The Best Week Ever. Payment Scheduling.

So how do you top the best week ever?  Sit down and write your next book, that's how.  My first two books, Requiem and Guardian sold a lot of books last week.  I won't lie, more books moved in those days than the last 6 months combined.  Requiem sold 134 books and received 40 borrows from Amazon Prime members and Guardian sold 39 copies with 8 borrows.  173 books and 48 borrows.  Borrows kind of have me scratching my head on where to fit them in the grand scheme of things.  People didn't buy the book, but I do get paid for each borrow.  So on the business end, it's like a rental.  One question I get asked a lot is "How many books have you sold?"  That used to be easy, right now about 112 books since June.  No one asks, "How many books were rented?" so i'm not sure if I should include them in my numbers yet, however there is actually a lot more because I quit trying to keep track of live sales because the reporting tools just suck and it became a whole lot easier to just record the numbers from the remittance statements.  So when someone asks how many books I've sold,  I tell them, "I've been paid for 112ish".  Also, I'm not going to pay taxes on money I haven't received yet either.

If you haven't published a book before one of the things you will need to get used to is the payment schedule of royalties and advances.  I won't go into traditional publishing, but I have read that they still mail checks out from England and if the row boat makes it across the Atlantic, you might see a check once a year if you managed to earn out your advance.  I use Lightning Source for print and Amazon for e-books.  Both are good and pay out monthly.  Both are bad because Lightning Source is three months delayed and Amazon is two months delayed. But it beats Smashwords pay out schedule of once a quarter.  Downside of delays is obvious. You don't get your money.  For example, back in November I had a sell out book signing at Barnes and Noble.  I have yet to see a dime from all of those books ordered and sold.  I should see it sometime in February.  Same goes for my best week ever on Amazon.  March will be the "Best paycheck ever" month.

Payment schedules get even worse when you add layers of distribution.  Smashwords pays 4 times a year remember.  They use Lightning Source for print.  So if the first week of January is your best week ever and I had sold hundreds of paperback books.  Lightning Source wouldn't pay Smashwords until April.  Smashwords would have just payed out for Q1, so you would have to wait till the end of Q2 for Smashwords to pay you.  Six months delay.  Ouch, I hope you didn't quit your day job because you finally started selling books.  The publishing forums are rife with posts and people claiming that Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Lightning Source etc are stealing their money, holding it hostage, blah blah blah.  But it's funny to read about and point at people who get upset from this because they stepped into a business they don't understand.

I am working on my next piece already.  Come Monday of next week, I will blog about it's progress.  If I maintain my word count, it should be done by the end of February.

A mountain of books and questions answered.

It was Christmas all over again at my house.  UPS just dropped off my book order from Lightning Source.  I had almost sold out of my personal copies of Requiem so I ordered in another round along with my first order of Guardian.  If anyone wants to buy a signed copy, use the buy now links under the cover pictures to the right.

A few blog posts ago I talked about the new KDP Select program and gave my thoughts.  It has been about 20 days now since the program launched.  Much more information has come out.  Several more discussions and a reader posed the following question: "What would a new company have to do to win you and everyone else over?"

The main sticking point on this question is if you use the KDP Select option from Amazon, you have to grant 90 days exclusivity.  No selling your e-book anywhere else (physical books not effected).  Tens of thousands of books got pulled from all other stores and are now exclusively on Amazon.  So how would an existing company like Apple or Barnes and Noble, or a new online retailer "win me over"?  The simple answer right now is, they can't.  It's a numbers game and always will be.  Amazon has a good 75% of the e-book market.  Think about this.  Amazon has three times what everyone else combined has.

There are things in my opinion, every company needs to improve.  Sad thing for competition, Amazon has the best tools right now and they suck.  Here is a list of improvements every e-book retailer needs if they are going to work directly with content providers.

1. Calender tools.  Simple scheduler so I can make adjustments to product descriptions, prices, pictures in advance.  I should be able to set a time and date to make book one and book two go on sale at the same time when book three launches, as well as change the product description to represent the sale, how long it will last and why.

2. Previewer.  This is important in my opinion.  Right now when you upload a new book somewhere, its just a mess of fill in the blanks, submit and hope it comes out OK after a 2-48 hour wait.  Nothing sucks more than finding out your line breaks and carriage returns did not carry over when you cut and paste the product description in.  Great, now I am locked out for potentially two days before I can edit and fix it, because the book is pending or in some other review state.  God forbid you fat finger a price change of 99c and it comes out $99 and you can't fix it for a day and a half.

3. Social media.  Amazon gets this one better than others.  But you should be able to link up Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs.  There is no reason for these not to be there.  Visibility helps.

So even if a new company came along and had all these things right and offered 99% royalties, I would still have to stay with Amazon because that is where everyone shops for books.  It would be like trying to make a social network and pull users from Facebook.  Amazon would have to self destruct somehow first and I just don't see that happening.

Requiem is free to download on Amazon.  If you haven't downloaded your copy yet, click the cover art on the right and grab it now.

Outline writing.

I am an outline writer.  When I look back I can see this was the case long before I ever decided to try my hand in the writing/publishing world.  Lists, numbers, and outlines have been at the root of everything from school to my eight years working for Dell.  My test scores when I graduated from high school placed me in the top 98 percentile for math and mechanical reasoning.  When I taught newhire's for Dell, I created weeks of content and had everything planned down to a 15min window.  Regardless I have said it before in my blog and made several comments on other people's blogs that I have a fairly set method to how I write and some rules that I follow. (never edit or revise until the first draft is done)

There is no right way, or wrong way to write.  But writing is a skill first and art second.  Most everyone learns to write from their parents and their first few years of school.  Everyone can write, but not everyone can write.  Writing for others entertainment and asking people to pay for this is totally different.  Now I am not going to go into what writing method is better than another.  I am hardly qualified after four months to even think that I know all there is about creating a good story.  Here is a glimpse.

Many people have seen this picture.  I posted it on my Facebook page on March 22. 2010.  It is the first outline of The Eternal Gateway trilogy.  All 105 chapters of it.  Each card has nothing more than the names of characters and one or two words of what the chapter is about.

Ch1 :Confusion, who's bad, who's good.
Ch2: Fight
Ch3: Intro Hero

Requiem consisted of 35 chapters in note card form.  When it was finished, it had been condensed to 30.  Nothing is set in stone, not even an outline, it is a guide and it's my solution to avoiding writers block.  Jumping to book 2: Guardian, I am currently on chapter 19.  Chapter 19 is special for Guardian because it is about a quarter to a third of the book.  It has been broken down but looking at my original notes, all it says is "Big Ass Fight Scene".  I should finish chapter 19 this week.  I only have three parts left to write.

This picture is the outline for chapter 19.  The yellow paper is the first half that I had already written.  The white cards are what I had yet to flesh out before writing.  Before you roll your eyes and think that this is too much work to do for each chapter, remember that this is a third of the book.  Right now chapter 19 is 17,010 words long with another four or five thousand left to go.  Normally each chapter after it goes from being a note card, gets anywhere from half a page to a couple of pages when fleshed out for outline.

Now back to chapter 19.  The yellow notes were easy, I had two groups to keep track of.  group A doing their thing and group B doing theirs.  It was simple to bounce back and fourth between them to advance the story.  The second half (the white cards) things got much harder.  Both groups were now together and I had to weave them together and have some cool interactions.  Each card at the top says "Train" or "Air".  Then I lined them up and moved them around until I had it in an order that I liked.  Picture how a movie bounces around in a chaotic action sequence.  Heroes ducking for cover; Evil laughing; Starship Enterprise rushing through space; Random explosion; Eviler evil shoots laughing evil; Sad Keanu becomes happy. etc. etc.

It was much easier to outline what I wanted each group to do by themselves and then come back and mix it together like this instead of trying to do it in my head or on the fly writing.

So without making this blog post into its own novel.  I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the madness of my writing method.

Holidays

I am sure everyone and anyone who has any level of access to news media has heard about the new lineup of Kindle devices.  The only one that means anything in my opinion is the Kindle Fire.  The others are just more of the same with shiny new packaging.  I think Tychus Findlay said it best.  Hell, it's about damn time.

The only concerns I have with the Kindle Fire is it's marketing.  First is do not try to become a tablet iPad competitor.  It needs to remain an eReader first and a tablet second.  The last thing Amazon needs to do is piss Apple off and they pull the Kindle for iPod/Pad app and force everyone to go to Apples iBookstore.  With over 250 million iOS devices out there, this would be a serious blow to Amazon.  As far as self publishing goes, most of us won't be too effected because our works are already on the iBookstore.  The exception being that Amazon is king of the eBook and it would take quite a while for sales to migrate.  Amazon should focus on doing what they do best only better, not try and take on Apple who since the invention of the iPod and the iTunes store has single-handedly crushed all attempts at trying to compete.

So what does this mean for us?  My prediction is this holiday season, bad economy and all, Amazon is going to have a mega year.  There will be millions of new Kindles sold.  Some will be replacing older models, but a lot of them will also be new owners.  Nooks and iPads also will be unwrapped come December 25th.  This is something that you will want to leverage for yourself if you can.

My advice is to have something ready to go this holiday season.  If your current book is ready, consider delaying to December.  If you are almost done, put in some extra hours so it's ready to go for December.  Have a series already out?  Create an anthology.  Have a sale, something.  There is going to be about a two to four week window after Christmas that has everyone playing with their new eReader and you will want to take advantage of this.

Taxes, Interviews, and Positive Thinking.

First I would like to let everyone know that Action Adventure Inc Blog has a short interview posted about myself and my first book Requiem.  It is interesting to read it myself even though I answered the questions only 21 days ago.  When you are learning and growing as an indie author, your perspective changes almost daily with each new experience or lesson learned.  At the one year mark, I will have to go back and re-read my blog and comment about what I see and how I changed as an author and person.  I found this picture to be funny after searching Google for "interview".  The desk lamp looks like it has been stabbed into the guys neck and the girl reminds me of MTV's Daria trying to figure out what is going on with her classic strait face.

Taxes taxes taxes.  Well, the bright side to taxes is that if you have to pay them, then you made money.  So I should look forward to the time every quarter when I have to sit down and do taxes.  The taxes today is for sales tax.  When I set up SBJones Publishing, I needed a sales and use tax permit number and one of those tax exemption numbers you need to buy things without tax.  This was something that was required when I set up my Lightning Source account for the paperback book.  This lets me order my own book and not pay taxes on them, but I have to collect it from my customers.  I purposely priced my book to $14.15 so it comes to an even $15 when I sell it online through my blog, or in person at a book signing or other encounter.  I don't have to worry about sales tax on books sold through B&N or Amazon because they are responsible for sales tax and all I get is a commission subject to income tax.  I know some of you are wondering how much taxes I have to pay.  Are you ready?  I have to send in a total of $31.45 of collected sales tax this quarter.  Between my two book signings, blog sales, and other paperback sales, I personally sold 37 paperback copies of Requiem.  If you want, you can always hit that "Buy it Now" button on the right and add to my tax burden if you want.

So the other day I was drinking beer with my editor and she was complaining about the fee's involved with having a VISA machine.  I had to agree, they were depressing and that is why I am a big fan of Square.  Then there were the complaints about banking fees.  Again I had to agree.  Once the rant was finished I said.  I can only hope one day that the fee's and limitations become an issue.  In fact, they should be goals you try to attain. For example, if you exceed $5,000 sales in a single day.  Square will only deposit a maximum of $5,000.  You will have to wait a day to get the rest.

Oh darn.  The day I sell 334 or more books in one book signing or event to break the $5,000 mark and I have to wait an extra day to see the rest of my cash is one I can't wait to happen.  And if it becomes to big of a hassle, you can call Square and explain and they will raise this limit.  The day I have to call Square because cash is so backed up that $5,000 a day just isn't enough to get caught up is another happy day.

My bank has a similar setup.  Cash deposits of $5,000 or more are subject to a fee.  Guess I will just deposit $4,999 and come back the next day to deposit the rest.  What a rough life it would be to have to visit the bank every day to make a $5,000 cash deposit.

So with that good news, I have to do some self promoting here.  That spike in sales I talked about last time after I had my book signing.  Requiem came so so close to breaking into the top 10,000 of the Amazon ranking. 10,630 is where it topped out at.  My bingo card has a square on it that says its under 9,000 on it.  (a joke for the it's over 9,000 meme).  That square is going to get crossed off!

Congratulations to the latest winners of the Requiem eBook a Day Giveaway.  It's almost over with only three more to give out so time is running out if you haven't signed up.


Sept 23 Mav
Sept 24 Kathy Jones
Sept 25 Andy Maestas
Sept 26 Kim Miller
Sept 27 Purna Thanandabouth

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.

One Success at a time.

One of the nicest things about being self published, is the fact that your success is directly related to the effort you put in.  It's also not tied to anyone else's time tables or agendas.  When I look back to March and remember the things I had in mind for The Eternal Gateway trilogy, having my book for sale in a book store was a listed goal.  Knowing that I would be taking the eBook route it wasn't very high up on the list.  When I made the paperback version of Requiem, I went with Lightning Source.  I liked that it was tied to Ingram and they were the POD company cutting out all middle men like Create Space or Smashwords.  Well, over the weekend after a few weeks/months of hard work and social engineering, Requiem is for sale at Barnes and Noble.  Not the web site.  The brick and mortar store you have to walk into.

It's not the best photo of me, but that's not the point.  No major publishing contract, no years of rejection letters.  Just hard work and my book is right there, on the same shelf.

This coming Saturday I will be having my second book signing in Hagerman.  There is an Arts and Crafts show and a Car Show going on at the same time so hopefully the increased foot traffic will result in more exposure and sales.  Vista Print offered 100 postcards for free (I had to pay for shipping).  I had them made up to sign and hand out to people who own eReaders and would still like something signed from the author.  They look great with the cover on one side and the back has the blurb, isbn, website, email etc.

Last week I made good on my writing goals as well.  Guardian more than doubled in size from 16,000 words to 35,000 words.  It felt really good to see it grow.

Congratulations to the following winners of the September Requiem eBook a day give away.  The month is almost half over so if you haven't signed up yet. There is still time.


Sept 7, Philip Brennan
Sept 8 Luis Stands
Sept 9 Jaime Winterwerb
Sept 10 John Russell
Sept 11 Bart Webber
Sept 12 John Leavitt
Sept 13 Steven Black

Amazon's Digital Library and why this is the worst idea of the century.

There are a few things I want to discuss today.  First is the rumblings in the news about Amazon's Digital Library.  Basically if you don't know, its a book version of Netflix.  You pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee and you have unlimited access to the library on your Kindle (no print books).  It appears that this offering will become part of Amazon's existing Amazon Prime.  I have posted my opinion of it on the KDP forums already, but I want to talk briefly about it here as well.

This is a huge step backwards for indie authors, traditionally published authors, the Big 6 and Amazon in my opinion.  Amazon has taken the sledge hammer to the traditional publishing world by allowing anyone to publish their work through KDP.  Barnes and Noble followed and so did Apple.  As much as the Big 6 try to convince us it isn't so; digital publishing is the norm and paper is the exception.  Amazon and authors are making big bucks this way.  Even the Big 6 are making bank as they transfer back list and out of print titles to the e-format.

The greatest advantage this gives authors is that an eBook is forever.  In traditional print, assuming you even got the chance to publish a book, you had 30-60 days to sell and you either made it, or your books were returned or burned to make room for next months new books.  If the guy in New York passes on doing a piece about your book because there was a similar one last month, you failed and so did your career.  Here comes Amazon and  eBooks.  Now your book has a shelf to sell from until it takes off.  Visit Kindle Boards and other forums and you will see.  There are a lot of good books out there that took six months, a year, two years before they found their stride and started selling in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.  Numbers that make people drool and the best part is everyone wins.  The readers win because the book costs $2.99 instead of $27.99.  The author wins because they get paid $2 instead of $1 and Amazon sits back with arms open arms as the savior of the writing world raking in 30-65% of every sale without having to do a thing other than host a website.  Amazon didn't write the book, they didn't edit it, buy a cover, isbn number, market, promote or anything.

Now, Amazon wants to offer books as a rental subscription?  Screetch!  What!  Its like 7:00pm and your stopping the party?  The Kindle only came out in 2007.  Give it a decade for christ sake.  I pray that the Big 6 say no to this and I fear if they don't.  Why?  Because rental just doesn't work.  Look at libraries.  They run on donations and government funds.  Video rental stores have all gone belly up.  This leaves Netflix and Red Box.  Only reason Red Box works is there is no overhead, no store, no employees to pay, it's a frigging vending machine!  Even Netflix tried to push everything to streaming, and recently they lost the Starz library and raised all their prices.  Why?  Because $9 a month can't pay anyone for new content.  Rental is where things go to die, there is no life left, no money to be made.  The end.

I worked for Dell for 8 years and I saw them do some really stupid things to make something look good when it was a bad idea to begin with.  There is an Amazon exec who is in charge of Amazon Prime and this is nothing more than a way to boost Prime's numbers so he can look good and make his assigned metric and try and boost sales when they launch their iPad rival.  This will cost everyone money.  You, me, Amazon and the Big 6.  If you want to rent a book.  Support your local library and go there.  Your tax dollars already pay for this.

The marketing machine moves forward.

As August ends and we start to move into the final stretch of 2011 the pre-holiday marketing continues.  Kids are going back to school, Labor Day and county fairs are in full swing and life gets busy after the long summer days.

Promoting and marketing your work never ends.  It's a full time job if you let it be.  I posted on my blog earlier about the September e-book a day giveaway.  It can be found here if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, and let anyone you know who might be interested as well to sign up.  The giveaway also marks a shift in social networking for me.  I am going to move everything book related off of my own Facebook page to a dedicated page for SBJones Publishing.  Look for that announcement soon when it goes live.

I have set myself an aggressive goal for Guardian.  December 14 is my tentative release date for the second book of The Eternal Gateway trilogy and I am on track to finish well before that.

September also brings my second book signing.  I have been asked several times to have a book signing at the Fantastic Flea Market in Hagerman Idaho.  The venue is nice and every time I have been to the market, it is full of people.  September 17th is the day I decided on setting up a signing table.  The reason I chose this date is because Hagerman is also hosting a Car Show and an Arts and Crafts show at the same time.  The flea market brings in about 300 people every Saturday, but with these two other shows going on, there will be an estimated 6,000 people attending.  From the information I have been told, I should expect about a third of those people to also at some point browse the Flea Market.  How many of those people will pick up a copy of Requiem?  It doesn't matter, it's about getting out there and letting people know.  Of course I will be happy for every copy sold.

So this brings me to a question for the blog readers.  What would you write inside your book to a customer?  I have a couple like "Enjoy the read" and "The Gateway adventure starts here"

September e-book a day giveaway contest.

Starting September 1st I will be giving away one free digital copy of Requiem every day of the month of September.  Also every winner of the book a day contest will automatically be entered for a chance to win a digital copy of Guardian when it launches and there will be one grand prize winner who will receive a signed paperback copy of both Requiem and Guardian.

This contest is limited to residents of the United States.
This contest is limited to Amazon Kindle and Kindle device owners.
Don't own a Kindle? You can still enter with Kindle for PC, iPhone, iPad etc.
The Email registered to your Kindle device is important, this is where the Requiem e-book will be gifted to.
Incomplete entries will be ignored.

To enter, do the following.  Send an email to sbjonespublishing@gmail.com with the following information.

Put "Requiem Giveaway" as the subject line.
In the body of your email have the following information.
1. Name
2. Email address registered to your Kindle device.
3. Yes or No if you care to have your name announced on this blog, Twitter, Facebook etc if you win.

The Mage Council has been disbanded. The ruling class for a thousand years is dissolved after the War of Antiquities and technology gives rise to a new era.


Kail Kelly, a young man who has spent his life on his aunt and uncle's farm, finds himself in the middle of a desperate power grab by the last ruler of the Mage Council and a time traveling mage known as The Guardian who is trying to prevent the world from falling to darkness.


Angela Atagi, the mysterious woman born a thousand years in the past who also has the unique ability to fly, is given a second chance by The Guardian if she plays her part in the prophecy.


With the help of an unlikely group thrown together by The Guardian, including the captain of a prototype airship, they set about unlocking hidden powers on a journey that takes them across the world and to the edge of time.




Brain Melting Awesomeness:
Once I started reading this book I was unable to stop. A very well written story that combines steam punk fantasy and good old fashion butt kicking action. From start to finish this book is a nonstop thrill ride of epic proportions. I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a good time.


Can't put this one down until it's done:
This book is worth every penny just for the cover art. 
** Disclaimer ** 
Beware, once you start reading this book, you won't be able to do anything else until it is finished!


Fantasy Lovers Must Read!
This book was a great read, loved the characters and action. Highly recommend it.

One listed goal at a time. Advertising study coming soon

There are a million places that talk about the importance of goal setting.  I am sure everyone reading this has had at some point either read or been told this.  I am the type of person who likes to set goals and make lists.  I love lists, it keeps you on track, focused, and lets you arrange things in order of importance or efficiency.

Speaking of lists, my father ever sense I completed my first book Requiem has been trying to give me money.  While flattered, I don't need it.  Sure I budget and the project of writing a trilogy has been more expensive than I originally thought, it has brought in enough these last two months that I'm not broke.  So on weekends he would complain about how expensive it was to maintain the property in Hagerman.  Mostly the complaint was about time, but there are a lot of trees that have died, things break and need to be replaced.  I made a deal with my father,  I would come down one day a week (Friday) work and you can pay me, and that money will go to my book/writing/advertising budget.  This way he can give me money for the book and get something in return.

I told him to make a list of what he wanted done.  His response was that it was obvious what needed done.  While this may have been true to a point, I told him that it needed to be listed out.  The first three weekends were busy, there were a TON of trees that needed to be cleaned up, but once that was finished, the list got shorter and shorter.  This last weekend my mother and I were sitting on the patio drinking beer when he got home and he asked what got done.  I pulled out the list and there were a good twenty items on it.  Problem was none of them were his items.  I had helped my mom all day.  Sorry dad, but it wasn't on the list.

The money that I earned these last six weeks fixing up the place, I have ear marked for advertising.  Half of it is going to promote Requiem and the rest is being set aside for Guardian when it is finished.  Currently Requiem has had a Facebook ad campaign running since August first.  Once it is finished, I plan to write up a report about it.  Its not one of these "I had a $50 voucher Facebook/AdWords sucks" rants.  Its going to be detailed with full disclosure on the results.

Last week I wrote about DefCon 19, but there was another piece of news I wanted to share but it didn't quite fit for that post.  After six weeks, I finally got my first review for Requiem on Amazon.  I have four of them on the Barnes and Noble site but none of those are like this one.



Brain Melting Awesomeness, August 3, 2011
Once I started reading this book I was unable to stop. A very well written story that combines steam punk fantasy and good old fashion butt kicking action. From start to finish this book is a nonstop thrill ride of epic proportions. I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a good time.



I did make the rounds on a few message boards when I saw the review.  What I did not expect was that after letting people know about it, I had an instant jump in sales.  People were aware of my book, but had not purchased a copy until the review hit.  Sense then I have received a second five star review and a lot of congratulations as well.  I can now cross off the list where it says "receive good reviews".  Also I was able to cross off the list "Sell 50 copies".  Next up: "Sell 100 copies"

How is your list of goals coming along?

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?

Book signing results, becoming a salesman and DefCon 19.

First I would like to thank Rachna's Scriptorium for giving me The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award.  This was a nice surprise and set the tone for my whole book signing weekend.  Thank you again Rachna.


The book signing went very well.  The local paper did a nice write up in their community events page that came out Friday.  But the bigger surprise was the Sunday paper.  It wasn't big, but my book signing was printed on the front page of the paper!  How cool is that!  First my blog wins an award and two days later I'm front page news.


Once the signing started, I was a little nervous.  It's been almost two years since I last did any public speaking of any sorts.  It didn't take very long before the nerves settled and I had a lot of fun.  The part that stood out the most was a couple of ladies came in and one of them gave me a fresh cut rose.

In all I sold and signed 12 books.  For three hours on Saturday and three on Sunday it lands as a success in my book.  There have been several questions people have asked me over the last few days so I will repeat them here.


What kind of marketing did you or the cafe do?
It was setup about 2 weeks in advance, I sent a press release to the local news paper, I tweeted, set up an event on Facebook and plugged it about 4 times.  I told a lot of people in person, and I posted it on the events for our towns craigslist.


Would you be able to give us an idea of the overhead costs, revenue, and profits?
Right now I am still in the red overall for out of pocket expenses to what has come in.  However the book sold for $15 and it costs me $6.30 or so to have it made,  So each one made me about $8.  I made money doing this event, but not when you factor in all of the costs to produce a book.  This is my first book and it has only been on sale since June 20 and I only had paperbacks now for a couple of weeks.


Any weird/awkward/memorable moments?
The fresh cut rose bit stood out.


Any idea if you'll be doing more in the future?
I am working on getting one at the local Barnes and Nobles.  My sister works there but they have changed a lot of things lately.  The big thing is they won't order in POD/Non returnable books anymore w/o headquarter approval.  But what they will do is let you bring in your own books, run them through the register and they end up with a negative inventory.  The store then orders that many copies and gives them back to you and you get paid through your print distributor.


This upcoming weekend I will be attending DefCon19 in Las Vegas.  This will be my 6th year attending the conference.  They moved it from the Riviera to the Rio so it will be a new experience.  One of the ideas that I have is to get a custom tee shirt made that advertises my book.  I am going to take half a dozen copies with me and see if any of them sell.  Also I have some small cards made up that have the necessary information if they want to pick it up from Amazon or B&N.




Looking back, the book signing was everything I expected and hoped it would be.  If I could do anything different, it would have been to practice with friends or family.  Write out a script so when people ask, "What is the book about," or "How did you get it published," and other general questions, I would have had an easy answer for them instead of stopping and having to think of something on the spot.  Also if I had ten or more one liners to use other than "Thank You" or "Enjoy The Read" to write to people.  After the 4th book or so, I didn't know what to write down anymore.


I would like to hear about anyone else's experiences with book signings or if you haven't done one yet any experience that stands out with your book.

First Book Signing Event, Momentum and Music.

I have my first book signing event this weekend at a cafe near Hagerman Idaho.  It helps that I know who the owners are so I get 2 three hour blocks to sign my book on Saturday and Sunday.  I have done a little bit of free advertising with the local news paper and their community events, Craigslist, a Facebook event and Twitter.  From the responses for more information, I expect it to be fairly successful with 10-15 books sold and if I'm lucky I will sell out!

Look at that line!

Cutting back on the blogging and making the rounds on forums has helped with my writing.  Book two of my trilogy is coming along again.  I broke 5,500 words and I am on chapter four.  It feels good to get it moving again.  I wanted to have the rough draft finished in August but July just slipped away with getting the paperback produced and all the extra time it took to promote and market Requiem.

Something that I have been considering the last ten days with Guardian is to continue on and write Sentinel without stopping to edit Book two and make it ready for sale.  When I was writing Requiem the last 3 weeks I was on a huge roll and everything just poured out till it was finished.  Then the 5 weeks of editing happened and extra weeks of getting a book cover and dealing with the paperback and and and and.....  In other words if the momentum is there, I am not going to stop it.  I will carry that momentum into Sentinel.

Music plays a big part while writing.  I remember listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song for an entire day of writing.  The chapters were all action fight sequences between airships.  Right now I have found a few songs that help me get into the mood of writing.  Taking ten minutes to listen to a few songs while I read the last few paragraphs from the previous writing session really sets the mood.  For me it makes getting back into that groove a lot easier than dinking around for an hour or more before settling in for a good session.  Right now the intro theme song from the original World of Warcraft sets the mood for Guardian.

What do you do to get in the mood to write?

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.

Marketing things to remember.

This is the first week of reducing my blog time to once a week instead of twice a week.  The main reason is that spending two full days of the week to blog, browse forums, post, tweet, Facebook as well as read and post on all of the blogs I follow and find new ones to watch just takes too much time away from writing.  I ended up choosing Tuesdays to do this for two reasons.  First was at the recommendation of someone on the KDP support forums.  They said that they had worked for years doing charity work and said that Tuesdays by far were the days that people had a little bit of extra time as well as money to spend.  The second reason is that Tuesdays mark the day that new books get released to the markets.  Those two reasons made sense to me.

New release Tuesday brings me to the main topic of my blog today.  When I should have been writing, I was on the KDP forums Monday and there was a post from a frustrated author who could not find their book with out directly searching for it.  Their question was if they could not find their book, how would anyone else.  Her book Godhead was released on July 4th.  A Monday.  I spent about 20 minutes looking through Amazon to see if I could "find" her book.  I did eventually under the new in 30 days in the romance department.  That's when it hit me about the Monday bit.  There were 11 pages of romance eBooks that came out on July 5th.  And when I searched on the 11th.  Her book was on page 30 and it was only a week old.  In the end, my advice to her was that she needed to sell, market, and promote her work.  People are just not going to stumble upon it and to be aware of how the market works.  Her book got dumped on and had less than a day before it was on the bottom of heaping pile of new books.

My own experiences with this situation are similar.  About 3 days after Requiem showed up on Amazon, I was browsing around and came upon the discovery that a week later Random House was about to dump the entire back list of Star Wars books onto the market.  My book is primary sci-fi genera and secondary fantasy.  At first I said to myself "Oh man, this sucks."  But it didn't bother me past that because I had already been selling my book and it was doing well, with positive feedback.  But there was the thought that if I had known, I would have waited a week till after.

The book world isn't the only industry that works like this.  Take the upcoming final Harry Potter movie this week.  If your movie is now finished, there is a feeling of pride and anticipation to get it out to the world, but premiering your new movie the same weekend as Harry Potter isn't the best of ideas.  Waiting a week or two will be much better, or even holding off for a minor holiday weekend that has no competition.

As a self published author, all the decision making is mine.  My question to you is:  When you are ready to publish your next piece of work.  Are you going to publish on a Tuesday because that is the major new book day and will have the most people randomly browsing and they have new books on the brain?  Or will you wait a day to publish so your book has the longest chance of being seen on the new books list?  Or maybe just publish it on whatever random day it happens to be when it is ready?

Back to writing. Requiem paperback books ordered.

Finally back to writing.  I had not realized how much time had passed until I made an effort to sit down and write.  True, I have been busy with getting all the kinks out of the print version of the book, holiday weekend and family but still...  June 22 was the date on my save file.  Time will get away from you in a heart beat if you let it.

I sat down yesterday after lunch with the goal of 500 words.  This is a tiny amount compared to what I was cranking out with Requiem.  In less than an hour I had that goal beat and by the time I hit save for the final time, I had cleared 1500.  Chapter 2 of Guardian is taking a lot longer than I had planned and it is developing well.  One of the plot lines for Guardian is how do you take a character who in book one became a superman/chosen one with a lot of power and continue to have them grow as a character?  Simple, you have them grow mentally  emotionally and focus on relationships.  It has been fun to translate the classic heroes journey as an emotional journey instead of the physical one.

Other note, I approved the second proof copy of Requiem to Lightning Source and ordered my first short run of 50 copies.  I hope I can sell enough to break even as most will be giveaways to family, friends, and promotional gifts.  Math says I can give away 29 of them and I have to sell 21.  I am pretty sure I can manage that.

4th of July and my second proof.

Normally I blog on Monday, but it was a holiday so I spent that time soaking up as much solar radiation as I could.  Its good for Superman so i'm pretty sure its good for me too.  So what does an international selling author do on a holiday summer weekend?  (Thank you person in the UK for buying my book.)  Why they live the dream that's what they do.

The above picture is a little lagoon that is upriver from my parents place in Idaho.  It is only accessable by boat and there are a lot of rocks in that area of the river.  Rocks that every year mangle someones boat and this year was no exception.  Note to boaters.  Aluminum props break and can be replaced.  Stainless steel props don't break, but break drive trains and engines.  I took a PhotoSynth Picture of the lagoon as well.  The boats did not come out well because they moved while I was taking the shot, but it is cool non the less.

Back to the book world.  I received the second proof from Lightning Source for the paperback version of Requiem.  The chapter heading mistakes have been removed, and I increased the gutter by 0.08in.  It did make the book "longer" by a dozen pages or so, but it looks a lot nicer and easier to read the inside margin at the beginning and end of the book.  Later today I am going to give Lightning Source the green light and order my first run of books to sell/give away to those waiting without e-readers.  I am going to have to practice signing my name as SB Jones to.  I better start going to bed early for that.

Paperback proof

I received the paperback proof of my book the other day.  It looks good and it feels good to hold a physical copy of my work.  Lighting Source so far has been a great company to work with if you are going to do things on your own.  It took less than a week from when I uploaded the files correctly to having the proof in my hand.  There were a few minor corrections that I need to make to the interior, reorder a proof with changes and it should be ready to launch.  So my guess is this time next week, I should be approving the print and ready to order copies for myself to sell.  Before it shows up elsewhere via Ingram's catalog, that could be much longer.

This brings me to a topic for this blog post.  Selling books vs selling eBooks.  When I started my trilogy I had planned on both eBooks and regular books to be sold.  The idea of traveling around the country or world to shake hands and sign my name for fans seemed about as Hollywood as it could get.  Four months into writing, editing, formatting, researching etc. this is pretty un-realistic financially.  Well...  At least it is for now.  When it comes to numbers, selling a single copy of my book myself produces the greatest return.  If I were to attend a conference or book signing, I would have to sell 1.5 books an hour to make minimum wage.  That doesn't sound too hard.  But if you do the research, selling ANY can be hard.  For every person who had a good book signing of 10+ copies, there are 1000 that didn't sell.  I am still looking forward to setting up some signings in my local area and perhaps outside of that if I can combine the trip with something else like a vacation.

I think however that until the paperback shows up on Amazon and other online stores I will focus on selling the paperback online myself with either an e-bay store or just a simple PayPal account and email me if someone wants a signed copy.  I already have a good list of people who want to buy the paperback because they do not own a e-reader device.  Also by offering to sign any copies through my own store could be a little bonus.

This leads me to a marketing question for everyone reading.  In the end, I do not want to charge anymore for the book than I have to.  I priced the paperback at $14.15 so with Idaho sales tax it comes to an even $15.  This is for my own convenience on making change.  So at $15, what do you see as a more attractive buy?  A discount off the cover price and you pay shipping, or paying full price for the book and "free shipping"?  In the end math regardless of choice it will be $15.

Book cover photo shoot

Tonight finally we are going to get a photo shoot done.  The book cover has been aggravating to get done.  The first model was super excited and 2 weeks into the planning she up and disappeared.  An extra week and a half was lost trying to find out if she was still interested before I gave up and moved on.

The next model was ok with everything except her schedule was bad.  The earliest she was available would be July.  That was a deal breaker.

Next girl that said yes simply never replied to emails or answered her phone or returned voice messages.  Sigh... 4+ weeks into it now.

Another model was contacted and showed interest yet like the previous, just would not respond.

By now I was giving up on this cover idea and I have about six alternate covers sketched up that do not involve people.  I can only assume being a model is so unaffected by the current economy that offers can just be ignored.

Finally I have a model who said yes to the project and showed up yesterday to get fitted for costumes and props for tonight's shoot.  I am hoping it will be a lot of fun and the final product looks good.

If not, then I'm going to just bite the bullet and hire an artist.  My friend knows an artist in Texas who is familiar with the Steam Punk genera and has offered her services for a reasonable price.  http://jrfleming.wordpress.com/  J R Fleming.  Her 'friend' prices are almost cheap enough that I would just drop this current cover project and hand it off to her,  but between time and current costs involved, I need to see it through for now.

I think I will take some video and pictures of the shoot tonight and throw together a little something for YouTube.