Cut Scene from Dark Currents (EE Book 2)

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Lindsay

A reader recently mentioned that she enjoyed the Sicarius interview and would love to see more extras. Since writing new material might take time away from working on EE5, maybe I could find some cut scenes to post? Well, ask and ye shall receive.

This is a short snippet I found in the EE2 scrap pile with the title of “Maldy tries to take advantage” (No, no, not in that way.). It was originally part of the scene where the team is riding up to the hidden lake, and Amaranthe and Sicarius are in the back of the lorry, cleaning their weapons and discussing events. It breaks off at the end when the glowing-eyed cougar is about to attack.

~

Maldynado stepped into the lorry bed and eyed their cleaning kits. “Anyone want to scrub my weapons?”

“No,” Amaranthe said.

“But you’re a natural at that sort of thing,” Maldynado said. “I like the way you’ve laid everything out in perfectly parallel lines.”

“I prefer a tidy area.” She glanced at Sicarius. His weapons were spread out just as neatly.

“Hm.” Maldynado slid his rapier free of its sheath. “It’d be unfortunate if someone dirtied your area by carelessly leaving a grimy old sword next to your shiny clean weapons.”

He set his blade on the edge of her towel. Smudges marred the surface and something gummy stuck to the forte. Amaranthe’s fingers twitched toward it.

Maldynado nudged it so it was out of alignment with the others. “Just in case you finish yours and—”

Sicarius’s hand blurred, and the point of the rapier appeared at Maldynado’s chest. Sicarius still sat cross-legged, relaxed and calm except for the outstretched arm holding the sword.

Eyes bulging, Maldynado did not move.

“Tend to it yourself,” Sicarius said.

Maldynado stepped back, arms wide. “I will. It was a joke.”

“It was not. You were trying to take advantage of her.”

“I was not. I mean, I was, but not in a mean way. In a friendly way.”

In a lazy way, Amaranthe thought, though not with rancor. She would have cleaned it as a favor, then reminded Maldynado later that he owed her a favor. She remained silent, not sure whether she should agree with Sicarius or tell him she would prefer to handle the men in her own way. It seemed a weakness to let him stand up for her—and she hardly needed that when it came to Maldynado’s innocuous joshing—but she did not want to squabble with him in front of the others.

“She is not your chum; she’s your employer. Act like it.” Sicarius flipped the sword and extended the hilt to Maldynado.

Maldynado grabbed the rapier, jammed it into its scabbard, and threw up his hands. “Whatever you two say.” He pointed a finger at Amaranthe. “You do realize it’s going to be hard for us to set you up with that pretty warrior-caste newspaper fellow as long as you have a viper coiled around your arm.”

Though Sicarius did not move, Amaranthe felt the air grow frostier around him. She waved Maldynado back and tried to soften the tension with a smile. “Thank you, Maldynado, I’ll consider your advice.”

He sniffed and climbed back into the cab.

Amaranthe reassembled the pistol. “That’s why people don’t tease you, you know.” She measured powder to load the weapon, grimacing when the swaying of the lorry made her spill some. “If they dare, you threaten them or give them the Death Stare of Doom.”

“You can lead men or befriend them, not both,” Sicarius said.

She rammed a ball home. “While I value your counsel, you must know I’m not one to create artificial distance around myself. Leading through—”

 ~

Thanks for reading. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to writing Book 5!

Posted in Cut Scenes and Fun Extras | Tagged , , , | 25 Comments

Writers’ Conferences–Valuable for an Indie Author?

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Lindsay

I’m plugging away at my next novel (70,000 words into EE5, in case anyone is wondering!), so I’m glad to have a guest poster lined up for today. Indie fantasy author Dale Ivan Smith is here to talk about writers’ conferences today. Are they worthwhile for those who want to self-publish? Let’s take a look…

Is there value for an indie author at writers’ conferences?

Writers’ conferences have long been a place where aspiring writers thronged, attending panels to listen to editors and agents dispense marketing advice and publishing wisdom, and line up for pitch seasons, where they could have a few minutes of an agent or editor’s time to run a novel or non-fiction book proposal past them, hoping that lightning would strike. Writers still head to annual conferences, hoping to connect with an agent or an editor and be invited to submit the first few pages to the agency or publishing house.

This is all well and good for writers looking to land a contract with a big NYC publisher or a small press, but what about the indie author? Is there any reason you should attend a writer’s conference? Conferences can run four hundred dollars or more for a weekend, not counting hotel, food and transportation. Is it worth your hard earned dollars to spend 1 to 3 days with fellow writers, editors and agents at hotel?

My short answer is a resounding yes! Writing conferences can offer far more than just pitch sessions and editor/agent panels, and even those have value for indie authors.

Writers’ conferences usually have a well-stocked schedule of workshops and panels on all sorts of writing craft topics, from putting emotion into your fiction, plotting, world building, inspiration, you name it. At my local annual conference put on by the Willamette Writers, there are panel and workshop tracks on fiction writing, non-fiction, YA fiction, and general topics. I’ve taken workshops from bestselling thriller author Larry Brooks, the “story fixer”, SF and mystery writer Mary Rosenblum, and accomplished short story writer Eric Witchey, to name but three. All are accomplished teachers. Craft workshops can range from a presentation on a topic and questions and answers, to writing exercises where you may, if you wish, share what you wrote with the workshop leader and your fellow attendees.

Despite having read a number of books on fiction writing, workshops opened my eyes to understanding how a story works, and beginning to learn to break down the craft of fiction into parts, much like analyzing a golf swing or learning to play the piano, something which had never occurred to me before.

Looking at the conference schedule for this year’s Write on the River conference, held in central Washington state, you will find a workshop by accomplished SF novelist and screenwriter Steve Barnes on the Hero’s Journey, another on making your writing process fun by C.C. Humphries, who also will offer an extensive longer workshop building a novel on Sunday. The big Surrey Writers’ Conference, in British Columbia, even offers master classes immediately before the conference begins in mid-October every year.

Of course, writing well isn’t just honing your craft, and learning useful techniques and tips on plotting or characterization. It’s also about finding inspiration, and facing the blank page. I took a terrific workshop a few years ago at my first conference from Eric Witchey on dealing with procrastination, with tips like writing for 15 minutes first thing in the morning, recognizing obstacles that keep you from writing, and how to turn them into allies to help you write. (Come to think of it, I need to rewrite my workshop notes.)

You can also find plenty of opportunities to cross-pollinate. For instance the right screenwriting workshop can give you unexpected insights into story structure, suspense, motivation etc. Screenwriting may be extremely stripped down in terms of narrative, but movie dialog has to work on multiple levels, and plot and structure are often tight and well-honed.

The “general” track at the Willamette Writers Conference covers publishing, finding agents, what editors want etc. But these days’ panels and workshops on all sorts of indie publishing topics are being offered as well in that general panel and workshop track, covering things like promotion, marketing, using social media, search engine optimization, building a career as a self-published writer, designing an eBook, etc.–the same sorts of things Lindsay has written extensively about here. There is a growing recognition that indie publishing is another way to reach readers and possibly make a living doing so.

While you might not be aiming at traditional publication, pitching to agents can still prove useful, giving you feedback, and perhaps landing you an agent if you decide to pursue a traditional book contract on the side, or to help with foreign rights. It’s also good practice for framing your novel, and helping with distilling it down for your description at Amazon, Smashwords, B&N and other e-book distributors. The same goes to pitching for editors. Moreover, conferences could lead to meeting a freelance editor or a referral to one for content or copy editing.

Also, often you can submit a first chapter or a short story for a paid manuscript evaluation at a conference, which can give you some extremely useful professional feedback. I did that at Willamette Writers a couple of years ago and found it a big boost to being able to look objectively at my own fiction, not an easy task for many of us. I sat down with an author who had read my manuscript and we went over his comments—I was able to ask clarifying questions. His written feedback was well worth the modest price, an additional charge not covered by the conference registration fee. Check with your local conference, chances are you’ll have an opportunity to submit a first chapter or short story for evaluation.

Connecting with other writers is one of the biggest benefits from a conference in my experience. Back in 2009, I ran into an old friend, a fellow writer, who had moved away years ago. We reconnected just at a writing workshop the last day of the conference, and went on to form a new critique group, which has been invaluable in improving my writing. And renewing my friendship with my writing pal led to him introducing me to a number of other local writers.

There are also intangible benefits from attending a conference. I had kept my writing to myself for several years, after some intense experiences in previous critique groups and accumulating a pile of rejection slips from various science fiction and fantasy magazines. Just going to my first Willamette Writers conference was a public acknowledgement that yes, I was a fiction writer, and I was rubbing shoulders with many other kindred spirits. It was a boost to my confidence, and the first step in getting my work back out into the world. That workshop I took on dealing with procrastination was at the same conference, and it led to my taking several classes from the instructor, which also was a huge help in improving my writing.

To recap, yes writers’ conferences have a lot to offer the indie author:

  • Workshops and panels on writing craft topics.
  • An opportunity to cross-pollinate with film, YA, and non-fiction.
  • Panels and workshops on indie publishing.
  • Pitching can be good practice even for indie authors, and you can meet agents and editors there. It’s also a place to meet potential free-lance editors, too.
  • Paid critique and manuscript evaluation.
  • Networking—you meet other writers, share stories, and find possible critique groups or beta readers.
  • Intangibles like confidence building and acknowledging to yourself that yes, you are a writer.

If you are interested in attending a writers’ conference, how do you find one? The good news is there may be one closer than you realize. Many cities in the United States host an annual conference, often put on by their local writer’s organization. Here in Oregon the Willamette Writers and the Oregon Writers Colony both run a conference each year.

In the Pacific Northwest alone we have the following:

Surrey Writers’ Conference: http://www.siwc.ca/

Pacific Northwest Writers’ Conference: http://www.pnwa.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=5

Write on the River: http://writeontheriver.org/

Willamette Writers: http://www.willamettewriters.com/wwc/3/

I’ve never attended Surrey, but several friends have. It’s the largest of the four above and has a stellar reputation. Write on the River is the smallest, but still has a number of panels and workshops.

The following sites can help you search for writers conferences in your area:

Retreats for Writers: http://www.retreatsforwriters.com/conferences/

Writers’ conferences and centers: http://www.writersconf.org/

Writer’s Digest: www.writersdigest.com

Writer magazine:  http://www.writermag.com/events.aspx?page=list

*****

Bio: Dale Ivan Smith has his mother to thank for his love of science fiction and fantasy. When he was five, he glimpsed the cover of a paperback sci-fi novel she was reading and was immediately interested. (It had a giant radioactive spider on the cover.) When he was fifteen, she loaned him her collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom novels and he devoured them in short order. He got into trouble in grade school for sneaking off to the library during class, so naturally he wound up working as a librarian. While he has had fiction published in a couple of magazine and had the goal of having novels traditionally published, he has now embraced indie publishing. His story Persisting is now up at Amazon and Smashwords. In July, Episode 1 of his serial Weed will be published. You can find him at  www.daleivansmith.com, where he blogs about science fiction, fantasy, ereaders, and his fiction.  

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Contest: Design Maldynado’s Next Hat for a Chance to Win Signed Paperbacks

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Lindsay

As you may know if you follow my Facebook page, I’ve been mulling over ideas for a new contest. I’ll have some shiny new Conspiracy paperbacks coming my way soon, and I’d like to give away a set of all four books. EE1-4, signed, and (if you wish) personalized.

How can you enter the contest? Help me with a crucial plot element in Book 5:

I need design ideas for Maldynado’s next hat.

I’m afraid his current hat won’t make it through the dirigible crash, and, as team shopper and all-around-charming guy, it’s going to be up to him to venture into the city and acquire stylish new digs for the team, including (naturally) fashionable headgear for himself. As readers know from previous books, Maldynado’s idea of fashionable has occasionally been considered silly by others…

Feel free to get creative!

You don’t have to draw anything (though it would be fun to see some pictures!); you can simply describe your hat idea with words.

Entries can be posted in the comments of this blog post or on my Facebook page. I’ll leave the contest open for two weeks and then pick a winner and incorporate the hat into EE5. The winner will receive the set of paperbacks, and, yes, you can be located anywhere in the world to win.

Thanks!

Posted in Cut Scenes and Fun Extras | Tagged , , , , | 85 Comments

Updates to Amazon’s Book Ranking Algorithms: The Death of 99-Cent Ebooks? An End to KDP Select Perks?

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Lindsay

Ever wonder how Amazon’s ranking algorithms work? Why one book gets recommended to readers and another doesn’t? The difference between the popularity lists and the bestseller lists? Well, indie author Edward W. Robertson doesn’t work for Amazon, but he’s a stats junkie who’s been studying the e-seller’s algorithms for a while. Today, he’s here to answer questions on how books get ranked and recommended along with new changes that could punish 99-cent titles and take some of the appeal out of the KDP Select program.

Amazon Algorithms Examined

You seem to enjoy studying how Amazon’s algorithms work for ranking and recommending books. Before we talk about what’s new, could you give authors an idea of how things work, at least insofar as you know? What goes into ranking a book and causing it to appear on such-and-such bestseller list? Also, what’s the difference between the bestseller lists and the popularity lists?

Yeah, studying these things is a lot of fun for me. I don’t have any formal training in numbermancy (which I’m pretty sure is the term), but spending the last 10-12 years reading about the statistical study of baseball appears to have taught me a few things about data analysis. Perhaps I wasn’t wasting my life after all!

On to the lists. Everyone who’s spent much time on the Kindle store has seen both the bestseller and the popularity lists. The bestseller list is the Top 100 of a given category of books. For instance, here’s the bestseller list for Epic Fantasy.

The popularity list is the list of all books in that category. Here’s the popularity list for Epic Fantasy.

What you’re currently seeing on those lists will depend on when you’re reading this, but you’ll note they aren’t identical. That’s because they differ in key ways. The bestseller list is essentially a gauge of how many copies a book has sold over the last 24 hours. It takes longer-term sales into account to a degree, but the last 24 hours are far and away the most important factor. A book can rise and fall extremely swiftly on the bestseller list.

The popularity list is more complicated. For one thing, Amazon changes the formula for how it’s calculated a few times a year. Currently, to the best of my knowledge, the popularity list is the accumulated sales of a book’s last 30 days compared to those in its category–but free books given away only count for roughly 10% of a paid sale, and price is factored in as well, in that the higher your price, the more each sale counts for on the list. Lastly, borrows aren’t counted as sales for purposes of popularity list rank. The formula looks something like this:

(sales + (0.1 x free downloads)) x (unknown sales factor) / last 30 days

A simpler way to think about it is gross revenue earned by your book over the last 30 days (with an additional boost depending on how many copies you’ve also given away). I’m not sure that’s a 100% accurate way to put it, but it fits the data we’ve seen well enough to work as shorthand.

In short, then, appearing on the bestseller lists is mostly all about having sold a bunch of copies in the last 24-48 hours. To appear high on the popularity lists, however, you need strong sales (or an extremely strong giveaway) over the last 30 days. Additionally, the higher your price, the fewer books you’ll have to sell to do well on the popularity lists; the lower your price, the more you’ll have to sell.

That’s a lot of information! What is the popularity list actually used for? It sounds like that’s what the changes are effecting, but, as a shopper, I wasn’t particularly aware of it until recently, so I never used it to find books. Do people actually browse through it? Or is it used for determining recommendations?

The popularity lists are pretty important. Obviously, Amazon has an almost endless assortment of ways to promote books from within the store itself, but I think the popularity lists are one of the major factors. See the main Kindle store page? With all those links on the left to a variety of different genres? Those bring you to the popularity lists.

So they’re pretty prominent. Both for browsing and, yes, for recommendations–when Amazon sends out emails along the lines of “You might enjoy these other books in Epic Fantasy,” the links they include take you to the popularity list for that category of books.

Of course, the importance of any given category varies quite a bit by its overall popularity with readers. Romance > Romantic Suspense might be just a little more important than Basketry > Underwater Basketweaving. Ranking high on the popularity lists of small categories won’t make much difference. But in the well-trafficked ones, it’s pretty big.

It’s hard to know just how huge unless you are actually Amazon, but if I were to make conservative guesses based on my experiences, being on the first page in Epic Fantasy might lead directly to 20-60 sales per day based on your visibility there alone. (And maybe much more. This will vary a lot depending on your book’s overall appeal. I’m sure A Game of Thrones benefits from it just a little bit more than my dinky indie title did.) In Science Fiction > Adventure, I’d say it might be good for as many as 30-100 sales. For the biggest categories like Romance and Mystery & Thrillers, the visibility the popularity lists provide to the top books might be responsible for thousands of monthly sales by themselves.

Key word “might.” This is really tough to estimate. But in my experience, a lot of people see these lists, both when they’re browsing around Amazon and when they’re directed there by emails. Based on post-free results from hundreds of different authors, I’m positive the popularity lists were the main drivers for the big sales Select authors used to see after making their books free. Now that it’s so much harder to achieve high visibility on these lists via free alone, I’m afraid Select authors are in for some much leaner sales.

Yes, in a recent Kindleboards post, you mentioned that Amazon’s changes would effect those using KDP Select. Can you summarize what’s been going on and what the changes may mean for authors?

Amazon has made significant changes to their popularity list algorithms twice this year. Around March 19, they started using three lists at once. Around May 3, they condensed that to a single list. The new list works as I’ve detailed above.

If you’re in Select and have been doing book giveaways, you may have noticed that you started selling fewer copies after a free run starting March 19. You’ve probably done even worse since May 3. That’s because free copies used to be weighted equally with paid sales on the popularity lists–which also looked at most recent sales most heavily.

But now that free downloads only count for about 10% of a paid sale, and the lists look at the last 30 days of sales rather than the last week or so, it can be really hard to land high on the popularity lists unless you give away a colossal amount of books. (Though if you can make it there, you’ll stick for longer.) Without the visibility of the popularity lists to drive your sales, you probably won’t see the “post-free bump” we grew used to in the first few months of Select. Select can still be an effective program, but for the moment, it’s far less useful for generating sales than it once was.

For instance, back in February, I gave away 9000 copies of my fantasy novel The White Tree. That was enough to put me at #1 on the Epic Fantasy popularity list for several days. I sold a lot of books! In March, I gave away another 4700 copies. On a similar version of the list we’re currently seeing, that was only enough to boost me to #65. I didn’t sell nearly as many books!

For a more in-depth look at these changes, check out my series of posts here, here, and here.

In that last post, you talked about how the new changes may make it harder for authors with 99-cent ebooks to rank as well. What exactly are you seeing and what price points seem to be favored?

Yes. Price now seems to be a factor as well. Collecting data on this is really hard–in fact, I can’t even say with total certainty this theory is correct–but there’s a strong correlation between price and relative position on the popularity lists. In short, the higher your price, the better you’ll place relative to your overall sales.

The favored price point in this new system is “as much as you can get away with charging.” It looks like $0.99 books have been pretty well massacred. $2.99 books can still place well (particularly when they’re boosted by giveaways), but they’re at a noticeable disadvantage. Something like $5.99 – $12.99 looks to be the ideal range at the moment. Affordable enough for people to buy in droves (if the quality is there), but with a high enough price to hang with all the high-priced traditionally published books.

This is not a call to jack up your prices. If you raise your book to $7.99 and only sell 20% of what you were doing at $2.99, you’ll be worse off on the popularity lists. And remember, the popularity lists are just one way to generate sales (although it is a significant one). But since price appears to be directly relevant now, it’s something to be aware of when positioning your book.

Any thoughts on why Amazon might be making these changes? To push people into their ideal $2.99 – $9.99 pricing bracket?

I don’t know. Could be, but it’s not like Amazon made any announcements about this. I don’t think Amazon builds these algorithms with overly specific goals in mind. Like, nobody in Seattle woke up one morning and said, “And now I ruin John Locke’s life! Ah ha ha ha!” As far as I can see, all they care about is what will make them the most money now and continue to do so ten years from now.

Do you have any parting thoughts on what these changes might mean for authors who hope to do well in the second half of 2012 and beyond? It seems like some of the “tricks” indies have used to outperform mainstream books (99-cent price tags, KDP Select free days, etc.) might not work as well in the future. Will this force us all (Big 6, small press, and self-published authors) to sell and promote our books in the same way?

This is just one more step in the ongoing and absurdly fast-paced evolution of the ebook market. The algorithms could change again tomorrow or six months from now. Amazon makes changes all that time.

That said, in the meantime, Select isn’t the money-printing machine it once was. To sell many books, you’ll have to do more with it than “set book free, sit on couch, drink fruity drink.” You need to have a secondary strategy to make your book visible after your free run’s over, or use your free run to specifically generate visibility for your other books. So maybe the strategy is to make the first book in a series free on a regular basis, or taking out an ad to run the day after your book reverts to paid to try to cluster as many sales into one day and climb the bestseller lists, etc. Indies are still in the process of working this out.

If these changes stick around long-term, we might see a convergence of prices, tactics, etc. between indie and trad publishers. But I think that, for better or worse, we’ll see yet another change before the year is up. Maybe several of them. While the current changes don’t look good for Amazon’s indie crew, we still have the advantage of being able to adapt faster to them–and to whatever comes next.

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, Ed!

~

Edward’s bio and information on his books:

Born in the Pacific Northwest, Ed recently moved with his fiancee to Los Angeles, where they’ve since accumulated three small furry mammals. A sci-fi and fantasy author, his short stories have appeared in a couple dozen magazines online and in print. His epic fantasy novel The White Tree and the postapocalyptic thriller Breakers are both available through Amazon. A more complete list of his work is available here.

Note: if you’re reading this on Friday the 18th, Breakers is free at Amazon, so make sure to check it out!

 

Posted in Amazon Kindle Sales | Tagged , , , , , | 66 Comments

Is a Kickstarter Campaign a Consideration for You?

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Lindsay

I’ve been meaning to write up a post on my experience with using Kickstarter to fund publishing projects (in my case, an audiobook project), but I’m still busy getting together all the reward goodies for those who pledged, so I better wait until I have everything wrapped up. Fellow writer, John Portley, is running a campaign now, however, and offered to write a guest post. If you’re wondering if this might be a way to fund the start-up costs of getting your first manuscript online, then read on…

Is a Kickstarter Campaign a Consideration for You?

by John Portley

Being an author can be a lonely job, and in the transition to being a reasonably paying job, it can be a costly one.  If one is going the indie route, then doing more than just creating an ebook can be a daunting concept.  An author may want to create a special printing of her/his work, or to add numerous quality illustrations to a book before publication, or create an audio presentation of a novel, or to create another derivative of your work, such as a graphic novel.  Hopefully the following regarding a particular way of asking for help in paying for such a project will help you in determining if this method is for you.

Hi, I’m John Portley, who will be publishing my first book later this year (Guardians of Pangea, Book1:  The Worm in the Wood).  I am here to share what I have learned in starting my Kickstarter campaign.  Laying out some of the steps that I took should assist you in your deliberations of starting your own Kickstarter campaign, either now, or later in your career, to take advantage of crowd-funding, the term used for going to the masses to find funding for a particular mission, with Kickstarter.com being the number one website in the United States for assisting in such a goal (excluding charity sites).

Firstly, there are other websites with similar purposes to Kickstarter, with IndieGoGo being one that takes a lower percentage as their fee and is known to release the collected funds faster (Kickstarter and its partner will take about a collective 10% off the top, and can take 3 weeks to deliver the funds to your bank account after your campaign successfully ends).  Though IndieGoGo is smaller in web traffic, you probably will be driving the majority of the traffic to your particular webpage, so taking a look at other crowd-funding sites should be a consideration.

For a discussion of crowd-funding websites, here is a good article.

Look to which sites apply to you, what each offers, and then charges, for hosting a crowd-funding webpage.

Incidentally, there will be an explosion of similar sites with the recent passing of a law that waters down the requirements for investors in a new company.  Nearly anyone, from anywhere in the States, will soon be able to invest in a new business concept.  Internet sites will spring up by the score, touting the Next Big Thing, telling you that you can be part of a cool company, and be a part owner in the next FaceBook, or Apple, or Twitter.  Some great companies may be started this way, but I fear that this new law will multiply to ridiculous levels the boiler room stock pumping-and-dumping activities of fly-by-night companies.  A strong warning for the future:  beware.

But back to bringing your story’s project to the public.  You will need to combine a bit of creative thought with a lot of rational thinking…

One of the first things to determine is exactly what you want to do.  After all, what you will be doing is creating a contract between yourself and your sponsors.  Set a specific monetary target for a clear goal—e. g., you will purchase X number of illustrations to go into your book, and will need Y number of dollars to do so, as well as pay for all the other aspects of the project.  Do not set the monetary goal too high, because at Kickstarter, if the campaign does not generate enough pledged money to meet your goal, then none of the money comes to you.  If your project has more money pledged than your goal, it all comes to you.  Do not set the goal too low, as part of the milieu of crowd-funding is that the person asking for money will set up levels of support, and reward sponsors according to the level of support pledged.  For example, if a sponsor pledges $25, then that person receives the book, postcards with illustrations from your book, and your thanks to this sponsor listed at your website.  More rewards at higher levels of sponsorship.  You have to factor in the costs of these rewards on the individual levels and within the overall project.  These rewards must come out of the project itself, such as copies of your published book, or downloads of your audio interpretation of the book, or posters based on the illustrations which were paid for by the campaign.

I set my costs of the rewards at 40%-60% of the pledge amount, and that does not consider the sweat equity of designing, producing, and then delivering the items.  Which brings up an important consideration:  factor in the cost of having these items shipped to you, and then to your individual sponsors.  The cost of shipping 100 posters to you in bulk may be $15, but cost $6—for a mailing tube and postage—for each of your pledge supporters.  If you accept international donations, then figure out how to address international shipping, and its considerably higher costs.

To assist in telling your story about the campaign, Kickstarter strongly recommends that one creates a video, with the limit being 250 MB in size.  Have your receipts ready for any licensed music used in your video if you also post this video to YouTube, as they have become sensitive about music rights (Kickstarter kindly lists a number of sources for licensing music at their website).  It probably would not hurt to keep receipts for any copyrighted pictures used as well.  Crowd-funding sites in general will probably be asking for all of these soon enough, in order to cover themselves legally.

My costs for the video were less than $500, though yours will probably be considerably lower, unless you hire a professional.  The largest expense came from the three commissioned illustrations of characters from my book, something which you may not encounter for your project.  I wanted to show the quality of the to-be-commissioned art for the book, so I paid for some before the campaign.  I also paid for a few licensed illustrations from dreamstime.com and licensed music from JewelBeat.com (and some similar music also for my website).  I purchased a video editing program.  And though I just purchased an USB microphone (~$90) which is too late to use for this video, I am sure it will greatly improve my future ones, and strongly recommend using a separate microphone, and not your computer’s built-in ‘mike’.

Among the items to upload to your Kickstarter site is an image as the ‘face’ of your campaign, preferably in a 4 by 3 ratio (width by height, respectively).  I took elements of my book cover, and rearranged them into a new picture.  This gave continuity throughout the project—this new picture at Kickstarter, the book cover at my website, and some of the opening images in the video, all variations from the same illustration.

You will need a very short description of your project, and then a detailed description.  The short is 135 characters of description.  Mine was:  “Guardians of Pangea is a family friendly series that explores a rich world of fantastical creatures and inventive individuals.”  I still wonder how to spice up 135 characters, and this did nothing to talk about the goal of illustrations for the book, but it did describe the book itself…somewhat.  For the long version, name drop if you can:  the person(s) who will do the illustrations, the company that will produce the audio CD/download, or the printing house that you have arranged to do the special hardback collectible (and perhaps list similar works that this company has done).  Show that you have planned ahead.

You will be asked to do a biography, which is something that I have always hated, but hopefully you are better at it than I.  They also want a picture of you, which is something that even my own mother would be hard pressed to find, yet I hope that you are less shy than I.  Then the address of your website, which is now nearly a requirement in this digital age, and for this I have no problem at all, for this is where I love to share details of my invented world.

You will need a banking account that will accept your funds, if and when they happen.  I made mine a business account, as I am running my writing as an occupation, and involving the federal and state governments in its profits and expenses (the usual required partnership with the IRS and State Department of Revenue).  The legalities in my state to set up such a business and then a business banking account actually took a little more than two months.  I believe that a personal account will be acceptable to the Kickstarter campaign entities (named in the following paragraph).

Kickstarter uses Amazon to collect and distribute the funds of a successful campaign.  So you will need to set up an Amazon Payments Account.  Part of that process is that Amazon verifies your bank account, electronically if possible.  My financial institution does not verify its bank accounts electronically (and I feel better that they do not), so Amazon plays a little game (PayPal does the same in their verification of a bank account, by the way).  Amazon makes two sub-one dollar deposits into one’s bank account, then you access your account, electronically or in person, and report to Amazon what the exact deposits were.  To save time, set up your account so that you can access it electronically, especially as Amazon can spread these two deposits across a number of days, and will not tell what those days will be.  Also, part of the process at Amazon requires the filling out and signing a 1099 tax form, so that the government can track the money that your project may generate.  Yes, there are frustrating delays everywhere, if you are not prepared.

And hopefully you are now more prepared, if you do want to run a crowd-funding campaign.  There are at least two reasons to so:  1) the project itself; 2) the publicity for your work, whether or not the campaign financially succeeds.  If you do run one, I wish you the best in both regards, and drop me a note at my website, I might be interested in what you are offering, or to answer questions about the process.

http://www.john-m-portley.com/

Please take a look around.  My series has a broad age and genre appeal with its world of inventive people and devices, and dynamic characters who deal with friendship in the face of stress and conflict.  A taste of the world and the series is at my website, including the first six chapters of Book 1 for your own enjoyment and judgment.

The video and webpage of my Kickstarter campaign is at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1922781115/guardians-of-pangea-book-1-kickstarter-campaign

…and there is even a button there to send the host (myself) a message, if you would care to remark on my project.

If you enjoy either, then please share, allowing your friends a chance to experience Guardians of Pangea.  Perhaps you, they, or their friends, will be interested in the soon-to-released book and the colorful items that I am offering through the Kickstarter campaign, for themselves or as gifts to others.

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Early Results from Creating an Ebook Omnibus–Good Choice or Not?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Lindsay

A lot of authors who read this blog (at least two out of three of them!) are publishing, often self-publishing, their first books. That’s a noble endeavor, but what if you’ve been writing for a while, and you have several books already published? What if they’re all related (i.e. stories in a series)? Maybe it’s time to look into putting together an omnibus.

That’s what I did a couple of weeks ago, publishing The Emperor’s Edge Collection on Amazon. It includes the first three novels in my fantasy series, and I decided on $7.99 for a price tag, so it’s a good deal for readers. So far, I’ve sold 50 copies, so it’s sales are low compared to my other novels, novellas, and short stories (though it is outselling my poor children’s story collection — it’s so hard to find 10-year-old readers with Kindles and the ability to buy from Amazon!). That said, 50 sales at $7.99 (putting a little over $5 in my pocket for each book) isn’t too shabby, especially considering I didn’t write anything new for the collection, meaning I didn’t need to pay for editing. Also the cover art and formatting costs were minimal (I got deals on both since we were just re-purposing existing covers/files), and I’ve already recouped those costs.

“Ah, but wait,” you say, “aren’t you cannibalizing your own sales with an omnibus? Aren’t the people who bought those books folks who would have purchased them individually?”

This is a valid point. My first ebook is free right now, so no loss there, but I sell EE2 and EE3 for $4.95 each (although, last I checked, Amazon had price-matched one of those down to $3.99 based on some slow-to-update store out there). Essentially, instead of making $5-something on the omnibus, I could make $6+ if people bought EE2 and EE3 separately.

I have no way to know for certain, but I suspect I am losing money on this deal, at least with the omnibus priced at $7.99 (I may raise the price down the line, especially if I ever “un-free” the first book). Based on earlier sales months, I know that a high percentage of the people who buy Book 2 go on to purchase the following books.

So, why do it?

Well, it’s a way to give the readers a deal, perhaps encouraging those who are on the fence about getting into the series, and it’s still a pretty good deal for me. Also, it gets people to buy the set today rather than the books one at a time tomorrow (if your situation is different than mine, and you don’t have a high percentage of people returning for the remaining books in the series, this may be a particularly good idea for you).

When does the omnibus really shine?

As you can see, with my EE books, creating an omnibus was more of a convenience for the readers than a big earner for me. But, there are instances, especially with e-publishing, where it can be super smart to create an omnibus.

The next one I’m going to put together is a three-story collection of my Flash Gold novellas. Because those are shorter than my novels, I sell them at 99 cents (although the first is free right now), $1.79, and $2.99. The last one, which is the longest at 43,000 words, is the only one that earns the 70% royalty rate at Amazon. I earn $2 on a sale of that one, but I only earn 35 and 60 cents respectively on the first two adventures, because ebooks priced under $2.99 receive a 35% royalty rate.

When I release the novella omnibus, I’ll likely sell it at $3.99 or $4.95 (we’ll see if the first one is still free then). Again, this will be a deal for the reader, who will be getting the word-count equivalent of a full-length novel, but then I’ll be earning the 70% royalty on the whole collection of stories.

The best possible scenario is when all three of your stories (or however many you want to combine) are selling individually for less than $2.99, thus forcing you into the 35% royalty rate. Combine them to get into the 70% rate, and you’ll be making significantly more on your omnibus.

A sneakier tactic to sell more omnibus editions?

As I mentioned, I didn’t write anything new for my omnibus. I didn’t want readers who had already purchased the books individually to feel compelled to buy the collection as well to get new material.

However, that is precisely the strategy many publishers pursue, no doubt to great effect. I know I’ve purchased omnibus editions of books by favorite authors because of new essays or stories tucked into the collection. If you don’t want to worry about an omnibus cannibalizing your other book sales, this may be a tactic to try, as you might get people who already purchased the books individually coming to grab the collection. Granted, you’d need a fan base built up, one that’s into your world/characters to the extent that they’d pay to get their hands on extras, even if it meant double-purchasing some stories.

It’s up to you to decide if that’s something you want to try.

Is a multistory edition good for anthologies and non-series collections too?

What if you don’t have the first three books in a series, but you have a collection of short stories that you’re selling at 99 cents a piece? Can you still take advantage of the higher royalty rate by combining them into one ebook anthology or collection?

The answer, of course, is yes, though you may have mixed results when it comes to sales. With a series, it’s more of an obvious buy for folks who like the sample and see that reviews are good for the rest of the books. With short story collections, the more unrelated they are, the less they’re likely to appeal as a collection.

You can always give it a try, though, and see how it goes. If you format your own ebooks and can splice together existing covers to make a new one, you needn’t pay anybody anything to put together works that have already been edited. Even if you only end up selling 10 or 20 copies a month at $2.99+, that might end up earning you more than selling individual tales for 99 cents.

~

 

So, readers and authors, what are your thoughts on the ebook anthology/omnibus? A good deal for all or do you prefer working with individual titles?

 

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , | 30 Comments

Can a Goodreads Giveaway Help with Book Promotion?

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Lindsay

A while back, we debated whether it is, in this new world of e-publishing, still worthwhile to create print versions of our self-published books. That’s up to each author to decide, but, if you do have paperbacks made, it can be helpful with book promotion. You can send review copies to book bloggers who don’t accept ebooks, make gifts of signed paperbacks to contest winners, and list giveaways over at Goodreads.

Just in case you didn’t know, Goodreads is a big social media site just for readers. Tons of people hang out there, interacting with other readers (and sometimes authors) and reviewing books they’ve finished.

If you’re an author, hoping to make more people aware of your work, it can be helpful to have folks over there reviewing your books. As I said, this is a social site, and those reviews show up in people’s activity logs, something all of their Goodreads friends can see. Even having your book in someone’s to-read list can be a little free advertising

Listing a Goodreads book giveaway

Any author can give away a book at Goodreads, and it doesn’t cost you anything (other than a paperback + shipping). You simply create an author account and start a giveaway.

Goodreads suggests these be new releases or advanced reader copies, but there’s nothing in the rules to say you can’t give away copies of a book that’s been out a while. To celebrate the release of my fourth Emperor’s Edge book (and maybe get some new people into the series, eh?), I’m running a giveaway of the first over there right now. I’m also planning to do a giveaway for Encrypted later this month (with that one, the ebook has been out over a year, but I’m just getting around to creating a paperback version).

Why bother with Goodreads?

You may think you can simply run a giveaway on your blog or perhaps on your Facebook page and “build buzz,” but the reality is that Goodreads has a lot more visitors than your author sites. It’s the difference between selling something at a garage sale and listing it on eBay (where millions of people have a chance to find it).

Here are a few of the possible perks of running your giveaway on Goodreads:

  • More visibility — People who’ve never heard of you may browse the giveaways page, decide your book sounds interesting, and sign up. They may also list the book in their to-read list where their friends can see it, friends who might think, “Hey, that sounds like something I might like too.” Those friends might add it to their to-read lists where their friends might see it, and so on. If you’ve heard the term viral marketing, this is it.
  • Reviews — We all know that reviews are important, as they help new readers decide if a book might be worth a try. If you don’t have many reviews yet, this can be a way to get some. Jane Friedman, quoting a Goodreads newsletter, wrote: “If your goal is to get reviews, it makes sense to give away a lot of books. Nearly 60 percent of giveaway winners review the books they win, so the more books you offer, the more reviews you are likely to get.”
  • A way to connect with potential buyers — When I ran my first Goodreads giveaway last year, I didn’t think to try this, but Robin Sullivan of Ridan Publishing mentioned that you can contact all of the entrants after the giveaway is over. Apparently you can say something like, “Thanks for entering and sorry you weren’t selected, but, if you’re interested, here’s a coupon to grab the ebook at Smashwords for half price.” Because I give away the ebook version of the first book in my series anyway, I could forgo the coupon and just give them a link to grab the digital version for free.

So, does all this work? When I did my first Goodreads giveaway, I didn’t measure sales, but I’d definitely say it helped make more people aware of my work (at the least). I had close to 1,000 people enter to win a copy. That was before I had much of a fan base, so those were mostly people who found the book via Goodreads. I’ve seen people writing in more popular genres receive even more entrants. Considering it only costs about $10 (an author copy of your paperback + media mail shipping), it seems like a no-brainer.

Here’s a link to that Jane Friedman article again (she has some giveaway pointers on there that are worth reading). As to where I heard Robin Sullivan talk about the giveaways, she’s been interviewed a number of times for podcasts (I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which one specifically this was mentioned on), and you can find those by doing a search for her name under podcasts in iTunes.

Any thoughts? Have you tried a Goodreads giveaway, and did it help you with book promotion? Or are you thinking of trying one?

Posted in Book Marketing | Tagged , , , | 41 Comments

Reader Questions Answered: Emperor’s Edge 5, Paperbacks, Encrypted Sequel?

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Lindsay

It’s been a little over a week since I released Conspiracy, the fourth Emperor’s Edge book, and we sold a thousand copies in the first week. That’s a record for me (I believe EE3 sold about 500 copies in the first week), and it was great to sell enough right off the bat to cover the cover art and editing costs. Thank you for your support, everyone!

As promised, I’m working hard on Book 5. Thanks to the, ah, slight cliffhanger at the end of 4, folks are asking when the next one comes out.

It’s a little early for me to post a date, but I’m going to shoot for the end of summer (maybe the first of September). I’m about 30,000 words into the rough of EE5, and it’s coming along well. I’ll post more details as I get closer to finishing the first draft.

There have been a few other questions of late, so let me go ahead and answer those here:

Will there be paperbacks for all of the Emperor’s Edge books? Do you make much on the paperbacks (i.e. is it worth buying them to support the author?)?

Yes, to more paperbacks. The formatting is almost done for Encrypted, and Glendon over at Streetlight Graphics (he does all of my covers) will be starting on EE4 soon. That shouldn’t take long since we’ll be using the same style as was used in the previous books. I do have plans to have all six EE novels turned into paperbacks.

At $11.99, they are fairly expensive to buy, but at 6″ x 9″ they’re larger than mass-market paperbacks, and I think they ended up looking pretty good. But, as far as what the author gets, I make about a dollar per sale on those (compared to $3 on the $4.95 ebooks), so unless you really want a hard copy, please don’t feel like you should spend more for my sake.

If you do want paperbacks, and would like them signed, please send me a note. I usually have some books on hand, and, because the author copies cost less than store-bought copies, I can sell them to you for less than that $12 per book, even including shipping (for those in the U.S. anyway). I’m also planning to have some custom book plates made eventually, so I can sign those and send them to you to stick inside the books (if you already bought the paperbacks elsewhere).

Maybe someday I’ll get on the ball and make a separate page on the site with details about this.

Will there be a sequel to Encrypted?

I want to finish up the six Emperor’s Edge books first, but, yes, I’m planning on a sequel. I may try another Kickstarter campaign to help support the cause, because sales of Encrypted are quite a bit lower than of those of the EE books, so writing more books with those characters isn’t as obvious of a choice. That said, I do want to pen at least one more adventure (we have to see what happens when Tikaya brings Rias home, after all).

I’m still working on getting goodies together for the last Kickstarter campaign, so this will likely be a 2013 project.

When will the next Flash Gold story come out?

Because I left Kali and Cedar in a better spot than the EE gang, I want to focus exclusively on EE5 this summer, but I do plan to get back to the Flash Gold stories before too long.

In the meantime, I’ll be publishing an ebook omnibus of the first three adventures this summer, and I’m planning to do a paperback version of that as well.

Will you do any more character interviews?

The Sicarius interview was quite popular, and I’ll absolutely do some more. Maldynado may be the next up to bat since he’s the secondary POV character in Book 5. I imagine he’ll be a tad more verbose than Sicarius was…

Want to keep up on the latest news and tidbits?

You can sign up for the newsletter (link in the menu on the right) or follow me on Facebook, as I often post little dialogue teasers there.

Also, if you’d like to chat with other fantasy fans, check out the Emperor’s Edge Forum that a nice reader set up.

Any more questions? Let me know in the comments. Thanks!

 

Posted in Ebook News | Tagged , , | 22 Comments