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

E-Publishing: Who I Use for Editing, Formatting, and Cover Art Design

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Lindsay

Every now and then, someone emails and asks for recommendations on editors, cover art designers, and ebook formatting folks, so here’s a quick run down on who I’m currently using.

Editing

A few months ago, I did a post on how editing (and hiring an editor) works when you’re self-publishing, so you may want to take a peek at that if you’re new to things. It’ll give you an idea about which level of editing you may need, and it talks a bit about prices (though there’s a huge variation from editor to editor).

I’ve tried four or five different editors since I got started e-publishing, and, for the last four novels, I’ve used Shelley Holloway. She’s been freelancing for a while, and her rates aren’t the cheapest you’ll find, but, for me, it’s been worth paying more. She always seems to catch more typos, missing words, etc.. When I used a different editor for a short story last winter, I even had a reader point out that it had more errors than she was used to in my novels.

Cover Art

I don’t think I’ve done a write-up on how selecting a cover-art designer works, but I did figure out, through trial and error, that it’s helpful to get someone who has experience doing books. You can make a cool cover out of a custom illustration, but it saves some headaches if you use someone who handles lettering/fonts as well and gets that, especially with ebooks, the cover should look good in a thumbnail version as well as a full-sized one.

I tried a couple of different people before finding Glendon Haddix, the fellow who does the Flash Gold and Emperor’s Edge books for me (he redid Encrypted last year too). He’s also done the covers and interior formatting for my paperbacks. I believe he does ebook formatting now too. One-stop shopping. 😉

Ebook Formatting

This is something that a lot of indie authors learn to do themselves, but, if you’re like me and prefer to outsource the non-creative work, you can find lots of folks offering formatting services. $100 or so (for a full-length manuscript) seems to be about average, but you can find bargains out there too.

Glendon and Shelley both offer ebook formatting now, as an add-on to their other services, but I started out using Ted Risk over at Dellaster Design, and I’ve stuck with him. He does a good job and he also has the files to all my earlier books, so it’s easy to have him update the old ones at the same time (as you publish more work, you’ll want to update your “also by the author” lists in the earlier books). I also like that he creates HTML files rather than simply converting Word .doc files. I think you have more possibilities for customization that way, and, for non-fiction, in particular, that can be nice.

You can also check into Paul Salvette, an indie author based in Thailand. He’s been a guest poster here before. He wrote How to Format Your eBook for Kindle, NOOK, Smashwords, and Everything Else and just started BB eBooks, which offers formatting services.

Do you have anyone you’d recommend? Feel free to do so in the comments.
 

Posted in E-publishing | 22 Comments

Can Writing in Multiple Genres Hurt Your Sales Potential?

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Lindsay

When it comes to fiction, authors seem to fall into two camps: those who have multiple favorite genres and want to explore all of them and those who couldn’t imagine wanting to pen stories outside of their chosen niches.

One of the things we noticed when looking at many of the successful independent authors in the fantasy/science fiction arena was that they all wrote in series (many had multiple books out in multiples series), and most of them stuck to one genre. In the cases where they wrote in multiple genres, they tended to be related (i.e. fantasy and science fiction).

As we’ve discussed before, there’s a lot of power in a series. If people like the first book, subsequent books often become auto-buys. Also, the series itself is out there where it can be discovered for a long time (every time you publish and promote a new book, there’s a chance that fresh readers will chance upon it, and that’ll rekindle interest in the earlier books). With self-publishing, you can change prices on a whim, and this can help tremendously when you have a series; you can offer the first book for free or 99 cents to get people into the adventure, and then use normal pricing for subsequent books.

So, what happens if you like to write stand-alone books? And, more, what if those stand-alone books are in different genres? Western, science fiction, romance, thriller, historical non-fiction on the importance of basket weaving in Sub-Saharan Africa…

If you have multiple unrelated books out, you may have already discovered that one sells better than the others, and people just don’t go on to try the others you’ve written. If so, you’re not alone. I’ve seen indie authors rock it with one book, maybe even reaching the Top 100 in the Kindle Store, only to see mediocre sales on subsequent books if they’re not related to the first. And, if the books are in different genres, getting readers to cross over seems to be even more of a stretch.

What are your options, then, if you like to genre hop?

I’ve thought about this because I’d like to try my hand at space opera some day, and there might be an urban fantasy series in there somewhere. Even in the SF/F area, though, you’ve got folks who will only read epic fantasy or only urban fantasy, and getting them to try your other books can be a challenge. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Make use of the “afterword” area in your books to cross-promote — You can include previews of one or more of your other works at the end of your most popular ebooks, so why not post a few pages of something with a similar style? Even if you’re writing in different genres, you’ll probably have some distinctive you traits that appear in all of your work, and that’s likely part of what drew people into your first book. If you can get the reader to try one of your unrelated stories, maybe they’ll get into it even if it’s not in a genre they typically buy. (It occurs to me, as I write this, that I should probably do more cross-promotion of my own unrelated ebooks!)
  • Include your social media sites, blog, newsletter signup details, etc. — It’s always good to encourage people to follow you online and sign up for your newsletter (even if they read your thriller and aren’t interested in the historical romance you’ve got out now, your next book may be more up their alley, so it’s worth keeping in touch with them).
  • Think about whether a series makes sense in one or more of your chosen genres — Even if you’re a genre-hopper, you can still utilize the power of the series. If you’re at all inclined to write that sort of fiction, you might want to leave things open for the possibility of sequels. Even with only two linked books, you can start seeing some of the benefits of writing in a series.
  • Work on branding yourself instead of specific books — When you’re writing in one main series, it makes sense to try to turn the series into the brand, i.e. the Harry Potter books. But when you’re jumping genres, you’re going to have a lot of work on your hands if you try to and create a brand for every world you create. I’ve seen authors do three or four different pen names because they’re writing in three or four different genres, but I don’t think this is necessary unless there’s a possibility that some of your books will offend readers of the other books (i.e. if you write both children’s books and steamy romances). Ultimately, you end up with a ridiculous amount of work if you’re maintaining online presences for all of these entities. Instead of building one career, you’re trying to build three. Also, you lose out on those readers who will follow you across genres. Instead, I suggest finding the common thread (you) that runs through all of your books and turning that into your distinctive brand, replete with a little tagline that applies to all of your books. Amy Smith, the queen of wry humor, explosive adventures, and geeky heroines (okay that could be my tagline…). If those qualities are typically in all of Amy’s books, then it’d make a lot of sense to offer that promise as part of her “brand.”

All right, that’s enough from me. I do think writing in multiple genres can make it tougher to succeed, at least from a financial standpoint, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In the end, you have to go with what you enjoy writing if you want to have a chance of turning this into a career.

Do you have any thoughts on what else authors can do when they’re trying to succeed across multiple genres?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 19 Comments

Using Your Self-Publishing Success to Find an Agent with Elizabeth Mock

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Lindsay

Some independent authors have little desire to hunt down an agent or a traditional publishing contract once they’re doing well. Others choose to use their self-publishing success as a springboard into the big time. Fellow indie fantasy author, Elizabeth Mock, has recently signed on with an agent and is here to answer my questions on why she’s choosing to seek a traditional contract. If you’re an author thinking of doing the same, you may want to check out her answers.

Interview with Elizabeth Mock

LB: I remember seeing your Children of Man book in the Kindle Store (with oodles of reviews) when I was first getting started, so I know you were a fairly early adopter when it came to e-publishing. What did you try before that, and what made you choose self-publishing?

EM: Huh. I guess I am. It’s weird to think of myself as an early adopter, simply because I’m friends with Randy Lalonde. We’re World of Warcraft (WoW) guildmates from way back. Randy writes the Spinward Fringe space opera series, and he published Spinward Fringe: Origins back on mobipocket, pre-smashwords days. He actually deserves a lot of the credit for me going into self-publishing, because it wasn’t exactly my plan.

I never queried or submitted short stories to publications or took any of the normal steps. I didn’t try anything before self-publishing, because it happened almost accidentally. I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2009 and finished the first draft of Shatter on Christmas Eve. One of the prizes for NaNo that year was a free proof of your novel from CreateSpace.

I have a graphic design background (like old school, I-can-run-an-offset-printer, print shop background), so I decided to go forward with the CreateSpace offer, since it wouldn’t require me to spend any money on formatting or design. I spent that winter and spring editing and revising the MS as well as designing the interior pdf and cover. I discovered, during the proof process, that the paperback would be sold on amazon. So, I figured, why not? Let’s see what happens.

During the editing process, I sent the MS of Shatter to Randy to beta read. He encouraged me to distribute it as an e-book and helped me navigate the muddy waters of self-publishing. He introduced me to smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and answered all of my crazy questions. The e-book went live at the end of June 2010. This was all before the big self-publishing wave hit with Amanda Hocking’s success.

So, for me, self-publishing was more of an organic process and less of a chosen path.

LB: Can you tell us how self-publishing has treated you so far? Your Book 1 has over 150 reviews on Amazon, so a lot of people have obviously checked it out!

EM: Self-publishing has treated me quite well. In July 2010, I participated in smashwords’ semi-annual sale and offered Shatter for free. As a result, my sales saw a massive spike. Once the sale ended, I decided to try the loss-leader model (first taste is free!) and offered the book as free all the time. In October 2010, amazon price-matched the e-book as free. On amazon alone, I saw 25,000+ downloads that month.

At this point, Shatter, both print and digital, has been sold or downloaded over 230,000 times. In November 2011, I released the second book in the series, Render, and more than 7,000 copies have been sold.

I’ve had nothing but good experiences with self-publishing. My readers are vibrant and enthusiastic and gracious, and I adore them. My cover artist, Claudia McKinney, is spectacularly talented as well as a truly lovely person. One of my close friends, Anne Hromalik, designed my jaw-droppingly beautiful maps. (Shameless plug: If you need freelance artists, they’re both extremely professional and worth the money.) It’s been a lot of hard work and long hours, but I’ve enjoyed it.

LB: I understand you recently decided to take on an agent and hope to switch to traditional publishing. What made you decide to go that route?

EM: Last November, I was contacted regarding my books. I can’t really go into details, but it raised some questions about publishing that I was ill-equipped to handle. I immediately turned to another old-school WoW guildie for advice. (And people say playing MMO’s is a waste of time.) Outside of Azeroth, he’s Barry Goldblatt, rockstar YA & Children’s Lit agent of BG Literary (BGL).

What Barry and I discussed that day led to my decision to seek representation, and the first phone call I had with my agent Joe Monti led to the move into traditional publishing.

First: Why an agent?

  1. Navigating the business end of publishing. This is why I contacted Barry in the first place. I’m not savvy to all the ins and outs of the business end of publishing. (Though to be clear, the reason I contacted him turned out to be completely legit.) With an agent, I don’t have to worry about the business end of things, because Joe guides me through it.
  2. An agent protects you and your interests. Agents can protect you from predatory contracts or publishers. They know what a legit contract looks like, and they fight for their clients. Think James Frey’s shady contracts with I am Number Four.
  3. Selling rights. Even if I hadn’t decided to go traditional with the series, an agent can still sell foreign, movie, and audiobook rights for a self-published author.
  4. A professional partner that sharpens you. This was something important to me personally. Not all agents take an editorial role with their clients. BGL does, and I think it shows in their clients’ books. Joe gives sharp critiques that always push my writing further. I respect and appreciate that so much about him.
  5. Connections. This is a large part of an agent’s magic. They know people. Good agents have connections all over the publishing world. They have reputations, and editors trust their professional opinions enough to read your MS. This is why an agent is necessary for entering traditional publishing. I decided to sign with Joe and BGL because they have some pretty reputable credentials. (Info here: http://www.bgliterary.com/about/about-joe-monti/)
  6. A community. Again, this is not necessarily true of all literary agencies, but it factored into my personal decision. BGL is a community of authors. It’s a priority to Barry that the agency be a family, not just a business. Every year BGL hosts a writers’ retreat for the agency. Because artists in community create better art.
  7. Pie. That’s right. Pie. The first time I met Joe in person we went to a little pie shop in Brooklyn to discuss my books. My agent bought me pie. Apparently, the way to my heart and my writing is through my stomach.

Second: Why traditional publishing?

  1. Editors. Editors. Editors. I crave constructive criticism. That’s my primary motivation. I want an editor to eviscerate my MS, so we can burn away all the dross. I want copy editors to catch all my idiotic typos. (Seriously, a book free of any typos is a miraculous thing to behold.) I want to collaborate with a creative team to produce the best work I’m capable of producing, and I believe that traditional publishing can offer this.
  2. Other mediums. Traditional publishing can more easily lead to audiobooks, movie optioning, foreign publication, and graphic novel adaptations to name a few. Yes, these are all possible within self-publishing, however, you have to devote a lot more time and energy into making them happen, and I still have another full-time job as a teacher.
  3. Scope. What amazes me is that my books have achieved the reach they have through self-publishing without any advertising and just a bit of publicity through social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Shelfari). I’m excited to see what a real marketing and sales team behind me can accomplish.
  4. Fan girl. Full disclosure. This is the embarrassing reason. My name is Elizabeth, and I am a geeky fan girl–to my core. Because I’ve gone traditional, I’m getting to know some extraordinary authors whose work I’ve respected and adored for years. This makes me giddy. I’m a dork. I know.

LB: Do you think you’ve had enough success with your first two books that it’ll make finding a publisher easier than if you were simply plucked from some agent’s slush pile?

EM: Yes and no. My commercial success is definitely advantageous. I come with an established fan base, and publishers want to acquire books they know will sell. I also come with the baggage of being self-published, which is becoming less of a stigma with the continued success of self-published authors.

However, if an MS makes it through an agent’s slush pile, it’s going to be a solid story. I’ve watched an agent read through queries. It takes a lot to get an agent’s attention from the thousands of submissions–a lot. In the end, I think it’s a wash. I don’t think I’m any more likely to have a publisher buy my series than anyone else with a good agent.

LB: Do you have any tips for indie authors who might like to use self-publishing as a stepping stone to eventually get an agent and a traditional deal?

EM: When I did decide to release the e-book, I was primarily motivated by a thirst for feedback. I wanted to see how people–who didn’t know me from a raccoon bashing its paws against a keyboard–would react to my stories. This may seem like an masochistic decision, because the interwebs are merciless. Fortunately, people enjoyed my story.

But I won’t lie that squirreled away in my mind, I thought self-publishing could prove my writing’s commercial viability to an agent. That was more of an afterthought, however, rather than a driving force. I had no expectations that self-publishing would ever lead to representation. I also realized, after the fact, that if my books had wallowed in obscurity, I could have really damaged my career prospects.

I would not necessarily look to self-publishing as a route into traditional. There are a lot of stereotypes to overcome, and while some of the circumstances that led me to my agent were within my control, some weren’t.

Things in your control:

  1. Write a good story. Writing is a craft. Practice it. And go read Chuck Wendig over at terribleminds.com. Seriously. (Caveat: He’s more than a tad vulgar, but he’s so very right.)
  2. Hire an editor. At the very least, you need someone to copy edit for you. People also judge a book by its typos.
  3. Commission good cover art and design. EVERYONE judges a book by its cover. You’re trying to get the reader’s attention.
  4. Be professional. I really cannot stress this enough. The bottom line: Don’t engage bad reviews. Don’t be vitriolic about publishing or other authors. What you say matters. Be professional. Be gracious. Be classy. Think Wil Wheaton’s first rule of the internet. (Full disclosure: Joe stalked my blog and other online presences before deciding to offer representation. He wanted to see if we’d be a good fit working together.)

Things out of your control:

  1. Timing. I happened to self-publish around the same time as Amanda Hocking, so the field wasn’t quite as saturated. For a while, I was one of two free fantasy e-books available on kindle. My agent also had been actively seeking a female-driven ensemble epic fantasy series to represent, which is why Barry referred me to him. So many things were just good timing in my situation, which was completely uncontrollable.
  2. Trends. You can’t control what’s popular or what readers or agents or editors are seeking. All you can do is write the best story you can.

I know those are only two things, but they are major factors.

There are so many options available to storytellers today, and there is a lot to get excited about. You need to research and decide which options are the best for you. Take the opportunities that are out there and tell your stories. Just remember that self-publishing, like an entrepreneurial venture, is a big time investment. I wouldn’t necessarily say that my path is a formula to follow, because so much of it came down to uncontrollable timing.

I want to thank Lindsay for having me on her blog. I love her Emperor’s Edge series, and if you haven’t read them, you should. She’s a fantastic example of why self-publishing can be vibrant and viable. Seriously, read them. It has a laconic assassin, an OCD heroine, and many, many things going horribly right as they go horrifyingly wrong.

LB: Aw, thanks for the plug, Elizabeth! Good luck with the publisher hunt!

If you’d like to know more, check out Elizabeth’s blog or the website for her Children of Man series. Her first book is available at Amazon, Smashwords, and other stores.

Posted in Interviews / Success Stories | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

How to Upload Ebooks Directly to Apple/iTunes with Danielle Bourdon

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Lindsay

If you stopped by earlier in the week, you know I’m planning to switch from using Smashwords to distribute to Apple and Kobo and start uploading ebooks directly to those stores. I’ve already uploaded my fourth Emperor’s Edge book to Kobo (I’m beta testing their new self-publishing portal, but the platform should be available to everyone soon), but I need to either get a new Mac or upgrade my own one before I can give Apple a try. Fortunately, I stumbled across Danielle Bourdon‘s blog where she was talking about her experiences with Apple. Since she’s already done what I plan to do, I asked her to answer a few questions for us.

Uploading Ebooks (iBooks) Directly to the Apple Store

Thanks for stopping by, Danielle! I’ve heard there are some hoops to jump through to be able to upload your own ebooks into the Apple Store. What made you decide to figure things out? 

There are definitely a few hoops to jump through. I’ve never owned a Mac before this, so I was green going in. One of the top reasons I decided to upload direct was the wait time regarding reporting through the aggregator. Sometimes it was as long as 5-6 weeks between reports, which makes it very difficult to plan marketing strategies or to know what promotions are working.

Can you talk about what’s involved? I know you have to have a Mac, and I think there’s some software you have to download?

First things first is to make an iTunes Connect account. Once you’re approved (it takes anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks), Apple will send you a link to iTunes Producer. This is the application you need the Mac for. It’s a simple download and easy enough to use. They only accept ePubs (as of this writing), so you’ll need to generate one that passes through an ePub checker.

The other must-have is your own ISBN. Apple does not provide them. They cost $250 per 10 ISBNs through Bowker.

Do you know if it’s easy for self-published authors to get accepted as iTunes publishers, or is there an approval process?

The approval process is fairly smooth. The only hitch I encountered was that the Seller’s name must also match the EIN or the SSN. I use my maiden name, Bourdon, not my married name. Once I figured the semantics out, I was good to go.

Is it fairly painless to upload new books once you’ve done the initial setup?

I think so. The screens are easy to read and pretty self explanatory. You need Producer to make any other changes such as text, description or things of that nature. You can use iTunes Connect through a regular PC.

One thing prospective authors should note is that if you’ve had your books up through an aggregator, you’ll lose all your reviews once you direct upload. That was why it took me four months to finally bite the bullet and upload myself. Losing hundreds of reviews isn’t fun.

Ouch! Yes, at this time I’m planning to leave my old ebooks at Smashwords and just upload directly with new ones.

Do you feel you have more control over your books/descriptions/categories/etc. than if you went through a distributor such as Smashwords?

What I have is more immediate control. I can make changes instantaneously, which I prefer. Some authors might not need or want that option. There is a short wait time–no more than 6 days for me so far–from the time you upload to the time the books go live. I’ve heard others say they’ve waited upwards of three weeks. For me, personally, it was absolutely worth the investment to start from scratch with iTunes.

Great, thanks for answering these questions, Danielle!

Thanks for having me, Lindsay!

~*~

If you have any questions for Danielle, please ask them below, and I’ll try to get her to stop by and respond to comments. Also, if you’d like to support a fellow indie and check out her work, she’s writes paranormal, romance, horror, and dark fantasy, and is the author of 10 novels and 9 short stories. You can find more information on her site.

 

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments