J David Osborne

I put my five most popular books up for free on Bookfunnel. Brutal, minimalist, spiritually weird crime fiction. Kick in the door and get reading. books.bookfunnel.com/entrywounds

Let’s goooooooo

@EvieMacaraig Godspeed

@jdowrites Thank you!

I have a couple of friends who have earned dream careers with trad publishers, writing exactly what they want and getting paid crazy money to do so. I have several other friends who still work regular jobs and publish with Big Five as a side hustle, and overall they have positive things to say (even in private). All of these are straight white dudes by the way (so they say, heh heh). It’s not that it’s not possible, or that trad has nothing to offer. I mean, it’s probably impossible FOR ME, due to the fact that I’d be Shane Gillis’d very quickly. All that said, there’s a lot to love about indie publishing. You make your own schedule, you keep your e-mail list, and if you’re business-minded, you can absolutely thrive. You don’t have do rapid release or write to market or any of that shit (unless you want to be that kind of writer and make millions and have cold lizard brain and are perhaps insane). There is an extremely clear 5-year plan available to literally anyone to build a decent readership and make some good side money while you work. Importantly, it’s not this either-or, us-vs-them thing that I see so often on Substack. I see a bunch of folks banging their head on the door to trad pub and getting nowhere, and I think “man the technology now exists for you to have a TEAM behind your work! For the first time in history!” The bottom line, and this is said with absolutely zero haterade, is that you do need to develop relationships within the industry in order to get anywhere. The days of the cold submission to career pipeline are pretty much over. In my opinion, it makes more sense to spend your time building a business rather than applying for jobs. Your mileage may vary!

@EvieMacaraig Sure! Two resources that I have found helpful are the Novel Marketing podcast and Joanna Penn’s Successful Self Publishing / her podcast. There are specific 5-year plan episodes iirc but just absorbing all the info you can from those two would be helpful.

@jdowrites If I may, can I ask where this five year plan is?

"what developers didn't understand in their rush to get as realistic as possible was that the bad graphics were a feature, not a bug" ~ @jdowrites ; GODS FARE NO BETTER

@WholeTimeDavid Chris Knowles is a genius. Crazy, probably, but in a good way.

@jdowrites Bro what is this website I been stuck on it

Why are so many of these videos about snatching mermaid tails?

Indiana Jones

Book Vault does good work.

It was huge. For me FF8 was even bigger.

This was a lot of fun. Get in there. And buy a copy of THE EARTHEN DARK already. It's easily the best independently-published work of blue-collar cosmic sewer horror published in the last few months.

Gonna drop a short book soon called NOCTURNE REPEATER about a haunted video game. Kind of like Pale Fire but for people who had a PS2.

Going through my old stuff and found something cool.

Started the revival season of The X-Files. I have enjoyed the stories but MAN you really notice how fast editors started cutting somewhere between 2002 and 2016.

At one point I said ‘all furries are wolves, you never see lizard furries’ and Alan said ‘scalies’

@teo_ess I read the ‘spaghetti is noodles’ section and then the Parable of the Wolves that the Crucifix Mukade tells while it is dying.

@jdowrites which bit did you read?

Reading from Gods Fare No Better. Had the crowd chucklin.

Creeping individualism