Zoe Winters's Blog

I’m retiring (effective immediately) from writing on this name. For those who had been looking forward to the serial I was working on I sincerely apologize but this has been a long time coming. It is time to move on.

My COMPLETED Preternaturals series will remain available for sale at retailers.

If you need to contact me, please use the contact form above. This site will remain active for the foreseeable future as well.

I will NOT be available via Twitter or Facebook on this name so anything you need to say to me really needs to go through my contact form (see link above in the header bar) if you want me to actually see it.

Thank you for reading and supporting my work.

Z

Quick update, which I will now proceed to do in a numbered list:

1. I almost never update this blog, primarily because I HATE the changes to the interface on wordpress.com It is seriously so user-unfriendly and obnoxious I can’t stand to log on here. I will hopefully blog/update more once I FINALLY get this over to self-hosted wordpress. My other name is already on self-hosted.

2. Arcana Update: I am working on this. I’ve mentioned in various places that I want to get the full first season complete and ready to go before I reboot this serial launch because I realized after I’d already attempted to launch that no, in fact, I could NOT work under that kind of pressure to release even shorter work fast. I’m also juggling another name and work on that name which is more popular so usually takes priority. I do plan to release this soon after the first of the year, though. (Before that isn’t logistically smart because US elections are distracting as are holidays.)

3. I’m on a big social media/internet break right now and won’t be back and fully socially available to you until November 9th (the day after the US elections. I’ve decided I’m sidestepping this entire clusterfuck on the internet entirely and taking a vacation.) I WILL have limited email availability… and will check and respond to emails on MONDAYS ONLY.

4. Newsletter: I just sent out my last brief newsletter (covers a lot of this same stuff, just trying to cover bases). My next newsletter will be December 1st, where you’ll get a full update on Arcana and the plan going forward, I’ll also be emailing from my NEW newsletter company, and if you’re subscribed, you’ll get a newsletter from me on the first of each month starting in December.

Thanks for reading and for your patience!

Z

I am very sorry to have to announce that the remainder of season 1 of Arcana is being postponed until Fall. I’ve been desperately trying to do this serial for the past 2 years. (And the delay is not that I can’t write it, merely that I can’t justify taking so much time away from my other pen name.) I LOVE this story. I want to write it and I want to share it with you, but the reality is this name is almost dead. And apparently serials are REVILED among readers.

Look, I’m sorry. I know many of you got burned in the first version of Kindle Unlimited when people were writing tons of serials and basically breaking up longer works for no real reason just for a cash grab. So I GET if you are cynical and just plain angry about authors doing this.

But Arcana is DESIGNED as a serial. It simply doesn’t work as a novel or series of novels. And I won’t write it that way. It’s meant to be episodic like a TV show in print form.

And it’s a HUGE commitment. To tell Arcana fully requires 22 episodes because it’s based upon the major arcana of the tarot and there are 22 cards. These are short 20,000 word episodes. But just because they are short doesn’t mean I can write them in an afternoon. It still takes time. (particularly since I’m developing a large story arc) It still costs money. And it still takes away from my other name which is my actual bread and butter. And without reader support I just can’t prioritize it.

I also have carpal tunnel and right now I’m having a flare up. So what I need to do is REST and stay off the computer/internet for a while, NOT rush to try to meet an arbitrary deadline for a serial nobody cares about yet. (And believe me I GET it… people are in the habit of binge watching… Netflix has started on their original series releasing a whole season at a time… and believe me I’m paying attention to this development and adjusting my plan accordingly.)

I have a book on my other name due out May 15th, and that is the name that actually makes me money. It’s the one that has real reader support, so it’s the one that I absolutely will prioritize. No matter how much I love and want to write this serial.

I wish I were independently wealthy. Then I could write whatever the hell I wanted whenever I wanted without caring how it did. But I’m not. And if I want this to continue to be my career, then I have to write what is selling for me. And right now that’s my other name.

I haven’t given up on this serial. I believe with several episodes out and the right marketing that I can reach people with it and it will be well received. But the issue is… Zoe is nearly dead. She’s barely on life support at this point. Not only that, but every attempt I make to bring her back is time and energy taken away from my “sure thing”. So I feel trapped between a rock and a hard place.

The main reasons I’m waiting until Fall to continue this are:

1. If I start releasing in the summer, that’s a VERY hard time to sell anything book wise, so I’m just creating a bigger hill to climb. And looking at this realistically, summer is the soonest possibility if I want to not also miss my deadline on my other name. And I do NOT. That is why Arcana is not up for pre-order for the other episodes yet, but my other book due out on the other name is.

2. I plan to have the entire first season COMPLETED before I start releasing it again, and to release on a faster time frame. (If I don’t choose the netflix model of releasing the entire season at once, it will be on a weekly publishing schedule.) Here is a deal I can make with you if you can have faith in me and this work… I will complete a season at a time so that I can release each season in a way that’s a less “painful” wait for you. And also less stress-inducing for me.

3. Because this name is almost dead, there are VERY FEW PEOPLE already waiting for more of this. And it’s not going to miraculously change in the interim. Since so few are waiting on this, it just makes sense to wait until I’m ready to roll out the whole season to continue, rather than try to push forward and have even MORE people disappointed when I can’t keep up the pace.

4. It’s not worth it to stress myself out over something that has no guarantee of ever selling or recouping the money and time I’ve invested in it. This is a passion project, but I still have to eat food. I shouldn’t have to sacrifice health on top of everything else.

So that’s where we are. Again, I’m very sorry about this. I kind of feel like I get how George R.R. Martin felt when he was telling his readers that the newest book wouldn’t beat the HBO season that it was supposed to be attached to. It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re disappointing/letting down 50 fans or 5 million. The way it makes a writer feel is still the same.

Hugs to George R.R. Martin.

Episode 1 of Arcana is now LIVE: ($2.99 USD)

iBooks

Kobo Books

Google Play

Barnes and Noble

(available internationally at Google Play and Kobo)

NOTE: Will be available on Smashwords on March 3rd.

$1.99 Pre-order at Amazon… Book Goes live at Amazon on March 3rd: (regular retail price $2.99. Save with pre-order!)

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca

Amazon.co.uk

(available in all the Amazon country stores.)

DESCRIPTION:

Aurelia Cunningham has ignored her magic too long, and now everything might fall apart. She must choose between being a citizen of one of the controlling magic cities or trying to make it in the wilderness.

The city contains the secret to her magic and answers to a mystery she must untangle to survive. The wilderness has Bast, an old, powerful, and mysterious vampire intent on making her his permanent meal.

Arcana is a serial that follows the Fool’s/Hero’s journey through the major arcana of the Tarot. Readers need not be familiar with the Tarot or the meanings of the cards to appreciate the story, but those who are familiar will find many Tarot Easter eggs hidden throughout the series.

IMPORTANT:

99 cent pre-order sale for Arcana episode 2, should start tomorrow at: iBooks, Kobo, Google, and B&N. You will also be able to get pre-order for the rest of the first season at iBooks. Amazon will be much closer to release because long pre-orders there hurt visibility. (Excitement! I can now do Nook Pre-order! Yay!)

For the latest status on everything arcana, Click Here

If you don’t want to have to keep up with constantly checking for things… subscribe to my new release list to be kept updated on when episodes go to pre-order and when they are live.

Thanks for reading!

Z

FINALLY, I have Arcana episode 1 available for pre-order. So there are no surprises, here is how it will go:

I will have pre-order available at Kobo, Google Play, and iBooks (links below). The Pre-order price for the episode is 99 cents. If you wait until it’s live, it’s $2.99. (See Note at the bottom if you want to understand why there is no Amazon pre-order at this time)

DESCRIPTION:

Aurelia Cunningham has ignored her magic too long, and now everything might fall apart. She must choose between being a citizen of one of the controlling magic cities or trying to make it in the wilderness.

The city contains the secret to her magic and answers to a mystery she must untangle to survive. The wilderness has Bast, an old, powerful, and mysterious vampire intent on making her his permanent meal.

Arcana is a serial that follows the Fool’s/Hero’s journey through the major arcana of the Tarot. Readers need not be familiar with the Tarot or the meanings of the cards to appreciate the story, but those who are familiar will find many Tarot Easter eggs hidden throughout the series.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ARCANA

PRE-ORDER LINKS: (All three of these are available internationally. These are the US links)

iBooks

Kobo Books

Google Play

THE PRE-ORDER EXPLANATION:

I will do a pre-order on Amazon briefly for 3-4 days to just get filtered into also-boughts (Amazon pre-order screws up your algorithms because unlike the other stores they don’t count all your sales on release day and count that toward your rank, they count sales as they happen. And long story short it REALLY screws anybody up at Amazon who isn’t already REALLY BIG as an author.)

There WILL be an opportunity to get a “slightly” reduced price at Amazon during the short pre-order period. It will be $1.99 for those few days there, and then $2.99 after that once it goes fully live there.

So bottom line… it’s cheapest and live earliest everywhere but Amazon. I am not doing this to snub Amazon readers but it’s important to understand that Amazon is REALLY instituting policies that are starting to hurt authors and make authors “so dependent” on this ONE retailer that they are otherwise fucked if they don’t do well at Amazon and I want to build my other outlets and SERIOUSLY encourage shopping at them. I do not want to be Amazon’s serf. I don’t want to be “owned by Amazon”.

Certainly I want to do well at Amazon, but if things go badly at Amazon, I want to still have an income and an audience. That’s just the economics of this. When Amazon stops jerking authors around and trying to force them into Kindle Unlimited and exclusivity, and when they stop making pre-order a type of punishment for anybody not already famous, then we’ll talk about them getting pre-order when the other stores do.

Also, unfortunately there is no pre-order at B&N due to the fact that they don’t allow authors to set up pre-order direct. I’d have to go through a third party distributor and no thanks.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the most important part… I have NOTHING against my readers who shop at Amazon and you are welcome to shop wherever you want, but for many readers Amazon is starting to become like Walmart… you hate it but you’ll go there if you have to. And so I want to encourage other options first THEN Amazon. You can still shop wherever the hell you want. And I’m certainly grateful for any sales I get on Amazon because it still is the retailer I’m most reliant on. I just want to start shifting those eggs across more baskets. It’s what will ultimately be necessary for me to survive this business.

Thank you for understanding!

If you have any questions either about the serial or about the pre-order you are welcome to contact me via my contact form (see the links bar across the top of the site.)

Thanks!

Z

I know I don’t update frequently because I suck. I spend most of my time “being” my other name. And so… I do most of my social media and interacting there. Anyway, the Preternaturals box set did way better than I expected. I was also fortunate enough to have a Bookbub with it, so that was awesome. And I got some nice sell through on my other titles which I think are overpriced given the rabid reading habits of romance readers so I’ve adjusted those prices downwards a bit just to see how that goes.

Sure, it isn’t “fair” other authors can sell books at a higher price, but romance is a tough market. (And who said life was fair? I don’t want to devalue the work, but I also don’t want it to sit there and do nothing. Keeping prices high when it’s not selling at that rate is just foolishness.) It’s a big market but it’s highly competitive and readers are so voracious that they want lower priced books so they can read more. I would have to be a BIG name in my genre to command $5.99 and $6.99 per title. I feel like that’s a more ‘respectable’ price that is more in line with mainstream traditionally published work. BUT… I would bet money that new authors with traditional contracts selling at that rate are having a MUCH harder time competing in the marketplace. Because it’s name recognition and big fanbases that command those sorts of prices now. So it’s not an indie vs. trad. It’s just that indie authors actually have the flexibility to lower their prices if something isn’t working.

And also, to be fair, this series is complete, and it’s been complete for a little over a year and every title runs it’s course. I know people say that you build this big backlist and things sell forever. But… that’s sort of true and untrue at the same time. A lot of backlist stuff WILL sell seemingly forever, but usually at a much lower rate than when it was a new release. That’s just the nature of the beast. It is beneficial to have a lot of titles out there, but you have to keep publishing new stuff or everything sort of just withers and dies on the vine. That’s not me bitching, just me actually having lived this publishing journey long enough to more or less know “what’s what” on subjects I couldn’t have known about when I started because everybody has a pie-in-the-sky vision and it’s hard to separate truth from bullshit.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate in this business to do as well as I’ve done. Part of that was jumping in back when everybody said you were a loser who’d never go anywhere if you self-published. (I honestly believe I’ve done much better than I would have done if I’d sought a traditional publishing contract.) I spent way too much time arguing with those people when I could have been building my brand stronger, but the fact that I jumped in and did it while everybody else was acting like this was something that even mattered in a world-ending way, was a smart move.

Also, new work IS coming. I have not abandoned this name. I’ve just been focusing more strongly on the erotica name because I get more ideas for that and more weird plot lines and my fan base on that name is a bit more “into me”. But with my other name, I got in there when my subgenre was just starting out, so there was some hope for name recognition at least within the genre. For paranormal romance it is SO competitive. I “might” have somewhat of a name if I’d actually been focused entirely on this name, but it’s hard to manage more than one name.

But anyway, the serial I was going to release last spring IS happening. It should start releasing in February. I’m already writing it. So stay tuned for that!

Thank you for reading and supporting my work!

The Preternaturals first three books are now in a box set. Regular retail price for the ebook version of all three books individually is $18. Regular retail for this box set itself is: $9.99. But Now through Sunday the 29th only, the box set will retail for only 99 cents!  3 FULL books in my preternaturals series for 99 cents. Now is an excellent time to introduce a friend or family member to the Preternaturals series.

Please see your preferred retailer below for full book description. If you’ve read and enjoyed this series, a review at the retailer site (particularly Amazon) would be much appreciated.

CURRENTLY LIVE AT THE SALE PRICE:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.ca

Barnes and Noble

ON PRE-ORDER:

The following retailers are only available on pre-order at the $9.99 price until Black Friday, when they will go live and be changed to 99 cents: (Please note: If you pre-order this, you can’t get it at the 99 cent price. For these retailers please wait until Black Friday if you want the sale, but the Amazons and B&N are already discounted. Thanks!)

Google Play

Kobo

Apple ibooks

A reader emailed me because I haven’t updated in a while. And I don’t want you guys to think I’ve fallen off the planet. Part of me not updating is that I haven’t moved this blog yet to an independent hosted wordpress site. And I HATE wordpress.com The interface is horrible now. It’s worse than Blogger. So it just annoys me to have to deal with it and I haven’t had a chance to get a self-hosted blog site set up for this name yet.

Anyway, here is where we are: I’m writing a lot on my other name because it’s the one that sells better and that people seem to care about most. However, one thing I notice is that it has become less an “experimental name” like it started out and more fraught with worry over “if this or that will sell.” When I started with that name I didn’t really care if it sold. It was stuff I was just writing for me.

Ironically the more I wrote “just for me”, the better it sold. But now the Zoe name is in this “Zoe who?” place and so now this is the experimental “just for me” name.

I AM working on the serial on the Zoe name. I’m hoping to start releasing that after the first of the year. Sorry for lack of update. But I am working. It’s just hard to manage two names. If I had it to do over again I would probably only have one name. But I have no time machine.

Besides I think the creative tension and being able to write things without pressure where I don’t feel “watched” (like on this name now), is a good and healthy thing. As long as you are subscribed to the new release list (go to the home page here and you’ll see it at the top), then you will know the second I have something new out.

If You’d like to know when a new book in the Preternaturals world is out, please subscribe to my new release list:

I’ve got a Bookbub ad today, so The Catalyst is 99 cents today only at multiple venues:

Amazon

Amazon.uk

Amazon.ca

Barnes and Noble Nook

Kobo

Google Play

The rest of my titles in the series are on sale for $2.99 at Amazon, Nook, and Kobo. (Prices vary on Google Play).

The 99 cent sale for The Catalyst is today only. The $2.99 for the other titles will be a bit longer. Maybe a week or so. I want to give readers who grab the Catalyst at 99 cents a chance to work their way through the series enough to know if they are interested in buying all of them while they can still get it at the sale price.