Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 94

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 107: Do Free Books Still Work?

In this week’s episode, I take a look at whether or not free first-in-series books still work for indie authors.

I also answer reader questions and talk a bit about AI-narrated audiobooks.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES now underway!

Now that CLOAK OF IRON is out, it’s time to work on the next book!

Specifically, DRAGONSKULL: BLADE OF THE ELVES, the third book in the DRAGONSKULL epic fantasy series.

I’m currently 33,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 7 of 20. If all goes well it will be out in March.

I’ve also started on the next CLOAK MAGE book, CLOAK OF SHARDS. That will probably be out in April or May.

-JM

Free book results

A common marketing tactic for indie authors is to make the first book in the series free, and then write numerous sequels. The idea is that people will read the free book, and then continue on to the end of the series. I’ve used that tactic pretty much since I first started self-publishing all the way back in 2011, and I still use it.

But does it still work? A lot has changed in the last ten years. And the idea of giving away a book for free really vexes some writers. They put all this blood, sweat, toil, and tears into writing the book, why should they give it away for free? (Granted, once you have 128 of them, giving away, say, five for free isn’t really that painful.)

However. If you want a crop, you have to surrender the seed to the earth. Costco uses free samples and relatively low-cost hot dogs for a reason.

Conventional wisdom is that if you get a 5 to 8 percent conversion rate from a free first book to a paid second book, you’re doing well. So, in other worlds, if you give away 100 free copies of the first book, a good result is 5 to 8 sales of the paid second book in the series.

Starting in 2021, I’ve been using a tool call ScribeCount to keep track of ebook sales since my previous tool stopped working. ScribeCount makes it very easy to slice and dice ebook sales. For 2021, I decided to look at four series that had consistently offered a free first book in series for the entire year – FROSTBORN, SEVENFOLD SWORD, THE GHOSTS, SILENT ORDER, and CLOAK GAMES. I looked at the conversion percentage from the free first book to the paid second book, and then the percentage of people who downloaded the first book and read to the end of the series.

Frostborn – 15.7% conversion rate, 11.% to the end of the series.

Sevenfold Sword, 11.5%, 12.6% to the end of the series.

Ghosts, 14.4% conversion rate, 7.9% to the end of the series.

Cloak Games, 13.5% conversion rate, 8.4% to the end of the series.

Silent Order, 17.8% conversion rate, 23.3% to end of the series.

So that is pretty good! I should note that the SILENT ORDER percentage to the (current) end of the series is probably artificially high because SILENT ORDER: ROYAL HAND came out in the summer, but that’s still a good number.

This is also why I consistently advertise my free books across Facebook – if I know that for every 100 copies of FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT I give away, about 15 people will read to the second book and 11 will read all the way through, that allows the ads to turn a profit.

Speaking of that, here’s the results for my ad spending on free ebooks for January 2022. For every $1 I spent on advertising the series, this is what I got back.

Ad results:

Cloak Games/Cloak Mage – $3.31

Frostborn – $3.17

Ghost – $6.50

-JM

CLOAK OF IRON now available!

I am pleased to report that CLOAK OF IRON is now available!

You can get Nadia’s latest adventure at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Amazon CA, Amazon AU, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, and Smashwords.

I should note that Barnes & Noble is presently having technical problems and the cover is not displaying properly there, but the content of the book file is just fine.

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 106: CLOAK OF IRON finished & paperback pricing

In this week’s episode, I discuss finishing CLOAK OF IRON and talk about how to price paperback books on Amazon.

I also discuss the DRAGONLANCE series of Dungeons & Dragons novels and Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

computer-generated audiobooks?

A reader emailed to ask if I’m planning to use computer-generated voices to turn any of my books into audiobooks. (I think the question was inspired by this article from Wired.)

No, I’m not, for two reasons.

1.) The technology isn’t as good as its proponents think that it is. It just isn’t. It can do a very excellent facsimile of a human voice, but it’s not quite there. It’s a little too controlled, too modulated, to be recognizably human. Like a really good interactive phone menu. Ironically, the technical perfection of the computer-generated voice may cause the brain to realize that it’s fake, since nothing human is truly perfect. Additionally, computer-generated voices can’t do emotion very well, so reaching a scene that’s a passionate declaration of love might be a bit strange when the synthetic voice reads it in a calm monotone that would also be suitable to Alexa giving the weather forecast.

Also, I’m a fantasy author, and getting the correct pronunciation of names like Agrimnalazur and Delaxsicoria through any sort of automated process would be a huge pain.

2.) A more practical reason – Amazon and Findaway Voices both ban the sale of computer-read audiobooks, and when computer-read audiobooks slip through Quality Control, they’re deleted as soon as someone reports them. Since Amazon’s ACX and Findaway Voices are the two main ways indie authors can get audiobooks into the stores, that kind of makes computer-generated audiobooks a non-starter.

And any computer-generated audiobooks that elude Quality Control will get reported, because a very large subset of listeners hate computer-read audiobooks with the burning nuclear heat of the fiery cores of a thousand suns. I know some authors have produced computer-read audiobooks and are selling them through their own stores (powered by Shopify and Payhip and the like), but I’m curious what the reaction is. I’m willing to wager that it’s more on the negative side.

A good example: my absolute favorite science fiction novel of all time is Timothy Zahn’s THE ICARUS HUNT from 2000. It’s never had an audiobook available in the modern audiobook era (there was one on cassette that disappeared into unavailability), but while writing this post I was delighted to discover that it’s getting an audiobook narrated by Marc Thompson (of STAR WARS audiobook fame) that comes out on February 1st. I will buy it, immediately, the instant it is available, because it’s my favorite book and Marc Thompson is an excellent narrator.

But if it was narrated by a computer-generated voice, I wouldn’t be mad about it…but I wouldn’t buy it, either.

So, two reasons why I won’t use synthetic voices for my audiobooks.

That said, I can definitely see a use for the technology in the domain of accessibility. I think the ideal use for it is to get integrated into the ereader apps for visually-impaired readers. A while back I had an angry email from a reader claiming that I was biased against the visually impaired because I disabled Text-To-Speech in my books. But I didn’t! It’s totally enabled in every place that has it. If you have a Kindle Fire, it will read any Kindle book aloud to you. (Unfortunately, that feature is not available in the Kindle Android and iOS apps.) Google Play Books includes a pretty good Text-To-Speech feature, and I think Apple Books has one on iOS and iPadOS that’s integrated with Siri.

The unfortunate fact is that audiobooks are expensive and difficult to produce, and the majority of book titles in every language will probably not have audiobooks attached to them. So I definitely think that it’s a good idea to integrate computer-generated voices into ebook readers. However, I simply don’t see the sale of computer-generated audiobooks becoming common, unless the technology gets a lot better at expressing emotion, which seems unlikely, or if audiobook listeners get less picky, which is about as likely as those thousand burning suns spontaneously turning to ice.

-JM

CLOAK OF IRON table of contents!

I am far enough along in editing to share the CLOAK OF IRON table of contents!

Well, the current table of contents, anyway. I might reshuffle the order of some of the chapters one more time before I finalize things. But if all goes well, the book is on track to be out the first week of February!

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 105: Creating Fictional Conflicts

In this week’s episode, we look at seven different ways you can create conflict within your novel or story.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

CLOAK OF IRON, the book description

Still editing CLOAK OF IRON!

Let’s see the book description:

A lost magical treasure might unleash catastrophic destruction.

My name’s Nadia, and I’m the shadow agent of the High Queen of the Elves.

When an Elven lord is assassinated with a bullet forged from magical iron, the High Queen sends me to track down the source.

But the bullet is just a small part of a much larger hoard.

And to claim that hoard, the enemies of humanity and the Elves will wipe out anyone who stands in their path.

Starting with me…

And another short preview excerpt:

“Hey,” said Nadia. “If this goes bad but you live through it, can you find Riordan and tell him…”

“No.”

She gave him an irritated look.

“You can tell him yourself, because we’re going to win.”

Nadia snorted. “Good answer.” She hesitated. “Is there anyone you would like me to…”

“No,” said Neil, checking his carbine one more time. He would keep checking and rechecking his equipment until the fighting begin. “There’s no one. I suppose I had a family, but they’ve all been dead for centuries. And I can’t remember them in any event.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah, well,” said Neil, “winning will suck less.”

“That is true.”

-JM

Microsoft, Activision, and the human condition

It has been interesting watching the reaction about the announcement that Microsoft intends to purchase Activision for $70 billion dollars.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know. I suppose it will have some good effects, some bad ones, and then some unforeseen consequences both positive and negative.

I have thoughts on what those might be!

1.) I saw someone on Twitter say that in the world of gaming, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are now the Big Three, while Google is in the corner eating paste. I have to admit that was pretty funny and might be accurate. Another interesting view is that Microsoft and Sony are locked in a console arms war, while Nintendo is doing its own thing that doesn’t directly compete with either.

2.) I suppose it’s possible that the US Congress might try to block the deal on anticompetitive grounds, but it seems unlikely. It would be straightforward for Microsoft’s lawyers to establish in court that it isn’t a monopoly and still wouldn’t be one after buying Activision, especially since Sony and Nintendo both sold more consoles than Microsoft in 2021. For that matter, the Congressional leadership in the US is old enough that they probably only have a vague idea that video games exist at all, or of the scope and scale of the modern video game business. This isn’t to say that elderly people cannot enjoy video games (see the “Grandma Plays Game” phenomenon on YouTube and Twitch), but the most powerful elected officials in the US federal government are in their upper seventies and early eighties and not terribly in touch with life outside of their bubbles to begin with, and if you handed them a PlayStation controller they would probably think it was a Life Alert device.

3.) It would be good if Microsoft cleaned house at Activision. Regardless of all the other reports of bad activity at Activision, Blizzard used to make great games, and then Activision bought the company and promptly ran it into the ground. So a lot of upper management at Activision might get to spend more time with their families soon.

4.) In fact, given all the legal troubles at Activision, it would surprise me if Microsoft doesn’t have a plan to clean house. Otherwise Microsoft just paid $70 billion dollars to buy a whole bunch of lawsuits and labor disputes.

5.) Large corporate consolidation is, in general, bad.

6.) On the other hand, Microsoft was probably the best potential buyer. Activision is sitting on a ton of valuable IP, and Microsoft is likely to actually make use of it and make it available on PC and Xbox. Activision, by contrast, seemed content to coast on past glories and Call of Duty. And the Xbox ecosystem, by and large, is excellent, especially with the addition of Game Pass. Microsoft needs content for that ecosystem, so hopefully that means it will make maximum use of the stuff it just bought from Activision.

7.) Then again, nothing at all may happen. Big corporate buyouts like this sometimes appear with a lot of fanfare and then fizzle out into nothingness. Like when Activision bought Blizzard.

All and all, I’m very glad not to be in video game development – it is such a brutal and unforgiving business! You can work on something intensely for years, only for it all to fall apart in a second and to find yourself out of a job. That’s true of many fields of human endeavor, of course, but especially true in video games.

Living in fear that your job might evaporate at any moment is an unpleasant way to live, though many, many, many people do so. Of course, complacency and the confidence that you can never be fired is just as bad – some of the most useless and simultaneously arrogant people I’ve personally met were paid from taxpayer or union funds (or taxpayer-funded unions) and probably hadn’t done a day of work in years. (This, of course, is not to say that all people paid from taxpayer funds are lazy, but if you work in government or education, I bet you thought of some of your co-workers when you read the previous sentence.) And we’ve all seen un-fireable CEOs with death grips on their companies who did terrible damage.

So there must be some middle ground, some middle career path between terror of losing your job and complacency, but I’m not wise enough to know what it might be. It might be one of the insoluble problems of the human condition. In fact, the old proverb YOU SHALL NOT WORK, YOU SHALL NOT EAT seems to be one of the inescapable laws of the human condition, with history an account of our failed efforts to escape it over and over again.

And this got philosophical for a post about video games.  I should probably go play some SKYRIM (also owned by Microsoft) to clear my head.

-JM