Twenty-three timestamps. Slurs, f-bombs, a detailed explanation of how she’d storm Penguin Random House and hold the building hostage until they gave indie authors book deals.

And it just didn’t seem right to leave all that on the cutting room floor.

Tia Ja’nae has been banned from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit. She calls herself the president of the Fuck Amazon Fraternity Incorporated, so you might imagine she’s some never-was in the literature world. Far from it.

She’s a Pulitzer-nominated playwright whose debut crime novel got shadowbanned, bootlegged, and sold overseas by Amazon without her seeing a dime. One copy resold for $750.

By necessity, Tia is truly independent with her writing, in a way most of us never will be. Never could be.

This is the full conversation—over an hour of Tia walking through the entire history of American publishing, from the 1970s golden age where a heroin addict could mail a manuscript from prison and get a book deal, to the “lipstick lesbian trust fund baby agents” who now decide what gets published. She explains exactly why she spelled certain words correctly in her novel and refused to change them, even when Amazon tried to bury her for it.

She talks about why indie authors are too scared to say what they actually think. Why writers selling books to other writers is a trap. Why fan fiction isn’t killing literature—corporate IP hoarding is. Why most of you are undercharging for your ebooks and should be embarrassed about it.

And she issues a challenge: What are you going to do about it?

Tia is also the managing editor of Black Market Fiction, so if you’ve been curious about the person reading your submissions—now you know exactly who you’re dealing with.

Fair warning: If you’re easily offended, this isn’t for you. Tia doesn’t do disclaimers and neither do I.

*If you didn’t know, Substack videos can now be viewed on Apple TV and Google TV. If you don’t have either of those platforms, be sure to download the Substack app so you can listen or watch wherever you are.

What I mean by that is so many independent authors are still asking for permission.

“Is it okay if I…” is a common sentence when I first talk to my editing clients. What do you mean, “is it okay?”

The sense of disempowerment is endemic, which is the opposite of what independence is meant to bring. You don’t need to beg Amazon’s algorithm for permission to be discovered or go down a checklist of genre conventions to tell the story you actually want to tell. You certainly don’t need to ask the ghost of some literary agent who rejected you years ago for permission to believe your work has value.

We internalized rules that were never ours.

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But people conveniently forget the first part—the part about the critics.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.”

Roosevelt was talking about politics, but he could have been talking about indie authors.

Everyone Has Opinions Until You Actually Build Something

When I announced I was launching a digital magazine and mentioned accepting unpaid submissions—me, one person, self-funding everything with no investors, no corporate backing—the internet lost its mind.

“Scammer.” “Exploiter.” “Money should flow TO the author!”

Never mind that I’m paying for hosting, design, advertising, and taking time away from my actual income-generating work. Never mind that I’m building something that doesn’t exist yet and…

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I’ll let you decide if those two things are connected.

For authors just starting out, it can be a tough call as to whether an event like this is worth it, even with the separate “tracks” each session is coded with (not yet published, published, and full-time income authors). So for your viewing pleasure, I published my thoughts on the conference, whether I thought it was worth it, and what changes I’ll be making based on what I learned there.

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Bold, saturated colors. High contrast. A visual that communicated exactly what it was in under a second—vampires, 80s aesthetic, dangerous fun. It grabbed attention in my Instagram feed, even as a static image. Even bracketed by frantic reels featuring pretty girls trying to sell me pretty things.

This is what book covers should be doing. This is what marketing a book should be doing.

But somehow, in author circles, there’s still resistance to this kind of bold signaling. Well, maybe not the signaling in itself. They resist change. They resist adapting to the “modern audience.”

Even among not-yet-published authors, there’s an undercurrent of contempt for any member of the public whose head isn’t turned by their artistic, abstract, and subtle cover art (and/or blurb).

Stopping the scroll, they say, is somehow beneath us.

Maybe big publishing houses can afford that posture for a while longer. They have …

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His final post before deleting was a full-on manifesto of why he was done with it all: the audience is fickle, the algorithms are rigged, AI is flooding the market, everyone wants everything for free, and the “business” of writing is beneath the dignity of someone who just wants to write well.

I read it twice. The first time with sympathy, because indie publishing is brutal and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt every one of those frustrations myself. The second time was with a sick sort of familiarity. Because buried in that rant was a belief I’ve seen sink more writers than any algorithm ever could: the idea that good writing should be enough. That talent will find its audience. That if you build it, they will co…

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I thought that was an oddly aggressive take, though made in good faith. We have mutuals in common, so I responded with what I thought was a measured take: paywalled articles are only problematic when used as “proof” for controversial claims in tweets. Otherwise, writers charging for their work is perfectly reasonable. Writing is a job requiring skill, time, and effort. If readers find value in it, asking for money isn’t wrong.

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Kit Perez (@shepardscale), an intelligence analyst and resistance expert, explains why this happens: we’re trained to emotionally trust systems that will never reward us. In this week’s interview, she breaks down the difference between owning customers (Amazon’s game) and owning readers (yours), why traumatized writers fall hardest for publishing scams, and the three non-negotiable rules for building a parallel economy that can’t be stripped away by algorithmic whim.

Watch if you’re ready to stop performing for a machine that sees you as extractable value.⬇️

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Publishing’s obsession with “safe” characters is creating a slop epidemic of bland stories that say nothing and bore everyone, including the very people they’re trying to please. It’s time to let your characters tell uncomfortable truths and be genuinely human—even if that makes them unlikable.

My new video is now live. Enjoy!

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But here's what makes this conversation different: Rian came into the writing community from the outside. He's seen what actually works in building audiences and selling books, and he's watched indie authors make the same pathetic mistakes over and over again.

He's going to tell you exactly why most indie authors are frauds - why they're more interested in playing writer than actually writing, why they prioritize being liked over being read, and why they're sabotaging their own success with participation trophy mentality. This is an amazing conversation.

Check it out!

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But then, author and Pulitzer-Prize nominated playright read my article and left some amazing comments with her inside knowledge of the literary and publishing world. With her permission, I have compiled them here for you. Every author needs to read it. Read it again. And take it to heart.

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From Tia Ja’nae

Here’s the rub. For too long, the industry (i.e., mainstream) published nothing but white guys. Think Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, that silent generation/baby boomer generation. We all know this at this point. Every now & again you get white women if they were “good.” Think Collen McCollough, Jackie Collins, Agatha Christie.

Then the 1970s happened …

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We all grew up with novels as our medium for the written word. Of course we did; the big publishing houses were still firmly in control. But now, even in the wild west of the indie author landscape, a lot of us are still operating under the assumption that success requires churning out 300-page epics destined for Amazon's bestseller lists. This mindset ignores a fundamental truth about the current market—different narratives require different formats, audiences, and platforms.

I used to write fan fiction. X-Men fan fiction, specifically. So know that it comes from a place of love when I tell you that your weird self-insert daydream, if published at all, doesn’t belong on Amazon.

Because of the stranglehold of trad pub, writers have gotten it into their heads that every piece of fiction MUST be a novel. But it’s not true. Kid Dynamo is the finest X-Men fanfiction ever written. But even if it got the copyright blessing of Disney Marvel, Amazon isn’t the right place for it. It’s not accessible to anyone without 30 years of X-Men knowledge… and it’s still a self-insert fanfiction, albeit a good one.

We’re all still clinging to the idea that if our story was GOOD, it would be sold on the Zon. If it’s available anywhere else (or God forbid, it isn’t behind a paywall), then it’s not REAL writing.

This is my plea to indies to look around. Trad pub is dying. So why are you clinging to their business model?

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The Death of the Publishing Gatekeepers & New Tech Platforms

Yes, I said it: The traditional publishing model—query agents, submit to publishers, pray for acceptance—is dying. Spare me your list of the four or five BookTok favorites that made their authors famous.

Legacy publishers cling to their antiquated systems, which requires a few winners and a whole lotta losers. Kind of like a pyramid scheme. And frustratingly, many so-called independent publishers are also following this model (and promptly going belly-up within a few years).

The internet has democratized storytelling, and it's time to stop pretending that a 300-page novel on Amazon is the only path to literary success.

Trad pub might be too big to pivot their entire business model, but they probably won’t, especially when it comes to male readers:

Part of the need to embrace new channels is the existence (and rapid acceleration) of AI, the steep competition for readers’ attention, and the simple disinterest in many to sit down with a hard copy book and read in silence. Stories can and should come in different forms to appeal to different audiences.

Before anyone freaks out on me, I am not advocating for the erasure of the traditional novel. They should (and will) continue to exist. And I will continue to read them. But there are a variety of ways to create, publish, and distribute stories.

Maybe you tried to write a novel and it just didn’t pan out. It’s not necessarily because there was a problem with the story. It might be because it needed a different format.

If you’re an indie author, you have options. Readers want stories that speak to their specific interests, their niche communities, their particular brand of weird. The mass market is fragmenting into thousands of micro-audiences, each hungry for content that understands them. And you already have what you need to provide them with the stories they crave.

Fandom Pulse

Fantasy Author David V. Stewart Predicts AI Will Transform Indie Fiction Into A Reader Services Industry

Fantasy author David V. Stewart offers his vision for how AI will reshape independent publishing in his latest video analysis, arguing that current AI adoption represents just the beginning of a transformation that will benefit both creators and readers. Rather than viewing AI as a threat, Stewart sees it as the natural evolution of an indie publishing …

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9 months ago · 19 likes · 8 comments · Fandom Pulse

Serial Fiction: Building Your Audience One Chapter at a Time

Kindle Vella may have gone belly-up, but serial fiction is still popular and can help you build an audience while you write. Platforms like Royal Road, Radish Fiction, and Inkitt have created ecosystems where readers develop relationships with their favorite authors.

Popular formats on these sites (in addition to regular chapter novels) include:

• Web novels: Long-form stories published chapter by chapter

• Flash fiction series: Connected short stories exploring a theme or world

• Choose-your-own-adventure narratives: Interactive storytelling that builds community engagement

Interactive and Multimedia Storytelling

You don’t actually have to limit yourself to text to tell stories. If you (or your audience) doesn’t particularly like sitting still or being in silence, there are growing multimedia storytelling options:

• Audio fiction: Podcasts and audio dramas are exploding in popularity

• Visual novels: Combining text with artwork and music

• ARGs (Alternate Reality Games): Stories that blend fiction with real-world elements

• Social media storytelling: Twitter threads, Instagram stories, and TikTok series

• Choose Your Own Adventure: Interactive fiction platforms like Twine, Choice of Games, and Episode allow authors to craft branching narratives where readers shape the story.

Community, Not Profit

My next video (coming Monday), is focused on readers who are not looking to replace their current income. There are many such authors; if you’re one of them, there’s no need to deal with Amazon or other e-commerce platforms. You write to share stories and to talk to people about stories.

There are places just for you and your work. Your vampire romance novel might flop on Amazon's general market, but it could thrive on Dreame or Galatea, platforms designed for romance readers. Whatever your niche or community, there is a site that’s right for you:

• Wattpad: Young adult and romance fiction

• Archive of Our Own: Fanfiction and transformative works

• Tapas: Webcomics and illustrated stories

• Radish Fiction: Serialized romance and fantasy

• Royal Road: LitRPG and progression fantasy

Revenue Streams (NOT Amazon)

Most writers want to make money from their work, even if only a little. The Amazon bestseller dream dominates most writer’s forums, but it's not the only way to monetize your writing. Or even the best way.

Smart independent authors diversify their income through multiple channels:

Subscription Models: Platforms like Patreon, Ko-fi, and Substack allow you to build a steady income from dedicated readers. Even Buy Me a Coffee has a store feature now. A hundred subscribers paying $5 monthly generates more reliable income than hoping for viral success.

Patronage and Crowdfunding: If you have a lot of upfront costs (graphic novel writers and other multimedia authors, especially) can use the crowdfunding model. Kickstarter campaigns for special editions, character art, or world-building content can fund your creative projects while building community.

Licensing and Adaptation: Your web novel could become a podcast, your short story collection might inspire a visual novel, or your serial could be adapted for other media. Think beyond the original format.

Merchandise and Ancillary Products: Fan art, character guides, world-building documents, and even physical merchandise can generate income while deepening reader engagement. Remember the interview I did with John A. Douglas? Well, he has since become a meme. His books have been selling like hotcakes and, hopefully, he can get some Orc City merch on the market so he can cash in on the internet fame. Get on it, John!

Genre-Blending and Experimental Fiction

Traditional publishers shy away from genre-defying work, but independent authors can embrace the weird. Your cyberpunk western romance isn't “too niche,” the audience you want just hasn’t been able to find it on Amazon. The internet rewards specificity over broad appeal in a way the traditional book market can’t.

Experimental formats gaining traction:

• Epistolary digital fiction: Stories told through emails, texts, and social media posts

• Hypertext fiction: Non-linear narratives that readers navigate

• Collaborative storytelling: Community-driven narratives where readers contribute

• Transmedia storytelling: Stories that span multiple platforms and formats

I’m Trying Something New Too

My latest WIP is a little something different than anything I’ve written before. It’s a thriller. It’s contemporary…

And it’s a serial epistle.

Starting in August, I’ll be releasing The Twitter Crush on Substack (on my other publication, Serial Journeys). I’m also planning a stylized hardback (much more than text on the page). God willing, I’d also love to do a full-cast audiobook, as it would translate perfectly to the medium.

I figure why be an indie author if I’m confined to one type of writing and one type of publishing?

Serial Journeys | Novels by Kristin McTiernan

The in-progress novels of Kristin McTiernan. Some Thrillers. Some Spec-fic. Always Awesome.

Every day you spend trying to squeeze your creative vision into traditional publishing expectations is a day you're not connecting with readers who need exactly what you're offering. The internet is vast, varied, and hungry for authentic stories, told in the format that works best for the story.

The traditional publishing model is dying. So stop wrapping yourself in the straitjacket they designed. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what new models indie authors come up with, and how readers respond.

If you don’t have the full 2.5 hours to watch the full podcast, here is just the book section, which includes some amazing examples of shorter novels that were life changing.

Echo is a cultural commentator, novelist, and thoughtful literary reader currently in the query trenches. You should subscribe to his Substack.

Echo Chamberlain's Substack

My personal Substack

I had nothing bad to say about Tim, but used his take as a kickoff point to talk about Worldbuilding and how much is too much. The video did pretty well, but honestly, I didn’t give much thought about how Tim would feel when he saw it.

Ya’ll he was MAD.

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Whether fiction or nonfiction, part of the “editing” process of any trad pub house involves making sure a book is thick enough. It needs to “feel good in the hand.” And if that means stuffing a tight, outstanding novel full of unnecessary subplots and meandering philosophizing by the main character… then so be it.

At least until recently.

Indie authors long ago realized that readers don’t actually care how thick your book is. They care if it’s good. And now trad pub is finally catching on.

Two years ago (2023), Esquire declared 'the year of the slim novel.' It wasn’t true though, at least as far as traditional publishers were concerned. But now, in 2025, seven of Esquire’s 21 best books list are less than 300 pages. That’s huge.

Traditional publishing has long favored 80,000-100,000 word novels and even bloating informational nonfiction to an unnecessary 60k-70k word count, necessitating higher retail prices and taxing readers’ patience.

It’s hard to be mad at the TikTok girlies for skimming their way through 10 books a month when you know up to 40% of them are filler.

Penguin Random House would rather commit seppuku than admit it, but independent authors are driving a fundamental shift toward shorter novels, which is a win for readers, and a win for ALL authors.

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What Defines the "Slim Novel" Revolution

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, widely considered one of the greatest American novels (for some reason I’ll never understand), contains just 47,000 words. Yet for decades, the publishing industry treated similarly concise works as anomalies.

Instead of taking a lesson from the success of short, bingeable works, trad pub gatekeepers designated them as punishment for honors junior English classes and established the unwritten rule that adult fiction had to be between 80,000 and 100,000 words. Anything shorter was relegated to the "novella" category—a category that only established authors could ever dream of getting published in.

This arbitrary standard forced basically all authors to pad their manuscripts with unnecessary subplots, ridiculous descriptions, and meandering tangents simply to meet word count expectations.

I love you, Ken Follett, but did we need FOUR ENTIRE PAGES of describing how Jack got into the church in Pillars of the Earth??

No. We didn’t. And publishers are finally waking up to that.

Word Count by Genre Quick Reference

The Indie Style of Publishing

In a time where production costs are rising, trad publishers are looking to indies for cost-saving measures.

1. Digital First: Though paperbacks still have the best sales rates, ebooks have the highest margins, and shorter books perform well in digital marketplaces.

2. Frequent release strategy: Many indies use shorter works to build reader loyalty and trad pub is encouraging their authors to release short one-offs between novels. (See Gillian Flynn’s novella The Grownup and her short story in the Rogues compilation. Also, Gilly, don’t feel pressure due to Gone Girl’s popularity. Drop another novel on us, honey; we support you and we’ll be waiting ❤️.)

3. Rapid publication cycles: Indie writers, especially those who write to market, sometimes adopt a spaghetti at the wall mentality: throw everything you got, see what hits, then lean into that. Shorter works allow trad pub to follow that model, at least some of the time. Testing market response quickly is vital for staying relevant and this allows them to take a risk on newer authors more often.

Indies also understand that their books are competing with Netflix, something trad pub is only just seeming to realize. Readers are busy and distracted by other media (hence why audiobooks are rising in popularity). But for physical book fans, they appreciate a book they know they can finish in a month and don’t have to force themselves to get through.

Also, we have among us a group of sickos who read books on their phone. Sometimes they read them on their computers. Why do you hate your eyes, anon? Whether the phone is “easier” for you or not, screen fatigue is real and it encourages shorter reading sessions, which is another bonus point for shorter books.

Also, go buy a proper e-reader, you absolute lunatic! The Kindle Colorsoft and the Boox Go 7 are the elite choices. The Kobo Lira Color is my preferred device but I know many people only read on Amazon.

💡 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

Traditional Publishing "Safe Zone"

• Debut novelists: 70,000-90,000 words

• Established authors: More flexibility

• Genre fiction: Most rigid word count requirements

Self-Publishing Sweet Spots

• E-book optimal: 50,000-75,000 words

• Print-on-demand efficient: Under 80,000 words

• Series strategy: 40,000-60,000 per book

The "Slim Novel" Revolution

• Under 70,000 words = Growing acceptance

• 50,000-65,000 words = New literary sweet spot

• Quality over quantity = Reader preference trend

Market Impact and Future Implications

The market has spoken clearly: in an attention-scarce world, precision trumps bulk. Shorter novels will continue to gain market share. The only question is how quickly the entire industry can adapt to this new reality.

They have the tools they need. Shorter books means lower price points (or at least it should). That means focusing on volume sales vs higher priced per unit sales. It means new and established authors being able to take risks with new work, “throwing spaghetti at the wall” to see what books sell, and in which format. Fiction has ALWAYS been a price-sensitive market, as affirmed by Beau L’Amour. So why are book sellers still pricing out a good chunk of customers with their chonker, door-stopper novels?

Having more short books also means reading as a whole becomes more satisfying for the consumer. Reader behavior data reveals books under 300 pages show completion rates 40% higher than their longer counterparts. It’s not even because of TikTok brain rot. We get a psychological reward by finishing something meaningful. In focus groups, readers consistently report higher satisfaction with shorter novels, describing feelings of accomplishment rather than exhaustion.

(If someone reported feeling exhausted by my book, I’m not sure I would recover from that!)

The "completion bias" also means readers are more willing to take chances on unknown authors when the time investment feels manageable. A debut novelist with a 65,000-word book faces far less reader resistance than one asking for 400 pages of commitment.

The lower barrier to entry might also be what we need to convince some of the “I don’t need books, I have video games” guys that you can have both.

So let’s keep up the pressure on the big publishing houses. If they are going to continue to operate their own rigid, exclusive club, the least they can do is put out books that the audience most prefers.

Lucky for all of us, technology has finally caught up to what writers want most, convenience, and the ability to get in a flow state across devices. I have been experimenting with E ink tablets for the better part of five years now and I own a couple of them.

But now there’s a new kid on the block and I was lucky enough to be asked to review the ViWoods AiPaper tablet, an E ink tablet that incorporates AI right into the interface.

If you’re looking for a device to bridge the gap between paper and pen and your computer this might be what you’ve been looking for. 👀

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It’s a big problem, especially for writers and other communicators. A recent contribution to the Ask a Manager advice column highlighted this perfectly.

Most everyone has worked in an office. So please read this and reflect on how this would have been received at any of your past jobs: (Question and response have been abridged)

Mentee Fired for a Vulgar Term

by Alison Green on March 25, 2025

1. My mentee was fired for using a vulgar term

I work in a regulated industry and there are specific education and license requirements to work here. My company has a mentorship program for those who are new to the industry. I was assigned an entry-level employee from my company, “Wendy.”

I thought things were going well. Wendy was bright and on the ball. But We…

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Book trailers are even harder. Luckily, was kind enough to lend his considerable talents to Black Magic’s Prey, a paranormal mystery—one that doesn’t really vibe with the Twilight crowd.

The trailer is perfect in my humble opinion, telling enough of the story to let you know if it’s for you, without giving away too much.

If it’s for you, you can get the book now on ebook, paperback, and audio. Enjoy!

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