How I dealt with my first bad review

Strange short story/novella. Written from reporters perspective, who is from a world other than earth (alien),it is in a newspaper article format. Personally it seemed like more of a journal entry. The main focus being on cloning. It describes the rise and fall of Jax, who sets off certain events in history by cloning himself over and over again. The second entry is a woman, who is initially against cloning, but personal circumstances make her uncertain. I have got to ask: Where is the writer going with this, what was the point? In what way was the reporter and his orign important? The writer needs to go back and look at the objective of the product he produced.I received a free copy of this book for my review.

The above 2 out of 5 stars review from Amazon is for Clones : Gangs & Such. A little scifi novella that is being reviewed through BookRooster. A company that gives out copies of your books for a fee to honest reviewers. Which is something I wanted. Honest reviews. And that's what I got.

Now the obvious thing to say was that I was angry at this review. Angry, at first, because he didn't get it. He didn't understand. And I paced the floor thinking about what I could say that would sway him. Dreamed about a way to make him feel foolish for his blunder. But it's obvious in the language that my story has been dismissed. The best I can hope for is that it burrowed deep into the back of his mind, and he is thinking about it. And it is slowly growing on him. But as a consumer I know better. That rarely happens.

Then I was angry at myself for putting something crappy out there. That I had failed as a writer. So I laid down in bed and thought about my work. If I really did all I could to see it finished properly. And I thought I had. I re-read the work and I got it. But then again, I am the writer. I should get it. It's all in my head. I've seen it all unfold over and over again. So I went through what I was writing currently. And I'm too close. And I can't affor an editor so I have to be ruthless myself. And I think I have the eye. But in the end I don't really know. I just get out what I have to get out and hope it connects with someone. But I say that now. Before it was miserable feelings.

And those feelings stayed with me through the night. The anger which mixed with sadness and self-doubt. It wasn't much fun. I barely slept. But in the morning I got up and started writing again. For a few reasons. 1) I've made art before. Whether it has been music or a drawing. And I've received reviews before. So my skin has thickened a bit. 2) Writing has been my go-to for making myself feel better. It always has been. I have stacks of journals all over the place filled with ideas and half stories. Usually written when I need to get my thoughts out. And 3) I want to do this. This writing for a living thing. I don't even want Rowling-level cash. I'd be happy with making as much as the first year teacher at the moment. But writing and putting it out there and people reading it is something I want in my life. And being able to do it more often would be great. That's what I want.

And I'm sure more bad reviews will be headed my way. Which would be great because that means people will be buying my work. But I have to remember that I can't let these words stop my own words. That I will have anger and dispare and self-doubt. Always. But that I must work through it. And past it. And onward. Or it will all build up like a dam and stop any progress. And who know? Somewhere down the line I might write something worth writing home about. And I will say "Hurray!" and then get started on my next book.

I read everywhere that you just need to keep pushing. You just need to keep doing what you are doing and at some point it will happed. I don't know how much I believe that. I can't be honest and say that this is the reason I will tell another story. It's not. But I don't think that matters. It's whatever keeps you writing. Whatever gets you motivated. I'm new at this game. Just started putting my prose out there a few months ago. So I would feel weird trying to make a post that would inspire you like that ones I have read on more experienced self-publishers. But maybe putting this post out there will help others who are just starting to publish. Or starting to write. Or starting to do whatever it is they do. And know that we are all beginners at some point. We don't come up roses right out. And I re-read that review and I remember that. Perhaps in a year I'll look at that review and feel lucky it was so tame. Or that I had a review at all! But in the mean time, I'll get back to writing my weird little stories and hope they stick to someone's heart a little better than this. And you should too.

Using Creative Commons to Explore the Power of Stories.

The Public Factory has decided to start living up to its name. We are now licensing all of our works under Creative Commons. And making things public. This is nothing new to e-books. There have been people out there who have been licensing under Creative Commons for a while. Ex: Cory Doctorow. But that was as long as no one made money off of the books or created derivative works. Which is still an awesome license. And why we love Creative Commons' flexibility.

But we want to really push some of the ideas behind Creative Commons. Especially in writing. So we are now allowing you to create derivative works. In fact, we encourage it. Also, sell those works. Try to make a living writing. That's what we're trying to do, too! Now, we don't want you copying our books and reselling them. That is not what this is about. This is about expanding our universe. And giving readers and writers a place to grow and play in.

As we mentioned before, we grew up reading comics. One of the best things about comics was seeing the shared universe. Watching characters coming in and out. And that's what we're trying to do here. We want our characters and ideas to be building blocks and backdrops to launch your own characters and your own stories. 

The Internet has allowed for all kinds of ideas and business models to be tried. This may be a failure. We don’t know. Trust us. We've been sitting on this for a while. A little scared. As in very, very scared. But in the end, it just felt right. And if 'free' can sell books then why not 'shared'? Reading, writing, and cross-referencing ideas, when you think about it, just sounds fun. Well, for us, story nerds, anways.

So check out our books. And see what you like and what you think you can add. Then write your own story. And share it. Let us know too!

All our rules are right here if you want to check them out. The link can also be found at the top of the website under Creative Commons.

And if you're just interested in learning more about Creative Commons, check out their site.

Why I keep my ebook prices low.

There has been many an article written about the good or the bad that comes with the low prices of ebooks. And we can see valid points from each side. But in the end we only care about what we are doing here at The Public Factory. We price most of our books at 99 cents. And if we have collections in the future or longer works they'll probably be at the 2.99$ mark unless something dramatic happens. Yes, we'd like to make a living from our writing. Pay off some student loans. But we just don't feel comfortable selling at higher prices.

Anyway, as I said just a few sentences ago here at The Public Factory we are trying to keep everything super low and super affordable. Why? Because we want these pieces read by anyone with the ability to access ebooks. In a perfect world we would be able to send out cheap physical copies as well. But we can't so we strive for cheap digital works. And why besides feeding the minds of readers everywhere?

For us it comes down to pulp magazines, aka the pulps before that dime novels and before that penny dreadfuls. Most of us here love literature. And more than that. We love pop culture. And we love adventure and weird stories. And amazing characters. No one here grew up with pulps. They came later. We knew their next of kin, comic books though. 

Before comics became 4$ each they were good inexpensive forms of entertainment. Monthly and short. These were our pulps. Looking at the history of comics and their heroes we found that before them pulp heroes such as The Shadow, The Avenger and Doc Savage were making their rounds in super cheap serialized books. These books came out frequently and were all over the place. Magazine racks were saturated with pulps in their heyday. Competition was fierce and it was about how much great entertainment you could put out at how low a price.

People now are worried about what cheap ebooks are doing to sales. And the satuartion of the market. That good authors and books will just be lost in the ocean of cheap crap. But why be worried about that? Why not embrace it! We have it easy compared to the pulp publishers of old. Low overhead. Small staff. And easy distribution. Imagine supporting a publishing company with tons of editors and writers and a warehouse and monthly printing by selling 15 cent magazines. Even in the 1930's that's a lot of magazines to sell.

So what am I getting at on this post? That maybe we shouldn't worry too much about cheap ebooks. Let the old literary industry price their books at 6.99$ up. It's fine with me. I still pay those prices for writers I really admire. But let those of us who are into writing fun and weird stories do that. And don't worry about us selling low and cheapening the craft. We are the starting point to the love of reading. We got our love of stories from comics. Before that our parents had the pulps. Before that our grandparents had dime novels. We're just continuing the tradition.

In your eyes equating ourselves to pulps may seem backwards. And perhaps to you we may not seem like much. But we are. We are genre and we are strange and we are something to entertain. And hopefully along the way something that makes you think. Something that sticks with you and makes you want to pick up the next book out there. Cause in the end we'll take our cues not from the huge publishers like Random House. But from places like Street and Smith Publication. And if the history of cheap entertainment can teach us anything it's that there's room for both the cheap and the expensive, all things inbetween and unthought of. Cause the good books will rise to the top despite the price. And hopefully take their readers along for an amazing ride all the while.

Laughing at that Science Fiction Future!

I was in my journalism research class a few weeks ago waiting for it to start when someone mentioned the article writing robot. This classmate found it weird and slightly worrisome that a robot could write something well enough to be enjoyed by humans. This got the rest of the class asking questions about what makes good writing and what else will robots be doing? Then the teacher walked in.

He immediately came in tot he conversation. He'd seen the same article. But was he worried? That would be a big, fat NO. He was not worried. He waved his hands and he laughed it off. This wasn't some old as the hills professor either. This was a younger guy who had just earned his doctorate. He thought it was interesting. But nothing to worry about. The robot was only writing formulaic sports articles about the basic stats and outcome of the game. This wasn't really writing! He said only hacks should worry about it. And the real journalists like him would be fine. As a bonus, he won't have to worry about someone dropping that kind of work on his lap. He'll be writing real pieces. The rest of the class nodded along with him and began laughing as well. The idea that a robot could take a humans place in such creative matters! That's complete science fiction! Ha!

Instead of laughing away their worries people need to be ready to ask some serious questions. Science and technology is not getting any slower. And humanity must be ready to understand the role that these once science fiction scenarios will have on our lives.

So robots writing serious journalistic pieces is science fiction now. But so what? 

When we look at science fiction we tend to brush it off as unrealistic to expect X to happen. Specific scenarios seem implausible especially looking at writers' and futurists' track records for predictions. Specific scenarios may never happen but variations of them have, are, and will happen.

Let's look at smartphones. No one would have predicted such a technology would saturate society. But it has. And the abilities it possesses are changing the way we think and the way we interact. But how could we have anticipated this without knowing the exact scenario? We look at science fiction. We look at depictions of brain augmentation where you can pull out any answer to just about any question. Kinda like googling. Or telepathy where contact is almost instantaneous between individuals. Kind of like instant messaging. And that leads to the filter for privacy seems to be breaking away. Linda like Facebook oversharing.

Fitting the brain with hardware and a phone may not be the exact same thing but the brain augmentation scenario let's us as humans practice asking questions and thinking of our own reactions. What would we do if we had all the answers at our fingertips? How would we act differently if people could contact us almost anywhere in an instant? Questions we are asking now but could have been asking then.

Making us think is something that good science fiction does. What a good futurist does. Publishing the latest Kalibak Tor book Clones: Gangs & Such reminds me of that. It makes me realize how important science fiction is to humanity. But it gets laughed at for being over the top and almost always wrong in predicting the future. We shouldn't be thinking of these predictions as a true/false test but more as reading comprehension for us. Because it is not the future scenarios that will be tested in the end. It will be us. And instead of laughing at the future we need to seriously consider it and its variations. Who knows? It may be just a smartphone now, but how much longer until it does give us answers automatically and sends automatic telepathic updates to friends and family? Huh...?

Yeah right! Hahaha! That's never happ....Oh wait, I just remembered autocorrect and Foursquare.