Amazon's KDP Select Program: Is Exclusivity Worth The Perks?

A few days ago I mentioned that the Amazon store in India is now offering a 70% royalty option (Amazon's India Store Now Offers 70% Royalty Option) but apparently I didn't read the small print. Kris Rusch writes:

This week came the news that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program will offer its content providers a 70% royalty on all sales made in India—provided the content providers go with Kindle Select only. For those of you who don’t know, Kindle Select requires exclusivity from anyone who joins it. You can’t market your work on the iBookstore, for example, or on Kobo if you’re part of Kindle Select. Only on Amazon.

Let me play devils advocate. Many writers I've spoken with say they make upwards of 95% of their sales on Amazon, so selling only through Amazon is not costing them a great deal of money. Further, since Amazon gives them perks like free days and inclusion in the lending library many authors end up selling far more through Amazon than they would have through all the stores combined.

Personally, I thought the above line of reasoning was compelling, but Kris raises an excellent point. She writes:

[M]y own beliefs about maintaining different platforms for my work got reinforced this week after WMG hired someone to input the sales figures for the last six months. We looked at those numbers yesterday. I sell a lot of books on Kindle, but my biggest selling title, a short story called “The Moorhead House,” sold a grand total of one copy on Kindle from January to June.

Every single one of “The Moorhead House”’s rather surprising (to me) sales came on the Nook. For some reason, Nook readers either like or have found or continue to find that one short story. And they buy it more than they buy anything else of mine offered through Barnes & Noble.

If I had joined Kindle Select with that story, I doubt I would have made comparable sales.

I don't think I've read a business post of Kris Rusch's that wasn't well written and well thought out. This one is no exception. If you'd like to read the whole thing here's the the link: The Business Rusch: Content is King.

I'd like to share one more thing with you before I leave. Kris writes:

If you can control the content, then you can control the money.

But here’s the problem with content: it’s not easy to create. If a bunch of monkeys at typewriters could write novels, don’t you think the publishing industry would have conscripted the little buggers decades ago?

I thought that was hilarious! So true.

Other articles you might like:
- How To Format A Word Document For Amazon's KDP Publishing Program
- Lyla Sinclair's 8 Secrets Of Successful Romance Writing
- Indie Books: What Price Is Right?

Photo credit: Karen Woodward

Stephen King's Sequel To The Shining, Doctor Sleep, Coming Sept 24, 2013

Stephen King's Signature

From theguardian.co.uk:

Readers who have been waiting for more than 30 years to find out what happened next to Danny Torrance, the young boy who survived the horrific events of The Shining, can breathe a sigh of relief: Stephen King has finally announced a publication date for his long-awaited sequel.

Doctor Sleep will be published on 24 September 2013, King has announced – 36 years after The Shining was first published in 1977.

King's third novel, The Shining tells the story of the Torrance family, who move to the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains where father Jack is to act as caretaker over one long winter. Jack Torrance becomes possessed by the evil spirits in the hotel, and attacks his family, but Danny – whose psychic abilities have strengthened the hotel's ghosts - and his mother Wendy eventually escape.

Many, many novels later, King's Doctor Sleep will take up the story of a middle-aged Dan Torrance, a man who has "been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence", according to the synopsis released by King's UK publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.

Dan has settled in a New Hampshire town, where his "shining" psychic power is used to provide final comfort to the dying. Known by the townsfolk as Doctor Sleep, he comes into contact with a 12-year-old girl, Abra Stone, whose shining is "the brightest ever seen", and must fight a terrifying tribe of quasi-immortal beings who live off the "steam" which children with the "shining" produce when they are slowly tortured to death. (Stephen King's Shining sequel Doctor Sleep coming next year)

Here is Stephen King reading a chapter from Doctor Sleep:



Other articles you might like:
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Photo credit: Connormah

Amazon's India Store Now Offers 70% Royalty Option

I found this in my inbox last night. From Amazon:

We are happy to announce that the popular 70% royalty option is now available for sales to customers in India for titles enrolled in KDP Select. This royalty option is available for books sold from the new India Kindle Store, Kindle devices, and Kindle apps.

New features for authors and publishers in India include the ability to set prices specific for India, receive royalty payments in INR, and now earn up to 70% royalties when enrolled in KDP Select. For additional details, check out our Terms and Conditions:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=APILE934L348N

Also, take a look at the 70% List Price Requirements:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0

If you would like to review or change your royalty preferences for each title sold in India, just visit the KDP Bookshelf here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/dashboard

Looks like the ebook market in India is just getting started:

If you happened to wander down the aisles of the Delhi Book Fair that concluded recently, you would think that India is soon going to be swamped by a tsunami of ebooks, heralding a digital revolution in e-reading like never before. Almost every other store had something about soon-to-come ebook offerings.

The reality is that the Indian publishing industry in its offline form is still flourishing, churning out 100,000 titles a year and growing at 12 to 15 per cent a year. Many of the biggies in the book selling business seem impervious to all the noise about the business of reading digitally. Leading online book chain, Flipkart, had earlier said it was studying the space, but refused to comment on ebooks for this story. Snapdeal, the online marketplace, says that it is treading cautiously. Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive officer, Kunal Bahl, says that he too is analysing opportunities, but first wants “to ensure that there are enough devices for people to access ebooks.”

Looks like a great market for indie authors! The rest of this article can be read here: Is an ebook revolution around the corner? Thanks to the Passive Voice Blog for the link.

Other articles you might like:
- How To Format A Word Document For Amazon's KDP Publishing Program
- Lyla Sinclair's 8 Secrets Of Successful Romance Writing
- Indie Books: What Price Is Right?

Photo credit: Unknown

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance

"The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything." 
John Irving (1942 - )

"You can't think yourself out of a writing block, you have to write yourself out of a thinking block." 
John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey, 06-25-11

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012), advice to writers

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing, p. 147

These quotations are from The Quotations Page.

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Photo credit: Unknown

How To Format A Word Document For Amazon's KDP Publishing Program

As anyone who has successfully published a book will tell you, formatting your MS Word document correctly is the key to a successful, low-stress, experience.

One of the best explanations of how to format your Word document in preparation for publishing is in Zoe Winter's book Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming An Indie Author, but if you don't have it, this video by Connie Neal has some great tips: Formatting a Word 2010 Document for KDP.

I agree with Passive Guy's comment on the video:

In the demonstration, Connie applied some styles, then manually centered the text. PG would probably modify the style so it includes a centered text format. Very easy to do.

Rather than using one of Word’s style sets, PG uses a set of styles he has developed for all of Mrs. PG’s books. When he receives a new manuscript, he applies the styles he’s developed to that book. If he wants a different look for the new book, he can modify the styles or add other elements.

He usually begins by formatting the CreateSpace printed copy, always using section breaks instead of page breaks, then uses the result for conversion to ebook formats. It’s not the only way to do it, but it seems to him to be the most efficient.

Another great resource for formatting is Mark Coker's Smashwords Style Guide. I know, I know, we're talking about formatting your Word document for publishing through Amazon's KDP program, but the basics of formatting are the same regardless of where you're uploading to.

The key, I think, is to "go nuclear" and strip out all formatting from your document and then put it back in, making sure that the only formatting you use in your finished document, the one that's going to be uploaded to Amazon, are paragraph styles. I strip out the formatting by copying the entire text of the manuscript and pasting it into a text file like Notepad (on the PC), copying that text, then opening up a new Word file and pasting the text from Notepad file into it. (Clear as mud?) Sounds like a lot of work, but it's worth it to be sure you've stripped out every last pesky pit of formatting.

Stripping out all formatting will also strip out italics so I've taken to indicating italics in my manuscripts by putting "_" on the left side of a word. For instance, "She _loved chocolate" equals "She loved chocolate". Then I just do a global search and italicize all words that have an underscore as their first character. After that I remove all underscores and there you have it. (This article, Find and Replace Using Wildcards, is terrific)

I imagine there's a far more simple and elegant way of doing the same thing, and if any of you folks have discovered it, please do let me know! :-)

Other articles you might like:
- Lyla Sinclair's 8 Secrets Of Successful Romance Writing
- Indie Books: What Price Is Right?
- Writing Resources

Lyla Sinclair's 8 Secrets Of Successful Romance Writing

Recently Lyla Sinclair's indie published book, Training Tessa, made the New York Times Bestseller List. Today she was interviewed over at Smashwords.

Here are 8 secrets for indie writing success:

1) Join the Romance Writers of America (RWA)
I was a RWA member for two years and can say from personal experience that they are a terrific group. It's wonderful to have people cheering you on whether you are unpublished or multi-published. Thanks to my RWA chapter I was able to meet and ask questions of multi-published authors and hear their stories. There is no substitute for getting together with other writers and talking craft.

2) Publish new work frequently
This advice might seem obvious, along the lines of, "If you want to stay alive it helps to breathe", but I think it bears repeating. Lyla Sinclair writes:

Typically, when I publish a new story, sales increase for my backlist titles as well, even the more expensive Ellora’s Cave books. If I go a long time without publishing a new title, sales gradually decrease. My first indie story was published in the first quarter of 2011. I continued publishing short stories, than a novella, as fast as I could. So, 2011 was the year I began making a living as a writer, even though I’d written fiction seriously since 2003 and was first published in 2009.

3) Make sure your cover not only evokes emotion but evokes the right emotion
Lyla Sinclair writes:

I think it’s important to remember why people read fiction. They read in order to escape and feel things they may not get to feel in their real lives. Therefore, the most important characteristic of a cover is that it invokes—in the potential reader—the same emotion he or she will feel while reading the book. In other words, the cover for a horror story should creep you out. A suspense novel cover should make you nervous. An erotic cover should turn you on.

4) Price your book right for your genre
Lyla Sinclair writes:

You do need to study the pricing of other books in the top 100 of your genre before you consider your price. Different genres can have different price points. ... When I put my novella Training Tessa on sale for $0.99 (originally $2.99) to see if it could sell better, sales of that story went through the roof, then sales of all my backlist surged drastically.

. . . .

To be successful in self-publishing, an author needs to stay away from the “sheep” mentality and become her own shepherd. I research everything I can, run my own tests, then decide what’s best for me. All my marketing and sales efforts are a work in progress.

5) Social media works but focus on retail sites first
Lyla Sinclair writes:

If I were starting out as a new author today, my primary focus would be on making the most of what the retail sites offer—author pages, tagging, Listmania, putting key search words in my title for the search engines to pick up, etc., then I’d deal with Facebook and Twitter next.

6) Blog, but not frequently
Lyla Sinclair writes:

[...] I decided to use the “movie star” approach to blogging. Notice how movie stars disappear from talk shows for months, then pop up when they have movies coming out? That’s what I try to do. I think it’s interesting to note, though, that I was too sick to blog around the Training Tessa release, except for an announcement that it was out, but it made the bestseller lists. And when I think about it, I’ve often heard complaints from readers that fiction authors aren’t publishing their next books fast enough. I’ve never heard a reader complain that his favorite fiction author isn’t blogging enough.

7) Keep at it even if your first few books don't sell
Lyla Sinclair writes:

It is nearly impossible to be an overnight success as an author. Even when it seems that way, if you dig deeper, you find out the author has been working toward her goals for years. One book will not create a career for you any more than one year at a job will. Honestly, if a writer publishes one book, doesn’t sell much and gives up, I’m not sure he wants it badly enough. I was born a writer, and I would rather write limericks on bathroom walls for a living, if that were my only writing option, than not write. It took me about six years and the writing and rewriting of numerous works in three genres to become a self-supporting fiction author. I have traditionally published friends who had to start over several times in new genres with new names when their books didn’t sell. One thing is true, whether publishing traditionally or indie. A writer needs to be prepared to create multiple stories in order to build a following, then many more to sustain a career as a professional author.

8) "The secret" to making it big as a writer: 'Create the perfect storm'
Lyla Sinclair writes:

I think Training Tessa was the perfect storm that happened at a lucky time. “Perfect storm” does not mean perfect story. My definition of the perfect storm in self-publishing is when you write a good story in a popular genre, create a cover that communicates the story effectively to potential readers, and write a description that is interesting and clear.

Here is the complete interview with Lyla Sinclair: New York Times Bestselling Author Lyla Sinclair Shares Secrets to Writing Successful Erotica.

I think there is a lot of truth in what Lyla said about creating the literary analog of a perfect storm. I have heard that from many different people, Joe Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch, and all those folks are supporting themselves form their writing.

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Photo credit: unknown

Squatters Re-Open Friern Barnet Library

Today I read a heartwarming account of how eight squatters became community librarians and reopened a north London library that had been closed by the local council.

Eight squatters entered the north London library last week through an open window. Since a law change on 1 September made it a criminal offence to squat residential properties, they have turned to commercial properties to find a bed for the night. The occupation has the blessing of many residents who are delighted to see the locked doors of the library flung open once again. It's the first time that squatters have morphed into "community librarians" by occupying and reopening a public lending resource in this way. Book loans will be manually recorded and stamped.

Council officials have been trying for months to persuade locals enraged by the library closure to become volunteer librarians in a room in a nearby council building instead. The proposal has not been well received: residents want to see their much-loved local library reopened and stalemate has prevailed.

All that changed when the squatters moved in and embarked on unprecedented negotiations with senior council officials about the future of the library.

Read the entire story here: Squatters reopen Friern Barnet library after council closes service.

When I was a kid, my local library was my hangout. I'd go there and breathe in the smell of the stacks and stand in awe of all the books. (I just about had conniptions the first time I went into the UBC library. Being surrounded by thousands of books was amazing!)

It feels as though this small group has breathed life back into their local library, a hub of the community. How wonderful.

Other stories you might like:
- How Do Writers Get Their Ideas? Neil Gaiman, Seth Godin & Stephen King
- Neil Gaiman's Hell: A Blank Sheet Of Paper
- Writing Resources

Photo credit: "Old books" by Moyan Brenn under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Neil Gaiman's Hell: A Blank Sheet Of Paper

When I researched my blog post, How Do Writers Get Their Ideas?, I came across this quotation. I didn't use it for my Idea post but it was too delightful to keep to myself.

Neil Gaiman:

My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that hasn't been told before.

Staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Forever.

From: Where do you get your ideas?.

Other articles you might like:
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- Harper Voyager Open To Unagented Submissions For 2 Weeks
- Writing Resources

Photo credit: Kyle Cassidy

Indie Books: What Price Is Right?

Dean Wesley Smith addressed a question that has been on my mind: what effect will the recent settlements regarding agency pricing have on the cost of books? DWS says they're going to go up, perhaps way up.

Pricing for customers of electronic books will go up as this settles out over the next few years. Even with stores discounting some titles, ebook prices really can’t do anything else but go up.

Why are book prices going to increase?

... I am being scary simple and general here for the sake of keeping this short and understandable to those who don’t much care.

So now the government has come in and said to the big publishers, “No, no, no. You can’t all agree to do this at the same time.” So now the publishers are being forced to back up and allow retailers to discount what they want, as it always should have been.

In response to that, publishers are raising their “suggested retail prices” expecting retail stores to discount. Some retailers will, some will not.

Some books will be discounted, some won’t. And the amount of discounts by the retailers will vary from moment to moment and book to book and agreement to agreement.

All this is going to cause all kinds of very strange price benchmarks for books. Prices like $10.14 or $12.64 for electronic books. It’s going to have readers who are used to set and standard prices shaking their heads, that’s for sure.

And it’s going to make for some interesting shopping for book buyers, who now can shop around for the best deals. Again, as it always should have been in this capitalistic country.

So what should indie writers price their books at? Here's what DWS recommends:

Novels
- Front list, meaning brand new. Over 50,000 words. $7.99
- Shorter front list novels, meaning 30,000 to 50,000 words. $6.99
- Backlist novels, meaning already published by a traditional publisher. $6.99

Short Books
- Short books, meaning stories from 8,000 words to 30,000 words. $3.99

Short Stories
- Short stories … 4,000 to 8,000 words. $2.99
- Short stories under 4,000 double with another bonus story… $2.99

Collections
- 5 stories $4.99
- 10 stories $7.99

Dean also suggests, and I agree that this makes good sense, publishing a trade paper edition along with your ebook, even if you don't expect to sell many paper books. Why? Because it shows readers how much less expensive the ebook price is and makes them feel like they're getting a deal--which they are!

You can read the rest of Dean Wesley Smith's article here: The New World of Publishing: Pricing 2013

Other articles you might like:
- Stephen King: How His Novel "Carrie" Changed His Life
- How Do Writers Get Their Ideas? Neil Gaiman, Seth Godin & Stephen King
- Writing Resources
- Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden and the Dresden Files

Photo credit: See-ming Lee

Stephen King: How His Novel "Carrie" Changed His Life

How Tabitha King rescued her husband's manuscript of Carrie from the trash is one of my all-time favorite stories. I've heard it many times over the years, sometimes from Stephen King in one of his forwards, sometimes from other authors. The best version I've read comes from Stephen King's book "On Writing":

I had four problems with what I'd written. First and least important was the fact that the story didn't move me emotionally. Second and slightly more important was the fact that I didn't much like the lead character. ... Third and more important still was not feeling at home with either the surroundings or my all-girl cast of supporting characters. ... Fourth and most important of all was the realization taht the story woudln't pay off unless it was pretty long ... You had to save plenty of room for those pictures of cheerleaders who had somehow forgotten to put on their underpants--they were what guys really bought the magazines for. I couldn't see wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn't like and wouldn't be able to sell. So I threw it away.

The next night, when I came home from school, Tabby had the pages. She'd spied them while emptying my waste-basket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. She wanted to know the rest of the story. I told her I didn't know jack-shit about high school girls. She said she'd help me with that part. She had her chin tilted down and was smiling in that severely cute way of hers. "You've got something here," she said. "I really think you do." (pp. 76 to 77)

Boy, did he! A few pages later King writes about receiving a call from Bill Thompson telling him that the paperback rights to Carrie "went to signet Books for four hundred thousand dollars. (p. 86)"

Stephen King writes of his reaction:

I hadn't heard him right. Couldn't have. The idea allowed me to find my voice again, at least. "Did you say it went for forty thousand dollars?"

"Four hundred thousand dollars," he said. "Under the rules of the road"--meaning the contract I'd signed--"two hundred K of it's yours. Congratulations, Steve."

I was still standing in the doorway, looking across the living room toward our bedroom and the crib where Joe slept. Our place on Sanford Street rented for ninety dollars a month and this man I'd only met once face-to-face was telling me I'd just won the lottery. The strength ran out of my legs. I didn't fall, exactly, but I kind of whooshed down to a sitting position there in the doorway.

"Are you sure?" I asked Bill. (p. 86)

On Writing is a marvelous book on the craft of writing, as well as a wonderful autobiography. No other book has had the impact on my writing this book has and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

What is your favorite writing story?

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- Stephen King's Latest Book: A Face In The Crowd
- Quotes From The Master of Horror, Stephen King