Free Forgery!

I am starting the new year by breaking one of the cardinal rules of marketing (or indeed any sort of experimentation): I am changing several elements at once.  You know from my previous post about my intention to be printed-on-demand by both KDP and Ingram Spark.  That project is currently in abeyance while I figure out what to do about the cover concerns – whether to add more pages to my IS version, or pay to have the cover rejigged, or get the cover files from the designer and rejig them myself, or [current favourite] ignore it all and eat Jaffa Cakes.

I am also exploring the murky world of Amazon advertising, which is generating headaches of previously unimagined kinds.  Whole books (literally) have been written about how to work the system, and although I have narrowed it down to a few principles, I am still uncertain.  I thought I would take the plunge over the festive break – but when it came to it I couldn’t even find the right part of the Amazon empire to log into to start my life as an advertiser!  I have put out a call for help to my self-publishing community, and when someone figures it out, I’ll have another go.

But in the meantime I am trying a third tack: going narrow.  Yep, that’s what they call it when you limit the sales of your e-books to Amazon only.  In the past I have gone wide by creating all possible e-versions of my books for distribution via iBooks, Kobo and Smashwords (which distributes e-books to all sorts of places like Barnes & Noble and Scribd).  This takes time, and the rewards are slim to the point of emaciation: perhaps a dozen copies have sold across all those alternative channels.  If, however, you throw in your e-lot with Amazon only, you can enrol in their “KDP Select” programme, and this brings with it a raft of possibilities, as explained on their website: “If you make your eBook exclusive to the Kindle Store, which is a requirement during your book’s enrolment in KDP Select, the book will also be included in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. You can earn a share of the KDP Select Global Fund based on how many pages KU or KOLL customers read of your book.  Enrolling in KDP Select also grants you access to a new set of promotional tools.  You can schedule a Kindle Countdown Deal (limited time promotional discounting for your book) for books available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk or a Free Book Promotion (readers worldwide can get your book free for a limited time).”

Like most people I am chary of monopolies and don’t really like the idea of Amazon controlling e-books in this way.  But – with my handful of sales each month – I am not really the author to take a stand on this issue and thereby make Amazon think again.  That’s for the Rowlings and Pattersons of this world.  And so I have taken the plunge: I have de-listed my Plank e-books from all other channels and made them exclusive to Amazon.  I have enrolled them all in KDP Select – which you renew every 90 days, so I can track it and see how it goes.

And – rather daringly – I have decided to try that promotion malarkey and offer the “Fatal Forgery” e-book free for a few days.  Yes: free, gratis and for nothing.  I am hoping that it will prove to be the gateway drug to the Sam series, hooking people in and leading to actual sales of the other books.  I have done all I can to promote the giveaway via my Facebook and Twitter presences but please, if you can, pass on the link to your friends and family – the giveaway has started today and will run until the end of Sunday 6 January 2019.  To download your free “Fatal Forgery” e-book from Amazon, here’s the link (which should take you to the correct page of your local Amazon site).

Free, gratis and for nothing

As promised, I have been spending more of my “Sam time” trying to figure out how to improve sales of the current books, with writing of the new book a more relaxed affair this time round.  Over the weekend I read hundreds of pages of information on the marketing in particular of e-books, and there is much support for the idea of giving books away.  Free, gratis and for nothing, as my father used to say.  “Permafree” is the current term for it.  The thinking is that people have too much choice when it comes to books – millions of them out there.  So you tempt them to try yours by giving it to them, which removes the “shall I risk my money on an author I don’t know?” dilemma for them.  They read your book and – so goes the theory – are so enamoured of your work that they rush to slap down hard currency for all your other books.

I can see the logic, I really can: it’s like the free samples given out in supermarkets and at railway stations.  But “Fatal Forgery” (it makes most sense to give away the first in the series) would be quite the free gift: all those years of work and all those words, just for nothing.  I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that – plus I would feel bad for all the people (219 at the last count) who paid good money for their “FF” e-books and could have got it for nothing had they only waited.  And do people value something they are given for nothing?

However, my weekend has not resulted simply in yet more dithering.  During my reading I discovered that I have let myself fall behind the times.  Apart from publishing direct to Kindle, I rely on a service called Smashwords to distribute my e-books through various other channels, such as iBooks (part of iTunes), Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Scribd and so on.  You format your text in as clean a way as you can, and Smashwords converts it to these various formats (hah! I say that so glibly, but I remember that it took days of painstaking formatting), gets it into the various catalogues, and then takes a percentage of the sales.  Last year I made ten sales through Smashwords.  And now I discover that there is a new competitor on the block: Draft2Digital.  Their website is considerably more user-friendly, and the conversion for the channels they use – similar to the Smashwords offering – is much more straightforward (cleverer software behind the scenes, I guess).  So I have signed up, and so far have published two titles with them.  (I am doing only e-books with them, but they also offer print-on-demand paperbacks, which I currently do with CreateSpace.  In my next marketing session, I might compare the two.)  So as not to cause confusion, I have delisted on Smashwords from the channels offered by Draft2Digital, and kept all of the channels that are unique, if that makes sense – so that my titles are offered through the maximum number of channels.  As I always say, I’ll keep you posted.

Scenting the finish line

Just a quick update for you today, as things are moving along apace with “Portraits of Pretence”.  I have now done my final edits (until, that is, an eagle-eyed reader writes to me in a few months’ time to point out something I’ve missed!) and have cut and pasted the text into the format needed for uploading to CreateSpace.  I’ve written the back cover blurb (which doubles as the book description on Amazon), chosen the key words (for Amazon cataloguing) and set the price.  All I need now is the cover, which I have approved in draft and am hoping to see in finished form very soon.  So you don’t have long to wait to see that!  All I’m saying at the moment is that it’s green…  Once I’ve uploaded the cover to CreateSpace I can order my author copy, and once I’ve seen that I can publish quietly and order my big box of books to be delivered to bookshops ahead of the official publication date of 21 October.

Before then, I still have to take the finalised text of “Portraits of Pretence”, strip it of all its formatting, and turn it into different versions suitable for Kindle, Kobo, iBooks, Nook and Gumroad.  I sell hardly any in any e-format except Kindle, but the other books are available in those formats and it seems churlish to stop now.  I’m working in Guernsey this coming week, so I figure that creating one format per evening should see me through.

And just this morning, I found myself thinking about the plot of “Plank 5”…

AudioSam is here!

It’s here!  The audiobook of “Fatal Forgery” is now available for purchase from Amazon, Audible and iBooks, with five-minute free samples offered on all three sites.  Obviously I am a novice at this, but here’s what I have gleaned so far (from a technical, publishing, money-earning perspective).

On Amazon, the link is made automatically between other editions of the book and this new audio version, so all the existing reviews can be seen – hurrah!  If you want to buy through Amazon, you are patched through to Audible, which Amazon now owns, but it still looks more Amazon-ish than Audibl-ish.  Once there, you have two options: ordering a one-off download, or setting up a monthly subscription to Audible (£7.99 per month) which allows you to download one new book a month.  They are currently offering a 30-day free trial, and there is also a system of credits that you can buy to save money on your monthly sub.  If someone signs up to the monthly sub and downloads “Fatal Forgery” as their first book – which demonstrates that “FF” is what brought them to Audible – and then they stay with Audible for at least two paid monthly cycles, I get a bounty payment.  It’s US$50, and it’s shared equally between the narrator and me.

You can also do all of this (one-off download or monthly sub) by going direct to Audible, rather than through Amazon – but the net result is the same.  Well, almost the same: the one-off download is (today) priced at £14.60 on Amazon, and at £16.69 on Audible.  (I mentioned a while ago that the strangest thing about audiobooks for me as a self-published author is that the pricing is out of my control – I’m used to setting my own prices.)

Lastly, if you’re Mac-ish by nature, you can download the audiobook to your iPhone or Mac from iTunes.  I’m not nearly as au fait with this system, but I have managed to find the link, and today the iTunes download price for “Fatal Forgery” is £10.95.

As far as I can tell – and this is all theory at the moment, as I have had no sales yet – I can track it all via my ACX dashboard, which will record all sales and bounties.  And, as with paperback and e-book sales, I will no doubt fail almost instantly in my resolution not to check the figures every hour or so.

The Worm is launched!

The Big Day is finally here!  And the (some might say obsessive…) planning has paid off, as “Worm in the Blossom” has hit all the relevant shelves at the right time.  Here it is in Heffers this morning:

And I have checked all the e-venues – iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Gumroad – and all listings are now live.  The only laggard is the Book Depository, and their catalogue will pick it up on their next sweep.  (I’ve never sold anything through them but no-one likes a monopoly, so I try to give an alternative for people who want a paperback-not-through-Amazon.)

My lovely friend and book blogger Jo has kindly featured me as her guest blogger today – you can read my post here.  Jo is also one of my reviewers, so now I wait on tenterhooks to see what she thinks of “Worm”.  Because yes, that’s the next step: waiting for those reviews and rating to start appearing…

But for now Sam and I will enjoy the moment.  And then next week I start thinking in earnest about “Plank 4” – I’ve already booked a library research day in the diary.

The countdown has begun

Only two days to go!  Can’t tell you how excited we are in our house – well, apart from the cat, who just yawns widely and ignores us.  Friday is the Big Day, but in the true spirit of self-publishing, I have had to work out what needs to be done in advance in order to hit that deadline.

Today I cycled into town with my deliveries for the two local bookshops who are kind enough to stock Sam; I could have delivered them on Friday, but they might not have time to process them on the day, and it seems a bit rude to hang around and watch them, so I figured that with a couple of days’ lead time I could pretty much guarantee being able to go in on Friday and see “Worm in the Blossom” on the shelf.  I have also sent out a few review copies, because if people are kind enough to agree to review the book, it seems only polite to let them have it a bit ahead of time.  And one kind person has offered to have me as a guest blogger on her book blog on Friday, so I needed to plan for that.

The appearance of the e-Worms is happening gradually, and I am reasonably hopeful that they will all be in position by Friday.  Amazon was obviously in a high gear this time round, and their listings are already live, while Smashwords is taking a bit longer – but then it does distribute its catalogue to all sorts of places, like iTunes.

So what is left to do on Friday?  I shall be updating this blog, of course, and adding all the purchase links to this and to my work blog.  I shall be doing that guest blog – I’ll give you the link when I have it – and of course snooping round the bookshops to see “Worm” on the shelves.  And I shall be turning my mind to “Plank 4” – I’ve already been jotting down ideas…

Opening a can of e-Worms

I am a rugby widow.  Even though England have now been knocked out of the World Cup, my husband is  continuing to watch so that he can decide “who else to support” – and apparently Namibia/Georgia was the best match he has ever seen.  Luckily it has all coincided with my preference to spend time with the other man in my life, Sam Plank, and so this weekend is dedicated to the e-versions of “Worm in the Blossom”.

As I have explained before (I’m a bit obsessed with this), the key to successful self-publishing (which is not the same as profitable self-publishing – it’s just managing to get the book out there) is working backwards.  Decide on your publication date – for “Worm”, it’s next Friday, 16 October – and then work backwards from there.  And this means uploading your files several days before you want to be certain that they are available for sale.  When I was new to it all first uploaded “Fatal Forgery”, I clicked refresh on Amazon every three seconds for about four days, until I realised that these listing sites work to their own rhythm and timetable, and my fretting was having no impact on anything except my own blood pressure and sleep pattern.  So with “Canary” I just planned a bit further ahead, uploaded the files well in advance, and then went all Zen.  And I have done exactly the same with “Worm”: this afternoon I uploaded to CreateSpace everything they need for the paperback edition – cover, interior, price, distribution channels, search terms, the whole lot.  I have no idea when it will actually appear in Amazon’s catalogue, but I do know that, with six days’ lead time, it will definitely be there on the launch day.

And tomorrow is to be devoted to e-Worms.  As well as the paperback editions of the Sam Plank novels, I also offer them in Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, iBooks and Gumroad (PDF) versions.  This is of course the same basic text, but formatted – or rather, stripped of most formatting – in slightly different ways for each one.  It’s a bit tedious, but fun when it comes to the uploading.  Again, the actual appearance date on each website is in the lap of the self-publishing gods, but come Friday, they’ll all be there.  And boy oh boy am I looking forward to Friday!