Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 15

Boxsets, book bundles, and collections, Oh, My

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Have you considered creating boxsets, bundles, or collections in order to move more digital books? These are different than anthologies (which I’ve participated in for a while, now. Anthologies are generally themed collections, whereas bundles might or might not be themed and come from a single author, or multiple authors and are usually created for one or more of  a variety of purposes. Here’s some of the reasoning that made me decide to create my own.

I’ve recently been turned on to the idea of putting together ebook box-sets/bundles for my fiction, especially those completed works I have in a series. Part of this is because of the success I’ve seen Mark Dawson (of Self Publishing Formula) have with them as a way to get his pitched books for mailing list adverts to break even. The other half of my decision has been from research within KDP Rocket—most of the titles I see grabbing #1 ranks or pulling in significant sales revenues within the types of keywords I’m researching have been box-sets.

Joanna Penn notes several other reasons why they are good ideas. Not only do they represent a great value to readers but they are also easier to market. Plus, it’s a good way to breathe some new life into a backlist title that might be languishing. My favorite reason, however, is the Netflix consumer mindset. People like to binge watch shows and readers, similarly, want to plow through a bunch of like content—it’s why books in a series really begin to sell their best after books 3 or 4 are completed.

There are other reasons and methods, too. She discusses the options of using a super-cheap, heavily loaded booklist to crack into a bestseller list or new market. There are cautions and caveats with that, but it’s a viable strategy.

One issue to be certain of is Amazon’s TOS. Obviously, you must have rights to post a boxset (in the event of a multi-author one) but I’m looking mainly at single-author sets to publish myself and for a few varied purposes. If you put a boxset into KU, you will need to ensure that each book in the boxset obeys the Kindle Unlimited guidelines. You cannot release the books individually and “go wide” with your distribution and then lump them together to also gain the benefits of KU. (If you could, it’d be a great way to get page counts up for KU money while skirting the mandate for being “exclusive” to Amazon.)

Another word from Dawson’s SPF course regarding bundles: he recommends authors use 3d graphics of boxsets, even though it’s a digital product. In his research, it increases sales because of the seeming tangibility the image gives. I tried to set up my page as similar to how he suggests in his course as possible. If you’d like to check it out, just click this link.

 

Review of The Dinosaur Lords

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This high concept novel seems it has such an amazing potential. George RR Martin himself called it “Game of Thrones meets Jurassic Park.” I first discovered it while scavenging the bones of a failing bookstore chain like a procompsognathus during its “going out of business” sale. It went on my Christmas reading list… and there it stayed. Despite it’s amazing potential, Victor Milan’s Dinosaur Lords took me a year to complete. That is not my norm.

There’s a lot to like about this series, but first, there were several things that bothered me.  These were the reasons that it took me so long to complete the book.

First: Milan is long-winded… severely so. Very often he would take pages and pages to get where he was going.

Second: it felt like Milan was more concerned with world building than he was with his story telling. When high fantasy writers make up words and build societies, languages, peoples, etc. it’s usually from scratch. However, Milan’s is obviously based on existing people groups like the Spanish, Italians, etc. He spends an inordinate amount of time to make sure that we get steeped in cultures that don’t seem to manage to the story.

Third: language. And grammar. Milan often writes. Like this. Often. As a novelist of similar types of books, it continually baffled me that his editor didn’t straighten it out. In some situations, writers can break rules in favor of stylistic  methods like this—but Milan often uses them when there is little cause to, making his writing and editing feel lazy.

Fourth: Characters. There are two primary storylines happening at the same time—there is very little connecting them in the story (except for in the beginning). They likely converge in later books, but one of the stories I didn’t care for—it was filled with characters I didn’t like and took up more than half of the story (Jaume and the excessively whiny princess.)

I DID like the plotline between Karyl and Rob. They had a certain kind of chemistry and a Wheel of Time kind of feel to their story arc. Their struggle was what kept me reading.

When the world building was done right, it was spot on. There is certainly a larger world in the mix between the gods and grey angels and books of history. When it didn’t suffer from the above issues, it was great: that’s the book I wanted to read.

While it was overall enjoyable and the writing really sticks with me, I don’t think that what I liked about the series is enough to get me to read the next two in the series. This will be a book that was fun—but left too much on the table for me. I often compare books to it, for what that’s worth. Maybe you’ll like it more than I did.

Phenomenal potential for this high concept tale—but one that ultimately fails to shine like it should.

You can pick up a copy of this book by clicking here!

State of Writing

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Last week I got my new fantasy, Ashes of Ailushurai off to the trademark holders. This book. Is. Awesome. I rather surprised myself with some of the subtle themes that thread through it, though it’s written as something of a coming of age quest in a very D&D like world (which is in a trademarked universe). Like most of my books, it really spiraled into something all on its own and I’ve got more ideas than I can reasonably pack between the pages… that may lead to an eventual two more books. I’ll wait to make any decisions for a while. I need to let the trademark holders and their team look over it first to see if it’s a thumbs up or down or needs significant changes to make it into a shared universe. Mums the word until then.

I’m still spinning my wheels somewhat on my audio book recording for Wolves of the Tesseract 2… I’m at about 70% done… I just keep bouncing back to other projects that are also very important and timely. My goal is to record at least 5 chapters this week.

I’m up to 4 chapters on the final Dekker’s Dozen (all of those prequels I’ve been writing are in one series called The Armageddon Seeds. I hope to be at about 30% completed by the weekend, in addition to those audio chapters. Most of my writing plans and goals are already mapped out for the entire year. We’ll see if I take any major detours, but my next two major goals are the audio book and the scifi in the works right now.

How to Double+ Your Number of Keywords

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You get 7 keywords/phrases for your books on Amazon. Want more? Would you like to double that number, quadruple it, or more? Then read on!

I interacted with an author in my circle who wondered about the necessity/effectiveness of the Keyword blanks on their title’s listing wondering if they were even all that effective. “Who even searches unknown authors by keywords” they asked. Pretty much everyone, according to the data. I pointed out something that not a lot of authors know: the book description is not searchable. You could try and load your book description with as many keywords as possible, and it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans… you only get your book Title and seven keywords, so you’d better use them and use them wisely.

Prior to that interaction I had asked if others in my group had tried doubling their keywords by using different sets on linked ebook and paperback. Consensus was that it was a wise idea.

The method:

In theory, you have one listing on Amazon (in reality, you have 2, 3, or more depending on your setup with multiple tabs that are linked together—the paperback and ebook being the primary ones.)

You get 7 keywords on the KDP ebook listing.

With the takeover of Createspace by KDP, you now have 7 keywords for the paperback (Createspace only had 5). Since any hits on results from the combined 14 keywords brings you to the same place, you can get creative and spread out your keywords. The main drawback (which is negligible in my opinion) is that customers might search only in the Kindle section of the store which would eliminate those keywords found in the paperback version—so I’d try and split your top performing keywords between the two formats to maximize your odds of discovery.

Another author said that she had a multi-book series and actually used different ones across her books which were linked by her series page. It might dilute the potency of those keywords, but it maximizes her discoverability. The net is broader, but the mesh might not be quite so fine—still, there is a certain amount of logic and I might try it, but still leave my best keyword or two on all formats and on all books in the series.

Wise usage of your keywords would include doing some research into what keywords are performing best. There are a few ways to do that. I have invested in purchasing KDP Rocket, software that helps search the keywords to find high performing ones and target competitive search terms. Another option is to have someone else do the research for you. You could hire someone to do the leg work for you on Fiverr for just a few bucks, or you can pay about a hundred bucks for KDP Rocket. Either are options, but you’ve got to keep those keywords in mind. People can’t buy your books if they never see them.

Review of Firefly: Big Damn Hero

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One of the things I wanted most for the holidays was to take a day or two and sit down with this new Firefly book. Mission accomplished. Big Damn Hero (and I’m assuming the subsequent two books) takes place immediately after the Firefly series ends and in that period of time between the show and the movie Serenity.

There were many things to love about this book by James Lovegrove. There was a fair amount of other involvement as well, including oversight by the Wedon himself.

First things first, I loved the book. One of the neatest things about it is what I call the Morgan Freeman effect. If you see a meme with Morgan Freeman’s picture, all the words will sound like his very distinct voice in your head. The book had that same thing going on since we all know and love the characters. The author did make overt tempts to preserve this inner voicing and, for the most part, did so very successfully.

One of the things that seemed a bit clunky was the insertion of some stock material, especially in the first third of the book, to refresh the reader on exactly what Firefly is all about. If you talk to ancient language scholars about literary “seams” where it appears redactors or editors changed or added material, you will get what I mean. Some of that data seems like it was inserted editorially for the benefit of the uninformed. That’s fine, but it came off like it was written after the fact (at least in a different voice.)

About a third of the way through it also felt like the story really bogged down in dialogue—more dialogue than is normally expected in an action tale like this. But hey, at least it was all in the voices of characters we know and love.

If you love Firefly, this is a book that you really ought to get in order to keep that universe alive and spinning. You might also check out the Dekker’s Dozen SF series which bears some similarities. Overall, though, this is one that I highly recommend and which will remain in my book collection.

You can pick up a copy of this book by clicking here!

 

 

State of Writing

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I spent most of the last two weeks working on the business end of writing related projects. While my mailing list has been operational for a while, I trimmed over 500 names off the list for inactivity and reworked all of my workflows (basically, I made it better, cleaner, and it offers better content) all in preparation for a future ad campaign as I try to get bigger and better in 2019.

My mailing list now offers 5 free books for signing up. You can get there by clicking here.

I also got a few of my series set up in boxsets (in addition to launching my newest SF book in the Dekker’s Dozen series). Oh, and I read a lot. Couple of novels for my own enjoyment.

Hopefully, by next week I will have final edits on my current draft ready for review by the trademark holder and then I’ll know if I have good news to report. It’s over half done at the moment… and then its on to my next SF project J

The Secret Trick to Contacting Amazon or KDP Via Telephone

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It’s Christmas time, so I’m going to give away something that, in certain moments, will feel infinitely valuable: the way to contact Amazon via telephone. I had to fight a minotaur and purchase this info with a chest full of cursed Aztec gold. If a simple, 4-step method (to have you on the phone with Zon in 60 seconds) is the kind of thing you’ve been searching for, then read on!

There are a few things that you need to have in place in order for this to work… but as an author, you probably have them already: an amazon account and a Kindle Direct Publishing account. You will also need to have your account set up in Amazon’s Author Central. If you haven’t played around with Author Central, you are really missing out—get on that ASAP.

Step 1: log in to Author Central.

Step 2: Click Help in the upper right hand corner.

Step 3: Click Contact

Step 4: Select any kind of issue on the drop down menu and select Phone under contact type and verify your phone number. The customer service line will ring you up in a few minutes and connect you. If it’s not quite the right department they will connect you (if it’s a KDP issue, they will put you on hold and connect you to their support department.)

Short and easy… no more waiting around for days to get a vague, copy/pasted response via email. Don’t abuse it, for sure, but when you simply must talk to a human, this is the easiest way I’ve found to do it.

If this sort of thing is helpful and you want to support me as an author, signup for my mailing list! (You’ll even get a free book just for signing up)

PreOrder new Sci-fi Now!

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I wanted to let you all know that the newest Dekker’s Dozen Story is available for preorder now! Get it by clicking here!

It should also be available right away via Audible as well and will drop on the 27th of December.

The Importance of Digital File Size at KDP

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I recently ran across an author who was frustrated that she could not price her ebook at .99 and had reached out to ask why. After some looking around, it seems like there may have been a built-in safety tool to prevent Amazon from losing money based on their terms of service. If there’s anything that the almighty Zon hates, it’s losing money. Ultimately, it comes down to digital file size, and regardless of what anyone else says, size matters.

It may be worth noting (like in a cash-value sense) that when KDP encodes your file into their digital format it tells you what your file size is. Most people miss that detail, it’s item #2 on the graphic. Many authors I’ve heard from say that KDP doesn’t always  encode it at a conservative rate; one author reports a file being a few hundred kilobytes but coming out at a couple megabytes at KDP (like 400-500% larger). That may be part of the format difference, or a variety of other factors, but those author also report re-uploading and then getting a better file size, so sometimes we can only blame it on a glitch in the matrix. Also, KDP has a 650MB maximum size, in case you have a graphic intense comic, graphic novel, or photobook that is being blocked for size reasons.

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The above graphic is from a short how-to guide that has several graphics. Item #1 shows the royalty rate, #2 is the file size, and #3 shows the delivery charges. You can experiment with these numbers, but here’s the rub: the 35% rate will get you free delivery of your electronic data, but the 70% rate will not. Depending on your market, it could be possible to have a book cost you money to sell (plus not be available on other platforms because of exclusivity in the TOS… I have a book costing me money right now, in fact. I’m waiting for a response from KDP Support, but suspect this is the cause.) Below is the data from KDP’s guidelines.

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It is important to keep these figures in mind when you finalize your products! Yes, this is an un-fun side of writing: the business angle. Derek over at Creative Indie notes that reconverting his files has saved him hundreds of dollars annually, and he recommends a program that I also use quite often for converting files: Calibre. Its conversion results are usually far smaller in file size than that given by the KDP automated system.

In addition to re-converting with Calibre or other software, you can reduce image resolutions, clean up extraneous encoding, and remove embedded fonts (or save only the parts that you need, also an option in Word’s settings.) Little things make a big difference if you begin to sell lots of digital copies.

While this sounds like it might be more work than you want to do, there is an easy solution if you’re not a do-it-yourselfer: outsource it to someone on Fiverr!  People are willing to do it there for as little as $5. I use Fiverr freelancers often and I’m usually happy with the results.

Review: The Terran Privateer

[image error]I finally got to my review of The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart which has been in my TBR pile for a few months, now. Stewart writes a number of book series, like myself, and they all have beautiful covers.

Something about the early interplay in the dynamics between characters gave me a Battlestar Galactica vibe (the new version). While Terran Pivateer’s plot isn’t exactly original, that doesn’t make it less enjoyable. The indie world has a number of great SF writers, including Stewart (and also guys like Mark Cooper, and Jay Allan)…

Stewart’s writing had much in common with Victor Milan. I would suggest that there are some areas that could be tightened up (the last Milan book I read I wished his editor owned a red pen) but the genre is forgiving and allows for a writer to take some extra leash.

Glynn Stewart writes several “universes,” so if you’re looking for a new sci-fi to read, particularly a military SF, this might be a good series to pick up.

If you’d like to check it out, it’s over on amazon by clicking here.