My novel, Moving (a life in boxes), is now an ebook!

My newest novel, Moving (a life in boxes), has just been released as an ebook.The story is about a married couple, Jed and Lila, who are compulsive movers. For them, moving boxes, packing tape, and open houses are the ultimate aphrodisiacs. They meet on a moving day, Jed proposes on a moving day, and they end up moving 18 times in 18 years. They move for fun, to recover from tragedy, and for new opportunities—until Lila decides she wants them to put down roots, in Boston.  Her decision pushes their marriage to its limits.

This is a novel about a marriage challenged by wanderlust, regular old lust, obsession, infertility and adoption, and race. Really, it's a book for grown-ups about marriage and what happens when you and the person you married aren't the same people you were at your wedding.

Moving (a life in boxes) is available from Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble, for $2.99.  (You don't need to have an e-reader to read the book--at Smashwords you can buy a pdf that you can read on your computer, or you can read Kindle books on your PC with a free app.)

I hope you'll check it out and help spread the word.  Any actions you take--rating the book on Amazon or Goodreads, reviewing the book on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords, or mentioning it to your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter--will help this book find an audience.  Word-of-mouth from my friends and colleagues will be the single most important factor in the success of this book.  The word started going out yesterday, and I'm already grateful for the responses I've gotten.

first look at Moving (a life in boxes) cover

My novel, Moving (A life in boxes), is set to come out as an ebook in about three weeks, but I've got the cover now.  I'm super excited about it--it's just what I had in mind.  Much thanks go out to Keary Taylor of IndieCoverDesigns.com for all her hard work and patience, and to Katie Walt for her photography.  One of the best things (and also most challenging) about self-publishing is that the cover is really up to me.  In this case, I had a very specific image in my head, and thanks to Keary and Katie, I was able to get it.

Ebook pricing experiment continues for Tornado Siren

I'm still trying to figure out the ideal price point for the Tornado Siren ebook.  One of the nice things about ebooks is that it's super easy to change the pricing.  At the end of December and all through January, I lowered the price from $2.99 to $0.99.  I was curious to see if it would dramatically increase sales.  I did also have a little bit of PR bringing in some readers, because it was a featured read with a group on Goodreads.

Lowering the price definitely seemed to help.  Over the fall, sales had declined quite a bit--over the summer I'd been selling a dozen or so a month.  In September and October I sold about 9/ month.  In November, it was down to 3.  In December, after the price boost, sales went up to 15, and then I sold 32 in January.  (These are all numbers just for the Kindle.  The other platforms have fairly minimal sales.)

But based on my reading, a lower price isn't always a huge selling point.  So for February (and perhaps March), I'm going to try pricing it at $4.99.  I'm curious to see if that drops sales down to the bottom of the well.

Obviously, with selling so few copies, sales numbers don't greatly affect my income.  However, the difference in royalties at the various prices do add up.  Especially because below $2.99, the royalty on Kindle sales drops to 30% from 70%.  So at $2.99 I was making about $2/book.  At the $0.99 price, only 33 cents or so.  All those sales in January brought in about $13.  At $4.99, I'd only have to sell about 4 copies to make that same amount.  In my case, I'm more interested in gaining readers, but I do have expenses to pay.

Here's hoping that sales continue strong.  It's still a lot cheaper than when it was out in paperback (at $14.99).  But I'm not sure people will be as willing to experiment on an unknown title and author for $4.99.

We'll see how it goes.

pricing ebooks--conflicting advice

Pricing of ebooks seems like a tricky proposition.  Amazon encourages pricing ebooks at a certain level by offering higher royalty rates on ebooks prices between $2.99 and $9.99.  They pay 70% royalty on such ebooks, whereas ebooks between $0.99 and $2.98 only earn an author 35%.  This ends up being a lot less money earned.

But of course, the question is: will a cheaper ebook sell a lot more copies, and thus even out the price differential, while at the same time reaching a broader audience (and increasing future sales of future books)?

I've read lots of conflicting advice and opinions on this one.  There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal about author Darcie Chan and the success she's had publishing the her ebook, The Mill River Recluse.  In the article,

She noticed that a lot of popular e-books were priced at 99 cents, and immediately dropped her price from $2.99 to 99 cents. The cut would slash potential royalties—Amazon pays 35% royalties for books that cost less than $2.99, compared with 70% for books that cost $2.99 to $9.99. But sales picked up immediately. "I did that to encourage people to give it a chance," she says. "I saw it as an investment in my future as a writer." The strategy worked. Several reviewers on Amazon said they bought the book because it was 99 cents, then ended up liking it.

She took some other interesting and smart marketing steps for her book (some of which I might try), and also got some positive mentions on web sites that helped her start to sell a lot more books.  Sales started to grow fast.  So far she's sold more than 400,000 copies, earning more than $130,000.

Sounds nice.  My sales of Tornado Siren have not been quite that strong.  Not even close.  (Yet.) (Says the perpetual optimist.)  And sales have actually dipped quite a bit since the end of the summer, and now they're getting very, very slow.  (I've seen NO holiday season boost.)

Hm.  So, I wonder, should I lower my price to see if that will help boost sales?  It's been at $2.99, but is that making it hard to attract readers who have never heard of me?

And then I read this post on Joe Konrath's blog, a guest post by Elle Lothlorien, who writes about the opposite effect.  She found that raising her price on her ebook, Sleeping Beauty, from $2.99 to $5.99, helped boost sales, and made her a lot more money at the same time.  Her theory being that people don't value things that they don't have to pay as much for--so you enjoy your expensive cup of coffee from Starbucks partly because you paid more for it.  

For authors with one book, it’s worth considering creating “imputed value” first with higher pricing. With a decent novel, this will “prime the pump” with positive reviews from readers who are invested and who want to like your book. This in turn will lead to more sales.

I'm not exactly sure what to do.  The nice thing, though, about ebooks is that it's pretty easy to change the price.  I've been reluctant to do so, but it feels like I should try something.  So I'm going to experiment a little.  I'm going to try lowering the price to $0.99 for a month, and then try raising it to something above $2.99, maybe $4.99, and see what happens.

Tornado Siren e-book: progress report (2 months)

Tornado Siren has now been an e-book for a little more than two months .  It's been selling some copies, but certainly I'm not putting up anything close to Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking numbers (not even in the same universe).  No publishers are beating down my door to reprint the novel.  On the other hand, there are people actually reading the book again, and I'm making enough money to buy the family a pizza or two.

So, here are the sales numbers so far, by platform/version:

Kindle:  58 copies so far (22 so far in April)
Smashwords:  6 copies sold
Nook (Barnes & Noble):  2
Sony: 1
Apple:  1

Total:  68 ebooks (plus I sold two paper copies in this time period, too)


What little promo I did mostly was done in February and early March, so it's encouraging, and a little surprising, to see that the ebook is continuing to sell, even though I didn't have time to do any marketing in April. 

I'm still surprised by the absolute dominance of Kindle/Amazon over all other outlets.  I figured there'd be an imbalance, but 30-to-1 over Nook is pretty impressive.

Smashwords gives me numbers on how many people download the free sample (the first 60%) of the book.  So far, 62 people have read sample page.  I'm curious to see if the conversion rate of samples to sales will stay at 10-to-1, or change over time.  I'd love to know how other people do with their books.

John August recently posted sales numbers for his short story, The Variant, on his blog.  He's selling a short story for $0.99, and has sold 4,608 copies through Amazon since March 2009, with most sales coming in the first six months.  He's got a good platform to let people know about the story (he's a very talented screenwriter (author of Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and writes a very useful blog about screenwriting).  He also got his story out there two years ago, when the number of titles available for the Kindle was much smaller, so it was easier to crack the top 100 (which makes the title much easier for a casual user to find).  Nowadays, he's selling 10-45 copies a month, and The Variant seems to have a sales ranking similar to Tornado Siren, in the 30,000 range.


I'm hoping to do some more promo in May, to see if I can boost sales a bit.  But getting to Amanda Hocking numbers (she self-published nine e-books and sold more than a million copies in less than two years.  She just landed a print contract with St. Martin's for $2 million.  Here's the NYT story.) takes some serious time and commitment.  In the article, she says she jumped at the offer, not just because of the money, but because: “I want to be a writer,” she said. “I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation.” 


When making the decision to publish an ebook, if you want to avoid huge disappointment, I think you need to go into it with the right expectations.  Most people aren't going to sell more than a few copies of their ebooks.  Joe Konrath already had plenty of books in print before he starting selling thousands of ebooks and became one of the big promoters of self-publishing ebooks.  Amanda Hocking has nine titles for sale, and markets like crazy.

However, it seems to me that if you have an out-of-print novel, you don't have much to lose from trying to sell some copies as an ebook.  Before Tornado Siren went out of print, no one was buying it anymore--the only people reading it were in libraries (and not many of those).  After it went out of print, no one was reading it.  But in the past two months, I've picked up 70 new readers.  I write in order to have my stuff read, so at the most basic level, putting Tornado Siren out as an ebook has been worth it.

I might be able to increase sale a little bit with more marketing, but I'm not sure how much.  Probably a bigger boost would come from having more titles, but I don't have anything ready at the moment (I'm still hoping for traditional print contracts on the two novels my agent is shopping).  A little luck would help--if someone reads it and gets enthusiastic and start telling their friends and everyone they know, and they do the same, and then it clicks into the top 100 for a while, that might give a good bump.

I'll let you know what the next few months bring.

Tornado Siren part of Read an E-Book Week (and half off)

There's a time for everything, and apparently the week of March 6-12 is the time to read e-books--it's officially "Read an E-Book Week."  It even has its own web site, with the history of e-books (they've been around a lot longer than you'd think) and other information and special offers.

My little part of "Read an E-Book Week" is a special promotion through Smashwords for Tornado Siren.  For this week, you can buy the e-book version of Tornado Siren for half off ($1.50 vs. the regular $2.99) at Smashwords.

It's a fun story and now it's even on sale, and Smashwords lets you read a pretty sizable free sample, in a variety of different formats.  I hope you'll check it out. 

Tornado Siren is now an ebook! (part 2: the how to make an ebook)

So this week, I finally got my act together, after procrastinating for almost a year, and published Tornado Siren as an ebook.  Every time I read Joe Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, I felt more and more stupid for delaying.  But I was short on time, I needed a new cover, blah, blah, blah, excuses, excuses, excuses.

This week I finally just gave it and stopped doing all my other work and just decided to jump into the creation of a Tornado Siren ebook.

The first problem was that I needed a cover.  The text of the book was mine, but the old cover belonged to my publisher, Behler Publications.  And plus, the old cover was okay, but not great (and the print version wasn't a big seller, so maybe the cover wasn't helping much).  Plus, I needed a cover that would work as a much smaller image.  The original book cover was designed for a 8.5 x 5.5 inch book.  Ebooks are sold on the basis of thumbnail images (though, if you think about it, so are all print books sold on Amazon).

I talked to a neighbor who is a designer, hoping to get her to design it for cheap (I'd given myself a hundred dollar budget), but she was too busy.  Still, just talking about it helped generate some ideas.  So I spent a couple hours on photoshop, found some public domain tornado images, downloaded some new fonts, and put together a cover.  I'm still thinking/planning to find someone to help me do a better cover, but the one I came up with will do for now.  (That's it at the top of this post.)

Once the cover was done, I needed to format the manuscript for the various platforms.  Most important was the Kindle sold by Amazon, but I also wanted to have a version for the Nook sold by Barnes & Noble, as well as versions for any other reader.  For the other readers, I could use Smashwords, which creates ebooks in multiple platforms. 

The good news is that each of these platforms makes it pretty easy to upload your file and prepare it for publication.  This is especially true of books that are primarily text-based, like novels, without much in the way of tables or images.  The bad news was that my most recent version of Tornado Siren was in pdf format.  This meant I needed to buy a pdf unlocker.  I got DeskUNpdf from DocuDesk, since I already use their DeskPDF writer (all the time).  This gave me access to the file, but also meant I had a lot more formatting to do.

In addition, I also wanted to proof the book one more time (the printed version had one or two typos that had been bugging me for years), so that took a bunch of hours.  I resisted the urge to get into a full scale rewrite of it (since I have my hands full with two other big writing projects), but I did do some minor edits.

Once I got rid of text errors and ugly formatting problems, I was ready to format it for the publishing platforms.  Each one required something a little different.

Kindle
I started with the Kindle version.  I found some online help, from blogger/screenwriter, John August, in his blog post "Kindle formatting for web geeks" and also from Joshua Tallent's Kindle Formatting site.  The key takeaways from these sites were 1)  Keep it simple.  Try to strip away any formatting possible from the document (including fancy fonts, headers, footers, page numbers, etc.).  2)  For the Kindle conversion, I needed to have Word save my doc as a "Web site, filtered".  This second point proved very helpful.   I also discovered from Kindle forums that to get page breaks before Chapters, I needed to take out Section Breaks and replace them with plain Page Breaks.

The Kindle site  allowed me to preview my file, to make sure I didn't have any big errors showing up.  The preview is rough, but close enough.  It took me a couple tries, to make sure I had nothing strange showing up.  I had a printed version of the book already, which reminded me to make sure I had a copyright page and the other various info I'd need in the text.  I shifted the acknowledgments to the back, because I wasn't sure how much front matter Kindle users would be willing to page through.

Once I had the document together, I entered my summary, bio, cover, tag words, genre (I chose Fiction, general, and Romance, paranormal), the price, and all the info I'd need to get paid.  Seems like I'll get paid monthly, about 60 days after the sale goes through, if I earn more than $10.  I chose to price my book at $2.99, of which I'll earn 70%.  Then I pushed the Publish button and I had to wait about 36 hours before the book was live and for sale.  Now that it's up, I can check on the my sales whenever I want, which is another big difference from print publication--with Behler, I'd get paid once a year and there was no easy way to check the progress of sales to date, and even though my book was on Amazon, there was no way for me to track Amazon sales, other than through its sales ranking (which is a strange mysterious number that new authors follow obsessively).

So now it's online, at http://amzn.com/B004NSV4M8
I had one sale pretty quickly, and Tracy and I bought a copy to view on her Droid phone, just for kicks.  I was not able to enter editorial reviews from the printed version, and it doesn't seem to want to link any of the reader feedback from the printed version to the Kindle version, which is kind of annoying. 

It's hard to tell exactly how to make this book easier to find on the Amazon site.  It probably needs to sell a bunch of copies and receive a bunch of positive ratings, in order to start moving up in any search results.  Right now you'd have to know exactly what you were looking for to find it. We'll see if I can find a way to make it easier.

The Nook
This was my second priority, though I'm not sure how many people actually use Nooks versus Kindles.  I'm guessing it's a lot less.

The Barnes & Noble Nook publishing site is called Pubit, and it was pretty similar to the Kindle site and very easy to use.  The formatting for the Nook needed to also be very clean, but in this case, I saved the document as a Word 97-2003 doc.  And rather than Page Breaks before chapters, I needed to insert Section Breaks.

One plus of the Nook interface is that I was able to enter some of the editorial reviews that Tornado Siren received, but unfortunately, I couldn't enter the Publisher's Weekly review, because I don't have a name of the reviewer (which stinks, because a PW review would lend some credibility).  The cover size was also a little different from that of the Kindle, so I needed to work up a slightly larger cover.  I also had more room for the description of the book and the author bio, which was good.

I posted it to their site yesterday, and in less than 24 hours, it was live, here. 

Like the Kindle, the Nook offers a dashboard for authors/publishers, to make changes to the cover, descriptions, price, even the book text.  For some reason, even though I have a live link and can get to the page myself where someone can buy the book, it doesn't show up on the B&N site when I just do a search for "Tornado Siren" in NookBooks.   I'm assuming this is because my title hasn't been populated into the database yet, but I hope it happens soon.

I never had a sense that the print version of Tornado Siren sold many, if any, copies on BN.com, versus many hundreds of copies on Amazon.  I'm very curious to see if the NookBook version is able to sell anything.


Smashwords
This site has been around for a while, and they publish e-books in a wide variety of formats.  Smashwords offers a healthy royalty on books sold through them (85%), plus they sell through other resellters, like Apple, Sony, Apple, and more.   Their "meatgrinder" conversion engine allows you to upload one file, and then they translate it into the different formats required.  In order for this to work, your document has to be very minimally formatted.

To help you get it right, they put together a 72-page guide (that you can read on line) to guide you step-by-step through the process of formatting and publishing.  I followed each step, exactly as they set it out.  For Smashwords, I had to take out all page breaks and section breaks, giving up the notion of a clean page break between chapters.  Otherwise, the formatting was fairly similar to that needed for the Nook (the file was a  Word 97-2003 doc).  They are very specific about what you need on your copyright page, and had some great suggestions for other material you can include at the back of the book (author bio, contact info, etc.).

Again, like the other platforms, I uploaded my various info, cover, and hit the button.  My file converted with no problem, in a couple hours, and is now for sale on the Smashwords site, here:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42708

It is now awaiting being given "premium" status, which means they'll distribute it to other sites (Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Apple, and Diesel).  It'll take about a week to get approved, and after that it could take another 2 weeks or more to appear on these sites.

They also sold me an ISBN number for $9.95, on credit versus my future Smashwords royalties, which was required in order to be carried by the Apple and Sony ebook stores.  (I couldn't use the print ISBN number for the ebook).



What next?

It was pretty easy to get all of this done.  If I'd started with a clean Word file, it would have all gone a lot faster.  I also spent some time tweaking my description and bio. 

The really cool thing is that I can go back and upload a new cover, or summary, or bio, whenever I want.  And I can easily track sales.  If I get any.

That's the big question, of course.  Will anyone buy these ebooks?  Smashwords is pretty upfront about this on their site FAQ--they don't suggest you're going to sell many books.  It all depends on marketing and luck.  I have a limited amount of time/energy/money available for marketing at the moment, but I'll definitely work hard at spreading the word to friends, family, and other contacts.  Smashwords actually offers its authors a very sensible marketing guide (available for free, online), which I found helpful.


I'll let you know how it goes.

Tornado Siren is now an ebook! (part 1: the why)

So, first, my big news:   my novel, Tornado Siren, is now available as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, and other formats (via Smashwords).

Tornado Siren was originally published by Behler Publications in January 2006.  Behler is a small publisher just in its second year when they picked up Tornado Siren.  I did what I could to promote the book (detailed in a previous blog post here), and we sold a small amount of copies (not nearly as many as we'd hoped).  Last year the book went out of print.  It had stopped selling, wasn't in bookstores, and Behler had not yet put out an ebook version.

I've been interested the idea of ebooks for a while, even though I don't own a Kindle or Nook, and don't know if I will.  The ability to distribute a novel or nonfiction book so easily and cheaply seems like a pretty amazing idea.  And obviously a lot of other people think so, too, because more and more ebooks are purchased all time time, with ebook sales rising fast.  What's especially cool is that you can tweak the marketing of an ebook easily--swapping out covers, descriptions, changing prices--to find the balance the works best.

For unknown writers (like me), ebooks offer a great chance at broader potential distribution and the ability to compete on price.  The complexities of printed book distribution, especially for small (and new) publishers, meant that my book was in almost NO bookstores, even after it was released.  The exceptions were stores that I contacted myself and where I had readings.  It was hard to sell books if they weren't in stores.  Having the book listed on Amazon made sales somewhat easier--hundreds of my friends, family, and contacts (and even people I don't know), bought copies through Amazon.  But even with discounts, the book cost more than $10, and readers had to wait, and they had to know about the book.  And wait.  And pay shipping.  And the price could only go so low, because so many people (publisher, distributor, Amazon, and me) needed to get paid.  On the sale of a printed book on Amazon, even at full price ($14.95), I tended to make about 67 cents per book.

I've been reading a lot about ebook publication, and Joe Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, was certainly the most enthusiastic.  He's has some amazing success with his genre fiction by publishing his own ebooks.  He's always been a good self-promoter of his work and is extremely prolific.  He was also very willing to share the numbers about how many books he was selling and how much he was earning.  (And I like numbers.)  His blog also features many guest posts from writers who are also having significant success selling their books at ebooks.

So why not publish Tornado Siren as an ebook myself?  I could have have waited for Behler to do it, but they didn't seem in any hurry to make that happen.  Plus, if I published it as an ebook myself, I'd earn a lot more on every sale.  For example, Kindle books sold on Amazon, can earn an author as much as 70% of the sales price (if they're priced between $2.99 and $9.99).  So even if I sold the book for $2.99, I'd be earning almost $2/book.


Most importantly, I'd have a chance for readers to start to find me again.  The book could remain continuously accessible (you don't even have to down an ebook device--you can read ebooks on your PC), for a very long time.  Plus, my book could now compete on the basis if price with books from established publishers.  Ebooks from the big houses tend to run around $10 and up.  I could price my book at $2.99 (or less), and cost would not longer such a barrier to a reader trying an author who's not a bestselling writer.

And it wouldn't cost me anything.  That's right, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords will all publish your ebook for free.

Still, I put it off for almost a year.  Which was probably a mistake, because getting in early means you get in when there is much less competition.  Thousands of new titles are being added every week.  The need for a  new cover and the general lack of free time in my life kept it from happening.

But in the end, the decision was easy.  What did I have to lose?  It would take some time, but not much money (maybe some money for a cover).  I could direct viewers of my web site and blogs to buy copies.  I'd continue to have a chance to read more readers.  And I could try new marketing strategies, new summaries, and even pitch the paranormal love story aspect of the book more actively.

I'm not giving up on print publishing.  I have an agent who is pitching two of my newest novels, and I desperately hope she'll find publishers for them and that they end up in bookstores across the country.  But for Tornado Siren, this seemed like the way to go. 

I'm trying to temper my fantasies.  My book isn't going to sell like Joe Konrath's stuff.  But even if I find dozens or hundreds of new readers, I'll come out ahead.  (Maybe I can make enough to buy the kids some pizza.)  And maybe those new readers will come back and read some of new novels, when they're available.

(next: the how)