Glad to see people are writing to me about this interview I had with @buttondown https://buttondown.com/blog/robert-kingett #Email #Author #Authors

Glad to see people are writing to me about this interview I had with @buttondown https://buttondown.com/blog/robert-kingett #Email #Author #Authors

Oh, there's something like #portfolioDay ! Okay, so, I'm an #author, #podcast host and data privacy expert with a strong focus on #ITsecurity awareness. I write #nonfiction, crime and #scifi in German and English. The last two years I mainly spent with making #books and podcasts for others, like the lovely Eltville #WeinSchreibereien anthology and podcast.

https://www.zotzmann-koch.com/

a few years ago i mentioned that i wrote a book about the exciting, awkward and embarrassing experiences of growing up with computers and video games in the 80s and 90s.

i wanted to remember what it felt like being the only dorky computer kid at school. or what it was like to hear my first modem handshake sound. or starting the first flamewar on the school's national FirstClass BBS in the macintosh lab over the lunch-hour

it was originally something i wrote only for my family and friends who were there at the time.

and then i met all of you folks when i started my first masto instance 4 years ago. i had no idea there were so many hardcore retrocomputing and gaming nerds out there; unix and mac and ms-dos folks alike.

so i mentioned it casually. i was surprised by the interest in the book.

so i spent the better part of the past 3 years rewriting the book for *you* fellow mastodon dorkus malorkuses. the book is a celebration of all of the best (and worst) parts of a kid growing up in the digital age.

we're all busy old tired stressed folks now. so every memory and cringetacular story is short enough to read on a 5 minute bus/metro/toilet ride. they're weaved together into an arc that starts at my family's first Tandy TRS-80 and ends at my school's Mac LC II and building my first Pentium 133.

it's finally published, and i'm super proud of what it became thanks to everyone here nerding out for years.

enjoy the book. i wrote it just for you. ❤️

paperback edition: https://mybook.to/EDuUf

DRM-free ebook (EPUB format) and chapter samples here:
https://tomotama.itch.io/mages-modems

#books #indiePublisher #bookstodon #author #macintosh #vintageApple #vintageComputing #msdos #dosGaming #yeg #canada #alberta #bbs #smolWeb #indieWeb

Anniversaries have a way of sneaking up on me, and this one is no different. My debut novel, By the Pact, the first in epic fantasy series was released exactly 5 years (and 1 day) ago. Since then, I finished this series, published another one, and added a standalone to the list.
It's been a wild ride at times, and I'm still stunned by the response to this book, readers' kind words and excitement they share with me, author friends I made and opportunities I participated in.
And if you've read this one or any other of my books, thank you for giving this author a chance!
To celebrate, I'll try to share some fun tidbits about By the Pact and the series in the upcoming days, so stay tuned!

And if you want to grab book 1, it's free!
https://bf.authorjm.com/ByThePact

#books #bookstodon #fantasy #fantasybooks #author #authorlife

Anniversaries have a way of sneaking up on me, and this one is no different. My debut novel, By the Pact, the first in epic fantasy series was released exactly 5 years (and 1 day) ago. Since then, I finished this series, published another one, and added a standalone to the list.
It's been a wild ride at times, and I'm still stunned by the response to this book, readers' kind words and excitement they share with me, author friends I made and opportunities I participated in.
And if you've read this one or any other of my books, thank you for giving this author a chance!
To celebrate, I'll try to share some fun tidbits about By the Pact and the series in the upcoming days, so stay tuned!

And if you want to grab book 1, it's free!
https://bf.authorjm.com/ByThePact

#books #bookstodon #fantasy #fantasybooks #author #authorlife

@kristiedegaris @castaway Sadly, this problem is an open secret in publishing https://www.alcs.co.uk/news/why-writers-are-at-a-loss-for-words/: “The past 15 years have seen a sustained fall in professional writers’ real terms income from writing; this decline of around 60% has pushed median earnings down to minimum wage levels.”

If you haven’t done so already, register your works to earn extra income with https://www.alcs.co.uk and https://plr.bl.uk/

As well as the systemic and structural issues, part of the problem is that publishing is a numbers game: the number of people wanting to be published authors is more than the number that publishers and their markets need, so authors without a track record of success have a weak bargaining position and have little power to improve poor terms and conditions. (But it does sound like you have done relatively well with your publisher, did you have a literary agent?)

Also, a few big winners make up for the long tail of low-selling books, and editors *need* new untested authors and their books in the hope of finding their next bestselling author.

As others have said, some authors make more money from speaking engagements than their books, and use their books for credibility and to raise their profile.

#writing #book #author #enshittification #bookstodon #business

Sigh. I just saw two posts here pushing the "real authors don't use em dashes, that's an AI thing" myth and I am tired. 😣

Hi. Hello. "Real author" here. I have never used AI in any part of my writing or process, ever. I use em dashes all the time. So do other real authors. In fact, there'd be a fight to the death if you tried to take our em dashes away from us. Sometimes, a semicolon just won't do, and you *need* that em dash. Other times, you *must* use an em dash (when a character gets interrupted mid-sentence or mid-word, for example).

The *reason* you see em dashes in AI slop is because those LLMs were literally built on the stolen works of real authors. Who use em dashes. All the time.

#author #writing #writingCommunity #amwriting

a few years ago i mentioned that i wrote a book about the exciting, awkward and embarrassing experiences of growing up with computers and video games in the 80s and 90s.

i wanted to remember what it felt like being the only dorky computer kid at school. or what it was like to hear my first modem handshake sound. or starting the first flamewar on the school's national FirstClass BBS in the macintosh lab over the lunch-hour

it was originally something i wrote only for my family and friends who were there at the time.

and then i met all of you folks when i started my first masto instance 4 years ago. i had no idea there were so many hardcore retrocomputing and gaming nerds out there; unix and mac and ms-dos folks alike.

so i mentioned it casually. i was surprised by the interest in the book.

so i spent the better part of the past 3 years rewriting the book for *you* fellow mastodon dorkus malorkuses. the book is a celebration of all of the best (and worst) parts of a kid growing up in the digital age.

we're all busy old tired stressed folks now. so every memory and cringetacular story is short enough to read on a 5 minute bus/metro/toilet ride. they're weaved together into an arc that starts at my family's first Tandy TRS-80 and ends at my school's Mac LC II and building my first Pentium 133.

it's finally published, and i'm super proud of what it became thanks to everyone here nerding out for years.

enjoy the book. i wrote it just for you. ❤️

paperback edition: https://mybook.to/EDuUf

DRM-free ebook (EPUB format) and chapter samples here:
https://tomotama.itch.io/mages-modems

#books #indiePublisher #bookstodon #author #macintosh #vintageApple #vintageComputing #msdos #dosGaming #yeg #canada #alberta #bbs #smolWeb #indieWeb