How to Fail as an Author: A Memoir and Guide by Steven E. Wedel

If you’d told me at the beginning of the year that I was going to write a how-to book for authors, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But I have been reading so many of them that just didn’t seem to cover my situation, that I decided to outline one. Then I wrote a chapter. And another. And pretty soon I had a book.

I asked my friend Rick Hipson, interviewer and author of A Reviewer’s Guide to Writing Book Reviews: And How to Get Paid for Them to write a foreword because he’s been following and interviewing me off and on for a really long time. I was thrilled when he said he’d do it! Here’s a little taste of what Rick said:

I know that most readers of (insert genre here) don’t know who Steve Wedel is. I hope this book changes that a bit, and not just because his name is obviously written on the book as its author. I know that to read Steve for the first time is to wonder where the hell he’s been hiding out your whole reading life. At least that’s how it went for me. If it goes the same for you, then I envy you the fresh thrill of catching up with his impressive body of work up to here…

Rick is a kind man. You should definitely read his latest book and learn how to make some cash reviewing … my books! haha

I’m going to offer up a few more excerpts here to give you a feel for the book. This is from Chapter 5: Short Stories …

So, I wrote short horror stories. I took my typewritten pages with no eraser holes, but with a few handwritten corrections, put them in large brown envelopes, drove to the post office, and explained I needed to mail this and pay for return postage and put this envelope inside. You’d be surprised to know the number of times I, a teenager or in my early twenties, had to explain how to weigh and price a submission and self-addressed stamped envelope to postal clerks who obviously didn’t encounter many writer-types.

Invariably, the stories came back. See Chapter One for a good part of why.

But, this chapter is about where I was sending those early stories.

Twilight Zone magazine was my Mount Everest. It was a “slick” magazine, meaning the pages were glossy, high quality, and made to last. They also paid professional rates, which at the time was three cents per word. All the big name speculative fiction authors of the time were publishing in Twilight Zone.

Here’s a bit from Chapter 6: Small Presses …

At some point in 1998 or 1999, I almost fell into one of the oldest traps out there for writers. You have to remember that the internet was not what it is today. You couldn’t just sit down and research something. There was no Writer Beware website listing scams and shady dealers. So, I submitted Shara to Northwest Publishing, Inc. and, to my utter shock and disbelief, someone from the company called to say they wanted to publish my book.

Glory hallelujah! It was finally about to happen!

Except this is a book about failing, so you know it certainly was not about to happen.

The person on the other end of the phone was a smooth talker. My book would be available to every bookstore. It would have a full-color cover and be in a popular trade paperback format, blah blah blah. He’d send me the contract and a sample of one of their books by FedEx and I’d have it tomorrow.

He did. I did. And I read the contract, which is probably something he hoped I wouldn’t do because, you see, Northwest Publishing, Inc. was a vanity press. They weren’t going to pay me. They wanted me to pay them! Then they’d send me a bunch of books I could try to convince bookstores to stock and sell.

Here’s one more, from Chapter 9: Going Indie …

One of the issues with Amazon’s KU program is that the author has to agree to only publish the books through KDP. That means my books weren’t available to Barnes and Noble customers, or Kobo’s, or to libraries and a host of other retailers and venues.

Also, the internet is full of horror stories about authors having their entire KDP account shut down because a bot misread something, and appeals are not always easy or successful.

Then I heard about this concept called “going wide.” It turns out, there were alternatives to Amazon’s KDP. I read about an aggregator called Draft2Digital where I could upload my books once and they’d be available to multiple outlets that Amazon didn’t reach.

Hell yeah, brother!

I began pulling my books from KU in late 2022 and uploading them to D2D as fast as the KU agreements ended. Now, I didn’t take them down from Amazon’s KDP because Amazon has some specific criteria that has to be met and, while D2D does have an option to create Kindle books, it’s just better to upload directly to KDP. As long as you avoid Kindle Unlimited, you’re perfectly fine in doing this.

The book even comes with pictures. There are a lot of my book covers, of course, but there are other gems, like this shot of me signing the 3F Publications edition of Shara while sitting beside Gary A. Braunbeck, who is in conversation with Jack Ketchum.

On May 1, I posted the first chapter of the book (pre-edited). On June 2nd, I posted the table of contents. Then I had the idea to ask for a foreword. And then another idea hit. I’d make a free e-workbook with chapters that corresponded to the chapters of the actual book. So I started on that, and it ended up being almost as long as the memoir itself. So, yeah, if you buy the book, at the end you’ll find a link to download a free 71-page workbook that will hopefully help you avoid some of the setbacks I’ve experienced.

Here’s a tiny bit from the workbook’s Chapter 5: Short Stories …

Writing short stories can be an excellent way for aspiring novelists to hone their skills, develop ideas, and gain confidence before tackling a longer work. That’s exactly what I did and what I talked about in Chapter 5 of How to Fail as an Author.

Here’s an exercise designed to guide you through creating short stories that will serve as building blocks for future novels.

Exercise: Crafting Short Stories to Prepare for Novel Writing

Objective: To develop the skills needed for novel writing by creating short stories that focus on key elements such as character development, plot structure, and thematic exploration.

Step 1: Choose a Central Theme or Concept

1. Identify a Theme: Think about a theme or concept you’re passionate about or that intrigues you. It could be something broad like “forgiveness,” “identity,” or “betrayal,” or something more specific, like “the impact of technology on relationships.”
2. Reflect on Potential Novels: Consider if this theme is something you might want to explore in a future novel. If so, this short story can serve as an experimental space to explore this theme in a more condensed format.

I hope you’ll give How to Fail as an Author a try. It’s part memoir, part how-to, and hopefully a good dose of humor and encouragement. I know it’s not like reading a Stephen King or John Steinbeck memoir. I don’t have their credentials. But I do have 40 years of trying to get to where all of us authors want to be, and sometimes it’s good to just hear what a fellow traveler has experienced on the road.

Happy writing!