Wolf O’ Rourc simplifies self-publishing … and saves your hair in the process
by Timothy Pike
If you’ve ever felt mystified by the process of self-publishing a book, or don’t know what’s involved—or if you know too much and just want someone to tell you the easiest path forward—then you’ll appreciate what our cover author, Wolf O’Rourc, is doing: simplifying self-publishing.
“In case you’re wondering,” he says, “I wear a wig on the cover photo, made from the natural hair I shed publishing my young adult thriller.”
Is that true? I have no way of knowing, because Wolf loves to joke around. But if you’ve ever pulled your own hair out trying to use—or even understand—some of the self-publishing tools offered by companies like Amazon, then you can see how easy it would be to experience hair loss (or “traction alopecia amazonia,” as Wolf calls it) out of sheer frustration.
His book, How to Simplify Self-Publishing and Save Your Hair, offers helpful tips as it guides you through the process, explaining the tools that help you knock out self-publishing tasks quickly and efficiently.
Based in Las Vegas (“a town nobody has ever heard of,” he quips), Wolf is active in the Henderson Writers Group, which sponsors the Las Vegas Writers Conference every year and also runs regular online critique meetings that anyone is welcome to attend.
Wolf lights up when he talks about how much this critique group has helped him write and fine-tune his work, because for Wolf, it’s all about writers helping writers by sharing information. In fact, this is how he managed to learn so much in the first place. “Like every good author, Shakespeare included,” he says, “I steal—er, borrow—the wisdom of other writers.”
In my interview with him—which is nothing if not entertaining—you’ll learn the one thing Wolf did that propelled him toward success more than anything else, what readers have found the most useful in his book on self-publishing, and what a “save the cat” moment is and how it can make your story even better.
TIM: Welcome to Books & Buzz Magazine, Wolf. Where are you based? Is that where you’re originally from?
WOLF: I’m based in a town nobody has ever heard of named “Las Vegas,” although I’m really literally in Paradise (township). Because of my neuralyzer problem, I only have vague memories of my previous lives. Some of them do include whispers of a fabled land full of story and song called “Los Angeles,” I think.
TIM: What led you to write How to Simplify Self-Publishing and Save Your Hair?
WOLF: I joined various writers’ groups years ago. Helping other authors comes with the territory. As the book’s title suggests, it came from a painful experience in my life. In case you’re wondering, I wear a wig on the cover photo, made from the natural hair I shed publishing my young adult thriller CyberSpiracy on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).
If you check various author fora online, you’ll find many similar tales of horrible self-mutilation. Those who started their career last year probably find KDP hard to use. In the dark ages, it was truly horrible. Particularly, KDP’s formatting tool misinterpreted Microsoft Word’s margin and widow and orphan settings. After two weeks of fiddling, I gave up and saved the manuscript as a print-ready PDF.
Too late for my curls, I discovered tools that made publishing so much easier. Pros use programs like Vellum or now Abacus for formatting, but simple narrative text like novels or memoirs doesn’t need that.
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A group of authors grew frustrated with the torture of ancient programs like KDP or Smashwords with its hundred-page style guide (no joke). They pilgrimaged up the holy mountain. There, they asked the programming gods for salvation and received it. Out came a tool to simplify publishing for the vast majority of writers.
Draft2Digital (“D2D” among friends) of course had the usual childhood problems, but when CyberSpiracy came out, they had gotten the platform to a point where it took care of formatting guidelines like the Independent Book Publishers Association with little effort by the author. For example, starting every chapter on the right in Word required an act of the Publishing Gods. In D2D it takes one mouse click.
To spare other writers my hair-ending experience, I developed a self-publishing workshop for the local library to cover some of the most important tools I use for various stages like formatting, meta data research, and creating sales pages. Before I could give the talk late March 2020, disaster struck. I won’t go into details so as to not traumatize your readers again. But I ended up with all this research and lots of time in lockup.
The book grew out of these trying times. To save authors from traction alopecia amazonia, it offers many tips and references to do self-publishing tasks quickly. For a standard novel without any complex formats—like tables or SMS text—you can publish an e-book in fifteen minutes. In the newest version of D2D, another fifteen minutes will give you a properly formatted paperback with correct table of contents and no widows or orphans. Like magic, provided you have all the pieces ready to go, of course.
TIM: What have readers found most useful in the book?
WOLF: Definitely D2D. The company has as its mission to help authors. Unlike some other companies, like the one starting with (*cough cough*) “A,” once you finish your review, they give you the EPUB and print-ready PDF for free. No strings attached. They also include other useful features like universal book links. It shows that the founders publish their own cooking.
For a commission, you can send the book through them to various retail and library vendors, but you don’t have to. It does make royalty accounting and managing book changes and sales promotions easier, as you can send updates to all participating websites with one click. You can find both Simplify and CyberSpiracy in the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, because D2D makes it easy.
Other free tools and a sprinkling of paid ones make researching keywords, categories, and creating the book description easier. Simplify shows you in detail how to do these tasks. If you don’t need that kind of handholding, I have an up-to-date list of tools with links on my self-publishing blog.
I have vague memories of a previous life as a programmer during the Roman Empire. If you think programming is hard, try it with V, X, and L.
TIM: How did you first figure out self-publishing for yourself?
WOLF: Like every good author, Shakespeare included, I steal—er, borrow—the wisdom of other writers. I’ve attended over fifty conferences by now, and as mentioned, participate in various writers’ groups. It helps that the Henderson Writers Group puts on the Las Vegas Writers Conference. I know how hard the volunteers work selecting the faculty and providing a good experience.
Many successful industry professionals cited in Simplify freely share their wisdom. The biggest problem is sifting through the information. For example, The Creative Penn has over 700 podcast episodes—hence my book.
TIM: Self-publishing has come a long way in the last decade or so. Do you think it’s now a better way to go than traditional publishing (that is, trying to sell your book to a major publisher or small press)?
WOLF: It depends on your goals. Publishing is only the second step. You have to market your work, build a fan base, and run your author business. As we discussed, tools exist to make every task easier and learn the ropes. A cottage industry of companies and professionals will help you along—for a fee—if you feel overwhelmed by the many decisions you still need to make, like the copyright or author page.
Some of my readers feel uncomfortable doing all these tasks on the computer, so they hire me for some of those. I have vague memories of a previous life as a programmer. From the details flashing by, like eagle standards and laurel wreaths, I’m pretty sure it was during the Roman Empire. If you think programming is hard, try it with V, X, and L.
Although even the big publishers now only give marketing support to their top authors, a reputable one brings along experience and a Rolodex. I found out the hard way that my first cover was not optimal. There’s a reason publishers don’t let authors pick their covers. Their marketing departments have experts who understand sales psychology.
Finding good help can be difficult and time consuming, though. Through an editor building her client list, I got a contract with a small publisher. From conference presentations on legal pitfalls, I recognized that some of the terms were too favorable for them. During the negotiations, the editor for my book changed. Eventually, the company ghosted me.
The Better Business Bureau received multiple complaints from authors. By the time I checked, a consumer protection agency filed suit against the publisher. Obviously, I should have checked with them earlier. So you have to weigh the time to pursue the traditional route against the effort to learn publishing yourself. Also, since companies have overhead to cover, the royalties from them pale in comparison to the payout from online vendors.
TIM: Do you have a regular writing routine?
WOLF: I try to get critique from my writers groups or online for every chapter as early as possible, instead of wasting weeks writing in a style that doesn’t fit the genre or is outdated. For example, The Lord of the Rings, by some measures, is 90% passive voice, because that was the popular style back then. Nowadays, publishers and many readers frown on it. You want to find that out before you put 150,000 words to keyboard.
On the other hand, I don’t want to waste my critique partners’ time with stuff that an artificial intelligence checker like Autocrit can easily find. So I polish every chapter while I write it, since I usually read it to the group within days. Easy, since the Henderson Writers Group has two to three virtual critique meetings a week.
In other words, I’ve moved away from sucky first drafts. With thrillers, the plot has to hold together along the way, since many readers get upset if you don’t include enough clues for them to solve the mystery. I carefully outline the plot using a custom beat sheet. Since I know what happens in a chapter, I can focus on wordsmithing, grammar, and spelling while I write, so the critique can deal with bigger issues.
The Lord of the Rings is 90% passive voice because that was the popular style back then. Nowadays, publishers frown on it. You want to find that out before you put 150,000 words to keyboard.
TIM: What one thing propelled you toward success more than anything else?
WOLF: Writing screenplays. I never worked as a waiter in L.A., so I had to follow another stereotype, right? But seriously, publishing a book may cost a few thousand. Studio-produced movies cost millions. The industry has much more rigorous methods to ensure a good outcome.
Blake Snyder admits in Save the Cat! that the methods and tips in the book he learned on the job. The industry also created standard terminology to make studio notes clearer. I doubt you’d find a screenwriter in Hollywood who doesn’t know what a save-the-cat moment is. The best one I know appears at the beginning of the original West Side Story from 1961.
Not surprisingly, the most extensive beat sheets come from the movie world. Including the five-point finale from the sequel, Save the Cat! has nineteen. Edson has twenty-three hero goal sequences.
Save the Cat! also includes a timeline to maintain good pacing. Again, nothing Blake invented. Writers have understood pacing for centuries. I matched Pride and Prejudice to the beats, and the page numbers line up plus-minus 1%. I’m sure Jane Austen knew Save the Cat!, but I could never get a straight answer from her. Probably too much to ask of a 249-year-old to answer e-mails.
All my novels start as screenplays, basically a summary of the plot plus dialogue. No pages of backstory or description to weigh it down. It has an additional advantage: if you sell your story to a producer, you know that the spine will work as a two-hour movie. Chances are you won’t have to disown it because the screenwriter took liberties to make the story fit.
TIM: What was the biggest roadblock to your success? How did you push through?
WOLF: I came out of the journalism world. Don’t ask me when. From the uniforms, I’m guessing Napoleonic era, so I might have reported live from Waterloo. The first professional critique of my first manuscript was devastating, because I wrote it like a newspaper story. Just like screenwriting, I had to learn the distinct elements that make a novel work. Hence writers groups, conferences, and lots of reading.
TIM: In addition to your instructional material, you also write fiction, such as your young adult novel CyberSpiracy. Where did the idea for this book come from?
WOLF: The seed for CyberSpiracy came from an article on how easily researchers could manipulate people by falsifying the results of a search engine. That preceded the popularization of artificial intelligence output like deepfakes that took the idea to a whole new level.
To avoid clichés, I looked at existing hacker stories. My research revealed, as confirmed by studies from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, that no bestsellers or blockbusters featured a feminine hero as a hacker. Disney or Barbie movies for preteens did, but adult fare propagated the stereotype that men hacked, or at best, nerdy, butch women. That simply isn’t true.
To move teenagers away from that stereotype, the CyberSpiracy series offers realistic stories—the methods and gadgets are real—involving a heroine who loves pink and plays with Barbies. Because pink and tech do mix.
TIM: What role did the Henderson Writers Group play in helping bring your novels to publication?
WOLF: As I mentioned, I read as much of my work at multiple critique groups as I can. Editors can help you with structure, grammar, and spelling. A large critique group, like Henderson or an online platform, offers additional critique that a single editor can’t provide. The group members include veterans from different service branches, the medical profession, law enforcement. They know proper methods, lingo, the technologies of their jobs. Such knowledge is invaluable in an age where complaints about factual errors in reviews or social media can cost you readers.
For example, CyberSplosion, my work in progress, involves conspirators who launch missiles from the Chinese mainland against a U.S. fleet to provoke a war. For dramatic effect, I decided to use the jargon “carrier killer.” For an Air Force veteran, those two words ended suspension of disbelief and took her right out of the story. I picked the DF-21D, an older anti-ship ballistic missile. Nowadays, for most in the military, the term “carrier killer” means the DF-26. Crews can swap out the conventional warhead for a nuclear one in the field. Chances are the protocol to fire such a weapon would be as stringent as those for a U.S. nuclear missile launch. Unlikely that a hacker could fire one.
In addition, the Dong Fengs fly thousands of kilometers to attack U.S. fleets on approach from Guam or Hawaii, long before they can threaten China. It makes no sense to fire one in the narrow Taiwan Strait. Realistically, my scenario would involve a smaller weapon like a Yīngjī-12 that a hacker could potentially compromise.
One mistake won’t kill a story, but you don’t want them to add up. Andy Weir posted chapters from The Martian on online critique platforms and got feedback from NASA people. Unfortunately, none of them dealt enough with planets to recognize that the storm that injured the main protagonist couldn’t happen in Mars’s thin atmosphere. But because he scienced the s–t out of the rest of the story with their help, it became an international bestseller anyway.
Large writers’ groups, whether in real life or online, can also save you money on editing. Since the regulars usually know the craft, they can point out obvious problems, even structural issues, that a paid editor then doesn’t have to waste time and your money on.
In particular, the veterans of the Henderson Writers Group have put on many Las Vegas Writers Conferences, listened to many talks, and know editors, agents, and publishers. Other than the annual dues, they’ll give you advice for free, and you can read as often as you like if you sign up early enough.
The group also holds contests to help you test your craft, including an annual anthology. I’m in four of them. Writer’s Bloc Thirteen is now available at various vendors as e-book and paperback. For many members, this is their first publishing credit, and they can hand out autographed copies as unique gifts. When you have that many authors together, they can amplify each other’s marketing efforts.
Special Author in Charge and transmedia storyteller Wolf O’Rourc had delusions of protecting extraterrestrial lifeforms for Men in Black (MIB) before he looked into a neuralyzer without shades. Now he mines his implanted memories of centuries in cybersecurity, politics, and finance to create thrilling stories pitting quirky characters with high-tech gadgets against evil villains with vile weapons.
His alter ego, Warry Wotter, Word Wizard Wextraordinaire, brings his passion for writing and publishing to parallel universes full of categories, copies, and covers.
Visit Wolf at his website and connect with him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X.