Claude Nougat's Blog

How to Make Your Book a Best Seller, Learn From WOOL

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:53:15 PDT

WOOL is the latest astonishing hit coming from the world of self-publishing. The author, Hugh Howey, "independently published" his book (as Wikipedia delicately puts it) as a serial novel - meaning it started coming out in parts, each about as long as a novella and all linked together by their post-apocalyptic setting. The first came out in July 2011 and seeing the demand from Amazon reviewers pressing him for more, Howey continued producing parts until it had developed to a full length serial novel (5 parts, 528 pages printed).

An astounding success, especially considering this is his debut novel! He hadn't published anything before WOOL, he was born and raised in Monroe, a small town in North Carolina, and he'd worked as a yacht captain, a roofer and an audio technician. Yet WOOL won Amazon's Best Indie Book of 2012 Award and gathered, just for its Part One, 711 customer reviews, averaging an astonishing 4.5 stars out of five. The book today, two years after it's come out, is still ranked #1 in the Kindle Store for science fiction >short stories (no doubt a leftover from the early times when it started out as a short story) and #2 for science fiction >post apocalyptic. Howey has sold the film rights to Twentieth Century Fox and reached an agreement with Random House to distribute a printed version of WOOL to book retailers in the UK starting in March this year, while fully retaining his e-book rights. He's also begun to sell his international rights, notably in Brazil. In short, he's a savvy self-published wonder, someone all self-pubbed writers could learn something from.

So what are WOOL's secrets for success? Perhaps Hugh Howey has better answers to that one than I do (and he does blog about it on occasion, see his piece on Salon here ), but there are certain surprising things about his experience that I think are worth highlighting.

There are five things all publishing gurus tell you that you need to get right: the title, the cover, the pitch to attract the readers' attention, a marketing strategy (know who your audience is) and of course, content quality.

Now how does WOOL fare on all five counts? Be ready for some surprises!

1. The title: do you believe this title works? To me, when I first heard it, I thought it had something to do with knitting, LOL! Honest! Actually, the title derives from a small detail in the first story, the pad to clear the lenses is made of wool...Does that tell you anything about the book as a good title should? Can you guess it's science fiction? Of course not. So forget the title, that is not what made WOOL's success.

2. The cover: Look at it, it's reproduced here. I don't know whether this is the original cover Howey came out with, but even if it is an improvement on whatever the first cover was, I can't imagine a less enticing cover. The texture, the colors are awful. Of course, it's all a matter of taste, but for me, the cover does not work and I imagine that it doesn't for a lot of other readers too.

3. The pitch: Perhaps this is a little better in that it has the virtue of being superbly short. Here it is: "Thousands of them have lived underground. They've lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside.

Or you'll get what you wish for."

Okay, once you've read it, you can see why this is a good pitch. It's well written, snappy. But the trouble is: if you haven't read the book, you can't quite imagine what's in store for you...Therefore, yes, the pitch is not bad but it could certainly be better.

4. Marketing strategy: clearly Howey had none. He first used a small press called Broad Reach then he abandoned it for the next four parts and used Kindle Direct Publishing. When he first published it, WOOL Part One wasn't really part one of a serial novel, it was just a long short story or a short novella, take your pick. It grew organically as a response to reader demand. No marketing strategy here!

5. Content: bingo! Yes, this is where the secret of WOOL is revealed. This is very well written, full of suspense and makes you wonder about the post-apocalyptic world Howey has dreamed up. You want to know more about it, you buy the next part. Simple...

Anything else? Yes, there is something else. Howey's marketing strategy is rather more sophisticated than what may appear at first glance: his book is upheld high in the Kindle rankings by the simple expedient of maintaining Part One of Wool permanently free. Now some people object to making books free on the theory that readers equate free books with worthless books. Yet, in the case of a serial novel, it makes perfect sense: the preview sample on part one of a serial novel that is essentially nothing more than an ultra short book, i.e. novella-length, is simply insufficient (barely 2 pages) to enable anyone to judge whether you want to go on reading or not. Therefore, making Part One of a serial novel free is merely the equivalent of providing a free sample preview of the book, something Amazon routinely does for all its books.

Yet Amazon, if you ask them, won't allow you to set the first part of your serial novel free. I know because I asked. I wanted to make Part One of 2213:Forever Young permanently free, exactly as Hugh Howey had done for Part One of WOOL. I got nowhere even though I asked three times (!). Now I've asked a fourth time and I'm still waiting for an answer that would go beyond what they originally told me, and I quote: "Due to operational costs it is currently not possible to set a book as permanently free through our KDP platform. The minimum list prices allowed with KDP are $0.99 for the 35% royalty option and $2.99 for the 70% royalty option."

Yes I knew that already. Their next point is also something that came as no surprise: "However, from time to time, we may match free promotions on other sales channels, but we retain discretion over our retail prices." Right. If you want Amazon to lower the price to zero, you have to set your book free on other platforms that allow it, like say on Smashwords...and hope for the best!

Is that what Howey did with his WOOL? The answer is no, his book is only available on Amazon or from his own website.

Oh, another remarkable aspect: Howey is a fan of YouTube videos, here's his latest one:

So far, he's done...62 videos where you can follow his book production travails, step by step, month by month. Fascinating look into a writer's life! And you'll notice, now his book covers are, as he put it, real artwork, professionally done.

Yes, Hugh Howey has come a long way...How about you? Are you selling books and if you are, what do you think is the single most important factor explaining your sales?

Post-scriptum to my readers: henceforth I'll publish only one post per week, normally on Sunday. I'm currently working on Part Three of 2213:Forever Young (called The Immortality Trip) and I simply haven't got the time to write two blog posts per week as I have done in the past. Sorry, but I need to finish my book!

Lessons from Japan: How to (Not) Revive an Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 02:26:10 PDT

The whole world is looking at Japan wondering whether it will make it out of its 20-year deflation. It may look like what is happening in Japan is occurring on another planet and that it has no bearing on the American situation, but that sense of comfort is deceptive. Japan is actually a laboratory experiment of what might happen in future in the developed world, the United States included. Why? Because the Japanese economy has been one of the fastest growing economy ever that has reached a fully developed status, sustained by amazing technological innovations, and it is the first advanced country in the world that has a growing - and soon overwhelming - aging population.

And it's not just America that could learn some lessons, Europe too, particularly on how to get out of its self-induced Euro-crisis that threatens deflation, exactly the way it happened to Japan.

To address the issue of deflation and economic stagnation, the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has resorted to a Keynesian strategy dubbed 'Abenomics' focused on government spending and investing in infrastructure, i.e. aggressive monetary easing coupled with public spending on public works plus somewhat vaguely defined "economic overhauls".

Will it work?

At first it looked like it would. The international community allowed the Yen to drop without retaliating, providing a boost to Japanese exports. Early first quarter figures showed Japan growing at a robust 3.5% annualized rate, now revised to an even better 4.1% rate. Still, international investors have qualms, things are no longer looking so good, hedge funds are betting on a bust. In short, financial markets have taken a dim view, fearing that all this government spending might result in nothing but a throttling debt at the expense of Japanese future generations.

To counter this view, on June 5, Prime Minister Abe outlined his blueprint for recovery, optimistically setting a target of 3% growth in income per head over the next 10 years. A tall order, as noted by Reuters' Andy Mukherjee, in the light of the country's shrinking and greying work force. And as Abe spoke the markets plunged, the Nikkei lost 3.8 percent that day.

Why? Because it was deemed that he had left out the reforms Japan needs the most: in its labor market and in industry (see New York Times article). The promised "economic overhauls" did not seem to be coming. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised: Abe is facing elections this summer, no politician likes to disappoint his electorate.

So what does 'Abenomics' really propose and what are the problems Japan is facing and that have caused such a long period of stagnation?

The Challenges.

Simply put:

1. An economy turned inwards: there is no true competition in the Japanese industry and laggards are allowed to linger on behind tariff, tax and bureaucratic protective barriers. They are maintained by state subsidies that further prevent newcomers to enter industries. As a result, firms financed by foreign investors account for only 4% of GDP, compared to 20% in the US and 50% in the UK.

2. A cumbersome regulatory system that discourages start-ups and closes off markets, for example in the medical sector a ban on Internet sales of non-prescription drugs.

3. A stultified labor market in desperate need of flexibility, for example workers from ailing companies cannot be easily transferred to promising new ones.

4. An energy market in the hands of regional monopolies, a situation made critical by the recent idling of nuclear reactors, as a result of Fukushima.

5. A greying population causing a looming medical insurance and pension problem, with Japan's public pension funds that control more than $2 trillion of savings mostly invested in domestic bonds, meaning that they help finance government spending.

All of this combined means that the Japanese economy is skewed towards favoring large established companies and places Tokyo in a leading, protective role.

Abenomics Solutions

An analysis of Abe's blueprint for recovery shows that it fails to tackle all five challenges and in each case only addresses part of it or in a way that will require time before it is solved.

1. Announcement of "tax breaks" to encourage foreign direct investment and participation of Japan in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement. Both would certainly help open up Japanese domestic companies to more competition - but obviously such measures take time.

2. A pledge to remove "cumbersome regulations" but specific measures are not mentioned, except for lifting the ban on Internet sales of non-prescription drugs, surely a minor point, and the setting up of special zones to promote entrepreneurial innovation by "experimenting" with regulations. There is no indication of what sort of experiment is intended and much more needs to be done on the industry regulatory front.

3. Opening up the energy market seems to mean "breaking up regional monopolies" without indication of how this will be done, and pushing for an early resumption of Japan's nuclear reactors - which conveniently overlooks nuclear risks.

4. Overhauls of the medical insurance system are announced without giving any specifics and a call is made for extension of maternity leave to allow mothers to focus on child-rearing. The latter is really a minor populist measure that does not address fully the work-family life balance in Japanese society and it was immediately criticized for possibly discouraging female participation in the labor force

5. Calling on Japan public pension funds to shift their holdings towards investing more in higher-return-equities and overseas assets. This would ensure a more efficient use of savings but the risk is high that it will drive up the cost of government borrowing.

All this completely leaves out the needed reforms in the labor market and only barely addresses the major challenges facing the Japanese economy, in particular the high barriers to entry for newcomers - which means that innovation, the main engine of growth, is still muzzled.

It's not game over yet, but Shinzo Abe will need to press down on the accelerator if his proposed 'Abenomics' is to produce results. Will he dare to do so in the face of upcoming elections?

Do You Really Want to Live 120 Years? That is What Science Promises...

noreply@blogger.com (Claude Nougat) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:36:23 PDT

Is the dream of a long and happy life within reach? The National Geographic recently published an article about the progress of science in this area and optimistically slapped a baby face on its cover suggesting that your child might live to be 120 years old (see photo, that's the Italian edition I get here, if you want to read the full article in English, click here).

The facts.

How probable is all this? More probable than you think. We all know that life is getting longer, that the new "real old age" starts at 80 and not 60, and we've all heard of amazingly old villagers in Italy, in Calabria and Sardinia. Scientists here in Italy have engaged now for years in systematic research to try and uncover the "secret" of old age. Add to that other research in other parts of the world, in Switzerland, in Ecuador, in the United States, and you get an interesting, if complex, picture of where Science stands on this question.

To begin with, this new research is putting dents into some convictions like the one about the benefits to be derived from a restricted diet based on mainly fruits and vegetables. While centenarians from rural areas in Italy often ate that way, it's basically because they were poor and had nothing else to eat when they were young and continued to eat the same way out of habit even when their economic circumstances improved.

And that's one more reason why the question of longevity is treated in genetic terms.

First, it's a question of having the right genes to avoid early death from major life-threatening diseases like cancer. For example, there have surprising results from research among men suffering from a recessive mutation in a single gene that causes the so-called "Laron syndrome", a form of dwarfism that is prevalent in many families in El Oro province. It would appear that the "little people" as they are known locally, are (relatively) immune to cancer and diabetes. Such conclusions are based on serious epidemiological research that started in 1987 and has identified about 100 people suffering from Laron syndrome. Moreover the results are comforted by a set of complementary experiments carried out in the laboratory on mouses. In 1996 Andrzej Bartke, a scientist at Southern Illinois University, shut down the growth hormone pathway which resulted in smaller mice but also, surprisingly, produced longer-living mice by a noticeable margin: some 40 percent longer than normal mice.

This suggests that there might be a link between genes that govern growth and cancer which is, as everyone knows, a condition where cells are multiplying in disorder, as if growth had run amok.

Second, the question arises whether there is a gene responsible for longevity. In Italy, since 1994, scientists at the University of Calabria have carried out solid demographic surveys of families with centenarians to try and figure out how much of longevity is determined by genetics, how much by the environment and how these factors interact to contribute to longevity. The scope of this research has recently turned up an astonishing finding: contrary to accepted wisdom that women live longer than men, a 2011 paper reported that the genetic factors involved seemed to benefit males more than females. While the genetic component of longevity appears to be stronger in males, women may take better advantage of non-genetic factors such as diet and medical care.

So women should not despair, with diet and medical care, the chances of enjoying a life as long as men can even out!

Clearly the question is far more complex than just having a gene that you engineer for longevity and you're done. Calabrian researchers have shown that there are at least five or six pathways that influence longevity, and they include response to stress, the metabolism of nutrients and metabolism in general, i.e. the storage and use of energy. Anything really can influence how long you live, from childhood diet to how long a person attends school.

In America, research is going in another direction at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with studies of brain function and mobility in the elderly. Plus a particularly interesting study of 500 centenarians, all Ashkenazi Jews who were found to have exceptionally high levels of HDL (the good form of cholesterol). This was apparently caused by a variant of a gene known as CETP (cholesteryl ester transfer protein) which protects against cardiovascular disease.

You can easily imagine how this finding has sent off pharmaceutical companies on a frantic search for drugs that would replicate the action of the centenarian variant of CEPT!

The search for genes with key metabolic responsibility in the mitochondria of centenarians also goes on at a fast clip. Think of the mitochondria as the cell’s power plants, with their own DNA and genes. Several mitochondrial proteins have been identified by Einstein College scientists, the so-called "mitochines" associated with people who live into their 90s and 100s. One molecule in particular, dubbed the "humanin" has been shown to have surprising effects in experiments on rats: it was found to normalize glucose levels and essentially erase diabetic symptoms in a few hours. It also prevents arteriosclerosis and Alzheimer’s in mice prone to these diseases and helps limit coronary damage when attacks in the experimental animals are induced.

In short, human genetics research is currently focused on seeking "protective genes". One of the most promising is called FOXO3 (I love the name!), which has been found in long-lived Japanese-American men on the island of Oahu. This gene is similar to the one identified in the Laron population in southern Ecuador. Other scientists, at Einstein, are studying stem cells, suspecting that there might be influences on the fetus that affect genetic mechanisms at the beginning of life that somehow set the rate of aging.

Recently, scientists in Switwerland have treated worms with antibiotics and expanded their life span by 60 percent (see article below).

So are we close to identifying a sure path to longevity? Not really, not yet, but we're on our way, no doubt about it.

Question: Will living long make you happy?

It depends. Just imagine for a moment that science gives us the option - I expect this could happen in about 80 years or so - to choose, assuming you have the means, to join an Age Prevention Program that will guarantee youthful looks till the day you drop dead. Because die you must: it seems we are genetically programmed to last some 130-140 years and not more.

So you look young and you feel good all your life. Is that a blessing or a curse?

Two years ago, I asked myself that question and came up with an answer in fictional form, a short-short story, flash fiction really, to try and move you and make you think. Curious? Here it is, on Read Wave, a cool new site for readers:

Read on ReadWave.com

This is the original story which was the starting point of the serial level I am currently writing, 2213:Forever Young. Part One and Part Two of Forever Young are just published, I'm currently working on Part Three and it will be soon available.

Do let me know in the comments: do you believe longevity is pure gold, particularly if the problems of aging have been solved, or is there something not quite right about it?

Claude Nougat's Blog

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