Beyond the Words

State of the Snake, January 2, 2012

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:31:00 GMT

Happy New Year!! I am very excited to be flipping over the calendar – yes, I realize that years and days and dates and time itself are all human constructs, but I choose to give meaning to this time of the year. It’s not like there’s any better time, IMO.

Two years ago, I made the choice to give up the idea of traditional publishing, and just write for my blog readers. Maybe I’d self-publish my serials, but that wasn’t the point. The point was letting go of the pressure to write a certain way, and just have fun with it. Then I self-published, started making a little money, and decided to pursue writing as a career again, this time, a DIY career.

My life is measured in cycles...

This year, I’ve decided to take the pressure off again. It’s a ton of work to run a publishing company, worry about getting other authors’ books out along with your own, promotion, marketing, trying to make a book (or books) visible...it’s a full-time job (and then some). I don’t mind the work. What I mind is working all day at my day job, and then coming home and feeling guilty about sitting and watching TV or playing digital games because someone else needs me to do something for them, or I should be doing something for the business. By the time I get to my writing time, I have nothing left...the well is empty, and I fight for every single word. Not cool.

The day job isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I like the things I have, and my lifestyle. I don’t even mind the job itself most days. And unlike those writers willing to put everything on the line for their art, including relationships and health, I’m not. I won’t ever stop writing, because I love it and I can't *not* do it, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to sacrifice my creature comforts. If that resigns me to amateur status forever, so be it.

I’m also not willing to dance to a traditional publisher’s tune, or give Amazon exclusive rights to my books. Independent means just that, and I am fiercely so – but that comes with a cost, and especially in the case of Amazon, it seems that cost is visibility and sales. It’s all good though – I’m comfortable with my choice, and I’m willing to pay the price.

So I’m pulling away from marketing and promotion, and much of the business-y stuff I’ve been doing over the past year. I’m going to stop worrying about sales, money, and visibility, and refocus writing – craft, productivity, and just enjoying the process for what it is.

And I’m going to stop feeling guilty for watching TV and playing games in the evening before my workouts. There are plenty of workaholics in the world – I don’t need to be one of them.

This blog won’t be going away (in case past posts help someone), but it will be updated only very occasionally (kind of like it has been for the past few months). To those of you still reaching for that full-time career (and don’t get me wrong – I still want that, just not enough to work myself to death), I wish you much good luck. As for me, I’m bowing out of the race, and returning to writing for fun – though I can assure you I’ll enjoy every dollar I earn...

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KDP Select – Thanks, but no thanks.

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:06:42 GMT

So the whole self-publishing community is shaken up today about Amazon’s newest announcement, KDP Select. A lot of authors are jumping right on it…basically it’s the option to make your book available to Amazon Prime members for free in their own lending library (this is separate, as far as I know, from the normal “lend this to a friend” feature).

There’s a really huge catch though – and that is that Amazon requires exclusive rights for the time your book is in the program, and the non-compete clause that goes with that. Frankly, I’m surprised so many authors are rushing to sign up – because at the moment (not for much longer, apparently), indie authors *have the power* to nip that power grab in the bud.

I’m also really surprised at how many authors seem to think Amazon does anything specifically to “help” or “be nice to” indie authors. I am 100% positive that Amazon does what it does to make money…nothing else. They don’t want to offer this as a service to indies, they simply need more books in their prime lending library (since traditional publishers aren’t going along as quietly as Amazon would like), and they know that indie authors will do nearly anything for a bit of exposure. So they dangle the three things authors want most – a little cash, a little exposure, and the ability to make your book free for 5 days – knowing that a lot of them aren’t confident enough in their business acumen to fight them on the exclusivity and non-compete terms.

Amazon isn’t out to help indies here. They listened to what indies want (access to the prime lending library, and the ability to make books free), and twisted it to use for their own gain. They aren’t for or against indie authors – they’re for making as much profit as possible, and they’re not above leveraging indies for that purpose.

I am *not* against Amazon…or any other retailer. I spend plenty of money there, and I’m a prime member myself. And I’m not even surprised or angry that they would do this – it’s business, and for them, it’s *good* business…they don’t have to give a lot to make their prime library explode.

I *am* surprised that so many indie authors, who have the power right now to take control and *insist* on better contract terms (because they have the most important thing Amazon needs for the Prime library to succeed – content), are so willing to play along with Amazon and not use the power they have to ensure better contract terms right from the start. If indies refused, by and large, to enroll in this program until the exclusivity and non-compete clauses were stricken, Amazon would have no choice but to either run with a much smaller library of books for Prime borrowers, or to back down on the terms.

Yes, I really think indies have that much power right now. Or they did, until literally thousands of them just jumped right on board and allowed Amazon to dictate the contract.

It’s disappointing, because I think we’ve missed a major opportunity to hang on to leverage of our own. But that’s the thing about being independent…we all get to make our own choices. Unfortunately, I think signing up for this program is a choice that will show Amazon (and other companies) just how much power we’re willing to give away as a whole…and that very well could be a bad thing in the future. Much like authors who blindly signed/sign away too many rights to traditional publishers.

In any case, you won’t see any of my titles or any BSB titles in the Prime lending library. They’re still available to lend to friends after you buy them, and they’ll still be available on Amazon and the other major retail sites, as well as the BSB store, of course. It may cost me in the end, but I wouldn’t sign an exclusivity or non-compete clause with a traditional publisher (or at least if exclusive rights, there would be a lot more money in it for me, but no non-compete clause, for sure), so there’s no way I’d agree to one with Amazon (or any other retailer who wants to try that).

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Business Pitfalls and Determination

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:39:07 GMT

November was an insanely busy month for me and BSB – somehow I ended up with far more projects (only about half of which were actually writing) than I really had time for. I can’t tell you how easy it is to fall into that particular trap, especially when things are already going pretty well, and I tend to think, “hey, what’s one more thing?” Well that, and all these things I’d promised to do for other people just hit at the same time, rather than being nicely spaced out (I’m not complaining – it’s just funny how it always seems to happen that way). In any case, I made it, and without any serious casualties (or I think, anyways), so that’s good. Here’s hoping I didn’t lose too many readers with my spotty serial posting and lack of online visibility, though I undoubtedly had some casualties. Unavoidable, unfortunately. I did what I could to keep up under the circumstances. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

So now that I have perspective and a lot more experience, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make sure I don’t get caught in that particular trap again. And of course this is a good time to be thinking about such things, since this year is ending and a shiny new one is waiting just around the corner. Unlike a lot of people, analyzing and reorganizing my goals is a process I actually really enjoy, so I’m quite excited to sit down and take what I’ve learned this year to apply going forward.

First though, I still have some catch-up/clean-up work to do for the year. There are a few business issues that simply *must* be corrected as soon as possible, because at the moment, they’re only affecting me personally, and I am determined that they will be taken care of before they start affecting the other authors working with me. If you’re reading this blog, it’s probably because you want all the dirty details of what goes on behind the scenes, so I’m going to be straightforward and share my biggest shortcomings, so that with any luck (and a lot of determination), you won’t make the same mistakes.

1) Contracts - This is something I knew in the back of my mind was a necessary thing to have for the authors publishing with me, but because they’re both good friends, and because I mistakenly thought they could read my mind (that’s a comment on my own shortcoming, *not* theirs), I let it slide. And that (along with a serious lack of sleep on my part) led to a pretty sizable misunderstanding that could easily have ruined a very good working relationship along with a friendship. The misunderstanding would have been completely avoided with a good contract from the start. I now have a basic contract in place to use with authors who do hybrid publishing with me (I’m not talking about Rattles, but hybrid deals that involve royalties rather than flat fee payments), and while it’s not perfect, it’s far, far better than not having things laid out in a clear format right from the start. Before 2012 gets here, I want to refine that contract and make it more comprehensive for the next round of publications – more to make sure we’re all on the same page than anything else. I haven’t hired a lawyer to look it over yet, but I may do just that after I have things as clear as I can make them. Even if you’re just doing it yourself though – don’t underestimate the need for this if you’re going to work with other authors.

2) Bookkeeping – Lord, how I suck at this. I truly just haven’t had time to keep up, but it’s not a “have time” sort of thing – it’s a “must make time” sort of thing, even if it means skipping a writing night. That’s the huge thing with running your own publishing business, even if just for yourself – you either pay a bookkeeper, or you make time. It simply *must* be done, especially when you bring other authors into the mix. I am at this moment nearly eight months (yes, 8) behind on my bookkeeping – tracking sales, expenses, etc. It’s going to take me several days worth of solid work (ie, no writing) to get all that data rounded up and put into Quickbooks so that I can both provide statements on time for the authors who publish with me, and so I can do my taxes next spring. I am *not* behind on any author payments, and that’s not going to ever happen no matter what state my books are in. But the books need to be up to date and I need to have a schedule for keeping them up to date in place before January 1. Period. There’s no point in even going forward with the business if I can’t master this one very important task – poorly kept books can bring an entire business to the ground in the blink of an eye. I will not let that happen.

So those are my two “Achilles heels” at the moment, but I’m not going to let them stop me or bring me down. In my day job, if I don’t know how to make something work, I figure it out. There’s no such thing as “can’t”, just “how long will it take to learn”. The same applies to my pub business – just because I don’t know how to do something “yet”, doesn’t mean I won’t figure it out. And I think that’s the sort of attitude you need to have to be successful.

Now that my fall storm seems to have passed, I’ll be free to pick up this blog again. So more posts coming this month on the business side of things.

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State of the Snake - November

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:46:40 GMT

“So, Jamie, how’s the publishing business going?”

“Well, sales are down, projects are up, and I have more ideas than I have time to implement, thanks. But I’m hoping that 2012 is the year we finally turn a profit…”

That pretty much sums it up. I’m not sure why sales are down, exactly, but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, since it’s only been a few days and book sales are like that. Eventually they’ll pick back up for awhile, and things will cruise along nicely again. I think that’s really the number one thing for authors to remember – sales ebb and flow, and you just kind of have to ride out the swells without panicking (too much). More books equal less noticeable sales fluctuations…

I am going to take advantage of this lull to do some pricing experiments, considering the holiday shopping season is right around the corner. I’m moving most of my books into a higher cost bracket to see if they’ll entice a slightly different audience. It’s easier to play with pricing when sales are in a natural “down cycle” (or I think so), because there’s no initial “drop” in sales…they’re already low.

This will also be in preparation for moving into my next marketing arena, which includes two major tiers:

- Electronic books on CD for tangible, signable digital gifts

- Developing a publisher catalog to send out to independent bookstores for possible brick & mortar stocking

The book CDs I hope to have up for sale by the end of this month. The catalogue will be available as of January, and I’ll start sending it out with samples then.

The anthologies have been going well, but unfortunately, the monthly workload is a bit too much. So starting in December, the anthologies will be every other month, which will ease that pressure and allow me more time to work on other projects. Like my own books, and those of the authors publishing full novels with me.

I am working to get print versions of the anthologies out earlier than I’d originally planned, in advance of the holiday season. I’ll probably go ahead and continue that, just because print gives a tangible product to promote via contests, etc, and thus a wider potential audience.

As far as books are concerned, the publishing calendar is full up right through the end of the year, with new books coming out nearly every week (that's a minimum of 7 books between now and Jan. 1 - eek!). Needless to say, the bookstore is growing nicely in terms of stock. And that’s a very good thing.

So the “state of the snake” this month is good, I’d say. There’s money in the account, and nowhere to go but up.

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Opening the Doors…Just a Crack

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:46:46 GMT

It’s been awhile, eh? I’ve been so busy attending to the business of writing (and actually writing), that I haven’t had the time to blog about it. That’s the thing though – business is constantly changing and growing, and each of those changes is a “blip” in my schedule that tends to throw things for a loop until everything realigns again. Thankfully I seem to be stabilizing again for awhile. Most recently, I’ve been doing some publishing (not surprising, I know). But most of the publishing I’ve been doing lately isn’t my own work – I’ve been publishing the work of others.

It was never (and still isn’t) my intention to do business as a traditional (or legacy, if you prefer) publisher. But it’s exciting seeing your books finally go up on the shelves (virtual or otherwise) and to the best of my abilities (and within my time limitations), I want to help other authors experience that.

For starters, I’m making good on trade agreements made with my editor and my cover artist to publish their books when they’re ready. We’re using a hybrid publishing model wherein I do the formatting for digital and print versions of their books (they trade editing/cover art between themselves as well), and then whatever I sell on my business site, we share a 30 (me)/ 70 (them) profit split. Their books are published under the BSB label, with my ISBN numbers, and print books are published under my account so I can easily fulfill store orders when I begin sending out flyers to independent bookstores next year. With the digital books, those are uploaded to the author’s accounts, and they keep all profits from those, no split. When I do promotions, I include their books as part of my business label just as any publisher would, and I submit the book to review sites, hold contests, etc. They get the best of both worlds, basically – we operate as a bonafide publishing company, but the author keeps the large majority of the profits. As it should be.

I’d like to do this for other authors too, but there are time and quality factors to consider. Because it’s my label on the books, I require a certain standard of writing, just as any publisher would. Like any author, I don’t have time to read and vet a bunch of submissions, so I have no plans to open that up at any time. Will I eventually publish other authors this way? Perhaps. I may invite specific authors I’m familiar with to join us as time permits. But I’m moving very slowly on that, because I need to make sure my bookkeeping methods are settled first, and I need to make sure any publishing I do doesn’t interfere with my own writing.

Another thing I’ve started that includes publishing other authors is a monthly flash fiction anthology based on a photo prompt. Using my publishing team (Heidi & Carol), I accept flash submissions that we read and either accept or reject based on quality and theme. It works pretty much like a traditional publishing company would, with a revision request sent to the author if necessary and the story accepted if the revisions (or a reasonable substitute) are made. I pay semi-pro rates ($25 per story) for six months of exclusive digital rights, and then non-exclusive digital and print rights thereafter. I fully expect that most authors will self-publish or sell reprints for their stories after the initial six months are up. I can only accept up to 8 stories per month, but as we’re just getting started, that hasn’t been an issue yet. I expect that if the anthologies get popular, competition could increase, and I may not have time to offer every story a critique, but for now, I include revision notes with every reply so the author will understand why I’m rejecting, or will have a chance to fix the issues I see.

Why do this? Initially, Heidi and I thought that it would be a good exercise for writing – and that’s the main reason we started the blog. By critiquing stories and publishing those we love, we can help other authors get a little extra exposure and provide an arena for them to practice tight writing as well. I pay up front so the author is compensated right away, and release rights six months later so the author can still use the story as a revenue stream. It wouldn’t make sense to pay out miniscule royalties to several authors every month – I’d loose money just on check and transfer fees. The anthologies are more like a magazine in that respect. Naturally when the print version comes out, authors will be able to buy issues at cost plus shipping, and will receive a copy free as well. The anthologies start at .99 cents, but then go up so as not to compete with stories the authors may want to release individually later at the .99 cent price point.

In any case, those are the things keeping me busy lately – that, and keeping up with the writing/publishing schedule for my own work. As I said, ebb and flow…but I’m quite happy with the way things are going at the moment (and I think the authors I’m working with are as well).

The deeper I get in this writing/publishing business, the more I like it. Then again, it’s easy to like when you’re the one making the rules.

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Marketing is…What it is.

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:06:25 GMT

Books are an interesting commodity. Recently even the definition of what makes a book a “book” has been debated with regards to the rise of ebooks and digital media in general. Personally, I consider a book to be a physical product, an ebook to be the digital version of that product, and the words inside to be a story. And the story is the most important part – everything else revolves around that (as it should). Just like most everyone else though, I still tend to use the term “book” to encompass a story in any format…mainly out of habit. But in marketing terms, I think it’s important to distinguish the two.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I’ve been working on a marketing strategy. When I first started publishing my stories, I decided not to put much effort into marketing until I had at least three of them out (because it would be more effective then). Now I have six out, soon to be nine, and I’m also helping a friend publish and promote her work. So a marketing strategy seems smart at this point.

The first thing I’m focusing on is trying to get rid of that “market the cover” mindset. I love my covers, and I think a good cover is very important, but it’s the story I want people to buy. So my first order of business next month will be to look at all of my blurbs and see if I can’t rewrite them to be more enticing if needed. I’ll also be adding short excerpts to all of my sales pages, because while you can download a long sample nearly everywhere, not everyone wants to click (and samples are normally downloaded “to read later”). Adding excerpts to my descriptions means that everyone gets a small sample right then and there, both of my writing and of the story.

I’m also going to post lines from my stories when tweeting/sharing, rather than just titles. A very brief snippet of the work, but hopefully something to entice people to click the link, where they’ll be taken to my web store to read the excerpt and if they choose, download sample chapters.

I’ll be creating some ad campaigns as well, both to post on my sites, and to buy space on other sites for. Banner ads won’t just have the cover/title though, or even just a pithy saying. They’ll have direct quotes from the book, and the cover ads will be the same. I won’t be buying a lot of ad space on author sites though, but rather on forums and sites where my target market hangs out.

I’m currently revamping my shopping cart – moving to a completely different host and software that will make my store more like the big web stores. Multiple payment options will be available (instead of just paypal), gift certificates, coupon codes, a wish list, pre-orders and one of the really nice things about the new software is that people can post reviews directly to my products on the site. This shopping cart also has the unique ability to set up a store right in Facebook, and it has agreements with a lot of other sales sites that I’ll be able to post products to right from my own store. So the potential for wider distribution on sites that are *not just for books* is there, and made very easy with this product. All for about $5 more than I’m paying now – a steal, really.

I’ll be playing with formats too – mainly for my ebooks. It’s hard to give an ebook as a gift – a digital gift certificate isn’t really wrappable or fun to watch people open. So I’ll be doing some test marketing with CD cards – business card sized CD’s that will have a label with the cover of the book, and contain book files (several formats) and directions for installing them. Customers will be able to buy these for a slightly higher price than just the standard ebook (just like any software – you want the physical media, you pay a little more), and will then have something they can wrap up for gifting, complete with the author’s signature. They’ll be available in my store as soon as December, and depending on how that goes, I may send them out to local bookstores to see how they’re received.

In keeping with that, I’ll be marketing different formats of books in different places. Next year I’ll have flyers to send out to bookstores featuring print books, and possibly the ebook CD cards. Ebook marketing will remain more online, due to the nature of the format. The new shopping cart software allows me to set wholesale and retail prices, so that book sellers can buy stock directly from me at whatever discount I set, so I’ll be putting that together in an attractive-to-stores cost as well. It’s a beautiful system, really – retailers can order from me, I place the order with CreateSpace and have it shipped directly to them, and the order is filled, with no inventory for me to deal with and about five minutes worth of work. Slightly more work for the CD cards, but they’re small. I think it will be a good system.

Naturally my main strategy is still to keep writing & publishing more books, and I’m really excited about the new Rattles anthologies. But a little marketing at this point may give my sales a nice little boost. We shall see...stay tuned.

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Revisiting the Business Plan

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:09:44 GMT

It’s been a little over a year since I wrote up my first business plan for my writing career. It’s safe to say that I’ve gone pretty far off track from that, accelerating nearly every part of it, and completely doing away with the traditional publishing track I’d originally planned to follow concurrently with the self-pub track. Needless to say, though I’m happy with all the decisions I’ve made so far, it’s always a good idea to get it all down on paper (so to speak), and make sure I’m still heading in the right direction. It’s easy to get sidetracked when things are going a million miles an hour...

My goal is still to make enough money to write full-time. So that hasn’t changed. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make my projected 5-year deadline (4 years, now), but I’m still going to try. The main difference between my original plan and the new one is how I’m going to get to where I need to be.

Originally I’d planned to work in only two genres, and publish one novel every six months, and “play around with short stories for the holidays”. This year I’ve stuck to my goal of publishing a novel every six months, but I’ve also added the goal to publish a short story every other month in a second genre, and I’ve been working on a novel/novella in a third genre that I’m fairly certain will be ready to publish before Christmas. For 2011, I’ll have published:

3 romantic suspense novels
6 erotic novelettes
1 or 2 erotic short collections (depends on whether I split my niche works up or not)
1 thriller novel/novella (depending on word count when it’s done)

I’ll also have 2 more drafts half or more done.

Needless to say, I’ve been writing a lot more than I’d originally planned. I’ve also started a publishing project that will result in one flash fiction collection per month based on a prompt, the first to be released in October. I’m not sure how well those will do, but I’m interested in finding out. If nothing else, it will be good practice for me, and good exposure for my publishing company and the other authors I include.

The reason I’m able to put three novels out this year is that two this year were already drafted. So after this year, I’ll probably have to cut back to the original one novel every six months. But I fully plan to keep going with the erotic shorts and collections, and I think I’m going to play with writing shorter thrillers next year (novelette/novella length). I should feasibly be able to publish two novellas per year, I think, or three novelettes.

I was offering flat fee author services, but due to a lack of interest and time, have discontinued that. Instead, I’ll be publishing select authors under the BSB label, helping them with formatting, ISBN’s and whatever else they need, but in the end allowing the author to keep all profits (aside from a small percentage for the books sold directly from my BSB store). My way of helping out friends who want to self publish, but want a little help with set-up and marketing.

So that’s the current plan...and unless something changes drastically, I don’t see myself having any issues sticking to this schedule. The other part of the plan is a comprehensive pricing/marketing strategy, but that’s another post.

If you have a business plan, how’s it working for you? Have you revisited it recently? If you don’t have a plan...why not?

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Print & Digital – So Happy Together…

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 18:09:00 GMT

And now I’ve got that song stuck in my head. You’re welcome.

I’ve demonstrated before that I don’t sell much print when it comes to my books. The five copies I’ve sold on Amazon this month is a pretty rare occurrence (normally it’s 2). And I sold a couple signed copies through my own store this month as well, with the release of The Biker’s Wench. The difference is, in my BSB store, I have the paperback bundled with the digital copy – so if someone buys a paperback, they can download a free copy of the eBook and start reading immediately while they’re waiting for the signed paperback to go through the mail.

I do have them available separately as well, of course. But both readers who ordered chose the bundled option, which I think is very telling. I think (and this is total postulation on my part, with no factual backing whatsoever, so take it as you will) that a lot of people who still want signed print (collectors) copies would rather read the actual contents of the book in digital form. Simply because it’s more convenient (esp. with the trade paperback sizes that my books are). I know I’ll often do that – buy a digital copy and a signed paperback if I’m a big fan of the author. It would be the coolest thing ever if more authors would bundle their books that way – with the ebook and paperback included in one price. I fully plan to offer this option with all of my books – and I’m playing around with some other bundling options as well.

Not only is it more convenient to read an eBook (far more portable), but including the eBook with the print copy gives both more of a perceived value, in my opinion. It’s like any “two for the price of one” deal – and customers love a bargain. This is marketing, people, and pretty basic marketing at that, but it’s also showing customers generosity. Which gives them a good feeling about buying from you. And that much more likely to buy again.

Marketing isn’t always just social media stuff, even though we seem to like to think so. It’s about giving customers (in our case, readers) something at a good value and building a good relationship with them, so they *want* to do business with us. This is something that stores do through sales and bundling items, and it’s something that as an independent, I can easily do as well. I’ve noticed that All Romance eBooks does similar things (buy x amount, get one free, etc), and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, agency pricing restricts many other online stores from doing the same (and I think that’s bad for business).

In any case, that’s just one more reason I love being my own publisher. I make all the marketing decisions for my company…and I’m certain that bundling digital and print copies together is a good marketing decision. I’m going to see about getting some banners made up, and check out advertising on *gasp* non-reader sites soon. As much as people say traditional marketing for books doesn’t work, I’m not sure I agree with that. I know for me, a nice poster, commercial, heck, sometimes even a Facebook or banner ad will entice me to check out a book. And I’m steeped in the industry.

So, I have to see for myself. It may be a case of just “learning the hard way”, in which case I’ll have lost a bit of time & money. If it does happen to pay off, I’ll be glad I took the risk.

Publishing Schedule Logic

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:14:25 GMT

At the beginning of this year, I set a publishing schedule for myself. I based it on my normal (comfortable) writing speed and the desire to start building a backlist in two genres. So far, I’m a little behind, but overall I’m very close to where I wanted to be by this time, all things considered. We’re just heading into the busy fall season, so this will be the big test for whether I can keep the same pace in the fall as I do the rest of the year or not. Experimentation is good.

Why did I set a schedule at all? Why not just write, and see what happens?

Because in order to *reach* a goal, I have to *have* a goal.

My larger goal is to make an increasing amount of income from my writing. The more books I put out, the more I make (simple, eh?). So the logic behind the publishing schedule is to publish as much as possible this year while writing at a comfortable, steady rate (ie, not rushing just to meet arbitrary deadlines, but not dragging my heels just because I’m lazy either). By making a schedule and basing it on a comfortable speed (in my case, 500-800 words per day, 6 days per week), I set myself up for a decent chance at success. I also sort of self-limited myself by keeping my schedule full enough to not leave much room for “extras” (work expands to fill the space available, I’ve found).

If I didn’t have a schedule, I’d feel like I was just floating aimlessly rather than executing a well-thought-out plan. I’m not good at floating aimlessly even on a non-work day. I tend to get bored and anxious and insecure. With the schedule, there’s a purpose to fulfill, deadlines to meet, and a sense of accomplishment every time I hit a goal.

It’s also something I can share with my cover artist and editor, so they have an idea of when I’ll need their services. Always a good idea, in case they get super busy.

As an added bonus, my readers know roughly when things are supposed to be out, so waiting is less of a chore. And because I know pretty much when something will be released, I can do a decent job of early marketing if I’m so inclined.

There’s also the fact that it just looks and feels more professional (which helps me keep things in that perspective). Writing is a business. A publishing or release schedule is a normal part of that.

Do you have a publishing schedule? Or if you’re querying, do you have a query schedule? How are you doing at meeting your milestones this year?

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Release Day Hoopla…or Not?

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:15:08 GMT

I recently released my third romantic suspense story – which is excellent, since I’m finally starting to build a backlist of titles. Ignoring my previous vow not to do any more contests or major hoopla for the release (because in the past I’ve found release day activities do absolutely nothing for sales), I did blog posts on all of my major blogs, along with a contest on my Fantasy Ranch blog (home to the novel that was released).

I uploaded the novel digitally all over ahead of time as I usually do to make sure it’s actually available on release day. The print copy was available a couple weeks early. And digital copies started selling about the minute it went up on Amazon, and sold right up until release day, when I made the big release announcement. You’d expect sales to go up more still, right?

All I got was crickets. In fact, sales ground to a halt amid the announcements, and the contest was pretty paltry as far as turnout goes.

Please understand, I’m not complaining even a little bit. I’m merely analyzing, and I’m actually happy that the results are consistent with my first and second books. Because this is very valuable information to have in terms of deciding what to spend time on.

With my erotica shorts (the third of which I’ll be releasing sometime this week), I don’t do the fanfare thing, and never have. I post a simple notice on my blog that gets fed through facebook & twitter, and one on the BSB blog, and that’s it. They start selling when I upload them, and tend to just continue on as they were through release day.

Part of that could be genre, but I think part of it is the whole “hoopla” thing surrounding a release seems like it could be turning people off. Or else it’s Murphy’s law. Either way, I’m glad, because there’s only one logical approach to take from here on out, and that is, no release day hoopla. A simple blog post that feeds out and announces that the book is available when it’s available will be plenty (I’ll include an excerpt) – I’m not even going to stick to a firm release date except to hold myself to a deadline.

No contests (well, I’ll probably still do Goodreads contests for print copies), no extra promo, no extra effort. Because sales seem better in the absence of all that extra “stuff”, counterintuitive as it seems.

Do you have to get the word out about your book? Sure…but increasingly I really think a simple announcement, submitting to review sites and the occasional guest post are plenty. I think a social media presence is important too, but only insomuch as you meet and talk to people, which makes them curious about your books. A link here and there on twitter isn’t a bad thing, but the constant link pushing, the big blog tours, etc that I see authors doing to try to get their books out into the public eye – I just don’t think any of that is really necessary. Will it boost sales in the beginning? Sure, maybe. But then everything will die down, and I think the author risks being disappointed when sales fall back to “normal” levels after the excitement is gone.

Of course this doesn’t apply if your ultimate target is a traditional publisher. In that case, yes, you need to push your book hard to sell as many copies in as short amount of time as possible, because that’s how sales work in the traditional publishing world. A trad publisher’s goal is to sell as much as possible in as little time as possible (because books have so little time on the shelf in stores), so it would make sense for them to want to see that from an independent author.

As for me, I’ve got all the time in the world…so no need to wear myself out. I have time to let sales build gradually. Yet another thing I love about being independent…

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July Sales & Seasonal Habits

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:50:52 GMT

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a sales post, and to be honest, I’m hoping this doesn’t put a stop to the rather fabulous start to August my books are having. It’s the weirdest thing, but every time I mention numbers online, my sales just flat out quit for a day or two, for some reason. If I were superstitious, I might think that meant something nefarious…

But because my personal mission on this blog is to be transparent and let people know what’s going on behind the scenes of my self-pub business, I’ll ignore that, and dig into the numbers for June, July & August (so far). These are from Amazon, All Romance and Barnes & Noble – I haven’t exactly balanced my books in awhile, so haven’t sorted through the Smashwords data yet.

So let’s get right to it, then – keeping in mind that summer is typically a low-sales season, and also that I’ve had day job issues that kept me from doing any kind of promotion whatsoever for the past month or so (that includes not being on social media much).

June – Total of 253 ebooks, 3 print (Tempest)

Tempest – 144
Desert Heat - 7
The Entertainer – 23
The Bouncer - 79

July – Total of 200 ebooks, 1 print (Tempest)

Tempest – 152
Desert Heat – 6
The Biker’s Wench - 20
The Entertainer – 2
The Bouncer - 20

Aug (4 days) – Total of 28 ebooks, 5 print (2 Tempest, 1 Desert Heat, 1 The Biker’s Wench)

Tempest – 21
Desert Heat – 1
The Biker’s Wench - 4
The Entertainer – 0
The Bouncer – 2

Now considering I sold 485 books in May, it’s been pretty small potatoes this summer, but honestly, I’m still happy with these numbers. Considering I’ve put *no* effort into promotion, and sales are down for a good chunk of authors, this is actually good news for me. It means even when I can’t push sales, my books still have some momentum – and that is excellent, IMO.

I’m sure that releasing TBW late last month has a lot to do with the recent sales surge, and I have another erotic short done that just needs the final edits before I can publish it. That should give my erotica line a bit of a push this month. It’s also worth noting that I’ve raised the price of The Bouncer and Desert Heat to $1.49 (from .99), so while they sell less, I make more per book. Desert Heat will go to $2.49 sometime in September when I publish my fourth romantic suspense novel, and The Biker’s Wench (currently at .99 for an introductory price) will go to $1.49. Tempest and The Entertainer will both stay at .99 cents as sort of “gateway” reads for those genres. I’m anxious to see how things sell when I have books at several different price points…I think I may even try some of the rom. suspense as high as $3.29, just as an experiment (though everything will start at .99 cents so regular readers always get the best price).

I’m surprised at how well the print copies have sold this month too – and I’ll be interested to see if there’s another sales spike for print when my next one comes out.

It’s important to keep good records for this sort of thing. Next summer, I can look back on these and compare how things are going then with how they went this year, and hopefully get sort of a big picture for seasonal sales habits. This could help with marketing decisions like when to release books, when to buy ads and request reviews, and when I can sort of go easy on those. It will also be a good comparison for the sales to number of books ratio – this year I have five books, 3 in one genre, 2 in another. Next year I should span 3 genres and have considerably more titles out, so it will be interesting to see how that affects sales as well.

So there you go – my summer on the shelves. With any luck, things will only go up for the rest of the year (though I’ve heard August is the worst month for sales, so we’ll see).

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The Difference a Year Makes

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:08:00 GMT

Long time no post – sorry about that. Crisis at the day job sent me into a tailspin, and I’m finally finding my way out and back to some semblance of balance. Such is life...for now.

I’ll put together a sales report post next week, once I catch up on my accounting (which I’ve been bad and fallen behind on). Overall, things have settled into a fairly predictable sales pattern, and since I like patterns better than random, that’s a very good thing for me.

This Friday I’m releasing my third romantic suspense book, a novel I wrote as a serial on my blog last year called The Biker’s Wench. Of course in order to release a book, it needs to be available on release day, so it’s already available pretty much everywhere aside from the Smashwords distributors (and it will be there soon as well). I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, overall, and with early sales too.

Last year at this same time, I was scrambling to meet deadlines to get my first book published by mid-August. I distinctly remember spending several days learning how to format Tempest for print, and then turning around and doing the same thing all over again for ebooks. I was so nervous and so excited all at the same time. I had big release day activities planned, contests running, guest blog posts here and there – it was kind of a madhouse, looking back. Then there were issues with formatting (ahem, the chapters are now in the correct order. I think.), getting print copies in late, worrying about whether or not to do a pre-order page...and not even a thought yet of starting my own publishing company.

On release day last year, I sold one book, close to midnight – over a week after I uploaded it to Amazon & Smashwords. I sold 21 ebooks and 12 print the first two months (averages out to 15 per month total, which, looking back was pretty good for a first-timer)...and struggled a lot not to let the self-publishing stigma get to me too badly. The ball was just starting to roll then...

Fast forward to now. I’ve got five books out under two names, and had TBW basically done weeks before the deadline. Plenty of time for formatting and uploading (though I’ll admit I am behind on the short story due out this month...but that’s something that couldn’t be helped). The self-publishing stigma is far less prevalent now, and it stopped bugging me so much after my second novel anyways. The opinions of other writers on your business acumen tend to matter less after readers start paying for your books on a regular basis (for me, anyways).

The last three books (including TBW) have started selling practically the minute I upload them. That’s not to say any of them are selling a ton of copies per month (though in May one of my shorts did rather surprisingly well). But they’re doing okay for recent releases, and over time, as long as they sell around 5-10 copies per month, that will be fine. With decent pricing and a large enough backlist, I can make a decent living with that. Don’t believe me? Read Dean Wesley Smith. He’s good at math.

TBW has sold 11 ebook copies since I uploaded it last weekend – and the official release day isn’t even here yet. And I’ve done virtually no promotion, save mentioning that I’m working on it, and posting serial chapters (frankly, I haven’t had the time or energy to do more than that lately). I’ve done even less promotion for my erotica, and that does passibly well on it’s own too. I’m looking forward to seeing what the Christmas rush will do for my whole little shelf of titles.

Tempest is selling over 100 copies a month, pretty consistently. A far cry from where it started last fall. Even at .99 cents, it makes me enough each month to pay my expenses, which is very cool.

And I have my own publishing companynow, that I plan to open up to short story submissions for themed anthologies very soon. It will be a paying market for authors who want to earn a little cash in exchange for 6 months worth of exclusive rights. And a good way to build my publishing reputation.

I’m not sharing all of this to brag, but rather to encourage. Bookstores are going out of business – whether we’re sad about it or not, it’s happening. Contracts for writers with trad houses are getting worse, and so are royalty rates. I pretty firmly believe that if you’re not going to self-publish, finding a smaller independent publisher to work with is the way to go these days. One more likely to understand the actual value of digital rights.

It may take awhile to build up your titles, but I really do believe you can make a living writing, provided you have a large backlist that’s widely distributed. The trick is not more promotion, or writing in a genre you don’t love, or editing the life out of your book (though quality is important too - not even technical details so much as a compelling story that keeps people turning pages).You don't see the top selling authors promoting the heck out of their book everywhere. Why not? Because they're busy writing.

The key is to keep writing. Put writing first, and treat it like the job you want it to be. Try on different genres and formats. Write short. Write long. Play with words. Challenge yourself to do things you normally wouldn’t do on the page.

You can do marketing in your spare time if you want, but it’s not necessary to do all the things that beginning authors tend to want to do (nervous energy makes us crazy – I know, truly). Save that energy for writing your next book, and the next one after that. Write first. Always.

Next week, some numbers. Until then...more words.

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Web Store – Yea or Nay?

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:33:59 GMT

I think that for most authors, the short answer to this question is “nay”. At least in the sense of a full-on professional shopping cart experience. Selling signed copies of books is just as easy with a paypal button, though it looks and acts a little less polished. But for an author’s web site, casual is fine, in my opinion.

There are, of course, pros and cons of setting up a true ecommerce solution. I’ll list what I consider the major cons first, and then if you’re still interested you can hang around for the pros.

Web Store/Shopping Cart Cons

- Expense. Shopping cart programs range in price, but expect to pay a decent sum for one that looks and feels professional. I use the GoDaddy Quick Shopping Cart program, and it costs me $30 a month at the moment. It’s less if you pay a year at a time, but still a sizable amount. I’ve been paying month-to-month because I still haven’t decided whether to keep it or not.

- Bookkeeping. When you have a web store, it’s that much more bookkeeping and inventory you have to keep track of. If people buy, of course, which they don’t from mine, at least not yet. But very few shopping carts I’ve looked at will play nice with Quickbooks, which is what I use for bookkeeping, so it’s just one more revenue stream that has to be kept up with.

- Buyer reluctance. This one’s a biggie. For whatever reason, whenever I intentionally direct traffic to my web store, I usually get at least one sale…from another, larger online retailer. Readers seem extremely resistant to buying online from a small publisher/author site for some reason. And there’s really not a whole lot that can be done about that except give it time and build a large enough catalog to make people more comfortable ordering.

- If you want to accept credit cards outside of using PayPal, you need a merchant account…which is another monthly fee. Some buyers refuse to use PayPal though, so if you stick with that as your only payment option (as I have thus far), you lose business.

That really should be enough right there to convince most people not to do it. If you’re doing a good job getting your books out there, odds are they’re available all over the place online, so readers will be able to buy from their favorite store anyways. So why would someone (I) want to offer a shopping cart on my site as an option?

Web Store/Shopping Cart Pros

- It just looks professional. A bonafide web store gives site visitors an experience they’d expect from a business – browsing a store environment to check out all the offerings.

- It’s an easy way to sell specialized & discounted merchandise. Right now I have bundles on offer at the BSB site that readers can’t get anywhere else. Print and ebooks bundled together, all three major formats of an ebook in one download file, and the option to create coupons (though paypal doesn’t allow free items in their payment screen, so I’m restricted on that). And of course signed copies of my print books are available exclusively from my own business site. My shopping cart makes it easy to sell ebooks too – I just upload it on the back end, and the program does the rest to automatically deliver them when customers buy. There are other programs you can use for this, but the shopping cart feature always left me wanting something better when two or more titles were chosen.

- It’s a nice way to automatically organize all the books you have on offer…rather than trying to design, categorize and layout all of those pages yourself, the shopping cart program will do it for you.

- It’s part of the cost of doing business, so the expenses are tax deductible.

- Aside from payment processing fees, all profit goes to the author. If you can get people to buy from your own site, that’s the highest royalty you can make on your work.

Will I keep my shopping cart? Probably, as long as I can afford to subsidize it. Thus far, I make enough in royalties to cover the cost every month, though that money could easily go toward cover art or other expenses. I may well look around at other, potentially cheaper solutions though. I will definitely need a merchant account eventually (to make it easier to hand sell both print and ebooks), which could affect how I proceed as well.

But for the average author/self-publisher who just sells the odd signed book from their site, I think the paypal buttons are just fine, and free.

Book Sales vs. The Business of Life

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:44:20 GMT

And so it begins…one day late with a post to the business blog. It’s all part of the process, and something that will work itself out fairly quickly, I think. If you’re trying to figure out what the heck I’m talking about, you can read last week’s post, or this one from my author blog for clarity. Basically, I’m living a nearly one-dimensional story consisting of a single, simple plot line with only a couple very insignificant sub-plots, and no real description. My mission is to add some good description, and a few intriguing subplots so everything “reads” more like a Technicolor movie than a black and white news cast.

Wow. That sounded *way* more dramatic than it really needed to. LOL But you get my point, I think. All work and no play makes Jamie a dull girl.

In any case, go read the linked posts if you want the whole story (and a few houseplant pictures). Today we’re exploring how all this “lifestyle revision” is going to affect my book sales.

Last week, I was prepared to watch sales pretty much dry up for awhile, since I’d planned on having to give up some writing time. And I’m not planning on adding any more promotional time either. Then I started playing with my calendars and schedule. I play with calendars like some writers play with storyboards, like it’s all one big puzzle of squares that just need to be plugged into the right spot. And yes, I find this fascinating. I can literally spend hours playing with this. It’s okay, you can laugh.

Now that I’ve got things rearranged a bit, I really only had to cut one hour of writing per week for now. I cut it from the place it would have the least amount of public impact – the pen name I haven’t “officially” published anywhere yet. The fact is, I was ahead of my goals in that genre anyway, so I’m merely throttling back to “normal speed” there. Everything else can keep cruisin’ along as it has been with no real issues (aside from July’s short story running long, but that’s not my fault, it’s the dang characters). So the short term effects aren’t going to be quite as drastic as I thought they might. Which is a relief.

In the long term, I really think this is going to help my sales in a couple of different ways. One is the obvious benefit for any writer of experiencing life through different filters. The more different ways I see the world, the more perspective I’ll have to put into my books. The more things I learn, the more background knowledge I’ll have to draw on. It’s good to keep the mind warm and nimble, and I think that will show in my writing.

I’ll also be able to approach writing with a calmer mind – which leads to better creativity. I have some new routines that will help keep both the house and my own body in better shape, so instead of sitting down to write and thinking about how the carpet needs vacuuming or how I should be working out, I’ll know that those things are taken care of. I’m not turning into a neat freak (couldn’t if I tried) or a workout fanatic, but I have already noticed the difference when I sit down to write in a clean living room, after a good workout. Words flow better when I’m not feeling guilty for stuff I “should have done”.

And there’s the fact that marketing is mainly social these days – and rather than just talking about writing, I’ll be able to network with a wide variety of people with many interests again. That could definitely help sales in the future, I think.

I’ve never wanted to be one of those people whose job is their life. I love writing, and I plan to write until I’m physically unable to type, but as much as I love it, I don’t want to be just “one thing” in my life. I do think that by taking care of my need for variety, I’ll be a better writer, and a better overall business person in the long run. So it’s a win-win situation all around, IMO.

If you made it this far, thanks for indulging my philosophical ramblings for the day. Next week we’ll get back to business…namely the pros and cons of hosting my own web store.

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Personal Limitations & Elusive Balance

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:31:00 GMT

I hate realizing that I have limitations. Yes, I know “hate” is a strong word – I used it for that reason. And yet, my hatred of bumping up against my own personal limitations doesn’t make them disappear, despite the fact that my mom always told me I could do *anything* I set my mind to. I can do a lot of things, don’t get me wrong, but “anything” is stretching it a bit.

In any case, lately I’ve found myself testing my own limitations, and bumping into a rock wall in a couple of areas. It’s annoying and frustrating and it takes me awhile to stop running at the wall because I don’t want to believe there isn’t a hidden doorway somewhere if I just keep bouncing off of it long enough (see Labyrinth). I’m persistent like that. Even now, making the decisions I am, I *still* believe somewhere in the back of my mind that there has to be a way around this hurdle (see, I don’t even really believe it’s a wall LOL), and that if I keep looking, I’ll find it. Persistently optimistic, I guess.

Why post about this here, on my business blog? Because it affects both my business and my marketing strategies in a pretty major way (they seem minor now, but the effects will most likely be long-lasting).

For the past two years, I’ve been eating, sleeping and breathing writing. With the exception of my day job (which is necessary for both necessities and capitol for BSB ) and reading (which is necessary for good writing and a practice I’ve been addicted to since I was 5 or 6), I’ve slowly let go of nearly all of the “other things” I used to do when not at the day job.

My nail art blog
My tea review blog
My houseplants (you’d cry if you saw the dead plants in my house – the succulents, I’m happy to report, are still doing well)
Housekeeping in general.
Gardening.
Stamp collecting (Ha! You had no idea I have a stamp collection, did you?)
Crocheting

Listing it out here just makes it look that much worse, to be honest. *sigh* But I want to be transparent, because maybe you’ve done the same thing. Or maybe you haven’t yet, but are heading that direction. Or maybe you just like knowing what’s going on in other people’s heads (which wouldn’t surprise me at all, esp. if you’re a writer). In any case, two things happened this week that made me realize I had to make some changes.

The first one was looking at the dead plants in my house. I love plants. Houseplants, specifically – big, tropical looking ones. And mine are all dead or dying. All of them. It’s sick, and it made me sick realizing that most of them can’t be revived.

The second was a couple of posts by Kristen Lamb this week – the first reminds us that we have no choice but to learn how to juggle non-writing w/writing things (there's no such thing as "just a writer"), but it was the second one, where she talks about blogging on our *other interests* that flipped the way-too-bright-light-bulb on over my head.

It’s not the concept of blogging for readers that did it – I’ve been including reader-targeted content for awhile now mainly in the form of serial fiction with good results. But in the comments of her post, while there was this incredible sense of relief, there was also an underlying low-level panic. If I don’t blog about writing, what do I blog about? And *that* was what smacked me upside the head.

If I don’t do anything *but* write, I have no other level to connect with people on. And that simply can’t be good – for writing, for expanding my customer base, or for general mental health. It makes me a one-dimensional character – and we know what happens to them in reviews. And selling books is much like selling yourself – you need good reviews to really get things going. Heck, using social media is exactly like that - people like you, they'll hang around. If they don't, they'll go hang around someone else.

I’m not talking about changing my personality or anything like that (that would be silly and denote a serious lack of self-confidence, so don't misinterpret what I'm saying here - whatever you do, be yourself), but I do have other interests outside of writing and running my business. Bringing some of those back into the public spotlight, even only occasionally, can only do good things for both my mental balance and my social standing – which I dare say in turn will help book sales. Everything works together.

In short, even if I were writing full time, I could never be “just a writer” – if for no other reason than it’s just not healthy for me as a person. I need to be three-dimensional. And I dare say that the invisible door in the wall I keep slamming myself against is waiting to be discovered somewhere in that three-dimensional space.

This post has gotten a bit out of hand as far as length goes, eh? To summarize the rest, I’ll be making some changes over the next few weeks designed to bring my life into better balance between writing, running my business, and re-discovering those three-dimensional parts of myself. I expect that at the outset, it will mean a loss of sales in that my writing productivity will drop off a bit. Then again, I do intend to be more active in other online (non-writing) communities, so perhaps I’ll be surprised. Next week I’ll talk about the specific changes I’m making, and how I expect it to impact sales, marketing & productivity.

In the meantime, I’m dusting off my nail art blog, and cleaning out those dead houseplants so I can replace them.My husband seemed happy to hear about both, and wondered about the tea blog as well, so perhaps he's noticed the lack of balance too. I suppose it's easier to see from the outside.

Of course, I'll still be writing/publishing...

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Sales & Pricing Strategy – The May 2011 Report

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:32:00 GMT

This is going to get long – so settle in. It’s as much an exercise in analytics and strategy as a report this month (mainly because typing it all out helps me to organize and cement my thoughts, and someone out there might find it interesting).

It’s very easy to get in the habit of checking sales at Amazon. I mean like several times per day. Amazon updates in real time (well, more or less), and it’s easy to jump in and jump back out of the sales reporting without too much clickage.

The problem with this (aside from the very obvious) is you start to think that Amazon is representative of all your sales. And if you’re only on Amazon, that’s absolutely true. But if you have work distributed elsewhere (as we all should), it may not be true at all. Which brings us to this month’s sales report. I’m going to list sales at the three main distributors I have up-to-date numbers for. With Smashwords, I had a total of 7 sales on the site, and numbers won’t be in from all the sites they distribute to for awhile yet. I also sold 2 print books (Tempest) this month, both through Amazon.

Amazon

Tempest: 137
Desert Heat: 14
The Entertainer: 12
The Bouncer: 41

Barnes & Noble

Tempest: 8
Desert Heat: 2
The Entertainer: 2
The Bouncer: 11

All Romance eBooks

Tempest: 22
Desert Heat: 4

The Entertainer: 73
The Bouncer: 150

Totals (including SW)

Tempest: 168
Desert Heat: 21

The Entertainer: 89
The Bouncer: 205

Grand total: 485 (print included)

Prices were as follows: Tempest - .99, Desert Heat - $1.49, The Entertainer - $1.49, The Bouncer - .99. And The Bouncer was a new title – released the first week of May. This was the first time a new release has ever sold even 100 books the first month. Clearly I need to write more stories like that!

It’s pretty safe to say that price plays a very important factor, judging from the numbers here. Desert Heat (DH) and The Entertainer (TE) both spent the majority of the month at $1.49, and they both sold less than the 99 cent books, though TE made a decent showing at ARe. In fact, it sold more copies there than anywhere else, earning me $61.66. The Bouncer (TB ) sold 150 copies and earned me $89.10. I make 60 percent profit at All Romance.

The numbers were skewed toward TB on all venues, and while it’s true that TE made more on each copy sold, I didn’t sell enough to make up for the potential earnings at a lower price with higher sales. So this month, I dropped the price of TE back down to 99 cents, and I’ll monitor that to see if price was an issue in sales numbers, or if it was something else (like the fact that it’s erotic romance and TB is bdsm). More on that when I have data next month.

One of the reasons I think price may have a lot to do with it, even just at 50 cents more is that if you look at those numbers, DH and TE were very close for sales on Amz. & B/N. It’s pretty obvious that erotica just plain sells better than romantic suspense at AR, so genre is clearly the primary importance at that site. It balances out though since erotica sells slower than the rom. Suspense at Amazon. Which is why it’s dangerous to assume that one site is representative of sales all over.

This makes me wonder, of course, what would happen if I dropped Desert Heat to 99 cents. I did that once for a week, and had no sales whatsoever. This month is actually the best sales month DH has had so far, and I’m hesitant to screw with that. I’d like to put it back up around $2.49 eventually...but I’m not quite ready to do that just yet. So it will stay at $1.49 for another month, because I don’t want a novella (Tempest) priced the same as a novel (DH) on principle. And because it’s still selling, albeit slow, I can afford to stick to that (if DH wasn’t selling at all, I’d drop the price, regardless). With any luck, I’ll get a novelette written in that genre that will be 99 cents, then Tempest can go to $1.49, and DH to $2.49.

So we’ll see how things go this month with TE lowered to 99 cents, and everything else left alone. I have another erotic novelette coming out in July, as well as a romantic suspense novel, and I’ll be playing with price on the erotica again then. Might move DH back up to $2.49 as well, introduce the next novel at 99 cents, and then move it up to 1.49 a month later.

Trial & error, people. That’s what this game is all about.

I should note that my marketing skills have been nearly non-existent for the past month....so a little attention to that would probably help across the board. But I do a little marketing here and there, and I’d rather be writing, for the most part. So that’s what I’ll keep doing.

One thing that is odd is that no one is buying directly from the BSB site. I’m going to split out the ebook formats this month, and see if that helps. Maybe people don’t want all three formats together after all? Maybe they don’t know what to do with a zip file? Or maybe they just are more comfortable buying from the larger sites. I’ll have to see if I can come up with that might be enticing...

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Creative Promotion

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 26 May 2011 21:24:03 GMT

I go on a lot about how writing the next book is the best promotion – and I believe that. But there’s no denying the usefulness of promotion in making people aware of books, and there’s no better motivation for continuing to write than people paying you money to read them. So it’s worth some effort in getting the word out, as long as it doesn’t interfere with writing more books.

I’m pretty careful with “normal” promotion. When I have time, I’ll write guest posts and do interviews. I use my business account to tweet links to my books, but not normally my personal account (I pimp other authors there instead, along with blog links, etc). I generally prefer letting my work speak for itself though – which is why I serialize novels on my blogs. People can read the drafts (or portions) and decide whether it’s worth buying one of my other books. I need to start sending out book quotes again too. For all people complain about those, I got a lot more positive comments on them than I ever did negative.

If you read The Variety Pages or my Snake Bites blog, you’ll know I recently decided to dabble in animated videos. This came after a late night discussion with Heidi & Carol centered on audio books and podcasting…and I had to share the Xtranormal link since we were discussing multi-media. I decided that instead of hanging about aimlessly on Twitter, I’d make a movie that night…and after much thought and planning, I created a newscast. That set off a chain-reaction of creative activity in my head that I think is going to result in a fun promotion that will not only reach an entirely new audience (the video watching community), but will do so in a manner that makes use of (and stretches) my writing/storytelling abilities.

Yes, I’m being intentionally vague here – because I haven’t made an official announcement yet. Watch the W.I.P. Newscast this Sunday night for more info.

I’m also going to explore the oh-so-scary world of podcasting a novel. This is another thing where the focus is on the story more than me personally (which I like), and a way to reach yet another set of people who might not be actively looking for books. Those who prefer audio books might subscribe to my podcast, listen to the book (I’m leaning toward podcasting books I already have published, because the text is already clean), and then perhaps decide to buy the audio version of my books (which I’ll be creating as I podcast). Or maybe they’ll listen to one podcast episode, and decide to buy the book to read, either in ebook or print format.

The thing I like about these forms of promotion is that rather than asking for something, I’m sharing something (same thing with my serial novels). And because it’s focused on my words, it’s hard to see it as a waste of time because simply doing these things is productive for me – I’m producing products *as promotion* (say that five times fast LOL). So I get the satisfaction of sharing my work in progress, and readers/listeners/watchers get a story for free. If I do a decent job, they might decide to pay me in the end by purchasing other products. It’s a winning deal all the way around, in my opinion.

And yes, while I don’t consider it particularly productive, I will be working on book trailers in the near future. Do I think it will help sell books? I used to say no…but then I bought a book based solely on the trailer, so I’m eating my words. *sigh*

It’s a multi-media world now. I think we’re going to have to get creative to catch the attention of potential book buyers from here on out. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, creative is what we *do*, right?

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Be a Data Miner

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 19 May 2011 21:47:01 GMT

Data is your friend, but it can also be your worst enemy if you let it take over your life. Still, keeping track of monthly sales is a good way to get an overall picture of what sells, where, and for what price. This assumes of course that you’re playing with price, genre, and outlets – which is highly likely. We like to fiddle with things.

I check in on my sales a couple times a day, morning and night. But I don’t keep track of daily sales. Once a month I create an “invoice” in Quickbooks for each vendor that lists the quantities and prices each book sold for the past month. This does two things. It gives me a sales record for each outlet, and gives me an easy invoice to apply payment to when the money comes in 60 – 90 days later. You could just as easily do this in an excel spreadsheet.

The handy thing about this is that when you have good monthly records, you can do nifty things like create charts and comparisons that tell you how things were from month to month. And from that, you can better target your promotional efforts, along with your writing efforts if you choose to do so.

For example, I know that at Amazon & Barnes and Noble, price seems to matter more than genre. I also know that while higher priced books sell less, I can make about the same amount of money with 1/3 the sales of the lower priced books (using my own price points – your mileage will vary). Knowing all this is how I set my current pricing strategy that will eventually include books at three price points in each genre. But I had to gather the data for nearly a year before I could use it to make any kind of logical assumptions.

I also know that at All Romance, genre seems to matter more than price. My erotica titles are both (at different prices) selling better there than the romantic suspense. I also get a higher percentage of each sale there, so it makes more sense to push erotica sales that way than toward Amazon/B&N at the moment. And perhaps even release erotica titles early on that site to encourage sales there.

The other kind of data I gather is how reviews from various places affect sales. Early Goodreads reviews seem to give sales a push, as do reviews from professional sites like Night Owl Romance and Coffee Time Reviews. This helps me target my review copies for maximum effect. Giving review copies away on the blog/Twitter doesn’t garner any results, so I won’t be wasting time/money on that in the future. I’ll be doing some ebook giveaways on Library Thing next month to experiment with that. If sales go up, it will stay on my “to do” list. If not, I’ll cross it off and move on. Same with paid ads on popular reader’s sites this summer.

It’s all about trial and error – the more I do, the more data I get. The more data I have, the smarter decisions I can make. All this experimentation is best done *now*, while I have a small-but-growing list, so that later on when I have a bunch of titles out, I’ll be savvy with where I spend my time and money promoting them. Work smarter, not harder. Be a data miner.

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Ebb & Flow

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:52:00 GMT

It was around this time last year that I decided to try an experiment, and self-publish my novella, Tempest. It seems like such a distant decision now, and at the time I thought I’d still pursue traditional publication. Mainly because I was scared to commit to taking full responsibility for my writing career, and because even such a short time ago, it was still thought that self-publishing could hurt your chances at traditional publishing. That is no longer a factor. Not that it matters, because I no longer have any desire to publish through any company other than my own.

What a difference a year makes.

I’ve now sold over 1000 copies of Tempest. It used to be said that a self-published book would never sell that many copies – and some won’t, but from what I’ve seen, most will. And as bad as it might sound, I didn’t really work all that hard for those sales either. I’m one of the laziest marketers you’ll ever meet. I believe pacing can be just as beneficial in marketing as in a plot line – and to that end, I’m pacing myself.

Sales go up, and sales go down…and at the moment, I’m just riding the wave, quietly gathering data and working in the background to get everything “just so” before I use some of the marketing tools I’ve purposely held in reserve. Details, you say? Here’s what I’ve been up to:

- Writing, writing, writing. Even if everything else falls to the side for a day or so, I rarely miss a day of writing.

- Set up a comprehensive accounting and sales tracking system, so I can keep track of sales trends and finances easily (and a bookkeeping schedule to go with it)

- Developed a dedicated web site/blog for the romantic suspense series I’m launching this summer.

- Opened a bonafide web store that makes it very easy to sell both digital and print books directly from my business web site

- Established author services packages in conjunction with My Creative Pursuits and Creative Expressions to help other authors with the knowledge we’ve gained, and open another potential income stream

- Expanded my distribution with publisher accounts on two more retailer sites (All Romance Ebooks and Xcite Ebooks)

- Started planning for the potential distribution of print books to small/indie bookstores in 2012

So you see – even though it may look like there’s not much happening at the surface, there’s a flurry of activity going on in the background, all in anticipation of that day when I have enough titles to justify flipping that marketing switch to “full power”. Rushing things isn’t the answer, in my opinion. Taking the time to set things up right and build a large backlist will hopefully equal a profit I can live on, even in the naturally lean months.

It’s all about riding the ebb & flow. Personally, I find the motion both exhilarating and motivating...

Clicking Along & Book Packaging

jamie@jamiedebree.com (Jamie D.) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:47:00 GMT

I get that most writers don’t want to really be “running a business”. I’m sort of an anomaly there, because I find that while some aspects of business are just “things that must be done”, for the most part I really enjoy the planning, organizing and sometimes even the bookkeeping that comes with owning a small business. It’s exhilarating and empowering. Maybe I come by it naturally - my dad has worked for himself ever since I was little, so it’s something I grew up with.

The *potential* is exciting.

I love the writing too, of course - it’s the whole reason for starting BSB, and every time I look at my publishing schedule, I feel both a mild sense of panic, and a soothing sense of pride. No matter what happens, or how much money I make (or don’t), I’m writing what I love, and getting it out to readers. That’s important to me.

But that’s not all I want.

I also want to have a viable business with a good income that I can draw a salary from. One that will replace my day job. I believe that if I publish enough good books, that will eventually happen (I can only write so fast). But it will be later, rather than sooner. And I’m not the most patient person in the world.

So I’ve decided to expand the BSB offerings into ebook packaging (I may add print later, but will start with digital for now). This is really the perfect solution for me, because not only will I have a second income source for the business, but I can provide a service for other authors who want to publish their own books, but don’t want to mess with the formatting and conversion process. It’s a win-win situation, especially with more and more authors wanting to just try self-publishing these days. I’ll be contracting with my graphic artist and my editor to provide affordable cover art and proof reading as well, so it could well be a one-stop shop for an author who just wants to write a book and upload it to the major distribution sites.

I’ve got the packages and pricing all laid out, I just need to finish the web store, and get my sample download ready (which will consist of uploading instructions for the three major online distributors). I plan to launch the new store and services on April 30th.

Why an online store? Because I have no control over the big distributors. They’re here today, easy to use and a great way to get books to readers. I have no plans to stop using them. But if something (anything) happens where they are bought out, or close, or decide to limit who can sell, etc...having my own store insures that I will always have a place to sell my books (and starting now gives me time to build customer relationships and buyer trust). It will also be an easy interface for authors to order packaging options, and for bookstores to order print copies (nicely discounted, of course).

So that’s what I’m up to this month. I’m also prepping another short to release the first week of May, and gearing up with promo for the big novel release at the end of July to launch what I hope will be a long-running series.

I love this job.

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