Month: March 2010

How Nonfiction Self-Publishers Can Become Keyword Naturals

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Recently I wrote a post about how self-publishing is a perfect long-tail business. As I said there,

As publishers, we can use this information to our advantage. Google and other search engines make available the actual search terms that people type into their search field. This powerful information is studied by internet marketers under the term keywords. An author who understands keywords, how they are used, and how to target the people who search on them, can go a long way toward making his nonfiction book a success.

Now I’d like to take a closer look at keywords and how they can help the nonfiction publisher.

Web Presence First and Foremost

Before we can address keywords, though, I have to say something about web presence. This is, for many self-published authors, the beginning of their platform building efforts. Most of the people I see entering self-publishing have little or no web presence before they begin the publishing process.

Maybe they have a personal blog, or a website connected to a business. But I’m talking about an actual personal presence on the web and in social media. That includes:
 

  • active blogging on your specialty, and or
  • Facebook marketing through fan pages and regular updates, and or
  • developing a Twitter profile and connecting to people with similar interests, and or
  • connecting on other sites appropriate for your subject area. Lots of business-oriented publishers congregate on LinkedIn, for instance, and there are subject-oriented online communities centered around most topics.

As an author in whatever field you write in, you need to become familiar with these social settings. This is where people interested in your topic “hang out” and where you can learn what their interests, their problems, and their needs are. And they can get to know you.

Interacting in these social media spaces helps to establish your expertise as well. All of these efforts will bear fruit when it comes time to market your book.

The Big Funnel

With some kind of presence on the web, with a central location you can refer people to when they express an interest in your book or your niche, you are ready to look at keywords. Why? Because every nonfiction author has goals, and those goals are usually dependent on finding more readers.

Your challenge is figuring out how to find the people looking for your book, even though they may not even know it exists. Going back to my example of pizza baking, if I’m publishing a book on the best way to bake pizza at home, I want to find the people who are already looking for that information. Pizza is the number one fast food in the United States, outselling burgers, tacos, burritos and every other form of fast food, so we know pizza is popular. We also know more and more people are interested in cooking at home, in slow food, and in artisinal food preparation.

This is where keywords comes in. Keywords are really nothing more or less than the terms that people use when they are searching for something. But which keywords will work for a nonfiction author of a book on home pizza baking? Single keywords—like pizza—are virtually useless for us. They are too general. If you search on that keyword, most of the results you’ll get are for local Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s and so on.

Here’s where I’m going to introduce you to a great free tool you can use to investigate your own specialty area. It’s the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. There are lots of keyword tools available, but this one is free and easy to use. It’s a great place to start.

Going Google on Keywords

 

self-publishing nonfiction is keyword friendly

Click to enlarge

Google provides this tool for people who want to advertise with them because their AdWords program is a way to “buy” keywords and the searches that are made on them. But let’s take a look at the tool itself:

You can see I entered the phrase “baking pizza” in the entry box. I put the phrase in quotation marks because I want only results that mention this exact phrase somewhere. In the bottom half of the window you see the top of the results list. Looking at the top line, for instance, we see that “bake pizza” was searched for in the previous month 33,100 times in the United States, in English. The green bar indicates that advertisers are bidding on this term to capture traffic from people typing “bake pizza” into a Google search bar. This is also how Google’s software matches its ads to your searches.

But the real value for niche marketers is in going down, down, down the list to find the real treasures. This is where you’ll learn more about your target market, the people most likely to be interested in your book and your other programs associated with it. Below this section is another section Google calls “Additional Keywords to Consider.”

The list starts with short keywords, like baking stones and pizza ovens, highly sought-after keywords for companies looking to capture searchers looking to make a product purchase. Farther down, the phrases get longer. This is where you start traveling out the long tail of this search. Now we encounter active search phrases like these:

 

  • making pizza dough, 5,400 searches
  • wood burning pizza ovens, 1,900 searches
  • pizza dough recipes, 27,100 searches

Keep in mind that each of these longtail keyword phrases can also generate more keywords. For instance, if I enter “making pizza dough” in the entry box and search again, I’ll get a whole new set of keyword results, one of which is “quick pizza dough,” with 8,100 searches a month.

In the next installment, I’ll show you how you can use this very exact information that Google makes freely available about the searches run through its software. And just how powerful this kind of information can be for the nonfiction author who knows how to use it.

Takeaway: Nonfiction self-publishers are in an ideal position to take advantage of keyword marketing once they’ve established a presence on the web.

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer site.

Shss! It's Softly, Softly For Lulu in The eBook Wars

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This week seems to be the week that anyone remotely connected with selling ebooks is announcing a hook-up deal with Apple or Amazon. We have already seen announcements from Author Solutions’ deal with their brands, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, iUniverse and Trafford for inclusion on Amazon’s Kindle, and yesterday, news came of the popular Smashwords announcing a distribution deal on their ebooks with Apple for inclusion in the new iPad iBookstore.

 
Since early yesterday, at least a dozen different digital technology websites and self-publishing news sites have been reporting a deal struck by DIY self-publishing service Lulu. If you dig a little deeper, all of the reports I have seen actually cite one source; Dean Takahashi of digital.venturebeat.com, writing yesterday on the Digital Beat section of the site. Just for the record, here is what Dean reported:


This is one more way that indie books by self-published authors can appear on Apple’s iPad platform, which is a tablet computer that is expected to be one of the hot gadgets of the year. The self-publishing book company said that authors whose work is in iformat can use Lulu to publish their e-books on the iPad. Lulu will convert the books from the Lulu format into the ePub format at no cost. Authors will receive proceeds after Lulu and Apple take their cut.


Lulu said it would automatically convert books for submission to the iBookstore, unless authors didn’t want their books published on the iPad. Smashwords, another self-publishing e-book company, also said over the weekend that its books can be made available on the iBookstore. Lulu supports the ePub and PDF formats, with or without digital rights management."

I have no doubt Dean is spot on in what he has reported, but what I find odd is that in a 48 hour period when every man and his dog was announcing a deal, Lulu chose to tell ‘its top authors over the weekend that their electronic books can be made available on Apple’s new iBookstore that is debuting with the launch of the iPad on April 3’. If we are to go on recent announcements and Lulu’s general megaphone marketing approach–particularly this year–one would have thought such a significant announcement warranted a press release, and at the very least, a posting on their widely read Lulublog.

Not a sausage! Although…

The news from Lulu on books being converted to epub for the iPad was flagged as in the pipeline more than two weeks ago, but I wonder if this free ‘deal’ is quite what it first appears for Lulu authors. What particularly grabs my attention is that Lulu have–according to Dean Takahashi–told their ‘top authors’. The real point here is how Lulu quantify top authors. I mean is it top authors, top-top authors or top-top-top authors. This deal certainly does not include me, but does it include you if you are a Lulu author? Lulu has extended the reach of its marketplace this year to boast established authors like John Edgar Wideman, Jeremy Robinson, Simon Levack, and Stephen Covey. Are they top-top-top authors? In regards to the latest news by Lulu, I just dunno. Tonight, I’m none the wiser. Enlightenment is the order of the day.
 
Come on Lulu, get it together!

This is a cross-posting from Mick Rooney’s POD, Self-Publishing and Independent Publishing blog. Also see this follow-up post, Did Lulu Get A Shed-Load of iPads With Apple Deal?!

Because I Can

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I write because I can.

I can because I got lucky. I was born in a family that values the written word, in a town that values writing, in a state that values literacy, in a country that was founded on a document. Every cultural break a writer can get, I got, save being born rich. I didn’t choose where I was born and I didn’t value these things when I was young, but they stood as open doors and affected me greatly. I got lucky and I never forget it.

I write because I can.

I can because I live in a free country. I have the right to say what I think, even if you disagree. Even if everyone disagrees. I know all people do not have this right. I know there are countries where writers cannot be true to their reality and imagination. I do not take my freedom for granted.

I write because I can.

I can because I protected the writer in me from every teacher who tried to kill it. I loved writing when I was young, as long as I was allowed to write the way I wanted to write. I hated writing when someone told me how to write. I flunked a class in junior high rather than turn in a five-page science paper. You laugh, but it’s the truth. I never got over the idea that a thesis statement was redundant. I never got past the certainty that the lede in a newspaper article belonged at the end. I knew these things were wrong, instinctively. You don’t start a murder mystery by announcing that the butler did it.

I write because I can.

I can because I tried everything else first. I looked at every job, every career — anything to avoid writing, because I knew I loved it and I knew how hard it would be to care. I tried the blue-collar life. I tried nine to five. I went to college and pretended I was a psychology major. I took a long look at philosophy, even though I knew there was more to life than logic and reason. I took a lot of classes, but I never clicked with any subject the way I clicked with the ideas and words patiently waiting to get out of my head. I was those words.

I write because I can.

I can because every time I look at a blank page I’m seduced by the possibilities. I have never feared a blank page in my life. I can’t wait to gather small strands of nothing until they begin to talk to each other and fuse and give off heat. I see such connections the way other people see contrails in the sky and skid marks on the street.. They are as plain to me. I write them down because I think others would like to see them, too.

I write because I can.

I can because I trust myself. I don’t do things that undermine my own confidence. I try to eat well. I exercise. I am conscious of how fragile writing is, and I try to protect my writing by taking care of the writer I am. Life intrudes, yes. But I’m not sabotaging myself. I know I will meet my deadlines. I may pound my head on my desk from time to time, but that’s the way some stories are. Some births are easy, some are hell.

I write because I can.

I can because there is nothing else. I don’t have questions about what I should have done with my life. I don’t have regrets. I don’t ever wonder if I made the right choice. I know I made the right choice. Long before my peers settled on a career I knew there was nothing for me but writing. I knew there would be no road-not-taken. Frustrations, sure, I’ve got plenty. But I wouldn’t trade the gifts I was born with for the crosses I bear.

I write because I can.

I can because I am still alive. Whatever your beliefs about an afterlife, you only get so many years to write. If you want to write and you don’t write then you blew it. I’m trying not to blow it. I don’t want to die thinking I missed my chance. Existentialism is a big word for taking advantage of the life you have. Take advantage of the life you have.

Write. Because you can.

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk site.

Building On The Momentum

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The next book I wrote after "Hello Alzheimer’s Good Bye Dad", about caring for my father, was "Open A Window" – ISBN 1438244991. A caregiver’s handbook that is used to train CNAs in long term care and as an ice breaker at Alzheimer’s support group meetings. This book I actually had printed at a print shop. I’m very proud of the book for the help it has been.

In 2000, residents family members would stop to ask me questions about why their loved one said things like they hadn’t been fed all day. Sometimes, the family couldn’t understand the behavior problems or the sudden declines. I remembered the days when I wanted so much to know about Alzheimer’s disease in order to help my father. By 2000, the Alzheimer’s Association was well known and very helpful if families contacted them. In some cases that didn’t happen. Not realizing how devastating the disease would become, the relatives didn’t bother to become educated until they were surprised by devastating events. I decided I need to write a book that would educate the families that I came in contact with at the nursing home. Little did I know that the book would go much farther than that.

Over the years, I had 100 copies printed, sold those and had another 100 books printed before I self published the book last summer. To go along with publishing the book, I asked Jolene Brackey a well known author and speaker about Alzheimer’s if she would give me a review to put on the back of the book. Now how did I get the nerve to ask for that review? The administrator at the nursing home had sent one my book to Jolene. She liked it so much she called to ask me if I would let her use some of my stories in her next book "Creating Moments Of Joy". What an honor. Of course, I said yes. About three years ago, Jolene was in the area doing her presentations. I went. Jolene waved her book around as she told the audience if we wanted one we would have to buy it from her website. She only packed one for the plane trip. As I was leaving that day, she stopped me and handed me that signed book. She had brought it for me. So when I published my book "Open A Window" I thought I’d ask her for the review, and I got it.

Jolene’s review – "This book shares what is possible if we allow a person with Alzheimer’s to "be" who they are right now. Thank You for "opening" a window."
 

For more about Jolene Brackey visit her website http://www.enhancedmoments.com

In August of 2002, I was asked to be the first speaker for an evening session for CNAs at the Alzheimer’s Association’s annual conference. Due to the fact that I mentioned CNAs don’t get enough education about Alzheimer’s. They learn most of what they know by on the job experience. My presentation was "Many Hats" taken from the social worker’s call to me about my father in 1999. That presentation was a workout that signified how hectic our life becomes when we deal with sick parents, our family needs and work. I confiscated some of the better looking of my husband’s many farm caps. On each, I sewed a pink ribbon band with the words, wife, daughter, mother and CNA. ( Which I had to remove before my husband would wear the hats again.) As I told about my concerns and experiences, I took off one hat and slapped another on my head for emphasis. At the end of the speech, I showed the audience my book. The CNAs flocked to buy them. One woman was a social worker. For two years in a row, she took a box of my books to the social workers conference in Ames, Iowa and sold them. That is how my book wound up at the first CNA training. A social worker gave her book to an RN who trains the CNAs. The RN sent for more books.

Promoting doesn’t and shouldn’t end with the book sale. I live in the middle of farming country where book sale events are hard to find. Harvest is about ready to start. Winter is coming soon. The internet is my best and handiest method for promoting. I’ve just had a successful book sale. Now I can build on that and find ways to promote the fact that I am an author with books for sale.

I took my camera to the book sale and snapped a lot of pictures. The first pictures, my son took of me in my pioneer dress and bonnet and of my table after it was set up with stacks of books and the two posters. With these pictures I made an album on Facebook and other web sites complete with captions.

On twitter, I submitted messages about my book sale and later wrote to take a look at my album on Facebook. By the way, I am developing a following. I have at least two authors following me now – Stephanie Cowell and Steve Weber the author of Plug Your Book – online book marketing for authors: a book I have and use.

Every time I find a website for writer/authors I’ve signed up. In fact, I am on so many that I had to log them in a notebook with login name and password. I picked booksbyfay as a login name to show what I do. Having a list helps me keep track so I don’t forget to make entries on one of those web sites about a new book, a book sale or press release. Several of these websites have links to other websites where I happened to be registered so I can link what I do to be announced on those sites.

I’ve put a link to Publetariat where I could. Hopefully, internet surfers will come across my blog post on the front page. On Biblioscribe, I wrote two news articles. One article was about the success of my book sale. The other article was about my blog post "Preparing For A Book Sale" posted on the front page of Publetariat. That should get people to take a look at Publetariat and perhaps become interested in my blog. I keep readers of my blogs on myentre.net and blogger informed.

So don’t stop promoting after a book sale event. Keep finding ways to get your name out there until the next event. Then begin all over again.
 

This is a reprint from Fay Risner’s Books By Fay blog.

Four Approaches To Writing Schedules

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Editor’s Note: With this post, Shaun Kilgore joins Publetariat’s roster of regular Contributors.

Today, I thought I would pull out some articles that I’ve found on the topic of schedules. There are definitely some different ways to approach the subject. What it comes down it is finding one that works for you.

All of you know that each writer has their own unique writing habits. I know that none of this is original thinking. In fact, I’m sure most of you already have some type of schedule in place to help you get writing done each day. This doesn’t mean that the method you’re using is getting you the results you’ve hoped for.


Perhaps, you are considering a change in your writing schedule and would appreciate another perspective. I hope these posts will offer you some guidance. Thanks for reading.

Four Approaches

1. Creating A Writing Schedule That Works For You – Yuliya Geikhman (Associated Content)

2. How To Create A Writing Schedule – lolaness (eHow)

3. How To Stick To Your Writing Routine – Ashley Sinatra (Associated Content)

4. How To Make A Writing Schedule And Stick To It – Online Writing Tips (blog)

What Else?

Now, I’m sure you’ll find some overlap in some of the advice and tips included in these different articles, but that shouldn’t be a deterrent. Not at all. There are just some things about setting up a writing schedule that are common to any writer. It is only the fine details that will vary from person to person.

I’m still trying to discover the perfect schedule for me. I think I’ve dabbled in a variety of approaches because I am always trying to make one flexible enough to meet the demands of child care obligations. Being a stay-at-home dad is tough all on its own. Little children have a hard time understanding a writing schedule if they understand it at all. With time, I know they will more, but in the meantime, I have to do what works – and make up the difference in other ways.

All of this is to say that schedules really are an important part of having a good writing career. They will help you attain your goals and meet your deadlines. Without them, you may find that time slips away from you so quickly. If you haven’t established your own schedule, then do it now. Don’t wait another moment. Your thank yourself later.

Again, thanks for reading. If you have any other approaches to scheduling, could you pass them on here by leaving a comment. See you next time.

This is a cross-posting from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s blog. 

How To Be Your Own Best Editor: Part II

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Editor’s Note: With this post, M. Louisa Locke continues her series on self-editing and joins Publetariat as a regular Contributor. 

This is the second post about how I prepared my manuscript, Maids of Misfortune, for self-publication. In the first post I outlined the steps I took to develop the skills necessary to be my own best editor.

As I look back at this previous post I feel it is only fair to mention that those editing skills were already fairly well developed–as a result of getting a doctorate in history that required numerous rewritings of a 400 page dissertation and over thirty years of correcting student’s essays.

This post will look at the steps I took next to replace the editorial input I would have gotten if my manuscript had been accepted by a traditional publishing house. See earlier posts on Why I Decided to Self-Publish for why I didn’t submit the manuscript to an agent or the editor of a small press at this point.

It was June of 2009. I had a manuscript that had, over the years, been written and rewritten, as well as read and commented on by my writers group and a number of agents and editors. It was time for me to do the job of a developmental editor.

“A developmental editor works with a writer to improve the basic concept of the book, the way it’s focused and structured, the style and attitude of the narrative voice, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. In a non-fiction book they’ll help clarify and organize the ideas and information. In a novel, they’ll work on the plot, characterizations, dialogue, visual description, and literary style. It’s important to distinguish developmental editors from copy editors, who take a manuscript that has already been developed and correct the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and in some cases fact-checking.”  – AlanRinzler in Choosing a freelance editor

With all the rules of writing now refreshed in my memory, and all the comments that previous readers of the manuscript had made in front of me, as my own best editor I determined that I had four main tasks.

  1. Shorten the manuscript.
  2. Undo the effects of an earlier rewrite.
  3. Improve the romantic tension between the main protagonists
  4. Increase suspense. (library scene, each chapter end with hook, and better development of red herrings)

Task One: Shorten the manuscript

My manuscript was 119,000 words long at this point, and I knew from my reading about writing and my critical look at my favorite mysteries that this was too long for my particular genre (historical mystery in the cozy style.) Therefore, one of the major editing tasks I had was to shorten the manuscript.

As anyone who has bothered to read any of my blog posts knows-I am a wordy writer. I remember one of the first comments a reader of an earlier version of the manuscript made was that it sounded like something written in the nineteenth century. Not surprising, considering I spent nearly four years reading nineteenth century primary sources for my dissertation. I didn’t want to lose that flavor. I had, after all, written a novel set in 1879 San Francisco. But I knew that modern readers of mysteries expect a certain briskness to their narratives.

I first outlined the book I had written, breaking it up into 10 acts. For each act, I listed the existing chapters with brief descriptions of the action in each scene. I found that my acts ranged from 20 pages to 38 each, and my chapters ranged from 3 pages to 10 pages. My goal became to make the chapters more uniform in length and shorter over all.

In some cases this meant dividing chapters up when there was a logical break. In other cases I simply deleted large swaths of text (cutting out whole scenes or sections of dialog if they didn’t further the action). I also ruthlessly pruned historical detail if I felt it was there for no other reason beyond a desire to prove my historical expertise. (I hope to write a whole post on this in the future.)

I then went through each chapter, line by line, looking for unnecessary words. “I have a tendency to use the dreaded adverb,” the author ruefully admits. By the end most of my chapters were (in traditional manuscript formatting) 3-5 pages long and I had shortened the manuscript to 107,000 words. I had successfully gotten rid of 12,000 words or 9.9% of the manuscript. This was gratifyingly close the 10% that Stephen King, in his book, On Writing, recommends cutting when rewriting a draft.

Task Two: Undo an earlier rewrite

My first task was made more difficult by my second. In 2004, an agent who was considering my book asked me to rewrite the novel (written in the third person) by shifting from the dual perspectives of my primary protagonist, Annie Fuller, and my secondary protagonist, Nate Dawson, to the single perspective of Annie Fuller. (The details of this can be found in my post Why I Decided to Self-Publish: Taken for a Ride).

I had always felt that this change slowed down the pace of the narrative and weakened the development of the relationship between the two characters (see tasks number three and four!) I knew I wanted to go back to the multiple perspectives in my new version. However, this entailed not just rewriting two chapters but writing four entirely new chapters from Nate’s point of view–lengthening not shortening the overall word count.

However, as I hoped, when I no longer had to have Nate tell Annie in detail about all the things he had witnessed or observed or said it enlivened the dialog between them considerably.

This also helped me in my third task.

Task Three: Improve the romantic tension between the two protagonists

Maids of Misfortune is rooted in two distinct romantic traditions. The first is the tradition that can be found in the Harriet Vane-Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy Sayers, where two protagonists develop a romantic attachment as they solve a series of crimes-often over several books. The second tradition comes from the light, romantic comedy of Georgette Heyer’s regency romances. I found that it is not always easy to meld these two traditions. Some of my first beta readers felt that there was altogether too much romance for a mystery novel, while others felt that there was not enough sex for a romance novel. I knew that my novel was first and foremost a mystery, and so one of my tasks in this final edit was to ensure that the developing romance didn’t take away from the tension of the mystery.

Yet, I also wanted those readers who liked romance to feel completely satisfied by the romantic arc of the story, and I wanted them to be invested in finding out what happened to the two protagonists in subsequent books. To this end I adhered to the old adage, less is more.

I had liberally used one of the standard devices for creating romantic tension- a series of arguments between the hero and heroine. But one of my most thoughtful readers had pointed out that there was a kind of repetitive nature to these arguments. I now went through these scenes, one by one, cutting out any scene or even bit of dialog that repeated points that one of the characters had made in an earlier scene. This permitted the nature of the relationship between the two protagonists to build and deepen, not repeat. It also removed a few more words from the total!

Additionally, I worked to make the sexual tension that underlay the romance more subtle, again—less is more. This required rewriting anything that felt like a romantic cliché-but also remaining true to the historical period (late Victorian) where the early dance of courtship within the middle classes was characterized by restraint, not excess.

Task Four: Increase suspense

The editing I did to achieve my first tasks went a long way to helping me achieve this last one.

The new shorter chapters, tighter dialog, and sparer language kept up the pace, which in turn increased the tension.

I also paid attention to comments from my writer’s group that the series of scenes where my protagonist snuck around a house at night were oddly lacking in suspense. I discovered that the whole time she was snooping, I had her ruminating about her feelings and speculating about things that had happened earlier in the day. Ho hum! I rewrote these scenes to focus on the present, describing what she saw, smelled, and heard while she was groping about in the dark, which produced a much greater sense of danger.

Finally, I checked every chapter ending, looking for ways to hook the reader into turning the page to the next chapter. I was amazed how often I had undercut what was a perfectly good chapter climax with some extraneous bit of dialog or action. Gleefully, I cut some more words from my total count, while ratcheting up the suspense.

One of the most consistent compliments I have gotten from people who have read the published book is how fast paced and exciting it is to read.

Conclusion:

When I was done editing Maids of Misfortune, for the first time in its long history, I was confident that it was as well-written as any mystery produced through the traditional publishing process. Now I just had to make sure it was sufficiently copy edited, so that minor errors (although found ever more frequently in traditionally published books) wouldn’t cause a reader to feel it had been unprofessionally produced. But copyediting, I knew, would require more than a single eye, and I assembled my own editorial board to provide this function. This will be the subject of my final post on being my own best editor.

This is a cross-posting from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor blog.

People Links

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For me as an author it’s all about linking to people who may become potential book buyers. As a result, I’ve been rewarded with people who become my email friends and better yet want to be on my growing list of customers to notify when my latest book comes out.

Awhile back, I was emailed by someone belonging to the WeRead website. She linked that website to my blog, because she liked what I write about and thought others on her site might, too. My blog is a split between daily life in the country, mentioning my books and what I learn as I go through the process of becoming an author. Perhaps, some of the readers on WeRead will buy my books after they have gotten to know me and about my books through my blog.

This last week I had an email from printerinkcanon.com. If I would put a link in my blog from their website I’d get quite a bit of exposure. I was told there is 30,000 blogs on this site. Now I guess there will be 30,001. 200,000 visitors read blogs posted on that site. Now I have been invited to link to kodakprinterink.com. So maybe a few of the visitor hits from those sites will be on my blog to see what I’m all about. If they like what they read, maybe that will lead to repeat visitors and to book sales. At the very least after reading my blog, my name mentioned on the internet or on the cover of a book will already be familiar to my blog readers. Maybe that will make someone curious enough to buy one of my books to see how good it is.

　

I just made it into the line up of Iowa authors on Iowa Center for the Book website. That’s a good thing. My interacting in a community connected to MyEntre.net blog brought the site to my attention. I asked if anyone knew of websites in Iowa for Iowa authors and someone responded with three websites for me to explore. I like the idea of people checking for Iowa authors and finding my name and list of books among all the others. Some buyers like to buy books from authors in their area. Others want an author to do a presentation about their books which help gain exposure.

Over the weekend, I took the time to get into the mystery community in Amazon where I sell my books. I have several genre, but I don’t take the time to advertise that fact often enough on the different communities. The mystery subjects for conversation were right up my alley. A cozy mystery which is what I consider my mysteries. A less violent, less sex, and no swear words type book which mine are. A Miss Marple kind of book and that is the way I have always described my mysteries series. The five books are about a Miss Marple type person who happens to live in Iowa. So I posted in each place and came back with emails wanting to know if my books were on kindle. I thought the first one Neighbor Watchers was two years ago. I hadn’t made a sale so I decided no one wanted to buy that type of story. I investigated and found out I hadn’t filled out all the forms Amazon needed. By the way, am I the only one that spells out the state in the address form only to be told that it isn’t my state? After a few times of trying, I finally thought to abbreviate the state and the form went through. So I got back into the mystery community and posted that my book was in Kindle and emailed the two people who emailed me to ask so they could get the book. Now I know I have two customers for that book. My idea to put the first book in my mystery series on Kindle in the first place was to get customers that might buy the next four books in hard copy, because they couldn’t stop with just one book. Might not work that way if the buyers all describe themselves as Kindle addicts, but still they are going to tell others that they liked my stories. Maybe those people will buy my book.

One contributor on Amazon emailed me that my books sounded like Geezer Lit which is what she was looking for. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it is true. While I was working at the nursing home in Keystone, I read the residents all of the mystery books. They identified with my elderly characters. When I started writing, I wanted to write books like I want to read. Plus, the people who live around me, friends, neighbors and families like the same kind of books I do so I knew I had a built in potential customer base in my area. Just to be sure I had posted in all the places I could in the mystery community, I searched for Geezer Lit. I couldn’t find it so I’m saying my mysteries are about Miss Marple like characters. Call the books whatever genre subtitle you want as long as you buy one. Next time I enter the mystery community, I’ll start a discussion about Geezer Lit.

Word of mouth links are great ways to sell books. Last fall, I had a three day book sale near my home. A man bought one book in my Amazing Gracie Mystery Series. He mentioned to his daughter 600 miles away that he wished he had bought all five books, because he liked the first one so well. His daughter emailed me, bought the other four books for her father for Christmas. Her husband’s grandparents live near me so I dropped the books off there for the woman pick up when she came for Christmas. That’s friendly customer service.

One day I was in the drugstore in a town near me. The clerk asked me what I had been up to lately. I said I write books. She wanted to know what kind. I told her, and she said she wanted to buy the first book in my Amazing Gracie Mystery Series. Another time I was in the store and the clerk said she wanted to buy two more in the series. Then later on, the clerk called me and ordered the last two be dropped off at the drugstore when I was in town. We take the local newspaper. I always read the library news to see what books are being added to their inventory. That library had bought three of books last fall, but didn’t ask for any others. Suddenly, I found my name and one of my mystery books on the list. Along the way, one at a time my books appeared in the library list. It puzzled me at first how that happened, then I realized the drugstore clerk donated her books.

The library in Keystone, Iowa is a link for me. I am a member so the library had me come for an author visit right away a couple years ago when I first published. They bought 15 of my books. Now when I meet someone in town they bring up how they checked out one of my books from the library and really liked it.

I’ve put a state public library list in google search and came up with email links to most of the libraries in that state. I picked the states that I sell most of my Amish books in and let them know that I’ve written Amish books and how to purchase them. I see a rise in sales by the next month.

 

I’ve learned to think where to place a free book now and then in hopes of getting more sales. Last year I gave away 20 at my high school reunion. Each book had a list of other books I’ve written tucked inside along with contact information. I sold more books as a result. Not because my former classmates know me well, but because they liked the way I wrote the book I gave them.

Two other places I’ve given a book, with a business card inside, is at a bridal shower and a baby shower. Gifts are passed around for all to see, including my book. Our niece and my friend were pleased to be able to say to the guests that they know the author well. Guests were curious and asked me guestions. That’s just one way of spreading the word and drumming up buyers.

This all seems like a slow start sometimes, but new self published authors don’t give up hope. It takes time to get your name and book known. Customers looking for a particular book keep watching the internet. You’ll find what you want. Thousands of new books are published each year and the internet is a great way to find them.

 

Happy Happy Birthday!

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Today is my friend’s birthday. It’s a very special day for her. So I’m not gonna ruin it. Haha. My friend’s name is Hershey. Nice name isn’t it? Just like the hershey chocolate. This friend of mine is very sweet. Sometimes moody but fun to be with. I’m thankful that I met her. Anyway. As for her birthday she is planning on celebrating it on a Bar. She wants to drink with us. Some laughing, singing and bonding. I’m sure it will be a great night. A really great night. A night that we will never forget for the rest of our lives. After her celebration with us she plans to celebrate it with her family. A swimming pool party perhaps. She loves to swim even if she didn’t know how to swim. She wants me to accompany her because she’s going to buy pool supplies for the pool. It’s her birthday so I can’t reall complain. It’s a great pleasure that she did not forget us in her birthday celebration. Hershey is one of my true friends. I will treasure her for the rest of my life.

Book Signings

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We all hear how important it is for authors to help market their books. Today I’m going to discuss one of the key marketing tools in the author’s bag of tricks—book signings. I’d especially like to focus on signings at independent bookstores for reasons that you’ll quickly see. As an independent bookseller who schedules a fair number of book signings, as an author, and as a publisher, I speak from years of direct experience. First, why should an author consider doing book signing appearances? What are their purposes?

  • Sell books
     
  • Introduce yourself to the bookstores and their staffs
     
  • Introduce yourself to the book buying public
     
  • Develop your platform or fan base
     
  • Meet nice people and experience new places

Sell books

If you are extremely lucky, you might sell enough books to pay your expenses to the event, ie. gas, vehicle wear and tear, meals, motel if far enough away, and most importantly your time. So, why bother? Because a good signing experience can be like a gift that keeps on giving long afterwards. If you are a self-publisher or an author writing for a publisher, this is really important. It is a way to give your books long legs, as we say in the industry. No one wants their books to “go out of print” in a few months. You would like to become recognized and desired for a long time. Book signings go a long way toward that goal.

First of all, never just do a signing. Always do a 20-30 minute book chat to start out. Explain how you came to write this particular book. Tell an interesting story about its writing or about the topic. Keep the stories positive. Nobody likes to listen to “downer” types of information. If you feel you must do a reading, keep it very short. I find that if you have a really good hook up front to lead out the book, read that. Pull your audience into your book’s pages. Whatever you read, leave them hanging—wanting to learn more.

Make your event memorable and entertaining—so much so that the attendees will buy books as gifts to family and friends as well as for themselves. I remember one wonderful cookbook author who surrounded her recipes with quaint stories about the recipes and the culture and time period from which they came. Several people bought one copy for themselves, left and took the time to scan the book, and came right back in to buy 4-6 more copies as gifts. What a great experience that was for this bookseller. I hand sold a copy to one lady after the signing. Two weeks later, she came back to shop at our store again, and I asked her how she liked the recipes. She said she had been too busy reading the food stories to have had time to try any of the recipes.

Don’t assume you’re going to sell a lot of books during the signing. You may not sell any. So, why do it? For all the reasons I will explain below. Our best signing ever was a Kansas University basketball star who had a autobiography written with the help of a ghost writer. He had appeared on a radio sports talk show the day before and mentioned he would be at our store for a book signing the next day. We had folks lined up around the block. We had to give out numbers to help keep order. Young teenage girls were hyperventilating as they approached him, and I thought I was going to have to catch a couple if they passed out.

We sold 350 books that day. To counter that experience, we’ve had signings where nobody came and no books were sold. One lady was a popular speaker. She had authored six books and was signing her latest. She had been a very popular speaker and trainer for several organizations in our community—in other words a well known and liked entity. We fully expected a really good turn out, but only two happenstance drop-ins attended. There had been way too many conflicting events scheduled in our community that Saturday that drew people away from ours.

We usually like to pre-order several copies of books for up coming signing events so we can display them in the windows and around the store. We try to hand pre-sell these before the event. We also ask the author to sign several books before he leaves so we can offer autographed books to our customers later on. Bookstores expect a 40% discount, just so you know. There are several ways they will purchase your book. Here they are in the order of preference:

  1. From their primary distributor (usually Ingram or Baker and Taylor) (no shipping costs involved)
     
  2. From the author
     
  3. From the publisher

If you would like to get credit for royalties but want to bring some books with you just in case, bookstores will be more than happy to replace them for you from what they order from their distributor or your publisher.


Introduce yourself to the bookstores and their staffs

This is the best reason I can think of to do a signing. Earlier I mentioned I’d focus of independent bookstores. Here’s why. Independents are passionate about books. They know their stock, what’s coming out soon or is just out, and what kinds of readers will like which books. The big chain stores just don’t do this. Their staffs are far less knowledgeable as a rule and they seldom do any hand selling. Books not displayed in the expensive high traffic areas (yes, publishers pay dearly for the right to be specially displayed) are doomed to compete with all the other books on the shelves, generally displayed with only their spines showing.

On the other hand, independent bookstore staffs love to hand sell. I have certain books in my store that I love to draw my customers’ attention to because I’ll have a better than 50% chance they will buy the books I point out to them. As an author, you stand a better chance of booksellers getting behind your book and passionately hand selling it if you make an appearance at the store and make friends of the owners, managers, and staff. I can’t stress this enough. It’s so important. Be on time, be helpful, be courteous, and don’t push too hard. Help customers be glad they met you at that store.

Introduce yourself to the book buying public

This is your public. give them positive memories and good impressions. Be clean, neat, and pleasantly interesting. Encourage writer wanna bees without committing to reading their works (you just don’t have time). Help them connect with you on a positive personal level. Be grateful they took the time out of their busy schedule to honor you with their presence. Do not hassel them, but if there is a lull, it’s OK to get up from your seat and gently let customers know you’re there for a signing. Usually they will ask you what your book is about. Be ready with your elevator synopsis. (In the 30 seconds it takes you to ride up to the 10th floor in an elevator with someone, be able to describe your book in a powerful way to them).

Develop your platform or fan base

This is one of several ways to get the word out about you. You’re not just there to sell your book, you’re there to sell yourself. Ideally, you want to create a viral movement centered around you as an author. You want folks to like you well enough to tell their friends about you. have literature about your book, which includes interesting information about you. Have little strips of paper with your social addresses such as Twitter, Facebook, blog, and your website. Have a guest book to capture their contact info so you can send them periodic information about yourself and your books in an email newsletter.

Meet nice people and experience new places

Have smell-the-roses moments. Enjoy the travel. Develop funny, if not good memories. I’ll never forget a Christian science fiction author from the Detroit area who drove 14-15 hours out to our bookstore for a signing where we only sold two of his books. I was devastated for him, but he was happy. he said, “I made this trip so I could personally shake your hand to thank you.” When I asked him what for, he said, “The book review you wrote for HeartlandReviews.com where you compared me favorably to the Left Behind series sold 5,000 books for me.” Wow, talk about a positive experience! We always like to point out our various excellent restaurants and museums in the immediate area that our authors might find pleasing—anything to make their visit memorable in a good way.

Hooking up to other events

  • Schools
  • Libraries
  • Book Fairs
  • Community speeches
  • Media Appearances

Schools

If you have a book of interest to children in schools, try to book yourself into schools as a lecturer. Contact a local independent bookstore and invite them to sell your book to teachers, parents, and even children. Try to arrange a signing at their store before you leave town.

Libraries

Do the same at libraries.
 

Book Fairs

See if one of the bookstores in attendance at the fair would be interested in an exclusive right to sell your book at the fair. Make it easy as possible to obtain and sell your book. DO NOT FORGET TO PICK UP ANY UNSOLD COPIES FROM THEM BEFORE LEAVING!
 

Community speeches

Invite an independent bookstore to sell your books at any public appearances you make. You should focus on your talk and not worry about the book sales. They’ll handle it well for you.
 

Media Appearances

Don’t forget to mention upcoming book signings—where and when—whenever you appear on radio, TV, or in the newspapers before the events. Take advantage of this free publicity.

In conclusion, book signings are necessary and can be fun. Do not be an introvert! Shy? FAKE IT! Best of luck on your real life book tour.

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Writing Can Save Your Life; Let It

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I haven’t been blogging or otherwise communicating online as much as usual lately, for very good reasons. I’m facing two major life crises, simultaneously. As I’ve been half-joking to friends, if I survive this year I may as well sign up for the Navy SEALs, because it’ll be clear that nothing can kill me.

The blog of record for what I’m going through is To Hell & (Hopefully) Back. I won’t be writing about any of it here, because this is a blog about indie authorship, not coping with trauma.

Still, there’s one aspect of it that’s worth addressing on this blog. As I endure, and one day come to embrace, the changes being thrust upon me, writing will be a key survival tool.

Finishing my revisions to The Indie Author Guide and then working with my editor to get the book ready for print will provide me with the much-needed distraction of work, and remind me that I still have something to contribute in the world.

Blogging at To Hell & (Hopefully) Back will help me acquire and strengthen the discipline and self-control that will be demanded of me in the coming months and years, to articulate my feelings and share my experiences in a constructive way, and hone what may be my most valuable survival tool: my sense of humor. It will help foster the habit in me of thinking about these difficult times as a necessary, if painful, transitional period that will end someday, and from which I can learn and grow.

Pouring my anger and pain into letters that will never be sent will offer an outlet for all the negativity that has to come out, but has nowhere to go.

Getting back to work on my author platform in preparation for the release of my book in November will keep me connected to the part of my community that exists apart from what’s happening in my personal life, which will keep me looking to future possibilities instead of dwelling on past injuries. It’ll give me a place to be the me who’s capable and productive.

The marketing push I’ll need to engineer when the book comes out will offer me a welcome diversion during what’s sure to be the most difficult holiday season of my life.

If you’re a writer, count yourself lucky. You have a crisis survival utility belt that rivals anything the caped crusader’s got.

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton’s Indie Author blog.

March Doldrums

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Wello, hello again. I seem to have found my way back after an absence of several months.  There was some travel involved. We dodged some tornadoes in Arkansas, some tandem Semi rigs in OK City, then made it home intact. 

March surprised us by throwing sunshine and warm temperatures for a couple of weeks, but now we’re back to the same old tiresome month we know and love.

I’ve been working on the sequel novel to the Red Gate as well as writing a few short stories to keep my hands active.  I entered The Red Gate into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards contest and was encouraged when it made the first cut, but…it didn’t make the second. Possibly because I entered it into YA to see if it would fly there. I’d had some encouraging feedback from younger readers, but the conditions for YA are pretty specific regarding the age of the MC.  15-19 years old is the target age.  My MC was 26.

I’ve also given a lot of thought to new ways to market my writing.  One of the ideas I had, has to do with pulling a chapter out of a novel, re-writing it into a stand-alone short story, then entering it into short fiction contests to get a little notice for the book.  I’ve also entered three other contests with other short stories I worked on during my hiatus.  If any of this comes to fruition, I’ll pass it along in a future Curmudgeon installment.

Meanwhile, I’ll go check up to see if any of my bookstores need inventory and get myself in the mood for Spring. 

 

 

…of Exhaustion, Frustration, and Some Other Word That Ends In “-tion.”

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This post, from RJ Keller, originally appeared on her Ingenious Title To Appear Here Later blog on 11/21/09.

Friday night, I was told by an author I’d never heard of that her ultimate goals when she began writing were to see her book in a bookstore and to sell a lot of books. She further informed me that because her book had found an agent and a publisher and was now sitting in a bookstore that it was a “real” book. My book, not falling into that category, is – naturally – not “real.”

[Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I wanted to tell her that my ultimate goal when I began writing was to write a good book. An awesome book. A book that, when people read it, they’d say, “I have felt exactly this way before! I thought I was the only one!” Or, “I stayed up all night reading this, even though I had to go to work early in the morning.” I might have even wanted it to make people cry, to make them think about things in a way they’d never done before, or to look at people in a way they’d never done before.

I wanted to point her in the direction of postive reviews I’ve received, and send her copies of emails I’ve gotten from readers, stating that my book had accomplished exactly those things. I wanted to send her the link to this post, affirming that my book is, indeed, a real book. Then I Googled her name and learned about her book. That’s when I wanted to tell her that the only reason an agent had picked it up and had been able to sell it to a publisher is because it’s a cookie cutter of about 1000 other books already out there, which means it’s not considered a risk. I also wanted to tell her to stuff it (okay, I wanted to tell her to fuck off). 

Read the rest of the post on Ingenious Title To Appear Here Later.

Adventures In Self-Publishing

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This post, from John Sundman, originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 3/24/10.

I’ve been self-publishing novels for a little more than ten years. I’ve had some successes–for example, I’ve won the Writer’s Digest National Self-Published Book competition and I’ve sold more than 6,000 copies of my books. But I’m not a self-publishing rock star and I still dream of doing much better.

Here’s an essay on some things I’ve learned in ten years of doing this. Other versions of this essay appear elsewhere on the net, most recently on my site wetmachine.com, from whence you can download versions of my books for free if you feel like checking ‘em out.

This is mostly an essay about “publishing” in the traditional sense of books printed on paper. I welcome any related discussion about ebooks, web publishing, intellectual property & digital copyrights and so forth that may come up in comments. But when I say “publishing” herein, I’m talking about old-fashioned books.

The Books

I published my novel Acts of the Apostles in late 1999, the novella Cheap Complex Devices in late 2002 and an illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria called The Pains in late 2008. Depending on how you reckon, this venture has been a stunning success, a qualified failure, or something in between. I’ve sold about 6.5k copies, total, of my books. In any event, I’m working on my fourth novel Creation Science, and I intend to publish it before the summer comes (unless a big publisher buys the rights first; see below).

All of these books are available under Creative Commons license for download from Wetmachine (no DRM, no registration required), so you can read them for free.

Background: a tad more on novels and why I published them myself

My novel (”AofA”) is a geeky paranoid technothriller ostensibly about nanomachines and Gulf War Syndrome. This Amazon review sums it up pretty well:

This book is a far-fetched story about mad geniuses, cutting edge technology, world domination and a couple of lovable misfits (computer geeks, at that) who try to thwart them. In broad daylight, you know it can’t happen, but after dark you’re not so sure. I couldn’t put it down. It’s the book Neal Stephenson and Robert Ludlum might have written if one of the evil geniuses of this book had cloned them into one consciousness.

I’ve written elsewhere about what motivated me to write this book, and about how the process of writing and publishing AofA nearly destroyed my family. It is frankly embarrassing–make that humiliating–to admit how insane the whole deal was. However, my family and I seem to have weathered the ordeal OK– or actually we’ve come out a whole lot stronger than we went in. But here’s the key point: I only wrote and self-published AofA because I was nuts. I’m glad I did it, but if you’re not nuts you should think twice before choosing me as a role model.

I tried very hard indeed to find a publisher for Acts of the Apostles. I had a very well respected literary agent representing me & he connected with some very well respected movie-rights agents. Together that team put in about $20,000 of work & materials on behalf of my book. We worked on it for three solid years. The agents covered those expenses out of pocket, by the way. They really thought it was going to be a blockbuster book/movie hit. But the point is, self-publishing was not my first choice.

Read the rest of the post, and check out the accompanying graphic, on Self-Publishing Review.

Alan Moore on Horror

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I’m currently re-reading the old Alan Moore Swamp Thing books. This was a comic that had a couple of false starts and then, in the early 1980s, Alan Moore took over and completely renovated not only this particular title, but the concept of horror comics across the board. Alan Moore is one of those writers that constantly redefines a genre or a medium (Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, The Killing Joke just to name a few seminal graphic novel works).

I’ve been revisiting some of Alan Moore’s other work, which is what led me to his Swamp Thing stuff again. He picked up the Saga Of The Swamp Thing title in its new run at issue 21 in 1983. It’s the trade paperback collected edition (which has issues 21 to 27, shown above) that I’m currently re-reading. I was particular struck by Moore’s introduction to the book where he asks what horror is and why we have such a fascination with it. I was so struck by it, and thought it quite relevant to a lot of my own work, that I thought I’d reproduce a key part of it here. Particularly interesting is that this was written over twenty years ago and is still very relevant now:

In a century packed to the bursting point with paradoxes, one of the most puzzling must surely be the meteoric rise of horror as a genre in literature, cinema, and even music, all at a time when each day seems to make us just a little more conscious and aware of the real-life horrors unfolding all around us. While the faces of missing children stare from milk cartons, lines for the latest dead teenager movie are stretching ’round the block. While the AIDS virus sweeps through society with a chilling ease, born upon a colossal wave of ignorance and prejudice, the shelves of our bookstores creak beneath the weight of plagues and infestations filling the pages they’re forced to support – whether they be plagues of rats, slugs, crabs, or centipedes that characterize the nastier end of the market or the real thing, as presented in Stephen King’s The Stand. While radioactive clouds blow west and test-ban treaties go up in a mushroom of poisonous smoke, punk bands gob out splatter-movie imagery with a ferocity that at best signals hopeless defiance and at worse a perverse and nihilistic acceptance of the situation.

Like it or not, horror is part of our media, part of our culture, part of our lives – none of which answers the question of why an entire society should stand around engrossed, reading Dracula while up to their jugulars in blood. Do we immerse ourselves in fictional horror as a way of numbing our emotions to its real-life counterpart? Is it some sort of inoculation… a tiny dose of something frightening with which we hope to ward off a more serious attack in later life? Could it even represent a useful, if not vital tool with which we enable ourselves to investigate and understand the origins of horror without exposing ourselves to physical or mental harm? Whatever the answer, the fact still stands: horror fiction of one form or another is a major totem of the twentieth century. – Alan Moore

(c) 1987 DC Comics

And still that applies nearly a decade into the twenty first century.

I post this not so much to provide an answer than to provoke a debate. Everything that Moore says is true, perhaps even moreso now than it was then. Dark fiction in all its forms is still massive business, from the pop culture mass consumption stuff like Ghost Whisperer and Supernatural on TV to the more more cerebral dark fiction found on television, in books and in movies. It’s an eternally popular genre, even if it is something of a sub-culture.

Then again, I’m often surprised at the people that read and praise my books. It’s not all goths, emos and heavy metal fans that enjoy my fiction about demons, magic, death and mystery. It’s housewives and grandmothers too. Gentlemen and teachers. Very few people, if really questioned, are averse to a bit of darkness now and then. Some people have berated me because my stuff scared them and kept them awake, yet they still read it. Something compelled them. And my stuff isn’t really straight horror, designed to scare people. It’s dark fantasy, designed to peel back any veneer and reveal the dirty, gritty reality of the human condition.

It’s like a rollercoaster ride. We love to be scared. But why?

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s alanbaxteronline site.

Amazon Builds Kindle Revolution with Guerilla Tactics vs. Conventional Warfare by Publishers and Competitors

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There is a revolution taking place in what and how we read. Although it has been fired by movements and changes in technology that have been gathering for decades, it began in earnest on November 19, 2007 with the release of the Kindle. It might therefore be natural to think that this is a revolution about gadgets and technology, and which ebook reader or convergence device will win, but that would seriously miss the point.

In the long run, this revolution will be about what we read, our right of access to what we read, and the right of authors to connect with readers.

In most cases where there is a revolution, sooner or later there’s going to be a war, and it is now clear that there is a full-fledged war going on for the future of books, reading, and publishing. As is often the case, most of the participants would prefer not to be at war: for starters, readers would rather just read, and the big publishers and their most successful authors would prefer to return to some sepia-toned notion of the way things have always been. War is distracting and warlike behavior is unseemly, which is one of the reasons why it matters when New York Times reporters go all Judith Miller and regurgitate spoonfed publishing industry leaks that cast Amazon as the primary agent of threatening behavior in a controversy where, actually, all the players are playing hardball.

But while it is unfair to single out Amazon for "threatening" behavior, it would be silly not to realize that it is Amazon that is the revolutionary force here: it is Amazon that has taken the pulse of its current and future customer base and decided that we, those readers and customers, will insist on new ways to read, new forms of access to what authors are writing now and have been writing for centuries, and economic efficiencies that will better serve readers and authors (as well as Amazon itself). The Kindle is the magic that is making it possible for Amazon to deliver most, or much, of what it believes readers will insist upon, because it is, at once:
 

  • a reading device
  • an increasingly ubiquitous multi-device reading platform
  • an online bookselling and content delivery system
  • an astonishingly accessible and ultimately meritocratic direct publishing, distribution and marketing platform

By bringing out the Kindle and engaging customers with it well in advance of the existence of a mass appetite for its features, Amazon has achieved first-mover status and shaped an increasingly broad-based appetite for the Kindle’s benefits. At the same time, it has built a critical mass of customer loyalty and perhaps even turned the name of its device into the noun and verb by which we may know all ereaders and ereading in the future: I kindle, you kindle, we kindle, each of us on "one of those kindle things." If ever there was a trademark that its holder should be willing to set free, the Kindle® may be it.

None of that, of course, is very appealing to the big publishers or, in general, to Amazon’s bookselling competitors. The big publishers have not wanted ebooks, ebook readers, or any changes in the traditional gatekeeping and distribution channels for books. Barnes and Noble, late to every party, did not want to create and sell the Nook any more than it wanted, a few years after Amazon’s launch, to open an online bookselling website. And the extent to which Apple wanted to launch iBooks was pretty clear when Steve Jobs told the Times in January 2008 that the Kindle’s "whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” Nearly all of these players have been dragged kicking and screaming, and unfashionably late, to the ebook party.

 

So the publishers and Apple and other Amazon competitors are fighting back hard with the most conventional and traditional tactics of business warfare, including:
 

 

  • price-fixing collusion
  • supply-chain manipulation and interruptions
  • duplication and cynical rebranding of products and features, and 
  • the use of fear tactics and disinformation to get authors and agents, with whom they actually share very little self-interest, to carry their water.

While it has also employed some conventional business warfare tactics along the way, Amazon’s fundamental approach to this war has been characterized by guerilla tactics, and guerilla tactics often win when the war is essentially a revolution. The most obvious area where these guerilla tactics are playing out involves authors and content.

Apple has been signing iBooks deals with (mostly) the big publishers, and those publishers may feel very confident in the short run to put their bestsellers up against scruffy upstart authors and indie publishers that bear, in some cases, the fading stigma of the self-published. But Amazon understands better than anyone else in the content business that nurturing "the long tail" can deliver significant revenues and occasional future bestsellers. The company that launched the Kindle is also supporting the expansion of the Kindle catalog by developing a remarkably diverse and potent infrastructure aimed at bringing authors, independent publishers, and other content providers directly onboard through a variety of channels including:
 

Not that Amazon is concerned only with the long tail of Kindle content sales. Kindle owners are not only Amazon’s best customers; we are, almost by definition, the book-buyingest people in the world. We buy a ton of bestsellers, and bestselling authors and their publishers who have made millions of dollars over the past couple of years on Kindle downloads are not likely to turn up their noses at those growing revenue streams.

"Amazon has built up a 90 percent share of the American e-book [content] market," according to the Times. That market share may fall to less astounding levels over the next few years, but it is likely to remain at high enough levels that many authors — from the very successful to the emerging — will be inclined to make direct or even exclusive deals with Amazon if they determine either that
 

  • their publishers are not playing nice with the Kindle, or 
     
  • the "10 to 25 percent of net proceeds" Kindle sales royalties offered by the big publishers look rather anemic next to the "70 percent of gross sales based on suggested list price" offered directly by Kindle’s Digital Text Platform (beginning in June). 

It will be interesting to see how this migration away from publishers-as-middlemen unfolds, and there are a range of possibilities:
 

Amazon’s ownership of the long tail supports an ebook ecosystem in which an astonishing number of author’s success stories are blooming and then, in the evangelical retellings by authors like J.A. Konrath, inspiring other established authors to take note and consider new options. As Amazon becomes increasingly aware of the importance of luring authors to interact directly with its Kindle Digital Text Platform without the intermediation of corporate publishers, it would be wise to build on the promise of forthcoming 70 percent royalties and take further steps to level the playing field between its DTP and its offerings to corporate publishers, including parity in access to such things as zero-priced book promotions. Amazon could also do much to strengthen and protect its Kindle content market share by taking two steps that seem mind-numbingly obvious given the fact that the company already owns Amazon Associates and Shelfari:
 

  • restore Amazon Associates affiliate commissions to Kindle content (the only major part of the Amazon website where they are disallowed), even if at a lower percentage than the 10% that Amazon applied to Kindle content for the first year or so after the Kindle’s launch; and
     
  • integrate Shelfari, which bills itself as "the social network for people who love books," fully into the Kindle reading experience. (The most natural way to build on these two necessary features, of course, would be to provide ways for Kindle owners to receive account credits when their Kindle device and book recommendations to other Amazon customers result in purchases.)

 Meanwhile, publishers are fighting a conventional, old-school war to prop up their hardcover sales and their traditional wholesale and retail distribution channels, but as Michael Mace made clear in a brilliant speech at O’Reilly’s most recent Tools of Change conference, "the real threat to [publishers] is the likelihood that in the future authors will publish their books directly to the public, bypassing the entire publishing value chain:"
 

We’re likely to have a latency period of at least several years while the e-reader installed base gradually grows. During this time nothing terribly dramatic will happen to publishers, and they may think they have the situation under control. But then we’ll reach a tipping point, and suddenly established authors will have a financial incentive to go direct rather than bothering with paper publication of their books. Once that happens, all book buyers will have a very strong incentive to get e-readers — some books by bestselling authors simply won’t be available in paper form, or will be available first electronically. This will drive more rapid sales of e-readers, which will give authors even more incentive to bypass the publishers. 

Once the dam cracks, the water will move very quickly.

In making its (so far) largely successful pitches to publishers that they should sign ebook deals with its iBooks store for the iPad, Apple has built its argument upon what could be, for the publishers, a potentially fragile premise. This premise is that Apple’s iBooks store will quickly become such a serious market share competitor to Amazon’s Kindle Store, in actual ebook content sales to actual readers, that new iBooks revenues will replace lost Kindle Store revenues. The challenge for Apple becomes impossible if Amazon employs its "nuclear option" of deleting those publishers’ buy buttons across the entire Amazon website. Then, Apple’s new iBooks revenues (combined with other book sales displaced but realized somewhere) would have to replace the publishers’ lost Amazon Store revenues in toto, which might be as much as 20 percent of total book sales.

I do not mean to discount Apple’s truly impressive market power and digital ecosystem, but for Apple to deliver on either of these challenges would be a very tall order. Amazon already has an installed base of over 3 million Kindles, and the reports seem to have been that after over a year of delays, hype, and pent-up demand, there were somewhere around 125,000 first-day iPad pre-orders. That seems a little underwhelming, but I’m perfectly prepared to grant the possibility that the iPad and the Kindle will each finish 2010 with an installed base of 5 to 6 million units.

But who knows how many prospective iPad owners are serious readers or will be serious ebook buyers, and who knows how many of them will choose the iBooks store over the Kindle Store? As of yet, nobody has ever bought a book from the iBooks store, and nobody has ever read a book in the iBooks environment. Among those loyal Apple customers who are regular readers and book buyers — whatever percentage that is — it seems likely that a relatively large portion are also loyal Amazon customers. Prying those customers loose when they have had nothing but good customer experiences with Amazon will not be easy. Most people who buy expensive gadgets are not gadget zealots; they populate the great middle and are likely to own and use several different kinds of devices and numerous online websites and services.

Beyond the question of the device itself, of course, Amazon has been achieving brilliant success at another kind of guerilla warfare. While new-kid hardware manufacturers (and, believe me, I do not include Apple here) have been breathlessly copying and trying to improve upon the Kindle and its feature set, they consistently miss the point of the four Cs that have made the Kindle, so far at least, unbeatable: customers, catalog, convenience and connectivity. There are some very cool dedicated ebook readers being launched these days by companies that are not Amazon, but if you have found a way to imagine them taking over a large market share either of U.S. ebook devices or content, you are way ahead of me either in seeing or imagining the future. Meanwhile, among all the other devices that are not dedicated ebook readers — from PCs and Macs to the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the Blackberry, the iPad and various other tablets and Android devices — the Kindle for X app is either on the device or on the way.

So far, Apple and Steve Jobs have succeeded in getting most of the major book publishers to change the basic structure of their way of doing business so dramatically that it might be compared, to use an old metaphor, with getting them to turn around a super tanker. But if the customers do not line up to purchase what is on that super tanker, or if growing numbers of authors abandon the publishers’ ship in favor of their own dramatic changes in the way they, the authors, do business, the super tanker may prove to be an empty vessel and the navigational 180 a Pyrrhic triumph indeed.

This is a cross-posting from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.