Part Four: Blurbs for books in a series. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

If you found writing blurbs for your first book to be difficult.  Wait until you get to the sequel.  The blurb for your sequel has to do the same job as the first blurb, but it also has to do more and has more restrictions on what to avoid.  The blurb still has to do it's job by convincing people to click the buy now button.  But it pulls double duty because if it's a new customer, this blurb has to convince them to find and buy the first book as well.

Next you have to remind existing customers what was going on, but you can't spoil book one's story in the process.  You have to balance leaning on the events of the earlier book and focus on the new books story.

In the sidebar to the left, I have three fairly attractive covers.  I have no control over what cover a potential customer may come across first, or which one they my decide to click on for the first time.  It may even take all three covers viewed at various times before someone clicks one.  If a new customer's first click is not on book one.  The blurb can't be too confusing for them to follow.  It can't spoil earlier books.  It still has to engage and hook them to where they want to seek out book one.  This is probably the hardest juggling of words a self-published author will have to write.

Lets take a look at my second Sky Mage novel.  Again, I am going to include the cover because I strongly believe that every part of your book needs to fit and work with each other part.

Branded as an outlaw for his daring rescue of the aerial warrior Angela, Kail finds a new home for his magic abilities in a gearworks mining town. There people are willing to help Kail and his group as they too hold no love for General Therion’s advancing airship armada.

As devastating losses mount, the Eternal Gateway reappears, and the fight for its control is rekindled. Kail and his allies know the Gateway cannot fall into Therion’s hands if they are to prevent a dark future foretold in prophecy. With little resources left, word of a possible key to victory reaches Kail and Angela, but it risks their best chance to seize the Gateway on the temperament of one volatile mage and a man immune to magic.

Through time the Gateway returns a burned and unforgettable face; Xavier Ross has the knowledge of what is to come and lashes out at Kail and Angela for choices they have yet to make. He who controls the Gateway controls time, even death, and Xavier knows at the end of time lies the beginning of vengeance.


I opted for a character-conflict-conflict format for my sequel.  In the first paragraph I re-introduce Kail, Angela, and Therion.  Unlike the first blurb, I don't need a sweeping grand intro.  This is how I lean upon book one.  For new customers, I still have interesting and unique identifiers tied to each character.  Aerial warrior Angela, Kail finds a home for his magic and the obvious villain, Genreal Therion.

The second and third paragraph is all conflict.  This is where you really need to shine for the new customers who haven't read the earlier books.  Is what you present here going to be interesting enough to get them to find book one?  For return customers, is this going to convince them to part with more of their money?

Let's pick apart this blurb.  Cover and title.  The only change in the title is the word Ember.  The rest is this guy with fire and he's got some clear attitude.  I have the clockwork and gears at the bottom for the steampunk setting.  Remember, the cover is your only visual marketing tool for your book.  Use it.

The very first word of this blurb is branded.  This is my fire word to match the fire word in the title: Embers.  There is also fire on the cover so I am leaning on that visual as well.  Gearworks mining town: setting and also draws on the gears in the cover.  Airship Armada: more setting and genera definition.  Gears, clocks and airships.  We have the Steampunk nailed down.  If you read the first paragraph again.  It's a pretty simple paragraph, but it's a very busy paragraph with it's message.

The second paragraph, rekindled is my fire word for the title and cover.  Again leaning on the cover.  I also remind existing customers about the time travel gimmick that is the Gateway.  I also show what the gateway can do in this blurb and it all leans on the title as well: of Time.

This is also an important paragraph because it has all the legwork to convince new customers to find book one.  I feel that I did an acceptable job here with explaining the time traveling gateway. I present the stakes and what's on the line and I have an interesting twist with foreshadowing a mage fight and a guy who is immune to magic.

In the last paragraph, if you haven't picked out the trend is the word: burned.  Xavier is also the character portrayed on the cover.  In my earlier post I talked about starting the blurb with Angela because she was on the cover over Kail.  Honestly, there just isn't a way for me to do that with book two.  However, when the customer finishes reading the blurb, they get everything they see on the cover.  I feel this pulls together well.  With this also not being the first book, you get a little more wiggle room on your blurb.  The Embers cover was almost used for book one.  It was in a dead heat with the one I used based upon customer feedback.  In the end, as good as it is, it just wouldn't work as the cover for book one.

As with book one's blurb.  This blurb is laced with theme, plot, and setting.  Your cover, title and blurb should be able to let the customer know exactly what they are going to get.  In a later blog post, I will go over some of the do's and don'ts of blurb writing.  One of the don'ts is listing what your book is by talking directly to the customer.

Part Three: Writing your blurb. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Part one and two have been theory and conception.  In this part, I am going to take my blurb and rip it apart as a learning tool on writing blurbs.

A thousand years ago, Angela was born into a race of warriors with the ability to fly. Recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy, she travels through the Gateway to a mechanical future dominated by airships on the edge of war. Now the last of her kind, Angela has been promised a second chance at life, if she plays her part.

Kail has a simple life, and it doesn’t include magic and forgotten prophecies. Magic ruled for centuries, but as it died out a new industry of alchemy and machines rose in its place. After Angela arrives bruised and battered the military follows bringing enemies that Kail didn’t know he had.

As the last of the vanguard mage class, General Therion can pervert magic to do unspeakable things. He wants what Kail possesses at any cost: a birthright of powerful magic that also includes the secrets of the Gateway. If Therion can seize what Kail has, he would have sweeping control over time and even death.


I went with a Character, Character, Conflict format.  The conflict just happens to be another character, but that is fine.  Even a gimmick or inanimate object can be a character.  The Starship Enterprise, or the Stargate can be a character.

Kail is my main character.  I don't start the blurb with him where in most situations I would recommend you do.  However he's not on the cover so I start with Angela.  This is one example of how I lean on the cover.

When you introduce characters, you MUST make them interesting and engaging.  I shake my head at how many authors introduce us to bland, boring, cardboard cutout characters.  If you re-read the first paragraph about Angela, I have a girl from a thousand years ago, who can fight, who can fly, who died, who time traveled and now is the last of her race scraping for a second chance.  Damn if that isn't an interesting character, I don't know what is.  Sure beats "Red-headed Angela helps train and guard young mage Kail."

Under-paid high-school teacher quits job to make meth to pay hospital bills.  I doubt Breaking Bad would have done well with that description.

I can't stress enough how important it is to have engaging characters.  If you do it well, you don't need a gimmick tagline or hook.

In paragraph two, I introduce Kail.  He's the main character of the trilogy.  After Angela's introduction, I went in the opposite direction.  It's minimalist compared to Angela's epic intro.  Kail is our blank slate.  He's our Luke Skywalker who hasn't had a life on the run and a bounty on his head like Han Solo or a banned senator on the run like Leia.  Kail is the character that we follow through the trilogy and get to see grow, develop and change.

I feel this worked well and in the second half of the paragraph, I link in Angela and begin the setup for the conflict that is paragraph three.

In paragraph three, we have our bad guy, he does bad things and it explains why this matters to our characters and it doesn't spoil our book.

Next I want to go over setting.  Each paragraph of my blurb, I have woven in the setting of my book.  Mechanical future, Airships, edge of war.  Paragraph two has Magic, alchemy, machines, military.  And paragraph three has, magic, (general) military title, and time travel.  I prefer to weave the setting through my blurbs, but there is nothing wrong with a dedicated paragraph for setting in your blurb.

Now let's take a moment and go over some of the nitty gritty parts of the blurb.  The blurb, title, cover combinations.  Here is the cover and blurb again so you don't have to scroll up.

A thousand years ago, Angela was born into a race of warriors with the ability to fly. Recruited at her death to help fulfill a prophecy, she travels through the Gateway to a mechanical future dominated by airships on the edge of war. Now the last of her kind, Angela has been promised a second chance at life, if she plays her part.

I use a lot of words that describe the cover and title.  "A thousand years ago."  This goes with the word "Time".  "Angela," girl on the cover.  "Race of warriors," sword in hand.  "Ability to fly," goes with the word "Sky."  Gateway is repeated in the blurb to match the title.  "Mechanical future," goes with the word time and the gear/clockwork on the cover.  "Airships," goes with the word Sky and the image in the background.

If I go back to the movie trailer analogy, the cover is the only visual element you have for a book.  They really need to match.  Both the cover and blurb get stronger this way.

Kail has a simple life, and it doesn’t include magic and forgotten prophecies. Magic ruled for centuries, but as it died out a new industry of alchemy and machines rose in its place. After Angela arrives bruised and battered the military follows bringing enemies that Kail didn’t know he had.

Again, Magic in the blurb, mage int he title.  Centuries is a time word.  Industry and machines match the metal hoop and clockwork.  Angela is here again, drawing back to her image on the cover.  The last sentence draws upon the cover as well by letting us know that there is going to be a lot of action in the story and the girl on the cover looks ready for it.

As the last of the vanguard mage class, General Therion can pervert magic to do unspeakable things. He wants what Kail possesses at any cost: a birthright of powerful magic that also includes the secrets of the Gateway. If Therion can seize what Kail has, he would have sweeping control over time and even death.

Mage and magic match the title.  Gateway is repeated as is the word time.  Every paragraph draws heavily upon what a customer sees in the cover.

The cover by itself is good.  The blurb by itself is good.  Together as a whole, they are much better than separate.

There is much much more to writing a good blurb than writing a product description or following the example on the back of a book on your shelf.

Part Two: Constructing your blurb. Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

Now that understand that the blurb's job is to convince a customer to buy our book.  We now have to construct the second most important part of your passive marketing strategy.  The book's cover is the most important part of selling your book.  If a customer doesn't click on your thumbnail sized cover, they will never see your blurb.   Your blurb won't even get a chance to do it's job.

Step one:  Identify your main character.  Identify your plot/conflict.  Identify your setting.  But SB Jones, I have more than one main character.  No you don't.  One of these characters is reacting, growing and changing as a character in reaction to the other.  That is your main character.

Many authors can't identify or describe their own books.  It's like asking a parent who has a 30 year old son/daughter to describe them in a few short sentences.  Do you talk about them in broad strokes or try and cram in all the minute details of their life?  Remember part one?  We need to get customers to click the buy now button.  If your describing your son to someone in hopes of seeing them settle down, taking about how they wet the bed isn't going to help.

If you still struggle with what the blurb is supposed to do.  Hop over to YouTube and watch the movie trailers for this year's blockbusters.  These are exactly what your blurb is trying to do.  Get people excited about your book so they have to click the buy now button.

Step two:  Outline and structure.  We need to take a few minutes and look at some technical aspects of your blurb.  Amazon and other retail websites limit the display area for blurbs.  Amazon keeps it down to 4000 characters, but what you really need to watch out for is number of lines.  If you have a large five paragraph blurb with four blank lines in-between.  Your blurb will get cut off and a customer will have to click a link to expand out the blurb.  Anytime you put a click between the customer and the buy now button.  You WILL lose sales.  Some retailers only give you a line or two before they cut it off, so you really need to remember this.

https://supervillainsomeday.wordpress.com/tag/blurbs/

This link is a collection of good blurb writing articles.  When it comes to plotting your blurb.  You need to setup your characters, your conflicts and your setting.  Like the movie trailers, often they will start with the main character talking while at the same time they are giving you the setting.  Vin Diesel's scratch voice, while you see fast cars, big explosions and crazy stunts.  Then it shifts to the conflict and you see other stars, quipy one liners, more explosions and rocking music until at the end of two and a half minutes you are standing with a fist full of dollars yelling "Take my money!"

That's what your blurb has to do.

At minimum.  You should have a character, conflict blurb structure.  Other structures include character, character, conflict.  Or Setting, character, conflict.  There are any number of workable paragraph structures for blurbs.  The genera is also important.  What works well for a Star Wars blurb isn't the best for a Rom-Com.

My personal preference is a Character Conflict structure and I weave in the setting.  I also leverage the most important marketing point of my book in my blurbs: the cover.

Part One: What is the job of the blurb? Blurb writing 101 for self published authors.

I re-branded my Gateway Trilogy earlier this year.  It was a transition that took about six months to complete.  Editing, New Titles, New covers, New Blurbs; the works.  Most of this re-branding was work I paid someone else to do.  The blurb however I did on my own.  I spent almost an entire month working on three blurbs.  This involved dozens of rewrites, hours of research and weeks of bouncing the results off of other Authors and volunteers for feedback.

Today I want to explore the blurb writing process and my goal is to condense down what took me a lot of time to understand in my own effort to pay it forward for all the help I received.

First question:  What is the blurb?
This is an easy answer to a question that every author seems to know, but in reality don't understand at all.  When you upload a book to Amazon, Amazon calls it the "description" and asks you to describe your book.  They then recommend that you look on the back cover of other books for examples.

If you're like me, the first book I picked up off of my shelf, the back cover had no description.  It was covered in truncated quotes by people and marketers that what lay inside was "stunning",  "author name does it again".  A couple of books later I found one that had a description.  It wasn't very good so I kept looking until I had about six books with decent descriptions.

I tried following some of the styles, but each blurb I came up with for my own books just looked crappy.  A few self-help web pages later and I started to develop a theory about blurb writing.  This stems from an earlier concept that I believe in that writing is an art, but publishing is the business of selling that art.  Selling is completely different than creating.

My new question is:  What is the job of the blurb?
Many may jump back to the first answer.  It describes the book.  This is where the common thinking is wrong.  The job of the blurb is to get a customer to click on the "buy now" button.  To help explain how I got here, we need to take a quick look at the customer buying experience.

In a book store, the buying experience is completely different from buying online.  You have new shiny books up front to catch your eye.  Better sellers on the shelf sit with the cover facing out and older books if they are even present, only have the spine facing you.  The cover of the book is still king.  It's what catches your eye.  It's what has the authors name on it.  It's what instantly tells you the genera and what the book is probably about in a single glance.

Next if you pick up a book, you might glance at the back, but odds are it's just got the same "this book is stunning... again" chop quotes that every other book has.  So you get to thumb through it.  Feel it in your hands.  You can tell how long it might take you to read it because you can see how many pages there are.  All of this factors into your choice to buy a book or not.  Buying an e-book...  You get none of this.

The e-book buying experience is night and day different.  You have a cover, that is the size of a large postage stamp.  That's it.  If your cover catches someone's eye, they get taken to your books landing page.  Here they are presented with a lot more information.  A larger sample of the cover.  Prices, format, reviews and your blurb.  But the MOST important part of your landing page is the "buy now" button.

Up front and center of the landing page is your blurb.  It has only one job.  Getting the customer to click the buy now button.  Anything else the customer clicks on is one click that is not spent on buying your book.  Now that you understand the difference in buying experiences, treating your e-book blurb like the back jacket of a print book is flawed.

Creating a blurb that says your book is fun filled, action packed and if you like this other series, you might like this one too, is the wrong way to approach writing your blurb.

It's been a while since my last blog entry discussing the world of self publishing.  I'll be honest, other things got in the way like new seasons of my favorite shows on Netflix and an overall vein of lazy.

There is something I wanted to bring to new authors attention.  It's something that gets repeated every month or two on other blogs and forums.  That question is what to write.  Often the answers to this question end up in the, "Write what you love," pile.  It makes sense; why would you write something you don't love?  The easy counter answer is, "Write what will make you money."  Yes the bah-humbug from those dinosaurs from traditional publishing.  They truly are sorry that your billionaire leprechaun meets unicorn shape-shiftier time travel children's book doesn't have a market.  And the entire love crowd will call you a sellout, a get rich quick scumbag, a hack and all kinds of nasty names.

I have said it before and it needs repeating.  Writing is an art.  Publishing is a business.  One sells the other, not the other way around.  Traditional publishers know this.  If you are going to self publish, you need to know it too.  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against someone trying to make a living off of publishing leprechaun unicorn books, but I do take issue with people who have their heads stuck in the sand, believing a lot of the self published crap that gets talked about and refuse to acknowledge that it really is all their own fault that their book isn't selling.

So when you sit your writer self down with your publisher self, you need to decide what it is you're going to do.  This is very important because it takes a lot of time to write something that is worth selling.  Even when that is done, it takes a lot of money and more time to get it edited, proofread, covers, formatting etc etc done before you even see a dime.  If you skip this meeting, you may end up with nothing.

Climbing the ranking ladder.  It sounds exactly like that.  Amazon is the big store right now.  They have some 50 million unique hits a day and the better your book's rank is, the more eyes will see it.  There are a lot of categories on Amazon these days.  Some of these categories are broken ladders, dud genera, and filter traps.  I write steampunk, I love it, I still am writing it with my new series (The War of Antiquities), but it's a dud genera.

As of this writing the number one steampunk book has an overall rank of 3572.  For many of us, that would be awesome.  But the reality is, it's dead.  Steampunk's parent genera is Science Fiction.  The number 100 book is ranked 1624.  The list won't show you any lower unless you browse Amazon a specific way and get off the best sellers list and into the searches or apply filters.

So even if you have the best steampunk book out there, you're not even listed in Sci-Fi.  This is a dead ladder.  Unless someone is specifically looking for steampunk books, they will never see it.  If they never see it, they will never buy it.

Going back to the book that is ranked 100 in Sci-Fi, we can also see that it's ranked number 20 in Dystopian and 31 in Post-Apocalyptic.  This book isn't even at the top of it's sub-genera.  It's not even on the first page of its sub-genre.  But it gets the visibility of general Sci-Fi, Dystopian, and Post-Apocalyptic.

These sub-genera's are not broken.  As these author's books climb the ranks, they graduate into higher tiered categories.  This gets more random eyes on their books.  More eyes mean more opportunities to make a sale.

You can buy your way out of the basement with advertising and clever marketing, but at the end of the day when your book slips back, it really has no fair chance of climbing out on its own.  When you have that sit down meeting with yourself and you are honest about your goals.  Put on your business had and realize that your great story just might not have a market but you might be able to turn the leprichaun into a sparkly vampire and the unicorn into Jack Bauer and find success with a paranormal thriller romance.  If you pick a broken ladder, be ready for a long hard climb.

Book signing at Barnes and Noble wrap up.

On April 6, 2013 I had a book signing event at Barnes and Noble here in Twin Falls, Idaho.  It was the second signing with them.  The first was shortly after the release of my first novel Requiem back in 2011.  I didn't have one for book two, Guardian but now that the trilogy is finished I set one up for it.

There are a lot of things that went on with this signing that I want to touch on for anyone who is interested in doing book signings.  I have done other book signings in the past other than Barnes and Noble.  When I first walked in and found where they had set up the table, I was nearly floored.  The signing was at noon and I was about ten minutes early, what I wasn't expecting were the people waiting, book in hand, for me to sign their copies.  It wasn't a big line, just two people, but it was a line none the less and they were waiting for me.  So right off the bat, I had four books signed and sold before I even had time to take off my jacket.

Right after that, I still had not had time to set up my display, a news crew from the local TV station showed up and thrust a microphone in my hand for an interview.  This was another first.  People waiting for me to show up and now TV.  They asked me several questions about myself, the books, the process I went through to finish them and what other projects I was working on if any.  The spot made the nightly news and you can read about it and see the spot on their website here.  http://www.kmvt.com/news/local/Local-author-releases-final-novel-in-sci-fifantasy-trilogy-201776831.html

After all that more than an hour had gone by and I was able to finally get my display set up and the book signing took on a more regular tone.  If you're not a superstar author with a blockbuster book, book signings can be intimidating.  From what I have been told, most signings don't do well especially for the "local author" types.  Often they sell less than five books and sometimes they don't even sell any.  I have had a book signing in a restaurant and sold 7 books, and I sold 9 at a flea market so I honestly have no idea how you could sell 0 at a book store, but I'm told it's not uncommon.

I had about a dozen people ask me where the bathrooms were after they entered the store.  I expected that from the last time I had a signing.  One lady barged into the store on a mission to ruin someone's day and found me sitting behind a table and demanded that I fix or replace her Nook.  After pointing her towards a manager she had some unkind things to say to me even after I explained that I was not an employee, but doing a book signing for my trilogy.  Even an hour later when she left, she gave me a nasty look on the way out.

The antique green tapestry I use for a table cloth received several offers for purchase.  This wasn't unexpected as it happened last time I had a signing, though the offers were not as high as the flea market signing was.  You can see it in the photo there of my display when I had it set up.  Note that it's missing in the TV interview.

I had a full set of postcards printed up for each book.  I used this promo item at my other book signings and have found it to be a successful way to promote the book to people who are hesitant in buying a new book they know nothing about.  I also took the whole trilogy and burned it to CD's in e-book format.  If anyone bought a book, I offered them the CD for free.  This helped sell several copies.  It's a hard sell to get someone on the spot to plop down $15 a book let alone $45 for a full set.  When people were told they got $15 worth of e-books for free, it was much easier to close the sale.  There were two customers who bought books from me that did not want the disk.  Their reaction was almost like I was trying to give them a disk of cancer or something.  They also let me know what they thought of e-books in general and their utter disdain for them.  I agreed with them as much as I could.  I personally don't buy e-books or even have an e-reader and still buy mine in physical form.  However, they are simply holdouts to the changing publishing world.  What they don't know is that in my three years of selling books, I sell and easy 150 e-books to every 1 physical book.  E-book's is simply where publishing is at.

One odd observance that I thought was noteworthy.   When I offered to sign a postcard for people who didn't buy a book. I asked them if they had a cover preference or what card they wanted.  Universally, everyone took the postcard for book two.  A couple of people opted for book one and no one took book three's postcard unless I just signed it and gave it to them without asking for their preference.  I still don't know why everyone wanted the card for book two.

One older gentleman spent about 15 minutes talking about Scientology.  I'm not sure if he was trying to convert me, or borrow money so he could join the church...  It reminded me of the Dell days when people would call support because it was a toll free number and they simply wanted to talk to someone.

When it came time to finally pack up and head home, I had sold out of book one.  Sold out of book two, and there were only a handful of book three left.  In total, 32 books were signed.  Most people picked up the first book.  Only four people picked up the entire set, and once book one was sold out, sales came to a halt, even with the CD that had them all.  Several people asked when the books would be in stock again, but from my experience, it's rare for anyone to remember to come back and buy one even if they took home a signed card or not.  It might be different this time with the number of books sold, cards handed out and the TV spot.

Now for the lessons.
If you have an introverted personality, book signings are going to be tough.  You have to be a salesman.  Simply sitting there hoping someone will see you and your books isn't going to work.  Having something to give to people is a must.  But it has to something they are going to want to keep and not toss on the floor, into a garbage bin, or shoved into the bookshelf somewhere for an employee to clean up later.  A lot of authors use bookmarks and when I talk to the people who work at B&N, bookmarks seem to be the least bothersome ideas.  They still get dropped and shoved into the shelves by people who don't want them but nothing like paper flyers do.  If you hand out 300 paper flyers and the employees spend the next week picking them up and out of other books, they are going to hate you.

Don't be this guy.

I haven't had any complaints about the postcards.  They are larger than a bookmark, made of heavy stock, look great and when a person sees me sign it for them it instantly gives the card a perceived value so they are not thrown away, littered, or crammed into the shelves.

The e-book on CD idea I feel was a success and I will continue to do that going forward.  It costs me nothing other than 25 cents for a CD and it helps sell books.  It would have been nice if they had a printed label with cover art or something instead of a memorex disk and a sharpie, but I don't have the equipment to do something like that and when I looked into services that offered them, the cost per disk was unreasonable.  $1.50-$5 a disk and order requirements in the low hundreds to thousands.

The only other advice I can say if you are looking at having a book signing is to engage as many people as you possibly can.  You are basically getting impulse buys so almost everyone is going to turn you down.  My first signing at B&N for Requiem sold 18 copies and it was a much busier day than this one was.  I averaged about one book sold for every 15 to 20 people that I managed to greet and engage.  That's about 5-7% sales rate, so don't get discouraged.

Pro's and Con's of Choosing to use Amazon's KDP Select program.

I've had the idea to write a blog post about the pro's and con's of being exclusive to Amazon as a self publisher for a while now and I have a small break in my writing to get it down.  I do have to add a disclaimer that these are my opinions and should no way be taken as an etched in stone way for you to do things.  Every author's experience with what works is different from another.  Luck plays a huge role in self publishing.  Also the speed of change can make this information inaccurate and obsolete and by the time you finish reading it, anything could have happened.

For those who are not familiar with KDP Select, it is a program that an author can choose to opt-in/out when they upload a manuscript to Amazon.  The benefits are five days out of each ninety day period that you can set the price of your book to $0.00 for promotional reasons.  Select also makes your title available to the Kindle Online Lending Library where Amazon Prime members can choose to download and read your book at no cost to them.  The author is compensated for these borrows from a monthly pool of money and it tends to average around the $1.80-$2.00 range per borrow.  The last major benifit to a book being in the Select program is that it allows an author to collect 70% royalty rates instead of 35% in the emerging markets that Amazon has been expanding since the launch of Select.  Namely, India, Brazil, and Japan.

The downside to select is the e-book version must be exclusive to the Amazon store.  This means you can't sell the same e-book or even portions of it on other web sites like Apple, Barnes and Noble or even your own website.  Now you can make available promotional material like blurbs, excerpts, or a sample chapter or two as long as it doesn't exceed a certain amount.  What that is, I can't tell you because I have not heard of anyone getting in trouble for this and there are different numbers being tossed out from 5% to 30% of your book.  However you cannot offer a short story for sale in other outlets and then include that same short in a bundled book that is opted in for select.  This works the other way as well.  You can't have a short in Select and include it in bundle on other sites.  The content has to be exclusive.  This does not apply to print options.  Print is a separate deal when it comes to KDP Select.  The other growing downside is that since Select has launched, all new markets default to the 35% royalty option instead of being able to collect 70%.  For most authors, these markets represent little to no income, but as time goes on, the list of restricted markets will grow as will their impact.


Exclusive with Amazon:
Exclusivity has some advantages.  Especially for new authors working with shoe-string budgets and Amazon offers some very nice perks.  First, they are the shark in the tank of fish when it comes to online publishing.  All other companies combined don't equal the amount of e-books sold compared to Amazon.  So when it comes down to where you're going to spend your time and money, it's going to be with Amazon.

When you get around to promoting your work, it's very beneficial if you have the ability to point everyone to the same place.  This means that every sale counts towards the same ranking, every review received is collected on one site.  If you're spread out among five or six different retailers, then your sales, ranks, and reviews are also diluted.  What's better?  A hundred sales split five ways leaving you book in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands on the ranks, or all one hundred sales on Amazon that puts you onto the top 100 genera lists where the discoverability of your book jumps explosively?

Accounting is simplified.  You get a check from one place, you manage your whole digital library from one dashboard, you deal with one specific file format.  At first these might not seem like they would be an advantage, but once you start branching out and one web site takes one file type, and another requires a third type, and finally in Apple's case you need to use a system running a mac OSX to upload your work, it quickly becomes a lot of work.  This compounds exponentially when you start releasing more books, or if you're going back to earlier works and adding back end material.  This will either cost you time, to learn how to create these file types, or increased costs to whomever you pay for formatting.

Free promotion days.  This is the honey for joining Select.  The ability to pre-schedule when your book will be available for free is arguably the most powerful marketing tool you will find.  The only other way to get your book free in any market place is by using a 3rd party distrubutor like Smashwords who has a negotiated thing with Barnes and Noble to make books free on their site, and Apple.  Apple allows for direct uploading and pricing $0.  Everywhere else you have to use some price matching scheme to get your book free and it is whimsical at best.  It can take weeks to months for a book to get price matched and it can take that long again for the price to revert.  In other words, you have lost control of your pricing.  There are horror stories out there of books stuck in free limbo because each website is price matching the other and none of them will change.  Having complete control of your pricing allows for you to effectively promote your book how you see fit.  You can change the price and it will instantly take effect, offer free days without worry and more.  This is a major benefit to deal with only one company.

KOLL.  I don't have much to say about the lending library.  When I have been enrolled in Select, the amount of borrows I received were negligible.  I had roughly one borrow per every 300 full priced sales.  I also price my books at $4.99 and receive $3.10 per sale and that's significantly higher than the $1.80+ that I would get from a borrow.  However I have read plenty of posts from authors who receive a considerable amount of revenue from borrows.  I do know that if you are offering your book for 99c. you will make much much more money per borrow than you would for a sale.  A 99c book will only bring in 35c in royalties.  Going from 35c to $1.80 is a five fold increase in royalties.  That's right you can get paid $1.80 when someone borrows a 99c book.  This could be where they are favoring the lending library over others.

So in summary, consolidation of payments, sales, rankings, and reviews.  One website you need to promote.  Complete and timely control over your pricing, increased royalties in new markets and a lending feature that can pay out significantly increased royalties in certain price ranges.  Last but not least, your on Amazon, no one is bigger.


Non Exclusive:
There are whole economic college classes that are dedicated to the dangers of exclusivity.  If Amazon is 60% of the market, why would you cut yourself out of the other 40%?  Each marketplace is it's own ecosystem.  If you don't thrive at Amazon, you may very well succeed at Barnes and Noble.  Also shopping demographics are different.  B&N dominates when it comes to the romance genres and erotica.  Apple...  I'm not sure what they dominate but a lot of authors report success from the iTunes Bookstore over Amazon and others.

The luck factor.  One of the driving factors for selling books is word of mouth.  It's not uncommon for a book to take off on one retailer, and it spreads to others as word of mouth kicks in.  If your only available on one website, you give up those chances to break out.  Mark over at Smashwords has released data that clearly shows books taking off at one website and having it increase sales across all platforms shortly after.  Each website also offers their own features and if you're not on their site, they can't pick you to feature you.  The more places you are, the more you increase your luck.

The market place is shifting.  Kobo and Apple are making significant strides in reaching out to authors.  Amazon's dominance is shrinking and the days of a dedicated e-reader are already gone.  Now its the time of the tablet that can do it all and e-reader apps.  Having a device exclusive to a vendor is dangerous.  Apple and Amazon saw this very quickly.  B&N seems to be a wait and see then follow years late kinda company that does not leverage it's one asset that none of the others have, a real bookstore.

Price matching is a very powerful tool for self-published authors to use if you're brave enough to accept its flaws.  Did your five free days on Amazon not produce results?  Too bad you're stuck for the 90 day period before you can try again.  Did it actually do well and your doing a happy dance with your 25,000 free downloads that resulted in hundreds even thousands of sales on your other books?  Good, but you do realize you will not be able to do this again in the next 90 day period right?  Those websites like E-reader News Today and Pixel of Ink won't feature the same books twice.  So your next 90 day promotion period is already guaranteed to suck.  I shudder when people have back to back promotion periods that do not perform well.  That's half a year locked into a program that leaves you with no other avenues to explore or new options to try.

If you have a book you're willing to offer for free, price matching can be your Ace of Spades.  Instead of 5 days out of 90 to get your book out there.  90 of 90 days it can be free.  And not just on Amazon.  Free downloads from Apple, Kobo, Sony, Deisel, Barnes and Noble and even at Amazon.  You can still submit your book to the promotional websites and if they don't pick your book among the thousands that are submitted, you can try again, and again, and again until they do.  You're not limited to the 5 chances Amazon gives you then your out of luck.  Luck is important and limiting it is bad.


Conclusion and advice:
Both Select and non-exclusive to Amazon have their advantages.  I have been a part of select for 15 months and have had excellent periods, and crappy periods.  Dealing with only one vendor has the advantages already stated but it has it's disadvantages too.

My advice if you're new to self publishing would be to go with Amazon's Select program.  It's the perfect playground to get your feet wet in the world that is self-publishing.  If it doesn't work out, just opt out.  90 days isn't all that long, but it can seem like forever if your books are doing poorly.  Two or three bad periods can really crush an author as their book fallows and due to the terms, there is little you can do but wait.  Many an author has given up from this.

Once you have a feel for things, start to branch out.  Test the other markets, you can always go back.  Several authors have a mix of books in and out of Select.  A strategy that is often used is to put a book in Select for it's first 90 days.  Capture those early reviews all in one place, have a free run to get it out there, then release it to the rest of the markets.  Or taking older books that haven't found an audience and give it the same Select treatment to jump start it again.

After two years of being self published, I will be opting out of Select.  Only Requiem remains and it's contract will expire at the beginning of March.  I have reached a point in my career where exploring new markets is something I want to do and now that the trilogy is complete, I can market it as a set instead of one or two books with an unfinished story-line.  I have a new series coming out shortly as well so it's the perfect time to try.

I hope you have found this information helpful.