Publetariat

Amazon Select: We Are All Junkies Now

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This post, by Libby Fischer Hellman, originally appeared on her Say The Word blog on 1/25/12. In it, she shares her experiences as an author in the KDP Select program, and the possibility that the program is training readers to wait until a book is free, rather than buy it at regular prices.

It’s been over a month since the Amazon KDP Select started, and we’re beginning to see the ramifications of the program. And although I’m making good money, I’m scared. 

For those of you who don’t know, Amazon created the KDP Select program to increase their base of Prime Customers (those who pay no shipping costs in return for an $80 annual fee — kind of an online Costco). The program allows customers to “borrow” one e-book per month free. Authors whose books are borrowed get a pretty nice royalty ($1.70 per borrow) if they enroll their books and give Amazon exclusive access to those books for 90 days.

But the real hook  for authors is the ability make their books free for 5 of those 90 days.  Free, you might ask? I thought you were supposed to pay for a book. True, but it’s widely believed that giving away a book for a limited time results in instant exposure. Theoretically, hundreds, if not thousands of people, will download your book, read it, fall in love with your writing, then buy all your other books.  Presto – you’re a best-seller (whatever that means in today’s environment). 

It sounded intriguing, so I decided to test the waters and enrolled a novella that wasn’t selling well at all. It went free on Christmas day, perhaps the biggest day  for Amazon downloads in the company’s history, and there were 8,000 downloads. Two days later, when it back to paid status, the sales and “borrows” rolled in, and this lovely little novella ended up making me a small fortune. 

A week later I entered my best-selling book and made it free for two days. There were over 16,000 downloads on the first day alone. I panicked and pulled it off free the next day (which I now understand was a taboo and for which I apologize.). Again, sales and borrows after it went back to paid were fantastic. 

I was hooked. And continue to be. The program has treated me well and has boosted sales of all my books, even those that aren’t enrolled. December was terrific, and it looks like January will be stellar. 

So, of course, I drank more Kool-Aid, entered 3 additional books, and made them free. The novel did well, with over 13,000 downloads, but my short story collection didn’t. For the first time, downloads were just okay, and I did not see any kind of bounce afterwards. I figured it was because short stories aren’t as popular and dismissed it. 

But then something happened.

 

Read the rest of the post to learn why Libby Fischer Hellman has concerns about the unintended consequences of KDP Select on Say The Word.

Upcoming West Coast Book Publishing Events for Indie Authors

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One of the staples of an author website or blog is the Calendar page. Fans can find out the next stop on your blog tour, where you might be speaking at a live event, or other notable happenings.

The problem is, in practice, these Calendar pages rarely get updated. It’s quite common to go to an author’s Calendar page and find out where they were speaking two, three, or four years ago. This makes me sad, so I’ve never put a Calendar page on my blog.

Instead, I’m listing right here the upcoming events I’ll be speaking live at, with links to the registration pages for each. These are all excellent educational opportunities being run by great organizations for writers and indie publishers.

 

Not only that, it gives me a chance to meet up with blog readers and indie authors, something that’s a lot of fun for me.

Here’s the lineup.

San Francisco Writer’s Conference

San Francisco Writer's Conference
“Bestselling authors Lisa See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) & Lolly Winston (Good Grief) will join legendary editor Alan Rinzler as keynote speakers at the 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference.”

San Francisco Writer’s Conference

Pre- and Post-Conference Sessions Flyer (PDF)

This conference runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday February 17 – 19, 2012 in San Francisco. In addition, there will be a “Self-Publishing Bootcamp” on Monday February 20 as well. Always well-attended, you’ll meet writers, editors, agents and others in the publishing business for sessions with over 120 presenters.

I’ll be presenting a session on blogging as well as one on book design in the Bootcamp. Check the schedule for details.

IBPA Publishing University

IBPA Publishing University

“Haven’t published yet?—IBPA Publishing University’s the place to learn how.
Just published?—IBPA’s Publishing University’s the place to learn what’s ‘now.’
Been publishing awhile?—IBPA’s Publishing University’s the place to learn more”

IBPA Publishing University

For the first time, the Independent Book Publisher’s Association (IBPA) will hold their Publishing University on the West coast. This is a major opportunity for writers, self-publishers and indie presses to get both basic and advanced training in the business of publishing.

March 9 – 10, 2012 in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area. I’ll be presenting a session on book design, and another on blogging. Come by and say hello!

Redwood Writers Conference

Redwood Writers Conference

“Our conference, themed ‘Next Step,’ offers you the opportunity to learn about the evolving publishing industry, to find new ways to promote your books and yourself, and to enhance your skills in the craft of writing. We offer four tracks—Craft, Genre, Marketing, and Publishing—and 16 breakout sessions. We wish, and you will wish, that you could take all 16.”

Redwood Writers Conference

Redwood Writers, a branch of the California Writers Club, is holding a full-day conference for writers and indie authors on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California. This is about an hour north of San Francisco.

I’ll be presenting a session on using your blog to market your books as well as participating in a panel discussion. If you come to the conference, be sure to look me up.

Ed: As usual at my presentations, I’ll have some kind of special bonus offer for attendees. But I don’t publicize these, so you’ll just have to come to get in on the good stuff.

As longtime readers know, my belief is that education is the most important part of getting ready to publish your own books. These conferences all present opportunities to take your own education in publishing to a whole new level. Added to that are the terrific opportunities to network, meet other authors, talk to vendors, and basically get a huge amount of information and education in a short period of time.

I’d love to see you at any of these events, and I hope you can make one of them if you’re in the area.

 

 

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

Author 2.0 Blueprint Rebooted For 2012

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Author 2.0 encapsulates the spirit of empowerment to create, publish, sell and promote with the amazing online tools available today.

I wrote the original Author 2.0 Blueprint over 2 years ago and things have changed a lot since then.

I have sporadically updated it but now I have rewritten 95% of it to create a 52 page ebook packed with useful information on writing, publishing and book marketing.

The Blueprint is entirely free so please download and use whatever part of it resonates with you.

 

It’s based on articles on the blog as well as information from other blogs. I link to many of the sites I personally find useful and I recommend further resources, some free and some paid, if you want to continue your research further.

Since The Creative Penn is a business these days, there are links to my own courses and affiliate links to others, but all of it is based on what I have found useful myself. I still aim to save you time, money and heartache on the writer’s journey, so I hope you find it useful.

You can download the new version here => Author 2.0 Blueprint 2012 Edition

It’s a PDF and if you’re having problems, please use Adobe Reader which is freely downloadable here.

You can also read it on Scribd.com, here, or have a look below

Author 2.0 Blueprint: Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing using online tools (2012 version)

It is Creative Commons licensed so please email it to people who might find it useful, embed it on your own site or use excerpts of it – as long as you don’t use it commercially and you cite TheCreativePenn.com as the source.

This has been emailed to everyone already on my list and anyone who signs up to the newsletter on the right will get the new Blueprint.

Please do let me know what you think in the comments [section on the original post], or by email: joanna AT TheCreativePenn.com

 

 

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

SOPA and PIPA are Stupid, Oatmeal Nails Why

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I’m very much in support of sites like Wikipedia, which [blacked] out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. If you don’t know what they are, there’s this (the only Wikipedia page [that was] NOT blacked out) and this handy infographic. This is something that affects all of us, and it’s very important. Don’t think it’s only those crazy Americans and it doesn’t affect us – this affects everyone and is the start of a slippery slope.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: mature content after the jump]

My books are pirated all the time. I see them on fileshare sites and there’s nothing I can do about it. And yes, it pisses me off. But it’s a part of the modern world. As the old saying goes, the only thing worse than piracy is obscurity. Sure, I’d like to see stricter controls in place to protect film and music piracy, and, of course, ebook piracy. It’s in my interests – it affects my ability to make a living. But I do not agree with SOPA or PIPA as anything like valid ways to deal with the problem. It needs to be crushed for the fucking idiocy it is.

Of course, my little corner of the web here won’t make much of a dent if I black out. Ironically, the only thing likely to happen is that I might lose a couple of books sales. But I will speak out against the bills. And I can’t think of a better way to do it than with this animated gif from The Oatmeal. It’s simply perfect:

sopa SOPA and PIPA are stupid, Oatmeal nails why

 

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Can I convert my manuscript into eReader format or do I need to pay someone?

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It depends how skilled you are with computers. The way I produce eReader files is the following. I use Atlantis as my word processing program. One of its options is to save my work as an ePub file. I then transfer and open the ePub file using Calibre (a free program). I add my book cover and create an index. I can then use Calibre to convert the ePub file to any number file types, including MOBI for Kindle. I have successfully uploaded these files to a number of outlets (Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google eBooks for example). Your word file needs to be correctly formatted to allow a smooth conversion for use in a eReader. It must be able to free-flow to accommodate the font size the reader chooses. As a result an eReader file does not have pages, headers, or footers. Follow the advice on file formatting given by Smashwords. The difficulty you have will be directly proportional to how jumbled up your word file is. Smashwords has guidance for that also. It’s not hard once you get the hang of it. I recommend installing the free eReader programs for Kindle and Nook on your computer so you can check your conversion before you up load it. Good luck.

 

Kindle Users and Library Patrons Made Equal in Privacy, but Only in California

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This post, by Ariel Bogle, originally appeared on the the Melville House Books site on 1/23/12.

It’s almost impossible to resist peeking at a friend’s bookshelf when we’re invited into their home.  But this sentiment becomes a little scarier when it isn’t a welcome guest snooping on us and noting that dog-eared copy of Harry Potter, but a mega-corporation who might sell such information to the highest-bidder.

 

MobyLives has always endeavored to keep track of the fast-moving privacy issues affecting ebook readers.  In this 2010 report, for example, Moby was concerned about the amount of information Amazon’s Kindle recorded about its customers. Beyond the reader’s name, email, address and credit card details, the Kindle records book searches and notes reader annotations, as well as the exact books and pages read. In a worrying twist — hidden in the fine print — Amazon reserves the right to share that information with law enforcement agencies, civil litigants and with Amazon’s own product suppliers.

This is alarming — what you read can reveal a lot about you. While librarians and bookstore owners fight ongoing battles against disclosing information about their customers, most companies that develop electronic reading devices are missing in action when it comes to bringing privacy protections into the digital realm.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Melville House Books site.

An Indie Author’s Manifesto

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This post, by Martin Lastrapes, originally appeared on his Inside Martin site on 1/17/12.

(This is an extended and revised version of the article “A Self-Publisher’s Manifesto,” which was previously published in Self-Publishing Review on 7/27/11)

I am an indie author and this is my manifesto.

 

If you’re a reader, a simple lover of books, someone with no aspirations of ever writing or publishing, then there is a very good chance you’re unaware of the culture war that has been going on within the world of publishing for what feels like forever.  The war is between the large publishing houses, primarily found in New York, and indie authors.  For almost as long as the publishing industry has been a relevant cog in the entertainment machine, publishing houses have served the purpose of finding, publishing and, essentially delivering to the literary world the best authors they could find.  But they didn’t do this alone.  Literary agents—who not only represent authors, but also serve as gatekeepers for the large publishing houses—helped them.

Most any writer who has ever aspired to get published has learned the hard way that finding a literary agent to represent you is, arguably,  harder than actually getting your manuscript accepted for publication by a large publishing house.  And this is not by accident.  As gatekeepers, the literary agents weed out the “bad” talent and wrangle in the “good” talent, making it easier for the large publishing houses to pick which handful of writers they’ll be publishing during any given year.  As someone who has been rejected by more agents than I care to count, I have a pretty good grasp on how the system is intended to work.

First, the author writes a manuscript (i.e. a novel, a memoir, a collection of short stories, etc.).  Once they finish, the author writes a query letter, which is, essentially, a one-page pitch to a literary agent.  In the query letter, the writer should not only tell the literary agent what their book is about, but also why anybody would bother reading it or, more importantly, buying it.  This last part is important, because agents earn money on commission, which means they only get paid if they can sell your book.  So, even if they personally love the book, but don’t think they can sell it, they aren’t going to represent it.

If the agent likes what you’re pitching in the query letter, then they’ll likely ask you to send them the first 10-15 pages.  If they like those pages, then they’ll likely ask for a partial, which are the first 50 pages.  If they’re still satisfied with what they’re reading, then they’ll ask to see the full manuscript.  After looking at it, they will either decide to represent your book or reject it.  There is also the possible middle ground where they might ask you to make revisions to the book that will, in their estimation, make it more attractive to publishers.  And even if you’ve gotten this far and the literary agent decides to represent you, it’s going to take nearly a year (sometimes longer) before you come to that agreement.

Of course, getting a literary agent is no guarantee of getting published.  They still have to try and sell your manuscript to a publishing house.  There are plenty of authors who have secured literary agents, only to find out that the agent couldn’t sell their books.  But if you are one of those rare authors who have cleared all the hurdles and have had your book published by a large publishing house, one of the first things you will learn is that you’re going to be on your own when it comes to promoting and marketing the book.  Publishing houses have limited budgets for marketing their authors and first-time authors aren’t likely to get much support.  Ironically, if your book doesn’t sell, then the publisher will be less likely to buy your next book.

 

Read the rest of the post on Inside Martin.

Amazon: "Primed" to Disrupt Apple's Textbook Plans?

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This article, by Jason Perlow, originally appeared on the ZDNet Tech Broiler blog on 1/21/12.

Summary: Apple may have thrown down the gauntlet for the iPad in education, but don’t count Amazon out.

So. Apple. A huge library of textbooks for $14.99 each and a free authoring program for rich textbook content.

That about sums up this last week’s events.

Oh wait. You can only sell that content produced with iBooks Author on the App Store and of course all of those texts are stuck in Apple’s “Walled Garden”.

 

Are we supposed to be surprised that this is the way Cupertino wants to do business? No, of course not.

It does bring up the issue however that if Apple becomes successful in making iBooks electronic textbooks a successful enterprise and an educational standard, a “digital underclass” might be created for those who cannot afford to purchase electronic texts if paper texts become no longer economically feasible to produce.

While I projected that this is probably more likely to happen faster to our public library system than our educational system, it does bring up the disturbing thought that iBooks textbooks might not be an affordable solution for most public school systems and only privileged, wealthy school systems will benefit from them.

 

Read the rest of the article on the ZDNet Tech Broiler blog. Also see How Apple is Sabotaging An Open Standard For Digital Books, by Ed Bott, on The Ed Bott Report on the same site.

25 Things Writers Should Start Doing (ASAFP)

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 1/17/12.

Consider this, if you will, a sequel to the gone-viral post, “25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right F***ing Now)” — sort of a mirrored-reflection be-a-fountain-not-a-drain version.

Now, a warning, just in the rare instance you don’t come to this site all that often:

Here There Be Bad Words. Naughty profanity. The sinner’s tongue. Lots of “eff-this” and “ess-that.”

If you’re not a fan of profanity, no harm, no foul. But you might want to turn your tender gaze away before your eyeballs foam up and ooze out of your poor innocent head.

Please to enjoy.

 

1. Start Taking Yourself Seriously

This is a real thing, this writing thing, if you let it be. It’s not just about money or publication — it’s about telling the kind of stories only you can tell. Few others are going to take you seriously, so give them a 21-middle-finger-salute and do for yourself what they won’t: demonstrate some self-respect.

2. Start Taking The Time

Said it before, will say it again: we all get 24 hours in our day. Nobody has extra time. You must claim time for yourself and your writing. Time is a beast stampeding ever forward and we’re all on its back. Don’t get taken for a ride. Grab the reins. Whip that nag to go where you want her to go. Take control. Hell, pull out a big ol’ electric knife and carve off a quivering lardon of fatty Time Bacon all for yourself. (As a sidenote, the Germans had a name for that phenomenon: Zeitspeck. True story I just made up!)

3. Start Trying New Stuff

Branch out. Get brave. Look at all the ways you write now — “I write in the morning, sipping from my 64-ounce 7-11 Thirst Aborter of Mountain Dew, and I pen my second-person POV erotic spy novels and it earns me a comfortable living.” Good for you. Now punch that shit right in the ear. Okay, I’m not saying you need to change directions entirely — what kind of advice is that? “Hey, that thing that works for you? Quit doing it.” I’m just saying, mix it up. Make some occasional adjustments. Just as I exhort people to try new foods or travel destinations or ancient Sumerian sexual positions, I suggest writers try new things to see if they can add them to their repertoire. Write 1000 words a day? Try to double that. Don’t use an outline? Write with one, just once. Single POV character? Play with an ensemble. Mix it the fuck up. Don’t have just One True Way of doing things. Get crazy. Don’t merely think outside of the box. Set the box adrift on a river and shoot it with fire arrows. Give the box a motherfucking Viking funeral.

4. Start Telling Stories In New Ways

Another entry from the “Set The Box On Fire” Department — with the almost obscene advances in personal technology (the smartphone alone has become more versatile than most home computers), it’s time to start thinking about how we can tell stories in new ways. A story needn’t be contained to a book or a screen. A story can be broken apart. A story can travel. Your tale can live across Twitter and Foursquare and Tumblr and an Android app and Flickr and HTML5 and then it can take the leap away from technology and move to handwritten journals and art installations and bathroom walls and — well, you get the idea. Let this be the year that the individual author need no longer be constrained by a single medium. Transmedia is now in the hands of individuals. So give it a little squeeze, and find new ways to tell old stories.

5. Start Reading Poetry

Poetry? Yes, poetry. I know. I see that look you’re giving me. “What’s next, Wendig?” you ask. “We all hold hands and dance around the maypole in our frilly blouses and Wonder Woman underoos?” YES EXACTLY. I mean — uhh, what? No. Ahem. All I’m saying is, all writing deserves a touch — just a tickle — of poetry. And do not conflate “poetry” with “purple prose” — such bloated artifice has no room in your work.

6. Start Saying Something

You are your writing and your writing is you, and if you’re not using your writing to say something — to speak your mind, to fertilize the fictional ground with your idea-seed in an act of literary Onanism — then what’s the damn point? You have a perspective. Use it.

7. Start Discovering What You Know

Ah, that old chestnut. “Write what you know.” Note the lack of the word only in there. We don’t write only what we know because if we did that we’d all be writing about writers, like Stephen King does. (Or, we’d be writing about sitting at our computers, checking Twitter in our underwear and smelling of cheap gin and despair.) The point is that we have experience. We’ve seen things, done things, learned things. Extract those from your life. Bleed them into your work. Don’t run from who you are. Bolt madly toward yourself. Then grab all that comprises who you are and body-slam it down on the page.

8. Start Writing From A Place of Pain

You also know pain. So, get it out there. Don’t build a wall and hide from it. Scrape away the enamel of that tooth and expose the raw nerve — meaning, it goes into what you’re writing. Our pain is part of what makes us, and if we speak to that honestly in our writing, the reader will get that. Audiences can smell your inauthentic contrivances like a dead hamster in the heating duct. A reader wants to see their story in your story. They want to relate their pain to the pain on the page, and if that pain isn’t honest — meaning, it isn’t born out of experience or empathy — then your work will come across as hollow as a gutted pumpkin.
 

Read the rest of the post on terribleminds.

Can Your Readers Find You?

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Author websites and blogs are an essential book promotion tool. But far too many websites lack contact information for the author or make the contact information hard to find. This seems to be especially true of author websites that are on the Blogger platform.

What if someone wants to ask a question about you or your book, interview you, request a review copy, invite you to guest post on their blog, tell you how much they enjoyed reading your book, or suggest a joint venture? How will they find you?

While it’s important to make it easy for people to contact you, it’s a good idea to protect your email address from spammers who harvest email addresses online. One option is to use a contact form on your website. There are various plug-ins that work with WordPress.org sites, or you can use a service such as EmailMeForm.

Another option is to use an encrypted email link. I use the Enkoder form from Hivelogic. If you click the "email me" icon below my photo in the right column, a blank email addressed to me should automatically pop up. Encrypted email links are not entirely foolproof, but they work well.

However, I have found that there are a few email programs that are not compatible with the Enkoder, so I have also added an image just below it that contains my email address. Because this is a JPG image, rather than text, it should not be visible to bots that are harvesting email addresses.

Some people try to disguise their email address by inserting various characters such as myname*at*website.com. According to my research, many bots are sophisticated enough to see through that tactic. Probably the worst thing you can do is to place an actual link to your email address on your site. That would be highly visible to bots that are searching for email addresses to sell to spammers.

Take a look at your website now and see how easy it is for people to find you and whether your email address is secure.

Want to see more articles like this? Subscribe to The Savvy Book Marketer blog so you won’t miss any posts.

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

ThrillerCast is back for 2012

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ThrillerCast – the podcast I co-host with thriller/action adventure author, David Wood, is back for another year. We chat about anything to do with thriller and genre fiction, and regularly have cool guests on the show.

The first ep of 2012 has just gone live and it’s a corker. We talk about our plans for the year, discuss KDP Select, have some free books to give away AND have a chat with Myke Cole, author of the Shadow Ops books – the first one, Control Point, is out next week from Ace.

 

ThrillerCast ThrillerCast is back for 2012

The books sound great:

Cross The For­ever War with Witch­world, add in the real world mod­ern mil­i­tary of Black Hawk Down, and you get Control Point, the mile-a-minute story of some­one try­ing to find pur­pose in a war he never asked for. – Jack Camp­bell, New York Times Bestselling author of The Lost Fleet series

I’m definitely looking forward to reading that. Myke is a great guy too, and a total nerd for roleplaying games. It’s a fun chat.

Check out the new episode here.

And check out Myke’s site here. You can pre-order Control Point now.

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

KDP Select Free Promotion: Discoverability Experiment, Part Two

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As stated in Part One, my goal in joining the KDP Select program had been simple, to get my two Victorian San Francisco historical mysteries, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, back up to the top 5 rank in the Kindle historical mystery bestseller category. Their ranks had dropped to between 18 and 24 after Amazon added hundreds of titles to that category just before Christmas. The experiment in light of this goal was an unqualified success.

I used KDP Select to offer the Kindle edition of Maids for free for two days, December 30th and 31st. When the free promotion ended, Maids of Misfortune was at #1 in the historical mystery bestseller category, and it has stayed there. In addition, Uneasy Spirits, a sequel to Maids, rose to #8 during the promotion of Maids, and by the end of the first week after the promotion, it had risen to #3 in the historical mystery bestseller category.

What I had not expected when I embarked on the experiment was that Maids of Misfortune would also rise to the top ranks in so many other categories. But it did! When Amazon calculates its rankings, it includes the free downloads. So, when the promotion ended, those 14,500 free downloads moved Maids of Misfortune up to the 400s in the overall Paid Kindle store ranking and to the top 5 in popularity in the categories of mystery, and mystery — women sleuth, and historical romance. This made the book very easy to discover by a much wider potential market than ever before. (I published Maids of Misfortune at a time when Amazon let authors choose more than two categories; for sales purposes, this gives it an edge over other books, like Uneasy Spirits, that are in only two categories.)

This greater discoverability immediately translated into increased sales that have kept Maids of Misfortune up in the overall rankings during the week after the promotion ended. Last night, at the end of the first post-promotion week, Maids of Misfortune was #164 in the Paid Kindle Store and, while it has slipped a bit in the other categories, it was still #1 in popularity in historical mysteries, #7 in mystery-women sleuths, and #7 in historical romance. These rankings are high enough to make the book very discoverable — which leads to more sales — which leads to maintaining a high ranking — which leads to more sales.

The sales of Maids of Misfortune since the promotion ended have been fantastic. In November 2011, before the promotion, I sold 376 copies of Maids of Misfortune in all venues combined (Kindle US, other Kindle European stores, CreateSpace, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.) This was an average of 12.5 books a day. In December 2011, before the 2 day free promotion, I sold 433 books, with an average just under 15 books a day. In the week after the promotion ended, Maids of Misfortune sold 3183 books in total at an average of just under 455 books a day. Since I was no longer selling it in Smashwords and Barnes and Noble, these sales were almost entirely in the Kindle Stores.

Another unexpected consequence was the number of books I was now selling in the European Kindle Stores. In the 5 months before the promotion I was averaging 16 copies of Maids of Misfortune a month in these stores (primarily UK and Germany), but in the first week after the promotion I have sold 148 copies—an average of 21 books a day, pushing Maids of Misfortune up to #2 in the historical mystery category in the UK store.

I had hoped that the massive download of Maids of Misfortune during the promotion would eventually translate into a spill-over to Uneasy Spirits. I reasoned that, as people finished the first book, they might decide to buy the sequel. This in turn would lead to a higher ranking that would make it more visible. This has already happened. Before the promotion, in November 2011, Uneasy Spirits (which I published in mid October) sold 341 copies—an average of 11 a day. In December 2011, before the promotion, it sold 531 copies—an average of 18 a day. During the promotion and the week after, Uneasy Spirits sold 414 copies—an average of 46 a day (well over twice the rate of sales.) One result of this is that Uneasy Spirits is now showing up in the top 100 bestselling romantic suspense books, again making it more discoverable.

A final unexpected consequence has been the number of copies of Maids of Misfortune that have been borrowed by Amazon Prime members. When you “enroll” a book in the KDP Select Program, readers who belong to Amazon Prime can “borrow” the book for free for one month. I assumed, because I was a relatively unknown author and because Maids was priced at only $2.99, that few people would borrow it.  Why would they when there are other much better known authors whose books cost more to buy? Yet, in the first week since the free promotion, 766 people have borrowed Maids of Misfortune. That means I will get some, I don’t know how much, of the $500,000 Amazon has reserved to compensate KDP authors whose books were borrowed during January. These borrowed books also are included in the calculations that Amazon uses to determine the book’s rank, so they also help maintain its visibility.

Trying to explain the phenomena, I looked more closely at the list of books in the historical mystery category, and I realized that those higher priced books ($8 and above) by better known authors (like the Maisie Dobbes series by Winspear, Gabaldon’s Lord John books, or King’s Russell-Holmes series) are not in the Amazon Prime lending program. Most of the books that are available for borrowing are by indie authors like myself, who can recognize a good promotional tool when we see one and who have control over the decisions we make about our own books. One apparent result of this is that Maids of Misfortune and other indie-authored books are ranked higher than those higher-priced and better-known books in the historical mystery category.

In summary, enrolling Maids of Misfortune in the KDP Select Program turned out to be much more successful experiment than I ever imagined it would be. Not only has it made this book and the sequel, Uneasy Spirits, more visible in the Kindle Store through high rankings in a number of categories, but the rankings have produced a large number of sales.

I don’t know how long this pattern will last, and I can already see a slight slippage in total books sold per day. KDP Select gives authors the opportunity to do promotions like this for a total of five days in a three month period, so I still have three more promotional days that I can use, if necessary. But there is no getting around the fact that in the first week of January 2012, I sold 3,515 books. And that — by any measure — is wonderful news for this indie author.

At the end of January I will post Part III, an analysis of the success of the experiment at the end of a month, but, in the meantime I would like to hear from those of you who have also experimented with the KDP Select program to learn what your experiences have been.

 

 

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

Self-Pubbed Author Beware

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This post, by J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 1/17/12.

Right now I’m looking at the Top 10 Kindle bestsellers in occult fiction.

Every one of them is self-pubbed. In fact, there are only three legacy authors in the Top 30. I count only ten legacy pubbed in the Top 100, and most are brand names.

That’s… staggering.

It also doesn’t bode well for legacy publishers.

Long ago, I said ebooks aren’t a competition. But that only applies when they are affordable. Once an ebook costs over five bucks, readers become choosy. The above list is proof. There are ten ebooks on that list priced more than $4.99.

Bet you can guess which ones. Hint: none of the self-pubbed.

At the moment, legacy publishers seem to be content with their ebook sales. They boast how ebooks are exploding, while print sales slip more and more.

And yet, they obviously aren’t pricing ebooks competitively. I’m outselling King, Harris, and Preston & Child. That’s odd, since they kill me in paper sales. But it doesn’t matter, because bestselling authors sell at any price, which publishers are aware of.

Midlist authors do not. Midlist authors right now are getting screwed by their publishers, earning far less than they could. It’s bad enough they’re only getting 17.5% of the list price; when the list price is ten bucks it is leaving a lot of money on the table.

So why aren’t legacy pubs pricing their midlists and backlists competitively? Are they still trying to preserve paper sales? Or have they crunched the numbers and figured out $7.99 to $14.99 is the sweet spot for profits?

Whatever the reason, it is misguided. Here’s a look into the future:

 

Read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Is Penguin Using Stock Photography For Cover Designs?

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This post, by Derek Murphy, originally appeared on his Creativindie Covers site on 1/14/12 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

I was a little surprised today to see the cover of Ruth Long’s book “The Treachery of Beautiful Things”. After being warned by a designer friend about using stock images (because the same image might end up on multiple book covers) “Treachery” jumped out at me because I’ve been working with the same stock photo for another cover design.

Of course I assumed it was an indie published book; even so I will have to ditch the photo as I don’t want to design a cover so similar to something already out there. Turns out this book is actually being published by Penguin! Why oh why is Penguin using stock images for book covers? Isn’t that a little unfair against the little guys who have no choice but to use them? Or has independent publishing so threatened traditional publishing that they can’t hire their own photographers anymore and search for royalty free images like the rest of us?

Anyway it’s a beautiful cover, the book is probably good as well.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-treachery-of-beautiful-things-ruth-long/1103630518

My cover was still in a very early (rough) phase, but would have been just as good as the one above eventually.

 

Derek Murphy is a fine artist, freelance graphic designer and indie author. He started making book covers for his own books, but now now offers them to other authors as well. Click here to view his portfolio.

The Challenges of New, Digital Lit

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Note: I’ve made my latest book, Overshare, available for free download through this Friday, 1/20/12 – it may be informative to download a copy and look at it in the (free) Kindle Reader app or on a Kindle Fire (it’s presented in full color, so viewing it on a monochrome Kindle won’t give you the full experience) before reading this post.

These days, authors and publishers are beset on all sides by pundits and industry watchers telling them they must innovate, they must redefine the meaning of the word "book", they must experiment with new forms, make use of multimedia and transmedia if they hope to stay relevant in the new, digital frontier of literature and publishing. All of which is well and good, until you take their advice.

 

The relatively minor transition from hard copy to ebooks has been difficult enough, and there are still plenty of readers who prefer the feel (and even smell!) of "real" books so much that they’ve sworn they will never switch to using an ereader. There goes a chunk of prospective readers, if you’re intending to release something in a digital format.

Next comes the form the experimental content takes. We’ve all heard of Vooks, "enhanced" ebooks and ebook apps. But how many of us have actually bought, or even seen one for ourselves? Think about it: if those of us who are in the publishing and literature business aren’t invested (or in many cases, even interested) in these new forms, why on Earth should we imagine casual readers would be? So now your prospective audience has been whittled down further, to include only those ebook fans who are also interested in experimental, new forms of digital lit.

Finally comes the quality of the content. Once you’ve brought the experimental digital lit fan to the table, it’s much the same as winning over any reader. If your content appeals to the specific tastes and preferences of a given reader, he’ll like it and maybe even be so kind as to leave you a nice review on Amazon or Goodreads. If not, he will deem the book a failure. And unless he leaves a negative review somewhere, detailing the reasons for his dislike of the work, you’ll never know if it was a failure of form or of content.

Overshare is an exclusively digital release, and it’s presented in an unusual form. When the reader "turns" to the first page, she doesn’t find the typical chapter heading followed by paragraphs of text. She finds what looks like a Facebook page. After a few such pages, she finds what looks like a Twitter stream. Then a post on the protagonist’s blog. And so it continues: social media pages and blog posts, lots of pictures, but nothing else. No narrative is provided, the reader must construct her own.

I’ve sent out MANY advance review copies of Overshare. The responses seem to fall very clearly into two camps. On the one side, there are the people who rave about it and respond with genuine excitement to its non-narrative, heavily graphic presentation. On the other, there are the people who initially say they’ve begun to look at it and find it "fascinating", "intriguing", etc., but then never respond in full. Obviously, these readers ultimately did not find the book to their liking, but I’ll never know if it was a failure of form or content from their perspective.

This is frustrating, since it’s impossible to refine or improve either the form or content of other works going forward if I don’t know what needs to be improved. It’s also possible that any kind of experimental thing, simply due to its experimental nature, will always create a sharp divide of opinion.

Experimental digital lit is a tough sell. The non-narrative form of Overshare makes it very difficult to promote. While regular users of social media—my target audience—know how to interpret this material right away, others don’t know what to make of it. When my own father, who does not use social media, was out for a visit recently, he asked me, "How do I read this book?" One hates to discourage ANY sale, but I have to accept that people outside my target audience aren’t likely to "get" Overshare to any extent, and their negative reviews can be a liability.

I thought I could build buzz initially within publishing and author circles, which are presumably more fertile ground for digital lit and experimental lit, and branch out from there to the general, reading public. Dan Holloway ran an interview with me on his eight cuts site, focusing primarily on the non-narrative aspect of the book (e.g., the book demands, or allows, depending on how you look at it, the reader construct his own narrative) and the Creative Commons licensing issues it raises. Joanna Penn ran a guest blog from me on the technical aspects of creating this heavily-formatted, graphics-intensive book. Both pieces generated a lot of reads and some comments, but scarcely bumped the sales needle for the book. I got a bit of discussion going on Facebook, where one commenter noted that by turning on the Commenting function of the Kindle, readers can insert themselves as characters in the book by adding their own "Likes" and "posting" comments to the protagonist’s blog. A very promising idea, I thought; but it still didn’t generate sales.

So now, I’m trying a giveaway. While it’s always been possible for prospective buyers to view a free excerpt, an excerpt doesn’t adequately convey what the book is all about, or how it’s supposed to be "read". People viewing the excerpt are just as likely to be confused as prompted to buy the book. When what you’ve got to offer isn’t instantly accessible and doesn’t immediately touch on familiar reference points for your target audience, sometimes the only way to get people to take a risk on it is to give it away at first. Even then, some people will decide it’s not worth the investment of their time to try the new thing.

But hopefully, many others will try it. And whether they like it or not, some of them will talk about it. Some will blog about it. Some will post reviews. And with any luck, after you’ve stopped giving it away, the book will have made enough of an impact that it can stand on its own two feet. Time will tell. If you’ve decided to download Overshare, and I really hope you will, I would very much appreciate your feedback: in the comments section here, in the form of a review on Amazon or Goodreads, or even sent directly to me via email (my address is readily available on my website, Facebook profile, Twitter profile and Blogger profile).

Circling back around to the whole question of whether or not dabbling in experimental digital lit is worthwhile…well, I’d say it depends. If your goal is to maximize the commercial potential of your work (e.g., to make money—and there’s nothing wrong with that) as efficiently as possible, then experimentation is not for you. On the other hand, if your financial needs are pretty well covered and more or less every manuscript you write is an experiment of a sort, you may want to give it a try. Those with some tech savvy will have an easier go of the writing, formatting and publishing steps, but once the book goes on sale, we’re all in the same, leaky boat.

 

April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat. This is a cross-posting from her Indie Author Blog.