Sorry to start with a quick business overview, but Marker news and other stuff further down!

What a month April has been! No sooner did I think that yay, I could finally get back to writing because we had wrapped up house renovations when I got clobbered by Draft2Digital's announcement that they were planning to institute a yearly fee for accounts netting less than $100 a year.

Something didn't seem right about that, especially the explanation that they were doing this to cope with AI slop. So...I looked back at my spreadsheets. Yikesarooney. Over the past six years, with one exception, my sales on D2D have been declining. And that's been with aggressive promotion and regular new releases. Meanwhile, my sales on Amazon and Ingram Spark have been reasonably consistent in comparison.

Then I started poking at my universal links through D2D. I was being lazy in the last few years and only using one link, not highlighting the places where people could find my work. Multiple links either didn't work or the whole darn thing wouldn't work. Yikesarooney times two. No wonder my sales were dropping!

I'm not going to bore you with further analysis--I've written about this elsewhere and will be writing more about it soon. The tl:dr of the situation is--I left Draft2Digital and am working on going direct with Kobo, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. I have also added Google Play to the places you can find my work, and am almost done with uploading and updating my books in paperback and hardcover through Ingram Spark.

What a slog. And I'm still not done. Part of the catalog is up on Kobo and Apple, and I'm still trying to get things set up on Barnes and Noble. My paperbacks and hardcovers are still available there, at least.

However. I'm also pivoting because I see some big shakeups coming up in publishing. I'm also planning to set up a Patreon--not sure yet what I'll offer there, whether that's stories in progress or the long-awaited horse memoir, or both. I need to think on it.

Anyway.

Other stuff is happening. We've already gotten two loads of firewood in and are hustling to get what we need to replenish before the woods get shut down. It is dry here, and the scary thing is that this corner of the state has the best snowpack in Oregon. No mushrooms yet, sigh.

Marker-boy is living in a pen because Mr. Air Fern is at risk of grass founder. I swear, he gains weight just looking at grass. I went through enough of that in my younger years with my kid horses that I don't want to deal with it again. And because he is a Very Messy Boi, he gets not just diet hay but diet hay in a hay net. Which he turns into a toy that he flings around his pen unless it's fastened to a tie. However, he's doing pretty well otherwise.

We still have some business stuff to do that isn't writing-related, but I've put my foot down about doing anymore house painting. My lower back doesn't like it. I ended up investing in a foam roller upon the advice of my acupuncturist and has it ever made a difference! What I probably need is a sit-stand desk as well, but that's an issue of expense and fitting into the office space, just when I've finally gotten things to the way I want them. Mr. Marker does his share of physical therapy because I've learned that short rides without a saddle, at fox trot, seem to do the right thing to help those muscles unclench. I got the boy for a very low price because he was a rehab project, and he's more than earned back what I've spent on him just for that alone.

Nonetheless, it's a pain getting old (literally)!

Back to business stuff. Right now, the best place to find my current book links is at my website, https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com. I will be updating them over the next month. I also plan to add more books to my Ko-fi store--more on that later.

For those of you who want to know what the best place is to buy my work that will give me the most return from your dollars, that is either on my Itch site: https://joycereynoldsward.itch.io/, or by using the direct Ingram Share and Sell paperback and hardcover links listed for each book on my website (alas, this is only for US buyers right now). I can adjust the percentage I give Itch, and Ingram only takes production cost plus a small percentage if you buy direct from them. Also, I'm offering not just a generic epub format but Kindle and Nook formats on Itch.

I'm also running regular monthly themed bundles on Itch. This month, the theme is Western Science Fiction, with an assortment of my western-themed SF. 11 books for $20. You can find it here: https://itch.io/s/185324/science-fiction-westerns. Bearing Witness gives you a sneak peek of sorts at the work in progress because the Vortex Worlds is the subject of my next book, which is going to feature time travel, multiverses, suffragists, and some other stuff, including redefining some Pacific Northwest history. It's horror lite as well as SF because it gets into some deep dark themes. But no splatter! No gore. Just a wee bit of kinda gothic sort of notions.

Whew. Stuff is happening. But I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm pretty darn sure it's not a train bearing down on me.

I hope.

Have a good May, and stay safe.