Indie Author vs. Indie Entrepreneur

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As you may have noticed, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted here. There are good reasons for that, like the fact that my former house was foreclosed in August and I had to move on short notice, plus some divorce-related challenges that I can’t really detail for you here. 

But I’ve been thinking about this post for weeks now, and I’m sorry to tell you that it won’t come as a welcome insight to everyone. Still, judging by the recent blog posts or inactivity of many of my online writer friends, I don’t think it will come as a huge surprise to very many of you, either.

I’ve said all along that in order to really make a go of earning a living as an indie author, one must approach it with all the verve, dedication and business acumen of an entrepreneur. I stand by that to this day, but here’s what’s new: maybe not all of us need to be, nor even want to be, indie entrepreneurs.

This new paradigm of indie author-entrepreneur (I’ll abbreviate it to IAE in this post) is totally different from what the idealized picture of being a Published Author was just a few short years ago. While the IAE has much greater control over her work and career, with that control comes greater responsibility, too.

You’ve got to SELL, SELL, SELL. You’ve got to PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE. You’ve got to LEARN, LEARN, LEARN. You’ve also got to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, because having a large published catalog is one of the commonalities among indie authors who are truly making a living at it. And once you get that momentum ball rolling, you can’t stop pushing it, EVER. Not if you want to continue selling, that is.

So making it as a fulltime author means working at it, fulltime. It also means coping with the same stresses and uncertainties as any entrepreneur: unpredictable income, all the administrative duties and headaches that come with running a small business, the constant pressure to produce and promote, et cetera.

A few years into it, many indie authors are stopping to reassess. The initial rush of excitement over being able to call our own shots and write our own tickets is over, and now we’re wallowing in the morning-after hangover realization that being a successful IAE means spending at least as much time on the business and promotion side of things as on writing. 

All those years we spent daydreaming about being a Published Author never included scenes of bookkeeping, coming up with promotional campaigns, buying our own ISBNs, boning up on ebook tech, strategizing over our books’ prices, and so on. We weren’t daydreaming about running a small business, but unless we’re willing to go back to the old ways of querying agents and praying for a mainstream publishing contract, that’s exactly what we have to do.

Those who are trying to transition to being a fulltime IAE while working a fulltime job to pay the bills are finding it very difficult, if not impossible, to manage. It was never easy finding the time to write, let alone query agents, enter contests and so on; being an IAE adds many, many more hours of work to the authorship equation.

I’ve concluded that for me, it’s just not worth it. 

I’m not willing to give up so much of my life to this effort, even if I knew for a certainty that I’d be a Joe Konrath at the end of it: making a comfortable living as a fulltime IAE. I’m not willing to trade years of stress and 80-100 hour workweeks to achieve that particular goal, then continue working 60-hour workweeks to maintain it. Considering that I was never in it for the money anyway, I guess this is not a difficult decision for me to make. For those who are struggling with it, consider this:

Being the next Konrath may not be realistically possible for most of us indies, anyway. Remember, Konrath went in with the advantage of already having a large back catalog of mainstream-published books (plus the royalties that go with them), and he was already a fulltime author before he went indie too. His journey to fulltime IAE was much shorter and less difficult than what the rest of us are facing.

At the outset, my goal for my novels was to get them published and know they’d reached an appreciative readership. My hope as an indie author overall was to see indie authorship go mainstream and become a respectable alternative to mainstream publishing within my lifetime. I’ve achieved the first goal, and seen my hopes for indie authorship realized far beyond my original notions, and much more quickly.

I have a ‘day job’ I love that’s steeped in books and media (Editor in Chief of Kindle Fire on Kindle Nation Daily). I’ve come out of a marriage of over 18 years, and I’m facing the happy prospect of building a new life for myself, exactly how I want it to be. I’m also thoroughly enjoying these regrettably short years of remaining time before my kids are grown and out on their own.

So while I’ll still write and publish, I’ll continue to run Publetariat, and I’ll remain active in the publishing and indie author communities, I’m not working toward the goal of becoming a fulltime IAE, and I guess I never really was. Anyone reading this who DOES want to be a successful IAE, you have my admiration and I support your choice completely. I’m certainly not making any kind of value judgment, or trying to imply there’s something better about my choice in this.

All I’m saying is, if you have decided, like me, that being a successful IAE isn’t really your dream after all, that’s okay. Choosing a different path does not make you a failure. Just be glad that as indie authors, we now have the flexibility to design our own career trajectories. As with pretty much everything else in indie authorship, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. 

 

This is a reprint from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

Self-Publishers Aren’t Killing The Industry, They’re Saving It

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This post, by Ed Robertson, originally appeared on David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital site.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment that cheap books are destroying the industry.

In traditional publishing circles especially, fingers are being pointed at self-publishers (and their chief enablers, Amazon), who stand accused of encouraging a race to the bottom, of devaluing books, and training readers to pay ever-cheaper amounts – making the whole book business unsustainable.

Today, I have a guest post from Ed Robertson – author of Breakers and Melt Down – which takes issue with that view. His logic is compelling, based on a historical look at book prices. This is really worth the read: 

Self-Publishers Aren’t Killing The Industry, They’re Saving It

I’m a self-publisher. An indie author. Whatever you want to call me. I’ve read many articles about how self-publishers are killing the book industry. I’ve heard it from big publishing houses. From the president of the Author’s Guild. From traditionally published novelists and agents and even other self-publishers. If I want, I bet I can find a new one of these articles every single day.

But I won’t, because I no longer believe them.

Self-publishers don’t have the power to kill the publishing industry. I don’t think anyone does. But we do have the power to change it. We already have – and paradoxically, this change isn’t a change at all. And instead of killing books, this change has helped resurrect them.

We aren’t the first to be accused of killing the industry. In 1939, Robert de Graff threatened to kill publishing, too. At the tail end of the Great Depression, when hardcovers regularly sold for between $2.50-$3.00, he started selling paperback Pocket Books for $0.25.

To put that in 2012 dollars, hardcovers cost roughly $40-50. The new paperbacks, the first of their kind in American markets, cost the equivalent of $4.16. In modern terms, a book that once cost as much as a coffee maker now cost as little as a cup of coffee. A book that once cost as much as a full tank of gas now cost as little as a gallon.

In just over five years from that 1939 launch date, Pocket Books sold 100 million paperbacks.

But it wasn’t all high fives around the burgeoning paperback business. One publisher at Penguin was so aghast at the tawdry covers on his books he wound up selling off the entire line. Others worried openly about the death of the hardcover industry. On the concept of skipping hardcovers entirely and printing straight to paperback, even Pocket Books’ own VP Freeman Lewis said, “Successful authors are not interested in original publishing at 25 cents.”

But they were, of course. Particularly genre writers who didn’t care if this new format was disgraceful. Because it sold. Readers bought their books by the millions. As the format was being denounced as the playground of hacks, authors like William S. Burroughs and Philip K. Dick got their start with bargain-priced paperback-only prints (specifically, with Ace Doubles that sold two novels bundled for $0.35). The history of the era is fascinating – a short yet rich article recaps it here – but what is most interesting to me is that initial $0.25 price.

 

Read the rest of the post on Let’s Get Digital.

12 Holiday Book Promo Ideas

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The holiday season is upon us.

It’s only [a few days past] Halloween, but you and I both know that holiday displays are going up in stores as I type this.

Scratch that. I was just at Walmart, and half the store is already decorated!

While this time of year is crazypants for you (what the heck am I going to get Dad this year?), it’s also the busiest shopping season for your readers — and that makes it the perfect opportunity for a fun promotion.

And, when you start planning your special holiday promotions now, you  build up excitement before everyone else (except Walmart) begins their own jolly campaign.

While you could go with the old standbys of discounts and personalized copies, they’re…well, somewhat predictable. You know your Duolit gals — we like to have a bit more fun!

So, check out these 12 other holiday book promotion ideas (prettily tied up in a bow):

1. Package Deal

Buyers loooove packages. Less shopping, more gifts, right? Create fun packages including your paperback, such as:

– Discounts for buying multiple copies (2 for $15, 4 for $20)

– Bundling multiple books together (2-for-1, 3-for-2)

– Buy one, share one (one book for you, one for a friend!)

2. Post 12 Days of “Your Book”

This can be a blog series or a great theme for a guest posting spree! Celebrate the 12 Days of [Your Book] by showcasing gift ideas, recipes, flash fiction, or playlists centered around your book and its characters.

3. Create an Indie Authors Bundle

Time to grab those indie author friends and gather your books into a package — at an unbeatable price.

You’ll gain exposure to completely new fanbases, and give everyone’s readers lots of ideas for holiday gifts. Be sure to include a ‘gift guide’, so readers know exactly who on their shopping list would love each book!

4. Share Gift Basket Ideas

Make your book the featured item in a gift basket! Post creative suggestions on your website, so all your readers have to do is purchase your book and create the basket! Ideas include:

– Cozy Reader: hot chocolate/coffee/tea, a mug and a blanket.

– Rockin’ Out: albums or playlists to accompany your book.

– Yummy in My Tummy: A character’s favorite recipe and all the ingredients to make it.

– Book Fair: Your book along with others by your favorite authors.

5. Host a Recipe Contest

Everyone has a special family recipe they’d love to share! Get your readers into the holiday spirit by creating your own fanbase cookbook! Let each reader submit a recipe, then give away digital copies to celebrate the season.

6. Donate Proceeds to Charity

Give back during the holidays by donating a week of your book’s profits to charity. If you choose a smaller/local charity, be sure to let them know of your plans — they’ll want to let their donors/fans know of your good deed!

7. Write a Holiday Story

Borrow characters from your novel and craft a short story centered around the holidays. Sell it as an eBook or give it away as a “Holiday Card” to your fans!

8. Partner with Local Stores

The holidays are the perfect time of year to get offline and pound the pavement. While you’re doing your own shopping, ask local stores to consign copies of your book, featuring you as a local author (what a great gift idea, right?). Bonus points if they’ll host you for a signing!

Side note: Shannon’s book is being featured at a local mall kiosk starting this weekend, and she’ll be blogging about the experience on her website!

9. Decorate Your Emails

Y’all know how wild I am about keeping in touch with your fans via email! Don’t slack on this during the holidays — share your feelings about your holiday experience (loving them? feeling stressed?) and ask a question at the end of every email, such as:

– What gift do you think [character name] would love to receive for Christmas?

– Which menorah would suit [family name] the best?

– Which holiday song is your favorite? [Character name] looooves “White Christmas,” but I rock out to “Little Saint Nick.”

– If you use a graphical template, check out your mailing list provider’s holiday-themed options. Now that’s really decking the halls!

10. Offer Free Wrapping

This one depends on your ‘gift wrap’ skill level (read: this would not work for me),but offer free gift wrapping for books you sell from your website. Pick out (or create) cool gift wrap that goes with the “theme” of your book — and don’t forget agift tag, too!

Note: Make sure this is an option, since some peeps like to wrap their own gifts  😉

11. Give the Gift of Books

Prefer a simple promotion? Host a giveaway for Amazon or bookstore gift cards — everyone could use more books this time of year!

12. Close Up Shop

This flies in the face of reason, but, let’s face it, everybody needs a break. If you feel overwhelmed during the holidays, take some time off: announce that you’ll stop accepting sales from your website as of [a particular date].

If you go this route, close with a bang (plan one awesome promotion) and use the time wisely (reflect on what you’ve learned this year).

Talk Back

What promotions are you planning for the holiday season? Do you want to give one of the above a try? Would you rather ignore the whole thing? Let’s brainstorm (and share) in the comments!

 

This is a reprint from Duolit.

When Do You Need A Little Ritual? When You Want To Do Some Magic

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So… I am someone who has long scorned the idea of “having a set of writing rituals before starting to write.” I didn’t like the idea of having these little OCD things I had to do before writing. Or these “stalling techniques”, however one chooses to look at them. But I’m thinking perhaps I was looking at the situation all wrong. Sure it ‘could’ become a little OCD. It ‘could’ be a form of procrastination. But it also ‘could’ be a way of training your brain to get you into the right frame of mind to write.

This is a little bit related to the question of ‘where to write’. I never considered that very important either. Have laptop, will travel. Anywhere and everywhere was “where to write”. But I’m beginning to look at that differently as well. Especially given my tendency to go long stretches of “working all the time” and then long stretches of “barely working at all” (which doesn’t balance out to optimum productivity in case you thought it did). I have no balance.

The benefit and the problem of working for yourself from home is that you can do anything you want. It’s a benefit for obvious reasons but it’s a problem because it can become this unstructured free-for-all where you don’t know where your work ends and your life begins or vice versa. And maybe these walls are all artificial anyway and unnecessary. That’s what I thought for awhile, until I started feeling like I was in constant limbo. While working I wanted to be or could be “not working”. While not working I wanted to be or could be “working”.

It started to become impossible to be in the moment of what I was doing because there were no boundaries. I’ve worked in nearly every room of my house at all sorts of wacky hours of the day, to the point that everything has blurred together and my home is my workplace. Not in the sense of: “it’s where I work”, but in the sense of seeing it more like a workplace than like a home. It would be like living in the back office of Amazon or something. Does Amazon even have a back office? They probably have 500 of them.

Anyway. So I was thinking… what I really need is some routine and structure in my life and a clear separation of work and home. So I thought about renting an office. Not like traditional commercial rental but a single SMALL office for one person to sit in with a desk and work. Or some kind of “coworking” situation where there are multiple cubicles and you’re only renting one of them. It would basically force me to get up and be up during normal work hours that other humans work, get ready, get out of the house, and “go to work”. Very clear separation.

I mean it’s not perfect. There is the tedium of getting ready and commuting and eating up time and gas money. And then the ongoing office expense. But it’s definitely a clear work/home separation and more mentally healthy than what I’ve been doing.

I called a few places that had the sort of thing I was looking for and talked to them but one of the places had no vacancies, and the other one only had large offices currently available (translation: expensive!) or a coworking situation but there weren’t even cubicles. And really… honestly… I need a door, or some sort of subdivided semi-private space in which to work.

I’m sure I could sublet some cubicle in some back corner or some small closet of an office somewhere. I’m sure there are plenty of businesses that have more space than they actually need/use and they wouldn’t mind someone subletting a little of that space from them for a few hundred bucks a month. But, I DO have a spare bedroom in my house.

I haven’t turned it into an office yet because at first I thought I didn’t really NEED a dedicated office because I can “work anywhere”. And then, once it became clear to me the perils involved in that… I thought that just setting up a home office surely wouldn’t/couldn’t be enough. But Tom says I’ll be surprised if I am consistent and don’t play in the office or work in any other part of the house and keep consistent office hours. (This is based on his personal experience going through what I’m going through and then having his own office when he worked from home for himself in the past.) Sure, this doesn’t get me out of the house, but if I can keep the routine and the separation, then I can shave off the time I’d spend commuting and be finished with work faster and have a bit longer free time for the rest of the day… time during which I can leave my house and interact with others.

So I’m going to try the home office thing first. I’ve got a great room that is literally a blank canvas with nothing in it. I’m going to set it up in a way where it is functional and has a ‘professional’ feeling but also where it has a creative feeling so that it’s a place I want to go to work and create. I’m going to spend a little on this because otherwise I was going to spend a lot spread out over indefinite months to rent space that I’d probably still want to spruce up a bit.

I’m going to try to be consistent with the room being specifically for work and not bringing work out into the rest of my life or the rest of my life into work, and keeping sane, consistent work hours. If I do these things, it may be enough structure/separation. If not, I could look into an off-site option. But I was also thinking about the kind of specific environment I want to create in, and the truth is that I have a lot more freedom to create that environment in space that is truly my own than in a rented cubicle or nook.

And then I got to thinking about how I’ll probably have my own coffee maker in my office so during work time I’m spending my time mainly “in my office” and not wandering all over the house in various procrastination exercises… like hot beverages. That was what led me to the idea of rituals and how I’ve poo pooed both the idea of pre-writing rituals and a specific space/room for writing.

But structure and routines are important both to make life feel more organized and manageable and also to get into the mindset you want to be in for various activities. So I’m going to try this space and ritual thing to see if that helps me to create the kind of structure and routine that I need to keep my writing sanity.

I’ve always felt writing was a form of magic. Why wouldn’t one have ritual and significant space for that? 

 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

25 Motivational Thoughts For Writers

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds.

 

With NaNoWriMo about to storm surge the writer (and wannabe-writer) community, this seems a good time to both tickle your pink parts and jam my boot up your boothole in terms of getting your penmonkey asses motivated. So, here goes — 25 motivational thoughts for writers, starting in 3… 2… 1…

 

 

1. You Are The God Of This Place

The blank page is your world. You choose what goes into it. Anything at all. Upend the frothy cup that is your heart and see what spills out. Murder plots. Train crashes. Pterodactyl love interests. Vampire threesomes. Housewife bondage. Demon spies! Cake heists! Suburban ennui! You can destroy people. You can build things. You can create love, foster hate, foment rage, invoke sorrow. Anything you want in any order you care to present it. This is your story. This is your jam.

2. Infinite Power, Zero Responsibility

Not only are you god of this place, but you have none of the responsibility divine beings are supposed to possess. You have literally no responsibility to anyone but yourself — you’re like a chimp with a handgun. Run amok! Shoot things! Who cares? There exists this non-canonical infancy gospel where Jesus is actually a little kid and he’s like, running around with crazy Jesus wizard powers. He’s killing them and resurrecting them and he’s turning water into Kool-Aid and loaves into Goldfish crackers — he’s just going apeshit with his Godborn sorcery. BE LIKE CRAZY JESUS BABY. Run around zapping shit with your God lightning! You owe nobody anything in this space. It’s adult swim. It’s booze cruise.

3. The Rarest Bird Of Them All

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of “aspiring” writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That’s how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That’s how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

4. You’re Not Cleaning Up Some Sixth Grader’s Vomit

You have worse ways to spend a day than to spend it writing. Here’s a short list: artificially inseminating tigers, getting shot at by an opposing army, getting eaten by a grue, mopping the floors of a strip club, digging ditches and then pooping in them, cleaning up the vomit of nervous elementary school children, being forced to dance by strange dance-obsessed captors, working in a Shanghai sweatshop making consumer electronics for greedy Americans, and being punched to death by a coked-up Jean-Claude Van Damme. Point is: writing is a pretty great way to spend a morning, afternoon, or night.

5. Abuse The Freedom To Suck

Writing is not about perfection — that’s editing you’re thinking of. Editing is about arrangement, elegance, cutting down instead of building up. Editing is Jenga. Writing is about putting all the pieces out there. It’s construction in the strangest, sloppiest form. It’s inelegant. And imperfect. And insane. It’s supposed to be this way. Writing is a first-time bike-ride. You’re meant to wobble and accidentally drive into some rose bushes. Allow yourself the freedom — nay, the pleasure — to suck. This is playtime. (Or, as I call it: “Whiskey and Hookers” time.) Playtime is supposed to be messy.

 

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 20 more pieces of motivational assistance, on terrribleminds.

Insane Characters

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This post, by Marian Perera, originally appeared on her Flights of Fancy blog.

 

I read an urban myth that The Madness of King George was originally called The Madness of George III, but it had to be retitled in case Americans thought it was the third in a series. That made me think of writing a post on insane characters…

Obvious vs. subtle

I’ve read that one of the scariest things about serial killers or rapists is that they look like everyone else. The same thing would apply to insane characters.

 

 

This isn’t always the case. There was a serial killer called Richard Chase whose disheveled, bizarre appearance helped in his identification and apprehension. But for the most part, people with mental disorders can pass as normal, or eccentric at the most. Writers can often use that to its best advantage, because readers will usually believe that I’m a wolf and will be taken by surprise later.

By the way, the phrase I dropped into the last sentence – “I’m a wolf” – is the first indication in Stephen King’s Desperation that the cop stopping people on the highway is not normal. The cop slipped it into the middle of a regular conversation, and it made me start a little. The people he had stopped weren’t sure if they had heard correctly or not. 

The same thing applies to insanity. It’s incredibly fun to watch readers gradually realize that a character whom they took for normal is nothing of the kind. And is probably very dangerous. 

Often, such slips in dialogue or odd actions can be more unnerving to the reader than if the character is gibbering and clawing at the walls. You can always start subtle and ramp it up to obvious, but it doesn’t work so well the other way.

Beyond the madness

Annie Wilkes, the psychotic nurse in Misery, might chop off a man’s foot but she’ll never use the f-word. Insane characters could have their own codes of morality and ethics. The more you flesh them out – giving them hobbies, fears, genuine liking for some people – the more realistic they’ll be. And the easier it might be for the readers to care about them, if you’re going for tragic-insane rather than only scary-insane.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Flights of Fancy.

Varieties of the Publishing Experience

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I’m not sure how many of you—authors who took the leap, self-published your own books—know quite how heroic you are.

I bet a lot of you have already published books, but there are even more writers who are still thinking about it, reading about it, testing the waters.

And that’s a good idea. There’s no reason to rush into self-publishing, particularly if you think about what you’ll be taking on.

 

There are a lot of skills you’ll have to learn, new companies to research, service providers to vet. It really can be a lot of work, and it can test your own resources, the assets you bring to publishing, and your native abilities. Sometimes, even your character.

True, there are some people who are passionate about getting their work out there, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to see their book in print and up for sale. I admire that kind of dedication.

But I also know that not everyone feels that way. There are lots of people who would like to publish, who might even have a book finished or almost done. But they haven’t made the decision to move forward.

Making Choices Isn’t Always Easy

A very successful author called for a phone consult recently to talk about the exciting prospect of publishing her own books.

We talked about her newest book and her publishing background. Then I started to talk about the kinds of tasks she would confront as a self-publisher.

As the list went on, I could sense her drawing back. And I was right.

This author had absolutely no interest in running a publishing business, buying ISBNs, setting up printer accounts and all the other little details that go into establishing yourself as a publisher.

So why do it? Why make yourself miserable doing stuff you hate?

In the end I suggested she find someone within her extensive network of authors and entrepreneurs to partner with, someone who enjoyed that part of publishing as much as she enjoyed meeting people, speaking, and networking about her work.

Together, they might make a dynamite combination that could be the beginning of a great publishing business, since one was already a bestselling author.

I think the moral of this story, if there is one, is to be honest about what your capabilities are, what things you enjoy doing, and what you can barely tolerate.

You know, the stuff that always seems to slip to the bottom of your to-do list, that you procrastinate about because it’s just easier to avoid.

On the other hand, you can format your book by yourself even if it doesn’t give you a lot of joy. Why? Because you only have to do it once.

But if it’s one of those things that you just keep putting off, it’s not that hard to find someone to do it for you.

On the other hand, if you hate bookkeeping or tracking expenses or keeping receipts, maybe you shouldn’t be in business at all. Accurate recordkeeping is a prerequisite for most successful businesses, and if the idea of tracking costs makes you want to scream, look for a different solution or see if you can outsource that part of your tasks.

Sometimes you have to look for ways to free yourself up to do the things that only you can do. If those are things you love to do, you’ve got a winning proposition.

My takeaway today is that there are lots of ways to get into print and participate in the amazing possibilities in book publishing. Maybe for you it’s going to be getting focused training in the publishing process that will give you real self-confidence as a publisher.

Or you might be better off looking for help with the tasks you don’t want to tackle. As long as you don’t lose control of your own book, there are lots of solutions out there that can work for you.

I’m curious: how have you dealt with all the tasks you take on when you publish? Have you outsourced, or gotten training? Let me know in the comments [on the original post].

 

 

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

A Bunch of Quotes About Writing

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 This post, by Philip, originally appeared on YouOffendMeYouOffendMyFamily.

I met a couple of kids over the weekend who hope to grow up and become writers. That’s always inspiring to hear but I also wonder if they really understand the struggles and hardships that await. So for them and anyone else who writes or wants to write or loves writing, here are a few of the quotes I’ve collected over the years on this “noblest of professions.”

…I had decided that the only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.
– Russell Baker 

When you start writing you’re 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you’ve written for a length of time, you’ve learned a great deal about your craft, and you’ve become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It’s like writing uphill.
– David Westheimer

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.
– Paul Rudnick

Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.
– Robert Bresson

Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
– Gene Fowler

Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type ‘Act one, scene one,’ your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O’Neill or anyone. It’s that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.
– Meredith Willson

There was a time when making ‘Barney Miller’ a hit on the air was my life. I cared about nothing else. That was all I was concerned with. And I told my wife and I told my children if it costs me my relationship with my family, I’m committing five years of my life to making the best television show I can possibly make. Whatever it costs, under any circumstance. And I hocked my house, and I gave up my salary and I did everything to give the show a chance to start going. And that’s what you have to do.
– Danny Arnold

Hollywood is the only town where you cannot fail. You can only quit trying.
– Dennis Foley

Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.
– Herman Mankiewicz telling fellow journalist Ben Hecht about Hollywood

My chief memory of movieland is of asking in the producer’s office why I must change the script, eviscerate it, cripple and hamstring it? Why must I strip the hero of his few semi-intelligent remarks and why must I tack on a corny ending that makes the stomach shudder? Half of all the movie writers argue in this fashion. The other half writhe in silence, and the psychoanalysts couch or the liquor bottle claim them both.
– Ben Hecht

Writers are lucky. Whatever the mood, no matter the longing, the writer can use his words to connect himself to any world he wishes to visit.
– Alan Zweibel from “Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner: A Sort of Love Story.”

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
– Rod Serling

 

 

Read the rest of the post on YouOffendMeYouOffendMyFamily.

Help! My Book Isn’t Selling. 10 Questions You Need To Answer Honestly If You Want To Sell More Books.

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I love answering your questions and I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned on the journey, but recently I have been receiving the same question over and over again, namely,

“Help, my book isn’t selling. What can I do?”

Most of the time people include a link to their book on Amazon and I can see immediately why they aren’t making any sales, because although I’m an author, I’m a reader first and I’ve been shopping for books on Amazon for years.

The ProWriter multimedia course ‘How To Find Readers & Market Your Book‘ covers this in great detail, but the following checklist will also help you identify your problem and solve it quickly. I have also included lots of links so you can find all the extra material on this (ever-growing!) site.

[As always, these are not rules, because there are no rules in this crazy, fast-moving self-publishing world. There will also always be outliers who get away with not doing any of the following, but these will at least help with some guidelines!]

1. Is your book available as an ebook?

99% of indie authors will not have print distribution in physical bookstores, and I would postulate that all the success stories we have heard in the last 2 years about indie authors and huge sales have come from ebook sales, not print.

I personally don’t do print books anymore because the cost/benefit didn’t work out for me and I want high quality print books (one of the reasons I am pursuing a traditional deal for my thrillers). But if you want a print book, fantastic, go ahead and use print on demand to do it.

BUT/ if you want to sell a lot of books online, then make sure you have an ebook for sale as well.

There has been an influx of ebooks (and print books) self-published in the last year, as well as traditional publishers beginning to re-issue backlists digitally. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about this so-called‘tsunami of crap’, but personally, I believe you can surf the wave and make good sales even if you’re starting now. The ebook market is growing globally as new countries come online and even within markets like the US and UK, ebooks are becoming more widely accepted.

So first off, get your ebook published.

I use Scrivener for formatting in Kindle, ePub and Word formats and then I publish on Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life and Smashwords or BookBaby for the rest (US citizens can use B&N Nook PubIt as well.) It’s not hard if you spend some time with the various help pages.

2. Has your cover been professionally designed?

Book buyers still shop with their eyes. If people make it to your book sales page and your cover is terrible, they will not click the Buy button.

Don’t use a painting your child did or that you did yourself. Don’t DIY based on a YouTube video. Don’t assume you can make a professional cover.

Do research your genre on Amazon and take screenshots of books that stand out in a good way.

Do take pictures of books you like with fonts and designs you like.

Do check out the ebook cover design awards at TheBookDesigner.comto see some great covers and some truly awful ones. Then hire aprofessional cover designer, give them that information and work with them to create a professional cover.

If you don’t have a budget for this, then work extra hard until you have that extra money. Seriously, I believe this is non-negotiable if you want to stand out in the crowded market.

3. Has your book been professionally edited so it reads well?

I am passionate about the value of editing and editors, especially for new writers, or books in a new genre.

editing ARKANE

Some of my own editing

You should edit your books until you can’t stand them any longer, and then you should consider hiring a professional editor to help you take it further, because you cannot see your own words after a point because you know the story so well.

You need other eyes, preferably professional eyes who will critique you honestly and tell you where the problems are, especially if the book is truly awful – and sometimes it is (and that’s ok because you can write another one).

Stephen King in ‘On Writing’ says to rest the manuscript for a while, so put it away and when you have some distance, read it again. You may be horrified by what you find but better now than when it’s out there in the world. Here’s some more articles on editing and my recommended editors.

If you can’t afford a pro editor, then you can try using a critique group of readers within your genre, or join a group like theAlliance of Independent Authors to network with other like-minded authors in order to network and potentially barter your skills. Bartering shouldn’t be underestimated in the online world.

But definitely do not publish your book if only you and your best friend, or your Mum, have read it.

4. Have you submitted the book to the right categories on the ebook stores?

Sorry, but not everyone will like your book.

You may think that everyone will, but they won’t. You might not want to put it in a box or a genre or a category, but you have to because that’s how readers find it. The category/genre reader has expectations and if you don’t ‘fit’ they will be disappointed. That’s not to say you need to follow any specific rules in your writing (let’s not get into that now!) but when you load it up to the distributors you do have to choose which categories and tags to use and they need to be meaningful.

You need some distance from your book in order to do this, but consider where your book fits within the online bookstores. This means deciding on the categories, tags and keywords associated with your book.

It’s also important to match reader expectations and the promise of what your book delivers with what your book is actually about.

There is no point having a book with a swirly, girly pink chic-lit cover in the horror section of fiction. It won’t sell, however good it is.

There are some scammy sites out there that will tell you to aim for the categories that will rank the best in order to have a Bestseller on Amazon. That’s just silly because your book won’t match the expectations of the readers and even if you get a bump in sales, it will completely dry up very soon.

You can choose a category that fits your book AND is easier to rank in, for example, I use categories Action Adventure and Religious Fiction. I rank occasionally for the former and consistently in the latter. That’s optimization, but it is still true to the book and to the reader’s expectations.

If you’re struggling with this, choose 3-5 authors your book is like, not what you want it to be like, but what it is really like. That will help you find the right category.

5. Have you optimized your Amazon sales page with a hook, quotes from reviews and other material?

I have seen some Amazon sales pages with not just typos but terrible grammar.

Some of them make no sense at all. Some are just the back blurb with no review quotes or other things that might draw a customer in.

Basically you need to treat the product description like a sales page. People will not buy your book if your description is badly written or hard to understand because it’s an indication of the quality of your book. Here’s another great article on 11 ingredients of a sizzling book description.

If you want to see a fantastic example, check out CJ Lyons Bloodstained which continues to rock the Kindle charts. That product description seriously rocks. CJ also explains all of this in our ProWriter Marketing course.

6. Have you priced your book realistically, or at least tried different price points?

It’s important to say on pricing that no one has a clue how to price ebooks and authors are having success at many different price points. Check out this great article on The Passive Voice and the comments below to get an idea of the widely different levels of pricing and success.

However, I had one author ask why his debut novel wasn’t selling, and when I checked his sales page, the ebook was priced $11.99. It was his first novel and he had nothing else for sale.

However good your book, however marvelous the cover, your first novel is unlikely to sell at that price. Most ebooks are under $9.99, and a lot of fiction is under $7.99, with many indie books being under $5.

The 99c price point still has some power even after the algorithm changes but you might go somewhere in between, changing your price with promotions as well. I have my books at $2.99 right now so I make $2 per ebook. You get to set your own prices but there’s no way you’ll sell much at those very high prices.

7. Have you written, or are you writing another book?

Sure, there are some breakout successes, but most indie fiction authors making decent money right now have 5 or more books. For non-fiction authors, you can expect to make your money on back-end products ans services and not book sales anyway.

The more books you have available, the more virtual shelf space you have, the easier it is for people to discover you. Plus if a reader finds one they like, they may buy them all so you make more per customer.

I was as guilty as anyone of trying to hype my first novel, because it took so long and I thought it was a precious snowflake. I still believe you have to hustle those first thousand sales with everything you have, but my sales and income jumped when I released the second novel with very little fanfare because I already had an established presence on Amazon and they do a lot of marketing for you when you have multiple books, e.g. emails to people who bought your last one.

I am also fascinated by the rise of novellas and serials as a way to create more books, more quickly. Hugh Howey is a great example of someone who wrote novellas in different series and then continued the direction of the stories for the novellas that took off, Wool being his most famous and lucrative. I am definitely moving into this model in 2013 in between longer works.

8. Have you done some kind of promotion or marketing to let people know it is there?

Again, there are no rules and in fact, everyone has different results from different marketing tactics. Some hit a mega-success with none at all, but I do think that you need to hand-sell your first 1000 readers because they won’t just appear out of nowhere.

Remember: Marketing is sharing what you love with people who want to hear about it. You don’t have to be hard salesy, scammy or nasty. Just be authentic and share your passion.

Lots of marketing info here.

If you need some starter tips, you should definitely be building your email list from your own website and also from a signup at the back of your book.

If you do that with book one, you will have at least some people to market to with book 2. It’s a start, and it grows over time. This is my only non-negotiable recommendation for authors, because you never know what will happen with all these sites we depend upon for sales. If they disappear, or the terms we publish under change, then your email list of fans and buyers is all you have.

I also believe that social media can sell books, but it is a slow build over time and you have to have other goals than just book sales, e.g. networking with peers and other authors. It’s not instant sales so you can’t rely on it. The whole author platform thing is massively useful in so many ways but it is only one aspect of book sales.

If you have some budget you can pay for promotion, but be targeted and track results.

The biggest leaps I had on the Amazon charts were from paid promotional pushes on sites that market direct to Kindle readers. I have used Kindle Nation

Prophecy Joanna Penn next to Lee Child

Prophecy with Lee Child on the Action Adventure Bestseller List

Daily and Pixel of Ink and there are new opportunities all the time. I more than made my money back but the rankings were worth it. Prophecy hit the Action Adventure list above Lee Child! (of course, it dropped away but the screen-print is worth gold!)

Free is still a great option, especially if you have multiple books, as it means people can discover your work with no risk. Fantasy author Lindsay Buroker talked about this in our interview where she revealed that the first book in her series is permanently on free with her other books at $4.95. You can do this by making your book free on Smashwords and eventually Amazon will price match it.

9. Have you asked for reviews, or submitted to review sites?

reviewsThere’s been a lot of scandal about the sock puppet reviews but reviews are still critical because they give your sales page social proof and they feed into the book site algorithms.

I give away a lot of free books to people who might like my genre and ask that they leave a review if they like it. No hard sell, no pressure, no expectation. This is easy if you have built up a list from the last book, or if you have built a platform and in fact is one good reason to do this. Traditional publishing has been doing this forever so it is not a new or a scammy tactic.

Remember that not everyone will like your book and not everyone will leave a review, or a good review, but it is a start. [And remember, don’t respond to bad reviews!]

You can also contact book bloggers or Amazon reviewers to get more reviews. This is hard work but well worth it. You can listen to Rachel Abbott in this interview talk about how this strategy got her to #1 on Amazon.co.uk.

10. Are you working your butt off?

hard work aheadGenerally, I’m an even tempered type of girl, but when I get emails from people asking why they’re not successful and they’ve done nothing on this list, I get a little annoyed!

Especially when this site has over 500 free articles on writing, publishing and marketing and there’s 70+ hours of audio for you to learn from for free. Oh yes, and a 57 page Author 2.0 ebookon all this. That’s all available for free, but I also have a number of multimedia courses as well, so there is no excuse not to be educated, even just from this site.

I absolutely believe that you can be a great writer and make an income from writing.

I have to believe that for you because I believe it for me, and I have left a stable job and steady income to take a chance on being an author-entrepreneur. I’ve been on this path since 2007 when I decided to write my first non-fiction book, so I am 5 years into working my butt off to change my life.

But writing books is not a get rich quick scheme.

I look at authors like CJ Lyons, Scott Sigler, Chuck Wendig, Joe Konrath, Bob Mayer and so many others and I know they are working their butts off every day writing and getting their work out there. The recent success ofSean Platt & David Wright in landing a Serial deal with Amazon is because they work incredibly hard at writing all day, every day to produce new content for their market. They are my heroes.

These guys are pros and they know it takes hard work to get there and hard work to stay there.

So please, if your book is not selling any copies at all, go through this checklist and honestly evaluate what you have done and how much effort you have put in. Please also share this with other people who may be asking the same question.

I’d love to know what you think, so please leave a comment below. What other tips can you give for people who aren’t selling any or many books?

 

 

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

Popular Highlights On The Black God's War

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This post, by Moses Siregar III, originally appeared on his blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. It seems like the Most Popular Notes feature on Amazon’s Kindle may be a very useful tool for authors; who among us wouldn’t want to know which passages our readers felt most strongly about?

So I bought a new Kindle Paperwhite, and it’s almost an amazing e-reader (Mostly, I love it, but there are some issues with the “white” part when using the built-in lights–namely, the background isn’t a uniform color). One nice new feature (okay, I lied. It’s actually an older feature even on my trusty kindle2, but I hadn’t realized that until today) is that if you click to “View Notes & Marks” on a book, you’ll sometimes get to see the top ten most popular highlights on the book.

 

Some books show these highlights and some books don’t. And you’ll probably see more highlights on your device than you’ll see on a book’s page at Amazon.

I’m one of the lucky ones, because my first novel does show the top ten highlights. Because I haven’t had any big news in awhile–semi-kidding, although if you want to follow my author news, my Facebook Author page is the best way, or on Twitter @MosesSiregar–I’m going to paste the top ten highlights (selected by the readers) from The Black God’s War here. I’ll list them in order with the most popular highlight at the bottom of the list.

1) “I know know how to fight him. His gods are a projection. They are just as false as this world. I know that. I will win.”

2) “You are a master in a tiny field. The ultimate truth still lies far beyond you. There is no end to evolution, to the unshackling of chains.”

3) [this is one a bit spoilerish] “his domain also includes the dark processes of life, including the balancing of what you might call sin. Our concept is karma. It suggests that whatever we do returns to us because in truth there is no separation between us all. So when we act upon another, we act upon ourselves. Evil acts come back to us, while good deeds bring good karma. As I understand your Lord Danato, it’s as if he is a god of karma.”

4) “The mind is the master of the physical world. The physical isn’t observed by the mind–it’s actually dependent on the mind.”

5) “Introspection, clarity, and creative imagination must come before action.”

6) “It’s the most recent worst day of my life,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”

7) “The descent to Hades is the same from every place.” -Anaxagoras [this is a quote, not my words]

8 ) “A man must act on his conscience. I would rather die than live by no greater principle than my own survival.”

9) “This is why our desires must be questioned before we undertake any great endeavor. If our values are flawed, our actions can only produce imperfections.”

10) “I believe it is not important how long you live, but that you give yourself to living. Live as only you can, with every part of you fully engaged.”

It was definitely fun for me to see what readers have highlighted in the book. Do you have any popular highlights on your favorite books (or on your own books) that you really like?

And if anyone still manages to read my blog even after all of my updates have been going to FB and Twitter rather than here, and if you can remember–without going back to the book–which characters said each of the above quotes, give it a shot in the comments [section beneath the original post] and if you get them all right I’ll have to figure out something really cool that I can give you. Maybe a signed copy of book two?

 

Random House, Penguin Agree to Merge

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This story originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/29/12. 

In a deal that had been months in the making, Pearson and Bertelsmann announced Monday morning that they have signed an agreement to form a joint venture that will combine the businesses of Random House and Penguin. The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2013, will make Penguin Group chairman John Makinson chairman of the newly named Penguin Random House company, while Random House chairman and CEO Markus Dohle will be CEO. 

Under the terms of the agreement, Bertelsmann will own 53% of the joint venture and Pearson will own 47%. The joint venture will exclude Bertelsmann’s trade publishing business in Germany, and Pearson will retain rights to use the Penguin brand in education markets worldwide. Bertelsmann will nominate five directors to the board of Penguin Random House, and Pearson will nominate four.

The announcement came after word leaked Sunday that News Corp. was considering making an offer for Penguin, but Makinson said the Pearson board is committed to the Bertelsmann deal. And Pearson and Bertelsmann executives made it sound like they were proceeding as they expect the merger to move forward.

“This combination with Random House – a company with an almost perfect match of Penguin’s culture, standards and commitment to publishing excellence – will greatly enhance its fortunes and its opportunities. Together, the two publishers will be able to share a large part of their costs, to invest more for their author and reader constituencies and to be more adventurous in trying new models in this exciting, fast-moving world of digital books and digital readers,” said Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino.

Thomas Rabe, chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, said: “With this planned combination, Bertelsmann and Pearson create the best course for new growth for our world-renowned trade-book publishers, to enable them to publish even more effectively across traditional and emerging formats and distribution channels. It will build on our publishing tradition, offering an extraordinary diversity of publishing opportunities for authors, agents, booksellers, and readers, together with unequalled support and resources.” 

 

Read the rest of the story on Publishers Weekly.

The Business Rusch: Rights Reversion

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This post, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her The Business Rusch blog.

Over the last couple of years, a number of writers have written to me to ask how to get the rights to their traditionally published novels reverted back to them.  These requests increased while I wrote the most recent short series, “Why Writers Disappear,”  and finally, one of the readers mentioned via e-mail that I should do a blog post on getting rights reverted.

It’s a good idea, so I’m taking it. 

When a writer signs a contract with a publisher to have a book published, that contract includes which rights the publisher is licensing and at what cost/percentage of that cost. All of this is based on the copyright, which can be sliced down to minute fractions, and each fraction licensed.

For example, a writer might license worldwide rights to publish the book as a hardcover novel in the English language. The other rights, from e-book to audio to mass market paperback, would not be included in that particular contract.

Some contracts are short, some are ten and twenty pages long. Each contract will delineate what the rights licensed are, what the publisher will pay the writer for the use of those rights, and when the contract expires. All contracts need an end date to be legal, and so you’d think that book contract would have a set time period. It’s pretty convenient: both parties know the contract expires on a specific date. The contract can be renegotiated around the time of expiration or renewed on a yearly basis, until one party decides to cancel the contract, or, or, or…

Before we go any further, I want to make something very, very, very clear. Often, writers in the comments section of this blog ask a question about contracts that assumes that all book contracts are the same. Some writers might understand that contracts differ, but those writers then believe that all bestsellers have the same contract, and all midlist writers have a different one.

Here’s the truth of it, folks. You—one writer—can have twelve book contracts with the same company, and each contract might have different terms from other contracts. In other words, you might have spent your entire publishing career with one publishing house. You might write the same type of book year after year, and you still might have twelve different contracts, with twelve different terms, including twelve different reversion clauses.

I know that’s hard to wrap your minds around, but it’s an important thought, because if you believe that all contracts are the same, you’ll end up signing something that’s bad for you. After all, Famous Writer (who publishes with the same publisher) signed that contract, right?

No, not right. Famous Writer is different from Famous Writer Two. One is a great negotiator who hires an IP attorney. The other is a terrible negotiator with an even worse agent. The great negotiator with the IP attorney might have a better contract. But he might not. Because the terrible negotiator might be too famous to piss off, and the publisher automatically offered terrible negotiator better terms than great negotiator.

You don’t know, and can’t know, and probably never will know.

So you must make decisions based on your own career.

  

Read the rest of the post on The Business Rusch.

NaNoWriMo Pep Talks From Successful Authors

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If you’re contemplating the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) with abject terror, help and motivation are available right on the NaNoWriMo site. Here are a few excerpts:

As the great Nelson Algren once said, “Any writer who knows what he’s doing isn’t doing very much.” Most really good fiction is compelled into being. It comes from a kind of uncalculated innocence. You need not have your ending in mind before you commence. Indeed, you need not be certain of exactly what’s going to transpire on page 2. If you know the whole story in advance, your novel is probably dead before you begin it. Give it some room to breathe, to change direction, to surprise you. Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure. – Tom Robbins

———————

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist.  – Neil Gaiman

———————

Sigh. You’re a lost soul. So there’s no help for it but to join the lowly company of the other aspect of The Fool. Because the fact is, that Fool is a Dreamer, and it is Dreamers who ultimately make life worthwhile for the unimaginative rest of us. Dreamers consider the wider universe. Dreamers build cathedrals, shape fine sculptures, and yes, generate literature. Dreamers are the artists who provide our rapacious species with some faint evidence of nobility. – Piers Anthony

———————

Can you keep your story going for a week without reading anything over? You’ll find you can. You’ll find that being able to rely on this ability will help you let one word follow the next without fussing as much as you do when you believe it’s the thinking and planning part of your mind that is writing the story. There is another part of the mind which has an ability for stories, for holding all the parts and presenting them bit by bit, but it’s not the same as the planning part of the mind. Nor is it the thing called ‘unconscious’—it is without a doubt quite conscious when we are engaged in the physical activity which allows it to be active. This something is what deep playing contains when we are children and fully engaged by rolling a toy car and all who are inside of it toward the table edge. The word imagination isn’t quite right for it either because it also leaves out the need for moving an object—a toy, a pen or pencil tip—across an area in the physical world. It’s a very old, human thing, using physical activity along with thing ‘thing’ that is neither all the way inside of us nor all the way outside of us. Stories happen in that place between the two. The Image world isn’t anywhere else. A computer can give you a neat looking page, higher word count and delete and copy and past abilities, but they are poor producers of the thing the hand brings about much more easily: Right here, right now, the pane of paper that the paper windows and walls require to give is the inside view, the vista. – Lynda Barry

——————— 

I know only too well what comes next. The excuses. The rationalization: “So what? So I switched stories. I’ve still got a work-in-progress. It’s just not my original work-in-progress. So I’m a little behind in my word count. I’m still writing, right?”

Sure, it seems innocent enough. But the problem with doing this is that of course the new story always seems better than that old busted up, out-of-control story you’ve been working on for so long. That new story has the aura of dewy freshness to it. It’s calling to you! It’s all, “Yoo-hoo…look at me! I don’t have any plot problems and my characters are way-intriguing and some of them wear leather jackets and oh, yeah, you know that weird transition thing you’ve got going on near chapter four that you can’t figure out? I don’t have that!” – Meg Cabot

———————-

In short, quit. Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it. Blow it out, so our eyes will not be drawn to its power. Extinguish it so we can get some sleep. I plan to quit writing novels myself, sometime in the next hundred years. – Lemony Snicket  

 

You can read all the pep talks, from very many more authors and NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty, here, on the NaNoWriMo site.

Update on Categories and Keywords: Why Authors Should Still Care

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A year ago (October 2011), I wrote a piece entitled Categories, Key words, and Tags, Oh My!: Why Should an Author Care?, which has become the most frequently viewed post on my blog. It has been reposted numerous times, and I still get comments on it weekly. There is a reason for this. The subject is complicated, confusing, and yet crucial to selling a book successfully online.

 

 

While most of the original post is still relevant, it seemed time to update it, with the special addition of a section on how categories play a role in KDP Select promotions. For those of you who never read the original, I hope this helps. For those of you who did, I hope I have clarified a few sections and added some useful information.

This post focuses on ebooks on Amazon (although the main points work for print books as well) because that is where I have the most experience and because Amazon is definitely (still) ahead of the other ebook stores in its sophisticated approaches to helping readers find books. As with much of the publishing process, there is a lot of conflicting information about how Amazon’s categories, keywords, and tags work, so some of what I say is more of an educated guess than documented fact, but I will link back to Amazon’s information pages whenever possible.

First some definitions:

Categories:

When a book is uploaded into KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), an author (or traditional publisher) has the opportunity to choose two categories for that book. It used to be that Amazon allowed you to choose five categories, which is why some books, like my first historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, have more Kindle Store categories listed at the bottom of their product page. (If you want to know what a book’s categories are­­––look under Look for Similar Items by Category) When you, as author, choose a category for your book, you are actually choosing a browsing path for customers. That browsing path consists of a hierarchy of categories and sub-categories and your book is available for readers to discover under each of the parts of that hierarchy. For example, in the case of my most recent book, Uneasy Spirits, one of the two browsing path/categories I chose was:   Fiction—Mystery&Thriller—Mystery—Historical 

If you browse for Uneasy Spirits in the Kindle store, you will find it under all four parts of the hierarchy. Note that each time a reader goes one step further down the hierarchical browsing path there are fewer books to browse. For example, as I write this, here are the numbers of books in each of these four areas:

Fiction [570,230]; Fiction––Mystery&Thriller [74,482]; Fiction—Mystery&Thriller—Mystery [15,240]; Fiction—Mystery&Thriller—Mystery—Historical [2,587]

The “categories” Amazon offers when you upload your book to KDP are based on BISAC categories, a book industry standard for subject headings. What authors find confusing is that Amazon converts the BISAC categories into the Amazon browsing-path categories and subcategories that show up in the Kindle store––and the two are not always identical.

To complicate issues further, the browsing categories for print books and ebooks are not identical, and Amazon creates additional browsing categories like “newly released” and “best sellers” and “editors’ pick”––some of which are separate from the browsing-path/categories and some of which are available as additional qualifiers to the browsing-paths. Are you lost yet?

Finally, to make matters even more difficult, this conversion process does not always work accurately (for a long time the historical mystery category had less than 100 books in it because of a computer glitch). However, the KDP Support system has improved in the past year in helping authors resolve these problems. If you click on the Contact Us link at the bottom of the KDP page, the menu leads to an option to email the support staff to change your categories, and if you use the Author Central Contact Us link, you can even ask for a telephone consultation.

Keywords:

When you publish your book with KDP, you can choose seven keywords in addition to the two categories. These are really key phrases since they can be more than one word. For example I used terms like “Victorian Mystery” and “cozy mystery.” These keywords are used by Amazon in its own search engine––along with words in your title and subtitle and product description. Because I used those keywords and also have Victorian and Mystery in my subtitle, when Maids of Misfortune was first published, it immediately showed up near the top of the list of book when a customer put in the key search words “Victorian Mystery.”

Tags:

These are another kind of keyword or key phrase, but many authors get confused and think that they also help a book get found using the search box at the top of the Amazon page or on their Kindle device, but they don’t work this way. Tags are listed on a book’s product page under the heading Tag this product and were designed by Amazon to help customers describe and find products using key words called “tags.” Because this is so confusing, I am going to address the question of tags in a separate post.

Why Should an Author Care?

Categories, keywords, and (to a much more limited degree) tags can be used to help readers find your books, and these are methods that are generally not available to authors of print books that are sold in brick and mortar stores. As authors of ebooks, we need to learn how readers find books in estores like the Kindle store and use the tools that are available to us to maximize our sales.

When you sell a book to a traditional publisher, who then distributes that book to bookstores, you, as author, really don’t have much to say about how readers find your books. You hope that the bookstores will shelve your book on the right shelf (and that they have separate shelves for your genre) and you hope your publisher can convince the seller (or pay them) to put your book in special places like “newly released” tables, or “best seller” tables, or under “staff recommendations.” Beyond that, there isn’t much authors can do besides cultivating booksellers at conventions and through book signings, hoping this will convince them to feature their books––a time consuming and expensive proposition.

However, authors, by their choice of categories, keywords, and tags, can increase the chances that a reader will find their books in an ebook store. I am going to discuss two strategies an author can use to achieve that end.

The first strategy is to choose, at least for one of your two categories, a browsing path that ends up with a relatively small number of books at the end of the path.

For example, when I first published my second historical mystery, Uneasy Spirits, I could have chosen as one of its two categories, the browsing path of Fiction—Historical Fiction. However, this would have placed this book in a final pool of over 24,000 books in the Kindle store. As an indie author without a big promotional campaign behind me, it would be easy for this new book to get lost in that pool. Few people are going to scroll down through hundreds if not thousands of books of historical fiction books to find mine.

Instead, I chose to put Uneasy Spirits into the Romance–Suspense category [8,000 books] and, more importantly, I chose to place both of my books, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits in the Fiction—Mystery&Thrillers—Mystery—Historical category/browsing path. There are only 2600 books in the historical mystery category, and with a category this size I have been able to keep my books continuously on the list of top 100 bestselling books. This means both books are always visible when someone browses, which means both books sell well day-after-day. To date, I have sold 35,000 copies of Maids of Misfortune and 10,000 copies of Uneasy Spirits.

Obviously you don’t want to put your book in a list just because it is small. It has to make sense to the reader.  My books are cozy mysteries, and if I chose the hardboiled mystery sub-category just because of its size, I would end up with either few sales or nasty reviews. However, you should take the time to learn what categories are available that might fit your book. For example, look at the categories successful books like yours are found in, and then think about how to use your 2 category choices wisely.

The second strategy is to use keywords in combination with categories to help when the category is too large to be effective under the first strategy.

Take, for example, that large category, Fiction––Historical Fiction. Since this is really a more accurate description of both of my books than Romantic Suspense, once Uneasy Spirits got enough sales to be more competitive (helped along by its placement in the Historical Mystery category) I changed its second category to Historical Fiction. However, on a day-to-day basis, neither Uneasy Spirits or Maids of Misfortune show up high enough in this large category to be visible. This is where your choice of keywords can help.

When I was coming up with keywords for Maids of Misfortune and then later for Uneasy Spirits, I could have used the term Gilded Age as one of my 7 choices. It is actually a very precise definition of the time (1877-1880) and place (U.S) where my series of books are set. However, if someone was in the Historical Fiction category and put in the term Gilded Age, only 28 books come up. While I am sure if I had used this as a keyword, that my books would have been near the top of this category and search list, how often would a customer bother to check a list so small? But if you put in the term Victorian (which is used for the entire 19th century in England, Europe, and the U. S.) you get 367 books. This is a list of books that is large enough for a customer to find it a useful place to browse, but small enough for my books to do well in. Therefore, I chose the term Victorian and made sure I put this keyword in my subtitle as well. Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits are at the top of that list of 367 books.

A third strategy for using categories includes considering what category you want your books to be in if you do a KDP Select free promotion (something that didn’t exist when I wrote my original piece.) While it is good to have your book listed in at least one relatively small category, where it is visible to the casual browser, if the category is too small, or has no sub-categories, it can limit your exposure when you make the book temporarily free.

Let’s take, for example, Of Moths and Butterflies, a book by a V. R. Christensen, a fellow member of the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative.

Of Moths and Butterflies is currently in the two categories, Fiction­­––Historical Fiction [24,000 books] and Fiction––Drama––British & Irish [2500 books]. The choice of the second category makes a good deal of sense since it is a much smaller category. As a result, the book is currently listed as #21 in the bestseller list for this category and is much more visible to browsers.

However, when Christensen does a KDP Select promotion, I would recommend that she try shifting the book temporarily from British & Irish Drama to Historical Romance. The reason for this is that the British & Irish Drama free list is filled with public domain books that are always free, and this means it isn’t a list where people would regularly go to find free books. Historical Romance, on the other hand, both because of its subject matter and robust free list, will be a place that people routinely look for free books to download. In addition, the book would show up on the Romance Free list as well (since a book shows up on all the stages of a browsing path), which is an even more robust free list.

This means Of Moths and Butterflies would be seen, and possibly chosen, by a much broader pool of potential customers. More downloads means a better ranking when the book comes off of the free promotion. Christensen could then keep Moths and Butterflies in this category if her sales are strong enough to keep her in the top 100 Historical Romance bestseller list, or she could shift it back to British & Irish Drama. I have followed this pattern with Uneasy Spirits, shifting it between Historical Romance, Romantic Suspense, and Historical Fiction, to good effect.

In Summary:

As an author, you need to choose categories and keywords carefully when you publish or promote. Social media and traditional marketing can only do so much to drive potential customers to find your book. You need to make sure that the person who is just browsing in the Amazon or Kindle store has a good chance of finding your book (and then your cover, description, reviews, and excerpt will hopefully do the rest). You need to take into consideration not only what best categories describe your books, but also what will maximize the chances that a reader who is browsing will find your books. You also want to make sure that readers who find your book are the ones who would be most likely to buy it and enjoy it. Careful uses of categories and keywords can also increase your chance of having a successful free promotion, which in turn will help boost your sales. Carelessness in using these strategies can condemn even the best work to the backwaters of the Kindle store––undiscovered, unbought, and unread––and that would be a shame.

 

 

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

Should Charity Be Profitable?

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 A news story this week asked “Is ABC Going to Far in Covering Robin Roberts Illness?” The journalist was speculating about whether the network’s “concern” had crossed the line into exploitation in an attempt to boost ratings.

It’s a very fine line and a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because it applies to authors, charity, and book sales. Many authors have donated the profit, or part of the profit, of a new book to charity, typically a charity or medical cause that corresponds with a theme in the story. And in doing so, they boost their sales and visibility.

On the surface, this seems noble, and we did it on the Crime Fiction Collective blog when the tornado tore apart Joplin Missouri. We all donated all of our profits during a certain time period to a Joplin family, who was very grateful for the help. I even think it was my idea.

But the more I ponder this trend, the more I believe that for myself, charity needs to be separate from commerce. Any donation I make should be done out of compassion and goodwill alone—without profiting from it directly through increased sales.

But why not accomplish both things at once, when it seems so expedient? I’m not sure I can articulate why I’ve come to feel this way. Except that rooting for your book to sell is a completely different emotion and experience than sending money to help others in need—perhaps even a contradictory one.

I understand why authors do this. Their hearts are in the right place. And the readers who buy those books are even more commendable. They’re figure they’re going to spend money on books anyway, so why not make a donation to charity at the same time?

Many businesses also run these campaigns. A pizza parlor down the street often donates part of its one-day profits to a charity, school, or foundation. Everybody wins.

And I understand what ABC is trying to accomplish: educate viewers, raise money for medical research, and boost its ratings. But has it gone too far? Probably. Charities are by definition nonprofit, and raising money for, or donating to, a cause without directly profiting from the effort seems more noble. Yet goodwill results naturally from generosity, so indirect benefits are inevitable, but they’re not the same as direct profit.

I’m not saying it’s wrong for authors to connect their books to a charity. It’s just not something I’m comfortable doing myself. But I’m probably in the minority here. What do you think?

 

This is a reprint from L.J. Sellers’ blog.