Ebooks

Articles specific to writing and publishing ebooks.

MWA(BNSP) – Mystery Writers of America (But Not for the Self-Published)

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 6/10/11.

When I was offered a contract for my first novel back in 2002, one of the first things I did was join the Mystery Writers of America.

As a lifelong mystery fan, I was thrilled to be part of an organization that counted many of my heroes (living and dead) among its members. I wanted to mingle with my fellow crime writers. I wanted to attend the banquets. I wanted to sit at the MWA table at Bouchercon and sign alongside major bestsellers. I wanted to go to the Edgar Awards. I wanted to be included in their many high-profile anthologies.

In short, I wanted to be validated.

The need for validation is often rooted in insecurity–something writers have truckloads of. Insecurity is a wicked thing, and can foster an "us vs. them" mentality. More on that in a moment.

During my first year as a member, I attended a banquet, and had to pay through the nose for it. Sitting at the MWA table at a conference was a job, not an honor. While Whiskey Sour was nominated for just about every mystery award out there, the Edgar wasn’t among them. I tried to submit to several MWA anthologies, only to discover the slots had already been filled before I had a chance. As for mingling with my peers, I did that just fine at conferences without needing the MWA.

The only time the MWA got in touch with me was when they needed something–I lost count of the times I was called upon to volunteer for some task or another–or when they wanted me to pay my dues. The dues notices (both email and in person) became so frequent, not only for me but for many of my peers, that it is now a long-running joke in the mystery community. (A friend of mine was even approached during his signing slot at Bouchercon to pay dues, in front of several fans.)

The MWA, an organization that was supposed to exist to help writers, seemed to exist only to sustain itself.

After a few years of getting nothing back (and yes, I aired my many grievances often to board members) I simply stopped renewing. While MWA no doubt does some good things (they rightly fought the Harlequin Horizon vanity imprint, and do various workshops and community events), I felt like I was giving more than I was getting. I was helping MWA, but they weren’t helping me.

The annoyance at MWA wasn’t only felt by me. The International Thriller Writers came into being at around the same time I quit MWA, and while I would never go on the record to say it was created because MWA was ignoring a large percentage of its members, I can say that ITW quickly figured out how to do things correctly.

While the MWA didn’t seem to care I existed (except when they wanted something from me), the ITW actually helped my career. Their first few conferences were terrific. I was involved in two anthologies. I made connections that have served me well over the years. And best of all, the ITW does not have dues. They run such a smart organization, it actually earns money.

Both the MWA and ITW have membership requirements, and these are based around signing contracts with traditional publishers. I understood why this was necessary years ago. By allowing publishers to vet members, the organization would be populated by professionals.

The fact remains that most self-pubbed work isn’t very good, and would never have been traditionally published.

But the times have changed. Now it is possible for authors to circumvent the legacy gatekeepers by choice (rather than because they had no choice.) Self-pubbed authors can sell a lot of books and make some real money. Full time salary money.

In my mind, that equates with being a professional.

The ITW maintains a progressive approach to accepting members. They review applications on a case-by-case basis. So even if you don’t have a legacy publishing contract, you aren’t automatically dismissed. This is because they understand that an organization for writers isn’t an "us vs. them" venture. Exclusion doesn’t make an organization better. It makes an organization self-important.

So when MWA recently changed its submission guidelines and issued a press release, I was intrigued. Had they finally gotten the hint? Were they looking at this untapped resource of self-published writers and realizing the potential to make their organization relevant again?

Alas, no.

 

Read the rest of the post on JA Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing.

The Completely Backwards Way To Amazing Self-Publishing Success

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I had a daydream the other day. I was working on a mindmap. (Do you know what a mindmap is? Until quite recently I was woefully ignorant of this incredible organizing tool. More to come.)

The title I had given the mindmap was “Simple Steps to Self-Publishing Success.” The title had come from an exercise in which I set a timer for 15 minutes and spent the time writing what I call “Imaginary Blog Articles.”

The idea of this exercise is to imagine great blog articles that don’t exist, but that everyone would instantly want to read. I only write the headlines. This is the second time I’ve tried this exercise and both times I’ve come away shocked at the ideas that came out.

Anyway, when I finished putting together the mindmap for this topic, I realized I had created a flow diagram of how self-published books usually come together, but in reverse.

Not only that, the longer I studied this progression, the more I realized that self-publishers can learn a lot from traditional publishing. Here’s why.

The Difference Between Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing, Said Another Way

Most self-publishers are producing their first book ever. This adds a considerable amount of baggage to the creation of the book because when an an author writes, produces, publishes and markets a book themselves, the book invariably becomes an expression of that author, an extension of them.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But books are consumer products. Marketing and selling these products is made easier by using the tools of product development. If you’re totally identified with your book project, it’s a little hard to see it as product development. It’s too personal, you have too much invested in it.

Savvy editors and experienced authors know how to gauge a book’s market appeal before the book is written. While self-publishers usually write the book first and then try to figure out how to market it, publishing professionals are more likely to have access to a market and know what that market wants and needs. At that point it becomes a matter of creating the products that will fill those wants and needs.

 

Here’s the mindmap (This is from the wonderful iThoughts for iPad):

Backwards Book Construction mindmap

Think about this:

  1. Research the market: Wouldn’t you want to know what people in your market want first of all?
     
  2. Write the back cover copy: This is the basic offer of the book, and it ought to be crystal clear.
     
  3. Design the cover: This shows how you will position the book.
     
  4. Write a sample chapter and outline: Establish both the tone and the scope of the book.
     
  5. Design the book: Now’s the time to decide how to deliver the content.
     
  6. Test the concept: With a cover, an offer and a sample, see how people react.
     
  7. Announce the book: This is a product rollout, right?
     
  8. Write the book: At this point there’s no guesswork involved.
     
  9. Launch the book: Everything should now be in place for success.

At the end of this process, you ought to have a book that’s in demand, has a compelling offer, is properly positioned in its genre, and which people are avidly awaiting.

Why can’t self-publishers do this too? I’ve written often about the second book, and how authors multiply their chances for success by going on to write and publish more (related) books.

The Business of Being in Business

Traditional publishers are in business, and must show a profit to survive. At its best this brings a discipline to the creation of new products that helps to ensure that they will succeed. We all know that this is an ideal, and is not always practiced by most publishers.

However, self-published authors who decide to keep growing in their publishing career and go on to write more books will inevitably begin to view what they are doing as a business. We often encourage people going into self-publishing to take it as seriously as any other business, and that’s good advice.

It’s from that point of view that what seems like a completely backwards approach to book creation starts to make a lot of sense. If you followed this sequence, I think we would have a lot fewer books that no one besides the author is interested in. Fewer garages full of books, and fewer disappointed authors.

Learn from the pros, and be more successful for it. Use the completely backwards way to achieve self-publishing success.

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Kindle Sales And Pricing With Kindle Nation Daily's Stephen Windwalker

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Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog connects authors to readers and is an invaluable resource for the indie community. I used the sponsorship for Pentecost in early Feb and made it to #4 in Religious Fiction, #1 on movers and shakers, #93 in thrillers.

Stephen Windwalker is the author of 27 fiction and non-fiction books as well as running the Kindle Nation Daily blog and he’s an expert in all things Kindle related.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 36:57 — 21.8MB)

  • How Stephen’s career progressed from being an undergraduate with Vonnegut, to community organization and then running a bookstore for a long time. Then into running the book, video and software for Inc Magazine which got taken over by Random House, so he ran a small publishing imprint for a large media organisation. He self-published some of his own books with Harvard Perspectives Press. Stephen saw Jeff Bezos on the TV in 2007 when the Kindle was launched and he realized that it had the potential to remove the intermediaries in the process. It would empower readers and authors. Immediately, he wrote a book on how to use the Kindle for the Kindle and it remained #1 on the Kindle store for along time. After selling the book so well, Stephen realized he had a platform. So it became a mailing list, then a newsletter, then a blog – which has turned into Kindle Nation Daily blog.
  • Stephen saw the Kindle coming and embraced it on launch, unlike many in the publishing industry. He talks about how the last 6 months have been very exciting with the huge sales some authors have made. But many others are making a living, they may not be spectacular sales or press-worthy but authors are doing well with this. Authors can connect with more readers and sell more books for lower prices and still make more money than they did with traditional publishing. The stars in the firmament are currently reorganizing, the industry is changing and the relationships between them all are changing. The most important thing is that readers are empowered – they can decide what price they want to pay, they can demand an ebook and not buy hardback so the publishers are being affected by this change in behavior.
  • On ebook pricing and the 99c discussion. Stephen has been proven wrong as he had previously said that with the 70% royalties at $2.99 and above, no one would go any lower. But clearly authors are making money at 99c and selling at least 6x as many books at the lower price. Authors who have changed their price to 99c have leaped up the charts, so it’s hard to decide. The people who are doing the best are authors who have a brand and a lot of books to sell, many at different price points. The first in the series at 99cents hooks people in for the rest of the books which can be priced at $2.99 or more. On “the race to the bottom” – pricing a book at 99c and making thousands of dollars on it is not a race to the bottom. The price is NOT 99c – it’s 99c x the number of books you sell.
  • In the Kindle world, there is no scarcity in terms of books or readers. The market is growing. You won’t over-penetrate the market.
     
  • There’s a mindset for authors which is understandable when you work on a book for a long time. You want a publishing contract, you want it to be sold for a decent price. You don’t want to be diminished in value. But the importance of something and it’s value is Price x No. of people who buy it. What will validate authors is connecting with as many readers as possible. If they can sell 10 x the amount at 99c as they can at $2.99, then why not?
  • Reviews are important so the quality of the book is critical – the wisdom of the crowd. But also important is a high impact cover, good quality formatting, linked table of contents and a good title. Genre is also important. Some are clearly more saleable and some genres are easier to stand out in (enough vampires already!)
  • Kindle Nation Daily is available for authors to connect with readers. There are posts about books, bargain books, free excerpts etc as well as posts on how to use the Kindle. Authors can use one of the several sponsorship models available. (I used it for Pentecost and was really happy with the results!)
  • We talk about where else readers hang out and Stephen recommends BookLending.com

You can find Stephen at KindleNationDaily.com and on Facebook/KindleNationDaily where there are lots of promotions.

 

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

If You Love A Writer

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This post, by Eileen Flanagan, originally appeared on her blog on 7/24/09, but is just as relevant today.

After ten years of writing around my children’s schedules, I have a book coming out soon, and friends have been asking what they can do to support me. I’ve been touched by their offers and yet reticent to ask too much, especially of busy people in a tough economy. At the same time, the online writers groups I belong to are a buzz day and night with authors trying to figure out how to publicize their work before the entire publishing industry goes bankrupt. So, as a community service, I’ve decided to write up ten suggestions for all the people who love a book author who’s been fighting the publicity odds (Fellow writers, feel free to forward this link or add your own suggestions in the comment section.):

1.   Buy your friend’s book. If you can afford it, buy it for everyone in your extended family. If you can’t afford it, ask your local librarian to order a copy. In fact, you can suggest it to your librarian whether you buy a copy yourself or not.
 
2.   Don’t wait until Christmas or Hanukkah to pick up a copy. How it does in its first weeks determines whether a book will stay on the bookstore shelves or be sent back to the warehouse to be shredded (along with your friend’s ego). Try to buy it as soon as it’s published, or better yet pre-order a copy, which makes your friend look good and gets your friend’s publisher excited about the book’s prospects. An excited publisher will invest more in publicity, while a bookstore that is getting advanced orders is more likely to stock the book on its shelves.

3.   Friends often ask where they should get the book, which is a tricky question. In the long-term, it is in every writer’s best interest to support independent booksellers (reader’s too, actually). If you don’t have a favorite one yourself, you can go to IndieBound to find one near you. When a book is newly released, however, it may help your writer friend more to buy it through a big chain, so they keep it stocked where the most people can find it. Likewise, a high sales rate on Amazon can get people’s attention, and if your friend’s website links directly to Amazon, she may be part of a program where she makes extra money when someone enters Amazon through the link on her website and then makes a purchase. I personally have links toseveral booksellers,  on the theory that it’s good to spread the love around.
 
4.   If you genuinely like your friend’s book, write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, mention it on Facebook and Twitter, and recommend it to your book group.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes six more tips, on Eileen Flanagan’s blog.

What's In A Name? The Pink Floyd Effect

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The Pink Floyd Effect – The process of a name becoming perfect for its subject through familiarity with that subject and/or its actions.

Names. Very powerful things. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with demonology or the occult will tell you what a powerful thing a name can be. If you know something’s true name, you have great power over it. Maybe that’s why Prince changed his name to a symbol, which is very hard to pronounce in spells – could he be a demon, hunted by occult adventurers? But I digress.

[Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump, and political opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author]

 

I’ve been thinking about this lately because we rescued a tiny stray kitten last week and he appears to live here now. He has a strangely large chin and I said, “He’s like Stan from American Dad.” Henceforth, the kitten’s name is Stanley. He’s very cute, really. Look:

stanley Whats in a name? The Pink Floyd Effect.

When I mentioned this on Facebook and Twitter, people were universally besotted with him, but the reaction to his name was interesting. A lot of people thought it was a great name and many people complimented me on giving him a “proper” name. I presume they meant as opposed to Tiddles or Mr Snookums. Other people were very confused and made comments like, “Stanley? Really!?” A couple of people even pointed out that he looks like a Stanley. Which he does, of course, because that’s his name. Chicken and egg.

The name and the named grow into each other and become inseperable. I guarantee that within a few weeks, our new kitten and the name Stanley will be completely normal, at least to us. It happens in every walk of life. For example, my favourite band of all time is Pink Floyd. Stop and have a look at that name. When you hear it, you think of the band and all the amazing work they’ve done. But really? Pink Floyd? The etymology is interesting. They started out called The Tea Set, then one day found themselves on a bill with another band called The Tea Set. So Syd Barrett suggested a name he’d been keen on for a while, based on his two favourite blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. So they played as The Pink Floyd Sound. After a few gigs they dropped Sound, but remained known as The Pink Floyd. Usually known simply as Pink Floyd since the early seventies, the definite article is still used occasionally even now. But really, when you think about it, Pink Floyd is a bloody silly name. However, it’s also awesome as it contains and references everything about one of the most seminal bands of all time.

So of course, I relate this name situation to fiction. Names become incredibly important when we’re writing. I agonise over names – it’s probably the thing that gives me the most grief when I write. I want to get names just right. I want them to fit. But the truth is, whatever name I give a character will fit if I tell the story well and write the character convincingly, because the character and the name will grow together and seem like it was always the perfect match. I call this ‘The Pink Floyd Effect‘.

Drizzt Whats in a name? The Pink Floyd Effect.I think the important thing is to not try too hard when coming up with names for your fiction, especially if you write fantasy. Remember, the apostrophied name is so overused now that it’s become something of a joke. Characters like Drizzt Do’Urden owned the concept back in the day, but now it’s seen as overly try-hard, or extreme wankery, to include crazy apostrophied names in your fantasy fiction.

In Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy, I was initially really annoyed at the name Durzo Blint. It annoyed me because it seemed uneccessarily “fantasy”, and it still does annoy me a bit. But the name also now conjures for me everything about that character, and he’s a character I really like.

Let’s look at it from another real world example. I’ll write a name, you be aware of your immediate reaction. Ready?

Rodney King.

That’s a pretty ordinary sounding name in and of itself, but I bet you had a pretty visceral reaction to it. The man, the name and the events for which he’s known have become ingrained in our culture and the name carries a lot of power because of it.

Let’s try another one:

Errol Flynn

Calm down, ladies. Take a deep breath. Errol Flynn is actually a pretty funny name, and you might feel a bit sorry for anyone with a name like that these days. Although I do quite like the name Errol myself. But there’s no denying that it has power.

Okay, one more:

Sarah Palin.

Did you feel yourself get a bit dumber just then? Just reading or hearing the name actively destroys brain cells and enhances right wing idiocy and religious insanity. And that’s a name that could become much more powerful if the American people don’t take a moment to get their shit together. But in itself, Sarah Palin is a pretty ordinary name.

So, my point is this: Don’t over-stress the names you use, be it for your pets or the characters in your fiction. The Pink Floyd Effect will kick in with time and the name and the named will become one and the same thing. And potentially attach themselves to events people are aware of around the world.

When you’re writing your fiction, spend some time to think about the names, make sure they have a good ring to them, are easily read off the page and stuff like that. Then put your effort into writing the characters and the story as well as you possibly can. By the time you’re finished, the names you’ve chosen will be perfect.

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Agree or disagree? Please feel free to share your thoughts and examples in the comments.

 

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

Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors?

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Kindle for the Web widget

In September last year Amazon introduced a new tool, Kindle for the Web, which allows users to read and share first chapters of books without leaving a web browser.

In addition to a good-looking preview interface, there are two useful features: sharing and embedding. The latter one is a very good, yet underestimated tool which can be used in many ways by authors who publish their books at Amazon.

Before I’ll list benefits and explain how to embed the preview in a blog, I’d like to point out to one very important fact. Despite the name, Kindle for the Web is not available on a page with a Kindle edition of a book. Just the opposite – you’ll see the green widget with a Read first chapter FREE button (picture 1) on a page with a print version of a book… and linking to Kindle edition.

This is misleading many people, who look for previews where they are not available. As a result they stop searching for books at all.

Why Amazon decided to profile the tool this way? A simple explanation is that by giving a chance to read a sample of a print book they want to convince people to try Kindle editions – and buy Kindles.

What’s related, and essential for authors, is that Kindle for the Web is available only for books with both print and Kindle editions.

Why it’s good to use it?

I was extremely interested in this tool since the very beginning as it opens a couple of new opportunities for authors. Let me list the most important ones.

1. It helps differentiate your social media activity

Instead of tweeting “buy my book” all the time, you can write “read first chapter of my book for free”. Remember, we never know what is the current mood of our followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Some of them are willing to buy, some – to test before buying (but don’t feel like downloading a free sample to their Kindle or tablet).

2. It makes your blog more attractive

If you embed a book in a blog post and stick this post to a home page, you’ve got a very inviting entry, what’s more: saying right at the beginning that this is a blog from a published author.

3. It changes the reader’s attitude

Let’s say you want to share a first chapter of your published book. The difference is that when you make a regular blog post with it, it’s just a regular blog post. When you embed Kindle preview in a post, well, that’s a different story – you are showing a first chapter of the book.

4. It helps focus on reading

This is one of my favorite topics: reading in times of distraction. If you use Kindle preview in your blog, there are bigger chances that the reader will read it, as it removes all the distractions (like banners and sidebars) after a full screen option is clicked.

5. It helps you manage your author’s profile

Some authors, including me, published a book some time ago, started a blog to support it and drifted into areas where they can be more useful – sharing experience or writing tips and advice.

You were a mystery romance writer and now you are a writing expert. Sometimes it’s hard to fight with this strong new profile. Using Kindle for the Web will make your readers more willing to accept your other face.

6. It allows to earn more money

Finally, but most importantly, you can earn extra money, if you are an Amazon associate. When you are getting a code to embed, you can also provide your associate tag. Thanks to that any book sold via link from a Kindle preview on your blog will bring you money not only from a royalty (author) but also from a referral fee (associate).

If you haven’t joined Amazon affiliate system, it’s a good moment to try. There is nothing to be ashamed of. What’s really interesting is that Kindle for the Web with a pattern to switch to Kindle ecosystem can be also a natural opportunity to sell on your blog Kindle e-readers.

How to embed a preview in a blog?

The minimum size of the embedded window is 500(width) by 325(height) pixels. Therefore the places to consider are either a page or a post.

1. Go to a print version of your book, find the green widget entitled Kindle Edition and click on a Read first chapter FREE button. A Kindle for the Web window will pop up.

Kindle for the Web window

2. Find Embed button in the upper right corner and click on it. When you expand it with a Customize option, you’ll see a window like this.

Kindle for the Web - embed box

3. Type the size of a window. Ideally the width could be exactly the same as your blog’s page/post. In the Associate Tag field, type your tag.

4. Copy the code and paste it into your blog’s new page/post (in HTML preview). Done. Now you can share it with your readers.

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Although adding Kindle for the Web to a blog is a relatively easy task, there are a couple of conditions when you may not be able to do it:

– your blogging platform does not support html scripts (WordPress.com or Posterous)
– you are not familiar with html and/or don’t want to bother with it
– your blog has a very narrow page/post area – if it’s less than 500 pixels you won’t be able to do it

You can always take advantage from a feature I added to Ebook Friendly, my site designed to make browsing for e-books a more friendly experience. There is a special section called Read Online, where Kindle for the Web previews are perfectly tailored to e-reading application design. What’s important, authors can provide their associate tags and earn money as they would do it on their blogs.

If you’re interested, read more details in this post.

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Kindle for the Web is a great, easy to implement and very engaging tool. Until now I’ve seen it used mainly on book review sites. I think it’s not the reviewers, but authors, who should benefit the most.

Discoverability Issues For Ebooks

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In this Beyond the Book podcast and accompanying transcript, provided by the Copyright Clearance Center, the CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews leading industry experts on the question of how consumers find ebooks.

As part of the Independent Book Publishers Association‘s Publishing University for 2011, CCC’s Chris Kenneally moderated a discussion on “What’s Now and What’s Next in E-Reading.” Taking place just ahead of BookExpo America, the session featured Mark Coker, Founder and CEO, Smashwords; Ami Greko, Senior Vendor Relations, Kobo; James Howitt, Director of Publishing Services, R.R. Bowker; and Ron Hogan, Electric Literature.

“Last time we had a revolution of this kind,” Kenneally pointed out, “was the emergence of the printing press in the end of the 15th century. It took 150 years for anything like a publishing business to emerge. So while it’s possible to invent a technology, inventing a business takes a good deal more work. This is not the Middle Age, and we don’t have centuries to work these things out.” The panel noted ways that e-readers are changing how authors, publishers and their audiences think about the things we once called “books.”

From Bowker, James Howitt noted, “that we have to realize that bookstores hold in excess of 50, 60,000 titles to browse through. Today’s e-book buyer is going online and probably seeing — I don’t know, 50, 60 titles in front of them. There’s not that browsing, discovery capability just yet, and again, I’ll keep saying it, but not everyone is buying an e-book. So the challenge is about understanding each one of those customers and why they do what they do.”

 Emagination 2011 [41:57m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download
 
View or download the transcript of this podcast here.

 

The Problem For Piracy

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I’m not going to include software in this, just entertainment. The main entertainment forms that are pirated are: movies/television shows, books, and music. (I know, duh, right?)

So I’m thinking about why we have this problem. There is the obvious entitlement people have, but where did this entitlement even come from? I actually believe it came from the entertainment industries themselves (inadvertently), way back before the Internet when it was actually costly and time prohibitive for the average person to share copies of shit they didn’t own the copyright to.

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

 

With the film/tv industry there was “local television” (and movies are included in this because SOME movies from the theater eventually got edited for network television.) Local television didn’t cost money. You just had commercials (which most people don’t watch anyway, so they don’t consider that a cost to them). It was drilled into people’s heads that television entertainment is FREE. (Unless you were one of the families who could afford cable… but I really think subscription based free-for-alls still encourage the idea that you are paying for a service, not access to content.)

Now we have Netflix and Hulu which supposedly help reduce piracy but it STILL drills this same message in. Netflix is under $10 a month for all the streaming you want (of what is available that way). I do a lot of Netflix Streaming. It’s legal. I pay for it. But I still don’t see how anyone is being fairly compensated for all I’m watching. Bottom line, even though I pay a monthly fee, I, and probably most other people sort of see Netflix Streaming and Hulu as “free”. And the reason for this is that I get DVD rentals at home, too at this price. So in my head I’m paying for the DVD rentals but not the streaming, because it doesn’t make logical sense HOW I’m really paying for ALL that I’m streaming at that flat fee.

Onward…

With music we have radio. We are used to listening to music for free. Sure, there are commercials, but we all change the channel, turn the volume down, or ignore it. So we don’t see it as a real “cost”. The only cost we really have with radio is that we don’t get to listen to the song we want when we want to listen to it. But twenty years ago we all solved that problem with our cassette player/radios when we just recorded songs on the radio we liked when they came on. Now, we didn’t set up shop in our basement with bootlegs, but we were getting personal use: free music. So in our heads… music is supposed to be free if we want it.

And finally… books. We have libraries. Borrowing books without paying and reading and enjoying them without paying. There aren’t even commercials here. Just a fine if we don’t get the book back on time. And with public libraries doing digital books as well, the line is REALLY blurring quite a lot for ebooks.

So this, IMO is the problem. It’s not because the economy sucks and everybody is poor. It’s not because it’s so easy to do it. It’s because of entitlement. But the entitlement doesn’t exist because everybody is a jerk. The entitlement exists because in all of these industries we have all been trained by social reinforcement to see entertainment of this nature as “free”. And that was okay before the Internet. Once the Internet got here, people just wanted to continue doing what they were doing, but more conveniently. A lot of folks weren’t paying for TV, music, or books before… why the fuck should they start now?

But by everyone acting on this entitlement, a lot of people who create stuff lose a lot of money and are justifiably pissed off. I think the people who built libraries and the radio stations and the TV people, they just never thought we’d reach a day where the good will fostered through free content could be turned on them in such a drastic way. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

Had people always paid for all books, all TV, and all music, my view is that everyone would have felt it was wrong to steal it when the Internet came along. Most people understand digital downloading without pay is illegal. But deep down many don’t believe it’s wrong. Because they were getting it free before in another way and no one was making money personally off their enjoyment of the entertainment… and it was okay then.

 

This is a reprint from Zoe Winters‘ Weblog.

All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

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Self-publishing, that is. Or at least, it can seem so. There are the breakthrough success stories at one end of the spectrum, bitter tales of sales disappointment at the other, and between the two, a generous smattering of testimonials from indie authors who aren’t earning enough to quit their day jobs yet but are covering the rent or groceries each month with proceeds from their book sales. Suddenly, if you’re not releasing a Kindle or Nook edition at the minimum, you feel like you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. The pressure to rush to market is great, but you must resist it until both you and your book are truly ready for prime time.

 

Is Your Platform In Place, Focused and Growing?
Releasing your book before you’ve made it easy for readers to connect with you online, whether via a blog, social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), or an author website, is a big mistake. Readers have come to expect authors to have an online presence of some sort, and not having one paints you and your book as a bit more fly by night.

I’m not saying prospective buyers will check for platform before making a purchase decision, but platform is what spreads the message about you and your work, pulling more and more readers into your fold and making those readers feel you care about their reaction to your work. Building a community around your work makes each subsequent book easier to promote, and creates a cheerleading section that will do a fair amount of promotion for you.

Is Your Book Still In Beta Test, Or Should It Be?
If you just completed your draft a week ago, I don’t care who you are or how fantastic a writer you are, it’s not ready to be published. Don’t scrimp on the workshopping and rounds of critique, and don’t let your sense of urgency about publication color your rewrite decisions.

Let’s say the majority of your workshop/critique readers agree the second act needs a major overhaul, and a certain character needs to either be significantly expanded or cut entirely. Your heart sinks as you realize you’re staring down the barrel of six weeks or more of rewrites, followed by another round of review, which pushes your publication date back by three months or more. It can be very easy to become so focused on your target publication date that you give short shrift to any feedback that could possibly interfere with that date.

Just keep reminding yourself: releasing a book that’s not ready will lose sales and fans. And if it’s your first book, readers aren’t likely to give you a second chance. There’s just too much else out there for them to choose from, and at bargain prices.

Have You Succumbed To The "Good Enoughs"?
Your manuscript is all formatted for print or ebook publication, and for the most part, it looks great. There are some inconsistencies in your formatting, like maybe most passages written in the voice of your protagonist’s deceased son are italicized as you’ve intended, but a few have been left in standard type. Maybe most of your paragraphs begin with a .25" indent but non-indented paragraphs are scattered here and there. Maybe most of your line spacing is 1.15, but here and there you’ve lapsed into 1.5, and it’s barely noticeable. Readers don’t care about these things, right? Most of the book’s formatting is correct and consistent, and that’s good enough, right? Wrong.

You know a quality cover will elevate your book above the crowd, but you have no art or typography skills to speak of, don’t have the money to pay top dollar for a professional design and don’t have the time to search out a freelance artist you can afford. So you get your artsy sister to create a cover image for you, and it may not look like a slick mainstream cover but it’s not bad. It doesn’t scream "my sister designed this for me," and that’s good enough, right? Wrong.

Again, don’t let your sense of urgency about publication set an unprofessional tone.

Are You Prepared To Promote?
The book’s been workshopped, polished to a high gloss, has a fantastic cover and attractive, consistent formatting, and you’ve got an author blog, Twitter account and Facebook page set up. Time to publish? Maybe, maybe not.

Are you prepared to invest the necessary time and effort to post to your blog regularly and acknowledge comments left there, to tweet quality messages and links, and respond to Facebook messages and wall posts? A neglected platform can actually be worse than no platform at all if it makes your readers feel snubbed.

Will you be able to do some guest blogging or write some articles to help get the word out about your book? Can you find the time to reach out to book bloggers and other reviewers, and are you prepared to send out free review copies of your book?

Platform maintenance doesn’t have to be a fulltime job, and you can calibrate your platform activities to match your available levels of time and energy (e.g., maybe you can do Twitter or Facebook, but not both; maybe a static author web page is best for you because you don’t have the time to blog, etc.).

What’s important is that you’re not going into publication with an expectation that once the book is out there, your job is done and all you need do is wait for the glowing reviews and royalties to start rolling in. Raising and building awareness doesn’t happen by accident.

Are You Going To Make The Rest Of Us Look Bad?
Whether for any of the above reasons or something else, if you’re not prepared to do a professional job of preparing your book for release and promoting it afterward, don’t publish. While indie books and authors are gaining widespread acceptance, every amateurish indie book has the power to create or reinforce an anti-indie bias, and that hurts all of us.
 

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

Ebook Publishing And The Great Price Debate: My Numbers Tell An Interesting Story

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Before Christmas and the great Amanda Hocking success story hit the blogosphere, the general wisdom among ebook self-publishers tended to be that $2.99 was the sweet spot  for selling and profiting from sales. Particularly after Amazon instituted its new 70% royalty offering (which didn’t apply for books priced at under $2.99), anything lower than that was seen as reserved for short stories or novellas or at the most a brief promotional launch. However, the success of Amanda Hocking and a growing number of self-published authors selling their books at 99 cents changed the debate.

They proved that you could sell so many books at that rate that it would more than make up for the loss of the 70% revenue. An additional upside to the 99 cent approach was that the sheer volume of sales at 99 cents would put your book(s) so high up in the rankings in the Kindle store and its browsing categories that you could dominate the market in these subgenres, thereby attracting even more buyers.

I confess, as I watched my number of U.S.Kindle sales of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, begin a steady decline after it reached a peak in January (2841 sales), February (1461), March (1191), April (728), I began to think about whether or not I should lower my price to 99 cents. But so far I have held off.  I decided that what I was seeing was a seasonal pattern, rather than a lack of competitiveness of my pricing. For example, Maids of Misfortune remained at the top of the historical mystery best-seller list, which suggested to me that other books in the list were undergoing a similar decline-otherwise they should have started to out-rank me. Shatzkin in his recent post analyzing the new data on ebook sales echoed my conclusions when he stated:

“…Christmas presents of ebook-capable devices would tend to result in ebook sales after December 25. (The devices would have been sold before Christmas, of course.) It might be true that people buy more ebooks in the first month or two that they own a device than they do on an ongoing basis.

So for the period left in our time of transition when Christmas presents of devices add new digital reading converts — and we certainly have one or two more Christmases like that coming, if not three or four — we can expect ebook sales surges right after Christmas that calm down in March and later.”

I think that every time Amazon puts out a new device (with a surge in new buys), every time a gift-related holiday rolls round (first 7 days of May I averaged 15 sales a day, Mother’s Day I sold 31!), Kindle books that sell well (have good reviews, good cover, are ranked high in browser categories, etc) will sell more. But I also believe that in most cases this will be followed by a decline—since people who get new devices tend to “front load” with lots of books, particularly low-priced books, and it will take them awhile to make their way through those already purchased books to begin to buy again. And I suspect that when they begin to buy again, they may not focus so narrowly on the free and 99 cent books, particularly if they found a high proportion of these cheaper books did not live up to their expectations.

This isn’t to say that by lowering my price I wouldn’t start to sell more books, but whether or not my book, in my genre, would sustain large enough numbers to compensate for the lower royalties over a month or two is still questionable. Since I hope to have my sequel out by early fall, it made much more sense to wait to experiment with lowering the price until closer to my launch-so that I could use it as a promotional tool to generate interest in the new book. I might also start out with a 99 cent price for the new book to generate enough sales and reviews to get it to climb the top of the historical mystery category.

Further evidence of the temporary effects of lowering the price of a work came this month when Amazon lowered the price of my short story, Dandy Detects, based on characters from the longer novel, from 99 cents to free. (Background here is that as a self-published author on Kindle I couldn’t offer Dandy Detects as a free short story, which is what I wanted to do. However, I was contacted ten days ago by Kindle Direct saying they were going to offer Dandy for free because it had been offered as a “free promotion on another sales channel.” I am not sure, but I think this was because Dandy had been offered as a free short on KindleNationDaily in July, 2010.

In the year since I started offering Dandy Detects, I had sold slightly over 2700 stories at 99 cents. May 11th when it was offered free for the first time, there were 3851 stories downloaded. This was the peak, and the numbers declined steadily, so that yesterday, May 19, I sold 123. However, as I had always hoped, the free short story led to sales of Maids of Misfortune. The first week in May my average sales was 15, the week after Dandy Detects started being free, my daily sales average was 31. Yet, as the number of new Dandy’s downloaded declined, so has the number of daily sales for Maids of Misfortune.

Will my daily sales, despite this bump, continue to decline? Possibly, until the next new device or a new lower price is issued, until the summer holidays cause an uptick in reading, until the people who front-loaded their devices begin to buy again. This April I may have sold only 728 Kindle copies of Maids, but last April I sold only 28.

In conclusion: from my experiences in Kindle sales as a self-published author I have drawn a few simple lessons.

•  As the number of people who own Kindles (or devices that support Kindle books) increases, the sales of ebooks from the Kindle store will increase, including sales of Maids of Misfortune. Amazon just announced that it has sold 3 x the number of ebooks so far in 2011 as it did in the same time period in 2010.

•  At the same time, the pace of the sales of ebook devices, while increasing over all, is influenced by such factors as the timing of when new devices are issued, the periodic lowering of the price of Kingles, and gift related holidays, causing a pattern of jumps in sales, followed by a temporary slowing in sales.

•  Offering short stories for free, or full length books for 99 cent prices, will also increase sales, which can be very good for promotional purposes (gets you higher ranks in categories, can raise the sales of other books), but it is not yet clear if this is a sustainable approach for the long haul (given the loss of royalties) for all ebooks (genre does matter here).

Finally, because Maids of Misfortune is a self-published ebook, and it will not go out of print (or be returned by bookstores), any declines in the number of daily sales (while does effect my monthly income) does nothing to determine the lifetime income the book will make. The first year the book was out I made over $5000, the next five months I made another $17,000 dollars, and I have every reason to expect that this income will increase in the next 5-7 months, as the number of people who own Kindles increases. And at the end of that period, I should have a second book out, and if I did my job as a writer and produced a good book, then in time my income should at least double.

So, what are your numbers telling you?
 

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor.

How Publishers Are Affected By Digital Devices

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This Beyond the Book podcast and transcript are being provided in their entirety by the Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book Cast site, where they originally appeared on 5/29/11.

Recorded in Boston at the 2011 SIIA NetGain Conference, this conversation with leading analysts looks at everything from tiny smart phones to tablets to learn what’s hot, what’s not, and what you need to know that will impact your business.

A trio of Boston-based analysts provided insight on where businesses need to head: Vanessa DiMauro, CEO, Leader Networks; Jim Hamilton, Group Director, InfoTrends; and Ned May, VP & Lead Analyst, Outsell, Inc. They answered questions from CCC’s Chris Kenneally, including, “What are the devices that will have the most immediate impact on my business?” and “How fast, really, are the new mobile tools being adopted in the consumption of business information?”

 Leading Innovation [36:55m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

Read the transcript of the podcast here.

Strip Mining the Authors

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This post, by Passive Guy, originally appeared on his The Passive Voice blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has written another important essay on the changing face of publishing. I’ll intersperse some excerpts with my comments, but this is one you’ll want to read in its entirety. There is, as always, a link at the bottom.

As will be abundantly clear from Kris’ examples, traditional publishers and the new agents-turned-publishers are making a brazen grab for as many rights from authors as possible while reducing the amount of money they will pay authors for their books. This is the new strip mining model for publishing.

Why are they doing this?

When the ship is sinking, some of the passengers start fighting over the lifeboats.

With each passing week, the handwriting on the wall becomes more and more distinct. What does the writing say?

Big Publishing, the agents who rely upon it and the traditional bookstores that provide its lifeblood are sinking. Just like the Titanic, they’re not disappearing in an instant. The band is still playing and fashionable people are doing business on the upper decks. The good ship Big Publishing will be bobbing in the waves for some time to come, but Amazon, ebooks and indie publishing have punched big holes in the hull. Those holes cannot be patched and the ship is going down.

Does this mean the end of publishing ships? No, but it means the demise of the grand ocean liners. The S.S. Amazon is an entirely different design, crafted for speed and efficiency and it doesn’t need many sailors schooled in the old ways.

While the band is playing and champagne flows, people make brave speeches about the timelessness of their trade. But, make no mistake, a battle is underway below-decks for spots on the lifeboats. If it’s necessary to toss authors over the side to make room, well, that’s just the nature of the business these days.

From Kris:

[A bestselling] writer, more than any other writer, is in danger of losing money and copyrights, of in fact going from making a lot of money to making little or no money at all. How can she lose money when she will probably maintain her bestseller status, her sales will probably go up, and her work will go into more markets than ever before?

Simple. Her contract terms will change and she might not even notice.

At some time hidden in the mists of time, an ancient rule of contracts was formulated: When a business partner is in financial trouble and wants a change in a long-standing agreement, watch your wallet. The more “routine” the change, the more dangerous it probably is.

Kris talks about e-rights:

Another clause to beware of in the e-rights clause of your new contract is this one:

“The Author hereby grants to the Publisher…the exclusive license to produce, publish, sell, distribute and further license any Electronic Version of the Work…. ‘Electronic Version’ means versions that include the Work…in a complete, condensed, adapted, or abridged version and in compilations for performance and display in any manner whether sequentially or non-sequentially and together with accompanying sounds and images, if any, transmissible by any electronic means, method or device (including but not limited to electronic and machine-readable media and online or satellite-based transmission or any other device or medium for electronic reproduction or transmission whether now or hereafter known or developed…)” [Emphasis mine.]

Yikes! Ick! No. Never, ever, ever, ever sign this clause. Think about this: movies are digitized—they are performance, and they are often distributed online. Not only does that clause allow someone to monkey with your work, abridging it, taking it out of order, adding things to it, making it into a performance piece, adding sound effects, but it also is a backwards way of granting television rights, video display rights, and any other performance right, so long as that performance can be distributed electronically.

And don’t believe that someone in your publishing house won’t use that clause down the road. The editor you trust may leave, the publishing company might change hands, and a clause that was designed for one thing will be used for something completely different.

Gold has been discovered in ebooks. Smart people are prospecting for more gold with enhanced ebooks. Video in ebooks is a definite possibility.

While a few people sprinkled in publishers’ management positions high and low may have seen a vision of what books could become and the effect that might have on publishers’ profits in their traditional lines a few years ago, nobody bothered to tell the gnomes who tended the standard-form contracts.

Kris has seen far more publishing contracts during her career than Passive Guy has, but the ones he’s examined that are more than a couple of years old are tight where paperbacks and hardcovers are concerned and they leak like a sieve everywhere else.

Back to Kris:

Watch out for your option clause. Try to avoid signing one at all. In the past, option clauses were like job security, but no longer. Option clauses have now become a way to tie a writer to a publishing house and to prevent her from working for anyone else. So strike your option clause if possible.

. . . .

Watch your warranty clause.  Now, many publishers are reverting to an old practice. They want writers to warrant that the writer will not write anything until this particular book under this particular contract is published.

This used to be a separate clause, and very easy to find.  It existed in a lot of contracts 20 years ago, then faded away.  Now it’s back with a vengeance.  It used to be that the writer guaranteed that the book she had just contracted for would be her next book and no other book would compete against it.

Now she’s guaranteeing that she will not write another book until this one is published.  And in many cases, the publisher enjoins her from writing anything.

This clause, which has been in every new book contract I have seen from traditional New York publishers in the past six months, is buried in the warranties.  Which are the boilerplate part of the contract, the part that includes bankruptcies and acts of God.  A lot of established writers stopped reading the legal gobbledygook in the boilerplate years ago, and have been snared by this clause.

Sometimes people fighting for lifeboats don’t act in rational ways. During the fight, the lifeboat may be damaged, supplies lost and passengers capable of providing valuable assistance to the survivors prevented from boarding.

When he read Kris’ description of these provisions, Passive Guy was reminded about one of the fundamental rules of making contracts with important long-term partners: Don’t screw your partner in the contract even if you have an opportunity to do so. When your partner realizes you screwed her as she inevitably will, she’ll spend all her time and energy working on ways to get out of the contract instead of doing whatever it was that you wanted her to do when you signed the contract.

What about the clause that hog-tied the author to the publisher? PG’s already thought of a half-dozen likely ways to evade the clause. He can’t help it, that’s just the way his mind works. However, he’ll keep those under his hat for the moment because he hasn’t seen the language in the contract.

Something else also came to mind, however. As described, the hog-tying clause potentially precludes a professional author from earning a living by writing for a competing publisher. When you think of it that way, it sounds a lot like a non-compete clause.

Non-compete agreements are common in the tech world. When you go to work for a tech company or become a contractor for a tech company, you’ll be required to sign a non-compete agreement that prevents you from taking everything you learned while you worked on the Apple ebook project and taking it with you when you’re hired for the Microsoft ebook project.

As with everything else, however, non-compete agreements were abused by some employers and today a dense combination of state laws and court decisions have placed substantial limits on how much a company can restrict the post-employment work of a former employee.

One of the fundamental limitations on non-compete agreements is a public policy that people should be free to work and support themselves in their chosen profession and should also be free to move from job to job. Limitations on that freedom included in non-compete agreements must be narrowly-tailored with time limitations to protect the vital interests of the company, not punish ex-employees or former contractors for quitting.

Back to the bigger picture for a moment, hiding material limitations on an author’s freedom in obscure warranty clauses as Kris describes is an unethical business practice.

Depending upon how it’s done and what extra-contractual representations are made to the author, we may be moving into fraud territory.

This practice exploits the great mismatch in resources and negotiating power between a large publisher and an individual author. Passive Guy has no problems with bare-knuckles contract drafting and negotiations when both sides have access to good-quality legal advice, but this is over the line. It demonstrates disrespect for an author and an intention to fleece the author for the financial advantage of the publisher.

This is antithetical to a relationship of mutual respect between professional colleagues. This is destructive exploitation – strip mining – of an author’s life work.

Such behavior by a publisher gives rise to an additional inevitable question. If the publisher is willing to engage in borderline fraudulent practices in its contract with an author, what additional types of fraudulent practices may it engage in? Even hidden clauses in a contract are far easier to discover than under-reporting of sales and underpayment of royalties.

So, how do we deal with hidden gotchas in a publishing contract?

Next week, Passive Guy will unveil yet another lovely contract provision for authors. Check back to learn about the Smoke ‘Em Out Clause.

And most definitely read the entire post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. This one can make or save you some big money.

 

First Royalty Cheque For Pentecost

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So I have shared the entire journey of Pentecost with the readers of this blog, and I have tried to be transparent along the way. I have shared the triumphs and also the difficult times in the hope that we can learn together. You can read/skim the entire journey here => First Novel.

Yesterday was very exciting because I received my first royalty cheque from Amazon since Pentecost was released on Feb 7th. They have payment terms of 90 days and pay by cheque to people outside the US for Amazon.com sales (which I have had a lot of questions about lately). So to round off the story, I thought I should share it with you in the spirit of honesty. Here it is.

I think there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in the publishing world. People are secretive and keep things behind closed doors which can skew our perception of reality. Joe Konrath shares his numbers and encourages us all, so I’m sharing my (far more modest) sales in order to show you it can be done on a smaller scale. This cheque is a representation of a level of publishing success – very small, but for a new author with a first novel, it’s encouraging to me. I will make my costs back within a couple of months and then we’re into the happy times!

I sold 578 books on Amazon between February 7 – 28 and the total sales = US$1003.06 and GBP33.90. Because of the with-holding tax from the US Kindle store as I’m not a US tax-payer, I received a cheque for $702.14. The GBP royalties aren’t enough to warrant a cheque yet! (They have a threshold of $100 before payouts) No, this is not going to pay a mortgage but it will pay a couple of weeks rent and is not insignificant for a first month [boldface added by Publetariat Editor].

The exciting thing is that Pentecost continues to improve sales and ranking, so although I have lowered my price to 99 cents, the sales numbers are going up (as above).

I’ll forfeit the higher price for this first book and the next one in the series, Prophecy, will be back at $2.99 so the cheques will get bigger again after December. As I write this, Pentecost is at #277 overall in the Kindle store, #2 in Religious Fiction and #12 in Action/Adventure.

It’s also exciting to see my future as a pro-writer, blogger and speaker slowly coming more into focus. I fully intend to make it my full-time living in the next few years and move out of the day job. A few more books will mean the cheques will get bigger. I can aim for the success of Konrath, Hocking and Locke – and so can you!

Does this encourage you? What success are you aiming for?

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Of Readers And Gatekeepers: A Call To Arms

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Are you reading this? Then I’m talking to you. You’re a reader and you have a new responsibility. I’m including myself in this. I’m a writer, but I’m a reader too. Any writer worth his or her salt should be a voracious reader, and we’ve got a new responsibility as well. We’re all the New Gatekeepers. No, not extras in a Doctor Who episode, don’t get over-excited.

There’s so much talk about the changing face of publishing, and justifiably so. It’s an exciting time and writing and publishing is going through a renaissance brought about by new technologies. That means there are options out there for pretty much everyone to get their writing out into the world, and a lot of people are taking up the opportunity. Some people are doing seriously well out of it, like Amanda Hocking. Others are doing rather less well, like the poor woman that immolated her career with one online review – you know who I mean. But one of the net results of this revolution in publishing is that readers have been saddled with a massive new responsibility.

Gatekeeping is important. In the good old days of the late 90s and early 2000s, and since forever before that, the gatekeepers were the publishers. Writers would approach publishers, either directly or through agents, and publishers would decide what was published and what wasn’t. They essentially filtered what everyone got to read. The upside of this was, largely, the stuff that made it into print was generally well written and worth reading. Generally. We all know publishers are quite capable of turning out reams of utter shite too. But on the whole they ensured a general level of quality control. The downside, apart from the afore-mentioned shite, is that they also ensured that anything risky or unusual, something strangely cross-genre, something not immediately saleable, was unlikely to see the light of day. There were self-publishing and small press success stories, where the unlikely became massive, but those hits were very, very rare.

Now, with the advent of Print On Demand and ebook technology, publishers have found those gatekeeping responsibilities ripped away. Writers are still keen to be published by the big guys – there’s a definite advantage to it, both in terms of credibility and distribution, hence readership. But literally millions of people are circumventing the publishers and self-publishing. Millions more are scoring smaller deals with small press. The volume of stuff out there is staggering. And a lot of it is complete shit.

Remember, the publishers themselves have turned out many stinkers over the years, but the strike rate for quality – in editing, formatting, production and so on, as well as writing ability – has generally been kept high even if the stories were rubbish. Not always, but often. Nowadays people think it’s easy to write and be “published” and there’s loads of stuff out there that really shouldn’t see the light of day. Poorly written, poorly edited, poorly formatted – just poor. And that’s where we as readers come in. This is why we are the New Gatekeepers.

Success in writing has always relied on word of mouth. When a big publisher puts the might of the marketing machine behind a new release that word of mouth gets a massive head start, but it’s still the reviews and recommendations of critics and readers that determine whether a book is truly successful or not. That’s still the case, but the mainstream reviewers can’t keep up with the tsunami of words constantly bearing down on them. Along with all the newly published writers, a whole bunch of new reviewers have cropped up, and many book review blogs are developing considerable power. This is a very good thing, as it helps to strim out the crap and let the quality stuff rise to the top.

But you don’t need a review blog to wield power in this new world. You’re a reader – you have enormous power. If only you’d use it. By the Power of Yourskull! Or, more accruately, the brain within it. If you read something you like, tell people all about it. Recommend it to your friends, buy it and gift it to people. You can gift ebooks now as well as print books. There is no better result for a writer than a reader enjoying the book and recommending it. But don’t stop there – there’s so much more you can do, very easily.

You don’t need to be a talented reviewer to review books. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Goodreads, Smashwords – all these places and more make it very easy for you to leave a review and rate a book. Or just rate it. Your review doesn’t have to be anything lengthy to have an impact. For example, look at this review of my second novel, MageSign, that a reader called Joefredwheels left on Amazon.com (Yes, I’m going to use my own work as reference. Sue me.):

excellent follow up – great story continuing adventure of first book protaganist. hoping for more stories in this world. Baxter is an excellent writer of a fast past exciting plot. THIS IS WORTH THE MONEY. BUY THE BOOK

He also rated it five stars. Brilliant. It’s very short, it’s not worrying about being good writing in itself, it’s simply conveying the person’s enjoyment of the book. Sure, it’s cool when readers take the time to write a few paragraphs of carefully thought out critique when they review, but the review above is just as valuable.

Here’s another example, this time a review of RealmShift, left on Amazon by Cathy Russell “Ganymeder”:

a well thought out tale – I liked that this story had believable characters and explored faith (or lack of), it’s origins, etc. It had a lot of deep themes. The characters were well thought out. The plot was engaging, and I liked the whole idea of a superhuman who could kick the devil’s ass. While reading this, I kept thinking it would make a great action movie or comic book too. I’d recommend this. 4 stars.

That wouldn’t have taken long to write, but in a single paragraph she recommends the book and gives some basic reasons why. Again, brilliant.

I can’t express how grateful I am when people take the time to do this. And it’s something we can all do, for any publication, anywhere on the web.

I tend to review books I enjoy here on my blog, but I’m a regular blogger anyway. I always rate them on Goodreads. I’m also planning to copy my reviews over onto Amazon and Goodreads – I wish I’d done it as I wrote them, as now it’s going to take a while and a concerted effort. But I’ll do it, because I plan to put my reviews where my mouth is.

So we, as readers, are the new gatekeepers. It’s our responsibility to help spread the word about the good stuff we read, and the bad. You don’t have to leave negative reviews on anything – just don’t review them. But it’s an act of true benevolence to leave good reviews of stuff you enjoy, or drop by websites and leave a star rating. You can write a single line or single paragraph review and copy that to all the sites you visit or shop at. If you do blog, then reviewing a book on your site is fantastic. But whatever you do, do something. Help spread the word. As writers, nothing is more valuable to us than the recommendations of readers. It’s always been that way, and now it’s more true than ever. Readers can make sure the good stuff out there gets noticed and more writers get themselves a well-earned career. Power to the people!

 

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

Books For Charity: Helping A Family In Joplin

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As I watched families pick through the rubble of their homes, looking for shoes for their kids, I felt sickened and helpless. As helpless as they must have felt to see the tornado coming and not be able to do anything but hide and hope for the best. I tried to imagine what it would feel to have lost everything and not have enough money to rent a motel room for the week.

So rather than feel helpless, I decided to do what I could. Together with my blogger partners, we’re raising money to help a family in Joplin, Missouri. Drew and I have pledged 100% our Amazon book royalties (print and digital) for the next four days to this charitable cause, and Judith has pledged 25% of her e-book royalties through Memorial day.

The amount of money we raise will be up to readers. We hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to buy some great books and donate to a good cause at the same time. Here’s a list of the participating novels with links to Amazon.

Drew’s bestselling title: While the Savage Sleeps

L.J.’s bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries:
The Sex Club
Secrets to Die For
Thrilled to Death
Passions of the Dead
Dying for Justice
And standalone thrillers:
The Baby Thief
The Suicide Effect

Judith’s guilty pleasure Skeeter Hughes mysteries:
Where’s Billy?
Whose Hand?

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This is a cross-post from The Crime Fiction Collective.