Bob Defendi's Blog, page 8

Back to the Grind

I don't even know where this blog post fits. Getting your Third Book Published? Sleepless Nights for Fun And Profit? Goodbye Video Games?

I tend to work in spurts. New writing is steady. I do about a thousand words or the equivalent in plotting, most weekdays. During convention season, when a lot of writing groups get cancelled, that might slump a bit, but I turn in about six thousand words a week to group, so that schedule handles the occasional missed meeting.

When edits come back from the publisher, that's another matter. So far, they've been pretty easy. I TRY to clear up all the big story problems before they ever see the manuscript, so it's not too hard to just do about ten percent of the manuscript every night after everyone goes to bed and not really miss anything socially, while still turning the manuscript around in ten days... which I think catches them a bit off guard.

But that those drafts before I turn in a manuscript? Oh, are they labor intensive. I try to read and do my major rewrite at night after everyone's asleep. That can go more than two hours getting me to bed after midnight, and leaving me chapters sorta clean to work with the next night, when I painstakingly go through piles of critique notes, considering whether or not I'd addressed those comments the night before and addressing those that I haven't (or not. I don't agree with every note, and sometimes the notes argue, especially where jokes are concerned).

So I tend to work between 50-55 hours when everything is happy and I'm in an off period with new edits. I binge video games. I enjoy life. I also set entertainment benchmarks, after which I have to get back to work. I played a few games during the last vacation period that ended with me playing all the Dawn of War II expansions. I finished those Saturday. Now it's back to work.

I want to draft two novels this bout, one that's a cyberpunk murder mystery that's been percolating in my drawer for about a year and a half. The other is DbC 3. They are both around 100k words, and I have a vacation starting the last week of October. I WANT to finish them by then, but I don't actually think that's possible. Still, I'm going to give it the old college try and see if I can double my editing output for the period, which basically means giving up all reading whatsoever and collapsing in exhaustion every night for bed. There were fewer pages of existing critiques on these two, so the time going through the edits might just be quick enough that it's doable if I sacrifice everything else and work 80-120 hours a week.

If I fail, it's not super critical. I'll just take my vacation. My critiquers for this bout of beta reads have all over-committed to the point where I don't think any of them will blink if I stop sending them pages for a week. I'll just take it up the week after. Still. We'll see if I can do it. I'm curious to see how it goes.

Wish me luck

Take a Deep Breath

There is a common occurrence at my writer's groups and I think it might help any new writers that might happen to stumble upon this blog, perhaps while looking for the lyrics to a Hamilton song. Here. I'll help the search engines. "The Election of 1800" + "Lyrics" Good.

Anyway, this problem often starts with a side issue, which is the "Slow Read Problem." This happens when your writer's group hasn't met for two weeks because you meet at the house of a high-falutin' humorist and he goes on cruises once a year and the group has forgotten important things that happened in your last submission. Because: cruise. And high falutin'.

Anyway, this happened last week. The number one, actually I think the only high-level criticism They had with my submission was that one of the characters, The Cat of Darkness, didn't seem to have anything to loose and they'd lost track of his thread and they wanted him to meet up with the other characters. The last we handled right away when I reminded them the two groups had met up about five chapters previously and asked if they still thought it was a problem and they all agreed that no, they'd just forgotten and that part was fine. I told them that the rest of the problem would go away in the chapters NEXT week, and while I couldn't figure out a way to solve it in the chapters this week, maybe we'd talk about it after the next group when we all had the big picture. We all agreed and walked away.

Here's what was really going on:

The critique caught me off guard and sent me into a panic spiral. All I could think of was that I'd need to rewrite about a quarter of the book to fix the problem and that I had no idea what I was doing and that I was a hack and dear God don't look me!

But. Deep breath. This happens all the time. Fake it 'til you make it. Keep outwardly calm. Suggest a plausible-sounding plan like a grown-up and fall apart in the car on the drive home.

Then, on said drive home, the initial panic wore off and several things came back to me one at a time. First of all, one of my primary critiques way back at during that last group was that they liked the irony that the Cat of Darkness's stakes were so much higher than the main character's (in a certain scene played for that comparison, at least). They'd just forgotten that scene. While sitting on deck chairs in the Caribbean.

Also, they had all enjoyed this omniscient scene I'd written this week who's entire purpose had been to up the stakes on the Cat of Darkness even farther. I just hadn't finished connecting the dots between the rules I set in that scene and what they met for the Cat of Darkness. A simple failure to finish a logical conclusion.

And next week, all those elements come together in an epic cat fight.

This post is entirely free of metaphor, BTW.

The point is, I didn't freak out. I panicked, but I didn't let them know it. And when the panic receded, I realized that the entire high-level problem went away with the addition of a single sentence to make certain that the readers knew that a scene about a cat was, indeed, about a cat.

I bounced that sentence off the group when I got home to ask if I could get away with it, because it was particularly omniscient, and they all thought it fixed everything very nicely. The closest we came to a critique was the high-falutin' humorist, who gave back a joke suggestion that earned him forgiveness for the whole cruise thing.

Earning Good Karma

One of the things I try to remember is to spread the love. Buy other people's books. Share other people's links. Promote other people's sales. Those are the obvious ones. I had a less obvious opportunity Thursday.

Daniel from Dungeon Crawler's Radio posted on Facebook in the afternoon, saying that all of his co-hosts had last minute scheduling conflicts and asked if anyone wanted to help with the show. Now, I believe that DCR has been critical for my book's success so far, so I was the first to reply. Followed by several other authors, which made me wince. Most of them were scheduled to be on the show as guests that night and I was afraid Daniel would think that I was just volunteering to be a guest as well.

So when he shot me the recording address I immediately replied, asking him the show topics and questions so I could come prepared as a panelist. I made it clear I was not coming to pitch my books. We've done that twice in three months and I don't want to wear out my welcome with his fans. I want his fans to like me. I want Daniel to like me. (Daniel already likes me, but I want him to continue to like me). Basically, I wanted to be clear that I was there to work for him, not the other way around.

So he gave me the show schedule. Three-four episodes recording. The first one interviewing a store owner. Second interviewing a new publisher. (Wymore). Maybe a spill-over episode. The last... Well, he didn't have a last. He asked me for ideas.

My chance to shine. I almost threw out some lame placeholder podcast subject, then I stopped. I stared at the blinking cursor.

Think, Defendi.

This is it. This is the moment. Here is where you define your worth to these people. But you don't do it showily. You do it by making it not about your worth. How do you do it? How do you do it?

And then I remembered driving to work, listening to DCR and Daniel mentioning something about DCR history and wishing I knew more. And then I remembered Daniel vague-booking about a contract deal. And that's when it hit me.

Daniel asks all the questions. Daniel has all these fans and followers, and no one gives them a window into Daniel's life. Daniel's too humble to bring it up and no one ever asks him the questions.

So I told him, "For our last show, I interview you. All your fans get to find out about your writing career and your recent contract and the history of Dungeon Crawers' Radio."

It was a blast. Maybe the favorite thing I've ever done as a guest spot on a podcast. I felt good. Daniel felt good. I bet the fans will really enjoy it. I got to talk a little about how much I love Daniel and how much I appreciate what he does for us authors, but that was the most I indulged in myself, and even that was about my feelings for him.

I never mentioned my book by name. I probably should have, but I really wanted it to be an act of altruism. Daniel has worked tirelessly to build DCR as a brand and he lets us all come along for the ride from time to time. He's good people, and I was happy to give a little back.

The episodes we recorded started dropping Friday and continue this week.

Aftermath (Your First Published Novel: Part 28)

All right. Things have finished falling out after my first Amazon sale, and overall, I'm still happy.

I was correct. Those "sales" on noverank in the first days definitely seemed to be false positives, caused by the rate of fall, not by actual new sales. Or rather it might be more accurate to say they were corrections, adding in books moved during the countdown sale after the fact.

Tuesday my rank stopped dropping. Wednesday, I had a small number of sales, Thursday and Friday, that doubled. It dropped over the weekend again. It seems to have leveled with my rank right around 25k.

I think I'm going to be happy about that. I know that this is something many writers struggle with. Hell, lots of people struggle with it in general, and I don't want this to turn into a statement on psychology or depression or disappointment or unrealistic expectations. We all have arrows in our quiver we can use when dealing with the business. Two arrows I am very glad to have are these:

1) I can find joy in a bad review, as long as they are not all bad.

2) I can reset my expectations and choose to be happy with something.

Don't get me wrong, these are not bad numbers for a first book from a small publisher. I don't have a whole lot of bragging contests with other writers, but I expect they are better than average. The publisher seems pleased. My acquisitions editor, who sees all the numbers from books he's acquired, says I sold more copies in my first month than some books sell in their lifetime. I'm pretty sure at this point I've passed more sales than your average literary novel (though I won't have firm confirmation of that for more than a month.) These numbers aren't bad.

But I hang out with people like Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson. Larry Correia gave me my cover quote. I know what really good numbers look like. It would be easy to fall into the trap of hating myself because my first book wasn't a runaway success.

But I've been in the business long enough to learn to manage expectations. I know to add "In its first four months" to that statement about being a runaway success. I know that many people don't buy first books from authors until their second books are out.

I'm a terrible salesman. I might have mentioned it. But the best thing I learned in a sale training seminar was to give yourself downtime. One salesman said that when something bad happened to him, he'd give him ten minutes. Ten minutes to be mad, or depressed, or to despair. Then he's back on. It's not a skill everyone has. Brain chemistry is tricky. Some people can't stop despression. Some can't let themselve fall into that trap or they'll never get out. But I can do it and it's a coping mechanism I've learned over years of disappointments and successess.

When I get a bad critique at writer's group, I give up writing for good on the drive home. I let myself do that. I know that I'll come to terms with the problem by the time I pull into my driveway and I'll give myself permission to become a writer again. If it's a bad problem and it take a long time, well, I have a long drive.

When my mother had cancer, that was the worst, because I had no one I could be weak in front of. So I would take my down time in the middle of the night, when she was asleep, when I could cry or rail and despair and no one could see.

When a relationship doesn't work out, I spend downtime proportional to the length of the relationship. When I get a bad review I roll with the punch and then laugh about it.

This blog post has turned into something else.

Which is funny, because as I said, I'm pretty sure the sales are above average. But I still needed to take my downtime and I think I've hit something here that needs to be said.

I can't help you find your coping mechanisms. Some people can never let themselves read reviews. Some people can never let themselves check sales numbers. Your first book, your first sale, will be a learning experience. I'm lucky in that I've had oh so many RPG books out and I've learned what tools I have and what tools I don't.

You're going to make mistakes learning what tools you have and do things that destroy you. Make sure it's only temporary. You're going to need friends and family to get you through. You're going to need to learn who you are and how you cope. When you do something that really messes you up, don't do that again. That's not your tool. Find another. Learn your limitations.

There isn't a writer alive that doesn't have to deal with disappointment. You think Andy Weir isn't terrified about what's going to happen with whatever book he writes AFTER The Martian? You think JK Rowling was delighted with the sales of her first detective novel, before her identity "leaked" to the public? You think Brandon Sanderson didn't have books where he said, "Well, that wasn't well-received."

My disappointment with my first countdown sale was inevitable. I knew it was inevitable. I have big hopes. The odds against my first sale meeting them were astronomical. I knew that going in and I was ready. Understand that. Prepare for that.

Being a successful writer is about being successful. It's about being unsuccessful successfully. Almost no one wins the first try, and those that do will fail later. Everyone fails. Let's say that again.

Everyone fails.

The trick is to fail up.

Not that this was a failure. I'm happy with it. But I could have turned it into a disaster in my mind. And that's the other lesson. Don't turn wins into losses. Don't compare yourself to others in ways that aren't healthy. Figure out the method that works for you and own it.

Don't just fail up. Succeed up.

Now I sound like a self-help book. So I'll stop.

Your First Amazon Sale (Your First Published Novel: Part 27)

Thursday and Friday we had a 99 cent sale of Death by Cliché on Amazon.com. If you are connected to me in social media, you probably saw the couple dozen messages touting the fact. This was my first big sale, and I prepped for it hard.

In fact, I was originally told the sale would be the week before and that I had about three days notice, to which I promptly fell into a screaming pile of panic. Mainly because all of my methods of effectively getting the word out involve podcasts, and you can't get guest spots on podcasts scheduled, recorded, and released with three days warning.

Also, Salt Lake Comic Con was about to happen, so no one would be returning my proverbial phone calls anyway.

Luckily CQ was able to push it back a week, and so the sale happened on September 8th and 9th. I managed to get an interview out on Dungeon Crawlers Radio, the Hello Sweetie Podcast, and various shows from the Defenestrate Media Network, as well as on schlockmercenary.com. They started dropping Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursday and Friday I was a bit of a wreck. I hadn't had enough warning to take time off work, so I automated all my social media posts about the sale and just checked in at lunch to see how things were going. As with most of these things, I didn't do as well as I hoped, but I did far better than I feared.

I've been using Novelrank to estimate my sales, but I did receive firm numbers from the publisher. The book moved well and was well received. I needed to sell a lot more than I did to hit #1 in a category (the guy at the top of the category I came closest on was #53 overall in the kindle store, and I had multiple Harry Potter books ahead of me in humorous fantasy), but I was #2 in satire genre fiction and #3 in two others for a long time. I supplanted both Feast of Crows and The Princess Bride, although I've fallen below both of them since.

Death by Cliche



$14.44



By Bob Defendi

Since then I've been watching an interesting phenomena on Novelrank. For the most part, Novelrank always reports low for me, but since the sale, as my rank steadily degrades, it might be reporting high. It thinks I'm getting consistent sales every hour since the sale, but for once, it isn't basing that estimate on my rank improving, it's basing that on the speed at which my rank worsens.

I've checked with my publisher and they have my sales at about 1/8 what Novelrank reports (yesterday, at least). The thing we don't know is how many Kindle Unlimited downloads we aren't seeing. I'll know better when my rank settles and I can compare the sales to actual ticks of my ranking in both directions.

But overall, it was a fruitful endeavor. If all else fails, a lot of people have Death by Cliché that didn't previously.

And of course, you can still buy it for the normal price.

Selling At a Convention (Your First Published Novel: Part 26)

Okay. Brace yourself. I might say some good things about Wymore in this post. If you don't think you can handle that, I understand. I'll see you next week. I'll try to throw a "Screw you, Wymore" into the mix as well so you know I'm not a prisoner in his dungeon or anything.

So this weekend was my first post-release convention, and I went in on a booth with the Space Balrogs. It was an enlightening experience, to say the least. You see, I'm terrible at sales. I always have been, at least in any situation where I profit. I can sell the hell out of other people's books. My own, well you might not guess it to hear me talk, but there's a deep core of my personality that doesn't like to brag. I boast constantly, but it's always for entertainment value and I exaggerate just enough the everyone in the room knows I'm doing it for laughs, not in earnest. For instance, I rarely said, "I'm pretty smart." I'll often say, "I'm hyper-intelligent." It's all about making people enjoy themselves without actually becoming an ass.

So selling is hard for me. Very hard.

The first day, I barely tried to sell anything. If someone at the front of the booth found a customer who looked like they'd be interested in my book, I discussed it with them, but none of them purchased anything. That wasn't surprising. Mostly I observed my fellow booth workers. James Wymore, Craig Nybo, and David J West were the most active salesmen and all of them made multiple sales that first day (Jason King was sick and Holli Anderson just collects customers effortlessly, without speaking--perhaps through black magic or pheromones). I know James best, and honestly I could hear his pitches better than the others from where I sat, so I spent most of the day just watching him.

The second day I started asking questions. He pointed out that he didn't sell any more books when he had many titles to sell than when he had one. He also told me that my plan of having the potential buyer read from the book might backfire, as he had better sales if he kept talking until money changed hands.

I have a snarky and a non-snarky explanation for why that is, but my book is a comedy. People SHOULD read it and want to read more, but everyone who opened it told me it was very funny and walked away. My theory here is that the reader and the writer have an implied contract, and once the reader actually reads, that contract is fulfilled. I think it might be easier for someone to walk away from the sale of a book they read if they've read a sample, than from a book where that implied contract is still unfulfilled. I don't know. I'm just spitballing.

With Wymore's advice (and help refining my pitch), I sold two that second day.

The third day I had more success. My pitch worked. My patter was on. Despite the fact that I was in too much pain to stand much of the time and my voice was shot, I sold several books. At one point, I had three sales and Wymore had none, so when the next person approached the booth, I cold-read her and decided that I could sell her three books, not just one. I only HAD one, so I decided to break Wymore's slump and I poured on all that fast talk I can't bear to use on my own book. She bought the whole series and I chalked that as a win.

Holli Anderson tells me my best sale was to the guy who stated flat out he didn't read books, but my favorite moment was when Wymore asked someone what they like to read and they said, "Editorials." Without skipping a beat, he said, "Then you would love Bob Defendi's book." After giving him my best, "Screw you, Wymore" look I asked the guy if he liked Dave Barry. He said he did and I told him, "This book was greatly influenced by Dave Barry." I didn't make that sale, but at that point, I knew that I could roll with just about any pitch situation. Seriously. Editorials. Wymore is the worst.

I love him for that, though. I told Sandra Tayler I expected to sell less than ten copies my first con. I sold ten, so I beat that number. If I'd been selling on the first day they way I sold on the last, I might have broken even, which is way more than I have any right to expect at this point.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't about the quality of the book. The book is doing better than I had any right to expect in overall sales. (You know, the ones where I'm not directly involved). This is about the art of looking a potential customer in the eye and forming a relationship that ends with the exchange of money. There are best-selling authors that fall apart the moment a sale needs to be made. Writing is a solitary skill. Selling is a very public skill and it's hard to master both.

I can officially say that I'm no longer absolutely terrible at it, and that's pretty good after a couple days practice.

My Salt Lake Comic Con Schedule

Hello!

Salt Lake Comic Con starts tomorrow and I'll be selling books at booth 2220 with the Space Balrogs. I assume there will be a banner. Maybe a few really good looking people behind stacks of books. I believe it's BYOB for the balrogs, though.

My panel schedule is as follows:

Friday 10 am:

Chip the glasses crack the plates, that's what Bilbo Baggins hates! But what he doesn't hate is this scholarly dive into all things Middle Earth. With:

Robert J. Defendi Moderator
Paul Genesse
Aaron Hastings
Jennifer Jenkins
Kathryn Purdie

Saturday 1 PM:

With:

Robert J. Defendi
Bryce Moore
Frank Morin
Josi Russell
Richard Lance Russell
Sam Sykes
Dan Willis Moderator

Hope to see you there!

I Am Not a Serial Killer Movie Review

Friday a friend and local author hit something of a milestone in his already admirable career. You see, some years back Dan Wells wrote a little book called I Am Not a Serial Killer. You might have heard of it. You might not. If you haven't heard of it, go buy it and read it right now. I'll wait.

Back? Good book, wasn't it?

So Friday night the movie version of this book released in six cities and on video on demand.

I'm going to break this review into two parts. the spoiler-light section and the spoilery section for those who are fan of the book and want a deeper examination of the adaptation. The spoiler light section will be mostly spoiler free if you've read the book.

Spoiler-Light Section:

I Am Not A Seriel Killer is a solid execution of a fairly difficult proposal, the adaptation of a book which is fairly intimate and cerebral in its presentation. It's the story of a young man, John Wayne Cleaver, who is the son of a Mortician and starts noticing a strange pattern in the bodies coming through the morgue. To add an extra twist, John has Antisocial Personality Disorder. He's a sociopath. His greatest fear is that he's a budding serial killer and he will do almost anything to stop that from happening.

John has developed a set of rules to keep himself under control. He's not allowed to stalk another person. If he feels the urge to hurt someone, he must compliment them instead. John, while broken in a way few of us are, is still fundamentally a moral character. He won't let himself become the monster his brain wants to create.

But now someone is out there killing people, and the police can't help, and John might be the only one in the town with the skill set and the unique perspective to stop the killer.

The star of this movie is Max Records (Where the Wild Things Are). He brings a raw and compelling performance as John. He pulls us immediately into John's world. We feel for John, especially because John can't feel for himself. John is both armored and vulnerable at the same time. He is both without feeling and an exposed nerve. Max plays this dichotomy perfectly. The only thing I can say bad about him was I didn't like his hair, and seriously, that puts him in good company (I'm looking at you, Tom Hanks.)

In the book, John is balanced against his family: his mother, sister, and aunt. Also Brooke, the girl he's drawn to. In the movie, John's counterpoint is the loveable neighbor Mr. Crowley, played by Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future). Crowley is passion where John is calculation. Crowley is warmth where John is distance. Crowley is age and experience where John is youthful mistakes.

The movie hangs on this relationship and it succeeds. From the moment that John helps Mr. Crowley use his smartphone to send his wife a kiss, the relationship between these two characters sparkles on the screen.

Of course, this is an independent picture. The picture quality isn't what you'll expect if you're used to big budget films, but the directing and the cinematography are solid, the locations good, most all of the acting compelling (there's one exception from a bit part in a news program that's a bit painful, but it's brief.)

My only real complaint about the film is the music. It pulled me out throughout, from the song playing at the school dance to the opening music to the scoring. Only the closing song is really compelling and it's so compelling that not even inanimate objects can resist it.

I can heartily recommend this movie to anyone. Many people call it horror, but as a piece of film it's solidly in the thriller category, so don't panic if horror turns you off. I made my mother watch it to see if it would play with someone dead set against horror films, and it went over well.

Spoilery Section:

The novel I Am Not a Serial Killer is fundamentally about John's relationship with his own broken brain. While there's a killer to be caught, the killer serves as a reflection and symbol of John's inner self, his personal demons manifest in the world. His battle to stop the killing is, at its heart, symbolic of his battle to master himself.

The movie doesn't actually fail here, but this is the weakest part of the adaptation. We can't see inside John's head, no matter how well Records puts his performance on screen. We don't really get John's relationship with his rules, though we do know his rules exist. We don't see John's struggle with his potential inner monster. We only really see his external struggles with the people around him.

His family relationship also suffers from the adaptation, although in this case that's a factor of time and not medium. We get the broad strokes, but there just isn't time to develop the nuances. This isn't a criticism of the movie, but someone who loves the book should be prepared. Cutting the text of even a short book to a mere one-hour-and-forty-three-minute will leave a lot of stuff on the floor.

Brooke actually gets a similar treatment. There just isn't much room in the film for Brooke, and I felt the loss. The first thing that my mother asked when the movie finished was if Brooke had a bigger role in the novel.

Also, the movie never says that the killer is a demon. While the book brings that out before John even realizes it, the movie leaves it as a bit of subtext at the very end.

But most of that is just the reality of adaptation. Not everyone can take a short book and translate it into three movies. Where the film shines is the relationship between John and Crowley.

The brilliance of the relationship carries through in the film. John fights his inner demons. He is incapable of love as we know it. He fights his own inner demons, trying not to become a monster. Meanwhile, Crowley is a literal demon, his methods are monstrous, but his motivation is love. He feels what John can't. He does what John fears. He is the perfect foil for John's character. Here is the one place the film couldn't fail and it does, indeed, succeed.

I Am Not a Serial Killer is available in select theater and more broadly in VOD. For a comprehensive list, see Dan's blog post, here.

Your First Published Novel: Part 25

I stand on the cusp of many things. It makes a difficult find a topic this week. So let's talk about all the transitions ahead of me.

Sales were good for my book bomb of course, and then they fell (of course). About Wednesday they started picking up again. That's probably a momentary blip, but it's nice to see a little momentum. Friends of mine who have books that released this year are starting to put them on sale. CQ hasn't suggested one to me yet. I think that's because my sales are steady. Maybe they're just waiting for me to suggest it. We'll see. When we do have a sale, we'll want to arrange the timing carefully.

Things are moving with Death by Cliche 2, but I don't have anything official to announce yet. I expect news there soon.

I am nearing the finish line on Death by Cliche 3 (the first draft, at any rate). This means that soon, like in the next few days soon, I need to be plotting it. I've been prepping. I've watched the movie The Hidden Fortress, from which I intend to draw ideas. A friend, Bryan Young, has suggested that I watch Kagemusha as well after I mentioned some of my ideas to him online. I'll do that this week and then leap into plotting. Leap, I tell you.

Meanwhile, we're also getting ready for Salt Lake City Comic Con, which will be the first convention where I'll be at a booth with a novel. So. There's that.

Life is good. The work is good. The friends are good. The colleagues are good. My cat is okay.

Let's call that a whole lot of win.

Kindle Unlimited

After last week I was asked to write a blog post explaining Kindle Unlimited. Someone might have also screamed "Dance, Monkey, dance!" at the top of their lungs. Never on to avoid pandering to the masses, I've put on a tapping clogs.

So Kindle Unlimited is a service where you pay Amazon $9.99 a month for unlimited reading of selected books. While the A-List titles aren't there, over a million titles are, so if you're a voracious reader, this might be the service for you. There also seems to be a feature where a certain subset of titles also include the audiobook version. These have a set of headphones next to the Kindle Unlimited logo and say, "Read or listen for free." For instance, every third audiobook I listen too is project-related. Right now I've been working on Death by Cliché, so I've been listening to a lot of comedy.  Right now Scott Meyer's Magic 2.0 books seem to be available for listening as well, but his book, the Authorities isn't.

My wallet was stolen Friday night, and Amazon won't let me test the audio version (it's too busy panicking about my cancelled credit cards), but the Kindle versions seem to work well.

So how does this impact authors?

Well, when you download the book, the Amazon ranking changes as if you made a full sale. I can't say it changes "instantly," because amazon rankings change on a delay, probably about 12 hours behind the actual sale. I'm doing a test of this today, and will hopefully have solid data on that by midnight. I've been told that the Kindle Unlimited downloads count for more in the sales rank change than normal purchases because Amazon is pushing the platform, but I can't prove that without a lot of data. (Even if I found a book that didn't have any sales in a day and I could both download and buy on separate days, I'd need them to be at the same ranking both times and I'd need every other book on amazon to perform the same as well, since all rankings are relative to all other rankings.)

Sales are delayed, however, because a lot of people download a lot of bad books on Kindle Unlimited, and Amazon doesn't think all downloads should be equal when actual money is concerned. The barrier of listing a book is just too low. So instead, Amazon pays authors based on how many people actually read the book. They used to judge that based on a single book read, with 10% of the book being the payout threshold. Evidently, that was too easy a system to game (For instance, I'd be tempted to write a lot of ten page books... I wouldn't do it, but boy would I be tempted). Now they pay by the page, and that's a Kindle Normalized Page (I assume that means that you can't game the system with font size). This means, and my math is loose here, that if both Douglas Adams and Brandon Sanderson were on KU, every time you read a Brandon Sanderson book, the payout would be a billion times higher than a Douglas Adams book.

This is the first read of the book, and it's judged by percentage of progress. Kindle doesn't have a way of actually counting page flips. It just goes by your furthest point you've hit, and Amazon looks for cheesiness like people putting their table of contents at the end of the book. There are other ways people try to game the system of course, but I won't dignify them in a post about Kindle Unlimited working properly.

So if you read 10% of my book, I might get 5 cents. If you set it down and picked it back up a year later and finished it, I might get another 45 cents then.

The point is they aim to reward writers who write the books their readers actually finish while minimizing the profit disparity between people who write novelettes and publish them on Kindle alongside giant epic fantasies.

How does this work for the author?

250 pages is probably about the size of my book. For every 250 pages read, in my first month, I made about 30% of what I'd make from an ebook sale. That is probably going to change from month to month due to subscribers and number of reads.

Would I prefer ebook sales?  Absolutely. However, those pages were almost certainly read. Also, I suspect a great number of my Kindle Unlimited readers wouldn't have plopped down $6 on an untried writer. Also, I have a good job. I don't need the extra money in the short term, and in the long term, I'm certain that building a readership is way more important to my long-term success than immediate profit.

So I think I'll stick on Kindle Unlimited, at least for my first book, for the foreseeable future.