His message informed me that they are:

• “Introducing account activation and maintenance fees.”  
• “Applying an annual maintenance fee of $12 (USD) to accounts whose earnings from book sales total less than $100 over the preceding 12-month period.”
• “Offsetting a portion of the steadily rising costs we pay to maintain those accounts, including compliance, security, and infrastructure upkeep.” 

Why would they do that? Well, as the email states, legit indies are being punished because of AI slop:

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.” A modest activation fee can make a real difference and allow our team to stay focused on supporting genuine authors like you.

So, enshittification has infected both book production (people using AI tools to write very quickly) and book distribution (Draft2Digital being asked to distribute the slop and then finding it produces no money).

Indie authors like me who don’t produce slop but also haven’t achieved massive sales are the bystanders caught out by this decision.

Being listed on Draft2Digital gave me access to Bookshop.org, Apple, Smashwords and a swath of other book retail distributors in one place. Yet, for reasons I don’t understand, I’ve never sold a single copy of Chaos Calling through their platform. My ebook sale landslides have always happened on Amazon and Kobo.

I was looking forward to changing that pattern one day, but Draft2Digital has forced my hand. To make staying with them worth it, I’d have to sell between 50 and 75 copies every year on their site alone.

The math just doesn’t make sense.

I’m sad to leave a place that made my work more accessible to libraries, but I’ve closed my account.

I sent my designer a message this morning. We’ve pulled the relevant buy buttons from my home and book pages.

Will Chaos Calling be available on Apple & Google Books?

The short answer is not right now. Apple requires me to have a US tax ID, publicly listed address, and phone number on my website.

Google Books wasn’t included in Draft2Digital’s distribution but I found their backend so confusing I gave up.

I have to ask myself: am I in the business of a) optimizing to sell books or b) write them? With a backlist as short as mine currently is, B is the clear winner.

I don’t write for a living. My attention is always divided between creative work and the work that pays my bills. Thinking about ebook distribution isn’t my priority right now. Draft2Digital simply forced my hand.

I’ll revisit down the road when I have more books available, but Chaos Armor remains my focus.

Can I buy an ebook directly from you?

The good news: My ebook files exist in all formats because I use Vellum to make them. Which means, if you want a copy of Chaos Calling in a format other than Kindle or Kobo, you can send me a DM on Instagram and we’ll work something out.

Creating an online store is something I’ve avoided since it takes energy away from writing. I’ll consider it in the future when I have more of a backlist. That’s partly why the Draft2Digital decision is so disappointing.

Thanks for understanding!

The post I’ve pulled my indie book from Draft2Digital appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

The holiday season is a busy one, and I have a couple upcoming November events to tell you about.

ESA 26th Annual Holiday Market, Craft Fair, and Silent Auction

First up, I will be at the Etobicoke School for the Arts’ Holiday Market this Saturday, November 12, from 10 am to 4 pm.

I’ve donated a signed copy of Chaos Calling to the silent auction. 

This high school is part of the Toronto District School Board and uses this event to fundraise to support their arts-based programming. According to their most recent updates, over 85 vendors are participating this year with unique, handmade crafts.

I’m told the bake sale is not to be missed.

Ontario Author Holiday Meet & Greet

Some lovely indie SF/F author friends in the Greater Toronto Area put together this Ontario Author Holiday Meet & Greet event in Hamilton, ON, at Crown and Press from 1 to 4 pm (it’s also on a Saturday).

Canadian Indie authors attending:

• Laura A. Barton (fantasy)
• Jendra Berri (fantasy & SciFi)
• Will Forest (romance with SF/F elements)
• Nathaniel Luscombe (speculative fiction)
• Megan McSpadden (romance)
• K. A. Riley (SciFi and fantasy)
• Justine Sobocan (non-fiction)
• Sandy R. Stuckless (fantasy)

The venue is associated with Hamilton artist Julia Veenstra, a talented Canadian painter whose work I love. When lockdowns hit in 2020, I bought several of her prints to brighten up our living space, including one for my office.

So, that’s a little piece of serendipity around this event that made me smile.

If you’re in either the area, I hope to see you there!

The post November events (2025) appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Her episode aired on November 4, 2024. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• Listen Notes

On the How Did I Not Know That podcast, Conny brings her listeners information about crucial topics they missed out on in school. She uncovers knowledge, explores fascinating facts, and discussses pressing issues.

Conny and I connected through Growclass, where we’re both part of the Internet’s kindest marketing community. Since she knows me professionally, I appear as both my writing and marketing selves in this episode.

We had a great conversation about writing The Xenthian Cycle and my journey through self-publishing. We also talk about Taylor Swift’s choice to self-publish her Eras Tour book and the pros and cons of going it alone.

Topics we cover on How Did I Not Know That?

• 1:20 — My journey into self-publishing, and my TedxTalk about women, superheroes and power
• 3:00 — How my work and life combines my passions for books, marketing and career strategy
• 4:40 — How The Xenthian Cycle evolved, and my background in crowdfunding
• 6:10 — Who self publishing is for and Taylor Swift’s decision to self publish her Eras Tour book
• 7: 15 — The traditional publishing path
• 9:00 — Celebrity and book publishing (Taylor Swift, Keanu Reeves, etc.)
• 10:00 — The importance of the backlist for indie authors
• 10:25 — Building in public before your book launches and the pitfalls of Internet piracy for authors
• 13:10 — The pros and cons of self-publishing vs traditional publishing
• 15:30 — Why money generally flows to the author if you go the traditional path, not the other way around
• 17:10 — My advice to aspiring authors: Pick an idea you love, finish it and get private feedback
• 18:00 — The stages of manuscript review and book promotion (I refer to Travis Baldree’s guide to self-publishing)
• 21:10 — Why finishing a project is so important and so hard
• 22:10 — How I find time to write, before and after Covid-19
• 23:20 — Writing and AI

Note that in the section about Taylor Swift, I mentioned that I thought the Eras book was coming out next year. My mistake! It’s coming out in November as the tour ends.

For more, you can follow Conny Lee and the How Did I Not Know That podcast:

• LinkedIn: Conny Lee
• Spotify: How Did I Not Know That? show page
• Apple: How Did I Not Know That? show page

The post I’m on the How Did I Not Know That Podcast! appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

Writing a book series no one asked for may be one of the most massive creative commitments on Earth. And that’s especially true for indie authors. 

Collaborative art projects—film, television, theatre, etc.—strike me as equally bonkers in terms of their ambition. You get a lot of competing ideas about the final product. Sometimes the piece you worked on ends up on the cutting room floor. 

But writing is, by and large, done by solo creatives.  

And in the modern publishing space, books are increasingly published by sole creators, too.  

I started thinking about Anna Lin, Dave Montcalm, Jason Lin, the skyworms, and a bunch of characters you still haven’t met in Spring 2014.

This April, they’ll have been with me for a full decade of my life. 

It’s a long time to think about the same characters and their problems. 

For this reason, I have great sympathy for George R. R. Martin. He’s been thinking about Game of Thrones, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and all the rest since, oh, 1988. And probably longer. 

Because no matter how much I, as an admirer of Martin’s, want those last books to be done (especially after how the series ended, gah), I know he wants to be finished even more. 

Consider how tired he must be after more than 35 years on the same project. Thinking about my own work sometimes makes me want to take to my bed, and it’s only been a decade. 

Getting a fantasy series off of the ground is a heavy lift.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

Surprise! That first draft was a whole series 

In 2015, I finished the first draft of Chaos Calling. Little did I know, I’d written a whole series.

In the plot maps and journals from when I wrote the second draft of what became Chaos Calling and will one day be Chaos Armor, it’s clear that I thought I had a trilogy.

Roughly from 2016 to 2019, the story existed as one book–which seems like utter madness now! Past me estimated that I would be done, with all three books published, by 2025. Maybe 2026 at the latest. 

Great, I wrote back then, with zero awareness of my naivety. I’ll be in my 40s. Young enough to still travel easily and meet readers while taking the victory lap that may come from having a completed series. 

Well friends, it’s January 3, 2024. I’m in my 40s. Only one of my books—in what is most likely a five-book series—is out. 

On December 31, 2023, I finished Book II’s fourth draft.

In part, I’m posting to celebrate its existence for the first time as a fully-fleshed out, self-contained book. The manuscript now enters what I anticipate will be an 18-month production phase. That assumes its timeline will follow a similar path to what I experienced for Chaos Calling. I won’t really know until I finish. 

As I fix page numbers, I keep thinking back to that past self as she stands in the subway doors, furiously writing on her phone. And I think of her with so much love.

Because if she’d known the scope and magnitude of what she was tackling, she may have given up.

Writing a book series is not for the faint of heart.

Writing a Book Series in 2024

On average, self-published books sell 200 copies through the author’s personal network. 

Some of the most stunning data to come out of that wild Penguin vs Simon & Schuster lawsuit? Many traditionally published books also only sell a handful of copies.

We’re talking less than 12. 

I can proudly say that I beat both scales handily in my first year, and continued to challenge my sales numbers in Chaos Calling’s second year. If I’d based my success on those metrics, I may have viewed my project with more wisdom. I would definitely have saved myself a lot of grief. 

But I’m ambitious. It’s my nature. I wanted to sell 5,000 copies in one year and, long-term, a million copies of my series. 

I still do. And it hurts that there is no shortcut to that outcome.

I may never achieve that depth of readership. Or it may happen after I’m dead. After all, I wouldn’t be the first author that’s happened to.

Since starting this project, I’ve thought a lot about Jane Austen. She had no idea what her work would become when she died. She never saw a word of the critical success or a dime of the massive fortune her books continue to earn. 

That woman’s pen produced a billion-dollar, critically-acclaimed literary empire.

And when you consider how much the fear of poverty and homelessness runs like a wound through her books and letters . . . well, friends, that breaks my fucking heart. 

Calling a truce with my ego 

I chart the novel I’m working on using this wall.
As you can see, it’s beautifully blank right now.

When I started, writing a book series was never my goal. Yet, it’s where I landed.

Sometimes I want to write other books.  Sometimes it feels like The Xenthian Cycle will never be done.

Yet I remember looking at my Book II sticky wall in January 2023. Only four out of eight purple stickies for Jason’s chapters had checkmarks. Checking off every chapter in the book felt impossible. 

In total, I wrote over 107,0000 words this year. And Chaos Armor’s current draft is complete.

While I congratulate myself on achieving that goal, I am also working to accept that my books’ fate is entirely out of my hands. That’s a truth you’ll hear authors acknowledge, but there’s extra mind-fuckery involved when you’re also the publisher and marketing team. 

In my bones, I believe in The Xenthian Cycle. That belief keeps me coming back to write and market this story.

I’ll deliver it to the best of my ability. And only a small readership may ever care. 

I have to be okay with that, and make the art I make. 

~

Perhaps you’re reading this post on an idle Thursday. Maybe you’re writing a book series, too, or feeling the creative weight of your other dreams.

If you are, I feel for you. I have been in the dark place before, and I will be there again. We all get knocked down.

So get up with me, and let’s take the next step. I know that we can do it.

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