If Ebook Piracy Is on the Rise, What Are You Going to Do About it?

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Lindsay

Judging by the number of recent stories out there regarding ebook piracy, illegal copies of ebooks are being shared around the internet in even greater volumes than LOL Cats pics. Even I, a lowly indie author who’s never tickled the upper reaches of the Amazon best-seller lists for long, have, in recent weeks, had a couple of folks point out that my ebooks are out there in places that I didn’t put them.

So, for those of you in the same boat (with sleek yachts bearing down on you, waving their skull-and-crossbones flags), what do you do? I figure we have two options:

Option 1

Grab your pitchfork and crossbow and hunt down those pirates. Send cease-and-desist emails to the sites housing your illegal ebooks. Climb up on the highest soapbox you can find and pontificate on the evils of fans stealing your work.

Of course, you must bow to the idea of living with your panties in a permanent twist, because none of this will change anything in the long run. You may even turn some fans into non-fans because nobody likes to be lectured to. (Yes, I believe someone can be a fan without paying for my work; I’ve enjoyed many a book from the library, and, especially when I was younger and more cash-strapped, it sometimes took a lot of good books in a series to turn an author from library-only status to buy-as-soon-as-the-book-comes-out status.)

Option 2

Realize that piracy is going to happen (the music business has been dealing with this for over a decade, and they, with a whole lot of collective power and money, haven’t put a dent in digital piracy) and either learn to embrace it (it might just help you sell more books) or to accept it as a pitfall of doing e-business, one you have to learn to work around. There are worse things to deal with as an author. Like the obscurity that plagues us all before we become popular enough to tempt pirates.

But I’m losing money!

This may or may not be true. In the above link, Neil Gaimon said that his sales increased in the countries where he was most pirated. Others have pointed out that the people downloading illegal copies of your books weren’t going to pay for them anyway.

But, let’s say, for the sake of argument that piracy is in fact costing you money and that this problem will only continue to grow in the coming years. How can you make a living, or at least a decent part-time income, as an author living in such a world?

The main thing is to establish a fan-base or, as Seth Godin calls it, a tribe of people who love your work and will pay for it. You don’t need to be a bestseller. You just need a core group of “true fans” (I’ve linked to it before, but here’s the Kevin Kelly article on 1,000 True Fans one more time).

Once you have that “tribe” established, you will always be able to monetize your work in ways that go beyond selling ebooks. Making a living shouldn’t be a problem, and piracy shouldn’t matter.

How, you ask?

Here, again, it may be worth looking to the music business for ideas, as they’ve been dealing with piracy longer than we have. A model a lot of musicians, indie and otherwise, are using goes like this:

Give away the music for free (or accept that it’s being shared up the wazoo and getting people to pay for digital copies is tough) to build a loyal following, then make money on concerts and by selling premium products to those who love the work enough to plunk down money for exclusive goodies.

Is that ideal? Probably not, but people make it work because they love to create music and they can’t imagine not finding a way to make it work.

Okay, authors, I know what you’re thinking: concerts? Lindsay, are you planning to sing your next Emperor’s Edge novel for us? Nah, someone already sang a book review for me, and I can’t possibly top that.

My point here is that most of us, like it or not, will need to not only be authors but authorpreneurs if we want to make money from our work in the years ahead. Marketing and being creative about how we sell our stories is going to have to be a part of the plan.

Ways to make money that go beyond ebook sales

Even if you’re doing well right now, it’s worth thinking about the what-ifs. What if piracy becomes so popular that fewer and fewer people are actually buying ebooks from the stores? What if those same stores react by dropping royalty rates (I know I wouldn’t be making a living on ebook sales alone if Amazon suddenly decided to give indie authors 20% instead of 70%)? We hope these things won’t pass any time soon, but let’s think ahead in case ebooks go the way of digital music.

Here are a few ways I’ve seen authors making money that go beyond ebook sales (note: this all requires having at least a small tribe out there — I’ve covered the how-to on finding/keeping fans in a few previous posts so please surf through old entries for ideas):

Kickstarter

I recently interviewed an up-and-coming steampunk author who raised over $90,000 to fund the production costs of his book (his original goal was $4,000, so, even after he produces and ships all those books, he ought to have come out of the deal with a year’s salary in addition to whatever he makes on sales once the book goes live). While Kickstarter is traditionally used to fund start-up costs, I’ve seen a few authors make enough to pay the bills while they’re writing the book as well.

The Freemium Model

Game designers have been using “freemium” for a while. Offer a free version of your work (maybe your ebook?) and then have a premium version with more features (interviews, bonus extras, commentary?) that’s not free. Maybe make it a hard-copy so the e-pirates can’t go after it.

Another option is to do some sort of membership site where die-hard fans can pay to get early access to your work. Bestselling fantasy author Tracy Hickman has done an “exclusive subscription novel series” where fans get to come into a special membership area and see the chapters as they’re written, and even offer feedback along the way.

Advertising / Affiliate sales

While I’ve seen a few authors kick around the idea of selling advertising in their ebooks, I’m thinking more about making money from one’s blog here. You’re blogging anyway, as you “build your platform.” There’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t earn money from the content you’re putting up on the web every day (that was my day job — with a home improvement blog — before I quit to write fantasy full time).

I don’t sell any advertising here right now because I don’t need to, but I’ve had a couple of people ask about it, so I know it’d be a possibility. I do make an extra $100 or so a month as an Amazon affiliate (I link to my own books and other people’s books with affiliate links). If I wanted to, I could also become an affiliate for various businesses offering self-publishing services (since I talk about that sort of thing here).

I also have 1,000-odd fantasy fans as newsletter subscribers and, if I needed to, I could do some discreet advertising there (i.e. promote another fantasy author’s work for $XX) in addition to providing updates about my own work.

Merchandising

I’ll admit that this would be unlikely to account for more than take-the-family-out-to-dinner earnings, but there’s no reason you can’t put together some t-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars, or other goodies once you have a series that people enjoy. I know I’m thinking of running a contest to see if I can get some of the awesome folks drawing fan art to come up with a cool design that I could use. I just have to decide on some prizes.

Sites like CafePress take most of the hassle out of creating and selling merchandise, and, at the very least, these goodies can be used for giveaways. Every t-shirt someone wears is a little bit of free advertising for you.

Final thoughts

If you read through this list and thought, “Are you freaking kidding me? I just want to write books and have people go to Amazon and buy them,” I won’t tell you that’s not going to happen. It’s absolutely doable as I write this in the summer of 2012.

I’d guess that ebook piracy is a much smaller issue than people make it out to be right now. (Finding your tribe is a much bigger challenge.) But, if we do end up going the way of the music industry, that might not always be the case. I offer these ideas for authors who want to plan for the what-ifs or who are looking for ways to make more than they’re currently earning from book sales alone.

Thoughts?

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , | 37 Comments

Does Facebook Advertising Work? (One Author’s Experience)

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Lindsay

Last week, I wrote a post on how Facebook advertising works, but what you’re all wondering is if Facebook advertising works. For example, if you’re a self-published author, can you a) use Facebook to sell more copies of your books and b) actually earn more in book royalties than you spend on advertising costs?

My short answer is that you can make more people aware of your work and sell more books, but it’s hard to break even, especially if you’re selling a single paperback or ebook where you’re only making $2-$3 (or less) per copy. The numbers grow more promising if you’re promoting the first book in a series and you’ve already seen, through previous months’ sales stats, that a good number of people who read Book 1 go on to purchase the others.

I’ve tried the two types of advertising Facebook currently offers (more details in the post I mentioned), general “pay-per-click ads” that are displayed to a demographic you target and “promoted posts” that are shown to people who’ve previously liked your author page. I’ll go over my experiences with both here.

My Experience with Facebook’s Pay-Per-Click Ads

I played with a couple of ad campaigns last year, and, since it’s on my mind here again, I’m trying another one now.

Last year, when I tried this, I was selling my first ebook for 99 cents and my second for $2.99. That’s all I had out at the time. A sale of Book 1 would earn me a 35-cent royalty, and, considering you have to bid close to that for a Facebook ad click, it definitely would have been a losing proposition if that were the only thing I had out. (Facebook suggested I bid close to a dollar per click — yeah, right. I tried bidding the minimum of 10 cents, but the ads didn’t get displayed much, so I bumped things up to 15 and eventually 20 cents, which resulted in a more reasonable number of displays and clicks). With two books out, advertising held more promise, but because of my low prices, I’d still only earn $2.40 per reader, if said reader liked the first book enough to buy the second. I definitely had to keep advertising costs low!

So, did I actually sell any books?

The answer is… it’s hard to tell.

Here’s the main problem:

I can see how many people click on the ads, through my Facebook advertising dashboard, but if I’m sending them to my book’s page on Amazon (or elsewhere), there’s no way for me to tell which purchases come via the ad and which come via another source. When I tried advertising on Goodreads, less than a month after I published my first ebook, I was selling so few copies a day, that it was easy to see how the advertising increased sales. By the time I tried Facebook, this wasn’t the case. I was averaging maybe 20 sales of EE1 a day back then, with daily variations, so it was hard to tell if Facebook accounted for any of those sales or not. Also, with ebooks, people can download a sample and come back to make the purchase days or weeks later, so that makes it doubly hard to gauge ad effectiveness.

Are there workarounds?

Yes, there are a couple, and, though they’re not ideal, they may help you more effectively monitor your costs vs. earnings.

First off, you can send people to a tab on your Facebook author page (here’s the lowdown on how I did my first Facebook fan page, in case you haven’t set one up yet) instead directly to the bookstore. On this tab, you could have a big picture of your cool cover art, an excerpt from a scintillating chapter, and a link to your ebook at Smashwords, along with a coupon code offering the person a discount (Smashwords offers file formats for all e-readers, so Nook, iPad, and Kindle users can all shop there). You can see how often (and when) your coupon is redeemed, and if you’re not using that same coupon code anywhere else, you’ll know for certain that those sales came from Facebook.

The problem? The main one is that not everyone has a Smashwords account or wants to make one. Also, by sending people to your fan page first, you’re making extra steps for your potential reader. You can test, but it’s likely you’ll have a higher buy-in rate if you send people directly to Amazon (target Kindle people) or Barnes & Noble (nook), etc. where they can quickly skim the reviews and download a sample.

The second workaround is one I haven’t tried, but which I hope to implement some day, and that’s to sell ebooks directly from your site. Using a tracking program such as Google Analytics, you can see exactly how people get to your e-store, how long they spend on your site, and whether they eventually make a purchase.

Again, you put an additional barrier in the road, though, because people have to be willing to make a purchase from an unfamiliar site and to go through the additional step of manually loading the ebook onto their devices instead of enjoying wireless delivery from Amazon, Apple, etc.

*For those thinking that they might use affiliate links to monitor sales (this is how I know that people actually buy my books after visiting my blog), I’m sorry to say that Facebook won’t approve ads with affiliate links in the URL.

Why I Abandoned My Facebook Ad Campaigns (but am thinking of coming back)

At the end of the day (at the end of a couple of weeks actually), I hadn’t spent much (I targeted my ads to a very precise fantasy-loving ebook-reading group, so there weren’t a ton of displays or clicks each day), but I hadn’t had a very noticeable increase in sales either. At the time, I decided to discontinue the campaign.

Fast forward a year, and I’m tinkering again. As some of you know, I now give my first ebook, The Emperor’s Edge, away for free. Books 2, 3, and 4 (with 5 coming soon) are currently $4.95 (meaning I make about $3.30 for each ebook sale), and I have related ebooks (short stories and novellas) that fans often go on to purchase as well. Though not everyone who downloads the freebie goes on to buy any other books, I stand to make much more from those who do. Some of those people also sign up for my newsletter, like my Facebook page, and essentially become long-term (dare I hope “lifetime”?) fans, meaning they’ll be there to grab new books when they come out. Suddenly it makes sense to spend a dollar or two to get people to try the first ebook.

Also, because the ebook is free, there are no barriers for the readers. People no longer have to go through the shopping-cart process or risk buying from an unfamiliar store. They can simply download the book without hassle.

When I had a daily sponsorship at Pixel of Ink in May, it resulted in lots of free downloads, which caused an increase in all of my other ebook sales for that month too. Unfortunately, I can’t advertise at Pixel of Ink that often, as there’s quite a waiting list. I can, however, keep ongoing advertising campaigns running at Facebook (and Goodreads as well — another place that allows you to target a specific audience), which can help keep a trickle of new readers coming in.

I’ll point out here, too, that once you’re making a part- to full-time income from your books, you’ll be looking for business expenses to write off when tax time comes around. I can’t speak to other countries’ tax codes, but, if you’re in the U.S., any money you spend on ads for your business is money you don’t have to pay taxes on later. (Of course, this is still your money, and I’d run the numbers to make sure it ends up being worth it, taxes notwithstanding.)

Warnings: AKA What Might Cause Your Ads to Perform Poorly

Poor targeting — Facebook lets you get very specific with targeting, so make sure you use the feature. This will keep down clicks from uninterested parties. As you can see, I targeted female steampunk and fantasy fans (I have male readers, but, because the heroine and I are female, the books tend to have more female readers). If you’re sending people to Amazon and only sell ebooks, you may want to target only kindle folks. You don’t want to waste money trying to sell your ebook to someone who only buys paperbacks.

Bad cover art/blurb/sample/etc. — It should go without saying, but the more professional your cover art and blurb are, the more likely people will take the book seriously. Ditto for your sample pages — make sure something happens in those opening pages and grabs the reader (personal mistake: I didn’t really do that with my first book because I didn’t know how to “think like a publisher” back then).

No reviews — Wait until you have a few reviews before giving advertising a try. I’ve talked about social proof on here before, but essentially, it’s tough to get people to try a book that (it seems like) nobody else is reading. I’ll argue that sales ranking matters less than reviews, as the average reader doesn’t really know what those numbers mean, but it might also look bad if the most recent reviews are two years old — go out and give away some review copies to see if you can drum up some new ones.

All right, as is so often the case with my posts, this has turned into a long one, so I’ll talk about how the “promoted posts” advertising went next time. I just did that a couple of weeks ago, so it’s fresh in my head. Short teaser: I thought the experience was promising enough to try again.

In the meantime, if you’re an author, have you tried advertising on Facebook? What were your results? Readers, have you ever purchased a book after clicking an ad on Facebook?

Posted in Advertising | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

How Facebook Advertising Works for Authors

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Lindsay

You spend years writing, editing, and polishing your first book, and when it’s finally published, all you’re worried about is whether people will like it. You don’t worry about whether people will buy it or even know it exists. But (and this realization comes more quickly if you self-publish and you can check your sales statistics in real time), you soon realize that obscurity is the biggest concern. Before people can decided they love the book (and leave all sorts of warm, fuzzy reviews), they have to find it and give it a chance.

Online advertising is one way that authors are trying to “be found,” especially authors who have a few extra pennies to spend on book promotion.

As we’ve talked about before, there are a few types of online advertising that authors might use: pay-per-impression (you buy ad space by thousands of “views”), flat-rate (you pay a set amount to have your book featured for a day, week, etc. on a blog, forum, or other website), and pay-per-click (your ad is displayed to a large viewership, but you only pay if someone clicks on it).

I’m going to blather impart important information on the pay-per-click model today, specifically Facebook’s version.

How Facebook Advertising Works

With Facebook, you create a short text-based ad that will run only on Facebook, being shown only to people in the demographic you target. You don’t pay to create the campaign; you only get charged when people click. How much you pay per click depends on what you “bid” for clicks. A higher bid will get you more prominent positioning.

For authors, you don’t generally have to bid much (perhaps 10 or 20 cents), as we’re not in a terribly competitive market space. That’s good, because we don’t stand to make much per sale either, not when we’re selling our ebooks for $1-$5. (Naturally, the numbers get better if you have a series with a good buy-through ratio, meaning you can count on a large number of the people who grab the first book to go on to purchase the other four or six or whatever it is.)

One thing I like about Facebook advertising over, say, Google Adwords, is that you can target a very precise viewership. Thanks to the “like” system, and many other factors, Facebook knows a ton about its users. Let’s say you’re a science fiction author. It’s possible to only display your ads to men between the ages of 18 and 29 who are fans of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, or Orson Scott Card. This serves to keep costs down (no drive-by clicks from parties who aren’t likely to be interested in your work) while potentially connecting you with your ideal audience.

Speaking of costs, I’ve heard (and I haven’t tested this to back it up) that ads cost less over time if your destination URL (the place people go after clicking an ad) is a Facebook page (i.e. your author fan page) instead of an external site (i.e. your blog or your book’s page at Amazon). You also get more than a click if you’re sending folks to an internal page–a “like” option shows up on the ad. If you’ve just built your author fan page, and you’re hoping to get a few starter likes (social proof and what not), this can be an added perk.

If you decide on an internal destination, you can link to your wall or any tab on your author fan page (i.e. a book page you’ve created that includes an excerpt). As of a couple of months ago, you can even promote specific posts on your news wall.

How Facebook’s Promoted Posts Work

Facebook now lets you promote specific posts that you’ve made to your new feed (wall). The video in that link explains how everything works, but basically it’s a way to get people who have already liked your page to come back and see what’s new (it also reaches friends of those who have liked your page).

Some people get cranky about this concept (why pay to advertise to people who are already your fans?), but, if you spend any time on Facebook, you already know that a “like” doesn’t count for much. You’ve probably liked hundreds, maybe thousands of pages, and have noticed that none of the updates for those pages appear on your personal news feed. The exceptions are those pages with which you interact regularly. That makes sense — think how cluttered your feed would be if every news story from Star Wars, Eddie Bauer, REI, Whole Foods, and The Big Bang Theory showed up on your home page. You’d never see the updates from your flesh-and-blood friends.

Though that might make sense, the downside is that a “like” doesn’t get you much as an author. As I write this post, I have 1200-odd likes, and I’d say that maybe 100 people interact with my fan page regularly (leaving comments or likes on my posts). Advertising a specific post (maybe one that lets people know you have a new book out or offers a coupon/free-download on an existing book) is a way to bring back those folks who were interested enough to like your site once but haven’t been back in a while.

Costs are low for promoting specific page posts, too, as the only spending options are $5 and $10. You can select how long the promotion will run (from 1-3 days), and Facebook will spread your funds out over that time, charging you only when someone clicks.

So, does any of this stuff work to sell books? Are Facebook ads worth the money? As of last week, I’ve tried both types of ads (the sponsored links that go out to a targeted audience and the promoted posts that go out to people who’ve liked your page). Later this week, I’ll give you the lowdown. Stay tuned!

 

Posted in Advertising | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

Emperor’s Edge Fan Art? Oh, Yes…

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Lindsay

As I’ve mentioned before, the awesome Amanda Findley started a forum for Emperor’s Edge fans, and there’s a thread on there where people are posting fan art. I’ve been told, though, that you have to be registered for the forum to see the pictures, so I thought I’d share a few of them here. I’ve already posted some of these on my Facebook page, but these may be new for some of you. I get a huge kick out of them. If you’re a reader, I hope you enjoy them!

Amaranthe scheming something new… by Alex Baird

Sergeant Yara by Rebekah Kjos

Sicarius by Heather

Amaranthe and Sicarius by Catherine

Maldynado and Yara by Alex Baird

The team survives another explosion… by Cam

Amaranthe by SketchingBarefoot

Sicarius by Alex Baird

Posted in Fantasy / Science Fiction | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

How Jordan Stratford Raised $91,751 for His Steampunk Novel and Earned Interest from Every Big 6 Publisher

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Lindsay

As many of you know, I ran a Kickstarter campaign a few months ago, hoping to raise the funds to pay for the creation of the third Emperor’s Edge audiobook. With the help of many generous folks, I raised about $6,000, enough to pay for EE3 (in production now) and EE4, as well as covering the costs of creating a paperback version of Encrypted. Not too shabby, but not quite as mind-blowing as the $90,000+ that Jordan Stratford raised for his steampunk novel. Not only did he gather all the start-up money he needed and more, but his success earned him a contract with a major literary agency and interest from every one of the Big 6 publishers.

Jordan agreed to an interview today, to share some of his Kickstarter success tips, so without further introduction…

Interview with Steampunk author, Jordan Stratford

LB: Would you like to start out telling us a bit about your project and why you looked to Kickstarter?

JS: I’m a screenwriter by trade, and I originally conceived of the project as an animated television series.  After I’d written my first novel (“Mechanicals”, an occult steampunk version of the Crimean War), I was looking for the next long-fiction project and settled on a novelization of my Wollstonecraft concept: in a nutshell, it’s Ada Lovelace (the first computer programmer) and Mary Shelley (the first science fiction writer) as 11 and 14 year old girls in 1826 London who open a detective agency, solving crimes from 19th century fiction.  I hadn’t done much with it as a TV treatment, so I thought I’d do it as a book series.

My business model was to self-publish and generate steady but modest revenue from the series for the next 3-5 years.  I thought of kickstarter as a way of proving the concept, building the audience, and offsetting a portion of the start-up costs; editing, illustration, website, and publicity.  But mostly it was about connecting with potential fans.

The project raised $91,751 in 27 days, landed me a contract with a major literary agency, and yielded offers from every one of the Big 6.

LB: I’ve seen some insanely successful Kickstarter campaigns, but they’re usually from artists/authors who have built up a huge fan-base beforehand. You don’t seem to have that huge of an online following (at least from what I see on your blog and Twitter). What was the key to your success?

JS: My follower/friend numbers weren’t huge, but because my wife and I produced the first steampunk show in Canada, we had a terrific network of influencers.  We’d invested in these relationships over the years, supporting artists and promoting friends, so it was quite organic.  While not blatantly steampunk, Wollstonecraft has enough steampunk elements in it to appeal to that audience, and that was really the stone in the water.  We had a defined genre and significant relationships in that genre.  The first step in crowd-funding is to start with a great crowd.

I’d like to add that as a Canadian, I can’t produce my own kickstarter campaign.  So I turned to my American friend Kevin of Airship Ambassador, a steampunk blog, for assistance.  It was the only way to get the project off the ground.  But that’s step one, isn’t it?  Find out where your gaps are, and ask for help.

LB: I know your project hit the Kickstarter front page and was covered by many big blogs (io9, wired, boingboing, etc.), but how did you gather that initial momentum that convinced the various media outlets that your project was newsworthy?

JS: An artist friend of mine had had some previous coverage in boingboing, and he mentioned me to Cory Doctorow, who gave the project a plug.  After that I became nerd-famous pretty much by accident.  The biggest difference financially was the kickstarter newsletter, and that was simply because they liked the idea.

LB: In your Tips for a Successful Kickstarter Campaign article (great post!), you mentioned people should “Position the goal of the campaign as ‘funding for the OTHER people needed to make it happen’, not funding for you personally. Campaigns which do very well are those which seek to pay for printing, or a film crew, etc. Backers understand this kind of financial reality, but are less willing to let you quit your day job with the proceeds of the campaign.” 

Do you think that’s set in stone? The first hundred people who donated to your campaign knew they were paying for your editor, illustrator, etc., but after you smashed your initial goal, folks had to be donating for other reasons. I ask because I’m curious about the viability of using a donation model to put one’s work out for free. Could Kickstarter be an alternative to the traditional publishing paradigm?

JS: No, I don’t think it’s set in stone, it’s just an observation from looking at literally hundreds of campaigns.  It’s a generalization.  Nobody expects Pebble to build all those watches in their spare time.  Shadowrun is obviously a full-time gig for a whole lot of people.

Once we had exceeded ten times our initial goal, it was obvious that the world we were creating together was growing well beyond the original scope, and that entailed infrastructure – more people, more partners, more planning time.  And of course smart acquisitions editors are looking at kickstarter, and I was approached mid-campaign by every major publisher, film studios, merchandising license firms.  It was obvious that the characters and scenario were resonating with the audience, and solving a problem: the lack of pro-science role models for middle grade girls.  I got an amazing letter from an engineering student who said she wanted a copy of the book and a time machine so she could give it to her ten-year-old self.

Kickstarter isn’t just about the money: it’s about the community and their ideas, and it’s about market-testing.  I essentially pre-sold close to 10,000 books in the series, which proves a market.  As the campaign continued to grow, I reached out to my supporters and said “what would you like to see?” and the answer was more books, free short stories, resources for teachers and home-schoolers, interactive fiction, translation… all kinds of fun stuff.  But those stretch-goals came from the community.

As for publishing: I think the “traditional paradigm” is a myth.  Each book has always needed its own plan, its own team, its own audience.  Publishers – Big 6 or indie – aren’t sausage factories.  We just have more options now, more tools in the drawer.  Kickstarter is one of those tools – for covering start-up cost as well as sending the canary down the coal-mine, so to speak.

What has changed is the sequence: build a product on spec, submit to a hundred agents and wait, submit to a hundred publishers and wait, then hope to find an audience.  That’s over.  It’s not the creator’s job to ask the distributors for permission anymore.  The creator connects to the audience, and the distributors now have to sell the creator on the benefits of a partnership.  And the benefits are significant.  But agents and publishers hunt for authors now, not the other way ’round.

LB: Such awesome advice, Jordan!

Okay, last question: would you tell us how crucial the video was to your success? You talked about the book, but you also talked about your daughter and how you wanted to give her (and other girls) adventures featuring smart female role models that might impart a love of science and math to kids. I can see where this would appeal to folks much more than simply talking about the project. Thoughts?

I think it was just about being honest.  I love these characters.  I’m inspired by my daughter and her friends, I’m in awe of how curious and connected they are.  They’re unapologetically scientists, creators, explorers, inventors, pokers-of-dead-things-with-sticks.  It’s crucial to me that we retain that curiosity and engagement.  Girl-brain is probably the most under-utilized resource on the planet, and it can change the world – just like Ada and Mary did.  So I just spelled that out: This matters to me, and I’m doing it.  If it matters to you too, let’s do it together.  It’s that simple.

~

Thanks, Jordan. This is such an inspiring interview! Readers, for more information on Jordan’s projects, you can check out his blog. The site devoted to his book http://worldofwollstonecraft.com will have (at least) a placeholder and mailing-list sign-up by mid-July.

 

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Tips for Dealing with Bad Book Reviews (have any to add?)

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Lindsay

I’ve come across a lot of interviews where authors say variations of, “You need to develop a tough skin to survive this business,” and “If you have to write, write, but if you can… quit.”

Fortunately, the e-publishing (and self-publishing) boom of late has made things a little easier, at least insofar as getting your work out into the marketplace (no more submitting to agents for years and years and handling rejection after rejection.) Unfortunately, as authors, we still have to deal with the unpleasant fact that not everyone will love our work. Inconceivable, I know!

The bad reviews can be tough, especially when you’ve just published your first book. Here are a few suggestions on handling bad reviews, from someone who is (trust me) as sensitive as anyone and has a hard time letting things go. (For the record, I think it’s less about developing a tough skin — callouses, ewww — and more about keeping things in perspective. At the worst, people are rejecting our ideas and our way of sharing them; they’re not rejecting us.)

How to deal with bad reviews

Realize that everybody gets bad reviews

Misery loves company, right? Some of your favorite books probably have oodles of bad reviews. The final book in the insanely popular Hunger Games Trilogy has almost 500 1-star reviews. John Locke, the indie author famous for his How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! has a 3-star average on his popular Saving Rachel (a Donovan Creed Crime Novel) and almost as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews.

You can’t please everybody, but, as these successful authors prove, it’s not required. All you need to do is figure out how to please a small group of people (if you haven’t read Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans post yet, it’s a must).

Don’t let the bad comments outweigh the good ones

We can get 99 good reviews and 1 bad one, and it’s the bad one that sticks with us. For me, the ones that sting most are the ones that I know are right. It’s easy to dismiss the brief, are-you-sure-this-guy-even-read-the-book reviews, but the analytical ones that make a point-by-point list of the story’s flaws are tougher to let go.

I try to remember that just as you’ll never please everyone, you’ll never obtain perfection. With art, perfection is an elusive target anyway. All we can do is try to write good stories.

Instead of focusing on the occasional harsh reviews, take a look at the trend. Are four out of five people enjoying the story? Are the sales good? If you have a few books out in a series, are a lot of people buying the subsequent books after trying the first? (That’s a telling statistic and worth paying attention to.)

If you’re getting more positive reviews than bad, then you’re doing better than most!

Save your fan mail

The other day, I saw someone on the Kindleboards ask, “How do you know if you have fans?” My first (admittedly snarky) thought was that if you have to ask, you probably don’t. But that’s not necessarily true. A lot of people who read and enjoy books never leave a review or say anything to the author.

What you can do is make it easy for readers to contact you (i.e. put your email address or your blog/social media links at the end of the book), and encourage them to do so. When someone takes the time to write and say they enjoyed the book, that’s the all-time greatest compliment. When you start getting emails like that, put them in a special folder and save them (heck, print them out and stick them on the fridge). Then you can read through them again later when you’re feeling a down after being slammed somewhere.

Think of bad reviews as an opportunity to learn and grow

As I mentioned, some reviews are just odd (the ones where it seems like the person didn’t read the book), but the critical reviews that strike a chord can be a learning experience. Maybe your next protagonist should drive the action more, or perhaps you need to trim more words so that the story doesn’t get bogged down in the details. Maybe your witty banter isn’t as witty as you thought and needs to be toned. Or maybe the novel just wasn’t ready to be published.

Don’t do anything drastic based on one review, but if you get more bad reviews than good, and lots of  different people are picking on the same things, then it may be a sign that it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

A lot of people talk about how great self-publishing is because there are no gatekeepers; true, but there’s also nobody to tell you when you’re ready.

I’m glad e-publishing hadn’t taken off yet when I first “got serious” about writing. Because of that, I submitted quite a few short stories to magazines and earned a lot of rejections while I continued to learn the craft. I reached the point where I was making some sales before I turned my focus to novels and eventually self-publishing. Ideas are subjective, and you never know if a particular story is going to resonate with people, but if you’ve gotten thumbs-ups from some of the gatekeepers (whether they be magazine editors, contest judges, or agents), you can be reasonably confident that your writing itself has reached a professional level.

But if you’ve never dealt with rejection before, these early reviews may be all you have to go on. If the book wasn’t ready to publish, the readers will let you know. And it’s okay if it wasn’t. In every industry, 99.9% of the successful people out there failed a lot before hitting it big. It’s how we learn.

Don’t look at the reviews

Some people can’t help themselves. They have Google Alerts set up to email them whenever their name or their book titles are mentioned on the web. They want to read everything that’s said about them. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you know you’re a sensitive sort (especially if you’re someone who will over-analyze things and find cause for disgruntlement even in a four-star review), it might be better to simply stay away from the review sites.

In the end, reviews are largely meant to help other readers anyway. Yes, it’s sometimes possible to learn from them, but there’s a point of diminishing returns (i.e. you’ll probably learn everything you need to know after reading the first ten or fifteen reviews). Time spent zipping around the web, skimming every blog post or review that mentions you is time that could be spent working on the next book.

What do you think? Do you have any tips of your own for dealing with bad reviews?

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , | 50 Comments

Is It Harder Today for Self-Published Authors to “Break in” at Amazon?

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Lindsay

You’ve published your ebook, done book blog tours, pimped your work on Twitter and Facebook, and you even got such-and-such favorite author to provide a blurb. Now, where the heck are the sales?

Hmm.

It’s a crummy reality, but, when it comes to ebooks, there’s more competition these days.

Those clairvoyant authors who were smart enough to get into the Kindle Store back in 2009, when so few mainstream titles were available as ebooks, enjoyed the perks of a less crowded marketplace. Today every new traditionally published book is available as an ebook (and many of the older ones are out there too), and there are tens of thousands of self-publishers adding their titles to the virtual stores.

Obscurity has always been the enemy, but there have been tricks (let’s call them opportunities, so as not to ruffle feathers) that allowed early adopters to profit handsomely. Those tactics seem to be losing viability now though. Let’s take a look at a couple of recent changes that may make it tougher to break in as an indie author.

The fall of the 99-cent ebook?

A couple of years ago, Amanda Hocking came on the self-publishing scene with several YA ebooks priced at 99 cents (for book 1s) and $2.99 (for subsequent books) and had legendary sales that led to a legendary two-million-dollar traditional publishing deal.

This was before I started self-publishing, but I understand that she was one of the first to take advantage of the 99-cent price point. Most indies were sticking to $2.99 and up because Amazon made $2.99-$.9.99 the point at which authors could earn the highest royalty percentage. (You have to sell six times as many books at 99 cents to earn the same $2 you’d get on a $2.99 book.) But readers were all over those early 99-cent ebooks because they were such a bargain, and numerous self-published authors leaped to the tops of the bestseller lists.

Would-be prognosticators said this signified a “race to the bottom,” a scenario in which all ebooks would eventually be 99 cents or even free, leaving authors a pittance of an income for all their work. Well, Amazon, perhaps not enamored with making pennies per sale, has made some changes to its ranking algorithms. A few weeks ago, we talked to indie author and stats junkie Edward Robertson about those updates and learned that Amazon has started weighting books based not only on sales history but on price. This may change one day, but, right now, all other factors being equal, higher priced books enjoy more prominent ranking positions in the popularity lists.

Though this is doubtlessly about Amazon’s bottom line, it’s a bit of a blow to indies, who have, for the last couple of years, used price to give their books an advantage over traditionally published titles in the Kindle Store. Technically, an indie can put a book out without spending a dime (though hiring an editor, at the least, is recommended), meaning that even 99-cent ebooks can result in tidy profits, whereas traditional publishers must put a lot more money into the process and can’t afford price points like that, at least not in the long run.

Now, though, it seems that lower prices are being penalized with lower visibility, at least at Amazon, and at least if one’s goal is to spend time on bestseller lists. These changes may eventually reach beyond the Top 100, too, meaning 99-cent books would be less likely to be mentioned in Amazon’s recommendation emails and in other books’ also-boughts. (I’d love to hear from other authors on this. I haven’t personally experienced any drop in sales from what I’m talking about today, because I’m not in KDP Select (next topic), and my novels are $4-$5 instead of 99 cents.)

KDP Select’s unintended “perk” disappearing

The 99-cent pricing strategy has been around for a while. KDP Select is relatively new, but accounted for some meteoric rises from previously obscure authors.

When Amazon rolled out the program last Christmas, indie authors flocked to it in droves, not because the lending library deal sounded that wonderful to anyone, but because Select allowed books to be listed as free for a few days each quarter. Many of us had witnessed a “feature” (one I maintain was likely unintended) where books that went free and received a lot of downloads leaped up the paid sales charts when they returned to their usual price point. This was because those free downloads were counted as sales. Amazon rewards books that sell well with more visibility (a lot more visibility), so you had previously unknown titles jumping into the Top 1000 for extended stays because, to Amazon’s algorithms, they had “sold” so well over such a short period of time.

Again, I don’t have any person experience with this phenomenon, as the books I’ve made free have stayed free (by using price-matching rather than enrolling in Select), but I’ve seen a lot of people grumbling on the Kindleboards and in other places that KDP Select isn’t worth anything to them now that this “feature” has been fixed (or at least majorly downgraded).

In other words, another trick indies were using to out-perform the traditionally published novels (from what I’ve read and seen in the Kindle Store, few Big 6 publishers were willing to sign the exclusivity clause Amazon required for participation in Select).

Will there be other tricks one can use? Maybe so. There are always rewards out there for those who pay attention and can get in early on things. But, it seems that, more than ever, self-published authors will have to put out high quality books and work on building up a loyal readership over time, rather than depending on gimmicks to launch their careers. Yeah, that’s how it always should have been, but you can’t fault folks for taking advantage of opportunities along the way. If KDP Select had come at a different point in my self-publishing career (i.e. a year earlier, when I was just getting started) or hadn’t required exclusivity, I’m sure I would have tried the game too.

What does still work?

As I mentioned, my Book 1s are permanently free. It works. Many of the people who grab them go on to pay for the other books in the series. In my opinion (and thanks to awesome readers, I have the sales numbers and fan letters to back up my opinion), giving away free work is a great way to build a readership. People get to try your stories without risk, and, in my experience, it’s a win for the author as well (so long as you have follow-up books for the reader to go on to buy).

Some will argue that free is a gimmick, too, especially since you can’t upload a book for less than 99 cents at Amazon (you can at iTunes, Kobo, and, via the Smashwords backdoor, Barnes & Noble — you have to wait and hope Amazon will price-match). I suppose that’s true, but readers have been finding new favorite authors by borrowing books from friends (free) or checking them out from libraries (also free) for ages. It’s a well-established model. Being free in the online stores just means being in a much larger library with a lot more visibility.

But I digress…. I do think that everything from increased competition to decreased effectiveness of pricing gimmicks has made it harder to break in at Amazon, but it’s still going to be possible to establish yourself and make a career out of self-publishing. You just can’t expect it to happen anymore with the first book or in the first year.

If you’re new to my blog, please check out other posts I’ve written on building a platform and a readership:

All right, that’s probably enough reading material for one day! What are your thoughts on the recent changes at Amazon and breaking in today as a new indie author?

 

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Emperor’s Edge 5 Update

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Lindsay

I’ve been off on a road trip this week, so posts have been a bit sparse, but I thought I’d mention that I finished the rough draft of EE5 today. It’s a little over 125,000 words right now, though I’ll shave some of that off when I’m editing. As most of you guys know, Maldynado is the secondary point-of-view character in this one, and he does have a tendency to be verbose and hog the page (he denies the former and, for the latter, points out that he is the most interesting character, so it’s only natural).

This puppy still doesn’t have a title (perhaps I should host another contest?), but I’ll start in on editing soon. A while back, I mentioned September for the release goal, and I should be able to make that happen. I may have to bribe editors and beta readers with chocolate and coffee, but that’s just part of the game.

Thanks for checking in. I’ll start posting some teasers and excerpts and such when things are a little further along. (I believe we’ll have a Maldynado-centric interview or two as well–as he said, it’s only natural.)

Posted in My Ebooks | Tagged , , | 18 Comments