Sell

This post, by Julie Ortolon, originally appeared on her Julie’s Journal Online site on 4/27/12.

It was a year ago this month that my world changed forever thanks to the ebook revolution. April 2011 was when my sales exploded. I have been reeling – in a good way – ever since.

This journey, however, started long before that. It started in the fall of 2009. Back then, I had one goal: to somehow get back some semblance of a writing career. To me, at the time, that meant land another contract with a traditional print publisher.

Boy has that goal changed! But let’s look at how I got from there to here.

The First Step Down a New Path

In the summer of 2009, I was basically unpublishable in the eyes of New York. I hadn’t had a book out since Unforgettable came out in 2007. I’d gone from rocketing onto the publishing scene by hitting the USA Today list with my first title to sales numbers that were so bad (thanks to the implosion of the publishing industry) it was heartbreaking. I was also so emotional beat up after eight years of the publishing process, I needed a break. I stepped back for two years by going to the mountains of New Mexico to paint aspen trees and contemplate clouds.

That was fabulous for awhile, but after two years my muse started to stir. I wanted back in the game. So, I landed a new agent with a proposal for a new series. One of the first things I realized, though, was that a lot had changed in the two years I’d been away. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the proposal and an author’s sales numbers that publishers looked at before offering a contract, it was the author’s Website and overall Web presence, i.e. their number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Yikes! My Website was two years out of date, and I didn’t know a tweet from a twerp.

Fate Intervenes

As karma, chance, the universe would have it, I bumped into an Internet marketing coach at a wine bar one afternoon and I hired her to overhaul my Website. Instead, she overhauled my entire life by opening my eyes. I already knew the publishing industry doesn’t make sense to any rational business person. Yet, in talking to this very savvy businesswoman, trying to explain why I couldn’t implement her marketing strategies because “that’s not how things work in publishing” I started to see just how ridiculous the publishing industry is. Even so, the first time she suggested I ditch New York and self publish, I drew up with indignation and said, “I would never self-publish!”

Long story short, part of the strategy this marketing guru proposed to help me land another print contract was for me to start this blog. Julie’s Journal Online was meant to accomplish two things: 1) help me learn social networking by teaching others; and 2) seriously up my overall Web presence. In order to write my blog posts, I had to do a lot of research. That led to me reading things like Konrath’s blog the Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Which led to me reconsidering epubbing my out-of-print backlist. Lord, what a hair-pulling experience epubbing was back in the early days before we had a sufficient number of cover designers and formatters to hire.

Read the rest of the post on Julie’s Journal Online.

This post, by Zoe Spencer, originally appeared on her Colpo Di Fulmine blog on 4/26/12.

Yesterday I came across a small publisher who was looking for writers in the genre I’m currently writing in. I was quite excited until I dug deeper into their website. I’m not going to name names because I’ve no interest in getting into a fight on the internet but the overall tone was arrogant and off-putting.

I have a friend who works as an agent’s assistant in London and she says soft skills are of critical importance because the publishing industry is relationship-based. The tone of this publisher’s web site and specifically their submissions guidelines guarantee I’ll never submit to them.

The killer for me was their bald refusal to consider anyone who didn’t have AT LEAST two hundred followers on each of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. If you don’t have that, they say, you’re not serious about your career and they have no interest in you whatsoever.

Where to start?

I’m very new to the idea of publication – this time last week I’d never submitted a thing and I still consider myself very much a learner – but this attitude suggests they expect their writers to market their books for them. I had this weird idea that was the publisher’s job. If Harper Collins tells me I need to build a web presence, fair enough. But when some relative nobody says my number of followers is more important than the story I have to tell or the quality of my writing, I shake my head and put them in an idiot-shaped box.

Read the rest of the post on Colpo Di Fulmine. Please read through to the end – it’s a kicker!

I’ve just finished several marvelous days at the London Book Fair and wanted to share my perspective on this brilliant event.

It was definitely a publishing trade event but there were plenty of fantastic opportunities for authors to learn at workshops, through networking and finding out what’s going on in the industry. For independent authors who are entrepreneurially minded, there was also the potential for new markets, tools and relationships.

In the video below, I include some pictures from the event, interviews with authors and share my own perspective. You can also watch on YouTube here. There is a text post below the video if you prefer to read.

 My Overall Impression

When I walked into Earls Court, I was immediately intimidated by the huge stands of the ‘Big 6′ publishers that were packed with billboard sized posters of authors and books. Of course, we would all like to be up there, but that’s not the reality for most authors these days.

Those stalls were also full of people having meetings and no appointment meant no chat. I did feel a sense of the scale of the large publishing houses. How many authors, how many books and how many people are involved. It’s no wonder an individual author can feel insignificant.

The ‘altar’ to JK Rowling [is shown at right].

There were more interesting stands around the edges and towards the back, where smaller and more agile publishers had stalls. There was also a Digital space with a fantastic networking area where many of us had back to back meetings.

I heard a fantastic talk from Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn about the data behind the hype, and the Amazon KDP & Createspace stand was permanently busy.

Amazon publishing, including thriller imprint Thomas & Mercer, had a booth at the very back of the event. That physical placement seemed to be a deliberate act by the ‘powers that be’ as there was also a lot of anti-Amazon talk (from publishers) at the Fair. I went to talk to them about my own thrillers and had a great chat with the team there. More on that another time…

Amazon Publishing including Thomas & Mercer thriller imprint

There was a focus on China but I didn’t attend any of those events. I did talk to people about Portuguese translation for Brazil and also about other European markets, something I am definitely interested in pursuing. I enjoyed the seminars I went to and generally felt there was a good atmosphere. A lot of people are positive about the future of publishing, even with the tectonic changes currently happening (but then perhaps I only hear the glass-half-full side because that’s how I feel).

Here are some points from the sessions I attended, primarily the CEO Keynote. I tried to keep notes of verbatim speech but I acknowledge any errors are my own.

• The whole point of publishing is how creativity gets to readers and winning the hearts and minds of the consumer

• Audible desperately needs more content, and audiobooks continue to expand as a market. This is great for authors but the author-focused stance was challenged in the keynote, details reported here. If you’re interested in audiobooks, Audible outline their business model further here.

• 

  Ceiling at the China pavilion

  The book industry is sustainable, just not in its current form. Twice as many people read now as they did in the 1930s which is fantastic. But a quarter of books printed are destroyed, 1 book in 5 doesn’t earn back its advance. “The karma in publishing is bad.” But the interest in stories and ideas is very much alive.

• Publishers want to embrace all things digital, but there is hesitancy because of the difficulty of predicting the future [Authors do this too!]
• Publishing used to be based on alco-rhythms (booze and instinct) and is now based on algorithms – Richard Charkin, Bloomsbury

• Print books are handled 24 times on average from manufacture to purchase. Planes take books to Australia and come back with the returns. Tescos buys 10,000 books and returns 9000. There is no business model that can sustain this. Things have to change.

• All that really matters is the author and the reader. Everyone else is in the middle. Authors must realize that publishers can’t do everything for them. Neil Gaiman shifted thousands of his audiobooks with a tweet. We’re looking for more of that. Authors directly engaging with readers.

• Publishers serve authors through editorial standard. They turn something into something better. [Agreed. Which is why serious indie authors hire professional editors, many of whom work for publishing firms already.]

• “The advance is hush money” John Mitchinson, Unbound

• Any kind of artist has to do everything. There is no such thing as sitting around dreaming. Performance is important.

Rights Workshop

This was a separate half day event that focused on what rights are, how they can be sold and the legalities behind it all. It was aimed at publishing professionals but I think all authors need an education in this. It could save you thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seriously. Intellectual property rights are critical for us to understand so we know what we are selling and the possibilities that there are for us.

I learned how the author’s work is “exploited”, how different books work in different markets, the attention to detail needed in contractuals and tracking rights, about translations and the excitement of the Brazilian market. Highly recommended if you’re around next year.

Digital Minds Conference

This was at the same time as the Rights workshop above, but I attended virtually via the Twitter back-channel which was great. You can read a fantastic round-up of everything that went on at Publishing Talk’s Live Blog Roundup. Well worth a read.

Opportunities For Independent Authors

There were a lot of self-publishing companies around the Fair, as well as a large area for Digital and also Apps, which is where independent authors mostly hung out. The usual suspects were there, and there was a positive, happening vibe with speed networking going on.There were also a number of workshops for authors who want to look at self-publishing. They were a bit basic for you lot though, but interesting to see so many sessions at a Fair so dominated by traditional publishing.

The biggest event though was the launch of the Alliance of Independent Authors, brainchild of the terrific Orna Ross. It is definitely time for such an Alliance and there was a great camaraderie in the room. The turn-out was brilliant, considering you had to pay to get into the Fair and it is a global organization so not everyone is London based. I chaired a panel with Amazon, Blurb & Kobo (video to come on that) and then there was one with some independent authors sharing their experiences.

[This] video contains some of the reactions to the event – you can tell everyone is excited! Watch on YouTube here.

Featuring: Joanna Penn (me), Orna Ross, Joni Rodgers, Jon Reed, Linda Gillard, Ben Galley, Marion Croslydon, Lorna Fergusson, Karen Inglis, Leda Sammarco, Harriet Smart, Alison Baverstock.

In conclusion, a marvelous event and I am considering going to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, so may see some of you there!

[Update] Radio Litopia The Naked Book: Shiny, Happy, Publishing People

As a result of the launch, Orna Ross and I were invited onto the panel of Litopia’s The Naked Book, along with a panel of publishing industry professionals. We talked about the Book Fair, Amazon, self-publishing and more. You can listen to the recording here on Radio Litopia.

Did you go to the Book Fair? or have you attended Book Fairs or publishing industry events before? What are your impressions and have you found them useful? Please do leave a comment. Thank you!

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

This post, by Melissa Conway, originally appeared on her Whimsilly blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Roll the dice. Move your token. Play the game everyone with a word processing program is playing! Learn as you go, because the rules change as fast as the publishing industry!

Land on the Goodreads square: Whoop! Whoop! Warning, Warning. Author approaching forum. Use extreme caution. Do not engage the indigenous readers in conversation about your book. Severe consequences will result! Move ahead one space.

Land on the Librarything square: Enter your ebook in the Member Giveaway program, where readers can get a free copy of your book in exchange for a review. Discover that ‘winners’ of Member Giveaway books are chosen at random, unlike the traditionally published books given away in the Early Reviewer program, where Librarything uses a complicated algorithm to ensure good placement. Give away fifty free ebooks, get two reviews and be thankful you got any!

Draw a Book Review card: Three Stars! A quick check on this person’s other reviews shows s/he is historically stingy with stars. You’re pathetically grateful s/he gave you the “It was okay” thumbs-unenthusiastically-up. Move ahead one space.

Land on the Publicity square: You’ve just been asked to appear on an unscripted podcast/internet radio talk show with an aggressive host, so polish your smile and prepare to field random questions LIVE on the internet in direct opposition to the introverted nature that made you a writer in the first place!

Draw an Expense card: You blow tons of money on video editing software that comes with a user’s manual written for a much earlier version. Then you spend weeks slaving to make a decent book trailer. After uploading to YouTube, you get seventeen views, two disgustingly profane comments (before you figure out how to change the settings to allow comments only with approval), and an anonymous thumbs-down. Go back three spaces.

Land on the Book Promotion square: Your endless marketing efforts have sucked every last drop of joy out of the thought of writing another book and your muse is actively trying to convince you to take up pottery. Go back three spaces.

Land on the Amazon Discussion square: Whoop! Whoop! Warning, Warning. You stumble into an Amazon Discussion titled ‘Badly Behaving Authors’ and are horrified at how much venom is directed your way. Leave with your tail tucked firmly between your legs and seriously consider changing your user name. Lose a turn.

Land on the ‘I Used to Enjoy Reading’ square: Your swaying TBR (To Be Read) pile is stacked a mile high with other indie authors’ books. You owe so many reads it will take you until the year 2525 to fulfill your obligation. Go back five spaces.

Land on the Facebook square: You are among friends of your own choosing, many of them indie authors like yourself. You may relax and spread the joy by clicking ‘like’ on other authors’ posts about their books. You may enjoy the steady stream of inspirational and funny pictures…until, that is, your former best friend begins tagging you in a series of embarrassing photos from your ‘wild’ days and your dad, who never learned that all-caps is shouting, posts a LOUD admonishment on your wall that you never call him. Bye-bye professionalism! Go back two spaces.

Land on the Twitter square: Welcome to the Land of Spam, where the one who dies with the most followers wins! Here, indie authors are free to spam each other to our hearts’ content. Make your followers happy and retweet their spam – they’ll return the favor and retweet yours! Spam it up! Nobody cares because with thousands of followers, we’d have to spend 24/7 reading tweets to keep up! Whee!

Land on the Family square: Of all your family members, the only one who bothers to read your book is ‘No-holds Barred’ Aunt Fanny, who promptly reviews it on Amazon and tells the world that funny story about how you lost your bikini bottoms while waterskiing on the Sacramento River. What a cute butt you had! Go back one space.

Land on the Kindle Forum square: Whoop! Whoop! Warning, Warning. You start a forum thread offering to swap reviews with other authors. Within 12.3 seconds, you have seven responses from the established forum cronies advising you that what you are proposing is sleazy and unethical. Leave with your tail tucked firmly between your legs and request from the forum administrator that your account be deleted. Lose a turn.

Draw an Expense card: You splurge for a portrait at the local J.C. Penny that makes you look like a refugee from an eighties Glamour Shot. In desperate need of an author headshot, you break out your ancient point-and-shoot and, ignoring the burning pain of holding your arm out straight for three hours, take exactly four hundred and twelve photos until you get one where both eyes are open the same width and your nose doesn’t look like it belongs on Mr. Ed.

Land on the Royalty square: You receive your first email from Amazon with your royalty statement. Take the family to McDonald’s in celebration, but restrict them to the dollar menu. Advance token to the Taxes square.

Land on the Taxes square: The IRS gleefully adds insult to injury by taxing your meager royalties. Enter the data into Turbotax and watch in horror as the extra income pushes you into a higher tax bracket. Attempt to conceal the information from your spouse, who always knew no good could come of this crazy author venture. Go back one space.

Draw a Book Review card: Two Stars! This reviewer got the book for free and admits to only reading the first chapter. S/he claims to not be in the habit of reviewing books s/he ‘couldn’t finish,’ but s/he immediately hated your flawed heroine and brilliantly deduced how the story would end anyway. S/he would have given it one star, but doesn’t like to be cruel. Go back three spaces.

Land on the Blog square: You’ve been blogging for years already, but have to go through and read all your old posts to clean out the ones in which you are ranting, raving, revealing TMI about yourself or your family, or otherwise coming across as unprofessional. From this point on your blog posts are strictly limited to discussion about books, writing, and the ‘author experience’ – just like all the other indie authors out there. Your followers, all six of them, don’t notice the changes.

Draw an Expense card: You purchase the cheapest drag-and-drop website design software on the market and begin the frustrating job of learning how to use it to create an author website. The user’s manual has been badly translated from some foreign language, but you eventually cobble together a somewhat professional-looking site. Advance token to the Domain square.

Land on the Domain square: Your dot com name is already taken, so you are forced to choose from an embarrassing dot net, dot org or dot biz. Once you own your spanking new domain, you begin to wade through the incomprehensible world of GoDaddy. You upload your site into the ether a dozen times before locating the problem on an obscure user’s forum thread. Yay, your site is finally live! Begin checking the site stats every day, several times a day. Be impressed at how many visitors you’ve gotten – until you find out what ‘spiders’ and ‘bots’ are. Move ahead one space.

Land on the Pirate square: Ahoy, Matey! You are happily Googling around to see where your ebook has been mentioned on the interwebs when you find that it is available, for free, on a site called Zippyshare. After you finish freaking out, you contact the site and accuse them of copyright violation. They quickly respond back that your book has been removed from their site, but you find it elsewhere, too – on sites that are using it as bait to get people to download it – but anyone who does will also be getting a nasty case of computer herpes! You struggle to reconcile your hatred for hackers who create viruses with your glee at the thought that there’s Karma out there for those who steal your book. You are at an impasse. Arrrr. Advance token one square anyway.

Land on the Formatting (alternate name: Author Hell) square: You spend three unwashed days in front of your monitor obsessed with figuring out how to format your manuscript to Smashwords and Kindle specifications. Several times you consider throwing the entire PC out the window. By the time you’ve uploaded and all seems right in the world, your family has taken to tip-toeing and whispering and you have several mounds of tear-stained tissues littering the floor around you. Move your token to the Upload square.

Land on the Upload square: Three days after uploading to Kindle, a writer friend contacts you with a long list of typos s/he spotted in your book. After suffering a debilitating anxiety attack, you fix the errors and reupload. You find yourself glad no one bought your book. Lose two turns.

Draw a Book Review card: One Star! Oh NOES! This reviewer did not read the book at all, but thinks since you are an indie author all your five-star reviews must be fake, so s/he wants to even the playing field by lowering your book’s overall stars.

Land on the Book Blurb space: A blood pressure spike sends you to the ER after several days spent attempting to write the perfect book blurb. Go back four spaces.

Draw an Expense card: You create an ad for your book and buy space on a popular reader’s site, among thousands of other so-tiny-you-can-barely-read-them authors’ ads. After two weeks, you’ve only received five accidental ‘clicks.’ Go back two spaces.

Draw a Book Review card: Four Stars! And from a stranger who paid actual money for your book without you having to beg them to buy it. Skip ahead two spaces.

Land on the Amazon square: You browse the Indie Book store looking for your book only to discover Amazon has limited the Indie Book store to only the first thirty best-selling (which does not mean ‘best’) self-published books. When you attempt to browse Amazon book categories, you give up after six hours of clicking through 7,000 pages. Your stomach begins to produce excess acid as the realization sinks in that the only way someone will find your book on Amazon is for them to use a direct link. Go back two spaces.

Land on the Author Interview square: Bloggers love author interviews because not only do you do all the work answering their list of questions, they don’t have to actually read your book. Plus, they get free content for their blog! Go ahead one space.

Land on the Book Blogger square: After three days of searching through blog after blog with big, bold “I DO NOT REVIEW SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS,” in the review policy, you finally find a blog that does! Too bad they only have three followers. Go back two spaces.

Draw a Book Review card: Five Stars! Too bad it’s from a coworker who admits to knowing you in the review. Here come the downvotes!

Draw an Expense card: Advance token to the Book Cover square.

Land on the Book Cover square: You’re no artist, but paying one to make your cover is out of the question, so you fire up the old photo editing software that came with your computer and begin the process of bringing your vision to life. You buy a cheap, royalty-free photo online and settle on a font that conveys the genre without being overbearing. Yay, your cover is complete and looks pretty good if you do say so yourself! The first book review you get calls it, “Hideously amateurish.” Go back two spaces.

Draw an Expense card: Your vision of the perfect book trailer includes music from your favorite band – but you can’t afford that and wouldn’t dream of using another artist’s work without permission, so you find a website that sells music from the public domain. Your choices range from scratchy old recordings of Amazing Grace to Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. In the end, you find a royalty free music site and pay for a 15-second clip that you loop in the background and hope no one notices. Go ahead one space.

Draw a Book Review card: Five Stars! From a stranger who raved about it and posted their review on their blog as well as Amazon, Goodreads and Libarything! THIS is why you decided to self-publish. Skip ahead to the end of the game.

YOU SURVIVED – I MEAN WIN! 

My two historical mysteries, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, have come to the end of their first 3 months as part of the KDP Select program, and I have decided to re-enroll them. I know that a good number of authors are facing the question to re-enroll or not, (or to enroll at all) so I thought I would discuss why I have come to that decision, particularly in light of the persistent argument made by a number of self-publishing authors that KDP Select is a bad strategy for authors.

Just this week, as I was making the decision to re-enroll my books in the KDP Select Program, I read a post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, where she made the following argument.

“The key to developing an audience is to stop searching for one audience. The key to developing a lot of readers for your books—audiences plural—is to do what musicians do: play a lot of venues.

“Yet writers make all kinds of bad decisions in search of the biggest audience they can get. And writers think of that audience in singular terms. These writers give their books away for free, hoping to hit some bestseller list and gain readers. They only sell in one marketplace because it’s the biggest one in its genre or its category.”

While I disagree with her conclusions, Rusch does pretty accurately describe two of my reasons for enrolling my books in the KDP Select Program. I entered Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits into the KDP Select program and used the free promotion days in the hope that my books would, at the very least, regain their position at the top of the historical mystery category (which they had lost because of a change in that category that increased the number of books from below 100 books to nearly 2000 books). I was also willing to accept the KDP Select requirement that I sell my ebooks exclusively on Amazon because Amazon had proven to be the biggest market for my books.

What I disagree with is Rusch’s characterization of these actions as “bad decisions,” or that they only represent a short-term versus long-term business strategy. First of all, of course joining KDP Select is a short-term strategy–since the contract only lasts 3 months. In addition, the program is new–none of us knows if it will continue, if the tweaks Amazon is making to the formula will make the free promotions less and less effective, or if the pot of money for borrows will continue to be sufficient. And if Amazon asked for exclusive rights for a longer term than 3 months at a time, given these unknowns, I would probably not sign.

However, almost any action an author takes in the midst of the rapid changes within the publishing industry can be characterized as short-term. Putting your ebooks in the Barnes and Noble Nook store, given the effect of the Department of Justice decision on agency pricing, might turn out to be a short-term strategy if this corporation goes under. Concentrating on building relationships with bookstores to get them to carry your print on demand books (a strategy that Rusch’s husband Smith is currently advocating) may be a very short-term strategy if those bookstores go under in the next 2-3 years. Whether or not you can guarantee the long-term effectiveness of a strategy shouldn’t determine whether or not it is a good decision. What does matter to me is whether or not my decision to enroll my books in KDP Select for a short time will further my long-term goals.

Those goals are, coincidentally, ones that Rusch strongly supports. Over and over Rusch, her husband Dean Wesley Smith, and other successful self-published authors have advised that it is important that authors view themselves as engaged in a business (Rusch calls her Thursday posts “The Business Rusch.”) and that part of a long-term effective business strategy for authors is constantly increase their content. In Rusch’s words, “An audience can’t be goosed. The audience must be built. And then it must be nurtured. Audiences aren’t fickle. They’ll return when they see a notice of something new from one of their favorites. But if their favorites cease to produce, the audience will move onto something else.”

My decision to enroll in KDP Select was very much a business decision. The main reason for that decision was my need to make enough money so I would have the time to write my next book. I didn’t believe I would be able to do that if I continued a strategy of having my books in as many e-retail stores as possible, while forgoing the opportunities of the KDP Select promotions.

I first discovered the effectiveness of using free material for promotional purposes to gain an audience when my short story Dandy Detects was free on Kindle Nation Daily in July 2010. This 3-day promotion of the short story had the side effect of pushing my novel, Maids of Misfortune, to the top of the historical mystery category on Kindle. That, in turn, positioned the novel to sell well, particularly during the winter holidays when a whole slew of new Kindle owners were looking for books to read. This first jump in sales (you might say they were “goosed up” in Rusch’s terminology) permitted me to take the financially risky step to retire completely from teaching so I could write full-time. Consequently, in the next nine months I wrote and published a second novel, Uneasy Spirits, satisfying my audience’s demand for a sequel.

While my sales in 2011 had been just enough to replace my teaching salary, most of that income had come in the first 3 months of that year (the post Christmas boom in ebooks). However, even with a second book out, my sales at the end of 2011 were steadily decreasing. This was in part because of the expansion in the historical mystery category and my books drop down the bestseller list, and, I suspect, in part because of the beginning of the KDP Select Promotions. I was facing the real possibility that in 2012 I wouldn’t be making as much money as I did the year before in sales. So, if I wanted to have the time and income to write a third book, I was going to have to figure out a way to increase my income.

Hence the decision to give KDP Select a try. This was a business decision: not a short-term emotional desire to see my book on a best-seller list, but a calculated move to ensure the long-term goal of making enough money so I could produce more work, thereby continuing to build my audience and its loyalty. And it worked. In January, February, and March of 2012, I sold over 20,000 books and made over $40,000 — more than enough to replace my lost part-time teaching salary and ensure another two years of full-time writing during which time I hope to write two more books and additional short stories.

But didn’t my decision to go with KDP Select – which required that I sell my ebooks exclusively on Amazon – mean I had to sacrifice those multiple audiences that Rusch and Smith say are so important? Well, I would beg to differ with the opinion that selling exclusively in the Kindle store only develops one audience. My first free promotions through KDP Select (at the end of December and again in mid-February) were successful, not just in pushing my books back up to the top of the historical mystery category but also in putting them at the top of numerous other categories. In fact, Maids of Misfortune ended up in the top ranks of eleven different categories. As a result, not just the historical mystery audience, but the often very diverse audiences who like mysteries with female sleuths, traditional mysteries, romance, and historical fiction all got a chance to see and buy my books. I didn’t sell over 20,000 books in 3 months to a single historical mystery audience. I tapped into multiple audiences — which is exactly what Rusch is advising.

But I am sure she would argue that it is equally important to cultivate audiences who do not have Kindles or use Kindle apps. Yet I had already tried the strategy that Rusch and Smith are advocating — making my ebooks available in multiple markets. For two years I sold my ebooks in six e-stores in addition to Amazon: Apple, Barnes&Noble, Diesel, Kobo, Sony, and Smashwords. (And I still make my print book available to any bookstore who wants to order it through Amazon.)

Nevertheless, in the those two years, over 90% of my income had come from Kindle sales. Since the most recent data suggests that Amazon holds about 67% (down from 80%) of the ebook market, it is pretty clear that the other booksellers haven’t been doing a very good job of selling my books. The books are the same, the covers are the same, the descriptions are the same, and my social media presence is the same. Yet that potential 30% of the market (or audience) that these non-Amazon bookstores represent are not finding my books. In other words, my books are languishing in some back room, on some back shelf, of these virtual bookstores. In the Amazon store, however, my books are front and center within categories, promoted by email blasts, recommended through “Customers who Bought” lists, and listed on my Author page (along with links to my twitter and blog posts).

This is not to say that there isn’t a way to tap into those other bookstore markets, or that in time those bookstores won’t do a better job of selling my books, if they want to stay competitive. But I needed the income now, to go on writing, not in some future when the other e-retailers learn how to market my books as effectively as Amazon does.

My decision might not be right for every author. If I were Rusch or Smith and had a large number of books, in multiple genres, a smaller return in sales from these multiple markets wouldn’t be a problem, and these other markets would be worth cultivating now. And I applaud the success of an author like Sarah Woodbury, who has effectively followed the strategy of using one book as a loss leader to bump up sales for her other books in multiple ebook stores. But she has nine books, and a smaller return over nine books is still substantial.

My conclusion: the decision to forgo the possibility of increasing your income and reaching new audiences within Amazon with the KDP Select, in order to keep books in multiple ebook stores, might be a good decision for some authors, but not necessarily for all. For authors like myself, who have tried the multiple store strategy and found it wanting, who only have a few books out, and who need the income to keep writing and expanding our content in order to keep building our audience, then KDP Select can be a very good short-term strategy for long-term success.

This brings me to the question of why I decided to re-enroll in the KDP Select program. This wasn’t an easy decision since there is now a lot of evidence that it is becoming more difficult to translate free promotions into higher sales. For example, my last promotion at the end of my first enrollment period was not particularly successful. I put Maids of Misfortune up for free March 30, 2012 and Uneasy Spirits up for free March 30-31. Compared to the previous promotions, the results were not impressive. I had 3900 downloads on the one day Maids was free — compared to 14,400 over two days for the first promotion and 13,000 free downloads in one day for the second promotion. And Uneasy Spirits had fewer downloads than Maids — around 1320, even though it was available for free for two days. Unlike the first two promotions, neither book broke into the top 100 bestseller free ranks, which generally translates into the largest number of downloads—and subsequent sales. During the first week after the promotions Maids did better than it had been doing, but now, in the second week after the promotion, it is actually selling less than it was before. Sales of Uneasy have stayed steady before and after this latest promotion, but not increased.

I suspect that I have saturated the markets for Maids of Misfortune, at least temporarily. If it follows the pattern of last year after the post Christmas bump, it will slowly lose sales every month. Uneasy Spirits, on the other hand, may continue to sell steadily as people who have read and liked the first book in the series buy the second. Even though I have re-enrolled my books, I don’t plan on doing another free promotion until the beginning of summer when my books, which make good summer time reading, might pick up some more sales.

So why re-enroll? Why not step out of the program for a few months, see what the changes in the formula of downloads to sales does to the continuing effectiveness of the free promotions, see whether or not the newest strategy of group promotions of free books work, or just wait until next Christmas when a new round of new Kindles hit the market and re-enroll?

And, why not make my books available again on those other e-bookstore sites in the hope that sales there will compensate for slipping sales on Amazon? The answer is simple. Borrows. I never expected to benefit from the borrowing aspect of the KDP Select Program; few of the indie authors, with our lower price points, did. We expected that the customers who enrolled in the Amazon Prime program would spend their once-a-month free borrows on more highly priced books. But I have found that people have borrowed my inexpensively priced novels and even my very inexpensive short stories. In January through March, I made $4,558 from Amazon Prime customers who borrowed my works. So, even if I don’t do another free promotion, I will come out ahead with my books in KDP Select, as long as I make more than $200 a month from borrows. That is as much as I was averaging in sales from non-Amazon bookstores.

In the next months, because of the sales I have made already as a result of being in KDP Select, and because of my borrows, I won’t have to spend time doing free promotions and I won’t be trying to figure out why people with Nooks don’t buy my books. Instead, I will have more time to write. Because, as Rusch pointed out, if I don’t produce more books, “the audience will move onto something else.” Sounds like a good short-term strategy to reach my long-term goals and not such a bad decision at all.

This is a cross-posting from M. Louisa Locke‘s blog.

This post is about the alarming sense of entitlement I’m seeing out there among indies and would-be indies now that we’ve become empowered to publish. I’m sure I sound like a broken record (or damaged MP3) by now, but apparently I need to keep saying this:

The decision to self-publish for profit is a BUSINESS decision. When you decide to self-publish for a profit you are deciding to LAUNCH A BUSINESS. You are going into direct COMPETITION with every other publisher and self-publisher out there, and many of them have a lot more money, time and experience than you do, no matter who you are. No one who goes into business has an inherent right to success or profit, or even the attention of consumers. All of those things must be earned, and are generally hard-won.

Anyone who wants to launch a new business like a restaurant, widget manufacturer, accounting practice or pool service expects to invest a certain amount of start-up capital, both in terms of actual cash and sweat equity. Neither is dispensable. Yet plenty of would-be indie authors seem to think it’s unfair for me, and even the book-buying public, to expect them to invest anything more than the sweat equity part of the equation. They expect the public to be able to look past a cut-rate cover, ignore the typos, bad grammar and the many other substantive flaws that can be eliminated by a good editor, and see the excellent story within. These indies are wrong, and they’re hurting all of us by lowering the collective bar.

In a recent Facebook exchange, one indie author directed this to me:

Not all self published authors can afford to hire out for pro services. If that were the case, why not go with a vanity publishing company and all their promises.

To which I responded, in part:

…if we self-publishers wish to compete head-to-head with mainstream books, we have to be willing to invest what it takes both in terms of effort and money. Hiring a pro editor and cover designer yourself is a far cry from going with a vanity press, which will usurp your rights and take a cut of your royalties. A pro edit, file conversion and cover design shouldn’t cost most self-pubbers more than about $400-$600, if you check the freelancer listings on Smashwords—and many can beat even those prices by shopping around and calling in favors. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but compare that to how many thousands of dollars a mainstream publisher invests in every book *it* acquires and releases. If we want a seat at the poker table, we have to be willing to invest at least a small stake.

Another commenter replied:

I work as a handyman. I’m barely making it. $400 to $600 is half a months’ wages for me. How would you suggest I scrape together enough to pay someone to edit my book and another someone to design a cover for it?

My response was: 

I’m sorry to say this…but the realities of launching and running a business are what they are, and I have often advised would-be indies NOT to publish until they can afford to do it right. The vast majority of authors, mainstream and indie alike, do not earn enough from sales of their books to live on. Virtually all of us still need day jobs.

The fact that the content is gold won’t matter if all the reader notices is typos, bad grammar or spelling mistakes, and an amateurish cover. For years us indies have been saying all we want is the opportunity to compete against the mainstream on a level playing field—but that means we have to be willing to do (and spend) what it takes to compete. I’m all for DIY when the person has the skills, and for trading favors and doing whatever else one can to shave costs. But it’s unrealistic to think one can go up against multi-million dollar publishers without spending even a few hundred dollars.

Hopeful Olympians pay for quality equipment, coaching and travel. Hopeful artists pay for quality supplies, professional framing and gallery space. Hopeful filmmakers pay for quality cameras and professional editing, or at least time in a professional editing bay to do it themselves. The fact that it’s much easier for a rich hopeful to afford the necessities of his craft or sport than it is for a poor one doesn’t make those things any less NECESSARY for the poor hopeful.

People DO judge a book by its cover, as I’ve learned firsthand. The cover for my novel Adelaide Einstein is much less slick than the one for my novel Snow Ball , and Snow Ball outsells Adelaide month in and out despite the fact that Adelaide has nearly three times as many positive reviews. I can complain all I want about how unfair it is that more readers won’t give Adelaide a chance, but that won’t sell more copies of the book. 

And ebook fans DO post negative reviews based solely on bad editing and poor formatting. I’ve found most ebook fans to be very welcoming to indies, and even willing to cut us slack to an extent in acknowledgment that we’re not backed by a Big 6 publisher. But when poor formatting or bad editing gets in the way of their enjoyment of the content, they stop reading and let others know about it.

Remember: publishing was never meant to be fair. It’s a business. Mainstream-published authors have the luxury of a whole staff of businesspeople standing between their delicate, artistic sensibilities and the harsh realities of commerce, but they pay for it pretty dearly in reduced royalties and the loss of control of their work. We indies have to be willing and able to play both sides of the net, art AND commerce, ourselves.

If you’re not willing, or you’re not able, you’re not ready to publish.

Having seen comments here and elsewhere, I’m kind of shocked that this is such a controversial stand to take. I mean, if I wanted to go into business making and selling any other product, and openly admitted I had no money for quality control (editing), packaging (cover design) or marketing (author platform) for the product, that I didn’t have the skills to do all of those things myself at a level comparable to a professional, and I don’t know anyone who’d be willing to offer those services to me for free, everyone would just say, "Well, maybe you need to wait till you’ve saved up some money, then."

But for some reason, to some people, when the product in question is a book, it’s somehow a special case. To those people, suggesting the author delay publication till he can make his product—a book—the best it can be is elitest. I’m not saying that only the rich should be able to publish, not remotely. I strongly encourage controlling costs, acquiring as many skills as possible so you can do a professional job of things yourself, calling in favors and comparison shopping for services. And I’m not saying those who don’t do these things should be barred from publishing.

All I’m saying is, if you’re going to step into the spotlight and invite the scrutiny of a paying public, doesn’t it make sense to put your best foot forward? If "good enough" is inadequate when it comes to the quality of your storytelling and characterization, why is it acceptable when it comes to the quality of your book’s presentation?

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

This post, by Zoe Winters, originally appeared on her blog on 4/7/12.

I’ve gotten lax in a lot of ways. I used to be all over the internet. Of course a lot of that was arguing which was of only questionable benefit. Annoying potential readers to death seems like a less than awesome business plan. I’m just saying.

Now it seems like I’ve gone too far in the opposite direction. There was a time when I would be the squeaky wheel because I HAD to be or nobody would know I existed or read my books. It’s really easy for somebody to say: “God, that person self-promotes all the time, it’s so annoying”, but if we don’t have “somebody else” doing it for us, or some big advertising budget or front table space at Barnes and Noble, how are readers going to find out about our books?

Is an angel going to descend to tell them about it? Will somebody famous stumble upon the book and then tweet it to their five million followers? We all hope for magic and luck like that but the reality is that writers who want to be read, tell people about their work. I do hope some big lucky break happens for me at some point (like major high sales rankings where suddenly everybody is buying my book for themselves, their friends, and their neighbor’s abnormally smart dog), but… while I’m waiting for some magic to happen I’m going to publish a bunch of books… and talk about those books, and try to figure out the best way to engage without being off-putting.

One of the difficult things with mediums like Twitter and Facebook is… people are on at all different times, so if I tweet something 5 times in one day, someone who is on Twitter all the time and doesn’t follow a ton of people might be “annoyed” because they saw the tweet five times. But what about all the followers who only see it ONE time because they aren’t on Twitter all the time, they follow a bunch of people, and they don’t read every single tweet that happened while they were away?

So it’s a balancing act. When I say something 5 times, it’s not to tell the same person five times. I figure if you want whatever I’m offering you will go get it. And if you don’t, you won’t. I’m just trying to reach different people who are on at different times. My hypno-direct-to-mind beam is only in the prototype phase so… these other methods of communicating with you will just have to do.

Read the rest of the post on Zoe Winters’ blog.

This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on The Book Designer on 3/26/12.

When I checked my Twitter account this morning (@JFBookman) I had 9,951 followers. Over the next day or two I expect this number to click over, like the odometer in your car, to 10,000. This comes with a variety of responses:

• Surprise: What took so long?
• Incredulity: You mean you really like me?
• Malaise: Does anyone care?
• Humility: That’s a lot of people to answer to!

Does having a lot of people listening influence me? A little bit, but I’ve been pretty focused on curating my Twitter stream, keeping it on the topics I write about. In that sense, I do think a lot about readers, and what’s most useful that I can provide.

Maybe because of that care, Twitter is my most important social media investment, the place I enjoy spending time and where I’ve put in the most work to establish a robust “outpost,” made the most new friends, created the most connections.

But here’s what’s really interesting to me. It took me two years of almost daily work to reach this milestone. Does this seem like a good thing? You could get 10,000 Twitter followers today:

So what’s the difference? Why spend all that time and energy if you could just spend a couple of hundred dollars and be done with it?

The Difference, Explained

What makes a community of interest? That’s the question that has guided me on Twitter over the last couple of years.

Sure, I enjoy Facebook once in a while, there’s no better way to find that cute girl who sat behind you in American History class all those years ago. That’s fun.

But for me at least, it doesn’t equate to business, and there’s no community of interest in that kind of connection.

You can also find community on Google+, a service that allows for longer text and lots of other goodies, but that isn’t where I’ve spent my time.

Twitter seems to attract certain types. As a long-time word buff and writer, the 140-character limit to your posts on Twitter seemed more like a delightful challenge than a restriction. It reminded me of the strict rules certain kinds of poetry require and the fun of working your words into a form.

A Little History, Please

Although I signed up for Twitter early in 2009, I never used my account until later that year. The stimulus was starting my blog in the fall of that year.

At the time, the people who had massive followings amazed me. How did they get all those people to listen to what they had to say?

Now, celebrities of all kinds are on Twitter, and tweets appear every day on cable news shows and at presidential debates. Twitter continues to make news as the communication medium of choice for social upheavals as well as for companies who want to use social media to influence buyers’ behavior.

But for bloggers (and authors who blog), Twitter has two blockbuster attributes that make it a desirable destination:

1. There’s no better way to connect to influencers and thought leaders in your niche, whatever it is
2. There’s no easier way to find that community of interest that can multiply your communication efforts

How to Find 10,000 People Who Want to Follow You

Compared to the really big Twitter followings, 10,000 isn’t much. Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian 14,214,322 followers) probably gains or loses 10,000 followers in a typical day.

In book publishing, Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman 149,080 followers) towers over most of us. Michael Hyatt, blogger and head of Thomas Nelson, is doing well (@MichaelHyatt 115,988).

In the indie publishing niche, my pal Joanna Penn (@TheCreativePenn) makes me look rather mouselike, with her 25,721 followers.

But here’s the thing: 10,000 is a heck of a lot of people. The biggest group I’ve ever spoken live to was about 400 people, and that filled a pretty good-sized room.

So, how do you get all those followers? Here’s my simple 3-step formula:

1. Find people who are interested in the same topics you’re passionate about
2. Follow those people
3. Post useful, amusing or educational content with links to resources, mostly not your own

That’s not too hard, is it? Just rinse and repeat for a couple of years.

This is slow, by the way, unless you’re willing to spend hours at it each day. Most of us have other things to do.

A lot of this regular day-to-day posting can be handled through nifty software like HootSuite, which allows you to schedule a bunch of posts at one time that will then be delivered at specific times.

What I like about this slow growth is this: I know that virtually every follower on my list is involved in writing, publishing, design or a related field. That’s what I was looking for when I began the search for that community of interest.

And it works! Twitter is the second-largest source of traffic to my blog, and I consider the people behind all those accounts part of the community here.

In the End, Gratitude

More than anything else, I’m left with a feeling of gratitude to all the people who’ve helped me along the way. People who re-tweeted my posts when I first got started, people who posted great content themselves that was ready to pass along to others.

And the people who served as models of how to engage on social media in general, and Twitter specifically. You can’t help but learn when you follow great people, the ones who care about helping other people to succeed.

And also to my assistant, Shelley Sturgeon of E-Vantage Business Services, who attends to all those things I seem to forget about.

Looking Forward

When authors ask about diving into social media, I always tell them that they’ll be most successful with the service that they enjoy the most.

Long term, you’ve got to be getting something more from a social media site than drudgery. Try them all to find the one that feels most comfortable to you.

I believe Twitter will eventually grow to “utility” status, like gas, electricity or telephone service. It’s such a neutral communication medium that it can be used in lots of different ways.

Apple seemed to be moving in the same direction since integrating Twitter functions into the operating system for its mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Maybe someday soon we’ll all be connected to each other seamlessly, and everyone will have their “@” address issued at birth. But by then, the whole concept of “followers” will have faded into history.

Since that day isn’t here quite yet, I’m going to go raise a glass and toast the power of social media. I think there’s no place else you can see so clearly the wisdom of marketer and motivational guru, Zig Zigler:

“You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”

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

This post, by Mathew Ingram, originally appeared on GigaOm on 3/27/12.

After months of anticipation, the e-book versions of author J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally successful Harry Potter series are now available through Rowling’s Pottermore online unit, and as my PaidContent colleague Laura Owen has noted in her post on the launch, Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with her e-books, including releasing them without digital-rights management restrictions. Obviously, the success of the Potter series has given Rowling the ability to effectively dictate terms to just about anyone, even a powerhouse like Amazon, but there are still lessons that other book publishers should take from what she is doing.

One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook from Barnes & Noble, the Kindle and Google’s e-book service (which is part of Google Play). And in keeping with Pottermore’s status as a standalone digital bookstore in its own right, users will be able to buy the books from the Rowling site and then send them to whichever platform they wish. As Laura points out, even Amazon has bowed to the power of the series and done what would previously have seemed unthinkable: it sends users who come to the titles on Amazon to Pottermore to finish the transaction.

As we’ve pointed out before at GigaOM, one of the problems for users when it comes to the e-book landscape is the clash between competing platforms — with Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble all trying to create their own walled gardens, where users can only access titles from publishers that have deals with the platform they happen to be using. Amazon and Apple in particular both seem to see books and other media content primarily as loss leaders that can help them lock users into their proprietary platforms, and recent skirmishes have seen Apple reject books that have links to Amazon’s store, and Barnes & Noble block Amazon titles from its store.

Read the rest of the post on GigaOm.

Have you ever wondered, when you’re out interacting with people on your fan page on Facebook, whether your author platform was actually growing?

Or questioned whether you should be doing some serious Tweeting, like a lot of other authors do, to gather a big following?

Well, good news. Dan Blank from We Grow Media will be here tomorrow with a content-rich article about exactly how to get started answering questions just like these.

I know you don’t want to miss it. Dan’s gathered some great resources and uses his vast experience helping authors to show you how it all works.

Using QR Codes for Book Promotion

There have been a number of publishing-related events nearby recently, and that got me thinking about promotion.

From past experience I knew that most event-goers get weighed down with freebies from vendors, and everyone ends up with plastic totes stuffed with promotional literature that might get seen, but might not.

A few weeks ago I created some new business cards at Moo.com. They print on Mohawk Superfine, probably my favorite printing paper of all time, and other similar stock. The cards are twice as thick as normal business cards and larger, too.

So I went back to Moo.com and made this one:

In this case, the book I’m promoting is the free PDF I give away on the blog (top [of the right column on my blog]).

I reasoned that, rather than try to sell somebody I had just met something they might or might not want, content marketing could make my job a lot easier.

After all, I would be in groups of writers and indie publishers, the exact people who are likely to be interested in the articles here and in the free PDF.

By giving them the card, they would have the option of downloading the PDF. If they take the trouble to get it, I can assume that they are going to be interested in the other things I do.

Here’s the back of the card:

My hope is that the promise of the PDF and the novelty of the QR codes will intrigue people enough to get their smartphone out and scan them. Of course, I’ve included a “human readable” web address as well.

After this, my next experiment with QR codes will include analytics, since I just ran across a very clever way to track QR codes with Google Analytics.

Of course, this is more metrics, more analysis to look at.

Authors as Marketers

Hate it, huh? But let’s face it. The more book discovery and purchase happen online, the more adept self-publishers have to become at understanding how this stuff works.

That’s exactly the reason I’m doing the analytics I do here on the blog and in my other projects, and why I’m excited to bring you Dan’s article tomorrow.

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