterbury Tales. Editors usually only read the first and last pages of a manuscript, anyway.

Johnny S. writes:

John, do you ever consider the reader’s perspective when writing?

No.

Anri. O writes:

John, I’m a self-published author with a few books out and mostly good reviews. But one person keeps giving me the harshest reviews on social media. It’s either my step-dad, mad that I refused his sexual advances, or my boss, mad that I keep advancing on him sexually. Anyway, how do you deal with bad reviews?

An author can’t let bad reviews get to them. Unless you know the reviewer personally, then you absolutely can. My lawyer says I shouldn’t give you any advice about your specific situation, but I will share something that worked for me once.

I had this one reviewer who constantly review bombed all my books on all the online bookstores. But their big mistake was using the same username on all these platforms. After a little social engineering, I learned it was actually a person from my own publishing company upset that, because of a clerical error, they hadn’t been paid in five months. Talk about a “the call is coming from inside the house” moment. Now, I don’t care what you say about me personally or about my ability to lead people as a boss and make sure they receive at least minimum wage. But leave my works of art out of it, you know. We eventually agreed to have that worker be compensated for time unpaid plus an extra month’s salary if they promised to take their reviews down. So it all worked out in the end.

Angela W. writes:

John, I can’t stand the sound of your voice and I hate your videos, but I did end up reading your most recent book, Glossolalia and Other Stories, and I was surprised to find it witty, insightful, poetic and exactly the opposite of how you come off here. Anyway, what authors did you dislike at first but grew into?

Well, scifi writer John Scalzi was somebody I didn’t really like. Not because of his books, but because he threw me out of one of his book signings for trying to secretly endorse several books on the D&E label. But then years later, we were actually on the same panel at a book conference and we hit it off. Ended up going to a strip club later. Lovely guy.

Finally, we have Scarlit S. who writes:

John, I want to start writing, but my boyfriend says I’m too racist to be a writer. So my question is, what’s one thing you’d give up to become a better writer?

Well, first of all, lots of great writers are racist: Ayn Rand, Margaret Mitchell, HP Lovecraft. So even though I don’t agree with your views, don’t let that stop you.

But for me, this is an easy decision. I’d give up one of the children my first wife claims we had together before she ran off.

I Tried This Nine-Step Story Writing Formula (and I can’t believe how useful it was)

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Lots of writers hate the rigidity of a writing formula. After all, writing should be an organic process, not something measured in steps. You’re not making yellow curry, or performing funeral rites, or attending AA meetings that the judge forced you to attend after puking into the open window of a police cruiser during a wild Presidents’ Day celebration.

But if you want to write a story quickly, and the thought of getting rich and famous and finally being able to abandon your family doesn’t motivate you enough, a good writing formula can be a big help.

This writing system was created by Antonya Nelson, a writer whose work I won’t mention or link to because I don’t believe in other authors getting more attention than me. But take my word for it, she’s a pro who knows her stuff.

Step 1: Write About Something That Happened To You

The first thing you need to do is get words on the page, and there’s no better place to start than your own life. Think of something that would be emotionally resonant. You could write about a priest who molested you, or an uncle who molested you, or the dog you had to put down because you could’ve sworn it somehow was knowingly and purposefully molesting you.

When I used this method, I wrote about my first wife, particularly about how she disappeared shortly after I discovered she was a serial bigamist.

Step 2: Rewrite the Same Story From a Different Point of View

As the counselor in my road rage support group taught me, it’s important to take a step back and see things from other people’s perspectives. This applies just as much to writers.

To most people, it might’ve made sense to tell of my first wife’s bigamy from my perspective. But I realized my disillusionment and heartbreak might be muddied by the fact that I was cheating on her with the woman who would eventually become my second and by far favorite wife. So instead, I wanted to get inside her head and try to explore the psychology of a woman who married others compulsively.

Step 3: Create a Ticking Clock

Stories rely on momentum. In real life, drinking too much on Presidents’ Day might lead to court-ordered community service that derails your efforts to track down your missing wife, but a story can’t have random digressions like these.

A ticking clock not only propels the story forward but also culminates with a climax that readers expect and crave. When I rewrote my story from my wife’s perspective, I gave her a father who was dying of cirrhosis. She had nine months to scrape up enough cash to buy a liver for him on the black market. In real life, I never met Barbara’s family, as she told me they wouldn’t like me because they were racist against the Irish.

Step 4: Introduce Significant Objects

Frodo’s ring. The suitcase in Pulp Fiction. The magic golf club in The Legend of Baggar Vance. Fiction relies on symbols to deepen the meaning of your story.

If you’re lucky, this symbol might already be present in your narrative. But you also want to avoid cliches. Something like an engagement ring would probably come across as tacky. Luckily for me, Barbara and I never exchanged them as we’d gotten married so quickly we both forgot. So instead, I chose a special duffel bag in which she kept all her different fake IDs and cash and wigs.

Step 5: Establish a Transitional Situation

Sometimes this is easy to forget as many of us go to work, write and watch YouTube every single day until we die, but fiction depends on change. Your character must have some significant shift in their life or situation.

For my story, that was easy. It was the moment Barbara decided to leave me. Of course, I had to change the circumstances a bit. In the story, Barbara sneaks up behind me and bashes me on the head when I find the duffel bag in the closet and when I come to, she’s gone. In real life, I discovered Barbara missing after returning from an erotic three-day holiday getaway with my soon-to-be second wife at Disney World.

Step 6: Integrate a World Event

You can do this to be symbolic, to anchor your story in a way that’s more relatable to readers or to help market it.

I played around with a few ideas as I was editing. I first thought about setting it during the French Revolution, for example, but abandoned that idea when I remembered that cell phones didn’t exist then. Instead, to underline the sense of hidden intent and double identities, I set the story during the final season of Hannah Montana.

Step 7: Develop Binary Forces

Jocks vs. Nerds. Snobs vs. Slobs. Shiites vs. Sunnis. All classic rivalries that make for compelling drama and drive the narrative.

In my story, there was already a clear binary. Man vs. Woman. But I wanted to go a bit deeper than that. In real life, I didn’t know Barbara all that well, or at all, really, it turned out. I mean, she said she liked Shakespeare and tennis and hardcore porn just like I did, but I realized these commonalities were probably just part of the con, a way to worm her way into my life.

Anyway, in my story, I established a second binary by having her be in favor of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics while the husband was partial to the Copenhagen interpretation that insists of wave function collapse after measurement takes place.

Step 8: I actually don’t remember step 8

Step 9: Embrace Experimentation

This is usually the point where I tell you to ignore everything I just said and do something completely different. And this article will be no exception.

But, you don’t have to throw away a perfectly good story just because it might still be too embarrassingly close to what happened to you in real life. Keep playing around with the format. Write the story as a Yelp review. Write it as something your character brings up on his friend’s dad’s death bed.  

For me, the only thing I did was change the point of view again, this time to the second person. Turns out lots of people are really insecure about their relationships and I was able to play into their anxieties pretty well.

Top Tips for Crafting the Perfect Story Ending

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Story endings are one of the most things to pull off as a writer. Because of this, it’s going to take me all year to create this video, as I’ll likely have to piece it together little by little.  

Anyway, like sex, a great ending should be an emotional release that all your hard work, all those jogs, all those fasts, all those kegel exercises, culminates in, so to speak.  But unlike sex, a writer needs to at least to attempt to satisfy the person you’re performing for.

It helps to think of some of the great endings of fiction and really analyze why they work so well. The ending of the original Star Wars works so well because it satisfies the audience’s basest, primal bloodlust. We cheer because the hundreds of thousands of sentient beings who are not in our in-group have just suffered an unimaginably painful death.

A great ending should have the following elements: it should resolve your central conflict, it should satisfy the reader, it should illustrate the character’s transformation, and it should take your reader by surprise. To illustrate this point, let’s look at Business As Unusual, a book I just released at the beginning of 2024. The novel follows Tabitha Martin, a young girl trying to make it in the big city while taking care of her sick brother. You can skip ahead if you don’t want any spoilers, but the novel ends with the character’s brother dying.

It solves the central conflict because she’s able to live her life now, it takes the reader by surprise because the brother doesn’t die of cancer but is instead absolutely pancaked by a bus, and it satisfies the reader because Tabitha finally has time to pursue the sexual relationship with her boss that she hinted at by dressing slutty to work.

Now, let’s look at some more general tips that work for all kinds of fiction.

Step One – Know Your Ending Before Writing

You want to take the reader by surprise but not yourself. Wild twists that don’t really make sense just make you look as emotionally unhinged as a drunken secretary who advances on you sexually at an office party even though you barely know each other.

Now, have I written books without knowing the ending in advance? Well, of course. When you write 430 books in 27 years, 13 of those being periods of heavy drug use, both self and externally-administered, things like that are going to happen.

Dawson, a book I wrote as a young man, is a particularly bad example of this. I wrote it without ever knowing who the killer was and in the end I had no choice to make the titular character the killer because his only alibi was that her didn’t remember where he was on the night of the murder.

Step Two – Try Out Different Types of Endings

Despite what many authors might tell you, you don’t have to know your ending in advance. Write three or four different endings. If you find one that surprises you, it may surprise readers even more.  

It can be very liberating as a writer, too. We don’t get to choose different endings in life. We may have let a job opportunity go by and spend the rest of our life regretting it. Or we might spend our days casually flirting with bar patrons, yoga classmates and coworkers with the vain optimism that one will eventually match the charisma and beauty of your second wife, only to have them bore you with the details of their similarly depressing life.

Step Three – Leave Room For Interpretation

This can depend on the kind of story you’re writing. If you’re writing a series, you may want to tease that the villain might’ve survived the final battle. And some very powerful pieces of fiction have ambiguous endings that readers may argue over. Call Me By Your Name and American Psycho are two great examples, as is a recent novel that I’ve had to remove from the market for reason I won’t get into. All I’ll say is that this book ends with the main character finally free to pursue a romance she’s wanted the whole book, but it doesn’t tell us her final decision.

But real life is messy like that. Sometimes people say things that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Like, imagine your secretary walks into your office at five o’clock and asks, “Would you like me to stay late?” How would you interpret that?

Sure, it could mean, “I am willing to stay late to reduce the amount of work you have to do.” But it could also mean, “I can’t wait until everyone else leaves so it’s just the two of us alone.”

Anyway, as I’ve often told my lawyer, it totally makes sense why two people might interpret that differently.

Step Four – Tie Up All The Loose Ends

Fiction should be neat and tidy, unlike real life. Look, I’m a busy man. I can’t be writing twenty books a year, running a publishing company, doing this web series, all while remembering every conversation I have with every person. This libel stuff… it’s just a desperate plea for attention from someone who could barely be a receptionist, let alone someone who thinks she knows the ins and outs of libel laws as it applies to fiction.

And the sexual harassment stuff is just… I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. I’ve had lots of people come through my office doors and like most bosses I have had sexual relations with a few of them, so that right there already tells you I didn’t target Tiffany specifically. In fact, I was sleeping with two other office assistants while we were in a relationship. So how could there be a quid pro quo if I was getting it from multiple people? Was I playing favorites with all of them? That doesn’t even follow basic logic.

Anyway, back to the libel stuff… if Tiffany had ever listened to my advice, she’d know that’s what a great writer does; he gets inspired by the world around him. Now she wants to take down the company that paid her salary for an entire seven months? Give me a fucking break.

The Art of Travel Writing

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Imagine that you’re sitting at a sidewalk cafe in a foreign city. You put your book down. You take a moment to savor the unfamiliar flavors, to smell the unfamiliar aromas, to listen to heated conversations in an unknown language, to watch plainclothes police drag a screaming woman into a panel van. And you think to yourself, somebody ought to write a book about this place. If nothing else, I hope this article shows you that travel writing isn’t just for wives of hedge-fund managers desperate to prove their life isn’t worthless.

So what is travel writing? Travel writing is a loosely-defined genre that includes travelogues, guidebooks, memoirs, travel journalism, snapchats from Phuket, Yelp reviews of Vegas brothels, and letters to the consulate to get you out of Moroccan prison. For the sake of brevity, we won’t focus on those last few.

The first question you might be asking is, Do I actually have to travel to these places to write about them? Of course not. Travel can be expensive, dangerous, and mind-numbingly boring. Hell, I’ve written travel books about Damascus, Port-Au-Prince and Jackson, Mississippi and God knows I’d never be caught dead in any of those places. But if you don’t travel to the place you’re going to write about, you’ll need to put in extra work on Wikipedia, Google street view and watching movies filmed in that location to make sure you get things right.

For the rest of this article, however, we’ll assume you tricked your boss with a fake family death to get enough time off to actually travel to these places.

Step One: Write From a Unique Point of View

Remember, you are writing as a traveler and an outsider to the community you’re visiting. Now, it’s possible far-flung regions like India and China have had talented native writers who’ve written about their homeland, but that’s not what you’re going for. Take your reader into account and think about what value they hope to get from your writing. Do you hope to help them navigate this strange land when they visit? Do you want to share some off-the-beaten path sights away from the large tourist traps? Do you want to tell them where they can purchase a child bride, so they make sure to stay away from that spot?

However, it’s also important to be aware of your biases. It’s best to write in the first-person. Travel writing should have the intimacy of a diary and this way the reader is aware of your subjectivity. So, for example, your readers will understand that your local hosts might not be so open-minded to slaughtering street dogs for meat as you are. 

Step Two: Be Honest

Whether it’s a local dish you found to be disappointing or an old high school you’re certain is being used as a death camp, it’s important to be honest about your experiences as a traveler. Your reader will want those moments of authenticity. Not all trips are sunny beaches, picturesque vistas and nubile masseuses who allow roaming free of charge. Make sure to share those dead ends, scams and overrated traps as well.

In my most successful travelogue about my time in Bahrain, I wrote about a misunderstanding at the local pharmacy. While I asked for Advil, I was instead taken into a backroom and asked to deliver endangered osprey eggs to a government official in Hong Kong. While my publication of the incident means I’ll be executed if I ever return to Bahrain, it did make for a great story. This brings me to my next point.

Step Three: Interact with locals

Your reader, like you, want to absorb as much local flavor as possible and that’s not possible without at least trying to engage with the locals. Even if you don’t speak the language, pay attention to their body language. When I was in France, I couldn’t count how many people would stick their middle finger up to me as I passed them on the street. A local guide said it was their way of complementing my attire.

If you can get a translator or know someone who speaks English, soak up as many stories as you can. In Pakistan I met Hashim, a young man with a great passion for computer engineering. Many things about Hashim struck me as unique: his eagerness to share his life’s details, the way he’d hold my hand in public, or run his finger through my hair, his comfort sleeping next to me, completely in the nude, no modesty about hiding his erection. And though he was forcibly removed from my hotel and I never saw him again, I like to think he lives on in my writing.

Step Four: Stay up-to-date

If there’s one constant in world history, it’s that there are no constants. Borders, kings, queens, and laws regarding drug trafficking change constantly. Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic which became Czechia which is now just Kia.

You never know when a war might breakout during one of your trips. This is just an unfortunate reality you’ll have to accept. When I was in Yemen in 2014, nobody could’ve predicted this prosperous, stable nation with prompt, efficient room service was moments away from civil war.

But you don’t want to publish something outdated or look out-of-touch. Don’t do what I did and release a whole book about the wonderful bathhouses of Afghanistan in October 2001. So you have two choices: get a publisher who keeps a close eye on the news, or write about places that never change.

Avoid Common Pitfalls in Self-Publishing

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Self-publishing: for some, this is a term as depressing as “dinner for one” or  “Milf Manor marathon.” But just because you’ve decided to self-publish, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure or that you wrote the equivalent of a miscarriage.

While I didn’t start out as a self-published author, I have self-published over 150 novels in my long career for a variety of different reasons, from frustration with traditional publishing to wanting more creative freedom to incorrectly assuming any income I made doing so wouldn’t have to go to my first or second wives.

I’ll take you through my journey as a self-published author and discuss some of the pitfalls I encountered so you can avoid them.

Fans of mine will know that, unlike most of the people reading this, I didn’t start out as a self-published author. But while self-publishing wasn’t really an option when I started, that didn’t mean traditional publishing came without its share of headaches.

For starters, my first actual publisher had some weird thoughts about human biology, one of which was they didn’t believe it existed. And my second publisher, the first one that actually had an office and who I assume didn’t think cells were an illusion meant to test humanity’s faith, made me sign a contract that basically got me nothing back in royalties.

It wasn’t until I met Tabitha Cartwright, my mentor and writing partner for over five years, that I started seeing any success as an author. Under her tutelage, I entered the most productive stage of my writing career, though it wasn’t until later that I realized that was because the diet pills she was giving me were actually speed.

Anyway, the next few years after that are kind of a blur, where I produced some of my worst books that I don’t even remember writing. And after settling a lawsuit that gave Tabitha the rights to all the books I’d written in our partnership (while also getting me off the hook for some things I’d rather not mention), I thought it was time to step away from traditional publishing and try the self-publishing route.

This was in 2011: the year Bin Laden was killed and America was warming up to the idea of authors releasing their own books online. The following are some things I learned during the process.

Number 1 – Get A Good Editor.

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this article, besides the fact that our bodies are, in fact, composed of cells, it’s that you cannot be your own editor. Because the editor I usually worked with wasn’t taking my calls, I thought I could do it on my own. While you do need to edit your work, you need to get at least one other set of eyes on it, if not more. So once I self-published my first novel, the earliest reviews called me out for misspelling the word “baggage” on the first page of the book.

Number 2 – A Book Without A Marketing Plan Is Just The Diary Entry of a Very Sick Individual

Self-publishing is not an outlet for self-expression. If it’s self-expression you’re after, you can, I don’t know, start a blog of your poetry, or post erotic selfies on Tumblr, or storm the Capitol. You have to self-publish with the mindset of a businessperson. And what are all the greatest businesspeople like? Cold, obsessive, ruthless, and so focused on profit that it borders on a psychosis.

Set goals for yourself. Figure out what kind of ads you want. Make schedules and stick to them. You know, do the kinds of things only successful people do and that unsuccessful people never would have possibly thought of.  

Number 3 – Your PR Campaign is a Story in Itself. Start it Before You Finish Your Novel.

You can’t wait until you push that “Publish” button to start finding your audience. Even before you’re done writing, you should give your existing audience some idea of what’s coming. Let them know what it’s about. Let them know the release date. If you’re a YouTuber like me, flash subliminal messages urging them to buy it in your videos. So long as your audience isn’t populated by a high percentage of epileptics, you’ll be fine.

I ignored email lists and newsletters, assuming I’d get by on name recognition alone. But my earliest books were out of print by 2011 and Tabitha Cartwright changed the name on all the books she owned to my legal name (which fans of the channel will know is the same as one of the worst serial killers in American history.) This actually boosted sales, but didn’t do anything for John Lazarus. In any case, I should’ve made a better effort to reach out to long-time fans.

Of course, if you’re a brand-new writer and you don’t have an existing audience, everything I just said was a complete waste of time.

Number 4 – Send Out Advanced Copies to Get Reviews Before Publishing

This is another step you need to take before publishing. And it doesn’t matter if your name is Dan Nobody or Tyra Banks, you need reviews. Lots of them. If you have the money and the connections, get reviews with places like Kirkus and literary magazines. You can go cheaper and use book bloggers. You can go way cheaper and hire the homeless to write reviews and post them on your website.

When I self-published Nap Time, I was so low on money none of these options were available. And when I usually run into a problem like this, I would just lie, write the reviews myself and post them on my website, but I thought I could get by without it. I was wrong.

Number 5 – Act Like a Best Seller

But speaking of blatant fraud, a wise man once said, “Success only comes to those who believe in it.” Projecting confidence, self-promotion and the grind of the hustle that has rendered modern life an existential nightmare are essential to be a successful writer.

Do you know what Neil Gaiman and JK Rowling have in common, besides being shitty human beings? They are always working. When you’re at social functions, when you’re at work, in the online sphere, act like you belong in their club. One day you just might.

Here are five more bits of knowledge I find are essential to all authors considering self-publishing their first book.

Number 6 – Climate Change Won’t Kill Off Enough of the Population Fast Enough to Desaturate the Marketplace

Number 7 – Publishing in Comic Sans Isn’t A Great Idea for a Holocaust Drama

Number 8 – Assume Everyone Is Trying to Scam You. Be Cold And Distant To Everyone in Your Life

Number 9 – Using Child Labor for Your Book Launch Team Might Not Technically Be Illegal, But It’s Still Frowned Upon

Number 10 – Don’t Hold Out Hope On This Book’s Success Filling That Crippling Void In Your Life

The Best Books I Read in 2024

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The holiday season means different things for different people. For some it’s a time of reflection, to make resolutions and promise to stick to only clear liquors from now on. For others, it’s a time of sorrow, knowing that your family will call your bluff this time when you say you’re going to kill yourself.

For me, it’s a time for list making. Not gift lists, mind you. My three wives made me stop giving my children gifts after some of the knock off Furbies I bought one year started several small fires. No, it’s a time for year-end lists, when I can share the best things I experienced in 2024. Fans can go to my blog to read about the best movies, albums and brothels I discovered this year, but to keep this relevant to the channel, we’re just going to focus on books.

This list will contain some 2024 releases, some classics I had never gotten around to, and a lot of books that landed on the D&E label that I think all viewers should consider checking out.

I’m going to start this list with a book I had never heard of, but that was brought to my attention by a former writing partner. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a French expatriate and literature professor living in New England who falls in love with and kidnaps the titular 12-year-old girl. I found this book to be one of literature’s finest examples of an unreliable narrator, a witty sendup of American culture and a sharp exploration on the nature of obsession. Nabokov’s prose is a delight: verbose, lyrical, and enviably clever. It’s just a shame the man who recommended the book to me ended going to prison and getting killed there.

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RF Kuang’s Yellowface came out at the tail end of last year, but I didn’t get around to it until 2024. Yellowface starts with its narrator watching a fellow author die, stealing her manuscript and publishing it under her own name, so this was a book I could relate to on a personal level and seemed almost specifically written for me. But beyond being an exploration what authorship means and satirizing the publishing landscape of the current era, RF Kuang offers a brilliant critique of how social media is unfair to white authors like myself.

Here’s another book I had never heard of until recently. I always felt graphic novels were for children and grown men who couldn’t grow beards but tried anyway. I still think that, but it didn’t ruin my appreciation of Watchmen, a multi-faceted deconstruction of the superhero genre that I probably shouldn’t have read to my seven-year-old son.

If you have to pick one book this year that I won’t personally profit from, make it Miranda July’s All Fours. Centered on a middle-aged woman who abandons her family for a love affair, this was another book that I felt was written personally for me. July’s writing blends sex with humor in a way I haven’t seen since Porky’s II. Now, many readers might find the main character to be immature, sex-obsessed, impulsive, and hyper-privileged, but I would counter that that describes 90 percent of people who attend book clubs so it’s definitely a work that encourages self-reflection.  

Reagan. An icon as synonymous with the 80s as Tawny Kitaen and C. Thomas Howell. Now I’m not the most political person and probably fall somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. On the one hand, I think trans women are women, trans men are men, but on the other, I think it’s ridiculous the State of New York won’t allow me to bring a few loaded pistols into a bookstore to protect myself at a book signing. Anyway, no matter how you feel about a guy who ignored the AIDS epidemic, but who also looked good on camera, this is a must read.

Now we’re going to look at some D&E Publishing titles I loved this year.

If I had to choose one avant-garde book to pick this year, it would be I Hope You Fucking Die, a book by anonymous released last May on D&E Publishing. Composed of nothing more than threatening tweets I’ve received for the past decade, the book was sent to our offices in an unmarked package. While some might’ve called their lawyer or the bomb squad, I instead went ahead and published it anyway. One reviewer called it a fascinating examination of a deranged mind, and while they seemed to incorrectly be referring to me, I couldn’t agree more.

The End of Us was one of the best thrillers I read all year. A harrowing account of a man who decides to kill his whole family, I was over the moon that Robin Fletcher decided to publish with D&E. Unfortunately, the deal fell through when police discovered the book was a confession and Robin had actually killed his family.   

Band Camp was the best young adult story I read in 2024. This coming-of-age story about a young immigrant from Iran who develops an unexpected friendship at the titular setting was moving and had wonderful insight into what it means to be an outsider. Unfortunately, D&E didn’t end up publishing this book either because author Daphne Laughton also killed her whole family.

But the best book I read this year had to be my own, Glossolalia and Other Stories, available now on Amazon. Unlike all of the other books on this list, this book never felt like a chore to read.

Cringeworthy Mistakes New Authors Always Make

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Much like raising a child, becoming a professional author is nearly impossible to do without making mistakes along the way. But much like building that child a treehouse even with no carpentry experience, there are, for writers, ways you can limit the damage your mistakes might cause.


Even the greatest writers make mistakes. George RR Martin, for example, keeps making the mistake of forgetting to send his editors finished versions of his stories. John Updike forgot to take three minutes to consult a textbook and learn how women piss.

I’m going to talk about beginner mistakes by sharing the story of Evan Hayward, a promising young talent who had all the potential in the world, but who unfortunately flamed out of the industry because of some fatal errors he made and his unwillingness to correct them.


And even I’m not susceptible. I vastly overestimated the number of people who can read Old English, for example, and I wrote over thirty books before I gave a woman a speaking role.

Evan Hayward was probably like a lot of people reading this. He was a Master of Fine Arts, he loved literature, and he was a hungry young writer with lots of talent but not the necessary connections you need to make it big. But unlike most of the people reading this, Evan was tall, good-looking, had great skin and people generally liked being in his presence.


I signed Evan in 2015. His debut novel, a self-published indie comedy called A Tale Told By An Idiot, had won a few indie awards. I reached out and commissioned Evan to write his follow-up for D&E Publishing. At the time, the only other authors working for us, besides myself, were Blake Colby, who was struggling with addiction and would soon drown in his bathtub, and Samantha Chao, who only wrote political non-fiction about the imminent takeover of Sharia law. So I was very desperate for fresh talent.


Like many of you, Evan pitched many ideas that, with the correct guidance, editing and marketing, I knew would make a big splash. But unfortunately, over the next six months, he made some errors from which he’d never recover.


Mistake #1 – Trying to Write For Everyone

Writing for everyone is the same as writing for no one. That’s a little phrase I coined, and I find it rings true. When starting a new project, a writer has to clearly define their target audience. This is a mistake I often made at my start. When I wrote And Justice for Some, my target audience was just men, as my story contained lots of violence and the protagonist has sex with six or seven large breasted women with various racial backgrounds. But I was wrong. It turns out there are lots of men who are racist or who like small breasted women and the story did nothing for them.


From the start, I could tell Evan would have the same problem. Everyone in the office loved his work. People praised him constantly. The women in the office, in particular, spent a lot of time hovering around his desk when they should’ve been working.


Once Evan came on and spent more time around our offices, lots of gossip started. Now, to promote diversity and help save money, a large amount of our staff didn’t speak English. Fortunately, I was able to get my landscaper to get his daughter to help me translate their conversations I recorded in our break room by agreeing to help edit a college entrance essay. Here are just some of the things I learned:
Office integrity aside, the bigger problem was that I knew all this love and attention would go to Evan’s head and make him write too broadly.


Mistake #2 – Relying on the Perfect Conditions to Write

Writing is one of the most laborious processes imaginable. Many young writers have great ideas, but they feel if they don’t have their exact color Moleskin notebook in their favorite coffee shop eating their favorite pastry, they can’t get any words down.


A writer has to learn to write anywhere at any time. If you start putting writing off because you can’t find your perfect place, you’ll never get anything done. I make character sketches on the toilet. I write notes while I’m driving. I’ve done key edits while my third wife was in labor.


About a month after Evan joined D&E Publishing, his house burned down. For some reason, his work and productivity started to suffer. He tried to get more of his writing done in our publishing offices, but due to some renovations, I had to move his desk to the utility shed. Evan complained that the formaldehyde made it hard to focus, but I told him a writer needs to find a way to make it work.


Mistake #3 – Neglecting Research

Readers are more discerning than ever these days. Back in my day, you might be able to get away with saying Nixon was president during the Bay of Pigs or have a character with no arms administer CPR. But nowadays, readers are champing at the bit for their favorite writer to slip up so they can go on Twitter and call for him to be castrated.


Evan’s second novel was going to be a crime thriller and it had a solid hook, but the sloppiness was holding it back. The editors I hired, for example, were quick to point out that he didn’t specify the caliber of bullets used by the criminal in both metric and imperial units. Another character simply died of lung cancer, when it was clear they had actually died of pneumonia due to complications caused by lung cancer. No discerning reader would let things that slide.


Mistake #4 – Trying to Shock Without Value

Maybe it was some combination of the pressure over publishing under a deadline, the noxious fumes in the janitor’s closet or the grief over his cat dying in a fire, but Evan had trouble holding it together. Instead of working at his desk, I’d often find him whispering to people in the office, who I found a bit too supportive considering his poor work ethic.


When I did get the final manuscript, I was disappointed by the final twist in his story, where it turns out the killer had been the police detective who had suffered from split personality disorder. I told Evan this made no sense and was incredibly cheap and nobody would ever buy it.


Evan told me that the ending was actually from one of my novels and the fact that I automatically rejected it said I was just jealous of his talent and looks.


Lots of writers feel like way about their mentors, but most have the sense not to say it. I like to think, if Evan had been more mature and willing to learn from his mistakes, he’d have done great things with us. But D&E Publishing cancelled our contract with Evan and my only other regret is that security wouldn’t escort him out of the building because they said they liked him more than me.

The Anatomy of Your First Chapter

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Photo by Min An from Pexels

Nothing will draw your reader’s attention like a completely perfect first chapter. But complete and utter perfection is easier said than done. In fact, as the head editor of DEPub, I can say with authority that an author’s inability to construct a flawless first chapter is the biggest obstacle to getting published.

So, before we break things down, we need to ask ourselves, “What should the perfect opening do?” Well, it has to introduce the main character and the world in which your story takes place. It has to have a strong, unique hook, an original voice, a well-defined tone perfect for your intended readership, several references to classical literature that are obscure but not too obscure,  something mysterious but also completely clear and understandable, a non-cisgender character, an abortion, a description of a sunset or wedding that makes your own personal memories of those experiences pale in comparison, a person dead or dying of a little known disease, fish, dark humor, nothing callous or insensitive, 2-15 words that aren’t English, and either a galactic spaceship battle or a grounded discussion about motherhood but preferably both.

Now that might sound easy, but once you start writing you’ll definitely notice some key elements are missing. So here are some tips, advice, suggestions, reminders and pointers on how to reduce redundancy and sharpen that first chapter into a useful weapon to plunge into heart of your reader.

Start in media res

With ever-decreasing attention spans, the readers of today need their dopamine fix fast. Recent studies show that readers will decide whether or not to read your book after the first three words. So you’ve got to whip out all your literary might, so to speak, and dangling it front of their face.

That’s why I suggest you start in the middle of your scene. Skip long introductions, skip backstories, skip exposition, skip character description, skip names, skip adverbs, skip nouns, skip punctuation. Start your book with a gunshot to the head. “Bang Bang Bang.” Start your book with cannibalism. “As far back as I can remember, I always wondered what people tasted like.” Start your book with a nonsensical string of expletives. “Fuckin’ piss-ass cocksuckin’ motherfucker.”

Don’t frontload the backstory

Be sparing with your reveals. It’s probably not good to painstakingly detail every year of your character’s life from birth to their present age. Don’t make the same mistake I did and write a hard-boiled crime thriller where the lead detective doesn’t reach puberty until page 46.

Maybe pick one or two key moments from your character’s past that relate to the events unfolding in your first chapter. If your character is eating a sandwich, maybe then would be the time to talk about their high school job as a school cafeteria bully. If your character is in the middle of a high-speed car chase, maybe you should talk about the advice their high school driving instructor gave them.

Opinion, opinion, opinion

Your story is driven by the voice you give your narrator. Original, radical opinions are maybe the best hook you can give your reader. Give your character a refreshing voice of reason, or a scornful voice of hatred.

Look for contrasts. Maybe your radical Islamic terrorist has decided to leave his past behind and open a bakery on the west side. Or maybe hint at a revelation like this: “I hated immigrants my whole life – until the day I realized I was one.”

When nothing else works, change your starting point

Start by asking yourself, “Why am I starting here?” Then ask yourself, “What if I started here?” Then, “No, how about here?” And “No, I think the second one was better. No, wait, which one was the second one?” And finally, “Why am I trying to write this stupid fucking book nobody’s going to read? Just give up you no talent piece of garbage.”

And once you get all that out of your system, try removing your first paragraph and see if that’s better. If that doesn’t work, make your second chapter your first. Then delete every sixth sentence and see what that looks like. Is your story starting to make much less sense and does it seem completely disjointed and nonsensical? If you’ve followed everything I said up until now, your answer should be “no.”

Finally, deliver the burgeoning conflict

There’s a saying I put in all my Powerpoint presentations when I teaching storytelling at the adult learning annex: “Your first chapter doesn’t have to bring the storm, but the storm should be visible on the horizon.” After all the applause, I go on to explain how this is the driving force of all fiction.

Be subtle. Instead of staring with a bank robbery, have the manager of bank security list every single vulnerability he’s noticed. Instead of starting with the death of a father, start with a dream sequence of a near-death experience of an uncle.

 

Remember, it’s important not to panic. This is a long process. So long as you don’t mind getting rejected for decades, there’s nothing to worry about. I hope this has been helpful.

Seven Secrets To Writing Better Characters

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Characters are the windows to our story’s soul. They embody our wants, wishes and desires, and we often use them to say the things we can’t in real life without being called a “racist,” “sexist,” or “that guy who has some strange ideas about Israel for someone who’s not very religious.”

The following is a sneak-peak of what you’ll learn in my 75 part, non-refundable online writing course on how to create believable, dynamic characters that aren’t obvious self-inserts.

Give your characters strong opinions

As a writer, there’s a good chance you’re naturally passive. You’re probably afraid to speak in front of others, cower from responsibility and suffer from a complete lack of charisma.

To write resonant characters, however, you’ve got to provide  strong personalities readers will want to follow for the next 300 pages. Giving your character strong opinions is a great way to do so.

For example, I wrote a story about a lonely, American twenty-something unsure of what to do with his life who also thought the holocaust wasn’t such a big deal. I realized it wasn’t working and couldn’t quite understand why. After a good deal of consultation with my beta readers, I decided it would be much better if he denied the holocaust ever happened at all. Now he was somebody who got your attention.

Unpredictability is key

Storytelling is all about character growth, how characters react to their circumstances and how they mould the world around them. Nothing will grip a reader more than a character making an important decision your reader didn’t expect, and if you followed my last piece of advice, sharp changes of mind will be all the more striking.

For example, try making your conformist, browbeaten neighborhood butcher, who has spent his whole life doing what he’s told and making sausage from animal parts, decide one day that he’s going to make sausage out of human parts.

It can go the other way, too. Make your antagonist the good guy. Maybe the liberal philosophy professor decides he isn’t going to give another lecture about why everyone needs to be atheist, quits his job and instead goes to church to pray.

Grudges are another key

This goes part and parcel with strong opinions. Much of our folklore – hell, much of human history – is built upon grudges. I think naturally we as humans are fearful of outsiders, occupying forces and the imminent threat of Sharia law being implementing in our schools.

Your grudges can be professional, political, social or familial. And sometimes, the vaguer the better. A hinted-at grudge is a great way to worldbuild without wasting too much time on exposition. In my Grisham-esque thriller The Subtle Subpoena, we don’t need to be told why the protagonist has it in for the criminal defense firm Abelman, Cohen and Blumenthal – it should be obvious.

Improve physical descriptions by being as specific as possible

Strong, unique physical descriptions are a cornerstone of great character. Read the following sentence: “The cashier had a mole under his right eye.” Decent, but it leaves a lot to the imagination. Here’s a much better version of that sentence: “The cashier had a mole 2.78 centimeters below his right eye.”

Better, right? It’s much easier to picture this way. In the first example, the mole could technically be anywhere under his right eye; it could be next to his mouth, on his neck, on his knee, or even under his left eye.

Character names are more important than anything

Nobody wants to read a book about someone named Jared or Brayden. That’s why it’s important you pick evocative names that follow the three “make it’s”: Make it era-appropriate, alliterative and symbolic.

Names that don’t fit the era they’re set in can be distracting. If you’re writing a historical drama about the Antebellum South, don’t do what I did and name your general Zebulon Geezwax of the Ursa Antilles Cluster.

Also, alliterate every name you can. All great writers and porn stars do it. Names like Candy Cox and Dante Demarcus DeHarrison already tell the reader a lot about the character.

And slather your names in symbolism. Don’t call your character something boring like Joe unless you want him to be an everyman. If you’re writing sci-fi give them a mythic Greek last name and if you’re writing literary fiction give them a mythic Greek first name. Or use obscure color names like Vermillion Dax, Smaragdine Simons, and Burnt Sienna.

The third key is interesting professions

There have already been a lot of books about sea captains, princes, private detectives, humanities professors, hippies and refugees who just whine about everything that’s happened to them. It’s your job as a writer to explore the unexplored, and what better way to do so than by picking a character with a unique profession.

Some ideas: Podcasters who will do anything to uphold the Second Amendment; a Crisis Actor; a movie producer and lobbyist trying to repeal the Second Amendment; a lawyer who happens to be a woman; and the most unsung of all heroes, Israeli politicians.

Finally, you need a moral dilemma

So you’ve got an opinionated, grudge-bearing, unpredictable character with a unique name and profession. But eventually your story will hinge upon the decisions that character makes, and a perfect way to do that is to put their convictions to test, to force them to make uncomfortable choices. This conflict is the essence of all my books (and I assume others as well).

Will your podcaster let Spotify ban his streams on their platform, or will he use his Second Amendment rights to uphold the First? Maybe your character has always been taught men and women are equal? If so, what will he do to stop radical feminists from attacking him on social media?

 

To learn more about character development, contact us to enroll in our comprehensive online course. It’s just three easy payments of $88.