Licensing Restrictions? Boo!

AVI-8 watch brand has been doing Peanuts collaborations lately, releasing watches that use Snoopy character on its watches. And they proved extremely popular, often selling out on the night of release. Literally.

So I’m on their mailing list. I might not have the $$$ to buy the watches they release, but there’s no cost to checking them out online, right? Previously, they released the “Flyboy Engineer” series. But what’s shocking to me was that they could NOT sell these products to US or Canada due to licensing restrictions.”

Since AVI-8 had not installed this limitation with their previous releases, the party insisting on it is the copyright holders for the Peanuts franchise. And for the upcoming Hawker Typhoon Baldwin series, again they are imposing licensing restrictions against US and Canada.

Once is an oddity. Twice makes it a pattern/policy. The question is why? If, for example, due to high demand, low supply, they prefer to focus on a certain market (Asia, Europe), that makes sense. But with the Flyboy Engineer series, out of 3 variants, only one has sold out. Clearly, the licensing restriction backfired and prevented their sell out. So why impose this restriction for the new release, especially considering this is the first time Charlie Brown appears on an AVI-8 watch?

I don’t understand this policy. *shrugs*

RIP Kindle Unlimited

Amazon launched this service back in July of 2012 partly to create more demand for its Kindle reading devices. Back then, it was facing competitors in Kobo and Nook, so it made sense that Amazon tried to distinguish its electronic device by building an ecosystem around the Kindle.

Kindle Unlimited meant consumers having access to unlimited books similar to how Netflix subscribers could watch unlimited media content for a monthly fee. And it worked–but not in the manner that I think Amazon had predicted.

Device sales have dropped partly because consumers don’t read as many ebooks as before; not when AUDIOBOOKS arrived on the scene. Imagine you’re a UPS driver or a long distance truck hauler. Going hands free (leaving them on the wheel) and listening to a narrator reading the book is a vastly different (and some say lazier) experience than tabbing the device to scroll over to the next page.

The fact that Amazon rebranded Kindle Unlimited to Kindle+ (and offering enrolled audiobooks to the service) reinforces the rise of audiobooks and the fall of ebooks. This is what the consumers want, and Amazon is facing/conceding to reality. Some people might hate the use of Virtual Voice service to narrate audiobooks and simply boycott them.

Since Amazon is really a metrics-focused company, its push to include Virtual Voiced books in Kindle+ could reflect the growing use of VV to produce audiobooks and consumer willingness to accept them. As a indie author who have used both live narrators and VV service, I could understand why.

Ignoring audio narration quality, a live narrator would take days and weeks to produce a commercially acceptable audiobook. The VV service turnaround is a handful of days, unless it meets a glitch in the conversion somewhere. For most indie authors, they won’t be launching the audiobook simultaneously with ebook/print versions. It’s most likely they would release the ebook and then consider hiring a live narrator if the book produces sufficient sales. If the ebook generates only a handful of sales, for whatever reason, launching a simultaneous print/audio version would only compound the loss.

That being said, Kindle+ will be paying audiobook royalties by the pages read. Amazon promised to increase the monthly pot for paying out consumed content. But I’m highly skeptical. I fear ebook authors are going to see their payouts reduced due to the audiobook inclusion; a slightly bigger pie to split among more eaters would mean smaller slices for each person. We will find out next month.

Paying For (Editorial) Review?

My inbox received an email from Reedsy announcing their relaunch of Reedsy Discovery platform. They offer editorial reviews with a minimum of 350 words for $299 per review.

Honestly, I don’t use Reedsy services, so I wasn’t aware they offered editorial reviews. 300 bucks is pretty pricey, especially if the reviewer isn’t well-known A-list author or a social media influencer with tons of followers. I believe Amazon would accept it so long as you post those reviews in the editorial section of your book’s product page. Since it won’t appear as a customer review (or receive a star rating) though, it’s questionable if a potential reader would even see it.

Would an indie author/publisher be better off spending that $300 buying Amazon, Google, or Meta ads? That’s the more interesting question in my opinion. And timing is also an issue here. Say you have a book launch today, if you set up an Amazon ad campaign, it could be up and running tomorrow. But if you use this review service, you would wait, cross your fingers, and hope a reviewer will pick your work to read and submit a review 2 weeks later. That’s 2 weeks after your book launch, and your momentum has decelerated or died.

As you can tell, I question the value of paying for an editorial review versus an ad campaign that could generate immediate attention to your release. That’s why I’ve never used Reedsy Discovery, and I can’t see myself doing so when paying for an ad campaign would be more effective.

Writing Progress, Sept ’26 Edition

After releasing book 2 in The (Secret) Tower Lord series, I began working on the next installment. As of the end of September, I reached 16.7k words. I’m undecided whether to treat this new book as the finale for the series. Modern/urban fantasy has its appeal. But a political thriller fantasy seems rather nichey, so I’m not surprised the series hasn’t drawn that much readership.

On the flip side, book 2’s release brought some interest in my (extensive) backlist, so there’s the silver lining. Book 1 also got some new reads/borrows/ratings, which is very much appreciated.

In any case, I expect the new/current writing project to remain consistent, in the 100k-word range. So whether book 3 is the series finale or a continuation is too early to think about at this point. I expect to spend the rest of 2026 writing the first draft before starting the final round of edits for publication next year.

Thank you for your continuing support! Xoxo

iPhone Duo = New Status Symbol

At first glance, it’s hard to understand who is the intended consumer for Apple’s upcoming foldable screen phones, aka “iPhone Duo,” with its $2k selling price. With a 7.6 inch screen (when unfolded), this device is, in reality, a tablet pretending to be a smartphone.

Sure, you could use the extra screen space for facetime and streaming videos. Power execs will have their secretaries and aides carry these devices for Zoom and other online meetings on the go. So, I do expect it to be widely adapted at the executive level in business settings.

But for the rank and file workers, a $2,000 phone becomes a demonstration of your wealth, income, or earning power. I wouldn’t be surprised if youngsters start popping up at bars and social events carrying the Duo. And loan sharks will likely have a field day offering loans to desperate folks fishing for wealthy partners to hook up with and treating the Duo as a tool for this endeavor. Pretend until you make it indeed.

As for Apple itself, the company obviously realizes the Duo would cannabilize iPad sales. But iPhones is were the company makes its money, and the costs of chips make iPads less profitable than before. So losing iPad sales wouldn’t hurt as much if Apple could convince its consumers to pony up more $$$ for the Duo instead.

So, will people start saving money now for the Duo launch in late October? Will we see a noticeable dropoff in consumer purchases/spending as a result?

We are Live!

The (Secret) Tower Lord 2: Post-Integration Earth is officially published on Amazon and also available on Kindle Unlimited.

Our Joel Black finally comes out of hiding within his tower and confronts a vastly different Earth. New continents are added by the System, bringing aliens bent on expansion and conquest of humanity!

But since our MC pretended to be dead, he takes on a new identity as Pal, the sole Beastmaster in the world. He joins the Hunters Association and relocates in Long Island and NYC. But his missions soon pull him beyond the borders of USA.

Meanwhile, America’s enemies target him for assassination again. How will Joel protect himself without revealing his secret class as a tower lord? Will he be forced into hiding again?

Thank you for your support! xoxo

Writing Progress Aug ’26 Edition

I finished the first draft of my manuscript, reaching 101.3k words. Subtracting from July’s 80.4k, that comes out to 20.9k words for August. I also proceeded with the editing process and finished the first round of edits. So now, I’m going through the manuscript a second time and still making important changes to the novel here and there.

I hope to finish/finalize the edits and publish Book 2 of The (Secret) Tower Lord series either later in this week or sometime next week. Stay tuned. =)

Benefit Versus Requirement

My current writing style is to review and edit each chapter as I write, rather than leaving the edits until the first draft’s completion as I had done previously. The benefit is that I would spend far less time in edits compared to the second method and the details would be much fresher in my mind. Conversely, edit as I write would slow down the daily and weekly word count. But I view this as a reasonable tradeoff.

Right now, I’m in the latter portion of the current manuscript. Our MC is returning to NYC while riding on his flying serpent. But some New Yorkers are upset by this. Why should a Beastmaster enjoy special privileges to fly across the city sky? And endanger local residents with a possible crash into tall buildings?

So i needed to come up with a reasonable explanation that City Hall could offer to justify this situation. Otherwise, we would have civilians riding horses on the street and pretend these creatures are tamed beasts, too. What I came up with was treating our MC as an emergency responder who REQUIRE his tamed beast to react to emergencies ASAP rather than a privileged BENEFIT. One change of the word resolved this theoretical problem.

If we had used AI to generate the content, it wouldn’t necessarily appreciate the difference or nuance between these two words in this context. This is the sort of human touch needed in writing stories, in my view. Will AI someday offer such nuanced wording? Perhaps. But not currently.

Backfired

Amazon sent me an email this morning notifying me about a recent book release from a well-respected fantasy author that I follow on their website. The book was literally published yesterday, and it generated 1x 3star review in total–from an advanced review copy (ARC) reader (who got the copy via a ARC distribution company). And it turns out the reviewer is gushing with positives about the work but probably click three stars by mistake.

I plan to keep an eye on the work and see if that 3 star review would crater the book sales. If so, that would be really, really bad luck. The work is published by a traditional (but smaller) publisher, who had spent gobs of money on a nice fantasy cover. This situation shows that even going the traditional release route, getting a fancy cover, going through the hassle of ARC, and you could still risk having a poor book launch. Yikes.

Writing Progress July ’26 Edition

At the end of July, my current manuscript reached 80.4k words. Subtracting from last month’s 52.6k words, that comes out to 27.8k words for the month. It’s a bit less than last month’s progress, but okay considering we had July 4th holiday celebration and whatnot.

I’m targeting 100k words for this book 2 in the Secret Tower Lord series, meaning I expect to finish the first draft during this month of August. Here’s a small preview of this upcoming book:

The Appraiser is dead. Drowned. Body cast out to sea. How will Joel Black re-emerge from his secret tower and return to the world? What is his place in it now?