News and Notices from the Writing Trenches #95…
Item. The Mockingbird sequel. It turns out that the “discovery” of the Harper Lee’s old MS (written before Mockingbird but still a sequel) occurred in 2011 and not just recently. Why Harper Collins didn’t own up to that originally can be analyzed by the pundits, but do we care? I find it all a wee bit disappointing because it detracts from Lee’s famous and still unique novel, but who knows what big publishers will do to sell a book?
Item. Goodreads and LinkedIn mean good people. Now that I’ve phased out my social media activity on Facebook (yes, I still have an author’s page there) and phased in more activity on Goodreads, I have found many new online friends. Between Goodreads and LinkedIn, I have a rich experience with discussions about reading, writing, and the publishing business. I value all my old FB friends too, but there’s too much “look at my cute pics,” grandstanding, and soapbox preaching going on there for my taste, not to mention that FB programmers are often tinkering, something which led to my not being able to share blog posts anymore. Pox on Zuckerberg and his staff, not my FB friends.
Item. Goodreads ads v. Facebook ads. If anyone’s interested, I now also have an A/B comparison between ads on these two social media giants. I advertised Kindle Countdown Deals for Angels Need Not Apply and Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, the first on FB and the second on GR. There were many more clicks on FB but no sales. There were fewer clicks on GR—only one!—and fewer views (10,808), but still no sales. Of course, this is a very small sampling—your results may vary, as they say—but the books are similar, so I consider my stats a learning experience.
For now, here’s my tentative conclusion: online marketing sucks if I use social media! I did hit a high on visits to my website, though, but that was probably a combination of the end of the GR campaign and the blog post about the duplicitous Saudis that seemed to resonate. (I can have fun even if I people don’t read my ebooks.)
Item. I’ve missed him. Dan Poynter’s a bit of an old fashioned snake-oil salesman, worldwide traveler, and book marketing guru. His newsletter and AME’s (see below) are the only ones I subscribe to—I usually go to the humor section first (AME’s is humorless). He has created an ebook contest—I never enter it because, like Writer’s Digest’s, it costs money I’d rather spend producing my own ebooks. So I was wondering what happened when I realized I hadn’t received that newsletter in a while. The events are described by that infamous adage: s&%t happens! He fell 12 ft (4 m) off a highway retaining wall while maneuvering for a better pic and spent 2+ months in the hospital. There’s no word whether he’ll return to all his activities, but we should wish him well.
Item. Just pay me…. Marketing people make all sorts of promises to entrepreneurs, and book marketing people aren’t any different in their treatment of authors. Smart ones offer no guarantees, of course (there are none), but still twist your arm by saying, “Let a pro do it.” There’s the good (I love my PR and marketing person who handles my new releases—absolutely no arm twisting from her), the bad (people who write books about book marketing that just regurgitate tried-and-failed ideas, books that often cost more than mine!), and the ugly (“buy my package of services and I’ll make you into a NY Times bestselling author”). Nevertheless, if free, marketers can provide indie writers some good ideas to try.
Item. One example. Penny Sansevieri and her group at AME—maybe you’ve seen her on Huffington Post—usually do a better job than most. Beyond the free advice and some free services offered via contests, AME is a bit expensive for my bare-bones writing business, though, so my connections with AME reduce mostly to reading her newsletter (they’ve reposted some of my articles about writing too—I don’t get paid for that, other than making my name better known, which has some value).
A recent edition of the newsletter contains an explanation of the new Kindle Unlimited policy (if you have your ebooks in KDP Select, i.e. exclusive with Amazon, they automatically participate in Kindle Unlimited). The old policy paid royalties drawn from a slush fund for different percentages read. The new one pays each author per page read (think about this a moment—both are invading readers’ privacy!). In other words, authors are shafted once again (and readers too).
Penny defends this new Kindle Unlimited policy by saying it allows Amazon to better promote ebooks that do well and relegate those who don’t to obscurity (those are my words that summarize her position—you can read the full spiel if you like). Fine and dandy, but I’m considering removing ALL my ebooks from KDP Select, hence Kindle Unlimited. First reason: my ebooks are already priced so low that people can buy them for less than a fast food meal—if they can gamble with indigestion, they should be able to gamble with my ebooks.
Second: Amazon, just like Smashwords, is negating readers that pleasure of discovering a new author—it might seem immodest, but I claim that any ebook in my catalog is solid entertainment for a reasonable price. Many indie books fit that bill; traditionally published books, not so much, because “reasonably priced” doesn’t apply! Third: from a retailer’s perspective, Amazon (and Smashwords as well) would sell more ebooks if they promoted all ebooks—many readers have no idea that Amazon is conspiring to keep them ignorant of potentially interesting reading, but plenty of authors realize that.
Fourth and final reason, and maybe the most important: I’m a bit miffed at Penny’s following statement (this is a direct quote): “If a book isn’t any good, it won’t do well [with Kindle Unlimited].” Really? There are many reasons for a good book not to do well, and many of them have nothing to do with writing quality. Penny is following the stupid marketing mantra that good = sales—she’s a marketing person, after all. Think about it: if we suppose that her wonderful marketing techniques really work and make a successful book (whatever that means), she’s made that book “good,” which is absurd. Moreover, buyers can’t buy a book if they never know about it—and that’s what Amazon’s policy almost ensures.
Amazon and Smashwords’ practices are mostly a hindrance for all authors. Amazon treats books like products, and the Amazon book reviews show it, for example. I don’t know how many times I search for a thriller and find something interesting buried five-plus pages down in the listings the Amazon search engine produces. These ebooks are often good and they’re written by competent authors who haven’t been “discovered” by Amazon’s computer algorithms. Better said, I’m better than any computer at determining what I want to read! Most readers are too.
Item. Apple bashing. Continuing this theme about suffering and exploited indie writers, I hope you read my post on Apple yesterday. Amazon, Apple, and Smashwords are three examples of capitalism out of control in the book publishing world. There are many; my blacklist also includes every Big Five publisher, of course, and many PR and marketing gurus. The common conclusion from the above, yesterday’s post, the Amazon v. Hachette controversy, and many other cases is that authors get shafted and smacked around by big and small corporations who really should be coddling them because authors provide the raw products. Indie writers are out to stop those practices, but the odds are stacked against them.
Readers, please try an indie writer. It’s a small gamble that costs less than a McDonald’s fast food meal and can provide you many more hours of good entertainment and no indigestion. Let your mind soar—read indie and listen to indie music.
Item. More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. It’s delayed but also eminent. (Holidays and soccer fandom interfered a wee bit.) An ET virus attacks Earth, but is it really an attack? An ark to Mars is launched to ensure human beings’ survival, but is the new Mars colony just the first small step for more interstellar exploration? If you like conspiracy theories, hard SF adventures, and plots with different twists, read this ebook. It will be available on both Amazon and Smashwords and all major retailers (it will NOT be in KDP Select, so it will NOT be page-by-page readable in Kindle Unlimited). Enjoy quality entertainment for a reasonable price…coming soon!
In elibris libertas….
