This month's results

This has been a very, very good month for me. I'm going to post one more royalty statement a la Konrath and Goldberg, and then I'm probably going to quit, because I really don't like doing it. But I know the first question a lot of people have is "how much are authors really making at this indie stuff?", so I figure hard numbers may be useful to some folks. Here is my royalty statement for the month:

You'll note my big winner is, inexplicably, In the Mood. I say inexplicably not because it's a poor book, but simply because I haven't been promoting it. It was my first release, and thus I've been hawking my others on the forums. But In the Mood has been cheerfully chugging along, almost always somewhere on the Kindle contemporary bestseller list, selling consistently. I think it's probably the cover-- that's a nice-looking chest, and the green is pretty eyecatching. Or maybe it just has an appealing description, I don't know. Anyway, there it is at over 500 copies sold this month, and over 900 copies sold overall. It's followed by All I Ever Wanted, which has sold a bit over 750 copies overall.

Never Love a Stranger is also worth mentioning. Before I was featured on the Galaxy Express, I had sold a mere 36 copies and the book was way down in the Kindle store. Now I've sold 159 copies and it's been on the Kindle time travel, fantasy/futuristic/ghost, AND contemporary lists most of the time.

And then there's Isn't It Romantic? It limped along most of the month, not doing terribly, but not doing really well, either. Finally I gave it a new sexy cover, and boom, up went the sales. I think it's sold about 130 copies since I redid the cover on April 24th. It's taken up residence a good deal of the time on the contemporary romance list, too.

So, points to consider. First of all, for two months now I have benefited from exposure. The first was sheer luck-- I didn't contact Books on the Knob; I hadn't even heard of Books on the Knob. But this month, two people mentioned that I should check out the Galaxy Express. I not only checked it out, I put aside my natural painful shyness and contacted the site owner, asking politely if she might be interested in mentioning my book in her posts about new releases. She turned out to be totally awesome and did a whole interview on me, which surely accounts for many (if not most) of NLaS' sales. She also asked people to blog and tweet about me, and some did. So remember that exposure is the author's friend, and get as much as you can (while being very, very polite and very, very appreciative!).

Second point. Cover of Isn't It Romantic? There is no question in my mind that the original cover, pretty though it was, wasn't cutting it, saleswise. If you think your sales could be better, don't hesitate to play around with the cover or the description or anything you think may be a little weak. This flexibility is one of the great things about indie publishing... you can tweak. So tweak away.

Third point. Notice that even though I've sold over 2100 books in two months (and I am totally amazed as I type that figure), I still haven't made a boatload of money. I'm just not making that much in royalties. I'm not paying my mortgage, nor anywhere near making a living at this. So it's an open question as to whether with a new book, it would be better for me to Kindle it or to sell it to a small press. It really depends on whether my sales continue along these lines or not, and not being gifted with second sight, I don't know what will happen next month. But if you're a new author, please do consider ALL your options. Indie publishing may or may not be the best route for you. Think about it long and hard before you decide to go this way... or any way, really.

Wisdom for the day

Don't insult your readers. You can't hope to sell books without them.

Question

What's the best way to post a free story on your site? My inclination was to just throw the sucker up there, but I wondered if people preferred to download it...

Indie or small press?

When I got back into professional writing after my long hiatus, I had intentions of going right back to small press publishing. But my first project was to do something with my backlist, and after some muddling around, I hit upon the idea of Kindling my old books. Now I'm wondering, should I Kindle the new ones or try to sell them to a small press?

I guess like anything else, it depends. My books on Amazon are selling fairly well-- since I started, the best seller has sold over 900 copies and earned me $311 so far, which is not bad for a re-released novella. The next biggest seller has sold 750 copies and earned $266, and the other two books' sales seem to be growing. The amount I'm earning is not as much as I'd earn from an e-publisher, but if they continue to sell... I suppose my big question is, will my books continue to sell at this rate? Will they actually improve saleswise, as J.A. Konrath's and Zoe Winters' have? Or is this all a fluke which will fade away?

I have other concerns about selling only on Amazon, too. What if someone hates my writing and leaves one-star reviews on all my books? Could that significantly impact sales? What about the shift to 70% royalties? Will that help or harm my sales? Is it possible Amazon might eventually decide to stop selling indie books? I guess I'm a don't-put-your-eggs-in-one-basket person anyway; I had my books with more than one small press, too. It just seems safer that way.

Right now, my plan is to Kindle my whole backlist (including The Light in the Darkness if I can ever get Bantam to give me the rights back, grrrr). I also want to do a couple of new things for the Kindle and see how they sell. But I also intend to get something written for my Samhain editor. And who knows, eventually I may even try approaching New York again. I think I'm more comfortable when all my eggs aren't in one basket, even if that basket is selling well.

Missed this one

This interview's about a week old; I didn't see it till just now. J.A. Konrath talks here about making a living off of Kindle.

Kristan Higgins

I just finished Fools Rush In by Kristan Higgins on my Kindle. I ordered it because I saw her mentioned on the Amazon threads, and I picked this particular one mostly because of the Border collie/Aussie-type dog on the cover (I so need to do a cover with one of my dogs on it!). It was very enjoyable. I will say it felt more like chick lit than romance to me, not so much because of the first person as because the heroine had two love interests, and the one she didn't wind up with got a lot of focus. Also, the sex scenes were pretty much closed door, which surprised me. I also have to admit I was mildly uncomfortable with something about the guy she wound up with (no spoilers here, but if you read it you'll probably know what I mean). Even so, it was a lot of fun and I'll be reading something else of hers-- probably the one with the basset hound on the cover, since I owned one of those when I was a kid:-).

That is a cute dog on the cover, but Impulse is cuter. Does this boy belong on a book cover, or what?

Covers matter

I'm not sure "the cover is everything," as Lee Goldberg recently said on Kindleboards, but the cover certainly matters. If you're an indie author and your book isn't selling as much as you think it should, do seriously consider revamping the cover. Since I changed Isn't It Romantic's cover five days ago, it's sold eighty copies or thereabouts, and has gone from a lukewarm seller (usually in the 4000s on the Kindle books list) to a good seller (usually around 1500-2000). It seems to be doing as well as the rest of my contemporary romances now, which is what I was hoping for.

My office

Got all my furniture together and my curtains up. It looks like a real office now! I'll get the real computer up there once the phone line is in... working on a netbook hurts my eyes and makes my fingers cramp up:-).

Two things I should probably do but haven't

Two things I should probably do but haven't:

1. Get on Smashwords. This is a way for people to read your book in formats other than Kindle, and if you follow the formatting rules and get in the "premium catalog," you'll be listed to the iBookstore. The problem is that every time someone talks about Smashwords, they mention that their sales are only a very tiny fraction of their Kindle sales. I'm lazy, and don't much feel like spending a lot of time doing this if it's going to result in only two sales. I imagine I'll wait until I hear people talking about how their iBookstore sales are going through the roof, and then do it.

2. Make paperbacks. I know they don't sell much, but you can throw a POD version up on Amazon for people who prefer p-books, or who really like your book and would enjoy a paper edition . The problem is that when I went to Createspace, it told me I'd have to make a pdf, and my inner whiner took over. How do I make a pdf? I don't knooooowww hooowwww. That sounds haaaaaaarrrrd. Look like too much troooooouuuuble. And so even though I'd like a paperback edition of All I Ever Wanted (which was never released in paperback), this project has gone uncompleted thus far.

The joys of indie writing

I'm amazed by how many people are buying my books. One of the many things that discouraged me from getting back into professional writing after all my problems was the feeling that if I wanted to sell again, I was going to have to write hotter than I was comfortable with. I like reading erotic romance, and I can even write it, every now and again. But making a career out of writing erotic romances all the time didn't appeal to me, and it seemed to me that both traditional publishers and e-pubs were heading in that direction . I also saw the market swinging over to paranormal, and I didn't see myself writing vampire stories all the time, either. I had the distinct impression that writing hot-but-not-erotic contemporary and sci fi romance wasn't going to get me far with publishers, and worried that perhaps there were no longer a lot of readers interested in what I wrote.

But apparently there is an audience out there for what I write, after all. Sometime this morning I will pass a thousand Kindle copies sold this month. I find this very validating. To paraphrase Sally Fields, people like me! They really like me! Now admittedly, I might be selling more books if I wrote vampires or erotic romance, and I may give those a shot at some point. But the fact that readers are buying and appreciating the stuff I've written is very encouraging. It's nice to know that I don't have to write something out of my comfort zone to sell... people like my writing the way it is. How cool is that??

Status report

Since Never Love a Stranger was featured on the Galaxy Express, I've sold forty copies, for a total of 76. This is definitely my strongest start for a Kindled book so far! It's #2722 on the overall list for the Kindle store-- still my weakest seller, but doing a whole lot better than it was. It's at #18 on the time travel list and is #1 for hot new releases in that category. I just edited my categories in the hopes of getting it onto the fantasy, futuristic and ghost romance list, too. I think that list might be a bit more visible.

Meanwhile, all my other books have picked up steam, too; In the Mood was in the top thousand for most of a day, and All I Ever Wanted and Isn't It Romantic? have been ducking in and out of the top 100 Kindle contemporary romance list more than usual. (Some of IIR's sales may be due to its new cover, which definitely seems to have improved sales.) Overall, I've already sold more copies than last month, and we still have five days left in the month. So it's been a very successful month, and I think much of Stranger's success is due to the Galaxy Express interview, and the tweets and links that were posted in response to that interview. Thanks for all the support!

Cleaning, yay

When I said I "cleaned out my office" the other day, what I actually meant was *clears throat* "I pulled all the boxes out into the foyer." So that left me with a clean office, but a front door no one could get through. I did empty out a couple, but that left ten or eleven more (and that's not too bad for someone who just moved in eight months ago... is it?). Today, the kids and I have been going through the boxes, sorting and getting everything where it needs to go. We've cleaned out six so far, and I hope to get the rest after lunch. And then we will be mostly finished with boxes! Yay!

Well, okay, there's still some in the garage... and a few in the master bedroom closet... *sighs*

Random

I'm on Twitter, and trying to post more actively. I'd love it if you'd follow me!

I'm still torn about getting a more professional website. Nice designs aren't cheap, and on top of that, I'm not sure I could maintain it myself, not being an expert in HTML. And I usually update once a month or more. So maybe I'm better off sticking with Blogger, which is easy for the technically challenged to play around with...

Kid #2 is twelve today. Twelve!!!

Flexibility

The nice thing about indie publishing is its flexibility. J.A. Konrath and Lee Goldberg have both talked at length about changing covers and making an impact on sales. My book Isn't It Romantic? hasn't been doing as well as I think it should. It's sold quite a few copies, yet only about half as many as In the Mood. I honestly think Isn't It Romantic? is the better book, and I'd like to see it selling very, very well. I've left it for a while to see what happens, and sales have picked up, but not as much as I'd like. And I do think the cover is the issue. Here is the original cover I did for it:

I think this hints at the story and fits the title well. However, it's simply not doing as well as the books with half-naked men on them. I really like it, but I think it's a mistake to get emotionally attached to a cover... it's just a sales tool, and this one isn't bringing in the sales. I have a feeling it's saying "sweet romance" to my readers, which is not an accurate reflection of the story. So here's the new cover:

I used the same typeface as In the Mood, as well as the same general style, in the hopes of "branding" it a bit. This is my first experimentation with a new cover... we'll see how it goes!

ETA: Update: Isn't It Romantic? has fallen from around 4500 in the rankings, where it's been pretty steadily the past few days, all the way down to 2150 in a matter of a few hours. My other books have improved too, however, so I don't know that this is related to the cover. Might simply be more people noticing my interview at the Galaxy Express. Still, it's promising.

ETA: Another update: It's at #1968 in the Kindle store and #94 on the Kindle contemporary romance list. It has brushed the contemporary romance list before, but it's never stuck around for long. We'll see if this is a temporary aberration or if it continues to do well.

Yay!

Stranger has sold eleven copies since my interview was posted on Galaxy Express. Stranger has dropped to #1954 in the Kindle store (first time it's made it below 2000), #17 in Kindle time travel romance, #1 in "hot new releases" for that category, and #81 in Kindle contemporary romance (first time it's made it onto that list). Meanwhile In the Mood is beneath 1000 (#949) for the first time in a while, and All I Ever Wanted is on the Kindle contemporary romance list, too.

Exposure... it's the writer's best friend.

And as a followup, Amazon has already gotten rid of the erroneous nonexistent Kindle edition from NCP, per my email to them this morning. They've also unfortunately deleted the paperback edition, which means anyone trying to sell a used copy on Amazon might run into problems. Heh. Hopefully they'll fix that eventually. But now if you search on "ellen fisher never love a stranger," you get the correct edition, and that should help people find my book!

ETA: But in the "Amazon can be annoying" category, I noticed Isn't It Romantic?'s sales weren't perking up at all. Someone mentioned on the author boards that Amazon has been randomly removing book descriptions, and I checked. Sure enough, the cover copy for Isn't It Romantic? has disappeared, which of course makes people less likely to buy it. Grrrr, Amazon!

My office

What I love about my new house is that it has lots of rooms downstairs for different uses. It has a central family room, but then it's also got a game room, a library with extensive shelving, and a teeny little "sitting room." The prior owner had the sitting room decked out as a formal living room, but it's really not big enough, and I've never been into formal living rooms anyhow; all they're good for is gathering dust, in my opinion. So the sitting room was designated my office when we moved in.

At least, that was the theory. Eight months later, what it was being used for was box storage (yeah, I haven't unpacked all my boxes yet, sue me) and the place where Impulse's crate is kept. (In fact,the kids refer to it as "Impulse's room.") The problem was that the prior owner had his office in the library, and there isn't a phone jack in the sitting room. So I set up my office in a corner of the library and said I'd move my computer and office stuff over later.

Did I mention this was eight months ago? Anyway, the other day it dawned on me that most of a year had passed, and here I was, still huddled in my corner of the library, the keyboard on my lap because I don't have a proper desk. The kids like to come in and read and chat, and they don't appreciate me shushing them while I'm working-- they get annoyed and say, "It's NOT your office, Mom, it's the library and it's for all of us!" Good point. So I got to cleaning, and cleared my office out (and moved Impy's crate to the back-- he only uses it at night nowadays anyway). Looks much better:


I think it will be a sunny, happy place to work once I get it decorated. It's almost twice the size of my old "office," which was a tiny, cramped sitting area off the master bedroom. I did toss the old desk when we moved (it belonged to VH, and was much more of an oversized, masculine sort of desk, whereas I'm going for more of the ladies' dainty writing desk look), so I have to put a desk together, or possibly get my handyman to do it if I can't figure it out. I also need curtains. And my old chair is a bit tattered, as you can see, but it's comfortable, so I probably won't replace it right now. I do need to call the phone company and get them to come out and run a phone line to that room, though. Can't have an office without an internet connection!

There's a picture in the corner waiting to be hung, too. I found it in Pier One and thought it was extremely appropriate for a writer's office. It says DREAM.

Fixing stuff

Since the Galaxy Express interview went up, I've had quite a few sales, but most were for other books. I did sell a few copies of Stranger overnight. One reader complained that she couldn't get it in the UK-- I'm not sure, but I think she may have been looking at the "wrong" edition, the one NCP put up that says "unavailable." Unfortunately, when you search on my name and title, that's the one that comes up! I fired off an email to Amazon customer service asking them to get rid of that one, and explaining why. I already had them take it off my Author Page, explaining why (it wouldn't let me list the real copy of Stranger because the imaginary one was listed) and they quite promptly fixed that. Amazon customer service seems to be very much on the ball.

Ellen on the internet

Here's a blog post that mentions me and some other ebook authors as encouragement to writers to think about going indie. I'm flattered to be mentioned in the same post as Karen McQuestion, J.A. Konrath, and Lee Goldberg, but I'm really not comparable, I'm afraid. At least not yet:-). The article talks about how it's possible to make a living as a writer, and mentions my decent amount of downloads from last month... but of course I'm not making a lot per copy sold, so I'm actually a long ways from making a living at this.

And The Galaxy Express has up an interview with yours truly about Never Love a Stranger (and the new cover for Farthest Space as well). Thanks to Heather Massey for featuring me!

Random good things to know if you're an indie

Derived from some discussions I've seen on the Amazon boards this week, a few useful things to know if you go the indie route:

1. Song lyrics are copyrighted. Unless you are absolutely certain they are in the public domain, do not use them in a book. (You can obtain permission, but you probably won't be able to afford it, so it's best to skip them.) You can, however, use song titles.

2. Don't use images for your cover unless you are certain you have permission to. Don't assume an image is in the public domain or that it's okay to use it for commercial use.

3. Don't lose heart if your book doesn't start selling right away. In indie publishing, it seems to take a little while for a book to get rolling. So if it's been up for a week or two, and hasn't sold many copies, don't give up. Conversely, if it's been up for a couple of months and you're not seeing much activity, you might want to re-evaluate your cover and price.

4. You do have to promote. Don't expect to put a book up on Amazon and have people just find it. You have to get the ball rolling by posting on the boards. Don't overpromote, but do promote.

Cool

Never Love a Stranger has made it to #33 on the Kindle time travel romance list, and #2 on the "hot new releases" list for that category. And yet its overall sales rank is only around 5200. Obviously this is not a big list! I don't know if this will boost my sales; is there a benefit in being highly ranked on a list that isn't for a popular category? We'll see, I suppose.

Oh, and check out number 1 on the time travel list. It appears Bella Andre is going the indie route for her backlist, too. Her covers are along the same lines as mine; check this one out. Naked chests sell!

New cover

By the amazing P.L. Nunn, for my upcoming sci-fi romance spoof Farthest Space: The Wrath of Jan:

You can click to enlarge. This is exactly what I had envisioned for this story. Her style fits it so well, and she did such an awesome job. I'm ecstatic!

Stephen King's a smart guy

Kindle Nation Daily reports that Stephen King's newest, Blockade Billy, is available in Kindle and other e-formats five weeks in advance of the hardcover edition-- what they describe as reverse "windowing." Apparently Mr. King, who has the clout to do what the rest of us can't, hung onto his e-rights and is releasing the ebook under his own imprint, Storyville. At first I thought it was a bargain at $7.99, compared to the publisher-set price of $16.99 for his last book, Under the Dome. It's interesting to note, though, that the reviews on Amazon are already complaining that this is a short story, and not worth the price (whereas Under the Dome is a massive book that makes the OED look short).

Karen McQuestion

J.A. Konrath has an interview up with Karen McQuestion, an indie author who's outselling him.

Zzzzzzzz

I am very, very sleepy this morning. I went to bed around midnight (already kind of pushing it, as that means about six hours sleep). At 1:00 a.m. I was awakened by the roaring of an angry five-year-old. I leaped out of bed and raced down the hall, thinking he'd fallen out of bed or something. But no, he was just angry because his comforter had gotten knocked off the bed, and he was too sleepy to fix the problem on his own. But not, apparently, too sleepy to holler at the top of his lungs, awakening the entire household and likely the neighbors as well. Anyway, after my frantic dash down the hall I was full of adrenaline, and had a hard time getting back to sleep.

I need a nap...

Indie reading

I read J.L. Penn's The Cinderella Curse today:

She's a writer of chick lit, though this novella had a strong romantic component. Part of the description on Amazon, it's "the hilarious tale of a girl who whacks a witch, gets cursed, and becomes a pumpkin at midnight."

This was a cute story, and definitely made me smile. And the premise was quite unusual, as you can see from the description. I enjoyed it.

A new e-reader

The new Alex e-reader is profiled here. The reporter says that the thought process of the designers was apparently, “Let’s just take an Android PDA and glue it underneath a Kindle.” And yep, that's what it looks like. It's kind of the same idea as the Nook, only better executed (another article says that Spring Design actually sued B&N for similarities to their product). Whether or not it sells probably depends on where you can find it, how widely it's distributed, and whether you can read Kindle books. The article seems to suggest you can download any Android app; is there a Kindle app for Android? I thought there was, but I can't find it. I imagine most ebook readers want access to Amazon's rather large Kindle library at this point.

More sales

Stranger has now sold sixteen copies, so I've doubled my sales since reducing its price. Not bad. Other things that may help sales are: 1. Amazon moved the original two glowing reviews over to the new edition, so it has two five-star reviews on it, and 2. I'm updating the description to add a few good review quotes. Those were supposed to be added in on my last update, but didn't go through for some reason (I probably brilliantly forgot to click "save"). A lot of people don't like to buy a book with no reviews, so this should help. Also, I did post about the lowered price on a few threads yesterday, and hit a few more today.

And, the lovely Kristie Leigh Maguire very kindly featured me and In the Mood in her blog.

Sales

Never Love a Stranger's sales are improving. 99 cents does seem to be the key, for me at least.

Tonight, In the Mood hit 300 sales for the month. This little book has been going gangbusters, and I don't know why-- I haven't been promoting it (except occasionally in sig lines), and I never considered it my best book. Not saying it's bad, but it's just a fun little piece of fluff. But for some reason it's become my number one seller, with over 700 sales altogether so far.

I guess this could be partly attributed to the "bestseller effect"-- once it got onto the bestseller list, it stayed there. But All I Ever Wanted and Isn't It Romantic? have both been on the bestseller list too, so I don't think that explains it fully. It may be the cover, which is certainly one of my most striking (I like the color and the font, and the guy on the cover is a little more suggestive than my others). Or it may be something totally different that I haven't figured out yet. Regardless, it's doing very well and I'm glad!

The readers have spoken...

...and what they've said is, "We're not spending $1.99 on an Ellen Fisher book."

I posted Never Love a Stranger at $1.99 in the hopes that I'd developed enough audience to get them to pay that much. It sold anemically (eight copies), and worse, my hoped-for spike in other sales didn't happen. Then we got to the point where it didn't sell at all. For two days, it just sat there, looking sad and neglected, while no one purchased it. (Meanwhile, In the Mood kept selling merrily; it's been on the contemporary romance bestseller list for a while now and seems gleefully determined to stay there. More power to it. Go, little book! Sell many copies!)

But I digress. Late yesterday afternoon, I gritted my teeth and decided to lower Stranger to 99 cents. Of course, it's possible that if I stubbornly kept it at the higher level, its sales would eventually pick up. Maybe. But there was no guarantee of that. Anyway, Amazon took it offline for a while. They always say it'll be unavailable for purchase for 24-36 hours, but within a couple of hours it was back at the lower price. And within fifteen minutes, two people had purchased it, even though I didn't promote the new lower price on the boards.

More interestingly, my other sales took off. I sold 46 copies of all my books for the day, a lot of them after I lowered my price, when I ordinarily sell about 30. And overnight I sold 16, which is a lot more than I usually sell overnight. Stranger so far has still only sold 11 copies in total (I won't pimp out the new price on the boards till Monday, so I may not see a big rise in sales today), but my other books have really improved their sales. In fact, all three of my contemporaries are on the Kindle contemporary romance bestseller list again.

I really can't figure this stuff out. Why do my other books' sales improve when I lower a book's price? Are those two events really related, or is it just coincidence? And why do readers ignore me at $1.99, but then buy at 99 cents? There's really not that big a difference there. But the difference seems to be enough to matter.

I still don't understand a damn thing about how to sell books on Amazon. But I'll keep plugging away at it, experimenting, and trying to improve my sales. That's really all anyone can do.

Free serial fiction

My friend Jody Wallace is offering her short story Cooley's Panther as a serial here. Check it out! I like her cover, too:

Busy, but not writing

Accomplished today with the kids: Downstairs cleaned. Pantry cleaned out (how exactly did we accumulate so many cans of foods we don't eat in the short time we've been in this house?), with box of canned goods set aside for the food bank. Cleaned up back yard preparatory to teenager mowing lawn. No writing, but much drooling over pencil sketch of next cover.

In short, not a bad Saturday:-).

Cover art and other stuff

The cover artist who's doing my cover for Farthest Space: The Wrath of Jan sent me a pencil sketch of it. It is AWESOME, y'all. You're gonna love it. It never had its own cover before, since it was in an anthology, and this cover is just perfect. I'm like totally inspired to go work on the sequel now. Too bad I have to clean house today *sighs*.

Meanwhile, Stranger is not selling well at $1.99. Some indie authors seem to do well at that figure, but alas, not I. I think perhaps it's a genre thing, or maybe it's just that people see my promo for Stranger, go check it out, and see that my other books are cheaper, so they naturally buy the cheaper ones. I guess I can understand that, but I want Stranger to be a hit, darn it!

iPad or Kindle?

This kitty seems to be an ardent iPad fan:

Could I get some rain, please?

As I've said before, the people who owned my house previously liked azaleas and small daylilies a lot. I like a little more variety in my plants, so I'm adding to the beds around the house. It hasn't rained in a week and a half, and the ground is like concrete, but today I optimistically bought six Asian lilies and four bearded iris to plant. I figured it's gotta rain sometime. Right?

Wrong. I checked the forecast, and it's not supposed to rain for the foreseeable future. Ugh. After all the rain we got earlier in the spring, it's just... quit. It is not easy to dig in this soil when it's dry, but my plants do need to go in sometime, so I'm soaking the grounds in the beds with a hose. These plants are going in sometime this weekend, rain or no rain!

Changes

I've been re-reading A Country Woman's Scrapbook, a book by Virginia Beach author Louisa Venable Kyle, based on columns she wrote for the local paper in the 1950s. In it she writes movingly about "Edgewood," the small house in the "country" (now in the middle of one of the busiest sections of Virginia Beach) she called home. She paints beautiful word pictures of sitting on the porch before air conditioning, working in old rose gardens, and driving down twisting county roads.

I remember Edgewood. My parents were friends of Mrs. Kyle, having worked at the newspaper with her, and every Christmas we drove over to visit her and to see her spectacular and ever-growing Nativity display, which included every sort of china animal imaginable. Edgewood was a small and unpretentious Cape Cod dwelling on Linkhorn Bay, situated on three acres so densely wooded that even in the winter you couldn't see the house from the road. Mrs. Kyle apparently spent a lot of time gardening, judging from the book I'm reading, but all I remember from my childhood is the thick woods. I remember rambling around the property with my sister. The book I'm reading tells me it was possible to walk a half mile on the paths through the woods. I believe it... despite being in the middle of a suburb, it truly did feel as if it was in the country.

Today I went to visit my dad, who lives in Virginia Beach, and on a whim we drove past Edgewood. Mrs. Kyle died years ago, but Edgewood is still there. At least, the house is still there. It is no longer hidden in the woods. It's plainly visible from the road, its small, unprepossessing, old-fashioned form shadowed by three towering new houses. Most of its acreage has apparently been sold off, and since it's waterfront property, the houses that have been built there are quite spectacular. A sign in front of the house advertises yet another lot for sale, so any remaining woods are presumably doomed.

I suppose it's nice that the original house is still standing, but it doesn't look much like the original house any more. The trees and gardens are all gone, and Edgewood sits nakedly visible to all passersby, its charming, homey modesty mocked by the mansions rising around it. It looks very small and forlorn, stripped of its history and its beautiful woods and its gardens. It's sad and depressing, and I really wish I hadn't driven past it.

Sometimes memories are best left as memories.

Hot, sexy author seeks readers of website

So, I'm asking myself the question every author ought to ask herself-- how can I get more people to look at my website? I've seen people talk about fresh content. You know, new stuff beyond self-promotion, interesting content that actually encourages people to come to your site. Blog entries are one of those things (although since I usually link to my journal when I post on other people's blogs, it's quite likely that people are visiting my journal without ever checking out my primary website). And blog entries are more for other authors than they are for readers, a lot of the time.

But a very good way to get readers to your site is short stories. If you produce free fiction, they will come. Wait... that sounded naughty. Well, you know what I mean. My professional website is getting, what, three hits a day? Not good. People are more likely to drop by to check out a free story or two. And it's not like writing short fiction is hard for me, anyway. So what I want to do is produce a new short story every month, and post it up over there in the sidebar so people can find it. Hopefully this will get readers to check out my writing and go on to buy my books... a kind of "gateway drug," as J.A. Konrath puts it.

Don't worry, be happy

So after all my stressing yesterday about my sales, I had a little spurt of sales last night, and wound up selling about my usual daily average of copies. Having access to sales data 24/7 is a mixed blessing, because it feeds my obsessive-compulsive disorder. I tend to obsess on sales, either good or bad, and agitate about them when there's not really anything to agitate about.

Well, that's interesting in a depressing kind of way

Typically, putting out a new book gives my sales a bit of a boost thanks to the promotion I do on the boards. But Stranger seems to have depressed the heck out of my sales. I've had hardly any sales on any of my books since I promoted on the boards (and most of the sales I did get seem to be from one lovely fan who went on a buying rampage:-). In the Mood dropped off the contemporary bestseller list for the first time in quite some time, and all my other books are way down in the basement, too. Do people actively dislike sci fi romance? Are readers thrown off by seeing me release something that isn't contemporary romance? Did I inadvertently overpromote and irritate readers? Or do my limp and lagging sales for the day have nothing to do with Stranger at all?

I also found out there's a futuristic romance community on Amazon, but alas, it's pretty much dead. There have only been a couple of posts made since 2009. There is a very busy and active paranormal romance community, but they don't care for sci fi romance being promoted there (sci fi romance is often lumped into "paranormal romance," but that doesn't seem to be the case there) and will call authors on doing it, so I won't try it. All this seems to suggest that sci fi romance just isn't "in" any more, which may not bode well for Stranger, especially priced at twice what my other books cost.

Hmmppphhh

Amazon didn't carry over the two five-star reviews, but they DO have a little box telling consumers they can buy Never Love a Stranger in paperback, for which I don't get paid any royalties because the book is out of print. Gee, thanks so much, Amazon. I've been dragging my feet about using CreateSpace to do a paperback, but maybe I should go ahead and do one for this book. Then again, will consumers buy a new paperback when Amazon is directing them to the old seven-dollar copies? Who knows?

Anyway, so far I've sold a big two copies *sighs*. Come on, guys! I'm worth $1.99! I swear!

Never Love a Stranger

Never Love a Stranger has been released (though sadly it did not carry over the two five-star reviews from the other edition, boo). It is here on Amazon. It's lacking the description, of course, but at least it's up. Here is the description:

A hero like no other...

One seemingly ordinary evening, Annie Simpson finds an extremely gorgeous (and totally nude) man in her kitchen. When James tells her he’s an escaped criminal from the future, she figures he’s crazy. Before long Annie and James are running for their lives, and Annie’s falling for James in a big way. But now they have to find a way to change the future before fifty million people die...

This is a re-released full-length novel (about 87,000 words) and my most original story, a time travel/sci-fi romance that finaled for an Eppie and garnered a lot of very good reviews (which can be read here). I hope people enjoy it!

Ugh

A person styling herself "Kait-Amazon Optimization" has been posting on the Fiction board at Amazon, telling authors to do loads of self-promotion. Because of her signature, authors are assuming that she is with Amazon and that she's saying that the aggressive self-promotion she's suggesting is okay on the Amazon boards. As far as I can tell, she's not with Amazon at all, but from this site. This is pretty much the giveaway: "If you are further interested in what you can do to enhance your presence on Amazon, Strategic Book Marketing offers a service dedicated to 'Amazon Optimization'. Please email me for more information." She's selling a service, folks. That's all.

Some of her advice is great (yes, go create an Author Central page if you haven't already, and if you have, go update that sucker right now!). Some of it isn't, such as: "Post away my friends, promote away, it is a competitive world out there so do not be afraid to step out. The point in these boards (besides shamelessly promiting your work) is to let Amazon users see your style of writing." No, no, no. She's making it sound as if Amazon wants the boards to be all about author promotion. They are not all about author promotion. They are about DISCUSSION. And they are about all users of the Kindle, not just authors.

In short, unless you are absolutely clear she works for Amazon (and I don't think she does), please do not take what she says as gospel. She's already creating some issues on the boards by making authors think Amazon is just fine with tons of author promo. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But I'd rather hear it from Amazon, not some person who's deliberately passing herself off as working for Amazon when in fact she's peddling a self-promo site. Caution is advised here, folks.

ETA: And some nice person on the boards did the legwork for us. Check here and here and here. They're apparently the old Sydra-Techniques gang. Nice. But we really didn't need to read that to know, did we? If people try to pass themselves off as something they're not, they're best ignored.

Read me!

Someone posted on the Amazon boards asking people for recs on the best recent indie books. A few people suggested some; one or two dissed indie authors as unpolished; and then a few indie authors began posting links to their own books.

I've said this before, and I'll continue to say it: Recommending your own books on a rec thread is not the best way to make an impression, IMHO. Reccing someone else's book (even if you end with a sig line linking to your own book) makes you a contributing member of the community, and lets people know you're there to talk, not just to post links to your books. Reccing your own book just makes a lot of people dismiss you as a spammer, especially if you use the same verbiage over and over, or if you do it on a lot of threads.

I will confess that I have recced my own books on some romance threads, if they very specifically met the criteria requested (I mentioned In the Mood in a rec thread asking for redheaded heroes, for example). However, I'm on the romance forum quite frequently, reccing other people's books and chatting, and when I do have occasion to mention one of my own books, I try to rec at least one other author, too. I'm familiar with the romance genre, after all, and I can usually come up with a book I enjoyed if I think about it. This way I'm actually contributing to the discussion, and not just jumping up and down with my hand in the air, yelling Hey, read my book!

Once again, subtlety is the key here. It's okay to mention your book on a rec thread that asks specifically for books like it (though you might want to consider whether it's really modest to post a link to your own book on a thread asking for the best of indie books). But don't use boilerplate, and do try to suggest someone else's books, too. And it doesn't hurt to actually hang out on the forums relevant to your genre and chat, either. It's the difference between promoting, and being friendly.

Bestseller, sort of

Last night Isn't It Romantic? made it down well below 2000 and onto the Kindle contemporary romance bestseller list.... for a whole three or four hours. I was hoping it would benefit from the "bestseller" effect (people are more likely to see a book and take a chance on it when it's on a list, which leads to the book staying on the list for a while), but I think it was the wrong time of night. My books never seem to sell well in the late evenings. But I'm grimly determined to get that book onto that bestseller list sooner or later. It's one of my favorite books and I want people to read it.

In other news, I'm working on getting actual professional cover art for my spoofy sci-fi romance novella Farthest Space: The Wrath of Jan. More details soon!

Isn't It Romantic? and other stuff

Isn't It Romantic? seems to finally be getting its feet under it, so to speak. It got a second review today (four stars), it's sold close to a hundred copies so far this month, and it hit #2294 in the Kindle store this afternoon-- its best ranking to date. A few more sales and it'd make it onto the contemporary romance bestseller list, which would be great. Fingers are crossed. (ETA: It's down to #1956 now. If it can just stay there...)

Meanwhile, I haven't heard back from Amazon about Never Love a Stranger. I'm hoping that no news is good news, and that they're going ahead with publishing it. I didn't love NCP's method of doing its rights reversions publicly, but I do have to admit it's fairly convenient; I can just point people to that webpage. It's easier than having to scan and fax a rights reversion letter, I suppose.

And finally, I just redid the banner on my website because I liked this background better, and the banner I had didn't match, colorwise. I think it looks pretty good now.

Blogger

I messed around with my journal and website last night. First of all, I removed the borders around pictures, because no matter what I did the banner would not fit quite properly in the top border, and that gave both blogs an ooops! look. Then my friend wwg pointed out a new Blogger beta feature to me, and I used it to give my website a pretty background. It's nice that Blogger is working on providing more templates, because they've had the same limited selection of templates forever. There are, of course, a lot of sites that provide Blogger templates-- but most of them are for personal use only. I am still playing with Photoshop to try to figure out how to round off the corners on my banners. So far no luck, but I shall persevere.

Publishable does not equal good

I've seen discussions going on in the blogosphere (many of them over at J.A. Konrath's) about how an indie author can determine if her writing is any good or not. The usual answer suggested is to submit your work to traditional publishers and agents. If it's good, you'll get a nibble or some sign of interest, and then you'll know it's good.

Well, maybe. I guess I've passed this test because I had one book published traditionally (it was back in the Stone Age, but hey, it counts!), I had one good agent email me and express interest in representing me because she loved my ebooks (and that doesn't happen often), and I did have another good agent representing me for a while. Conversely, I've been rejected by traditional publishers at least thirty times (eight of those for the book that Bantam finally bought) and by agents more times than I could count. Far more people associated with traditional publishing rejected me than accepted me. Does this make me a good writer, or a bad writer?

The fact is that good does not equal publishable. I haven't really gotten going in traditional publishing because what I write tends to be odd. For example, Bantam offered me a two-book contract, but they dropped me after the first book because publishers were emphasizing Regency-set historicals, and my books were set in colonial Virginia. Much later, after I finaled in the Brava novella contest, I got a phone call from the lovely and lamented Kate Duffy, who told me she enjoyed the partial but that nerdy heroes were so not what the Bad Boys anthologies were about. And I wrote Never Love a Stranger, which features a hero who is, as my tagline says, like no other. (You'll have to read the book to find out what I mean.)

Basically, I write weird crap. Don't get me wrong; you can sell weird crap, even in the romance genre, if you're very, very good and very, very lucky. But it all depends. If your crap is weird enough (and that sentence sounded really disgusting, sorry), you might never get a nibble from New York, and yet your writing might be positively brilliant. This is the sort of story that is tailor-made for indie publishing-- a story that is well-written but that somehow doesn't fit into the traditional publishing mold. Such a book is, I think, likely to do well in indie publishing.

My point is simply that running it by New York as a way to determine if you're publishable or not may not be helpful, because your writing may be great but quirky. It's also an agonizingly slow process (I still remember getting a rejection letter for All I Ever Wanted a year after it was published). So using traditional publishers as a gauge of your writing ability doesn't seem like a really feasible method to me, unless you really are committed to going the traditional route. Rejections don't really tell you a thing about your writing, unless they tell you exactly why you were rejected (and they rarely do). And in traditional publishing, almost everyone gets a whole hell of a lot of rejections.

Grrrrr

Amazon is questioning whether or not I have the rights to Never Love a Stranger. It was erroneously uploaded to Amazon some time ago because the original publisher inadvertently put it on the Mobi site, even though they'd already returned the rights to me, and it's still there even though NCP did contact them and ask them to remove it. You can't actually order the book on Amazon, but there is a page for it. Additionally, there is a paperback edition (which is available only through third-party sellers). I sent them a link to NCP's "public notice" page and sent them the specific verbiage pertaining to my rights reversion (which was granted a year and a half ago!), so hopefully they'll be satisfied with that. Unfortunately they only respond to emails Monday through Friday, and they say they have a two-day lag in responding to emails, so this will probably delay the release of my book a bit.

Various

In the first ten days of this month, I sold 364 downloads. That puts me on track to sell a bit more than last month. So far I'm very happy with my sales. I don't know if the ad on The Indie Spotlight is helping or not, but my sales are remaining quite steady, which is a good thing. Of course, one always wants to improve. Hopefully Stranger will add to the total.

And speaking of Stranger, it's not up yet, because I foolishly posted it on a Friday night. Heh. I'd just come back from a mini-vacation, and I honestly did not realize it was Friday. Oh, well, it should be up early this week, anyway. I did get up the Never Love a Stranger page on my website.

I'm giving some thought to a "real" website (meaning a properly designed one rather than a dressed-up Blogspot), but having a website designed is not cheap, and I'm not sure I could justify it yet. My site, while not snazzy by any means, does contain the necessary information. And it's free (well, the stock photo for the banner cost me a tiny bit, but nothing like what a real website design would). Maybe once I've made a bit more money, I'll feel that I can justify a proper website. I did spend a few happy hours wandering around looking at websites yesterday. Rae Monet does beautiful work...

2012 is Doomsday

Or so the Huffington Post says about publishing (Publishing Crashes in 2012), citing this blog post. (Link from Moses Siregar III on J.A. Konrath's blog.) The Huffington Post summarizes the blog post in this paragraph: "...once ebook sales hit 20-25% of book sales, print run numbers will fall to a point where the current consignment system for sales will break down. Under the current system, most books can be returned for credit, so for every book sold, two are printed. Those "returned" books have the covers torn off, and the guts discarded, so they cannot be put out into the market again. Ebook sales will create smaller print runs, driving up the unit cost, forcing higher prices which, in turn, will kill sales. Game over."

The original post also says this: "There’s an inevitable concurrent downward spiral of brick-and-mortar retail inherent in this forecast that sales are moving online. The nearly-limitless online selection has been an increasingly powerful magnet since the day Amazon opened and in the new paradigm there will be a growing body of talked-about content not visible on store shelves. It is beyond the scope of today’s speculation to consider what this means for the strategy and survival of bookstores and wholesalers and for publishers’ expectations for them, but it’s not likely to be pretty."

I do think ebooks will continue putting pressure on traditional publishing, though perhaps not to any dramatic extent by 2012. I hope brick-and-mortar bookstores never go away, though, as I love going into Barnes and Noble. But the sad truth is that I only go to B&N nowadays to browse and decide what to buy on my Kindle, so...

Older than Methuselah

My five-year-old son was playing with magnetic numbers on the refrigerator this morning. He called me into the kitchen and showed me the number on the fridge: 2235.

"Granddaddy," he informed me solemnly, "is this many."

Kindle in Targets?

Ooooh, look, Engadget has a shot of an inventory listing showing that Target will be stocking Kindles, supposedly on April 25.

Never Love a Stranger

I just put up Never Love a Stranger on Amazon. It will likely take a day or two to go live, and then (judging from past experience) the description will be mysteriously missing in action for several days. But once it's buyable, I'll promote it. I hope this one will do well. It's far and away my best book. Furthermore, it's time travel/sci-fi romance (which is not quite paranormal, but hopefully close enough), it has a cover that I think will appeal to my target audience, and it's definitely one of my more original efforts. I've priced it at $1.99... I'm hoping I can actually move some copies at that price this time.

Sales

I said at the end of last month that I probably wouldn't be lucky enough to have sales numbers along those lines two months running. I still don't know how this month will play out, of course. But as of March 6, I had sold 27 downloads in that month. As of today, I've sold 209 this month. Do the math and you'll see I'm on pace to do better than last month overall. Of course, my sales may sag at some point. Then again, when I release Never Love a Stranger in the middle of the month, they might improve. Who knows? But I do find it encouraging to be doing so much better than I was last month at this point.

"Playing on a level field"

Someone started a thread today complaining about all the free books on the bestseller lists-- a perennial complaint over on Amazon. I pointed out mildly that the only benefit to publishers in making their books free is that they DO get onto the bestseller list, thus garnering attention for the author's and publisher's other books. Thus, if you take them off the bestseller list, there will be no more free books.

At that point someone else posted, "I agree that the free books skew the rankings. They should have all the free, and almost free books in a separate category. It doesn't look good when your book listing shows that 55% or whatever bought another book after looking at yours. And when you look at the price it's free or almost free. Totally unfair comparisons. Apples to oranges. If all of us with books on Amazon over a certain price point were playing on a level field, the results would be far different."

Interestingly, this was posted by someone who posts on the indie threads, but she's selling through a small publisher, so her price is fixed at a higher point. Presumably she feels this puts her at a disadvantage. I've discussed this with her on the boards before, but I don't want to hijack a thread about free books and turn it into a thread about the merits of low indie pricing, so I won't discuss it over there this time.

However, my response to this argument previously was that 99 cents or $1.99 isn't free; I'm pricing my book to move, and I can afford to do that because my overhead as an indie is very, very low. Of course publishers have a lot more overhead, but if you choose to go with a publisher, you're choosing to go with a higher cover price. But you're also choosing to go with a professionally designed cover, a professionally edited book, and a company which does some of the marketing for you (even in the case of small presses), so it should all even out.

A free book is by definition a loss leader-- you CAN'T make money on that particular book (though it may earn you lots of sales on other books). But some writers are in fact making money on low-priced indie books-- look at J.A. Konrath for the most notable example. I'm covering my costs, at least, although indie publishing will probably never make me rich. So why exactly should low-priced indie books be kept off the bestseller lists? In my opinion, it would unfairly penalize indie writers, and I simply don't see a good justification for it.

Charging what the market will bear, and then some

I watched Star Trek: Nemesis with my daughter last night. I had sworn never to watch it again because it killed off my favorite character, but my daughter is a completist, and insisted on seeing every last one of the Next Generation movies. So I gritted my teeth and watched it. It wasn't as terrible as I remembered (though it sure wasn't good, either). I'd read in Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek that Wesley Crusher (barely visible on the edges of the screen in the wedding reception scene) had a scene that was cut, so I thought maybe I'd buy the novelization and see if that scene had made it into the novel.

So today, I picked up my Kindle, went to the store, and looked up Star Trek: Nemesis. There it was, marked this price is set by the publisher. And the price set by the publisher for the Kindle edition? $14.99.

Guys. No. Just... no. This is a prime example of how the agency pricing model seems to be a little out of touch with economic reality in some cases. This isn't a current New York Times bestseller; it's a novelization of a rather bad movie from 2002. The paper editions of the book (which included a mass market paperback edition) are all out of print, which should probably be a clear indication to the publisher that no one is all that interested in it. Furthermore, there are some forty used copies available for sale on Amazon starting at one cent. I'm a Next Gen fan, and I do have a vague interest in reading it, but for $14.99? Seriously? Are you kidding me? Thanks, but no thanks.

Hmmmm

I looked at my sales figures today and saw that Isn't It Romantic? has sold fewer than half as many copies as In the Mood (which is my sales winner for the month thus far). In fact, Isn't It Romantic? has only sold 56 copies in total, despite quite a bit of promotion on the boards. I hope it will pick up, but I am tempted to conclude that pretty romantic covers just don't sell as well as bare male torsos do. We'll see how the bare-chested Never Love a Stranger does when I release it...

Easter

I hope everyone who celebrates it had a happy Easter. We went over to the in-laws' house and hung out with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. We had a lovely dinner, and then the kids had an Easter egg hunt. So that was lots of fun. And because we now live nearby, we were able to drive home afterward and chilled in our own house. This is nice, because having badly overexcited kids having to spend the night in Grandma's house, the way we used to do, can be unpleasant for all concerned. By the time the day was done, my kids seriously needed some chillax time!

Buying an ad

I bought myself a banner ad for a month over on the Indie Spotlight. I haven't found banner ads with romance sites to be very helpful, but all my experiments along those lines were several years ago, and this is a more general site for readers interested in indie books, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Milestone, again

I have now sold over a thousand downloads (for three different books) in the two months I've been on Amazon.

LOL

Clearly I am waaaaay underpricing myself at 99 cents:

Yay

Isn't It Romantic? finally seems to be starting to sell. It's moved onto a Kindle bestseller genre list... not contemporary romance, but humor. It's only #82 there, but I do believe genre lists are how people find you, so any list is a good list, to my way of thinking.