Tales From An Indie Author: .99c Books

Established authors have been quick to dismiss the trend, but let me tell you about this poor man's marketing plan. Instead of advertising dollars chasing potential profits, 99c IS the advertisement.

Free advertisement.

Take, for instance, a 2k advertising buy. You sell 1k books at a profit margin of $2. Oh look. You break even.

Or you sell 500. Lose money. Or get NOTHING.

Instead you drop the price to .99c. Sell 1k books, and instead of $2,000 you get $400. Did that really cost you $1600 or, like me, would you have not sold near that many anyway? Not Just for Breakfast Anymore was priced at .99c for the summer. The result? A modest, but definite increase in sales, and now NJFBA is in the top fifty in its categories, if not top twenty.

Price is a superior marketing tool versus ad buys (when time is an abundant resource, which is the only thing indies reliably have). You only pay for marketing that results in sales.

Now you've all heard the blog blather about the 99c price line demeaning the value of the work (like anything has inherent worth) and 'creates a race to the bottom' (again, no. Books, like water, seek their own level) Competition doesn't reduce wages to zero—try finding a free gardener.

And indies can always raise the price once there's demand. Being able to control these aspects is what gives independent publishing its appeal.

As far as I'm concerned, dissing the 99c millionaires is a millionaires game. Easy to say from on top of a pile of money.

Tales From an Indie Author: The Audio Book

Today, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore launches as a serialized audio book. Narrated by me.

Becoming your own recording studio is no easier than becoming your own publisher, let me tell you. It involves learning a whole new craft — I've developed a big respect for voice over talent. Those guys earn their keep.

What I Did

I got a microphone, sealed off part of the house, and started to record in Garage Band (free with Macs). Think you know your book? Try reading it out loud. What's obvious in print is no longer there in audio.

I used royalty-free sound effects and stock music clips. Again, trying to lower costs to just time spent.

I flubbed words all over the place. Re-recording led to levels being off. Thank god for the app Levelator!

Where I Did

Podiobooks. The learning curve, for a novice like me, felt like a putting a puzzle together. In the dark. Missing pieces.

Don't get me wrong, Podiobooks is used to newbies like me and emailed detailed instructions. Pages. But they don't hand hold. Be prepared to cobble together your own process. Again, this is like learning a whole new craft. It can be done with minimal cost and programs that are free to you. You just have to really want to do it.

Why I Did

Audio books have been the launchpad for many an indie. If nothing else, it is another avenue for prospective readers to find my work. Besides, it was fun.

In addition to my book, check out the others at Podiobooks. Books are free, though donations are appreciated. The quality is fantastic and there's something there for anyone's taste.

Tales From An Indie Author: Advertising

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does. ~Steuart Henderson Britt

So you've written a book. What now? Tell people about it! That, my friends, is advertising. Specifically, today, I'm talking about PAID advertising.

Catalog Listing

My book, NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE, was printed by Lightning Source and I advertised in the Ingram catalog (The one they send out to bookstores).

My sales were disappointing, but I was only offering a 35% discount (I've since learned that 40% to 50% is a minimum enticement for bookstores). Next time I will price my print book to accommodate this discount. We'll see.

Goodreads

GR recommends linking back in their ads to their site to create a buzz (discussion + internal links (TBR)). This does not necessarily result in sales. So I also tried linking directly to Amazon.

My findings? Good return on investment, but surprisingly more on the print side. Ebooks are usually an easier lift for an indie than traditional books. Mine sell that way, ten to one. But that could be because of the demo of GR's more than anything else. Next time I will devote more resources for GR's ads. Didn't try Facebook ads, but will next time.

Kindle Nation

A must try. Best ROI. Also, the most expensive. Their audience of dedicated ebook buyers is exposure you need. Together with their family of affiliate sites, there is a place for your book somewhere. I had my best luck with their daily kindle sponsorship, some with their ipad ad, and to a lesser extent with their weekly newsletter (though that could be advertising fatigue, it ran last).

Google Ads
I took their free money (trial) and ran a campaign alternating print book ads and ebook. Nada. Zippo. I just don't think that Google ads—as currently set up—are well suited to selling books; the profit is so slim that their low-priced ads generally get pushed too far back to be seen regularly.

Other Ads
No luck with static book ads on well-traveled book review sites. This might just be me, but I've yet to hear different from anyone else.

Kindle in the Wind styles itself like Kindle Nation, but at a much cheaper price. My experience is that it updates irregularly (and only listed my book for twelve hours instead of twenty-four). When my original ad failed to run at the appointed time, their customer service was underwhelming.

What I've Learned

My takeaway from this first campaign is to focus on advertising to ebook buyers. That's the driver of indie success. Hello Amanda Hocking! McQuestion anyone? My next book will be more geared to that demo. And now that I know of proven performers in advertising, I'll be able to make better use of my marketing dollars.

How about you? Any lessons learned you'd like to share?

This is a 'Crap' Post

Today's kids use language that you can't find in most middle grade books. In fact, just try getting a novel into a kid's book club with realistic language. Just ask author Lauren Myracle. And don't think I'm talking about the big seven you can't say on television. I'm talking 'geez' and 'sucks, in addition to 'crap'. Am I advocating wholesale potty mouth in books? No. What I'm addressing here is conveying authenticity in fiction, not shock value. Relating to kids in their own words.

You're probably thinking that you've read far worse. Yes, and it probably was in a young adult book: something for teens and up. Even then, a publisher risks losing sales to younger teens and middle schoolers by allowing realistic language. Remember, books for this audience are still mainly bought by parents. And they don't want to buy that crap.

Two books I've read recently get around this prohibition. MAZE RUNNER takes every curse word you can imagine and invents a counterpart. So instead of crap you have klunk. There's also slinthead and shuckface. Yeah, aren't you glad they didn't curse?

LEVIATHAN accomplishes the same thing, but because it's counter factual historical fiction, well, who's to say they didn't speak differently in this alternate universe?

Both books are creative in expressing emotion in dialogue (hello, that's what swears are for) without waking the censors. Still, it's a dodge. Kids will notice the difference. And, one day, nine-year-olds will be able to order books like they order up a video on Youtube. You watch.

So as much as I don't want kids cussing like longshoremen, reading a book about dystopian death camps and having the protagonist say 'oh crud', just doesn't cut it. Because, in the twenty-first century, kid-readers won't have to put up with that crap.

Why are ebooks so expensive?

Did you know that the first typeface looked like italics? The first printed pages were made to look just like handwriting. Like calling a car a horseless carriage, innovation seems to start out like an emulation of the past. So when I tried to figure out why ebooks are so expensive, I first thought that publishers were treating them just the same as print books. That they were unable to let the buggy whip factory close. Are publishers just not getting it?

In favor of That Argument
Often ebooks are priced the same as their print counterparts. Yet with ebooks there are no printing costs, or shipping, so what's the deal? Well, it could be they don't want competition with their real business: dead tree byproducts. Certainly their copy protection schemes suggest just that. While I can pass around my copy of The Hobbit like a shared tankard at the Ivy Bush inn, I can't email a friend an ebook. Or print it out in some cases. My own paid-for copy! It's like publishers are crippling their own products. Have you noticed when you read ebook offerings online that about one in ten is missing an uploaded book cover? Call me skeptical, but ebooks seem to be the unwanted stepchild of the publishing world.

Against That Argument
Take Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue. It's only available as a hardcover, not as an ebook. At first this seems like another point in favor of cluelessness. However, consider the margins: Rogue is selling for thirty dollars (list); if at a fifty percent discount, minus, say, a hypothetical $5 print cost, HarperCollins could be looking at ten dollars of profit a book. Using Amazon as a measure, ebooks' price point appears to be ten dollars. Then, isn't it reasonable to assume that the money HC makes would be less that that? Perhaps half?

My question is: Would you sell dead trees over ones and zeros at twice the gain? You betcha'. What I believe is that publishers are pushing print books because they can make a tidier profit out of them.

How do I Feel About This?
As a reader, I feel taken advantage of. I could have many more books on my iPhone, just like I own plenty of apps. Most apps are free or a dollar; five bucks is the outlier, and what I receive from those is great utility or dozens of hours of entertainment. Somebody is making money off of apps, you can count on it. Don't tell me that software writing is less work than book writing. I don't buy it.

As a writer, do I think making more royalties on a print book are a good thing? Sure, but according to my partner pub contract, the ebook edition will be forty percent off of the print price — yet the royalty to me is higher! Why? No printing and transportation costs. Would I rather sell fewer books at a higher margin? Not really. I want my book in more hands not fewer. Whose interests does this serve? The publisher, not the author. Rooted to an old model.

What this whole argument presupposes is that there has to be a good reason for pricing. Clearly, Houghton Mifflin can charge whatever they want for Lord of the Rings, for example. Then again, nobody has to buy it. What this topic does remind me of is what the record industry went through with Napster. Record execs arbitrarily set a price for music, and consumers had to buy it bundled (a whole CD) instead of getting only what they wanted (a single). And the music became copy protected. Stealing music became easier than buying it. And we all know what happened to the record industry since then.

So my conclusion is not that publishers 'aren't getting it', but that they are trying to preserve their historical margins. If so, all I have to ask them is this: Can Bookster be far behind?