RAIDERS AND REBELS PRESS

Researching the Next Novel

2012-12-03T20:04:00.002-05:00

Writing authentic historical fiction, I believe, requires research. Such novels cannot be constructed entirely from fiction. Recently, my research for the sequel to Counter Currents took me to southeast Australia.

I need to walk the ground or paddle the waters where my novels take place. The contours of the land, the shape and color of the trees, the scents on the wind, the sounds of birds and insects are all important ingredients of a compelling story.

The sequel begins on the coast of Australia southwest of Melbourne. So, I visited Victoria state's picturesque Great Ocean Road to walk the beaches and stroll in the eucalyptus forests.

The story is also set northwest of Melbourne during the Australian gold rush in the 1850s. For that, I visited Ballarat and area where much prospecting and mining took place.

On my travels, I saw many of the “supporting cast” of Australian characters: kangaroos, wallabies, and koalas.

An Authentic Character

In addition, I have read extensively on Australian history, including biographies of 19^th-century characters. What all this means is that this sequel will give you a real taste of the Australian frontier as the complex story of struggle, loyalty and love unfolds.

P.S. If anyone wants to read about my travels to Belgium, Nepal, Cambodia, and Australia, visit my travel blog.

Many Literary Awards Exclude Indie Authors

2012-10-28T13:45:00.001-04:00

In the past, I often bought books that won or were shortlisted for one of the major English language literary prizes. Not any more. When I became an indie author, I began to boycott such books because many prize-granting organizations specifically exclude self-published authors. How can you claim to award the best if you exclude vast numbers of authors?

Here are three examples:

The annual winner of the Man-Booker prize receives £50,000. Their web site says it is open to “any full-length novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe,” but they exclude self-published books.
The $70,000 Giller Prize is given to a “full length novel or short story collection, written by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada.” Nominees must be submitted by a publisher and the web site states “No self-published books shall be eligible.”
The Governor-General’s Literary Award, presented annually by the Canada Council, presents $25,000 prizes in several categories for works “written, translated or illustrated by Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada.” Again, the books must be submitted by a traditional publisher: self-publishers are prohibited.

In contrast, the venerable Pulitzer Prize does not exclude indie authors. The $10,000 award is open to authors who are US citizens, and to non-US citizens who write about American history.

Anyone looking for an inclusive, author-friendly process could emulate the Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy. Books are nominated by fans and winners voted on by all members of the World Science Fiction Society, not an elite committee. There are no citizenship restrictions on authors.

I think I'll buy some sci-fi soon.

Canadian Angle

Being Canadian, I have a beef with the publishing establishment behind this country’s big awards.

The Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award seem designed to promote established Canadian publishers, not authors. How ironic, when most of Canada’s publishers are foreign owned. And this exclusivity seems to do little good. In October, Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre, publisher of the 2010 Giller Prize-winning novel, The Sentimentalists, filed for bankruptcy.

While I admit there is a legion of self-published authors of dubious talent, many are as good as those chosen by publishers. There is a simple way to open the door to indies. Self-published authors work closely with independent bookstores to get their books to the public. The bookstores are capable of vetting the work of indie writers and could be trusted to nominate worthy contenders.

Make Sure the World Can Buy Your Ebook

2012-10-23T12:27:00.000-04:00

Recently I advised self-published authors to diversity their ebook formats: I said go beyond Kindle to include sellers who offer the epub format. Here’s a further tip for my American colleagues: diversify your epub vendors to make sure your foreign fans can buy your books.

Recently I tried to buy another book in the Nash series by American thriller writer Frank Fiore. His books sell on Amazon and Barnes & Noble (BN). I browsed to BN for an epub version. I found Fiore’s books, selected the Nash box set, clicked Buy Now, and filled out the extensive purchase form. At the end of all that, the site flashed this message:

You must have a credit card billing address within the US or its territories, including US Military sites, to receive this item. We currently do not support non-US billing addresses.

How parochial! How completely unfair to authors! There is no excuse for a vendor to ignore the world market other than lack of vision. Amazon and Apple iBooks use international portals to service customers. Kobo doesn’t care as long as you have a valid credit card.

As I have said before, the best way to diversify is to use Kindle Direct Publishing for sales on Amazon and Smashwords for epub creation. Smashwords makes your ebook available to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel Books, and others. That way, your buyers never hit a purchase wall.

Sell to the world, not just your home country.

Indies Should Publish on All Platforms

2012-10-09T10:54:00.000-04:00

We indie authors work hard to coax readers to buy our books. When even a trickle of sales of an ebook is cause for euphoria, it astounds me that so many authors ignore nearly 40% of the American ebook market and the majority of the Canadian market.

Many indie author sites promote ebooks and give readers chances to get free samples. Far too often the ebooks are available only through Amazon. The Amazon format is proprietary and plays only on a Kindle device. Sure, you can read a Kindle book via a special app on your laptop or smart phone, but that ignores the millions of ereader users.

The non-proprietary format epub is readable on the Kobo (my choice), Nook, Sony Reader, Apple devices, and via apps on third-party platforms. Together they claim a very large segment of the US market and a majority of the Canadian market.

Extra tip: Also make sure that your epub choice is available beyond your borders.

According to “The rise of e-reading,” by Pew Research Center in April 2012, the Kindle has 62% of the American market. The Nook has 22%. The rest is shared by Kobo, Sony, and other platforms.

While the Pew study stated that Kobo had just 1% of the US ebook market, a 2012 study by Ipsos Reid says Kobo has 46% of the Canadian market, where it was invented. (The Canadian market is one-tenth the size of the American market.) In Canada, Kindle came second with 24%, followed by Sony at 18%.

“The Global eBook Market” by O’Reilly Media says ereader use outside of North America is less popular but growing. In the UK, for example, Kindle has 14% of the ebook readers, Sony has 6%, the Apple iPad and iPhones have 17%, but 45% of people still use their desktop or laptop computer to read ebooks. The study notes that Kobo is grabbing global market share by creating localized versions for foreign languages.

It is easy to diversify your ebook format. Like most authors, I use Kindle Direct Publishing for sales on Amazon. But, I use Smashwords for every other ebook vendor. If you follow the Smashwords style guide exactly, the conversion process works every time.

Smashwords will also make your ebook available to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, and others, if your manuscript and cover are professionally produced. Thanks to Smashwords, readers can find my first novel, Counter Currents, at all those locations and more.

Unless you have signed up for Amazon’s KDP Select, which demands exclusivity, diversify your ebook format to maximize your sales.

A post similar to this first appeared at Indies Unlimited.

The Adult Content Dilemma

2012-07-28T12:08:00.001-04:00

My first novel, Counter Currents, contains one nude swimming scene (pretty tame stuff) and one explicit sex scene. The latter is not gratuitous--it is a natural evolution of a relationship between two characters in the story. I included it because I wrote the book for well balanced adults.

But, that one scene makes the book "adult content." That means my novel will not show up on book searches if users of a site, such as Smashwords, have the "adult filter" on. That may reduce sales.

As an experiment I wrote a companion novel, Islands of Love and War, that tells the same story, with the skinny dipping scene intact but not the sex scene. The latter is set up but leaves the details to the reader's imagination. This version also has 10 fewer minor characters, a slightly different ending, and is 10,000 words shorter. I posted it at Smashwords and Amazon.com and am actively promoting it.

Will this change increase sales?

I will update this blog with the experiment's results later.

Make Paperbacks Part of Your Sales Plan

2012-07-19T21:23:00.001-04:00

For my first self-published novel, Counter Currents, I decided to include a paperback version as well as an ebook. I used CreateSpace with excellent results. Some of the pros, such as John Locke (author of How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months), advise us not to bother—it's not worth it, they say. Respectfully, they're wrong for two reasons.

It is worth it emotionally. While I am an ebook fan, I still enjoy the tangible and tactile reality of a printed book. I feel proud when I see mine in a reader's hands or on a store shelf.

It is worth it economically. I have not sold millions like Mr. Locke. (I am close to the statistical average I wrote about in my last post.) However, over 70% of novel's sales so far have been in paperback; the rest are Kindle or ePub format. Of the confirmed paperback sales (not including books on consignment), over 80% were purchased through independent bookstores. The remainder were bought online. I have sold almost as many paperback copies as ebook copies on Amazon.

Once again, I urge indie writers to create relationships with neighborhood bookstores. Get your paperbacks in a few retail outlets within driving distance and then promote locally. Participate in author events at those stores. You will be glad you did.

One Leaf in the Forest Screaming for Attention!

2012-05-29T12:08:00.000-04:00

Imagine you are one leaf in a forest of 10,000 trees. How do you get noticed? That is the challenge each new indie writer faces.

Here are some sobering stats found on blogs and news websites:

In 2011, Amazon had 950,000 ebooks for the Kindle, out of a total of about 1.8 million titles.
Almost 2.8 million non-traditional books, including ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks, were produced in the United States in 2010 (says Reuters).
US publishers of all types produce over 300,000 traditionally published books per year with about 210,000 more in the UK.

The world is awash in books.

Mark Coker, founder of the ebook aggregator Smashwords, says ebooks are immortal: they are not stale-dated like printed books. So, each year, each ebook must fight for recognition with an ever larger horde of competitors.

Here are other sobering statistics from a recent study (Not a Gold Rush available on Amazon) of 1007 self-published authors from the Taleist blog:

The average self-published author sells 100 to 150 copies per book.
Half of the authors studied earned under $500 in 2011.

The indie publishing world has many sources of advice on steps you must take to market your book and develop author recognition. These include:

Start a blog or website and post often.
Develop a Twitter following and tweet often.
Create a Facebook author page and update often.
Submit guest articles to other blogs and e-magazines.
Get your book reviewed.
Get yourself interviewed.
Advertise on Goodreads or Kindle Nation.

These may work, assuming you offer professional content. Just as likely, they will have no measurable effect. The trouble is, when every writer uses the same marketing techniques, the effect is muted. Unless you jump on a new marketing technique early, you may be wasting your time.

In fact, the Taleist study found that the authors who market the least write more and make more money. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, it bears wisdom.

If you examine the writing careers of million-selling indie writers like John Locke and Amanda Hocking, they did not hit big on their first book. They used successive books to build a fan base.

For most of us, we write for the art and not for the money. Maybe more writing and less marketing is the route to take. And remember, even $500 is better than the $0 you get when rejected by a traditional publisher.

For other perspectives on this issue, see:

Joe Konrath's blog

Symbiotic Nature of Indie Books

2012-03-23T21:06:00.001-04:00

After just a couple of months as an indie author, I groked an unspoken truth that any author needs to know who still wants to sell paperbacks (along with their e-books). Your best friend is the independent bookstore owner, and you may be that owner's edge against the big book chains.

Canada's only large bookstore chain, Chapters-Indigo, does not carry books by indie writers in the chain. (Individual stores can arrange for consignment sales with an author.) Most indie bookstores I cold-called about stocking my two books have said yes. Several offered to host an event.

The relationship is symbiotic. The author gets a venue for book sales. The bookstore gets something the chains do not have: good books by new authors that people are curious about.

Caveat: You need professional quality books and an understanding of the bookstore industry. Be prepared to do much leg work visiting each store. Stay in your region where you are known. You won't get rich, but you'll get satisfaction.

New Publishing Paradigm Unfolds as Foretold

2012-01-22T21:30:00.002-05:00

In January 2012, the flagship in Canada's fleet of traditional publishers became a small cog in a foreign business empire. Random House, a subsidiary of the international publishing conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, bought out the remaining shares of McClelland & Stewart. (The purchase passed federal government scrutiny, proving that Canadian culture gets less protection than Canadian potash.)

Publishing is a business and the M&S purchase was part of a relentless aggregation of imprints by big media firms. Big media firms love to acquire control because control begats power—or so they think. If you are an independent author or publisher, you should cheer the demise of M&S. The publishing world is unfolding as it should.

The economic theories of Harold Innis state that, when media power concentrates in the hands of a few, somewhere in the hinterlands new competitors with new technology will appear to challenge the media oligarchy and eventually become the new heavyweight. Since Gutenberg's printing press made scribes obsolete, one new technology after another—printing press, telegraph, radio, television, Internet—has emerged to challenge its media predecessors.

Small publishers are already appearing who create books electronically or via print-on-demand. While many traditional publishers and agents don't even accept e-mail submissions from authors, the new e-book writers and publishers are building up ever-increasing market share in the book word by embracing e-publishing.

The best years are ahead.

For interesting viewpoints on the subject of the changing publishing world, check out:

Nathan Bransford's blog

War of 1812 Not the End of Border Conflict

2011-12-20T12:04:00.005-05:00

June 2012 marked the bicentenary of the start of the War of 1812. We can expect governments and media on both sides of the border to play up that pivotal struggle.

The need to defend Canada's border with the United States did not end in 1815 with the close of the War of 1812, as some believe. All of the other 19th-century wars and skirmishes along that great border are the initial subjects of books from Raiders and Rebels Press.

For example, 2012 also marks the 175th anniversary of the start of the Patriot War. Between December 1837 and December 1838, Canadian rebels and American sympathizers attacked Upper and Lower Canada 13 times from American soil.

Many of the books now available from this publishing site deal with the Patriot War, either as standard history or as historical fiction.

In the months and years to come, Raiders and Rebels Press will publish additional titles, both history and historical fiction. In all cases, the books will present a strong biographical slant and focus on the major leaders and pivotal people on both sides of the conflicts to tell the human stories around the events.