Excitement Coming Soon?

Deviating from my usual topics here because we may be seeing a bit of excitement next week.  Hurricane Erika is on her way and the latest prediction showers the storm passing just off shore from our location.  Of course, that's still 4 days away and the predictions of storm plots can, and often do, change. 

The Results of My E-book Giveaway Promotion

Since I haven’t blogged in 3 weeks, this is long overdue.  All I can say is my “regular job,” as well as our volunteer work, has kept us busy.

So what happened with the e-book giveaway promotion?  That’s where we left off.  It was a bust for sales; did not sell a single copy from my promotional efforts.  The reason why was simple.  I didn’t promote my promotion, at least not well enough.  I posted to a handful of Facebook groups, as I had not yet even been accepted for membership to the list I found of places to promote.

However, I did improve my ranking by a fair amount.  It was not enough to bring about any sales.  As anal as I can be about details, I didn’t make note of my standings before I started, but I remember the numbers roughly. 

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: ~#360,000 Paid in Kindle Store

    ~#13,000 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    ~#38,000 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

At the height of my giveaway, my stats looked like this.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,812 Free in Kindle Store (Note, this number is in the free category.)

    #181 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #361 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

And this is where I currently stand.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,020 Paid in Kindle Store

    #8135 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #10218 in Books > Romance > Paranormal

    #25481 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

I gave away 89 copies of Soul Searching, made no money, but raised my overall ranking by over 160,000 places.  Granted I’m still just shy of being in 200,000^th place, but that’s better than 360,000^th.  During the promotion, it was exciting to see my other numbers dip into the low three digits.  But that didn’t last long.  The morning after the promotion (which ended at midnight) the stats looked like this.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #199,602 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

    #8257 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #10611 in Books > Romance > Paranormal

    #25407 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction.

Now keep in mind I didn’t sell any books from the promotion.  Since then, I have sold exactly 3, and have a couple of Kindle Unlimited users.  Even those 3 sales improved my stats.

What’s next?  I will be doing another giveaway, but only after I have done an organized promotion from a carefully crafted list.  The object is to rank high enough in popularity, that you will be as close as possible to the top of the list.  Then the effort becomes self replicating.  People who didn’t see the promos for the giveaway will see it when they go to “Free on Kindle” without scrolling too far.

The list.  Well, that’s coming.  But it has been a rather daunting task.  I’ll tell you why next time.

A quick addition.
When I wrote this just a few minutes ago, my stats were as I described them.  I just looked again and they had changed.  I lost ground.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #212,182 Paid in Kindle Store

    #8511 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Paranormal

    #10723 in Books > Romance > Paranormal

    #26828 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction

That one single sale last night affected the numbers THAT much, at least temporarily.  It would seem that small changes in sales can have a surprising effect.

What have I learned about promoting my novel on Kindle?

OK, so what am I learning about promotion.  I’ve learned that it’s not just about giving an e-book away for a couple of days.  Without promotion, the effort will likely fall flat.  It may only generate a few downloads and little or nothing in the way of sales.

I’ve also learned that a lot of people have made a lot of lists on where and how to promote your e-book online.  Some are paid advertisements, others are free.  Some will allow you only to promote when your e-book is free, others will allow you to post when it’s reduced, and others allow free posting of a full priced e-book.

Some web sites require varying lead times, as much as 30 days.  Others request a week, and still others are “day of” only.

I also found a list of “Twitter Influencers”.  Looks like I will have to revive my Twitter account.

Many are Facebook groups.  Virtually all memberships require approval.  After 24 hours, about 50% have been joined as members.  The rest are still “Pending.”  I’m focusing on Facebook first since it’s the social network with which I’m most familiar. 

I might add that I found a great group on Facebook.  Promotion is forbidden, but they have a great group of people.

I’ll work on Twitter next.  That should just be a matter of Following a bunch of users, and hoping that they will follow me back.

Part of my process involves worksheets.  I have consolidated the lists that I found online and I’m in the process of putting them into a table, complete with my own notes.  The goal is to separate the free from the paid, and which I can only use for my free giveaway and those that will let me do general promotion.  If I don’t, any efforts will be haphazard.

Another thing I learned is not to talk about free book giveaways in the Amazon Author forums.  It’s a subject that starts flame wars among users. 

My free giveaway has been set to start at midnight (but I think that’s Pacific time) and End Friday.  I should know how well it worked on Saturday.

Marketing and Promotion on Kindle

Having conquered all of the technical aspects of Kindle, I will now begin tackling the marketing and promotion of my novel.  I’ll also be thinking about my next book to be uploaded entitled The Damsel and the Hermit.  Yeah, not very creative but it’s the best I could come up with and my wife likes it, soooo…  But I digress.  Marketing and Promotion.

My first order of business was to set up my Author Page on Amazon.  It was quick, easy, and fairly painless.

The next order of business will be to help move my novel’s listing by giving it away.  That may seem counter intuitive, but it is said to work.  Amazon places ebooks on their list according to the number of downloads.  It doesn’t matter if those downloads are at full price, reduced price, or free.  The more downloads you have, the higher on the list you appear.  But because of my inherent procrastinatory tendencies, I will put that off for a couple of days just to see if anyone stumbles across my novel all on their own.

Once my curiosity is satisfied, I will be offering my novel Soul Searching for free, and posting it to my Facebook page.

BTW, my Author Page can be found at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B012LA0TE8
Its a little long and unwieldy, but I can change it to something that makes more sense.  But first I have to figure out what that could be.  My name in all of its variations is taken.

It's Done

It’s done.  My novel is uploaded.  All 72,450 words, cover art, description, keywords… the whole shebang.    Distribution… set.  Royalty options… set.  Price… set.   I clicked “Save and Publish” at about 9:45 last evening.

The status was given as:  Now in Review and should be available within 72 hours.  

Within a few minutes the status changed to: Now Publishing. Again there was the promise of 72 hour availability.  I was loving that fact that at that time I still didn’t have a product link so there was nothing more I could do.  A procrastinator’s dream.

Some time around 11 pm it went live.  I had a link and I could see it as Kindle Shoppers see it.  I immediately saw that I would have to edit my html in the description.  I added a line break unbeknownst to me that Kindle would add one as well underneath my headline.  It really blows the flow.  But that’s not a problem, I needed to go back in and register for KDP Select as well, but I don’t want to do that until the ad looks just right.

It’s was also available to the Kindle search at that time.  I typed in Soul Searching and it comes in third with several more underneath it.  I’ll have to play with keywords later and see how it ranks.

At around 11:15 I noticed the status was: Live – Updates Publishing.  But I couldn’t get in to edit that pesky html error.

It was a little past midnight, and I still couldn’t edit anything.  That was probably a good thing as it might have inspired me to stay up later.

When I woke up this morning, it was all there and available for editing.  It only took a few moments to make my corrections to the html coding in the description and enroll in KDP Select, then a few minute for the changes to appear on the page.  I’m in business.

So here it is on Kindle; my first novel. Soul Searching.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012JO8E98?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

So I guess my next step will be promotion.  But I kind of want to see how many, if any, people stumble across it in the next day or so.  Maybe that is procrastination, but I'm curious to see if anyone  will see it among the millions of other ebooks on Kindle.

Today I will be studying the ins and outs of KDP Select. 

Fear

At the end of the last post I mentioned that things were getting a little frightening.  I don't know about other first time Kindle publishers, but I would hazard a guess that many experience this angst.  Very few outside my immediate family, my actual household, and a few close friends know this is happening.  To those who know, I'm guarded.  "Maybe I can sell a few copies," I say, tipping my head from side to side with a forced smile. 

Inwardly is a different story.  I wonder if I'll hit pay dirt.  Maybe I'll be an overnight success.  Fame and fortune will be mine.  My family will never again be in want of anything.  I don't even care if its not overnight; if it takes a month that will be fine. 

But going deeper is a more dispiriting thought.  What if NOBODY wants to read it?  As Marty McFly said in Back to the Future: "What if they say 'Get outta here kid, you're no good.'?"  It's a scary feeling.

It's getting scarier because there are few things between me and hitting that "Publish" button.  The time is drawing near.  It might even be tonight.  In the winter, I drink coffee morning noon and night with a few colas in between.  In the summer, I tend to drink coffee only in the morning, and colas until bedtime.  Tonight, I'm thinking coffee.  Its a "project drink."  Something you drink as you work to keep your edge sharp.  Or perhaps beer would be in order.

Inspiration and Procrastination: My Kindle Project

The previous post is why I have 3 completed novels.  Every time I would finish a novel and start to even think about searching for an agent, I would get inspired with another story.  "I can't waste my time looking for an agent today.  I'm really hot on this new novel.  I probably wouldn't find an agent anyway."

As a champion procrastinator, the first rule of procrastination when faced with an unpleasant task is to find something more important to do.  Since inspiration has no schedule, you must strike when the iron is hot.

That is not to say that, I haven't procrastinated a bit since I first began exploring the Kindle option.  At the present time, I have ideas for 5 more novels in various stages of notes.  In the last week or so I have become very inspired to write other things, but I am forcing myself to focus on Soul Searching.

I have the cover art.  That was a huge stumbling block.  I have finally sorted out the royalty option choices.  I know what format it needs to be in prior to uploading.  When the final proofread and corrections are complete, the file will be ready for upload.  But there was more more thing to agonize over.  The description.

The description isn't just something to go and fill in.  You don't just sum up your novel in the text box with no prior thought and move along.  The description is what will make people either click the button to download or keep searching.  I find that daunting, especially after searching the internet for tips.  "Write in the style of your genre," says one.  "It will drive your English teacher crazy but don't use complete sentences," says another. 

Today, inspiration struck for my description.  I'm still fine tuning it, but I'm sure I'll have it ready before the final draft is complete.

All I can say is "soon."  Which is actually a little frightening.  More on that later...

Why Kindle?

So why did I decide to put my novel on Kindle?  I had a little late night rant a little while back after researching "conventional publishing," and had made the decision to go with an ebook.  This should explain it.


So why am I here working on putting my novels on Kindle?  Why not go the conventional route and have my books published for real?  Well, in my opinion, online publishing IS real.

I have doubt that digital media will ever take the place of print completely, at least not in my lifetime.   A physical print volume offers comfort to many.  But the convenience of digital cannot be denied.  It is the ultimate in instant gratification for readers.  While there is the warmth of a visit to the local book store, more and more people’s lives are just too busy for that.  Of course there is Amazon, but if there is a book you really want, you want it NOW, not three or four days from now.  E-books can be yours in seconds.

Then there is another reason.  The agent search process is INSANE.  In the old days, an aspiring author typed up a manuscript and submitted it to a publisher for consideration.  Usually, the manuscript was returned with a note saying “Don’t call us we’ll call you.”  But now it’s different.  Most publishers will ONLY accept submissions from literary agents. 

So how do you get a literary agent?  You don’t just find one in the Yellow Pages and say “I want to hire you to be my agent.”  Any agent that wants money up front should be avoided.  Agents work on a percentage.  It gives them incentive to sell your book and get the best possible deal.  But the question remains, how DO you get an agent.

You send out a letter called a query.  It’s one page and HIGHLY structured.  First, you tell them WHY you chose them.  You’re supposed to tell them that you chose them because they represented a similar book for another author.  What?  I have to go out and find books similar to mine?  THEN find out who represented the author?  Are you CRAZY?  I spent 2 years working on an original novel and now I’m supposed to go out and find books that are JUST LIKE IT???  Not just one, but potentially DOZENS.  I have a job.  I don’t have time to read that many books and I sure don’t have time to research dozens of books that ARE “just like mine.

But it gets better.  The rest of the query is a doozy.  The next paragraph should be a run on sentence called “The Hook.” The hook should describe your ENTIRE book enough to garb the agent’s interest.  It’s tough but doable.  I still have a problem with run on sentences though.  I had a lot of them in my rough draft.  And I went through it over and over to get rid of them, breaking them up into two or sometimes three sentences.

The next paragraph is a little easier.  It’s a whole paragraph describing your book: a normal one without run on sentences.

Lastly, you describe it in a little more detail in TWO whole paragraphs.

A lot of emphasis is put on the query letter.  There are web pages devoted to how to write query letters.  One in particular, http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx, is considered to be the standard.  It even includes examples of queries from published novels.   And since the query is so important, there are forums that exist for people to submit their queries for critiques. 

Boy do you get critiques.  No matter what you write, one of the first comments will direct you to the above website, because you obviously don’t know how to write a query letter.  Then people come in and pick it apart.  Then it dawns on you.  99% of the people commenting have never sold a book.  It’s a classic case of the blind leading the blind.  Why am I here?  ARRRG!!!!

On top of all that, your letter, as a first time author is going to end up on what’s called a “slush pile.”  That’s where all of the unsolicited first time authors go.  The main agent (or agents) at the firm likely will not read them.  A lower level assistant may or may not read it immediately, if at all.  It may be tossed aside because frankly, it’s terrible.  Or it may not be exactly what they are looking for at this time.  Hmmm.  Maybe they already have a similar author writing similar materials?  Is THAT a possibility?  Or you might have the next best seller but the assistant was having a bad day and just didn’t see your brilliance.

In common parlance, it’s a crap shoot.  It’s not unheard of for an author to have to make 100 submissions before they are published.  I’m 55 years old!  I don’t have THAT kind of time. LOL

Louis L’Amour received 200 rejections before getting published.

140 rejections for Chicken Soup for the Soul

Margaret Mitchell got 38 rejections for Gone with the Wind.

Zane Grey was told he had no business being a writer, and even Dr Seuss was informed his work would never sell.

The odds of finding an agent are far less than the odds of going crazy trying to find an agent.  Kindle became a viable option, if for no other reason than my mental health.

Cover Art

After a couple of hours of testing my concept in my photo studio, I came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to achieve my vision, and nearly impossible without a greenscreen, which I don't have yet.  I also don't have a model.  I was using myself as a test subject just to see if I could make the lighting look right.  I could have very easily used that as an excuse to prolong the project.  But my wonderful wife again saved the day.  She suggested using an image I already have: a waterfall I photographed in Yellowstone several years ago.  As is so often the case, it was a great idea.  I now have a cover.

But there is more to the cover art saga.  Amazon recommends a huge image, the longest side being 2500 pixels with an aspect ratio of 1.6.  I saw one website report that they were upping that to 4500 pixels, which would be ridiculous.  The minimum recommended size is 1000 pixels on the long dimension.  I decided to go with 1200 pixels.

Why all of the concern?  Because at the 70% royalty rate that I have, or will be choosing, I will be paying for the download.  My 1567x2500 image came in at 1.31 mb.  By reducing the image size to 752x1200 I reduced the file size to 364kb.  I basically shaved 1 megabyte off the download.

Still working on the final final final proofread and corrections.  Getting excited.  Soon my only concern will be if anyone actually wants to read it.

Progress Report

My wife is proofreading and highlighting, and I have been exploring Kindle.  I think I have a pretty good handle on what's involved.  Two of the biggest things in the Kindle process, for me anyway, is coming up with a description of my book, and what payment option I want.

The description is a tough one.  How much do I say?  They allow a massive number of characters; up to 4,000.  Far more than I think I need.  I was thinking four or five sentences.  But there is room for so much more.  I'll have to ponder that and sit down with a blank Word document in front of me and see what flows.

Pricing on the other hand turned out to be a no brainer.  It seemed like a no brainer at first, but it made me wonder: "Is it really a no brainer?"  You have two royalty options.  35% and 70%.  Automatically, I think, "I want more money; I'll take the 70%."  But then my suspicious nature kicks in.  Surely there is some kind of catch.  Without getting into ALL the details, no there is no serious "catch."  To qualify for 70%, an ebook must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and a small download fee comes out of the author's end.  Choosing the 35% rate allows authors to charge as little as 99 cents and as much as $200, for their ebook, and Kindle picks up the tab for downloading.  So 70% it is.

Now I'm off to set up the camera gear to do some test shots for the cover art.  I have a vision, and I think I can do it.  Just need to play with the lighting.

More to come...

Going to Do It!

OK, you finished your novel.  YAY!!!  After 4 years, it’s done.  Endless hours, often late into the night, you toiled to get it just right.  They say once you finish your story you should polish it and polish it, then polish it some more.  You’ve polished it so long that some of the “i”s are missing their dots.

That sound like you?  It sounds like me to a tee.  I decided I can’t be alone out there in this feeling, so I decided to blog about the trials and tribulations of getting my books on Kindle.  I tried the conventional print method, but I could never get past the agent search.  After only a handful of query letters I gave up.  That could be a blog entry all of its own, and it will be at some point.

So in this series I am going to talk about the process and the amusement and anguish along the way.  Every once in awhile, something will work easily, and I’ll have cause to celebrate.  I don’t think that will include the cover art though.  Even though it’s not print, it’s been suggested that a good cover still matters.  I tend to agree with that as we are a visual society.  I suspect that on social media, images get shared more than plain links, and are probably more likely to get clicks as well.

I have all the tools, or know where to get them either cheap or free.  I have my concepts visualized in my head.  And I roughly know the process for Kindle.  I take my version upload it, and let Kindle do the conversion  Easy.  But if I remember correctly from my previous research, it’s a good idea to make sure in the process none of the desired formatting was lost. They recommend html, and since I have a familiarity with it, that's what I'll use.  But I will still create my final final final manuscript in document form.

I have three completed manuscripts, and have decided that the first will be my romance novel entitled Soul Searching.  It happens to be my wife's favorite, and I have an idea for cover art.  In the coming evenings, she will be doing the final read through, looking for any typos we might have missed in the last three final edits, and any formatting errors that might have cropped up from using a backup copy in PDF format.  I'll tell you about THAT next time.

So stay tuned for more blogs, coming soon.

BACK UP YOUR FILES

How many times have you heard that?  In the last blog I mentioned formatting errors from a PDF.  I had to find a way to convert my PDF copy because somehow, my original doc file, actually several because I kept multiple incarnations of my story, disappeared in my last crash.  I thought I had all of it on a flash drive, as well as on my backup drive.  I did not.  All that was left was a PDF that I had sent to a friend who agreed to be a test reader.

I have read that Kindle will accept PDFs, they don't play well together.  I was able to convert it, back to a Word doc by way of html.  But in the conversion process, I lost all of my paragraph indentation.  It also ran some paragraphs together.  AAAAARG!  Without my loving wife's assistance, I'd still be working on it.  She spent the entire evening with the PDF copy on her computer reading the first few words of each paragraph, so I could correct the doc file on my computer.  It was grueling.

BACK UP YOUR WORK!  Throwing it on a flash drive is a great idea, as is saving a copy to an external hard drive, or at least the D partition of your computer if you have one.  But cloud storage is cheap these days.  I spend $60 a year on Carbonite, well worth it if it saves you from losing an entire novel.  Had I not sent that copy to my friend, I might not have Soul Searching.

Am I an Author?

I started wondering as I wrote the material for the dreaded “About me blurb.”  I always feel weird writing that kind of thing.  I get done and think, why would anyone be interested in someone like THAT?  Yeah, I’ve had an interesting life with a lot of ups and downs and a sprinkling of excitement here and there.  But I digress.

More than anything I looked at the heading.  About the AUTHOR.  Am I an author?  Does it count if no one ever read my work other than a few family members and friends who were “drafted” as test readers?  Somehow the word author has a certain power and mystique to me; a title to be earned, not given, and certainly not simply adopted.

I shall have to mull that over.