A little late 15th Anniversary wish to Jaclyn Johnson and the series that made me

As my old radio mentor said occasionally, "Better late than never, better never late."

Last month--February 15, to be exact--marked the 15th anniversary of my breakout thriller series, Jaclyn Johnson, codename Snapshot. Fifteen years has passed, and today I look fondly back.

She came to me in a dream, this leggy blonde wearing the stereotypical schoolgirl uniform complete with kilt, walking down the street with purpose. As my dream continued, my mind's eye watched as she entered a building. I didn't see anything else until she walked out... just before the building exploded. And as that happened, she didn't even flinch in reaction.

It made me wonder (as I shot out of bed and vaulted toward the writing room) what did that all mean?

In a word, it meant beaucoup readers, and opportunities to reach more readers than I could have possibly dreamed when I started out writing back in 2003. It was late 2009, and I spent pretty much the second half of 2010 and all of 2011 writing about this partially blind (partially sighted?) counterterrorism agent. 

What you probably don't know is that I wrote the second book in the series, Rogue Agent, before I wrote Model Agent. By Halloween 2011, I had finished the third book, Double Agent, and as was the custom back then, I made Model Agent free on Smashwords--in essence, Apple iBooks and the small outlets that sold/lent eBooks--and had someone report the lower price to Amazon. It was sound practice: use the first book--Model--as a loss leader and see the sell-through through the next two books--and the following books--go high. 

And for the most part, that happened. There were people who loved the books, and there were some who didn't. I wanted to create a series that was fun, escapist fiction that readers could enjoy. I threw in the James Bond-esque gadgets that helped Jaclyn achieve her goals and solve her missions. I made her strong and relentless, and in many respects, I made her vengeful and bloodthirsty. The way Jaclyn inflicts punishment is in no way realistic, but in a book of escapism, blurring the lines of what is real and the fantastical makes, in my opinion, good pulse-pounding reading.

Over the next decade or so, I got away from some parts that made Jaclyn special. I stopped using her "darkness bombs" and "ether bombs," but kept others that made her unstoppable, such as her bodysuit and the multiple holsters. I ensured that she would have a reliable, fancy vehicle that was a rolling cache of weaponry. I carried this through nine full length novels and a novella... and then I stopped.

In 2018, I started on a new path. I had other things I wanted to accomplish... but then the pandemic and buying a house threw a monkey wrench into everything. I managed to start a tenth Jaclyn novel back in 2023, but I haven't come close to finishing it. It's my goal to get another quarter of it finished within the next year; between a long research project, as well as covering games again, it's all about balance. 

I also want to regain my audience and make it grow. I want to find readers who love James Bond and the gadgets. I want to find readers who love a heroine who has a lot going against her (she's disabled, for Christ's sake!), but overcomes and kicks ass. I want to find readers who want to binge read me on the beach, who want excitement in their books and not just the stale storytelling you'd get in New York-published books. This series, now 15 years old, is cinematic spy reading, and is FUN.

Again, I'm writing a new JJ. When will it get done? I don't know.

But the series is waiting for new readers like you.

Take a chance. You won't regret it.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com
Find me on Twitter/X: https://x.com/smsweeneyauthor   

Making a tough business decision in order to survive

Back in 2014, I wrote a blog post at the advent of Kindle Unlimited, the then-new program by Amazon. And I'll be honest: I was skeptical. I was skeptical about it. I didn't think it would work, but then again, it's Amazon. Bezos had struck gold with Kindle, and I must admit that lightning struck pretty hard with KU.

Suffice it to say, I balked. Even though I had trumpeted ebooks and Kindle in particular since 2010, I personally felt that I had no right to tell readers that they needed a Kindle or a Kindle app in order to read my books. Seriously, who was I to tell anyone who read ebooks how they should read them? I felt that if you had a Nook, a Kobo reader, or an iPad with Apple iBooks already downloaded, you had enough to read me.

How wrong I was!

Over the next few years, like Mark Coker had predicted, my sales and the sales of other authors not in KU started to slip, and slip hard. I went from 4,000-plus books sold in 2012 to 336 last year; shit, I only sold 193 in 2019. I really didn't understand it: I had  all these new books, from Travel Agent to Scouring Agent and the Ricky Madison books, books with even better writing than books like Model Agent and Rogue Agent that sold really, really well, and I couldn't get a sniff of a sale, or reach the numbers that I once had before KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited entered the fray. Are readers by-passing my books because they aren't in KU? Quite possible; I've never received a single piece of email telling me to get into KU or else, though. But even though I had plenty of evidence to the contrary, I steadfastly -- read: stubbornly -- refused to go narrow... until as late as December 2020, when I considered putting Incoming Private Show into KU.

That refusal has come to an end.

As of this morning, I have started the process of de-listing all of my books on Nook, Kobo, iBooks, and all the small ebook sites. While I'm sure that Kobo, Nook, and iBooks will be instantaneous, it will take a while for Hoopla and OverDrive, etc, to de-list me and take me off their sites. Once that happens...

Once that happens, I can put all 30-something of my books and short stories into KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited.

As I've said before, I crave the success that my friends have. And when I look at the stats they post in certain Facebook groups, all from KU, and I see the amount of money they are making -- life-changing money -- and the amount of books they are pushing out the door, it makes me wonder why I can't get that.

But alas, I can get that. I can get that by succumbing to KU and finally embracing all it does for authors. My writing skills are superior to what they were. I'm doing everything right, and yet I feel that I'm losing because I'm not selling, because I'm not in KU. As a wide author, I'm not making enough to make fiction writing a full-time profession any longer, I'm not making enough from it to put food on the table, to pay my mortgage, to pay my bills; I've scaled back since 2017, and my hope is that I can make enough through my fiction by going narrow with KU to grow my audience and get back to a full-time status.

Time to do just that. Hopefully lightning will strike for me like it has so many others.

KU, here I come. See you there.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

Looking ahead to 2021

Within the next two-plus days, the sands in 2020's hourglass will run out, an imaginary hand will twist its wrist and spin it, and the long year of 2021 will begin. For many, seeing New Year's Eve approach has to be a relief; 2020 has not been kind to them, and in the years to come they will flinch when anyone mentions the numbers associated with this horrid year in their presence.

For me, I count myself fortunate. Outside of brief scares, I have not been exposed to COVID. We thought my mom might have been exposed following a late summer outbreak here in my hometown, but she, luckily, turned up negative. Extended family members contracted it and have recovered. 

And outside of my wife's stroke back in May and my heart condition rearing its ugly head on me over the last month or so, my family has come out unscathed. We are incredibly thankful for that, and our hearts ache for those who have lost loved ones.

In looking back, we were lucky. We listened to the experts and wore a mask from the middle of March on whenever we left the house. We social distanced, we washed our hands, we sanitized. 

In short, we controlled what we could control. 

And as I look ahead to next year, I have to continue that mindset. Control what I can control, don't sweat the small stuff. Insert whichever cliché you need, but those are two that I will utilize when it comes to my writing business in 2021.

What can I control?

My writing output, for instance. I'm not setting a word count goal, per se, like I've done in the past, but when I plan to have two books out in 2021 and one is practically already scheduled to come out in the summer, it means that the book I'm about to start writing needs to take priority during my daily writing time in order to have it ready for a near Christmas 2021 release. When 10 a.m. arrives, I need to be in my office typing away until 2 or 3 p.m. Not doing this will hamper that goal.

On the flip side, I have to remind myself not to get completely angry at myself should other things -- like one of my other writing lives, or an emergency -- pop up, and subsequently hampers the writing schedule. That falls under not sweating the small stuff; emergencies happen, and in my other writing job, things happen that take me away from the fiction. I just have to remind myself to get back to the writing as soon as humanly possible. And if that means getting a page done in the overnight, so be it, or promising myself to write more the next day in an effort to make up for it.

What else can I control? Improving my marketing skills. I've said it time and again: my marketing skills are positively dreadful, but I'm working to improve them. I've done quite a bit of reading over the last quarter, and my hope is to continue to tweak my marketing, and not relying on the same tired methods that haven't necessarily worked, or have tailed off in their effectiveness.

And one of those things, unfortunately, is to possibly look into Kindle Unlimited for the release of INCOMING PRIVATE SHOW, at least at the start. I know that those who have bought my books on Nook, Kobo, and iBooks are shouting, "No!" at me, but I have to at least try it out and see if it works for me, with an incredibly well-written book. And honestly, if it doesn't, once the 90-day exclusivity period it up, I can easily take it out of KU and upload to the other markets.

Other things that I can control? My health, the maintenance on my new house and the various tools I need, and whether I'm wearing a mask.

What are the things I won't sweat about in 2021? Book sales -- I have no control over whether or not people buy my books -- the weather, the Revolution or Arsenal winning or losing, and whether or not people get vaccinated. I'm sure there will be other things that come up.

In short, I'm going into 2021 with a great deal of optimism for myself, my business, and the world at large. 

I hope you're doing the same.

Kindle Unlimited: Netflix gone awry?

Earlier this week, while trying to distract myself from writing TRAVEL AGENT, I saw a post on Twitter (and then, on Facebook) regarding a potential new program from Amazon entitled Kindle Unlimited. Anything Amazon does these days is news. In short, KU would be a Netflix-type avenue where customers pay $9.99 a month for the option of unlimited ebooks and audiobooks from the Amazon catalog, which grows exponentially by the day, the hour, the minute.

I see several issues with this. Keep in mind that I don't have a horse in the race. I'm not on the inside of Amazon, and the following may be speculation.

 But speculation is what I do best, so here you go. 

In order for this program to succeed, Amazon is going to need the content to pull this off, of course. Amazon's relationship with the Big Five is tenuous, at best; with Hachette, non-existent. The big question, of course, is that in order to get the Big Five in on this, there would have to be a boatload of money involved going toward their bank accounts. It leads me to ask: how much money Amazon would be willing to give the Big Five publishers after the current B.S. with Hachette, and the B.S. with the federal lawsuit regarding collusion between Apple and the Big Five against Amazon's business model. I highly doubt the Big Five will agree to this unless there's a big piece of the pie for them; remember that in their model, they take 52.5 percent of royalties after the 30 percent the retailer takes from the sale. After paying the agent, the author gets a measly 7.5 percent.

Ever since the advent of Kindle Digital Publishing, Amazon has tried to convince authors to abandon the above puny royalties offered by the Big Five in exchange for 70 percent with them (and while they haven't said it, there's also the 70 percent with Kobo and 65 percent with Nook, all for books between $2.99 and $9.99). Most have not taken advantage of it, thanks to (as J.A. Konrath puts it) the Stockholm Syndrome the authors feel toward their publishers, and I highly doubt the authors under the blanket of the Big Five will say good bye to the publishers in order to get in this program. Users of the program will look for the books offered by the Big Five; they won't be looking for me.

In addition, any author that wants their books in this program more than likely will have to join KDP Select, meaning no Nook, no Kobo, no iBooks, no Smashwords; I'm against putting all my eggs in one basket, and I've made a lot of money from those sources, and gained loads of readers from spreading the wealth. In addition, from my reading/research, royalties will be paid out of the same kitty Amazon gives for the lending library program (re: borrows), and while it may be speculation, there's no indication that fund will increase. More than likely, it would mean lower royalties than what trad-pubbed authors receive from their publishers as it is, probably a dime and a couple of pennies. 

Right now, it's so not worth it for either the publishers, the authors, or the readers.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com