Camille Picott on QR Codes–How Writers & Publishers Can Supplement the Reading Experience

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Lindsay

Camille Picott, one of my critique buddies from the SFF Online Writing Workshop, has officially joined the e-publishing world, though she’s been an independent author and publisher for some time. She’s here to guest post on some interesting new technology: QR Codes (if that doesn’t ring a bell, just read on — you’ve probably seen them and didn’t realize what they were for) and how you might want to use them.

How Writers & Publishers Can Supplement the Reading Experience

By night I’m a writer and self-publisher, by day I’m a full-time working mom in the wine industry. My daytime and nighttime lives rarely intersect, but in recent weeks I’ve been learning about these nifty things called QR Codes. Here’s an example of what they look like:

QR Code

A QR Code is a two-dimensional bade code that can be read by a Smart Phone. (If you’ve already got a Smart Phone with a QR Reader, go ahead and scan this code – it should take you to my website, www.pixiupress.com.) They have the potential to open new doors for indie writers and publishers.

This past week I had the privilege of taking a webinar on QR Codes. The webinar was presented by Rick Breslin, Founder and CEO of Hello Vino. And though the webinar focused on QR Codes in the wine industry, I learned quite a bit that can be applied to the publishing company.

Here’s some of what I learned from the Hello Vino webinar. And although this webinar was aimed at the wine industry, most of what I learned can be applied to the publishing industry.

You can use a QR Code to:

1. Link directly to a URL – sends your customer to a URL of your choosing. From a URL, there are a various things your customer can do:

a. Discounts/Coupons

b. Access additional information about product

c. Enter sweep steaks

d. Sign up to receive more information

e. Access video

f. Make purchase

g. Interact with social media

2. Send a text message – allows your customer can send you a text message (Interesting tidbit: this allows you to capture the phone number of the person texting you.)

3. Call a phone number – allows customer to call phone number supplied by you

4. Decode a secret message – you can embed a message up to 500 characters long in the QR Code; scanning the code will display the “secret” message. Some companies have been using this method to send customers on scavenger hunts.

5. Download Vcard contact info – allows you to download contact info; the future of business cards

Where you can get a free QR Code:

1.Go QR – this is a neat site that allows you to create QR codes that do all 5 of the items listed above. It’s totally free.

2. Kawya – another free site. It allows you to do all of the above except #5.

3. To find other free QR code generators, do a Google search for Free QR Codes.

What the QR Code Scanners do (not all do exactly the same things):

1. Send you automatically to a website

2. Capture the website so you can go to it later

4. Give customer yes/no options

5. Maintain history of accessed sites

What your customer needs to scan a QR Code:

1. A Smart Phone with a camera

2. An App that reads QR Codes. Here are a few:

Red Laser (iPhone)

ScanLife (Blackberry)

Quick Mark (Android)

3. A QR Code that’s dark in color on a white/light background (contrast is imperative)

4. A crisp QR Code, preferably one that’s generated from an EPS file. JPEGs may work, but be sure to test them.

Why QR Codes are good for businesses:

1. Deliver extra value to your customer

2. Allow you to collect contact info

3. Allow you to capture the location of your customers (usually with their permission)

4. Present incentives to purchase

5. Allow you to interact with your customer

6. Inexpensive and quick to set up

7. Allow you to track consumer awareness and engagement

Best Practices for businesses using QR Codes:

1. Use short URLs. The longer the URL, the more complex the QR Code. The more complex the URL Code, the more difficult it is to scan (generally, you have to make complex codes proportionately larger). If you don’t have a short URL, you can shorten it using bit.ly.

2. Cross Platform Compatibility – make sure the Code can be used on multiple devices.

3. Give instructions to your consumer so they know what to do with the QR Code. For example, if you print the Code on the cover of a book, print a statement like this below/beside it: “Scan this with a Smart Phone app that reads QR Codes.” Until QR Codes are more widely recognized, businesses must help educate consumers. Check out this Macy’s YouTube campaign to educate consumers on QR Codes.

4. Test QR Codes over and over again with multiple apps and phones before releasing to the public.

5. A “micro site” for customers. A regular webpage can be pretty hard to read and navigate on a Smart Phone. Landing sites for QR Codes need to be dimensionally smaller; in other words, designed for a small Smart Phone screen. Check out Hello Vino’s website for an example of a “micro site”. On the right hand side of their home page is a picture of a Smart Phone displaying the Hello Vino app. The website even allows you to navigate the app right on your computer so you can see how it will look on a small screen. Notice how easy everything is to read and how nicely it fits on a small screen.

A quick story relating to QR Code Best Practices: A colleague of mine did some experimenting with QR Codes. Using a long URL, she was unable to successfully scan .5″ QR Code. When she blew the code up to 1″, she was able the scan it. Our IT department shortened the URL, and she was able to scan it at .5″. This illustrates 1) how important it is to have a short QR Code, and 2) how important it is to test QR Codes.

QR Codes are Ugly! What can I do?

Worried that QR Codes are going to look tacky on your book cover? Check out some of the innovative ways you can spruce up at QR Code:

decorative QR codes with color

If you’re looking to do something like this, you have to hire a designer. I did a quick Google search and found BeQRiuos, a place that specializes in creating custom QR Codes. I don’t know what this sort of thing costs, but if you’re interested it would probably be worth your time to request a quote from a few of these companies. (Notice that both of these QR Codes adhere to #3 of “What your customer needs to scan a QR Code” – that is, both provide a dark QR Code on a lighter background for contrast.)

My plans for QR Codes:

I have a lot of ideas for how I would like to use QR Codes on my upcoming books. I’m thinking they will function as “Bonus Features.” Here are some things I would like to include:

a. full color illustrations for fantasy creatures in my books

b. YouTube video of me giving a school presentation

c. YouTube video of me talking about my writing process/inspiration for my story

d. early drafts of the book or deleted/altered scenes

e. promote the free teaching curricula I give away on my website

QR Codes and E-books: I don’t see any reason why a writer/publisher can’t include QR Codes in e-books. I’m thinking in my table of contents, I will have a “Bonus Features” hyperlink which will take readers to the QR Code. I will also include a hyperlink to the website, in case the reader does not have a Smart Phone. For those readers who may not have a Smart Phone or an e-reader with access to the web, I may also include the actual website address.

I’d love to hear ideas from other indie writers and publishers regarding QR apps. How would you use them to supplement the reading experience for your customer?

***

About the author of this article: Camille Picott is the author of Raggedy Chan, a middle grade fantasy novel named Best Juvenile Fantasy 2010 by the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. Check out the Raggedy Chan e-book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Hard copies of her book (which includes 40 full-color illustrations) can be purchased at Pixiu Press.

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Trading Excerpts with Other Authors in the Back Matter of Your Ebook

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Lindsay

Kindle ExcerptI’m seeing more and more ebook authors trading excerpts with other authors, and it came up on JA Konrath’s blog today as well, so I thought I’d write a few words on it too.

What does “trading excerpts” mean exactly? Well, at the end of my heroic fantasy ebook, I might include opening chapters or scintillating passages of one or more other authors’ works, ideally authors who write in a similar genre. Then they would do the same for me in their ebooks. This gets your name out to an audience who might enjoy your work but may not be aware of you yet. And, naturally, it does the same for the other author.

It’s not something I’ve looked into myself yet, but I can see why you might give it a try. It’s a form of collaborative cross-promotion that has a lot of precedents (the big internet marketing gurus always cross-promote each other on their mailing lists, and those people make millions).

If you’re thinking of trading excerpts, here are a few things to consider first:

  • Does the other author sell a lot of books? Granted, you’re not likely to get Stephen King or even a bestselling indie author to trade excerpts with you if you’re just starting out, but if you’re doing reasonably well with sales, you might not get much out of this by trading with someone who doesn’t sell more than a couple of ebooks a week.
  • Do you genuinely like the other authors’ work? Whether you say so or not, adding an excerpt to the back of your ebook may be considered an endorsement by many of your readers. You don’t want them going on to buy a book that tanks in the back half or has huge numbers of grammatical errors.
  • How long will the trade last? You’ll probably want to agree ahead of time to a length, especially if this is your first time experimenting with this. You might agree to try it for a month or two at first and see how much it affects your sales.
  • Will it annoy your readers? I wouldn’t think it would (it wouldn’t annoy me, at least), since they’re not paying extra and it’s easy enough to skip something in the back if they’re not interested, but you never know. If you have a blog, you could always ask your fans for their thoughts before going ahead.

Readers, authors, what are your thoughts? Good idea or not? Anything else to consider?

Posted in Book Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

Steve Richer on “Who’s REALLY Making Money with E-books?”

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Lindsay

I like to highlight success stories and interview authors doing well with e-publishing, but I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a road to riches for most folks. It’s easy to get dazzled by the fortunate folks doing well and start thinking, “Hey, maybe this could be my road to fame and fortune (or at least quitting the day job),” but it’s worth staying grounded. Today’s guest post, by indie author Steve Richer, points out some of the realities of the business.

Who’s REALLY Making Money with E-books?

Gold Mining ToolsWhen I wrote my historical thriller/Western The Gilded Treachery, I went a little overboard with the research. I must have spent three or four hours looking into the history of Nebraska, specifically the town of Florence. I made a startling discovery. One of the place’s founders, James C. Mitchell, had made his fortune during the Gold Rush in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Wait a minute, you say! Iowa wasn’t where the Gold Rush took place. You’re right but Mitchell saw something few people had. The village was the starting point of the Mormon Trail and it was a route favored by immigrants going west to Oregon and California. He figured out something few people had at the time.

Why play the lottery when you can be the one selling tickets?

What he actually did was open up a store to outfit the adventurous settlers heading out West to seek their fortune. Everyone believed they would be striking gold and getting rich. The reality was that most prospectors ended up losing money. Aside from a few who did strike gold, those who became the wealthiest from the ordeal were the businessmen who catered to them. There was Levi Strauss whose blue jeans became bestsellers with settlers or Samuel Brannan, shopkeeper and a newspaper man, who became the first Gold Rush millionaire.

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? It seems like the e-book craze is in fact a publishing revolution. The numbers back this up, books are increasingly downloaded and paper copies are in a downward spiral. Self-publishing, thanks to easy-to-use services such as Smashwords and Amazon KDP, is thriving. Everybody’s a writer these days, the short story you wrote in 10th grade is now put on the market for $0.99.

Smart people are taking advantage of this. You have the cover designers and you have proofreaders. There are those who specialize in e-book formatting and others who’ll try to sell you advertising. And I won’t even mention the thousands of blogs on the subject. Don’t be surprised if new companies spring up offering to package your books, from formatting to marketing, for a small fee. [Lindsay comments: lots of them out there already!] Don’t be surprised if some people start calling themselves e-book agents, charging money for something you could do yourself. Ever heard of estributors? There is a lot of money at stake, a lot of people trying to cash in on this new phenomenon.

Of course, the people I mention provide valuable services but I believe it’s useful and timely to consider where you stand in all this. The bloggers and the service providers have a stake in continuing to promote this revolution, in making everyone believe that you too can become the next successful independent author.

What you have to ask yourself is whether you’re a fly-by-night prospector hopping on the Oregon Trail on a whim or if you really know of a great piece of land where gold is buried. And this finally boils down to one basic fact: if you’ve written a great book you’ll have a great publishing career. There’s money to be made everywhere, just make sure you’re on the right side of the counter.

Steve Richer is the author of two novels, The Gilded Treachery and The Kennedy Secret. You can visit him at SteveRicherBooks.com.

Steven Richer Gilded Treachery

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Using Twitter to Promote Your Blog

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Lindsay

Twitter Tips for Blog PromotionIf you’re an author or a book reviewer, you’re probably interested in getting more people to visit your blog. Heck, even if you’re rambling without an agenda, you’d probably love more blog visitors. It’s fun seeing your traffic stats climb.

We’ve talked about building links to get more search engine traffic to your blog, but social media sites can be another good way to attract visitors. I’m a fan of Twitter since it’s hard to waste a lot of time there (hey, how verbose can you be in 160 characters?), but it’s easy to check multiple times a day, and you can even get to know people over time. And — the reason why you’re here — you can use Twitter to bring more people to your blog.

Here are a few tips for promoting your blog (effectively) on Twitter:

  • Use titles or blurbs that answer the “What’s in it for me?” question for your followers — If your blog post title already does this, you can simply use it in your tweet, but you might have a little more room to entice folks. If you just say something like, “Hey, I updated my blog and here’s the link,” you’re less likely to get clicks than if you detail what you’ve written that’s worth reading.
  • Don’t just tweet links to your blog — I don’t even follow people who do this (and I’m not picky about who I follow back). Most tweeps want to engage with people, not get someone’s RSS feed in an alternate format. It’s called social media for a reason.
  • Don’t bury your own promotional tweets — While it is called social media, you won’t get many clicks if you post the link and then respond to thirty @ messages in the next five minutes. Most people aren’t sitting at their computers, following your Twitter stream 24/7 (an ego buster, I know). I often post a link to my blog before I’m heading offline to do other things. This gives people who check my tweets more time to notice it.
  • Link to your old articles too — I should do more of this myself. There’s nothing that says you can only tweet about your most recent blog post. Do you have some gems from the early days of your blog (back when you had no followers)? You can tweet links to them if they’re still relevant.
  • Have enough followers that you’ll get retweeted — This is the true power of Twitter. Thanks to the “retweet” button, it needn’t be just about promoting your blog to your followers. Your followers can promote it to their followers  and so on and so forth. An interesting article could bring you quite a few new visitors. You don’t necessarily need thousands of followers, just some that like to spread the word and share cool links. (Make sure to retweet them once in a while too so everyone benefits.)
  • Tweet during “prime time” — I’m not the best about this, since I’m a night owl in a late time zone, but Twitter tends to be most active during the work day (which says volumes about our culture), especially the morning. Your link will be more likely to be noticed if more people are online. If you’re in a different time zome from many of your followers (maybe you’re in Australia, but you have a lot of U.S. readers), check out some of the free services that let you schedule tweets.

Do you have any tips you’d like to add? Let us know below!

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Updates on the New Novel (Plus How to Get a Free Copy)

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Lindsay

Sunday updates:

Editing of Dark Currents, the second book in what’s becoming The Emperor’s Edge series, is done!

I’ll be sending it off for ebook formatting in the next couple of days. First, I’m working on an Author Q&A to add after the story (last week’s discussion on afterwords inspired me, and I thought it’d be fun to do something extra at the end of the ebook). I have a few questions that I’ve received a number of times that I’m answering, but I’m open to others if anyone wants to ask something soon (like today).

As for how to get a free copy, I mentioned it before, but I’ll do it again because I’m sure not everybody reads every blog post I write:

I’ll be sending out a Smashwords coupon for 100% off, good for a week or so, to those on my mailing list, so sign up now if you’re interested. (Sign-up form in the sidebar on the right.)

Otherwise the price will be…I haven’t decided yet. Thoughts?

Thanks for reading!

Posted in My Ebooks | 16 Comments

Interview with Full-Time Ebook Author S. J. Reisner

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Lindsay

If you like success stories, you should dig today’s interview. I first learned of S. J. Reisner when she left a comment on one of my posts about short fiction ebooks. She mentioned she was a fan of short fiction because she’d been able to quit her day job, thanks to the sales of her novellas in particular. I, of course, pounced on the chance to get that story and stalked her back to her website to request an interview.

She agreed, so here we are:

Interview with S. J. Reisner

Do you want to start out telling us about what let you to e-publishing and how you came to have four pen names?

I have been a (starving) published author since 1996 (in print), but in 2008 I decided to go ahead and make my fantasy novels available on Kindle since I still owned all the electronic rights. At that point, Kindle was pretty new and having my books as e-books increased my sales about 6-10 copies a month so I was happy with it. I kind of forgot about it. Meanwhile I had quite a few non-fiction books self-published through Lulu and CreateSpace. My readers started asking for my non-fiction books as e-books. So after about the third request in 2010 I began converting all my self-published print books to e-book format. Meanwhile, I’d begun writing mystery novels and when the first one came out, I immediately published it as a Kindle book. I was also among the first writers to sign up with Barnes & Noble PubIt. When I saw my sales increase 100% – that’s when I realized that maybe there was something to be said for the e-book thing. As I saw it one of my biggest obstacles as a small press author and Indie author who books were POD, was getting readers to fork over $10+ for a paperback. With e-books I could price the books lower and in some instances make more money so it was benefiting me and my readers. Not to mention I saw it evening out the playing field between those authors published with the big six, and those of us who were both self-published or working with small presses. I went from making about $600 a month in physical book sales to $1000 a month in both physical and e-book sales almost instantly. Then, after my erotic romances hit it big, I started making even more and now, only about 100 sales a month are paperbacks. The rest are e-books and my sales numbers vary wildly month to month. Some months I’ll sell 20,000 books (usually when a new one comes out), but in an average slow month I sell about 5,000 books. That’s my goal number because that means I’m selling enough books to make the same amount of money I was making at my day job.

Of course this doesn’t explain why I have four pen names. Since my non-fiction, written as S. Connolly, is about witchcraft and magic (and therefore controversial) I wanted to keep my fantasy novels separated so I wouldn’t alienate readers who might be offended by such topics. So I wrote the fantasy novels as S. J. Reisner. When I began writing mystery novels I was originally going to write them as S. J. Reisner, too, but then I had to contend with the problem that my mystery novels are written for adult readers and my fantasy novels were safe for ages 11+. Since my fantasy fan-base seems to consist of a lot of younger readers I was not willing to make the mistake of publishing books for adult readers under that pen-name and accidentally have one of those books end up in the hands of an eleven-year-old. Could you imagine the parental outrage? Hence Audrey Brice was born. Finally, Anne O’Connell started out as my experiment in writing romantic erotica just to see if it was something I really wanted to do (or could do). I didn’t write those stories under any of the other pen-names just because if I was terrible I didn’t want to admit I was Anne O’Connell, and at the time I wasn’t sure how my family and friends would react to me writing such racy novellas and novels. Of course once Anne became popular and my family questioned how it was that I was making so much money, the jig was up and I decided to go ahead and publicly claim Anne.

Of course having four pen names is kind of a pain because it required the maintenance of four websites and blogs. After a few months of that I gave up and combined everything into one website I call The Quadrant. http://www.the-quadrant.com/ It’s also sjreisner.com, s-connolly.com, audreybrice.com, and anneoconnell.com.

You mentioned that you were able to quit your day job thanks to your success with short fiction. Congratulations! What made you decide to try shorter stories?

Thank you! Basically what happened is while writing the second mystery novel, I wrote a particularly erotic scene between the two main characters. When it went through critique, the entire group agreed that it was far too graphic (x-rated if you will) for a mystery/thriller novel so I had to tone it down considerably. That’s when one of my critique partners approached my privately and asked if I’d ever considered writing erotic romance. I’ve been writing for about thirty years and I can tell you that writing erotic romance was something I never really considered. She suggested I try it, so I started out by reading an avalanche of erotic shorts by other writers. I wanted to see if it was something I enjoyed reading or could even consider writing. If I don’t enjoy reading it – I won’t write it. It’s really that simple. By the time I’d finished reading about twenty of these novellas, I was inspired to write one short story (about 8000 words) and two novellas. I had an editor friend who was willing to edit them for me (since it was an experiment), a friend did some covers, and then I priced them based on the market and got them out there.

I honestly wasn’t expecting what happened next. My sales on Barnes and Noble took off and in the first sixty days I made a substantial amount of money. Please know that my results are NOT typical. After my success several writer friends attempted the same thing and while they’re selling their erotica shorts, maybe twenty copies a month, none of them have been able to emulate my sales numbers. For whatever reason my books just started selling like crazy (without any heavy marketing). I suspect it was word of mouth, or a bunch of eager Nook users because my stories were some of the first hardcore erotica stories on PubIt Nook. It was when my fourth story when sales really took off and next thing I knew, Training Amy was #1 on Amazon’s Kindle Erotica list and it made Kindle’s top 100 romance novels for a month.

How successful you ask? As of the beginning of June – I’ve already made $70K, which is about $20K more than the yearly salary I was making at my day job.

I’ve heard romance and erotica are popular genres. Do you think you’ve had to do less marketing because you’re in a hot niche, or is there just more competition (more writers publishing in that area)?

I think romance and erotica are popular, but I also think readers are discriminating. There is a lot of competition and there are a lot of good writers in the genre. It’s probably one of the most saturated genres, too.

I think I got lucky and was in the right place at the right time (being one of the first erotic romance authors with books on PubIt) and my work ended up getting noticed. That, right there, for an indie writer, is your biggest obstacle. Getting your work noticed. So as much as I hate to say it – I don’t have to market my erotica nearly as much as I have to market my fantasy and mystery novels. It may have also helped that I was already a best-selling Indie author with my non-fiction. But I worked hard marketing my non-fiction to build a name for myself there. I have noticed my non-fiction has helped to increase my fiction sales since a lot of the people who read my non-fiction also read fiction. I do some marketing though. Don’t get me wrong. I’m constantly marketing. I don’t think I do any less work than you average indie. Writing is still a business.

What are your thoughts on ebook pricing? I see that, across your pen names, you’ve got prices that range from 99 cents to $9.99.

I think pricing is what gives the Indie e-book author some advantage over the traditional publishing model. An example to illustrate my point – I wanted to read the latest Charlaine Harris. But because she’s so popular, the big six publisher she’s with is charging $12.99 for the Kindle book. Sorry to say, but as a reader, I’m not paying $12.99 for a novel unless I’m buying a physical copy of the book. But I will gladly buy two or three Indie paranormal mystery/romance novels for $3.99 each (provided the samples look promising). So when I price my books, I look at it from a reader’s perspective. As an unknown fantasy author, $1.99 isn’t bad for a fantasy novel that’s been out for several years. It keeps my sales steady and slowly grows my audience. But I’m still not charging rock bottom prices for an 80K word novel. That novel took a long time to write and I deserve to get paid. And you better bet that when the third book in the series comes out next year, I’m charging $3.99 for it and after it’s been out six months I’ll drop it to $2.99 and after a year, down to $1.99 with the rest of them.

Mystery is a hotter seller than fantasy. I can get away with starting the books at $4.99, dropping them to $3.99 after six months, and finally letting them rest at $2.99. With non-fiction – you can get away with higher pricing. Since most of my NF is around the 200 page mark – I put all new releases at $9.99 and for the NF chapbooks – between $2.99 – 7.99. For short stories under 10K, .99 cents and for my fantasy short story collection – also .99 cents.

With the erotica I chose to create my own little pricing system that seems to be working for me, .99 cents for short stories under 10K, $1.99 up to 15K, $2.99 for anything longer. However, I am considering putting a $3.99 price tag on the next erotica novel to see what happens (since I might be able to get away with that price now that I have an audience). I also have a series of erotic horror short stories coming out at .99 cents each and another novella that will likely price between $1.99-$2.99 (won’t know until the revision is done).

Do you have any tips for new indie authors looking to break into the e-publishing scene?

I guess first and foremost I’d say don’t get into e-publishing because you think it’s a quick buck. I can’t even begin to tell you how many people I know who decided to jump into writing when they heard my books were doing so well because they thought it was a get-rich-quick scheme. So many of them were like, “If she can do it, so can I. It can’t be that hard.”

Then, after a few months, they found themselves upset and frustrated when they weren’t getting the same sales I was. Like I said, my success seems to be an exception rather than the rule and I suspect that while it was probably a combination of luck, pricing, the popularity of e-books and the popularity of erotic romance, I also think it may have something to do with the fact that I’ve been writing for thirty years. Just concentrate on writing good stories. Readers always have been and always will be the real gatekeepers. You never know when something you write will get noticed. What becomes popular may not be, in your opinion, your best work either. Also know that you need to keep producing. Never bank an entire career on one book. Writers who can make a career out of writing are prolific, self-disciplined, and they can consistently produce at least one to two books a year. Not only that, but all books have a life cycle. You’ll make the bulk of your book sales in the first 3-6 months after it comes out and then it’s going to taper off. If you aren’t consistently putting out new material sales will eventually level off.

Great information. Thanks for the interview!

Here’s the link to SJ’s Amazon page, in case you want to check out her fantasy. And here’s the Anne O’Connell page (for the other type of fantasy).

Posted in Interviews / Success Stories | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Should Your Ebook Have an Afterword?

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Lindsay

I’ve always been a fan of afterwords in traditionally published books. It’s nice to get a little thank you message from the author or the tale of how the book came to be. Sometimes you’ll even get an interesting essay on the genre or the author’s book-related experiences (some of the omnibuses I’ve purchased by my favorite authors have had these).

That said, afterwords don’t seem to be all that common.

If you’re an ebook author, you might want to consider adding one. What you write is up to you, but this is the ideal place to add links to your other books.

You’ll often see a list of an author’s other works in the front of a paperback, but people reading on a Kindle or other e-reader aren’t that likely to “flip” back to the front when they finish.

Also, with ebooks, you have the unique ability to put live links into the text. Naturally, you wouldn’t want links in the middle of your novel, but adding a list of other books at the end makes sense.

If I’m reading on my Kindle, and a link takes me to the Amazon sales page for the Kindle-version of the sequel, I can buy it right then and there, without having to get out of bed. If I’m not sure if there’s a sequel, and I have to look up your name in the browser, hunt through other offerings, etc., then you’re putting more steps between me and purchasing the next book. Remember, I’m in bed already, so I’m not feeling terribly ambitious.

I always figure the easier you can make things on readers the better. If you do decide to include links to sales pages at the end, make sure to tailor them, i.e. your mobi-formatted Kindle ebook should take readers to the Amazon store. An epub for Barnes & Noble should have B&N links. With Smashwords, if you’ve opted in for distribution, you can’t be sure which store someone will buy your ebook from, but you can always include links to your Smashwords sales pages, since they sell every format of ebook.

Beyond Sales Page Links

Okay, so what else can you do with your afterword? Let’s say you’ve already thanked the reader for trying your book and you’ve included links to your other ebooks. Here are a couple other things you might add:

  • A link to your website or email address — Readers might want to visit and find out what else you’re working on.
  • A line or two letting them know you having a newsletter they can sign up for on your site — You do have a newsletter, right?
  • A request for reviews — While not everybody is into writing up reviews, it doesn’t hurt to add something like, “If you enjoyed my story, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, B&N, etc.” This can be especially helpful if your ebook is new and doesn’t have many yet.
  • An excerpt of the next adventure — I hate getting these when the next book isn’t due out for 8 months, but if your follow-up is already on the virtual shelves, waiting for buyers, this can be a nice teaser.

You don’t want to go too crazy with making requests (I’ve seen indie authors ask readers to review them, tag them, add them to lists, tweet about them, add them on Facebook, etc. etc. etc.), but the afterword is a chance for you to communicate briefly with the reader so it doesn’t hurt to use that space!

Can you think of any other things authors might want to include in an afterword? Let us know below!

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Interview with MeiLin Miranda on Ebook Pricing, Web Serials, and Crowd-funding

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Lindsay

MeiLin Miranda Lovers and Beloveds Ebook CoverToday we’ve got an interview with indie fantasy author MeiLin Miranda. I tracked her down after reading a review of her novel, Lovers and Beloveds, over at Frida Fantastic. She started out publishing her work as a web serial and got help with the initial ebook start-up costs (for cover art, editing, etc.) from her fans. Read on for details….

What led you down the road to independent publishing?

Frankly I didn’t know if I had time to do it the traditional way. I finally began my lifelong wish to write fiction after a 30-year career in nonfiction when I had a near-death experience five years ago. None of us know when we’re going to die, but that kicked me into high gear; I started writing. And while I’m a lot better now, when it came time to figure out what to do a couple of years ago I didn’t know if I had the years to find an agent, years to find a publisher, years to wait for the book to come out.

I started reading a webserial and thought, hey, maybe this is what I’ll do. I began writing my series, “An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom,” as a serial. It quickly gained a large audience, and I never looked back. When it came time to make it into novels rather than a serial — it turned out to be unsustainable as a serial — going indie was a no-brainer.

I read in a review that your first novel, Lovers and Beloveds, was a crowd-funded project insofar as paying for editing and cover art went. How did that come about?

Yes. Forty-eight people bought pre-sale packages to the tune of $2500. That paid for my editor, artist and typographer, and then the purchase and shipping of the paperback for those that bought the print package. The $50 presale bought them an autographed paperback, the finished formatted ebook and a thank-you in the acknowledgments, but the real attraction was that they got the raw manuscript as soon as my editor and I decided it was done (the $25 package was everything but the paperback). I finished on August 31st, 2010 at 9:30 pm; the raw manuscript was in their hands 24 hours later.

It came about because I needed $500 to match $500 I’d saved up for my editor. So I put this package together and said, OK guys, match me. I had the $500 in 24 hours, I closed the presale, and a bunch of people complained that they didn’t get a chance to buy one. So I reopened it. I had the rest of the $1000 in less than 72 more hours.

After that I just kept it open so that everyone would have a chance. It stayed open until about two months before the book came out, at which point it switched to pre-orders of the book–regular-priced autographed paperbacks.

I see you have your novels priced at $4.99 in the Kindle store. That’s a higher price than many indies try, at least in the beginning. Does $4.99 work well for you? Have you tried other price points?

I was priced at $2.99 for a while and sales were okay. Reading other authors’ experiences, though, there seems to be a “sweet spot” for each book, and sometimes that spot is *higher* not lower. So as an experiment I raised the price to $4.99. I’m selling the exact same number of books as I did in March and April (the price went up in the middle of April)–in fact this month I’m on track to sell more. And I make a lot more money. This is a BIG book–140,000 words, 420 pages in a 6×9 trade paperback–and $5 is not a lot for that many hours of quality reading. In fact, just the other day I got $5 from someone who got the book for free and liked it so much she paid me for it. When book two comes out I will probably drop the price of book one for a while, or perhaps for good.

One could argue that your novel has a fairly niche target audience. Do you have any marketing tips for those who aren’t writing in the most popular genres?

Quite honestly, no. What has worked best for me is to figure out who I’m most like and then appeal to that audience. For me, apparently that’s Jacqueline Carey, who I’ve never read myself. I’m told that while our styles and stories are different, we’re mining similar veins. So I’ve started saying in my marketing “If you like Jacqueline Carey, you’ll like ‘Lovers and Beloveds.'” It seems to be working–it gets me many more acceptances on reviews, at least. I’m still trying to figure out how to find Carey fans, though! Her fan sites don’t take advertising.

You have some shorter ebooks (stand-alone short stories and collections of shorts) out there too. How do those sell for you?

On initial release very well, but then they taper off. I think they’re selling to the choir, so to speak. I don’t think I have my blurbs down yet, or they may just be limited to people who’ve read the book. I did my best to make them stand-alone; reviewers of “The Gratification Engine” say they can tell you’d get more out of it if you’d read the book but that it was enjoyable nonetheless.

Do you want to finish up by telling us more about your work and any future projects in the pipe?

I’ve just today put book two in the corner to let it think about what it’s done. 🙂 I lost my way, and I’m taking a break for a week or two on the order of my editor to let the thing settle. While I’m doing that I’m working on another related short that takes place not long after the story-in-story of “Lovers and Beloveds.”

And I’m writing some more episodes of my fantasy western webserial, “Scryer’s Gulch.” I put it aside to work on book two, and its readers are peeved–especially since its last page was an April Fool’s story written by another writer in a round-robin the webserial community did. The story’s title: “The End.” People think I’ve abandoned the story, even though that entry is marked APRIL FOOLS! Gotta get back to that.

You can read “Lovers and Beloveds” in installments free on my website at http://www.meilinmiranda.com/intimate-history, where you’ll also find links to buy the ebook at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords and direct from me.

You can read all of “Scryer’s Gulch” for free on my site as well, though there are also ebook collections of Gulch episodes for people like me who prefer to use their e-reader to reading on a computer. 🙂 You’ll find the beginning of “Scryer’s Gulch” at http://www.meilinmiranda.com/scryers-gulch-1

 

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