Author 2.0 Blueprint Rebooted For 2012

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

Editors Passed on Same Book Critique Group Loved: 6 Reasons Why

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This post, by Lynette Labelle, originally appeared on her website on 1/4/12.

You have a critique group and the members love, love, love your work. They’ve been nagging at you for months to send it out. You finally got up enough courage to submit and even received requests for partials and fulls, but in the end, nobody liked the manuscript enough to take it on. What gives?

Let’s take a look at six reasons agents and editors may not love your work as much as your critique group does.

1) The Relationship: This can mean different things depending on the group. For some, they’ve developed a friendship with the members of their group and can confuse “she’s a great person” with “she’s a great writer.” Some members may realize you’re not such a hot writer but don’t want to hurt your feelings, so they tell you what you want to hear instead. Others aren’t in the same league as you. Beginners will love stories written by intermediate writers and might even believe the book should be published, when in reality, it still needs a lot of work.

Lesson: Use a combination of your judgment, that of your critique group members, and feedback you get from agents and editors. If the rejections you’re getting are all canned, you really need to take another look at the book or start something fresh. If you’re getting personalized letters with specific notes on what’s wrong with the work or how to improve it, then you’re on the right track. Just remember, it’s your story. Only make changes if they feel right.

2) Super Premise: Your critique group loves your premise and thinks this is the next bestseller. They may be right. However, they don’t have the inside information agents and editors have. In this case, the industry experts may love your premise but if it’s too similar to something they’ve recently bought or something that’s currently on the market, they won’t want to touch it no matter how good it is.

Lesson: It’s not always about the writing or the idea. Sometimes it’s about who gets their idea out first.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes four more reasons a publishing house editor might pass, on Lynette Labelle’s site.

SOPA and PIPA are Stupid, Oatmeal Nails Why

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

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

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

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

sopa SOPA and PIPA are stupid, Oatmeal nails why

 

 

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

What Writers Need to Know About Formatting

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This post, by Brian A. Klems, originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 1/23/12.

When writing your future bestseller you don’t want to have to waste too much time wondering if you should be leaving one space or two between sentences or worried that you’re committing other style faux pas. Here I’ve collected a writer’s set of FAQs about formatting (and formatting-related) issues that will help you navigate the basics.

 

What Are the Guidelines for Formatting a Manuscript?

One Space or Two Between Sentences?

When to Use a Prologue

Where Should You List Your Manuscript’s Word Count?

How Long Should Novel Chapters Be?

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes many more links to helpful articles and tips, on the Writer’s Digest site.

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

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

 

An Indie Author’s Manifesto

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

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

I am an indie author and this is my manifesto.

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

Read the rest of the post on Inside Martin.

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

That about sums up this last week’s events.

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

Writing Settings

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One of the most loved and respected authors of western fiction was Louis L’amour.. His fans found his stories to be very realistic because of the accuracy of his settings. If one of his stories mentioned a specific well or spring, you could go to that location and find it. This is because L’amour had done so before he wrote about it. His research was meticulous.

Does this mean you need to become a world traveler to be able to construct realistic settings? Not necessarily. I’ve been fortunate to have lived in or traveled in a number of countries in Europe and Asia, so I could search my memory and describe a particular location I had personally experienced just like L’amour had done.

Detailed, accurate settings make for interesting reading. This is why books are often referred to as armchair adventures. But, what’s an author to do if his story takes him to a place he’s never been? All is not lost. First there are atlases for those of us who know how to read a good map. Second, there are sources of good information in Google and Wikipedia. Most importantly, there are UTube  and documentaries which can give you a look at far away places. Any author who doesn’t avail himself of these resources is just plain lazy. By studying and seeing for oneself the locations you’re writing about, you can produce much more interesting works.

OK, how about science fiction and fantasy? Did you ever notice how many fantasy novels come with an excellent map of the stories’ settings? I always find myself checking such maps as I read just so I’m clear as to where everything is. The beauty of scifi is its settings are whatever the author wants them to be; therefore, detailed descriptions become essential.

Good settings are the sign of good fiction writers. They add spice to your stories. They also add connectivity with your readership for those who have been to the places you write about. Do your due diligence to make what you write as believable as possible.

 

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

Can Your Readers Find You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

25 Things Writers Should Start Doing (ASAFP)

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

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

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

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

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

Please to enjoy.

 

1. Start Taking Yourself Seriously

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

2. Start Taking The Time

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

3. Start Trying New Stuff

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

4. Start Telling Stories In New Ways

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

5. Start Reading Poetry

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

6. Start Saying Something

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

7. Start Discovering What You Know

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

8. Start Writing From A Place of Pain

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

Read the rest of the post on terribleminds.

KDP Select Free Promotion: Discoverability Experiment, Part Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

ThrillerCast is back for 2012

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

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

 

ThrillerCast ThrillerCast is back for 2012

The books sound great:

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

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

Check out the new episode here.

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

 

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

Is Penguin Using Stock Photography For Cover Designs?

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Self-Pubbed Author Beware

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

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

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

That’s… staggering.

It also doesn’t bode well for legacy publishers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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