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.

“This afternoon, I found out how it would feel to win gold for Canada at the Olympics,” laughs Williams. “I shrieked and cried victory tears, and my hands shook so hard that it took me a couple of minutes to text my family the wonderful news. As an independent author writing a multi-book fantasy series set in Canada, this recognition means more to me than I can say.”

Williams self-published the first volume in her fantasy action series in 2022. “I’m grateful to the Canadian Book Club Awards for this recognition,” she says. “I started The Xenthian Cycle twelve years ago on a hope and a dream. I wrote standing up on the subway using my phone, I carved precious minutes out of my day job and duties as a parent, and I found supportive champions in my readers.”

What are the Canadian Book Club Awards?

The Canadian Book Club Awards highlights the best titles in 13 genres, as chosen by Canadian readers. Now in its eighth year of operation the awards have seen eye-opening growth in both the number of submitted books for consideration and readers participating in the awards.

“As Mark Carney recently highlighted in his address in Davos, Canada has THE most educated population in the world,” reflects Megan Williams, CBCA’s Board Chair. “Education begins and continues with literacy. The year-over-year growth of a reader’s choice award series indicates just how willing and open Canadians are to expand their literacy and support of the literary arts.”

Key facts:

• Finalists and winners are voted on by readers; not a literary panel or committee.
• The awards are publishing agnostic, which means books can be submitted by authors, publishers or independent presses, including self-published authors.
• Eighteen books were long-listed in the SCI-FI/Fantasy category, from which three finalists were selected.

“I’m so excited that my story resonated with their audience,” says Williams. “With Book II of the series in production, it’s the perfect time for new readers to catch up on The Xenthian Cycle.“

Fantasy finalists for 2025

The SCI-FI/Fantasy category was highly competitive. The finalists included:

• Chaos Calling — E.M. Williams (Circle Star Publishing)
• The Lightning Child: The Wolves of Orkerion — Quinn Lamothe (FriesenPress)
• Shadow of the Yew Tree — Kate Gateley (Fogberry Press)

For the full list of winners across categories, see the Canadian Book Club Awards website or Instagram account.

~

About E. M. Williams

E. M. Williams is a Canadian fantasy author whose stories are informed by sibling bonds, parenthood, her marketing career in tech, and the perils of being a super-heroic woman trying to ‘have it all’. Chaos Calling, which received a strong review from Kirkus, is her first published novel in The Xenthian Cycle. Elizabeth lives and works in Toronto.

Media Inquiries

E. M. Williams, Independent Author and Publisher, Circle Star Publishing
inquiries at emwilliams dot ca | emwilliams.ca

The Canadian Book Club Awards Kristain Camps, Program Director
marketing at thecanadianbookclubawards dot ca | thecanadianbookclubawards.ca

The post Chaos Calling wins 2025 Canadian Book Club Award appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

While writing Into the Fishpond, a novel-length fan fiction story set in the “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” universe (FE3H), I built a growth model for tracking my readers’ engagement.

The story is long: forty-seven chapters, and over 200,000 words.

When I finished the initial story in August 2024, I copied my model and populated it with a fake/sample data set for other writers with a growth marketing mindset to use.

This post explains the model and my thinking, and contains a link to the Google Sheet for those who wish to apply it to their own projects.

Why I built a growth marketing AO3 stats model

In my day job, I’ve been the head of marketing for several tech companies and worked with many talented growth marketers. If you haven’t heard the term, it’s the field of marketing most concerned with how you grow and sustain a customer base.

Or, in this case, a group of engaged readers.

On whim, I started writing Fishpond on February 9, 2024. I didn’t know what I was doing or why, but I decided to post chapters beginning on February 22.

As a writer, I was completely new to AO3. I didn’t have any presence or following when I started. I had read some FE3H work by other writers dealing with this particular character pairing, but only as a guest. In the beginning, it felt like I was publishing the story for myself. I was skeptical that it would find readers. 

Case in point about how little I knew — I didn’t discover the “Statistics” tab in the home screen until after I had published Chapter 14.

By mid-April, Fishpond had reached 1,000 hits. I told a growth marketing colleague what I was doing. 

My colleague: “What’re you doing for Analytics?” 

Me: “Not much. All the site data is in the moment. There’s no time-based record of the metrics at all.”

My colleague: “How about we fix that?”

We built out a Google Sheet to track what was happening with the story. My colleague also encouraged me to adopt a regular posting schedule given my steady output. 

My use case and assumptions

I started applying my data model when I published Chapter 17 of Fishpond on April 26, 2024. Thanks to back-and-forth texts with my colleague, I had some historical data from screenshots dating from my first weeks of publishing.

My numbers were and are limited to what appears on AO3’s summary page:

Beginning with Chapter 17, I posted twice a week on Monday and Thursday between 4 and 5:30 pm EST. That pattern continued until I reached Chapter 38. After that, my writing process got complicated. I needed more time between instalments.

By July, I’d switched to a weekly model (Thursdays) with Chapter 39. At this posting tempo, I saw significant growth between with each chapter. I’d now recommend going weekly or monthly, although it requires more patience.

True experiments, where marketers control everything except one variable to determine which option wins, are harder to do with fiction. The stories themselves vary. Knowing whether audiences are responding to the frequency or the content would be next-to-impossible to parse out (unless AO3 itself did a study).

As you’ll see, my AO3 Stats Model has two primary tabs: 

• General Growth by chapter, which tracks the baseline AO3 stats — I updated this sheet once a week in the 15 minutes before the next chapter went live. It contains a trend line that changes trajectory as you feed it more data, and a table for tracking overall audience engagement by chapter (kudos, comments, bookmarks and subscriptions). 
• Chapter Growth by key metrics, which tracks activity within the first 24 hours and until the next chapter is published — I track hits, kudos and subscriptions (capped 15 minutes before publication). 

You can’t beat email subscriptions for reach

Growth marketing focuses on actions that reduce friction between user and product. That’s why brands ask you to subscribe to their marketing newsletters when you buy something or to provide an email address before you see a demonstration.

Growth marketers love email because it partially solves the tug of war between social platforms building for self-serving needs and content creators trying to gain an audience. It’s a medium we control end-to-end. 

AO3 is more like a library archive (with a beautiful tagging system) than it is like a social platform. It doesn’t have or need an algorithm with filtration power like you’d find on sites run by Meta or TikTok.

The subscription feature that AO3 provides is similar to email, but not the same. I can’t see the names addresses of anyone who subscribes; AO3 handles the actual emailing of updates I make.

But in principal, it’s close.  

What I tracked

Hits are a key AO3 metric because they’re the way to know how many visits a work has had. Long-time AO3 users know the site counts a hit as one visit from an IP address within a 24-hour period. Multiple hits are not recorded, nor are hits from writers to their own work when logged in.

You can read more about how it works in the AO3 FAQ.

Kudos, the site’s equivalent to likes, indicate a work’s popularity and act as social proof that a story is engaging. Some writers particularly value them from registered accounts. Most platforms have a like/heart/Kudos function. I’m grateful to every single person who gave me one, whether from a registered user or a guest account.

Subscriptions, either to a work or to everything an AO3 writer publishes, mean readers get emailed every time you update. That makes a subscription the single most valuable metric to a growth marketer over time.

Why? Because the engagement action is a single click from your email inbox. As my subscriber count grew, so did the hit and kudos count week-to-week. I’m grateful to every reader who subscribed to the story or, eventually, to me.

My model only includes work subscriptions and not user subscriptions. When I started, I didn’t have any user subscriptions. You could adapt the model to track them separately or together as you see fit.

I can tell you that as Fishpond got more popular, I received double the subscriptions in the period 24 hours after a chapter published compared to the first 24 hours.

Why aren’t bookmarks tracked in Chapter Growth?

When a reader sets a bookmark, they still have to actively remember to check it to read the next piece of story, and some readers have dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of bookmarks.

Readers can choose to make bookmarks private. That means the public-facing bookmark count on a story’s summary doesn’t give the whole picture.

I did love seeing my bookmark number rise; I tracked it in the General Growth tab.  I also really love it when someone annotates their bookmark on my story — I can sometimes tell from the description how far they’ve read or which kind of reader they think story would appeal to. 

But as growth stats go, it’s not as active or transparent an indicator of interest as a subscription.

Why aren’t comments tracked in Chapter Growth?

Comments are great. I love them.

From a growth perspective, their numbers are misleading, especially for works like mine. I responded to all my comments. That’s why I track them in the General Growth tab.

I respond to all of my comments because I enjoyed the interaction with the audience. They were a great source of qualitative feedback about whether the audience agreed with my instincts for the characters and plot — but I don’t count my comment responses in the model.

Given the number of people who never ever comment but will happily give a kudos, my colleague and I opted to give the kudos metric more weight.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think AO3 should count responses from creators on their own stories, either. Writers know we’re engaged in what’s happening with our work. I’d exclude them from the Dashboard counter.

Your mileage may vary and you can adapt your copy of the sheet how you like. Make it work for you!

If I could change one thing about AO3 stats  . . . 

I’d want to know how many users hit all the chapters in a work. Or, I’d ask for a ‘percentage read’ number or ‘completion rate’. Given how the Hit counter works, the number I see could easily be many, many people reading the first chapter and then stopping.

That’s why comments or annotated bookmarks are so nice when they crop up. It’s the only way to get a sense of how far people are reading. But I don’t believe they’re an accurate measure.

Growth marketers can be a bit obsessive

In general, growth marketers are data-driven people. We can be a bit (a lot?) obsessive about things we track.

Getting accurate numbers requires manual updates a couple times a week. I’m comfortable with that, but you may want to change it up. 

If the sheet is too much, feel free to cut back for your copy, adapt it, or ignore it. Track whatever feels right for you.

My goal is to give you a tool, not an obligation.

Data trends take time to develop on any platform

If you’re new to any Internet platform, it takes a while for people interested in your content to find your work.

I saw a big inflection point for Fishpond in Chapter 16 and again in Chapter 27. When I moved to the weekly model, I again saw a big jump with Chapter 39. 

My data and publishing frequency prior to Chapter 15 were erratic. If I’d decided then to pass judgement on whether the story was a success or failure, whatever answer I gave myself about what was happening would probably have been wrong.

It was simply too soon to know. 

Be patient with your work. It takes time to find an audience and for people to get invested.

That’s the lesson I’m taking forward with The Xenthian Cycle.

Other posts in this series:

• What AO3 Taught Me: Golden Route = Powerful Premise
• Overturning my Internet Bullshit: That time I wrote romantasy action on AO3

The post My AO3 Stats Model 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.

I’d seen Gilbert’s Tedx talks about creativity and working through her phenomenal writing success after Eat, Pray, Love. When I learned she was publishing a non-fiction book about living with creativity, I devoured it in print and audio.

That first read was a revelation. I admired the way Gilbert punctures the fallacy that living an artistic life means suffering. “If the art legitimates cruelty, the art may not be worth having,” she writes.

Her approach to creative living is decidedly anti-elitist. I’ve written about how Big Magic encouraged me to cast off my outdated, ignorant opinions about fan fiction. It also cemented my conviction that self-publishing was absolutely the right choice for me.

I read it again before I launched Chaos Calling, certain that I understood what Gilbert meant when she wrote, “The outcome does not and cannot matter.”

Spoiler alert: I had no fucking idea.

I’ve talked about how challenging it is to write a series, particularly as an indie. It’s time-consuming and expensive.

My newsletter subscribers also know that editing Chaos Armor’s fourth draft has taken longer than I’d planned. I wanted to publish it in 2025. That deadline has slipped. To be kinder to myself, I won’t name another date until I can meet that promise with certainty.

Immediately after sharing that delay, I received devastating news.

My book is among the millions of texts first pirated by LibGen and then stolen by Meta and other unethical tech companies to train their AI engines.

When pirates aren’t cool, just gross

I work in tech. Toronto is a well-regarded hotbed for AI research (e.g., Geoff Hinton). Tech investment is soft right now. Guess what’s still getting funding? AI projects.

Over the last five years, I’ve also listened to my peers and friends get increasingly enthusiastic about the various chatbot tools. As with environmentalism, DEI concerns, or flagrant violations of human rights, speaking up about the ethical quagmires AI presents may threaten your livelihood in tangible ways.

Many job descriptions in tech require fluency with AI skills, processes, and prompting. Recruiters want to know you can use it appropriately.

I’d been watching all of these trends with a mix of interest and skepticism.

But it’s one thing to suspect a technology billionaires are pirating books to feed their data-ravenous algorithms. It’s another to know that your work is among them.

When I read Alex Reisner’s article, “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” in The Atlantic and found Chaos Calling in the searchable database, my stomach lurched the same way it does in a fast-moving elevator.

Who do the other 121 results belong to? An academic who also publishes as E. M. Williams. Pirates have also stolen her published papers. The LibGen dataset includes millions of academic and non-fiction publications, along with novels, short stories and poetry collections.

Nearly every writer you can think of has likely had their works pirated by LibGen, a decentralized system that reminds me of the early days of Napster and KaZaA. LibGen includes original works, translations, and audiobooks recorded by equally talented voice artists.

Meta then scraped that pirated archive to train its engines because it didn’t want to pay market cost for acquiring data.

Elizabeth Gilbert (117 records) is also among the thousands of affected writers, academics and voice artists. Like her, many writers have lost the work of their entire careers.

What kills big magic? Despair

Without a publishing house or agent to commiserate with, I spent the next few weeks in a fog.

Writing felt impossible. What was the point? Why was I living my life on hard mode? Why should I bust my ass (and wallet) to write and publish another book when some combination of pirates and tech autocrats were going to steal my work the second I hit ‘upload’?

Worse, when I talked about what had happened, colleagues were sympathetic to a point, but it’s clear no one thinks the open exploitation of creative people means we should put AI back in the box.

Part of me understands. AI is the big trend. The hiring market is already precarious. No one wants to be left behind.

On another level, the whole thing made me want to lie down and never get up.

“Fear gets boring after a while”

In March, my book club picked Big Magic as our monthly read. I snagged the audiobook from Toronto Public Library. While I listened, I asked myself what Liz Gilbert would say about my piracy/theft situation.

No one was worried about AI when Big Magic was published. Gilbert does, however, write at length about, “me, creativity, and fear, advancing once more into the wide, terrifying terrain of UNKNOWN OUTCOME” [capitals mine]. After all, she says, “Uncertainty is what we sign up for.”

No kidding, Liz.

I kept coming back to these and other lines, which so accurately capture the hardest parts of pursuing a creative project. To write is to wrestle with uncertainty all the time.

But I’ve also experienced indescribable joy when an idea blooms in my mind like a flower, and bubbles of delight when a reader tells me how much my work means to them. Over the last three years, I’ve had so many of these moments. Am I prepared to never have those experiences again? That’s a far steeper price to pay.

When I launched Chaos Calling, I also had no data to temper my wild, first-time novelist ambitions. In 2025, I know better.

Sure, I’ve had sales reports with weeks and weeks of nothing. I’ve got scores of TikTok videos and other social posts that flopped. It’s hard to psych yourself up to run through another wall when you’ve still got bruises on your face and a bum knee from your last attempt.

At the same time, writing Into the Fishpond showed me that you literally cannot see the shape of your story’s success or the following it may amass until you’re at least seventy-five percent of the way through.

Chaos Calling is only twenty percent of The Xenthian Cycle. Until I publish Book IV or V, I truly won’t know what I’ve got.

As Gilbert writes:

“How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your craft and how equipped you are for the challenges of creative living. [ . . .] “I am asking you to put aside your innocence for a moment, and to step into something far more bracing, and far more powerful:

There are no guarantees for anyone. Will you put forth your work anyhow?”

I know that I suffer when I’m not writing. Which means there’s only one viable answer.

The most bracing Big Magic

Every writer has an outside story we draw upon when asked to explain our inspiration. We also have an inside story—the personal motivations that drive our work.

When I’m outside my courage, it’s the inside story that keeps me going.

I remember sitting on a footstool in my kitchen at 1:30 a.m. one cold December night in 2015. Unbeknownst to me, I’d finished my second-last day of work on the first manuscript. I recall tipping my head back against the cabinets and staring at nothing, exhausted by and astounded at what I’d captured.

Later, I stood behind one of the swivel chairs in my living room, consumed by my story’s propulsive potential. This book has legs, I thought. This book can go the distance.

If I give up now, I’m turning my back on that younger and more courageous version of me.

If I give up now, the technocrats win.

And, as Liz Gilbert would no doubt remind me, nothing about writing has ever been certain.

Actions I’ve taken:

• I wrote an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asking for better policy to protect the work of Canadian artists. It’s posted on my work site.
• I finished a short story set in the world of The Xenthian Cycle. More details to come, but I hope to have it out soon.
• I’ve made Into the Fishpond visible only to registered AO3 members. Doing so adds another layer of protection from data scraping. The title page also includes a disclaimer stating my opposition to AI engines mining my work.
• Future editions of my book will explicitly call out AI scraping or training on the copyright page as something I do not consent to for any reason.
• I’m evaluating which digital platforms make sense for Book II’s release (I may also opt to sell it directly, who knows).
• I continue to work on Chaos Armor.

“Argue for your fears and you get to keep them,” Gilbert writes in Big Magic. “Fear gets boring after a while.”

Learning about the piracy and theft of my work definitely rekindled many of my writing fears.

It’s been true before and it will be true again—only way out is to keep moving.

The post Returning to Big Magic appeared first on E.M. Williams - Fantasy Author.

From the outset of a new manuscript, I begin with a vision for what I want to achieve. Inevitably, as the draft gets longer, my ideas about what I’m doing shift.

Sometimes, it’s because:

• I’m building new skills to fully achieve my ambitions.
• My ideas about the story have irrevocably changed.
• My attempt failed.

That’s part of the journey and somewhat understood by people who don’t write.

Writers may not agree on much when it comes to the creative process, but we do seem to agree that writing a second book is always a different psychological experience than writing a first.

I think that’s partly because your idea about the kind of writer you’re going to be changes when your first book is out.

The moment you publish, you burn your dearly held dreams about who you might be in the fire of who you’re becoming. If you’re lucky and your book finds readers, that group’s feedback may also shift your perceptions (positively or negatively).

I’ve experienced a little of that. But after publishing Chaos Calling, I also experienced a deeper loss.

And that’s also something many writers navigate.

My recent chaotic loss: Richard Rudy

In August 2022, my family lost a stalwart, lifelong friend in Richard Rudy. Cancer claimed this wonderful person far too soon and with little warning.

Rick and I first met through the University of Waterloo’s Fencing Club. We shared an understanding of depression and mental health. He loved fantasy books (especially Dune, C. S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy and Wheel of Time), and was a staunch supporter of my creative work.

We stayed friends as we began our careers. He worked in graphic design and development, while I focused on communications and marketing.

Rick quietly orchestrated my first date with my husband (they’ve been friends since grade school). We later attended each other’s weddings and welcomed children into our families.

Over time, Rick and I collaborated on dozens of marketing projects. Working with him was fun and productive. We developed a short hand and an unbreakable trust. At his funeral, peers confirmed his talent for design and web development, and his willingness to pitch in during a crunch.

Most importantly, he was a devoted father, friend and husband.

A stalwart supporter

Rick took the black and white headshot of me that appears in my Tedx talk intro on YouTube. He built all my websites, including my first blog. I later lost it when payments on his servers failed before I could get into the back end and move the site.

His illness progressed so rapidly. By the time we realized how sick he was, making time for technical administration was out of the question.

In the final year of his life, Rick designed and built the first iteration of emwilliams.ca. His version was active from March 2022 to June 2023. He also delivered an eleventh-hour tweak to Chaos Calling‘s paperback cover, removing a smudge and somehow fixing a file error that had dogged the project without even knowing what he’d done.

If I had known how little time he had left, I don’t know if I could have asked for his help. But he was that kind of friend.

With hindsight, I also see how fearless he helped me be when pitching. With Rick in my corner, I knew he’d either work with me to solve my technical challenges or bail me out if I got overextended.

Beyond the milestones he lost with his family and friends, I deeply regret that Rick never read Chaos Calling. I can’t remember how much we discussed the story. Unlike many friends who volunteered to beta read, Rick wanted the polished version.

I trust that he’s at peace, and he knows how deeply we love and miss him.

Chaos Armor is dedicated to Rick’s memory.

The post On Writing and Chaotic Loss 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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Their digital site has published a piece on me and the writing of Chaos Calling: Book I of The Xenthian Cycle. It’s part of a campaign I’m running to celebrate the novel’s wider release.

You can read the full article, “E. M. Williams Invests in Herself to Write First Book,” on their site.

As the writer notes, I am a marketer. And I have been in marketing for a long time.

I’ve pitched hundreds of profiles like this one for employers and clients. I’ve arranged the interviews, done the follow-up work, and captured the coverage.

It remains surreal now that it’s my work that’s in focus.

What does the Kirkus profile talk about?

If you’re a long-time follower of my books and writing, the points that got mentioned won’t surprise you:

• That believing my creative dream of writing a book had died was a terrible experience.
• My Tedx talk on Women, Superheroes and Power, which contributed to my series.
• I wrote a diverse story. Toronto is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. I embraced the process to get Anna’s, Jason’s and Dave’s characters right, which meant a lot of additional testing and feedback from my beta readers and editorial team, including sensitivity readers.
• My long-standing admiration for Guy Gavriel Kay. Reading The Fionavar Tapestry and seeing that it’s possible to write fantasy with Toronto-centric characters had a huge impact on my creative life.
• I wrote the first three drafts of Books I and II of The Xenthian Cycle on my phone using Wattpad, but didn’t publish as I went.

What’s most surprising about it?

Half the fun to doing an interview is remembering to stay on message. You also have to go with the flow and have a good conversation.

Here’s what I forgot I said:

• I wrote My Little Pony fanfiction as a kid. Writing on a desktop in the 1980s meant I never shared that work. I don’t even have a copy of it today.
• Anne McCaffrey provided my introduction to fantasy (specifically, Dragonsong). There’s even an homage to her dragon work in Chapter 21 of Chaos Calling.
• I write with an acute sense of my mortality and always have. It’s one of the things I admire about Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton.

Hope you enjoy it!

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Since this show involves both work me and writing me, the interview is attributed to my full name. We will pretend it’s E. M. Williams as usual. My pseudonym is more about being intentional regarding which part of my life I’m speaking to than an attempt to conceal my gender or create iron-clad anonymity, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The episode originally aired on August 14 and runs for about 40 minutes. Here’s where you can listen:

• Apple
• Spotify
• Amazon Music

On Learning with Lerner, Lindsey interviews unconventional leaders who have blazed trails in a variety of ways. Her goal is to challenge norms, explore unique journeys, and ignite personal growth for the show’s audience.

Lindsey and I connected on email after I heard Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale on her podcast earlier in the year. I enjoyed Lindsey’s interviewing style so much that pitching my own story was the next logical step.

We ended up having a great conversation about leadership, mentorship, learning how to do hard things by doing them before you feel ready, crowdfunding, launching a consultancy, cracking my own creative productivity code to write Chaos Calling, and why I don’t think you have to suffer to make art.

Who is this conversation for?

Anyone pursuing an unconventional path who wants to hear more from people with similar ambitions in adjacent fields.

Topics we covered on the Learning with Lerner Podcast

• 1:55 — Living in Toronto and a bit about my family history, along with my childhood desire to write
• 3:00 — Integrating creativity without bankrupting your existence; the myth of artistic suffering; Big Magic
• 9:50 — How I cracked the secret to figuring out my creative productivity process; the ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ story; Chaos Calling’s origins in movement and Wattpad
• 16:40 — Being a woman in a field dominated by men; working in tech and academia; how those experiences informed Dave Montcalm’s and Jason Lin’s storylines; using commuting and consulting to make art
• 24:00 — What my typical day looks like now
• 25:20 — Changes in technology and research across my working life
• 26:50 — Mentorship’s role in my career and why I believe in giving back; working with Growclass
• 28:00 — How crowdfunding helped me develop the skills to launch a self-published book
• 32:00 — I pitch Chaos Calling to Lindsey’s listeners
• 33:35 — My career advice on how to go rogue and work for yourself
• 35:45 — Telling people what you do when you have multiple career pursuits; being comfortable with self promotion
• 37:00 — Best and worst career advice I ever got; inspiration is super weird

For more, you can follow Lindsey and the Learning with Lerner podcast:

• Instagram: @lindseylerner
• LinkedIn: Lindsey Lerner

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