E. A. West Writing

Break My Stride? Nope.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:47:00 +0000

Quick update:

My other jobs and family life have kicked my tail. I'm not giving up. I wrote 627 words today at the airport. :)

That brings my total for the week so far to: 1679. I have 4 writing days left in the week. That's 4,580 words per day.

I could feel daunted, but instead I'm going to get a glass of tea, grab my Kindle Fire with keyboard and type for 30 minutes before bed. Another 600 words and I'll be happy.

Ain't nothing going to break my stride... oh no I've got to keep on moving!

Survivalism and Project Everest

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:20:00 +0000

This morning I woke up, I made my bed and did the dishes. This sounds trivial but it's a part of my plan of "oh grow up, Elizabeth." I will be 31 years old at the end of March and part of me still clings to an idea prevalent in my generation regarding "downtime." It goes like this.....we deserve downtime. But why? My husband's grandparents don't EVER stake a claim for leisure time, and they're actually "retired!" My parents are more of a cross between that generation and mine, with no sense of balance at all, it's full throttle work or full throttle play.

My generation benefits from the most advanced technology to date to ramp up production yet what are we producing? Not a whole lot. Sure, there are visionaries my age that are multi-billionaires from their good ideas, but as whole, most people my age aren't really willing to work hard. We're GREAT at hardly working though! :)

If I don't step up my game I'm going to blink and my life will be just a series of doing the bare minimum until I can "relax" again. That's not a legacy to leave behind! Hence Project Everest: 750,000+ words by December 31, 2013.

Where Do I Stand?

I have 19,140 words on His Parson's Wife. I typed another 140 this morning (get to that in a minute). I have 8,022 on Stone. 3,094 words on Daughters of Derbyshire. Grand total: 30,256.

This morning I tested myself on just plain old WRITE for 5 minutes and came up with this, an additional 140 words for His Parson's Wife:

Tea was served at Netherfield Park promptly at four in the afternoon and the mistress wouldn't have it any other way. Caroline Bingley walked around the parlor to check once more that every detail was perfection. Groomed for society's highest demands at an exclusive finishing school in London, where most young ladies with the stench of trade to their money would shrivel up and know their place after three years of the Ton daughters shunning them, Caroline Bingley was a different breed altogether. As the months passed by that the peerage daughters demonstrated Caroline would never be good enough, Caroline hardened her heart to making the most advantageous match possible: Fitzwilliam Darcy.

The inconvenience facing her now was waiting out his wife's death and talking her brother into taking her to Rosings to help console the man.

They're rough words, but words all the same. This means a potential rate of 1680 words per hour. When I originally calculating my "work hours" I planned 750 words per hour. I'm going to do a few more tests, including slower writing to see where I land, but I'm fairly confident I'm more in the 1,200 words per hour range, a savings in time required for the project by 40%.

I Didn't Want To

I didn't WANT to write those words, either. I forced myself to get started. Day One and already I'm thinking "Ugh, what's the point?" But it's all about survivalism and while I know the inspiration song is more about our complete disregard for the Earth, I like the pacing of the song because for me writing is like that. The verses are plodding, a march beat, a slogging through it if you will. But then, I get times where I'm like the chorus, an elated punch through the fake obstacles my mind builds up that IS pure propaganda.

I got my fist

I got my plan

I got survivalism

Now your turn. Get some! Because I'm going to go get mine right now and bang out a few thousand words, then take a break and do my HTML work for the day.

UPDATE: 12:35 PM
Just did #wordmongering on Twitter, where you write for 30 minutes. I was still interrupted twice by my daughter annnd 1,052 words were still written. Very encouraging. Just got to keep on keeping on. Now time for HTML work, will write more later tonight.

Back In the Saddle...Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 05:19:00 +0000

BACK IN THE SADDLE....WRITING

I fail a lot. I'm that person with a hundred ideas and the ability to execute maybe 5 of them. That's okay.

For a few days now I've mulled an incredibly ambitious goal, and it's all because of a conversation I had with a newer writer. Straight up she asked me if I was writing anything new.... how do I say I've been writing SIX something news for over a year? Wait, just like that.

In the course of the conversation, I confessed that I am a mountain climber. I only wrote Cancelled to see if I could. It was my Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Appalachian Mountain chain (6,683 feet/2,037 meters).

I'm scaling Everest! (29,029 feet / 8,848 meters)

Now, this is NOT my fault...I blame James Scott Bell. I am reading his Fiction Attack, which is a bit disjointed as far as writing help books go and recycles some of his old stuff that I know well because I like his books on writing, but all the same, it's a great book for a refresher course for me.

What would I do if I was truly fearless?

789,000 words between now and December 31, 2013, that's what.

Say what?

I know, you're thinking "Holy Cow, Elizabeth, that's um, beyond ambitious!" It sure is. It's 18,000 words a week between now and then. I'm aiming for 20,000 starting tomorrow.

What happens if I fail?

Wonderful things. If* I fail, I will still produce a ton of words since I'm really good at only managing 25-50% of my bigger goals. That's STILL 200,000 to 350,000 words! Oh, woe is me! LOL.

Yeah, but does this mountain even like exist? In this reality?

YES! I type 750-1500 words per hour, depending on how much I have outlined. More when I have fewer distractions. I am trained. I've groomed myself for this for ages to just type, and type, and type. I know I can write 18,000 words in 48 hours. I did that to FINISH Cancelled. I know I write thousands of words in responses on Kindle Boards in just 20-30 minutes.

I can and I will do this.

And that tomorrow is now today, so this counts as my "journaling" and since I'm up, no time like the present to get started. Later on I will break down all fo the projects etc. I am working on. For now, I have 6 that I can throw words at.

Appartment 325

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:41:00 +0000

I have "bought" a new web real estate location for my latest project chronicle: how I'm going to bring a new digital magazine to market as an app.

Come visit me at : Appartment 325

Confessions of an Ebook Marketer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 13:14:00 +0000

It's time for some tough love.

It's no secret for anyone who has followed this blog for the last two years that I am a web entrepreneur in the writing and publishing industry more than just "an author." In the last 6 years, I've made money

writing non-fiction SEO content
opinion pieces
working as a marketing copy freelancer
in social media campaign management
as a fiction author
as an ebook formatter
and most recently as the director of author advertising for a reader website and Facebook pages, The-Cheap.net, KotC and Cheap eReads.

The Internet brings a very REAL economy right into our living rooms and buying behavior is impulsive.

I buy memberships to wordpress template companies.... on impulse. (Check out elegantthemes.com)

I buy ebooks and apps for my e-reader..... on impulse. Gotta love One-Click!

Even when I shop for more durable goods online, if I do NOT finish the transaction right then and there, chances are strong I will never get the product. Why? Because there is just too much selection. By the time I'm considering a product, let's say a new MP3 player, and I put one in my cart and then I talk myself out of paying the money for the product and leave it in my cart, the product already has a negative connotation in my mind. When I come back three days later, because I decide I really want a new MP3 player, I will need to shop around again because there might be a new sale price on one I considered before. If I don't find another MP3 player with better features and a better price, I might go with the original, but it's not looking good. Rarely will I buy a product I abandoned in my cart. Do you?

And that brings me to my next topic: authors thinking like a customer. (Not a reader as we all read, but a customer, someone who BUYS ebooks).

#1 feeling a customer wants to feel after clicking Buy Now or Deliver To My.... is they got a great deal. This doesn't mean a specific price point, but rather an appropriate price point for YOUR product, your ebook. You never want a customer to feel like they overpaid for your product. This means

quit pricing your short stories and novellas at $3.99 and $4.99, then wonder why you're in the nosebleed section in the Paid Kindle store
quit slapping a homemade cover on the front of your ebook and complain that customers won't give your book a chance
quit padding the front of your ebook with advertisements for your other books so that your sample doesn't even cover your first chapter
quit paying hundreds of dollars in paid advertising when you have no other title and no reviews on your new release

PHEW!

I want to be very clear here: every single book has an audience. All of them. Even the broken English, error filled books authors like to laugh at when the worst of the worst indie titles are rolled out. Why? Because every customer has a different reading level.

Shocker, huh? For the last six months, I've been in the trenches with ebook customers. Same title, read by 10 people, some love it, some think it's okay, some hate it. Every. Single. Time. One reader dislikes any book with profanity, plain and simple. Another reader only likes books that are genre mashups because he doesn't have time to read too often, so he wants to be impressed every time he picks up a new book. One book I personally thought was rubbish from the sample was a delight for a reader I admittedly have a hard time not correcting her their/they're/there confusion and remind her there is no letter "D" in the word "congratulations" in social media posts. She cares about the story, not the grammar, since she can read right past the mistakes.

It's just like television shows. My husband and I love documentaries and don't watch shows like Jersey Shore and the Kardashians. My sister hates stuffy documentaries and DVR's all of the reality show celebrities.

Ebooks are entertainment. And there are fans of all kinds. As an author, the Herculean task is to find the customers who will like your ebook.

Test your product.

Your product consists of:

Your cover. This is the shiny bright plastic that grabs your attention to products on the grocery shelf. BE shiny and bright.
Your product description. Work that thing like your life depends on it. Every word counts triple than any other writing you will create. Get the customer's attention and make them want to own your product.
Your price needs to be a good deal for the page count. Customers devour books. No one wants to pay full ticket price at the movie theater for a 30 minute sitcom. Don't get caught up in what you can GET for the book, but what price can you live with that lets your customer feel positive about your product's VALUE.
Your author biography needs to sell YOU. No, you've been writing cutesy little stories since you were three. We all have, crayons and paper are the cheapest educational toys on the planet next to sticks and rocks. Include your interesting NON WRITING life information so customers can relate to you as it's not likely that they are all authors, too.
Your product's metadata including reviews, keywords, tags, and any other tie-in features an ebook store will let you add on (like Amazon's Author Central will let you connect your blog or video to your author account).

The only way to test your product is to place it in the path of customers. Beta readers are one way authors get early reviews up the day the book comes out. Other authors rely on networks and writing groups to help them publicize their novel. Another way is to use paid advertising.

I sell cheap ebook ads for a reason. I know I have 10,000 views of The-Cheap.net every single day, and 23,000 likes between our two most popular Facebook pages. When a book buys a $15 3 Facebook Posts in 1 Week ad from us, chances are good at the $2.99 price point, they will make that money back. Many authors, who have rocked 1-5 above, see a nice profit. The blog post/Facebook combo is only $25, and a great investment for authors with multiple books, because we promote all of them in the blog post.

There are books that do not make their money back, and as I look at the click reports, affiliate traffic and purchases, and sales ranks, I can usually identify the numbers above, 1-5, where the book product is lacking. I've helped authors who can't figure out just why their book won't appeal to customers via phone conversations, email, and even video chat. I'm not a snake oil salesman, I've turned down books that were not ready for paid advertising, and tried to gently let authors know their price is too high for a place called "the-Cheap."

If you've never paid for advertising for your ebook, for the love of God, don't start off with a $100+ ad.

Start small. If you want to buy an ad, just to see how customers react to your product, go for $25 or below. Sites that charge that do not generally have the hundreds of thousands of followers that the more expensive places have. But here's the thing, you could have one little problem with your listing, and it won't matter if a million readers look at the book if the cover/description/price turn off 999,900 of the people who view it.

But Why Should I Pay for Advertising When xyz.com gives it Free?

Here's where we go behind the curtain.

A reader site falls into one of two categories: hobby and business. The hobby blogs are typically your review blogs, run by one or maybe two people, who have organically grown their audience over time. This blog here is a hobby blog, I don't monetize it nor have any plans to do so. I write here when I want to, and the last two years of blog posts gets me about 100-200 views per day.

A business blog is a site usually run by more than one person and requires 24/7 maintenance. Increasingly, these reader communities are not just a blog, but also Facebook pages, Google + accounts, Twitter streams, etc. etc. Yes, you can schedule posts, and automate SOME of the work, but trust me, most of those tools are temperamental in the extreme.

There's a natural cycle to every reader community. Early on, it needs content. It needs books it can promote to help draw in regular visitors as a place to get VALUABLE ebooks when they go on sale. To do this, the blog owner must reach out to authors and publishers to get in the "know" before a book goes on sale. They often tout they will promote your book for free.

Eventually this need for quality products to showcase turns into an avalanche, and there's no rescue dog. There are many review sites and reader sites that opened up advertising for the year that quickly see their spots fill up for months out! The number of quality books out there written by indies outnumbers the spots available to advertise books. Plain and simple. Add in the books that aren't quite ready for prime time advertising, and it's an even bigger mismatch.

Owners of reader blog and sites quickly realize they can get the cream of the crop in two ways: charge authors a small fee to be listed so only serious authors will apply, or just copy what another successful website is promoting. Either way, the ability of an author to get this advertising for free is tougher every week as more ebooks are available and fewer sites are able to stay up on the work involved to keep readers interested and adapt to the ever changing rules of social media sites.

Affiliate Monies

Unless you've had a Nook or Amazon Affiliate account, you might not have heard what this is, or you've heard other authors mention it in passing. When sites use affiliate links, they make a small percentage on the total sale completed within a specific time frame from when the link was clicked.

For example, every book cover on The-Cheap.net is an Amazon Affiliate link. Each month, all of those monies are divided by the staff it takes to run the site and Facebook pages 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If someone clicks our free ebook link, buys that, and then also buys another ebook recommended in the Also Boughts, we make 8-10% on that transaction, depending on the volume we've sold for the month already (I believe you must sell 500 products to move up to the first tier above 8%). Some products DO NOT pay affiliate monies at all, like all of the video on demand content. But if the customer purchases something else within an hour, and hasn't clicked on another affiliate link in that time frame (almost all reader communities use affiliate links), that sale counts for affiliate monies for us.

Now I know you're thinking, 8-10%, that's a lot! Sure, but look at it this way: in a month where a site makes $1,500 in affiliate money, that site brought in customers who spent $150,000 at the Amazon store.

One could argue that reader sites get enough money from affiliate programs. But you'd be wrong.

These programs are not dependable. Amazon changes their rules every few months about what products it will and will not pay affiliate monies on. Barnes and Noble does their affiliate program through Linkshare, but doesn't pay on ebooks and you can't directly link to products. Barnes and Noble wants you to put up a banner and give you a paltry cut of the non-ebook products you sell, meanwhile getting free visual advertising on your site. Yeah, no thanks.

Plus, if these programs think, even for a second, that you've not followed any of the rules on the 4+ pages of legal jargon, you don't get paid. The-Cheap.net ran into that when Barnes and Noble arbitrarily killed a number of book blog affiliate accounts last year with monies owed. We once had to change our Facebook pages to remove Kindle from the name to comply with Amazon's rules (and other sites have had to do this, too).

The target is always moving, and while it's nice, a few hundred dollars doesn't compensate for the job is takes to RUN a reader community with thousands of members.

Alright, why should authors pay for advertising?

Most reader sites worth their salt will always have a way to feature your book for free. We do. Authors on the Cheap on Facebook is always open for authors to post once per day a link to their book. 5 seconds will tell you we are inundated with book links every single day there, sometimes as many as 50 different books!

We can't run the same titles every single day, so we grab books we know our readers have liked in the past if we think enough time has passed since the last time we ran it, and new titles with great covers that grab our attention. Remember, when you are advertising for free, WE are taking the risk that customers will be attracted to your product and click and buy your ebook or other products on Amazon so we make a little bit of money. If readers only download your sample and buy your book later, we make nothing.

In August 2012, we opened up paid sponsorships, where authors could schedule their time on our Facebook pages and website, for a nominal fee. For $15-$25, authors can pick a week they want their book featured.

We are also doing a unique combo for authors using KDP Select to promote their freebie run and then also the book once it goes back to being available for paid status. I'm an author, too, I know the goal is to go as high as you can on the Free Charts, then turn around and sell as many ebooks as you can once it's back to regular price. The smart authors last year did this naturally: they booked promotion for their free listing and separate promotion for their paid listing. We're doing this all in one.

How do you think you're worth that money, though?

Two of us are the primary staff for author ads, meaning we are the ones getting up everyday to make the Facebook posts and blog posts. We also make the HTML pages authors sign up on, maintain the schedule, track down authors who paid for promotion but don't have their ebook out yet, handle email questions from authors who are new to this world or self-promotion, and design, run, and complete giveaways to attract new readers to increase traffic. We check to see if books are available on every ebook outlet and make each post by hand because prices are not consistent across the board. A book can be $2.99 on Monday, FREE on Wednesday, and $4.99 on Friday!

Our two staff salaries are paid with 80% of the author ad money. I do the majority of the HTML work, schedule maintenance, emails, and giveaways. My friend and co-worker, Tobi, does the majority of the physical posts. We both work, just on THIS part of the equation, 10-15 hours per week, and we average about $8-$10 an hour.

The other half of our staff hunts for deals and maintains the blog, The-Cheap.net, and have built the Facebook pages over the last two years. That side of the team also runs giveaways, and responds to the lion's share of reader correspondence. They rely most on the affiliate monies for their pay. They get up at the butt crack of dawn to get the best deals out in time for the morning Facebook check on the East Coast.

We walk readers through converting DRM free Kindle books to epub and sideloading them to their Nook. We provide both indie and mainstream published deal books so readers keep coming to us every single day for deals. And this helps indies because it brings mainstream published books into their Also Bought algorithms We don't skip a day of posting deals, because the second you take a day off, you lose readers. We answer weird questions, like "I want Wizard of Oz to be free. Can you please post the link?" as if we have control over what books go on sale and when! We explain features and tips and tricks of the various ereaders in a friendly customer support way that Kindle and Nook don't offer.

All of us spend at least 5-10 hours a week just being human with the readers. Talking about what they're reading now, their personal struggles with exceptional children, or lingering disabilities from an auto accident, etc. We care, genuinely, for these people that patron our deal store every day. This is the interaction MOST authors miss out on doing because they're too busy either writing or spam linking their book on social media. They forget to BE social.

Yeah, but I could do that....

You're right, you could. You could easily spend 15-20 hours a week building a reader community, responding to spam and issues and discussions all week long, even on holidays. Some authors do, quite successfully. They call them Street Teams and the like. But for the most part, most authors do not have the organizational skills and discipline to run a reader community. It's like that getting up and writing 2,000 words every single day philosophy. Some authors have it, and they don't only rely only on paid advertising. Other authors choose to spend that time more wisely by writing new books or working on their day job, etc.

The bottom line is that running a reader community that buys ebooks is not an easy feat. It takes slow, methodical work, and a willingness to keep at it, even on days when you only earned $2.17 in affiliate monies. :) To allow authors to schedule promotions, even free ones, takes man hours and attention to fine details. Finally you have to do this not just for the money. It doesn't pay enough to feed a family, so all of our staff have a genuine joy of reading and promoting indie books, for a variety of reasons. That's what helps us ignore our families for an hour or two on Christmas to make sure deal posts go up, or checking our email one last time before going into a movie theater.

Once upon a time...

I too was against paid advertising. I was right, back then, that I should NOT pay for advertising as I was lacking in a few of the five areas of my product I list above. My cover wasn't appropriate for my genre and I had only a few reviews. Now that my book has an attractive cover for my target audience, romance readers looking for something different, AND I have 23 book reviews, AND I've tweaked my product description to really send a clear message that my book is not a typical romance, I buy advertising all the time.

My book will be free tomorrow through Thursday. I've paid $60 for a KND sponsorship, $25 for The Kindle Book Review, and I will promote my book in an ad spot on The-Cheap.net (which is free, since I run that). $85. Last year, I made it to #12 in Free Fiction. Tomorrow? Who knows. I might not make it anywhere because too many other great books are going free for the New Year. I might crack the Top Ten Free. I haven't promoted my book in a few weeks because I knew I was going free, and I didn't want to encourage readers to pay for my book knowing it would be free a few days later.

No matter what though, I know as a business woman I have a great product for a great value and I'm going to advertise it. Paid advertising is about putting my book in front of the eyes of strangers to me, my book, and everything I do in the web world to help others around me. It's a one-shot, split second moment to see if I can hook the customer into an impulse Buy Click, or not. And at the end of the day, that has very little to do with the advertising site, since it's the same X thousands of readers that see my book as who saw the books yesterday, and the day before that, etc.

It comes down to MY product and the value I offer to readers. If I take care of that, then it doesn't matter what I pay for advertising, my customers will buy my book.

Writer Beware MWiDP and My Role In The Mess

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 04:50:00 +0000

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud.
All men make faults.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 35

In September of 2011, I published my first novel, Cancelled, after 6 months of hob-knobbing with other “professional” authors online. I was a regular comment maker on The Writer's Guide to e-Publishing, and one of its biggest cheerleaders. As soon as the book came out, I received no help from anyone there at the time save for Tonya Kappes, who to this day is one of my author acquaintances I will bend over backwards to help anytime she asks. Yet, still a noobie, I remained a regular reader and learned about Mark Williams international Digital Publishing.

A few of the major players at WG2E vouched for working with Mark and Saffi and shared the signup to join MWiDP. The premise was simple:

Saffina Desforges, the dual writing name of two individuals, was already a best-seller. They were going to help upcoming authors with the UK side of things, being able to negotiate new channels of distribution over there because we wouldn't be a hundred authors negotiating one or two books each, but one cohesive organization negotiating for a large catalog of hundreds of ebooks. Bigger authors than me had already signed up and confirmed they were signed up in the comments section.

Original WG2E post: http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/trans-atlantic-weather-forecast-two%E2%80%99s-company-three%E2%80%99s-a-cloud

You can see in the comments just how “fresh” I was to publishing.

I was picked up and giddily “signed” my contract in early October 2011. I felt like I was being very smart, as I was only lending distribution rights with a 30 day removal if I chose at any time. I mean, I read all of the contract warning posts on The Passive Voice Guy, I had nothing to lose. Who wouldn't want to ride the coattails of successful authors?

By the end of that year, it turned out that many of those big names left the “publishing company.” I hesitate to call it that, though that's what Mark and Saffi wanted, because at least in my case, there was no cover art done, no editing, nothing like that. The excuse given was KDP Select, and Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award, but I later found out well after the fact it was mostly due to non-communication and other bigger issues.

Still, I was very small potatoes, and dealing with a very demoralizing situation where I had allowed myself to be taken advantage of for technical skills in return for nothing. Mark's shoulder was where I proverbially “cried.” As a way of cheering me up, I became involved in the technical side of MWiDP, first formatting ebooks then stepping up to make a website. This truly helped me stay in this industry as the other situation had me ready to quit fiction altogether and go back to ghost writing non-fiction articles. I had a purpose again.

Mark and Saffi paid for the hosting costs, and the understanding was that I would make the shell, they would populate it with information and/or give me the information and I would make it. I made two shells, and never got the simple list of authors in MWiDP at any time. Should have been a red flag that there was no spreadsheet of publication schedules, who was in, who was out, etc. And admittedly it was, even back then, but it didn't affect me and I was so eager to be a part of something bigger, I overlooked it. They must just be too busy to get to me, was my rationalization.

By spring of 2012, the few emails I had with Mark were mostly can you give me the login again to the site, I'll get you the content, and more talk about the “exciting” things just around the corner. I had stopped formatting ebooks for them as it was never a paid position and just a barter for editing help with my next book, but I wasn't finding time to write it. I admittedly did not step down from that position very well, telling them I would get to it, get to it, get to it, and then didn't. I own that. But at the time I was rather lost in what I was even doing as a person, and there had been no reciprocation of any work on their part, so I don't feel too terribly guilty about a momentary flaking.

I have since learned that compensation has to go both ways in this business or the person doing you strictly a “favor” will disappear. So don't make agreements to recompense in the future or BE recompensed in the future as none of us really know what that future will even hold. Living in the NOW is a good rule of thumb when it comes to monies.

By June of 2012, my royalty statements for Cancelled had not been updated since March. I was the listing agent, for lack of a better word, for a few MWiDP titles on Nook as I am a U.S. Citizen and can publish directly through them while UK authors still can't. I pulled my book from MWiDP cordially, and was asked to continue being the listing agent for the other books. I insisted on a contract between us before I would agree to continue (as I had been operating on the PROMISE of such a document for 3 months, and I needed to cover my butt in case an author accused me of stealing their work). I received it that day.

Now I knew Mark is in a remote location and Saffi was in the UK, but during all of this, all of the excuses of no access, can't get this done, the pen name Saffina Desforges kept publishing books. So the technical and banking difficulties they shared with us only go so far in my mind. Really, my personal experience was every time I gave a firm “This or else,” something was done within 24 hours.

I routinely checked with my authors they were receiving royalty payments from Mark and Saffi after I forwarded them the monies due from Barnes and Noble. I knew even in the back of my mind I could not rely on their ability to conduct business (really, what publisher doesn't have a spreadsheet of their authors? I run an author ad marketing company and I can tell you who bought when and where at any given moment!)

October 12, 2012, I learned that an author wasn't receiving royalty payments or statements about the original anthologies. At first, I was told it was a miscommunication about monthly versus quarterly statements. Another caveat for other authors: don't treat email communication as written communication. Yes, it IS, but for major changes to a contract, rewrite and re-sign the contract. Email is a pain in the butt to try to fish out the sequence of correspondence, and even timestamps can be altered and then you have to try to contact the ISP and that's a mess.

I defended MWiDP on the basis of knowledge I had at the moment, as was asked by the original poster on Kindle Boards. I knew my authors had been paid. I had an email from Mark saying all of the anthology authors agreed after the fact to quarterly statements. I posted the information I had, and the background information I knew about the organization.

After taking a break due to a tooth mishap for the weekend, I learned Saffi made some extremely poor decisions to publicly post private email correspondence with the original author, AND, then insulted other authors including current MWiDP authors. I never got to see the original message as it was removed by the time I followed up on the post. This is probably a good thing as I doubt my tooth pain would have allowed me to be particularly graceful.

In good faith, I am not perfect. I've made many mistakes in the last year learning my way as a self-published author. Now I work mostly as an ebook marketer and soon will be directing a digital magazine all about e-reading. I don't care if an author makes $5 a month in royalties or $5,000,000 a month in royalties, we all put our periods in the same place. We are all equally valuable, we are all important. No one should EVER tell an author he or she is unimportant because of the amount of royalties he or she makes. Ever. It is rude, unprofessional, and not a person with values that I want to work with.

Therefore, in light of the public inappropriate behavior by Saffina, and some more private correspondence with Mark that left me with a troubled feeling in my gut, I have served official notice that I will no longer be a listing agent in any capacity for MWiDP books. I gave 30 days notice, as per my contact, that the listings will be pulled no later than November 14, 2012 unless other arrangements are made earlier than that.

For new authors out there reading this, don't get discouraged about every opportunity that comes your way. I had 3 really terrible business situations happen to me between when I published and now, and my 4^th opportunity has been a complete blessing. There are ethical people out there. There are sound businesses to work with. I still don't think in my heart that there was malicious intent in the MWiDP organization, I think there was more work involved than Mark or Saffi ever realized and that 10% of not a lot to begin with is still not a lot. Where I don't care for their decisions is I think the handwriting was on the wall long ago that this idea wasn't going to work, and when the first exodus of authors left, that was probably the time to say “Wait, maybe we should rethink this.”

I know Mark didn't want to tell any authors “No.” I'm probably one of those authors as my book earns very, very little overseas (like single digit monthly sales figures). But really, true publishers that take on the risk of making money need authors that sell books. The problem is that if an author is selling books, why does he or she need a publisher?

I've accepted where I am as a self-published author. Hopefully, by my second publishing anniversary, I will be celebrating 1,000 books sold and a new title. In the meantime, I'm having a blast running the author ad program for The-cheap.net and designing our magazine. I'm part of a team, as I hate the solo aspect of this career choice, but I still have areas under my control. I'm sad about MWiDP as it is a great idea on paper for authors to band together under an umbrella organization for negotiating purposes, but quite a mess to actually make happen in real life.

I wish Mark and Saffi great luck in the future, and I hope that by sharing this story of my own mistakes it will help other new authors make better decisions in their own careers, whether or not they decide to share control of their ebooks with other organizations or not.

To Kobo I Will Go.... Publishing via WritingLife

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:29:00 +0000

It's no secret Kobo, the most popular ereading device in Canada and other countries, has been working on their own self-publishing platform called Writing Life.

I am pleased to share that it is now out of beta and open to all!

I uploaded Cancelled without hesitation! And this is a very, very good thing for authors and readers! And here it it!

BUY CANCELLED ON KOBO

About Kobo

Kobo ereaders were sold at Books A Million until recently, and are now sold by Target in the United States. There are also Kobo reading apps. Read here about Kobo's market share internationally!

Why are Readers Going to Like Kobo?

Kobo does not allow public domain content to be published, which should cut down on the "crap." And books can be free at any time, NOT for only 5 days and only on a Kindle.

The .epub file format is convertible to .mobi with Calibre, as long as DRM is not applied (make sure you uncheck that, by default in WritingLife DRM is applied!). epub is THE ebook standard, not .azw or .mobi which are Amazon's proprietary formats. That means, ANY ereader, other than the Kindle family, can read a non DRM file purchased at Kobo.

Kobo still has an affiliate program, unlike Barnes and Noble, so for Nook users and Kobo users, reader communities can still share reviews and links to epubs and make a small amount of money in affiliate monies for their trouble.

Oh, and let's talk about the Kobo website shall we? It integrates with Goodreads! Yep! And, the site has social media buttons integrated right into the page listing, so I can Pin a book on Pinterest, or share it on facebook, or tweet it (Amazon has this after you buy). And on my own listing, where I have downloaded the sample, guess what? It shows right on the cover a blue box that says this book is IN my library! As someone who reads 3-5 books a week, I NEED this feature. I don't know how many times I've sat, wasting 10 minutes to try and decide if I've read a particular Pride and Prejudice continuation, or maybe just one similar, ah forget it I'll buy it, and THEN Amazon tells me "You already purchased this book." GAH!

Finally, and most importantly to readers with multiple devices like me, a Kobo listing CLEARLY states if there is DRM on the file in the eBook Information section. Amazon does too, but it uses the vague terminology "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" Huh? Confuse me much? Just say DRM or no DRM.

I am impressed as a reader.

Why Should You As an Author Like Kobo?

Kobo is international. Kobo was international before Amazon cared about those markets. Kobo doesn't have the stigma (and yes, there IS a stigma) of being an "American" gadget. It's Canadian. ;) Best yet, the Writing Life interface is AWESOME....

Royalties: $1.99-$12.99 is a 70% royalty rate.
All other prices are 45%

You can make your book free when you want to. Anytime. :)

Tired of checking KDP daily for your sales and making your own reports? Yeah, me too. Kobo's WritingLife has many of that reporting built in, including your daily sales! YEAH! So now, you can really tell when a book's marketing has made any kind of difference instead of a guess, assuming Amazon updated their KDP stats that day.

Now I have to learn a few more languages and see about advertising my English written book on some international reader sites. :)

Oh some quick FAQs:

You can upload epub straight to Kobo, or they will convert .doc, .docx, or .odt if you follow their style guidelines... (I make epubs with Jutoh as then I can control the metadata)

You can put your book in 3 categories.

DRM is default, make sure you remove it in step 3 if you don't want it.

You don't need an eISBN, but it's optional. After you get an eISBN from Kobo, put it in your Goodreads listing to integrate the two systems.

Uploading is a bit buggy, I kept getting error messages, but once I clicked save and went pack to that step, my cover and file were uploaded. Weird, I know. Might just be today's flurry of publishing activity.

A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby. CANCELLED is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and KOBO

WIP: STONE. Never up Mom's expectations, a clothing designer kicks "Mr. Right" to the curb.

Totally for fun I am also working on a Pride and Prejudice What If? His Parson's Wife is supposing both Darcy and Elizabeth make hasty decisions to marry others and then defy society's rules to let love find a way. Yes, it is OH so scandalous!

How to Choose Between Self-Publishing and Traditionally Publishing Your Book.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:13:00 +0000

There appears to be an uptick in articles condemning the self-publishing option. I went the self-publishing route, but I have very good friends who are traditionally published. And as someone with just one book and a small amount of sales (500 to date in 9 months), I think I am qualified to speak to new writers out there still on the fence. I am NOT like any of those big time self-pubbed authors that are cited in the articles. I will not sell thousands of copies any time soon.

What do we want? When do we want it?

As individual as our stories is what an author dreams to get out of publishing his or her story. Before we get too far, BOTH paths to publishing take work and time. So let's not discount anyone with a manuscript working towards publication as taking an easy way out. Nothing is easy about publishing a book.

What do YOU want?

There is nothing wrong with feeling that your writing is validated because it is published by a publishing house. That's WHAT they sell. They sell a service to you, for a percentage of your future earnings on that book, that offers a professional publishing experience. If you don't feel that you possess skills in areas of technology, negotiating with service providers (and not everyone does and there is absolutely no shame in that), and managing marketing and distribution channels, then traditional publishing is definitely for you.

A lot of the anti-traditionally publishing rhetoric I read from self-pubbers involves the fact that many publishing houses now require an author to go through an agent first. You know, this doesn't make them evil. Let's face it, talk about writing a book with any acquaintance and you'll hear all about how they too would just LOVE to write a book. The DEMAND for publishing has grossly outstripped the supply for a very long time. What does this mean? It means that publishing companies have enjoyed many decades as the hot girl at the dance all the boys want to dance with, so she doesn't have try to spark up conversations with guys to get noticed. They can't publish everything that is well-written, they can't. At this point in time, they have bills to pay, salaries to cover, and can only publish the books that are going to bring them the best return on investment (the investment being the cost to publish the book, including the author's advance and marketing).

Now, there is another side to that publishing service that authors need to know and that is bringing more cooks into the kitchen is GOING to change the dinner menu. In most cases, the traditionally published authors I have spoken to feel that traditionally publishing has made their book better, though that doesn't always mean they made more money because they traditionally published. So if control over your creative endeavors is a very important part of your publishing journey, you are going to need to work hard to find a publishing contract that gives you that control, and it won't be easy to find.

Self-publishing isn't all it's cracked up to be, either. You are an island. Sure, you can network with other authors and cross-promote one another, but those are all temporary. Not to mention, the amount of details you have to stay on top of is insane. Yes, you can publish a book faster than the years it takes going traditionally published, but not as fast as you think. It can take weeks to work with an artist for your cover art, or a few hours if you can make it yourself. Editing passes with a freelance editor can be stressful, especially if one of you go on vacation, and you have to be disciplined enough to work usually to their calendar of availability. If you say your final draft will be ready for them in three months, don't be late, or it could be months before there is availability again.

Unless you enjoy managing your book, and I am someone who does, it can feel distracting to an author who loves to just write to have to check sales, look for new sales channels, read blogs and publications that tout the latest changes in ebook formatting guidelines (I'm glaring at YOU Kindle 8 formatting and your many, many headaches) and still work on new projects. Personally, I get bored with just the writing side of things. :) I love writing blog posts and working on technical stuff. I love managing my social media and working with readers on a one-by-one basis.

Now the later is all stuff that ANY author can do, including traditionally published ones. However, I find that I am VERY motivated when my efforts directly bump my sales figures and since traditionally published authors have to wait months or quarters to see sales data, that wouldn't work for me.

What IS your book?

Remember how I said that publishing houses want to publish that which is successful to their bottom line? It's not completely true that is their ONLY motivation. Certainly it's a big deal, but the bigger deal is if the book will make money AND fit into the brand of the publishing arm publishing it. See, to help sales, many companies break down into imprints, smaller companies that focus on a certain type of book.

When I was researching publishing options for CANCELLED, and all I had was an outline, I scoured the requirements for every single Harlequin imprint, even the ones not currently accepting submissions (where there is a will, there is ALWAYS a way). I knew after a few days that my book, a romance without a traditional ending and a non-traditional main POV, was not going to fit any of their imprints. This isn't bad, it just is what it is. My book has been purchased by more than 500 people (and no, my family is NOT that big... lol) and downloaded by nearly 15,000 people. Harlequin can't take the time to serve them and keep their overhead good, but I can. So I did.

Books that really push genre lines and especially the books that are mashups of multiple genres (which I love to read myself) are great for self-publishing because those books usually take a creative and targeted approach to marketing. A chick-lit/mystery isn't just for all mystery readers or all chick-lit readers, it's for readers who enjoy both. As a publisher-author you have to go out and FIND THEM. A marketing department with hundreds of books to promote in a given quarter may not be able to take that time for each title.

No matter WHAT path you choose to publish your book, define what is different about you and your book. If your book is exactly like book XYZ that was a best seller in your genre, guess what, the publisher is going to think "been there, done that." Not to mention, a publishing company has the schedule set for at LEAST the next 12 months. If your book is something that is HOT right now, it won't be hot by the time it comes out.

The more differences you find about your book than the genre you want to sell it in probably means it's better to self-publish it. Certainly, query agents and don't give up on your dreams of traditionally publishing if that is your dream (see what do you want above). But reading ANY agent's blog will tell you that as a new author, you are already an unknown. If your cowboy/alien/cozy mystery/women's fiction novel is loved by you and all of your beta readers, take it as a sign that someone out there will like it too; it just might not be something an agent feels he or she can sell. Big time authors with long-standing con,tracts are allowed a few misses, since they've more than made their money for the publishing company. As a new author joining a publishing company, we have to hit at least a double or a triple to be asked to bat next inning. A walk or a single just won't cut it, and heaven help you if you strike out (well that's not true, because you can always self-publish, teehee).

BOTTOM LINE

What does your gut tell you? By all means, do NOT self-publish just because of the money. No matter which path you choose, believe me, the money is slow coming. It all takes time. Second, there is upfront cost to both options. It isn't cheap to mail out manuscripts, unless you just do email submissions.

Authors should follow the publishing path that makes them feel good about their writing, because ultimately, that's where an author is going to be the most successful, personally and financially. Yes, many of us who pursue self-publishing have an independent streak a mile and a half long and a passion that few could match for our work. I'm a great saleswoman in other arenas, so I knew without a doubt that I could sell my book reader by reader if I had to. In fact, do you know I chat up my book with people in real life, handing them my business card with the information about my book on it? You bet I do! And I enjoy every minute of that.

But not every author has that same personality. I know other authors who cared about getting traditionally published and WANTED more than anything to get an agent and they did so without batting an eyelash because they did their homework first. They will also have something I don't, a safety net. If I decide to take 6 weeks off and work on my next novel, my marketing machine stops. In their case, their publisher should still be promoting the book (although I don't know how long exactly publishers will promote a work, many reports on the web are that books only get X amount of time to go big or go home, but I can't see that's always true since books like the Hunger Games were out long before they made it to #1 on any kind of list).

Most of life, and publishing too, is about knowing what you want and making a plan to get it. And when Plan A fails, Plan B fizzles, and Plan C was a non-start, be the person who implements Plan D-Z with just as much faith and excitement as you did with Plan A. The only wrong choice is leaving your manuscripts on your hard drive and giving up.

Google's Keyword Tool: How Authors Can Use It To Choose Their Blog Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Remember in our early writing classes we were taught to not be cliché, to use interesting words and phrases to describe the world around us? Yeah, toss that out the window for this discussion. Keyword strategies involve using the same keywords over and over again so that search engines can process your posts. Today's algorithms are very, very smart, and have started to correctly process most metaphors and related terms the way a human would. But for professional writers, our more obscure metaphors do not translate.

Now this can technique can also be used for a blog on writing, but I am going to tackle the more elusive blog traffic we all want: readers.

Who is your perfect reader?

I don't want to hear any whining that you don't know who your reader is. Please. As writers, we get into the heads of our characters with the snap of our fingers. Do the same thing.

Who is my perfect reader? (This is not meant to exclude readers who don't fit this demographic, just gives me a target to shoot for. You might have different “perfect readers” each book!)

For CANCELLED:

My reader has some education after high school, and she had a mother who read romance novels, but she considers herself above the “traditional” romance novels because she cut her reading chops on the more modern, contemporary “chicklit” tales. She works, and has to budget her money. She has a family member that is screwed up and causes drama in her life. She has had at least one serious relationship.

Her favorite stores are Kohl's and Target. She drives a foreign made sedan. For fun, she reads on her ereader, and in her group of friends, she's normally the one with plan or new thing everyone must copy. She doesn't do forums, and her social media is updated with her smart phone, because she spends enough time in front of the computer at work. When she comes home, she likes to unwind by reading, watching reality TV, and she has a secret thing for Johnny Depp. Like she owns every single movie he's ever made. On the weekends, she wears jeans, but at work she has to wear casual business clothes. She likes to cook, but also loves the convenience of food made for her. It's a luxury she indulges in more than she should if she wants to get ahead in her savings.

So that's my perfect reader, one I think would read Cancelled and LOVE IT.

Now let's look at some keywords (I highlighted above) with Google's Keyword Tool.

Let's tackle the easy ones first: “watching reality TV and Johnny Depp”

Reality TV Shows

I love “So You Think You Can Dance.” I typed that in as a keyword, searched, and found a great, low competition keyword: SYTYCD videos. Now here's what I can do. I can write up a blog post once a week highlighting 3 favorites SYTYCD videos on Youtube with them embedded. That's fun to me, and it gets searched 290 times a month in the U.S. alone. Now, I would also put in some other keywords, like “so do you think you can dance” which is searched 5,400 times a month and also has low competition.

Going a step further on my “platform” I could make a special video trailer for Cancelled that somehow worked in So You Think You Can Dance, such as a video that I think reminds me of a part in my book. For example, I LOVE Season 4's Bleeding Love by Mark and Chelsie, and it could easily be a video from Kellie's point of view in my book.

Even a post every week or two, over a few weeks would give me organic results. And I could pick other shows that I like, too.

Johnny Depp

I searched “Johnny Depp” and a result I immediately like is “mad hatter johnny depp” which is searched 5,400 times a month and has LOW competition. This is more of a creative type post idea. Mad Hatter Johnny Depp Mondays. I could share the absurd, the funny, or just play around with 6 words I have to turn into a story (flash fiction that many authors like to write). But see how I incorporate a keyword phrase? Linking to an image of Johnny Depp as a Mad Hatter would help even more, and this is the kind of post shared on Pinterest that would resonate well. Working with keywords ties into everything! :)

Her phone, her car, and her clothes

I imagined what my reader uses. This could go a few ways. I could blog about three great purse deals I find online that I think she'd like. “Purse deals” is another low competition keyword phrase with 4-5,000 searches per month. Saturday's Shopping Spree: Purse Deals gets TWO keyword phrases in there! “Shopping Spree” is searched 22,500 times in the US alone and has low competition. I could tie this into the next section, too. Make it an interactive thing where on the comments readers can share their great deals online in the comments and I'll put them in the blog post. My friends and I all LOVE to find great deals, but can't always spend the money. But if you blog about them, you get the kudos for finding them.

My reader's phone I could turn into a weekly syndicated post. I could go out and find helpful articles on how to use iPhones, Android phones, etc. and share little bits and link to the original article. This helps my traffic, gives those sites a pingback, and helps my readers get information they need.

Budgeting, Saving Money

Like the above keywords, this is another “educational” type keyword. “Money saving mom” is searched 49,500 times per month in the US and also has Low competition. I searched “funny money saving ideas” but that is only searched 39 times a month, so rather worthless. In the suggestions, Google had in there “money saving mom.” Now, that I could work with.

I could make the stories funny, like failed attempts to save money. I could write on serious things, like cutting the grocery bill. I could share great restaurant deals, remember my reader likes to eat out.

I know this is a lot to take in. But I hope you get the gist. Imagine your reader, make your keyword lists. Search them in Google's Keyword Tool and then choose 1-3 to make a regular feature on your blog. Make sure it's something YOU enjoy writing about.

BIG BIG NEWS, Micro-search engine optimization

Remember how I have said over and over again that keywords alone will not make or break your blog? Here's more proof:

When I am logged into Google (my gmail account) and I search a term, in my results are matches from the blogs and people I follow IN my social media. Yes! So if you really get into the head of your reader, you don't have to always worry if your taking on a highly competitive keyword, because Google will share your content with your followers!

This is all long-term blog audience building. Certainly, you can accelerate the reach by tweeting and sharing your blogs. But the basic building blocks of your blog should be there before you get busy with a social media campaign. Make sure your blog is pleasing to the eye (black text on light backgrounds) and that readers can easily find information they need.

Oh, and absolutely have a signature at the bottom of every blog post that sells you and your book. :)

eEKLY: The New Face of the Weekly Newsletter

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 05:00:00 +0000

The problems:

Email newsletters have notoriously low conversion rates for reader sites, even more for authors. Industry standards are well below 25% (mailchimp.com).

Clicks inside of email newsletters are even more abysmal.

The solution:

Test a new weekly publication that goes straight to a reader's ereader without charging the reader a subscription fee.

Although Amazon has experimented with a subscription type service for blogs and magazines, none of us have heard of any runaway success. If anyone knows of one, please share. But by and large, individual authors won't/don't have the time or resources to run a successful blog subscription service through Amazon's service.

Proposed: the eEKLY

The eEKLY is a weekly publication put out by an ereading community website, a publisher, or other group of authors with a similar marketing plan in mind. This electronic publication is made available in .mobi, .epub, and PDF so that readers can download or send the file straight to their Kindles, Nooks, or computer.

Benefits of the eEKLY

Links to books (and other products on affiliate sites) are hosted inside of the ereader so the reader has immediate access to a one-click buy environment.

Authors can use the eEKLY to give away a free copy (serialized over 3 to 4 weeks) in a qualified manner. No more thousands of downloads that who knows who will read? By serializing a "free" book, authors have access to their conversion rates of sampling, answering the question of how many readers who read the first section of your novel come back for more?

Serialized books through the eEKLY can foster discussion for a publisher or e-reading community as it taps naturally into a book club type setup, opening the door for direct author/reader interaction about the novel, because the community is on the same page with a novel at the same time.

By choosing other books to feature at the end of each section, including an author's other books and books in the same genre, there is an opportunity to humanize the "We Also Suggest" algorithm.

Readers receive a valuable publication, meaning there is content inside they WANT to open and read as opposed to an email newsletter that is 100% disposable.

Because the novel is serialized in 3-4 parts, readers will hold onto and possibly repeatedly reference the material inside each eEKLY.

Drawbacks of the eEKLY

Authors must be willing to serialize their novel, for free, with no expectation of royalties, up to 10,000 downloads or for 30 days (sites publishing the eEKLY would agree to take down the files 30 days from their release). Instead an archive file would be offered: a catalog of books that were featured that week.

Readers need training to sideload or send the file to their ereader. This is a great opportunity for authors involved in a specific eEKLY to talk to a reader about their ereader, but could also be a huge headache/cut down on reader adoption.

Eventually, involvement in the eEKLY would require a fee paid by the authors featured to compensate the editor for time compiling the files (There is no fee to be a part of the test, which is what this is).

So who wants in?

I am making a test prototype of the eEKLY (4 issues) for two ereader community sites, The-Cheap.net and eBookSwag.com. One of the books I am serializing for free is my own, but I am willing to serialize up 2 other books, and I can advertise books in each issue.

I am looking for up to 2 other titles to serialize (need word documents of manuscript and cover art to make ebook files of the eEKLY issues) that are romance, chicklit, contemporary fiction, or women's fiction oriented. There's nothing wrong with the other genres, and eventually, if the test is successful, there will be multiple genres for the eEKLY so that the "Also Bought" type algorithms are more humanly influenced.

I am looking for up to 15 additional titles per issue, for a total of 60 other books that I can feature. I will need an image of your cover (longest side 200 px) and the ASIN. I can match up and find the book on Nook if it's available there. If your book is on Nook too, first priority will be given to those titles because The-Cheap.net is strong Nook community.

If you are serializing your novel, you agree to allow each "chunk" to be made available for no more than 30 days or up to 10,000 downloads (as calculated by clicks).

What do you get?

Test out a new innovative spin to the reader newsletter housed within an e-reader for free.

Full disclosure of the clicks (Amazon) and # of downloads each eEKLY issue receives, as tracked through link clicks.

So let's get started!

Click here to register how you want to be featured in the first month of eEKLY issues.

Dark Dealings Release

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:42:00 +0000

This Tuesday, MAY 23rd, join me in celebrating my friend Karen Victoria Smith's new release DARK DEALINGS.

At thirteen, Micaela O’Brien was found wandering a pasture in Ireland, the sole survivor of a mid-air explosion. Now, as a successful investment banker, she will discover that Wall Street has fangs and claws. When international power brokers, creatures hiding in plain sight, threaten her and those she loves, will this heiress to a Druid legacy deny her power and let loved ones die again?

A thrill ride of money, monsters and murder across the globe.

Karen is also going out on tour! :)

Breaking Into Writing Nonfiction Articles For Pay Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:01:00 +0000

Before fiction, I wrote non-fiction articles for websites and content for private clients. In four years of working in the time it takes to do a hobby, I made over $8,000 (I did take about 18 months of maternity leave from when my pregnancy became problematic until my little one was about a year old). Could I have made more if I wrote more? Absolutely. My articles that I wrote on speculation, meaning just what I wrote because I wanted to, have a greater than 85% sales rate. After three years in the business, I knew if I wrote 10 articles, 5 would be sold within three months, 2 within six months, and one or two of the stragglers within a year. In fact, even though I have not written a non-fiction piece for profit in almost two years, I still made $20 this year alone in residual licenses selling.

I'm not an expert, but I know what I know. The first tenet of breaking into nonfiction writing is to never, ever PAY to sell your writing. Never. A site that sells memberships is not making enough money off the content they are selling, and therefore not a site you want to waste time with.

I've written for/sold writing on
Associated Content (now Yahoo! Contributor Network)
Constant-Content.com (by far my biggest money maker)
Helium
Guru.com
Textbroker
And another one briefly that feed eHow and Lance Armstrong's site, but the name escapes me.

Every online writing site is great for a specific type of writer. Here are the main categories:

Revenue Sharing Sites

You write, they pay you based on the page views you get because that equates to advertising dollars for them. Yahoo Contributor Network and many others do this kind of revenue. Some, like Helium or the various lenses pages (aggregators like Hubpages, Squidoo etc) have incredible hoops to jump through before you see a dime. I encourage new non-fiction writers to try out Yahoo! Contributor Network for two main reasons:

They offer upfront payment on exclusive content in certain categories (not oped, humor)
They pay $1.50 per 1,000 page views across all of your articles.

You want to be a subject matter expert on local geological digs and write a weekly column about it? YCN is for you. You can tweet your articles and develop a niche following, and people can easily follow you through their Yahoo account. I still earn about $5 a month on my articles listed there. The upfront pay is very small, a few dollars per article, IF it's accepted by their editors for upfront payment.

Bidding Sites

Other sites, like Guru, and the elance sites out there have what's called opportunities for work. Here, you write up proposals or bid on how much it will cost you to do a job. Guru.com requires a good nose for BS. The legitimate customers on there are tough to find, but when you do find one, and win the proposal round, the working relationships can be some of the best I've found. I had three long term clients from the site, and more than made up my $85 yearly membership fee (I know I said don't pay, and you shouldn't when you're just starting out. Guru doesn't require a paid membership, and I only bought one after I landed my first client with the free membership and my profits from the site covered it).

Bidding sites require some experience, that's why starting off with revenue sharing sites helps. Each bidding site requires a profile and portfolio pieces. After you've been on a revenue sharing site for a few months, you can see the articles that are getting the most hits. That's a great way to see what's resonating with readers. You have stats you can use to help a prospective client judge you: I have five SEO optimized articles this month with over 4,000 hits each. Also, and this is very, very important, you will know how long it takes you to write. You can't bid on a job that is "Write 50 blog posts for me, 500 words each, $5 a piece" unless you know that you can write that fast to make it worth your while. Many of the jobs are going to seem like peanuts. Keep in mind not everyone lives in the expensive USA and grumbling about it won't help. There are two types of writers using bidding sites: those that will roll up their sleeves and take any kind of work, and those who cherry pick for the best assignments because they have the luxury of experience or time to do so.

Auction Sites

If you want to skip bidding sites, auction sites are awesome. On auction sites, you write and set the price of your work. Constant-Content.com is one of the best sites I've worked for in this regard. The basic system is geared towards high-end non-fiction content where you set your own price. Once the article clears the editors, then it's up for sale. Once it sells, you get 65% of the article price you set. There are three types of licenses, Use, Unique, and Full. A Use license lets the buyer use the content as is, and allow you to sell it to another buyer down the road. My article "Fun Springtime Activities For Kids" sells 1-2 licenses a year at $10 for 500 words. It's been out there for 4 years.

Here is an article I wrote and sold for full rights, meaning no by line. http://www.crossmagazine.com/who-benefits-from-a-short-sale-real-estate-transaction.htm

Here is an article that sold Use licenses (2 times for $20 a piece) meaning they can't change it and I have a by line. http://www.greenearthreviews.com/home-solar-power/how-to-maximize-a-solar-panel-system-in-less-than-ideal-weather/

Some auction sites also include a bidding site type system as well. Here, clients can give specific writing job needs and then look through the submissions that come in. Some sites require the client to buy a submission, others do not. This is a shot in the dark for the writer. For me, I only wrote the Public Requests as they're called on Constant-Content.com if I could easily spin the content another way if the buyer passed me up. For example, one client asked for somewhat specific articles on solar panels. My article joined probably twenty other submissions. I did price mine a little higher than others (clients give a budget range) hoping a little it wouldn't sell. It didn't. I raised the price to what I would normally sell 1,000 words for (at that time, $45 for full rights, the market changes depending on demand, the topic, etc), and put up two companion pieces that I was able to write from the same research.

I sold one solar panel article for $85 (that was the original request that was only going to pay about $25) about three weeks after the original request closed out, and another shorter article for $20 for a use. That article has sold one additional time, in 2010. The original articles sold in February of 2009. The $85 article was 1,350 words long, and titled "What's Really Involved in Installing Solar Panels for my Home?" and tied with the tax breaks being offered at that time. The $20 article was 650 words on "How to Maximize a Solar Panel System in Less Than Ideal Weather."

Before you sign up with any website, I would write up a resume (to make profile writing easier), take a professional photograph (a home digital camera will work, but it should mostly be a head shot with you in professional looking attire) and setup a professional email account (your name or initials on a free email account, I prefer google myself for the added benefits of Google Docs, video conferencing, and other built in goodies). Finally, you need to set up a Paypal account. Also, if you do not want to give out your Social Security number (and I don't recommend that you do) sign up for a EIN with the IRS. To learn more about the differences between a SSN and an EIN, read here.

Next time I will talk more about the craft of writing for internet outlets. Stay tuned.

Vector Graphics vs Jpgs

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 05 May 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Graphic arts is my new hobby/pastime. Since buying a Bamboo Create tablet, I've been playing with graphics non stop. :) Over two years ago I heard about vector graphics, but by and large it sounded rather intimidating to me. You see, I was just really getting the hang of manipulating a JPG.

This weekend, I learned how to play with vector graphics and OH BOY is it fun!!!! You know that part of us that remembers how excited we were to get a new Lisa Frank product? It's like that.

My tool: Inkscape a 100% free to use, open source vector graphics manipulator.

Here's the basics of what a vector graphic is: each shape is an image to itself you can modify and manipulate. the star tool is the coolest, you can change the color, the number of points and manipulate the little squares on the edge called "handlers" to kaleidoscope into all kinds of shapes!!!! And the shapes will stack and go behind one another etc. It reminds me of the old type of drawing on Microsoft Word. You can also move items like WORDS to lay at an angle so that they look like they are on an object. Like below:

(I'm going to be signing ebooks LIVE on May 19th in a promotion with eBookSwag.com. They have many promotional spots still open for only $10. My ad with them will run May 16th, and I can't wait!)

See how the words look like they are on the bill board, not flat to the bottom edge of the image? That's something Inkscape does very easily. You can also treat a word as individual letters, of hold down shift, click them and treat them as a word!

Here's a quick little graphic I made of hearts. There is no heart shape per se, I had to make two circles and a square, rotate the square to the diamond orientation (or 90 degrees) laid them on top then click Union, which morphs the shapes lying on top of one another into one! Great for a person like me who can see the geometry of things, but I can't "sketch" or draw very well.

All I've learned was from Inkscape's tutorials which are SVG vector files themselves, so it's an interactive tutorial! And I've only been at this about 24 hours. One day... I'll be able to make something like this:

This is a free vector available on http://vector4free.comhttp://vector4free.com

So go play with Inkscape. It's free and fun to learn about vector graphics. While I won't be firing my cover artist anytime soon (actually NEVER) it IS nice to learn the capabilities because even if I can't execute it, I can at least know what can be done by a professional. And, I do feel like if I do decide to write some short stories, I can make inexpensive covers on my own for lower priced novels, etc. Not to mention ads and graphics to go with my blog posts! :)

United We Stand or Together We Fall: Kristine Kathryn Rusch Post of Royalty Scandal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:45:00 +0000

Background: The following post was originally posted on Kristine Kathryn Rusch's business blog when it was shortly infected with malware. Assuming a coincidence (though a very smelly one, in my book) she reposted the blog on an unlinked blog she uses for a pseudonym. Something happened to that post too.

But we are smarter and stronger than those who would wish to silence us. The call is out for indie authors to post the original post (including the copyright statement at the bottom) on their blog ASAP. By exponentially increasing the targets, they can't take us all down. :) So please, copy what's below and post it up and share it. Let's prove our might!

From Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.

Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.

Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.

Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.

The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.

I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!

The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.

Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.

I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.

I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—

Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.

The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.

I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.

To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.

But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.

The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.

The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”

Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.

This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.

I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.

So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.

Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.

In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.

Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.

Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)

On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.

On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.

Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.

But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.

I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.

So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.

Except…

The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.

Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.

The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.

So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.

From the outside.

Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.

I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.

Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.

In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.

Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.

I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.

Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.

My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:

A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?

Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.

If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.

Like this:

Advance for book one: $10,000

Advance for book two: $10,000

Advance for book three: $10,000

Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.

Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.

In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.

But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:

Advance on contract 1: $30,000

Earnings on contract 1: $23,000

Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000

Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.

Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.

Got the difference?

Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.

Nope.

I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.

Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.

But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.

This is just another one of those problems.

My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.

Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.

For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.

The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.

I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.

That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.

Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.

As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.

One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.

So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.

This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?

A lot less than I had hoped.

So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.

If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)

What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.

If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.

But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.

I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.

As usual, it’s up to individual writers.

Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.

That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.

I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.

The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.

I hope you make good decisions going forward.

Remember: read your royalty statements.

Good luck.

I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.

So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.

The donate button is below. As always, if you’ve received anything of value from this post or previous posts, please leave a tip on the way out.

Thanks!

Click Here to Go To PayPal.

Never, Ever, Underestimate JOY

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:14:00 +0000

GOOD MORNING! It's a lovely day. Look, I'm learning how to digitally paint!

Completely original digital water color/acrylic paint painting
I made this morning. I am LOVING my Wacom Bamboo
Create Pen and Tablet.

Show of hands, how many think that creativity comes from misery? That whole, we must suffer for our art?

I don't agree. You see, I've had seasons of abject misery in my life. Days where I struggled to find the will to eat. To get up an face the day. There was nothing creative or artsy about it. Now, I don't share that to contradict anyone who feels their outlet from their misery is their art. This is a very personal issue. I'm sharing this because someone who is like me might find relief that they don't have to be miserable to create.

Joy is infectious. When I am happy, my children are happy. My husband is happy. My days are exciting adventures, not chores to get through.

I've been rather stuck as of late, coming to grips with my roles as a wife, mother, and author. Call it a muse if you want, but I've been stilted in my writing. I lost my desire to write stories.

But I've got it back.

How?

A conversation with my husband where I confessed I had three unfinished outlines, bits of chapters for three stories made the difference. Oh I whined....

"Ugh, too much of me just feels like I wrote Cancelled to just see if I could. I did it. I succeeded. And the book is making money! I'm partly bored with it, and just don't feel like writing ANYTHING."

He took a sip of his coffee.

"You know what your problem is? Time management."

I scowled. Great, he was going to tell me again how I needed to schedule time to write and blah, blah, blah, which by the way, I totally tried.

"You're too caught up in making this a business that it's not your hobby anymore. You set aside time to write, but because you set aside the time, it feels like a chore."

Damn. He got it. Turns out he HAD noticed for a few months now, I wasn't coming to him and laughing about a scene I just wrote. I was only coming to him to tell him how many sales I made, where I was being interviewed, etc.

Today is my last day in Amazon's KDP Select. I feel bad because I am thankful for the opportunity, but now, I really want to make sure my book is back to being available everywhere.

And last night? Last night I read Chapter 2 of STONE and loved it. I wanted to read more! (Unfortunately, it seems like Chapter 1 is being cut, once again. I always start my stories too early it seems, but at least I can identify it, right?). And the focus is changing. Yes, Melanie Stone is STILL going to kick a total creep out of her life, but the organic story of a mother and daughter trying to repair their relationship is more important to the overall tone of the piece than I was giving it credit for:

Ergo, with much adieu, I finally have my one-sentence synopsis that's getting plastered on my wall over my laptop today:

Never up to Mom's expectations, a clothing designer kicks "Mr. Right" to the curb.

Talk about a loaded sentence! It only took me a page and a half to get it just right. As a reader, I'm thinking, wait, why isn't the main character living up to her mother's expectations, and why is Mr. Right really Mr. Wrong? That's good. That means I have a story question: How can a single-mother clothing designer make amends with her mother and get rid of a guy who won't take "No," for an answer?

Up next? The Paragraph and story arcs for the three main characters.

A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby. CANCELLED is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble

WIP: STONE. Can Melanie Stone let her mother back into her life and kick out the creep trying to worm his way in? March 2012.

What Makes Us Different? Indies vs. Traditionally Published

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:32:00 +0000

Yesterday, I spent all day with a good friend who was responsible for introducing me to Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series. She yanked out her Kindle and firmly asked me "Alright, who can you recommend?" I grinned and knowing her taste in books, suggested both Anne R. Allen and Talli Roland. :)

She wanted to know why my book wasn't mass market paperback yet, and I explained to her the ins and outs of traditionally publishing. She opened her mouth in horror when I said 17.5% on ebooks. And then when we talked about royalty statements, she said "Surely there's laws where they must give you an itemized accounting of each book sold, right?" I laughed. Nope. And she cringed when she heard statements only came every 6 months.

So anyway, on the heels of announcing that agency pricing is possibly/probably going away and what will this mean for indies? I like David Gaughran's assessment that traditional publishers will still set high list prices, so Amazon won't be deep discounting too far.... he has an awesome blog on all cool things publishing called Let's Get Digital. Anyway, one refrain I saw was this: "But our ability to be better priced was what gave us the little edge we had!"

So let's brainstorm other ways to be DIFFERENT:

Unpredictable Story Lines

We know the formulas. We know the rhetoric out there about what agents/publishers supposedly want or are willing to publish. Check out reader forums (don't spam them, just read/listen). What are readers in your genre tired of? Even if it's just a small percentage of them, you can get inspired to take your audiences to new places they haven't been before. We can take the risk on a potentially niche story because....

Kill 'Em on Overhead

Be smart about how much money you invest in your book. There is NOTHING wrong with planning to sell X number of copies and planning the book's production around that number. I knew I needed to earn out on CANCELLED within 12 months. Luckily, I earned out in 6 months. I have a tentative three year plan before I see profit on my fiction writing, but between now and then, I must stay solvent. That means I need the money invested in one book returned in time to invest it in the next book. When you're small like we are, you can do those kinds of plans very easily.

Deliver a Superior Ebook Product

Ebooks are still an afterthought to many publishers. Take some time to learn the craft of formatting. Know that readers don't like tons and tons of padding at the end of the ebook because it distorts the progress bar. Know that Kindle now defaults to Chapter 1 on ebooks, so front matter stuff is moot, you need to put a link at the end of the book to take the reader there.

Focus on the Most Important Part... The Story

Work your chapters so they compel the reader to press next page. Work with your beta readers, ask them to do some active reading, noting places they got bored, places they sighed and kept reading because they're your friend. Try out 3-4 different beginnings. Play with the structure of the story. I'm looking forward to trying out writing a novel in episodes, rather than chapters. I can experiment like that because there's no one to tell me not to!

We don't have to just beat traditional publishers on price points to stay in the game. We can deliver a superior reading experience. We can write ahead and then publish so we can publish more quickly than a traditional publisher. Our sky is the limit, so be brave and be bold. There's a bunch of readers out there needing a break from their everyday lives!

Indie Author Publication Schedule Discussion

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:34:00 +0000

Aggggghhhhh.....

If this is a "marathon," how on earth do I run it? I didn't TRAIN for this!!!!

I struggle with the "race" aspect of this new world of writing. Towards the end of March, a slew of distressing family news, mostly concerning the health of my parents, bombarded me along with other personal issues. Add to that the stress I was putting on myself to write STONE and run the ebook cruise and it was a perfect storm of yuck. I had to choose what was going to give. My sleep and eating or let some of my writing goals go...for now.

I chose writing. I took a break. For almost one full week, I didn't touch my computer. At first, it drove me nuts. But after 48 hours, I started to realize there is an entire world NOT ONLINE! :) And guess what? I'm a part of that world, too. (I will be taking a vacation from the virtual once per quarter, from now on).

I turned 30 years old on March 25th, and I feel fantastic. I am no longer going to stress myself out about writing. There's no need. I am a successful writer. I should have realized that before, as I sold non-fiction for years...but switching to fiction my confidence was rocked. And not in a good way.

Why do we listen to people who are jealous of us more than the people who cheer us on? In my case, there really IS no excuse, as far more people cheer me on than act as detractors. For my birthday, my husband bought me a new laptop. In his way, and he's not a man of many words, he was validating what I'm doing. He brags about me to other people, that his wife is a published novelist and that her book is doing well.

I've Earned Out

CANCELLED is 100% profit from here on out. Thanks to the electrifying jump start of the KDP free promotion (which worked for me, but not everyone) I've sold a total of 417 ebook copies in the US on Kindle and Nook since September 2011 when the book came out. In six months, I've earned back what I put in. So why on earth am I still worrying about if the book is good enough, am I selling enough, and why am I not a break out star?

Because I'm human. LOL. We ALL are. But when I read back through my original posts, all I wanted was to write books that people enjoyed, that weren't cookie-cutter, and that earned out in a reasonable time. I wanted, and still desire, to build a library of books by Elizabeth Ann West.

And I have tons of time to do this.

What Do I WANT?

I want less stress regarding my writing. I enjoy writing fiction, but I don't breathe to write fiction. I don't love writing, but I do love to sell. I don't love word quotas, but I do love interacting with readers. So what stresses ME out?

A Lack of Focus: I really don't do well trying to write more than one project at a time. I've tried this method out for the last 6 months and the result is 4 Chapters of STONE written, 2 Chapters of PAST DUE, 2 Chapters of SERVED, 3 pages of two different short stories. In other words, a m e s s!

Solution: Slow and steady wins my race, I will do one project at a time until its done, THEN move on. Period. That means Stone is backseat until short story for Pubwrite Anthology and the short story for the Indie Chicks Anthology are DONE because they're due first.

A Lack of Desire: I've planned to write for X number of hours, X number of words. Again, no dice. I am a free spirit by nature, and I am motivated most by accomplishing big bursts in short time frames. I thrive on feeling awesome for production (quality to me comes in the editing process, totally different mindset). I am giddy at crunching out 1,000 words in 45 minutes. YEAH! It's the on-deadline, non-fiction writer in me that rears her little ego when I try to write fiction.

Solution: I'm going to go back to milestones. Can I get to HERE (word count) before this DAY? Then I'm free to write when I can, what I can.

A Lack of Incentive: After my incredible KDP run where I made $500 in one month, guess what next month's sales were with 1) an ad on Kindle Book Review and 2) another free day run making it to #333 in overall FREE and 3) a reduced price of $1.99? 19 books. Yep. In March, I sold 19 ebooks. That's about what I sold per month at the economy price points last fall. I made the mistake of feeling motivated in February by my sales. I stalked my sales. I fell OFF the bandwagon.

Solution: Sales don't make me an author. I am planning specific incentives for each project I finish. The Pubwrite short story? One bottle of ice wine for me. :) STONE? I'm buying myself a Kindle Fire. PAST DUE? I'm going golfing. Etc.

A Crossroads: What do I specifically want in the next 12 months and what must I do to get there?

Last year I was frantic to get CANCELLED out the door. Frantic. I was so afraid the self-publishing opportunity was going to POOF! be gone right before I published. LOL. I know, it sounds a little silly, but when you're in the never-been-published shoes that I filled last year, it's a very real fear that your best laid plans will die right before you're finally ready to publish. I am no longer afraid that my fiction writing will lose publishing/distribution opportunities. For me, I'm repeating that. I am NO LONGER afraid that my fiction writing will LOSE publishing/distribution opportunities. There are far too many ways to get a book in the hands of readers (traditional publishing, self-publishing, small imprints, personal website, etc) for them all to close off to me or anyone else.

I have a few choices to make:

Build Up or Publish As Ready?

Other than three anthologies that I owe short stories for, I have NO deadlines. I set an April deadline for STONE, but that isn't going to happen. I am toying with the idea of not publishing a full-length work at all in 2012. GASP! Specifically, I am thinking about rejecting the Publish-As-Ready plan for a Build-Up-Titles plan first. There is a similar plan advocated by the wonderful Jen Talty and Bob Mayer at Write it Forward where they urge new writers to write 3 books before publishing any of them.Why?

Yes, I understand the whole "money left on the table" mantra pushed by some of the big names in digital publishing, BUT I am now appreciating WHY a big-house publisher holds a book back. Things happen. I released CANCELLED by the seat of my pants. Hodge-podge marketing plan, taking advantage of opportunities as they come along etc. I have readers who love my book, want more, and I have nothing to give them. Nothing. Will they remember me 6 months to a year later when I publish again? OR, is it better, since I'm gifted in marketing magic thanks to Disney to keep building one reader at a time when I can guarantee a new title every X months?

What I'm Thinking.....

Get the short stories out. No problem.

Revamp CANCELLED's ebook and print book to reflect the new things I've learned formatting and style wise since it published.

Write the book series I'm currently planning. Let STONE release maybe, maybe in the fall, but have PAST DUE's series and CANCELLED's series 100% done before publishing anything more there. This way I can 100% control the quality of the launches, the quality of the products, and plan accordingly. I've learned it's not that tough to make relationships with readers when you're a genuine person with them. :) But where I'm struggling is that AS I'm marketing, I suck at writing. I do. I think for me I need marketing furloughs so I can write. One way to do that is write, THEN publish, THEN market, then take a break. Who says authors can't go on sabbatical? That means 2012 is a writing year, 2013 is a marketing year, 2014 is a writing year (but I'm still releasing books I already wrote) etc.

Specifically? And this is rough:

Write STONE. (Publish this fall).

Finish RED INK COLLECTION:
SERVED
APPROVED

-------Potentially START publishing again --------

Write the In Debt Collection:
PAST DUE
IN ARREARS
BY DEFAULT

So that is my mountain to climb. It's an Everest. It's a Kilimanjaro. But it's MINE. And if it takes me until mid-2013 to finish, then so be it. Because really, I'm the Boss Lady. Plus, all of this started because I promised myself to write a novel and publish it to see if I could do it. I know, I know. I will take your volley of wadded up paper. Call me a great pretender. It's how I FEEL. And the only way I can think of to STOP feeling this way is to make an even bigger mountain to conquer. And don't worry, once I conquer THIS contemporary fiction mountain... guess what's the next challenge? Epic fantasy on my own terms. Coming to this mountain climber in 2015 or 2016. LOL.

I am interested in hearing from other authors on this subject, running the race of publishing.

How do you find balance between marketing and writing?
Have you considered stocking up titles to publish?
Do you not need a balance? (Not everyone does, I only just accepted that I DO need one).
Have you thought out a big picture?
Have you experienced negative side effects from a similar strategy or from the publish as you go strategy?

Seriously, we NEED to talk about this! :) Feel free to comment and share links to blog posts YOU'VE written or read on the subject. :)

How to Handle Negative Press

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:52:00 +0000

If you watch politics, you know there is an art to spin. Good spin MUST have truth to it, it doesn't have to be the whole truth, but a good chunk must be true for it to resonate with the audience. The goal with EVERY piece of bad press (and to some extent, a bad review) it to highlight the positive of the review.

Let's start with my story, and some of you already heard about this when it happened last month through Facebook. I STILL find it funny, and instructive, so I'm sharing it. Ready?

I am an Alice. Anytime I see a clever link, blog post title, or share, I click. I run Linux, so I have very little fear of a virus or malicious spyware installing on my computer (nothing installs on my computer without my express say-so and password). It doesn't take me too long to have seven or eight tabs open in my browser. I know. It's a problem.

So one night on Facebook in February, I'm looking at the stream, and "Why I Stopped Reading..." popped up. Ooooh, I thought. This might be good information from a reader's perspective, or maybe it's a scathing review of a book.... I freely admit that I enjoy reading negative reviews to gawk at the train wreck, but I don't take every word to be the gospel truth about a book. Especially one-star reviews from reviewers with NO OTHER reviews. That to me makes me suspect it's another author's jealous sock puppet. But I digress.... back to "Why I Stopped Reading..."

So I clicked and was taken here.

It is a post about why a reader couldn't finish a book. I was excited! I always wanted to hear this kind of analysis. After all, it's vital to know what makes a reader put a book down.

I'm reading the beginning:

It was a free download, so I didn’t feel as obligated to finish as I might have if I’d paid for it. It wasn’t by someone I know, or anyone I network with, so that also cut down on the potential guilt factor. And I gave it a chance: it was approximately 75,000 words, and I read over 25% before I gave up on it, deleted it from my smartphone, and moved on.

And this small voice in the back of my head says "We just went free.......we specifically state our book is 75,000 words IN the description....this might be our book"

Then came a few more details....

...straight contemporary romance...It did have a consummated love scene... it was glossed over pretty quickly...best friends to lovers stories...office-set romance

Now that voice is screaming.."THAT'S OUR BOOK SHE'S TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!" Alarm bells are going off, and my stomach drops. Ugh. But then I get to this point.

In the book’s defense, it was well-written from a technical standpoint, it had an interesting premise, and characters that could have been people I’d have enjoyed spending a few hours with, had their emotions been better drawn. The book wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t have kept reading

Okay. My book interested a reader who usually likes paranormal romance, and she didn't care for my book. But she didn't say I suck. She didn't say the book was unreadable. She had a personal response to the characters that wasn't positive.

And she wrote about it. Yeah!!!! She wrote about it!!!!! I'm going to be egotistical here and say a book has to be pretty good, but not interesting to a reader, for them to write such an analysis. Think about it. WE only do that when there's a product out there that we really wanted to like, either because of what it is or what everyone is saying about it, and it didn't meet our expectations. Then we share that, because we feel something about the product. And that happened to me! :)

So I knew it was my book. And I also weighed her criticism about the lack of emotional connection. It made me smile. First, I know that in the rough draft, there was TONS of introspection, and they fell victim to the red pen. Why? Because of my husband. If I ever ask him what's he's thinking about, the answer is "Nothing." I chose to model Johnathan off of him and the type of male gender role I identify in my husband. He's an alpha male, with a softer side, one who deals strictly with facts and emotions are secondary in his decision making process. My book was never a statement about all men, far from it, just a particular type of man I'm intimately familiar with.

I contacted the blog owner. I know. DANGEROUS. But the more I'm in this industry to more I'm realizing that by just being my normal self, things usually go okay. I let her know I recognized my book,and I took responsibility for her not finishing the book.... here was my initial contact:

Pretty sure that's my book. If it is, it won't hurt my feelings in the least for you to indentify the book. In fact, you aren't the first reader to point out they wished there was more emotion behind my characters. We only grow as we get feedback, and while 5-stars are great, ALL feedback is valuable.

Not to defend the work as some of the lack of emotion was a conscience decision, obviously I failed to communicate aspects of my story world to keep you drawn in. I take full responsibility that you couldn't finish, that's on me. But I thank you for giving the novel a chance.

Our exchange continued very pleasantly, and ultimately, I wrote a comment on the blog post AFTER discussing it with her first. Remember, that's her website space, and it would very presumptuous for me to just barge in and start taking over. It could be awkward, I don't want to make people afraid to talk about my book in a constructive way.

Why Did I Identify My Book?

Why didn't I just keep my mouth shut? Because the PROS outweighed the CONS. What do I really lose by being completely classy and owning up to my weaknesses as an author? Nothing, really. I do not want readers to pay money for my book expecting it to be something it is not. It hurts their pocketbook, gives them hard feelings towards me as the author who hoodwinked them, and probably brings more negative reviews to the book. I want every reader who is expecting a typical romance story line to know CANCELLED does not fit the formula.

I didn't want other authors to wonder if it was their book. I doubt that many would, but still, sometimes not knowing is worse than just knowing. And finally, in accepting that my book is not going to satisfy every reader's tastes, I'm getting an opportunity to further talk about the reader I had in mind when I wrote the book. By simply defining that I intentionally took out emotional introspection, I'm defining my book for a reader that is sick of books with an overabundance. There is no such thing as a perfect novel. Our job is to make happy the readers we can. :)

So if you find yourself staring at a 1-star review, or find yourself coincidentally reading a blog that is reviewing your book in a less that gushing manner, don't panic. Accept that the person writing the review has a 100% entitlement to his or her opinion, and is probably right in the conclusions met based on the individual's previous reading history, tastes, and personal experiences. Accept the feedback as valuable.

Try to find a redeeming aspect to keep yourself from stewing on the negative. Sometimes it's just that at least you got a response out of the reader. For me, this blog was the first time I had found someone writing about my book and it wasn't a scheduled or requested review! WHOA! :) Other times, the reviewer or blogger is classy too, like Jennette Marie Powell, who after explaining why she couldn't finish my book, added positive qualities about the book that she did like. You don't always get a balanced review. In fact, most I've read are either over-the-top gushing, or completely negative. Balanced reviews from strangers are priceless.

Finally, always respect another writer's, reader's, blogger's, or reviewer's web space. Ask for any clarification or deal with any concerns in back door communication (private messaging, email) not in the comments section. If your emotional response is retaliatory, you need cooling off time. You'll know it's retaliatory, not professional, when you want to write in the comments so that the world can see your righteousness or injustice. This isn't the way to handle negative press or reviews. And even if you are technically right, you're wrong because it's not your site and you're not going to turn the website's audience against the owner. They will rise en masse and clobber you. You are the guest, don't be an unwelcome one.

Good luck to all, we soldier on in the good times and the bad. Remember, there's no such thing as bad press!

Barnes and Noble CUT Affiliate Monies on Ebooks and Other Electronic Media

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:06:00 +0000

My Nook is sad.

First, a quick word on affiliate traffic....for those who don't know. Most online retailers offer a small commission on the purchases made to a website owner willing to advertise their products. Amazon has such a program, called Amazon Affiliates with very cool widgets and API tools. Like most areas of comparison between Barnes and Noble and Amazon, Barnes and Noble's program is a half-hearted shell of the robust Amazon offering.

Barnes and Noble's affiliate program is through LinkShare. It's not even in-house. Then, only select affiliates were allowed to "deep link" that is link to specific products to recommend to their readers. And finally, the death knell has sounded for Nook, as the Terms and Conditions were just updated to include this:

All products sold on BN.com receive 6% commission with the exception of customized gift cards, eBooks, digital magazines, digital newspapers, and any other ePeriodical.

That's right, affiliate percentages are only 4-6% on average, a few programs offer the sweet deal of 10%. To be clear, affiliates ONLY receive this commission on the purchases made by the traffic THEY drive to the site. This is tracked using cookies and tokens in the URL.

Affiliates ALREADY lost out on significant ebook affiliate monies because there's only a 30-60 minute window for a purchase to be made for it to count towards the affiliate. So, if I visited say, KotC, saw an ebook that struck my fancy, downloaded a sample, read it, and then purchased the book, they don't get affiliate monies for that. I'd have to go back to KotC, click the link again, and then make my purchase for it count for them. And on a $.99 ebook, that's a $0.4-$.06 commission for them for taking the time to highlight the book for me....

THIS IS BAD FOR NOOK INDIE BUSINESS

There was already a gross disproportion of Kindle book review and recommendation sites than Nook Book sites. Partly because it took so long for Barnes and Noble to even HAVE an affiliate network, and Amazon's been running an in-house affiliate program for years. With no return on advertising a Nook ebook, there is really no monetary incentive for a review site or book recommendation site to advertise Nook ebooks. Sorry, Barnes and Noble, advertising is NOT free!!!!!

It takes HOURS to go through author submissions, verify information, and make daily listings of books. I don't know of a single ebook reviewer or site owner about to retire on the riviera from that 4-6% kick back for advertising products. There ARE big time sites with tons of traffic that make a decent living doing what they do best, advertise to the masses, but the reality is the more traffic you have, the more staff you need and server costs you incur.

I am VERY disappointed in Barnes and Noble's continual stifling attitude towards digital reading. They already do not link paperback and Nook book versions on many books, burying ebook listings of titles below insidious products like Noise-Cancelling Headphones!

When my ebook of Cancelled was available on Nook, the keyword Cancelled brought up the Amazon distributed paper book first. Yes, the AMAZON distributed Createspace paperback was result #1. What was next? Three sets of noise-cancelling headphones. Finally, below the fold, they listed the Nook book published through their own digital publishing arm, PubIt!.

To now cut affiliate marketing on Nook books either screams to me they are lacking funds to pay for the results-rewarded advertising campaign, or they are indeed preparing to spin Nook off into a separate company... Either way, it's a really dumb way to give Amazon yet ANOTHER advantage.

This isn't about killing the indies etc. as it applies to ALL Nook books, including traditionally published ones. This is about Barnes and Noble repeatedly sending the message that they will not encourage the sale of their digital products to help readers who prefer reading on a Nook rather than a paperback. And THAT is poor customer service.

I Am Neither a Pimp Nor a Whore, But I Market My Book

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:31:00 +0000

So the blog world from indie writers has hit a hot button issue and even poor The Passive Voice Guy is not immune to the fire and hate spewing forth.

The spark to ignite this wildfire of nastiness? KDP Select. As someone who has been on BOTH sides of the fence, maybe I can help make a little peace.

FIRST, ON MARKETING

On a few comments and blogs lately I've seen writers who Tweet their book likened to "pimps." Apparently, I am "pimpin' my book." Momma needs a new pair of shoes!

This is utterly ridiculous. If you write a book, and publish it, you are not a whore OR a pimp to ask people to read it. You did that JUST by publishing. You put your words out there for whatever reason: to entertain, to educate, to share, to thrill, etc. It's seems rather self-centered to consider your motives to be higher or lower than another writer's noble intentions.

Me? I wrote CANCELLED to educate through fiction. Sex outside of marriage is still a big decision, even in our modern-everything-goes-society (and I'm not trying to be hypocritical, I had sex before marriage but I knew and prepared for the risks). Also, the only time a father can get custody of their child is if the mother is seriously flawed. I don't agree with that system. I know too many mothers that suck, plain and simple. There is no hard and fast rule you can make about how "good" someone makes as a parent based on their gender.

But I digress. I do not appreciate being labeled a "spammer" or a "pimp" because I tweet my book link and a tag line once every few hours. I'd rather get a link to a writer's book than a link to yet ANOTHER blog post on why indie authors need to edit. I like to RT book links because it helps any of my followers who read find new titles to consume. Authors who don't like other authors who do this, there's a very easy solution. Unfollow. And don't expect the rest of us to RT your links. We're only strong when we work together, not against each other.

SECOND, AMAZON IS EVIL

Greedy? Out to make a profit? Yes. Evil? Meh, I can't go that far. KDP Select isn't going to kill Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble's failure to ACT is going to kill Barnes and Noble. And it sucks, because I love my Nook. But when Barnes and Noble gives me these results for the keyword "CANCELLED":

Cancelled (my paperback)
Noise Cancelling Headphones
Noise Cancelling Headphones
Noise Cancelling Headphones
Noise Cancelling Headphones
Cancelled (the nook book out for more than a month before the paperback and astronomically more sales)

It's clear to me they don't get it...yet. I have been to the site many, many times, I'm even logged in as ME, a person who has BOUGHT Cancelled the Nook book. I have NEVER purchased headphones. It's pretty safe to assume I'm looking for a book I've already bought to gift to someone (another behavior on the site I had done before).

There's a book I had to read before I started college called "Who Moved My Cheese?" It's about cheese (success) being moved and the difference between a mouse (business man) who sits still hoping the cheese will move back to it's original position and another mouse (business man) who chases that cheese everywhere it goes, (arguably picking up crumbs as he goes). At the time, I was pissed off my first "college" textbook read like a damn children's book. Now, 12 years later, I GET IT.

In this industry, the cheese is moving every couple of months. First, you have to make sure it has indeed moved. I did not jump on the KDP Select Bandwagon at first. I waited nearly 2 months. I wanted to see the strengths and weaknesses. I guessed at some of them, and I (and others) were right about some things, wrong about others.

Drawbacks

It's not a magic bullet for everyone. There is a LOT involved with "going free" and most it has to do with the day you pick. Accidentally pick a day you didn't know 5 Mega Selling Authors were going to make their collection free, jam up the system, and oh yeah Amazon decides to change the whole site screwing up rankings and sales reporting? Ouch. Bad luck. Pick a random Monday at the end of the month as a test day, assuming you won't get anything like the results reported because it's too late, that was just the After-Christmas rush and race up the free charts? Cool. Good luck.
You are stuck for 90 days with Amazon as your sole partner to find the cheese.
Anything new that comes on another sales channel you don't have the flexibility to respond to.
Write or wrong.. other authors will be upset. (Pun intended). There will be jealousy, feelings that you've "picked a side" and a little us vs. them.
Higher rate of returns.

Benefits

Higher rate of returns. Wait, how is this both? Easy. Because that $0.00 stays bigger than the other price points on the KDP Select books, you get more reader who do that one-click thinking it's free. If they aren't Prime and borrowing, obviously it purchases the book on the credit card required on the Kindle account. Ca-ching. Now once the mistake is realized, there are readers who return the book. But I bet there are just as many who go "Oh, it was $2.99, not free. Oh well," because calling and cancelling the order/getting a refund for less than $5 is considered not worth their time nor do they want to admit they made a mistake. Same marketing type thinking that makes prices end in .99. Consumers think in the lower number... $2.99 registers a closer to $2 that one penny shy of $3.
Going free to gain exposure and the sales that come AFTER that.

I've seen some writings about how any author who makes "best seller" lists after going free shouldn't count because you didn't best sell anything, you gave away for free. I agreed with this BEFORE I went free. I also erroneously thought Amazon was moving these FREE books right into the best seller lists based on their FREE downloads. They are not.

I had 8,250 downloads of CANCELLED in 24 hours. I don't consider that best selling, even though I made it to #12 on the Free Fiction Chart and #3 on the Free Contemporary Fiction Chart. I DO consider that a Top Downloaded Title, as I beat out over 70,000 other books.

After you go free, Amazon dumps you right back where you were in the sales ranking before you went free. For me that was #249,000 something. The difference? You are now an Also Bought for the books that were next to you. So you are now part of a loose team of books, that just had amazing exposure, branded together. As they see sales, you see sales, and vice-versa. This is why it takes a few days for sales to really ramp up because some books may not come off Free status when yours does etc.

To make the best-seller status AFTER you go free, you still have to make the physical paid sales on that day. Last night, I made it to #1238 in Paid Kindle and #74 on the Women's Fiction Best Seller list. I had over 100 sales in 24 hours (might be more, KDP is screwed up). I'm not a mega-seller. But CANCELLED is a best-selling Women's Fiction book.

Yeah, but you only got those sales because you went free....

And others only got their best selling status because their publisher pasted the book cover on every bus, subway, and taxi in major cities. Or after buying a $250-$500 advertisement on a reader blog. I didn't trick any readers into buying my book. I didn't tell them it was going to bring them fame or fortune. I didn't hold a gun to their heads as they nervously clicked "Buy Now." I participated in a marketing campaign that gave away my book for free. I even got my first 1-star review for my trouble! :)

Giving away a free sample is as old as commerce itself. I chose to use KDP Select to see what it could do for exposure to my first book a month and a half before my next book comes out. I don't regret it, and I wouldn't have regretted it if I only had that 21 sales I received on the first day after. Before KDP Select, I was convincing one reader at a time to buy my book, with the highest month's sales ever recorded at 28 on Amazon. I don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on marketing, right now, but I can give 90 days of exclusivity. I may not be in a position to do that next year when I have a larger following on multiple devices. Being in business is all about leveraging what assets you have at the right moment, and that's not always money.

So let's all remember we are in this to get our books read. One of the best ways to have that happen is convincing readers to buy the book. And to do that, readers have to know the book exists. So as long as the marketing is positive and ethical, I won't begrudge your attempts to rise above the din, and I'll cheer you along the way! We all have to write, publish, and promote the best ways we can. That's what this indie hokey-pokey is all about.

My KDP Select Team (Other Books)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:59:00 +0000

I know, "Elizabeth, when are you going to shut up about this KDP Select thing?" Soon. I promise. But I need to explain something I haven't seen explained ANYWHERE else. Let me introduce to you, my KDP Select Team:

See those books were next to me on the many Free charts that I was on. I was only free for a day, many of these titles ARE JUST now coming off free. And why are they on my "team?"

Because if you look at their listings, my book is on the first few pages of their Also Boughts. So for the next few days, when someone clicks on the books above, my book will be right underneath with "Customers who Bought This Also Bought...."

And this is why I ran my "Test" Now that I know how the algorithm works (and I knew vaguely before this, but this is very specific) I can use it to my advantage. Next time I go free, every book next to me on that chart will be tweeted by me as much as I can to encourage readers to buy it for "Free" as well if they've bought my book. Why? Because where you rank on the Also Bought pages depends on how many readers who bough one book also bought your book. This time, I'm only on the first page of two books' Also Boughts. I was also only free for one day. Most of these books have been free for at least 2-3 days.

I did think, but didn't behave like this, when I was free and sharing a few links of other books that are free "Aren't I just helping my competition? After all, if readers get their book, I'll bump me down in the rankings." NO. I mean, yes, that can happen, but remember those free rankings DO NOT just shuffle over to paid. Your goals while you are free are:

Get as many people as possible to download your book.
Get as many people as possible to download other books in your genre so you are "connected" to them when you all go back to paid as an Also Bought.
Try not to wear out your computer's refresh button.

So I hope that adds a little more illumination on this whole "go free" business. It's not a magic bullet, as clearly I am not #1 on the paid charts or anything, but it is a strong method of getting your book linked to other books in the Also Bought category.

#ROW80 Another In a Long Line of "I Screwed Up."

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:16:00 +0000

"Step right up, folks. This here's the rootin-in-tootin'est most AMAZONing ride we got!"

"How many tickets, sir?"

"Why just 90 tickets, there, young lady. You think you're strong enough to take on this here roller coaster."

::gulp:: "I. . . I'll do my best, sir."

::Maniacal laughter ending in a sneer.:: "Hold on tight, lovely....MWAHAHAHA."

On Monday, I took a spin on the FREE Rollercoaster Ride Amazon offers to indie writers called KDP Select's Free Day. :) Cancelled by the way, is now a Top Ten Downloaded Ebook. Here's how the ride went for me:

Got about halfway up the first hill, and I can't see the top. It just keep climbing! The rollercoaster didn't stop until my little ebook car reached #3 on the Contemporary Fiction free charts and #12 on the Free Fiction charts. Holy crap, the Amazon theme park stretches further than the eye can see! (I ended up with 8,250 downloads in 24 hours).

The Rock Bottom

Then WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH. You hit rock bottom. And I panicked. You see, the rhetoric has been (from the complainers) "They go free, race up the charts, and then they're just right up on the best seller list. It's not fair!" I misinterpreted that. You see, there is no sideways "Everyday I'm Shufflin'" to the paid side of things. Nope. Amazon drops you right where you were BEFORE you went free (#249,227 for me). You have to climb your way back up! THAT'S why authors are saying they have "best-selling" status after going free (assuming they do).

I tried out a higher price, $4.99, thinking it might help set me apart once the book came off free. Nah. It's sinking like a stone. I sold 20 copies yesterday (31 but 11 were returned), and made it as high as #4,760. That is still phenomenal. Highest I've ever been before that was #12,000 something, that was after selling 18 books at $.99 as part of a book launch in November. But I'm an indie, I can right a ship as it's listing.... I just lowered my price to $2.99.

So, 8,000 downloads later, I'm feeling awesome! No I didn't have runaway sales success right after, but I sold more than 3 times what I had the entire month in one day. (I only had 6 sales in January before going free).

#ROW80

I wasn't as productive, what with the roller coaster and all that. I did however work on my reader site, got the original first chapter back up as an extra. Also, I am getting WAAAAAY better at putting on my OWN oxygen mask before helping others. Because I do so many other things; formatting ebooks, helping with websites, etc. I managed to not stress myself out by remembering that *I* have to come first. A sick, frazzled Elizabeth Ann West helps no one.

So I am still at only 5,000 words on STONE. But don't worry, unless I can't make great progress before next week, I'm not panicking. It's written, it just really needs to be typed.

I also need to finish those signed ebooks.

I have two files to format. (one in my possession half way done, one on its way possibly, next week).

And best of all, that roller coaster ride gave me a confidence that is going to help carry me through this tumultuous year of writing and publishing. Maybe I won't be a best seller this year, but I managed to beat out over 69,988 other free fiction books on Monday, and that's something!

UPDATE: Just got my first 1-star review. I'm very surprised. I thought I would be way more upset, but I'm not. I almost find it funny, as horrible as that sounds. I'm a little intrigued that it lifts some pretty unique phrasing from a 4/5 Black Dresses review I got on Chick Lit Is the New Black that I tweeted out while I was free. The first problem was the ending for the reader, but it's pretty clear in the reviews and product description it's not a formula romance. And the reviewer has no other reviews. If it's a real reader, I feel bad that they didn't like it, but it wasn't a craft issue, so there's nothing I can really do about it. The reader just didn't like the story line.

I got another 5 star review from another reader who made me laugh. I got bonus points for a MC carrying the "idiot's ball" not to just move the plot forward, but out of "human, understandable motives."

So going free brought a ton of firsts, and man do I feel awesome about it. I just wish I didn't have to go exclusive for 90 days with Amazon to gain this amount of experience in 48 hours.

A robotics engineer asks his business partnerI to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby. CANCELLED is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble

WIP: STONE. Can Melanie Stone let her mother back into her life and kick out the creep trying to worm his way in? March 2012.

Don't forget, I have many, many friends who are also part of a Round of Words in 80 Days. Please make sure you visit their blogs and give them some comment love!

An Experiment Gone Horribly RIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:23:00 +0000

In math class, we had these word problems about objects rising and then at what point does the object stop rising and begin to fall, where will the object be a t= some random number?

I sucked at those.

Yesterday, I made CANCELLED free on Kindle through the KDP Select program. I don't know if I caught a magical Monday of no competition or if the planets and stars aligned, but what I do know is that thing took off like a rocket!

I woke up, giddy, at 6 AM with my husband. I checked my "sales" had 250. I was ecstatic. Saw that I was ranked #11,309 out of #70,000. I thought to myself, "Yay, I might make it into somewhere between #1,000 and #2,000 FREE" That was my hope.

9 hours later, I cracked the Top #100 FREE by making it to #89. I was "selling" free books at about a rate of 4.5 per minute.

It is now 12:19 AM, there are 3 more hours of my "free" status. I am:
#32 in FREE KINDLE.
#17 in Free fiction.
#8 in Free Romance.
#5 in Free Contemporary Romance.
#4 in FREE in Contemporary Fiction.

How in the heck am I doing best in Contemporary Fiction?

The more startling aspect I learned from going free is just how big Amazon really is. Before this, I sold my 6 little books each month for the last two months and thought "Wow, I'm really lucky to have those sales." NOW I realize that thing is a behemoth once it gets going! I'm watching my "sales" jump 10-17 books every minute I refresh the page. Who are the 17 people who downloaded my book last minute? How on earth are there 10 more doing it this minute?

Sorry. I'm now #28 in Kindle Free (which also includes apps). Oh, and #15 in Free Fiction. 12:36 AM.

So now I know I wasn't a speck before, I was a speck on a speck. Possibly even a speck on a speck on a speck.

How did I do this?

First of all, I, didn't. Others did. I was listed on The-Cheap.net's Kindle streams, Pixel of Ink's Facebook streams, a few Chicklit blogs and Facebook streams, and who knows where else. I don't even know. I didn't plan ANY OF THIS. I put out on Facebook last night I was going free, talked with a few readers who got a signed ebook last month, and set up my tweets to tweet my book link as free once per hour from 4 AM to 11 AM.

The tweets helped get the ball rolling, but it was mostly other authors tweeting me. Having the tweets scheduled helped authors just click and RT. That certainly helped, but it's not where the lion's share came from....

When Readers Take It Personally

Reading is a very personal act. What we like, what we don't like reflects who we are as a person. Books we like we want to brag about. THIS is what catapulted me to the top.

I know you all have heard, probably a little too much, how I signed ebooks for readers. I know. However, it was two readers who received early copies, and NOOK owners mind you, that took it as a personal mission to make me a best-downloaded Kindle author in one day. How personal?

They sent me personal messages on Facebook of status reports all day long--messages telling me where they posted the links, who they told, who they got to share the link, and updated ME on my rankings. Seriously. I ended up with an army and I thought this was just a drill! I need to share something here for authors, and please don't go to Facebook and go after the two readers who helped me (a few have already tried). They aren't master marketers or even interested in marketing other books, they just wanted to help me because they cared about my book (not saying they won't care about your book, they have to read it first, and they aren't interested in being professional bloggers or reviewers, they're happy being readers).

So here's what you will all find fascinating. One of the readers took charge and informed me that she talked to the admin at Pixel of Ink and got permission to share my book on their Facebook wall. I chuckled and said "You did what? How? Do you have any idea what that means?" Of course she thought I meant she had stepped on toes. I had to reassure her, no, I was just shocked. THERE'S A WAITING LIST FOR PIXEL OF INK.... if you're an author, or if you know someone. If you're an author, you have to submit first (totally understand, agree 100% with that system, it's self-promotion). But readers truly have the power to walk right up that bouncer and say "Can I get in the club" and the velvet rope just unclicks in a split second.

I could sit here and say maybe I underestimated my own goodwill with others, maybe this would have happened if I had gone free last week. I don't think so. Certainly being someone few dislike in this industry helps, but I don't think it was me. I really think a handful of readers that wanted to see the book they enjoyed get "kudos" they thought it deserved is what happened January 30, 2012. It wasn't about me. It was about them. It was about social networking at it's most basic function, "Look at me, I like this, it's wonderful, therefore I'm wonderful." And I'm not saying that to belittle those readers who supported me. Not at all. I'd give them a kidney if they needed it! I'm saying that all of the broadcasting, tweeting, poking, prodding, begging, and and pleading isn't what propelled my book. It was a few people who wanted their network of friends to see that they had a book they liked, and they were going to make it a success. And I am 100% amazed at their magical abilities!

I think having a strong cover helped, and having a high overall rating caught people's attention as my book was free. But the real catalyst that caused this chain reaction was that I happened to make reading special for a few readers. Maybe through my writing, maybe through my personality, maybe both! I don't know exactly what I did, but I'm going to keep doing it!

There's 2 hours left in the promo. I've had such fun today. I've been truly touched at how many people came out of the woodwork to support me, some authors I haven't had a chance to pow-wow with in months! I can feel in my gut this is a big turning point for me as an author. This changes my perspective on many, many issues. I feel wiser. I feel more aware of my little role in this great big publishing machine.

I don't know if I'm ready mentally to read all of the reviews that will come in. I don't know if I'm morally ready to look at the sales that are going to come as my book falls back down the charts. I do know I'm ready to write that next book and get it into the hands it belongs in. A reader's.

Going Free KDP Select

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:34:00 +0000

I was ranked #222,100 last night when I went to bed. I had sold 6 copies of CANCELLED this month.

This morning, I woke up 6 AM and I had 250 downloads. By 7:15, it was 300. At 7:54 AM I made it to 402 downloads. And now it's 8:33 AM and I'm at 544 downloads.

8:35 AM, 550 downloads.

At 7:30 Am I was ranked 11,309 in Free Kindle.

I will update as the day continues.

UPDATE:
As of 12:45 PM EST. 1600 downloads.

#16 on the contemporary fiction charts (yes, I'm beating the free sample of James Patterson!)

I couldn't have done this without all of my friends and other authors helping tweet the book out. I can not believe it! We'll see how fast I sink like a stone, but I'm a Best-downloading author (not quite bestselling yet, but one day).

#ROW80 Excited to Write Again

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 02:10:00 +0000

First off, I took the plunge. CANCELLED is temporarily exclusive to Amazon as part of the KDP Select Program. I am going FREE 2/10 and 2/11, just in time for a great romantic weekend read, love from HIS point of view.

I will go free again April 1, 2012. That's when Kindle will get STONE. But wait, isn't STONE coming out in March? Yep. Only on Nook. That's right. I love BOTH of my children, lol.

I will definitely need help getting the word out from my friends when I go free. And if anyone else is going free before then, let me know. I will gladly Tweet my heart out.

SIGNED EBOOKS
I have handwritten all 150 notes and scanned them into the computer. At the time I am writing this last night, I am up 90 of them cropped to the correct size. Today I will make all of the ebooks and send them out. Monkey off my back. But I AM loving the reader response.

STONE
I am not quite on time word count wise. But I have a kick-ass outline that is 5 pages and scribbled on in every nook and cranny. :) Besides, I finished Chapter 1 and got it off to a few Omega Reader eyes. Good news is the flavor is there, they want to read more. Only 10 more Chapters to write and STONE is done. Yes, it's 11 Chapters long. I really like this novella format. Cancelled is often described as "packing a punch" and a "quick enjoyable read." Well, STONE packs a 12 gauge.

My story question is: Can Melanie Stone let her mother back into her life and kick out the creep trying to worm his way in?

One liner: A single mom with a Joan Jett attitude kicks a creep out of her life. With a shotgun.
AND a teaser:
There's NO TRESPASSING in Melanie Stone's life.

Long description:

A single mom for her son's entire seven years of life, Melanie Stone has done just fine on her own, thank you very much. But her recently retired mother has other plans, friends know what's best for her career, and a first date in years turns out to be a complete psycho! Melanie's carefully crafted life is slipping through her fingers and she's ready for people to start listening. Even if takes pulling a 12-gauge shotgun for her to be heard, there's NO TRESPASSING in Melanie Stone's life.

Can Melanie Stone let her mother back into her life and kick out the creep who has wormed his way in? Find out in STONE.

And this is probably my favorite part of the story... my dedication. You see STONE touches on the way abusive relationships develop, inch by controlling inch.

Dedication:

Physical and emotional abuse is a very serious issue and today's modern relationships are not immune. Abusive situations don't usually occur all at once, it's a gradual slide into completely unacceptable behavior. By keeping everyone aware of the warning signs, we can help stop the vicious cycles from ripping apart more families.

STONE is for every man and woman who has said, “No. I will not be treated this way.” I am astounded by your courage, and thankful you defied the statistics. And for the abusers who get help to break the cycle before it comes to charges, I am proud of you, too.

Finally, to the two people in my life that protected themselves when they had to, you are my heroines. I love you both very, very much.

WEDNESDAY:
Stay tuned for Wednesday as I hope to have a complete signup for my ebook cruise in March. It's a special event blog site I'm creating where authors are going to highlight their books' settings as a "virtual cruise" for readers. There will be interactive activities and best of all, partnerships with some great reader blogs.