I’m doing a little housekeeping today (not actual housekeeping… I’m sure I can put that off for a few more weeks) and thought I’d do a quick post to remind other authors to do the same things once in a while.
I’m uploading a new version of Encrypted to Amazon, B&N, and other stores right now. I’ve updated the file to include a list of all the work I have out to date, and I’ve also include a first-chapter preview of my recently published Decrypted.
Encrypted was the second novel I published, and I realized I didn’t mention any of my other work at the end (probably because there wasn’t much of it available at the time!). That was fine back in early 2011, but now I have seven novels out, with some people stumbling across Encrypted as an introduction into my world. If they like it, sure, they can check the store to see what else I’ve published, but I think it’s a good idea to let the readers know there’s more right when they finish the book. That’s taken care of now, and I plan on going back and updating my Emperor’s Edge books in a similar fashion once I’ve published the last one in the series. I’ll probably change the afterwords, then, too, as many of them were targeted at folks who picked up the book right after it was published (for example, at the end of Book 4, I have an apology about the cliffhanger nature of the ending — at the time 5 wasn’t available, so readers were left, er, hanging).
In addition to tinkering with the afterwords and book lists, I’m changing the pricing for the international stores (i.e. Amazon UK, CA, DE, etc.). I’d just been letting the stores automatically set the prices for other countries based on my U.S. price. Well, I had a short email exchange with Mark Lefebvre, Director of Self Publishing and Author Relations at Kobo, and he mentioned that their Canadian Merchandiser likes to see (and might even give preference to, insofar as showcasing indies goes) books with normal looking prices (i.e. $4.99 instead of $4.92). Well, I’m all about being in a position to be showcased!
On the assumption that this may be true in other markets, I’m going to gradually go in and change all of my books to have *99 or *95 price tags in the international stores (this won’t be possible for the titles distributed through Smashwords, but with Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble UK, it is).
Lastly, I’m going through my website to update the static pages (“book news” and my list of novels, novellas, and short stories specifically), ensuring they mention my latest publications and have links to excerpts when applicable.
So, in addition to getting back to work on EE6, I’ll be working on these housekeeping tidbits this week. They’re things that are easy to forget about when you start to have a larger number of ebooks out there, but it’s good to remember that you have new readers finding you all the time, and they’ll be wondering about all of your older titles as well as reading orders.
I’m a step ahead of you. Hahaha! 🙂
But that’s what happens when you have only two books out and then you release two more within six weeks. Easy to update everything at once on a formatting binge. Although I still haven’t updated the print editions or put out prints for the next two. Bad me. Very bad me.
I think you’re just more organized that I am, David. 😉
I actually wouldn’t recommend doing this with KOBO (at least for now). I uploaded some new files a few weeks back and as a result of doing so lost all my KOBO book ratings, my sales rankings, and recommendations.
I asked customer service what happened and they said this sometimes happens because when a new file is uploaded, a new URL and listing is created through their website. I asked them if they could fix at the least the user ratings I lost and they said “No, but I’m sure you’ll get new ones soon.”
As a result, I went from selling more on KOBO in December and January than Amazon US, to selling nothing the last half of February (when the change occurred) and only 2 sales in March.
I was on the “also boughts” of some pretty big people in fantasy on KOBO which was helping drive my visibility. Now….nothing.
Considering each month had been better than the last after a very slow build, I’m pretty angry/frustrated to say the least at having to start over from scratch.
It seems like they are working on this issue, but until then I’m really hesitant to make any changes to KOBO now.
And what makes matter worse for authors, is that the warning of what could happen isn’t posted anywhere in their user guide.
Hi Joshua,
Ugh, I’m actually getting Mark to answer a few questions for the blog and this is something I asked him about. Did you, by chance, take down versions that were going to Kobo via Smashwords and then upload on your own? It sounds like it’ll be a few months before they can make a transition like that seamless.
As for simple updates, such as price and new book files (i.e. you originally published the book on WritingLife and are just editing that book), that shouldn’t cause something like this to happen. I can certainly understand your frustration though!
Lindsay
Nope, I didn’t take down any older versions and actually had never published to KOBO through Smashwords before.
Two titles lost all their data because KOBO moved them from the old FTP upload format to The Writing Life module for me (which I was told would be seamless). However, both of those tiles were completely unavailable on KOBO for over a week during the process with no way for me to fix them. That was sort of the beginning of the end.
Not knowing any better, I decided to upload new versions of my other books soon after and then got the response I noted above. So, it was a double whammy.
Ouch, sorry to hear that, Joshua. It doesn’t sound like something most people will encounter, though, when simply updating ebook files. (I should hope anyway.)
Good pricing strategy. But what do you do about the Euro / UK prices, where Amazon tacks on the VAT?
I tell people to shop at Smashwords, Joe! (Nothing we can do really, but I’ve heard it’s a flat $2, so shouldn’t change the .99 part or what have you.)
No, I mean the VAT that the Amazon UK, DE, ES, IT, etc stores add on to whatever price you set via KDP. It usually comes out to a little less than a pound/euro, and to my knowledge means that you can’t set a price that is guaranteed to end in .99.
Well, I guess there’s not much that can be done about that. I’ve had people tell me it’s a flat $2 (i.e. a 99-cent story becomes $2.99), but maybe they were browsing the US store from their countries rather than shopping through the own stores and currencies.
Amazon is very hard to sort out if you aren’t in your own buying country store.
For example, as I’m in the Uk, the price I see in the uk store is my price +VAT. I want my books to sell at 2.10 so I set my prices at £2.04 on KDP to get them to come out at £2.10. Odd, yes, it’s two guineas in old money. My Princelings are guinea pigs … I can experiment with this, so it’s easy for me.
On .com they are priced by me at $2.99 but if the price is displayed to me for some reason (e.g. on also bought or the author page) I see £2.04 converted into $ and that’s around $3.24 – but it is $2.99 to a .com user. Actually I think the author page shows $2.99, go figure.
If you leave KDP to do the conversion, you see what it comes out at in those boxes. You could tweak them from there and see if you can get a nicely rounded number.
Good luck!
Jemima
I did the same thing this week. Moving on to print updates…
I do this every time I put out a new book, even just a short story. Since I’m on all my sites uploading the new item, it’s pretty easy to update the older works, too.
Yes, I do understand the concept of an ever-longer-list, but I think keeping ’em all up to date is important. If the SmashWords distribution delay weren’t so long, I’d be happier about it.
I tend to update this stuff every time I release a new book so that I stay on top of stuff. It does take a little while each time, but I think it’s worth it to have everything updated with each new addition to the count. 🙂
Hi Lindsay – another interesting post and I like the fact that you are so generous with your experience. Your advice is always practical and do-able. Thank you. In fact I have just nominated you for The Versatile Blogger Award. The link is here
http://janeayres.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/versatile-blogger-award.html
Thank you for the nomination, Jane!
Lindsay, I’m curious how often you feel old material needs to be updated. Would you do it with each book after this? Also, if the exchange rate changes, would your book be changed from .99 or .95 to something else?
How often? More often than I do it, haha. Ideally, I’d keep the book list at the end up-to-date with all the most recent releases. Because I don’t do my own formatting though, I have to bug someone to do that, and that’s a big part of why I don’t very often.
Keeping all your titles up-to-date with lists and links for all the others is a very sensible marketing activity. Unfortunately it is also very time-consuming as the number of titles increases. Of course what you’re adding will only be seen by readers who download a book after it has been updated not by those who have already bought it. It would probably be wise to also include a link to a page on your website or article on your blog that has complete up-to-date list of all your titles.
Keeping your prices to x.95, x.99 etc is also sensible. However, it’s notoriously difficult to do with retailers like Amazon who treat the price they’re given as tax-exclusive and then add on VAT or sales tax as appropriate. I can predict that a list price of £3.88 will get converted to £3.99 or £4.00 by the time it reaches the UK store. I don’t think it’s as easy as that for the US store. It seems to me that the price quoted online depends on the sales tax in the state you’re in — I stand to be corrected on that.
In most states in the US sales tax does not apply to Amazon purchases. When sales tax does apply, it is added after the purchase is initiated. Everything is listed without sales tax until you have decided to purchase. US consumers are used to tax being after the fact online or not.
Thank you for your explanation. I’ve had a few comments recently about the US price of the same ebook on Amazon seeming to vary and not matching the list price entered through KDP for 70% royalty. Out of interest please could you search Amazon.com for “From Apes to Apps” by Trish Nicholson and let me know what price you see. I’m seeing $3.06 when I access amazon.com from the UK and the list price I set was $2.99.
$2.99 is what I see.
David, I know I’m not supposed to search Amazon.com but I have to go there to get a link to include on each new book’s page on the Collca website. When I see the title in a list of matches it shows the price as $3.06 but when I click and view the detailed record it says “pricing information not available”. I suspect there’s a bug in their system and it should say something like “please use UK Kindle Store” in both situations. Mike
Thank you for the comments, Mike.
“It would probably be wise to also include a link to a page on your website or article on your blog that has complete up-to-date list of all your titles.”
Hm, very smart idea. I might just steal that. I already have a page on my site where I keep that list up-to-date, so it’d be easy to implement.
Also, sales tax gets added at checkout, so it doesn’t have any effect on the .99 or .95 price displayed on the book’s sales page.
But it does in the UK and mainland Europe. I don’t know about Ireland where they buy Kindle ebooks through Amazon.com.
There is also the hazy issue of whether an updated ebook needs a new ISBN. With printed books it used to be quite clear if a book was purely being reprinted and the only changes (if any) were in the front or back matter then it was treated as the same edition and therefore didn’t need a new ISBN. If there were any changes to the body of the work then it was a new edition and therefore needed a new ISBN. Unlike printed books, ebooks can be easily changed and resubmitted to Amazon etc. What constitutes a new edition? Changing one fact or sentence? Rewriting or delting an existing chapter or adding a new one? Changing the title? I don’t know. What I do know is that ISBNs are often seen as a license to print money by Bowker in the USA and Neilsen in the UK particularly with regard to the view that each ebook format should have its own ISBN. I am sure that if the ISBN agencies start trying to dictate that updated ebooks should have new ISBNs there will be a rebellion — ISBNs offer little or no advantage for ebook publishers and self-publishing authors.
Mike, most of the stores don’t require ISBNs for ebooks, and a lot of us don’t bother with them. Smashwords provides a free one for Apple (which does require one), and I don’t think they ever change it, no matter what alterations you make to the file.
Lindsay, Apple seems to have recently made the ISBN optional at least if you upload directly to them. Google insists on an ISBN. I can’t remember if it’s mandatory or not for Kobo and I’m sure some of the lesser stores demand it.
If you are using KDP to get your ebooks to Amazon and have an ISBN it is worth including it just in case someone Googles it (believe it or not people do search for ISBNs). That way a link to Amazon will be included in the results.
Apple stopped requiring ISBN last autumn.
I’ve been using Draft2Digital to publish to iTunes, B&N and Kobo – none of which required an ISBN.
I’m sure Lindsay has said this elsewhere but a reminder to folks to also include a link to subscribe to a “New Release Notification” – for the readers that liked your book. This has been by far the best way I’ve gained new “core readers” – and they’re the ones you need to be gaining.
Great writeup as usual Lindsay. The updating is something I need to do. Ever since I included the afterword, as you suggested, things have picked up as far as getting some reviews to trickle in. One formatting revision I could make would be to have my TOC at the beginning of my books, as I currently put them at the end. Most ebooks have them in the front as standard formatting, so I wonder if that could affect my sales. I am pretty excited about this month, as it’s my first 200+ sale month, and we’re still only 2/3 of the way through the month. I am all about keeping my ebooks up to date though, and when I go to do it, I will come back to this article. Thanks!