Jackson Allen's Blog

Today’s author journey topic is the attention-grabbing value of hate marketing – as explained by Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA case officer. Marketing and sales take advantage of the emotional energy of your hate to sell you more stuff. Creepy, no? Take a watch to see it broken down, and then let’s discuss: The Dark...

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Sad news this week – Nord VPN’s Meshnet is dead – this has no relation to Mesh Networking, but I’m sure people will assume they’re the same anyway. Let’s take a moment to discuss the difference as your future Internet (and my novel, Mesh) rely on its continued existence. Ready? Here we go: TL;DR –...

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Forget the book stuff for a minute – here’s how we know there’s only ten dimensions. What’s that you say, you thought there were only 3 dimensions? Nonsense – even Doc Brown will tell you that there’s at least four dimensions to be aware of. What’s a dimension, anyway? It’s a way to describe ;mathematical space...

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Scary news last week – something I’m starting to call ‘Dystopian Capitalism.’ Ever watch a dystopian scifi movie and they show something in the background to remind you that we’re living in a dystopia? Think 1984’s ‘Victory Gin’ or the commercials in Robocop. Those little diegetic moments are there to help you feel the creepy, unsettling...

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Return to Part One … Continuing the Authors Guide to Audience Building, I want to remind you of one important point: All artists are entrepreneurs, and all entrepreneurs are artists. Real artists ship. The game of professional creativity was never for the faint of heart. This blog series is simply about accepting the art and process...

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Did you know watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy is an authors guide to audience building? Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Let’s learn more. First things, first – As a fantasy series, there’s a lot to recommend. One thing I enjoy about the films are the sweeping, epic visuals of cities like Minas Tirith....

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Would you like a free and simple way to help me, you, and your local library – all thanks to Hoopla? I had a fantastic conversation on Bluesky about this and now I want to pass it along to my readers and fellow authors. It’s quick, it’s fun, it’s easy – no special tools required – all the infrastructure is already in place.

Want to know what it is? It’s easy – borrow my books from your local library. That’s right – all my ebooks are available through your local library right now – and so are many of your favorite authors. Borrowing our books through Hoopla, through your library, is easy, free, and it results in free income for all three parties. Sounds too crazy to be true, but it is! Here’s how it works:

Here’s What Everyone Can DoOpen your library’s website or app.Look for Hoopla Digital.Sign in with your library card. Search my books and click borrow!

Boom, it’s that simple. Once you borrow my stories, Hoopla gives me a portion of their income from that lending, a portion of that money goes back to the library *and* your library gets metrics to justify increased budgets for future library operations. It’s a simple way to make everyone win, but first let’s talk about what’s in it for you.

Here’s What’s In It For You

If you think about it – everyone wants authors to succeed. Problem is, you can’t buy every book from everybody. It’s just a fact:none of us are rich enough to afford own personal Library of Congress. Even though some of us would love nothing else. I get it, you get it, we all get it.

But think about it – by borrowing my ebooks or ebooks from other authors – no special tools required. Your tax dollars are already paying for this service – all you need to do is use it. You win, because you’re getting new stories for free. You win, because you’re supporting your local library. You win, because you’re helping authors you enjoy reading become self-sufficient. Look at you, being all win-win-win about this. Go, You!

Here’s How We Got Here

A day ago, I responded to a Skeet from Charliejane.bsky.social on the subject of how reading library books helps authors – here’s a screenshot:

The subsequent conversation from CJ, other BlueSky people, was a crash course in how libraries work, how audiences can be spoken to, how Hoopla works. If this was a college course, it’d be called ‘how to use Hoopla to achieve author success 101A.’ I learned a lot in a short period of time, and that’s part of what I want to talk to you about. Nothing I did was particularly heroic or masterful – I just did two things: I showed up, and I was curious. These are two simple things any other author can do. Let’s start breaking down the lessons:

Here’s What We Learn

If you’re a reader, this an *excellent* way to support your favorite authors for free. No weird apps, subscriptions, Patreons … just read and enjoy. If you’re a library, this is a beautiful way to encourage reading with a frictionless process – try out new authors for free in seconds. Looking for something to do? No worries – you got it – grab your library card and read a story, or listen to an audio book. No muss, no fuss.

If you’re an author – this is a *huge* learning lesson so I want to slow down and make sure I’m being intentional about these learnings. Where your comfort zone meets your growth channel, your growth channel has to win. Even though I have personal discomfort with talking with new people about technical and creative topics, participating in these discussions led to a massive jump in support from library, book and author professionals. I never dreamed it could be that simple, but it was, and it comes down to doing a lot of little things over time.

In fact, that’s something I read on Gapingvoid: “This means, start by doing little things. Nothing too dramatic, just wee improvements, many and often. Start exercising. Spend less time staring at your phone. Read more books. Eat less crap between meals. Don’t leave the house in the morning without making your bed. Quit those lousy cigarettes, or at least, start cutting down. The science says it takes between three and six weeks to turn a healthy move into a habit, and often you don’t manage it the first time. So keep on trying. Eventually something will click.”

So I want you to remember that we’re all in the ‘doing little things’ space as authors. We’re start-ups with one employee, making a product we hope will change the world. What we do doesn’t scale, until it does, and until then we’re off and running. Wanna know how that works? It’s easy – study what the startups are doing and figure out how you can emulate that process with your writing projects/process/community.

So what little things should authors do?

Show upBe Curious Connect the dots – ask yourself an important question: how does this conversation help me get to the next step as an author?’

I hope this info is helpful to you as you progress along your author journey. If you’d like a free and simple way to help me, you, and your local library – all thanks to Hoopla – look no further. If you’d like a simple way to get closer to author success – look no further. If you’re looking for a way to get to the next step of our life – it’s simple: show up, be curious, and connect the dots.

The post Author Journey: You, Me, Hoopla, and the Library first appeared on Inkican.

Busy day yesterday – rebuilding the website turned into an author journey of housekeeping and housebuilding. This gives us an opportunity to clean the digital closet of old database garbage, blog revisions that no one cares about, and other pointless drivel that slows a website down.

Out of that re-direction, you’ll note that some parts of the web page are no longer easily accessible – it’s all part of my desire to create an experience that works for everyone. We’ll see how it develops. I have some interesting ideas for a future state of Inkican but I’m figuring out how it would work technically before I open my big, fat mouth.

One of the things I’ve learned about this is ‘perfect is the enemy of good.’ Fretting over SEO, page rank, LCP scores – Every hour I spend doing website management is an hour I should be writing. It’s important to – in the words of Kenny Rogers – ‘know when to fold ’em.’ I try to keep this as sustainable as possible.

Beyond that, I’m reading more about startups and asking myself how that applies to the business of being a professional writer. As this 2013 article states, “Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going.”

Fair point.

One wonders: am I cranking the right engine, will the engine take me where I want to go, how do I make sure I don’t drive off a cliff? Those are questions I’m asking every single day and I invite you to help me answer them. In order for us to have productive conversations, I’ve created a platform to make it easy to interact with me without being sucked into toxic social media spaces – you can reach me there. 

Continuing forward, I’m going to be managing the experience in a more intentional way, so you’ll see additional changes in the next week or so. Meantime, the kitties are fine, my house didn’t burn down, and Eugene is … well … still Eugene.

The post Author Journey: Housekeeping and House Building first appeared on Inkican.

Red flag warnings in Eugene – Time for another edition of Weird Nerdy Kid Stories while I pack my go-bag and prepare to evacuate the author cats with my landlord. In 8th grade, I discovered a new talent that would go on to drive my academic experience for years to come. If you’re a Gen X or Baby Boomer kid, you knew the best day of the week after chicken nuggets day:

Movie time!

That’s right, put away the books and watch the teacher slip away to the lounge for a cigarette and a cup of coffee. It’s time for a teachable moment courtesy your friendly neighborhood 16mm Bell & Howell movie projector. I know you know what I’m talking about – many of these short films have been re-visited on Mystery Science Theater 3000 – here’s one of them:

That’s not really the point – the point of the story is ‘who were the people who actually knew how to make the movies work?’ That’s where this story begins – settle down, kids and then we’ll begin:

A/V Geeks to the Rescue

Being the A/V geek meant you were sent out to the library to grab either a TV/VCR cart or a projector and a movie. Sometimes the teacher had a specific film they wanted, other times you got to pick. Naturally, you picked the LONGEST film you could find because who wanted to watch movies for ONLY half the period? Bigger film platters meant longer films.

Into the back room of the library, opposite the school kitchen, that smelled of tater tots and stale milk. Back to the room with a projector to thread the film through the pickup and into the takeup reel. ‘How do you know how to do that?’ they’d whisper. ‘Dunno, it’s not that hard,’ you’d smile – feeling like you belonged, like you mattered, for the first time in your life.

Then it was time to watch the movie. Remember how the teacher liked to slip out for a smoke? Normally, we wouldn’t care. Except this time was different. Me and another A/V kid – Roddy – were hanging out in the back while the biology class watched ‘how to dissect a frog’ or something. Then somebody tugged on my sleeve.

“Max fell down,” this tiny Asian girl whispered, thick glasses and center-parted hair.

“So, tell him to get up.”

“No, like … he’s shaking. Something’s wrong.”

Roddy and I looked over. There was a seventh grader down between the desks, vibrating? Was he pulling a prank? Was he trying to break dance? What was going on? Then somebody whispered ‘seizure.’

Oh, snap. It was the first time I’d seen someone experience a seizure. None of us knew what to do. I froze there, panicked, in the middle of the floor.

Let me tell you something about Roddy. He wasn’t just an A/V geek; he was on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout, and that meant he had some basic first aid training. “Get a backpack under his head,” he ordered. Then Roddy pointed to one of the kids at the front of the room. “Go down to the office, tell them Max had a seizure and to come quick.” Max was fine, but that wasn’t the end of the story.

What was weird was, no one ever talked about what happened. I mean, we all thought Roddy was a hero. Aren’t they supposed to give the kid an award or put his picture in the newspaper? Nothing ever came of it. Max came back the next day, life went on. The teachers acted like it was just another Tuesday.

Looking back on it, I think the school was worried about lawsuits. Why was the teacher gone? Why were we in charge? No one wanted to admit to negligence, so all the adults were like ‘yup, thanks … where’s your homework?’ Roddy shrugged, already used to being ignored as part of the A/V geek life. We never talked about it again.

One thing I’m grateful for, watching the kids of 2025 navigate videos and technology. No more TV/VCR combo setups on trolleys, no more film strips, and no more negligent teachers. I just miss those days, and to some extent, I think today’s kids are a little poorer for that experience.

Yes, I was a weird, nerdy kid and yes, I was one of the A/V geeks. These are some of my stories. Don’t look at me like that. At least I don’t have a sexist dog.

The post Weird Nerdy Kid Stories #2 – A/V Geeks to the Rescue appeared first on Inkican.

Happy to announce a new video essay: Be Rich, Live Poor based on the STL blog post I released a few months ago. Watch the essay – read by our own Jeremiah Jones – and then let’s discuss:



Wow – Jeremiah knocked it out of the park on this one. Don’t forget to follow him on IG if you don’t already. The ideas aren’t necessarily new, but the meaning is still important – we’re all dealing with the stress of high prices and uncertain times. There’s no need to fear if you’re already used to living poor, it helps you be rich in so many ways.

Don’t forget – all video essays are on this playlist – I want my ideas and our teams’ talents to be as visible as possible. If you enjoy these essays, please share them with everyone on your favorite social media platform (Except Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit). Hope you’re enjoying the downside of summer – see you on the flip side.

 

 

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