My wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, on her blog today called “The Business Rusch” did a great post I feel is important for all writers to read.
It’s about not forgetting readers. Publishers are doing so and writers tend to do so as well. If you want to talk about her post and are afraid to do it on her site, come back here and discuss it. That’s fine. But read it.
And you might want to read the comments there as well. Interesting stuff.
http://kriswrites.com/2012/01/25/the-business-rusch-readers/
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith published traditionally more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he co-wrote The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and ghosts for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean wrote books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and wrote scripts for Hollywood. One movie actually saw film.
Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He now plays a role as an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
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I did read her post and it was most interesting and I do agree with most of it although I am very new to this business. I did ask her and I will ask you. I see you have pen names and I read some where that you had to buy your pen names. Is that right?
Buy our pen names? Nope. Except for the domains, of course. I get this question so often, my next topic will be about pen names in this new world of publishing. Stay tuned until this weekend.
Good question about pen names! I was going to get myself separate websites for each different pseudonym I use for the different genres I write in. Can’t wait for your blog post about pen names!
I read the post and it so impressed me that I wrote my own post – Keeping Faith with our Readers.
This blog (and your wife’s blog) really has influenced my writing and my publishing.
Thanks again
Cyn
@Vera – I don’t know if you went back to Kris’ site, but in the comments she noted that Harlequin had the (horrible) practice in the 1990s of claiming pen names that you have to buy back from them.
Is that what you’re talking about?
Because I’d never heard of anyone paying for pen names. Ever.
Good reminder that readers, if they find a series/character they enjoy, want a followup story asap. As a writer with a new series (“Worm” and under a new pen name to boot), I’m going to post the first and second installments of my serial novella at the same time and follow up with #3 & #4 within the next two months. A prequel short story will go up as well and be a loss leader (given away free at times) and will have excerpts from the rest of the series. But instead of tweeting the hell out of it, I’m going to start work on my next serial novella, “Stack.” Sound like a plan?
I don’t know this person, but he was kind enough to share his KDP experiences on his blog – it’s a two-parter and covers the “free” promotion benefit of this program.
http://kimaleksander.com/kdp-select-as-a-marketing-tool-for-indie-authors/
http://kimaleksander.com/kdp-free-promotion-net-effect/
Here’s his summary:
“So what happens to actual sales after a free promotion? In my case, not a whole lot. My paid sales rank dropped steadily after the promo, eventually reaching the point where it started before the promo after a few hours. Actual sales after that returned to a measly trickle.”
What I wonder, and here I’m relating this comment to Kris’s post, is if his sales went back down to basically zero because he has no second, third, or fourth book ready for readers to buy. Could be.
Thanks, Lyn. And I agree. With only one book, one product in his store, on his shelf, there just isn’t much reason for readers to read or buy other books, since he has none. They will look at it for free, but most will never read even that sadly, where if he had ten other products, they might and their might be a small halo effect for a short time, or a long-term slow reader response if people liked his writing.
I tried out kindle select on a new short story… I have around twenty short stories, a novel, and a collection on that pen name. I saw no boost in terms of sales.
It’s a nice learning exercise, worth the money it cost just to find out whether it would help (answer: not for me, not yet).
Incidentally, around six months ago I talked about my new project (write 1 short story a week quickly without rewriting other than a fix draft and submit it), and you said to keep you informed. Since then I’ve made two sales to semi-pro markets, which is more than I ever did before.
So, things are progressing quire well.
Thanks, Thomas E. And congrats. Keep at it and thanks for the report.
Out of curiosity, how many people actually remember which books they got for free, or how much they paid for a book once it’s on their shelf – physical or virtual? While I usually remember books that were given to me as gifts, I don’t sort the books I own by how much I paid for them.
Once I own the book, I may read it immediately, it may get added to my TBR pile. By the time I do read it, I’ve long forgotten how much I paid (or didn’t pay) for it. I either like it or I don’t (for all the many reasons I either like or don’t like a book) and either put it in the give-away box or go looking for what other titles that author has available – and that may be days, weeks, or even months after the initial gift or purchase.
I don’t know how typical I am as a reader, but at least in my case, the value to an author (or publisher) of any specific promotional effort may come so far down the road as to be totally un-trackable to them – another reason to build up inventory and make sure that whenever the reader comes looking for you, your work is there for them to find.
But I have to disagree with the basic premise that I’m never going to read a book I might happen to pick up during a free promotion, or that I’m automatically going to think less of it just because I didn’t pay for it.
Dean,
Want to say that I’m a fan of your blog and come here often for the extremely useful information both in your posts and the comments section. Great blog.
That said, I think you may be missing something important about the Kindle Select thing brought up in Lyn’s comment. While the person and book in that link talks about one possible outcome (i.e. not much benefit), there are other things that can happen. After a short amount of time to gather data, I’m beginning to see concrete reasons why some may see better results.
I also have one book available (working on more, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?). And I have had terrific success with Select, doing exactly as the writer in Lyn’s link did. My results have put me most of the way to that fabled “average advance for debut fiction” in one month’s time (technically 4 since my book went on sale in October, but started selling big in mid December when I began promoting it on Select).
I’ve noticed that David Wisehart has mentioned his results in your comment board. He has also helpfully posted hard numbers elsewhere. My experience has been consistently just like his, but at about 50% of his numbers. Still, it’s a lot. But “consistent” is the key. There is enough of a pattern in the data to start to formulate a theory as to “why.”
(FYI since it’s germane to what I’m about to say, my day job is in Brand consulting).
From what I’ve seen (admittedly only a short window of data gathering), other than raising the visibility of your book (marketing), the difference between having success with one book and not, has a lot to do with the book, the uniqueness and appeal of the subject matter, and how good your product page is at conveying what’s special about it once people do see it. So… branding.
David Wisehart has an excellent product page. His book is uniquely positioned within a clear cut genre. It shouts “quality.” There is no mistaking what it’s about and what to expect from it. He’s got a great cover in that regard too, and if you are attracted to that cover, then his book will very likely please you. It’s probably the most effectively branded Indie book I’ve seen. One look and it will be obvious if it’s not for you so you can move on (which is good). But if it IS for you, you’ll know it right away, and you will very likely buy it (which is tremendous). With branding that effective, all he needed was for people to SEE his product page. He’s using the one day free thing to create visibility and selling huge numbers.
I would easily believe that what happened with my book the first time was just a coincidence, except that it’s worked each of 3 different times. The result of selling a lot of books after going free has been very consistent for me. Wisehart has put enough of his numbers online to make a comparison, and it’s very consistent. I have done about half of what he has done 3 out of 3 times.
Why half each time? My book is similar in all the qualities I mentioned about his. It’s got a very interesting cover that stands out, it has a unique premise and has a very strong product page to let you know what to expect if you start reading it. The big difference is that Wisehart’s “Devil’s Lair” is so clearly an epic fantasy (with a twist), where as my book “King’s X” is more of a genre-hopper. I think that the crystal clarity of “Devil’s Lair” is worth (apparently) double the sales of a book that makes you wonder a bit more about what reading it will be like.
Anyway, I’ve seen him post here a couple of times recently, and wonder if you are being too dismissive of the info he is providing. I just wanted to chime in to say that his results are not a fluke. There are solid reasons for them, and Select is definitely one of them. I may have a very good book with a very effective product page, but neither of those things would make a difference if no one ever saw them. “If a tree tells a great story in a forest and no one was around to hear it…”
Just my opinion, but it’s been awesome for me. I will put my book on other sites when I have more books to offer. But with just one, and a commitment of 90 days at a time, this is a no brainer. I spent a lot of time and money producing a high quality book. It’s in the black much sooner than I dreamed would happen.
just my 2 cents. I Hope it helps.
Thanks again for a great blog!
Stephen, in no way am I dismissing anything coming from anyone about this program. Well, I am dismissing the idiots who come here without reading any blog to shout about how good Kindle Select is and giving their link. Whoever thought up that stupid way of spamming for promotion should be shot. (grin) But great comments like yours and David and others I am taking in the information. And also from the writers who say it didn’t work at all for them.
Honest, in my tally without names, it’s running 4 to 1 to not working from people who have clearly read the posts here and are willing to give an honest answer like you just did. (Again, I dismiss the spammers and don’t count them.)
What is surprising me, to be honest, is the ones like your case, where it does happen to pour money quickly. But I have some honest questions I know are impossible to answer, but they are still questions and they bother me. My biggest question is this: If your book, which is obviously a great read or readers would not be buying it, was on all sites around the world, what would you have made in the same 90 day period? That’s an impossible question to answer, yet the critical one. How many long-term fans would you have made during that period that you might not find after the 90 day period? Again an impossible question to answer but one that bothers me a great deal.
As for the free part to goose sales, well, to each his own. It’s a proven marketing method across almost all forms of sales (maybe not so much in cars…grin). I just think it is not a proven thing when a person only has one product in their store and then give that one product away. That’s where my issues are. Kris and I have 220 books up under varied names. We have one short-short Christmas story up for free and that was just a lark a year-plus back and we’re moving that shortly back to the paying side of things.
So Stephen, thanks a ton for the very well reasoned post and trust me, I am listening and do believe that I could be wrong on this. But I just have those nagging worries about anything exclusive like that. It bothers me more than I can figure out, honestly.
Yet, that said, Kris did a new Retrieval Artist novel called Anniversary Day and she sold it to Audible.com for a three month exclusive. But that’s exclusive in one form, (audible) and when the book was released in paper and electronic, it went to all outlets. It’s dividing one store away from others that bother me. And as a former bookstore owner, it would make me slightly angry, to be honest, that the store down the street had an exclusive on a book my customers wanted to buy from me. And that, in essence is what you are doing in the name of fast money.
I’m rambling trying to figure this out and yet I circle back to the same place. I don’t like it for the reasons of exclusiveness. Keep data coming folks. I am not dismissive of any of it (unless you are just a spammer, but then you wouldn’t have read this comment. (grin))
I hope Kindle Select spurs B&N and others to be more competitive and give small publishers better promotional tools.
The real problem, and the thing that is pushing writers towards Select, is that for most writer’s sales are poor on the non-Amazon channels.
I just read that the ebook sales breakdown is 27% of the market for B&N and 60% for Amazon. Thing is, for indies, most are not getting a breakdown like that. It’s more lopsided in favor of Amazon.
B&N, Kobo, iBooks, and the others need to step up their game if they want indies to not go exclusive with Amazon. They need to make indie writers feel like they have a chance in their stores. For better or worse, Amazon does a much better job of helping sell indie books than the other sales channels do.
Where did you get those numbers, Mark. Quote your source. I would love to read the study.
As for me and Kris, our numbers are 55% Kindle, 45% the rest of the planet. And each month those numbers creep closer together. (Now, granted, I consider paper books as part of “the rest of the planet” and they are often sold on Amazon as well as through other channels and directly to bookstores. Too hard to break out. And for this discussion, not worth the effort.)
I expect “the rest of the planet” to go past the Kindle sales sometime this summer. I’m not sneezing at the Kindle sales, they are great. Just saying that by going exclusive, we would cut out almost half our income. And I just can’t imagine Kindle promotion of any sort making that up over a consistent amount of time.
Hmmm… maybe that’s another key that bothers me. I’m into consistent and most of the responses I have heard are about how something or other in Kindle Select boosted sales for a short time. I do not care about the produce model anymore, where books spoil. I only care about selling and building readers over the long term. That might also be what is bothering me. So folks, let me know if your sales were boosted and if they lasted for more than a week.
Thank you Dean, and you make interesting points as always. Obviously I don’t have answers to a lot of those unanswerable questions either, but there is anecdotal evidence.
For example, my sales. I originally put King’s X up on Amazon, B&N and followed with a POD a couple weeks later.
October (e-books only)
Amazon – 16
B&N – 0
November
Amazon – 10
B&N – 0
December thru the 10th (before going on Select)
Amazon – 3
B&N – 0
Right away you can see one big difference. the “0.” The bottom-line is that that all the talk of algorithms and the the internal machinery of Amazon working to at least let people SEE your work is no joke. B&N simply does not do that. Whatever you sell on B&N will happen by the sweat equity of your own marketing (including, of course, having many books cross promoting each other.) Apple doesn’t do this for you either. Amazon does.
That’s why I’m more and more convinced that the emerging paradigm in the new world of publishing will still work just like anything else – effectively branding a quality product will lead to sales. But you still have to get eyeballs on your books. Without a long back catalogue to fuel cross promotion, I’ll take Amazon’s internal (or infernal?) machinery every time. To me, there isn’t really a choice. Not until I have more books to offer.
And also, just to be clear, going free didn’t “goose” my sales. Too understated. It took an idling automobile and STOMPED on the gas. Those 3 copies sold by December 10th at $4.99 ea., went up to around 700 (not sure because they mix it all in with the freebies so it’s hard to know precisely) plus 296 “borrows” at $1.70 a piece by New Years Day.
The visibility caused (I think by mixing in with the “also boughts”) lasts for quite a while, gradually dropping down. I went free again 13 days ago, and the results were very similar. The tail has dropped back to about 10 books a day. If you had told me in October that I’d be selling 10 books a day by mid December, I would have kissed you. But that is the low end of these 2 week cycles.
I have one day left of the 5 they allow until March. I foolishly wasted the first 2 experimenting. First, don’t do it on a weekend. And second, don’t use 2 in a row. It’s not necessary. If you space the 5 free days out over the 90 days, you can reach a lot of eyes when your on sale.
That said, there is a downside to giving it away. When the book is not valued by the “buyer” you might get some bad reviews. I try hard in my product page to dissuade people from buying my book. It’s simply not for everyone (no book is, of course). Well, one got through, and he posted a nasty, angry, and decidedly inaccurate review. Still, after I got over that, I realized it was more likely to help my cause of not only selling the books, but selling it to readers who will really dig it.
That very thing, though, is part of the beauty of what Wisehart is doing. He has no negative reviews at all. That’s because no one is surprised or confused about what they are buying (i think even the free ones), and the book delivers what it promises.
Oh, I just saw Mark’s comment. I agree with him too. I don’t know about the numbers exactly, but, that seems to be the way it works from what I’ve seen.
Dean, your 55% to 45% breakdown is a little surprising, but also, a lot of weight has to be given to your business model. So many books. So much coverage. You create your own visibility in a way newbies like me are years away from.
I think this month is going to be the first in which my non-Amazon sales actually beat my Amazon sales.
However the credit is partly due to my “high price experiment” – where everybody but Amazon honored the price. (Ironically, the books which had a higher price elsewhere, though, didn’t sell much at Amazon this month, even with the lower price.)
The other reason could be related to my freebie tie-in, which had a delay before Amazon matched it.
However, I think the main reason is that B&N sold a load of Nooks. (I will have to wait for Apple numbers to see what has happened there….)
Here’s where I got those percentages:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/29/2755207/publishing-industry-barnes-noble-amazon
“Publishers confirm the Nook currently holds around 27 percent of the ebook market, compared to the 60 percent minimum Amazon garners, and B&N anticipates Nook content sales to become a $750 million business by the end of this year — with international expansion on the horizon.”
Doesn’t surprise me. Everything I’ve been reading for the last year or two has had Amazon with a significant lead in ebook sales over other ebook sellers.
Of course for individual writers things vary widely, but I do know plenty who have said they get the overwhelming majority of their sales through Amazon.
My sales are more evenly split between Amazon and B&N, but the Smashwords revenue falls way behind those two. If it was just a matter of taking something off Smashwords (and with it, Kobo, Apple, Diesel, and whatever else) to get on Kindle Select, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Since I get a good percentage of my sales from B&N, I won’t go Select anytime soon. (And my sales are small, not big, and small numbers have less significance when trying to find trends.)
Amazon does a better job of making indie books visible than the other sellers.
Kindle Select is an option. It provides a marketing tool with the free days. It provides a bit more visibility because you’re one of 70,000 books in Select vs. one of over one million books in the Kindle store. There’s a lot to like about it, but that doesn’t mean it outweighs losing sales on other venues.
One thing to remember — it’s just a 90 day commitment. You talk about taking the long view with ebook sales, and in that light 90 days isn’t much at all.
Thanks, Mark, for the link. I hadn’t seen where those numbers had come from before, but I could from that link trace them back. Appreciated.
With 220 books and stories up under WMG, our breakdown is the following. Slightly over two parts Amazon, one part B&N, the rest Apple, Kobo, Sony, and CreateSpace. We sell a book at times on Smashwords itself and I can’t remember seeing a sale on Diesel through that channel.
And I do understand the 90 day aspect. That’s what I don’t like, actually. And yes, I agree 90 days is short term vs long term thinking, and that also is my point. Why worry about something for a short term when time spent on long term might be better? Again, I am looking at data from all sides on this and really trying to figure out if the exclusive aspect is worth the loss. And what can be gained besides a chance to give away books. I honestly have an open mind on this, but I need to be talked over some issues and so far I’m not seeing anything that has convinced me, or enough build-up of positive to break down my worries about the exclusive aspects of the program.
By the way, I do give away books all the time. Just not my own. I have five boxes of books sitting by the front door of the office ready to go to Goodwill to give away FOR FREE. I know Goodwill will make some money on those by finding readers who will buy them for a discount, and the rest will be trashed and recycled. I’m fine with that. I just don’t want to put my own books that I wrote into that cycle. See where I am having trouble clearing out certain types of thinking? (grin) A book I give away is something that I no longer want and am giving to a charity.
The prevailing theory behind setting a book to free seems to be twofold:
1) You introduce readers to your writing or to a series.
2) The momentum from being free and getting a lot of downloads will carry over and increase visibility (and sales, with luck) once the title goes off being free.
I suspect that both of the above CAN be true, but aren’t always.
Anyway, like it or don’t like it, these free books are here to stay until Amazon decides otherwise.
Oh, I know that, Mark. And again, I couldn’t care what another writer does with their career. It’s their career after all. I’m just trying to figure out as much information as I can to make decisions for my career instead of knee-jerk jumps from fad to fad. I’ve been around publishing far too long to jump to every new thing that comes along every time without stopping and looking. So I know free is here to stay. Not my issue if someone gives their book away for any reason they want. I could not care. I even read poems when handed to me on a street corner.
Just wanted to throw in my ‘numbers’ with yours, Dean. I know a lot of writers say they make most of their money from Amazon and make a blanket wide statement/myth for the rest of us, and that’s just not true. It might be true for *that* group of writers, but I’m with you and Camille – it’s not true for me. The past two months B&N sales have been dead even with Amazon and I expect this month B&N will actually make me more money. And another thing I noticed: buyers at Amazon are a whole lot more inclined to return a story than B&N. Don’t know why. I probably have total around 60+ returns from Amazon and for the whole month of January, B&N had one. Has anyone else noticed this? It seems if a title sells extremely well on Amazon, I’m almost guaranteed that some will be returned and I’m just not seeing the same with B&N. (Oh, and for reference, I have 50 titles published.)
I’m a new little author, and with two books under my name, I did some KDPSelect promo days in December and that started my books selling. It worked for me because I had, literally, nothing to lose.
Giving away downloads is not the same as organically building up your fan base. The high downloads on Amazon had zero correlation to traffic on my web site.
In the weeks since, however, people have been googling my author name and checking out my web site.
Thanks to Kathryn’s article, I just announced dates for my fourth and fifth novels. I had been reluctant to commit, as I abhor missing a deadline and wasn’t sure I can deliver, but I think now I’m back to thinking like a reader.
When you self-pub, you have to be a writer, and editor, and think like a publisher and marketer too! So many hats. Thanks for the reminder to think like a reader too.