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.

Gearing up and Kickstarter

November only has a few days left and I am getting ready to start all of the formatting and converting of the second novel.  I am awaiting feed back still from two beta readers is all, however regardless come December, I will be moving forward with the book to meet its Dec 15 release date.  Be on the lookout for an updated "How to Convert Your Manuscript" post in the next few weeks.  The first one I did in June has been viewed almost 1,000 times since I posted it.

Part of me still wants to take December off, but over the Thanksgiving holiday, each day that I didn't do anything with writing, promoting, or marketing the books just felt like a wasted day.  Next week will be busy with polishing Guardian, but the rest of December...  I don't know.  I think I will get a jump start on re-outlining the final book in the trilogy titled Sentinel, and if I have time, start writing the first 10,000 word short story  for Hyperion.  Its current working title is "Girl in the Clockwork Dress".  We will see, there is still a lot of Skyrim to play and World of Warcraft just put out patch 4.3 and I am looking forward to the Well of Eternity 5 man.  Distractions distractions distractions...

There have been a couple of interesting posts on KindleBoards the last week.  Both involved the website Kickstarter.  One thread quickly spiraled out of control, and the other thread was much more productive.  This got me to thinking about a way to setup and generate pre-sales of your book.  Unfortunately PubIt and Amazon's KDP do not allow a way for you to launch early, set up a pre-sales site or even set a release date other than the day you upload your files and that is sketchy at best.  You could use Kickstarter for this.  I have not spent too much time on the site, so I am not aware of all of the nuances, but if you were getting ready to launch a book, Kickstarter might be something to try.

Lets look at Requiem hypothetically for a moment.  There are a lot of costs involved in setting up a title.
Two ISBN numbers: $50
Cover Art: $300
Paperback setup, proof, catalog: $200
First run of 50 books: $310

There are more costs, but I won't count them for this example, like ink, paper, photo licences, vendor fees, postcards, costs of editing and time.  So just the basic setup fees to get a print run of 50 books ran well over $800.  The good news is by selling these 50 copies, I recouped my out of pocket money, but that was about it.  A lot of people don't have a lot of money laying around, so this is where Kickstarter comes in.  Set a goal, say $1,000 minimum.  For a $3 donation, you will receive a zip file containing the e-book.  For $15, you will get a signed and dated copy of the paperback as well as the e-book. And for say a $25 donation you get the e-book, signed paperback, and your name will be listed in the book under acknowledgments.  If you don't reach your goal, no one is charged and your project fails.  If you reach your goal, people can still donate until the project deadline launches.  So if you raise $3,000 you might just do a larger print run if more than 50 people want the book.

I didn't know about Kickstarter for Requiem, it's too late for Guardian, but I might try it as a pre-sales tool for Sentinel.  Seeing how it will be the final book in the trilogy, it leaves a lot of options for donations.  Say a discounted $5 for all three e-books.  $15 for the e-books and a paperback of Sentinel.  $60 donation for all three e-books and a signed matching set of the trilogy in paperback with an acknowledgement by the author. Too many options confuse people however.

Anyway, check out Kickstarter and see if its a tool you might be able to leverage.  Also if you haven't checked out my Facebook page, do so now and become a fan.