Good Problems To Have (Patreon)

Time for a long post about writing! I'm trying to weigh a lot of ambiguous things at the moment, but I'll try to describe them in a clear manner. If you aren't interested in my writing concerns but do want to help name an upcoming project, scroll to the last section after the fancy picture.

First, I have to say that I'm being a bit greedy here, because I'm already living a writer's dream. There are award-winning authors who hit the NYT Bestseller list that still need to maintain day jobs. And while my first novels haven't done insane, they're already doing pretty good relative to the field. 

Still, I can't help but want to do the best I can for my new projects, because I really enjoy seeing people care about the stories that matter to me. So this post is about addressing problems I'm glad I have to deal with.

The Audience Problem

Conventional wisdom is that audiences are fickle, so the best path to success is to pick one thing and do it forever. I have done a terrible job of this, given how diverse my projects have been. Even TLS sort of splits its audience in several strange ways. Having said that, what I'm contemplating is likely to make it even worse, because there are four different audiences that don't always play well together.

NSFW Games: Some doubt my sincerity, but there are a lot of NSFW ideas I really care about, like TLS being a reconstruction of many tropes. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone in every field looks down on adult content, so this is an obstacle to many.

LitRPG Books: I like the idea of the genre, but I don't know how many years I want to spend in it. NGM is a fun idea I want to finish and I have a couple more ideas solidly in this genre. Unfortunately, industry professionals say that LitRPG is pretty much ignored by publishers, unlike other self-published books.

Haremlit Books: Sort of an offshoot of LitRPG, this subgenre is booming right now. It is what it sounds like: male-focused fantasies with a large sexual component. I'm fine with this in theory, but based on what I've read, I don't know how much of a home the genre would be for me given what I like to create. It also has the same stigma problem as NSFW games. I include this because of a potential project below.

Fantasy Books: One of my core genre loves. The problem is that it's a tough field to crack, no matter what route you take, and most of my current work would count against me in the eyes of mainstream readers. How best to enter this genre is one of my main questions.

Basically, I'd like to be able to pursue all my ideas along these four lines, but the four conflict with each other. I'm not sure how best to resolve this, though I've given it some thought.

Potential Plans 

The obvious solution to this is pseudonyms, but those bring along their own problems. Fracturing your audience isn't good, for one. Another is that more pseudonyms means more accounts to juggle, more tax headaches, etc. Once I was thinking of doing all my work under just two names: one SFW and one NSFW.

This has been complicated by other factors. LitRPG and Haremlit are mostly reinforcing genres, but the latter would make Sarah Lin NSFW. However, if just doing LitRPG already attaches stigma to the pseudonym... I don't know, but I'm definitely not doing four pen names. X|

I would consider a third for SFW normal fantasy, though I don't particularly like that either. This process would have been easier if I went with a traditional publisher, but right now that's an open question as well.

Traditional vs Self 

I have conflicting feelings about this, so I'll start with a few things that aren't issues at all. I don't care about the "prestige" of a traditional publisher, self-publishing has no stigma for me, and money isn't a major factor. What I care about is finding an audience of people who are interested in my work.

Originally my plan was to self-pub most of my work and go traditional with my epic fantasy. Some industry veterans have told me that these days, traditional publishing offers almost no advantages over self-publishing, and that does seem to be reflected in sales numbers. On the other hand, the benefits of traditional are significant when a publisher really markets something. For example, a recent debut novel got huge hype from Tor and it launched with more ARC reviews than most books get total.

The counter would be that such marketing is basically winning the publishing lottery and that it'd be foolish to count on it. There's validity to that. A countering pro-traditional argument is that you're not at the mercy of Amazon (who we just learned deleted all the books of a successful author based on a few dodgy reports). You never want to be reliant on just one company, and right now self-publishing means relying on Amazon.

I am honestly on the fence right now. One potential idea is to see how agents react and how time-consuming the querying process is for me, then make my decision once I've tested the waters on both sides. Thankfully, I'm not under any pressure to take bad projects.

Incoming Projects  

After all this rambling uncertainty, maybe it'd be good to lay out all the different things I definitely plan to keep moving forward.

TLS: This is pretty much the dream for all my projects, so I look forward to continuing it!

Once Ever After & Don't Save the Princess: Both of these games are getting closer to a major step forward, actually, and will release in their uncensored NSFW glory.

New Game Minus: At minimum, I'll finish the third book and resolve what I hope to be a fun little trilogy.

Serialized LitRPG: Fairly soon I will begin publishing a story in serialized chapters on RoyalRoad. This has worked really well for some authors, and I figure at worst it will be a lot of free advertising for NGM with a finished novel to publish at the end. Plus it doesn't hurt to test serialization.

Uncertain Project: Haremlit Serial

A series of novellas in this subgenre would unquestionably attract a ton of attention to my books, both because of the subgenre and because Amazon rewards volume. I don't want to churn out material I don't believe in, but I have an idea in this genre that I'm excited about and that would work as a series of 99 cent novellas, which is a format that has worked well for some others.

One of the problems with this would be making Sarah Lin more NSFW, so sound off based on how important that is to you. I'd consider putting these out under my old erotica account, though some aspects of this make me grouchy. I don't think haremlit and my straight erotica would play well together, but my erotica still sells, so I don't want to put it away. Plus there'd be an additional headache with the marketing. On the positive side, maybe the books would draw new players to TLS?

Anyway, I actually wrote the first novella in this series, about 30k words. I was going to write them all so I could put them out one after another (rapid release is an effective strategy), but right now the writing of this is on hold.

Uncertain Project: The Brightest Shadow 

This is one of the major projects I believe in as much as The Last Sovereign. It's a story I want to tell and would finish even if it was solely for myself. However, I've really come to enjoy the community around TLS and part of me wants the same for this series. This is the part where I'm being selfish, but... that would be my ideal, anyway.

No matter what I did with this series, I wouldn't be starting completely from scratch, but there's no doubt I'd need to build up a real audience. Lots of Sierra Lee fans only want to play games. I don't know how many Sarah Lin fans would be interested in work that isn't LitRPG and I'm not going to count on any. Wanting to reach the novel-reading audience is part of the reason I considered traditional at all.

Technically I could write something else to build up a fantasy audience first. I have tons of ideas and some of them could work well for this. But I'd prefer to do those ideas when I'm most passionate about them instead of sitting on 292k words until some hypothetical future point.

Breaking such a large book into chunks would be more marketable, but I really didn't write it to be read that way. It's divided into five parts, but though they do have their own arcs, I doubt if they're fully satisfying on their own. I would at least consider doing it serialized depending on how that experiment works, but right now not many of the serialization sites seem exactly suited for this book.

So in the end, I'm just not sure what to do with this. I want to do some more revisions before I show another version to people, but I'm putting those off for now because editing 292k words is a lengthy task. (For those who read the first draft, though, I've finished the epigraphs!)

Welp 

I don't know how useful this post is, but it took me a bunch of time to write, so... here you go. =P

As I said at the beginning, there's part of me that wants to do all the things, but I know I can't. I hope to get to many of my ideas eventually, but I have to be selective along the way. Thanks again to everyone who has put me in a position where I have problems like this.

Naming the Serialized Novel 

I have the text mostly ready to go and an artist working on a cover (WIP above), but I still don't have a name for this one. At all. Names are the worst.

As you can see from the cover, the hook of this series is "modernity + wuxia". I want the title to reflect that as well. Other themes include financial debts, underground combat rings, and moving up in the world. But most importantly, the title needs to stand out from hundreds of other titles.

Somebody suggested "Debts Written in Qi" and I think this is a solid title, but I don't use the word "qi" in the setting. Another solid suggestion is "Ancient Arts, Modern Debts" - it gets the theme, but I worry it's too on-the-nose. I seriously considered "American Wulin" but the story is only inspired by the genre, not entirely within it, plus I worry that term may be too obscure. Perhaps a variant of one of those might work?

So yeah, I don't know. Thoughts/ideas are extremely welcome.