Dear wanderer,
Some good personal news: one of the greatest milestones for me lately was obtaining my permanent residency in the UK. That has changed my legal status here from a corporate slave to something more of a normal person, not a citizen (yet) but close enough. I don't want to dig into the details now and you probably don't want to hear all that (unless you do, in which case let me know haha). This change has not only brought me peace of mind but also more certainty and ability to plan and execute those plans freely, including financially, including my writing career plans. After five years on the work visa, I can work at any job I want, run a business, and earn extra income of any kind, including getting paid for my writing, either from traditional publishing or from indie publishing—so I have a lot to explore. Now, I don't want to "pull the cat by the balls" (there's a saying in Russian, akin to "to drag one's feet") and talk about "the business".
Over the past year, I've been making this publication looking more and more professional. I've moved it to a dedicated website with the design I wanted, introduced proper tags, categories, navigation, and é to Nova Nevédoma—and there's still a lot of work to do. All those changes, I believe, add a personal touch and a flair of exclusivity.
The next, some may say inevitable, step was "going paid" and "charging for my work". This topic has resurfaced in the STSC recently, and DB, whose opinion on it resonates with me, advocated that charging for one's artistic work is necessary, and one better do that earlier, for that cultivates a professional and serious attitude towards the craft, and simply fairer for the artist.
Independent writing and publishing is expensive. I pay editors, illustrators, voice actors, and other people involved in the process when it's required and I can't do something myself or with the great help of my friends (thank you, by the way). Running the website, paying for software, ordering proof copies, etm. also cost money. Don't get me wrong, I don't complain. People have all sorts of expensive hobbies or bootstrapped businesses, so why writing can't be one for me? Especially, if I'm going to treat the craft more professionally. I'm willing to invest my own money into it because I care about the result, and your, my dear reader, help will matter a great deal in that journey. That's your opportunity to make the result, my books, better.
So, there will be a few ways to support my work:
- Buy my books. Below I'll talk more about what books are coming soon. There will be a section on my website, a bookshop, where you'll be able to find all of them. By the end of 2024, I aim to have 4-5 books published independently.
- Buy a single story. I'm going to try selling ebook-versions of my stories that are longer than ~5000 words. You can always read them for free on the website, but if you desire to support me financially you'll be able to buy an ebook in pdf, epub, and mobi format for your convenience. The first story like that is coming out this week.
- Buy me a coffee. Soon, I'll also enable one-time donations that don't require any log in or sign up. If other means of support don't work for you and you just want to throw in a few quid (or bucks), this will be the easiest option.
- Become my literary patron. A monthly subscription, simple and flat £5 / month, no marketing tricks.
Now, a bit more about the last offer:
To become a patron, you can click the button below and upgrade to a new tier in your account. It would require you to login on the website.
If for some reason the button doesn't work for you, here's the link https://www.nova-nevedoma.com/#/portal/account/plans
Further down in this post, I'll outline every bit in detail, for both free and paid subscribers, and provide more context and reasoning behind my decisions and plans for 2024.
Fiction
Fiction isn't really "work" for me, it's more of an escape from work, and I don't want to change that, so there won't be "a schedule" as there has been none for a long time. Inspiration comes and goes, some stories take longer to write than others, hence I simply can't promise a certain amount of fiction to be written every week or two weeks or any other fixed period. I've been writing at least one short story a month, mostly for the STSC symposium, while working on longer works. The plan is to keep doing it that way.
I published my first short story collection in December and so far I've sold around 25 copies, including pre-orders, which is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC! Thank you, everyone, again. Some books are still on the way to their happy owners and will reach them soon.
In the upcoming few months, I'm planning to publish two more physical books:
Deleted Scenes From The Bestselling Utopian Novel—which now I refer to as "a mosaic novel", because it combines a series of stories of different length that happen in the same universe, roughly at the same time, featuring different characters. All of the "chapters" were published already on the website, but I'm editing them so they all work together as one whole, which doesn't only include some worldbuilding details, but also the order in which they appear in the book.
The Adaptation Of Fever Dreams—a collection of all my previously published stories that weren't included in other books.
Later this year, I'm going to finish my WIP novel called Paperburgh, which aims to be my best work so far (of course). It won't be published on my website for free and will be available only to patrons in digital format (pdf), with physical books and ebooks available for purchase by everyone. The primary reason is the novel includes some important typography and formatting tricks and cannot be published online easily—the magic will be lost! It's "Paperburgh", so it's designed to be on paper (or at least in pdf).
All these books, along with my future works, will be available digitally as part of the Nova Nevédoma library. Patrons will have a free library pass and will be able to downloads all my books. You will be able to read it in any ebook reading app, or send it to your Kindle, or print it, or share it with your friend. At the moment it doesn't include any exclusive pieces, but it might in the future. I will let you know!
And, as I briefly mentioned, I'm going to sell ebook versions of some of my longer stories and novellas separately for a few pounds each. While most of them will still be available for anyone to read on the website, the pdf, epub, and mobi versions will require a purchase. All of them will be available for no extra charge for patrons. In fact, if you're a patron, from now on, everytime I'm sending a new story, there will be an ebook version of it attached.
I don't want to paywall everything, so offering ebooks together with other bonuses seems like a good way to move forward.
And I'll think what interesting I can do for patrons regarding the physical books as well and let you know later!
Translations
It's been a pain point for me. See, I LOVE doing translations, not only because it improves my writing (through improving my English) and I learn a lot during the process, especially while researching for footnotes, but also because I love sharing hidden gems and obscure pieces with people. After thinking about it for a while, I realised that sharing and curation is my favourite aspect of doing translations. While I feel alright "shouting into the void" when publishing my own stories, seeing little or no response to translation feels demotivating sometimes because the key aspect, sharing, feels lost. At the same time, translations take a lot of time, they are actual WORK, which is why I tend to prioritise writing my fiction over doing them.
Despite all those struggles, I want to keep doing translations and, perhaps, becoming more professional in that area in the future. As a Russian-native, a huge part of my reading has always been translations and I deeply respect and appreciate the labour translators put in their work and think it deserves more praise and gratitude. Thus, to align with that and provide some external (monetary) motivation for myself, I've decided to make all future translations published on Nova Nevédoma exclusive to my patrons. Some of the big translation projects will be published as standalone books and still available to everyone to purchase.
Current translation plans include:
- Tolstoy's essays.
- Zamyatin's essays and lectures.
- A curious piece of correspondence between Turgenev and Dostoevsky.
- Leonid Andreyev's short stories.
- Vsevolod Garshin's short stories.
- Ivan Bunin's memories of Chekhov.
- Full Chekhov's first ever short story collection with footnotes, biographical details, and introduction from me. I want to recreate the original book with the original cover and publish it! Are you in?
- and more...the list is really huge and I will surely ask patrons what they would like to read next!
Monthly Digests
When I have enough things to bundle and highlight, plus to talk about something important to me, I'll send an email containing links to all my published work since the previous digest, including pieces from this website and from elsewhere if there are any. I do publish some small things on my revived Substack, which I use only for quick, raw and emotional free-form essays, social interractions with other writers, and, most importantly, self-promotion. Some of my pieces are published as guest posts in my friend's publications, and some pieces are only published but not send by email. I want you to see and be able to read those works of mine, hence the digest idea. That would add a bit of a discipline and self-reflection to my publishing flow and give me another chance to discuss interesting things with you. Next one will be in March. March 2024. End of the month.
That's all for today. Thank you for your attention!
Until next time,
Vanya