June Bug June
June 2025 edition of the Boopish Newsletter
Topics (click the link to go directly to the thing):
Amazon’s newest rip off
Short story competitions
Book 3 updates
New low content project
Metaxysm updates
L.H. Soaps - New candles!
I’m quitting YouTube for now (maybe a more in-depth topic for another day)
In case you missed this post:
Love them or hate them, Amazon is (unfortunately) here to stay.
Amazon is one of those companies. And by that, I mean, they’re such a deep-rooted conglomerate that no matter how much you hate their business practices or Jeff Bezos, people will still feed money to the machine. Why?
~ Because it’s convenient. ~
I remember when I first registered for an account waaaaay back in 2002-ish when Prime wasn’t a thing, and their offerings were mediocre at best. In 2005, they offered the free 2-day shipping model for an annual fee of $79. From here, they added on other “perks,” such as music, streaming, gaming, reading… you can even get your prescriptions filled by prime pharmacy. With all these new perks, we’ve seen the price of prime rise from $79 annually to a whopping $139 annually in 2025.
Going back again, in 2007, they released their KDP services, which was a tremendous leap for non-traditional (indie) authors to release their failed queries to market—oftentimes to tremendous success (e.g. Brando Sando). I’m not sure if they were the pioneer of this feature, but it’s had such an impact on the publishing market, edging out traditionally published works with an influx of self-published books (including AI trash, but that’s a topic for another post).
I publish all my books on Amazon, in addition to Draft 2 Digital and Ingram Spark. After the blow up in late February where Amazon announced they would no longer allow your Kindle purchases to be downloaded, there was a lot of buzz in the author community about whether they want to stay with the platform. Following the news, several self-published authors expressed sentiments of rage, in addition to comments such as, “well I make more on other platforms, anyway.”
Not for me. I make most of my (abysmal) sales on Amazon.
And now, they’ve announced that on June 10th, they’ll be reducing the royalty structure of print books that are priced below $9.99 from 60% down to 50%. This means my beloved horror comedy novella, Hillbilly Vamp, is going to have to go up in price for paperback, from $7.99 to at least $9.99. It’s only 96 pages, and the print cost is going to remain the same. That means they’re just pocketing the extra.
I understand businesses need to business, but come ON, Amazon. You’ve raised the price on Prime, took away our ebook capabilities, and now you’re lowering royalties on our blood, sweat, and tears. Not to mention the atrocities you pull on small businesses using your platform to sell their goods (again, another topic).
I love that they’ve opened up this tool to make more author’s dreams come true, but now it’s become unrecognizable. I will not raise the price of Hillbilly Vamp on other platforms, but I have to on Amazon. If you use the link in the banner, you’ll see all the places you can get it.
Just to reiterate, this is ONLY for print copies. The ebook is still $2.99. However, if you want the ebook, along with a guarantee that the copy is yours, get it through my personal shop link HERE.
Anyway, rant somewhat over. I could say more, but honestly, the topic is tiresome.
My short story, Digital Reverie, has made it through 5 rounds of judging on Writing Battle. It lost 2 duels, so it’s barely hanging in there! I won’t know the final results until June 13th. One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that I made it much farther during a professionally judged competition than a peer judged one. I think this speaks volumes about the nature of certain communities and their tastes.
My short story for the Spring Micro Fiction challenge, Terminal Vow, took place during an apocalyptic game show featuring a picnic and a bride. It was a peer judged story, so I don’t anticipate it going very far. I made the cover above, and I’ll let you determine the potential outlook of the story…
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m arranging all of my short stories into an anthology that I hope to release sometime early next year. If I do a Kickstarter for it, I can create a fancy cover with foiling! I’ll let you know if I go that route, and hopefully some of you would be just as excited as me to make it happen :)
BOOK UPDATES
Reaper’s [_E_AC_]
Have you guessed the title yet? I’ll reveal more each time, but I’m hoping to have this book written sometime in the middle of summer. I actually have the cover mocked up, but I’m having second thoughts about whether or not to change that…
As the story progresses, the current cover (which I commissioned last year), doesn’t make as much sense anymore. I mean, it makes *sense* in a broader way, but I don’t think it’s going to be as impactful as the current idea that I have.
The Artist’s Soapmaking Workbook
I have another project that I’m doing mainly for me, but if there is interest I might set up something to make it available, whether that’s print on demand (like Amazon), or Kickstarter.
It’s the Artist’s Soapmaking Workbook! I rarely make the same soap [design] twice. Unless it’s a special request, I’ll make it as many times as needed. Every time I settle in to make a batch, I write everything down in a regular spiral bound notebook. Over time, it starts to bother me because the format isn’t the same on every page. So, I’m adding some structure and reference tables to this one, along with mold calculation sheets. That way, I always have a reference to a recipe or design that worked well (or didn’t work well). I’m still working on it, but I’d love to show you whenever it’s done!
Metaxysm… part 2, 3, 4…
I’ve told some of you this already, but when the final book in the Northern Roseaarde series is done, I’m going to revisit the three different endings in Metaxysm and create spin-offs. I haven’t decided on length, so they could be full novels, or just novellas, like Hillbilly Vamp.
LH Soaps & Sundries updates
It’s been a while since I’ve made candles, but I do love them. I ordered a mold of succulents that I thought would be neat for soaps, but when I got it, the cavities were tiny! So I redirected, and created cute little toppers for this lovely green candle scented with Asian Pear and Lily from Nature’s Garden Candles:
I also wanted to use this newsletter to mention that I’m giving YouTube a break right now. I haven’t posted a video since early May, and the last one is only sitting at 50-ish views. I created the channel back in 2017 (or 2018 I can’t remember exactly), and my intent was to create tutorials and commentary. Well, my tutorials did better than the commentary, and now my tutorials aren’t doing very well. I don’t think I have the personality for YouTube. Plus, it’s a pain to record everything, export, import, cut, edit, voiceover, etc., for it to not even touch the algorithm.
I may come back, but I don’t know. We’ll see.
Latest YouTube Video(s):
(this section will probably go away soon… I’m also not creating any more playlists)
That’s all for now! Thanks for being awesome :)
Is it Reaper's Legacy? I loved the first book. Your style is so unique. I am hoping to read book 2 soon.
It’s Reapers Legacy 😬