New release and the school of hard knocks

Coming out this week is my newest romance novel, Ulfbehrt's Legacy. The novel falls within the categories of #contemporary romance, #new adult romance, and #military romance. Here's the book summary:

Fleeing horrific abuse and an uncaring legal system in the USA, Zoe lands in Norway to study archeology, specifically pre-Viking civilization. With the nightclub where she worked closed down and her apartment building condemned, she needs a new job and a new place to live.

Her roommate and fellow student Tabetha comes to the rescue and invites her to move in with her family. Zoe’s grateful for the offer and the warm welcome Tabetha’s family extends to her, even though Tabetha’s oldest brother discomfits her.

Wounded in battle against eco-terrorists who attempted to wrest control of an oil platform, elite sailor Lars moves back in with his family while he recuperates. Upon seeing his sister’s roommate, he discovers that his father’s “pow” theory of love isn’t just a cute story: Zoe stirs his blood like nothing else.

Zoe’s not looking for a relationship, but Lars’ gentle persistence shows her that she can trust him. However, an enemy wants to make Lars suffer by harming what will hurt him most, and one of Zoe’s abusers wants her back. She saved herself once, she’ll have to do it again.

As with most of my books, this contains mature content not suitable for readers under 18 years old.

The school of hard knocks never quits teaching. For the past couple of weeks, I alienated several potential clients by sending proposals for service at what I consider fair fees. I explained how fees are broken down to a potential client today, who (I hope) now understands the value of a good writer.

Let's say that "Joe" wants to earn $25 per hour for content generation and can produce 500 words of good content per hour. (Good content means well-written content that needs little or nothing in the way of editing or revision.) That works out to $0.05 per word.

Now let's say Client X wants Joe to write a 100-page book for $25. Estimating an average of 250 words per standard manuscript page, that's a total of 25,000 words. If Joe can produce 500 words of good content per hour, then writing the book will take 50 hours, not including any time spent on conducting research or editing the content once written. That works out to an hourly  rate of $0.50, which is both insulting and offensive to expect.

I'm fighting the good fight to educate people that good writing takes time, effort, and skill that there's value the writer's time, effort, and skill; but, I fear that I can't win the battle, much less the war.