Transcript:
Hello, this is Ansela, and you are listening to Adulting for Authors. Yeah, that’s right— I’m back.
So yesterday, I decided to post a little message, a little note on Patreon for my patrons. And it was mostly to tell them that this week’s chapter for Fake-Married to my Billionaire Boss is late, which, of course they already knew. Because yesterday was Thursday, and I was supposed to post it on Monday. That’s what I promised right? At the beginning of the month of October, I posted a thing and said, Okay, so we’re going to do this more regular. I decided I should be more regular with my rewards. So once a week, at least for my $1 and $3 patrons. So I said every Monday — new chapter. At least, that’s to begin with. I might add some more stuff next month, but I didn’t want to overwhelm myself.
So the first Monday of October, I was late. I think I posted it on a Wednesday. And then on the second week of October, I posted it on a Thursday. And this week, it’s Friday. Now, I still haven’t posted the chapter, but I did promise them that I would have it up within the week.
While I was recording it. I was, like, you know, I could have just typed this up. Just written up a post on Patreon. Because I can do that. Why am I going through the trouble of setting up my microphone and recording and mastering the file? Because I never post audio raw. I’m very insecure about my voice. I need to add a little bass, compress it a bit.
And I realized that I was just really sick of typing. I was sick of putting down written words. I mean, I still love the writing. It’s fun. It’s just the physical process of typing words. I just needed a break. I guess that’s why I decided to just pick up the mic and talk. I mean, there is a transcript. I have a transcription software, I use otter. So yeah, there is a transcript of that audio message. I use otter.ai. And it’s decent. I still need to clean it up a bit after. But accessibility matters. My point is, I did it with an audio file. And then I realized — Why? Because I have things to say. I want to update my website, my blog. But just the idea of typing another post did not appeal. And I thought maybe I should just say the words. And I remembered, Oh yeah, I had a podcast which I stopped several years ago. This was way before the pandemic. I thought maybe I should just say the things I want to say over there. Besides, it’s mostly about publishing stuff. Anyway, it’s the same kind of content.
And so here we are episode one of season two. I’m going to try to make this more regular as well. This is this is apparently going to be my goal for 2022: to be more consistent with my content. Maybe an episode a week, I don’t know. Maybe every two weeks. We shall see.
For now, because it’s been a while since I posted anything on my blog or put out a new episode on this podcast, I have a lot of stuff to say. Some of it is a lot of whining. Because I whine a lot on my Twitter. If you’re familiar with it, it’s @anselacorsino. Yeah, you can find me and follow me over there, if you like.
So updates! Not that kind of update. More like, you know, what’s going on. I finished a new book. And because I’m a serial author, when I say I finished a new book, it means something different from most other authors. Because I serialize my stuff, that means by the time I “finish” a story, my readers have already read most of it. As soon as I finish a chapter, I clean it up a bit (I try. Sometimes I forget.). I clean it up a bit and then post it online. It’s usually Radish first, and then a few weeks later I post it on Wattpad.
So three weeks ago, I posted the last chapter of Unmasking Mr. Darcy on Radish and the other day, I posted the last chapter on Wattpad. It’s around 80,000-something words. Which was a relief because I was worried my books were getting longer and longer. The last one before this was 125,000 words. So yeah, it’s like a nightmare to just edit and format and whatever.
Unmasking Mr. Darcy is complete, and you have six days to read it for free on Wattpad. After that, I’m going to leave just a small preview, maybe five chapters. And then on Radish, it’ll still be complete, but it will be paid. It will be a paid story. But I requested that we use the pay-to-unlock model, which I will explain if you’re not familiar with Radish. Radish, by the way, is a fiction reading app. If you like romance, there’s a lot of it on there, including my books, of course.
So, wait-to-unlock.
Generally on Radish, you pay by the chapter. Like the first few chapters are free and after that, if it’s a paid story, you pay to read each chapter. With a wait-to-unlock method, you can actually just wait for the chapter to “unlock”. That means it becomes free for you. So, say, the first 10 episodes are free, you can wait an hour for chapter 11 to become free. And then after that, you could wait another hour for chapter 12 to be free. If you don’t want to wait, you can just pay for it and read it. But technically, you could wait for each chapter to unlock after an hour— except for the last like five chapters which are permanently locked, which you will have to pay for if you want to read it.
But I think that’s a good deal. It makes it more affordable for everyone. If you’re willing to wait an hour for a new chapter, you just need to pay for the last five. That’s what’s happening on Radish. And if you prefer ebooks, I will also have it up on Gumroad which is my direct ebook selling platform of choice because it’s just pretty easy to set up over there. And that way I can get to sell my eBooks DRM-free, because I really do prefer to sell my my eBooks DRM-free.
A new thing I’m trying now is accepting ebook purchase payments through GCash. If you live in the Philippines, you’re probably familiar with GCash. I mean, it’s like everyone I know has it. It’s an e-wallet. And it’s it’s very convenient. A lot of stores — in fact, every store in my building, because there are stores downstairs convenience stores, water refill stations, laundry shop, they all accept GCash.
I’ve been meaning to do this a long time ago. The problem was, if you send someone a payment through GCash, your text notification will contain the full government name of the person you send money to, which is, um, I’m a little sensitive about that. Considering identity theft exists, right? I’m not comfortable with people with strangers basically, knowing my full government name. Now that’s changed recently, because of the huge proliferation of spam text messages, which have gotten pretty scary these days. Because not only do they have your number, but they seem to know your full name. I checked my spam folder the other day and I saw two. It’s a dual SIM phone and only one of those numbers is linked to a GCash account. And the spam messages I got that address me by my full name were sent to the number that’s connected to my GCash account. So it’s really not a surprise how they got it.
These days, you will get the same text notifications, etc. on the app, but the name of the recipient is kind of bleeped out. Like, you get the first letter of the name, but the rest are like asterisks. I felt safer now giving away my GCash number to accept payments. It’s up on my website.
Now I put up a page with instructions and the QR codes too just to make things easier for everyone. So instead of typing the number, the QR codes are helpful because you just need to upload it on your GCash app and then you can make the payment. They’ll tell you how much. It’s just so much easier.
So I did that the other day. It was early this week. And the first time I posted the page, I did not have the QR codes. I typed in my GCash phone number. And guess what? I made a typo, I put in a three instead of a two. So now there is a person out there somewhere who has gotten about $20 worth of GCash payments from people who are trying to buy my books. And I didn’t catch it until like, maybe 18 hours after I put the website up. So of course, the first thing I did was to edit the page and put in the correct number. Right. And, and of course, the people who tried to purchase my books, it’s not their fault. That was totally my fault. So I told them, it’s fine. I consider your orders paid for. And then I gave them the the ebooks, right.
So yeah, that’s, that’s what happened. Fortunately, everybody else who ordered after that, used the — I think they used the QR codes. And everything went smoothly. I’m really happy about how it’s been working. Because it’s a new payment system, I offered a discount, which some people did avail of.
But man, that was a really stupid blooper. You know, I really recommend doing this. If you’re selling ebooks, especially if, if you’re an indie author, and you’re selling your ebooks, try accepting payments through GCash. Again, it makes for better accessibility. Because not everyone has a credit card or a debit card. And even then not a lot of people are comfortable using a credit card or debit card except in like, I don’t know, I guess, huge brick and mortar stores. Maybe not online. I mean, I get that. Sure, I had my share of lost money because of failed transactions and stuff. All you need to do is put up a page on your website.
And if you don’t have an author website, why don’t you have an author website? That’s ridiculous. That’s, like, the first thing you need to put up if this is a thing that you’re doing. Don’t trust just having a Facebook page or a Twitter page — you’re building your store on land you don’t own. That’s the analogy.
Own your website. But everything on there. One of these days, I’m gonna post an episode about author websites, which is a thing I really obsess about. It has to do with the fact that I was— I still am — a web developer. So it’s one of the things weirdly enough a lot of authors sleep on. You’re losing a lot of opportunity by not having your own website and a newsletter.
So yeah, that is what’s been happening recently. I’m hoping I could get this up very soon.
Okay, I’m gonna talk about this podcasting process of mine, just in case, some of you authors out there want to do your own podcast, which is, I think, a really great idea. The barrier to entry has been lowered so much the past couple of years. I mean, the way I do it is a little more complicated. I run my podcast directly from my website, I don’t have podcasting platform. This is not something I recommend, unless you’re, like, a tech person.
My process used to be— I’d have an interview, I’d have sound etc. I use Adobe Audition for the audio mastering. I kind of quit my subscription to that because I stopped podcasting for a long time, so there was really no point in me paying $20 a month just for my subscription. And I thought, instead of getting back my Adobe Audition subscription, I should just use all the free software that I have. Like, I’m recording this on GarageBand right now, and it’s a little tricky because I hadn’t used this software in a really long time, not since my early days of podcasting, which was like a decade ago, I think. There’s, like, too many things.
I kind of miss Audition, honestly. But I think I got this down. But I’m not mastering this on GarageBand because it’s not really good for that. After I record this, I’m going to use Audacity. If you’re wondering why I’m not recording this on Audacity….
It’s the weirdest thing. I tried, but for some reason it wasn’t recording. I suspect it has to do with the fact that my version hasn’t been updated in a while. Which I’m not going to [do], because I think Audacity was bought by some company that was, like, just kind of sketchy. I forgot. It’s been a while since I looked up what happened, but there was some problems with the terms of service with regard to privacy issues. That’s why I didn’t want to update my Audacity. So now I have a very old version, which apparently now cannot record. But I can still, apparently… I can still use it for mastering.
My old process… right. The first time I did this podcast, it was so complicated. And it was like… so many things. And I think that was part of the reason why I quit, because it was just too many things. And once something gets tedious, I just… I just stop. So I figured this time, I was going to make the process quick and dirty without sacrificing quality. I’m still gonna master it, I’m still going to do an EQ pass, I’m still gonna compress the audio. If you’re listening to this and you’re having problems with with the audio or whatever, I would really appreciate feedback and email adulting [at] anselacorsino [dot] com.
So that’s my plan— make things quick and dirty, as much as possible to get everything done. And then, like, put it online. That is my process now. Well, you’ll find out if it works. If you’re an author, I do recommend making your own podcast. It’s a nice change from from all that typing of words and stuff. Sometimes you just want to take a break and just just talk.
And… that’s it for now! Until the next episode. I will talk to you later. Have a really productive writing week, everyone
