- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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FingerbangMisfire posted:The big thing is to haunt the community boards on Amazon and make connections there.
It's also good to be an active member at third party communities like KindleBoards and MobileRead. If you aren't there to only pimp your goods, they will take a chance on you and if it is good, they will spread the word.
Boyd Morrison is a good example (some would say an anomaly since he already had an agent before he was signed) http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/boyd-morrison-kindle-author-lands-major-book-deal_b11943
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Mar 27, 2011 21:12
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Apr 25, 2024 12:00
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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Sedgr posted:
Weird thing about self publishing is that you only really hear about the statistical outliers who are doing it. On the one hand you've got several people on Amazon selling to the Kindle that have made loving boatloads of cash, and then the other end of the spectrum (where most people sit I suspect) people who have put their stuff up and sold nothing at all.
Self publishing isnt really even the issue. Yes you can self publish. Its not difficult to actually do it in the slightest. But being successful via self publishing looks pretty damned hard. It seems to me to be more of an exercise in self promotion than anything else really.
So it boils down more to a question of "How do I promote my work?" and "How do I get noticed in the crowd?"
One of the major issues I see with self publication right now, particularly in Ebooks, is that the quality is all over the place. You've got everything from the fifteen year old kids terrible fan fiction type stuff, to writers who are actually decent, to the real pro's who are just sidestepping the regular publishing process.
Unfortunately there's no way to tell who is who. So you really have to develop a name and get recognized by your audience or your work just never gets on the radar. That seems to be the biggest key currently.
The normal publishing process has some of this built in. Get an agent, get your work picked up by a publisher, and they'll have the routes in place to get your work seen by the people that might buy it. Book tours, reviews in various publications, signings, interviews, retail store space, all that stuff. They know how to get your work seen.
Going the self publishing route, you have to somehow match that. Really get the word out on yourself and your work, and hopefully you can build an audience from there.
What I'd be most interested to hear about is the guy that put his work up, and is selling say 50-100 copies a month. The guy selling one 99c copy a month wouldnt seem to be doing it all that successfully, and the guy selling 50,000 copies a month is successfull enough that he's probably going by name/brand recognition/word of mouth alone at that point. The guys in the middle are the ones that are really working on finding ways to build their audience so they would probably have the most practical advice.
Then again, those people might want to keep their secrets and tips to themselves lest they suddenly start drowning in a sea of copycat self advertisers.
I have never done it but I have seen alot of people come up through self-publishing. There is no surefire way to success.
The most important thing is to have good work. After that, the key seems to be getting on to the Kindle bestsellers list and setting your price low. Being on the list will give you exposure, the low price will get people to take a chance on you. Once you are on it, it takes on a life of its own.
Some authors use a cat and mouse type pricing.
1) Set the price low
2) After promoting, it is hopefully on the bestsellers list
3) After getting on the bestsellers list, the sales continue to rise
4) When the book is high enough on the bestsellers list, they raise the price so they get a bigger cut of the higher price
5) It starts to fall off of the bestsellers list
6) Go back to step 1...rinse, wash, repeat.
Some authors price one story low or free and put up their other stories at normal price. Same idea with trilogies or a set of connected books.
Some authors latch on to a genre and shovel out a ton of stories (Amanda Hocking with Paranormal Romance is the biggest example of this http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-02-09-ebooks09_ST_N.htm)
Community support, like I posted about earlier, is a good way to get on the bestsellers list. Those people are always looking for new stuff to read.
Twitter, blogs and the sort are another good way to open yourself up and connect with fans (who will hopefully spread the word)
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Mar 28, 2011 21:05
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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FingerbangMisfire posted:
Sporadic, if you don't mind my asking, have you self-published anything? You are certainly a (much appreciated) wealth of information.
No, I thought about it but decided to go in a different direction (trying to put together a screenplay at the moment). I was just heavily into the community back when it was first taking off and tracked cheap/free books so I was able to see how their promotion worked along with finding new authors through the bestsellers list. Boyd Morrison gave me a shout out in his book The Ark when it was published (which was extremely nice of him and cool to see)
Myrddin Emrys posted:
Ugh, I've been browsing stock photography sites for a while and everytime something catches my eye it's ridiculously expensive, or extremely complicated to license. By extremely expensive I'm talking $900. Or $1200 but only if you use it in 50,000 or less internal newspaper pages, etc.
If you don't mind spending a little bit of money, I bet you could get a great cover made for $50-75 from SA-Mart.
Romper Billson posted:
Speaking of Amanda Hocking, she just got a contract with Macmillan to publish her books (not sure if it's her future books or the ones she's already got out) traditionally for a cool $2 million. Not bad, though I wonder why she'd want to give up the revenue of self-publishing (though I can understand why she would want to focus solely on writing rather than marketing, design, and everything else that a traditional publishing house takes care of) -- at one point she was selling something like 200-300,000 Kindle copies a month, at $1 a pop, which is no small amount of change.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/books/amanda-hocking-sells-book-series-to-st-martins-press.html
She actually posted a blog entry about it.
quote:Okay, I've been writing this blog in my head for about a month or so, and I was trying to decide how I would break the news to everyone. But by the time I got to say things, everybody had already heard.
And if you haven't, here it is: I've got a deal with St. Martin's Press to publish a four book young adult paranormal romance series called the Watersong series. I think they're shooting for a fall 2012 release. The Wake book I've mentioned a few times, that's the first book in the series.
Here's the article from the NY Times about the deal: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/self-publisher-signs-four-book-deal-with-macmillan/
There's also going to be many articles in the future about it. So many, that I'm sure you'll be sick of hearing about me, if you aren't already.
But the big question on everybody's lips isn't what the deal is but why? If I've sold over a million books and made close to $2 million dollars on my own, why oh why would I possibly want to give up rights? How could they possibly offer me more then what I'm getting myself?
Is it because I feel I need validation? (Somebody misunderstood my post of my saying "I want to be a writer" to mean that I didn't feel as I already am one, when in fact I meant, "I only want to be a writer. I do not want be a publisher.") Also, after selling a million books, making the USA Today Bestseller list, and getting the amount of support from my readers that I get, I feel pretty validated as an author.
Is it because I think publishers will take over marketing over me? No. I enjoy marketing. I am hoping that since I'll have their publicist on hand, the process will become more streamlined. I know I will have to continue doing interviews, and I'll always blog and tweet because I enjoy that.
Is it because I'm so hung up on the idea of seeing my books on shelves in bookstores that I'm willing to give up huge portions of my profit for it? No. That's just silly. I'll be honest, it is pretty cool to think about having a book in stores. Having large distribution is part of the reason why I wanted a deal, and part of that is having books in stores. But just the thrill of seeing my book at Barnes & Noble in no way affected my decision. It's just an added bonus.
Here are the two considerations I made in my decision: what's best for my career, and what's best for my reader. (Notice I didn't say what was best for my wallet).
It boils down to these points:
1. Readers inability to find my books when they want them. I am getting an increasing number of emails from people who go into bookstores to buy my books for themselves or friends or family members, and not only does Barnes & Noble not carry my book, they can't even order it for them. People are requesting my books, and they can't get them.
2. Readers complaints about the editing of my books. I have hired editors. Many, many editors. And I know that I can outsource editing, but I'm clearly doing a really lovely job of picking editors. EDIT: The people hired as editors are great people who worked very hard. Which is the most frustrating thing about the continued complaints of errors in my books. I know that my books are better because of the people I hired. And I don't understand how there can still be errors. So my remark at "lovely" is over my frustration at the situation. Not the actual editors or the work they did.
3. The amount of books I've written and the rate of speed that I write books. If it took me five years to write a book, and I only had one book written, I'd be thinking long and hard about this deal. But right now, I have 19 books currently written. By the time the Watersong series goes to print, I'll still have 19-24 titles at least that I can self-publish.
The reason I took this deal wasn't for the money. At least not the upfront money. Also, let's be honest - if I self-published the Watersong series on my own, I could probably make $2 million within a year or two. Five years tops. I am fully aware that I stand a chance of losing money on this deal compared to what I could make self-publishing.
I honestly didn't do this for money. But let's not forget that as much money as I've made, James Patterson made $70 million between June 2010 and July 2010. Legacy houses (is that what we're calling them now?) have made a lot of authors very rich.
So what do I actually want out of this deal? What do I hope to gain?
Career stability. As an author, I'll never really have one. Each book I come out with could bomb and could be the one that turns readers off me forever. Any day, my books could just stop selling. And I know that going with a house isn't going to change that. Any author can stop making money any day.
James Patterson has a book out now that has incredibly low reviews, some of the lowest I've seen for any book, and that book is still selling like crazy, and I can find it Target and Walmart. Even the sequel to the book, which the reviews say is even twice as awful as the original, is selling like crazy. Why? Because James Patterson wrote it. (Or more accurately, because his name is on the cover).
I want that. Not the writing bad books thing. I'll always strive to write a product that people enjoy. But I want to be a household name. I want to be the impulse buy that people make when they're waiting in an airport because they know my name.
That, I think, is as close to career stability as I can get. And that's why I took the deal.
Does this mean I'll stop self-publishing? No, absolutely not. I have a few titles lined up this year yet to put out via the self-publishing. And I'll have more in the future.
Did my agent push me into this? Nope. This exactly how the conversation went: Steve (my agent): "Have you thought at all about going the traditional route?" Me: "Yeah, I have. And I have a series that I'm ready to pitch." Steve: "Great. Send it to me when you're ready."
Did you sign the contract without reading it? I haven't actually signed anything. But on top of my agent, I have a lawyer, an accountant, a financial adviser, and a personal assistant. I like my agent. I trust my agent. But that doesn't mean I'm so excited about this that I'm going to ignore logic and forget to make sure everything is in order the way I think it is. Not only will I look over it, but I'll have other people who understand contracts better than me read it.
Aren't you going back on everything you said? Nope. I've made a number of blog posts in the past, and I haven't changed my opinion on anything. I always said if the deal was right, I would take it. Part of the reason I'm taking it now is because I have made enough of my name for myself that I had the leverage to get the kind of deal I wanted.
What happens if they screw you over in a contract, steal all your money, and keep your erights forever? Then they do. I like the books St. Martin's bought. And I believe in them. But if I lose money on them, I lose money on them. That's the risk I'm taking. And I do know this is a risk. But it's a calculated risk, and if it works out, the payoff could be enormous. But I'm making enough money on my other books - and I will continue to make enough on my self-published books - that I can afford to take this risk.
With all that said, I am very excited about this. The folks I've talked to at St. Martin's have been very kind, and they're pretty jazzed up to have me. They even sent me flowers and chocolates today.
But it is crazy that we live in a time that I have to justify taking a seven-figure a publishing deal with St. Martin's. Ten years ago, nobody would question this. Now everybody is.
Which is really silly, you guys. If there's one thing I've proven in the past year is that I'm pretty business savvy. I'm practical and level-headed. I've thought this through and talked it over with a lot of different people.
And now, I'm watching Scream 2 with Eric. It's his 25th birthday today, and I'm going back to celebrating that with him. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Mar 29, 2011
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Mar 29, 2011 18:47
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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Arnold of Soissons posted:
What do people think about serialized novels, Dickens style? 50 punchy pages a week/fortnight, collected digest versions at the end of the story, or ever 6 months or something like that? Would people pay 99¢ for each week for a weekly episode?
e: if you think this is a workable idea, what do you think the pages/time ratio would need to be? 50 pages a week? 50 pages a month? Is more often going to be better than more pages a shot?
I've seen that done with a comic book, except they gave out the first one for free and charged $0.99 for each one after that.
http://www.amazon.com/Tumor-Chapter-1-ebook/dp/B002J256D8
It seems to have worked out for the creators.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22446
Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Mar 31, 2011
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Mar 31, 2011 19:07
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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Arnold of Soissons posted:e#2: how hard would it be to offer a "The story so far" ebook comprising all of the previous serial episodes? After, say, every 4th installment, publish a 'catch up' volume that has 1-4, then once the first 8 are out take that down and offer a 1-8 'catch up,' etc? Good idea, bad idea, easy to do, hard to do?
That's up to you. You can upload anything to Amazon and it wouldn't be hard at all to put up a ebook comprising of all the previous serial episodes. Same with pulling the single editions.
Personally, I think it is a horrible idea. If you are going with the serial idea, stick with it. If you aren't, write them and bundle them all together for a single release.
How many serial episodes are you planning to write?
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Mar 31, 2011 22:09
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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Arnold of Soissons posted:
Sorry, I'm fighting off a cold maybe I'm not being clear.
Lets say I write a 200 page story and publish it 20 pages at a time. If you find out about this midway through and want to get into the story it will cost you .99 x 5 = $4.95. Of that $4.95 I will get $1.73. If, however, I publish a "half-way compendium" of the first 100 pages for $2.99, you will pay $2 less and I will get $2.09. Everybody wins, as best as I can tell.
So, hypothetically, my published book list on Amazon would look like:
Part #1
Part #2
Part #3
Part #4
Part #5
Parts #1-5
Part #6
Part #7
Part #8
Part #9
Part #10
Parts #1-10
Just to clarify, my original idea was to have to compendium float to always include the most recent installment, but that seems like too much work to bother with.
I understood what you meant. The reasons why I think it is a bad idea is because:
A) You can possibly alienate the small fanbase you pick up. Let's say I'm one of your fans. I take a chance on the first part, enjoy it and pick up the next four. $5 not bad but then I see you release Parts 1-5 for $2.99. The reward for getting in on the ground floor is having to pay an extra $2?
which rolls into
B) Now that I know I can save money by waiting, I'll just wait for the next bundle. There is no reason for me to buy them individually since it is only a matter of time before the bundle is released.
Anybody you pick up should be treated like gold.
Your competition is releasing everything from short stories to full length novels for the same price or even less. The market you are going after is a bunch of frugal people who are willing to take a shot on something that is unproven.
The reason I asked how many you were planning is because I was afraid you were planning too many. Your current plan ends up with people spending $10 on the end product which is the same as a published book. Even if you drew them in, I doubt you could keep them with that being the end game.
A much better solution would be to break it into three pieces. Give the first one away and price the next two at $2.99. (If it was me, I would do the second one at $0.99) You get the most exposure out of part one and a bigger slice of the pie with the next two. The fans get the whole thing for $6 which isn't horrible for a full story (but it is kind of pushing it for a 200 page one).
Exposure should come ahead of money when you are an unknown and self publishing (at least at first)
Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Apr 1, 2011
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Apr 1, 2011 00:52
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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Arnold of Soissons posted:
Super quick question: I saved my Word .doc as a cleaned HTML, tidied it up in Sigil and added a title & thanks page, saved as epub, converted to mobi with Calibre, do I need to write any metadata on the epub first? Or will Amazon do that automatically when I upload it?
The Amazone Kindle previewer thing shows the text flowing off the side of the page out of the window instead of wrapping, I have no idea why.
Why would you go through all of that instead of just feeding the .DOC into MobiPocket Creator?
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadSoft/ProductDetailsCreator.asp
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May 9, 2011 15:59
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Apr 25, 2024 12:00
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- Call Me Charlie
- Dec 3, 2005
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by Smythe
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FingerbangMisfire posted:My problem initially with the influx of posts was that they seemed specifically concerned with knocking The Red Man down a peg, which you're free to do, just not here. It isn't the place.
And, yes, of course I'm going to defend an author who's been posting in this thread from the beginning.
Um, I don't think any place in Creative Convention should be free of criticism regardless of what you think. Without criticism, it becomes a circlejerk of false praise and self-promotion.
This thread is getting dangerously close to that now with people blindly defending and counteracting negative reviews/votes. The amount of time somebody spends in a thread or when they joined shouldn't stand above the work.
FingerbangMisfire posted:
I've got to ask: Who's new to this thread who's self-publishing?
Does it matter? The author brought up the topic, not the other way around.
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Jun 12, 2011 08:10
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Mar 27, 2011 21:12
