Are you an Indie?

Not long ago being an Indie author meant paying to get your books printed and shipped to you, and then selling them, one by one, as best you could in your local area. Waterstones would look down their nose at your slim little volume and local libraries would take one grudgingly, flick through it and say “Oh, but it’s such small print.”

Then the ebook and Kindle appeared on the scene and everything changed except the work - the hours, days, weeks and months of research, writing, editing, and re-editing to get a manuscript ready for publication – that hasn’t changed at all.

But everything else has and is still changing. An indie author now needs to market and sell their books in a very different way.

An ebook can be transmitted, in an instant, anywhere in the world. But to make this work, you must be online, with internet, blog, website, and a working knowledge of social media. You also need to be alert to the constant changes in this world.

Never heard of metadata? You need to check this site: an expert at writing metadata. Make sure you know about keywords and categories. Decide if you are sticking with Amazon and ignoring every other selling channel, or if you want to sell through other outlets as well.

Then there’s the question of designing a cover yourself or paying someone to do it. Some people believe you must pay for editing not once but twice and sometimes three times. By the time you have paid out all this money, it is doubtful if you will ever get that money back in royalties.

Then there is advertising. Such a tricky business many authors are signing wannabe authors up to expensive courses on how to achieve success with online ads. Teaching people to write has become a college, university and freelance opportunity - and an expensive one at that. How many people can afford £20k for a university course to teach someone to write a novel? 

Not I. I'll just soldier on, learning by doing it the hard way. By trial and error. Doing something and seeing if it works. Discarding it if it does not. It keeps me out of trouble. If I were twenty something and craving a career as a successful author, all thee expensive routes might be worth taking, but I'm not, so it isn't. Oh, and by te way, have you noticed I now have an author page? Jen Black's Author page should find me.

To pay or not to pay?

Spotted this article from Jane Friedman this morning and intend to study it closely since I have been wondering about how to increase the number of my reiews - particularly for my latest Viking Summer, which currently has none. I  have looked at Brag Medallions and such like and was shocked - shocked, I tell you - to discover that you paid  to send your work in for a "possible review/award." It has always been the way of the big book prize competitions to charge an entry fee, but I  assumed that the money funded the cash prize that went to the winner. Anyway, I have steered clear of both! 

Jane Friedman says:

Paying for professional book reviews remains a controversial topic that very few authors have practical, unbiased information about. In fact, it’s not even well-known in the author community that paid book reviews exist, and even less is known about the value of such reviews.

Before I discuss the pros and cons of paid reviews, I want to define them (strictly for the purposes of this post).

§  Trade book reviews. Trade publications are those read by booksellers, librarians, and others who work inside the industry (as opposed to readers/consumers). Such publications primarily provide pre-publication reviews of traditionally published books, whether from small or large presses. Typically, these publications have been operating for a long time and have a history of serving publishing professionals. However, with the rise of self-publishing, some trade review outlets have begun paid review programs especially for self-published authors. Examples: Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews.

§  Non-trade book reviews. Because of the increased demand for professional reviews of self-published work, you can now find online publications that specialize in providing such services. These publications or websites may have some reach and visibility to the trade, or they may be reader-facing, or a mix of both. Examples: Indie Reader, Blue Ink Review, Self-Publishing Review.

§  Reader (non-professional) reviews. It’s considered unethical to pay for reader reviews posted at Amazon or other sites, and Amazon is actively trying to curb the practice.

This post is focused on the first two types of paid reviews; I recommend you stay away from the third.

Some of you reading this post may be looking for a quick and easy answer to the question of whether you should invest in a paid book review. Here’s what I think in a nutshell, although a lot of people will be unhappy with me saying so:

The majority of authors will not sufficiently benefit from paid book reviews, and should invest their time and money elsewhere.

She has a lot more to say, and a lot of information on the website for those who wish to discover it. I have bookmarked the site and I have no doubt I will learn a lot from it! Find it here:
https://www.janefriedman.com/paid-book-reviews/

Metadate 2

When thinking about the metadata for your book, don't skimp on detail: include all that is necessary - your book's title, subtitle, contributors, your own name, all the normal stuff.

Then we’re off into the realms of category and classification. Amazon gives me 7 keyword slots to fill in and I try to use every single one of them. Firstly I tagged my books as romance, then added historical romance and thought I’d done well; then discovered I should be more specific; not just “romance,” but "adult steampunk fantasy romance." (Not that I ever wrote anything to fit that classification!)

Instead of "historical" something more like "late Victorian Underworld zombie mash-up" seems to be the way to go.

If you don’t feel inspired, type a couple of keywords into Amazon and see what other authors use. Amazon even offers advice and recommends keywords for certain sub-categories. I was aware that BISAC Subject Codes existed – after all, I was a librarian! – but I’d never thought of using them in my self-publishing. BISAC Subject Headings categorize books by content so why not check them and see if their headings inspire you? 

Think about including important story elements such as the occupation of your protagonist, the time period and place in which your book is set. Does it include any specific historic event? If so, work that in.

If you quote reviews in your book description, ask the reviewer if you may include a keyword. He may have written "Best thriller I have ever read!" but "best post-apocalyptic thriller I have ever read!" is even better.

Make excerpts from your book available where you can.

Provide links to your website and social media pages where allowed.

Add your author location if you want to appeal to your local audience.

Metadata

For a long time after I first self-published, I had no idea what Metadata might be.  Then one day I fell across something on the internet that made me feel I had to find out more about this strange sounding word. 

That is when I discovered that Metadata is the information that makes your book searchable. Or put it another way – potential readers can find your book by the Metadata you provide - such as the author name, the category, price, ISBN and title. Enhanced metadata include author bios, blurbs, review quotes and more.

If you are an indie author you will have to list Metadata at every place you publish your book – Nook, Kobo, Amazon etc. Like me, you may not have realised this is what you were doing!

It was about this time that I ran into another puzzle. What was SEO all about? It stands for search engine optimization and guess what? Metadata is the information that search engines look for when someone searches for a book. The advice was to create metadata that fitted my book and matched my target audience. Author name etc was not a problem, I could supply that sort of factual info with ease, but Keywords and Categories proved a different thing altogether. 

My next problem was which Keywords and Categories to choose. Sounds simple, but I’m not sure I’ve got it quite right even now. In my next post I shall run through some of the good advice I’ve discovered.

We're doomed

I read that there are novels branded as “up lit” by publishers. Upbeat novels of kindness and compassion are making their mark on bestseller lists. I hadn’t heard of them until today, but it seems they have been around for around two years or so.

Novels filled with tenderness, companionship and nostalgia are said by some to be nothing more than wish fulfilment: reading of the society people wish we had rather than the devastation, cruelty and hardship of the world we do have. Comfort reading in other words; possibly a match for comfort eating which may be a cause of so much obesity these days.

“Up lit” is maybe a way of trying to fix what is broken in our fragmenting society. When everything is dark readers have often turned to fiction as an escape. Once escapist fiction was crime, romance and science fiction; now it seems to be novels of kindness that infiltrate the bestseller lists because they offer hope. Maybe the "do-gooders" of the world hope some of the goodness will rub off on society in general, but I doubt it. Society in general doesn't read, it watches film and tv and the internet. What does it get there? Violence, much of it mindless, diversive interviews as channels vie for ratings and often, viciousness in social media.

 "We're doomed, laddie," as the character in Dad's Army used to cry.

Indie author figures

No more than  40 self-published authors “make money” via Kindle, according to a report in the New York Times on 7th February this year. Selling more than one million e-book copies in the last five years qualifies you to make this claim. I’m surprised 40 authors have managed that. Here are some quick notes about the topic.

Last year, a third of the 100 best-selling Kindle books were self-published titles. That figure is averaged out for each week. The digital market is huge - there are 4 million titles today in the Kindle Store, compared with 600,000 six years ago. Standing out in such a crowd is crucial and very difficult to do.

Some ground-breaking solutions come from the successful self-published authors such as Meredith Wild, Bella Andre, Barbara Freethy, H.M.Ward, C.J.Lyons. They have struck deals with Ingram Content Group, a major book printer and distributor, thus getting their novels in bookstores, big-box stores and airports.

It seems there are two publishing worlds out there running in parallel. One is the traditional trail and the other is driven by Amazon with books priced at a much lower level.

The majority of authors earn a figure that is well below the poverty line. The statistics are grim:
Overall, the median writing-related income among respondents dropped from $10,500 in 2009 to $8,000 in 2014, a decline of 24%. That’s way below the poverty line! Most authors depend on another job to survive.

So if you’re not selling your books, take heart, you’re not the only one. If you’re considering becoming a writer, think twice, because it won’t make you rich.

Meredith Wild’s story is fully reported in the New York Times, here, and well worth a read.

Book v Kindle and Lewis

No one seems able to make up their minds about The Book v Kindle. First I read the book is declining, almost gone, and then I read Kindle book sales are dwindling fast and real book sales are rising.
This may be attributed to regional variation, or personal bias. (I always view statistics with caution after reading a little book called How to Lie with Statistics) But I wish we knew the true story. Perhaps it just means that if television is good that month then no one reads much - and vice versa!
There seems a lot that is good on  the box at the moment so no doubt sales of books will plummet whatever the format.

There's even a new series of Lewis to watch in these chilly autumn nights. Last night's first episode is safely recorded on video to watch later (I hope it recorded safely! Doc Martin didn't on Monday). I never quite empathised with Morse, found the series interesting in that Morse always went off after rabbits and hares while poor Lewis often had the right idea but got little credit. I find I don't want to watch Endeavour again though I enjoyed watching the episodes once. But the Lewis/Hathaway combo is brilliant and I do watch them again - for the combo development as much as anything. Plus the back chat with Laura, of course.

Books and Spikes

If you want a detailed report on how UK publishers are doing, then check out "Review of 2014" by Philip Jones in the Bookseller 20 January, 2015.

Here's a swift gloss -

"e-book sales outpaced print sales during the year."

Domestic e-book sales for Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan totalled 49m units in 2014, a 15.3% rise on 2013. There was an 18% rise in 2012, and a huge 105% gain in 2012 (on 2011).

There are and probably always will be, spikes. The e-book market rate of growth was exaggerated in 2012 by the Fifty Shades trilogy, Spikes like this can play havoc with a companies figures, skew general trends and drive analysts crazy.

Independently published titles are growing, but no one has a way of tracking the rate of growth.

HarperCollins UK chief executive Charlie Redmayne says the traditional Christmas sales spike has "all but" disappeared. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said virtually the same thing two weeks ago.

The other thing of interest is what everyone is calling the "print renaissance." The book trade has "rekindled its love affair with the physical book." 

Has digital helped revive and reinvent print?

The shift to tablet reading and the rise of subscription services, will likely change the narrative again. As Kindle's Russ Grandinetti suggested at Digital Book World last week, nothing is stable. Let's hope the book business is doing better than we all thought.

Goodreads Gone?

The big move of the year for readers and writers is probably Amazon's takeover of Goodreads. I've not been following the news as as well as I should, obviously, but I have picked up one or two snippets and hints about this so decided to check it out. Alison Flood has an article, dated 13th April, on the subject in the Guardian. Link 

I have to say that I never really got to grips with Goodreads. I'm on it, but in a sketchy sort of way because I could never understand how the website worked. As of this week I confess to being puzzled as to why none of my covers for e-books are showing on the site. I'm sure they were there not so long ago, but perhaps its just paranoia on my part. Goodreads boasts 16 million subscribers, all of whom probably use the site happily enough, which in turn makes me feel an absolute dunce. 

Some say Goodreads could have become a competitor in online bookselling, either selling direct or directing users to a site other than Amazon, which was why Amazon stretched out a giant hand and grasped it. There those who think Amazon has a plan to rule the world. Most people seemed to be against  the move, but not all.

Hugh Howey (of self-published Wool fame) predicted "a lot of hand-wringing over the acquisition". but thought  there were "so many ways this can be good for all involved. I'm still trying to think of a way it could suck."

He thinks Amazon wanted the data behind the Goodreads scenes and will use the algorithms to improve  their tailored buying suggestions . The social networks that feed readers' habits are going to get stronger. The people who helped make Goodreads so good are going to get richer. And the people at Amazon are going to keep trying to get the right books in the hands of readers. Aha - there's the rub, or at least one of them. The people at Amazon are going to decide which are the right books Or am I misreading what Howey says? 

Createspace covers

Trying to  make a cover for my book in Createspace had me tearing my hair for a day or two because I got absolutely nowhere. I had ignored Cover Creator because I'd read somewhere on the internet that CC was crap and produced lousy covers.So there I was trying to load a PDF file and believe me I'm no computer geek. Nothing worked. I decided it would have to be Cover Creator or nothing, and after all this work I wasn't prepared to give up.

I turned to the Cover Creator Community files, and learned that there were many, many cover designs to choose from, and that everything would be formatted for me.
 I chose my design and hopefully uploaded the front cover. It proved remarkably easy, but the title ran off the very edge of the cover by one letter and guess what? I couldn't change it because the file was saved and locked.

Stalemate again. I contemplated going back to the beginning with my original photograph, and actually did half an hour's work on it before deciding it wasn't working as I wanted. The original cover was so much brighter and  well, just better.

Reading the instruction manual for Photoshop persuaded me I could unlock the file so I looked at it again, and had a bright idea. Carefully matching the background cover colour, I painted out the title and reloaded it at a slightly tighter level. I am pleased to report that it works. I loaded the front cover then the back cover and Cover Creator loaded the spine for me. It all looks fine to me. So now we're
on the last lap - check, check and double check before I click the final button. Moral of the story is - don't believe all you read on the internet - and don't give up!

Struggles with Createspace

They say Createspace is easy - well, I beg to differ.
The interior (ie the words of the story) was not a problem. All it takes is patience, an eagle eye and knowledge of the system. It will go easier next time, now I know what is required.

But the covers - mon Dieu! I don't even understand the instructions! And Amazon instructions are always somewhat odd.

I've found and downloaded the cover template. I have a front cover, a back cover and a spine waiting in Photoshop. How to transfer them to the Createspace template is the problem. I struggled all day yesterday and have nothing to show for it. There must be a set of clear, simple instructions somewhere, but I haven't found them. All this talk of layers, opacity, bleed and trim lines - not to mention 300 dpi and 40MB is too much....!

So I took a day off today, gave Tim a long walk and then went into town and had my hair done. Flicking through a copy of Hello, I saw  photo of Anna Wintour and  golly, she and I have the same hairstyle. She's had hers for years and mine is just reaching the stage of all one layer, but even so, its enough to make me grin.

Not so the thought of going back to Createspace tomorrow. A grimace is more the thing. Perhaps I'll hit lucky and muddle through. Wish me luck!

The Digital Revolution

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10732764/The-ebook-revolution-hasnt-even-begun.html

An article by Gaby Wood begins with the statement that Sir Tim Waterstone, who once owned a chain of bookshops, thinks ebooks will go into decline. They've suffered a decline in the USA, and so he thinks it inevitable that the UK will follow a similar trend.

At a guess, booksellers probably dream wistfully of the digital book's demise. But what about the other groups who have a more than passing interest? I don't think any of the other three  - Writers, Publishers or Readers - would want such a thing.

 Ms Wood thinks it depends on whether ebooks give us what we want. "Do they inspire us, and open our minds to new ways of thinking, as they certainly could? For the most part, no. Early on in the life of the Kindle, digital versions of commercial fiction replaced sales of paperbacks, and publishers had to adapt quickly. As a result, they now tend to think of digital books and printed books as different versions of the same thing. If they really saw the possibilities of the ebook and the virtues of the printed book for what they are, publishers would know the two forms are only very vaguely related."

I agree she has a point. But do I want gimmicky  enhancements locked into a book I'm reading? Call me an old throwback, but no, I certainly do not. For me a book is something with which I commune in silence and as I read, the characters live and breathe in my imagination. I don't want my interpretation of a character to be totalled because the publisher decided some Hollywood or Pop culture icon should speed onto the screen every time the hero is mentioned. I want to visualise my own hero, thank you very much.

People under 25 may clamour for such enhancements. If they do, I shall fear that their imaginations have atrophied under the barrage of  tv, film and media games, if not under the barrage of sound they receive these days. I'm surprised cinemas don't crumble away under the almost constant rumble of what I call "ultrasound" - that low rumble that accompanies every key moment, or the sudden bombardment that presages a moment of high drama. It's enough to make you think the Fire Drummers of Japan have got locked in the cinema basement. It's on so many tvs now, so there's no escape. Go upstairs to get some peace and you can still hear the ultrasound reverberating through the house even thought the dialogue is silent.

Ms Wood claims "There is so much material – visual, historical, musical, vocal – that can bring a text to life digitally," and I shudder to think what she has in mind. Her closing sentence is worrying -
"Thinking of ebooks and printed books as comparable is like assuming that anything conveyed by means of the written word is a poem.... Publishers have got to stop thinking of their digital products as “books”, and start imagining more expansive ways of communicating information. Until then, the digital revolution hasn’t even begun." 

Top-selling authors

Top selling authors belong to a rare club and I suppose we all, secretly, in our heart of hearts, want to join! Jeff Bercovici of Forbes has some interesting thoughts to share in his articles on the topic. So what lessons can the rest of us pick up? The most sound seems to be - Write in a genre that has mass commercial appeal.

(FORBES bases its estimates on sales data, published figures and information from industry sources between June 2012 and June 2013.) 

Top of the list in 2012 is E L James (aka Erika Leonard, nee Mitchell) who has reputedly earned $95 million (£60 million) for her bondage trilogy. As everyone probably knows, she originally wrote it as fan fiction in the style of Twilight author Stephanie Meyer. The books leapt straight into every bestseller list, which throws an interesting side light on modern culture purely because of the theme running through all three books. However, that is not what interests us in this instance. Instead we should speculate if s the books would have had such success if the electronic reading device – which gave every reader a discreet way to imbibe such spicy stuff - had not been invented. 70 million copies sold between Jan-Aug in the USA.  As my good friend Jeffrey once said when he heard I'd taken up writing - “Remember – shagging sells!”

In second place that year was James Patterson, who publishes five or more titles a year with $91 million (£58 million) earned between June 2012 and June 2013. 

It seems fantasy fiction for young adults is a good market, especially if it attracts adult readers. No 3 on the list is Suzanne Collins, who published The Hunger Games trilogy. And earned $55 million. If you can manage a hit film of the story, that will really push book sales. You may have heard of Nora Roberts, too. Well, she stands at 8 on the list, having earned $23 million in 2012. You would think, wouldn't you, that they had all earned enough and they would stop writing and let some other author have a chance at the top prizes.

Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette Book Group thinks it’s the surprise and originality of some stories that leads to the giant sales. That’s why there are all these delicious stories of the book that was rejected by 96 publishers – because people are looking at what worked in the past. Then suddenly one brave publisher decides to take a risk, and finds a success on his/her hands.

Unhappily, there is no science behind forecasting the next bestseller, but there is a lot of luck.

Read some of the original articles at the links below:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fifty-shades-eljames-forbes-highest-paid-authors-499478

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/08/09/women-on-the-rise-among-the-worlds-top-earnings-authors/

J K Rowling and the book-buying public

There's an article worth reading behind the link quoted below. It has been around for some time, but I've just found it, and I'm "fixing" it here so that I can find it again - and perhaps bring it to the attention of a few more people who, like me, don't always catch the news first time around.

It concerns J K Rowling and her attempts to bring out  new novels under a false name. I can certainly see why she would want to do that. The Harry Potter cult-thing was unique. Enid Blyton was popular but I don't think she suffered the same media attention or the same pressure as J K.  Nor, I am sure, did she make the same amount of money! Once the cult thing began, J K's success was assured, but she must have wondered about her status as writer. Putting books out anonymously was one way of discovering what people truly thought of her work.

It's a sad reflection on people that the ones she trusted  most were the ones who let her down. It is equally a sad reflection on the book buying public - once they knew, they queued up in droves to buy the wretched book. It makes me wonder if any publisher could resist the temptation to "leak" the famous name and thus assure themselves of much-needed sales.

The best bit of the article is the single comment right at the end. Make sure you read that far.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/jk-rowling-publishing-industry-unknown-writers

Marketing

I used to think marketing was an American term for doing the weekly grocery shop. Then somehow it morphed into the business of promoting and selling products. Then it took on aspects of satisfyng customer needs even before they knew they wanted whatever it was you were selling. Marketing for authors is something I find particularly difficult. Who knows who the customer might be? They will buy a particular title for many reasons, and may never choose to buy the same author again.

Branding myself sounds painful, but that's what marketing gurus always recommend. Plus which it is difficult to know quite what to brand myself with - am I a Historical Writer? Is that a brand? If I select that label, am I stuck with it for life? C J Sansom has made his name writing about a Tudor lawyer named Matthew Shardlake, but his latest novel is set in the second world war. I've not taken much notice of it, because that era doesn't interest me, thought I have his other novels on my shelves as keepers. For me, Sansom's brand is thoughtful Tudor mysteries and injustices, and I begin to see from his example that writing outside the brand can be dangerous.

Social media always crops up when talking about marketing. To some it is a necessary evil, to others it can be an addictive pleasure. I've been on Facebook for a while, (jen.black.775@facebook.com) Twitter not quite so long, (JenBlackNCL) and I visit Goodreads, though not frequently - and I have to say I do not find the latter easy to use. Promotion and excerpts on Yahoo groups for readers offer an easy route to readers, though they remain an unknown quantity. I try to visit a couple of groups every day. I've found they are least busy Friday night and through Saturday till late on Sunday and then everything starts to pick up again. It's often the same for Facebook and Twitter - family time comes first at that time.

'Likes' and 'recomendations' on Facebook I don't yet understand, but must get to grips with someday soon.