Publetariat

Somebody Please Tell Me The Path To Survival For The Illustrated Book Business

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files.

My eye was caught at the end of last week by a story in The Bookseller that acknowledged that ebooks just haven’t worked for illustrated books. It appears that the publishers of illustrated books they spoke to for the piece think that situation is temporary. The Managing Director of Thames & Hudson, Jamie Camplin, is quoted as saying “you have to make a very clear distinction between the situation now and the situation in five years time.” And Dorling Kindersley CEO John Duhigg emphasized that his team is being kept up to date with digital workflows and innovations, so they can “be there with the right product at the right time.”

But maybe, except for an opportunity that will arise here and there, for illustrated book publishers trying to exploit the same creative development across both print and digital, there won’t ever be a “right time”. There certainly is no guarantee there will be.

Duhigg characterized what he called “the black and white digital business” (but which I think would more accurately be described as “the immersive reading digital business”) as “flowing along” while admitting it is “very different” for the companies with “fully-illustrated lists”.

That’s accurate. Expecting that to change could well be wishful thinking.

Illustrated books in printed form depend on bookstores more than novels and biographies do. If the value in a book is in its visual presentation, then you might want to look at it before buying it, and the view you’d get of it online might not be doing justice to what you’d see if you held the book in your hands.

Camplin sees that optimistically. He has an aggressively modernist view of what will happen with novels. “I don’t see why print should survive at all for fiction, beyond the odd bibliophile” which he apparently believes could open up more bookstore display space for illustrated books.

But if the buyers of Patterson and Evanovich and 50 Shades of Gray aren’t visiting bookstores to make those purchases anymore, will there be any traffic to look at the illustrated books, however prominently they are displayed?

This problem has been nagging at me for a while. Books are illustrated for two reasons: beauty or explanatory purpose, more the latter than the former. When they’re illustrated to better explain, such as showing you how to knit a stitch or make a candle or a piece of jewelry, wouldn’t a video be a better option most of the time? If the illustration is a map, isn’t it likely that being able to manage overlays digitally (for the movement of the weather or the troops on the battlefield or the adjustment of borders over time) will deliver more clarity than whatever stills were in the book?

Of course, these things can be done by book publishers for the digital versions. But they require creating or licensing and then integrating new content assets and rethinking and redesigning the presentation. And that’s not even accounting for the work involved in adjusting the content to multiple screen sizes, a problem that just keeps getting more challenging as more different tablet and phone screen sizes are introduced.

One major publisher I know really endeavors to make ebooks of all their new title output, which includes some imprints that do a lot of illustrated books. Like everybody else, they frequently see ebook sales of 50% and more of their fiction, and 25% or more on immersive-reading non-fiction. But the illustrated books are in the single-digit percentages most of the time, with some of the more successful categories in the very low double-digits.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

My Brief Experiment Going Off KDP Select: At Least I Got This Nifty Blog Piece Out Of It!

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So…

I lasted only a month off of KDP Select. It was an eye-opening experience. I knew that I would lose sales on Amazon without the borrows and KDP free days to keep my books visible on the historical mystery bestseller lists, but my hope was that I would be building enough sales on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and the Smashwords affiliates, to make up for these lost sales. I even told myself I was willing to accept lower overall sales for 2-3 months in order to test the idea that having my book on multiple sites (even if the sales on those sites were lower, on average, than on Kindle) was a workable alternative to exclusivity on Amazon, which is what KDP Select requires.

But this was predicated on being able to figure out how to get my books, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, discovered on these other sites, because my experience is that if readers find my books, they will buy them.

But I was not able to figure out how to do this for Barnes and Noble or Kobo and I didn’t see any evidence that this was something I would be able to solve in a short period of time.

As I have written about before, there are primarily two ways a person ends up buying a book (from a brick and mortar store or estore).

They either:

1) come to the store looking for that book (or books by a certain author) or

2) find the books in the store while browsing.

For authors who are independently published and who sell most of their books in on-line stores, social media (blogs, twitter, facebook, pinterest, etc) can play an important role in getting people to go looking for their books. When a potential reader discovers the title of a book through reading a review or an interview with an author on a blog, or reading a tweet or a facebook post from a friend, they may decide to go looking for this book. The more frequently they run across that author’s name or the title of the book, the more likely they are to do so. In addition, social media usually provides direct links to the product pages of estores so that the impulse to look for the book can lead immediately to the decision to buy the book, which increases the effectiveness of this form of marketing.

Social media also has the benefit of costing less money and requiring less clout than the methods traditionally used by authors to market (reviews in print media, book signings, talks at conventions, interviews on radio or tv, mass mailings, etc).

While I don’t believe that the majority of sales I have made have come through my social media activities, I did understand that I might have to work harder to drive people to look for my books in the Barnes and Noble and Kobo stores because they initially wouldn’t have much visibility in these stores. What I didn’t expect was to have difficulty finding places on the internet that specifically targeted Nook or Kobo owners. If an author wants to connect with Kindle owners there are the Kindle Boards, literally dozens of Kindle oriented facebook pages, book blogs and websites that target Kindle owners, providing free and paid methods of promoting your book. I couldn’t find any similar sites that focused on Kobo beyond their official facebook/websites, and the small number of sites that focused on Nook ebooks generally didn’t have many followers. So beyond tweeting using the #kobo or #nook hashtags, I discovered few ways of reaching out and alerting these specific readers that my books were available on their devices.

Which brings me to the other way people find books–browsing. Whether it was in the libraries of my youth, the bookstores of my middle years, or Amazon in my senior years, I discover new authors primarily by looking on the “shelves,” being intrigued by the cover picture and the title, looking at the short description of the book and blurbs, maybe scanning the first pages, and then deciding to take a chance. This is what I want to have happen with my books, and while Amazon’s browsing experience isn’t perfect, for my books, it turns out Amazon is much better than the other two major ebook stores at helping potential customers find my books on their shelves.

I had some hopes for Barnes and Noble because my books had been in this store before and had done moderately well. While I had been disappointed in the total number of my Nook sales, I thought that if I could figure out how to get my books visible in the right browsing categories I could increase these sales. I was particularly encouraged by the fact that Barnes and Noble gives you 5 categories to put your books in (Amazon now only gives you 2), and that they had some smaller sub-categories that Amazon didn’t have where I knew my historical mysteries would shine (like historical romances in the Victorian/Gilded Age, or American Cozy mysteries.) I also know a number of people who sell well on the Nook, although most of them have at least 5 books for sale, usually in a series, and they have been able to take advantage of either the NookFirst program or have used the first book in their series as their loss leader by making the book 99 cents or free (through price matching.) But they also seemed to have their books in the right categories.

However, my plan to make my books be more visible through better category placement in the Nook store failed completely when I couldn’t even figure out where my books were showing up after I uploaded them through ePubit, much less how to get them into the right categories.

Side note: all the Kindle/Nook/Kobo self-publishing systems have the same problem in that the categories you get to choose from when uploading your book aren’t identical to the categories that show up when browsing. See my discussion of this in my post on Categories.

Both the Amazon and Kobo product pages lists a book’s browsing categories, not so Barnes and Noble. When I went to the categories and subcategories I thought my books might be in and scrolled through, looking for my books, either my book would be missing or the pages would freeze before I got through the hundreds of pages, so I could never determine if they were there. Arggh. (And of course this means a potential customer wasn’t going to find them either.)

So, I did what I had done to get my books properly in the right categories on Amazon when I was first figuring out how browsing worked in that store, I wrote the Barnes and Noble/Nook support staff, first asking what 5 categories my books were in and next asking how I could get them into the 5 categories I wanted.

And got no reply. Not even an automated, “we have received your email and we are working on an answer.” Nothing. So I resent my request a week later (mentioning that this was the second request and that I would appreciate some response.) Nothing. So then I wrote the Director of Digital Content, asking if she could direct me to where I could find out the answers to my questions and asking if she could give me advice on how to better market my books for the Nook. No reply.

Bangs head.

I do believe that if I got my books into the right categories that I would begin to have decent sales on the Nook. I am assuming the books I did sell were primarily to those people who went into the bookstore looking for them (based on my tweets and facebook postings), but I don’t think it makes sense to go another month or two hoping I will finally get an answer, and that my books will finally start showing up where I want them to be. I am leaving my short stories up in this store, and maybe I will eventually get these stories into the right categories and begin to get more sales. If this happens and my sales of these stories increase enough on the Nook, I may try again with the full-length novels.

I also had high hopes for Kobo, after reading about their new self-publishing initiative, WritingLife. What was particularly attractive was that they are letting indies price their books at free, without an exclusivity requirement or time limit. But, despite the promise that they had been consulting with indie authors in beta testing, Kobo’s WritingLife is not yet ready for prime time when it comes to browsing categories or free promotions.

I was pleased with the ability to designate three categories on Kobo and my books actually showed up in the categories I put them in. The problem was that these categories are currently very limited. Most distressing from my perspective, there is no historical mystery category (which is the subgenre that is most aligned with my books). Also, if you put “historical mystery” in as a keyword search there were 51,000 books (many which didn’t appear to be historical mysteries), which says to me the search function isn’t very useful as an alternative way for readers to find this kind of book.

The categories my books do show up in the Kobo store (mystery-women sleuths, historical fiction and historical romance) contain a lot of books, with none of the sub-categories that the Nook has, which also makes it difficult for a book by a relative unknown such as myself to become visible in them. I was facing the old chicken and the egg problem (how do you get a book up high enough in a category for people to find it without sales, but how do you get sales if no one ever sees your book?) This is where I hoped Kobo’s free option would help––as it has helped so many authors who have used the KDP Select free promotion option.

However, when I put my short story, Dandy Detects,up as free on Kobo, I found that Kobo has a very ineffective method of making free books visible. While I don’t know how the Kobo ereader itself works, if you are using the Kobo ap there is no way to find free books because there is no way of finding out what books within a category or subcategory are free. This is true for the on-line Kobo bookstore as well.

For example, in Barnes and Noble’s Nook ebook store, if you click on the mystery-women sleuth category, you find 2338 books, and you can order these books by price, with the free books showing up first (15 of them). By the way, my short story Dandy Detect, which should be in this category as a 99 cent book, isn’t there (sigh).

For Kindle, if you look on the device at the best seller list under the “mysteries-women sleuths” you can look at the free list separately for this subcategory, and in the online store you can see the paid list to the left and the free list to the right in this category. Today the free list for this category is 53 books––so it is easy to have your book visible if it is in the midst of a free promotion. Visible not just to people who are looking for free books, but visible to people who are looking at books that are for sale––maybe the newest Anne Perry––and just glance over to the right and notice a free book that looks intriguing.

In the Kobo store, the mystery-women sleuth category (3303 books) can be sorted by price, but the lowest price is 99 cents, so no free books are visible. Instead, you have to click on the free books link on the home page of the estore, a link that is not available on the ap (I don’t know if it is on the Nook itself). Then there are two options. The most straightforward––on the surface––is a link to one of 6 categories, one that is called “Free Mysteries.” But when you click this link only 20 books show up, most of them public domain, and none of them Dandy Detects. Dead end, and frankly if I was a consumer I would try this category once, and never again.

The second option Kobo gives you is to follow these 3 Step instructions

Step 1: Perform a search using any keyword

Step 2: Filter your results by “Free Only” from the pull-down menu

Step 3: Select your download from the search results

This does work, and Dandy Detects did show up under key words like mystery, historical mystery, fiction historical, but the separation from paid books and the browsing categories means that this method isn’t going to produce the traffic that it would get in either the Kindle or Nook stores where there is a connection between the paid and the free listings. In addition, the Kobo method depends on the consumer to come up with the right key words.

I suspect that these problems (no way to find free books through the Nook ap, limited free books under the Free Mystery link, and the lack of connection between paid and free books) have meant that Kobo readers aren’t accustomed to looking for free promotions the way Kindle readers have become since the introduction of KDP Select.  Even more frustrating, when I downloaded a free copy of Dandy to my Nook ap I discovered that the dashboard for WritingLife doesn’t report free book downloads so I had no way of knowing if anyone is finding it.

The only evidence I have that a few people eventually found the story (probably because I have been tweeting about Dandy being free) is after a few days a small number of other books started to show up in the “You Might Like” listing on Dandy’s product page. But I don’t know how many copies have been downloaded, I don’t know when they were downloaded (so I can’t connect up with my marketing), and, so far, putting Dandy up for free hasn’t translated into anyone buying either of my full-length novels or even the other short story. I also haven’t seen any movement in the total ranking of Dandy in the categories––so I don’t know if I put it back to paid if it would show up any higher in these categories. In short, at this point the Kobo option of putting a book up for free doesn’t seem to help sell books.

While I imagine that the Kobo techs, who have responded to my questions (unlike Barnes and Noble), will try to solve some of these problems, until they do and Kobo readers get used to looking for free books, I don’t anticipate free promotions being as successful as they are currently on Kindle.

Again, as with the Nook, I will keep my short stories in the Kobo store, keep Dandy free, and see if over the next few months some of these problems are resolved. But I don’t want to continue to let my sales on Kindle stagnate on the promise that the conditions for selling in either the Barnes and Noble or the Kobo stores will improve dramatically in the short term.

So…Back I will go to KDP Select next week, when my books have been successfully unpublished in the other stores, and then I can get back to writing and doing an occasional KDP promotion.

Obviously, I would love to hear if any of you have tips on how to get books in the right categories for the Nook, or have had better success with selling on Kobo. But meanwhile, if any of you are Nook or Kobo owners, my novels will be available for these devices until Sunday, August 12, and my short stories will continue to be there indefinitely.

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s blog.

Kindle Lending Library vs Lending Kindle Books (Hint: They’re Different)

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This post, by Moira Rogers, originally appeared on her site on 8/10/12.

Most of my corners of the internet have been ablaze over the piracy witch-hunt that shut down legal lending website LendInk.  I have seen pitchfork-wielding mobs gather many times in the past, but this one was fast, vicious and amplified by careless RTing and a lot of authors who seem to know nothing about ebooks or how they actually work.  This is terrifying to me on so many levels: that people agreed to the Amazon ToS without understanding them, that people jumped to the worst assumptions without taking time for research, and then that they went and made “legal” threats based on those assumptions.

But that’s not what this post is about.  This post is about a misconception so common I’ve seen it on both sides.  I think Amazon is to blame in some ways for not giving two completely different functions slightly more distinctive names.  There are two types of “lending” on Amazon–one that is Amazon-to-Prime-Customer and one that is Paying-Customer-To-Non-Paying-Customer, and people seem really confused over what they both mean.

Kindle Lending

How it Works

Kindle lending (like Nook lending) is a customer-to-customer transaction.  Someone who has legally purchased an eligible kindle title can lend that title to anyone else with a kindle account.  The option shows up on eligible books:

The LOAN THIS BOOK text as seen on a product page on Amazon.com

Ebook lending is meant to mirror the act of physical lending–the book “disappears” from the lender’s account and “appears” in the lendee’s account. The lending period is restricted to two weeks, and a book can only be lent once.  In many ways, it’s far more restrictive than its physical counterpart, even if the internet allows you to easily use your one lend on people outside your immediate geographic area.

Which books are eligible?  For larger publishers, that’s their call.  Lots of the Big Six books are not eligible. Anyone using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), however, is automatically opted in to this lending service if they select the 70% royalty option.  (Note: this is NOT related to KDP Select. This is just about 35% vs 70%.  To receive the 70% royalty, you have to do many things that make your book more useful to Amazon, including opting in to lending and agreeing to stay within a set price range.)

This is the option LendInk was using to arrange book lending.  User A would say, “I have a copy of Cipher by Moira Rogers that I am willing to lend” and User B would say, “I’d like to read that book!”  LendInk would give User B’s e-mail address to User A, and User A would go to Amazon, click the “Loan this book” link and the standard (legal) transaction would occur.  If User C wanted to borrow Cipher, too, they would be out of luck. User A can only loan that book once.  However, User C might click on the “Buy this Book” link and purchase the book.  That would give the author royalties and give LendInk a small referrer fee.  That was the business model in play.

Royalties

 

Read the rest of the post, which also explains the Amazon Prime Lending Library and author lend compensation, on Moira Rogers’ site.

Do Readers Of Different Genres Have Specific Craft Preferences?

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Okay, I’m taking off my crankypants now to write a rare post about craft. Let me open by saying this post will contain some gross generalizations, and I know such blanket statements can’t possibly cover all situations and will certainly be untrue in many cases. I’m only working with blanket statements here to address a larger topic, so please try to bear with me on them and focus on the larger topic.

I have a writer acquaintance who writes hard-boiled detective, murder mystery novels. He will often post excerpts from his work as a promotional gambit (as opposed to looking for feedback), and just as often will post about his disappointment with his sales. I read some of his excerpts, and concluded that to my mind, what’s wrong with his work is that it’s overwritten.

He seems never able to write something like, "She was exhausted," when he could write something like, "The weight of the day, the hopeless yoke of overwork, enveloped her in a fog of somnambulant fatigue." And he doesn’t employ these kinds of sentences sparingly, virtually every line appears to have been laboriously massaged, tinkered with, and obsessed over.

Some people reading this will actually prefer the second, lengthier sentence to the first. Some will also think it’s just fine if most of the sentences in a given book are like the second one, and will admire the craft that went into them. Other people—people like me—, not so much. It got me thinking about reader tastes, and whether it might be possible to predict them.

And here’s where those gross generalizations enter the picture. It seems to me that readers who favor certain genres may also favor certain writing styles.

I am a near-textbook example of the Type A personality. I am most definitely a "bottom line it for me" type, a chronic multitasker, and a very busy person who values efficiency in most aspects of my life. It should come as no surprise that I don’t have much patience for flowery prose and lengthy descriptive passages. I’m not saying that style of writing is necessarily bad, just that it’s not a good fit for me, and I suspect it’s not a good fit for most Type A people.

I have a friend who’s much more laid-back. She can spend a half hour contemplating a painting in a gallery, and days on a road trip with no particular destination or schedule in mind; she may not even bring a map. She’s the type of person who will savor every word of the kinds of passages that I find irritating.

Now, getting back to that writer acquaintance…what if *most* of his target audience shares my sensibilities? What if the type of person who’s most likely to seek out a detective story is Type A? Considering that some of the defining characteristics of Type A people are that we’re very goal-oriented, organized, attentive to details, and love solving puzzles, it doesn’t seem like such a leap to imagine that most of us enjoy a good murder mystery; a murder mystery is essentially a written puzzle, after all. It may not be such a leap to imagine the inverse is true, too: that most people who enjoy murder mysteries are Type A.

If that’s true, then my writer acquaintance is turning off the bulk of his target audience with his verbose, highly stylized prose. We Type A people only want to be given relevant, or possibly relevant, pieces of the puzzle so we can try to solve it. Anything more feels like a waste of our time and energies.

My laid-back friend has plenty of patience for stylized prose, but for her, most murder mysteries are little more than empty exercises in tricky plotting and misdirection. She wants to read books that she feels feed her soul, not just her intellect. She very well might enjoy my writer acquaintance’s work, since it strives to rise high above plot mechanics and even be somewhat philosophical, but she’s not likely to ever find it since she’s not one to seek out murder mysteries or detective novels in the first place.

So for those who write in specific genres or combo genres (e.g., supernatural romance, supernatural thriller), and for whom maximizing sales is a priority, maybe give a thought to the most likely type of person to seek out your books in the first place, and what that person’s preferences might be. I’m not trying to suggest you totally engineer your prose to match some kind of external template, just that appealing to a commercial audience is always a balancing act between pleasing the audience and pleasing yourself.

I have nothing but respect for the writer who follows his vision regardless of whether or not it will lead to commercial success, but for those like that detective novelist, who spends as much time worrying over his sales as his art, writing with the eventual reader in mind may give better results.

 

 

This is a reprint from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

LendInk: A Post Mortem

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The totally legitimate, legal ebook lend exchange site, LendInk, is dead, and the cause of death was murder. Yet the mob still isn’t satisfied; LendInk’s owner has reported he, members of his family, and his former web host have all received numerous threats, even AFTER his site was taken down.

No matter how many times, nor how clearly anyone tries to explain how Amazon’s and B&N’s lending programs work, the ill-informed hysterics continue to insist LendInk was doing something illegal, and it was justifiably destroyed. These authors obviously have not read, or else don’t understand, the Terms and Conditions to which they agreed when they opted their books in for lending. Some are now saying it’s unreasonable for Amazon and B&N to expect them to have read those terms, or to make sure they understood the terms before agreeing to them. They are wrong.

Many of the others who are on the wrong side of this argument are attempting damage control, rather than simply owning up and apologizing. They’re fixating on some small detail that they feel still entitles them to feel righteous in their actions, instead of acknowledging that they’ve done a terrible thing.

Some say it’s LendInk’s own fault authors didn’t understand the LendInk business model, because LendInk didn’t make any effort beyond its FAQ to explain its service to authors, like placing a detailed explanation on its home page. This is a bad argument for two reasons. First, since LendInk was a site geared to readers, not authors, it had no obligation to plaster its home page with legalese intended to inform and pacify authors. Second, those who make this argument obviously haven’t read the FAQ; if they had, they would see the site’s business model and legality were very clearly explained there.

Some say that since not every book listed on LendInk was actually available to lend, that some were listed as Amazon affiliate ‘buy’ links, the site was pulling a Bait-and-Switch and deserved to be shut down for that reason. It is for site users, not authors, to decide whether or not they had a problem with this. Considering that the site had 15k+ registered users at the time it was shut down, it would appear they did not. Also, any author who objects to affiliate links for his book being placed on heavily-trafficked websites targeted to avid readers is arguing against his own interests.

Some say that since not every lend on LendInk generated a commission or royalty for authors, the site wasn’t really helping authors at all. Setting aside for the moment that LendInk had no obligation to help authors, the fact that some person or company isn’t helping authors is not a valid justification for destroying it. Besides, regardless of the commission/royalty issue, every listing of a book on LendInk was free advertising and exposure for authors, built entirely on a totally legal and totally pre-existing lend mechanism created by Amazon/B&N, to which authors and publishers voluntarily opted in.

Here are some follow-ups from around the web.

LendInk owner Dale Porter is interviewed on Digital Media Machine.

On Lynch Mobs, Social Media and LendInk.

A.B. Dada Offers T-Shirt Fundraiser, and Hosts a Boycott List of Authors Who Falsely Accused LendInk. Even if the thought of such a boycott list seems wrong to you, it’s important to know this kind of backlash is happening.

LendInk – How Can We Put Things Right? In which one blogger suggests those who falsely accused LendInk make amends via public apologies and retractions.

And finally, Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton offers this tongue-in-cheek YouTube video, How To Maintain Control of Your Work and Beat the Ebook Pirates, which is based on actual statements made, and objections levelled, by real indie authors who weighed in on the LendInk debacle.

 

And The Silver Bullet Of Book Marketing Is…

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This post, by Steve (Stephanie) Nilles, of Booknook.biz, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

Kimberly Hitchens is the founder and owner of Booknook.biz, an ebook production company that has produced books for over 750 authors and imprints.

This week’s entry is from our Social Networking Genius  extraordinaire, Steve (Stephanie) Nilles, who holds down the fort on Tweeting and Facebooking, Pinteresting and other "stuff" over at Booknook.biz, and has taught me all I know about Twitter, et al.  She will be guest blogging for me while I recover from a shoulder problem, and to provide a different perspective than I usually have. Take it away, Steve:

I’m not an agent, publisher, or aspiring novelist. I’m a working musician. About a year and a half ago, while taking a month-long break from the road, I happened upon part-time work for a well-established and traditionally published mystery writer who was just starting her own e-pub company. I have since edited manuscripts and provided marketing assistance for an ebook producer, as well as for mystery, science fiction, romance, children’s books, and nonfiction authors, ranging from the seasoned and well-known to the obscure writer pushing his very first novel. Predictably, my work in publishing has drawn enlightening parallels to my work in the music business. In short, publishing seems to be about 20 years behind the music industry, at least in terms of adjusting to a preference for digital. And as an outsider temporarily peering into a world of energetic bordering on frantic writers and publishers, I’ve found the clamoring for the magical marketing plan that will give birth to the next Amanda Hocking, H.P. Mallory, or John Locke to be … amusing.

The obvious explanation for what now makes being a musician or author nearly impossible is that “everyone can do it.” Perhaps screenwriter Aaron Sorkin put it best in a particularly wry interview: Interviewer: "Look, I don’t want to step on your toes, you don’t want to step on mine. We’re both writers."  Sorkin: "Yes, I suppose, if we broaden the definition to those who can spell."

As technology provides limitless tools for distribution, self-promotion, and even production of the artform itself, the internet has, as Mark Bowden puts it, "replaced everyman with every man." From art of every medium to the once revered science of journalism, press critic A.J. Liebling’s 1960s fear of a dystopia with only one newspaper, "a city with one eye," has been replaced by a city with a million eyes.

Much like a writer, when I tell a stranger that I am a "musician," I’m painfully aware that my self-proclaimed title conjures up images of a dramatic and self-medicated kid, sulking in her bedroom and writing break up ballads in her diary. I am a 28-year-old that has spent 23 years playing music, 15 of those years nearly 5-10 hours a day. I’m on the road 8 months out of the year. I play 150 gigs a year. So imagine my displeasure at sharing the semantics of a vocation with an overnight YouTube sensation who recorded a 4 song EP in a basement with a Fisher Price tape recorder.

My 28 years notwithstanding, I think I’ve amassed an interesting cross section of experience witnessing the worlds of music-making as well as book publishing, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that what works in music works in publishing–whether you’re writing what one of my clients calls The Great American Novel or the next paranormal romance Kindle millionaire-maker. If we define "success" as "consistently selling books" (and I have yet to find a better definition), the most successful authors I’ve worked for have one and only one thing in common: they spend all of their time writing more books. And each book is better than the one that came before it.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

Can You Afford To Be Fashionably Late To The Digital Party?

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on his Write It Forward blog.

In general it’s always a good thing to be the “first” at something. Being part of something on the ground floor tends to give you an advantage. This is why Bob and I are always trying new things and open to new innovative technology. But there is an inherent flaw in being “first”.

What was the first eReader? A Sony. They were first, but they aren’t really a big player anymore now are they? What was the first “smartphone?” Most people would probably say the Blackberry. Nope. It was a phone designed in 1992 by IBM called Simon. And well, we all know that IBM used to be synonymous with Personal Computer, except they have made a PC in years.

Anyone ever hear of Kodak? Did you know Kodak actually developed the technology for the digital camera? In 1995 they were pushing the Kodak DC40. They had pulled in Kinko’s and Microsoft to help develop digital making software and put kiosks inside Kinko’s stores. Even IBM collaborated with Kodak to make an internet-based network image exchange. These campaigns helped launch digital cameras to the consumers and now everyone uses them, but what has happened to Kodak?

It’s not that being first is the flaw. The flaw is the inability to adapt to continued change. Kodak made some ground breaking advances, but they never adapted to their own creation. The danger in being first and successful at something is the standard thinking that it can be re-created in identical format. Also, we have to remember that usually being first means it’s only the beginning. Too many people sit back and relax because they feel as though they’ve already achieved it. Whatever it is.

So, what does this brief little history lesson bring us to? Last week I visited the Corporate Offices of Kobo. During a tour of the offices with Mark we discussed various technologies, and how it has impacted the business of publishing, the writers, and the readers. I sort of joked that Kobo was a little late to the digital party and Mark responded with, “perhaps a little late, but with a solid plan.” One of the things that impressed me with Kobo is their ability to see what is going on around them and then act instead of react. They took their time launching the new Writing Life Portal. It’s been in the works for about a year, but they were busy watching, listening and learning. They are very aware of what is going on with other on-line stores and they welcome the competition. Mark constantly repeats how Kobo feels that the author should be able to get their book on as many platforms as possible.

 

Read the rest of the post on Bob Mayer’s Write It Forward.

Are You a Good Writer?

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This post, by Porter Anderson, originally appeared on Jane Friedman’s site.

What does the online writing community hand off to good writers?

 Good writers figure it out on their own.

No, this isn’t another hand-wringer about “Can Writing Be Taught?” But when I tweeted that “figure it out on their own” line the other day? The RTs went on and on.

A chord had been struck.

Or was that a starter pistol?

Since we’re all beginning to feel like volunteers at the London Olympics, I’m going to fashion this post as something of a relay. The baton of our shared thoughts here will pass from one writer to another. A quick 4×100. Ready…set…beep.

Off the Starting Blocks

Good writers figure it out on their own. Good writers develop a style that works for them. They write, they fail, and they write again.

This “self-immolating preamble,” as he calls it, is from Micah Nathan, author of this summer’s Jack the Bastard, as well as Losing Graceland, and Gods of Aberdeen.

The trick is prying apart the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, and seeing how it all works.

Nathan is telling us what we don’t always remember, but we do know: those good writers aren’t dependent on finding the Magic Blog Post or the Holy Inspirational Devotion that can transform the third vampire author on the left into Michael Cunningham.

Good writers intuitively know this. They certainly don’t need me getting in the way.

Nathan’s short essay is at Glimmer Train. Maybe it’s an anti-essay. (“I find these sorts of essays difficult.”) It’s called Selectively Stubborn. It’s been pointed out by Jane Friedman, host of the Ether and hashtag unto herself.

And it arrives at a time when we need gently to consider a kind of reckoning. No, a recognition. Well, maybe a recognition of what we’re not recognizing. A reckoning unreckoned. About this writing community business we engage in.

 

Read the rest of the post on Jane Friedman’s site.

Mistakes Writers Make On Twitter

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This post, by Rob Kroese, originally appeared on the New Wave Authors blog.

Let me say first of all that I’m not a Twitter expert. However, I have had some success using Twitter over the past two years to promote my books, and I thought I’d take a moment to share with you some of what I’ve learned about the do’s and don’t’s of Twitter.

Twitter is an especially difficult medium for many writers to adapt to. Writers tend to be verbose, and 140 characters just isn’t enough to say very much. There are sites that will allow you to post longer tweets (like Deck.ly), but overusing these sites defeats the purpose of Twitter and will probably cost you followers, as will using Twitter solely as a means to promote your latest blog post. If readers want to keep up with your blog, they will subscribe to your rss feed. There’s no need to constantly spam them with blog post-related tweets. Also, resist the urge to post anecdotes or diatribes that span four or five tweets. If you have something to say that requires more than a tweet or two, do a blog post. The most popular tweeters are those who use Twitter the way it was intended: for short, pithy remarks or updates.

And as with all social media, remember that people don’t enjoy constantly being bombarded with advertising. Your primary activities should be to socialize, entertain and/or enlighten. If more than a third of your tweets/posts/updates are self-promotion, people are going to get irritated and lose interest. Treat your followers with respect.

To that end, here are a few Twitter don’ts that I’ve picked up over the past two years:

  • Don’t follow people at random. If you’re going to start following large numbers of Tweeters in the hopes that they will follow you back, at least pick people based on some kind of relevant interest. For example, if you write romance novels, try following people who follow other romance authors. Otherwise, you’re just going to annoy and confuse people.
     
  • Don’t spam people. By this I mean don’t Tweet self-promotional message directly at individual users. In fact, don’t Tweet directly at someone (you do this by typing their Twitter handle followed by your message) unless you have something specific to say to someone. Recently I got a Tweet from one of my followers whose name I didn’t recognize, saying, “robkroese, Hey there! Been a while. How are you?” I looked up the user’s account and saw that this person had been Tweeting a long string of these sorts of messages, apparently in an attempt to “engage” his followers. His whole Twitter stream was filled with “@someusername Hey, how’s it going?” and “@someotheruser What are you up to these days?” That sort of insincerity is transparent and will probably get you unfollowed a good amount of the time.

 

Read the rest of the post on the New Wave Authors blog.

C. S. Lewis, Mastermind.

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This post, by Gerry McCullough, originally appeared on her blog.

I wonder when I first heard of C.S.Lewis?

I think it must have been when a friend of mine at school (I’d known her since my first day at primary school, and on through Grammar School and University, before eventually losing touch. Anne Stirling, now Anne Salmon, where are you?) spoke enthusiastically about, and then lent me, The Screwtape Letters. I enjoyed reading it, and began to look out for other books by this author.

For whatever reason, I didn’t at first find and read the Narnia series. I am an avid reader of children’s books, and have been from my childhood and teens, when this is obviously more normal, on through my twenties, thirties and so on. But I was eighteen before (again) someone lent me The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I loved it straight away, and bought and read the other six books rapidly.

I love the Narnia books, I even love the slightly distorted films. Well, they’re better than many films of well-loved books. And when I take a notion to re-read a children’s book from my past these days, although it may be one by Geoffrey Trease, Nancy Breary, Arthur Ransom, or a dozen other favourites, as often as not it’s a Narnia book. My special favourites are The Horse and his Boy, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair. Now I come to think about it, these are all books about a journey of adventure (did Enid Blyton write one of her adventure series with that title? I think she did. I always loved her adventure books. Oh, and The Magic Faraway Tree.)

Have you ever thought how much Lewis drew from another firm favourite of mine, E. Nesbit? In the opening of The Magician’s Nephew, he says that the story (set back in time from the rest of the series) happened, ‘when the Bastables were still seeking for treasure in the Lewisham Road.’ Now, there’s a clue!

I read an excerpt from The Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit when I was at Primary School, in a book which included bits from Little Women and Three Men in a Boat, etc. (It’s amazing how many of my favourite writers I first heard of in that selection.) After that I searched out Nesbit’s books in the Junior Library, finding, first of all, The House of Arden, the first Time Travelling book I ever read, and certainly one of the best. Lewis could have chosen no more evocative, magical opening to The Magician’s Nephew than that reference, from my point of view.

 

Read the rest of the post on Gerry McCullough’s blog.

Congratulations: You Killed LendInk And Denied Your Fellow Authors Their Lend Royalties

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April L. Hamilton here. This post provides a cautionary tale about what happens when paranoia about ebook piracy is allowed to run amok. While piracy and intellectual property theft are valid concerns, anyone who suspects his rights are being infringed must see to due diligence before setting out on a witch hunt with torch and pitchfork in hand, based solely on hearsay and suspicions. Remember: anyone can say anything on the internet; that doesn’t make it true.

Fair warning: I am angry, and this is an angry post. When misinformation has the power to kill totally legitimate, above-board small businesses, it’s time to stop being nicey-nice and start getting down to brass tacks. When the business in question directly impacts authors’ livelihoods, it’s time to take action.

This week, there was a huge kerfuffle on Facebook and elsewhere about LendInk.com, a site that allowed people to list any of the ‘lendable’ Kindle or Nook books they own in exchange for getting access to other members’ listings of ‘lendable’ books. The sites make their money on advertising: they don’t get any piece of the action on the lends, which are essentially private transactions between two individuals, carried out in full compliance with the lending rules and limitations set forth by Amazon and B&N. As another person put it in a discussion on my Facebook page:

If I have a copy of ebook X that I think somebody might want to borrow (just once, as per [Amazon’s and B&N’s Terms and Conditions]), I can say so on this site. If someone wants to borrow it, they contact me and I either say yes or no. If I say yes, I tell amazon to lend it and it’s flagged on amazon as having had its lend. No different than me lending it to my mum for her kindle.

Just as with any other lend, the author gets her commission [if she is eligible for one, per Amazon’s and B&N’s terms and conditions] on lends originating from contacts made on sites like LendInk. There is nothing illegal about such sites, and having your book listed as available to lend on such sites is a GOOD thing because the fact that someone else already bought it serves as a kind of implied endorsement, and the lend listings lead to lend commissions you wouldn’t otherwise get [on your Kindle/Nook books that are eligible for lend commissions].

But once a few hair-on-fire, sky-is-falling types of indie authors got wind of LendInk and found their books listed there, they jumped right to the WRONG conclusion that this was some kind of illegal Napster for ebooks and went on the warpath. Rather than take a few moments to read the site’s FAQ, where the specifics of the site and the legality of it were addressed clearly and in detail, these authors immediately started posting warnings to all their author friends about this new ebook pirating site, LendInk. It became an online game of ‘telephone’, with well-meaning people re-posting incorrect claims about LendInk, and the claims about LendInk getting more distorted as they were passed around and new posters added their take on the situation. In a matter of just THREE DAYS, it went from an online campaign of spreading hysterical misinformation to LendInk being shut down.

The icing on this cake d’stupidity is that many people are taking the fact that LendInk has been shut down as proof that it MUST have been a pirate site, and posting "Yay, us!! We beat the evil ebook pirates!!" messages online. A more accurate message for them to post would be, "Yay, us!! We killed a small business that was making readers happy and making authors money!! And we did it without any actual evidence of wrongdoing, just hearsay and angry threats!! This is a victory for those who wish to cut off noses to spite faces everywhere!!"

While I’m still investigating the specifics of the shutdown, there’s a suspension of service message on LendInk’s former home page so I think the most likely reason is that one or more ill-informed authors sent ‘takedown’ notices to LendInk’s web hosting company, threatening legal action for intellectual property theft.

Even though LendInk wasn’t doing anything illegal or unethical, having to prove it in court is a costly and time-consuming process. Add to this the fact that you must generally stop doing business until you’ve been exonerated in court, and it’s not surprising that the great majority of small businesses are more likely to fold than fight the good fight. If anyone were to bring a totally bogus legal action against Publetariat, there’s no question I’d shut the site down rather than go to court to defend it. I simply don’t have the money or time to fight a frivolous lawsuit, no matter how completely ridiculous that lawsuit’s claims might be.

I fervently hope LendInk will be back, but it’s too soon to tell. For now, just let me say this to everyone who’s participated in the events leading up to its suspension this week:

Congratulations. You may have just destroyed a legitimate small business that was making life better for readers and authors of ebooks. You have caused someone who was in business to serve readers and authors a great deal of stress and expense, and potentially the total loss of his livelihood. You have definitely cost every author whose book was listed there the lend commissions [or added exposure] they would have otherwise received through this totally legal, legitimate channel for Amazon’s and B&N’s existing ebook lending programs. Pat yourself on the back, because I certainly won’t be doing it.

UPDATED TO ADD:
There’s some evidence to suggest LendInk’s site was hacked. I can’t say for certain whether it was or not, and if it was, whether the hack was a targeted attack instigated by one of those making false claims about LendInk. I’ve got some feelers out to contacts and I’m trying to get the full story.

But whatever the reason for LendInk’s current state of suspension, its owner is now put in the position of having to answer to all the false claims authors have made about it in emails to Amazon. I’m hopeful that once Amazon fully investigates the situation, they will see there’s been no wrongdoing and alter their responses to authors who complain about LendInk accordingly.

Also, I’m getting some feedback from people with wrong information. Let me address the myths floating around out there.

MYTH: Only Prime members can lend or borrow Kindle books.

FACT: Any Kindle book the publisher has marked as Lendable is lendable. The Kindle Lending Library is a special, sub-program for Prime members that gives them access to books publishers have approved only for limited lends to Prime members. Read Amazon’s page about Kindle book lending here.

MYTH: LendInk claimed to have Amazon’s approval to list its books on its site and lend them on its site, and it was a lie.

FACT: LendInk claimed all lends were processed by Amazon and B&N, and they were. No special ‘agreement’ is necessary, since it was the owners of the Kindle books who were listing them on LendInk, NOT LendInk itself. All they were doing was putting Kindle book owners in touch with one another, it was those book owners who actually transacted with one another to request and approve lends.

Here is some of the actual text from the former FAQ on LendInk:

Is the loaning of eBooks really legal? Isn’t this the same as file sharing?
Yes, loaning of certain eBooks is legal and No, it is not the same as file sharing. The key difference between the two is that the loan status of an eBook is directly dictated by the publisher and file sharing is usually done without the publishers consent. Working with Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, the publisher’s make their eBooks available for loan under very strict rules. The actual book loaning process is handled by Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble, not by Lendink.

I am a Publisher or Author of a book on Lendink, how did you get a copy of my book?
First, let us explain up front, we do not have a copy of your book. This is actually a common misunderstanding of how Lendink functions. No book has or will be stored on any Lendink server, ever. The title of the book is entered by our members and the book information is fed to us by an automated link between Lendink and Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Our servers only store our member contact information and the basic book information such as the author, ASIN and book description. We do not even store the book cover artwork.

MYTH: LendInk was allowing members to lend multiple copies of the same book, which is against the one-lend policy. I saw (or my friend saw) where multiple copies of one book were listed as available to lend.

FACT: Not true. If multiple copies of a single book were listed as available to lend, that just means multiple members of LendInk owned that book and listed it as available to lend. Since all lends occurred off the LendInk site, through Amazon and B&N’s *own* lending mechanisms, it would not be possible for any Kindle book owner to exceed publishers’ specified lend limits—at least, not without some kind of hacking or dishonesty on the part of the Kindle book owner. And even if that were to occur, it would not be LendInk’s fault.
 

MYTH (Well, not really a myth, but another misleading item that needs to be addressed): I wrote to Amazon about LendInk and they wrote back to say LendInk was not authorized by Amazon to lend Kindle books.
 

FACT: Amazon is correct in this response, but the thing is, LendInk was NOT lending Kindle books. LendInk was just a specialized messaging and lendable ebook listing service, at its heart. It put owners of lendable ebooks in touch with one another, and those owners conducted the lend/borrow transaction off of the LendInk site, through Amazon’s (or B&N’s, in the case of Nook books) channels.

Amazon can only reply to the question put to it; if the question is, "Is LendInk authorized by Amazon to lend my Kindle book?" their answer will be "no". If anyone had written in to ask if owners of lendable Kindle books are allowed to list those books online for purposes of connecting with other lendable book owners, he or she would’ve received a different response.

 

MYTH: My book is offered through KDP Select, so it’s not lendable.

FACT: Lendability is a requirement of participation in KDP Select. Here’s the main Amazon KDP page about the program (note how most of the information here is specifically ABOUT lending), and here’s a link to KDP Select terms and conditions.

I’ll add more to this section [ on the original blog post ] as more myths come in.

 

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

Selling Books: The Only Guide You'll Ever Need

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Originally appeared as Selling Books: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need on LiveHacked.com.

 

Note: This post is really long. I believe it’s pretty darn good, and there’s lots of information in it. If there’s one post I’ve ever written that truly sums up my thoughts on writing, books, and making money from them, this is it. Here we go! Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve grown a highly-targeted email list, gained attention in a crowded niche (writing and productivity), and have been able to correspond directly with literally hundreds of people. I’m not famous, and didn’t start by being well-known. In fact, if you would have Googled me six months ago, you’d have found my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ pages, maybe my personal blog (now pointing to this one), and another dude with the same name as me who sings Backstreet Boys, albeit not well. Basically, I was a nobody.  Sure–I’m certainly not "famous" now, by anyone’s standards, nor have I become some sort of sage or guru. But I’ve definitely made an impact online, and the numbers don’t seem to be slowing down. There are lots of benefits to this sort of "impact," not the least of which is gaining attention and mindshare in a crowded world. For me, though, the best value I’ve received is having been able to help so many other people with their writing, business, and "platform building" online. …And, I’ve had a few book sales, to boot. That’s what this post is about I hope you’re writing for more than just making money. Selling a book is a great way to get your name out there, or promote an idea or mindset, and it can certainly lead to earning more money for yourself as well. Money’s a great thing, used wisely and for the right purposes, but it’s certainly not why most writers and creators are artists. That said, you do need money–either to spend on your family and lifestyle, or to reinvest into your writing business. Whatever the reason, I’ve been getting more and more questions lately about the writing + book sales dilemma. Most writers want to sell their books, and lots of them. But they have a (justified) hesitation when it comes to self-promotion, marketing, and spending hours and days on things other than writing. And I’ve harped on it enough to know that just writing and waiting is sort of a luck-based scenario. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I believe in building platforms online, and these platforms help to promote us and get more books sold. The problem In a nutshell, the problem with this philosophy is that it’s unspecific. You might understand the concept of building a platform, attracting people to it, and then hyping your product, but you might not understand the intricacies of how it all works. For example, here are some questions I’ve been getting over and over again in my email inbox, in the comments section of some posts, and on guest posts I’ve written around the web:

  • I write fiction, not nonfiction. How can I blog and still sell fiction?
  • I don’t want to write about my life or other nonfiction stuff–how can I write a fiction blog that sells books?
  • How can I sell more of my books without a big publishing deal?
  • How much does it cost to build a solid platform online?

This post will hopefully answer some of these questions. Step 1: Ask the Right Questions First, though, it’s important to make sure you’re asking the right questions. Questions like, "how do I sell more books," or "how many books do  I need to sell to quit my day job?" These questions aren’t bad, they’re just too early in the process of building a platform. The first, most obvious, and most-forgotten question is WHY.

  • Why do you want to build a platform?
  • Why you? Why not someone else?
  • What do you hope to gain from your platform?
  • What do you want others to gain from your platform?

These questions are the "business plan"-type questions that are all related to vision. Vision is a fleeting, hard-to-capture entity that dances in our dreams and makes our mouth water, but it’s not something we usually write down on a piece of paper. For some people, the vision questions (and their corresponding answers) lack clarity, specificity, and action-based steps, so they ignore it, opting instead to "just have it in my head." I can tell you from experience that "just having your vision in your head" is way different than having it written out in perfectly clear sentence form. I’ve launched a few businesses and blogs, and the ones that had a chance of succeeding were the ones that I spent time working on a vision for. Note: Here’s a secret, though. The really good visions aren’t ones we usually have to think too long or hard about–they’re already floating through our heads and in our minds. We just need to actually write them down.  What if your vision is just "to be a writer"? That’s a good question–and the answer is that it’s really not your vision, it’s just the method you want to use to get to your vision. Your real vision is something like:

  • To provide a new, fresh perspective on modern-day cultural changes in humanity, provided through writing and blogging
  • To offer a style of horror novels that inspire, teach, and guide young adults into adulthood
  • To change the way the world views life in third-world countries by writing personal first-person accounts and testaments of the men and women who live there

Do you see the difference? These "vision statements" are bigger–much bigger than, "to be a writer." Your vision can change, and it often does, but it needs to be something big, lofty, and "change-the-world"-y. So again, ask yourself the right questions and come up with a vision you can stick to for awhile. If you need help with these questions, I’ve written an entire book giving them to you (101 in all), and you can grab it here. Step 2: Build A Platform Once you know the right questions, you’ll know the right answers. You’ve been around long enough to have heard all of the ins and outs of what you do, and you’ve read enough about it and studied it long enough. In other words, you’ve read so many answers that all you need to do is figure out the right questions, ask them, and then let your mind answer them the way you know is right. I realized long ago that my platform was going to be successful only if I provided a solid value to other people, first and foremost. Building a business on affiliate programs and product sales was one of the many "answers" floating around on the web, but for me the "right answer" was more about writing for other people and listening to their concerns, and then helping when I could. So, how do you build a platform? You start by figuring out your value. What are you going to offer me that’s going to save me time, earn me more money, entertain or enlighten me, or give me something to think about? You can pick any of these things, but the secret to providing value is doing it well enough that I’ll want to come back later. Platforms range in all shapes and sizes, but the ones we’ll talk about (because that’s what I’m trained to talk about and what I know how to build) are those platforms that are built and grown online, using technology like social media and blogging, and are teaching-based and product (books)-based. This website is a good example of that kind of platform. And here are instructions for building one:

  • Set up a home base. Your "Home Base" is a website, preferably a blog, that will act as your online start and endpoint to everything you do. You don’t need to spend forever building this Home Base, but you do need to take some time to get it right. Here are a few posts describing this process in more detail. Use Google Analytics to track your Home Base’s activity.
  • Set up your outposts. Like your Home Base, these "Outposts" are websites, but they’re usually owned and controlled by someone else. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are all Outposts, and they should all be set up with one and only one goal in mind: Get people to click through to your Home Base.
  • Start promoting. Use the "Slow-Drip Marketing Method" to promote other peoples’ content most of the time, and your own stuff a much smaller portion of the time. Don’t be afraid to promote your own stuff if you’re promoting other stuff most often. Shoot for an 80/20 ratio of promoting other content versus promoting your own. Figure out how to promote almost on autopilot, so you can focus on the next step.
  • Start writing. Actually, you’ll be writing throughout this entire process. You are a writer, so this shouldn’t be difficult. Specifically, you need to write about things people want to read about, and don’t be afraid to try out new things. Again, get this on autopilot (blog every Tuesday and Thursday, for example, no matter what), and then start writing other things, like guest posts, manifestos, and books.

Tweak as you go, adding/subtracting/changing/whatever until you feel like your platform is looking polished and running like a well-oiled machine. Once you get to the point where you don’t need to actively be working on your blog’s theme, widgets, and plugins, use that energy to write more and broaden your horizons. Once you’ve started writing more, measure the results of everything you do, which is the next step. Step 3: Measure and Improve What gets measured gets managed. You don’t want to micromanage for too long, though, or you’ll get analysis paralysis and burn out. However, don’t use that excuse to not track what your efforts are leading to. Here are some key points:

  • Watch Google Analytics data on your Home Base and track things like Bounce Rate, which pages are bringing in the most visitors, and where your visitors are coming from.
  • If you’re using WordPress, install Pretty Links and set up some "pretty links" on your site. An example is the link I use for my new book: www.livehacked.com/blogging-101, which is a "pretty" link that just sends you on to Amazon–but it also tracks how many clicks there are on it, and now Analytics can track it as well. If you’re not using WordPress, start. If you won’t, then I guess you can use gaconfig.com.
  • Using the data you’re starting to measure, tweak things on your Home Base to hopefully improve them.

The formula for all of this is build-measure-tweak-repeat, over and over again. It’s not fancy, pretty, or even fun sometimes, but it works. Having a vision that excites and invigorates you is going to help you run with this formula without getting sick to your stomach. "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Alright–that covers it! Wait–you thought I was going to give you a top-secret recipe for selling loads of books? Well, I can’t do that–but what I can do is help you figure out how you, as a horror/romance/memoir/investing author, can actually get people to pay attention to you and take the time out to visit that awesome platform you’re building. There are a few tried-and-true methods in the industry that still work, and probably always will. Pick one of them if you want:

  1. Writing about writing. Companies like Writer’s Digest do this very well, and probably make a killing. The goal is to teach other writers about the craft and business of writing, and sell them products, services, and books that further help them. LiveHacked is doing this to some extent.
  2. Writing about yourself. Memoir writers and some other nonfiction authors can usually do this pretty well. Basically, you’re blogging about yourself, your life, your cat, your kids; whatever. It can sometimes be more difficult to make a long-term career out of this style, unless you have a large catalog of your work for sale or you have a bestseller or two.
  3. Writing about your fiction. Every now and then, I’ll come across a blog that’s just a mashup of an author’s fiction–blog posts are really snippets of short stories, character shorts, or serialized books (one chapter or section each day/week). If you want to sell books like this, you might try starting with releasing your book as serial fiction, one post every other day or so. This way, you can "set it and forget it" while you work on your next novel and promote the blog.
  4. Writing about your subject matter. This one’s cool, but it’s difficult. Basically, you’re writing nonfiction blog posts about your fiction’s subject matter. Let’s say you write a novel about a wizard kid who has to defeat He Who Shall Not Be Named. You might write a few posts about the history of wizardry, maybe another few on castles, and some on fantasy in general. You can certainly build a successful platform, but be careful when you try to turn around and write a Tom Clancy-esque military novel–that might need another platform (or pen name) altogether!

I hope all of this makes sense–blogging and platform building is not as much about the subject matter (what you’re blogging about) as it is about to whom you’re offering it. If you can figure out a subset of your demographic that really loves the stuff you blog about, it doesn’t really matter if it’s related to your book’s subject or not. WHAT?!? Yeah, okay, I said it. If you can build a great, successful, and popular platform, your readers and fans will buy your book.  They might not all buy it, but don’t think that just because they like reading your blog about military history, they won’t like reading your YA fan fiction. If you’re building a platform correctly, people will know you as a good writer, not just as a niche-focused writer. An example Trent Hamm, a very popular blogger, is known primarily (and almost exclusively) for his blog, TheSimpleDollar. He’s written so many blog posts on personal finance and helped so many people find financial answers, it came as sort of a shock to me when he announced that his next book (after his first, called The Simple Dollar) would be a novel.  Huh? That’s right–a novel. I don’t know what it’s about, but I know that I’ll buy it. Part of it is just trying to support the guy–hey, I love his work–and the other part of it is that I know he’s a great writer, and even if the book’s a flop, it’ll be like having a friend’s book on my bookshelf. I’m pretty sure that there are about 100,000 other readers of The Simple Dollar who feel the same way. Last thing–let me paint a picture There’s one other way I can illustrate this. I had a comment from a reader not too long ago asking (basically), "how can I promote and blog about nonfiction stuff, and expect these readers to buy my fiction?" It’s a good question, and it warrants a good answer. So here’s my best shot: Imagine you’re at home, having a nice dinner with a friend, whom you know through work. You often exchange work-related ideas, and help each other on projects and such. After dinner, you start watching TV, and the friend says, "hey, man, is this book on the coffee table yours?"  You of course reply, "Yup! I wrote it last year–I’d love for you to read it, but I don’t have another copy here." They will, no doubt, say, "Oh please! Just tell me where to get it! Is it available on Amazon? I’m more than happy to help you out!" You’ve just sold a novel to a "nonfiction friend" (does that analogy make sense?). There will be some friends who congratulate you and pat you on the back, but who never actually buy the book. There are also people who read only one book per year (usually Harry Potter, Twilight or Hunger Games, etc.), so you can’t really expect them to read yours, too. The point The point, if you’re still following along, is that this little parable of The Friend in Your Living Room is really People Who Read Your Blog. Your "living room" is your "Home Base," and the "friend" whom you invite over is the reader whom you attract through your platform-building efforts. Keep plugging away at your platform, and there will be more and more friends in your living room. The end.  I’m really sorry this post ended up so long–thanks for holding on there with me, and if I can ask one more favor–let me know what you thought. Leave a comment, and add your thoughts on the subject!

Publetariat Endorses Kindle Nation Daily For Kindle Book Marketing

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A message from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief, April L. Hamilton

Publetariat has never taken the endorsement of goods and services intended for indie authors and small imprints lightly. Publetariat has always erred on the side of caution in this area because there are lots of rip-off artists out there who specifically target our community, making their living off our hopes, and in many cases, our desperation. We take our audience’s trust very seriously, and understand Publetariat’s reputation as a reliable, respectable resource hinges on that trust.

However, in the interests of bringing deserving, effective tools to the attention of Publetariat’s audience, I am giving Kindle Nation Daily‘s Sponsorship Program my personal endorsement, and the endorsement of Publetariat. 

KND is one of the oldest, most heavily-trafficked and most respected sites dedicated to Kindle content; Kindle owners flock to this site, and they trust it. The site made its name with news and commentary of interest to Kindle owners, and then built on that core content by adding categorized lists of free, quality 99 cent (‘quality’ means an average Amazon review rating of 4/5 stars or higher), and Kindle Lending Library -eligible Kindle books, all of which are updated all around the clock.

One of the reasons I can recommend KND’s Sponsorship program without reservation is that KND is totally transparent when it comes to sharing the results of advertising on their sites. KND has advertising options starting as low as $30, and since the site insists on a minimum quality level before agreeing to run advertising for a given book, site visitors know the books they find advertised there have already been subjected to some scrutiny.

Perhaps most importantly, KND is truly dedicated to serving the needs of both authors and readers. One example of this dedication is their recently-launched eBookTracker service: a very useful and totally free tool that makes it easy to track sales rank and pricing changes on any book Amazon carries—like yours, for example.

So if you’ve got a Kindle book that’s not selling as well as you’d hoped, take a look at the Kindle Nation Daily Sponsorship Program. It carries the Publetariat seal of approval.

– April L. Hamilton

 

Why I Signed With A New York Literary Agent

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Last week I announced on my author blog that I have signed with literary agent Rachel Ekstrom from the Irene Goodman Literary Agency in New York. Thank you for all the congratulations I have received!

Many of you have been incredibly supportive of my independent publishing career so far and I know you will have some questions. Since I have always been transparent with my journey, I’m happy to share what I can.

I am a fan of publishing in all its myriad guises, and none of us know where the industry is going.  It’s also quite ironic that I feel like I have to defend my decision, since in the past, self-publishing has needed the defense more!

Why do I even want an agent?

I am an author and an entrepreneur, so my goals center around:

  1. Creating great books and quality products that will delight, entertain, educate and inspire my readers
  2. Building a long term career as an author and widening my reader base
  3. Growing a sustainable income that enables me to travel and spend my time on (1) above!

In working towards these goals as an independent author over the last 3.5 years, I have used business partnerships with professional editors, book cover designers and formatters. I also depend on distributors like Amazon, Kobo and BookBaby to get my books into the hands of readers. I use tools like blogging and social networking to market and I pay for internet hosting to enable this. I sell from my site so I use Paypal as a merchant service.

I could not run my business without these business partners.

I look at signing with an agent, and possibly a traditional publisher, in the same way. They are business partners who I will work with to achieve a mutually beneficial goal. I am not a newbie in this business anymore. I have been learning about publishing for nearly four years, so this is certainly done with forethought. I have also done a lot of research on contracts and legalities, attending the Rights workshop at the London Book Fair as well as poring over books on contract clauses. I’m not going to sign anything that doesn’t fit with my goals.

Being an indie author is not only about self-publishing anymore. It’s more about taking control of your career as an author and becoming a creative director for each book. The Alliance of Independent Authors has a fantastic definition here if you want to read more.

So signing with an agent and pursuing traditional publishing reflects on my overall goals above as follows:

(1) Traditional publishing is excellent at creating quality products.

I’m an ebook only author right now and although I have dabbled in print, I don’t enjoy the process. I know a lot of indies do it successfully but I am a huge fan of doing things I enjoy :)

I currently employ several different editors during my writing process, and I absolutely believe this is critical for any author to invest in. Traditional publishing will hopefully take me to a new level with my writing and push me further. I will certainly be looking for a great editorial team as part of any deal.

(2) Traditional publishing will enable me to build a wider audience.

There are still many readers who will only buy print books in bookstores, or who hear about books through more traditional venues e.g. book clubs. I can reach an online audience myself but there are possibilities with traditional publishing that I also want to pursue.

(3) On the income question.

I am the kind of indie who wants a hybrid approach combining traditional publishing with self-publishing. After all, traditional and independent publishing are not mutually exclusive.

This approach can bring in spikes with advances, and then a monthly rolling income with self-publishing. I specifically went with the Irene Goodman Agency because they understand self-publishing can be an option for some of their authors at certain times, depending on the specifics of the author’s career and goals. I know some of their authors who are already following this hybrid approach successfully.

Nothing changes right now in terms of my books being available for sale. You can still buy Pentecost and Prophecy at the moment (better snap them up though!).

Here are some of the other reasons for pursuing this opportunity.

Authority, experience, social proof and let’s face it, ego.

You guys know I am proud of self-publishing and absolutely intend to continue doing it in some form. Indeed, I recently re-released my first book on career change. But originally, this blog was sub-titled ‘Adventures in Publishing’ and it was always my goal to have a traditional book deal one day.

In the UK, there are still bookstores on the high street and my parents read books in print that they buy from Waterstones. I do want to be on those shelves among the bestsellers. There is definitely still some authority and social proof with traditional publishing that I want to benefit from, so long as I can integrate it with my self-publishing goals.

I would also like to say I have ‘done it’ so I can justifiably join in the discussions on traditional publishing that I can only report on second-hand at the moment.

Film rights and other subsidiary rights.

As well as my lovely agent, Rachel Ekstrom, the Irene Goodman agency has a couple of great rights agents who focus on specific areas of subsidiary rights. I am interested to see what they can do with my books.

Lee Child talked at Thrillerfest about the upcoming movie Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise. Very exciting. I want Morgan Sierra to be the next Lara Croft, so I need people with the right contacts to make that happen. I know the film deal is a lightning strike type of luck, but some authors make it, and I have always had stretch goals and dreams!

Peer respect, blurbs and networking.

At Thrillerfest, I was excited to meet some of the big name authors who I call my writing heroes. Much as I love self-publishing, even in the current market, I think I am more likely to be able to get blurbs from big name authors if I get a traditional book deal. I have to build my author brand over time and peer networking is critical for this.

Entry into prizes.

This is an arena that is slowly opening up to indies, but most prizes are still currently based on traditional publishing. I think nominations and awards can help marketing and enable the expansion of readership.

Speaking opportunities at festivals.

I already have a professional speaking career but it doesn’t currently include talking specifically about my fiction :) The festivals in the UK especially are only about traditionally published authors, and this is an area I want to break into. (btw, I’m speaking at Zurich WriteCon in October if anyone fancies some Swiss chocolate with their scribbling!)

Why a New York agent when I live in London?

I am British but I moved back to London last year after 11 years in Australia and New Zealand. In the last four years, I have learned about online marketing from mainly US blogs so I am enmeshed in their business models. My Mum also lived in the US for many years so I have visited a lot. I love my homeland but in terms of publishing, I believe the Americans are still ahead of us in terms of the new paradigms in publishing. I wanted a forward thinking agent at an innovative agency.

It’s also a bigger book market in the US and my current sales are about 4:1 US:UK split. I wrote for the US market and even use an American spell-check. My traffic for this site and my podcast is over 50% US so most of my existing audience is there. In publishing terms, books that make it big in the US are more likely to be picked up in the UK and in other countries. So it is a business move that hopefully will put me in a better position for achieving my goals.

I have years of writing ahead of me.

The books I have out right now are not the end of what I can create. They are not precious snowflakes (much as I love them!). I have stacks of ideas and I am writing more books. At the moment, I am mostly in the library working on edits for Exodus, ARKANE book #3 and researching my next book, Hunterian, which is possibly a stand-alone or the beginning of a new series.

This is a serious career for me. I want to sell some books to the right trade publisher and self-publish others.

I am 37 with (hopefully) 50+ years of writing ahead. The decision to sign with an agent and pursue traditional publishing for some of those books opens possibilities but it certainly doesn’t stop me from doing all kinds of exciting things in the future.

This is just the beginning. I hope you will join me for the ride!

I’d love to hear what you think as I know it’s an emotional topic. Please do leave your comments [here, in the post’s original location].

 

This is a cross-posting from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Book Marketing Toolbox – Free Conference Pro

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Today I want to share another of my favorite free book marketing tools with you. Free Conference Pro is one of several companies that provide free conference calling and recording services.

Here are just a few ways that authors can use this no-cost resource to promote their books and run their business:

 

  • Record yourself reading an excerpt from your book to use as a promotional tool.
  • Do conference calls with your project team or author group.
  • Conduct and record teleseminars with up to 200 live participants.
  • Do recorded interviews of other authors or experts.
  • Record consultations with clients so they don’t have to focus on writing notes.
  • Record audio presentations to distribute on your podcast or website, or sell as a downloadable product.
  • Record an audio greeting to play (on demand) on your website.

What other ways can authors use a free conference call service? Please share your ideas in the comments area below. See previous book marketing toolbox columns here.

 

This is a cross-posting from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.