Indie Author Revolution

     There’s a Revolution going on and it will touch every one of you, it probably already has. It’s in the books you read. 

     Before, agents and the big 5 publishing houses controlled 90% of the books in book stores. (Big five= Random/Penguin, Simon & Schuster, McMillan, Harper Collins, & Hatchett) They made the rules and let everyone know what was hot and what was on its way out. Agents had to bend to their wishes or they didn’t sell any books. Together they had  a strangle hold on writers and plenty of amazing books never saw the bookshelf.

     Then in 2009 Amazon said, “Publish with us,” and doors opened. Writers took control of their own futures and success.  The Indie Author was born. Like independent musicians and filmmakers, writers could now let their creativity loose on the world. The world of books has opened for both writers and readers. No longer is your reading material censored by 5 companies. Readers too, have found the freedom to read whatever they like and for a price that won’t break the bank. Indie Authors set reasonable prices and work hard to bring their stories to the world.

     

     The Publishing industry is forever changed. TeleRead, a website that reports on the publishing industry states, “if you’re a debuting writer, it’s a lot better to debut in self-publishing than in the Big Five. While the Big Five’s numbers are flat, the number of indie authors who can earn a living at it increases year over year.”

     Like the Indie Filmmakers and Indie Musicians, Indie Authors have a growing presence on web. Just type “Indie Author” into a web browser and see what pops up. You will find writers advocating for the Independent Author way of life. They are posting earnings & instructions on how to edit and publish. Indie Authors have shown up in the news. The New York Times, Forbes, and Tech Dirt have all covered the Independent Author Revolution.

     

     The earnings for Indie vs  Traditionally published writers? That would be 15% for those authors published by the big 5 vs. 70%  for the Indie Author.  

     J.A. Konrath, one of the first to step up and publish his earnings, in 3 weeks in 2012  made $100,000.  He talks about his 500 rejections from agents and publishers. He had one deal with Hyperion in 2003, he sold his book, Whiskey Sour, in a 3 book deal for $200,000.  Then, after doing everything he could to promote his books and make the numbers, they dropped him. He’s now making more as Indie. In 2012 he reported $791,000. You can check it out on his website.

     The Guardian reported that Amanda Hocking, another writer who started as an Indie Author made $2.5 million in one year. In April 2010 she wanted to go see Muppets in Chicago and needed $300. for the trip. She put a couple of Vampire love stories up on Amazon for $2.99. By August she made $6000 one month and quit her day job. By October she had $20,000 for Muppets.

     

     Writer’s Digest reported that Hugh Howey another Indie Author, made $150,000 a month from e-book sales. When the big five came knocking, he made publishing history when he made the deal and kept his digital rights. He now has a new book deal and sold the movie rights.

      

     There’s an old saying, “Everyone has a book in them,” and now it’s possible for writers to make their dreams come true. However, to be a successful Indie Author there are a few requirements.

• Learn the rules of writing
•  Edit, edit, edit
•  Multiple books = $$$
•  Publish Regularly
•  Know Cover Art
•  Market your work

Go Indie! 

Scrivener - Is it worth it?

After my last writer's conference I really wanted to try Scrivener. A lot of the more experienced writers were raving about how easy it is to organize a story. All the writers who were doing series swore by it.

So I toddled on over to Scrivener's website and found a free 30 day trial. One great thing about the trial was it was 30 days of actually using the program and not 30 calendar days. If it was calendar days I probably would have waited for that magical month when I had the elusive "time" nailed down. That never happens in real life. But 30 random days definitely fit my schedule. I hit that download button.

There is a learning curve to Scrivener and I've been using it for about a month and still feel I have a lot to learn. I can write, set up my characters/place descriptions. Jump back and forth and it is so nice to have those notes at my fingertips.  I'm still not great at fixing paragraph formatting but I haven't put much time into learning much about that stuff. I'll get on that more when I'm in the editing process.

Confession: I didn't wait the 30 days. I purchased Scrivener after two weeks to the cost of $40.

There's actually no excuse not to learn the ins and outs of Scrivener. They have a lot of tutorials on the website to help you out and other writers are stepping up to put up blog posts on it. Writers sites talking about it here.
There are lots of informative You Tube videos that go over different aspects of what Scrivener can do and how to use it. This one is pretty good here. A lot of them cover different parts of the program so it's an easy study. 

Bottom line, the peeps at the writers conference were right. Scrivener Rocks!

Figuring Out Facebook Ads

Experimenting with book ads and studying the results. I'm running a facebook ad for No Apologies and watching my Amazon rank fluctuate. 

An 12 day ad with a daily click through up to $5. giving me a total cost of $60. The book is not on sale, I left the prices the same as always. 

First day my rank dropped dramatically. From 923,485 to 32,291. The next day its up to the 300,000's. (I only checked it once that day, not realizing it was going to be changing that much) The following morning it dropped again into the 30,000. Yesterday, Friday, at 7 a.m. it was back up to the 300,000's. (Wish I charted these exact numbers, but i can only give you the approximations.) Friday afternoon I'm back in the 30,000's. This drop happened about 4 p.m. which I think was when everyone at work decided they had worked hard enough all week and jumped on facebook. ;)  It held there until about 9 p.m. when everyone probably broke open the wine and started ignoring facebook. (52,000's)

This morning we jumped back up to #110,761. Will this change when people start waking up? Break for lunch? Go back to facebook after dinner? I'm curious to see if weekends are better than weekdays. 


From what I've read on Booktrakker Amazon updates hourly. 

I'm wondering if some of this is the result of setting the ad to $5.00 a day for click throughs? I hit the $5. in click throughs and the ad stops running for the day? 

Are click throughs equaling sales? So far, not much. :( but we'll see what happens by day twelve. I'll let you know. 

Anyone else have luck with ads? Any hints or tips? 

Indie Marketing & Podcasts

In my search for marketing ideas, (Yeah, I know I should spend more time writing...) I went to YouTube. You can learn anything on YouTube. My daughter learned to play guitar there and she's quite good now. So, I figured I'd see if anyone there had Indie marketing ideas.

I found Joanna Penn and you can see her wealth of ideas on this video.
She talks about a lot of things, but one that caught my eye was Podcasts. I have a few short stories I don't know what to do with. Not enough to throw into a novella, but I wanted to do something with them. Podcasts? Would that lure people to read my other books?

My other Podcast idea is to read a chapter or two of one of my books. Then add, "To read Soul Mates go to www.jeannedonnelly.com." I only worry that it might piss people off. Would they see it as an interesting hook or a feel cheated? The Podcast would be free. Maybe put a note that says, "First chapter of Soul Mates read by the author?"

History lesson; When James Patterson was a new author he wanted to do a commercial. His publisher/agent said he was crazy. It wouldn't work and would be a waste of money. He did it anyway and landed on the New York Times best seller list. It worked and look where he is now.

Anyone out there Podcasting?

Romance! Suspense! Old boyfriends! Add in one crazy Rescue Dog and the fun begins! 

Editing, Editing, #*&(*@$%*(! Editing...

Editing & stress...so happy together.
Re-editing with the help of my daughter who a ruthless, unforgiving editor. I call her the grammar Nazi, but she also pounds me on those little technicalities in the plot. A degree in psychology with a minor in literature, she should have gone into publishing. And she killing my story!

Well, not really.

She's catching things that make me go, "How did I not see that?" or "How stupid of me." Don't get me wrong, I do argue with her. Explaining my point or the character's pov. What I wanted to say was....blah, blah, blah. But then she reminds me my readers wouldn't know that, wouldn't get it.

So, I'm back to a editing a story I'm kind of sick of seeing. Now I'll be sitting out in my car on my lunch hour with my red pen. Reading something I've read a thousand times. I park in the back of the lot so I can read out loud without people thinking I'm crazy.

Anyone got any editing tips they'd like to share?

Advertising and the Indie Author

I've heard that the best way to get noticed as an Indie author is to write multiple books. I'm working on that, but would still like to see better sales for the books I do have up. How many books are enough books? How many books are "multiple books?"

In one article I read that Hugh Howie knew he had to keep writing and getting more books done before he worried about promotion. Smart man. It worked.

So, should I be doing a little advertising? Make a budget?

Book Bub is supposed to give great results, but its a little pricey. I guess you get what you pay for?

Facebook ads can generate sales and some authors swear by it.

I did a freebie on Pixels of Ink and gave away about 80 something books. I got a few reviews from that, but nothing startling. However, that result did show me that Pixels has a good readership so I'll keep it on my list for later.

There are quite a few sites/email blasters like Pixel of Ink. I'd like to find a rating on these sites. Which ones preform better, which ones have the biggest audience, and which give you more bang for your buck.

I wonder if giveaways are worth anything at this point? I think a giveaway works better if you're writing a series that will make someone want the next book. I see Nick Pirog doing it and that's how he hooked me to read his series; 3 a.m.. I saw it on one of the ebook blasters that I subscribe to and since it was free, I grabbed it. It was a great surprise, very well written with a great story line. I went back and bought his other books.

Amazon has ads, too. Now that might be a better way to target an audience?

Twitter? I've tweeted a few, but not sure they produced anything. I just got the hash tag thing down better so that might change. Tweeting with hash tags does help my blog posts get noticed. I've had a few of them from Sidewalk Politics shared on independent newsy sites.  I think they found me through the hash tags.

Book Bloggers...this is an industry that's still out there. Amanda Hocking once said she credited Book Bloggers with the success of her vampire series. I met a couple of bloggers who do book reviews. Most don't charge anything to have a book reviewed by their site, but don't say it will definitely be reviewed. They have a group of reviewers who chose what they want to read and review. The reviewers will be honest on how they feel about the book.  These bloggers make a living with the ads on their site.

With all these options I think Indies need a marketing plan. Spend X amount on ads, pick a couple of bloggers, make a social media outline and stick to it. Organization! We need organization! Publishing houses have departments to handle this stuff. Do they have plans? Outlines to follow? (Not that a new author gets much of that.) I need a step by step plan for this advertising stuff. I know they have books on Marketing for Indie's but when I look up the authors of those books I don't see any reviews for their other books and the ranks on Amazon aren't that great. So tell me why I should listen to them?

What's your marketing plan?

Writer's Conference Update!

I'm a little late here with the Create Something Magical Conference update but that doesn't mean it wasn't great! We had a blast! My only problem...there wasn't enough time to see every seminar. There were a few times during the day I wish I could have been in two places at once.

First up was Scene of the Crime by Geoff Symon. A former Federal forensic investigator, Geoff gave us the run down on crime scenes and discussed a few of the more famous crime scene investigations. Check out his website!

Next up; The Line Between Good and Evil offered by Janice Gabie Bashman & Katherine Craft. This covered the POV character and how its the first relate-able thing to the reader. We also talked about the anti-hero or tormented villain.

While I was absorbing Scene of the Crime by writer friend went to one called; Draw Me a Story presented by Shiloh Walker. She snagged me a hand out. This covered Character Sketches and applying them to the plot of the story. What does your character want and what obstacles/conflicts are you going to put in their path?

From there we went to World Building presented by a panel that included Christi Barth, Stephanie Draven, Eliza Knight, Lea Nolan, and Kate Quinn. It was an interesting talk about in-bedding details about the world/town/culture and avoiding info dumps. They gave us the "sins" of world building

• Info dumps (better to layer)
• Glossary - depending on how detailed and different your world 
• Obsessing over details
• Forgetting aspects as you build your story. Don't let one aspect change another's facts
• Over reliance of dialog to impart details. Character saying things like, "As you know on planet X..."

One great tip of world building if you're writing a series; Make a series bible so you can keep track of the towns, houses, character jobs, etc. 

From there we had lunch with speaker Sylvia Day. She was a very inspiring author and gave us all her blunders and successes on the road to being a full time writer. One thing she did say was, follow your heart. When they tell you can't, don't listen. 

Raiders of the Lost Arcs was up next covering Structural Elements that create a story arc. Katheryn Craft was the presenter. This covered everything: the premise, inciting incident, motivation, high stakes for failure, complications through to the dark moment and climax. And of course, the resolution. 

From there I went to Marketing with Review Blogs with Joyfully Jay, Francesca Bensi, and Susan Lee. This was great insight into the other side of the review blogs and how they chose books to review, who does the reviews, and how to find the right ones. Basically, search blog tours or book review blogs and see if they did your kind of book. They said some of the  most successful author interviews are the ones that do giveaways of books or gift cards. They talked about Good Reads for reviews, too. 

The last seminar for Saturday was 5 Things to Start Doing Before You Get a Book Deal! The speaker was Donna Galanti and she was one of my favorite speakers of the day. 

• Connect with readers through book bloggers. She covered Google Alerts for your genre. Set the alert and find out where other authors are putting their books. Invite other authors to your blog to get traffic before you launch your book. 
• ID your reader and market. Does your book appeal to a certain group? Teens, mountain climbers, vegetarians? Find the groups on Twitter and engage in conversation. 
• Find 2 or 3 places to master on social media. Search for online reviewers, if you want an agent or publisher -follow them. (www.literaryrambles.com) 
• Promote others. Heartwarming or humorous posts get the most engagement. Find/follow pages that relate to your genre.  (www.aerogrammestudio.com/2013/04/21/twitter-hashtags-for-writers/)
• Blog, Engage, and Run Contests (Rafflecopter)
• Join writer organizations & volunteer 

If you want the handout on this one email me and I'll send you a copy. She gives several good websites for marketing information. 

And that was my Saturday. Sunday was a short day. Three seminars; Beyond Spell Check; Self editing before submission, Tying it all Together, and The In the Know, How to Guide to Self Publishing. 

It was a great weekend with a lot of good information. Can't wait for next year!