Bittersouls is now available!
A Shade. A Storm. A Soul.
Cursed with forbidden knowledge, 19-year-old Dela must hide her secret from her nomadic tribe or face exile into the frozen wasteland of the Bitters. When she becomes separated from her people during a blizzard, a mysterious and dangerous wanderer named Talon promises to help her find her way back to them. She quickly learns that nothing is what it seems, that her curse may actually be a gift, and that the Bitters are far more dangerous than she could have imagined.
It's happening! At long last, my debut novel, Bittersouls, is available for purchase. It's available in paperback and eBook, and if you just can't wait to get your hands on it, click here: eBook/Paperback. (They are still in the process of linking these on Amazon’s end.) I had intended on starting the eBook’s Free Promotion today, but Amazon wanted an extra day to think about it. So it will instead begin tomorrow and run 12/18-12/20!
For those of you that have stuck around, I’ll talk a little bit about how this book came to be. Like most stories, Bittersouls started with an idea. For me, a lot of story ideas come from songs. Sometimes when I listen to a song (usually one I've never heard before, but sometimes one that I have), an element of a story will press its way into my mind, unbidden. Almost like an intrusive thought. Sometimes this is a character. Sometimes it's a place or a piece of a magic system. Sometimes it's just a moment—a blink of time without context or explanation, but which compels me no less convincingly to discover more about its nature and source.
Bittersouls was no different. I was listening to "Set The Fire To The Third Bar" by Snow Patrol ft. Martha Wainwright and was struck by a visceral image of frozen isolation in the midst of a snow storm, but in that image was this sense of warmth held close to heart, keeping the frost at bay. It took a little while for me to further explore the idea, but that image ultimately evolved into the Warmth that features as a central part of the worldbuilding in Bittersouls.
I began drafting it after completing a short story project in September of 2019. I had only three months until my second child, Tiber, was due to be born, a timeline that I knew was probably impossible to meet. At that point, the only novel I had actually completed had taken me a year and a half to pen—and it wasn't even close to readable. It was actually my wife, Julie, that pushed me to draft it, despite the timetable, because she had liked the idea so much when I'd told her about it a few months before.
So I decided to take a chance. I worked out an outline for the book in about a week, including all the reveals and plot twists—something I'd failed to do properly with the previous novel, contributing to the delay in its drafting. I worked out that if I drafted a chapter a week from that outline, I'd finish just a week before the due date. It was madness, and I knew it then, but it was just the sort of madness that might actually work.
I pushed forward at that desperate clip, week after week, emboldened by my alpha readers' approval of each chapter as I finished it. I posted each chapter on my website and on Royal Road as I went as well, and though I didn't have a lot of readers, I did have some. I finished the draft just about when I planned to, which ended up being three weeks before Tiber was born, since he went just shy of 42 weeks. It wasn't incredibly polished, but no first draft ever is. What mattered was that it was complete, and more importantly, it was readable. I was the best thing I had ever written, maybe even good enough to be my debut novel, once I got around to editing it.
Well, as you might know from reading some of my previous posts, revision and editing are not my strongest skills. It took almost two years for me to hammer that initial draft into a shape that I considered passable for submission.
It was at this time that I realized I had made a grave and terrible error. By posting an early draft of the book online, I had, as far as the publishing industry was concerned, already published it. If someone in the industry looked at it, it would be considered a reprint—something that very few publishers will consider, due to the prestige of what are called First Print Rights. Long story short, I had massively shot myself in the foot if I wanted to get it traditionally published, as I now only had the option of a handful of publishers, rather than the whole market, to send it to. I'd always dreamed of being traditionally published (you know, as that young lad writing stories), so I gave some of these options a shot. But as any successful writer will tell you, you'll get ten rejections before you get an acceptance, and when you only have six options… let's just say that math doesn't work out for you.
So I had a decision to make. I had already put 2+ years of work into Bittersouls, and though I'd learned a lot during that time that would carry forward into my later work, it seemed a pity to have nothing come of the book itself. It was supposed to be my debut. My first real novel. I knew it was good enough to be published, I just hadn't found the right market for it with so few available. So what was I supposed to do?
I did some research. I did some thinking. I ran some numbers. I went through phases of doubt, followed by phases of confidence, followed by phases of doubt. I knew what I had to do, I just didn't want to admit it to myself. I didn't want to let Bittersouls die, but I had always dreamed of being traditionally published. You know, published for real. That was what I thought that meant.
So I did more research. More thinking. More numbers. More doubt, confidence, and doubt. I read about people who had been traditionally published, and how these days they are responsible for their own marketing—not their publisher. I read about royalty numbers. I read about average book sales. I read about the costs of editors and cover designers. In the end, everything I read told me one thing:
Indie publishing is not what I thought it was.
In fact, it may actually be the way of the future. Where once authors needed big publishing houses to put up the funds to distribute their work, we now have access to easy digital distribution and print-on-demand services through companies like Amazon. Editors and cover designers are readily available and easy to find online, offering fair prices for excellent and professional work. Advances from traditional publishers are just that—advances. Most books don’t even sell enough copies to make that money back due to the abysmal royalty percentages. On the other hand, indie published authors earn more than double (2x) the royalty per book sold. Indie authors have control over who they use as an editor (traditional publishing houses force you to use the one they like). Indie authors have control over who does the cover art, its style, and what it should include, while traditional published authors have no control whatsoever. Both have to do their own marketing, so there is no difference there.
So what does traditional publishing even have over indie anymore? A meaningless badge of external validation? Plenty of poor quality books are traditionally published every year. If big publishing houses are supposed to function as some kind of quality filter, they do a terrible job of it. There are good and bad books on both sides of the equation.
It should go without saying, but what matters most is quality. Readers want a good book. When they read a good book, they sometimes leave a review. This helps other readers find the good ones and filter out the bad ones. What need do we have for the ineffectual “publisher filter” when the market already has systems in place to sort by quality? No matter how a book is published, it should be done well. It should be done right. It should be the very best that it can be. For an indie author, that means doing your research. Hiring an editor. Hiring a cover designer. Taking your book as seriously as a publisher should—because you are the publisher. As an indie author, you’re not just a writer, you’re a small business owner. You have to treat it as such.
So this is where I am on my journey. I know I haven’t arrived—there’s still so much to learn and so much to write. But no matter where we end up, I’m glad that you have decided to take this journey with me.
I hope you enjoy Bittersouls—but a chapter in my journey, yet a journey all its own. Find it here: eBook/Paperback
Sincerely,
L.A. Morton-Yates