News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #88…
Item: Changes to Goodreads. Same confusing website (watch for those links with the tiny print!), but they’ve added two useful features, one for readers and one for readers/authors. The first allows you to download books you’ve purchased on Amazon onto your book list in one fell swoop. Although I’m an avid reader and read many more books than I write (as it should be), I’ve always been lazy about doing this (AKA I want to spend my valuable time writing, not doing Goodreads/Amazon’s work for them). I made the “fell swoop” occur just recently though, so authors who’ve had their books read and reviewed by me might note slightly different rankings. I apologize for that—damned if I was going to go to Amazon to check how many stars I gave a book when I don’t believe in that ranking system anyway. By the same token, if I couldn’t remember having read the book (even though Amazon’s computer says I did) or remembered trashing it, I generally didn’t make the transfer to Goodreads. (You’ll see what I mean when you take advantage of this feature—it is nifty and shows one advantage of Amazon’s long tentacles.)
The number two feature for both readers and authors is that now, you dear reader, can “follow me” by finding my Goodreads profile (this link will require a log-in if you’re not logged in already) and clicking on the “Follow Author” button. This adds another tool for authors that need to be discovered (I’m one, by the way). Another writer (Goodreads newsletter?) mentioned that she found the RSS feature the most useful (what I do here on this site is “shared” to my friends on Goodreads and now all “followers” too). I often write blog posts of interest to readers and writers (like this one!), so this new follow option works for both those groups. Goodreads might be confusing as hell, but these two features are very welcome. And I’d rather have friends or be followed on Goodreads by readers than on Facebook or Twitter. The latter two sites have too many people who aren’t readers, and never will be, and I want to reach out to readers above all because I think I offer quality reading entertainment at a reasonable price.
Item: Book bloggers. I recently discovered bloggersintl.blogspot.com with its bloggerindex. Between Simon Royale’s list and this one, authors supposedly have a list of avid readers who are willing to review books. Indie authors, though, shouldn’t get their hopes up. Many book bloggers in Royale’s list aren’t accepting new review queries (“closed to further notice” isn’t enough to remove them from the list, I guess). Many in the bloggerindex aren’t either. Those who do place conditions like only pbooks (in this day of ebooks?) or traditionally published books (that’s bloggerindex—Royale’s are supposedly looking only for indies), paying authors (“our slush pile is full, but if you pay me you can speed things up”), or restrictive genres (I always get a warm and fuzzy when Google Chrome queries me if I want to continue to a website because it’s X-rated).
I think the whole book blogging concept is now passé. It’s like a drive-in with carhops—maybe nostalgic but unworkable and inefficient. Book review sites should work as follows: Groups of reviewers should band together and administrators should feed them info about books whose authors have queried. Reviewers can select from that list books they want to read and review—the author has no guarantees except for an honest review if her/his book is selected. Slush piles that keep growing in the traditional book-blogger business model are absurd and often occur because a blogger says s/he’ll review ALL genres until s/he has to “close until further notice” (that’s irksome because it’s hard to discover when they’ll be open for business again). How do I know my system works? I’m a reviewer for bookpleasures.com, and that’s how that review site works! So, book bloggers, come into the 21st century, please!
Item: Authors seeking reviews. I’m an avid reader, so I try to give back to the community of readers and writers by reading and reviewing other author’s books as time permits. I’ll even do so occasionally without receiving a query—readers should know about new books (indie or otherwise) that are entertaining and/or informative and at a reasonable price. As an author trying to find reviewers, I’m painfully aware that quality reviews are a scarce commodity right now, but please, only query me after you’ve tried Bookpleasures.com. And, if I turn you down, please realize that I’m not making a statement about your ebook. How could I if I haven’t even read it! And to all readers who love a great story: please review that great ebook you just read. In just a few lines, you can let other readers know about that new author you’ve discovered! It’s very easy to do on Amazon—don’t let it slide to next week or you won’t get it done. That’s a great compliment to any author, and I’m no exception. In fact, for it’s a great compliment if you just mention one of my ebooks to your relatives and friends! But read on….
Item: Reviewers seeking books. Almost any indie author will send you a free ebook in return for an honest review, yours truly included. I set aside a reviewing budget for each ebook I publish. It’s usually not spent by the time I have another ebook to release, so I defray the new book’s production costs with some of that old reviewing budget. However, I’ll happily bite the bullet and send you a free copy of ANY ebook in my catalog in exchange for an honest review. (I’m not too happy when the reviewer makes that request but then doesn’t deliver on the review, but life isn’t like a box of chocolates.) Don’t worry about jumping into a series either. All my ebooks can be read as a stand-alone, whether they’re in a series or not. I write complete stories, not soap operas.
Item: 99 cent sales and price reductions. Two short story collections at $0.99 now introduce readers to two of my series. Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java will introduce you to the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”; Fantastic Encores! will introduce you to the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” The second’s release made me start thinking about price reductions. Because most of my ebooks are in Amazon’s KDP Select, I’ll try to remember to offer some of those at $0.99 in the Kindle Countdown program. In the same spirit of bringing you great entertainment for reasonable prices, I’ve lowered all my prices. All my ebooks, including new releases, will now be priced in that sweet spot between $2.99 to $3.99 from now on, with the occasional 99 cent sale. (Those less than $2.99 were just mentioned; the ones more than $3.99 are The Midas Bomb and Survivors of the Chaos, also available as trade paperbacks, because they’re Infinity Publishing books—I can’t do anything about Infinity’s prices.)
Item: Interviews. Author, do you want to be interviewed? I can send you a list of questions. The most difficult indie author problem to solve is the “discovery problem.” Interviews can only help you solve that. Other authors with blogs, or book-bloggers, do you want to interview me? Send your Q file as an attachment and I’ll turn it into a Q&A file (I might add some Q&A of my own too). I also need to solve that “discovery problem”!
Item: Kindle Scout. Praise Amazon for Goodreads changes; bash them for Kindle Scout. I talked about it last week in a post, but no comments so far. I put up the question in a LinkedIn discussion group, but no replies there either. I began to wonder what was going on, so I used my old friend Google to find comments about Scout. By the way, scouts are writers who subject themselves to Amazon’s incarnation of a critique group, and not the beta-readers who do the reading (forget about crowd sourcing—that doesn’t describe Scout at all—it’s more like American Idol). One person commenting somewhere said the program sounded fantastic because it had a $1500 advance and guaranteed $25,000 in royalties from sales. The first is correct. The second is NOT true. The Scout rules say that if the author doesn’t make $25,000 over five years, s/he can ask that rights revert back to her/him. At least, that’s my reading, and it’s a big difference. (Yes, you lose control of your rights for five years—that’s not as bad as forever, like with a traditional publisher.)
Basically, an author is trading off the usual 75% Amazon royalty for a $1500 advance, 50% royalties, and a protracted process not quite as bad as traditional publishing, but pretty close—the “gatekeepers” aren’t agents or editors but readers participating in the Scout program and Amazon gurus, who still have the final word. Her/his ebook still ends up in KDP Select (most of mine are there—see above). It’s not even clear that Amazon helps at all with PR and marketing (my biggest cost). Bottom line: With what I know now, I can’t recommend Kindle Scout. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
Maybe I’m just being a glass-half-empty guy here, but I’ve made costly mistakes before in this business—both in time and money—and I don’t want to make any more. An indie author’s biggest problem nowadays is being “discovered.” Kindle Scout doesn’t really help solve that problem and would damage my efficient ebook production process. Many authors can say they can release ebooks almost as fast as they write them, because they don’t write that many, so maybe Scout would work for them. In my case, I write a lot, and I can still say that (and I still go through extensive editing, beta-reading, ensuring good formatting and cover art, and promoting through PR and marketing—I pay for some of that, of course). So, I’m not saying Scout won’t work for you. I’m just not recommending it. I’ll stick with my current business model and KDP Select because it works for me.
In elibris libertas….
