Category: The Committee

The newsletter has a name! I’m calling it Five by Five, and it is now a combination publication for all of my subscribers: science fiction, fantasy, gamelit and more! Five by Five is also the motto for my reader community, since we’ve worked pretty hard to get reliable communications established.

After almost four months of work, this site now has a pristine email configuration, meaning other sites treat my email as legitimate by default, absent some kind of bizarre error. It used to be my messages would land in promotions, or spam or what-have-you, largely because my outbound email wasn’t configured properly. It now passes all the tests, both necessary and unnecessary, so there isn’t any further work to do on my end.

That said, my subscribers may still not be getting my messages for whatever reason. There are solutions to this problem which I plan to implement. Alongside my newsletter improvement campaign, I intend to include premium work in future issues, work which my readers deserve. However, in the interests of making sure that work actually gets delivered, I have constructed a system to make sure those readers remove as many obstacles as possible. Here is what I’ve come up with:

Note: Your Newsletter Tier will be included in all emails. This new system goes into effect June 17, 2026 starting with issue number #248. One note on issue numbers: Each unique newsletter gets a new issue number, so any particular tier of subscriber may get newsletters that are out of sequence, since each tier may get something different on any given day.

Tier 0: This is the default status of every new subscriber. If we acquire a new email address, we start here. The only messages Tier 0 subscribers get are “if you would like to subscribe to Shane’s newsletter please reply to this email.” If they reply, Tier 0 subscribers are considered to have “opted in” and are advanced to Tier 1. If a Tier 0 subscriber does not reply, they are eventually dropped.

Policy: The reason we do “opt in” and “double opt-in” is because email providers take great delight in penalizing us. We are therefore forced to relentlessly analyze our list to avoid including subscribers that simply park on the list and never participate. It makes it look like they don’t want our newsletter. Whether that is true or not is immaterial. Our subscribers must be active or they can’t remain on our list.

Tier 1: A Tier One subscriber is someone who has “opted-in,” meaning they gave us an email address and they explicitly requested a newsletter subscription. That’s a good first step. The next step is to make sure our sending addresses are whitelisted and/or added to a contacts list so we are recognized by foreign email servers automatically. So we ask Tier 1 subscribers to send us confirmation via email that they have added us to their contacts list or address book. That step advances a subscriber to Tier 2.

Tier 2: At this level, subscribers start receiving newsletters because they have “double opted-in”. That means they responded twice to requests. The standard edition of Five by Five goes out to Tier 2, meaning they get updates on new work, new site features, new art, keywords and so forth. Standard edition newsletters are occasionally enhanced with images and interactive buttons, but are often text only to avoid being relegated to promotions. Standard newsletters announce special offers from time to time as well. In order to advance from Tier 2 to Tier 3, a subscriber must make at least one purchase from Getabook.today using the same email they subscribed with.

Tier 3: Tier 3 subscribers get standard newsletters with one important difference. Tier 3 gets you access to discount codes. These are included with Tier 3 newsletters on a regular basis. Only Tier 3 and 4 subscribers get access to discount codes. To reach Tier 4, a Tier 3 subscriber must make at least one purchase from Getabook.today with a discount code. When they do, they are advanced to Tier 4.

Tier 4: Tier 4 subscribers get the premium newsletter. These issues are the gateway to the all-access-pass: exclusive offers, premium story chapters, priority keywords, hidden surprises, access to experimental publishing projects, the option to test Battlebooks™, Videobooks™ and so forth. Almost all premium editions of Five by Five are enhanced with color images, interactive buttons and other features. Tier 4 subscribers also get invitations to our message board where they can interact with other readers and myself, discuss interesting topics, review brand new works before they are published, participate in community projects like Every School in America and so forth.

Special Provision: If you subscribe to Five by Five with a Proton Mail address, you automatically advance to Tier 4. The above referral link also gets you a $20 credit from Proton Mail.

Special Policy: The reason we favor Proton Mail is because they actually deliver what we send. Their app also opens links in a web browser instead of a security nightmare. It should also be emphasized that deliverability deteriorates, so we will occasionally send “control” emails to various subscribers that require a response. A subscriber who does not respond to a control email is either returned to a lower tier or dropped to preserve the quality of our list. Our plan is to provide subscribers with value. All we ask is that our subscribers return the favor.

“This property has stopped processing data.” my analytics says. Fair enough.

This site has stopped using Google analytics.

I’ve added a “Tech” section to the Blogroll, and included the inestimable Emacs Org Mode. The Tech sites are a little more permanent than the Sites of the Day.

There’s a new recommended book and I’ve instituted a policy of no longer linking to Amazon for book recommendations. Authors: Build your own web sites. Put your book on your own site where you can protect it.

In case you are wondering, I maintain a blogroll. It’s where I link to other interesting sites on the web. Not social media posts. Not big tech’s gigantic piles of debris. The web. Where we all have our own sites and we link to each other because that’s how you make “the web” and not an endless river of diseased #(%&*@%.

It was a lot of work, but it was both worth it and necessary. I’ve consolidated all our most vital operations to our own land, as it were, so we can have a little more control over the quality of the product we’re putting out there.

The Internet has changed quite a bit since I got started. Keeping in touch with readers is challenging, but at the same time it is easier than it was all those years ago. The good news is we are no longer dependent on outside services for our vital communications. I like to think of it as one less point of potential failure. In order for us to grow our audience and invite more subscribers, we have to be consistent. This is one of the steps we had to take to make that happen.

I have five primary commercial web sites now: One for the Starships series, one for the Ironjammers, one for the bookstore, one for the studio and the fifth one for Bitbook. There are other ancillary pages, but those are the main points of entry. The Committee is equally associated with each, which is why I’ve added all of the sites to their own section on my links page.

I have several other publishing projects I’ve completed over the years which are no longer being actively updated. These include the First Kiss Romances, the Incredible Untold Story of Sailor Moon, my Kings and Conquests LitRPG series, the Million Dollar Artist™ series and so on. The books will still be available in the store, but they aren’t going to have their own “sites” per se because we’re not actively pursuing any ongoing new titles currently. This may change, of course, but for now the two major initiatives are the Starships Universe military science fiction series and the Ironjammers fantasy adventure series.

It wasn’t all that long ago I had separate pen names for all these books. The logistics involved in keeping them all organized were overwhelming. Don’t ever do that to yourself if you’re an author.

The thing I’m most excited about is Bitbook, because it is where I can fulfill all the plans I had for the Library-Tron and still make entire novel-length titles available for purchase. I will publish my first experimental title there soon. I think it will be a lot of fun.

I will also be launching an Ironjammers newsletter soon, so I can keep readers up to date on what’s happening with my fantasy series. Believe it or not, my fantasy characters have been around a lot longer than my sci-fi crews. Those books will come together quick, so don’t miss out.

Head over to my links section (it’s in the menu above) and take a look at what’s new. I’ll be updating much more frequently now that I’ve got everything semi-organized in one place. Black out.

The proper balance between illustrations and words has been a controversial topic for writers for some time. As authors, we rely on words to communicate, and to the extent we need illustrations, we limit them to book covers.

There is a reason for this. Imagery, animation, illustration work, and getting the look of something right is almost as time-consuming as getting the story right. As authors we end up with a trade-off. Either we spend hours making what will never be better than an amateur illustration combined with an amateur attempt at compositing typography and effects, or we spend that extra time working on the words.

The old cliche “a picture is worth a thousand words” isn’t quite accurate. A picture is worth more like half a day and at least one derailed train of thought, and for me, that can add up to more like six thousand words. That’s ten percent of a medium-length novel, and that can be expensive. Really expensive.

I’m fond of saying I have an unlimited special effects budget. But I only have that if I stick to my knitting. The very moment I open Photoshop or GIMP or whatever, the limits on my special effects budget become overwhelmingly apparent, and the limits on the time I have to fiddle and adjust and tinker become even more apparent. Every hour I spend on that illustration is 1500 words I didn’t get written today.

As authors go, I’m relatively experienced with graphics tools. I know GIMP and Photoshop well. I’m a fair to middling Blender user, and I’ve got journeyman skills with the tools in the Adobe Suite. I’ve had to develop those skills over the years as I’ve worked on video game projects, animated ads, audiocast projects and so forth.

But now, my business is books, and if I’m going to be good at something, it’s going to have to be writing and not gee-whiz graphics. I’m well aware of what happens when you overspend on graphics and underspend on script.

So on to the sourcebooks. You might ask what a sourcebook is? Well, it’s where I gather all the information that doesn’t necessarily make it into a story as is. It’s where, for example, I list things like a character’s favorite school subject, or a fighter pilot’s most prestigious accomplishment or award. It’s where I take what is two-dimensional and make it three-dimensional. It’s where I find out who a character really is before they get to that important scene readers care about most.

The sourcebook is where I describe all the creatures in a fantasy story, or all the enemy starships in a science-fiction story. I also build maps (without graphics, believe it or not) and name all the locations on various planets or realms where adventures take place. Readers appreciate it when stories get their own details right from chapter to chapter.

You would be surprised at just how much source material you can produce writing a 98,000-word fantasy novel. Every character has to be accounted for. Every treasure and creature has to be written before they can be included in the story. I have a list of nearly 100 starships in my Captain Jason Hunter series. It’s nice to be able to look up their names instead of trying to keep them all straight by re-reading previous chapters.

One of the most popular features of some of my past web sites have been the character profile pages for my LadyStar warriors. My Featured Creatures™ have also been popular, and I think some of the source material I’ve composed for Starships at War will be interesting for readers too. The thing is, those past sites had tons of graphics, which are among the things I can no longer produce in the quantities I need.

I want to start putting my sourcebook material up on my site, but I don’t have the time or the budget to illustrate it all. Naturally, I already have most of it written, but with thousands of pages of material, there is no way I can generate graphics in that kind of volume. There’s also the issue of mobile readers. Even if I could get the illustrations done, making them look right on desktops and mobile devices will consume incredible intervals of time I should be investing in new chapters and new stories.

So I have to make the trade-off and sacrifice graphics in favor of words. This is fine with me as an author because I’d much rather write my creations. I’m sure some readers will be disappointed I won’t have a pretty picture to go with each page. Perhaps someday I will find an artist to illustrate what I’ve imagined here and have the budget to do it well. In the meantime, I hope you’ll understand if I go easy on the multimedia extravaganza so I can get everything written that needs to be written.

Look for new material from my sourcebooks soon. Black out.