Guest Post by Guido Henkel

In February, Guido Henkel did a guest post about his sales, which weren't up to his expectations.

I offered some advice, and so did many others in the comments section.

Guido followed this advice. Did it work?

Here he is again, to answer.

Guido: As you may all recall, a few weeks ago, Joe was kind enough to allow me to presented to you the scenario of my “Jason Dark” series of supernatural mystery dime novels and how sales have been very flat despite my best efforts to kickstart the series.

The comments this blog post generated were staggering — to my mind at least — and I read every single response to the discussion with interest and with an open mind. In fact, I immediately began bolstering my Twitter presence as a result of it. But once things had petered out a little I took the next step. I made a detailed list of things that had been brought up and weighed the comments as I felt some of them warranted more credit than others.

As a result a picture began to form in my mind about how I could actually reshape the series, starting with the very first book, “Demon’s Night,” based on many of these comments. For the past weeks I have done just that and finally, I am able to show you the result.

About four weeks ago I relaunched a completely rebooted version of “Demon’s Night!” As you can see at a glimpse already, the book features a completely new cover artwork. Virtually nothing remains of the old look, I daresay. While the urge was strong to somehow reincorporate the original artwork, a few attempts quickly showed that they all, inevitably, turned out pulpy. Not what I wanted!

I wanted to refashion the book with a contemporary look, something that looks a lot more like what other quality Kindle releases look like these days, as opposed to the traditional look of old dime novels. It took a good amount of trying and tweaking, but I do like the new cover quite a bit, and through its design, it allows me to loosely suggest a series character by retaining certain elements when I go to work to rework the covers for the other nine books I have in the market.

But there are more changes. The title, for example. As you can see, the book is now simply called “Demon’s Night” without the limiting mention of the “Jason Dark” series as such. Instead, I provided a small byline saying “A Jason Dark Supernatural Mystery.” This way people can still identify books featuring Jason Dark as a main character without my creating the impression that this is a series of books that needs to be read in sequence. This, in particular, was important to me, as I realized just how strongly people believed they had to read these stories in sequential order, when in fact each one is a stand-alone book. With the new moniker, any reference to volume numbers is gone also, for the same reason.

Next is the reworked product description. Once again I have worked towards giving the book a description that makes it stand on its own instead of seeing it as tied into a series, so the boilerplate text that was part of each of the adventures is gone entirely. Instead I tried to fashion a description that has a hook and generates enough interest for readers to take a closer look. To complement the new description I have also changed my author biography on Amazon and placed the track record of my books in the text rather than my achievements in the computer games industry. With ten books now published, I guess I can safely use those titles as references to establish my credibility and will no longer require the mention of the games I did so many years ago. In addition the description now includes a word and page count to make sure potential buyers have better idea for “how much book” they get.

Let’s see, what else is there? Oh yes, the absolute hot-button issue — price. I have — once again — reduced the price of the book to 99 cents. Out of necessity. I still believe that this price point has become the bane of the book industry, but be that as it is, I have to bow to the market requirements just as much as anyone who wants to gain exposure. So I am deliberately forfeiting revenues for the sake of volume. Having nine other books in the catalog at a $2.99 price point will hopefully mean that I will generate much needed revenues though those titles in the tail.

In order to sell other titles, however, it is necessary for the loss-leader book to be as strong as possible, of course. Therefore I gave “Demon’s Night” a complete revision. Starting with the completely rewritten opening chapter, I went over the entire book with a fine-toothed comb to improve the style and writing. It was actually interesting to go back and see how much I have grown as a writer in the past two years, and to put some of the new things I’ve learned to work in that, my first, book. The result is, I hope, a much more riveting experience that will hopefully translate into readers picking up other Jason Dark adventures — or at least recommending “Demon’s Night” to their friends.

I made a series of other changes, including my author description, removing the message boards from the official website because they lay there barren, unused and intimidating and numerous other smaller things.

As I said, I relaunched the book about four weeks ago and was really curious to see what results these changes may yield. To prevent the tension from killing you, let me make this short and sweet for you. The result was zilch! It resulted in no measurable increase of sales — not for “Demon’s Night” or any of the other books.

By the time I launched the new version, “Demon’s Night” was hovering between #70,000 and #120,000 on Amazon, with an occasional break-out. I looked at that as my baseline. There has been some improvement in the ranking since the reboot, but the book is still hovering between #20,000 and #45,000 with occasional dips below the #60,000 mark. Since in that space selling even a single copy can make a huge difference, the sales numbers are really not nearly as dramatic as the rank improvement might suggest. The sales increase is not nearly doing enough to make up for the lost royalties resulting from the different price bracket. As such it is a complete loss.

My hope was, that sales increases in “Demon’s Night” would eventually lead to a sales increase in my other books — the upsell effect, but since there was virtually no sales boost… all of my other books are still hovering somewhere between the #100,000 and #200,000 marks, just as they did for the past months, each selling a single copy every 4 or 5 days.

During the past four weeks I also redesigned the cover for “Ghosts Templar” in a similar vein of the “Demons Night” rework to see how that will perform. I also changed the title to remove series references, I created a new product description and once again included a word and page count. I needn’t have bothered, really, as there is also no notable difference here either.

The only satisfying result that came out of this so far is that I can at least tell myself that I tried. I had an open mind and tried to incorporate feedback. I even agreed with a lot of the feedback and I felt good when I first relaunched the book, especially since so many people told me how great the reworked version looked and read.

So, what does all of this tell us? To put it bluntly, it tells me that we are all pretty clueless. There is no secret formula — or at least we have not yet discovered it. The original concept, look and feel, and presentation for the series that I had for the series was every good — or bad — as anything the collective input was able to produce. For everything I created and tried, there were people who thought it was great and others who thought it was bad. It is the way of life, for sure, but it certainly teaches me one thing: to go with my own instincts because they are every bit as true than anyone else’s.

For me, that instinct tells me right now to let go of Jason Dark for the time being, as there is quite evidently very little interest in this sort of literature at this point in time. The latest issue of Fangoria just came out this part week, featuring the first installment of an exclusive Jason Dark serial. Fangoria, as you may know, is America’s leading print horror magazine and even the exposure on the pages of such a genre institution did not have an impact on my sales, so perhaps it is time to move on. “Curse of Kali”, the tenth Jason Dark adventure is just around the corner and it will represent a nice way to put the series on hiatus with a cool cliffhanger.

If I sound disappointed to you, it is probably because I am. I spent every waking hour of the last two-and-a-half years on creating these books. It was a full time job, creating, publishing, promoting and, of course, writing these ten books and I have spent many thousands of dollars of my own money to see it come to fruition. Over that time I have fallen in love with the characters, the world, the possibilities it offered, etc. To see that it was all in vain is disappointing — would be to anyone, I suppose, but with that in mind I have begun writing a modern day thriller, a book that has absolutely nothing to do with the horror genre. It will be a full-length novel and I’ll be curious to see how that pans out.

Altogether, this was an exciting experiment that yielded some interesting — yet unexpected — results. I wish to thank you all for your feedback and most importantly, my heartfelt thanks go out to Joe who has allowed me to not only present my initial concerns to you, but who has been even more gracious by giving me the opportunity to share these resulting changes with you just now. Joe, you are a class act in my book!

Now, where was that refresh button for the Amazon Author Central ranking page again???

Joe sez: Wow. I'm impressed with all the work Guido put into this reboot, and I think everything he's done is smart and should increase sales.

But it hasn't. So what's going on here?

There's no magic bullet in this business. No one can predict what will sell, or even adequately decipher why something does well while something else doesn't. As I've stated many times, luck plays a big role in determining success.

I've had novels on Kindle for two years, and watched my sales rank fluctuate on various titles. Two of my novels, ORIGIN and THE LIST, were the first two I released, and they're both currently in the Top #100 at $2.99 each. (That might change shortly--ORIGIN recently fell out of the TOP 100 and only crept back to #99 an hour ago.)

But those are two ebooks out of 25 that I have available. What aren't all 25 of mine in the Top 100?

I have no idea. I wish I did, but I can't read every customer's mind to learn why they did or didn't buy something.

I have noticed that successful ebooks have some common traits--good cover art, low prices, good writing, good product descriptions. But in my humble opinion, Guido has all of that.

So did Jon F. Merz. Yet he also struggled to find an audience. That is, until recently, when his sales have blown up. Like Guido, Jon tweaked his backlist according to some suggestions by me and people on my blog.

And, like Guido, those suggestions didn't help much. But then Merz released a new series, which caught on and is earning him $150 a day.

Let's assume Henkel, Merz, and I are all equally talented writers. Let's also assume our covers are all of professional quality, and we're all doing similar things to find an audience.

So why am I selling like crazy, why is Merz finding an audience, and why is Henkel still struggling?

I can't say. Luck swings both ways. Prior to the new Lawson Vampire series, Merz was experiencing some bad luck. Now his luck is turning around.

Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows I wrote nine novels and got over 500 rejections before landing a book deal. Two of those rejected novels, ORIGIN and THE LIST, are currently in the Top 100. Why were they not good enough twelve years ago, but are now selling hundreds of copies a day?

Hell if I know. They books haven't changed. It just took 12 years to find an audience.

Now, no writer wants to hear that success could take 12 years. Or even 2 years (ORIGIN and THE LIST were uploaded to Kindle in April 2009.)

But sometimes, that's how long it takes to get lucky.

All we can do is keep writing. Keep experimenting. Keep trying.

Guido Henkel is going to succeed. I'd put money on it. He's doing everything right.

The world just hasn't discovered him yet. Sometimes it takes a while. I'm proof. And so is almost every other success story. Kindle lore is full of newbies who got rejections and then became bestsellers, and snubbed legacy authors who self-published out-of-print titles and made a killing. All of these stories have a common element: the writer kept at it until the world couldn't ignore them any more.

I think Guido is smart to try something new. I've reinvented myself at least six times over the past 20 years. Mysteries, thrillers, horror, sci-fi, humorous thrillers, technothrillers, medical thrillers, etc. Until THE LIST and ORIGIN took off, my pen name Jack Kilborn was outselling J.A. Konrath by a wide margin. Why? Hell if I know.

But I do know that writers need to write. And if something isn't working, it can't hurt to try something new. If Guido keeps at it, he'll find those sales he's looking for. Ebooks are forever, and forever is a long time to find a fanbase. Ask Van Gogh, who only sold a single painting in his life.

So my advice to Guido is to keep at it, and write something new. I'd stop messing around with tweaking covers, but if I was in his shoes I'd drop all of my titles to 99 cents for a month, just to see what happens.

Jason Dark isn't a dead property. It just hasn't caught on yet. And it wouldn't surprise me if, in the future, there's a demand for more Jason Dark stories.

But for now, it's time to move on. Having been at that point many times in my career, I know how hard it is.

I also know that I'm going to have to write sequels to THE LIST and ORIGIN--novels that have been "dead" for over a decade. I never could have predicted that would happen.

Guest Post by Blake Crouch

Last month, I asked Blake to do a guest post about self-pubbing his latest novel.

Here's his follow-up...


Blake: 32 days ago, I posted on this blog about my new novel RUN and all the reasons why I had decided to release it myself and stop waiting for the Big Book Deal.

To be completely honest, I was nervous about this one. Joe had been yelling at me to put the book out, but what if I took his advice, and it didn’t sell?

I knew it had a great cover, a great pitch, and I thought the book itself delivered on all of that, but still, that nagging fear of a flop was hanging around.

So what happened?

RUN blew up.

In all the best ways, and in those I hadn’t even thought of.

The bloggers and fellow writers I contacted to help me get the word out came through in a big way, and I believe they laid the groundwork for the book to take off.

For the last few weeks, RUN has been consistently ranked between the 200s and 400s on Amazon at $2.99.

The real surprise, however, has been in the Nook store, where, as I write this, RUN is ranked #132 overall. For every copy of RUN I sell on Amazon, I’m selling 2.3 copies on Barnes and Noble.

Which means it’s selling about 400 copies/day right now, and is approaching 4000 sales since I released it a month ago.

I’ve had a bit of difficulty wrapping my head around this, and it’s got me thinking a lot lately about expectations.

When I first released the book, I thought, if I can sell as well as Konrath’s and my SERIAL UNCUT, which has been selling between 30-50 copies/day for many months, I’ll consider this a resounding success. I had a lot of books ranked between 1500 and 2000, but I’d never had anything in the triple digits, and I’d never had anything sell like this on Barnes & Noble.

But my main purpose behind writing this blog entry is to share a few valuable lessons learned (and mistakes made) as I watched RUN begin to take off.

1. Having a book integrate into Amazon’s system makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE. For some reason, it took two weeks, but literally the day that RUN hit the “Customers Also Bought” system, it dipped under 1000 and never looked back. I truly believe that those connections Amazon builds between ebooks are the single most important component to a book’s success. Which means you have to have a concept of what books and authors are hot and selling that are like yours. Keywords and tags are crucial in achieving this.

This is what legacy publishers did for years (and still do). They try to position new books in the framework of known quantities and bestsellers to give readers and booksellers the confidence and perspective to buy and sell the book. This is also why my pitch (see below) begins with “For fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris...” These are big names, but my work truly does share a lot of common ground. I think readers like familiarity, and the comfort of being told, “This is kind of like that.”

2. The bestseller lists. So important. Once RUN started hitting the lists, my ranking became, for lack of a better word, “sticky.” There were no more drastic daily fluctuations between 1000 and 3000. If you can hit some lists, you have a better chance of maximizing any momentum that you build and holding onto it.

3. In that regard, choose your categories wisely. I made a major mistake when I uploaded RUN. I put it in the Thrillers and Suspense categories. When RUN’s rank began to fall, I noticed it wasn’t hitting any lists. Even when it got down into the 400s. Thrillers and Suspense are two of the most competitive lists on Amazon. I only squeaked onto the Thrillers list briefly at #99 when RUN fell to #280. This means you have to compete with all the heavy hitters to have a chance at making that list.

My mistake was, I hadn’t listed horror as one of RUN’s categories. If I had, when it fell below 500, it would have immediately hit the top 10 on the horror list. So I ran back into my DTP account, changed suspense to horror, and within 48 hours, RUN was highly ranked on the horror lists, which gave it yet another boost. I think of my books first and foremost as thrillers, but that doesn’t mean it’s smart to drop them into that category if my goal is to hit some Amazon bestseller lists and get a sticky ranking. Choose your categories not only wisely, but based upon bestseller lists that you believe you have a shot at hitting.

4. Pricing...this is my biggest question of the moment. I’ve railed before about $.99 and how I believe it’s not a good price for writers. But there is no denying the power of dropping a book to $.99 to make a run at the top 100. What Joe has done with THE LIST and ORIGIN has been very impressive. But when a book’s successful, and you don’t have as many novel-length titles to play around with, dropping that price out of the 70% royalty bracket is a scary proposition. So I’m still very much on the fence, but am at least considering dropping RUN to $.99 when it begins to slip in rankings.

I’m sure Joe will chime in here shortly and tell me how much money I lost not listening to him and releasing this back in October, (Joe sez: Over $25,000) but in the meantime, thanks to everyone who has bought RUN and said nice things about it.

And if you’re sitting on a novel, waiting for The Big Book Deal for your life to begin, please consider my experience here.

If you’ve benefited from any of my posts on Joe’s blog,please check out RUN, available for $2.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and as an old-school dead-tree relic on Createspace.
Here’s the pitch:

For fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris...

Picture this: A landscape of American genocide...

5 d a y s a g o

A rash of bizarre murders swept the country…

Senseless. Brutal. Seemingly unconnected.

A cop walked into a nursing home and unloaded his weapons on elderly and staff alike.

A mass of school shootings.

Prison riots of unprecedented brutality.

Mind-boggling acts of violence in every state.

4 d a y s a g o

The murders increased ten-fold…

3 d a y s a g o

The President addressed the nation and begged for calm and peace…

2 d a y s a g o

The killers began to mobilize…

Y e s t e r d a y

All the power went out…

T o n i g h t

They’re reading the names of those to be killed on the Emergency Broadcast System. You are listening over the battery-powered radio on your kitchen table, and they’ve just read yours.

Your name is Jack Colclough. You have a wife, a daughter, and a young son. You live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. People are coming to your house to kill you and your family. You don’t know why, but you don’t have time to think about that any more.

You only have time to….

R U N

Joe sez: I'm thrilled this terrific book is finding an audience, and I'm also wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong on BN.com since a lot of authors seem to be smoking my sales and I'm only doing $3k a month there.

I suppose I have to remind myself how much luck is a factor.

Blake mentioned my experiments with THE LIST and ORIGIN and I think that's worth commenting on. They're both currently ranked around #70, and I just raised the price on ORIGIN back to $2.99, which should kick in soon.

While THE LIST has made me a lot of money (over $20k in the time it has been in the Top 100), ORIGIN took its time to get up there, and seemed to peak and drop pretty fast. I'm raising the price now, while it's still in the Top 100, to try and chase the money I lost while it was 99 cents.

My guess is I'll come out ahead on ORIGIN (i.e. earn more through this experiment than if I'd just left it alone at $2.99) but it's still too soon to tell. With the rate they're both dropping, I don't expect either to be in the Top 100 for much longer.

I really can't draw any conclusions from my experiment. It worked well with THE LIST. It didn't work at all with SHOT OF TEQUILA. It partially worked with DISTURB, which never cracked the Top 100, but is holding a much higher rank than it had prior to the price drop.

If I had to advise Blake on what to do with RUN, I'd say drop it to 99 cents on Amazon and give it two weeks. He's got a cushion with his BN sales, so it might be worth the risk to try it. At the very least, he'll lose a few bucks but climb in rank, and then when we goes back to $2.99 he'll be making more money for a while.

As self-published authors, we need to experiment more. Too many writers are afraid of changing prices. The fear of losing money, or rank, or sales, shouldn't keep us from trying different things. Remember that ebooks are forever. Sales will fluctuate over time, no doubt. But there's no set business model yet in place for ebooks. I just cracked the Top 100 with two novels that have been on Kindle for two years. I think that shows the longevity of this medium.

We can afford to take risks, because unlike the print world which has set prices and a limited shelf life, our ebooks will still be for sale five, ten, twenty years from now.

But there's also a reverse aspect to this. If your sales are faltering, maybe you don't need to experiment with new prices or different covers. Maybe instead you should be concentrating on writing more. It's tempting to micromanage backlist titles, trying to improve sales. However, one guaranteed way to raise backlist sales is to self-pub new work.

Ultimately, you should do both: tending the backlist while expanding the frontlist. Blake was selling modestly with his previous titles. He was thrilled to make $6k in January.

In March, he made $24k, largely due to the sales of RUN, which is not only selling well but is helping his backlist sell well.

If that doesn't make you want to get writing, I don't know what will.

DO YOU HAVE GRAMMARPHOBIA?

I have just come across a fabulous resource for anyone who wants the answer to tricky grammar questions or anything to do with what's "right" or "wrong" in our language usage - not just grammar but word usage, too. It's the Grammarphobia blog.

Annoyingly, I sent off the final final final proofs for Write to be Published last night, but I'm going to email Emma at Snowbooks and see if there's time

Guest Post by Scott Nicholson

Scott Nicholson is launching his new thriller Liquid Fear today. He’s also giving away a $100 gift certificate on participating blogs if he hits the Top 100. Buy it at Amazon, BN.com, and Smashwords because it’s okay to forget your nightmares for a while or pop by Haunted Computer)

Good Cop, Bad Cop
by Scott Nicholson

I freely admit Joe has been an influence on my decision to enter the self-publishing world (or indie, or, hell, call it “vanity” if you want, I’m vain enough), and I’ve been a frequent visitor here, even though I disagree with Joe on some big points—particularly the rosy eternal-expansion model of six-figure incomes for indie writers.

I haven’t been around as much for the simple reason that Joe is mostly making the case why authors should do it themselves, and I was sold by last summer. Now, with Barry Eisler turning down half a million clams, I think we’re kind of past that debate. That’s about all the evidence most writers will need, because most writers will never reach that level. I mean, like 99.9999 percent of all writers.

Read their recent discussion if you haven’t yet (this interview needs a name, it’s like a bookmark of literary history—let’s call it The Summit), and Dean Wesley Smith makes a good counterpoint, though I am not fully sold on the positions of either. Dean, in particular, seems to think bookstores will remain valid for the next decade or two, whereas I foresee a collapse on the order of what happened to video and record stores.

In our little college town of 15,000 students and about 10,000 full-time residents, we had seven video stores and four record stores five years ago. Today, all we have is Blockbuster, which is a chain on the ropes, and one niche store that combines videos, books, albums, and CD’s, eclectic art for the discerning college hippie. Ironically, we have one other “record” store—and all it sells is classic vinyl albums, mostly on eBay. I think that’s the Bookstore Future—towns might have one weird shop that thrives on nostalgia and the personal touch. We do have a neat indie bookstore owned by former M*A*S*H writer Karen Hall, but it recently cleared away a section to put in a yarn store, not a good sign of the health of paper sales in spite of our recent Waldenbooks closing.

Since Joe, Barry, and Dean already made the point that the time to self-publish was yesterday, I’ll deal with some possible seismic shifts that would concern me if I was set on any specific outcome of the digital revolution. In fact, I was a lot more cynical about the future before I read The Summit, and if Barry has enough faith to walk away from enough money to keep a sensible family secure for life, there must be aspects I have been downplaying or over-inflating. My mantra in my wiser middle age is “Universal truth is nothing but a personal perspective inflated to a wish.”

I’m not sold on the “legacy” label Barry uses for traditional publishing, because my dictionary doesn’t have any definitions to justify it. But “traditional” doesn’t work, either. Which tradition are you talking about? Monks transcribing with quills? Hand-pressed books in the Gutenberg era? The 19th and early 20th Centuries when editors actually helped craft books and build careers? The 1950s through the 1980s, when run-of-the-mill paperbacks would sell 100,000 copies? Last year, when publishers made a number of major, major miscalculations (the Apple bet being the biggest blunder)?

I stick with the term “corporate publishing,” because every single decision will come down to the presumed well-being of shareholders and executives, not you, whether you are a reader or a writer.

We could do this all day, but I don’t want to write 13,000 words that I’m not selling. So I will play some Good Cop, Bad Cop of the Digital Future, and Joe will chime in with his 2 cents.

Good Cop: Joe foresees eternal expansion. He brings up Dark Side of the Moon, selling like crazy today after charting an incredible 736 weeks since its 1973 release, falling off, and then returning to the charts for another decade or so.

Bad Cop: The immortal Eric Weissberg topped the charts the week Dark Side launched. Trivia-question answers like Deodato, Dr. Hook, Anne Murray, Jermaine Jackson, and Edward Bear rounded out the Top 10.

Verdict: A few e-books will sell steadily for the life of copyright; almost all will not.

Joe sez: As I often say, forever is a long time to find an audience. There are few record stores left, and Best Buy probably doesn't sell Dr. Hook. But iTunes still does, and the good Doctor is still making royalties. What the hell was he a doctor of, anyway?

BTW, this from Barry, via Wikipedia:

"A legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program that continues to be used, typically because it still functions for the users' needs, even though newer technology or more efficient methods of performing a task are now available."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_system

Good Cop: Low-priced e-books will mean more people hoarding and reading more authors and more genres than ever, especially at 99 cents.

Bad Cop: 99 cents is great if you are selling in the six figures on multiple books. Otherwise, you are likely to use up your audience and still be looking for a job.

Verdict: A mix of prices and a broad platform will enhance your survival, because there are multiple audiences, not one single audience. Some want 99 cents, some equate it with crap, some do nothing but cruise for free books, and others like that stamp of corporate approval and are willing to pay for it.

Joe sez: Your best bet is to keep writing good books, keep posting them, and don't be afraid to experiment with pricing. Remember, success always involves luck. But you can improve your odds by being talented, smart, and persistent.

Good Cop: Corporate pricing has opened an incredible window of opportunity for authors who can compete with lower prices and equal quality.

Bad Cop: Most books are not of equal quality, and New York hasn’t even begun to compete—when they do, they can trim their staffs and go to war with a monstrous catalog of hoarded, cheap, and possibly stolen backlist. See Brian Keene’s experiences with Leisure/Dorchester if you don’t believe me.

Verdict: At some point, corporate publishers may organize enough to muscle in with economies of scale. “At some point” will likely be far too late for them and their poor authors who are locked into pitiful royalty rates virtually forever.

Joe sez: I don't believe that legacy publishers, as they now exist, can survive selling cheap ebooks as their main source of income. If they do downsize and start epubbing exclusively, they can expect a slew of lawsuits from writers who want their rights back after going out of print. Leisure is an important case study. Not to be mean, but they were always the low man on the publishing totem pole. When the bottom feeders can no longer make money, how can the bigger companies with much greater overhead?

Good Cop: E-book lending will help books reach potential new readers and expand the writer’s customer base.

Bad Cop: There are already sites illegally “selling” the “lending” rights, which means not only new readers, but new readers who don’t mind ripping you off.

Verdict: As with piracy, the main victims will be overpriced corporate books.

Joe sez: Agreed. Diffuse piracy by offering your ebooks at low prices, in a wide variety of formats. It's all about cost and convenience.

Good Cop: Agents are cruising the Kindle bestseller list and sharking the 99-cent writers, some of whom are thrilled to finally feel legitimate after years of trying to “break in,” so there’s new opportunity.

Bad Cop: I don’t see room for corporate publishers on 99-cent books or proof that those books will sell for significantly more, but I see easy paydays for lazy agents, bad return-on-investment for shareholders, and future lament for authors who make ego decisions instead of business decisions.

Verdict: Remember Boyd Morrison? He lost a ton of e-book audience but has expressed peace with his decision because he knew what he wanted—the hardcover deal. D.B. Henson went big because she wanted to pay off her house. Amanda Hocking plans to pursue both avenues. Some will win, some will lose, like always.

And this is all the proof you need that New York is not looking for quality. Nobody is sitting around reading slush in hopes of finding that great new literary talent (despite what agents say on Twitter when they are busy not reading your submissions.) Good books are largely interchangeable, and this is clearly explained in The Summit. Barry’s gone, but they probably already have a new Barry lined up. Not the same talent, of course, but there’s somebody out there whose agent saw the opening and made a convincing case for a good-looking, charming writer of intelligent, well-crafted thrillers.

No, get it out of your heads that quality is the defining attribute in corporate publishing. Only sales matter. Sales and numbers will always be the most important issue to shareholders. And, remember, it is shareholders who are the boss, not readers or writers or editors or distributors or bookstore owners or agents, despite how some of them act.

Joe sez: Education, research, and experimentation can help you make wise decisions. If an agent comes calling, know what questions to ask. If you don't know what those questions are, you aren't ready to enter the legacy world.

Good Cop: Amazon’s dominance of the e-book market is wonderful because they have been so considerate of writers.

Bad Cop: The royalty structure was designed to lure “real authors” away from publishers and make a joke of the agency model, not “lift up” the value of indie books to $2.99. And they could be working on a switch to a Netflix-type subscription model, as they did with their Prime accounts for movies. Or they could cut royalties to 20 percent after they bankrupt a bunch of publishers.

Verdict: This is about as incredible an opportunity as you could ask for, short of constantly selling content from your own site at full price, but given the complicated system required for that, Amazon is well worth the 30 percent and even the 65 percent. But Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo have been working hard to secure their foundations, which is a good buffer against draconian royalty cuts (remember shareholders?). Worry about the future when the future gets here, and do what’s best for you right now.

Joe sez: Agreed. But there's a long way to go before it gets as bad as the 17.5% currently offered by legacy publishers.

Good Cop: The 99-cent e-book sells well and stimulates algorithms that put your book in front of more potential readers.

Bad Cop: It can create a rush to the bottom, make it more difficult for higher-priced books to be seen, and build a sense of consumer entitlement in which the intrinsic value of literature is demeaned.

Verdict: Both will happen. Why should books be any different than what has happened with digital movies, music, and game apps? What’s so special about books, anyway? You can go to any thrift store in America and load up boxes of paper books at 10 cents each, and some they will pay you to haul away.

Joe sez: I'm still experimenting with pricing, but my experiments are getting me more money and more sales than if I stayed at $2.99. Like it or not, 99 cent ebooks are a powerful weapon in an author's arsenal. Just learn how to use them correctly.

Good Cop: There’s one sweet spot for pricing and every author should do the same thing.

Bad Cop: Joe’s sweet spot was $1.99, went to $2.99, flirted with 99 cents, and now seems to be $2.99 again. Guess what? Most of that was defined by Amazon, not Joe (except his influential original pricing). If there was a 90 percent royalty at $3.99, I’d bet that would be his new sweet spot.

Verdict: Don’t worry about what’s best for Joe or for John Locke or for Michael Sullivan or for me (although I have books from 99 cents to $9.99, because I believe there are multiple audiences I don’t want to miss). Try different mixes and see what works best. Your own data will always be the most reliable.

Joe sez: Amen to that.

Good Cop: Joe and Barry are established veterans well-versed in the industry, so their path is good enough for me. I’m convinced.

Bad Cop: Barry walked away from half a million dollars. Joe turned down multiple book offers of guaranteed money. Almost everyone (who wasn’t paying attention to the publishing industry) would call that “dumb.”

Verdict: They both made the right moves, for them, at the right times. But you’re not them. You probably don’t have a huge audience and a solid backlist. Find out what is the right move for you—I hear there are some slots opening in New York.

Joe sez: If you write and release a solid backlist, I like your chances at finding that huge audience. At the very least, you have a better chance on your own than you would going through a legacy publisher.

Consider that I've worked with major publishers and have been given major releases, and in eight years I've sold a few hundred thousand books.

Last month, I sold 60,000 books on my own. I don't know too many legacy authors selling that many.

Good Cop: With the mainstream and well-publicized success of Amanda Hocking and John Locke (and J.A. Konrath before the trade press blacklisted him), “indie publishing” is now legitimate.

Bad Cop: There’s more crap than ever. Last year, I could upload my book and be #3 in the Smashwords queue. I uploaded a book yesterday and it was #1,249 in the queue. Clearly, not all of that is corporate quality, or even legible quality, and it will be harder to separate the wheat from chaff.

Verdict: The best comparison I’ve heard is to the number of websites. Do all those other websites out there that don’t interest you even bother you? Do you even know they exist? Do you care about the NYT bestseller list or do you look at the Kindle Top 100, or just books in your favorite genre? Readers will find a way to find the books they want. And, clearly, readers are better at picking winners than New York is. That’s why New York is belatedly picking books already chosen by readers—another point that proves one book is as good as another for their purposes.

Joe sez: We're pretty good at searching for and finding what we want. Crap has always existed, and always will. But it is still easy to discover worthy media.

Good Cop: People trust a solid corporate brand like James Patterson and will stay loyal even after the tipping point.

Bad Cop: What the hell does that mean? What exactly is a “James Patterson book”? It has no defining element at all except the factory name on the cover. Put them in brown paper wrappers and Patterson would be ranked in the middle tiers of the Kindle list, especially at those outlandish prices. And I used to like Patterson, back when he was a writer.

Verdict: Some corporate authors will make the transition, some won’t. The number of writers making a living will be roughly the same, but half the names will be different. Would we have needed a Stephanie Meyer if Amanda Hocking had happened first?

Joe sez: My prediction is that the bestseller list will drastically change. It's currently fueled by print runs and widespread distribution. People buy bestselling books because they make up the majority of what is available to buy.

That will change when ebooks become dominant. Watch and see.

Good Cop: The future looks great. Expanding sales, better royalties, more markets, more diverse selection for readers, a Golden Age revival of literature, more money shifting to authors and away from corporations, a growth of new ancillary cottage industries for editing and book production, an egalitarian rise in creative entrepreneurship.

Bad Cop: The future sucks. Piracy, hack work, unedited copy., 99 cents rapidly plummeting to free, millions and millions of slush-pile e-books, hoarders discovering they already have more books than they’ll ever read, slower waves of new adopters who will read less and with more resentment because you “took away their paper books,” cut-throat corporate practices that will lead to the Wal-Martizing of literature, and few avenues for any writer to make a sustained living.

Verdict: The future is neither good nor bad. The future doesn’t care. And the future is always changing. Some of both might be true, or it all might be wrong.

Joe sez: I'm going to be very rich. And I won't be the only one.

Good Cop: Sounds good. I’m going to pull that mystery manuscript out of the trunk. Let’s go get a donut.

Bad Cop: Clichés and stereotypes are lame, buddy. But I understand, because you are “indie,” and that makes it okay, because you’re a rebel sticking it to the Man. Plus, you got rejected 700 times. Ha ha.

Good Cop: At least I can write.

Bad Cop: So can anybody with an Internet connection.

Good Cop: Must you always have the last word?

Bad Cop: I’m not bad. I’m just written that way.

Verdict: I had 700 rejections. I was accepted by a corporate publisher. At the time, it was a dream come true and the best move I could possible make. Now, it looks like the biggest mistake of my career. It could be the moves I make today will seem like mistakes in 10 years. Right now, they are working. All I ever wanted was to do this for a living, and I’m doing that, so it’s all gravy from here, even if it only lasts a year.

Joe likes numbers and data, but I am avoiding those kinds of comparisons. While useful on the business front, my spiritual path is about the destruction of ego, and clamoring about ranks and money and other comparative measures does nothing to further my journey. However, here’s a little story about a little novel.

My first book The Red Church did very well for a midlist paperback. The sell-though was an incredible 95 percent (compared to today’s standard of 50 percent or less). It was an alternate selection of the Mystery Guild Book Club, got good reviews, and managed a second printing, but then the corporate publisher was done. In their business model, it made sense to be done, because they had other books to shove in its place. In my business model, it was tragic to have the book dead for five years. I was lucky enough to get my rights back, so now I am grateful the publisher let it go out of print. In the last two months, I have earned more than the book’s original advance. And I have it for the rest of forever.

That, to me, is validation that I made the right decision. I knew it wasn’t dead. And I am so happy that it still feels fresh today and still finds a receptive audience. I hope Liquid Fear is as fortunate.

I am not wed to any specific outcome for the digital era. Worry about the future when the future gets here, and do what’s best for you right now. Indie, self, vanity, whatever—it’s best for me, because I love every single aspect of my cottage industry. I hope you do, too, because it’s much harder to be happy than to sell a million e-books. Good luck.

Joe sez: All I ever wanted to do was write for a living. That's the whole point of this blog; to help writers who also have that goal. I never wanted to be the King of Self Promotion, and never wanted to be the Poster Boy for Self Publishing. While I'm grateful for all of the attention I've gotten, and thrilled at the money I'm making, the thing that matters most to me is watching my wife laugh, cringe, cry, and smile while she's reading one of my stories.

Yes, I quote numbers and figures. But that's a means to an end.

I've already helped someone on their journey.

Me.

Every other person I help is just icing on the cake...

Origin 99¢ ebook Charity Experiment

ORIGIN, the technothriller novel I dropped the price on a weeks ago, is currently at #103 in the Kindle store.

Naturally, I'd like to crack the Top 100.

There's a charity called First Book, which buys books for children who don't have any.

If ORIGIN does indeed make it into the Top 100, I'll donate $500 to First Book.

So I'm asking you to help me out. Please spread the word, link to this blog post, buy ORIGIN, gift copies for friends, etc.

I'm curious if a concentrated push at this late stage in the game will work to get it on the list.

The novel is a cross between Jurassic Park and The Exorcist. Here's the pitch:

Thriller writer J.A. Konrath, author of the Lt. Jack Daniels series, digs into the vaults and unearths a technohorror tale from the depths of hell...

1906 - Something is discovered by workers digging the Panama Canal. Something dormant. Sinister. Very much alive.

2009 - Project Samhain. A secret underground government installation begun 103 years ago in New Mexico. The best minds in the world have been recruited to study the most amazing discovery in the history of mankind. But the century of peaceful research is about to end.

BECAUSE IT JUST WOKE UP.


Book Description:

When linguist Andrew Dennison is yanked from his bed by the Secret Service and taken to a top secret facility in the desert , he has no idea he's been brought there to translate the words of an ancient demon.

He joins pretty but cold veterinarian Sun Jones, eccentric molecular biologist Dr. Frank Belgium, and a hodge-podge of religious, military, and science personnel to try and figure out if the creature is, indeed, Satan.

But things quickly go bad, and very soon Andy isn't just fighting for his life, but the lives of everyone on earth...

ORIGIN by J.A. Konrath
All hell is about the break loose. For real.

So if you visit this blog and are helped by it, I ask you to spread the word.

Thanks.

THE MASTER CRIMINAL NOVELIST AT WORK

Today we're going to talk about writing a crime series. Well, I'm not, because I don't know anything about it, but I'm going to ask my expert friend, Aline Templeton, hugely acclaimed author of the Marjory Fleming series of crime novels set in rural Galloway, that beautiful and peaceful  - hooray! - South-West corner of Scotland.

Cradle to Grave, Aline's latest, is published in paperback today,

Another Talk with Ann Voss Peterson

I've collaborated with many writers, including F. Paul Wilson, Jeff Strand, Henry Perez, Tom Schreck, and Blake Crouch.

I'm currently working on a spy novel with Ann Voss Peterson. We previously co-wrote the thriller short story WILD NIGHT IS CALLING, which has sold close to a thousand copies in the past month.

Recently, Ann and I met in Google docs and hammered out a novella, featuring characters from my Jack Daniels series.

The result, a Harry McGlade story called JAILBAIT, just went live on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

Here's the description:

Private detective Harry McGlade is on the prowl, looking for a one-night stand. Or, in McGlade's case, a five-minute stand.

When he finds a sexy lady at his local bar, he thinks he has a chance with her.

But she wasn't alone. There was a guy with her. A guy with a gun whom she was desperately trying to get away from.

When the local mafia becomes involved with McGlade's tryst, things start going bad.

Then they go really bad, when a baby comes into the picture. And the only one McGlade can turn to for help is his old partner, Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels.

JAILBAIT is an 11,000 word novella (about 50 pages long), written by bestselling author J.A. Konrath, and romantic suspense author Ann Voss Peterson (who has over 3 million books in print.)

It's a hysterically funny, and sometimes poignant, look at sex, relationships, pregnancy, and fatherhood. It also has guns and violence and criminals and double-crosses and twists. Ann and J.A. are confident that it will appeal to fans of mysteries, thrillers, and even romance (as long as the reader keeps tongue firmly in cheek.)

J.A. blames Ann for any depth and emotion the story has, because he feels that such sensitivity has no place in a humorous mystery.

Ann blames J.A. for the non-stop barrage of tasteless jokes, because she has much classier standards than that.

This ebook also features a brand new excerpt from FLEE, a spy novel co-written by Konrath and Peterson, which will be available on April 26.

So, in celebration of this release, I invited Ann to a quick Q & A.

Joe: Congrats on the Rita Award nomination!

Ann: Thanks, Joe! It's pretty exciting. For anyone who doesn't know, the Rita Award is the biggest award for romance fiction, like the Edgar for mystery or the Hugo for science fiction. And this year, it's being held in New York City. I'm waiting for the clothing designers to start lining up to dress me for the Awards! Okay, that's just my imagination. Speaking of imagination, let's talk about this crazy Harry McGlade novella we just wrote.

Joe: So the idea behind this story was basically to show you how to use Google docs (which I've used with Blake Crouch for Killers and Barry Eisler for our dialog).

Ann: Now wait, Joe. The spark of the idea ignited before that. It came from your blog. Someone asked if you were going to write a romance. So I challenged you, and the idea took a few strange twists from there.

Joe: I was pretty convinced we weren't going to end up writing a romance. I was also convinced that whatever we came up with wasn't going to be publishable. I thought of it more like an experiment. But then it grew into a Harry McGlade short story, and eventually a Harry McGlade novella, and I'm really pleased with the result.

You've read my Jack Daniels books. What was it like writing in that universe?

Ann: At first, it was a bit like writing fan fic, which I've actually never done. But you did give me free rein to create a few characters of my own to make Harry's life hell. Gotta say, I really enjoyed that.

Joe: The funny thing is, the story doesn't seem like a collaborative effort. It reads pretty much like one of my solo works, even though you wrote half of it.

Ann: What was it like to have someone else messing in Harry McGlade's life?

Joe: Surprisingly seamless. Having someone write for Harry and Jack was fun, and I don't think there were any false notes. You had some really funny lines that readers will probably think I wrote, which proves how good you were at mimicking my style. What did you think of Google docs for collaboration?

Ann: When we started, I really thought I would hate it. It's so contrary to the way I work. My rough drafts are ROUGH, and I never let anyone see them. I rewrite a lot to hone my story. So I was really uneasy with the idea of writing the same document at the same time. But I have to say, it grew on me. It pushed me past my obnoxious inner critic and forced me to just put words down. And I could trust that if I turned the story in a way that didn't work, you would change it in front of my eyes. In summary, it made me stretch, which is always a good thing for writers.

Joe: I'm really stuck on Google docs lately, and how much fun it is. Sort of like hanging out with another musician and starting to jam.

Because it came so easily, we wrote this sucker pretty damn quickly, and it required minimal rewrites once we finished. Do you normally write this fast?

Ann: No. I rewrite 'til the cows come home. Wait, I need to delete that cliche and come up with something better--

Joe: The cliche works fine. Now just open the door and let the cows back in.

At the end of JAILBAIT, we included another excerpt from our upcoming spy thriller FLEE. It's a different excerpt than the one in WILD NIGHT IS CALLING. What do you think of FLEE so far?

Ann: I adore FLEE. It has been such a blast to write. I think Chandler (the lead character) is me, she just lives in another dimension. Well, there might be a few other differences, too.

Or are there?

Joe: When I first met you I had a hunch you were a superspy assassin. Now that you're getting a taste of ebook self-publishing, are you planning on doing anything solo?

Ann: I have a lot of ideas, the problem is choosing which to do first. No, the biggest problem is that I'm loving writing Chandler right now, and we're talking about some sequels, and my imagination is running wild!

Joe: Chandler is such a fun character. Driven, brave, complicated, and at times really vulnerable. We just wrote a pretty steamy sex scene. Well, you wrote the bulk of it. I just added more oral.

Was it odd writing a sex scene with a partner, especially a guy?

Ann: I've never written a sex scene with anyone else before, so I guess you're my first, Joe. It actually went pretty smoothly. I suspect it would have felt a little more odd if we'd written that scene together in Google docs.

Joe: I'm thinking the next two Chandler books will be called SPREE and THREE. It would be cool to write and release them by Xmas. I think ereader sales are going to go through the roof this year. I've made over $40k this month. I can imagine, next January, making $100k a month. Isn't that crazy?

Ann: Crazy? That's fabulous! Let's get these books written!

Joe: FLEE will be available on April 26. The preorder page is now live on Amazon. If you order today, it will automatically be delivered to your Kindle or reading device the exact moment it goes live. It will also be available on B&N, Smashwords, Sony, Kobo, iPad, and in print.

If you were part of the now-ended FREE FLEE promotion, I'll email you a copy several days before the official release.

Now I'll field some questions. If anyone has questions for Ann, please post them in the comments section.

Q: How did you get Amazon to create a preorder page for you?

A: I asked nicely. Don't expect them to create one for you, though, unless you have friends who work there, and 200,000 previous ebook sales.

Q: How much is JAILBAIT?

A: We released it at $2.99, which we feel is fair considering its length.

Q: Is JAILBAIT funny?

A: If you don't laugh out loud, you're either dead or dead inside. But be warned; it's not for the easily offended.

Q: You're doing a lot of collaborations lately. Why?

A: Simple math. I can write twice as many stories with a partner as I can on my own. That means I can extend my virtual shelf space quicker, and also reach new readers through my co-writers' fans.

Plus, it's fun. I really can't express what a joy it is to work with other writers. Everyone needs to try this.

Upcoming releases include BIRDS OF PREY with Blake Crouch (a sequel to SERIAL UNCUT and KILLERS), and BURNERS with Henry Perez (A Jack Daniels/Alex Chapa novella).

Henry and I are also working on a semi-sequel to DRACULAS called MUMMIES, for a Halloween release. Also signed on for that are F. Paul Wilson and Heather Graham.

Blake and I are doing STIRRED, the final Jack Daniels book and sequel to SHAKEN, which also marks the end of his Andrew Z. Thomas (DESERT PLACES, LOCKED DOORS, BREAK YOU) horror series.

I'm also planning on writing WEREWOLVES this year with Blake, and it looks like we'll quite possibly team up on that with two other known bestsellers in the ebook world.

Q: Aren't you doing anything on your own anymore?

A: TIMECASTER SUPERSYMMETRY, the second Joe Kimball sci-fi actionfest (and sequel to TIMECASTER), and CONSUMED, the new Jack Kilborn, are on deck for later this year.

Q: What about that super-secret project you talked about with the NYT bestseller?

A: It's still super-secret. Sorry.

Q: Can I collaborate with you?

A: If your name is Stephen King, James Patterson, or Dean Koontz, yes. If any of you guys are reading this, contact me. I'll help boost your ebook sales.

Q: You haven't posted your self-pub numbers in a while.

A: As of today, March 29 at 8:17am, I've sold 53771 self-published books this month. I'll probably break 60,000 sales for March.

Q: How much money is that?

A: A shitload. The IRS is going to eat me alive.