Hello.

It has been...a while.

Here's the TL;DR:

"All I got is This Stat Menu," is coming back. It would have been back in mid-2021 but a LOT happened personally and professionally for me and my family. It will be getting published to Amazon and maybe Kindle Unlimited (KU) some time at the end of May or early June (more details on the "maybe KU" stuff below). The first book will consist of the first three volumes (01.01 to 01.03) that have been heavily altered and expanded upon, with the second book (volumes 01.04 and 01.06 with 01.05 being mostly chopped) out by end of summer or early fall, and book three (new stuff) out by end of winter or early 2023. The future of the series will largely depend on sales of the first two books, and will end up being a complete trilogy of books, or expanding onward into four or more (up to a total of maybe six or seven books). I'm also working on other projects that I will more-than-likely be putting up here and my Patreon in-between releases.

Here's the long version:

Why did I stop updating and where have I been?

In early 2020 I got an offer for a wonderful job that would have allowed me to get a stable income and keep writing. My Patreon earnings at that point were very modest ($300 a month at my peak) and I needed steady work to justify the time I was spending on this story. I never went into this expecting to make a living wage or anything close to it, but my lack of income from writing did necessitate that I throttle back on it and focus on bringing in money from somewhere.

Then Covid happened. My job offer was withdrawn in February due to the university spending resources into going online and curtailing new faculty, essentially necessitating I spend my time looking for new work while also freelancing. My wife had to leave her job and we had to immigrate from Korea to the UK. The immigration process was GREATLY exacerbated by both Covid AND Brexit, and the whole process was both expensive and time-consuming and took almost all of our free-time and financial resources in 2021. This coupled with attending a number of funerals via Zoom for family and friends due to cancer (seriously though, fuck cancer) and other illnessess/health conditions left me mentally and emotionally drained. I also had some eye surgery that I'm still recovering from (dry eyes, mostly, but all good for the most part) that limited the amount of time I could spend looking at a monitor for several months.

in Early 2022, after dodging it for nearly two years, I finally caught Covid. I was knocked on my ass for about three weeks and for probably another month after which I had significantly reduced energy and pretty awful headaches. Doing fine now though, thank god. That brings us to now, and the future.

Why am I publishing to Amazon?

Because if you're an indie author who wants to stay indie, it's basically that or nothing. Even if you go traditional publishing or small indie press your work is going to end up on Amazon. While I have some pretty decent money coming in, like most writer's I'd like to do this full time. So that means putting my work out on the market, and currently, the only viable market is Amazon. Again, not really expecting to become a best-selling author overnight (or maybe ever) but I'm not so wealthy that I can turn down any revenue streams, and you miss 100% of the opportunities you don't take. This alone isn't really an issue. The issue (with most readers and certainly a significant subset of Royal Road readers) is KU.

Whats the deal with KU (insert Seinfeld riff)?

Kindle Unlimited requires that authors ONLY have their work available on Amazon. This means taking it off public sites like Royal Road, ScribbleHub, etc (frequently referred to as "Stubbing," since only a Stub (if that) is left of the original work, This tends to piss people off. It can be VERY beneficial for authors because subscribers to KU can try out a book they might otherwise pass on, the author gets more exposure, and if if a reader doesn't finish a book, they still get some money. It's not a lot, but it adds up.

My concerns with KU are fourfold:

1) I don't really like Amazon as a company. They have some questionable business practices that I take ethical issues with, but they essentially have a monopoly on the market. I don't really care for the exclusive requirements of KU, but again, there aren't any comparable options out there for small-time authors like myself.

2) KU's exclusivity policy means that if the Amazon algorithm has a hiccup and thinks it sees your story online elsewhere it might ban your entire account. This is extremely rare (popular authors like Shirtaloon and Zogarth and others who have their stuff pirated and posted online are doing just fine account-wise but please support these guys or others if you can. Pirating really does hurt indie artists) and can always be appealed (and almost always is), but it's something I'd prefer to have a 0% chance of happening rather than a 0.01% chance or whatever.

3) I am keenly aware of what it is like to not have money to spend on entertainment. I would prefer that somebody who has low/zero funds still have access to my stories if they enjoy them.

4) A (thankfully small but still noticeable) portion of Royal Road readers can get downright toxic and entitled when they see anything about KU. I'd rather not deal with them, but chances are they were never going to support my work financially anyway, so they're a minor concern. I've also discovered that RR has a pretty thorough "block," function for people who decide to be abusive. I would rather not block people, but I'd rather deal with trolls and people who are more interested in being toxic than being critical even less.

That all sounds kinda bad! Why use KU at all then?

Easy: I'm not at a point in my life where I could turn down a potential source of income. We Live in a Society, etc. Pretty much every single major LitRPG release is on KU, to the point that it's almost expected. Dakota Krout, Tao Wong, Matt Dinniman, Shirtaloon, Zogarth, CasualFarmer, Alex Kozlowski, TheFirstDefier, nobody103, Dave Willmarth, and on and on and on. Not being on KU is a gamble, professionally. It means people who are unsure of taking a chance on my story will give it a pass because hey, plenty of other books on KU. Other authors may be 100% okay with not being on KU and more power to them. I am not so confident.

Being on KU means more eyes on my story, which is the goal here. It means more chance of people rating it, more chance of the Amazon algorithm showing it to people who are browsing, more chance of me making enough money to justify expanding the story, and writing more. Again, not expecting to become a best-seller or do this for a living, but just to hammer the point home: I'm not rich. Not even close. I don't think I'm particularly greedy either, but I would like to be paid for my work, and maybe, someday, have writing be the only work I do. That might mean going with KU.

So I'm definitely going to sign this story up for KU?

I honestly don't know. I'm not trying to be facetious or anything, I'm legitimately uncertain at this point. Part of me even considered whether or not to address the possibility of KU here or not since it's such a contentious issue and a lightning rod for trolls and hate. But in general, I like to be up front with my audience.

While I haven't been publishing stories to RR (or anywhere) since April of 2020, I've been looking at publishing this story for a while. The aforementioned shitstorm of 2020-2021 waylaid those plans, but I can finally catch my breath now. Even a cursory glance at the indie publishing scene reveals that any indie writer can't JUST be a writer, they MUST also be aware of the Business. Yes, my skin crawls when I say that word. I cannot write nearly as much as I like working a full-time job and doing family stuff. I'm obviously not going to cut my family out of my life, so if I want to ditch the 9-to-5, I've got to make money where I can. To reiterate: I'm not planning or expecting to be able to quit my dayjob, but I am going to plan to do what I can to give my writing the best chance it can get so maybe, someday in the future, I can make a modest living off of my stories.

So right now I'm considering all my options. Maybe that means KU, maybe not. Maybe it means a hybrid: try KU at book launch, see how the numbers go for 2-3 months, then take it down and resume it being available for free publicly, or not. Currently I am leaning toward the latter option and seeing how things go. If I do go KU, I will, at the VERY least, leave up a basic summary of events for any portions of the story that get removed, so new readers can still get the basics and it won't just be a stub of chapters 1-5 and then skip ahead to chapter 300 or whatever. This is assuming that also doesn't break some obscure Amazon TOS and I go KU. Also, I hope it goes without saying but just in case: I do not have any bad feelings for any author who does or does not do KU. It's an individual choice, it's their story to do with what they please, and god speed to them with whatever endeavors they choose.

Anyway.

Let's move on to the book itself.

Why am I chopping up the first arc of the story (volumes 01.01 to 01.06) into two books?

The short answer is money and time. Not that it'll make me more money (I mean it might, I have no idea), but that if I want to turn this thing into an audiobook at some point in the future (basically another expected requirement for LitRPG at this point), it's much more affordable for me to pay for a book that is 400-500 pages than one that is double that. Audiobook narration is not cheap. Low range is a few thousand dollars for the typical fantasy/SF book, up to maybe more than $10k.

Also, releasing one biggish book in early summer and another biggish book in early autumn is better than releasing one huge-ass book in early summer and another huge-ass book a year later. Amazon tends to frown on people who take too long between releases, as do readers. This will also give me time to flesh out the third volume. I've spent most of my adult life as a writer who focuses on novels, not web-serials. I think a lot of the rough spots in the public release of "All I got is this Stat Menu," can be attributed to me writing as I went instead of writing a whole thing and then editing.

I've basically rewritten the whole first arc from page 1 (major characters and events are the same, mostly, but there's new scenes, new characters, and some minor characters have been removed), and I think it's a significant improvement. Going forward, if I continue to post on RR, what I'll probably wind up doing is something like "seasons," for a TV show, where I do all the work off-site, get it ready, and then publish it in pretty rapid succession, and then go on hiatus for a while as I make the next volume/arc/book/whatever. We'll see.

Anything else?

Yeah.

I know when some authors make any announcement relating to publication (and ESPECIALLY KU) they turn off comments. I'm going to leave mine on (for now) because I know some people may want to ask questions or discuss things among themselves. You can disagree with me, throw in your two cents, that's cool.

But don't be a jerk.

I discovered that RR has a rather robust Block feature that I didn't know about when I was publishing here. To date, I've blocked 2 people of the 2,365 unique followers I have across both fictions I've published, or 0.08%. Neither of those people are readers who have left written reviews (including the guy who gave me a half star, lmao, cheers bud), nor anybody who has left honest, constructive criticism. Constructive criticism given in good faith is welcome, even if I disagree with it or it's blunt. You don't have to kiss my ass, but you also don't get to act like one. I'm not entitled to anybody's money or time, you're not entitled to have my stories go exactly the way you want them, but everybody is entitled to a modicum of respect.

As I said, I'm leaving comments open for now for people who want to talk about the announcement, ask questions, just say hello, whatever.

Cool?

Cool.

~J