Imagine me as the couch who wants to teach you how to play effectively. The first thing you have to do is learn how to win.Kris Rusch hit a home run with her blog post this Thursday. It feels like each week I say: This blog post by Kris is a must read! And they are, but this one especially. She writes:
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch, The Business Rusch: Playing To Win
You won't succeed at writing and business every single day. You will fail. But no one wins without losing. Failures teach you how to be a success. In fact, the biggest successes always have a slew of failures behind them. Failing is how we learn.We shouldn't feel like a failure if we haven't written a bestseller (yet!). Success comes over the long term. The key is to write fast and well and get a lot of work published, so it can sell consistently over time.
I can’t force everybody to jump on the ebook party bus, but I will say that if you’re looking for a business that can insulate you during life’s hard times, you might find it’s a very nice place to be.Dahlia writes:
- Dahlia, My ebook sales figures for August 2011
Everybody’s got a song-and-dance they’re using to get to the top of the financial food chain. But the big question you should be asking yourself today is that if life were to toss you a bag a moldy lemons and you can’t make lemonade, could your online business still support you?Dahlia reports that she made $4,210 dollars in August! And her sales are down a thousand dollars from July. Way to go, Dahlia! To read her entire article click here.
If you were (God forbid) to become terribly ill and could only spend a maximum of 90 minutes a day online, could you still put a roasted chicken (or some veggie tofu) on the dinner table without straining?
A lot of online businesses are dependent on steady and active participation. I’m thinking in particular about my freelance writing friends. They stop grinding and the revenue stops flowing. That’s a little scary for me, even with a savings to pad the fall.
That’s part of the reason why I really began to pursue ebooks as my primary revenue source. I needed to know that I had something to support me should I suddenly need surgery, or if there’s a death in the family, or even if I fall in love with some awesome muchacho. (Love? Yes… I make breathing room for everything!)
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When she rolled out the first of nine books in March of last year, Hocking had no idea what to expect. Over the next couple of months, her Kindle sales amounted to around 600 eBooks. Not bad for a newbie, but not enough for the 26-year-old to quit her day job.Here is a link to A Tale of Many Reviews, a book review site. I have never used this site (although I might!), I came across it as I was doing research for this blog post. It looked good, so I thought I'd share. :-)
Whoosh! Into the fast lane
Then she discovered and tapped into the world of book bloggers. Her sales took a gigantic swerve into the fast lane, tallying 164,000 books sold by the end of 2010.
“I had no idea such people existed,” Hocking wrote on her own website. “They just read books and write about them. And I don’t mean “just.” They take time out of their busy lives to talk about books and have contests and connect with followers and writers and other readers. These guys are honestly my heroes. I’m a little in love with all of them.”
USA Today this week reported the jaw-dropping news that last month alone, Hocking sold 450,000 of her nine titles, breaking into their top 50 bestsellers list. Taking her cue from iTunes, she had priced her self-published eBooks at $2.99 (she keeps 70 percent) and .99 cents (keeping 30 percent.) Do the math. That day job is history.
To make a living at indie publishing, you must have a decent number of books and stories for sale.This is the point Dean drives home in his latest blog post: The Money is All in the Numbers. Dean acknowledges that there are people like Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking who have made a huge amount of money off of one or a few books in a relatively short period of time, but these good folks are the exception not the rule. Dean's point: you don't need to write a bestseller to earn a comfortable living as an indie writer.
I have, at my last count, just over nine million copies of my books in print, yet I have never had any big splash. Just a book here, a book there, and a lot of books selling over decades. And none of that counts any ghost-written novel or indie-published title. (The number would be a ton higher if I counted those.) Just traditional novels through traditional publishers under one of my own names.Traditional publishers, Dean says, make their money "not so much on sales-per-book ... but on numbers of different titles that are for sale". It is all about control. A publisher can't control whether one of their books will become a best-seller, but they can control how many titles they have for sale. The more titles they have for sale, the more money they will make month after month, year after year.
Some books lose money, some make more than expected. But the hope and goal is that the average over a line of books over a period of time will be around the 4% figure, give or take. If the book line loses money regularly, the editor is eventually fired or the imprint or publishing company is killed. Just business.
If these big publishers were only publishing one book (or even only one hundred books) per month, they sure couldn’t afford the big buildings.Here's how all of this applies to indie writers:
Quantity in numbers of titles is everything.
Indie-published writers got all the money that publishers used to get for building those huge buildings in New York. Instead of getting 14.8% on electronic sales (25% of 70% – 15%), that publishers were offering, we got 65-70%. Period. And we could put books on our own web sites for sale and maybe even make 100%.On top of that, indie writers have more freedom. Not only can we write what we want but we can also write to the length that's right for the story.
And even more importantly to us midlist writers: All our backlist suddenly had value again. (This is huge!!!)
Even if you are a novelist. Remember the one-hundred-thousand word novel was an artificial creation of the publishing industry over the last forty years to justify price increases. Let your stories go natural lengths. You will discover that most novels are fine around fifty-to-seventy-thousand words. Sometimes shorter. Just write the story you want to write.I have only discussed a few of Dean's points, I would highly recommend that anyone interested in writing or publishing go over to his blog and read his article, The Money is All in the Numbers.
Diversification across genres and author brands.Thanks to Joe Konrath, here is her incredible story:
In April 2010, I began e-publishing with two sexy, contemporary, backlist Bella Andre romances. After having a bit of unexpected success in those early months, I knew my chance had come to finally write the book my readers had been sending me emails about for five years. When LOVE ME did better than I ever imagined--Joe and I spoke on the phone last summer and I remember telling him I was shocked to have sold 1000+ copies of that book. He cheered!--I realized there was something to this whole e-reading business.
Of course I quickly went out and bought a Kindle and then a Nook later that fall and most recently an iPad. I released a couple more backlist books in October 2010 and then an original sequel to my Bad Boys of Football series that had been released through Pocket a few years back.
Amazingly, GAME FOR LOVE went to #28 at BN.com and was one of the top 5 erotic novels on Amazon for months at $5.99. This June 20th I launched a 8 book contemporary romance series about the Sullivan family with THE LOOK OF LOVE. It hit #19 on BN.com right out of the gate and has been a consistent Top 30 romance bestseller at Apple. Frankly, the whole thing continues to blow my mind.
Meanwhile, my husband had been watching my e-numbers rise for these self-published Bella Andre books and he kept saying, “Put out those fun chick lit books you wrote that no publisher ever bought!” Because I’d written them several years earlier, they needed significant rewrites, but I had always believed in the novels...and I like my husband to feel like I listen to him now and again. :) But since those books were very sweet (and snarky all at the same time), I knew they couldn’t be published as Bella Andre books.
Lucy Kevin came into being on a cold January morning in the Northern California wine country. Honestly, I figured 6 people would buy her books. To say that I was shocked when more than 25,000 people had downloaded SEATTLE GIRL and FALLING FAST by the end of February is a huge understatement. I released a third Lucy Kevin book in March titled SPARKS FLY.
The thing people are surprised to hear is that I didn’t draw from my existing Bella Andre readership for the Lucy Kevin books. In fact, until the Washington Post article came out, no one knew that Lucy and Bella were the same person, because I wasn’t sure the readerships would overlap between my teen-friendly books and my super-sexy romances. With the Lucy books I got to experience launching a new digital author--and building that readership--entirely from the ground up. It's been a lot of work, but I've loved trying to figure out what made people want to take a chance on a book. Heck, I’m still trying to figure that out :) and then find enough hours in the day to actually make it all happen!
Amazingly, here’s what happened--in some cases retailers were more excited to feature Lucy Kevin because the chick lit/sweet romance novels could reach a bigger mainstream audience. It simply didn’t seem to matter that no one had heard of Lucy Kevin. The fun, flirty covers (Oh, hello new graphic design skills I never thought I'd need!) seemed to draw people to the books and I’m guessing the $.99 to $2.99 price points helped, as well. Once I’d developed relationships with retailers via my Lucy books (I’m a “PubIt! Pro” for Barnes & Noble’s self-publishing wing), my recent launch of the more mainstream Bella Andre THE LOOK OF LOVE became even bigger and better.
I took things another step further in April when I decided to incorporate multimedia in my latest Lucy Kevin young-adult romance, GABRIELLE. In my previous career I was a singer-songwriter, so I wrote five original songs (rather, my songwriting heroine, Gabrielle, wrote them during the course of the story) and linked to them via Youtube and iTunes as an ebook package to create not only added value and excitement for my readers, but also another potential revenue stream.
I really like not having to depend on one author name to maintain--and build--sales. Having two brands means I can build sales with new books while offsetting risks. We all know that diversifying our financial portfolios is a good money strategy. I’ve found that diversifying my e-book portfolio has not only been a good financial strategy, but as importantly, it had been a really lovely creative strategy, too.Bella is an inspiration; a very talented inspiration! What she says about writing under more than one pen-name, or at least in more than one genre, rings true to me. As independent writers we aren't strangers to risk, why not try and reduce it?
So if you have a new idea or platform – if you want to try something completely different from what you’re doing now – I say go for it! Even if you think no one will be interested, the truth is that until you put your book out there, you'll never know.
My last three novels were pretty good sellers. Scribners, Ballantine, you know the drill. A few years ago, sales dropped drastically, no more royalties, the recession hit and I started living on my meager savings. Other than that all I own are 3 acres of land here, which in this market no one wants to buy. I don't even own a house.Somewhere around this time she heard of Joe Konrath and his blog, The Newbie's Guide to Publishing, and she made the decision to self-publish. Joe helped her out with some publicity and her book, House of Skin made it into the top 300 on Amazon.com.
I studied Creative Writing at university, but for years I was a fashion model in NYC, lived it up and never saved a dime. Then I went back to writing, prepared to scale down and live modestly. But as you know, things got even worse with the economy. It took me four years to write the most recent novel for which a NY publisher offered me less than HALF my previous advance. A depressing figure, to be paid out in fourths through 2013! By then I could be dead, and it won't even pay my bills. I was so desperate I accepted. Now I have to wait another year for the book to be published.
Agents and editors were admitting we're in a 'dying industry.' With dwindling publishers, rock-bottom advances, I didn't see any reason to write anymore, which is what I LIVE for.
So, here is what the publisher demanded. That I immediately and totally delete CANNIBAL NIGHTS from Amazon, iNook, iPad, and all other e-platforms. Plus, that I delete all Google hits mentioning me and CANNIBAL NIGHTS. Currently, that's about 600,000 hits. (How does one even do that?) Plus that I guarantee in writing I would not self-publish another ebook of any of my backlog of works until my novel with them was published in hardback and paperback. In other words they were demanding that I agree to be muzzled for the next two years, to sit silent and impotent as a writer, in a state of acquiescence and, consequently, utter self-loathing.
Last week, I received from their lawyers an official letter terminating my contract with them, "...for permitting Amazon to publish CANNIBAL NIGHTS, etc...." and demanding back the $20,000 they had paid me as part of their advance. Until then, this publishing giant is holding my novel as hostage, a work that took me five years to write. My agent assures me I am now an 'anathema' to them.
If you had any doubts about any of Kris Rusch’s descriptions of publisher misbehavior in the post that appeared about an hour ago, Kiana’s story should lay those to rest.You can read the rest of PG's blog post here: Indie Author Goes Traditional -- A Cautionary Tale
Many agents will tell authors they don’t need an attorney. Passive Guy was very pleased to see Kiana has one advising her about her contract. From Kiana’s description, it doesn’t look like her agent would do her much good.
Since Passive Guy does not have all or even most of the information about this matter and hasn’t examined Kiana’s contract, he will not try to do a long-distance analysis in detail.
Speaking generally, as publishers view this sort of thing, it does appear somebody from the publisher really screwed up. Kiana is careful not to mention her publisher’s name, but a little internet research reveals that it was Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin.
As PG has discussed, it has become common for publishers to truss authors like a turkey with contract provisions that prevent the author from writing anything — sometimes until the book is published and sometimes forever — without the consent of the publisher.
It seems clear somebody at Kiana’s publisher forgot about inserting that clause or it would have been the first thing Kiana heard about.
One of the recurring themes of traditional publishers, the agents who live in their ecosystem and authors who have a deep emotional investment in the way things have always been done is that by signing with a big publisher, an author is assured that his/her book will be handled by experienced professionals who will guarantee a quality product.
What is professional about an editor repeatedly shouting at an author over the phone?
What is professional about a paranoid rant accusing an author of “betraying them to Amazon”?
What is professional about screwing up a contract, then trying to make the author pay for the screw-up?
What is professional about hauling out the lawyers to intimidate an author?
There are three things that make up a writer. The first two are fairly obvious – the third, the key one, not so much so.So there we have it, the secret:
The first is inspiration – that is, you have to be inspired to write. See what I mean by obvious?
The second is perspiration. You have to sit your butt in the chair and write. You have to do that every day. That doesn’t mean you lie on your couch and play with your navel. That doesn’t mean you go shopping when the words don’t flow the way you think they should. That never works. It means you sit your butt in the chair and get to work. No excuses. And just so we’re clear: Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing (yes, that’s deep). So cut it out with the writer’s block and the waiting for the muse to arrive and the artistic pretenses. That’s all nonsense.
Again this is pretty obvious — and yet I’m shocked at how many people who want to write don’t get this.
But the third and most surprising thing you need to be a writer is desperation – pure, naked panic-inducing desperation. If I didn’t write, what would I do with myself? How would I make a living and feed my family? Am I any good? Was I good before and now I’ve lost it? My last book was so much better than the one I’m working on now — no, wait, the last book reeked and so no one will give this wonderful work a chance. I hate this sentence. I love this paragraph.
The panic was even pronounced this time around because suddenly I was writing for a whole new “YA” audience. I’ve written 20 some-odd novels for adults. Now with “Shelter,” I was taking on teens for the first time. Would I be able to sound like one of them, or would they roll their eyes at my every utterance the way my own children do? Would I be, uh, totally cool or ultra lame? Would I be able to handle that balance of writing FOR teens and not DOWN to them?
On and on.
Most writers are motivated by this heady and suffocating blend of fear, insecurity and self-loathing. If I don’t write, I hate myself. Simple as that. My life is out of balance. The muse is not an angelic voice that sits on your shoulder and sings sweetly. The muse is the most annoying whine. The muse isn’t hard to find, just hard to like — she follows you everywhere, tapping you on the shoulder, demanding that you stop doing whatever else you might be doing and pay attention to her.
This voice – this fear – reminds us in a surprisingly healthy way that we have no choice, can make no excuse. What else would a writer do if he doesn’t write? What would I, for example, a forgetful, disorganized man with no real-world marketable skills, do if suddenly I couldn’t do the one job that I truly love?
