Phoenix Sullivan - Dare to Dream / Be Thrilled

eBook Launch Strategy

2012-02-12T16:40:00.000-06:00

So you have a brand-new, stand-alone ebook ready to be released into the wild. You need reviews. You need to tweet it and facebook it. You need 10-minute spots on all the popular talk shows. Right?

Obviously, none of that hurts. But how much is necessary? As with everything in the book business, it depends. What is your expectation for sales? What is your personal view of the Amazon empire? What connections do you have? How much time can you devote?

We've launched 4 Steel Magnolia Press (SMP) titles in the past 2 months. This is how we did it and the results we've had so far. Will this same strategy work for you? Maybe. Maybe not. But when I compare sales of my first two books and sales of SMP's first novellas right after launch with the results we've had using our current strategy, it's clear what we'll be doing for our next release.

Our expectations are reasonable:

We want to get our books out there with enough visibility that they can be found by readers who'll love them.
We want a quick climb so that the books have prominent placement in the New Releases lists.
We're willing to trade a few dollars profit for a good foundation in the early days.

And really? Ours is a very, very simple strategy. Nothing surprising, nothing secret. Except maybe the secret surprise concerning pre-launch activities.

Our recent titles are:

Vet Tech Tales (by me), a nonfiction novella-length memoir/essay book released mid-December
Gypsy Bond (by Lindy Corbin), a regency romance, short novella released Jan 5
Catering to the Italian Playboy (by Tamelia Tumlin), a category-length contemporary romance released last week
The Rent-A-Groom (by Jennifer Blake), a contemporary romance, long novella released last week

And because SECTOR C didn't really take off until January, I'll include it tangentially in this post to add the dimension of a full novel in a non-romance category.

The Lead-Up

Obviously you need the basics in place:

Fabulous book that's been edited
Eye-catching cover
Well-formatted files
Grabby blurb

What you don't really need:

Much pre-promotion
Reviews

The commitments you'll need to make:

Exclusivity for 90 days with Amazon through KDP Select (this basic strategy is for stand-alone titles or the first books in a series)
Giving the book away for a couple of days right after it's published
To keep vewwy, vewwy qwiet about the book being published until the appropriate time for promoting it widely

The Steps

Keep vewwy, vewwy quiet about the book. No slamming social media unless you want to say you're working on a book and will be publishing it soon.
Publish the book to Amazon in the Select program with no fanfare. Pretend it's still on your hard drive.
Set the book to go free for 2 days starting 2 or 3 days out from the time it's published on Amazon.
Once it's published and you have the url for it, send polite emails to or fill out the online forms on request sites that feature books for free asking them to feature yours. A list of a few such sites is at the end of this post. Give at least 2 days notice. Most sites will not feature your book. Many of the top sites want there to be 5-10 4-star reviews first and your new release won't have the requisite number. Be prepared for that, but know there are also a LOT of sites that automatically pick up and feature all the books for free. Your book WILL get mentioned and found (unless it's erotica -- those books are special-case).
If beta readers or others with a fairly objective eye have already read the book, you can ask them to post a review between the time you publish it and the time it goes free. This is a helpful but entirely optional step. Not one of the SMP books had a review before it went free (except SECTOR C).
Continue to keep vewwy, vewwy qwiet about the book. This is undoubtedly the hardest part about this strategy. We're told over and over to promote and pester and promote some more. To use social media till our fingers bleed from so much texting and tweeting and posting. Here's the thing: Our efforts in this scenario aren't likely to mean much weighed against the engine that pushes free titles. Trust the tools we're given and use social media at the appropriate time. Understand that the sales you run up in the couple of days before going free will mean doodly squat in the long run. Save asking for those sales until they can help the book sustain the rank it attains after going free.
Now, SMP makes an exception to the gag order when it comes to our newsletter subscribers. Many of these folk are loyal fans (mainly of Jennifer Blake), and we want to do everything we can to reward their loyalty. That means we make sure they know when a new book is out and free. Understand that there is a difference between a fan base and a friends-and-family base. If you don't have a fan base, then you don't need to advertise in advance that your book will be free.
The first day your book is free, let the booksite engines do their work, and continue to keep vewwy, vewwy qwiet.
The morning of the second day of being free, evaluate how the book is doing.
If it's been mentioned by some of the big freebook sites and it's in the Top 100 in the overall free store (NOT just a category), it has enough momentum to sustain it. Continue the qwiet routine. That's right. Your book is out. Thousands of people are downloading it, but you don't need to let your family and friends know about it yet. They'll buy it, right? The absolute best time to ask them to buy it will be after it comes off free. And while I can't make guarantees about most things, the one thing I CAN guarantee is that if you tell family and friends your book's available but can they please wait till Day X to buy it, they will not wait. The timing is in your hands and you have to have the willpower to wait for them.
If, however, your book isn't going gangbusters during its free run, then you need to decide whether to use your social network to solicit more free downloads or wait till the book is back to paid to start promoting it. Unless you are very, very well-connected through social media, my advice would be not to push the freebie hard. A mention or two, fine, but I'd hold off on the heavy promoting. A few dozen free downloads in the grand scheme means very little.
Once the book is back in the Paid Store, haul out the megaphone. The first 4 days after coming off free are the most crucial. Try to drive what sales you can in that compressed time. After that, it's up to the almighty Amazon algorithms to carry you on.
After the book is back in the Paid Store you have about 3 weeks to promote it, get some reviews and keep it noticed. After 30 days it comes off the Hot New Releases list. Keep in mind that currently the average book will typically see the after-glow sales from being free start to decline after Day 4 and drop off a cliff sometime in Week 3, even for books doing really well.
Oh, but what's that in your back pocket? Another free day? Now's the time to put it to use! Contact the free sites and start the cycle all over again.
Meanwhile, it's 30-days out from launch and you probably still haven't gotten any bloggers to review your book or any ads up for it. You'll want to work on all that, of course. Because there are no guarantees about how your book will fare in any one promotion or fare from one promotion to another.

The Results

So how have our launches fared? Not as well as some; better than others. We've been pleased with the results. Consider that it was easier to launch a book last spring, and that Spoil of War had 68 sales its first month and 77 its second. When SECTOR C came out in September, it had 37 sales and 75 in October.

Vet Tech Tales

In its first two weeks, VTT had 311 sales and 88 borrows.
In January, it had 228 sales and 32 borrows.
That's a 6-week total of 539 sales and 112 borrows.

It had a very modest free run, with only 1347 downloads. And it didn't get its first review until 6 weeks after it was published.

Gypsy Bond

Between its release Jan 5 and its second free run on Jan 31, Gypsy Bond had 235 sales and 7 borrows.
Its first free run resulted in 2400+ downloads. It's second free run saw 9500+ downloads and it hit #65 overall in the Free Store.

Between Weeks 5 and 6 after launch, GB had another 695 sales and 37 borrows.

That's a 6-week post-launch total of 920 sales and 44 borrows.

Catering to the Italian Playboy

This book has only been off free for 1.5 days. It had 10,700+ downloads while free and hit #47 overall in the US Free Store and #8 in the UK.

In the day-and-a-half since coming off free, it's had 262 sales and 15 borrows.

The Rent-A-Groom

This book also has only just come off its free run. It had 24,600+ downloads, hit #5 overall in the US Free Store and #9 in the UK.

In the day-and-a-half since coming off free, it's had 364 sales and 44 borrows.

At one point in the UK store, Catering to the Italian Playboy and The Rent-A-Groom were occupying the #6 and #7 spots for Romance. This made me smile:

SECTOR C

Let's call January its relaunch month :o). It had 14,000+ downloads on its first free run on Jan 6-7 and reached #25 in the overall Free Store. Just the opposite of Gypsy Bond, it had far fewer on its second run on Jan 31 at 3000+ downloads and barely reached the Top 100.

During January, it sold 1925 copies and had 274 borrows. So far in February, it's had 435 sales and 68 downloads.

While these 5 books have done well, we can't hit homeruns every time. Some genres and some stories will just never have the same appeal for whatever the reason. But for now, this is the strategy we at Steel Magnolia Press are following.

What's yours?

Here's a list of some of the freebook sites you can notify about your free promotion. Please be sure to read through the requirements and how to submit for each of them.

Pixel of Ink
E-Reader News Today
Free Kindle Books
Indie Books List
Freebooksy
Books on the Knob
Ereader Freebies
Bargain Book Hunter
Kindle Author

There Are No Internships In The Indie World

2012-02-11T12:13:00.001-06:00

While a number of publishing folk have the advantage of learning on the job -- whether through an internship or starting off on a low-level ladder rung -- authors who self-publish don't generally have the same training opportunities to go with the publisher hat they're forced to wear. That's where following blogs such as Kris Rusch's (her business posts are a Thursday feature) and, I hope, this one can help us all better understand the changing face of digital publishing.

In the beginning, I do urge you to follow indie bloggers who are at different levels in their own careers. Konrath, for instance, started out with tips for the newbie, but his tactics and results are pretty unrealistic for the newbie today because he's no longer in the trenches trying to figure out what works when you're bunkered in a foxhole just trying to survive another day. Aspire to his success, but perhaps look elsewhere for the nuts-and-bolts of how to achieve it as a newbie working with today's digital options.

Separating the solid advice from advice that may be somewhat impractical in your situation will be the hardest part of the knowledge-absorption process. Dean Wesley Smith's (Kris' husband) creative habits may not be yours. His level of attention to detail in a quantity-over-quality strategy may not jive with yours. Maybe you only want to write series books and not branch out to test other markets. Maybe you don't have a series bone in your body. Maybe you're concentrating on short works. On putting out one book a year -- or maybe six books a year. All require different strategies and expectations. Be open to advice from all fronts.

The more indie authors there are sharing actual results from strategies implemented, the better indies as a whole will succeed in an industry that was once very closed and good-old-boyish.

I'm very pleased that my fellow authors at Steel Magnolia Press have agreed to my sharing their successes on this blog. Of course there will be some bragging. Of course there will be some promoting. Mainly, though, it will be a bigger window for you to see through: this is the promotion, this is what went well, this is what didn't happen that we wanted to, and this is the result -- not just the immediate result, but the longer-term impact as well. From that, plus my observations on trends and tools, you can maybe extrapolate whether a strategy is right or not for your book(s). What works for romance may not work for hard science fiction. Likewise, what doesn't work in a genre as competitive as romance may work beautifully for litfic. We offer no guarantees, just honest insight, commentary and best guesses.

One day, perhaps, our sales will be so stratospheric our strategies will have little in common with an author who's just starting out or is just a few months in. Meanwhile, most of the SMP authors with books out now have the exact same struggles you have for finding an audience and hopefully keeping it. Our consortium model may even inspire you to try a variation of your own.

Look for the first of these promo results tomorrow.

The Sales Voyeur: January Sales

2012-02-09T21:45:00.002-06:00

My need for instant gratification is not being catered to right now. Nearly a third of the month of February is gone and many of the puzzle pieces around January royalties are still outstanding. I'll have to come back later in the month to backfill, so look for an updated voyeur peek in the week or so ahead.

Again dear readers who are not writers, this is a post about the ugly business side of writing, not the beautiful enchantment that comes from connecting words sweated out on the page with readers eager to be transported to new worlds and have their emotions toyed with. Your part in the equation is never, ever forgotten.

Amazon reporting has been unreliable since the crash of Feb 1. In no way do I mean to infer that Amazon has "lost" any sales. They have redundant billing systems and the data is there; it's just not finding its way into the reports in a reliable fashion right now, or with its usual near-real-time precision. There are rumors of a new reporting interface on the horizon, which if true, may account for some of the wonkiness. Last evening saw a huge influx of updates to the week ending on Feb 4 as well as changes to this week's figures. Whether what we're seeing now are the final totals, who knows? What I do know is that trying to reconcile last week, especially after the reporting meltdown late on Jan 31, with this week's captured data is a battle I won't win.

I'm not intimidated by numbers or spreadsheets, but because Amazon isn't telling us what's actually being filtered through, it's trying to make sense of a data dump without a key. And with 25 titles across 5 regions, and most of the "sales" divided between free downloads and paid sales, I finally have to concede I don't know what it all means. And won't until I'm convinced all the final figures are in.

Still, I have data to play with through Amazon, unlike Apple. There I have to wait until Smashwords receives the reports from Apple, crunches them to take their cut, then delivers them out to me in a monthly report 2 weeks after the month ends.

Waiting 6 months for a royalty statement from a traditional publisher? Hell on earth for a numbers junkie/control freak like me.

Those of us with books enrolled in KDP Select are also still waiting to see what the commission per borrow will be for January. More than the $1.70 it was in December? Less? I will say, I'm seeing a fairly drastic decrease in borrows in February, which makes sense. The Kindle Fire comes with a 1-month free membership in Prime, which means the free month for all the holiday Kindles would have been either December or January.

So, reserving the right to update these figures once the final tallies are all in later this month, here are the sales stats for January.

The Numbers Sold

Vet Tech Tales

This little book trundled right along without any further props since its mid-December release and without a review to its name until recently when it received its first and, so far, only one. It's exclusive to Amazon.

194 - US
..34 - UK
_____

228 Total Sales
..32 Borrows

Spoil of War

Still waiting on the numbers from Apple where Spoil continued to be in the Top 3 in historical fantasy in the US, UK, Canada and Australia stores much of the month. For the first time, I'll have historical data to compare (December to January), and doing that in a separate post might be beneficial, especially as we see so little in the way of iTunes data.

91 - Amazon US
36 - Amazon UK
..2 - Amazon France
..1 - Amazon Italy
..4 - B&N
18 - OmniLit
..2 - Smashwords
?? - Apple
______

153 Total Sales (+Apple)

SECTOR C

Catching a bit of a break on a lot of fronts (including the Kindle Storefront!), this near-future medical thriller pulled its weight and then some in January. With a lot of debut advances hovering around $3000 - $5000 in the traddie world, SECTOR C earned that out during January. Its post-free run in February hasn't been quite as successful, but it's still looking like another 4-figure month. It's exclusive to Amazon since Jan 5.

1902 - US
....11 - UK
.....2 - Germany
...10 - B&N
______

1925 - Total Sales
..274 - Borrows
17,000 - Freebies

How Much?

Let's break it down and add it up.

Vet Tech Tales

228 copies at 99c = $79.80
32 borrows at $1.70 = $54.40
_______

$134.20

Spoil of War

115 copies at $1.99 = $80
39 copies at 76p = $16.41
_______

$96.41

SECTOR C

50 copies at 99c = $17.50
$2.99 @ 35% royalty = $106.75
$2.99 @ 70% = $2533.11
$3.99 @ 35% = $58.65
$3.99 @ 70% = $1307.85
274 borrows @ $1.70 = $465.80
___________

$4472.16

Aggregated royalties for all 3 books

$4702.77 = Estimated January Total (+Apple royalties; borrow amounts estimated from Dec payout)

Sometimes Lightning Does Strike Twice

2012-02-03T15:51:00.000-06:00

Swoon. Again. I'm speechless.

KDP Select, Amazon Rank And The Secret Of Why Select Members Have An Advantage

2012-02-03T12:46:00.001-06:00

One debate I won't get into is the "Amazon as evil empire out to take over bookselling as we know it" one. We all have our opinions about Amazon, exclusivity and what business intents there may or may not be. We all clearly have a side in the debate, and it's obvious from my posts what mine is. I have no interest in persuasive arguments and calls to the heart and emotions on the matter, but that's me and not you.

From Day One, I have contended joining KDP Select is a matter that must be decided on an author-by-author, genre-by-genre and book-by-book basis. My attitude on that hasn't changed. What I do try to offer here is insight on what's worked or not worked for me, and that can maybe be extrapolated to your situation.

I've read numerous posts and comments about how free can get a book a better rank in the paid store. What I haven't seen is a drill-down into what that actually means. And it's here that I think folk who don't understand everything that happens the day after free have a hard time seeing how free can possibly be a viable sales tool.

Let me be clear: This post is NOT about the long tail of free but about the short-term after-glow. In the long tail, we all hope maybe 10% of folk who download a free book will eventually read it and that a percent or two will go on to purchase other works we have on offer. It's about exposure and connections. It's about the personal reader-author side of the book business. It's the side that is easily understood. It's the side where authors line up either for giving away their books to get that readership or against giving away their work for free.

But there's much more to the Select Free Model than that. You see, Amazon gives Select members who choose to make a book free two tremendous perks that non-Select books don't get. Amazon doesn't advertise these particular perks, possibly because it wants to be able to change them at will without encumbrance, but savvy authors will want to know what Amazon is doing behind the scenes to promote its Select members, at least during these initial months of the program.

I'm astonished at how few folk seem to get it. On the first of this month, KDP reporting went into meltdown. Sales, free downloads, and rank were all affected. It was crisis mode for indies who obsessively check their stats. There was a lot of moaning about the sales and rank side of things, but never once in my travels through the interweebs did I run across anyone else who had the same concern I did: The books that came off free and went into the paid store on Feb 1 were not getting the expected perks. Oh, people were concerned about "rank" in general, but no one seemed to understand what the real panic moment was.

So in case you missed it, I'm going to share the secret side of the Select program for your eyes only. Do remember, though, that you're in partnership with Amazon. You do have to meet them halfway by doing what you can to ensure your book has a decent number of downloads compared to other books in its category.

PERK 1: Kindle Lending Library Placement

Only indie books that are in Select and exclusive to Amazon can be placed in the KLL. Placement of books listed there depends on three things: Overall popularity of the book in the long term, whether a book has recently been made free, and how well it performed while free.

The first pages of the KLL are volatile. Planned churn keeps new books in front of borrowers. Where does the churn come from? Books with high downloads coming off a free run. Each day new books come off free and wind up on the front page pushing older books further back into the catalog. Books that continue to sell well once back into the paid store can linger on the first two pages for a few days, but most books soon lose prime placement.

What can you expect being on Page 1 of a major category in KLL? More borrows certainly while it's there along with a few more collateral sales from folk who decide to purchase rather than borrow your book.

You can see the KLL here.

PERK 2: Kindle Catalog Placement By Popularity

Fine, so you don't care about borrows and the KLL. You want real sales, and real sales aren't impacted, right? So, so wrong.

Amazon has many ways to discover books, but a reader has to know where to look to find, say, the Bestseller lists. Casual browsers likely go to the Kindle store and click on the category links Amazon provides on the front page of the store. Do you think the list the reader sees doing that is a bestseller list? No. It's a popularity list that is manipulated to favor Prime/Select books.

In many ways, this Popularity Catalog List (my term, don't know if it has an official name) mirrors KLL. That means the number of Select books presented to the reader/buyer on this default list outnumbers those offerings that are not in Select.

The churn on this list also mirrors the churn in KLL.

For example, in Technothrillers right now, the first 6 books presented are all Select books, and SECTOR C happens to be #3 on the list.

In the same category in KLL, SECTOR C is #2. On the Bestseller list, SECTOR C is #12.

The Analysis

Typically, Days 2, 3 and 4 after coming off free are a book's best sales days. That's when the book has the most visibility in the KLL and on the Popularity Catalog List before being churned off to Page 3 or 4. Day 1's sales are usually so-so until the book is placed into these lists, which usually happens within 24 hours of coming off free.

Right now, today, SECTOR C has better placement in the lists that casual browsers see first than other books that are considered bestsellers. This better placement is a DIRECT result of 1) the book being in the Select program, 2) the book having just come off free, and 3) the book having had thousands of downloads during the time it was free.

Beyond the first 3 or 4 days after coming off free, an otherwise unknown book must rely on the "also bought" lists its associated with, the "also vieweds," and the "recommendations" it can get. Placement on the lists on the product pages of briskly selling books depends on how good sales are in those crucial first 4 days coming off free.

I'm not sure I'm getting across the true power of that placement in terms of sales, but it's the driving force behind many of the successes you've read about here and elsewhere. SECTOR C reached at least #110 in the free store during its free run on Jan 31. I think it actually broke into the Top 100, but that's about when the rankings stalled and things started melting. I expected to get placement on the Perk Lists by the end of Day 1. When the book didn't get that placement, I panicked. I didn't care that I couldn't see rank or that the sales-counting report was broken. I knew those things would be fixed. Not getting that placement and the sales it could drive couldn't be fixed.

Luckily, thankfully, Amazon followed through on its perking, and SECTOR C and Gypsy Bond by Lindy Corbin (which had an amazing second free run and reached at least #65 in the free store), are seeing the benefits.

The Reality

Not all books will benefit. Not all books will achieve the downloads needed when free to compare favorably to other books in their categories. Not all books will resonate with readers and benefit from a free run whether they're in Select or not, whether they get prominent category placement or not.

SECTOR C and Gypsy Bond are doing well. I don't know that SECTOR C will do as well this time as it did after its first free run in early January, but sales are definitely picking up today. Gypsy Bond is doing even better than SECTOR C this time around.

Two of the books that also went free on Jan 31, though, aren't enjoying anywhere near the same success.

I'll be back later with an analysis of the discrepancy. And I'll have a wrap-up of January sales on Monday.

More Free Books!

2012-01-31T12:31:00.002-06:00

Cross-posted from the Steel Magnolia Press blog: Where Imagination Blooms.

Today only (January 31), you can get 4 Steel Magnolia Press ebooks absolutely free from Amazon. We hope you enjoy them.

GYPSY BOND
by Lindy Corbin

Regency Romance
Novella

The palm reader spoke of two paths. Would one lead Juliet to her gypsy husband?

SECTOR C
by Phoenix Sullivan

#2 Medical Thriller on Amazon for 2 weeks this past month!

10,000 years ago a pandemic wiped out much of the world. It's back. "Contagion" meets the science of "Jurassic Park" in this near-future medical thriller for fans of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook.

VET TECH TALES: THE EARLY YEARS

by Phoenix Sullivan

#1 in Veterinary Medicine and a Top 10 in Pet Essays on Amazon

A charming and insightful coming-of-age story for anyone who's ever had a pet or a dream.

EXTINCT DOESN'T MEAN FOREVER

edited by Phoenix Sullivan

Echoes of yesterday touch the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary ways in 18 provocative stories by 18 of the best up-and-coming authors of mainstream and speculative fiction around the world.

Remember, if you don't have a Kindle, you can still read Kindle books on just about any device, even your computer, with a a free app from Amazon.

Extinct ... Isn't. But It Is FREE!

2012-01-30T13:54:00.005-06:00

Wow! Has it been a year already????

This time last year I was making final decisions on which stories to accept into the Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever anthology.

Last night I enrolled 17 of the 19 stories chosen with Amazon Select and uploaded a new edition of each ebook with a new cover, new front and back matter, and the odd updated author bio. Tomorrow each of the stories goes FREE on Amazon for 2 days. Almost a year later, these stories and their anthology are still alive and kicking. In fact, January has been one of the anthology's best sales months since its launch, with nothing more than some passive promotion behind it.

With the exception of "The Angel Genome," for which Chrys had already obtained a licensed image, "Blood Fruit," which Shona photoshopped and sent over, and "Past Survivors," for which Sarah submitted personal photos, the covers were all created from creative commons images and standard Office fonts. Of course, some them are also manipulations and/or blends of multiple creative commons images. For short stories that will either be free or 99c, I think they came out rather striking as a group, don't you?

I also took the opportunity to tweak the cover of the anthology just a tiny bit, making it easier to see and read as a thumbnail. I also had to reluctantly remove one of the stories that was a reprint due to a prior contractual agreement that prohibits it from being made exclusive with Amazon. This makes me quite sad personally, although in the end it was a business decision. "Too Close for Comfort" by Kyle Aisteach is still available as a stand-alone short, and I hope we can still help drive sales of his story.

Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever is free on Amazon on Tuesday ONLY. Snag a copy soon!

Want to learn more about the individual stories and the individual authors? The following blogs are spotlighting their Extinct story contributions on Tuesday and/or Wednesday. (I'll update as the authors let me know they're participating.) Go visit and say Hi! And download some free reads on Tuesday and Wednesday while you're at it. Don't forget you can get a free app from Amazon to let you read Kindle books on any device you want.

Chrystalla Thoma: "The Angel Genome"
Peter Dudley: "Distractions"
Kenneth Burstall: "Connect"
Scott Thomas Smith: "In Ring"
Shona Snowden: "Blood Fruit"
Jo Antareau: "My Own Secret Dinosaur"
Jen White: "A Dark Forest"

Filed In: A Nice Problem To Have

2012-01-27T07:17:00.001-06:00

I continue to check the iTunes stores waiting for my book to drop off the charts there so I can feel OK about pulling it and making it exclusive to Amazon.

Late Thursday, as I write this, Spoil of War is #1 -- again -- in Historical Fantasy in the US Apple iTunes store. It's #61 in the overall Science Fiction/Fantasy genre.

It's also #1 in Canada and the UK, and #2 in Australia.

Yay, right!?

Except that's making the decision whether to put it exclusively into Amazon/KDP Select a lot more difficult. Every time it starts to slip in the rankings there, I think maybe now's the time. Then back up it climbs and I take my finger off the trigger.

As more and more time passes, I'm realizing this book has a special relationship with the iTunes stores that it doesn't have anywhere else (although OmniLit comes close).

Sure, I could probably boost its sales over on Amazon enough to compensate for the lost sales on Apple were I to remove it from iTunes distribution. Apple isn't Amazon, and making the iTunes charts doesn't have the same financial impact. Not anywhere close.

But you know what? I LIKE clicking over to Apple and seeing my book being embraced by the readers there. I LIKE seeing that it's gotten nearly 200 ratings across the stores and that the majority of those ratings are 5 stars. I LIKE visiting my book's product pages there. And I LOVE that my book has found an audience that appreciates it for what it is. Having Spoil in iTunes just makes me feel good.

My business brain says to pull it. My heart says no.

Maybe -- just maybe -- I've finally developed enough wisdom to know that following your heart is sometimes the best business decision you can make.

Caution: Trend Analysis Ahead

2012-01-26T11:22:00.000-06:00

I honestly was not going to post another sales/money update this month, but a few of you have asked. Plus I think it's important for anyone just getting into self-publishing and trying to decide how -- or even IF -- to use the promotional tools Amazon offers to understand that a trend curve is becoming apparent with many of the books that do get a boost, so I want to share some observations on that.

The first thing to remember is that in the environment as it is today there are 3 possible short-term results from a free promo period at Amazon:

Category 1: The book comes off free with high visibility and resonates with people browsing the lists for a good read. Those sales then help populate the book into the "Also Bought" lists of other like-minded high-visibility books so even more readers can find it. Many hundreds of copies of the book are sold and/or borrowed in the first week back in the paid lists.

Category 2: The book comes off free with moderate visibility, populates into the Also Boughts of moderately selling titles, and has many dozen sales/borrows in the first week.

Category 3: The book simply doesn't resonate with readers because of any number of reasons (title, cover, description, price, topic, time of the year, phase of the moon, who knows?). The book may or may not see even a blip in sales.

The second thing to remember is that people LOVE to share their successes. Not so much their disappointments. One thing I've noticed is that many, many authors are excited to share how many books they've had downloaded for free and to note they've made a bestseller list or two on the free side. Only a small percentage of these folk are willing to share what happened once the book went back to the paid list. That means for every success, big or moderate, there are a lot of books that didn't live up to expectations. It's a gamble. Occasionally you win. Most of the time the house wins. Even so, I've not heard of a case where anyone's walked out with less money than they came to the table with, so I consider it a "safe" gamble.

I've been following the rise and fall of a number of books that have done well coming off free, and the pattern is pretty consistent, give or take a day or two, across the board. Whether this pattern is planned into the algorithms Amazon uses to identify and churn bestsellers or is simply a phenomenon of buyer behavior in response to the way the free promotions are used, I don't know. What's important is that we recognize it and plan for it -- until something changes the pattern.

SECTOR C fits the pattern pretty well. It's in the smaller percentage of books that see some really nice success when they come off free, but it's by no means an outlier. If your book falls into Category 1 from above, this is the pattern you're likely to see over the first two weeks. If it's in Category 2, the order of magnitude will be smaller, but the same trend will usually be evident. So, moderate sales the first day off free; followed by sales spikes on Days 2, 3 and 4; followed by sinking sales thereafter but no precipitous drop-offs in the first couple of weeks. That drop-off usually occurs somewhere in Week 3.

The remedy for that drop-off currently seems to be to put the book back up for free to goose sales again. The question is how many times will that be successful? Does the free promotion work on the law of diminishing returns? For now, this is unexplored territory that the mapmakers are hurriedly charting. I'll be setting SECTOR C and Vet Tech Tales (a Category 2 book that saw a similar sales pattern) free again for one day at the end of the month. I'll of course report back with maps in hand.

As of Thursday morning, SECTOR C has dropped to a rank of #4091. It saw its precipitous drop yesterday with only 15 copies sold and 1 borrow. Still, I have very little to complain about. I gambled with Amazon and more than quintupled my earnings so far this month. And best of all, my books are being read by marvelous readers!

In real dollars, that's about $4242.62 earned so far in January across 3 books and all venues except iTunes (Apple reports are delayed).

Next month, that could drop to $400 or $40. If I still had a day job, I wouldn't be ready to quit it on the strength of one month that could prove to be an anomaly.

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments. Or is there a topic you'd like to see a post on?

Score Another Launch!

2012-01-23T03:14:00.002-06:00

The reward for hanging out with talented neophyte writers is that said writers tend to finally publish and lose all that neophytedness.

I first "met" Peter Dudley over at Evil Editor's place more years ago than I care to recall. When he submitted "Distractions" to the Extinct anthology, I was delighted to include the short story, not because I had ties with Peter (there are some lovely, lovely writer-folk who I also know whose work I didn't accept) but because the story was witty, fun and well-written. Even if it was a story I had to bend the theme a bit to accommodate.

Now, Peter has released Semper, a YA dystopian novel that I'm super eager to read. Judging from the Acknowledgements page, this should be a truly fantastic book :o).

You could wait for the book to go free next month on Amazon for a short window of time, or you could pick up a copy now for just $2.99. A print version will also be available soon.

Kudos And A Giveaway!

2012-01-17T00:13:00.000-06:00

One of our alumni has sold their book and will see it in print June 1. How exciting is that?! We saw the query for TJ Robinson's THE ACADEMY DEFENDERS just over a year ago.

The publisher, Rhemalda Publishing, is holding a drawing at Goodreads for 5 free advance copies.

There are already 178 readers who've entered. By that indicator, this book should be a hot read for summer once it's officially released.

Go. Enter. Enjoy.

Pulsing Free, Repricing, And Tagging For The Future

2012-01-15T22:46:00.000-06:00

I was going to tease by putting the mid-month sales update at the end of this post, but then decided my observations might mean more if you know better where I've been and where I am.

It's been a slow climb, but December made me finally believe indie publishing can personally be worth the time invested. Earnings certainly wouldn't have paid the mortgage if I still had a mortgage to be paid, but it did mean enough for an extra treat or two for the beasties. With Apple iTunes numbers now accounted for, here are the totals for December:

$ 382.23 - Spoil of War: 489 copies at $1.99
$ 85.40 - SECTOR C: 244 copies at 99c
$ 108.85 - Vet Tech Tales: 311 sales at 99c
$ 149.60 - Vet Tech Tales: 88 borrows at $1.70
______

$ 726.08 - Total

SECTOR C obviously didn't pull its weight in December. A 2-day free run on Jan 6-7 and a featured spot on the Kindle store front page Jan 10-11 helped turn that around. Eyes off the other books, though, meant they turned into slackers instead. At least at Amazon. Spoil continued to rock it in the iTunes stores. Since the Apple report won't be available before mid February, the sales cited below do not include whatever Spoil has made at Apple. For the first two weeks in January:

$    17.50 - SECTOR C: 50 sales at 99c
$ 2549.19 - SECTOR C: 1326 sales at $2.99
$ 353.60 - SECTOR C: 208 borrows at $1.70 *December amount used to estimate
$ 45.85 - Spoil of War: 78 at $1.99 in US, 86p in UK
$   45.15 - Vet Tech Tales: 129 sales at 99c
$    32.30 - Vet Tech Tales: 19 borrows at $1.70*
_______

$ 3043.59 - Total

The question, of course, is how to maintain the momentum. And this is where things get interesting.

Pulsing Free

Authors are just now starting to make a book that's gone through a free promotion in the past few weeks free again. The jury is still out as to how effective a second and/or third pulse to free might work. Will it generate less interest? More? How does an author reach a new audience to market the free book to? When is it best to pulse the book a second time? While the book is still doing fairly well or wait till it's dropped back to a mediocre rank?

As I write this, on Sunday evening, SECTOR C has just fallen out of the triple digits. Books that have followed the same free route it did are now clamoring for the same spotlight it had. Talk about volatility! Of course, I predicted it would fall back to a 4-digit rank by the end of the day last Thursday, so it's actually kept its head above water 3 days longer than I thought it would. I'm already looking forward to doing this again! I just wish I had a clearer idea of when best to time the next promo. In the meantime, I'm keeping an eye on other double-dippers and their results.

Category Tagging

I mentioned in a previous post a mistake I made in tagging. It wasn't that I didn't think carefully about what I was doing, I simply didn't think big enough.

When you publish a book through Amazon, you are allowed to choose two genre categories for your book from a predetermined list. There's an issue, though. Amazon has two separate catalogs: Books (which includes all books and all Kindle titles) and the Kindle Store. Not only that, not all the subcategories Amazon allows customers to browse by are author-selectable.

So when I first published the book, a near-future medical thriller, I chose the following category paths:

     Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical
     Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction > High Tech

Amazon helpfully added the Books equivalent of the Kindle Store category:

     Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > High Tech

My dilemma was this: I wanted the book to be in a thriller category. Thriller by itself is a HUGE category and uber-competitive. I was pretty certain the book could never make it into the Top 100, which meant I needed it in a smaller sub-category. I had the choice of "Technothriller" in the Kindle catalog or "Medical Thriller" in the Books catalog. Gah. Why is there no "Medical Thriller" cat in the Kindle Store? I chose:

     Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Medical

To add this category, I had to contact Amazon to do it for me as it's not a choice on the author-selectable list.

This past week, SECTOR C rose high enough in the rankings to be where I thought it never would be: on the Thriller bestseller list. And not just the Thriller list, but the umbrella bestseller list of Mystery, Thriller and Suspense. The problem: It was in the Books catalog, not the Kindle Store, so folk looking specifically for Thrillers in the Kindle Store would not see it.

I realized the mistake as the book was climbing up the ranks. I was afraid to try to change anything about the book's details myself because there is some anecdotal evidence that while the book is republishing it loses some of its momentum. I emailed Support and asked them to change Fiction > Medical to the Thriller > Technothriller category in the Kindle Store and was told I had to go in and remove the category myself -- that by policy they couldn't do it.

I opted to wait until the book started losing rank. Tonight, when it dropped into the low 1000s I removed the one category and have asked Amazon to include the other. What this will do at least is set the book up in front of another potential audience when it comes off free the next time even if it has little impact right now.

Repricing

Yeah, I figured while I was republishing the book's details, I might as well raise the price of it by a dollar.

So I guess I'm not really doing anything to help it reclaim its momentum now, but I am setting it up for a possible replay of this past week's success in the future.

And a final observation: It's funny, isn't it, how quickly we accept a better level of something? Ten days ago, I would have been ecstatic to sell a dozen copies of the book in a day. Today I'm sad that I've only sold 65. So far. There's still a few hours left ...

Polishing The Apple

2012-01-14T11:31:00.001-06:00

If you trawl the interweebs looking for information about sales stats and promotion for indie books, you're going to find, I dunno -- 98% ? -- of the posts discussing Amazon. It isn't that other venues don't sell books. In fact, for certain titles in certain genres -- erotica and romance, in particular -- Barnes & Noble outsells Amazon. It's just that BN doesn't seem quite so welcoming toward their indie authors. And I've yet to meet anyone who understands BN algorithms and rankings and what influences them the same way savvy self-publishers understand Amazon.

And if we're going to be honest, most readers (buyers) don't have a love affair with the BN online experience either. Just about everyone who mentions shopping BN online says they've given up on browsing at BN altogether; instead, they do their browsing at Amazon first, find the titles they want, then head over to BN to get the exact books they're looking for. BN is losing out on a lot of impulse buys that way, I think. And now that there are 75,000+ titles exclusive to Amazon, BN customers who browse through Amazon may be disappointed when they find BN doesn't carry some of the titles they want.

All to say, traffic at BN for my personal titles and for SMP titles in general could be better, but I am clueless how to increase it. The handful of sales I've historically made there makes the decision easy for me to offer all my books exclusively through Amazon.

And I would -- except for the wrench that is Apple. Between April and November, the only intersection I had with Apple was 12 sales. I don't have Apple hardware, so I can't upload directly through their store. That means going through Smashwords and their meatgrinder and sales reports that are 4-6 weeks behind. Aarrgh. I set Spoil of War free on iTunes at the beginning of November. I will never know how many downloads it had because while Apple reports those numbers to people who upload directly, the Smashwords reports don't include the free downloads. Nevertheless, I assume the figures were impressive enough for Apple to feature the book prominently in various places through its various regional stores.

When the book went to paid status, it nabbed the #1 spot in Historical Fantasy for much of December in all 4 English-based stores: US, UK, Canada and Australia. Granted, the HF category isn't the most popular category in Fantasy, but it still hung out in the Top 30 in Fantasy and the Top 100 in SF/F. Made for some lovely screen captures, but all the while I was clueless as to how many copies it was selling. Well, Apple finally reported to Smashwords who reported to me and the results are ... better than the 2 sales per month I'd been averaging, but far fewer than the 400+ sales across the other venues after coming off free in December.

US: 50
AU: 23
UK: 5
CA: 7
_____

85 - Total

If the story ended with these figures and Spoil fading fast on the charts, the next-step decision to make it exclusive to Amazon would be easy. But three things mean the story isn't done.

1) During the first week of January, Spoil was still clinging to a Top 10 spot in the US, #3 in Australia and #1 in the UK and Canada. Last week, it dipped to #11 in the US and #3 in Australia, and I assumed it was beginning its slow slide into oblivion. Not so. This morning, it's back at #3 in the US. And it's in the Top 100 in Fantasy and is #131 in all of SF/F. Plus it's still being prominently featured in the What's Hot sections.

It's still #1 in the UK and Canada, and in Australia it's back to #1 in Historical Fantasy, #23 in Fantasy in Australia and, most amazingly, #24 in all of SF/F.

2) Spoil has over 176 ratings on iTunes now that average between 4 and 4.5 stars, with over 100 5-star ratings. I'm considering mentioning these ratings in the product description on Amazon to offset the 1-star reviews there. But if I pull the book from iTunes, I'll lose those dear ratings.

3) The rumor mill is abuzz with speculation about what Apple's big announcement at the end of this month will be. All clues lead to big news about its ebook program. And if perks are going to be offered to authors, Spoil is a great candidate to test the waters with if it continues to have rank and visibility there.

So for now, I've pulled Spoil from those venues where it wasn't performing and which are slow to respond to remove requests (Kobo, Sony and Diesel) so I can be ready to position the book wherever it makes the most sense come month's end.

If your book is with an agent or publisher, decisions about which venues and which programs will be in their hands, of course, not yours. If you're with the Big 6, it probably makes little difference unless you've been relegated as a mid-lister before you even start out and there are no marketing dollars being put toward your book. If you're with a digital-only publisher, they likely don't have the resources to consider what's best for each book on an individual basis, especially one that's been out a few months.

If you're poised to sign with a digital-only publisher, a good conversation to have with them beforehand is whether you can have any input in how the book is marketed in order to take advantage of the various boosts available. Between a savvy author and an experienced marketing department, a "small" book by an unknown author can get off to a very good start. But it takes work and cooperation to make it happen.

I'll update how SECTOR C is faring tomorrow.

For Every Season -- Churn, Churn, Churn

2012-01-12T12:05:00.000-06:00

Lots of updates to discuss over the next few days, including lots of talk about money. (Dear readers who are not writers who are visiting here, please understand this blog is about the business side of publishing. Readers are ALWAYS the primary equation in any book's sales, and you are never, EVER lost sight of, despite how impersonal the business side can feel.)

Amazon Announces KDP Select Payout Totals

First up is Amazon's announcement as to what the payout per book borrowed will be for its KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select program.

You'll recall having a book in this optional program not only allows the author to set when and how long they can promote a book for free (each author is alloted 5 days out of the 90 the book is contracted to sell exclusively through Amazon), it also places the book in the Prime Lending Library from which Prime members may borrow one book per month. One month of Prime membership is included free with the purchase of a Kindle Fire, so December and January totals will likely be a bit skewed as Fire owners discover and act on their trial membership. The book borrow is just a little added perk for members. The real draw is free 2-day shipping on any purchase plus streaming video for the $79 per year membership fee.

Speculation was rampant as to what the payout per book borrowed would be. The payout, we were told up front, would be an equal pro rata share applied against the total number of books borrowed. List price on the book would not factor in.

I enrolled Vet Tech Tales upon its release in mid December. List price: 99 cents. I enrolled for the benefit of making it free so this new release could gain some visibility. I honestly didn't believe anyone would bother to use their free borrow option on a 99c book. If anything, I thought maybe it would get a few impulse buys and readers would opt for another, more expensive title instead.

When I got my first borrow on it, I felt a little heart tug. Someone thought enough of it to borrow it! When I got my second borrow, my imagination fired up, and I pictured a younger reader with a limited amount of money drawn to the cute kitten on the cover, believing the book would be all about animals (which it is and it isn't). Of course I think my book is a worthwhile read, but it's novella length and who would want to borrow it over a full-length bestselling book about, say, Rin Tin Tin? That initial heart tug turned into a heart constriction.

By the end of the month, 88 wonderful readers had borrowed the book. I couldn't be more honored or surprised or conflicted by that gesture. (I have since enrolled SECTOR C and, it being the book it is, I have no such ambiguity about it being in the Lending Library.)

In all, 295,000 books were borrowed during December with each of those borrows receiving an equal share of $500,000. That means the author will be paid $1.70 for each borrow. While that's nearly 5 times the royalty this 99c book would have earned for a sale, it's about 35c less than what a book selling for $2.99 would earn as a royalty. In December, I sold 311 copies of Vet Tech Tales and made $108.85. On 88 borrows, I made $149.60.

Every self-pubbed author has to decide what they want most from a book: readers, ranking, dollars. Even for my $2.99 book, I think the trade-off in perks -- for now -- is worth staying in Select. For another author, it may not be, and that's OK. The last I checked, it's still a free market out there.

Churned Off of the Kindle Store's Front Page

After a lovely 2-day run of hanging out with the likes of The Help, The Hunger Games, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I now realize what SECTOR C needed to stay featured there: a title that starts with "The."

Indie titles on the front page churn a bit faster than the perennial bestsellers, especially in the genre fiction categories, so it's no surprise really that SECTOR C fell off the page to be replaced with a much better-selling book by Mainak Dhar, an author I'm acquainted with through the Kindleboards forum. In fact, SECTOR C originally replaced his book to begin with, so it was more like I just borrowed the space from him for a couple of days.

It took initial sales to gain that spot, of course, and, once there, being featured kept its sales on an even keel. I'll have more insight by day's end, but it looks like being featured was contributing quite a bit to yesterday's sales as things seem to be tapering off rapidly this morning.

Here's a quick recap of the activity between the beginning of the day last Friday and end of day yesterday.

Friday: First day of a 2-day free promo. By the end of the day, the book had been downloaded 6780 times and reached #47 overall in the free store in the US, including being #1 in Science Fiction.

Saturday: Got as low as #25 overall in the free store and #14 in all free Fiction in the late afternoon. Ended its free run at #36 overall. Total downloads for both free days right about 13,000.

Sunday: 103 Sales / 18 Borrows; ended the day at #2049 overall and #66 in Science Fiction

Monday: 308 Sales / 67 Borrows; ended the day at #277 overall and #5 SF in the Kindle store / #8 SF in the overall Books store, and was the #2 Medical Thriller in Books

Tuesday: 295 Sales / 51 Borrows; book appeared on the front page of the Kindle store; ended the day at #258 overall and broke into the Top 100 of Thrillers at #55

Wednesday: 322 Sales / 30 Borrows; had a best rank of #224 and ended #230 overall

Best ranks attained in the various categories:

#1 High Tech SF in Kindle and Books stores
#2 Medical Thriller in Books
#3 Medical Fiction in Books
#5 SF Kindle
#8 SF Books
#20 SF/F Books
#34 Genre Fiction
#43 Thiller in Books
#77 Mystery/Suspense/Thriller in Books

It's at #255 late morning today, but if sales continue as is, it'll probably be around #1100 or so by day's end. I'll do a follow-up in a day or two, but it's been a fun 15 minutes! I think breaking into the Top 100 in the uber-competitive Mystery/Suspense/Thriller category was the most amazing bit about all of this.

And as savvy as I felt I was about properly tagging a book, I still made a mistake that likely cost me some sales. I'll have more about that -- and help with how you won't make the same mistake -- in a later post.

Oh, and a side note. The above is for US sales only. Total paid sales over the same 4 days in the UK: 7.

Through Jan 11, then, the totals for SECTOR C are:

13,000 - free downloads
50 - sold before going free at 99c
1028 - sold after the free promo at $2.99
166 - borrows

The royalty side is a little complicated. Math-a-phobes may want to just skip to where it says "total" below. At $2.99, Amazon pays a 70% royalty on books sold through certain countries, such as the US, the UK and Canada. For other countries that buy through the US store, such as Australia, the royalty drops to 35%. Amazon breaks down the royalties in a weekly report that comes out every Sunday. So until then I won't know how many of those 1028 books earned a 35% rate or a 70% rate. On top of that, Amazon charges a delivery fee of about 15c per megabyte (the file size of the book) at the 70% rate (there is no additional charge at the 35% rate). SECTOR C is about a half a megabyte, so it earns about $2.03 per copy at the 70% rate and about $1.04 at the 35% rate.

For guestimate purposes, I'll use a 9:1 ratio of books selling at the 70% rate vs the 35% rate to come up with an estimated total for the first 11 days of January.

17.50 - 50 copies at 35-40% royalty rate (BN has a 40% rate and I sold 10 before removing the book from sale there)
107.12 - 103 copies (10% of 1038) at 35% rate
1877.75 - 925 copies (1038-103) at 70% rate
282.20 - 166 borrows (this is figured at December's payment of $1.70 per copy; January payment may vary)
_____

$2284.57 (1483.58 GBP) - Total

iTunes Sales

Apple sales have been a bit of a mystery until the report finally came in yesterday for December sales. I'll save those totals for you for our next discussion ;o).

Window Shopping

2012-01-10T09:55:00.001-06:00

SECTOR C is on the landing page of the Kindle ebook store today! How cool is that? No clue as to how long it may remain. It proved itself yesterday to get that placement today; now it has to prove itself today to keep it. The live shot is here. Amazon bounces the order around some to keep things interesting.

It started the day with a rank of #278 in the overall store, based on its 308 sales plus 67 borrows on Monday. I don't know what it needs to keep on the front page (which may be a manual placement by the Amazon "editor") or to keep its current ranks. I'm pretty new to sales at this velocity and have nothing to compare to, although I am getting some advice from a couple of other authors who have books that are laterally or better ranked than mine.

To be honest, I'm more nervous about today's sales than yesterday's. Yesterday, anything was better than where SECTOR C had already been. Today, it has expectations to do at least as well, if not better, than yesterday. It's already slipped rank from #278 to #294, and sales feel slower today. Although if I compare the first 8 hours of today to the first 8 hours of yesterday, the book has had only 1 less sale, and that was over the last hour. This upcoming hour yesterday had even fewer sales. Is that normal? Was yesterday a slow sales day? Is today? WILL THEY PULL THE BOOK OFF THE FRONT PAGE IF IT DOESN'T MEET A CERTAIN UNKNOWN QUOTA?

The butterflies are multiplying.

Now, I know that many books coming off a free ride rocket up then fizzle fast. I expect that. I also know what an incredible opportunity this is -- one that is handed to only a small percentage of authors. I'm grateful for whatever time this book has. And I'm even more grateful to the 600+ readers who have taken a chance on SECTOR C this month outside of its free run. I haven't lost sight of who I owe any amount of success to.

Here's where it's starting from now. Feel free to follow along.

#294 Overall

#2 Medical Thrillers - All Books
#59 Thrillers - All Books
#3 Medical Fiction - All Books
#42 Genre Fiction - All Books
#1 Hi-Tech SF - Kindle Store
#5 Science Fiction - Kindle Store
#1 Hi-Tech SF - All Books
#8 Science Fiction - All Books
#21 SF and Fantasy Combined - All Books

Gypsy Bond - Debut Novella

2012-01-09T10:43:00.001-06:00

Update: During its free run, SECTOR C topped out at #25 in the Amazon free store. It was #16 in overall Fiction and #1 in Science Fiction.

After having its algorithms readjusted after making its way back into the paid store yesterday, this morning it was sitting at #952 in the overall paid store, #3 in Medical Thrillers and #38 in Science Fiction. I don't know if it can hold those ranks, but for now at least, what fun!
_______________________________________

In other news, Steel Magnolia Press has a brand-new novella by an almost brand-new author. Lindy Corbin had a book traditionally published many years ago, but like many of us, life and bills got in the way and writing had to take a backseat for awhile.

Gypsy Bond is a Regency Romance with a steam rating of about 4-ish out of 5. Her cover is by Hot Damn Designs. And it's on offer at the special introductory price of just 99 cents.

Interestingly, Gypsy Bond seems to have found an audience in the UK already, having much better success in that market than SECTOR C is having, despite SECTOR C's strong showing in the US. You would think the English liked their stories set in England or something :o).

The palm reader spoke of two paths. Would one lead Juliet to her gypsy husband?
~~~
At sixteen, Juliet Bailey was hand-fasted to the gypsy, Marko, but when the tribe moved on, she was left behind. For years, she has endured snubs and snide remarks whispered behind lace fans. Now that the gypsies have returned, she demands her rightful place beside her husband.

Marko, who returned to Derbyshire to lay aside his memories of their rash affair, refuses to acknowledge the union. Though attracted to her still, he is convinced that her happiness lies in taking a husband who is her peer.

Stung by Marko’s rejection, will Juliet choose the path that will separate them forever?
~~~
Novella. About 16,000 words / 60 pages.

Free Is Good - And So Are Author Interviews

2012-01-07T08:35:00.001-06:00

I so promised myself I wasn't going to do screencaps every few hours during SECTOR C's free run on Amazon and that I would keep it a low-key affair. But that was before I saw this.

Not only this, in the wee, wee hours (where we again see the importance of commas) of Saturday morning, it hit:

#33 in the free store overall
#16 in Genre Fiction
#19 in All Fiction

7931 downloads in just over 24 hours.

Update at 4:00 PM: SECTOR C is now #27 in the free store overall with over 10,500 downloads since yesterday.

And the icing (because some days you get iced cake and other days you get the shaft): an author interview to cap off my stay over at the shiny new Indie Books R Us review site.

The Sales Voyeur: December Sales

2012-01-06T12:23:00.003-06:00

Whether it's for the beginning of world domination by Amazon or merely the first volley in a new battle for customers, December 2011 will be remembered as a watershed moment in ebook sales. Amazon's Select program with its ability for authors to now promote their book for free for up to 5 days at author discretion has already changed the way books sell on Amazon. That, coupled with strong sales of classics and traditional bestsellers at Christmas-time, has made it at once easier and tougher to send a book up the rankings.

Easier because, in many cases, free sells. Right now, today, free can be a powerful promotional tool, and the ability to control the promotional timeframe for the right book at the right time can pay off handsomely. How? By giving books and authors that "chance" everyone whines about. It can get your book noticed. What it can't do is sustain that notice. As an exclusive partner, this is what Amazon can offer. It isn't right for all books, but for the books it is right for, free can put an otherwise obscure book on the charts for its 15 minutes of fame. The unknown factor is whether or not free as a promotion will continue to work in the long term. Being flexible in this environment is the name of the game.

Harder because 1) if you don't want a book exclusive to Amazon, you lose the advantage of the bump free can bring, and 2) the divide between the bestsellers and the under-performers is widening. Where once selling 10 books a day could get you a ranking of, say, 10,000, it now takes 15 or 20 sales. The rankings -- and, in turn, the bestseller lists -- are more volatile than ever.

The Numbers

Anecdotal evidence on the Kindleboards and elsewhere seems to indicate in December that the rich got richer and the poor stayed poor as the gap started gaping. Many authors report double and triple their sales average over the last months. In any other month, my own sales would have been Good ++. As it is, they only merit a Good rating.

Spoil of War came off a November-long free ride at Apple and Amazon. I'll update with sales numbers from Apple whenever they come in, but Spoil enjoyed being the #1 Historical Fantasy in the US, UK, Canada and Australia iTunes stores throughout much of December. No matter how many or few sales were made, the real joy there was in seeing it go head-to-head with the big boys and to come away with over 150 ratings averaging 4 to 4.5 stars across all the sites. As of Friday morning, Jan 6, it's at #8 in the US store, (OMG) still #1 in Canada, (*swoon*) #1 in the UK, and #3 in Australia.

After its sales bump coming off free in Amazon with over 25,000 copies downloaded, Spoil settled in at Amazon selling 5-10 copies a day.

In a milestone month, it passed its 1000th lifetime sale in December.

The breakdown:

285 - Amazon US
.92 - Amazon UK
..4 - Amazon FR
..9 - BN
.14 - OmniLit
___________

404 - Total + Apple Sales

SECTOR C didn't go free, but early in the month it did get a lovely free mention from Kindle Books for a Buck and had a paid sponsorship (a $60 ad) on Kindle Nation Daily on Dec 28. In this particular instance, the free feature pulled in more short-term sales than did the paid spot.

The breakdown:

228 - Amazon US
.10 - Amazon UK
..6 - BN
___________

244 - Total

Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years debuted on Dec. 13, and I immediately enrolled it in Amazon Select. I offered it for free for 2 days, Dec 22 and 23, and 1347 readers picked it up for free. Once off free, it quickly became the #1 bestseller in Veterinary Medicine and went on to become the #1 or #2 bestselling Hot New Release in 3 separate categories: Medicine, Science and Animal Care & Pets. It's only eligible for the Hot New Release lists for a few more days, so I'm hoping its visibility remains high for those last days.

Being in the Select program also means the book is available to be borrowed through Amazon's Prime Lending Library. Still waiting to hear how much each borrow earned for the month of December and will update as soon as we know.

The breakdown:

270 - Amazon US
.41 - Amazon UK
___________

311 - Total Sales
88 - Borrows

What's Next

This past week I removed SECTOR C from all retailers save Amazon and entered it into the Amazon Select program. The reason is pretty obvious: 6 sales at BN and no or neglible sales in the other stores vs 238 sales in a month through Amazon.

Today and tomorrow SECTOR C is free. I've requested mention on a couple of the major books-for-free sites, and a feature on Free Kindle Books and Tips has already given the book a nice bump. As of noon today, it's already #292 in the free store, #1 in Hi-Tech SF and #4 in all of SF.

A new release from a new Steel Magnolia Press author, Lindy Corbin, is also free today and tomorrow. It's a Regency Romance novella: Gypsy Bond, and it's already #23 in free Historical Romance without any extra push. If you miss the free period, you can also pick it up later for just 99 cents.

The contemporary novella, A Vision of Sugarplums, by Jennifer Blake that Steel Magnolia offered free throughout December finally got price-matched to free on Amazon on Dec. 27. It had over 12,000 downloads, and in the 2 days it's been back on the paid list has made the best-seller list for Contemporary Romance in Amazon, and is hovering around the #1300 rank. Even backlist titles get new life sometimes.

Last year, many indie authors saw sales pick up mid-January after new Kindle owners downloaded their favorite authors then got adventuresome looking for more, and then continue high for a couple of months. One year, however, does not a trend make. I'm as eager as the next author to see what this new year brings.

Double Yay!

2012-01-05T12:18:00.001-06:00

Whew! It's like a week-long reviewfest at the Indie Books R Us blog. Cate posted her review of SECTOR C there today, and I'm happy to say it's a double Yay from the team. I'll be wrapping up my spotlight week there on Saturday with an author interview, and the questions they're asking are pretty awesome and insightful. I only hope my responses do the questions justice!

That said, I've made the decision to put SECTOR C into Amazon's Select program. One of the cool things about having control over a digital book is that you can make changes relatively quickly to match changes in the marketplace or in your own marketing plan. Conventional wisdom tells us we should make one change at a time to better track the effectiveness of each change. Well, I'm thwarting conventional wisdom, knowing full well I'll be sorry about it down the road when I'm forced to look at lessons learned (obviously I learn the lessons, I just don't implement the learned part).

Not only is SECTOR C now exclusive with Amazon, it has a new cover, a new title page and new back matter. Soon, it will have a new price ($2.99). And it's going on its first free run for 2 days on Friday and Saturday. The only thing that hasn't changed is the story itself. Nothing like a facelift to fall in love again with obsessing over what's working and what's not.

Tomorrow, I'll have the December sales wrap-up, along with some numbers from how others did.

Yay!

2012-01-03T11:58:00.000-06:00

There's a new book review site in the blogosphere and I have no doubt it's gonna be killer.

Ooh, pretty,wispy, ethereal site!

Indie Books R Us is the brainchild of two dedicated author/reviewers, Cate Peace (aka Lexcade) and Landra Graf (aka Rise of the Slush). Separately, these ladies rock when it comes to putting out reviews. Together ... well, settle in for the ride. Depth and insight and a knack for getting to the underlying intents and issues of a work are their hallmarks. I enjoy reading their reviews even though they almost always make me interested in a book I figure beforehand will be an easy pass. If I have any complaint about them as reviewers, it's that they're awfully hard on the wallet.

Go. Put the site in your RSS feed or have their posts emailed to you.

I've been following their individual blogs and reading their reviews and other posts for ages now. All to say I've been a fan of their work for a long time, and the fact that their inaugural review is of SECTOR C in no way influences the admiration I have for these ladies.

Plus, Landra and Cate are both HUGE advocates for animals. Landra contributes a monthly post to the Confessions of an Animal Junkie blog about a small rescue organization -- Pawsibilities -- she belongs to and the important work they do in finding foster and forever homes for the dogs in their care. Cate tweets and posts links and videos that help raise awareness about animal neglect and abuse.

Oh, what rating did they give SECTOR C? A "Yay!" How cool is that?!

Look for my author interview with them on the Indie Books R Us site this weekend.

And look for my December sales roundup here soon! (It's a cautious "yay" too.)

Shelf Placement

2011-12-27T05:30:00.003-06:00

In a not-so-surprising twist, I had planned a post on holiday placement at the various venues before Amazon stepped in with their quite surprising site change, which pre-empted this post with yesterday's.

What's amazing to me on Apple's iTunes site as well as Amazon's is how comfortably traditionally pubbed books rub shoulders with the indies. At Barnes and Noble, not so much.

Two of the books that I published out to Apple (through Smashwords) for Steel Magnolia Press got some lovely placement last week just before Apple announced most of their crew would be off for the holidays. While the bestseller lists are automated, the other lists seem to be manually overseen. So at one of the busiest times for ebook buying, these books have prime placement with the potential that they'll keep that placement through the first of the year.

On the US iTunes site, on the Romance splashpage, Out of the Dark is the first book on the Under $5 promo spot. How cool is that?

On the Contemporary Romance page on the US site, A Vision of Sugarplums has a spot on the New and Noteworthy list. And it's even a free title!

Even though Spoil of War has dropped off the bestseller list for Historical Romance in the US store, someone at Apple continues to give it some love as it still has a place on the What's Hot list for Historical Romance. It's still clinging to the What's Hot lists for SFF in the regional stores, too.

Allowing Spoil to go free last month was one of the best decisions I could have made for it. At Apple, it continues to perform well (although I won't know what that means in actual numbers until next month). It's getting great exposure in the iTunes stores.

Spoil is currently #9 in Historical Fantasy in the US and is on the What's Hot lists for both Historical Fantasy and all Fantasy.

In the Canada store, Spoil is #1 in Historical Fantasy, and has been for over a week now. It's #30 there in ALL Science Fiction and Fantasy titles.

I'm not sure what its actual rank is in the UK. It doesn't appear in the Top 10 on the Historical Fantasy splashpage, but when I click the link to see how far down it is, this is what I get:

Nice, and I'll take it certainly, but sort of WTF? :o)

Spoil has also been #1 in Historical Fantasy in Australia for the past 4 days. The screenshot looks very much like Canada's up there, so I'll spare you that image.

At OmniLit, sister site to All Romance eBooks, Spoil got a featured spot right before the holiday weekend. Pretty, huh?

In Amazon, Spoil has been selling steadily -- certainly better than it's sold previously. It's still in the halo effect from being free, I think, so I'm watching closely to see what happens in the next couple of weeks. So far, it's sold 329 copies this month across all venues, with Apple not yet reporting in.

Vet Tech Tales is up to 194 sales after its free push.

Now I'm anxiously waiting to see what my promo over at Kindle Nation Daily on Wednesday might do for SECTOR C, which has sold 176 copies to date this month.

Lessons learned this holiday season: Pushing a lot of unrelated books? Not easy. But in its way, quite fun. I'm beginning to feel like a "real" author ;o).

For Some Gifts, It's All In The Timing

2011-12-26T11:39:00.001-06:00

We talk about luck in the publishing industry all the time. Today I'm the beneficiary of a small stroke of it. Amazon has given me a gift.

Well, OK, it's not really MY gift. In fact, it's a small gift meant for readers and I'm just collateral damage. And not just me. A number of authors are receiving the same gift -- and all because we were in the right place at the right time.

Overnight, Amazon made a small change to its site design. Nothing much -- the webmasters just removed a couple of tabs and made them links instead. It used to be when you clicked on the Bestseller lists, you got two tabs you could click on to see the Hot New Releases and the Top Rated titles. You couldn't see what any of these titles were until you clicked on the tabs. Amazon took away the tabs and put links to the lists in the sidebars right on the Bestseller pages themselves. Had the webmasters stopped there, the links (like the tabs often) would likely have gone unnoticed. But they drew attention to the links by adding the covers of the Top 3 books in each list.

One small change -- one potentially huge effect.

Every time a cover image appears on Amazon it's an advertisement for that book. Publishers pay money for product placement in brick-and-mortar stores, and cover displays are Amazon's equivalent of the front tables and cover-out rather than spine-out placement.

Now, last Thursday and Friday Vet Tech Tales was free on Amazon. On the US site, it garnered 1287 downloads. Over the weekend, it "sold" 129 copies. Sold is in quotes because 53 of those sales were really borrows through the Prime Lending Library that Amazon counts in its sales. I am honored more than 50 readers would choose my book as their one borrow for the month. At the same time I'm perplexed why someone would choose a little 99c book with no reviews and no buzz over some really hot, really expensive titles being offered. More on buying/borrowing behavior another time when we understand it better and when the authors find out how much each borrow is worth toward their monthly royalty check.

Sales over the weekend put Vet Tech Tales into the Hot New Releases for all 13 of its eligible categories:

Nonfiction
Science > Medicine > Vet Medicine
Medicine > Vet Medicine
Professional & Technical > Professional Medicine > Vet Medicine
Lifestyle & Home > Home & Garden > Animal Care & Pets > Essays

It also made the Top 3 Hot New list for 11 of those categories. It's #40 Hot New in all Nonfiction and #14 in the Lifestyle & Home category (should it really have to compete with all those Kindle games and puzzles?).

That means that its cover image today shows up at the top of 11 Bestseller pages (above-the-fold in old newspaper-speak for prime placement) in addition to showing up in the lists themselves. More exposure, more impressions, more chances to buy.

For example:

Vet Tech Tales is #15 in Science and appears further down the page, but is ALSO listed in the sidebar, since it's the #2 Hot New Release in Science.

And double exposure for overall Medicine where it's #4 (it's #1 in Vet Medicine) and the #1 Hot New Release.

That's 11 new, high-profile clicks buyers have to reach my book.

Last week, the book wouldn't have had this exposure at all. If I hadn't made the book free when I did, it wouldn't have started selling yet. And if the book hadn't done well over the weekend, it wouldn't have had this exposure right at the start of what's expected to be a big ebook selling season. As I said, timing played an important part in all of this.

Now, of course, the little book needs to make good on all the help it's getting from Amazon.

And that's the real takeaway for all authors from this. Amazon can be a strong partner for anyone. They push traditional and indie books both. Traditional publishers can "come to an arrangement" with Amazon to get their books exposure, but books that don't get that kind of help can still get a push if they first prove they're worthy of a push. Amazon helps books that help themselves. But it doesn't care which books it's helping, so it's up to the author to keep pushing for sustained attention.

Scrambling now to see what I can do to sustain it...

Use Change To Your Advantage

2011-12-23T07:36:00.000-06:00

Where indie/self-published authors have a disadvantage is in not having ready access to historical data about the selling cycles for books. Where they have an advantage is in having a selling cycle that no longer resembles the old cycle of trad-published books.

The trick now is to aggregate all the sales data across authors so we can apply it to future trends the same way large publishers do. But how can we be sure the data we collect is even applicable when the landscape changes not just yearly but seemingly monthly?

Well, we can't. Nor can the traddies. Publishing as an industry just isn't set up for change, especially at the pace we've seen change occur in the last handful of years. We're all continually playing catchup and watching the numbers and today's trends trying to extrapolate what that means for tomorrow, only to be hit by something new in the market that throws old data into a tailspin.

The best advice to any author entering the biz now, whether self-publishing or through the traditional route: Stay flexible and realize that change will happen, and that some changes can't be planned for.

Of course, not all change is bad. That's most true when you understand that change is meant to benefit at least one segment of the industry. You just gotta hope you're in that segment.

Be adaptable. Be the proto-mammal in the world of dinosaurs when the asteroid comes crashing to earth. Be ready to change yourself to survive the changes around you.

Make 2012 your year of change.

Happy Holidays to All!

Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years - Launch Day

2011-12-13T20:28:00.004-06:00

Something I've been remiss in discussing that's obviously writing-related is how fiction writing compares to that nebulous nonfiction-y writing realm that slides around and melts into something that looks very much like fiction around its edges but that is memoir instead. How have I managed to overlook that topic after spending 4 months writing in that very nebula? Especially when I've run thin on topics to talk about here? This is a "duh" moment if I've ever had one. And trust me, I haven't had just one.

However, I'm not going to talk about memoir writing today, but do look for a discussion on it soon. In a nutshell, the mechanics are quite similar to fiction but the angst level of writing in first person and actually meaning first person in memoir is a lot higher.

In any case, the first volume of my Vet Tech Tales, which I've been serializing over on the Confessions of an Animal Junkie blog, is now available exclusively at Amazon. For 99 cents.

Wait, did I say exclusively? Why yes indeedy. I opted it into the new Amazon Select program. You'll be hearing more about that in the coming weeks as the first bits of data start trickling in and we can begin making hypothetical guesses as to who's benefiting from the program and who's getting screwed. You're welcome for being one of the 30,000 guinea pigs opted into the program who's ready to report back so you can play along right from your easy chair.

Interesting times for us all.

Oh, and did I mention -- the Vet Tech Tales volumes is just 99 cents at Amazon. US? Links to the book on Amazon's other sites are in the sidebar.

I'll also have more new books from friends of the blog to talk about at the end of the week, along with more sales numbers.

Happy mid-month!

The Week In Review

2011-12-10T06:29:00.001-06:00

Whew. It’s been a big week on the ebook front!

1.
Two of my critique group are gearing up to release their first ebooks this month. Wishing them much success. I’ve seen the cover for the one I beta read and every time I see it I love it even more. I’ll have visuals soon.

2.
I’ll be releasing the first volume of my Vet Tech Tales within the next few days, so I’ve been busy cleaning up and formatting those pages, plus writing a foreword for the series and the volume.

3.
I’ve been working with MailChimp’s email tools to put together Steel Magnolia Press’ first newsletter for release next week or so. For a free service (for up to 2000 subscribers), it seems to offer some nice tools for producing a professional-looking newsletter in a wide variety of pre-formatted templates, plus the option to customize those templates. Since I can also hand-code some sections, I’m finding it versatile enough to work with. I’ve only run into a couple of instances where I wished it could do something without me having to code the complete newsletter from scratch, which I don’t think I’m clever enough to do on my own – at least, not without spending tons of time on research.

So far I’m liking it and would recommend it to any author or blogger setting up a newsletter or email capture service. If you go with their pre-formatted options, you don't have to know a lick of HTML to produce a decent-looking newsletter.

The true test, though, will come next week when we import about 300 more names into the tool. It appears to be straightforward enough ...

4.
Amazon opened up its Kindle Lending Program -- which allows Kindle Prime members to borrow one book from its Lending Catalog free per month -- to everyone who publishes with them. With one little catch: whatever book an indie author elects to put into the catalog must be exclusive to Amazon. That means it can’t be offered for sale through any other distributor at all. As you may suspect, this has put a lot of folk into a terrible tizzy, with torches and pitchforks appearing on schedule.

First of all, the exclusivity and catalog featuring is completely optional. There’s no requirement for anyone to play. Second, each book in the program is only contracted to stay exclusive for 90 days, with optional renewal at the end of every 90-day cycle. Amazon has put up a pot of $500,000 to be split equally across the number of downloads. That means authors with one extremely popular book or with a lot of moderately popular ones will see a bit of income, while most everyone else will likely see nothing to a couple of dollars.

Fair enough. This alone would not entice me to throw my books into an exclusivity deal, especially as I price mine so low I can’t see a whole lot of folk using their one freebie lend to get a 99c or $1.99 book. But Amazon also now allows any author in this new “Select” program to make their book free for 5 days, spaced out however you like, across the store during that 90-day period. Having precise control like that is the bait tempting me to test this new program with my new, virgin Vet Tech Tales book. It’s a great guinea pig, being the first in a series and not up for sale anywhere else. And since the Steel Magnolia Press site sends buyers to Amazon (or BN) to make the actual purchase, I can put it the book up in our storefront, no problem. Plus, Amazon has hinted there may be other tools soon available to folk who opt into the “Select” program.

Do I think this program is right for every book and every author? Absolutely not. But for certain books and authors savvy enough to know which books those are, I think it’s another strong marketing bullet in the arsenal.

5.
Two new Amazon ebook stores are in full swing (Spain and Italy), to go along with France, which opened about a month ago. This month, I’ve made 2 sales in the French store, both Spoil of War, which rocketed it to #1 in Historical Fantasy, #43 in all Fantasy and #464 in all of the English-language store on Friday when the second sale was made. Obviously not many English-reading French are buying from Amazon when you realize 848,000 books from Amazon.com were ported over for the opening of the store. And since Spoil is still hanging on to the #1 Historical Fantasy spot today, that means no other sales of anything labeled HF have happened between now and then. Still, it makes for a great photo op ;o)

6.
Speaking of Spoil, it came off free in the US late in the day last Saturday, leaving the paid free list at #473. I had a stomach-lurching moment when it reentered the paid ranks at around #210,000, which is about where it would have been had it not sold a single copy in a month, and off of every list. OK, technically it hadn’t sold anything, but the Amazon algorithms had been counting free book downloads in a way that allowed free books that had done well to reenter the paid ranks at a decent ranking and to stay on the bestseller lists.

A lot of authors have reported that their books’ rankings sometimes don’t show up for days when the books transition from free to paid. Since my rank back on the paid list was visible within a couple of hours, I was simply privy to how the cycle normally runs behind the scenes. Apparently it takes a while to recalculate rank and filter downward (upward? There really needs to be a standardized way to refer to a book achieving a better rank). Spoil spiraled down and landed in the #3000 range, with visibility on the Historical Fantasy and Historical Romance lists. Yay! But how would that translate into actual paid sales? Getting to a good rank because of a short-term promo or by being free for a bit is one thing; sticking is quite another.

After about 6.5 days, it’s been holding its own, bouncing around in rank from around #4000 to #8000. As of 5:00 am CT Saturday morning, it’s at:

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,225 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
o #20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy > Historical
o #30 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Historical

What does that mean in terms of number of copies sold? It looks like 106 copies have sold on Amazon.com at $1.99 since it came off free.

7.
Spoil is also trying hard to stick in the Apple store as well. Right now it’s #4 Historical Fantasy, #66 All Fantasy, and #96 in All SFF. I won’t know sales till next month, but I was really disappointed to discover that if you go through a distributor like Smashwords to get a book into the Apple store, Apple doesn’t disclose numbers of free downloads. Apparently you DO get that info if you upload direct, but you need a Mac to do that and I’m Mac-less. Boo.

8.
As far as Amazon deigning to pick up the two other books I'm trying to make free now, it hasn't. First there was a lag time in getting the search sites (like Google) to pick up the free price on Apple so the Amazon bots could even find the books listed for free in order to price match. Then the new "Select" program kicked in on Amazon and authors made nearly 1000 books free in the last couple of days. How Amazon will treat price matching to free in the future for books not in the "Select" program is anyone's guess.

9.
Whether a promotion works short-term and/or long-term depends a lot on timing and luck and the generosity of readers. On Monday, SECTOR C was featured on the Kindle Books for a Buck blog. That resulted in a nice surge of sales: 46 copies in a little over 24 hours, which left the book at:

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,774 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
   o #15 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > High Tech
   o #16 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical
   o #22 in Book > Science Fiction & Fantasy >Science Fiction > High Tech

Ah, but I’d seen this before with SECTOR C, when another site promoted the book in October. Although the rank never got this high, the book lost rank as quickly as it gained it. This time, though, the promotion was a bit stickier.

Since Monday, SECTOR C has sold 81 copies on Amazon.com. It only started slipping rank on Friday. Before that it was solidly below #7000. At 5 am Saturday, it’s at:

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,307 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
   o #34 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Medical
   o #42 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical
   o #60 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > High Tech

One helpful bit is that Amazon added that first category, “Medical Thrillers,” on Tuesday (at my repeated prompting), which may have aided with the sticky factor this time around.

Off now to prep Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years for its exclusive debut on Amazon (and only you and I will know what that really means!).

Nov Sales Recap and Why I Love Apple

2011-12-03T10:21:00.002-06:00

Tired of hearing about freebooking yet? I hope not, because the saga is far from over. We've seen it can be an effective strategy for gaining visibility and exposure among an audience eager to download free books. How, though, does that translate into sales among the readers who don't frequent the free shelves?

Well, I don't have the answer to that yet, based on this current campaign, but Spoil of War has crossed another milestone, so I thought I'd share.

Remember when I was frustrated with Apple for keeping Spoil free long past the time I wanted it to be free? They unfreed it yesterday, about the same time some other free books that I'd been following went unfree too, although those books had been free for a shorter period of time. Guess it was time to clear the old books off the free shelf to make room for new ones.

I've notified Amazon and am waiting for them to reprice Spoil (I see the other books haven't been repriced on Amazon either, so this appears to be a normal cycle).

Meanwhile, I can amuse myself by following the book's progress through the various iTunes stores. Did you catch that plural? As informed as I kid myself that I am, I completely missed the fact that Apple has 123 regional store fronts. Not all of them carry ibooks, much less books in English, but there is a healthy selection in the UK, Canada and Australia stores that I was totally missing before I found out how to access those storefronts last week. In case you have the iTunes app loaded and haven't figured it out, if you scroll ALL the way down to the bottom of any page, there's a little button with your country's flag on it. Despite there being no instruction for doing so, if you click that button, a page opens up that allows you to click through to any regional store of your choice.

And here is why I have grown to love Apple. At least why I love Apple US, UK and Australia. I only like Apple Canada right now, but that could change.

Spoil of War is not special. I don't share these stats because I think it is, but because this is a sales tool given to us by these online stores. Not every free book will enjoy this kind of exposure, but for those in popular genres that resonate with readers, these are results that can be replicated. In fact, because there are a number of blogs and Facebook pages that push free books, and because the majority of these sites elect not to push erotica or books with controversial content -- such as Spoil -- Spoil received even less exposure than many free books. Still, Apple gave the book the same in-store exposure every other free book receives.

Rankings

When Spoil went onto the paid list yesterday, I expected it to drop off the bestseller lists completely. However, it was #5 on the Historical Fantasy list yesterday afternoon in the US and Australian stores, and by Saturday morning it had climbed to #3. Not getting real-time updates means I don't have any kind of a feel for what this means in terms of actual sales. It could mean 2 sales or 20. Amazon and BN, with their real-time updates, have spoiled me (pun not entirely unintended). Not knowing sales numbers for an indie author is something akin to a 10th-circle-of-hell punishment. Having to wait 30-60 days to discover what the numbers mean is an excrutiating eternity.

Ratings

Spoil has 133 ratings from all 4 regions now, for a 4.3+ average.
78 5-star
30 4-star
17 3-star
5 2-star
3 1-star

With 76 ratings for a 4.5 average, the US store has by far the most ratings, including 3 5-star text reviews that I love.

If it does nothing else from a business perspective, putting the book up for free has helped me see that the majority of readers are responding positively to it. This is priceless information for any author, and especially priceless to me.

Visibility and Placement

I could not afford the kind of "front of store" placement the book has earned in the Apple stores. Say what you will about the difficulty of finding a book that isn't in the Top 100 in a genre in iTunes (and there is plenty to say on that subject), if you're in the Top 100, you can be seen. In the Top 12, you're golden.

In just a bit over a month, Spoil went from no visibility as a paid book to a paid book with the following placements.

US

Let's do this one pictorially.

Historical Fantasy

All Fantasy

Historical Romance

All Romance: The featured category is an "Under $5" list, which comes up with a default sort by "Recent Bestsellers." Spoil is in the middle of the first page.

Australia

Historical Fantasy: #3 paid list; first spot for What's Hot
All Fantasy: top third on the What's Hot list
All SFF: first page (top 36) of New & Notable
Historical Romance: 2nd row of the What's Hot list
All Romance: 1st page (top 36) of New & Notable

UK
Historical Fantasy: top row on What's Hot
Fantasy: middle of the What's Hot list
All SFF: 1st page of the Featured list
Historical Romance: top third on the What's Hot list
All Romance: 1st page of the Featured list

Canada
Historical Fantasy: top row on What's Hot
All Fantasy: bottom row of What's Hot
Historical Romance: middle of the What's Hot list

Total Downloads and Current Rankings

Amazon only, since I don't yet have Apple's numbers.

US
Spoil has been free in the US store since Nov 2.

19,772 downloads

#474 in the Free Store (highest rank was #37)
#4 Historical Fantasy (highest rank was #1)
#21 Historical Romance (highest rank was #5)

UK
Spoil has been free in the UK store since Nov 23.

1247 downloads

#169 in the Free Store
#2 Historical Fantasy
#10 Historical Romance

Spoil has also been for sale at the following sites during Nov for 99c, $1.99 and $2.99 (it's $1.99 everywhere now -- or will be once Amazon puts it back in the Paid Store):

Smashwords - 3 at $2.99
BN - 8 sales at 99 cents; 1 at $1.99
Omni - 2 sales at $2.99
Amazon UK - 16 sales at 75p/99c before it went free
Amazon DE - 1 sale at 86e
________

31 Total Sold

SECTOR C, meanwhile, has been the neglected child. I'll have a paid ad for it on a popular site around Christmas, so I hope that will generate interest again.

60 - Amazon US
1 - Amazon UK
1 - BN
_________

62 Total

December Plans

By mid-month, I'll also be releasing the first volume of the Vet Tech Tales. For a sneak peek at the covers for Volumes 1 and 2, click over to the Confessions of an Animal Junkie blog :o)

Jennifer Blake's novella, A Vision of Sugarplums has just made it into the Apple iTunes store for free and Amanda le Bas de Plumetot's "Last Seen" short from the Extinct anthology has just been repriced to free there. So two more ebooks to try to take through the freebook ride on Amazon in December. (When did freebooking become a full-time job?)

Wish us luck!

Freebooking Doesn't Always Go As Planned

2011-11-27T13:14:00.001-06:00

A short but lovely trip to Louisiana to celebrate Thanksgiving with about 50 of my closest relatives almost netted me two new puppies -- but I was strong! Meanwhile, I learned a fair bit about the book biz while there, so maybe I can write the trip off come tax time... :o)

For those of you who have been following the freebook journey, that trip's had a few unexpected twists, some of which have been pleasantly surprising and others of which have been downright frustrating.

To recap, I decided to put Spoil of War up for free in late October. The plan was to get it free on Amazon and keep it free for only a few days. Since any good campaign plan includes a list of expected results, I hoped to 1) garner a few more credible reviews for the book and 2) capitalize on the book's better visibility once it came off free to spur sales before the holidays so that post-Christmas it would be in a favorable position to be discovered by lots of happy readers with new Kindles and nooks.

The first part of the plan went brilliantly. Apple kindly made it free right on schedule, followed by Amazon. I immediately started the process to unfree it -- and that's when I hit the first major detour. Apple simply refuses to unfree the book. I don't know if it's because of a glitch in the automated system between Smashwords, who distributes to Apple, and Apple, or if there is a human decision involved. Smashwords last week sent a message to Apple to help me expedite the unfreeing, but as of this writing, Spoil remains free there.

Amazon will presumably keep Spoil free now for as long as Apple does. In fact, Amazon decided being free in the US store wasn't enough, and, last Wednesday, they thoughtfully made the book free on the UK site too.

Now, lest those of you following this journey think this is the route all books take, let's look at one of the short stories excerpted from the Extinct anthology that went on this same trip earlier this month. The request to free it was honored on schedule by Apple and Amazon, just like Spoil. As with Spoil, I immediately began the process to unfree it the day it went free on Amazon. Unlike Spoil, Apple returned the book to paid status after exactly one week of being made free. Amazon followed suit within hours. Exactly the path I wished for Spoil.

Why the difference? Clueless.

My initial plan was to return Spoil to the paid list on Amazon while it was still in the Top 100 on the free list. When that milestone passed, I hoped it would still be in the Top 200, then the Top 300. Now I'm holding my breath for 2012. Free books usually start to lose their appeal and their rankings after 7-10 days. Spoil has enjoyed a decent overall rank for an extended period of time (which MAY be why Apple is reluctant to unfree it just yet), but a major fall in the rankings is inevitable. I'd really, really like to be shunted over to the paid store before that happens and the chance for visibility is lost.

Here are the numbers to date.

Apple:

#1 Historical Fantasy
On the What's Hot lists for all of Fantasy and Historical Romance

I won't know total downloads through the Apple store before next quarter, so maybe mid- to late-January I'll have those figures.

63 ratings (38 5-star, 16 4-star, 8 3-star, 1 2-star) for an average of 4.5 stars. Three text reviews, all 5-star.

Amazon:

US / UK
#3 / 2 - Historical Fantasy
#20 / 13 - All Fantasy
#14 / 5 - Historical Romance
#86 / 39 - All Romance
#388 / 107 - Overall Free Store

18,481 US Downloads
622 UK Downloads

16 new reviews since going free -- still pretty mixed.

It's frustrating to know where you want to go but to not be able to get there when you want to despite careful planning and through no fault of your own. I've enjoyed seeing the sights along the scenic route, but I'm ready to be at my destination now. Surely we must be close. Are we there yet???

Book Covers And A Free Gift

2011-11-20T10:48:00.004-06:00

Jump down to the end if you can't wait to see what the FREE GIFT is :o).

For any author, book covers can make or break the book. Traditionally published authors often get little say in the final result. Sometimes that's a good thing; other times, it can cause a maelstrom of controversy -- especially if the cover tries to cater to a PC mindset (blond-haired, white MCs, for example) when the actual story is anything but.

Authors who self-publish have the luxury of adapting a cover to the story as they see fit. Sometimes this means working directly with a professional design artist. Sometimes it means working with the design software yourself.

For the Steel Magnolia Press (SMP) books, we're swinging both ways. We've bought a couple of premade designs from a talented design artist and tweaked the titling text ourselves to get a feel for what we're happy with. Jennifer wanted a signature font and styling for the author name on her books, and we settled on a feminine cursive design that can work with anything from historicals to contemporary. We've also progressed to buying a premade design and letting the designer run with the titling text to stunning effect. I'll have more on the topic of finding a cover artist and the different types of cover work, along with examples, in a future post.

Some covers we keep in-house. A Vision of Sugarplums, a reissue of an award-winning novella by Jennifer Blake, is one we produced ourselves. Jennifer found a stock image that she knew captured the essence of the story perfectly. All that was needed was to make it Christmas-y. I suggested the santa hat and another SMP author, Kathy Faucheux, suggested the bow on the teddy. And to make things even more perfect, while Jennifer was updating the story to account for technology changes since the story was first released, she changed a ragdoll the baby carries around to a teddy bear. Having that kind of flexibility is priceless.

The image went from the standard stock image to the final cover with only one wrong turn along the way. (I seem to need to create one stupid draft first before understanding how obviously bad it is. Let's just say my skill with design software is maturing.) Another opportunity we had was to create a nice title page that plays off the design of the cover. For those of you self-publishing, the advantage to uploading directly to vendor sites such as Amazon and BN rather than going through an aggregator like Smashwords is being able to create nicer-looking interiors (even though there are still tight limitations on what translates over to the e-reader). It's double work to produce two different master copies, but some things are worth the extra time, you know. For instance, that pretty title page in the Smashword's editions is plain text, nothing more.

So What's The Free Gift Already?!

Among the romance reading audience, Jennifer's name is well-enough known that folk will readily pay traditional publisher prices for her new releases. In-store promotions helped rocket her recently released The Three Graces trilogy to thousands sold over the last few weeks. When I published A Vision of Sugarplums to BN and it went live yesterday morning, the cover image -- which is served out from a separate server from the rest of the information -- hadn't even populated onto the page yet and the book was already selling. A Jennifer Blake ebook for 99 cents had been unheard of before now.

Jennifer, though, wants the 30,000-word novella to be free -- a gift to her readers for their support, not just over the years, but for following her across publishing models. We're working on making that happen. For now, you can pick up your free copy -- in Kindle, epub (nook, Sony, iPad, etc) or PDF format -- at any of the following sites:

Steel Magnolia Press (Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter while you're there!)
All Romance eBooks (I uploaded the "pretty interior" versions here)
Smashwords (These are the "dumbed-down interiors" required to get through Smashwords' ebook converter, affectionately known as the "meatgrinder")

Here's the tease (see, you WILL be required to write a pitch at all different lengths even once your book is published!):

Meghan Castle is a real Scrooge about the holidays ... until she finds an abandoned baby in her store on Christmas Eve. Change is certainly in the air — especially when customer Rick Wallman agrees to watch the baby with her. But the secrets they're hiding could destroy the fragile future they start to build together.

Enjoy!

My Own Secret Dinosaur by Jo Antareau - Freebooking It Now!

2011-11-18T22:26:00.000-06:00

Yay! Another story from the Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever anthology is now FREE on Amazon!

Jo Antareau's very excellent "My Own Secret Dinosaur" is one of the BEST examples of voice I've seen. At just 2000 words, it's well worth your while to read it to check out the voice, especially if you write middle grade stories. While the underlying themes are really adult-level (though younger folk can certainly enjoy the plot), the story is told through the eyes of an Australian youngster.

Download your copy at http://www.amazon.com/My-Own-Secret-Dinosaur-ebook/dp/B005FG17CO

It's also free on Apple iTunes and Smashwords, so no excuses for not picking it up.

We'll probably make another couple of stories from the anthology free, but we'll do it sequentially and unfree each previous book before the next goes free.

Speaking of free, Spoil of War continues to be free on Apple, which needs to unfree it before Amazon will put it back in the paid store. It just broke 16,200 downloads on Amazon. While it's still #1 in the Apple and Amazon free stores for Historical Fantasy -- and in Amazon it's #8 in All Fantasy, #9 in Historical Romance and #51 in All Romance -- its overall rank on Amazon is dropping. It's now #203 in the free store. I'm hoping it will still be in the Top 300 when it's unfreed.

On Apple, Spoil now has 48 ratings with a 4.5-star average. The two text reviews it has are both 5-star. Just sayin' ;o).

I'll have an announcement about another free book soon! Stick with me here and you may never have to buy another book again...

Freebooking Update And The Influencers Of Reviews

2011-11-15T09:19:00.009-06:00

So 13 days in and Spoil of War is still free, despite my best efforts to unfree it. On the day it went free on Amazon I immediately repriced it on Smashwords, who distributes to Apple, expecting Apple to reprice the book within 2-3 days and Amazon to stop the free price-match by Day 5 or 6 at the latest. Apple still has it listed for free.

So, after Day 13 at Amazon:

#2 Historical Fantasy
#5 All Fantasy
#9 Historical Romance
#37 All Romance
#133 Overall in the Amazon Free Store

Times Downloaded: 15,034

at Apple after Day 18:

#1 Historical Fantasy
#9 All Fantasy
Historical Romance - Not on the Top 10 Free chart, but the book is listed in the Top 100 What's Hot, which includes only 7 free books.

Times Downloaded: Wish I knew, but I'm not provided that data in real-time. Maybe at the end of the quarter they'll let me know. Or not. Clueless as to how they report out free downloads.

After neglecting Apple as a retailer until 3 weeks ago, I'm beginning to develop a real affection for the iBooks/iTunes store.

Ooh, first position under What's Hot and #1 under Top Charts - Free in Historical Fantasy.

The only reason getting it unfree as soon as possible is important is that it will enter the paid list at a better rank and with more visibility. The more days that pass, the farther in rank the book will slip, and if the time that passes is too long, the whole marketing effort will be for naught.

Still, as a marketing effort, I'm quite happy with how successful the campaign has been so far. I wanted it free in the first place for two reasons:

To capitalize on visibility and hopefully pick up a few extra sales when it went back to its unfree status
To garner a few more reviews to offset the rash of negative ones.

Due to content alone, I certainly expect a percentage of folk to slap on a low rating. And I'm good with a few people simply not liking the story for whatever reason. I certainly don't like every book out there, no matter how well-rated. Plus, I'm sure because Spoil is cross-genre, there will be folk expecting it to be one thing and unhappy to find it's not.

What's interesting is how diverse the review communities are between Apple and Amazon.

At Amazon, anyone registered at the site can rate any product whether they've purchased and used/read it or not. Same for Apple. But you have to download the iTunes app first and launch the app if you want to rate something that you're not currently reading. That helps cut down on the "drive by's."

Like BN and Goodreads, Apple allows customers to simply rate a book without obligating them to write something. This encourages more ratings overall but doesn't make it as community-friendly.

Amazon cultivates a more open review community, which also opens it up to abuse of the system: sock puppets, paid reviews, review exchanges, boycott reviews, revenge reviews, etc. The only way to neutralize any of these abuses is to have a large pool of reviews for a given book.

Because I know Spoil is a well-written, well-proofed and well-formatted book, I was not afraid to open it up for wider consumption in hopes of more reviews.

What's happened is that, at Amazon, where reviewers are exposed to other reviews, the ratings continue to be mixed. A dozen new reviews have been posted since the book went free, with 25 total reviews now.
3 5-star - 8 total
3 4-star - 5 total
2 3-star - 3 total
4 1-star - 9 total

Even if the balance remains 50/50, from a psychological standpoint the number of positive reviews will now feel more legitimate to readers.

At Apple, where there is less peer-pressure, it's a completely different story. Spoil had no ratings before it went free 3 weeks ago. The rash of 1-star reviews that showed up on Amazon in August/September in response to a blog's reviews of the book didn't affect the iBooks store. As of ~~now~~ Nov 16, the book has 42 ratings (and 1 5-star text review):
22 5-star
12 4-star
7 3-star
1 2-star
0 1-star

The only experience most of the Apple customers have is seeing the book on the Hot and Top charts. I'm not discounting that as an influence in itself. In fact, I think that's likely a high influencer. I'm also sure some of those readers were disturbed by the content, but none of them enough to 1-star it.

Any conclusions we draw from this are only anecdotal, of course. We don't have enough to go on for any across-the-board observations. What it appears, though, is that books are little different from any other marketing targets. How the product is presented is as big an influence on the consumer as how the product actually performs. People like to be part of the "in" crowd. If 4-out-of-5 dentists agree that Brand X is the best, are you really going to disagree with the experts? Really?

How influenced are you by reviews? Do you generally like a bestseller more because it is a bestseller and everybody likes it? Have you ever decided not to read a book that sounded interesting and had a good sample but the reviews were poor?

May I Introduce ... Steel Magnolia Press

2011-11-08T08:30:00.002-06:00

Steel Magnolia Press is a site where imagination blooms, offering romance and mainstream fiction from a talented circle of Southern writers. Our anchor author -- with 65 novels and 15 other works under her belt -- is Jennifer Blake, a New York Times bestselling author and winner of multiple awards and recognitions in romance and women's fiction.

Did I say "our?" Why yes I did! That's because I'm involved in this new venture.

Why "Steel Magnolia?" It's the nickname given to Jennifer a decade ago by Public Relations genius, Nancy Berland. And, seeing as how all the affiliated authors are from the South, it has a feel that fits.

Right now, the venture is limited to 6 authors: Jennifer, me, Tamelia Tumlin, Trudy Edgeworth, Delinda Corbin and Katharine Faucheux. The latter 3 will have books up the beginning of 2012.

Steel Magnolia Press is a way to bring Jennifer's backlist out as rights are reverted, to offer never-before-in-print-or-ebook works, to showcase her backlist titles from other publishers, and to highlight her new books as they are released through some big-name traditional publishers.

As a corollary to the main reason for being, it's a new venue to showcase works by the other affiliated authors. I have a page on the site with my two novels and the Extinct anthology. Plus there's a sub-page with all of the Extinct singles.

What happened to Dare To Dream Press, you ask? Since that's the name my novels, the Extinct anthology and the Extinct singles are all published under, and since there's an e-store already set up under that name, it'll remain viable, just not so visible. I've jumped whole-heartedly over to Steel Magnolia.

Right now at Steel Magnolia we're running a contest to draw business to our newsletter. Each week, we'll be giving away a virtual basketful of 4 ebooks in the format of the winner's choice. Plus, everyone who signs up for the newsletter gets Jennifer's free e-booklet (in PDF): 20 Tips for Writing Romance Novels.

So what do I bring to the table besides a free book that was supposed to be unfree in time for the launch? I provide the techie stuff. I've dusted off some old skills to create the website (wow, when did iframes become so popular? And how easy is that to pull in a blog and an e-store now?) and am applying new skills to produce the new ebooks themselves.

In fact, there are new ebook editions of two Jennifer Blake classic novellas from the 90s that we're releasing in tandem with the site launch -- and may I just say I think the matched pair look quite pretty inside and out! You can see them on the Steel Magnolia homepage or take a peek at them on Amazon directly at:

For now we've decided to leverage the internal promotions Amazon and BN offer rather than sell direct from the SMP site. But we're setting up to be agile enough to change that model if and when needed.

Is print publishing dead? Absolutely not. Authors just need to be open to new venues and new possibilities. And they need to remember the smart portfolio is the diversified one. Jennifer has a stake now in each of the three selling models:

Traditional Publishing, with 3 new titles released successively in July, August and September of this year, and in contract negotiations right now for a new trilogy.
Agent/Publisher, with the majority of her backlist reverted, converted and offered up through eReads, the pioneer of the agent/publisher model.
Author/Publisher Coalition, with the launch of Steel Magnolia Press through which she'll publish out the remainder of her backlist herself as rights are reverted, plus publish brand-new works never before in print or digital versions.

I'm quite honored to be a part of this venture and will, of course, offer periodic updates and insight on it.

Meanwhile, Spoil of War has been downloaded 11,190 times at Amazon (I was hoping for 5000) and has 27 brand-new-since-it-went-free ratings on Apple iTunes (I don't have the data on how many times it's been downloaded there). The average rating on iTunes is 4.5 stars. So far there's only one text review, and it's 5 stars.

Look for a post soon about the influence of reviews on other reviewers ... ;o)

I've neglected my Confessions of an Animal Junkie blog while getting the final bits finished for the Steel Magnolia Press website, but I'll be back to regular posts there ~~tomorrow~~ on Friday

Please check out the Steel Magnolia Press website -- and sign up for the newsletter while you're there!

October Sales and Freebooking

2011-11-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

Today I've got some observations on the free book strategy as well as some solid and anecdotal sales figures from October.

FREEBOOKING

We need a term for the marketing strategy of offering an ebook free for a short time. I propose adding "freebooking" to the publishing lexicon.

After about 72 hours of being free on Amazon, Spoil of War has done better than I anticipated. For the last 60 hours, it's bounced between #37 and #42 in the overall free store and has continued to be #1 in Fantasy. In Historical Romance, it's moved back and forth between #7 and #8. And in overall Romance, its been between #17 and #19. Right now its rankings in the categories are the same as they were when I posted on Thursday. Only the overall rank is different.

#1 Historical Fantasy
#1 All Fantasy
#7 Historical Romance
#17 All Romance
#40 Overall in the Amazon Free Store

Times Downloaded: 7102

I really expected it to start taking a nose dive yesterday and am very surprised it held its rank this long. It'll probably start falling today. Needless to say I'm quite delighted so many readers have taken a chance on the book despite the handful of low ratings on Amazon.

It's also free in the Apple iTunes/iBooks store. I distribute there through Smashwords, but won't get the results from its time being free there for awhile yet. Silly me didn't download the iTunes app so I could watch sales in that venue until late Friday night, after Spoil had been free there for a week.

Right now, after a week, Spoil is, in the Apple free store:

#3 Fantasy
#8 SF/F

It also has 18 ratings on Apple -- all given since it went free -- with a solid 4-star average. There are no text reviews there yet, but this gives me a better idea of how average readers who likely haven't seen the 1-star reviews on Amazon are actually reacting to the book on its own terms and not on what other people think of it.

I'm afraid folk who grabbed a copy because of the kerfluffle on Amazon are going to be disappointed that the book isn't nearly as controversial as those low raters make it out to be ;o).

I am a bit disappointed to see it's still free on Apple. I changed the price from free on Smashwords on Wednesday as soon as Amazon made it free since Amazon will keep it free for as long as it remains free on another site. Smashwords should have fed them the unfree price on Thursday or Friday. I'd hoped that Amazon would have have it back to 99c by tonight (Saturday night). Not sure when it will lose free status now.

Theoretically, the timing could not have been better for the book to go free, climb the ranks then be made unfree while it still has visibility. It's frustrating to do everything right and on time on my part yet not be able to influence the vendors to follow through in a timely fashion. All the feeds and bots to do this should be automated.

The real test of the marketing strategy of free, of course, is to:

1) Help sell other books in the same series as the free book (Spoil is a stand-alone).

2) Help sell other books the author has in the same genre (My other book is a near-future thriller and my next book will be Part 1 of the Vet Tech Tales, so no help there -- although I have seen a small spike in sales in the UK where Spoil is not free)

3) Drive enough residual interest in the book so when it goes from free to paid, readers will be willing to splurge real money on it and keep it selling (which is where I hope the free strategy helps Spoil -- so having it go back to paid status while it's still high on the lists is the most important bit of the strategy, apart from the visibility it gains)

More updates to come on the freebooking experiment (go ahead, use "freebooking" in your own sentence -- you know you want to).

OCTOBER SALES

Like in August and September, sales continued to be pretty divisive between those doing OK and those doing GREAT.

Both Spoil and SECTOR C fell into the OK category. They both had more sales, but I also lowered the price on them mid-month, so the net gain was less.

Spoil of War:
39 Amzon US
10 Amazon UK
1 Amazon DE (Germany)
5 BN
1 Smashwords
______

56 Total

SECTOR C:
61 Amazon US
5 Amazon UK
6 BN
______

72 Total

I also gave away 35 copies of SECTOR C through a LibraryThing contest, and 28 folk claimed the book (the totals above are all paid copies). I've gotten a couple of short reviews from a couple of the LT winners so far, so that's nice.

As for more broad-spectrum sales, anecdotal sampling over in the Kindleboards forums yields some good info as always. Special thanks to Jason Letts for doing some of the compiling this time around so I didn't have to :o)

Again, some people reported by the book and some people aggregated their totals. My aggregated total, for instance, is 56 + 72 = 128 sales across 2 titles. All figures exclude free downloads.

SINGLE TITLES

1-9 = 10 (Note 3 reports of zero sales)
10-99 = 19
100-499 = 14
500-1000 = 4
1000-2800 = 2
2800-4399 = 1
4321 = 1
5800 = 1

29 single titles sold fewer than 100 copies vs 23 that sold more. That's 56% of this sample of 52 titles.

MULTIPLE TITLES

1-99 = 8 across 2-11 titles
100-199 = 4 across 2-3 titles with one other across 14
200-499 = 15 across 2-6 titles with one other across 9 and another across 17
500-999 = 8 across w-7 titles with one across 11
1000-1499 = 6 across 2-25 titles
1500-2499 - 3 across 2, 10 and 23 titles
2500-5000 = 7 across 2-33 titles
5001-10,000 = 7 across 2-14 titles
10,001-15,450 = 3 across 3,4 and 8 titles
29,500 = 1 across 43 titles

Again, this is very anecdotal and a random sampling of folk who chose to respond. Don't read more into than just some fun with numbers and a tiny glimpse into what people are selling via self-publishing venues.

Freebooking (just had to say it one more time).

What Free Can Do

2011-11-03T03:05:00.001-05:00

The Kindle Board members are reporting in on October sales. I'll do a sales roundup of their data on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Spoil of War is free for a very short time at Amazon and Apple iTunes. As I write this, it's been free for about 21 hours at Amazon. 3213 readers have downloaded it there, and its rankings on the Free bestseller list are:

#1 Historical Fantasy
#1 All Fantasy
#7 Historical Romance
#17 All Romance

#37 Overall in the Amazon Free Store

Wow.

I mean - wow. I had no idea. I keep having to take new screen captures as the rankings change. I don't expect this surge to continue, but I must admit it's pretty powerful while it lasts and the visibility it offers is amazing.

There's no money changing hands, but there is marketing method to the free strategy, which I'll of course share more of as we move through the cycle.

As mentioned in the case study post where I talk about "Connect," Ken Burstall's short story from the Extinct anthology, going free, Amazon price matches the free price at its discretion. Some books it never makes free. I'm fortunate. I started the process last Wednesday, setting the price to free at Smashwords. I opted for Smashwords to distribute the free price into the Apple iTunes store, which happened on Thursday. The price change was made at Apple on Friday and I notified Amazon of the new free price on Saturday.

I know a number of authors have been waiting months for Amazon to price match their books to free, so was quite happy it took only a few days to happen for Spoil.

Smashwords should be sending the new price update to Apple either today or tomorrow. I have no idea how long it will be before Amazon realizes it's no longer free on Apple and updates the price, so go grab it while you can.

See you Saturday for updates and a complete Sales Voyeur analysis...

Why The Value Of Content Won't Win A Price Debate

2011-10-29T00:29:00.001-05:00

Discussions about ebook pricing are rampant across the Internet. Seems everyone's weighing in about the perceived race to the bottom or talking about the devaluation of content.

I've put off talking about the great price debate here because I don't like to simply rehash the same discussions that can be found elsewhere. Frankly, I believe several factors contribute to a successful price point: genre, author recognition, time of year, marketing buzz and Amazon's algorithms of the moment. Some novels see great success at 99 cents, others at $2.99 and others still at $4.99 or more. A lot of novels never see any kind of success at all.

Where I see a gap in the pricing debate is in one aspect I've yet to see exploited in any of the blog or forum discussions. That this aspect isn't mentioned more often puzzles me as it's objective, historical and empirical. You'll tell me if I'm missing something in the equation, won't you?

The outcry against the 99 cent price point is that it devalues the author's work. That the author should be paid more for a book they've created -- that content should be worth far more than the few cents royalty the author makes and that the book might as well be given away for free as to be sold for a buck.

On the surface, this seems a valid argument; 99c is pretty darn cheap and I'm not going to deny authors shouldn't be making less than what they historically ever have. But does the reasoning really hold up? Let's examine.

Deb the Debut Author has just landed a nice paperback deal. Her mass market book will sell for $6.99 and for the first 10,000 copies her royalty rate will be 6% of cover price. Deb is delighted because she's about to be a published author with a well-known house. Pop the champagne!

Deb will be earning just a scosh under 42 cents per copy. But wait. Her agent will be taking 15% of that 42c, leaving her with an income of 35.65c per book.

Meanwhile, Sue the Self-publisher puts her book on the market for 99 cents. At Amazon, she earns 35c per ebook, at BN 40c and at Smashwords 60c.

What's being devalued isn't the content, is it? The author of the content is earning the same amount, yet for some reason there was never a huge outcry about the author's share in the past.

So Deb sells through her first edition and her royalty rate escalates to 8% for the next 25,000 books. That's 56c per book before agent cut and 47.5c after.

Sue doesn't get an escalated royalty, but she can raise the price of her book. And once it's sold 10,000 copies, readers are likely to pay a little more for it. If she ups the price to $1.49, she still makes a 35% royalty at Amazon, but now her cut is 52c.

At 99c, Sue is making the same amount of money per copy the Debs of the publishing world have been making for the last 20 years. Has content not been worth more than that before now? In addition, the reader is getting content from Sue for 75-83% less than what they're paying for Deb's content.

Based on the content creator's cut, it seems 99c pricing strategies aren't a race to the bottom at all but an historical status quo.

I have the luxury of not having to rely on my book sales to provide a living so I can adjust my pricing to see what works best for my genres at a particular time of year. I recently re-priced my two novels to 99 cents -- not that I have any great market insight, but simply to see if a few more people will pick them up because they're more affordable.

I'm happy making a mass-market paperback author's wages for awhile.

Do I think authors should earn more? Sure. The thing is, I still have the luxury to adjust my price at any time to whatever point the market will bear -- or beyond.

And that's the best thing about the great price debate. You can argue either side, or even argue with yourself, and experiment to your heart's content to prove whatever point you want -- even when that point keeps changing.

A Trick And Some Treats

2011-10-27T00:28:00.003-05:00

The Trick

I've been complaining about the summer drought here in Texas, happy that we're beginning to see rain again. Meanwhile, parts of Thailand are seeing the highest flood levels in 50 years with massive amounts of water still on the way. In an email, friend of the blog Wilkins MacQueen who lives in Bangkok reports some food distribution centers are flooded and that the shelves are empty at the larger chain stores. News reports hint at possible mass evacuations.

Internet connections there are sketchy so I don't know if Mac is among those who've already left the city, but she was thinking she would have to go. As she notes, "If you've seen the tv, the reality is way worse." Keep our Thai friends in your thoughts through this disaster.

The Treats

Ken Burstall's FREE short story "Connect" excerpted from the Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever anthology has now had over 1000 downloads just on Amazon. We're crossing our fingers that as folk get around to reading the story, they'll want to read more quality stories and click through to the anthology.

Grab your free copy of "Connect" now for your Trick-or-Treat bag.

And here's some eye-candy for your treat bag as well. Simon John Cox, who authored the bittersweet "The Restoration Man" short (99 cents) in the Extinct antho, has published a triptych of horror stories titled Totentanz for just 99 cents. He's put together some terrific cheeky posters for the stories and gave me permission to share them here just in time for Halloween. Enjoy.

It will shock and amaze you! It will surprise and delight you!
The Great Meliakoff is the Master Of The Impossible!

Discover how the shambling hordes of the undead really feel! Experience for yourself their lust for blood! Feel for yourself their vicious hunger for human flesh! All from the safety of your Kindle!

What are the mysterious images on Channel Six? What do they mean?

Who is the man in the hospital bed? Find out in the macabre triptych Totentanz!

Do not adjust your set!

Available from:

Amazon.com

Amazon UK

When Real Life And Fiction Intersect

2011-10-25T11:15:00.002-05:00

Last week, we all saw the terrible tragedy unfold in Ohio when 56 exotic animals were shot to death after being let loose from their compound. More than one person commented on how they were reminded of SECTOR C on hearing the news and seeing the grim photos.

I'm glad the actions in the novel seem realistic in light of this event. I'm horrified that such things actually happen. One look at my avatar/bio pic and I think you can understand how deeply this event affected me.

THIS in Ohio was preventable before the animals were let loose. As soon as their cages were opened, though, the conclusion was inevitable.

On the same day we learned about the fate of these exotic beasts and the man who owned them, the Today Show ran a segment on the possibility of cloning mammoths and one team's certainty we'll see a baby mammoth within a handful of years.

The science is now. The events in SECTOR C are sadly only too plausible. Like real-life events themselves, SECTOR C doesn't wrap it all up in a tidy ending.

The book also asks you to think about what you would do in similar circumstances. Would your reaction to the killings in Ohio be different if you lived in a surrounding neighborhood? Do you think officials acted too hastily? Could there have been another way to handle it? Could the outbreak in SECTOR C be handled differently? Should it be?

Just how much is the life of an endangered animal truly worth?

Field Of Dreams - Two Ebook Promotion Case Studies

2011-10-23T10:18:00.001-05:00

Self-publishing is easy, right? Even the most technically and grammatically unskilled can upload a book and call themselves authors. Successfully self-publishing, however, is becoming more and more difficult in general.
Authors will be talking about the Golden Age of self-publishing for a long time. It was the spring of 2011 and I remember it well. A time when you could upload a book and the readers would come, guided to your work because they all shared the same beautiful algorithm in Amazon's eyes.

The right price in the right genre and a gentle algorithmic nudge was all a book needed to sell in its early days when an author was struggling to find an audience.

Flash forward to the fall of 2011 and it's clear those days are done. Amazon is no longer the indulgent parent pushing all of its children equally to succeed no matter their failings. It's adopted a tough love philosophy where it helps only those authors who help themselves. And I'm afraid its rules are only going to get tougher.

To be successfully self-published means getting the word out about your book. To help readers find it in the avalanche. For debut and midlist e-authors that means promoting, advertising and marketing. But more than that, it means marketing your book well.

Most of us are still trying to figure out how to do that.

Here then are a couple of anecdotes about two recent campaigns and their varying degrees of success.

Free

Amazon promotes its freebies in a way BN doesn't. You may remember that in July I split up the Extinct anthology and uploaded the stories as their own separate ebooks priced at 99 cents each. Ken Burstall asked me to make his story, "Connect" free. Well, that's possible to do yourself pretty immediately in all venues except Amazon. To make a work free at Amazon takes some gymnastics.

"Connect" was being downloaded at a copy or two a day across all venues where Smashwords distributes. Now Amazon will often price match "free" but it does so on its own terms and in its own time -- if at all. You can lay the groundwork, which I did for "Connect," but you really don't know when a book might go free there. You wake up one morning, stumble to the computer, check your Amazon sales and do a double-take after your heart starts beating again. You've probably had a couple of hundred downloads by the time you even realize the book is now free.

Of all the science fiction stories in the Extinct antho, "Connect" is, I think, the most "hard SF," meaning it's predicated on scientific concepts that play a large supporting role in the story. Hard SF is in the best of circumstances a tough sell, even in die-hard SF arenas. So we're quite proud of the fact that "Connect" rocketed its way up to:

#1 in the High-Tech SF category on Amazon's free list
#5 in overall free science fiction
#181 in all free categories

Nicely done, Ken!

In all, more than 1000 copies have been downloaded as of today.

Since there are links in the "Connect" ebook to the complete Extinct anthology for all venues where it's available in the Amazon version, I can associate a couple of sales of the anthology this month to "Connect" having been downloaded. There's also been an uptick in the sample on Smashwords being downloaded. At least one other author now wants to try their story for free and (ahem) I'm just waiting for them to supply links and blurbs for their other stories and novels to put into their free book as teasers.

The free book strategy is obviously a long-tail one. Many readers collect free books; some don't read them for quite awhile and others never read them at all. The hope, of course, is that readers will enjoy the story and seek out other associated works, which may happen days, weeks or months after the free book is downloaded.

Because it's often not possible to associate sales with a specific marketing campaign, it's easy to get frustrated with marketing efforts. It's human nature to want instant gratification.

Luckily, there are some activities that can provide that.

Advertisements

Last Thursday I stumbled across a site that caters to Kindle owners called Kindle Lovers (aka KINDLE 3). As a point of reference, there are plenty of sites out there that cater to a Kindle audience.

Some of them, like Kindle Nation Daily, charge a hefty (for most indie authors) fee to advertise. The ad package may include a sponsorship post on their blog, anywhere from 1 to 3 mentions on Facebook, inclusion in a daily newsletter, and/or a tweet or two during the day. I purchased one of their more modest sponsorship packages and am waiting to hear when it will run (likely in late December). I'll report back on my results, but some other authors have gotten good immediate results, others have had barely an uptick in sales and a handful have had amazing results. Kind of like the results of e-publishing in general ;o).

Some of the Kindle promo sites, like the Amazon Kindle page, allow authors to post promos directly to their walls (within certain guidelines, of course). I haven't noticed any sales I can directly associate from promoting there, but on a site with 1+ million likes, it's got to be good exposure.

Some of them, like the Kindle on the Cheap (3300 likes) and Cheap E-reads (for nooks - 6000 likes) sites, allow authors to post on a separate page (900+ likes), then pick and choose which books to feature on their various pages for readers. SECTOR C has been featured twice on the nook page with no direct sales I can attribute. It hasn't been picked up for the Kindle page yet after more than a month of my posting to the author site. It's of course under no obligation to promote anything so I'm quite grateful for what exposure my book has gotten.

All to say I wasn't expecting any direct sales from the Kindle Lovers placement but was looking at it merely as free publicity. I also wasn't expecting to submit SECTOR C to them in the morning and then have it be featured that evening. Sweet! The surprise was when I checked my sales and saw 12 copies had been downloaded in a space of 2 hours. Overall, I estimate there were about two dozen direct sales within 18 hours of the Kindle Lovers posting the promo to their website and Facebook. SECTOR C started with a sales rank around 60,000 and dropped (that's the better direction) to:

A trickle of sales since has kept SECTOR C from leap-frogging back into the 60,000 range, but it definitely needs another push. It's got a paid spot on the Red Adept Reviews blog this week. (It's up now if you want to go look.) I'm expecting that to mainly be awareness-building, but am hoping for a few direct sales as well.

So does advertising work? Let's just say I started a thread Thursday evening in the Kindle Boards forum to share my experience with the Kindle Lovers site. The Kindle Lovers admins had to post two public messages to authors on Friday and Saturday saying they'd gotten a flurry of recent requests (mainly from Kindle Boards members) and asking for patience as it would take time to get around to promoting everyone. So I'd say yeah, in this case advertising worked -- both ways :o).

Speaking Of Promotion...

2011-10-21T07:33:00.000-05:00

Here's a site well worth the cost of advertising.

I'll post full details about my experience on Sunday.

Is It Advertising Or Marketing: Analyzing Ad Results

2011-10-15T00:10:00.002-05:00

I've seen a number of folk who whine about an ad for their book not earning back the cost of the ad. Is it fair to whine?

I've seen a number of other folk step in to say, "Suck it up. Ads only build awareness, not sales. People saw your ad so it was a success."

We've all heard the adage: It takes being exposed to a message 5/6/7 times before someone makes a purchase. These are wise words for garnering patience from executives but are they true? Or are they a fallback for the marketer/promoter/advertiser whose campaign is failing?

"That was just the first exposure! We need to do this 4/5/6 more times before you, Ms. CEO, can expect a return on your investment. Click-through/mail-back/purchase-contemplation success generally doesn't exceed 5% anyway. My team and I of highly paid professionals will get right on it. Should only take another 6 paydays before we're done and you start seeing some effect."

This is, of course, old-school, pre-technology thinking. This is thinking from an era that required effort on the consumer's part. This is thinking that might still be true for marketing and promoting efforts where raising awareness is the reason for the campaign. This is thinking for high-end purchases.

But advertising in the digital age? Especially advertising for books? Banner ads are NOT all about exposure. Banner ads, especially 1-day ads, are about driving instant behavior -- impulse buys. Can you be assured a consumer will see an ad of yours more than once, much less any marketing or promotional efforts? No. You need an instant response, instant click-through. You're not going to turn every click-through into a sale, but you CAN base the effectiveness (or failure) of an ad campaign on an uptick in sales.

Sure, an ad adds to your overall marketing campaign where you are looking for multiple exposures. You can treat it as one incident of eyes-on where marketing is concerned. But if your ad's main purpose is to capture impulse buys -- just like that candy bar from the bins at the checkout line gets tossed onto the checkout counter or that magazine with the sizzling headline you didn't know you even wanted ends up in your purchases -- then you can't ignore sales or lack of them.

Collateral awareness is great, but it's not the purpose of advertising; it's marketing -- or promotion, if it's free. The best thing you can understand is that online buying behavior is not the same as a mail campaign or a billboard or even TV placement, and that the expected results are, and should be, different for each venue.

A banner ad can fail miserably as part of an advertising campaign yet still be a positive result within the overall marketing campaign. For that to be true, though, you have to have a clear marketing plan to begin with. If you don't, and if an ad doesn't pay for itself with purchases made during and shortly after its run, then you've wasted money. You can only absorb those costs within a greater plan.

It's not unprofessional to point out when an ad doesn't bring in the revenue someone expected it to. That's a needed data point for the next person to decide whether that ad fits into a short-term advertising campaign or a longer-term marketing plan. I want to hear people whine.

So, if you're at this point, do you distinguish between advertising and marketing? How?

Bargain Days And The Power Of FREE

2011-10-12T08:33:00.002-05:00

I thought putting SECTOR C on sale for 99 cents for a limited time (just like Spoil of War currently is) was going to be the big news for today.

Then I woke up to Amazon making one of the short stories from the Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever anthology available for free: "Connect" by Ken Burstall.

Its ranking when I first looked was #723 in all of Kindle (free) and it was #2 in Hi-Tech SF (free).

In less than 20 minutes, more than 100 additional copies had been downloaded and it was #619 and #1 respectively.

Congratulations, Ken!

Everyone else, go grab your FREE copy NOW!

http://www.amazon.com/Connect-ebook/dp/B005FFTK4W

Minority Report

2011-10-11T00:10:00.002-05:00

Le sigh. Once again I seem to hold the non-popular view in an indie world. Here’s the setup: Joe Konrath puts out a call for guest posts while he goes on an indefinite hiatus. The topics can be anything to do with publishing. He receives 100+ contributions. What to do? Why collect 50 more and string them together into an ebook to sell. He won’t pay for the content, but the contributors will get exposure for their websites or their books. In fact, like my guest post for another site on Saturday, many contributions will undoubtedly exist solely as promotion.

In advertising, these types of pieces are called “advertorials.” I’ve written my fair share of them to be placed in trade papers and magazines. You’ve seen them. Half-page to page articles that talk about the benefits of a certain type of product that make you think you’re getting some honest, constructive advice, then wham, they hit you with the hard-sell paragraph to buy Brand X.

In the traditional world, these advertorials are placed just like regular ads. That means the company producing the ads buys the ad space. The consumer may purchase the magazine or paper the ad appears in, but the person peddling the product is still paying for the privilege of getting eyes on. The consumer doesn’t pay solely to be advertised to.

In the traditional world, advertisers pay the brunt of production costs. This is why a slick, glossy magazine mailed right to you could sell through subscription for as little as a dollar an issue. It’s why you get Facebook and tons of other online content for free.

Enter the new world where consumers are now going to be asked to pay to be advertised to.

Granted, advertorials skirt that fine line between constructive content and blatant advertising. I’m not saying there won’t be value in some of the content of the book itself. But the reader is not at the heart of why this book is being produced – the authors are.

The draw for authors is that Konrath will have his name as editor even though it sounds like he doesn’t really want to be hands on with the project at all. Can you call yourself the editor if you don’t even vet the content much less edit it? “Solicited by” perhaps?

Maybe I’m just overly cynical. Maybe I’m hypocritical. I intend to turn my Vet Tech Tales series into ebooks, which I’ll put up for sale.

Is there a difference?

Or is Yog’s Law changing: Promotion flows toward the author while the reader is stuck with the tab?

What do you think?

Average Monthly eBook Earnings

2011-10-09T11:50:00.002-05:00

Over on the Kindle Boards forum, Vicki (Victorine) Lieski started a thread with a poll to capture how much self-published authors are earning on average through ebook sales. I encourage all of you to go lurk on the forum, whatever stage you're at in your career. There's lots of good, honest information to be had.

The results of the poll so far:

Lots of caveats and cautions needed here!

This is NOT a random sample. It's a sampling of folk choosing to respond in a forum of authors working at selling their ebooks.
The figures do not discriminate between the author with a single title or 20.
Price points aren't taken into consideration. Different genres tend to favor different price points.
Length of time the title(s) have been on offer isn't represented. Some responders may have chosen to average their last few months sales or sales over a year or two. Other responders may have only two or three months of sales to average.
The totals cited are gross amounts and don't take into account any costs to recoup for editing, covers or formatting fees.

What we can look at is a correlation between reported numbers of copies sold in July and August and compare to reported sales dollars. The combined stats anecdotally tell us that about 45% of the respondents are selling fewer than 100 copies of their books per month while about 1/3 of the authors make less than $100 per month.

Combined, we see that 25% of respondents sell more than 1000 copies of their books while about 1/3 of the authors earn more than $1000 per month.

The optimist will focus on the 2/3 of authors who are making more than $100 per month without considering the average may well be for sales across, say, 5 titles all priced at 99c.

The pessimist will focus on the 1/3 of authors making less than $100 per month or the 45% selling fewer than 100 copies and make dismal comparisons between self-publishing and traditional publishing.

The realist will look at the odds, keep their expectations in line with the realities of the market and do their damnedest to beat those odds with a clear understanding that it takes work to sell. (Don't forget that 80% of the books on Amazon are selling fewer than 5 copies per month so the results of the poll are definitely skewed toward higher sales percentages.)

So what are some average advances and earn-outs from typical traditional publishers? Here's one informal poll's results.

With agents jumping into the indie publishing arena and acknowledging a number of good books are being left behind, a lot of overlooked authors are feeling the love these days. If you're trying to decide which way to go with your writing career -- indie, traddie or a hybrid of some sort -- there's a handy little spreadsheet at Twiliterary you can use to number crunch.

No matter which way you choose to pursue your dream, I applaud you. Actually chasing a dream will reward you far more quickly than simply dreaming about chasing one ever will.

Linky Love

2011-10-08T07:50:00.001-05:00

Today I'm disussing "Weaving Science Into Fiction" (with tongue planted a bit in cheek) on Rachel Wells' "25 Days of Twisted" guest authors (she's new to blogging, so forgive the formatting wobbles).

And here are a couple of unexpected but quite lovely reviews for SECTOR C:
http://jilljames.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/blog-the-book-sector-c/
http://procrastinate-writenow.blogspot.com/2011/10/book-review-sector-c.html

The monthly report-in for sales didn't happen on the Kindle Boards forum for September. However, there's a poll up now about how much authors are averaging monthly, which should make for constructive conversation. Last evening there were 175 respondents. I'll capture some figures at the end of today and have commentary on it tomorrow if I get permission.

So far, it has a very clear answer to the question of whether anyone hoping to make money can do it through self-publishing: "It depends." (Really, you saw that coming, right? But gray "depends" is a lot more interesting than black-and-white "yes" or "no." Yes?)

Quick Reminder

2011-10-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

Only 10 days left to rack up some points toward a new Kindle (the original or choose the Touch version) loaded with SF/F/Horror reads delivered just in time for Halloween!

See Red Tash's site for all the details. And don't forget, I'll be giving away an additional 3 copies of SECTOR C as well to random commenters between now and then.

Sept Sales Recap And The Reality Of Forever

2011-10-04T10:39:00.001-05:00

First of all, thank you to everyone who has purchased one of my books! I provide these sales figures publicly because bookselling is, after all, a business and there is no formal association (yet) for self-published authors to aggregate figures and analyze trends. Every sale matters and is very much appreciated. No sale is simply a ka-ching for me; I get a little tingle in my gut each time I see a sale because I know someone is going to be reading my work.

Still, I love charts and figures and trying to analyze the unanalyzable (which, surprisingly, the spell-checker tells me is actually a word).

In the forums and throughout the blogosphere, it’s clear September was a very divisive month. Observationally, it seems about half of the authors are reporting sales that are about half of normal. The other half are doing quite well. Quite anecdotally, it appears that books normally selling under 500 copies a month or so trended down while those normally selling over 500 per month trended up.

Amazon’s algorithms for determining what books to display to customers and in their lists remain a mystery. What can be determined through anecdotal evidence is that Amazon periodically adjusts these algorithms to favor different factors. The last adjustment apparently favors higher-sales books.

I’m not surprised. I do predict that the gap between low-sales and high-sales books will become wider and harder to breach. I also predict that whoever can put the most money behind their books will see more sales. I don’t believe for one minute that ebook sales at Amazon will (or even are right now) democratized and that every book has an equal chance of breaking out.

There will, of course, be outliers. There always are and always have been. But 99.9% of the folk who hook their strategy to that hope will be sorely disappointed. Even now, for all the bright new talent uploading their offerings there are a great number of disillusioned authors packing up their bags and calling it quits. For every utterance of “Ebook sales are forever,” there’s the raw fact that selling one book a month into forever won’t make anyone rich. Except Amazon, of course, who holds onto those royalties until they accrue enough to finally be paid out.

Let’s take a look at that model for a moment. If we assume Amazon has just 1 million ebooks in its store (it has more), we can pretty well determine through the rank/sales ratio that ¾ million+ of those books sell 0-5 copies per month. (Hmm. There’s an adage called the 80/20 rule that says 80% of business is driven by 20% of the business’ customers. Maybe it works for suppliers too.) To make things simple, let’s just say that the average royalty revenue for those ¾ million books is a rock-bottom $1/month. That’s $750,000 a month or $9 million a year that Amazon is safekeeping and making interest on. Sure, some of that money will eventually be paid out in royalties, but a lot of books will never earn enough for that to happen. Most of those books will be abandoned with Amazon. The only forever money those books will be earning will be for Amazon.

I’m not trying to be a naysayer or a pessimist here. All I’m trying to do is offer a counter-balance to the hype being generated around self-publishing right now. Look at the facts: Over ¾ of the books on Amazon right now sell fewer than 5 books a month. And I’m being generous. It’s probably a greater percentage selling even fewer than 5 per month. That’s the “forever” reality.

Can you do as well self-publishing as through traditional publishers? Of course. And you can fall just as flat too. One YA book I’ve been following published in March by Delacorte (Random House) has sold, on Amazon, a total of 53 ebooks. There were 3 ebook sales in July, 4 in Aug, and 1 in Sept. It’s sold 140 hardcovers (8 in July, 10 in Aug and 2 in Sept). It has 22 reviews with a 4.5-star average.

An MG book published in May by Dial (15 reviews, 4.8 stars) and whose author has 10,000+ Twitter followers, 5800 blog followers and 4700 FB fans has sold 213 hardback copies (35 in July, 22 in Aug, and 13 in Sept). It’s sold 45 ebooks (16 in July, 3 in Aug, and 4 in Sept). Presumably the paper versions are being bought in bookstores and ordered for libraries.

Still, there are self-pubbed authors selling over 1000 copies of a single ebook per month. Even selling over 10,000 or 20,000 copies per month. But just as you can’t predict for certain whether a traditionally published book will be a breakout bestseller, you can’t predict what indie book will be either. Could it be yours? Absolutely, if you have a decently edited book in a popular genre. Will it be yours? Odds are against you, even if you have a decently edited book in a popular genre. There are midlist indies just as there are midlisters in the traditional world.

That said, my Sept stats for Spoil of War:

29 - Amazon US
5 - Amazon UK
0 - B&N
1 - Smashwords
___________

35 - Total

It now has 7 4- and 5-star reviews compared to 6 1-stars on Amazon. (One 4-star review this past month came from a reader responding to the low-raters and discounting some of the claims they were making. I appreciated that because, while I’m not going to argue with those reviews or the reviewers there, much of what they’re saying about the content simply isn’t what’s in the book.) Do I think the reviews are hurting sales? That was my first thought, and I lowered the price to 99c on Oct 1 to see if more people would pick it up. But then I saw the trends of other authors who saw their sales halved as well, so I can’t be sure. I’ll leave Spoil at 99c through the month and re-evaluate on Nov 1.

SECTOR C launched on Sept 1. It did better the first half of the month, then faltered toward the end of the month despite having a sponsored post on the Red Adept review site, a FB ad targeted to folk who “liked” the Contagion movie page, and a mention of the Cheap E-reads FB page. It does now have some lovely reviews on and off the Amazon page, with at least a couple more reviewers having put it in their queue. I’m confident this book will gain traction. I think it was just caught up in the same algorithms as other books in September.

This month I should have an advertising spot on Red Adept reviews for a week, and I’m giving away a number of free copies on LibraryThing in exchange for reviews. My understanding is that about 10% of the recipients follow through. I’ll keep you posted so those interested can make a considered judgment about whether to offer there as well.

Depending on how you measure success – number of copies sold or amount of money made – SECTOR C either did better or worse in its launch month than Spoil did. Spoil sold 68 copies in its launch month for a total of $23.80. SECTOR C sold a total of 37 copies with about $67.30 in royalties. Personally I would prefer more readers over more money.

24 - Amazon US
2- Amazon UK
10 - B&N
1 - Smashwords
___________

37 - Total

I’ve been busy mowing pastures and bagging hay (mainly weeds and only good for bedding at this point because of the summer drought), so I haven’t put together the aggregated totals of books sold from the Kindle Boards forum yet as I’ve done the past couple of months. I’ll post those figures out in the next day or two.

In the meantime, go forth and query! Or self-pub! Just don’t do nothing. That’s the surest way to disappointment.

Quality Vs Price Point

2011-09-30T07:52:00.000-05:00

This news is certainly pertinent to our recent discussions here around copyediting where we talked about number and kinds of errors. The next obvious question: Is there a price point at which you expect better quality?

I found it interesting that the Galleycat article never names the publisher who was responsible for the errors, just the author who had no control over the final product and the distributor who sent out replacement copies. Can you see a journalist not mentioning the manufacturer of a car that's been recalled? Just an observation ...

Why Blog?

2011-09-27T00:23:00.001-05:00

(Quick promo message: SECTOR C was a sponsor book at Red Adept Reviews yesterday, and it received a 4.5 star review from Katy Hanna at Good Book Alert. Both very nice sites to find some great reads. Go check them out.)

Everyone has their own reasons for blogging and for starting the blogs and websites that they do. Some folk simply use their blog to record their daily musings and happenings – using it in a true journal sense. Some folk have a product or service or hobby that they blog about and their posts often reflect an aspect of that narrow topic.

A virtual buddy of mine is deciding whether to start a blog on a specific medical affliction and wondering if that’s enough of a topic to create a blog around, and if it’s enough that she simply has family with this affliction – not even family that she interacts with every day. I contend that if it’s useful for her to write down what she’s feeling and to talk about the challenges both she and her family are facing that it’s enough.

Perhaps, though, some things are too private to talk about in public? Or might it truly help someone who is dealing with the same circumstances to know others have conflicted feelings too?

Why do YOU blog and/or why do you visit the blogs you do?

I get that as writers trying to be authors we frequent other writers’ blogs, agents’ blogs, and editors and publishers’ blogs. We want to keep up with an industry that’s changing fast. We want hints at what we can do to get a leg up on everyone else submitting, on submission or debuting. We want to be sure we don’t miss a trick or we’re looking for ways to simply improve what we’re already doing.

As a happy collateral happenstance, we make new friends. Real friends, even if they remain forever virtual in our lives.

I started this blog back when because writers in the process of submitting should have blogs, according to conventional wisdom. I was lucky that I didn’t have to flounder long wondering what the focus of my blog should be. Queries and synopses and critiquing were things I felt comfortable with and I truly believed I could provide a forum where I could kickstart a critique and then the rest of you could jump in and finesse the crit and hopefully a few people would benefit and learn how to write a better query and/or start getting requests because of the work we did together.

I know I learned the art of query writing from seeing the critiques of others’ work. I can even remember the moment when I realized what a query letter really was. In my mind, it’s NOT a business letter; but when I was learning that was the general wisdom being touted. That definition kept me from clearly understanding the composition and mechanics of a query for a long, long time. I kept trying to make it all formal and geared toward the business proposition side of things.

When I finally understood it to be a SALES letter, that’s when things clicked. I worked in advertising and marketing, and a query letter – in my understanding – simply became an extension of that kind of writing. I always knew how to write that kind of letter; I just didn’t understand that was what a query letter was. Semantics. Seeing the critiques on Evil Editor’s site and in the Snarkives clued me in. And I felt the least I could do was to try to pay it forward.

Now, though, I’m not sure what this blog is about. I do know I’m trumpeting my own books too much here for anyone looking for any kind of quality content. I’m excited about them, but self-promotion isn’t why I visit other peoples’ blogs, so why should anyone keep coming to mine if that’s all I’m doing. And most of the writerly things I have to say are sparked by conversations elsewhere where you can find other opinions that are just as provocative as mine (though never as right as mine, of course) to consider.

So THIS blog will become a bit more static going forward. It’ll be mainly a broadcast area where I’ll continue to talk about my books, my promo efforts and my sales as I’ve been doing. I’ll post interviews and reviews that I’m excited about. Maybe even host the occasional interview or Q&A. But the nuts and bolts of writing and publishing and such are covered so much better elsewhere that I think you guys are better served time-wise to be reading others.

The author/editor me will be active on forums and in the comments of those bloggers.

The real me will be over at the Confessions of an Animal Junkie blog. You see, my real life is pretty boring. I’m interested in 4 things: reading, writing, animals and avoiding housework. That’s it. Really. I don’t review, so I don’t talk about reading. No one wants to hear my pathetic rants about housework. So that leaves animals and writing. Over on my other blog I get to talk about my beasties and the farm on Mondays, and other people’s beasties on Wednesdays. And on Fridays I don’t talk about writing, I show you what I’ve written. The Vet Tech Tales series is a book in the making. Or book-like thing. Memoir-esque?

I hope those of you interested only in the writing aspects stay subscribed to this blog. I know some of you like the end-of-the-month wrap on sales and promos. And I’ll be reporting on promo efforts and giving you the low-down as always on what works/doesn’t work in my test-marketing. So staying subscribed won’t be a complete energy waste and you’ll know upfront that any marketing posts you see you can safely ignore. Plus, once my current super-secret project launches in a few weeks, I’ll likely have some better observations on the state of publishing and promotional opportunities that I can share here too.

I invite the rest of you to join me over at the Animal Junkie blog, where I hope you’ll contribute articles and photos. Writing an essay about one of your BFFs (best furry friends) is a lot closer to real creative writing than most guest posts you’ll be asked to pen ;o). And you can stretch those creative muscles to create something poignant or funny, sad or horrifying.

Thanks for hanging with me!

Copyediting And Amazon: Update

2011-09-22T11:43:00.003-05:00

Update to my last post: Seems more and more folk are coming forward with similar emails from Amazon about grammar issues. Anecdotal comments from the authors as well as cited comments from Amazon that are surfacing imply that Amazon is:

Performing spot-check quality control
Responding to customer complaints and acting on them
Pulling books from sale if errors aren’t corrected

The onus is on the author/publisher to either correct and reupload the book or to write to Amazon, explain WHY the punctuation in question is being used or how the word is proper dialect in spoken dialog (using “ole” for example). In two cases at least, an email back to Amazon with explanation (such as the errors in question conforming with generally accepted style manuals) resulted in Amazon dropping the matter.

Some of the errors, of course, are founded: duplicate words, an extra indent, a misspelled homonym. Still, if what seems to be a litmus test of 3 errors found in a book means it must be pulled, corrected and republished, then Amazon QA personnel are going to be working overtime and traditional publishers will need to hire extra staff to deal with all the error-handling and reuploads.

A Google search indicates this has been going on for the past few months. It does, however, seem to be more prevalent now than before.

An unsubstantiated claim is making the rounds that Amazon has offered a bounty to readers who find and report errors. The bounty has been cited in various venues as $5, the purchase price of the book or, in some cases, both. I think we can agree that in a land of grammar gray and where the idea of editors following a little manual called The Chicago Manual of Style seems a surprise to the Amazon QA team, this could become a real issue. Ebooks are not so difficult to correct and reupload, though the time investment is annoying. But books where the print run could be in the thousands? This one’s going to be interesting.

Also, has anyone else noticed an increase in Google + invitations since Facebook launched its revamped News Feed yesterday? :o)

Everyone’s A Copyeditor

2011-09-20T02:00:00.000-05:00

Grammar. You would think something so fundamental to our language would be easier to parse, to critique and to use correctly. Oops, should there be a comma after “critique?” Does that question mark go inside the quote or outside?

We can, of course, turn to our trusty style manuals when in doubt. Except my manual may not be the same one you consult, and they may not jive in their advisement.

Problems arise when people think they know grammar but instead know only one style guide or philosophy and assume all writing should follow suit. You run into these folk in critique groups: the grammar nazis who believe all writing should follow formal rules and be bound by the wisdom of Chicago or AP or Strunk & White.

In the wild, you run into folk sure they remember every last grammar drill from school, not realizing they are mis-remembering what was taught or accurately remembering the lesson but not its spirit. I used to get this type of para-grammarian frequently at work. I’d present them with a perfectly good sentence and they would change it around into a perfectly wrong one, somehow believing they’d “fixed” it. (Hmm, comma before and in that sentence or not?)

A few years ago, I submitted 25 mss pages to a contest being judged by published authors. The author who landed my mss went through the first 7 pages marking all the “errors” then wrote: I won't be pointing out any more errors. I suggest a book on basic grammar or a course at your local community college. Erm, I taught freshman college comp while I was in grad school and, at the time this happened, I had spent 20 years as an editor in the corporate world. The "errors" he'd pointed out were all stylistic choices. THIS from someone who purportedly knew enough to be pointing out errors.

Why do I bring this up now? Because yesterday I heard an author had been contacted by Amazon to clean up the grammatical errors in his ebook and republish it. Before you applaud, let's look at the request and the book it was requested of. The email the author received detailed just three errors. Two of the errors were comma-related and the third was a word choice.

To start with, three errors in a full-length novel may or may not pass your individual quality assurance test. (It passes mine.) But the “errors” Amazon was asking be corrected were 1) an unnecessary serial comma, 2) an unnecessary comma between unrelated adjectives and 3) slang in dialog.

The book, Hunter: A Thriller, is here. For the record, the author is a professional writer and professional editor, the book is selling well and it has a number of really great reviews (60+), none of which mentions any egregious issues with grammar and spelling. From the sample, serial commas appear to be used consistently throughout. The offending comma between adjectives occurs in this sentence: ... a high-velocity, 400-grain, solid-brass, boattail spitzer bullet. Did you catch the extra comma there? Thought not. And the slang was a character using the phrase “J school” to refer to “journalism school.” Amazon advised: an appropriate word could be used in the place the letter "J" [sic].

It’s not clear whether the directive from Amazon was inspired by a customer complaint or not, though the odds are that it must have been. Why Amazon would rely on one customer’s evaluation of the book to influence its actions is a mystery. And if Amazon acted on its own, then seriously, they need to find another editor to comb through the books.

I have glanced through the sample and I'll admit I would have made some different choices in comma placement here and there, but they all fall into the gray hole of comma use and not the black hole of comma splices and run-ons.

There are plenty – plenty – of books on the virtual shelves with shoddy formatting and shoddy proofreading. Targeting those books would be doing readers a customer service. Still, individual complaints about books need to be validated by professionals who understand the trade. There are too many people with agendas not in the best interest of the overall reading public leaving reviews and making complaints. And there are too many people out there with no agendas who, while earnest, are simply not credible copyeditors.

I’m currently reading Zoo City, a multi-award-winning book that was released this year in both print and ebook formats. It has some formatting issues and I’ve spotted a couple of typos – true errors such as misplaced apostrophes and quote marks in place of apostrophes. I expect to find a couple more errors before I’m through reading. That’s the nature of both the self-published beast and the traditionally published one. Do movie-goers demand scenes be reshot because of continuity issues or ask for their money back because a character is wearing a black tie in one frame of a scene and a dark blue one in the next frame?

I’m willing to ignore a handful or dozen of typos and even a comma splice or two in any novel – not that I’d be counting them up, but maybe one every 25 pages or so. And I certainly wouldn’t count editor’s choice stylings as errors.

How many formatting or copyediting (gee, is that one word or two?) errors do you let slide before you throw the book against the wall, mention them in your reviews or refuse to recommend a book to a friend?

Let's Celebrate YOU!

2011-09-15T04:24:00.002-05:00

Sometimes it seems like a hard slog through an unforgiving universe, doesn't it?

What writing milestones have you achieved lately?

Have you finished a manuscript?
Submitted it?
Gotten requests?
Gotten an agent?
Been published?
Published something yourself?

We all deserve a little brag time. I'd love to hear what you have to brag about!

Welcome Red Tash “Trick or Treat” Contest Enterers

2011-09-13T07:21:00.000-05:00

The porch light is ON and I’m home to help hand out treats!

EVERYONE can enter, although you do have to be a US/Canada resident to win the KINDLE and other prizes Red’s giving away to celebrate the launch of her new ebook, This Brilliant Darkness. I’m throwing in a free copy of SECTOR C over there, but I’ll hand out 3 additional digital copies here based on randomly drawn comments – and you don’t have to be local to win those. Could be other participating SF, Fantasy and Horror authors are handing out more free books too. Go check out the treats they have on offer!

Red’s contest rules are here, along with the list of participating authors. You have through Oct 16 to rack up points toward that lovely Kindle, free ebooks and the additional copies of SECTOR C.

Note that if you enter once a day, your entry needs to appear either in the comments of the post for that day or the day before. The point is not to keep coming back to this post to enter but to engage with the blog itself. Duh ;o).

Let’s be safe out there. Good luck!

SECTOR C Vs. Contagion: Smackdown!

2011-09-10T09:04:00.003-05:00

Remember all those compare-and-contrast essays you had to write for English class? Yeah, well this post won’t be so formal, I promise, but the premise is the same. For the simplified version, see the chart here.

Mild spoilers for both the book and the movie below.

OK, I know they are two different media, but some of the underlying themes and risks that Contagion, the new movie, takes are echoed in SECTOR C. It’s natural that I want to know how audiences respond to the movie.

For one, the movie circles around trying to find its main characters. There are a lot of little-more-than-cameo performances, which is why it can include the named cast it does. In that, it feels more like a documentary than a movie and produces a more distancing effect.

SECTOR C circles in the beginning too, though it does land on two main characters who are threaded through the first half of the story and spotlighted in the second half.

The mystery of what the disease is and how it began is at the center of both vehicles.

They both focus heavily on the scientific response.

They both discuss the role private enterprise might play.

They both gloss a bit over the full impact the disease has on the individual. There are scenes in both where death is shown up close, but because of the crisis mode, the scenes feel a little clinical, a little sterile. Again, a little distancing.

Contagion takes the greater risk, I think, in showing us the science in a movie. Are movie audiences ready to sit through a thriller that doesn’t really thrill in the classic sense? It offers a plausible glimpse into events that could be without a lot of sentiment or time bomb ticking at the individual level, saving that for society in general and giving us a more global feel for how the crisis plays out.

In contrast, SECTOR C displaces focus from the global onto a regional response. It takes that narrow response one step further by not dwelling on ordinary people deep in crisis but showing select reaction at the beginning of the crisis before much is known about it. Too, the focus is dispersed. The disease in SECTOR C is not limited to one or two species, and there is a deliberate attempt to concentrate on the animal-related response since the human-centric response is dealt with so well in so many other pandemic thrillers.

The science, in written form, goes down more easily, I think, and people who don’t really care about it or who don't understand it can skim it to get back to “the story,” something not so easily done in a movie theater.

The movie takes the greater risk, too, in presenting a realistic ending done within realistic timeframes. It’s only real bow to a Hollywood-type ending comes in the last few frames (think Carrie).

In truth, this ending is the thing I’m most watching response to and reading reviews for. It isn’t neat and tidy. Neither is SECTOR C’s. It’s a feel-good-for-now-for-specific-people type ending, but the book leaves off without offering a full resolution to the crisis. That’s left to the reader’s imagination and is hopefully part of what makes this, as one reader called it, an “intelligent thriller.”

That said, while Contagion gives us a completely plausible and unsettling story line, it doesn’t give us anything new to really think about. People were already using paper towels to open restroom doors and coughing into their sleeves before Contagion came out. The movie simply shows us graphically how contagious diseases spread and reminds us to be vigilant about the contact we have with others and with objects others come into contact with.

But beyond that? For me, there were so many more interesting ways this movie could have gone and many more questions it could have posed to leave the audience thinking about it long after they walked out of the theater.

Whether SECTOR C succeeds on that level or not, I’m not going to venture. Only its readers can tell us that. However, business ethics and animal rights are collateral themes explored. The disease isn't what the book is about in the same way the pandemic defines Contagion.

In fact, in two respects, SECTOR C is more “Hollywood” than Contagion:

Patient Zero is the stuff out of science fiction. And yet, science has a way of catching up to the fiction, doesn’t it? SECTOR C takes place a dozen years in the future. I think that’s just about right given where the science is at today.
The mystery of the disease is resolved in the first 2/3 of the book. The latter 1/3 is more thriller-esque, what with fires and an explosion and running and shooting and chomping.

If you’ve seen Contagion, how did you respond?

If you haven’t seen it, is there something about it (other than a fab cast) that makes you want to see it? Or not see it?

Weekend Reading

2011-09-09T09:02:00.000-05:00

Dropping in on an off-day to mention that Wilkins MacQueen has some nice things to say about SECTOR C. She even posted an addendum (and no, I don't think it gives anything away to say the story doesn't have a vaccine-in-the-nick-of-time, Hollywood-type ending!).

She also has a recommendation for what sounds like a truly uplifting book about elephants: Elephant Dance by Tammie Matson. I'll certainly be reading that one soon!

Traveling the Blogosphere

2011-09-08T11:35:00.000-05:00

How exciting to be three places at once again!

I'm going on about SECTOR C over at Chrystalla Thoma's blog today.

And Lexcade has a review of Spoil of War.

I'm feeling quite well-traveled this week!

Doing It On Demand

2011-09-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

In my interview with Lexcade a couple of days ago, I professed to being a plotter rather than a pantster. And while that’s true for a lot of my writing, sometimes I do strip off my plotting gear and pull up my take-me-where-they-will pants.

Take blogging. I used to have a fairly structured blogging life. Monday through Friday was devoted to critiquing queries and synopses. I didn’t have to think about what topics I would post about except on the weekends. Even then it might be something about the writing biz one weekend and something about my beasties the next. Pretty easy for someone whose idea bank is, well, not really limited so much as slow. I’m usually late to the trending stuff and I hate to just repeat what everyone else has already said. What’s the point in that?

With the break from critting, I set a goal to come up with a writing/publishing topic on this blog three times a week along with a farm story and Vet Tech Tale each week for the Animal Junkie blog. Eek. Having the schedule and a deadline play right into my plotter frame of mind, but coming up with things to talk about? That’s where pantster me sometimes has to jump in.

I know YOU don’t care if I follow my schedule, but I care about meeting deadlines – even those I’ve imposed myself. And gosh-darn-it, I’ve agonized at times over what I would post about. For example, Tuesday night I went to bed mad at myself that I hadn’t scheduled anything to post overnight on the Animal Junkie blog. I hope to have the calendar full for guest posts every Wednesday once that blog matures, but for now the Wednesdays I don’t have guests are a bit free-form. I woke up settled that I would just make another plea for guest posts. How lame is that? Especially for, you know, a writer.

Then I sat down and pantster me took over and wrote a post that I had no idea I was going to do. It even had my farm-story voice with a totally in-brand beginning and end. How’d that happen? (And please happen again next time too!)

And then, of course, that little excursion brought me around to this post, which yesterday I would never have imagined. Serendipity -- or something else?

When it comes to producing on demand, do you surprise yourself sometimes too?

Rex Rising - Chrystalla Thoma

2011-09-06T00:12:00.005-05:00

Since others are kind enough to be hosting me today, I thought I'd return the gesture.

You'll find me spoiling SECTOR C over at Lexcade's place.

And Spoil of War is being featured at Indie eBooks.

Here, I've invited Chrystalla Thoma to talk about Rex Rising: Book One of Elei's Chronicles, her YA science fiction e-book that released on Sept. 1. I met Chrystalla when she submitted (and I accepted!) a most excellent story, "The Angel Genome," for the Extinct anthology and I've been a fan of hers since.

Who is Elei?

In a world where parasites create new human races, Elei leads a peaceful life as an aircar driver — until a mysterious attack on his boss sends him fleeing with a bullet in his side. Pursued for a secret he does not possess and with the fleet at his heels, he has but one thought: to stay alive. His pursuers aren’t inclined to sit down and talk, although that’s not the end of Elei’s troubles. The two powerful parasites inhabiting his body, at a balance until now, choose this moment to bring him down, leaving Elei with no choice but to trust in people he hardly knows in a mad race against time. It won’t be long before he realizes he must find out this deadly secret – a secret that might change the fate of his world and everything he has ever known – or die trying.

What compelled you to write Rex Rising?

Behind every book is another story – the story of the author and how she or he ended up creating a world, new characters and a twisted plot. It’s the book’s backstory, if you will, and it is inextricably linked to the author’s life at the moment of the writing but also to her or his past.

Having said all this, if I cast my mind back to the time I wrote the first draft of the story, in 2007, certain events and thoughts jump in my memory. I had moved to Costa Rica, following my Costa Rican husband, after a long stay in Germany. Although Costa Rica is a relatively rich Latin country, the house we lived in was next to a river on whose steep banks a slum was built out of tin and cardboard. I saw squalor and poverty like never before in my life (although Egypt came close). I wanted to create a sort of post-apocalyptic world where one human race oppresses the other, and I admit I drew inspiration from certain neighborhoods...

Another idea that was a lot on my mind at the time was the uncanny ability certain people have to assess a person instantly – with just a brief encounter to know whether this person is good, interesting, trustworthy etc. – an ability many people seem to lack. Rex Rising revolves a lot around Elei’s lack of trust in his own instincts, especially when events begin to become twisted and the truth to seem like a lie, until he learns to trust more in himself.

Finally, the parasites! I was fascinated with them ever since I read a book called Parasite Rex, which described all different sorts of parasites and all the amazing things they can do, altering their host’s abilities and behavior in order to propagate. I remember thinking that the scientific facts I had just read beat fantasy by a long shot! So I decided to give parasites a major role in the story.

What can you tell us about the science in Rex Rising?

If you wonder if it is a good idea to control one parasite by introducing another, I admit I don’t have an example – but consider this: in ecology, if a species is introduced in an environment where it has no enemies, it will take over the environment and destroy it. Efforts have been made to control such invasive species by introducing another species. For instance, on the Bat Islands of Costa Rica, rats were introduced by man and completely took over the ecosystem. So, cats were introduced to control them. Now they are reaching a balance. Therefore, I do think that it is a possibility. You can check on the internet about invasive species or assisted dispersion to read more about the topic.

Regarding parasites attracting each other or attracting their hosts, read for instance about the Toxoplasma gondii parasite we humans often get from cats. Studies have shown that when rats get infected with it, instead of avoiding cats and places cats frequent (marked by cat urine), they actively seek them out. In effect, they seek to be eaten, so that they can pass the parasite to the cats where it will continue its life cycle. Read Parasite Rex mentioned above for many examples of behavior-modifying parasites.

What do you hope readers will take away from Rex Rising?

Rex Rising is Elei’s journey. He struggles to discover the truth about his world and the people around him and to learn to trust in himself, his own strength and his instincts. I hope readers will identify with him, feel his pain, his fear, his confusion and his joy as the story unfolds, and that they may even see their own lives with different eyes.

Find Rex Rising at the following distributors:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon DE
Smashwords

Read more about it – learn about the geography of the world and read a sample at: http://chrystallathoma.wordpress.com/rex-rising

Like Chrystalla's Facebook Fanpage

Follow Chrystalla on Twitter: @chrystallathoma

August Sales Stats and an Elephant

2011-09-03T08:08:00.005-05:00

Looking at other authors’ stats and hearing the grumbling in the various forums, it seems August was, for a lot of folk, not a very lucrative month.

Spoil of War’s sales could easily have lost the same ground that many of its siblings-in-arms' books lost if not for a certain review that broke early in the month.

The Elephant

I’m not one to avoid elephants in the room, and I won’t avoid acknowledging this one either. That doesn’t mean I have to talk to it, though. I’ve thought about any number of ways this post could go, but in the end I’ve settled for letting others do the talking for me. Because one thing is clear: Whatever I say will be questioned or refuted, which then begs further engagement. And if I don’t engage, that prompts people to assume I must agree with commenters. It’s a no-win game. One I refuse to play.

So to all the folk who quibble over seeming anachronisms of time and materials (because while it may be ridiculously easy to find pictures of Roman war saddles, it’s also ridiculously easy to discover that they were already losing favor by the third century CE), yet who not only forgive but demand anachronistic thinking from characters, I’ll point you to 3 links:

http://mrsgiggles.com/books/sullivan_spoil.html
While there are other more favorable reviews I could point to, I won’t chance that those reviewers will be insulted and their integrity called into question the way other respectable, legitimate reviewers who have said good things about Spoil have been. Here then, a balanced review from a respected site where the reviewer reviewed Spoil precisely because of all the hubbub. (You can also look at the ratings bestowed there upon other [traditionally published] books for more insight into how Spoil compares: http://mrsgiggles.com/books/index.html).

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2011/08/29/305723/feminist-media-criticism-george-r-r-martins-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-and-that-sady-doyle-piece/
A timely article by Alyssa Rosenberg, a correspondent for the TheAtlantic.com and The Washington Monthly, takes to task Sady Doyle’s critique of George R.R. Martin’s popular and hugely successful Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series. There is much in Rosenberg’s article – and in its 80+ comments – that resonates with the Dear Author review and its ensuing comments. I’ll leave it to you to sort out the similarities.

http://www.ipu.org/splz-e/unga08/s2.pdf
2008 PARLIAMENTARY HEARING AT THE UNITED NATIONS - SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN ARMED CONFLICT
“It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern wars.”
- Major General Patrick Cammaert, former Deputy Force Commander, MONUC.
This hearing underscores the number of women and children in the last couple of decades (~1 million) who have been raped as spoils. What is the acceptable modern response for these women behavior-wise? Or are these million women simply not heroine material?

Other than pointing to the above discussions, I will not engage further on this. Thank you for understanding.

Back To Sales Numbers

I can probably credit that DA review for sales of Spoil not slipping like sales for so many other authors did. What effect the backlash of 1-star reviews and the rash of people popping over to Amazon and Goodreads to vote the good reviews down and the bad ones up will have on future sales we’ll find out together. Still keeping a running total in the sidebar.

The most fun I had was watching the sales on August 31. Up to that point, the sales numbers for July (when I upped the price from 99c to $2.99) exactly matched those for April (its first month at 99c) at 68, and August sales were running neck-and-neck with May at 77. Late in the evening, August pushed to the front by a nose with 78 sales.

The UK showed Spoil a little extra love, but Amazon UK is an easy site to seduce. Only 8 sales there, yet Spoil hit #12 in historical fantasy (represented by 1448 titles) not once but twice. And it dipped into the Top 100 in historical fantasy in the US (with 1710 titles there) several times throughout the month.

The breakdown:

56 - Amazon US
08 - Amazon UK
12 - Barnes and Noble
02 - Smashwords
78

The grand totals:

How Does This Compare?

96 respondents on Kindleboards had posted their August sales when I captured them. Disclaimer: This is anecdotal and non-scientific. Keeping that in mind, for respondents who broke their sales out by title:

34 titles sold less than 100 copies = 45%
30 titles sold between 101 and 1000 copies = 40%
7 titles sold between 1001 and 2000 copies = 9%
4 titles sold over 2001 copies = 6%

More granularly:

1-20 = 20
21-50 = 9
51 - 100 = 5
101 – 200 = 10
201 – 300 = 2
301 – 600 = 5
601 – 800 = 6
801 – 1000 = 7
1001 – 1500 = 4
1501 – 2000 = 3
2001 – 3200 = 4

And for respondents who reported aggregated sales across multiple titles:

1 – 20 = 4 (across 2-6 titles)
21 – 100 = 3 (across 4-15 titles)
101 – 300 = 3 (across 5-6 titles)
301 – 1000 = 5 (across 2-16 titles)
1001 – 2000 = 3 (across 3-5 titles)
2001 – 5000 = 1 (across 31 titles)
5001 – 16,000 = 1 (across 4 titles)
20,000 = 1 publisher (across 5 authors)

Next month bookkeeping gets more complicated (I hope!) with the addition of sales for SECTOR C.

(PS: Comment moderation is on today.)

Winners!

2011-09-02T08:08:00.000-05:00

Well, that was underwhelming. The majority of the 141 folk who came by yesterday didn't play because you thought there'd be a huge run and how could you possibly win, right? Right?

Some of you bought the book instead of trying to win a copy. I love you forever.

Some of you have a copy and tweeted anyway. Again with the forever love.

So after the tally, those who didn't already have a copy or who didn't buy the book after coming here are all winners! Let me know what format you'd like -- Kindle, nook (epub) or PDF -- and I'll send your copy over post-haste.

Beckah-Rah
Stacy
AA
McKoala
Jo-Ann

And if a couple more of you would like the book and want to spread the love, keep tweeting. I'll add a couple more freebies to the prize stash.

As always, THANK YOU!!!

SECTOR C Launch Day and Contest!

2011-09-01T00:21:00.007-05:00

I hurried this book out so as to get the drop on that little film called Contagion releasing Sept. 9. I mean, really, what does that film have that my book, SECTOR C, doesn't?

Here's a chart to help you answer that (it wasn't a rhetorical question). *SPOILERS* in the chart!

So picture the following with cows instead of Gwyneth and tigers in place of Jude.

A no-brainer choice-wise, right?

Let's help convince others! I'll give away 5 copies of the book -- winners' choice of format -- from a random drawing of everyone who posts, messages and/or tweets the following before midnight Central Time (US), Sept 2:

Why wait till #Contagion hits the theaters on 9/9? Read the medical mystery/ecothriller #SECTOR C now! tinyurl.com/43uuwnp

I'll see your tweet via the hashtag. If you message or post elsewise, let me know in the comments.

I'll announce winners tomorrow, and on Saturday we'll look back at August and decide how good a month it was for moving books.

Special Announcement For Paranormal Fans

2011-08-31T01:17:00.000-05:00

The Beyond Natural, a weekly series hosted by friend of the blog, Landra/Rise of the Slush, is debuting Wednesday night on the Paranormal TV Network! How exciting is that?!

Check out the details here. You can either attend live (9 PM CST) or watch it later on demand, a happy option for those in the UK who'll be asleep at 3 AM or those in Oz who'll be at work at noon on Thursday.

How Far Do You Go As An Author?

2011-08-30T00:58:00.002-05:00

I'll be releasing SECTOR C on the 1st. It isn't spoiling anything to say that much of the plot revolves around a company that sponsors canned hunts (hunts where the animals are tied out or put into an enclosure so the hunters are assured of a kill). The question of whether or not canned hunts are ethical is a small part of the story but not the main focus.

I don't have an agenda with the book other than wanting to present some philosophical questions for people to think about: Just because we can do something, does that mean we should? Put into similar circumstances what would you think, how would you react?

To that end, I worked hard to present balanced arguments to some of the ethical questions raised. I especially wanted my villain to be a rational person with grounded reasons that make sense for the choices he makes. He's countered by a protag who's a veterinarian and who's closer to being the spokesperson for my own ethical beliefs.

People die in the book. Animals who aren't human die. Although I've been told the animal deaths are more emotional than the human ones, I again tried for balance.

The ending doesn't wrap up neatly. It doesn't necessarily leave room for a sequel, but it does leave more questions about how the reader would react in the situation the world is left in.

My intent is not to manipulate anyone's thinking one way or the other. But I'm also concerned that because I start with a hunting scene and have some rational arguments for what the fictional company is doing, readers will believe I've written a pro-hunting treatise. Or that I'm anti-science. Or that I'm something else that I'm not that will somehow taint their attitude toward the book.

I think my subconscious was wrestling with that concern and that's what helped spur the creation of the Confessions of an Animal Junkie blog. I now have a public site that pretty much defines where I stand ethically. A pre-emptive block. One that I didn't necessarily realize I was glad to have until I had it.

So my questions for you are:

Do you judge an author by their book or by the speeches they put into their characters' mouths?
Are you planning or have you planned any "damage control" activities before releasing one of your books?

Query Revision 26: Redux

2011-08-27T22:14:00.001-05:00

Spy

Dear Editor,

As a stealth master in the SSS (Spies Serving Society), Sarhya helps protect her friends and the other street kids hiding from a despotic government that considers orphans nothing more than cheap labor. Dealing with infiltrators, smugglers and rival spies has become second nature after two years working with her fellow spies, but Sarhya will need more than talent to handle the crisis headed her way.

For the first time since the SSS formed, an adult has asked to join their ranks, and he is none other than the legendary Black Dragon, a stealth master like herself. Although Dragon's request is granted through a joint decision, Sarhya is none too pleased to have someone encroaching on her position, no matter how famous he is.

However, the SSS as a whole has larger issues to deal with than a little friction among its members. Black Dragon's former employer took offense when he walked out and is determined to get him back by any means possible, including blackmail involving an unsuspecting Sarhya, who is about to find out just how harsh reality can be when it comes to learning the truth about the family she has always imagined.

At 60,000 words, SPY is a futuristic adventure novel for middle grade readers. The completed manuscript is available upon request.

Thank you for considering my work.

Sincerely,

Comments

Through each iteration, I still find myself asking why such a legendary guy wants to join a youth group. And why a savvy bunch of kids lets him. I understand the prestige value from the kids' POV, but I think mentioning the motivation of the adult in the query will help pre-empt that question in the reader's mind. I think it's more important to know why he's joining than how he gets in. And probably more important than Sarhya feeling displeased that he's there. You could probably sneak that bit in more succinctly at the beginning of the last paragraph:

Sarhya's steamed at being snubbed, but the SSS as a whole has ...

Dealing with infiltrators, smugglers and rival spies has become second nature after two years working with her fellow spies, but Sarhya will need more than talent to handle the crisis headed her way.

This is a nit that may not bother anyone else, but I was trying to figure out who would be infiltrating the SSS? I could kind of imagine them infiltrating government groups but vice versa?

And, of course, if you say she'll need more than talent, I start to wonder what else she'll need -- friends, wits, knowledge?

Talent Vs. Luck - Or What's A Horse Race For?

2011-08-25T07:58:00.001-05:00

Sham (left) and Secretariat (right)

Re-watching the movie Secretariat recently got me thinking about the roles luck and talent play in so many aspects of our lives, writing included.

Secretariat, for those of you unfamiliar, was Horse of the Year as a 2-year-old in 1972 and took the title again as a 3-year-old in 1973. He won 16 of the 21 races he ran, including the Triple Crown. I remember sitting in front of the TV watching his 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes and gawking at that incredible ground-devouring stride of his.

The movie takes some leeway with the facts to create a more exciting and streamlined version of Secretariat's racing career. Most notably, it plays somewhat loosely with the rivalry between Secretariat and Sham, a bloodline cousin who Secretariat raced against several times. I don't know if Sham's owner really was as big a jerk as he's made out to be in the movie, but my guess is that the script writers needed a villain and Sham's owner -- and by extension, Sham himself -- was written to fill the bill.

What's only hinted at is just how good a race horse Sham was in his own right. In a different year, competing with a different crop of foals, Sham may well have taken The Horse of the Year titles. He may have won at least the first two legs of the Triple Crown. Maybe even the Belmont too, if he didn't have to match the brutal early pace Secretariat challenged him with.

The movie excuses Secretariat for losing the Wood Memorial to Sham when it's discovered Secretariat ran the race dogged with the pain of a mouth abscess irritated even more by bit and bridle. What the movie fails to acknowledge is that Sham broke two teeth on the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby and, mouth bleeding, still ran the second fastest Derby race of all time, a record beaten only by the Derby winner, Secretariat.

Sham had speed, talent and heart. Literally. One of the genetic traits he shared with Secretariat and others in his bloodline was an abnormally large heart, which gave him improved oxygenation and increased stamina. Sham had everything on his side. His only misfortune: being born in the same year as an athlete as phenomenal as Secretariat.

In that big red horse's shadow, great just wasn't good enough.

As writers struggling to be noticed in the slushpile or on the shelves, we sometimes have to accept that the biz is as much about luck as it is about talent. We can't control who our competition is or the fickleness of readers. We can't control world economics or the advent of new technology. What we can control is developing the talent given us. And despite everything you do to improve your lot as a writer, sometimes you have to accept that the genre you write in has dried up, the agent you'd give up your firstborn for signed a similar work the week before she got around to reading yours, or readers are snatching up a similarly themed series that hit the shelves a month before yours and calling yours -- which had publication delays out of your control -- derivative.

Talent will out, true. But sometimes being great still isn't enough.

How many of you remembered the name Sham?

Targeted Marketing and Oversaturation

2011-08-23T01:14:00.008-05:00

As you know, I write about animals here and over at Confessions of an Animal Junkie. I've written about rescues and I have a rescue organization signed up to write regular guest posts at the Animal Junkie blog. Google, Facebook, game sites, writer forums, animal forums -- all see fit to advertise charitable humane organizations to me.

I have rescues now. I've had them in the past, I'll have them in the future. I donate what I can afford to what reputable charities I can. In short, I am a convert. MORE advertising is oversaturation. In fact, from the time I sit down at my computer with my morning cuppa to the time I turn the laptop off at night, I am faced with an unending barrage of images of sick, injured, neglected and abused animals.

Yes, I care -- deeply. Yes, every image tugs at the appropriate heartstring. But sometimes I just need a break from the constant suffering on display, you know. Sometimes I just want to enjoy lunch at my desk without contemplating the fate of millions of dogs and cats. The occasional ad served out is fine. A similar ad on nearly every webpage I open? That just inures me to any of them. Nor does my brain discriminate between them. Is it an ad from the HSUS, the SPCA, the ASPCA, Best Friends, a local shelter? I don't know. I don't look.

It's been suggested this is "compassion fatigue." I don't dispute that. But I do wonder if it extends into other areas as well.

Are there certain targeted advertising themes that are wearing you down rather than inciting you to act?

Does this also translate to the increasing number of book ads we're seeing pitched in tweets, FB posts, banners on author sites and comments? Have you bought books because you're seeing them "all over the place?" Or does seeing them "all over the place" encourage you to run far, far away?

In Retrospect

2011-08-21T09:54:00.001-05:00

The general idea for this post was suggested by dear friend-of-the-blog Wilkins MacQueen. After critting 100 queries and 20 synopses, along with their revisions, here and commenting on and rewriting dozens more on other crit sites, could I sum up what it takes to write a great query or synopsis?

At first blush, it seemed like such a post would entail little more than a quick, down-and-dirty bulleted list of the do's and don't's of query and synopsis writing. But when I started to really think about "lessons learned," I realized that the true take-aways can't be distilled that easily. Besides, you can find any number of agent sites and writerly type blogs that present lists of do's and don't's that mirror most of what I would say in that type of format anyway. And here on this blog I've tried to steer clear of simply regurgitating advice you can so readily find elsewhere.

We've worked here to refine and clarify a lot of queries to varying degrees of success. As critters, we become quite invested in the work we critique and develop a bit of a skewed belief that there are a whole lot of good stories out there waiting to be read. Invariably, at some point it becomes a numbers game.

So here's my decidedly unhelpful retrospective on the business of the query letter (and synopsis).

What Gets Requests

A strong, confident query with a unique spin, a unique hero or a unique voice will get requests.

It will garner even more requests if it contains popular elements in a genre that's currently on an upward trend.

A few sleeper queries will get requests.

Minimalist queries that say little and leave everything to the imagination inexplicably also get requests.

Queries that break every query "rule" out there get requests.

Queries that seemingly have little in common with specific agents' preferred genres get requests.

Queries for beautifully written, beautifully imagined stories don't get requests.

In short, it's a crap shoot. The only query that for sure doesn't lead to a request is the one that never gets submitted.

How Many Requests Should You Be Getting

It's tough out there -- and getting tougher. There are a lot of good stories demanding to be noticed. If you're getting a 15-20% request rate, I'd say you're doing decently.

I have noticed most people taking the "query a handful of agents at a time" approach seem to do things a bit backward. They query the big agencies first. At big agencies, there's more competition to get in the door. And if your query isn't *quite* there yet, you've blown your chance. You can always send to "practice" agents first -- those you may not think are your first choice and/or those with a reputation for turning a response around fast. See if you get requests from them. If not, it gives you a chance to tweak your query. And if they wind up offering, you can still approach your favorite big agent with the practice agent's offer and do a little line-jumping in the process.

Some Don't's

Don't overworkshop your query and lose spontaneity and voice in the process.

Don't be quick to blame the query if you're not getting a high request rate -- maybe it's your pages or your unconventional story or an oversaturated market. Trust your gut.

Don't completely discount that it could be the query. If the style or voice of the query doesn't match the genre of the mss, that disconnect could be enough to trigger form rejections.

Don't point to all the great works that were rejected at one time or another and declare all agents and editors are clueless.

Don't forget that most great works have been rejected at one time or another, and many good works never see print because they can't secure a champion.

Don't pin all your hopes on any one agent/editor.

Anecdotally Speaking

Requests are made on "imperfect" queries all the time. Sometimes what resonates is a concept or a spark in the writing. Sometimes it's just gut reaction.

Sometimes agents request knowing they won't offer but they want to satisfy their own curiosity about how the story ends or how the author pulls off a certain macguffin.

Agents get swamped. Some agents prevaricate. One virtual buddy of mine got a rejection nearly 1 year after she submitted her query. The agent apologized, saying she'd just found some old queries in her spam filter. That was the same excuse she'd used on her website 6 months earlier saying she'd found some queries in spam dating back to the time my buddy had sent hers in. If you think your queries aren't being read, you may be right (although I'm betting most are).

The Secret

You could have a truly great story but an agent may be shopping something similar right then. Conversely, an agent may be considering repping a new genre when your query shows up in her inbox.

Accept that there are things beyond your control and mitigate those possible risks that you can control.

And the big secret: Approach the right agent/editor at the right time with the right work.

It's that simple. And that hard. It's creating that perfect storm through writing and editing talent, timing, research, perseverance and a little luck.

Here's to creating your perfect storm soon!

Agent-Publishers: The Reader Perspective

2011-08-18T09:28:00.000-05:00

Agents-as-publishers has been a heated topic for the past few weeks. There have been any number of discussions on personal blogs and public forums that, in general, focus on the pros and cons from the business perspective of the writer.

What I've seen fewer of are discussions around how the average reader will be affected. By average, I simply mean the reader who isn't interested in the behind-the-scenes machinations of how a book gets into her hands.

Where do readers find their books online? Have Amazon and BN made their storefronts so enticing and easy-to-purchase-and-navigate that they are the first choice for readers to head when they need a new book? Or do the storefronts for niche small and micro publishers draw more readers in? Will readers rejoice in the proliferation of publishing sites that will soon litter the internet or will they turn to a small number of favorites they already know and love?

For those readers browsing Amazon who say they will not read an indie-published book, what criterion(a) are they using? Is it size of the publishing company? Number of titles? Authors represented? And will agent-published books meet that criterion in the average reader's mind?

The thing is, while there's anecdotal evidence on the internet about readers who discern between traditionally published books and indie books, the larger reader audience is pretty much unaware of how to distinguish the two when they're buying online from a store like Amazon. Will that help or hurt agent-publishers' positions?

Invariably, publishing-savvy discussions turn to quality. Twenty years ago, a fixed number of publishers could only buy a fixed number of books. Good books got turned away if there wasn't room on the list. Ten years ago, more of those good books were able to find homes in niche e-stores. Today, supply still outstrips demand. There are no firm statistics, but agents have anecdotally disclosed that somewhere between 30% and 60% of the books they try to sell don't, and that the traditional market is tightening so much they are turning away submissions they would have snatched up 10 years ago. By agents' own confessions, lots of good books they feel deserve an audience are going unpublished.

Will the average reader care if a book was a front-runner or a second-place finisher? Will an agent-publisher list bear the stigma of being a stable full of also-rans or carry the same mark of quality a traditional publishing house does?

Many of you are querying agents right now. If an agent told you they love the book but don't think they can sell it to a traditional house and offered to take you on as one of their agent-published authors, would you consider their offer?

Just When All Hope Is Lost...

2011-08-17T09:13:00.000-05:00

It isn't.

Go read the guest post at today's Animal Junkie blog about a rescue given a second chance. It's a good way to start your day.

(I promise not to continually promote the new blog in the future, but being new it does need to find an audience...)

It's War I Tell You. War!

2011-08-16T02:42:00.000-05:00

The beauty of language, in my mind, lies in its fluid state. Through its ability to change, it can help shape and reinforce culture. It can help transition thinking from one paradigm to another. And it can be a source of eternal frustration for purists unwilling to let go of the old and embrace the new.

You might have noticed the groundswell recently around certain charged terms that've been infiltrating their way into conversations across the social media.

Indie.

Indie author.

Indie book.

How do you react when you see the terms? Do they make you shudder? Make you proud?

What do you think when you think "indie?" A ghetto-ized subsection of published writers who aren't worth the electrons they publish on? A niche clique of avant-garde authors blazing new trails into uncharted territory?

Last week, Amazon proved once again that it/they is/are on the cutting edge of applauding/irritating writers with its/their latest marketing ploy/shot across the bow: Featured Kindle Indie Books.

Corporate America has spoken.

Where do YOU stand in the great definition war?

There's A Snake In The Grass Over At 'Animal Junkie'

2011-08-15T09:30:00.002-05:00

Monday Confessions of an Animal Junkie will be a roundup of interesting happenings on the farm from the previous week. I plan to empty out the camera, so there'll be plenty of photos too.

If you've enjoyed living the virtual farm life through my posts here, join me on the Animal Junkie blog where it's all beasties all the time!

Hello World - Excuse The Mess; Didn't Know You Were Coming

2011-08-14T05:56:00.001-05:00

I bet it's every author's dream to be the talk of the town, right? The Twitterati and other bloggers all mentioning your book ... What, you haven't heard?

You will soon, so you might as well go here and read now. You'll be gone awhile. I'll wait.

If the rest of you have come by hoping for a flame war or at the very least a rant, sorry to disappoint. The Dear Author reviewer has every right to express how she felt as she read Spoil of War. Whether I agree or not doesn't invalidate her reaction to it. By request, I've posted a response. It's #96 in the comments there.

I could bother to explain the points the reviewer found issue with or I could trust other readers to connect with the words in the way I hoped every reader would and get on with my promoting. I'm electing to do the latter.

Other reviewers feel differently about the book. They've come at the story from different places and experienced it through different filters as they read. They've been able to lose themselves in the Weltanschauung of the story.

I don't at all mean to be catty when I say this is something you need to decide for yourself. Simply repeating other peoples' perceptions about the quality or accuracy of the book without experiencing it for yourself is certainly as wrong as the review shilling I've been accused of. (Seriously, 5 reviews in 5 months on Amazon and 2 reviews on Goodreads and some people who don't even know me think I'm bartering reviews?)

The book has been researched. It's gone through beta readers and extensive editing. I've placed a cautionary note in the product description that the book contains violence toward women and children. When I explicitly mentioned rape and child abuse in the description, Amazon kept recategorizing the book as erotica, which it certainly isn't.

I am quite open to hearing how you would describe the story and what warning, if any, you as a reader would hope to see on a book in which some readers see a strong heroine overcoming circumstance and others see a heroine sleepwalking through a rapefest. What are the right words to balance that violence with a young woman's coming of age and learning to love? What words would you want to see on your own book?

Right now, the product description ends with this:

Please note: This novel takes place in a harsh era when spoils were often treated as commodities. While the violence toward women and children is period-appropriate and for mature adults only, it is never gratuitous. The story focuses on adaptation, survival and, ultimately, love in the Dark Ages before Arthur was made king.

Feel free to leave comments -- and especially suggestions. Speak your mind but please be respecful, especially where it concerns other indie/self-pubbed authors and reviewers anywhere who work hard to deliver the insight into books that helps you decide whether or not to read them yourself.

Thank you.

Where I Am Today

2011-08-12T10:32:00.000-05:00

My first vet tech-related story is up over at the Animal Junkie blog. The series is starting with the early years and influences on why I became a vet tech, so today's vignette is a personal peek into childhood angst.

I'm also guesting over at Kindle Scribbler, talking some more about real-world sales numbers for ebooks. The site is amassing a database of sales figures and strategies for boosting sales and is definitely worth a look around for anyone interested in that aspect of e-publishing.

I also stopped by Rise of the Slush's Writing Profession Series to check out good blog buddy and Extinct anthology author Shona Snowden's piece on copywriting.

And I took a peek at some exciting news one of our own (we've seen the query and synopsis here) has to share. Keep your fingers crossed for Beckahrah!

New Critique Matchmaker Site

2011-08-11T21:08:00.001-05:00

Mine was pretty much a bust (thank you everyone who gave it a go -- I think we made one match at least!). But someone else has created, from a cursory look, a real, website-based service that's attracting people in several genres. It's in beta right now, though open to new members. All free. I've seen a reference to it from folk I know and like, but I don't personally know anything more about it than the few minutes I spent over there.

If you're still single (or looking to cheat), go check it out: http://www.ladieswhocritique.com/

Updated to add it does indeed appear to be "ladies only" at this time.

Does Your Writing Pass The Submissions Test?

2011-08-11T08:37:00.002-05:00

What does a first reader look for in a submission package of query/synopsis/partial --> full?

One first reader, Donna Maree Hanson, has written an excellent series of posts on just that topic. She's come at it from a very honest perspective. You can tell she was working it all out as she was writing the posts, which means they don't feel at all like someone "up there" lecturing down to you. I may have a bit more on the personal side to say about queries and synopses, which I'll talk about in a few days, but for the rest of it, Donna's taken far more time and explored the topic far more thoroughly than I would have done -- and done it from the perspective of someone in the trenches.

I don't know Donna. I found her because she and another blogger were identified as the primary first readers for Angry Robot's open submissions month, which drew close to 1000 submissions. Donna's not the reader who requested my full, nor is she in contact with the reader who did, so I'm not pandering here by pointing you guys her way. I truly believe you'll benefit from reading her posts. Heck, I did.

And for those of you who are UK-based thinking you're safe from the perils of queryland, note that Angry Robot (a serious player in SFF publishing) is/are in the UK. An "American" query letter works just as well there, plus you have the advantage of having one ready to pull from your pocket if you want to query beyond the UK.

You'll need to set aside some quiet time to read through all the content, but do it; you'll get more out of Donna's observations than you would out of that hour you were going to spend watching reruns on TV. The bonus is that much of this advice applies to those of you who self-publish too. If you can please a more discerning reader, your writing will be a shoe-in for a less-discerning (but not less-intelligent or less-validating or less-anything-else -- I'm not disparaging anyone here, merely distinguishing between reading experiences) general audience.

Part 1: Sets up who she and the publisher are and parameters around the process of reading subs

Part 2: When she provided comments back and why

Part 3A: Common issues in partial manuscripts (this is a long post - there are lots of issues!)

Part 3B: More issues that didn't make it into the first go-round

Part 4: On queries/introductory letters and synopses

Part 5: Assessing the full manuscript

Be An Animal Junkie Too!

2011-08-10T03:31:00.000-05:00

Come join me Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at Confessions of an Animal Junkie for stories about the farm and anecdotes about pets, owners and a vet or two you really don't want to know too well.

I'll continue posting about writing and publishing here on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (which may occasionally turn into the odd Sundays, so maybe we'll just make that "weekends" instead).

As ever, THANK YOU for following either blog!

Who Knew?

2011-08-09T09:29:00.002-05:00

I devote a large chunk of each day to my writing career. Lately, it seems more and more of that time is swallowed up by things other than the actual act of writing. Or even of plotting and outlining -- all the things you normally associate with the writing process.

For instance, I've set up a couple of new blogs.

Dare To Dream Press, which launched last week. Setting it up meant learning what types of widgets and gadgets and pages Amazon Associates offers and how to embed them in Blogger. And, of course, setting up the widgets for the site.
Confessions of an Animal Junkie (yes, it has a name -- many thanks to Landra, my virtual bounceboard during a midnight tweet session), my new animal-related blog, which launches tomorrow. I didn't want it coming naked into the world, without content, so I copied over all the "meet each of my beasties" posts from this blog, resized everything to fit over there, and then read through it all to edit for continuity and reference issues (and no, I did NOT get caught up looking at my kids' "baby" pictures. Nuh-uh.). Plus I wanted some fun gadgets, so have been looking for ones that go with the theme. And figuring out how to incorporate them without slowing the page load too much.

I reformatted 17 stories from the Extinct anthology as stand-alones and uploaded them to 3 different storefronts.

Every time these storefronts offers a promo op, usually on Facebook, I've jumped, uploading tweaked covers and tweaked text.

On Kindleboards and nookboards, I tweak descriptions and subject taglines for each book weekly.

I've brainstormed ideas such as the vet tech story collections and toyed with outlines and marketing plans to ensure they're workable. I've dumped a couple of ideas that weren't.

I've created ads for freebie exposure in an online magazine. Two of the ads that I was promised would be used, didn't make it in. Since one was for Extinct's campaign for the Tassie Devils, it can't be reused, so that ended up being wasted time. The ad that did make it in hasn't led to any attributable sales, so more time that could have been better spent elsewhere, as well.

And I've partnered in a venture that I can't discuss right now, but that is about to take up all the time I freed up by getting the new blogs launched and the 17 stories formatted and uploaded.

Here's my to-do list for this week:

Buy the hi-res art for Spoil of War's cover, recreate the cover image in high resolution, and create a new spine and back cover for a print version.
Reformat Spoil's text file for uploading to Amazon's CreateSpace to create a print version.
Upload all the files and set up the print version.
Complete final tweaks to the new Animal Junkie blog design.
Write the intro post for Wednesday's launch.
Read through the few chapters I wrote years ago about my days as a vet tech and rework some of it into a post for Friday's debut of the weekly series.
Put together some final thoughts and lessons learned about query writing for a post here. This will likely post this weekend or early next week.
Create stupid artwork for some of the posts for this blog. Yes, I generally do my own lineart - bet you couldn't tell ;o)
Get a memo out to some of the Extinct authors about a regional award they can enter.
Identify more review sites for Spoil and Extinct and send queries.
Read an anthology that has a crit partner's story in it and do a review.
Continue to read writing/publishing blogs and forums and post to them.
Update recurring posts for Spoil and Extinct on the Kindleboard and nookboard forums.
Identify animal-related blogs and forums so I can begin posting to them ASAP.
Start on final edits to Sector C, which I want to release in early September, which will mean identifying new review sites and forums -- just not this week.

You'll note repairing unexpected water leaks, such as the one I spent a couple of hours repairing yesterday, is not on the list. I think I'll have to put my foot down and say, going forward, if it ain't on the list, it ain't getting done!

Mind you, I'm not whining. I don't HAVE to set myself up like this. I'm free to walk away from any and/or all of it at any time. I'm not playing a sympathy card, just pointing out that, with the exception of writing the first vet tech post and editing Sector C, none of what's on the list has to do with the traditional thinking of what writing is -- yet it's all writing-career related. A second note to point out is nowhere does "work on my current WIP" show up for this week :o(.

So tell me, what writing-related activities do you have on your plate for this week or month?