A lot of new independent authors will e-publish their first novels and set the price to 99 cents, thinking that’s where they have to be because they’re unknown authors. Then they’ll go out and promote the heck out of their books (spending hours on blog tours, forum posts, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), all in an effort to sell copies of that single 99-cent title.

The problem?

If you’re selling your ebook for 99 cents, you’re only making 35 cents per sale. Nobody ever said being an author was the road to riches, but that’s an awfully poor return on a novel that probably took you six months to a year or more to write, edit, and publish. What’s worse is that, with only one ebook out, you can’t make more than 35 cents per customer (more on why that’s a problem below).

This is why, if you ask me, I won’t recommend the 99-cent price tag for authors with one book out (short stories or short novellas, being a possible exception).

Wait, you’re thinking, isn’t my first ebook currently free? Isn’t it a 105,000-word, full-length fantasy novel that’s less than 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Itunes, and Smashwords? (Yes, I can work plugs for my stuff into any blog post! ) And didn’t take it take me a year to write that puppy? (Actually, it was more like seven years in the making, but that’s another story.)

The answer is yes, I have a free novel out there, and there was a time when I had that novel priced at 99 cents too. The difference is that I have books 2 and 3 (with 4 coming this spring) in the series out as well, and those are $4.95. I’ve tinkered with the price on Book 1, and I’m finding that, right now, I make more overall by giving that novel away for free, because more people try the series and go on to buy the following books.

But, if you only have one book out, then it might not make sense to sell it for 99 cents — or less. The problem with 99 cents is you have to sell six times as many copies as you do at $2.99 to make the same amount of money.

You’re welcome to test things (I encourage it, in fact), but if you’re not writing in a popular genre (i.e. thrillers and romance), then you may find it tough to sell enough books for it to be worth it (“worth it” is subjective, of course, but most of us want to at least break even on our editing and cover art costs in a timely manner). Even writing in a popular genre is no guarantee of success. Many people find that their sales increase at 99 cents, but not enough to be significant. They may sell 50 copies a month and think, “Hey, that’s not bad” only to realize that only earns them $17 or about $200 a year. It’s hard to stay excited about your writing and the promise of a writing career on such paltry earnings, and many new indies don’t even sell that well. (I didn’t my first month.)

Is marketing worth it if you only have one 99-cent ebook?

If you only have the one book out, there’s nowhere for a new reader to go after buying your first novel. You’re putting all this time into marketing and guest blogging and hand-selling books, and all you’re going to get out of it is a maximum of 35 cents per customer. Ouch. Not many businesses make it on returns like that.

If you wait to go hardcore on the marketing until you have more books out (perhaps even a series, eh?), you now have the potential to make $10 or $20 per “customer,” depending on how you price your books. It’s still not a lot (see my earlier note on how most authors don’t get rich), but the numbers start to look a little better. Maybe you’re averaging $10 or $20 per hour of promotion you do, as opposed to 35 cents.

At that point, putting hours into promotional efforts begins to make more sense, especially if you start a newsletter and encourage your readers to sign up. In the business world, people talk about the “lifetime value” of a customer, and it’s not so different with authors and readers. Say you’ve sold someone your series and made that $10 or $20, but you’re working on your next series. If you have that reader on your mailing list, then you can shoot him/her a note when you have a new book out. That person may buy the new one and continue to buy your books for many years down the road. Ultimately, this means that your hour of promotional efforts can end up being worth much more than $20, but only if you have multiple books out and only if you encourage readers to sign up for your newsletter (don’t assume that readers will just remember your work, because they have lots and lots of authors they follow!).

You may be thinking that you can do the newsletter thing and try to snag lifetime customers based on your one book, and that is true, but you’ll probably find that it takes more than one book for readers to decide they love your work. After one book, they may decide to look for others by you, but if there’s nothing else out there…well, it’s asking a lot at that point for them to come to your site, read all about you, and sign up for your newsletter (that said, it’s never to early to get started with that stuff).

In summary, I recommend pricing your first ebook at $2.99 or above and not worrying a whole lot about sales and marketing until you have more books out. Even if you only sell 10 ebooks a month at that price, you’re making more than if you’d sold 50 at 99 cents. Then, when you have more ebooks out, you can play around with “loss leaders” (AKA pricing your first book at free or 99 cents to get more people into your world).

A short cut to getting more ebooks out there

If you’ve just published your first novel, and it took six months to a year (to seven years) to finish it, you may be groaning at the idea of not making much money until you have another one out. Well, I started out in the same boat. I’m envious of these new indie authors who pop in with five or ten “trunk novels” they can drop into the marketplace. But what about the rest of us?

Write some short stories to bulk up your list of titles. You can absolutely turn short stories, novelettes, and novellas into ebooks, and they don’t take nearly as long as novels to write.

I’ve talked about this many times on here (so those of you who have heard it before can skip this paragraph), but when I published my first novel, I didn’t have any of the following books in the series written. I did have a short story that featured the heroes from the novel. I uploaded the story to Smashwords as a free ebook (I didn’t even think of charging since it was only 6,000 words), and I included an except to Book 1 at the end. The ebook was distributed to iTunes, Sony, and Barnes & Noble (at the time I didn’t know how to get a free ebook into Amazon, or I would have done that as well), and lots of folks found it, read it, and went on to buy my first book (at the time I had my first novel priced at $2.99). How many people? It’s impossible to say, but over the last year, I’d guess that 500 to 1,000 sales came my way because of that short story.

Do you have thoughts on free/99-cent ebooks? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Related Posts:

• What Can We Learn from JA Konrath’s $140,000 E-Publishing Sales Month?
• Should an Indie (Self-Published) Author Create an Imprint (i.e. their own “press”)?
• E-publishing 101: How to Get Started

I’ve been wanting to have maps for the Emperor’s Edge books for a while now, but my artistic abilities are…well, they just aren’t actually. You don’t want to see how badly I can mangle a stick figure… Fortunately, EE reader and fellow indie author Jenna Elizabeth Johnson agreed to help me out. She likes to draw. She illustrated the cover art for her YA fantasy series with colored pencil and used the same style for my map.

Here’s the first one we (more her than me) put together for the region where the EE stories take place:

Some of the cities and terrain in the south will be appearing in the next couple of books (EE4 has a big train adventure and there might even be some flight…).

We’re also going to do a map of the capital, since lots of the adventures take place in the city, but I need to re-read the books first and make note of all the districts and landmarks mentioned (note to self: in the future, make a map as you go, even if it’s ugly as sin and no one else will ever see it). I’m hoping to have both maps ready to go by April so I can include them in the next ebook.

In case any of you are looking for an artist to help you with custom maps for your world, I believe Jenna is willing to take on some commissions. You can contact her through her website.

Related Posts:

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• Cover Art for The Assassin’s Curse (a Sicarius and Amaranthe short story)
• Cut Scene from Deadly Games

If you’re at all into self-publishing or e-publishing, you’ve probably heard of J.A. Konrath. He was one of the first authors to turn his back on the traditional publishing system and start enrolling his new titles (and old ones where the rights had reverted back to him) into the Amazon Kindle Store. For more than a year, he’s been sharing his impressive sales results, and earlier this month he posted that he’d made $100,000 in the three weeks around Christmas (he eventually made $140,000 over a 30-day period).

Most of us would be tickled to make that much in a year, and it’s mind-boggling to imagine making that much in a month from selling $0.99 and $2.99 ebooks. Really. I’m boggling right now. Feel free to take a moment to do the same before moving on.

Ready? Excellent. So…what can we learn from Joe’s success that can actually help us? The little guys?

I’m sure we could learn a lot from going back and reading his old blog posts, but I thought there were some worthwhile nuggets just in the *screenshot he posted of his Jan 1 to Jan 11 Amazon sales report. Here it is (click on the picture for the full-size version):

*He has fifteen more titles that didn’t show up in the screenshot

Here are a few things I noticed and that I think can be helpful for us:

Joe has a butt-load of books out

I see a lot of indie authors getting frustrated when they’re working their tails off at marketing, promoting, social media networking, etc. and it’s not doing much for their sales. I’ll check out their author pages and see that they only have one or two ebooks out.

I understand their impatience (one of the big reasons I got into e-publishing is because I’m impatient too — spend two years to query agents and pursue the Bix 6? No, thank you.), and I also have a long ways to go before I have a huge pile of books out there, but I’ve definitely noticed that sales have improved with each successive novel I’ve released. It’s not a guarantee, of course, but the more work you have out there, the more chances there are for people to stumble across your work. Once they do stumble across it, they can go on to buy many more books by you if they enjoy the first.

How many books is enough?

It’s true that e-publishing is just taking off, and there are some opportunities for quick success, but most of us will have to publish many books over several years before we get to the “doing this for a living” level. Traditionally published mid-list authors often have 10 or more books in print (not counting out-of-print titles) before they get to quit the day job. Maybe with e-publishing, you’ll get there sooner, but if you expect for it to take years, then you won’t be setting yourself up for disappointment.

It looks like Joe has 35-40 titles out there, and I know a lot of them, if not the majority of them, are novels, not short stories or novellas.

Joe’s books aren’t all in the same series

I’ve also come across indie authors who have a lot of books out, but they’re all in the same series. This can be good if people really get into Book 1 and go on to devour the rest of them, but a downside of a series is that all of the books represent only one doorway into your world (few people are going to stumble across Book 5 and decide to start there). If the majority of the people who try your first book don’t fall in love with it, then you might have dedicated a lot of time to hiking up a dead-end trail because sales of the following books will be mediocre.

If you’re an author who likes writing in series (and there are a lot of upsides to writing continuing story lines), it might be a good idea to start out with two or three different books where any one could be turned into its own series. With e-publishing, you can quick results (within a few days of publishing, you can start getting reviews, sales numbers, reader feedback, etc.), so you can soon see which book is your most popular one. Then you can choose to build a series out of that one.

Though it was purely by accident, I followed that route when I published my first two novels (Encrypted and The Emperor’s Edge) last year. They’re set in the same world, but they’re different story lines with different sets of characters (though a certain assassin does show up in both novels). It was always my plan to turn EE into a series, but I had a sequel in mind for Encrypted as well. If that book had turned out to be the better seller, I might have rearranged my writing plans and turned that into a series first.

You don’t want to get into a state of mind where you’re trying to chase trends or write what you think will be popular, but there’s nothing wrong with focusing on one of your story lines over another if one turns out to have poor or “just okay” sales numbers while the other becomes a hit.

That leads me into my next point…

A small number of Joe’s books make up the majority of his sales

In the chart, you’ll notice that he has one mega-seller, then a few more ebooks that sell very well, then a whole lot more that are in the “just okay” camp. If you’ve had some success in e-publishing, you might think, “Gee, I have titles that sell more copies than a lot of his books” (even allowing that Joe’s screenshot only covers 1/3rd of a month). And yet he’s making $100,000+ per month and you’re…probably not. (If it makes you feel better, I’m not either.)

You might think that this sales distribution is odd, but numbers and marketing people will tell you that it’s quite normal. The oft-cited Pareto Principle, sometimes called the 80-20 Rule, informs us that it’s common for 80% of the yield or earnings to come from 20% of the products or services. So, in the ebook world, if you have 10 ebooks out, 2 might be your big sellers that account for most of your earnings. This can be true in other business areas as well. For example, people who keep track of things often learn that 80% of their sales are a result of 20% of their marketing efforts.

You’ll probably find that it’s hard, if not impossible, to predict ahead of time which books will be your big winners. That’s why we get back to the idea that it’s important to spend more time writing than promoting, especially in the beginning. Of course, talent comes into play, but the numbers tell us that the more books you have out there, the more likely you are to have a couple of “winners” that can take you from meager earnings to stellar earnings (or at the very least from pocket change to making a mortgage payment!).

Do you agree, disagree, or can you think of other lessons we can learn from these numbers? Let us know in the comments!

Related Posts:

• Why I Self-Published AKA Reena Jacobs Does the Math [Guest Post]
• Ebook Pricing: Why 99 Cents Might Be a Mistake for You
• Should an Indie (Self-Published) Author Create an Imprint (i.e. their own “press”)?

Most of us who decide to self-publish have to handle the ebook creation, book blog tours, social media marketing, and just about everything else ourselves. Sometimes, though, you get lucky and you have a husband, wife, or significant other to help with all the work. Today we have a guest post, a “self-publishing checklist” from Rose Andrade, who is out in the blogosphere helping promote her husband’s new sci-fi/fantasy novel, Bleedover.

I’m not sure if she has a website of her own, but if you like what you see, you should be able to contact her through Curtis’s site or the blog that they maintain together. I am sure that she’d be tickled if you checked out Curtis’s book. It’s a 99-center for now. They’re also running a $5o-gift-card “blog tour giveaway,” so be sure to check that out as well.

A Checklist for Self-Publishing     

Many authors are deciding to self-publish their novels. And often, along with the excitement of that decision comes an overwhelming feeling of everything that needs to be done: create covers, edit manuscripts, formatting, creating web platforms, participate in social media, etc. The list is so huge it nearly made me give up before even starting. Now, a few months later, I realized there’s no need to run and hide. It may be scary at first, but it’s doable. Here’s a general checklist and timeline that will help you prepare for each milestone.

What stage are you?

1) I just finished my manuscript.

If you’re here, you should be thinking and planning to:

1.1) Hire a cover designer: Your e-book cover is one of the most important promotional tools you’ll have. So make sure you have a great cover. It’s possible to design your own cover, but I’d advise otherwise unless you’re very comfortable with digital design. (There are plenty of affordable cover designers on the market.)

Duration: 4-5 weeks. Plan to spend a week or two quoting and negotiating with designers. They’ll ask you for two weeks to get the first cover draft, one week for applying your recommended changes (if any), and another week for final approvals/receipt of final artwork.

1.2) Hire a professional editor: This is a crucial step to creating a professional e-book. Lindsay recently posted an excellent piece entitled “How editing works for independent authors” that details the types of editing services available, average costs, etc. The article is a must read that will help you make an informed decision when hiring editing services.

Duration: 5 weeks to 3 months. Allow two weeks for quoting and negotiation with editors. Once you’ve selected and hired one, depending on the scope of your project, the level of editing you’re contracting, how many rounds, and the availability of the editor—it can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months to have the editing completed.

2) I just got my book professionally edited and designed.

Your product is complete, congratulations! Now you can make it live for sale, right? Wrong! There’s a whole new world you must understand.

2.1) E-book distribution channels selection: At this stage, you have to decide where and how to distribute your e-book. You can select each e-book retailer individually or use a free distributor such as Smashwords to deliver your work to e-book retailers. Some authors rely solely on Smashwords for distribution. Most authors, however, use Smashwords to reach a larger number of e-retailers, then sign-up individually with the most popular ones such as Amazon, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. They do this to have more control over the quality of the e-book design.

Duration: 1 – 2 days to make a decision on distribution strategy.

2.2) E-book retailer sign-up and manuscript formatting: You’ll have to create an account in each e-retailer of choice, as well as perform the next steps for each one. You’ll be asked to upload your formatted manuscript. Each e-retailer has specific file requirements. Check out author Curtis Hox’s guest post, “How to Generate Your First Professionally Formatted Mobi File,” to see an example of how to create a .mobi file (required for Amazon).  Smashwords requires your manuscript in a .doc file with very specific formatting. They provide a guide to help you achieve a perfect file that will work with their infamous meatgrinder (although, I’ve heard they’ll start accepting .epub formats in 2012).

Duration: 1-5 days per retailer. Depending on your computer and HTML skills, formatting your manuscript and outputting the required files can take a few hours for each retailer, or weeks of frustration. If you’re not computer savvy, you can hire professionals to format and create .mobi files, .epub, files and Smashwords’ .doc files for as little as $25. Those professionals also offer packages where they’ll output multiple types of files for a set fee. Many people attempt to design Smashwords’s .doc files on their own. I’m proficient at MS Word and it took me two days in the first time. The next time, it took me six hours. If you’re not very savvy or have an e-book with lots of different font, formats, images, and boxes, I highly recommend that you hire someone who can format it for you.

2.3) Upload a formatted manuscript to e-book stores: Here you’ll “assemble” your virtual book for each retailer, which means, you’ll upload the cover artwork and the formatted file and submit for the particular e-retailer review/approval. Assuming there are no errors in your files, your product gets generated and made live fairly quickly (less than 24 hours). (If you chose Smashwords as a distributor, after your e-book is live on their site, you’ll need to submit a request for it to be included on Smashwords’ premium catalog—the catalog distributed to other e-retailers—and the approval can take up to 14 days. Once approved, Smashwords then begins delivering your e-book, which can take up to 2 weeks to complete.)

Duration: A few hours per individual retailer.

3) My book is up for sale on e-book stores of my choice.

Congratulations! Now you’re ready to create a web platform to promote your product.

3.1) Build an online platform: The first thing you should do is to build an online presence by joining social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Goodreads, etc.), building a website, and/or starting a blog. * The process of creating an account on the differing social networks is simple and cost free. The creation of a site and/or a blog can be cost free, but it requires some knowledge of HTML and web design, and usage of free web templates. If you’re not savvy about web development, or want to have a more customized look to your blog, you can hire a freelance web developer to create your blog and site.

Duration: 2 – 4 weeks. Allow those weeks to focus on the creation of your blog and/or website, test your pages, build content, stylize your Facebook page, etc.

* Creating a web presence can be your first step, even before you begin writing your manuscript! Interacting with your potential readers is a great strategy to gain readership and build momentum so that when you finally publish your work, you have a group of expectant readers eager to purchase your e-book.

4) My e-book is up for sale, I’ve built my web platforms, and I want to focus on marketing

Here you’ll have to leverage all the web platforms that you’ve created to help drive sales to your e-book. This is an extensive topic that requires a whole post about it. But if I could provide only one bit of advice, it would be that you create a marketing plan. A marketing plan will help you see what strategies work, what needs improvement, and where you should focus your efforts. I have just finished my own marketing plan where I detailed goals to be reached, where I created an overall strategy, and where I listed smaller marketing actions that’ll help me achieve my objectives.

It’s also crucial that you study the market and learn from other successful writers and bloggers. Bloggers such as Lindsay Buroker and sites such as Savvy SelfPublishing will provide excellent insights.

Duration: You’ll keep at this step as long as your e-book is up for sale. It should be a constant, ongoing part of your journey as a self-published author. Marketing plans and strategies will change, grow and evolve along with your career as an independent author. Good luck!

Related Posts:

• What Can We Learn from JA Konrath’s $140,000 E-Publishing Sales Month?
• Best Way to a Traditional Publishing Deal: Query Agents or Self-Publish?
• “My First Rule of Writing” by John Abramowitz

We had over a hundred entries in the Give My Character a Last Name Contest last week, so thank you for the support! Now it’s time to pick a winning name and reward two folks with gift certificates.

There were lots of great suggestions for Maldynado’s name (some of you put some real thought into this!), and many of them could have been winners. In the end, there was a bit of Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe involved in the selection, and I decided to go with some alliteration because it sounded more pretentious, and that’s just perfect for Maldynado.

Before I announce the winner, here are a few honorable mentions (they made the list either because they were almost chosen or because they made me laugh):

• Gigolocrest from Erwin S.
• “Ridencrest (Riden = laughing in Latin)” from Susie
• “Feathercrest (would explain his hats)” from Tara
• Warcrest from Jen (and others)
• Battlecrest from Lisa
• Mountcrest from Snagglewordz (“Alliteration and the word mount could be interpreted in a number of ways.” Yes, yes it could… )
• Falconcrest from Valicia (and others)
• Sabercrest from Victoria (and others)
• Moltencrest from Candace
• Daringcrest from Gail
• Ludicrest from Kate (sounds like ludicrous, eh?)
• Spirecrest from Tiff
• Thistlecrest from Liana
• Brightcrest from Dawn
• Arrowcrest from Chandra
• Silvercrest from Robin (and others)
• Hedoncrest from Amy
• Ardencrest from Jenna (“the ‘arden’ coming from the word ‘ardent’ – and who can argue that Maldynado isn’t ardent?”)
• Stagcrest from Mariah
• Thewcrest from Khaalidah
• Milkenhoneycrest from Stacey

And the winner is…

Maldynado Montichelu Marblecrest submitted by Kate.

I know, I know, with a set of names like that, it’s a wonder he didn’t run away from home before his family could disown him!

So, if you remember from the original post, I said there’d be two winners, the one whose name I chose and then another random participant.

The winners are Kate and…

(I like making things dramatic with all these ellipses)

Abbie A.

Thank you, everyone else, for taking the time to enter!

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• New Newsletter + Enter to Win a $100 Amazon Gift Certificate