How To Become A Full Time Indie Author

I can't believe I've never heard of Lindsay Buroker before. Even now I don't know much about her, but I do know three things:

1) She's an indie author
2) She sells enough books as an indie that she's able to write full time
3) She gives awesome advice about how to become a full time indie author

I'd go so far as to say that anyone who follows the advice Lindsay has given is guaranteed to sell more books. Of course, milage will vary. You might not be able to quit your day-job, but her advice to indie authors is along the lines of, "look both ways before you cross the street". You could ignore it, but I wouldn't advise it.

Here is Lindsay's advice:

1. Don't just write novel length stories, write shorter ones too

This allows you to publish more in the same amount of time, and the more you get your name out in front of readers, the better. Especially in the beginning. Lindsay writes:

... I’ve never been in the Amazon Top 100 (or in the Top 1000 for more than a couple of days), and I’m not particularly visible even in my sub-categories (epic fantasy/historical fantasy) in the Kindle Store. You don’t have to be an uber seller to make a living, though you have to, of course, have characters and/or plots that capture people’s imaginations and turn them into fans (not everyone has to like your books but enough people do so that you get good reviews and you word-of-mouth “advertising” from readers). If you have ten books priced at $4.99, and they sell 200 copies a month, you’re earning over $6,000 a month.

I don’t mean to make it sound like it’s easy to write ten books or sell 200 copies a month of a title (I would have rolled my eyes at such a comment 16 months ago), but, right now, the numbers tell us that making a living as an indie author is a lot more doable than making a living as a traditionally published author (where the per-book cut is a lot smaller). If you’re mid-list as an indie, and you have a stable of books that are doing moderately well, you’ve got it made in the short-term. If… you’re building your tribe along the way, you ought to have it made in the long-term too (more on that below).

 2. Use the power of free to promote your books

Lindsay writes:

I’ve tried a lot when it comes to online promotion, everything from guest posts to book blog tours to contests to paid advertising, and nothing compares with having a free ebook in the major stores. Not only will people simply find it on their own, but it’s so much easier to promote something that’s free. If you do buy advertising (and I do from time to time), it’ll be the difference between selling 25 copies and getting 5,000 downloads (i.e. 5,000 new people exposed to your work), because people live in hope that they’ll find something good amongst the free offerings.

I’ve heard authors argue that most people who download free ebooks just collect them, like shiny pebbles on the beach, and that they never even bother to check them out. I say B.S. to that. I’d bet money that most people try the books they download; it’s just that they find most of them don’t pique their interest. Maybe they’ll download 50 or 100 ebooks and only find one where they want to read the whole thing. That’s fine. That just means you have to make sure your story is entertaining enough to be The One.

3. Make your stories part of a series

I'm a sucker for a good series, and I know I'm not the only one. Even if one, or perhaps two, of the books in the series aren't great, chances are I'll stick with it if I have hope things will improve. In other words, series help develop dedicated fans, people who are going to be with you for the long haul. Lindsay writes:

I should mention here that, while giving away a free ebook can be huge, it’s key that the story be part of a series, or at least strongly related to the book(s) you’re trying to sell.

I just don’t see people having the same sorts of results when their free novel or short story isn’t related to the rest of their work. Oh, it might help a little, but not the way a Book 1 that ends on a cliffhanger will. (My first book admittedly doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, but it does have a teaser epilogue to let folks know that there’s a lot more to come.)

4. Form a tribe

You don't have to be everything to everyone, concentrate on forming close connections with a small group. Like ripples on a lake, your influence will spread.

Lindsay suggests cultivating 10,000 fans rather than 1,000 because if you write two books a year and sell each for $5.00 on Amazon then you'll make 70,000 dollars a year. That's gross income, so you'll have to pay tax and I'm sure you'll have many writing-related expenses (website, newsletter, advertising, etc.) but that's a decent wage. Lindsay writes:

Early on, I stumbled across Kevin Kelly’s “1000 True Fans” article. If you’re an indie anything, it’s a great read.

The gist is that you don’t have to be a mega seller. You just need X number of true fans (people who love your stuff and will buy everything you put out), and you’re assured that you can make a living at your art, so long as you to continue to produce quality material.

Lindsay's tips for acquiring 10,000 true fans

a. Place links in the afterword to each of your books. 

Links to your:
- Twitter account
- Facebook account
- Blog
- Newletter

b. Use Facebook to interact with your readers. 

This is your place to be more personal; interact with your fans, post links to things like interviews, to scenes you liked but were cut from your book, to contests you're running, to discounts or giveaways.

Obviously that advice is working for Lindsay, but I've never gotten into the Facebook experience. I love Twitter. Really. It's simple to use and it allows me to connect with folks I never would have otherwise been able to. Also, I don't have to worry whether I've written too little or too much; the 140 character limit is genius!

That said, authors do need a place to let down there hair and be more personal, which is why I'm in the (painful!) process of setting up my own website.

c. If your fans do something like start a fan forum or website, plug it! 

Mention it in the occasional tweet, or when you're chattering on Facebook.

If my fans did something like this I'd do backflips and name my children after them. Just sayin'.

d. Go the extra step to help create a community. 

Lindsay gives the example of installing a plug-in that allows nested comments. (You might need to be running WordPress.)

Great idea! Anything to help foster a community. It's interesting, though, that Seth Godin, one of the folks who helped spread the idea of developing a community, a tribe, doesn't have comments on his blog. Of course Seth has a large and rabidly devoted community, so that choice has obviously worked out for him, but still. I thought it was interesting.

e. Do goofy things just to please your fans. 

For instance, Lindsay's latest contest asks fans to design funky hats. The winner will receive signed copies of her book and the hat will appear in the next book in that series.

Awesome idea! As Lindsay notes, not many writers do this, but I love it when writers have a contest of some sort where the prize is that the winner will have a character named after them in the next book.

Well, that's it! I hope something Lindsay said will help. I encourage everyone to read her article here: What Does It Take to Become a Full-Time Indie Author?

Photo credit: Empty Nest

Thanks to the Passive Voice Blog for posting a link to Lindsay's article.

Related reading:
- The Vandal's 10 Ways To Promote Your Book
- The Most Common Mistakes In Writing: A Series
- 10 Reasons Why Stories Get Rejected

Photo credit: "color bricks" by Luz Adriana Villa A. under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Jake Needham's Experience With Amazon's KDP Select Program

Jake Needham, author of The Ambassador's Wife and crime novelist, tweeted me in response to one of my articles about the changes in Amazon's ranking algorithm and what they could mean for writers in Amazon's KDP Select program. What he had to say stunned me. Before we get to that, though, let me give you a bit of background.

Amazon's KDP Select program demands it's authors sell exclusively through Amazon, but it provides authors with perks: your books are included in Amazon's prodigious lending library and you are allowed to offer your books free a maximum of 5 days every 3 months. Every time a book is borrowed and every time a book is downloaded--even when it's free--the book's rank goes up.

Or at least it used to.

It seems the recent changes to Amazon's ranking algorithm mean free downloads now count only a fraction of what they once did, and it's pretty much the same for borrows. Since the rule of thumb is that the higher ranked a book is the better it sells authors are wondering whether Amazon's KDP Select program is still worth the price of exclusivity.

Enter Jake Needham and his tweet. Here's what he wrote (I'm using this with his kind permission):

After a big free promotions (20,000+ copies), paid sales were far lower in June than after same number of free in April.

That agrees with what I've heard from a lot of other authors. So, if Jake's experience is representative, should authors abandon Amazon's KDP Select program?

It depends.

It depends on how many books an author would have sold through other retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and iBooks, etc.

Here's what Jake said:

I sell thousands of copies of my titles every month for Kindle. So far this month for the Nook? O-n-e. Seriously.

Let's put this in perspective. Here are the books Jake has for sale on Amazon (I'm only looking at books available as ebooks):

The Ambassador's Wife
Laundry Man
Killing Plato
The Big Mango
World of Trouble

And here are the books he has for sale in the Nook store:

Laundry Man
Killing Plato
The Big Mango
World of Trouble

So the only difference is that The Ambassador's Wife is sold exclusively on Amazon. And of the thousands of copies he's sold this month, only one, one, was sold through Barnes & Noble. Wow. That's amazing.

What should we conclude?

I suppose it depends. On the one hand selling thousands of books a month on Amazon is great. I'd be swinging from the rafters. I'm guessing that even with the drop in revenue after Amazon tinkered with it's ranking algorithm, Jake is doing just fine.

On the other hand, what if Amazon breaks the algorithm? I think that's the fear, that Amazon will, intentionally or otherwise, change their algorithm in such a way that it becomes hostile to independent authors, and if Amazon is the biggest and most lucrative market out there, then we could be in very real trouble.

For what it's worth, my take on this is that it's a good idea to continually be on the look out for other places to sell ebooks, places such as Kobo's Writing Life portal for self published writers, now in beta.

That said, Amazon has shown every sign of being friendly to independent/self published authors. I believe the changes they're making to the ranking algorithm have to do with maximizing book sales and aren't intended to discourage indie authors. On the contrary, they recently featured author Jessica Park and her recently self published book Flat-Out Love on the front page of Amazon.

While there may be turbulence ahead I don't think Amazon's plane is going to crash anytime soon.

Next week I'll be posting an interview I did with Jake Needham, so stay tuned and keep writing.

Cheers.


Related reading:
- Kobo's Self-Publishing Portal: Report From A Beta Tester
- Amazon's Ranking Algorithm Has Changed: what this means for indie authors
- Amazon's KDP Select: Another Author Shares Her Experience

"Jake Needham's Experience With Amazon's KDP Select Program," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

The Vandal's 10 Ways To Promote Your Book

10 Ways To Promote Your Book

Derek Haines' blog is one that I read regularly, it was one of his posts that convinced me to set up my own website, although that is still a work in progress. Here are the first 5 of his 10 ways to promote your books, the remaining 5 can be found on his website.

1. Use a Facebook Page. I made the mistake of using my personal Facebook profile for too long before realising my error. Keep your personal life away from your book marketing and set up a Page. It’s more professional and much easier to manage.
2. Always be positive. It doesn’t matter in what form your communication takes. Whether it be posting on Twitter, Facebook or another social platform, never be negative. Even if you are insulted, do not react. Ignore, and even block that user. Keep what you post friendly, informative, complimentary and of course also add news or interesting tit bits about your books.
3. Use multiple Twitter accounts. This may have been frowned on earlier, but I believe it’s a necessity for effective promotion. It serves to keep your main account, that is the one using your own name, relatively free of direct promotional material. As it is the account you use to interact with friends and probably other writers, filling your own timeline with book promotion is not going to be received well. By setting up another account (or two), you can aim at different target groups to follow and build a new following. Of course you need to add content to these accounts, but there are many ways to almost automate the process. Think about posting interesting bloggers, related news stories or even selective retweeting. Then add your promotional content in between.
4. Use Stumbleupon. This is a great way to get your books and blog posts discovered, and by a large audience. Stumbleupon is second only to Twitter for me in attracting new traffic to my blog.
5. Write and publish under a pen name. This may sound off topic when talking about self promotion, but it’s a great way to experiment and try new writing ideas. Amazon allows publishing under a pen name on your own account, so it opens up a lot of possibilities. I have used it to experiment with writing short novellas in new genres. To do a little promotion and test the market, I use one of my secondary Twitter accounts. If it looks like it could work, you can then unpublish, change the cover and title as well as make any other changes you think would improve the book then republish under your own name. As you hold the rights under both names, there’s no problem in republishing the same book again under your own name.

To read the rest of Derek's article, click here: 10 Ideas To Promote Self Published Books

[Update (Oct 29, 2012): I just re-read the above direct quotation from Derek's blog and was shocked. I'm not sure if Derek Haines has changed his opinion about using multiple Twitter accounts to promote ones books, but doing this is NOT best practices.

Honesty is the best policy. Represent yourself as yourself. If you want multiple Twitter accounts, that's fine, just be sure to clearly identify yourself as the account holder of each one.]

I have a StumbleUpon account, but hadn't thought of using it to promote my own books. Great idea! This is one of the reasons why I love the wonderful community of indie bloggers, they're so marvelously helpful.

[Update (Oct 29, 2012): I never used my StumbleUpon account to promote my books or my blog, at least not in any way objectionable. And, as you can see if you look at the account, I clearly identified myself as Karen Woodward. I'm not passing judgement on anyone who used the sort of tactics Derek describes, I just want to make it clear I never followed suit and that I do not recommend the practice.]

Here's a tip of my own: Pinterest. I've been using it off and on for the past few weeks just because it's fun, but I think it could be a great way to share links with a new audience. In case you're interested, here's my Pinterest page.

Cheers!

Kobo's Self-Publishing Portal: Report From A Beta Tester

Kobo Writing Life

Jen Talty from Cool Gus Publishing talks about her experience with Kobo's new publishing portal, Writing Life. She writes:

I got the email on Friday after BEA giving me access to the beta test of the new Kobo Portal. I had a book from an author to load, so I immediately said why not try it this way. The portal was very easy to use. I simply added my information and hit publish. It’s very much like some of the other dashboards, but it has a few neat things that I can access, like sales trends. I can also access hourly sales numbers. Something I couldn’t do before.

There are 4 basic pages with information that needs to be filled out for your eBook. It took me 10 minutes to load the first book and it appeared in the bookstore less than a day later. I made a mistake in one of the books that I loaded and the change, after I fixed it, took only about an hour. So far, I have loaded two books via the new portal:  A Compromising Situation and a Dangerous Compromise by Shannon Donnelly. Check them out! I will be loading her third in the series when I’m done with this blog post.

There are a few things I’d like to see changed in the portal. There needs to be more category choices. For example, when loading one of my books the option for “Romantic Suspense” is not an option. There are actually only four options under Romance. This needs to be change. They do, however, let you choose 3 categories. I believe that is a good number. 3-5 is perfect. But just as a small piece of advice, if you book only fits in 3 categories on B&N where you get 5, don’t just go pick 2 more because you can. That will upset readers. And Readers Rule.

Writing Life is a work in progress, but I really do believe that once more authors are on there we will all see a spike in sales.

Read the rest of her excellent article over at Bob Meyer's Blog: Kobo’s Writing Life: The Long Awaited Self-Publishing Portal

Related reading:
- Writing Life: Kobo's New Platform For Self Publishers
- More On Writing Life, Kobo's New Self Publishing Platform

Indie vs. Traditional Publishing, Which Should You Choose?

In today's business world writers have more choice than ever but sometimes that makes life harder rather than easier. Today writers can choose whether to self publish or submit their work to a traditional publisher. Sometimes the right choice is to self publish and sometimes it isn't, so how do you decide?

In her weekly article on the business of writing, Kris Rusch talks about this choice.

Indie publishing: Hurry up and wait

With indie publishing you write your stories, get them out to the world, and then wait for the book to be downloaded, read, reviewed and, ultimately, earn money so you can continue to write (and eat!).

The thing is, with indie publishing, it can be a long wait. Kris writes:

Sometimes you don’t even have your first sale for weeks, maybe months. The cash doesn’t roll. You panic. You stop your current project and do “promotion,” contacting all the book bloggers you know. You annoy your followers on Twitter by mentioning your book’s title every other Tweet. You look at the real-time sales numbers (or lack of them) over and over again.

You’re waiting for the book to “catch on,” for “lightning to strike,” for “miracles to happen.”

And if you’re smart, you’re also writing your next book. More on that a little later.

But really, what you’re waiting for is time to pass. Five sales per month over 120 months will make you quite a bit of money. Only it won’t seem that way at first.

The indie writer, particularly the indie writer with very few books published, has to be patient. The readership—and the income—will grow exponentially if the writer continues to produce work. One day, the indie writer will wake up and realize she’s making $1,000 per month on a single title, and that amount spread out over a year is more than she would have gotten as an advance for a first novel. (Most first novel advances in all genres are under $10,000.)

The thing is, if she earns $12,000 one year, nothing will stop her from earning the same or possibly more the next year, and the next, and the next.

The indie author must be patient, but if she’s a good storyteller (and her book has a decent cover and is copy edited, and if she keeps writing and publishing new material), she’ll make a living wage over time. In fact, over time, she’ll sell as many or more copies of that book than she would as a first-time novelist who is traditionally published.

The key phrase, though, is over time. Years, in fact.

Traditional Publishing: Wait and hurry up

With a traditionally published book you can wait for years while you query agents and/or editors but if your book is accepted it could have the benefit of the kind of support it would be next to impossible to generate yourself. Interviews for instance, and book reviews. I've been collecting the names of book review blogs that accept queries from independent authors and, let me tell you, there aren't a lot of them.

Kris' Advice:

Only you can know what kind of writer you are, what you want, and what you can live with.

And, of course, all publishing is not equal. Traditional publishing has long-term contracts. Indie publishing has agreements with distributors that can be canceled with the click of a mouse.

All publishing isn’t the same within one publishing house. One fantasy series writer might make millions on his series; another (with the same cover artist, editor, and sales department) might make thousands on her series.

All publishing isn’t even equal inside one writer’s career. I have books that sell really well and books I can’t give away. I’m the same writer. But readers have different reactions to different books.

So the key is to give readers what they want. What do they want? Good stories. And the readers will differ as to which of your stories are “good.” So give the readers a lot of stories to choose from.

That’s what traditional publishers do. That’s why they release a new set of books every month. Because they’re giving the readers a choice all the time. You have to do that too, no matter how you publish the books.

What you decide to do, how you decide to make your books available to readers, is truly your decision. If you go traditional, make sure you have an IP attorney vet your contract so you know what you’re signing. Be prepared to wait before seeing your book on the shelf.

If you go indie, spend some money to get that book in fighting shape before launching it at those bookstores. And be prepared to wait before seeing sales of your book.

Neither decision is right or wrong. It’s only right for you.

I agree 100%. These days the choice between publishing independently and publishing traditionally is made on a project by project basis. The days of having to commit to one way of doing things is, happily, behind us. Hopefully something Kris said makes it easier to choose whether to go indie with it.

Keep writing!

Related Reading:
- 5 Points To Ponder Before You Self Publish

Photo Credit: Mysteries and My Musings

Promote Your Books In iBooks

I had read Bob Mayer's blog, Write It Forward, for a number of years before I took one of his workshops and I have to say, if you ever have the chance to see Bob speak in person, do it! You won't be sorry.

It's one thing to read posts about the publishing industry and quite another to have an animated author recount stories of his adventures in publishing, first as an author and then as a publisher. Although I loved his lecture what I found most helpful were his answers to questions posed by my peers.

Okay, back to business! Yesterday Jen Talty, co-creator of Cool Gus Publishing and frequent contributor to Write It Forward, posted about how to promote books in iBooks, a subject I knew nothing about. Rather than me natter on about what she said, I'm just going to let her tell you.

One of the questions I’m constantly asked when I present workshops on Indie Publishing is: How do we promote in iBooks? or How do we increase sales in iBooks? Its not an easy question to answer. One of the things I’m working on today for Cool Gus Publishing is to add links in our website to where our eBooks are available on other sites. We believe this is a good service for our customers and some people just want that easy “one-click” from Amazon or prefer to buy from Barnes and Noble, supporting the bookstore.

But working inside of iBooks is all together a different bird simply because its contained in iTunes.

Recently, Apple sent us a couple of PDF’s about how to promote and market using some of their tools. We got this email because we use iTunesConnect to load our books directly to the iBookstore. Here are a couple of things I think are useful and are not that difficult to use.

The Book Widget. You can actually do this for other products as well.

From Apple: “With Widget Builder, you can easily add interactive widgets to your website or blog. These widgets allow users to explore books and more from the iBookstore and iTunes.”

Go here to see builder.

Basically, you find the books you want, add them to your widget and then copy the code and put it where you want in your website.

For the rest of Jen's informative article, click here: Promoting your book in iBooks

Cheers.

How To Find The Right Freelance Editor For You

India Drummond recently shared her experience selecting a freelance editor. Her methodology makes so much sense that after I read her suggestions I thought: Of course! Why didn't that occur to me? All the truly good ideas are like that, they seem self-evident after the fact but a complete mystery beforehand.

India Drummond's Suggestions On How To Select An Editor

1. Ask everyone you know this question: Do you have an editor you can recommend?
I thought this was a stroke of genius. Rather than asking for editors to recommend themselves, ask other writers to recommend editors whose work they liked.

2. Narrow this list down to 12 people.
How? Go and look at the website of each prospective editor. They don't have one? Cross them off the list. Their website looks unprofessional? Cross them off the list.

3. Write a letter to each prospective editor.
In your letter let them know that:

a. This is a professional relationship you would like to enjoy for years to come.

b. Ask your prospective editor whether they are familiar with your genre (if you write genre fiction), and its conventions. For instance, if you write romance novels you don't want your editor to complain that the happily-ever-after ending was predictable!

c. Make sure your prospective editor is available to edit your book. Sometimes editors have a full plate and can't fit in new work in a certain time period.

d. Ask for references from their clients.

e. Make sure your prospective editor is comfortable with your style of writing. For instance, if she is American would she be comfortable with you using British spelling and conventions?

f. Make sure your prospective editor understands what services you would like from them. What one person means by "copyediting" another means by "proofreading" and vice versa. Also, if you would like your editor to indicate when they found a paragraph wordy or confusing, you need to make that clear up front so she or he can give you an accurate representation of her fees.

g. Ask your prospective editor to recommend another editor if they feel your work wouldn't be right for them.

h. Ask your prospective editor what form(s) of payment he would accept.

4. Based on the replies your prospective editors send you, narrow the list down further.

For instance, India eliminated any editors whose grammar wasn't up to snuff, who did not wish to provide references, who simply pointed her to their website, etc. She also rejected any who wouldn't accept PayPal. I thought it was very smart of her to address this detail. How frustrating it would be to finish the arduous process of picking an editor, have them edit your manuscript and then find out she doesn't accept your preferred method of payment! I wouldn't have thought of this, so thanks India.

5. Check references.
Write to the authors your perspective editor gave you and ask them:

* What did you like most and least about working with her? (Gives them an opening to give something other than glowing praise)
* Does she communicate clearly about issues in your manuscript? (Very important!)
* How does she handle follow-up questions?
* Do you generally use all her recommendations, or do you take some and leave some?
* Would you say her main strength is flow, structure, pacing, grammar/technical, spotting errors…or something else? (This allowed me to find out if the type of editing I needed was the same type this person had received.)
* Is it easy to book a project with her, or do you find you’re having to be squeezed in around a busy schedule?
* What do you receive on a full-length manuscript? A report? A document with tracked changes, etc? If a report, how long/detailed is it?
* Do you recommend her and plan to use her again?
- Hiring a Freelance Editor

6. Ask your prospective editors for a sample of their skills
Each of India's three prospective editors agreed to edit the first chapter of her next book. She writes:

Honestly, I expected them all to come back with virtually the same results. After all, a mistake is a mistake, isn’t it?

Well, no, it isn’t. Editing is incredibly subjective.

I was truly surprised at the difference in the marked-up manuscripts I got back, but so glad I went to the trouble of doing this. As I said, all of the editors were qualified, but comparing these was very useful in making my final decision.

Wow! India went to a LOT of work, but I bet it paid off. After all, a writer's relationship with her editor is, arguably, her most important professional relationship.

By the way, Susan Helene Gottfried is India Drummond's new editor.

Thanks to The Book Designer for his May 2012 issue of The Carnival of the Indies for leading me to India's marvelous article. Cheers!

To read India Drummond's complete article (something I highly recommend!) go here: Hiring a Freelance Editor

Nathan Bransford On Self Publishing

Nathan Bransford writes:

There is no "us" vs. "them." Traditional vs. self-publishing is a false dichotomy. It's an illusion created by people who either have let their frustrations get the best of them or are trying to sell you something. We're all writers trying to figure out the best way to get our books to readers. We're all on the same team.

No, the traditional publishing industry is not a hive of retrograde monsters out to steal and eat your newborn children. No, self-publishing is not a gang of unwashed crap artists trying to poison the literary well forever.

Publishing is a spectrum of choice, from traditional publishers who pay you, will handle most things for you and assume all risk in exchange for certain rights to your book, to self-publishing where you handle everything yourself, pay your own way, and adopt your own risk. And there's a whole lot more choice in between those two poles.

What's the right way? There is no right way.

Read the rest of Mr. Bransford's post here: Traditional vs. Self-publishing is a False Dichotomy

I woke this morning, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and trundled over to Dean Wesley Smith's blog where he raved about the fantastic post former agent Nathan Bransford wrote (Holy Smokes, Batman. I Agree With Nathan Bransford). And (as always!) he was right, it was a fantastic post.

In the past couple of months the flood gates have burst and record numbers of traditionally published writers have self-published their work. We're also seeing indie authors, even wildly successful indie authors, choosing NOT to go with one of the Big-6 publishers.

For instance, Hugh Howey, author of the runaway bestseller Wool, chose to continue to self-publish in the US and only sold Random House UK his overseas writes. Howey writes:

Now, this is still new enough to me to leave me in a daze simply from typing the words, but it gets even better: The same book--self-published, mind you--has been picked up by Random House in the UK for a major hardback release. And while domestic publishers have made offers that would have had me swooning mere months ago, I have chosen to remain independent here in the States.

I currently enjoy the best of both worlds: The ability to write what I want and enjoy the generous royalties inherent with self-publishing domestically, while also working with a major publisher overseas to hone my craft and produce the best physical books possible. Because of this avalanche of good news, I've been blessed by IndieReader to come here today and thank you all for turning what once was a fanciful dream into a mind-numbing reality. Yeah, I'm thanking you.

Hopefully Hugh Howey's success is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

Related articles:
- Hugh Howey Writes About The Phenomenal Success Of Wool


"Nathan Bransford On Self Publishing," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

More on Amazon Select: Is exclusivity worth it?

I know I've written quite a bit about Amazon Select recently, but I've been looking for good information on it for some time, information from other indie authors, and it seems to be coming in a flood.

Today Joe Konrath had this to say about Amazon Select:

I've lost some of my faith in the Kindle Select program since it originated, and as a result I've opted my titles out. Select requires exclusivity, and I found I was making more money via Smashwords, Kobo, B&N, Overdrive, Sony, and Apple than I was through Select lends.

The other advantage of Select--being able to make your ebook free--used to result in a nice bounce from the free list to the paid list. Lately, the bounce isn't nearly as dramatic.

Two weeks ago Ann Voss Peterson made her thriller ebook Pushed Too Far free for a week. She gave away 70,000 copies--which is impressive, even beating many of the giveaways Blake Crouch and I had done (giveaways that got us in the Top 100 paid list and made us lots of money.)

Ann never hit the Top 100 paid. She's currently at #158. This is great, and she's thrilled, but she's only allowed to do this once every 90 days, and I don't believe the benefit corresponds to the loss of income from the other retailers.

If you do decide to make your ebook free, go all in. Use the 5 full days allotted, contact as many websites as you can find who announce freebies, and enlist everyone you know to help you spread the word.

Read the rest of Joe's comments here: Guest Post by Robert Gregory Browne, in the "Joe sez" section. He follows these remarks with fabulous advice for indie authors.

I'm paraphrasing.

- Get as many books as you can up for sale as quickly as you can. Your writing is the best advertising you could have.

- Don't be afraid to experiment. Experiment with pricing, covers, promotions, and share your knowledge with your peers.

- Bundle. For example, sell your short stories as stand-alones, then group them into an anthology and sell that. Do the same with your books, especially books in a series. "This increases shelf space without writing more."

- Forget about advertizing and marketing. It's not worth it.

- Keep your fingers on the pulse of the industry. Joe recommends subscribing to:

Publishers Lunch
PW Daily
Passive Guy
Kris Rusch
Dean Wesley Smith
David Gaughran
Bob Mayer
Mike Stackpole
Mike Shatzkin

- As Neil Gaiman recently said, "Walk toward your mountain." In other words, figure out what you want to do and do it. Of every decision ask yourself: does this take me closer to, or father away from, what I want to do. Then, and this is the tough part, believe in yourself and ignore those who ridicule you.

- As Joe put it, "The world needs heroes. Be one." Pass along what you've learnt and encourage others the way you would have liked to have been encouraged when you were where they are.

That's it! Reading the list over, it seems like I could title it, "Joe's Commandments for the indie writer".

Before I end this article, I want to give you a link to an article on KDP Select by the above mentioned David Gaughran. It explains, among other things, the nuts and bolts of KDP select and why Amazon's bestseller lists are so important to indie authors. Read it here: Amazon & The Importance of Popularity

Related Articles:
Changes in Amazon's Algorithm: An Update
Amazon's Ranking Algorithm Has Changed: what this means for indie authors
Self Publishing on Amazon: Kindle Direct Publishing


"More on Amazon Select: Is exclusivity worth it?," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

Joe Konrath On Going Indie: "This isn't simply following your dream. It's chasing after it, full speed, until you catch it"

Joe Konrath

I don't like to quote extensively from other writer's blogs, but I had to share this. Sometimes it's hard, lonely, going the indie route but Joe's right. Being a writer is risky, but if a person never takes risks then ... well, I won't say it's impossible to get a reward, but I think it's less likely.

In any case, I needed this pep talk so I'm sharing it.

Joe writes:

I started this blog seven years ago, and I've long preached that is important to take chances, to experiment, to try new things. I'm also a believer in going all-in. This isn't a Newbie's Guide to Leading a Balanced and Happy Life. It's A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. If you want to get lucky, you have to gamble first.

Gambling in this case means devoting time and effort to something that may never pay off. It means devoting your energy to something beyond what the world says you should be doing.

This isn't simply following your dream. It's chasing after it, full speed, until you catch it.

We're all, to a certain degree, risk-averse. It's scary to fail. Failure can mean a loss of time and money. It can mean bad feelings and disappointing others.

But if you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough. You aren't taking enough chances.

A lot of people dislike me. They dislike my tone and attitude. They dislike my opinions. They dislike my writing.  They dislike my blog.

I. Don't. Care.

We could all benefit from caring less about the opinions of strangers. Especially since, let's face it, there are so many pinheads in the world.

That's a learned behavior, as we all grow up seeking approval.

Taking risks can also be learned.

It'll be difficult, because it is unnatural and uncomfortable. It requires unlearning many of the coping mechanisms you've learned. It requires failure, and in many cases ridicule, monetary loss, and depression.

But no one ever became successful without taking chances. If you think about it, many of the important things in your life--the things that you're proudest of and that define you--are all about taking risks. Things as ordinary as asking or agreeing to a date that ends up in a long term relationship. Going to that job interview. Making an offer on that house.

Self-publishing that novel.

Risks are risky. True. But they can also be rewarding.

So what chances have you taken today?
- Guest post by Tom Schreck

The article started out as a guest post, but Tom brought up the topic of risk and Joe caught the ball and ran with it. Go Joe!

I tweeted the link to Joe's post yesterday, but I found this section of it very moving and thought it well worth sharing again. 

Photo credit: A Newbie's Guide To Publishing

Ann Voss Peterson, Long time Harlequin Author, Goes Indie

Ann Voss Peterson has been writing for Harlequin since 2000 but doesn't have enough money for her son's braces. Joe writes that, in paper sales, Ann has outsold him at least 5 to 1 but that he earns triple what she does.

Granted, Harlequin gave Ann, and many other authors, their break into the industry -- and she thanks them -- but if the company isn't going to give her a decent contract (20% ebook royalties on net but with "net" undefined) then they're practically pushing her, and other authors in the same boat, out their doors.

To announce her departure Ann is offering her new book, Pushed Too Far, free for the next few days. Get it on Amazon here: Ann Voss Peterson, Pushed Too Far.

Read Ann's guest post on Joe Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, here.

Go Ann!

Big Trouble in Little China

This morning I was working on my rough draft for the second novel of my trilogy, writing a juicy bit of bad guy versus good gal violence, and found myself thinking about the Storms in Big Trouble in Little China.  I realized that my bad guy was looking and acting a lot like the guy with the ... what color was the lightening? ... phosphorescent blue?  Mmmm, that might be an excuse to watch the movie again.

Anyhow, back to the topic of this post.  The points of similarity between my bad guy and the Storms got me wondering about those characters and what, if anything, they were based on.  Were they based on Chinese mysticism or, perhaps, some of the recurring character types in Kung Fu movies?

After about a half hour of research (it's amazing what gets to be called research; but it was, it really was) I had no answers to my questions but had found out some amazing things about the movie.

(I guess I should say up-front that I love the movie Big Trouble in Little China, if you dislike it the following tidbits probably aren't going to be all that interesting.)

- Big Trouble in Little China -- although regarded by many (or at least by me) as a great movie -- actually lost money, a lot of money, at the box office and garnered a less than enthusiastic reception from the critics, including Rodger Ebert.   Ebert wrote,

"special effects don't mean much unless we care about the characters who are surrounded by them, and in this movie the characters often seem to exist only to fill up the foregrounds", and felt that it was "straight out of the era of Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, with no apologies and all of the usual stereotypes (Wikipedia, Big Trouble in Little China)".

(Here's the link for Rodger Ebert's original review, it's well worth the read.)

- Carpenter cited the film as the reason why he became an independent film maker.  He said in an interview that:

“The experience [of Big Trouble] was the reason I stopped making movies for the Hollywood studios. I won’t work for them again. I think Big Trouble is a wonderful film, and I’m very proud of it. But the reception it received, and the reasons for that reception, were too much for me to deal with. I’m too old for that sort of bullshit”.


I'm not sure how similar it is, but currently many writers are blogging about the pros and cons of going independent.  I thought it was interesting that Big Trouble was the movie that pushed Carpenter in that direction.  Interesting and cool.

powered by Fotopedia

Brian S. Pratt: The Energizer Bunny of Self Publishing

Brian Pratt is projected to earn over 100,000 dollars next year at Smashwords and, when his Amazon sales are included, over 200,000 dollars overall. Here's a link to the blog post.

Almost as interesting as his amazing financial success is the story of his adventures in self-publishing.

[MC] You joined Smashwords March 27, 2009 10:26pm (I checked!). Can you take us back to that moment in time, and recall what was going through your mind

[BSP] Let's see. I was a single dad living with three kids and boy, was I poor (under the poverty level). Up until then, I hadn't really thought much about eBooks. I tried Mobipocket for a while and had great sales for three months, then it died off. Sales for my paperbacks, which I had published through iUniverse had fallen off dramatically. Where I had been breaking 4 figures a quarter, I was now less than 600 per quarter and bleeding red. I typed in "self publishing" and saw a quirky little site called Smashwords. It said, Your eBook, Your way. Didn't cost a thing so what did I have to lose? First quarter sales at Smashwords were dismal, 2009-04-07 — $7.92 As it happened, April 7th is my birthday. That was cool. But I wasn't deterred. Books were selling. Sometimes, one or two a week, but they sold. I stayed with it and refused to allow all the naysayers (and there were those by the droves) to stifle my dream. Sales gradually improved and, well, here we are. Can't give up on your dream, EVER!

Below are a few helpful links Brian listed.  For a complete list: Helpful Info for the Self-Publisher.

obooko: Free ebooks and free publishing.
Project Wonderful: Advertising for even a small budget.
FanStory: Share your writing and get helpful feedback.

Also, can't forget Brian's website which has a lot of useful info.

Picture of the day:

powered by Fotopedia