Websites, Crowdfunding, Going Hybrid

December 27, 2024 by Harvey

In Today’s Journal

* Looking Forward
* A Really Helpful Post
* A Note on Crowdfunding
* Going Hybrid?
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Looking Forward

It’s a fact that if you want to succeed at both writing and making money at it, you have to do your best to stay on the cutting edge of innovations in publishing and marketing.

As we’re all gearing up for a new year of writing and publishing, I thought this would be as good a time as any to talk about some of those innovations and, of course, alternatives.

A Really Helpful Post

Two days ago in Of Interest I posted a link to Disrupting Your Author Website, an article by Lisa Norman.

I’m featuring it again today because I finally read it myself yesterday. It is a great resource. If you didn’t read it before, I hope you will read it now.

The whole article is well worth your time. I was especially interested in the section titled “Basic Business Card.”

For a basic and extremely inexpensive author website, Lisa mentions Carrd. She even provides an example of what you can do with Carrd.

To see the example site Lisa listed in her article (and I visited), check out Amy Winters-Voss.

I also explored Carrd itself a little more closely.

According to Lisa’s article, Carrd “offers beautiful, professional templates at an incredibly affordable price ($10–$20/year). Integrate MailerLite or [an]other email management program for list-building. This way, you can start connecting with fans without a heavy investment in time or money.”

Because I’m so heavily invested in both HarveyStanbrough.com and StoneThreadPublishing.com, I’ll certainly keep those for the foreseeable future.

But HarveyStanbrough.com is top heavy to say the least and chock full of writer resources. But then, it’s primarily for writers.

So going into 2025, there’s an excellent chance I’ll try to catch up with the 21st century.

As Part 1 of that devious plan, maybe I’ll build a new author website for fans and readers through Carrd. I anticipate doing a monthly or so reader newsletter there through MailerLite.

To showcase my books (because I have so many) I’ll probably just link to my Payhip store.

When I visited Amy Winters-Voss’ site, I also discovered a new (to me) crowdfunding source. More on that in the next segment.

Lisa also mentioned Substack for blogging; Shopify, Payhip, and ThriveCart as alternatives for a “Pro Business Site” (I use Payhip but I might check out ThriveCart too); “immersive” sites, and more. I hope you’ll do yourself a favor and check out the article.

A Note on Crowdfunding

This is a possible Part 2 of my plan for 2025. If you’re interested in exploring crowdfunding but you’re maybe intimidated by all the bells and whistles at Kickstarter (I am), you might check out BackerKit (URL below).

For one thing, BackerKit seems to emphasize helping you build or expand your reader base, and their pricing is definitely competitive. This might be the best new way to go.

The one campaign I checked out there did not require videos. Owing partly to my appearance and my personal schedule and partly to the time investment required and the “weight” of videos on servers, I’m not personally comfortable with doing them.

So at least for me, BackerKit is an interesting alternative to other crowdfunding sites. Even Sanderson endorses it.

Going Hybrid?

Finally, as Part 3 of my plan for 2025—and as I’ve mentioned briefly before in TNDJ—I also am thinking of becoming a hybrid author. To that end, I bought a new copy of Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market (40th Edition, Writer’s Digest Books).

As long as I’m launching a new series, this might be the time. As I’m watching a few hours of TV after my day is over, I’ll troll that book for agents and/or publishers who are willing to at least try to keep up with my output.

Either that or I’ll have to come up with a sh*tload of pen names, each of whom writes in the Intermittent Ghost (Blackwell Ops) world.

Whatever. It’s all good. I hope it’s all good for you too.

The Writing

Horrible day of writing yesterday. Just stuff. I’ll bet I wrote and then deleted 3000+ words. I hate days like those. Today will be better. For me, the good news is, counting today, there are five days remaining in 2024.

If I can maintain at least my 3000 wpd average for the rest of the year and exceed it a few times, I should finish the novel by December 31.

Of Interest

Mastering the Art of Cinematic Storytelling This article contains some great tips. Avoid the myths.

Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “The Best Opening Lines of 2024”

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 860

Writing of The Intermittent Ghost: Jack Temple (BO-31A)

Day 1…… 4202 words. To date…… 4202
Day 2…… 3055 words. To date…… 7257
Day 3…… 3412 words. To date…… 10669
Day 4…… 3352 words. To date…… 14021
Day 5…… 1153 words. To date…… 15174
Day 6…… 1785 words. To date…… 16959

Fiction for December………………… 89056
Fiction for 2024………………………. 835156
Nonfiction for December…………….. 25700
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 388270
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,223,426

Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 3425

2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 103
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 269
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.