Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 25

State of Writing

 

The first book in my new series is DONE! The rough draft for Hoods of the Red Order weighs in at just under 50,000 words but I still plan to write the prologue and epilogue–though I hope to write the pro/epi for all 5 books at once since they tie the 5 together in continuity.

Lots of other big news. The Kakos Realm 3 is now live and available for purchase! Death Upon the Fields of Splendor should be available anywhere you get paperbacks… still working on the Smashwords edition that will push to BN, Kobo, etc. I should get around to audio by this summer.

Wolves of the Tesseract #2, Through the Darque Gates of Koth is also now completed. I want to launch that on June 1 and do a release party at my huge multiauthor event happening on June 9 at Har Mar Barnes and Noble.

I’m hoping to indulge in a few weeks of rest, queries for other books I’ve written, and short fiction writing now

How to get carried by Bookstores Pt.1

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I belong to a few writing groups. A question came up that often does and is worth looking at again.

“Can anyone help me with info on how to get into bookstores.”

There is nothing as rewarding as walking into a bookstore and seeing your book on the shelf. It’s up there with a random stranger saying, “I read your book.” As an Indie author, until you’ve peeled back this curtain, the process for getting carried on bookstore shelves can remain a mystery.

I’ve written on this topic many times before, but crawling through my backlogs of writing can be tedious and it’s worth bring to the foreground again since we don’t know until we know that we don’t know about a topic. Plus, I have tons of new followers since I last wrote on some of these topics. For some of you, you might consider getting my book The Indie Author’s Bible since it carries these articles in a pretty easily followed format… but I’ll link some articles at the bottom that you may want to revisit.

First, you ought to know about whether or not the bookstore is a part of a chain or is an independent. Oftentimes they will treat you the same, but many independent stores will carry unknown writers on a consignment basis.

Second, you need to know your book. Not just the story, but your book details. Write this down and keep these details handy. You need to know the following things before you begin looking any further: What is your ISBN? Is your book returnable? What distributors carry your book? What is the wholesale discount rate? Who is listed as the publisher? Is your book Print on Demand (POD) or do you have a print run sitting in a warehouse somewhere?

Bookstores are not usually scouring the internet and looking for new titles to carry. There are many advertising services that constantly pitch them with new books they could consider carrying. If you want to be on a shelf you will need to break through the noise and pitch yourself to the store manager in order to be a shelved title. That requires you to contact them and make a request (or if someone else has made a purchase request they might pick up an extra copy or two to carry.) The burden of contact is on you as the author (unless you hire a publicist who does this) and that will require you to answer those above questions.

Shelved Title

They will ask you for an ISBN right off the bat. It helps them look up your book. It will show them the details of your book. If it is not in their distributor network then they won’t be able to carry the title. If you are in Ingram, almost any store in the US will be able to get it in. But because they can access it doesn’t mean they will.

Many stores, especially those that are part of a chain, will only carry titles that they can return unsold copies. You ought to know what you look like to them;; if the publisher lists your name as the publisher it indicates that it is self-published. That is fine and doesn’t necessarily deter them, but if it lists Createspace you should know that it will probably be a no. Createspace only offers a 40% wholesale discount and does not allow returns. I only know of one store in my state that will take CS books and put them on shelves and they are an independent store.

Some stores will not take POD books at all. Books A Million is one such chain that has a chain-wide prohibition against them. It is to their detriment, and I’ve had BAM managers who wanted my books on their shelf and they pull hard to try and get around it, but it is a corporate policy. It’s worth knowing so you don’t waste precious time in vain.

For chain stores, the standard details that you want are as follows: an ISBN that lists anybody except Createspace as the publisher. Fully returnable books. Reasonably priced titles (if it’s $20+ for a paperback, it had better be over 500 pages and have a following). The wholesale price for the book should be 50-55% off of retail. The book should also meet all professional standards.

These are a pretty good norm to shoot for with any store, in fact. It makes you look more credible to bookbuyers who purchase for the store’s stock.

It’s worth noting that when you do a signing or an event in a store that has shelved you, they buy all of the copies you will sign. This means you make much less per book (and even less if there is a pile of books left over that didn’t sell and are destined to be returned) but you do not bring books with you. There should not be a table fee or any extra costs… you are essentially working for the bookstore to try an move your product which they are sourcing to customers. I’ve had some confused authors contact me for joint author events who didn’t understand this dynamic since they were only familiar with consignment based systems.

Consignment

for this option you will expect  to supply your own books from your personal stock and physically deliver them to the store (or pay for the shipping.) Many stores will want you to supply them with a copy far in advance to verify that the book meets quality standards. There are a lot of crappy books floating around like turds in the swimming pool.

The consignment rate is usually somewhere between 50-40% off of sticker price. This is something you want to watch out for, especially if you are with a small traditional or indie publishing house. That might eat up all of your potential profit on a book. Nobody wants to lose money on each book sold and it’s not right that everyone but the author makes money from the sale of his or her book. This is one of those things that you simply need to know about beforehand. If your publisher has $18 on your book and gives you an author price with a sliding scale of 40%-60% off retail depending on your copies purchased you may need bite the bullet and buy in bulk in order to not go underwater while selling.

You should also keep track of where you have books, what their rates are, and how often they pay you your royalties. Check in often. Stores do go out of business and when they do they’re not always great about returning their merchandise.

Special:

Oftentimes you can talk to local/regional managers and be carried on a special shelf or during special times when they have a “local author” spotlight. This may or may not be on a consignment basis.

 

Here are some of my older posts on these topics. If you are interested in this topic I highly advise you to check them out, and post questions and remarks in the comments section!

How to Line up Author Events at Chain Bookstores

Setting the Price of your Book (highly recommended—this must be done correctly so you don’t lose money with every copy sold!)

Books A Million and chain retailer dynamics vs POD publishers

How to Be a Rockstar at Booksignings

Book Returnability, Bookstores, and Createspace

 

We will continue this topic next week and discuss what practical steps you can take to getting carried on shelves once you have a handle on today’s info so be sure to follow this blog!

State of Writing

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Well, the good news is that I will definitely be finishing Hoods of the Red Order this week. Technically, I finished it already, but I wanted to add a foreshadowing segment that builds the characters up better and so I sketched out a small 1-2 ch subplot which I will write this week to complete the chapters of the book. (I have a prologue and epilogue forthcoming, but the epi/pro will stitch together to form a separate narrative that ties into the last book and gives the backstory of the major villain and a couple supporting characters in book 5 and so I want to write that entire piece as one and then break it into manageable chunks to split it up).

Over the weekend I blitzed down to Nebraska for some bagpiping and then back up to SD for another gig before returning home. I might’ve otherwise completed the book in its entirety. I have big plans for this week as well, including completing my publishing files for TKR3: Death Upon the Fields of Splendor and the TKR Alpha Collection.

Also, I am speaking at a library in New Ulm on Thursday and then again this weekend as a part of the Marshall Area Fine Arts Council on independent publishing. Hope to see some of your smiling faces there!

The struggle is real. Author’s, don’t ask for honest feedback unless you really want it.

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I have the privilege of offering support and feedback to many authors who query me through my site or through other avenues. Some of you  have probably even acted as beta readers, proof reviewers, or been asked for honest (even brutal) feedback. I appreciate it all–which is why I’m so ready to offer assistance to others.

The blogs that come out over at the CSPA often mirror many of my feelings. A recent blog chronicles the struggle of a new comer to the industry who asked for feedback, but really just wanted to hear “this is the best new thing since sliced milk!”

The author insisted that he did not want to change the font he chose for his title—that he liked it. He stated that he liked the interior layout because he had envisioned such a layout for a larger landscape book (however, this book was a traditional smaller portrait paperback). He kept insisting that he liked what he had done.

I suggested that if he had just published the book for himself and his family, that liking what he had chosen was perfectly acceptable and sufficient. However, if he wanted to sell this book beyond his small circle, as he had indicated to me, then he needed to make the book industry standard.

full article: https://marketingchristianbooks.wordpress.com/2018/04/05/i-dont-know-anything-about-publishing/

I’ve written about this before, but are you a writer or an author? I don’t feel they are necessarily always synonyms. Know your writing goals: ask the tough questions before you pick your publishing path, and even then, revisit the questions regularly along the way. Are you writing to be read by other people (author) or are only producing a book for your own pleasure (writer)?

Refusing to take quality advice (or try to see through the lens that seasoned professionals look through) typically means you are writing for your own enjoyment. There’s nothing wrong with that, but lets not kid anybody, you don’t have some secret idea as an undiscovered writer that will demolish a hundred years of publishing standards (for example, I recently turned down a book review request that was center formatted. I don’t know that it was intentional, but to be taken serious in this industry you are only allowed to color outside of the lines a little bit… use that freedom to engage in creative writing, not being clever with fonts, formats, graphics, or layouts.

Readers have certain expectations. Failing to meet those means you’ve failed to be a real author. You can do it, just put in a little more effort. It will be worth it at the end–I promise!

Be Careful With Facebook Ads

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Marketing is important. I’ve been mulling overdoing a blog about this for a while after reading Chris Symes’ article about Facebook ads (Why I Am Cutting Back on Facebook Ads). If you haven’t been following the news, they are essentially running out of ad space for Facebook Ads… this makes them less effective in terms of cost. FB still has some of the most powerful tools to help reach very specific target demographics. However, because the demand for digital real estate has increased (especially given Facebook’s announcement that they will even be reducing what has been available in the past) the cost per conversion is increasing well beyond that of feasibility for the average author trying to sell their books.

In her article, Symes says:

Right now, it takes a pretty healthy budget, a higher click bid, and some fancy targeting to have success with cold audience ads on Facebook. Remember, those are people that haven’t discovered you or your books yet. People who don’t know you from Adam. Most of the people I’ve talked with are spending upwards of $1,000 a month to get a return. Some more established authors and brands are spending as much as $5,000 or more each month. And they are making a profit. But how much profit? I know we see “income reports” from a number of different authors, but most of them are established bestselling authors.

She points out that NYT bestsellers are already selling well. Facebook ads are just a part of the overall ad package. In her own right Symes is an online marketing guru (I’ll be purchasing her marketing book for authors soon to glean info I may share in future posts,) and has some good advice for crafting a marketing plan for those of us without massive ad budgets and publicists that get us lattes while on hold with Oprah. (I tried to train my dog for these tasks, but she’s a terrible barista).

I recommend checking out her article. Some of her advice includes some practical outlets for advertising dollars that may be more cost effective alternatives to sinking money in targeted FB ads. They include Amazon Marketing Service and Bookbub (she didn’t mention it, but Bookbub is now experimenting with CPC ads like you could get on FB, except you know everyone seeing them are already looking for books). She recommends trying other sites such as Bargain Booksy, EReader News, and others (I’ve used some with varying success but would recommend avoiding the services that merely blast your ad to its millions of FB/Twitter followers… those are rarely successful and the discount services should have some kind of following on email in conjunction with their social media.)

I’ve shut down nearly all of my FB ads since January; they stopped producing and even cost me more than I was making. Work smarter and try to keep as much of your money as possible! For now, it seems like Zuckerburg has made Facebook a financial black hole for authors. You may be a marketing genius and able to do better than I can with Cost Per Click ads and are still seeing great returns. If that’s the case, contact me! I will straight up hire you to be my marketer (giving you full control over my SEO and whatever you need to replicate proven success,) and let you write a guest blog here. In the meantime, the smart money is to use FB only sparingly and with other objectives in mind than direct sales.

Review: Darling Girls

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Darling girls isn’t my usual kind of novel, but I do like vampire books and tropes. The setting and feel of Darling girls is more like Pretty Little Liars meets Vampires than it is Underworld. I’m more an Underworld kind of guy (so take my review with a grain of salt.) I also love White Wolf/WoD stuff and this book really has a World of Darkness kind of feel, but more with battles of intrigue than straight up adrenaline fueled slugfests.

That’s not to say that there is not blood and action. There certainly is, but the book also has plenty of plots and scheming and some elements of mystery. Thorne and Cross’s narrative shines particularly well in dialogue. During some of the action the text begins to wax passive, but that may be my editor brain frowning at verbiage choices (I especially noticed it in passages later in the book, so it may have been an issue of editing—the first 60% always gets more revisions than later sections—there were a few other minor things, but nothing that really took away from the narrative.)

I really did love this cover, too. It helped set the tone of the book.

I got a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review on my blog. I got a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review on my blog. You can get a copy of the book or check it out by clicking here.

State of Writing

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This weather is getting straight up ridiculous. Snow made me miss a speaking engagement for the Minnspec group in the twin cities (bummer—I was really looking forward to it.)

I did get my chapters done, however. Hoods of the Red Order is currently sitting at 20 complete chapters and 40,000 words (technically it’s already a novel… it’s just a little light.) Another two chapters this week and again next week and it’ll be done! After my current book is completed I plan to begin pre-work in earnest on launching TKR3 and work out final kinks on Wolves of the Tesseract 2 for May and June launches.

Reading has been slow, however. I don’t have any book reviews ready for this week. I’m overwhelmed with this other house project in my spare time and I’m only halfway through my next book. I anticipate finishing it this week and then maybe I’ll start on Beren and Luthien.

What I Wish I Knew About Audiobooks Before Choosing ACX/Audible

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Audiobooks are the next big thing, and ACX (Audible) has been a boon to DIY Indies, but not everything is as smooth and shiny underneath the gold-plated exterior. Here are some things you might want to be aware of before/if you’ve already waded into the system.

With audio established as the next big thing, I discovered a bunch of things I wish I knew before I had signed up for Amazon’s ACX/Audible service as an author.

Surveys and trends show that audiobooks are on the rise. As with so many changes in trends, it’s tied to the way that we consume information and is influenced by technology. Screen fatigue is finally a thing and consumers (including readers) are looking for ways to peel their eyes away from digital screens—this is why print books still dominate book sales—and it’s also part of the reason for a bump in audio. In fact, a 2017 report by the Audiobook Publishers Association found that 26% of the US population had listened to an audiobook in the previous 12 months. There is a wealth of great statistics from their 2017 survey that can be found by clicking here.

Last year, ebook sales dipped by about 5% while sales in audio increased again. There was also a 33.9% increase in the number of titles available and 48% of all audiobook users are UNDER THE AGE OF 35! (that means great things for its future viability and reflects the trend of listening to them via smartphone while multitasking).

I get a lot of questions from Indies about Audible/ACX and it was one of the primary reasons that I wrote my Indie Author’s Bible. Very often when selling directly at conventions I meet people with reading impediments such as dyslexia or partial blindness and those folks often still love to read and use audible books to do so. (I wrote an article showing the why and the how of getting onto Audible that you can see here. I also had a followup article you might want to check out.)

I got sparked back up on new possibilities after getting an email from Smashwords. Mark Coker, the owner, predicted a rise in audio for his annual year in review and future predictions for the upcoming year of 2018. One might think his email (promoting a partnership with a new audiobook service that ties into his Smashwords platform) might be him trying to fulfill his own prophecy, but I think he’s too smart to put that on him. He sees the trends and audio is big and getting bigger. Coker is a huge advocate for Indie authors—his entire system is built on their success. He has identified that the big publishers have also keyed in on this (that increase in audio is what is offsetting the decline in ebook and because the rights are different, they can capitalize on the format by skewering authors with subpar deals on rights.) He discusses the pitfalls here.

As I was digesting all of this data and looking into http://www.findawayvoices.com, the platform Coker’s Smashwords is partnering with, I signed up. I advocate utilizing both Amazon services and also Smashwords for broader distribution on ebooks. As I typically do, I actually read the TOS agreement (and you should, too). In publishing, rights are a huge deal, and Amazon often demands more than writers first realize.

Some of my audiobooks I am both author and engineer (created and produced the audio content) and some of them I have a rights sharing deal on (split proceeds with an engineer/voice actor). The latter is a great way to do almost no work and have an audiobook available. But what I discovered after revisiting Audible’s rights agreement gave me some buyer’s remorse.

Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate ACX for what it is, and likely would have still chosen to enroll at that time, but audio has exploded since I first signed up and started using the system a couple years ago. That means I limited my options for the future. New audio book distributors with broader distribution and decent royalties are popping up but I’m already locked into an exclusive contract for an Amazon property.

How long does ACX Audible take rights for? Seven years. Seven years! That’s longer than most celebrity marriages combined.

Can I change from Exclusive distribution to nonexclusive? Possibly. You can only do this if you have not opted for a royalty sharing deal, so you must have a DIY deal (you produced content) or you paid straight up for the production and thus own the rights.

At least I did come across a help file explaining the mystifying pricing structure of ACX audiobooks. “Audible retains the sole discretion to set the price of the audiobooks it sells,” but they have a general pricing structure of

Libraries are awesome, they often give access to audiobooks… just not ACX/Audible exclusive ones. That was one of the reasons that I was looking into Findawayvoices. They distribute to libraries and even have a small royalty for it.

How does my royalty change if I switch to a nonexclusive deal? In an exclusive deal, audible gives 40% which is split in half again if you have a royalty share deal with a producer. If you switch out to a nonexclusive that falls to 25% meaning you only make an additional 5% if you paid the producer to generate the content on your behalf (typically that’s about $2,000-4,000.) Splitting the difference and using a $3,000 bill for audio production we’d see that an author would have to sell 3,000 books out of the gate just to let that 5% pay for the production (5% of 10hr audiobook cost is about a buck) or sell 600 audiobooks before you break even on the production cost and make any money at all.

What about just canceling my account? Amazon is basically Hotel California (you can get out, but you can never leave.) If you end your account in order to terminate a contract—if they let you out you must agree to never again use their service… a pretty extreme nuclear option. It may better to let your audiobook languish in the Amazonian dungeons for seven years like some kind of convict than pull the pin on any future use.

All this really shows that Amazon is not friendly to competition. Unless you play by the rules that only look fair in a vacuum, you wouldn’t even notice it. They use their monopoly on the market and strong-arm their rights agreements so that there is no room for anybody else, stifling anyone else that enters the market. That’s partly the reason Indies have become increasingly disgruntled with the online giant.

Check and know your rights before you enter into any kind of new service. These things are worth knowing (and a lawsuit will probably lose you more money than you would ever make from sales as an Indie, and at the very least get you blacklisted from Amazon.)

I’m going to still use ACX (I have to, in fact) and don’t see much that can be done. I’d even recommend it since it’s the best option to make money (at least until there’s some massive antitrust suit against them, which I expect I’ll live to see.) Be wise and be wary. Amazon might just be the great Satan of the publishing world, but it is currently a necessary evil—so make sure you know all the steps before you dance with the devil.

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#amazon #acx #audible #audiobooks #listening #reading #playlist[image error]

 

Review: Two Spells

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Mark Morrison’s Two Spells is an exciting mashup of everything great within the younger-YA spectrum. It feels like a cross between an upper Middle Grade and a younger YA book. It felt like it would be a smash hit with 5th grade-8th grade me.

Two Spells is well written and evokes much imagery and many tropes that really blend well together. At its core it is a fantastic adventure undertaken by siblings Sarah and Jon and their summer stay at Two Spells. It’s got shades of Narnia, painted with tones of Lemony Snikket, and reminded me of so many adventure stories I picked up from school book festivals and libraries as a young reader.

I do also have to say that the cover art is stunning. The colors and vibrancy leap off the cover; the digital graphic really does not do the printed version justice! It almost looks like it was foil embossed and is one of my top two favorites that I’ve reviewed this year.

Over all I am impressed with this book. It hits all the marks and it doesn’t disappoint. I’d recommend it for readers of all ages, though it’s primarily a book for teens. I got my copy for free in exchange for an honest review at my Inside the Inkwell Blog.

You can get a copy of the book by clicking here.

 

State of Writing

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I’ve had a heck of a time lately. Between snowstorm after snowstorm and a crazy workload as of late I’d normally feel frazzled. But over Easter one of my renters moved out after some major nonpayment issues (they trashed the place and I’ve spent most of my spare time hauling trash, replacing carpets, painting, and cleaning). You’d think I would’ve fallen behind… but remember what I said weeks ago about how I tend to fixate on my writing during the last third of my book or so? I’m way ahead of schedule and still making time to write. I’m only 16-18,000 words from completion and plowed into the climax chapters last week… Hoods of the Red Order is planned as fairly short by comparison (about 50,000 words, YA) and currently sits at over 31,000 words, with 16 chapters written.

I’m still on target! woohoo!

Some of the other stuff I made sure to do was revamp my Amazon Marketing Services ads for a couple books and run a promo on Dekker’s Dozen because I was accidentally locked into a new term for KDP that was expiring soon (so use the promo or lose the option). I did no media and zero advertising of The Last Watchmen being free on Kindle as an experiment to see how effective my adverts normally are. It got over a hundred downloads over a few days. My books usually do several hundred per day with free ads and other media blasts that have no cost. It’s an important lesson that I wanted to see for myself: authors must always be promoting.