The Numbers Game

On August 26^th, too long after midnight, the “Go!” button was pushed and Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody was released and went live on the ebook markets.

My timing of the release could not have been worse.

It was just before the holiday weekend—when people would be heading for picnics and barbecues instead of sitting at their computers looking for something to read. My primary audience was either moving into college or moving their kids into college. With the summer ending, people are switching from vacation/holiday mode to school/work mode. Activities and organizations that were shuttered during the summer months restarted. There is a lot of scurrying around as people try to get themselves back onto the schedule. Recreational reading takes a backseat during the month of September.

Still, sales have been steady and the feedback has been excellent. Readers who posted their review on Nobody: The Pirate Arc have read the full version now and updated their reviews to show their satisfaction. (Thank you!)

Overall, I’d say the prospects are looking very good for Nobody. Satisfaction is high among those who have bought it and there is a good deal of interest in the story among those who haven’t. It’s simply a matter for me to convince those who haven’t to do so.

How well will it do?  I really can’t predict that. I’m betting—hoping—it will do well enough that I can make a living at this.

Friends have sent me interviews of highly successful, self-published authors and in those interviews where they talked about the actual sales numbers, my book is doing better than theirs were at the same time scale. That’s very encouraging. It’s easy to get excited reading and listening to those interviews.

Hugh Howey’s Wool was first published in 2010 and it wasn’t until October 2011 that readers took notice of it. In that time, according to Howey, Wool went from selling a dozen per month to a thousand per month, then three thousand in November and finally ten thousand in December. I hope to sell ten thousand copies of Nobody in a year. To do that in a month would be incredible.

That is the sad truth of reality: the majority of self-published books that finally hit it big took years to reach that point of success. Most authors in this category comment how they put out their books and then went about their lives. I remember one made the comment she was surprised one day when she looked at her bank account balance and discovered several thousand more dollars than should have been there. This was how she discovered that a few months before, her book became a hit—almost two years after she published it. It is unusual for a book from an unknown, self-publishing author to take off right away.

What does it take to get a book to surge in sales?

The obvious answer is people must start buying it. But that isn’t the complete answer. People not only have to buy it, but they have to enjoy reading the story. Then they must tell other people about it. Word of mouth is the best way to sell a book.

The surge that every author prays to see depends on the numbers.

Twice, Amazon put Nobody in their promotional emails and twice, I saw sudden jumps in sales that corresponded with those promotions. In fact, I noticed the sudden, odd jump in sales and suspected there had been a promotion before I went to email and confirmed it. That also resulted in a huge jump in Amazon’s ranking system, and that caused Nobody to be featured a second time. The first promo happened before the weekend and that resulted in four times the books sold than normal. The second promo occurred a few days later in the middle of the week and so didn’t have quite the impact, yet still sold more than twice the normal rate.

What does it take to get your ebook to be promoted in one of the mailings? Sales. More to the point, sales velocity, the rate at which a title is selling.

Nobody has had a very steady sales rate over the past month. That keeps it fairly steady in the rankings. But if sales began to increase to a higher number each day, then the sales velocity is increasing. This is a sign that a book is a hit. If a book is becoming a hit, then the distributor is going to want to push it in order to sell more and thereby make a faster profit. It is a feedback loop. The more the book sells, the more the seller wants to sell it in order to make more money. The more the seller promotes it, the more it sells.

At the same time, the more the book is being pushed and more people buy it, the higher the number of people that read it will like it. Therefore, more people are likely to leave a personal and positive review on the book’s sales page. This in turn, encourages more people to take the plunge and buy the book to see what all the buzz is about.

When charted, this is where the line showing sales begins to suddenly curve upward at an ever steeper angle. This is when a book becomes a hit.

What triggers this surge? Luck is a large part of it. Timing is another, where you get the book to market just at the right time when people are looking for something new to read. The hard work of the author trying to promote his book is another other part of it. Getting the local paper to write an article about you and your book or getting on the local radio station would let you reach a few thousand people in a very short time. From this, you could get a couple hundred people interested in your story, and that could result in sales.

Just a few dozen sales over a day or two can push a new book very high on the ratings list. If the velocity keeps up for a few days, the rank goes higher, and more people will see the book in the promotions. This, as said above, results in more sales and a greater sales velocity.

Every successful, self-published author comments how the sales of their book surged suddenly and exponentially.

At the same time, the book is competing against thousands of other books. Like a stampeding herd of buffalo, each one is vying to get ahead of the other. So a book’s ranking on the bestsellers list at any given time tends to swing wildly.

Any bestsellers list is not important to a reader. All the reader wants is a good book. Readers don’t care how a book ranks so long as they enjoy the story. So what makes the bestsellers list so important to a writer?

The answer is visibility.

Steven King, Nora Roberts, R.K. Rowling—they all have millions of readers. If they put anything out, it is a guaranteed hit and a big moneymaker. Publishers and distributors will advertise months in advance about the release of any new book from such authors. Fans can’t wait and other readers may have their curiosity piqued at the premise of an upcoming story release. Writing is a business and when there is a guaranteed windfall the businesses are going to jump at it.

By contrast, an unknown writer may have created his or her first novel and pushed it up through the current self-publishing networks. It could be the most groundbreaking, thought-provoking, society-changing literary masterpiece to come along in centuries. Yet, it might languish for years because no one has noticed it.

When a book moves up on the bestsellers lists, it begins to get attention from distributors looking to make a bigger profit. As such, they will put this where it can be seen by the most customers who might be interested in buying it. That means greater opportunity for sales and this directly affects how many digits are on the royalty check received months later by the author.

So I watch these numbers. The direct numbers of copies sold and the rank my book has reached. Together, they give me a rough projection of how things will go in the near future. One shouldn’t obsess about these numbers, but these numbers cannot be ignored either. When running a business that sells a product, one has to pay attention to whether the product is selling or is a complete flop. A writer has to pay attention to how a book is selling. If it isn’t selling well, then money is going to run out before long.

Here’s the hard part: when and how do you determine that your book is a flop? This is particularly hard when considering what I said above that it could take a couple years for a book to catch on. Harder than that is to ask, “Why?”

On this, I don’t have enough experience to comment authoritatively. But I can at least put forward my own opinion.

First, sales slowing to a trickle is a pretty good indication that a book has run its course. When you go from three copies per day to three copies per month, it’s a pretty good indication that the market for that book has been saturated. Over time I’ve noticed the shelf life for most books seems to be around three years before publishers stop printing them. A title might still have legs for years, with slow sales continuing without letting up. But often, the market moves on to newer titles.

If sales on a book just never really get off the ground before things come to a stop, then that book might be considered a flop. 

A smart author will have their second book ready to go by the time the first book begins to cool off.

Second is reader reaction to the book. When complete strangers are telling you they enjoyed your story, that is the greatest indicator of success. If sales aren’t going all that well and yet people you meet tell you they loved your book, that indicates the failure to sell is due to lack of visibility and you need to work harder promoting your book.

If reader reaction is fairly cool or non-existent, then that’s pretty much the end of it.

For me, the most gratifying reviews of Nobody came from readers who had written reviews for the original excerpt and then came back to update their reviews for the full version. (Mr. McDonald and RWB, that meant a lot that you felt compelled enough to come back and say something more. Yes, I’m working hard on books two and three, with more to come!)

Negative reviews don’t actually affect the sales of a book, unless the vast majority of reviews are negative. In truth, bad reviews can often spur sales, as other readers want to see if it is really as bad as people say. As the old saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Most potential customers ignore negative reviewers as being trolls, especially when the reviewer seems to attack the author directly.

Positive reviews do affect sales. One, when a potential reader sees a large number of positive reviews, they are more likely to go along with the crowd and buy it to see how it measures up to the hype. Second, if a lot of people are loving a given title, then the distributors are going to start promoting it in order to cash in on more sales potential. A book loved by a large number of people is more likely to have greater success and sales if more people hear about it.

Just how important are good reviews?

Imagine someone going to their local book club and talking about your book. If that person told the other members how enjoyable your book was, that could be a dozen sales in one evening when the others go home and jump online to buy your book. The sudden surge in sales can increase a book’s ranking in the bestsellers lists which in turn results in an increase in sales velocity. 

The worst kind of review? None at all. The best way to kill off a book is to let it die on the vine unnoticed by anyone. Imagine that same book club member saying nothing about your book. No one knows about it, therefore no one will buy it. THIS is what ultimately kills a book.

Selling a book is much like lighting a fire. It takes a lot of effort to get a good fire lit, but once it catches it just flares up and goes. Only then can you sit back and enjoy the warmth and glow of the fire. Getting a book to sell requires that you have to promote the book to let people know it exists. Once you get enough people curious about your book that it begins to sell quickly, the process becomes self-sufficient. The numbers of sales and rankings become the warmth and glow of your career as a writer. Remember, like a fire, if you want to keep up those sales, you have to keep adding fuel to it. More stories and more promotion.

…Now What?

At long last, Nobody is available for purchase!

Amazon came online fairly quickly. Barnes & Noble was up the next afternoon. Kobo came up fairly quickly, but they assigned the wrong ISBN number to it; I had to take it off sale and resubmit it to get the correct ISBN number to show. Apple’s iBookstore– Well, Apple is Apple. It can take up to two weeks, it seems, for Apple to finish processing a submitted book. It will get there eventually…

I’m confident Nobody will do well. People who I know have said it is good and people who I don’t know have said it’s good. Looking at that, I’m pretty confident then that most people will like it.

I did introduce one error during the construction of the ebook. This resulted in the first section marker in Chapter 1 not being centered. Then readers discovered some errors that got past the editors.

Big face palm for those. An update has already been pushed up to the distributors (except Apple). One more update will be sent up as soon as Apple clears Nobody on the iBookstore.

So, now what?

First off, I have to start promoting. A colleague of mine understood strongly the value of advertising. In his office, he had a cartoon on the wall that said, “A man who doesn’t advertise is like a man who is winking in the dark. He knows what he’s doing, but nobody else does.” Apt words.

I’ve started pushing on Facebook. Probably the easiest place to start. I only hope my friends forgive me for sounding like a broken record for the next couple of weeks: “Buy my book! Buy my book!”

The trick to succeeding with Facebook is to have your friends share the entry, not just “like” it. Sharing has much more impact than liking, and it actually posts the link on your timeline so your friends can actually see it. If you just like it, it goes into the recent activity list for a few minutes and is gone. If your friends didn’t see it within those few minutes, they’ll never see it. Your effort goes to waste. But when you share, it lingers for a long time. When your friends see you say, “Hey! I know this guy! Give his book a try!” or “I read this and it was really good!,” that carries a lot of impact with people and has much more effect.

Then there are the more traditional ways.

I have a friend who is managing editor at a local paper. I figure once I have a good count of sales and the book is moving, I can ask if he’d like a local interest piece on yet another local author. (We’ve had a lot of them lately!) The same for the local morning radio station. Then strive for regional contacts to get the word spread out of the local area.

Of course, blog about it.

The important thing isn’t just for me to spread the word, but to get others to do it, too. Just as many hands make light work, many voices broadcast the message farther. Word of mouth is the best advertising for anything, but is also the slowest.

I’ll be a guest on a local radio station, talking about my book and the writing process. Maybe a few other things, too, about self publishing.

Then I need to tap some friends of mine still in the journalism business to see if they are interested in a local interest story about me publishing Nobody.

There are other things I’d like to do as well.

‘Meet the Author’ events. I can talk to people about my story and about writing in general. I’ve gotten a lot of requests for autographed copies. It’s rather difficult to sign one’s autograph on a computer file. So, I figured I’d print up a few hundred “covers” of Nobody on heavy card stock and use those to sign autographs for people who have bought the ebook.

Actual physical books of Nobody will have to wait for a while. It’s pretty expensive to print books so it’ll have to wait until I have the money to do it. I am seriously considering a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the printing. Serious enough, I already spoke to a shipping company about the estimated cost for a mass shipping, should I move forward with the program. The last step is to talk directly with an offset printer to find out what my costs will truly be and what I must do to prepare the narrative for the printing process. I may be a neophyte on the matter, but I do have a pretty good idea of what I need to do. Once I have all that, it is merely a matter of watching the sales numbers to see if I sell enough copies so I can afford to move forward with the printing program.

I’ve begun work on the next book, Dragon (working title). Assembling my notes and thinking of various scenes I’d like to see in the story. Preparing character outlines and clarifying the maps, goals, rules, etc. In Dragon, the story becomes more complex. Where Nobody was fairly black and white, now there will be situations and characters that fall into grey areas in the middle. It’s one thing to create a character like Lowe who is evil scum. It is a lot harder to create a villain with whom the reader can sympathize to some degree. Then there are those characters who might not be villains, but  aren’t exactly allies, and those whose motivations aren’t quite out in the open.

My goal is to have Dragon released next year. Time to place your bets, everyone! ;-)

So Far, So Good…

I’m very happy to report that since the release of the book on Monday, in the past three days I’ve sold several times more books than the short story sold in the same time period. Admittedly, in raw numbers it isn’t all that many right now, but I think I can take it as a good sign of things to come.

When I pushed The Pirate Arc out back in November, I think it was ranked around 115,000 on the Amazon Bestsellers list. Nobody debuted around 9,000!

There were still some errors in the narrative, a few things that got through. Corrections are already being made and have been pushed up to the servers. So, if you think you found something, just sync your ebook reader to your account and the refresh should come down. If the mistake you found is still there, send me an email (showing chapter number it appears in and copy the text of the error) so I can fix it. That’s one of the nice things about ebooks: mistakes can be fixed. (You can send me an email via my web site.)

I’ve already pushed one update up to cover some issues. I’ll be pushing up a second today. And if anything else shows up, a third before the weekend.

It’s amazing the silly things that got through! Most errors (six so far) were dropped or disarranged words. One error was actually right underneath one of the earlier edits, and as such had been overlooked. None of the editors, nor myself, caught these. It’s a case of the same tired eyes looking at the same text too many times. Errors were caught be readers with fresh eyes.

I’ve only myself to blame on this. Two of the errors were of the sort that I had to slap my forehead and exclaim, “How the hell did I miss THAT?”

So, keep those coming! These are things I would have preferred to have caught before the release. But at least this guarantees a better product for people who will buy the book in the future, as well as those who have already bought it.

Of course, for those people who care about such things, you might want to store the original file elsewhere so it doesn’t get overwritten if you want to keep it as a collector’s item. (First edition, with all the errors!) Truth is, that is how first editions of collectable books are identified: by the errors in them that were replaced in subsequent editions.

What didn’t make it into the book?

A number of things, actually.

Originally, the story began with Nem’s childhood. I decided to remove that, because it had too much the feel of a boy’s adventure tale and would have set the wrong tone for the series. Aggadeh Chronicles is no children’s series.

Second, is the little dreamer, Ophelia, whose dreams replaced the story of Nem’s childhood. Ophelia has a much greater role in the story besides dreaming. But we don’t get to meet her until Nem gets to meet her.

Third, the Great Lady Oracle. Said to be the most beautiful woman in the world and the most powerful. Yet, for all her power, she has little control over her life. She is the living goddess, the head of an Empire and cannot command it. Her desire to free herself of the constraints on her life has significant repercussions for the rest of the world—and for Nem. I was going to show a little more of her life, but decided against it as it created too much jumping around in the story.

Then was Nem’s life in the islands of the Southern Archipelago and the days leading up to the attack on Gulahg when they were encamped in a hidden fjord while Nem created the crystals that would sink the pirate ships. Problem was, I found the section of him creating the crystals to be too mechanical. Sure, it involved the sinking of a ship when a crystal was dropped, but overall it just wasn’t that interesting a chapter. And Nem’s life in the islands was tangential. It didn’t really move the story along, so I dropped it from the narrative. Relative to this, was how Nem came to be on the Island Dancer. A storm damaged the ship he served as navigator and the navigator of the Island Dancer was injured in the same storm. Essentially, the captains of the ships traded navigators as the most efficient means of completing business for the two vessels. The editing process trimmed this part back to merely a thought and comment on Jess Gowan’s behalf.

The big question? What is Nem’s backstory?!

I get asked that a lot. Mum's the word.

You get to know and discover Nem as the other characters in the story learn about him.

He is, after all, just a nobody…

So You Wanna Write?

Artist Noah Bradley recently posted his opinion on going to art school. I found what he had to say really struck a chord with me. In that vein, what would my recommendation be for anyone wanting to learn to write? My recommendations are thus:

1. Read.
2. Write.
3. Take some courses.

Read.

When you read, you see how the words are laid out by the team of the writer, the editor, and the typographer. Find books that are your favorite and read them.

Then, look at them!

How are they laid out? How does the artist structure his words and sentences? How does the punctuation work? When you are reading, you unconsciously see these things. They guide your eyes and mind to follow the words. They help lay out the rhythm and emotions behind the words.

You should try to look at them consciously as well. Find a particular part in a book that you really enjoyed and instead of reading that passage, look at it. Look at the words and punctuation and see how they are used and interact. I would suggest you copy this post into a word processing document, delete all the periods, and then try to read it. The document becomes unreadable. Remove all the commas and you won’t know where to breathe while reading it.

The old phrase, “Monkey see, monkey do,” is very apt here. The books you read do have an influence on your writing. I write better if I have read something just before I start writing. The proof of this is there are fewer errors reported back to me when I write a chapter after reading a favorite book.

I will often pull out a book and find a section to see how the author presented a scene or idea that might be similar to one I’m writing. Just as a programmer keeps a reference book on hand when writing code, a writer should keep a few books on hand for comparison of style. Keeping old favorites on hand means you will have a better idea of where to find a particular passage for reference.

By the same token, I avoid reading certain books when I’m writing. Especially if they are similar in theme to the story I’m writing. The last thing I want to have happen is I unconsciously copy something from Title A into my own work. It happened once in high school. I wrote a story for creative writing, and my teacher gave it a glance, looked up at me, and said, “Ah, you were watching Star Wars recently, weren’t you?”

It turned out one of the place names I created was a slight modification from the name of a character who appeared in Star Wars. I was absolutely dumbfounded that I could have done that—not to mention utterly humiliated. To this day, I still feel embarrassed when I think about it.

This is why you should always have a friend or relative read what you wrote before bringing it out to the public. If that person is well read in the genre you are writing, hopefully they will catch any such gaffs. If anyone catches something like that in my writing, I assure you I will lay it on cement, pull out my favorite flame thrower—set to 451°F—and reduce said writing to ashes.

Write.

If you have an idea for a story, sit down and quickly write out a description of it. Do it before you forget about it. Often a good idea for a story just might be one scene or one vision. Even though it is really intense when you first think about it, such ideas are ephemeral and can fade greatly in just a few hours. If you choose to sleep on it, it might be gone when you wake the next morning.

The idea for Aggadeh Chronicles began as a vision I imagined where a young man was sadly looking after his comrades running for safety, and then turned, drawing his sword to face alone what was threatening them. The image was so intense, I immediately began writing out the scene so I wouldn’t lose it. I wrote nearly non-stop for three days, producing over 15,000 words of notes about his story, the people he meets, and the world he lives in. A few months later, I had amassed nearly 90,000 words of notes describing character back stories, histories of various locations, and rules that the world followed. There were also scenes that would appear in the stories, interactions between characters and a few other things. All this, as well as a general description of how the story would run.

As long as you’ve written something down about your story idea, it will live. Even if you set it aside, when the time is right to pick it up again the notes will help you get restarted.

The more you write, the faster you will be able to write, the more you will be able to write. Writing is a physical act as much as mental, and you need to exercise your hands to hone up your ability to type. This is no different than an athlete training to improve on skills and condition. (Well, perhaps a little less aerobic…) Your hands have to be able to keep up with the thoughts your mind creates.

At the same time, you have to learn to pace yourself. Screaming along at a furious pace might get a lot of typing done in a short period of time, but if you don’t pause to think once in a while, your narrative may meander or come out as gibberish.

The most obvious reason to write? If you don’t write, you won’t have written anything. So much for those story ideas. It may seem like a stupid thing to say, but how many people do you know make the comment that they’d like to write a book someday? How many of them make that comment more than once? Anyone who says that two or more times wants to write a book, but they are waiting for an excuse or for someone to prod them along.

Well? Write! Sit down and start pumping out ideas.

Take Courses.

Going back to Mr. Bradley’s original point about whether or not to attend art school. I would say, there is enough argument on both sides of the issue.

Could I have started a writing career if I had not attended college?

The answer is yes, I probably could have. The talent to write is just something I have. The ability to create stories appears to be something I was born with. Unfortunately, I did not recognize that I could actually do it.

I wrote a lot of creative stories in college. By hand, jotted down in notebooks when I should have been taking notes. At some point when I have free time, I’ll break out those notebooks and transcribe those writings into digital format. There was some good stuff in those writings.

But that writing I did also showed I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to take it to that next level; to actually create a manuscript for submission. Every time I would work myself up to the point to consider it, I would get reminded of how often writers were rejected. All that time invested only to be turned down. I chose to focus my efforts on getting jobs so I could make a living. I figured that I would get to writing seriously, once I had enough money that I didn’t have to worry about paying the bills. (Stop snickering!)

I would chew the ears off friends for hours telling them about one story idea or another. 

What finally got me to writing—other than being out of work and completely steamrolled by the recession—was the decision to do it. To organize myself as a writer and move forward. To take my story ideas beyond the stream of consciousness description and actually make a story out of them.

But there are some things that I could do better. Manage myself better. Organize my thoughts better. And the way to do that is to learn.

For anyone, I would recommend a course in grammar and punctuation. (One look at the tears of blood streaming from my editors eyes should be enough to convince anyone of that!) Sure, dialogue should be in the vernacular, but the rest of the writing should not—unless it is a first person narrative. Even if you are confident in your skills as a writer, a course in basic grammar serves as an excellent refresher to help you stop any bad habits before they become an issue. My bad habit? I write the way I speak. I punctuate changes of voice inflection or pauses to breathe. This might work if you’ve ever heard me speak, but to the average reader it would be incredibly irritating because my punctuation style interferes with the inner voice.

It is vitally important to know how to properly structure your paragraphs and sentences. Readers do notice when this is sloppy!

Also, the fewer errors you make, the faster editing goes. That means the story gets out to the market faster and readers are much happier.

I took one course in creative writing in college. I confess, I didn’t get much out of it as far as improving the technical parts of writing. But I did get the first, real professional critique of my writing out of that course. I’m happy to say, it was very positive. He did point out a few weak areas for me to correct.

In this case, I have to echo Mr. Bradley and say I’m not sure how much value there is in teaching creative writing. I think a creative writing course should be more of a coaching program. At the same time, I think my opinion is weak and easy to argue against. Part of a creative writing program is to teach someone how to think of different ways of expressing something. Similar to the Zen Koan, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?,’ you have to learn how to think and perceive in different ways.

I think a vital course for creative writing is the more technical side of writing: organizing and creating the manuscript.

Most creative types just want to sit down and write the story. What happens when you do that? The story tends to meander around and shoot off into tangents that get away from the main plot line. This is why I tell people to sit down and write out a stream-of-consciousness description of the story. This is the version that no one other than the author should ever see. Once it is done, you sit down and read through it. Start breaking it up into small pieces. Each piece will become a chapter.

This way, you can create an outline of your story. Each piece describes something that happens in the story, and you have to write a chapter that covers that happening. The outline becomes the skeleton of your story. It will force you to stay within the proper guidelines of your story. By keeping your story framed around this skeleton, you will avoid those meanders and tangents that could make a story tedious. Also, it will guide you to actually ending the story.

You really do need to be more organized and professional in how you write a story if you want it to become something that could be submitted for publication. It is entirely possible to have a great story idea, but for the story to be completely unreadable because the writing is so bad or disorganized.

I think the most important course that should be offered for wannabe writers is a course about the business of writing! It is vital you should understand just how the book publishing business works. Even if you are going to self-publish, you should be aware of how it works. You should know about what to look for in a printer if you want to print up your books, and know about how much it is going to cost. You should understand what an advance is and how it works, when royalty payments should be made. You should understand this well so you can recognize when something is going wrong and when you should consider ending your working relationship with a publisher. So you can recognize a good deal vs. a bad deal in a contract, or when a contract is lopsided. You could be taken advantage of by an unscrupulous agency if you don’t recognize it. That could cost you thousands of dollars in the long run.

Another thing that could be in this course is about the tools of writing. How a manuscript is prepared for printing. How you prepare a manuscript for creating an e-book—I have five days until the launch of Nobody, and I’m still struggling to make Adobe InDesign work! 

I would also strongly recommend a business course geared for writers. How to set up a S-corporation and why. What can you claim as a business expense and what you have to do when it is time to file your taxes. Basic accounting so you can keep on top of your expenses. Why investing and how to do it should be an important part of your writing business. Writing is as much a business as it is an art form. If you want to make money by selling a book, you should accept that you have to treat it as a business. Writing is art, selling a book is business. If you don’t know what you are doing, you are going to have problems that will cost you over the long term.

Live!

Getting a B.A. in English does not make you a writer. It does not guarantee future success as an author. Heck, there are a lot of people with degrees in technical fields who have gone on to successful writing careers. College is the last free lunch you’ll get before the reality of life hits you in the face with a blunt instrument. The one time you can live like an adult and still act like a child. Use that free time to enrich your mind.

It isn’t just courses that prepare you to become a writer. Expand your horizons. Explore art galleries presenting work by your fellow students; see if you can’t figure out what they were thinking when they created it. Go see plays and shows on campus. Attend a meeting of a political/religious/social group you strongly disagree with and listen to what they have to say sympathetically and without judgement; try to understand why they think the way they do. Go out and party with your friends; learn how much you need to drink to get a warm buzz without getting drunk. Get laid; find someone who would be interested in finding out if the Kama Sutra is really all it’s purported to be. Go camping and learn to cook over an open fire; there’s nothing like chilling out in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no technology or distractions for a night or two. Check out the reading lists of various literature courses and actually read the crap; they are great sources of inspiration for a new story and you might find something you really enjoy.

Get a life. Learn to live. Write about it. (If you include your sexual exploits, I recommend heavy encryption….)

And now, back to work. I’ve got five days….

Death of an Email Address

A long time ago, in another lifetime, I worked in the rapid prototyping industry. Where many science fiction fans only dreamed of the day they could walk up to a computer and say, “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot,” I could do it for real. Only, it took hours to generate the tea cup, and the moment any hot water hit it, it would melt from the heat. But the process worked.

I was proud of the work I did. For a while I was one of the few people in the world who could take someone’s engineering drawings, create a 3-D model in a computer and have it generated into an object hours later. The downturn in the economy that got me into the field also left many engineers out of work who turned to doing the same kind of work. I have to admit, I was somewhat outclassed out of work. My last claim to fame was I had a knack for creating stable models that could be tessellated for stereo lithography work where others could not.

I created one of the first commercial web sites on the new [then] World Wide Web. With it, I created my first personal email address. It was mine! Not something that was handed out or assigned.

While involved in this field, I was a participant on the Rapid Prototyping Mailing List (RPML). The mailing list was highly active and ideas and networks spread far and wide.

Stupidly, people didn’t heed the warning about protecting their computers with anti-virus software. The RPML gained the ignominy of being at the top of the list for the spread of junk email and email-spawned worms and viruses. Junk emailers (aka “spammers”) discovered the list and began using it to pump junk email far and wide.

The junk took over and the RPML succumbed to it like the victim of a virulent cancer.

More important to the junk emailers wasn’t so much the delivery of garbage, but the harvesting of active email addresses. Did you ever get one of those emails forwarded from a friend saying, ‘Oh my God! Pass this on to ten people and you’ll get a winning lottery ticket!’? At the head of this email being forwarded were hundreds—if not thousands—of email addresses. Obviously your friend didn’t send it. Ever wonder who creates these things?

The people who create these emails are the very same vermin who run junk email businesses. They use them to harvest email addresses. They know thousands of well-meaning people will forward a heart-rending email about helping “Ailing Annie” collect a thousand stuffed animals before she dies from [insert horrible disease here] to many of their friends. As time goes by, the email will eventually make the rounds and get sent to the malfeasant who created it, and he now has thousands of email addresses collected to which he can send more important emails about deals on V•1•a•G•r•4 and potentially lucrative monetary transactions from Nigeria.

Once your email is on one of these lists, it will never, ever, escape. Even if one junk emailer is murdered by one of his colleagues, the list will pass to someone else and through that individual to others. Ad infinitum.

Still, I held onto the email address and I’ve continued to use it for years. Almost 18 years, in fact.

It was always getting flooded with junk email on a daily basis. The record, set back in 2000, was 7823 junk emails in one day. That whole week was nuts.

There was always an ebb and flow to junk email. It would reach annoying peaks and then back off for a while. Like the smell from a leaking sewage pipe, it just never went away. In recent years, I began to debate whether or not it was worth keeping that address active.

Last year, I received an email threatening that they would put my email on the junk email lists unless I paid them a sum of money. Written in very bad English, might I add. I actually laughed out loud. The stupid dip shits should have considered the fact that the email address in question was already on all the junk email lists. I ignored it. Nothing ever came of it.

Recently, an uptick in junk email got me thinking about retiring the address again. I admit, it was a fairly clever campaign. The flow started with just a few emails here and there, and slowly increased over time. It reached a point where I realized I was receiving an average of 30 junk emails an hour. The junk email filters were handling the vast majority of it, but there were enough getting through that it was starting to be annoying.

I came to the conclusion that it was time to retire that address. I unplugged the accounts from the email server.

For the first time in nearly 18 years, my email has been quiet for an entire evening.

I Don't Have to Write…

For the first time in many years, I don’t have to write!

At those words, most of the people who know me are covering their mouths and running for the shadows, snickering.

No more, “I can’t, I have to beat this deadline.” No more worrying about how many words were going to be counted on this day. The last period has been placed and the manuscript is being Q.A.-ed.

It’s done.

Preliminary reports aren’t too bad. Only one, “How the hell did that get missed?” So there is still a little cleaning to be done. But all the heavy lifting has been done. This means, the countdown to launch has begun.

The ISBN for Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody has been set: 978-0-9834857-1-1. The copyright will be filed shortly, as soon as the latest edits are put in place and the manuscript is ready for print.

The target date for release is August 21^st. Note, that isn’t entirely written in stone. But it is the target. So long as I don’t get hit with the need to rewrite a section, any adjustments should go quickly.

Thanks for your patience!

And So It Begins…

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) began its lawsuit against Apple, Inc. over an alleged ebook price fixing scheme between Apple and seven book publishing companies. The publishers settled and paid hefty fines up to as much as $75 million. Apple stands alone to fight stating they did not collude to fix pricing on ebooks.

The DOJ’s case seems to hinge on one particular email sent from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of HarperCollins Publishers, where Jobs wrote:

“Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.”

Sounds pretty damning to me!

Unless you read the text of the original email and get that line in the context in which it was written. Then it doesn’t seem quite so clearcut about the intent. It does come across as more of an example or statement of opinion than it does as a conspiracy to set pricing on ebooks. Still, Jobs is suggesting a price-point in that email.

The DOJ states they have a lot of evidence to support their allegations against Apple. Either way, it is in the court now and will be on public record. The next couple of weeks, we’ll see where this goes.

For me, it brings forward the issue of what to charge for an ebook. The publishers want people to pay the same for an ebook as they do for a hardcover book. Personally, I think this is being greedy.

The setup costs for an ebook are the same as it is for a hardcopy book: editing, typesetting, etc. But the production and distribution costs are not. While hardcopy books have materials, warehousing and distribution costs, an ebook has nothing. Once that file is saved onto the server, there are no more costs with distributing that file.

And before purists pounce upon me pointing out the electricity costs and equipment costs of the servers needed to distribute the ebook file, let me point out that the infrastructure to distribute the files already existed as the distributers were selling files for applications, music and movies. An ebook is just another file stored on the server’s hard drive and creates no further overhead or investment to distribute that file.

Once an ebook file is on the server, its production and distribution costs are $0. No need to purchase ink, paper, create new printing plates, trucks, gasoline, etc. Until the file is deleted, it is there for sale to anyone who wants to buy it. And there is now no longer a reason to allow a book to go out of print. Because unlike a printed book, a file costs nothing to store and takes up no physical space. A warehouse can cost millions. An entire library can be stored on a $10 flash drive. There no longer is a reason to say, “This book isn’t selling anymore, so we’re going to stop printing and storing it to save money.”

Once sales of an ebook have covered the setup costs, each sale is 100% profit. Well, okay, if you sell it through a distributer, the distributer is going to take 30%–35% of the sale price. But there are still no further production costs to that ebook file.

That’s why it irritates me when I see companies pushing ebooks for $13–$15.

The publishers claim that they must sell at these prices in order to stay profitable. Then why aren’t they selling the hardcover books at $50 and softcover books at $22?

A bit closer to the truth is the argument that the publishers don’t want to “devalue the book” to the customer. Their concern is having done to them what Apple did to the music industry: set the price of songs to 99¢ per song. That pretty much destroyed the pricing model the music industry: $20 per song. (Based on one good song on a CD and 12 tracks of absolute crap. Forcing the consumer to fork over $20 just to get that one hit song.)

Apple now offers top list songs at $1.29 per song on iTunes Music Store. Most people consider this a fair price for a song.

There is something to be said about undervaluing a product. You need to make enough money to bring home a livable income.

The author Dean Wesley Smith published this piece on pricing ebooks fairly.

For me, the key word is “Fair.” The customer should get a good value for their money.

There is another side to being fair: compensation to the author for two to three years of no income while writing the book.

Which brings us back to Apple and their agency pricing model.

Basically, Apple did not and does not set the pricing on the ebooks sold through iBookstore. Apple leaves that to the publisher.

I chose my price at a point that I thought was fair to both the customer and myself. At no time did I receive an email from Apple telling me my price was too low.

Right now, Apple pays a straight 70% royalty on every ebook sold. Regardless of price, even at 99¢.

If Apple loses the DOJ case, it is possible they may change their terms and force authors to go with a minimum selling price or they get half the royalty payment. This is how Amazon handles this. With that other distributer, you can sell your book for 99¢ if you wish, but they’ll only pay you a 35% royalty. You have to sell it for $2.99 or higher to get 70% royalty on the sales. That makes for a very strong incentive for an author to keep an ebook priced $2.99 or higher.

Where do I think Apple could get burned? On the “Most favored nation” clause in their pricing contract, whereby a publisher agrees not to allow their goods to be sold at a lower price through another distributer. If Distributer-A puts the ebook on sale at a 15% discount, then the publisher must ensure that the ebook is sold via Apple for the same price. If the publisher doesn’t, then they could be in violation of their contract and Apple could terminate the contract and withhold all unpaid monies. In a way, this clause could be used to facilitate price fixing by forcing the publishers to keep the same price across the board and not allow any retailer-specific sales to happen. This means no variation in pricing and no competition and no choice for the consumer.

Naturally, these are only my wild guesses at what may transpire. I can only offer layman conjecture, rather than professional commentary on this matter.

I don’t think ebook prices are going to really change all that much, regardless of what the court hands down to Apple and the DOJ. Consumers will eventually steer the pricing. If publishers and distributers try to push pricing that consumers are not willing to pay, then the whole market will eventually collapse, as it has done in the past.

If they push unfair pricing, they open the door for newer, smaller publishers to get a chance to get their foot in the door. This in turn, will drive the market toward lower prices, so long as they aren’t being artificially propped up at a higher level as the DOJ is accusing of Apple and the publishers.

Fan Fiction

I’ll admit, I am not a fan of fan fiction. 

I’ve seen fan fiction where the writers truly have talent. I’ve seen novellas written by fans that could truly stand on their own. Truth be told, some of these should stand on their own. The writers should write to the publisher, ask about licensing to produce a book in the world of a given series of fiction and/or offer their manuscript for consideration. I’ve seen other fan fiction pieces that paled in literary comparison to essays I wrote in the fourth grade. (Not a kind remark, trust me.)

I myself have read stories or watched movies where I would love to write a story of my own in that world. Something about the setting or the world just really grabbed me. To ply a character or a plot line into a series I enjoy whets my appetite. Often, such stories inspire story ideas in me.

The problem is, using someone else’s characters or world violates that person’s copyright. If I tried to sell such a story without permission, I’d get myself into a heap of legal trouble. Hence, fan fiction can never see the light of day.

I know the effort that goes into creating a story. The work that goes into creating the rules of the world that the fabric of the story is woven. That each character has a unique backstory supporting and driving that character’s motivation and actions in a story.

All that effort, plied on something that will simply be placed in a back drawer, or a file that will be stored on a backup drive and forgotten, just breaks my heart. The writer puts in all that effort and can never gain from that effort.

That’s why I am not a fan of fan fiction. I see so many people who truly do have a talent for writing, yet their efforts go to waste. It did make me wonder why someone would waste their time like that.

A friend of mine is a fan of fan fiction and she put forward some very good arguments. For one thing, she pointed out that it was good practice for writing. Second, it was a way to indulge in trying to work out a plot line that didn’t occur in a series, or one that the writer wanted to go in a different direction than was portrayed in the original.

“More importantly,” she stated, “not everyone has the ability to pull an entire universe out of their head like you do for such a story to exist.” Writers of fan fiction piggyback their story ideas into a universe that someone else already created, making it easier for them to try out their story ideas.

Touché.

Truth be told, how many times have I wanted to walk the decks of the Millenium Falcon or the Enterprise? Burn thread on the back of a mighty dragon? Or ‘tesser’ through time and space from world to world with no more effort than thinking about it?

When a writer is inspired to write a story, often the seed for the idea is inspired by another story. Romeo and Juliet becomes West Side Story, Cinderella becomes Cinderfella, Pinocchio becomes Data. This has been going on since humans began telling and writing stories, and will continue on into the future.

Even Aggadeh Chronicles has elements that were inspired by other stories; including Shakespeare, mythology, some fairy tales, and a video game. One key element in my story was the interaction between humans and dragons. Dragons in my world only interact with a select number of humans. So much so, that to the humans, anyone that a dragon will interact with is considered to be elevated above all others, even to the point where they could be considered a successor to the throne. This idea of exclusivity grew out of when I read Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series. In it, her protagonist, Ged, spoke with a dragon and that marked Ged as a great wizard. In my world, there is a reason dragons will only speak to certain individuals. (As that will eventually be revealed in the next book, I won’t give it away.)

My advice to people who wrote fan fiction has always been to look closely at what it was in the original story that drew them to write their own story. Then remove the elements that were part of the original and replace them with your own and make your story original rather than a spin-off. This is pretty much what authors do when they derive a story idea from some other source. Pare that story down to the bare essentials, the primal foundation that you wanted to write about. Then, create the details from your own mind and create a unique story.

Now, my whole argument that fan fiction was wasted energy because it could never be published without permission and licensing from the originators, has just been blown out of the water! Amazon just announced a fan fiction publishing service that gives fan authors the channel they need to write and actually publish their fan fiction!

The upcoming service is called Kindle Worlds by Amazon Publishing. While not active yet, Amazon will soon be opening the service for submissions.

Amazon Publishing negotiated licensing from several franchises that are popular among fan fiction authors. This licensing allows Amazon Publishing to publish pieces written by authors based on those franchises. So, at last, a fan fiction writer can actually have his or her piece published and collect royalties! At last, those who wanted to pursue the notion that Bella should have gone furry instead of parasite can now have their story published for real on the Kindle. What if Apollo discovered that Starbuck was actually Adama’s lovechild?

Royalties on the sale of fan fiction are split between the fan fiction writer and the originator of the series, which basically covers the licensing fee. This is an easier solution on an amateur fan fiction writer, who ordinarily would be unable to afford a direct licensing fee from a publisher.

Naturally, there are some limitations to be aware of before you jump into writing your fan fiction.

You have to remain true to the world in which you are writing. Crossover titles such as Harry Potter and the Pretty Little Liars are probably not going to happen. But maybe Hermione’s Secret Diaries could work. Also, you will have to keep your story within the guidelines that the originator sets for the series. This is the same thing that a professional author would have to deal with to write for a franchise like Star Trek or Star Wars. 

The world you want to write in must be one of the franchises with which Amazon Publishing has an agreement. Currently, only a number of Warner Brothers franchises are available. Amazon says there will be more coming.

Last, when you submit your manuscript to Amazon Publishing, you are granting Amazon Publishing exclusive world rights for publishing your material. This agreement holds for as long as the copyright is valid. In other words, if you write a magnificent masterpiece that turns out to be a big hit, Amazon is the only channel that can sell your book until you willingly expire the copyright and make your work public domain. Of course, once you make your title public domain, anyone can publish it without having to pay you royalties.

Still, this could be a good way for a wannabe author to test the waters. From what I gather, the service is geared more towards short stories and novellas than full-blown novels.

I’m sure more detail will be available when Amazon activates the service.

Of course, this begs the question: would I license Aggadeh Chronicles into this program? Possibly—when I’m done writing all the stories I have for this series.

FINISHED!

FINISHED!

Many friends of mine in the writing industry are having a good chuckle over that statement. They know the reality of it.

The manuscript is finished. But it still has to go through the meat grinder of editing before it can be declared a book. This entails pulling out all the notes everyone has written pertaining to the various chapters, and going through it all and fixing the errors and problems they found. Then, I have to assemble the manuscript as a whole and it must be read through again to look for continuity errors, apocryphal scenes, story flow, etc. Then it must be adjusted again, and read through again in order to ensure I didn’t introduce new errors while fixing the earlier errors. It’s like a tennis match with the manuscript bouncing back and forth until there is nothing more to do with it.

THEN it becomes a book. Sort of. Once the narrative is fixed and ready for reading, I then have to construct it into an ebook. With The Pirate Arc, I discovered that discrepancies appeared in how the ebook was rendered aross the various ebook reader platforms. Because the file I created renders fine on each of the units I own, I can only surmise that the various distributors applied some sort of post-processing that altered the formatting of the EPUB. Amazon annoyed me the most, because that is precisely what they did.

I need to do a little experimenting to figure out what I can do on my end to avoid this issue from happening when Nobody is released.

What a strange mood to be having—almost surreal.

I really started developing Aggadeh Chronicles around 2008. The idea had been bouncing around in my head for longer than that, but it was 2008 that I started writing out the notes for it. By the end of 2009, I had a story that was significantly more complex than I thought it was going to be when I started writing it out. After a long conversation with my brother, he echoed what was bouncing around in my head: that I should break the story into multiple books.

So, 2010 saw me start rewriting my notes and beginning to write out the new outline and narrative for Nobody, the first book of Aggadeh Chronicles. It was my hope that I would have Nobody completed and ready to go by the summer of 2011.

It didn’t work out that way. Life has a way of happening, and sometimes what it brings you is serves as a huge distraction from the course you’re trying to follow. Also, I am not a multitasker by any measure. Trying to do other things other than writing were constantly distracting me from actually getting any writing done. Oh, sure, I’d get a little done here and a little done there, but nothing that would really amount to anything.

I realized that if I wanted to write a book, I would have to go all in. No more working part time jobs, looking for full time work, or trying to start various businesses. The economy pretty much killed off any chance I had of succeeding in any of those ventures.

I looked at my situation. No employment prospects before me. The T-shirt shop I was running with friends was pretty much destroyed by the economy; our customers were primarily civic and charity organizations, two groups that were slammed by the economy. No money, no T-shirts.

I did have fairly significant savings set aside, so I looked long and hard at my situation and realized in that moment, I had the opportunity to make a go at writing. No job. I had enough savings to last me for a couple of years without income.

What I expected would take a year-and-a-half has actually taken three years. As I said above, life has a way of getting in your way sometimes.

The biggest problem was the knowledge that I was running out of money. My original plan was to get the book out while I still had at least enough money in the bank to make minimum payments on bills for a year, so I would have enough time to work on Plan-B in case sales of Nobody flopped. (Keep note of this paragraph; there is an inside joke about this in Privateer when I release that book.) 

I’ve gone way past that point. When Nobody is released in a few weeks, I now only have enough money to last until the first check gets paid out from royalties. I’ve no buffer left. No Plan-B. I have always told people that writing a book is a huge gamble. I really have gone all in on this project. As in a poker game, it’s time to show that last card…

So, after three years of this, it was such a strange feeling when I completed the last sentence and it slowly hit me that I had just finished the story.

And I do mean slowly.

It took hours for the feeling to sink in. I wrote it, put down the computer and walked away from the desk. Took a walk to stretch my legs. Went out to run errands. Had scheduled obligations to deal with in the evening. I said I am not a multitasker, so all this business kept me from really contemplating the significance of completing this task.

When all was done and I finally had the chance to head home and sit quietly, only then did I have the chance to ruminate on the fact that the book was done.

Only then did the reality of it hit me.

312 pages, 17 chapters, containing 104,162 words.

It’s done!

I am no longer writing a book. I have written a book!

Right there in front of me is the entire manuscript. Ready to go [get edited].

I don’t have to write anymore. I have nothing more to do. After three years, that is a strange sensation.

This also means that the release is coming soon. An exciting and terrifying thing. Exciting, because my book will finally be out there at last. Terrifying, because my offering is going to be laid on the altar of literature and I can only hope that readers accept it.

When I put out the excerpt of the first six chapters, I got an enormous amount of positive feedback from people. Heck, I even got fan mail!

For the moment, a brief pause is in order. The lilacs are blooming, it’s time to go sniff the flowers.

A Silent Protest

There was an uproar in the media about the remains of bomber #1 being brought to my town of North Attleboro. In all honesty, if the media had just kept their mouths shut, there would have been no controversy at all. The whole thing was a non-issue.

Instead, they turned the solemn and private celebration of the life of a young woman who fought and succumbed to cancer into a media circus with helicopters and news vans orbiting around the Dyer-Lake Funeral home. Then, as the grieving family members exited the funeral home, they were confronted with reporters sticking microphones into their faces and asking them, “What did you think about them bringing the body of •••••••• •••••••• to the funeral home while you were having the service for your family member?”

Now, stop and think for a moment: the grieving family didn’t even know that •••••••• ••••••••’s remains were in the building until the media shoved microphones and cameras into their faces and proclaimed it to them.

Next, the media were pointing fingers at Dyer-Lake Funeral home and saying, “How dare they honor bomber #1 by receiving its remains?”

I have some news for you: it’s their job to do that! They were not honoring the bomber, they were doing their civic duty to assist the state in moving the remains. As any member of the police, fire department, the military, and many other public services can tell you, sometimes in your duty to God and country you are asked to handle distasteful problems and people that no one else wants to touch. (Trust me, that’s an understatement. Just ask Mike Rowe. Listening to his comments is well worth your time!)

People complained about doctors treating bomber #2. Again, that is their duty is the treat the sick and wounded. Not to pronounce judgement and sentence on people.

So what can people do?

Actually, the media had the answer in the beginning. Laughably, because they couldn’t pronounce the names of the two bombers. So the media simply referred to them as “suspects 1 & 2” or “bombers 1 & 2.” This is what we should be doing. Do they deserve the honor of having their names spoken by you? Do they deserve to be turned into celebrities and have their names become legend by the law-abiding public?

No, they do not.

Remove their names from the American lexicon. Simply refer to them as inhuman objects: bomber 1 and bomber 2. (The lack of capitalization is intended.)

Anonymize them. The names of the bombers should never be raised above those of their victims. Leave the bombers to be lost to obscurity, never to affect the flow or a change in society ever again.

I will never use their names. Not even in use to describe removing the residue from the lugs of my boots after stepping in animal excrement. They do not deserve such elevated status in civil society.

Instead, let them be forever marginalized in failure. Forgotten in silence, never again to bother society and civilization with their existence. Shun them and leave them alone in their shame.

Instead, look to all the people who heroically stepped in to help those stricken by the violence. Exemplify those who have turned to helping rather than harming others such as the students of Boston College who today did a fund-raiser for the victims of the bombing called A Walk to the Finish. The walk was five-miles-long, representing the last five miles that many of the Boston Marathon runners were unable to finish because the race was called off due to the bombings.

Instead, when you are having a bad day, don't use that as an excuse to ruin someone else's day. Hold open the door to let someone else through. Let that car cut you off rather than try to teach the driver a lesson in civility. Be the example, not the complaint.

Instead, watch this video as an example of how real people should behave. Russian drivers get such a bad reputation due to all the bad videos, this makes a good example of how it should be:

(link by way of tywkiwdbi)