KDP Select, results not typical.

Like TV diets, I am going to start this entry with a disclaimer because KDP Select is still only 3 weeks old and Amazon just dumped millions and millions of new e-readers on the consuming public for Christmas.

I planned for my second novel, Guardian, to be released right before Christmas with the idea that it would be fresh on the "whats new" lists just in time for millions of new e-reader owners to find and buy.  A week before it dropped, Amazon tipped the e-book world upside down with its KDP Select program.  While the internet was buzzing with $$ in their eyes over a half million dollar "prize pool" and "it's the end of capitalism" 90 day exclusivity clause, I found my stomach doing flip flops over the little bit at the bottom that allowed you to set your book for free for 5 days.  Half million dollars? Who cares.  90 day contracts? So what.  5 days free?  Screech, what! Santo Gold! Sign me up!

What better way to promote a new book than making the first one free?  Honestly, I didn't even have to think about it.  Three clicks later and Requiem was pulled from Barnes and Noble and enrolled in KDP Select.  Enough back story and lets get to the good parts.  I set my expectations for the giveaway pretty low.  Two hundred a day with 1,000 total.  The end goal being that over the next 90 days. 1-10% of the free downloaders go on to buy Guardian.  So somewhere between 10-100 sales of Guardian by March.

Lets take a look at some hard numbers that most people do not like to share.  Requiem had a crappy quarter.  September was good, breaking the "One a Day" sales goal, but October flopped with 4 ebooks sold and November followed suit with 4 sales and December was going for a three-peat with 4 sales before the free promo at a ranking of 267,591.  Dec 26 the promotion started and it was supposed to end Dec 30 at 11:59pm  In reality, it ended sometime around 5am on Dec 31.  It ended up with 3030 downloads.  150 of them from European domains.

3030>1000 so expectations were exceeded.  While Requiem was free, it climbed to the number two spot of the Science Fiction/Adventure category right behind The Time Machine which cheated because it was auto downloaded by new kindle owners by default on some profiles.  My purchase history had me auto downloading it along with Treasure Island and Pride and Predigious.  It was a fun moment because I was beating out Joe Konrath and Requiem stayed in the top 10 for the last four days of the promotion.  Only falling out of the number two spot on the last day.

When the free ride was over, Requiem was back on the paid ranking side where it was prior. Rank 330,000ish.  Guardian started to sell.  Not much, but 6 copies during the promo.  This is a win. because it's up 600% prior to the give away.  A good start only 4 away from my original 1% low end goal of 10 books and reaching 100 a real possibility.  Then the magic happened, Requiem continued to move units.  35 copies sold on Dec 31st and so far today (Jan 1) it's at 38 units sold.  73 PAID units in less than two days.  Just what does that do to a paid book?  Well, Requiem landed on three top 100 sellers lists on Amazon.

This was not anticipated at all.  I expected to have these types of sales spread out over the next couple of months for Guardian.  Customers like the first book and purchase the second one.  I even included the first 9 chapters of Guardian with Requiem and a link to buy Guardian if they read that far.  Why Requiem instantly shot onto best selling charts is a complete mystery to me.  Guardian is doing well with 5 units sold today.  Back to the blog topic, I have 84 sales in two days.  I am more than happy with KDP Select, but I feel these are not typical results.  Only time will tell if this is a flash in the pan and gone tomorrow, or the starting sparks of a career.  Either way, Requiem can now be called a Best Seller, if only for a short time.

Musings

First I would like to point to ML Stewart's blog.  I have been following and commenting on his blog almost since he started it about his The Facebook Killer series.  I find his blog to be highly entertaining and the best way to describe it is with a 'You're doing it wrong" picture, but it's working for him if you check out his rankings.

Next, I want to chat a bit about success.  There has been a lot of articles, blogs, and forum posts regarding that the Kindle gold rush is past us.  If you don't sell a million eBooks you're not successful.  You can't make a living as an indie author, so don't quit your day job.  A lot of negativity, and the impression I get is that lately there have been a large influx of people rushing for the Kindle gold who don't even have a book finished yet, or only have one book and can't figure out why their book doesn't sell.  The obvious answer is they are wanting Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath success with one book where these authors have tons of books available and they have tons of fans buying them.  This is fool's gold.

Konrath's latest blog post says it best.  If you have two $2.99 novels and three 99c short stories for sale, all you need is 10,000 fans and you are making $50,000 a year if you continue to produce a novel every 6 months and a short story every four months.  This is much more realistic and attainable than superstar success.  For me, half of this would be what I need to pay all my bills and live comfortably.

Lets break this down.  For myself my novels are going to average roughly 80,000 words and a short story would run about 10,000 words.  This means I need 190,000 words a year for two novels and three short stories.  Let's just round that up to 200,000 words.  That puts me at a minimum of 3850 words written a week or a whopping 770 words a day for 5 days a week.  Slow typing at 30 words per minute this should take you a half hour to complete.

A more realistic number is 1000 words a day five days a week.  This gives you 260,000 words a year, but also lets you miss a lot of writing for book covers, editing, promoting, etc.  However, in two weeks you can have a 10,000 word short story complete.  Another week for editing and that fourth week to format, put a cover and in a month's time you have a 99c short story ready to sell on Amazon.

If you don't have an hour a day to devote to your writing, then you need to make the time.  Once the kids are in bed, instead of watching some reality TV show on your DVR, sit and type for an hour.

Getting fans of your work is the hard part, and easy part.  Like the doing it wrong picture, I think most people go about this the wrong way.  Authors tend to be introverts to begin with and you need to get past this.  If it takes a shot of tequila to open up then do it, but no one will get you fans faster than yourself.  Most of us already have a lot of fans but we don't even know it.  Start small. 10 fans, 50 fans, 100 fans, 1,000 fans.  Don't be afraid to ask your family and friends to help.  The trick here is these people need to be real fans, not some mass add me to your twitter account crap.  Also you need to get over your fear of asking for the sale.  You can blog, tweet, and Facebook your book all day long and never get a sale, but if you shake someones hand and become a real person, you will sell books, and you will make fans.  Best part is these fans generate referrals.  Online fans can work, but it's a lot harder to shake their hand or have a couple of minutes conversation.  Replying to comments, emails and forums helps, but they need to be fans, not other authors, editors, publishers.

Asking for the sale is hard.  It took me about an hour to warm up at my last book signing and about two hours after that it dawned on me what I was doing wrong.  Don't start a sale with your genera or book, start with yourself the author.  When people were walking by, I was asking them if they liked Science Fiction or Fantasy novels.  Overwhelmingly the answer was no, or that they don't read.  If they said yes, I engaged them and either sold a book or gave them a signed postcard.  What made me realize this wasn't working was the number of people who did stop to talk, did not grasp that I was the author of the book.  I figured the sign that said "Local Author Signing" in front of my booth was enough, but it wasn't.  When I started asking people if they would be interest in taking a look at the book I wrote and published.  Almost everyone now stopped and engaged.  The people who didn't read, still did not buy the book, but about a third of them took a signed postcard because their kid liked this stuff, or had a friend or relative who did read.  Those who did read but dislike Science Fiction were better at around half of them knew someone who would be interested.  I sold a few copies to non Science Fiction readers because I the Author was sold, not my book.  These people also had friends and family who read and took postcards.  I attribute all of my 15 secondary sales this week from this engagement that would have been completely missed if I hadn't changed my approach.  In one afternoon, I sold 22 books, handed out over 50 postcards, and talked to about a 100 people in a real conversation.  When you're starting out, this is the type of thing you need to do.  Become a real person, sell yourself, get over your fears, and write consistently and constantly. When it comes time to measure your success, be sure to have a realistic idea of what success is.  I sold 22 books, I made about $115, I am a successful author.

The value of attending a conference and other musings.

I got home last night after a long drive from Las Vegas.  The DefCon 19 hacker security conference as always is a three day party.  This was my sixth year attending and every year its gotten bigger and bigger.  So what does this all have to do with writing and being an author?  Simple, go to where your audience is.

The people in this picture not only are into computers at some level, but they also want to stand in the 100+ degree Vegas heat to watch other nerds take hot beer that's been sitting out there, and watch them run it through some home made contraption to try and cool it down to a drinkable temperature.  These people are into everything besides computers.  I have never seen so many guys in kilts, and steampunk getup outside Maker Faire.

I have read several articles about the value in attending conferences.  Joe Konrath says there is no value in them.  Sure you have the opportunity to meet other writers, agents etc.  But for the non superstar author, in the end its going to cost you lot of money.  I think whats missing from the Konrath rant is that from a non superstar authors point of view, attending a writer/agent/publisher conference or awards show is that your CUSTOMER is missing.  Now if we come back to DefCon you would think that Microsoft or Adobe would want to set up a booth.  Well... no they would get tarred and feathered.  But the vendors that sell lock picking sets and smart ass tee shirts sell out quick.

I did not go to DefCon this year with the intention of selling books.  I did not have a vendor booth or do a book signing.  I took a small handful of books with me just in case the luck factor hit.  Every time I met someone and when they asked what I do for a living, I told them that I was a steampunk science fiction writer.  First, everyone knew what steampunk was, second everyone was thrilled to talk about something other than the latest exploit or vulnerability of Google.  It didn't take me long to realize that there was an unusually high concentration of my customer here.  It would have been nothing to sit at a vendor table and sell books all day long.  So in conclusion, if the conference has your customer, then its worth going to.

There is a lot of thinking time on the road to and from Vegas.  I can see the monetary value of attending the correct conference.  DefCon 20 is less than a year away.  If the trilogy is complete and enough time to secure a vendor table can be had.  That could be a very break out moment.  And Comi-Con, Maker Faire, San Japan, all could be excellent events to attend.  So while it would be neat or even an honor to attend something like the Milford SF Writers Conference, it would simply cost me money.  Everyone there is my competition or someone wanting to make money from my work, not my customer.  So my closing question to you is this.  Think about your work and where can you see being an absolute ideal place to have a lemonade stand set up to sell your book at?

Targeting the influential and signed paperbacks available.

Monday I received my shipment of 50 books from Lightning Source.  After setting aside the ones that people had reserved, they are half gone already.  I have numbered them as the first run.  When I order and sell more, I will still sign and date them but only these 50 will be numbered.  If anyone wants a signed numbered copy, there is a Pay Pal buy it now button on the right.  The cost is an even $15 and that includes taxes and shipping inside the United States.  If you are wanting a copy and live outside of the US, you can e-mail me and we can work something out on shipping costs.

Now on to marketing again.  Yesterday I wrote up a pair press release regarding my book for the media.  They are basically the same except one tends to focus a bit more about being a local author and an upcoming book signing I have at the end of the month.  The other doesn't mention the book signing because no one in New York will care that I am signing a book in Idaho and is tailored to a more general announcement.  I have not done a press release before so we will see how it goes.  I have asked for help from the Kindle Boards forums regarding them and the response has been mixed.  Some say they are not worth the time, and others say the exact opposite.  In my opinion, it can't hurt to try and as one person mentioned, the only reason they got any press was because they sent out a press release.

Next piece of marketing advice I heard came from a movie I watched over the weekend.  'The Social Network'.  There was a scene early on when they first launched The Facebook from their dorm room.  Zuckerberg asked his friend for the e-mail addresses of the people in his fraternity because they were people of influence.  The general idea being that they would influence those around them to also join Facebook.  Later on a girl is checking out Facebook because she had six e-mails from her friends about it.  Book sales follow the same rules.  They rely on word of mouth to sell.  Even if the book is from a celebrity author, if its good, people will talk about it.  Once you hear about it enough times, you will either buy, borrow, or check it out from the library.

Its one thing to update your Facebook page, send a tweet, and announce that you updated your blog in hopes to generate word of mouth and ultimately sales of your book.  However if you are the only one talking about your book, then the only people who might buy a copy are those you influence directly.  The idea now is to get other people to talk about your book, thus targeting people of influence.  Now everyone influences everyone else to a small or large degree.  The goal here is to get the people you influence to talk about your book, tweet, or mention it somewhere and that will influence the people around them.  Even if its just a copy of your book on the table that people see during a party.  There will be overlap on some of this and you will pick up even more people.  Also targeting people of influence that you do not influence directly.  Such as a local radio talk host, or perhaps someone on the local news.  The lottery of influence would be Oprah.  But that doesn't mean you can't get a plug from someone like Joe Konrath if you play your cards right.

So when you get ready to release your book or already have.  Take a look at your social circle.  Find the ten or twenty most influential people in your circle and get them to plug your book.  Either ask them, or give them a free copy of your book, something and see what happens.  Also find a handful of influential people outside of your circle and do the same thing.