M. Louisa Locke's Blog, page 13

Don’t Panic: KDP Select still works, you just might have to work it a little differently

I haven’t posted for awhile on any topic, including on indie publishing, but that is because I have been working steadily on writing Bloody Lessons, the third book of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series (if you want an update on my progress go check out my facbook page.) I also felt I had pretty much exhausted what I had to say on the ins and outs and pros and cons of using KDP Select.

However, with the change in Amazon’s rules for Associates, a whole discussion has erupted about what this means for indie authors. See this balanced review of some aspects of the discussion. See, in addition, this good overview of the issues around free as a selling strategy and Amazon. One result of this change and subsequent posts about it is I have had a number of requests to comment on whether or not this means that free promotions and KDP Select won’t work as well any more.

The short answer is, how in heaven’s name do I know? But that isn’t very helpful so what I am going to do is remind people what I have written on this subject already, do a brief recap of how my last free promotion went, and try to predict some of the ways in which the most recent changes might require tweaking of my own (and other’s) strategies for using KDP Select. I also decided it was time to publish a list of Promotional Links, which I will try to keep up-to-date.

Posts I have already done: 

If you want to know everything I have written on this subject––put “KDP Select” in the search bar at the top of my website. Otherwise, go ahead and click on these posts I have done on selling on Amazon, the importance of Categories, and an update on this post, how to have a successful KDP Select promotion, and factors you should consider when deciding whether or not to enroll in KDP Select.

Update on my most recent KDP Select Promotion:

I put the first book in my series, Maids of Misfortune up for free through KDP Select for three days, February 23-25. This was two months since the last promotion, which was December 29-30 (where I put both of my books up for free). This time I didn’t put Uneasy Spirits up for free, although I did pay for a Digital Book Today 7-day promotion for this book for the week after the Maids of Misfortune promotion was over.

I signed up with eleven sites that promote free books (only two cost anything, Book Goodies and BookBub.) I have been trying to rotate through the free promotion sites with each promotion so as not to saturate their specific markets. Maids hit the magic top 100 Free List by noon the first day at #73. By the end of the first day I had reached #26 in the Free List and had over 8,000 downloads. On the second day, by 3:15 pm, when the BookBub email went out, the book was at #11 In the Free List and already had 22,000 downloads. By the end of day two it was #3 and had 28,000 free downloads. It stayed at #4 throughout the third day, and the total number of free downloads for the promotion was 37,086.

As you can see by the data below––the promotion was successful––in boosting my sales and   borrows, even of the book that wasn’t promoted.

Maids of Misfortune                                          Before             After

Average sales per day (over two weeks)          7.9                77.4

Overall Rank                                                   20,000s           2,000s (18 days after)

Uneasy Spirits

Average sales per day (over two weeks)          6.1                 22.3

Over all Rank                                                   26,000s           6,000s (18 days after)

Average Borrows per day (over two weeks)

Both Books combined                                       16                 59.9

The Future of KDP Select:

While I am not clairvoyant, I often pretend I am (something I share with my protagonist in my Victorian San Francisco mysteries), and I will say with some authority that KDP Select will not go away anytime soon, and Amazon will continue to work with and encourage self-published authors. While Amazon may have turned to indie authors (first with KDP, then with KDP Select) because they realized that depending on public domain books and traditional publishers wasn’t working, it was the indie authors themselves who proved to Amazon that they were both an outstanding source of the product Amazon needed and nimble innovators in the rapidly changing world of publishing.

Indie authors not only began to produce books at an amazing rate (as backlists were republished, manuscripts like my own were taken out of drawers, and genre writers began to pump out 2-4 books a year), but we also proved leaders in the changes that were going on in publishing, proving the viability of new short forms of fiction (novellas, short stories, serialized novels) and experimenting with new marketing techniques (using discounts, free promotions, blog tours, giveaways, twitter, facebook author pages, etc). Our books and our innovation helped fuel the heady growth of ebooks in a short period of time.

For example, from the beginning, Amazon’s royalty structure, which gave the 70% royalty rate only to books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, was challenged by indie authors like Amanda Hocking, who proved that the volume of sales you could make at 99 cents could make up for the lower 35% royalty rate. Amazon made money (and kept a bigger chunk of the money), and Hocking got her traditional contract (and paved the way for the idea that traditional publishers––including the new Amazon imprints––might find their next bestselling authors from among the ranks of the self-published.)

Then came KDP Select. If you will all remember, when Amazon introduced its first Kindle Fire, one of the selling points was that if you were a member of Amazon Prime you could download one free book a month. Initially Amazon had targeted traditional publishers (who––as with the whole ebook thing––ran away, screaming bloody murder), so once again they had to turn to indie authors to provide the product they needed to make the Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL) effective. However, while this is pure speculation on my part, by the end of 2011 (when KDP Select was set up) they were beginning to be concerned by the way that other booksellers (Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc) were tapping into the ebook market so they came up with the exclusivity clause. If a book is in KDP Select it can not be sold anywhere else.

They needed a way to induce indie authors to go exclusive, and, besides creating the pool of money to be shared by KDP Select authors whose books were borrowed, they threw in the 5 free promotion days, having learned from indies that free promotions could sell books. In fact, a growing number of authors who had now published their back lists (or were very prolific in self-publishing lots of books a year) had discovered that if they made their books free on Smashwords, Amazon would price match. They had also proven that a free book that was the first in a series, or a free short story, could drive up sales for their other books. No doubt, seeing this trend, Amazon thought that the chance to put up your book for free, for a limited time for promotional reasons, would be a good inducement to get indies to sign up. Which we did, to great success in the first months of KDP Select’s existence.

But there was an unintended consequence. New kindle owners loved free and were gobbling these free books up at an amazing rate. And, since initially a free downloaded copy counted as a sale, the books that had been free dominated the best-seller categories, pushing the traditionally published books into invisibility. I am sure the traditional  publishers complained, and I suspect that since indie books are by-in-large cheaper than traditionally published books this was not seen as a good thing in terms of profits for Amazon. The truth of the matter is that KDP Select and free promotions pushed the ebook environment from a level playing field for indies to giving them an unfair advantage within the Kindle store. Hence the changes to the algorithm counting downloads as sales and other tweaks to the formula that determined where a book is ranked on the popularity lists.

This was not the first time that some indie authors rent their garments and claimed that Amazon had turned its back on indies, and it certainly discouraged some authors from using KDP Select. However, while it became more difficult to translate your free promotions into high enough visibility to sustain sales afterwards, indies and those who supported indies again innovated, and a whole bunch of facebook pages, book bloggers, and websites popped up to advertise free promotions. The data above, from my last promotion, shows that KDP Select promotions remained a viable way of improving visibility and sales.

Again, however, unintended consequences caused Amazon to make the changes to their Amazon Associates because they were shelling out substantial amounts of money to websites that were primarily promoting free books. Again, the goal wasn’t to discourage indie authors, or even free books, but to direct the Associates program back to its original goal, encouraging people to go to Amazon to buy things.

So what does this mean for the future? First of all, a few of these promotion sites will go away, a larger percentage will start to charge for promotions––like BookBub.com does (to make up the revenue loss if they stop using Associates links), and others will begin to promote primarily cheap and discounted books rather than free.

If you look at the Promotional Links I have listed, you will see that there are still a significant number available, even after the Amazon change. And, one of my friends just put her book, A Provencal Mystery, up for free  in KDP Select (breaking through into the top 100 by noon the first day and getting over 24,000 free downloads in two days) so I think we can safely say these promotional sites are still doing their job.

However, I do think that as indie authors we need to continue to innovate. Here is what I plan to do––I would love to hear from the rest of you what your strategies are.

Have free promotions less frequently. I had already noticed a growing tension between my reliance on free promotions to keep my books visible (agonizing when 30 days from the last promotion had passed and my books began to drop in the rankings and then lose sales) and the law of diminishing returns (if I offered the book free too frequently, the promotions were less successful.)

Then the success of BookBub.com (as the promotion site that has been delivering the highest number of downloads) forced me to make a change since they won’t feature a book more than every 90 days or an author more than every 30 days. Because of these limitations, my most recent promotion of Maids of Misfortune came two months after my last promotion (and three months after my last BookBub promotion.) I don’t think it is a coincidence I had more downloads than ever, with the strongest post sale bump since last March (and the infamous Amazon algorithm change.)

Longer promotions are safer. I used to suggest that authors not put their books up for free for longer than two days at a time (based on the idea of doing several promotions in the three-month contractual period under KDP Select.) But now that you need to get more downloads to achieve a post sales bump (see the amusing post by Elle Lothlorien), you need to consider how long it is going to take your particular book, in its specific genre, to reach enough downloads. I would do at least a two-day promotion if you have been able to get accepted by BookBub, three days if you don’t but have your book in categories that do well in free promotions and have a strong number of reviews, and maybe the full five days if your book is new, doesn’t have a lot of reviews, or is in a tiny niche market.

Schedule promotions near the end of a month. I started to notice that my borrows are always the strongest the first few days of every month so it is helpful to have my books as high as possible in bestseller lists at the beginning of the month. March 1-3 (three days after my last promotion ended) 394 of my books were borrowed. This helps maintain visibility as well since the borrows appear to be counted as sales.

Do more 99 cent promotions. For awhile, 99 cents was considered ‘dead’ as free books began to dominate as the main method of promotion, but just last week, for the first time, a self-published book hit #1 on NYT Bestseller list (with a 99 cent book). What I plan to do is experiment more with combining a 99 cent sale with a free promotion, or doing a 99 cent promotion to help maintain visibility during those longer times between free promotions.

Experiment more with promotions that are not tied to free or discounting my books. I don’t know for certain whether or not having a week-long promotion of Uneasy Spirits on the heels of the Maids free promotion has helped keep its sales up, but as more of the sites on the list I have compiled switch to non-free promotions, there will be certainly some of them that will turn out to be successful. BookBub can charge high rates they have demonstrated that they consistently deliver enough post promotion sales to more than make up for their cost. I expect that new marketing strategies will emerge in the next few months that are not dependent on free promotions.

Write more books and short stories. I know, I know, this is not a new strategy. But I know that the time I was taking to do free promotions every month was taking away from my writing time. The launch of a new book or short story (like a free promotion), if done correctly, can bump up sales and visibility of your other books, and it can take the sting away from those months between free promotions when your sales drop.

In short, I predict that as long as free promotional days in KDP Select deliver increased post promotion sales and borrows, Amazon has no reason to get rid of them, particularly if this is the main way to get authors to sign an exclusivity contract. And, as long as indie authors continue to produce books and stories that sell and provide new innovative ways to promote those books, the partnership between KDP Select and indie authors will continue.

What do you think?

“The Dude Abides:” Changing Definitions of Words and Historical Fiction

Yesterday, as I was searching for descriptions of San Francisco Theaters in 1880 (I am hoping to have a scene in a theater in my next historical mystery, Bloody Lessons), I ran across the following paragraph and laughed out loud.

“Last evening, as I was hurriedly walking along Dupont street, near Post, in the gloaming, I saw before me a young dude, who, instead of minding his business of walking decently, was projecting his face and hat into the visage of his girl companion to the left, while with his dexter paw he twirled a light cane, which extended half way across the curbstone, and which I tried to escape, but which, notwithstanding, hit me square upon my nose, which is a long one.”  Etiquette on the Street, by Silver Pen in San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser Jan 9, 1886

You see, I am a fan of the movie the Big Lebowski, whose main character called himself “The Dude” and spoke of himself in the third person, and, as a result, the use of the word dude in this 19th century context cracked me up.

The next thing that occurred to me is that if I tried to use the word dude in my 19th century fiction, I would probably bring the reader right out of the moment because it would sound so modern. As I investigated the word and its meanings, I discovered that the term has undergone a profound transformation from its 19th century origins to its modern-day uses.

In 1883, when the above paragraph was written, the term dude was very new. A history of the word in Wikipedia says that the word first appeared in print in the 1870s in Putnam’s Magazine, making fun of how a woman dressed. However, a variety of sources, including the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, agree that by the 1880s it had become American slang for “a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner,” often suggesting that they were aping the style of the English upper

In other words, dude meant a dandy. While most sources agreed that the first printed use of the term with this meaning was 1883, obviously three years later the humorist complaining about modern mores felt comfortable that his readers would understand his use of dude when describing the rude young man who was strolling down a San Francisco street, twirling his cane. I am inserting a picture of Oscar Wilde, who was considered the personification of a dandy, from his 1882 tour.

At the exact same time, the word was taking on another, albeit related, meaning, as the term dude began to be used (for the first time in 1883 in the Home and Farm Manual) to describe men from the city (Easterners) who demonstrated their lack of knowledge about rural life (the West) by behaving and dressing inappropriately.

These two uses of the term were clearly related since to a working rancher or farmer there would be nothing more ridiculous than some dude (whether from an eastern or a european city), who came to the American West, dressed in fancy duds and pretending to be a cowboy.

By the early 20th century the term began to be applied to ranches that catered to these eastern “city slickers.” In fact, in the mid 1960s, my very suburban family spent a week on a “Dude Ranch” in upstate New York, where we rode horses, went on hay-rides and did square dances in a barn. If you had asked me the meaning of the word then, I would have clearly understood it to mean “city slicker.”

Yet, by the late sixties the term had also become a general form of slang used by men when addressing other men, and it seemed to have emerged within urban Black culture. As a young adult in the late sixties (who spent the summer of 1968 taking classes and living in a dorm at the traditionally all black college, Howard University, and then spent a good deal of time the next two years hanging out with my future husband who lived in the primarily African-American male dormitory at Oberlin College) I had become used to African-American men referring to each other as dude. Unlike its original meanings, this was a positive form of address, and it had nothing to do with city slickers.

Pretty quickly, whites who wanted to sound cool, expropriated the term (it shows up in the movie, Easy Rider) and by the mid-to-late 1970s, just about the time I arrived in Southern California, the term became associated with that region, specifically attributed to “stoners, surfers, and skateboarders.” See the Urban Slang Dictionary.

Robert Lane who has written a piece on the word, points out that int 1982 Sean Penn’s character, Jeff Spicoli, in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, personified the kind of young man who was called, and called others, dude.

While this new use of dude, as an informal form of address among young people, began to predominate, the older meanings didn’t fade away completely. My young daughter, for example, loved the TV show Hey Dude (1989-1991) that was about a dude ranch, not stoner skateboarders. Nevertheless, in my own mind, this earlier meaning of the word was wiped out completely after I watched Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski in 1998.

This movie about a grown up man, Jeff Lebowski, whose days are filled with bowling, smoking weed, and sliding through life, has become a cult favorite, and it has created an indelible image of what could happen to the Spicolis of the world if they never grew up.

Interestingly, when I thought more about it, I realized that the writers of the movie (the Coen Brothers) were clearly aware of the changes the term had undergone from its earlier origins. For example, the movie is narrated by a character (called The Stranger and played by Sam Elliott), who is a quintessential cowboy. A cowboy who wryly references the change in the meaning of the word dude from city slicker to stoner slacker in this opening monologue:

“Way out west there was this fella… fella I wanna tell ya about. Fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least that was the handle his loving parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. Mr. Lebowski, he called himself “The Dude”. Now, “Dude” – that’s a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then there was a lot about the Dude that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.” The Stranger, The Big Lebowski

What does this all mean for me as a writer of historical fiction set in the 1880s? First of all, I can’t prove that any of my characters would use the word dude, in either of the earlier meanings–of dandy or city slicker–in 1880, when my next book is set, since I can’t prove they would have heard of it that early. However, the fact that the writer of the 1886 quote used the word without feeling the need of any explanation does suggest that I would not be committing any major historical inaccuracy if I did have someone use the word in either of its original meanings.

Yet, when I read the word yesterday, all I could think of was Jeff Lebowski, in his ancient knitted cardigan, sloppy t-shirt, and baggy bermuda shorts, ambling down the street with his bowling bag in hand, and I was no longer in the 19th century, and I was certainly not thinking about a young man who was “extremely fastidious in dress and manner.” Here the modern meaning and use of the term was just too far from its origins to be an effective word to use in a work of historical fiction set in 1880. Consequently, it was with reluctance I gave up trying to figure out in what context one of my characters could call another Dude.

But I did have fun exploring the origins of the word, and I hope you had fun reading about it. Furthermore, I recommend that you click on this link and read the rest of Silver Pen’s 1886 diatribe on Etiquette on the Street because I think it will make you laugh, even if you aren’t a Big Lebowski fan.

And for the Lebowski fans among you, let me conclude by quoting from the end of the film:

The Dude: Yeah, well. The Dude abides.

The Stranger: The Dude abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there. The Dude. Takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.

M. Louisa Locke, January 18, 2013

7 Things joining KDP Select Can and Can’t do for you

I have no problem with authors deciding not to put (or keep) their books in KDP Select because there are a number of good reasons not to sell an ebook exclusively through Amazon. What does bother me is when people put a book into KDP Select with unrealistic expectations, or don’t do their homework about how KDP Select works, or blame Amazon when their books don’t sell, and then announce that KDP Select is not a good strategy to follow for independent authors.

It is my hope that this post will help educate authors about what KDP Select can and can’t do, thereby creating more realistic expectations and better decisions about whether or not KDP Select is right for their books.

However, before reading the rest of this post, I do recommend that every author read the KDP SELECT FAQ page first so that they have a basic understanding of how the program works.

Four Things KDP Select CAN NOT DO for you:

1. If there is some reason why people are not buying your book when they run across it (too few reviews, negative reviews, badly designed cover, ineffective product description, badly written or formatted free excerpt, wrong price–too low or too high), then simply being in KDP Select will not change this, and people will not start to buy or borrow your book just because it has the Amazon Prime designation.

2. If people can’t find your book when browsing in the Amazon Kindle Store because the book isn’t in the right categories, or doesn’t have the right key words or tags associated with it, simply being in KDP Select will not make it easier for people to find the book, and they will not start to buy or borrow this book. (There is no special promotion by Amazon of all KDP Select books).

3. If your book has demonstrated its salability, is in the right categories, has the right keywords and tags, but the book has not sold enough in the last 30 days to put it in the top 100 of the popularity lists for its categories (or in the last 24 hours to put it in the bestseller list of those categories), then simply being in KDP Select won’t change its discoverability, and people will be unlikely to find the book, and they will not start to buy or borrow this book.

4. If you do a free promotion of your book using the KDP Select free days, this will not automatically ensure that it gets a lot of downloads, and, even if it gets a lot of downloads, this will not always result in an increase in sales or borrows of the book.

For example, if your book fits in category one above (there are problems with the book itself in terms of why people don’t buy it), doing a free promotion won’t necessarily cause a lot of people to download it. I routinely look at the free lists of the categories I am interested in, and I routinely take a pass on free books that don’t appeal to me for a variety of reasons. In this case a book that already has problems probably won’t get enough downloads to cause a rise in visibility afterwards. And, even if a number of people decide to take a chance on a book, just because it is free, when the book goes off free it will face the same problems it had in selling that it had before the promotion.

Or, if the book is only listed in one category, and that is one of the larger categories (say it is only listed in contemporary fiction-where there are 109,000 books and where not every free book makes it to the top 100 free books in that category), then the free promotion may not gain enough attention for the book to make it visible after the promotion is over. Again, this means the promotion will not result in increased sales or downloads.

Or, if you do nothing to publicize your book’s free promotion, even if it is in the right categories and has demonstrated its ability to sell well when people find it, there is no assurance that enough people will download it (under the new algorithms) to result in increased visibility when the sales are over. This again means the promotion will not result more sales and borrows.

In fact, a failed promotion (one that generates few downloads) may hurt your book’s sales since the book will not be selling at all for the days of the promotion, lowering your average sales for those days. In this case your book will be worse off in visibility than before the promotion.

Three Things KDP Select CAN DO for you:

1. If your book is already selling well enough so that it is visible on one of the browsing category popularity lists or bestseller lists, then people who are looking for books to borrow through Amazon Prime can now borrow it. Since borrows translate as sales, KDP Select can help you maintain your visibility and add to your earnings for the book. A number of authors have mentioned that they can’t imagine that readers would bother borrowing a book unless it was a highly priced book, but this does not seem to be the case.

At $3.99, my two historical mysteries, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, have been borrowed 4108 times through Amazon Prime in the last year and made me $8,161 (just short of $2 per book). These borrows have also helped keep my books visible between promotions.

2.  If you do a promotion where you get enough downloads to put you on the top 100 of a popularity category list, being in KDP Select will result in at least some increase in sales and borrows after the promotion.

However, to ensure you get enough downloads, you need to make sure your book is ready (cover, description, categories, etc) and that you have done adequate marketing of the promotion. (see my Simple Steps to a Successful KDP Select Free Promotion.)

This has become particularly important because of the increase in the number of free books that are available in any given day, and the change in the algorithm for translating downloads to sales that has limited the impact of all promotions. Presently, if you don’t break through into the top 100 Kindle free book list with your free promotion, your promotion will be unlikely to bump your book up high enough afterwards to effect subsequent sales (unless your book was already doing well, and the promotion is designed to maintain that visibility.) Using sites like the Author Marketing Club, having your book picked up by a site like Pixel of Ink, or doing a paid promotion, for example through BookBub, is increasingly necessary to achieve that level of success. Here is a recent post at BookBuzzr on 7 Resources to Help with  KDP Free Days Promotions.

If your promotion is successful (you break into the 100 Free Kindle books list), and the book is saleable, and you have your book in categories where you have a fighting chance of being visible after the promotion is over, KDP Select will increase your sales and borrows.

For example, the two weeks before my recent December 28-30 KDP Select promotion, Maids of Misfortune sold an average of 25 books a day, and Uneasy Spirits sold an average of 9.8 books a day. The first 10 days of January, after the promotion, Maids of Misfortune sold an average of 43 books a day, and Uneasy Spirits sold an average of 40 books a day. In addition, in those first 10 days of January 907 people borrowed one of these books.

3.  If your book has already had positive reviews and you have a successful KDP Select promotion, you will increase your total number of reviews, which will improve the chances that people will buy the book when they see it.

Although you may garner a number of negative reviews (people who wouldn’t normally buy your type of book may give it a try if free, find it is not to their taste, and a number of them seem to enjoy telling everyone why they didn’t like it.), the increased number of positive reviews ultimately improves the overall credibility of the book.

For example, before doing my first KDP Select promotion last December, when the book had been selling for 2 years, I had 38 reviews for Maids of Misfortune, with an average 4.3 stars. A year later, after numerous free promotions, I have 191 reviews with an average of 4.2 stars. The slight slippage in stars is more than out-weighed by the positive impression of having those many positive reviews gives of the book. Probably even more importantly, Uneasy Spirits, my sequel, which had only been out 3 months before the first promotion (and only had about 8 reviews), now has 88 reviews with an average of 4.3 stars. I would never have gotten this number of reviews in just over a year without the KDP Select promotions I have done.

In summary, if your book is not selling well on Amazon (it is not at least visible on one of the one browsing categories) don’t sign that book up for KDP Select if you are not planning on putting in the work to do a successful free promotion. You will be disappointed, and you will be going exclusive to Amazon in exchange for no discernible benefits.

On the other hand, if your book has the potential to sell, it is in marketable categories, and you work hard on putting together an effective promotion, KDP Select can earn you more money in sales and borrows after the promotion, maintain a level of discoverability that will permit your book to continue to make money, and help your book accumulate a healthy number of reviews. How many sales and borrows you make a month (in comparison to what your sales are out side of Amazon), and how willing you are to continue to do promotions when those sales begin to dwindle (as they will almost inevitably), will then determine whether or not you want to keep your book in Amazon’s KDP Select.

I hope this helped clarify a little what to expect from KDP Select and what not to expect so that any decision you make as an indie author will improve the likelihood that readers will find and buy your books.

M. Louisa Locke, January 14, 2013

A Victorian San Francisco Christmas

While I am off visiting daughter and family, watching two little tykes experience the fun of opening up presents, I wanted to leave you with a little piece of Christmas Past. Below is the description of San Francisco in December 25, 1979, written in the San Francisco Chronicle. M. Louisa Locke

A MERRY CHRISTMAS 

HOW THE DAY WAS CELEBRATED THROUGHOUT THE CITY 

The Ways in Which Three Hundred Thousand People Sought and Found Holiday Amusements  

Amid a chime of bells that rang cheerily all over the city, and an echo of tin horns operated by adolescent enthusiasts fearless of cold weather, Christmas Day of 1879 was ushered in. As on all holidays the city was early astir, and despite hard times and collapsed stock market, young and old, rich and poor and high and low of San Francisco apparently determined to lay aside the consideration of the ills that the flesh in this section of county has been rather generously heir to of late, and have a good time. The signs of the time were everywhere visible in evergreen ornamentation over doorways, Christmas trees in various stages of bearing, visible through parlor windows, and brown paper bundles careering along the streets in charge of their new owners by right of purchase.  The ice on the streets did not appear to chill the general enthusiasm, but on the contrary lent an added enjoyment to the firesides and made the day  more than usually reminiscent of the Christmas tide in the East. The small boy was out numerously in all parts of the city, dividing his industry between the eager velocipede and the

SYMPATHETIC TOOT-HORN.

The latter from its more aggressive and impressive characteristics, “had the call” in the adolescent pools, and if there was one block in the city not favored by some red-cheeked soloist with a tin nuisance it was an oversight as fortunate for the block as it was remarkable to record. Adult humanity likewise took kindly to the horn as a Christmas celebrant and the saloons of the city were marvelously well patronized by a throng whose egg-nog tasted none the less sweet because it was disseminated at the rate of nothing per drink with especial inducements to clubs if the candidate came twice to the same bowl. The churches claimed a large number during the hours of service. In the Roman Catholic edifices low mass was celebrated in the darkness of the early morning hours, the chill of the dawn not deterring hundreds of devotees from leaving warm couches to participate in the holy rites. Between 10 and 11 o’clock high mass was sung to thronged churches, the slow, solemn grandeur of the service being rendered by increasing choirs and orchestral aids under whose efforts the “Kyre Eleison” echoed grander, sweeter and more solemn than ever. So with the Episcopal congregations, the choral service received especial attention and Christmas sermons, recalling the

 SACRED STORY

That the day commemorates were the universal rule. the ungodly––if the term can be fittingly applied to those who choose the droppings of the foaming ladle to the droppings of the sanctuary, and sought the theatrical spectacle rather than the churchly array––were likewise abroad in large numbers. The matinees were crowded, and the Prince of Goldland and his brethren of the tinsel circles went through scenic splendors to the edification and delight of thousands out for a holiday in the theater. The Park and the Cliff road were the scene of an unwanted pageant, comprising all those male and female appreciators of the delights of a fast trot through the frosty air and a spin over the red macadam at a rate that stirred the vigilant policeman to extra watchfulness. The neighboring city resorts caught a large proportion of the amusement seekers, the boats and trains going out heavily laden in the morning with an expectant multitude and coming back a night with the same throng, all the better for a breath of country air, a change of scene and a day of relaxation and rest. The ambitious duck-slayer pervaded numerously

THE FAVORED MARCHES

And the crack of Greeners and Scotis was through all the day, music to not a few ears, tough the resultant bags were so meager in most cases as to cast a sarcastic reflection on the marksmanship of the bearer, or pay mute tribute to the wariness of scarcity of the sought-for canvasback. At the various charitable institutions the little neglected inmates found that their adopted mothers had not forgotten them, and there was high revel held about many a charity Christmas tree, burdened with gifts for lonesome little wanderers cast up by the low tide of the social sea on the shores of public charity. As the hours of the day wore on and the shadows of the early falling night crept athwart the streets, the crowds thinned out and the average citizen went home and pushed his chair up to the table, when the turkey, immolated on the domestic altar as a sacrifice to the patron saint of the day, offered up savory incense that agitated pleasantly the membranes of hungry nostrils. There was feasting and merriment for all save the tramps, who slouched along all the more recklessly in the shadows of the street sides.

NOB HILL AND THE BARBARY COAST

Were bent on the same errand of celebration, though the different results were shown by the different terminations––the upper ten thousand going quietly to bed, while the lower continued it choruses far into the night in the circumscribed boundaries of the drunk’s cell to an auditory of sleepy trusties and cursing fellow-unfortunates. In the evening the candles on hundreds of domestic Christmas trees lit up tinsel ornaments and bright toys, the theaters opened their doors and engulfed new throngs, the refreshment depots received new detachments of thirsty recruits more merry than ever, and it was far into the morning before the last gay notes were over and the city went again to sleep to dream over again its “Merry Christmas.”  ––San Francisco Chronicle, December 26, 2012

Kindle Holiday Giveaway

I am participating in a HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY being hosted by The Kindle Book Review and Digital Book Today. Participants can win a Kindle Fire and 2 $100 Amazon gift cards. Registration is Dec 20-Jan 5.

In addition, Maids of Misfortune will be Free on Kindle Dec 28, and Uneasy Spirits will be free on Kindle Dec 28-29.

Happy Holidays! M. Louisa Locke

 

Two-Day Sale of Victorian Mystery Books on Kindle

I don’t usually just post when I am doing a promotion, but I am experimenting this time with a pre-Holiday promotion of my two Victorian San Francisco Mystery novels so I thought I would let you all in on the experiment.

Uneasy Spirits, the sequel in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series is FREE on KINDLE for two days, Tuesday-Wednesday, December 11-12, 2012.  Here is the link for the U.S. Kindle Store, and the U.K. Store.

A second part of the experiment is to offer the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, for 99 cents for the same two days that the sequel is on sale. While I know there are lots of people out there who already have Maids of Misfortune and are going to be glad to pick up the sequel for free, I wondered if those who are new to my work would be inclined to get the first book in the series at the same time if it was discounted. Here is the link for discounted Maids of Misfortune in the U.S. Kindle Store, and the U.K. Store.

If you don’t own a Kindle, try the Kindle ap.

Meanwhile, if you love historical fiction, here is a list of the books that are free or discounted from the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative to which I belong. Check them out, and the other fine historical fiction ebooks by the Cooperative members.

Cheers!

M. Louisa Locke

Authors Need to Get a Clue: How to devise the best marketing strategy for the Holidays

Everywhere the discussion is raging among indie authors: should they sign their books up for KDP Select for the holidays or not? This is an important decision because, if last holiday is any guide, the bulk of ebook sales are going to come in the ninety days after December 25, when huge numbers of new ereaders and tablets of all sorts are found gift-wrapped under the tree. On the surface the decision should be easy.

If the vast majority of a specific ebook’s sales are on Amazon, if you have enrolled the ebook in KDP Select program before and achieved a decent number of borrows (for example, more than the total number of ebooks you were selling in non-Amazon stores), and if you held free promotions that increased your sales––then probably it would be a smart move (at least financially) to enroll that book in KDP Select for the holidays. These are all the reasons I have decided to keep my books, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, enrolled in KDP Select.

However, I have become increasingly frustrated with how often as part of this discussion authors say they don’t have a clue why their books sell well in certain ebookstores and not on others or why their books have done well or not on KDP Select, and therefore they don’t know what to do.

I know some of the leaders in self-publishing argue that writers should just keep writing, not spend time with promotions or worrying about what sells and what does not. However, access to data and the ability to respond to that data are two of the advantages indie authors have over traditional authors, and deciding not to try to use that information to increase sales doesn’t make good business sense. It might if you have 20 books out and already have a steady income, but not if you are trying to build enough income so you can become or stay a full time writer.

(I am not going to get into the philosophical discussion of long term versus short term effects of exclusivity or using free promotions, etc, or how best to use social media to market your books because I have made my opinion  known on these issues repeatedly.) So, this post is going to detail some of the clues authors should be looking for to help them decide whether to go with KDP Select over the holidays as the best way to maximize sales.

1) Understand that not all books are the same.

In fact, the same author may have very different patterns of success for different books they write. Non-fiction books are going to behave differently than fiction. Genre fiction is going to behave differently than literary fiction, adult from young adult, etc. So don’t compare apples to oranges. How your horror/suspense book did in KDP Select isn’t going to tell you whether or not to put your self-help book into this program or the success of another author’s tale of horror in selling on the Nook isn’t going to necessarily tell you whether your cozy mystery is going to sell well in that store. So, you very well may decide to put one book in KDP Select and not another for this holiday season.

2) Analyze what is successful

Unless your books have been out for a very short period of time, or you only have one book (or novella, or short story) out, look for clues for why one book has done better than another in selling over all, or selling in a particular estore, or gets more borrows or does better in promotions. Or, look at a book similar to your own that has been successful (we should all know our competition––the books that rank high in our categories, that have product descriptions that make them sound similar to ours, that are listed in “our customers who have bought…” lists, and that do well after a free promotion.

If you can figure out why these books are doing well (or better than others), you should be able to figure out if there is anything to do to improve the performance of your less successful books, or understand why one book should be in KDP Select and another shouldn’t. This isn’t about how to write the book so it will sell, but how to make sure it is in the best position to sell well.

For example, Maids of Misfortune, my first book, consistently sold better this year than the sequel, Uneasy Spirits, and it does better in KDP Select promotions and has more borrows. The reasons for this turn out to be pretty easy to determine (given that price, cover, product descriptions for the two books were virtually the same). In the Kindle store, Maids is in 7 categories and sub-categories, while Uneasy is in only 4, and this means that it shows up in more free browsing lists. As a result Maids breaks into the top 100 free books list during a promotion more often. Maids is the first in a series (which gives it an edge-since someone who buys it and doesn’t like it won’t buy the next book) and it has been available as a book for 2 years longer than Uneasy (having more total sales and reviews), which means the Amazon algorithms that include total sales and reviews are going to be weighted in favor of the Maids. These differences, however, aren’t something I can do anything about, so I don’t need to change my marketing strategy based on them.

Using another author’s books as an example, P.B. Ryan’s Victorian mysteries not only sell well on Amazon, but they also sell well on the Nook and other retailers. One of the reasons for this seems to be that Ryan has six books in her series, which has permitted her to make her first book a permanent loss leader (at free or 99 cents). This has resulted in persistently higher sales for all the rest of her books in all the stores. This also means that going on KDP Select for the holidays wouldn’t make sense because she would lose substantial sales for these books in the other stores. With only two books out in my series, I can’t use that strategy, but I might very well be able to do in the future.

In short, looking at whether a book is in a series, where it is in a series, how long it has been published (and the number of total sales, and total reviews), and how many categories it has, will all offer clues why that book has had success in a specific store and whether or not you can duplicate that success.

There are other clues to look for if you examine a book that is selling well in one venue or another, when compared to other books. For example, the successful book might show up in different categories (not just a different number of categories), use different key words, show up on different “customers who bought” or recommended reading lists, have a different feel to their covers, or be sold at a different price.

All of these factors are related to how well a book has been able to tap into its market and how well specific strategies (categories, keywords, price, etc.) work in the different ebookstores to make the book more visible to that market.

Again, lets look at my two books. Despite the fact that Maids sold twice the number of books as Uneasy did this year, both books have done well on overall sales––but mostly in the Kindle store. Maids sold over 21,000 books and Uneasy over 9,000 (and these figures don’t include borrows or free downloads).

I believe the reason why these books have been so successful (besides the usual caveat that I hope it is because they have good covers, good product descriptions, competitive pricing and are well written) is that I have done a good job of determining who the market for my books are and I have been able to use the tools Amazon offers independent authors to reach that market.

3) Know your potential readership for the book­­––and how best to tap into it

The success of one book versus another book in sales, borrows or promotions, or the success of a book in one store versus another, depends in part on the overall market for the book and how well you are tapping into that market. Therefore you need to consider to whom the book will appeal and why, not just who you hope will read it.

For example, you might see your book as “literary fiction,” hoping for a readership that is mainly interested in the quality of your writing, but a large number of your readers might be interested in the book because of the setting, or time period, or the profession of the protagonist, or the age of the characters, or the feeling of suspense, or the existence of explicit sex, etc. They might also be readers in other countries than your own. If you ignore these potential readers and just put your book in the category “literary fiction” (where there are over 24,000 books listed on Amazon, 13,000 listed in Kobo, and no category for this at all for the Nook), your book will have difficulty competing with the traditionally published “literary fiction” that tend to dominate this category.

This means when people are browsing for “literary fiction” your book probably won’t be high enough up on this lists to be visible, but the other readers who are looking for a book like yours––but looking in “historical fiction,” or “mystery,” or some other category, or using some other keywords, won’t find your book because you didn’t target them by using those categories or keywords. In either case, your potential readers won’t find your book.

Looking at the categories used by successful books that are like yours is one of the easiest ways to get a clue of what categories work at attracting that readership in any given ebookstore. I have written numerous posts on this, here, here, and here. But there are other clues to look for.

For example, when I published my first book, I simply thought of it as a historical mystery––and thought my market was just people who liked historical mysteries. It also had a woman sleuth, so I put it into those two categories on Amazon and Smashwords, the first two places I published. But what fans of my books said in their reviews, emails, comments on my blog, and on facebook (all places you should look to for clues) revealed much more to me about exactly who liked the book and why.

It was immediately clear from these clues that my books were attracting historical fiction readers who liked the Victorian period, and readers in general who liked books about San Francisco.

I had already included the words “San Francisco” and “Victorian Mystery” in my subtitle, which I now believe was crucial in getting Maids of Misfortune noticed at the very beginning when the book was way down in the overall browsing lists (it took me 5 months to get it on the historical mystery list on Amazon so I wasn’t even tapping into that market effectively.) But I also used these terms as key words and tags when I first published––which reinforced my effectiveness in reaching this audience, and favorable comments by readers about the setting and the time period confirmed that I was reaching that market.

Over time, however, I started to notice that fans of the books also kept mentioning that they liked my books because they were “clean,” that they could recommend them to anyone, of any age, that they were a “comfort” read, that they were “gentle,” etc. It dawned on me (head slap) that these readers were saying they liked the books because they fit the format for a cozy mystery.

The common definition of a cozy mystery is that there is an amateur female sleuth with a partner––sometimes love interest––who is in police or legal profession, a community of secondary characters––including animals, and no explicit sex or violence. My series features Annie Fuller (widowed woman supplementing her income as a clairvoyant), Nate Dawson (her romantic partner and a lawyer), a cast of interesting characters (the people living in Annie’s boarding house––including Dandy the Boston Terrier), and the murders occur off-stage while the sex stays carefully within the bounds of 19th century middle class propriety.

At the same time, the few negative reviews I got mentioned the tameness of the romance, frustration that the mystery pace wasn’t fast enough––which also seemed to suggest these readers were looking for a book with either the more explicit sex of an historical romance or the tension of a thriller. Clearly I needed to make sure that the potential audience for cozy mysteries would find my books, and those who wanted something more racy or thrilling would look elsewhere.

At this point I went back and included “cozy mystery” as one of my key words and one of my tags for each book, I started using this as a hash tag when tweeting about the books, and using it as a descriptor when talking about them on facebook, and I got my books listed on key cozy mystery sites. And, while the evidence is anecdotal, I get even more comments that praise the books for the cozy elements and fewer that complain that the books aren’t something they were never designed to be.

So, it is important that you understand who the market for your books is, and how best to reach them, if you want to maximize your sales, but it is also crucial information if you want to look for the clues that will tell you in which ebookstores provide the best potential for reaching that market, and therefore whether or not going exclusive to Amazon in order to enroll a book in KDP Select is a good move.

4) Determine which ebookstores provide the best potential for reaching your book’s market

For example, in my experience the Amazon Kindle store has the greatest potential among the ebookstores for tapping into the historical mystery market. Why? Because on Kindle this browsing category is an easily found sub-category, and it has enough books in the category to be a place where a reader would find it useful to browse (or look for free books). In contrast, while the Nook store does have a “historical mystery” category, it is hard to find, and Kobo doesn’t have this category at all. To make matters worse, Kobo doesn’t permit the author to attach keywords to their books, which is probably why when you put the keywords “historical mystery” in the Kobo store you get 80,000 books listed, most of them mis-identified! Therefore I am not surprised I sold more books in the Kindle store than either the Nook store or the Kobo store.

But that isn’t true for all categories or keywords.

For example, Kobo actually has a young adult category with nice sub-categories under it (while Nook and Kindle call their young adult category “teen,” not as useful), and the Nook store has a number of cozy mystery sub-categories, and a 19th century sub-category under historical fiction. In fact, based on the number of categories you are permitted to sign up for (5) and the specificity of the subcategories under mystery and historical fiction, the Nook should be the easiest store for me to sell in. But, as I have written elsewhere, so far I have not been able to figure out (or get the help from tech support) to get my books into these categories. If I ever do achieve this goal, it might completely change my strategy for marketing and I could see shifting away from using KDP Select.

In short, when trying to figure out why your books sell one place or another, or why KDP Select does well for some books but not others––consider the advantages and disadvantages each of the key ebookstores provide in terms of categories, keywords, and tags. Consider as well if your book might be particularly attractive to people in certain countries, and how well the different ebookstores have tapped into those national markets. For example, Kobo is a leader in opening up non-North American ebook markets, and if your books sell well outside of the US, you might not want to go exclusive with KDP Select and miss out on those markets.

In summary, indie authors have an advantage in the kinds of data they get on their books (their sales, downloads, borrows, rankings, etc.) and the degree to which they can make decisions about their books (cover, product description, price, promotions, categories, keywords, tags, and even what ebookstores to sell in.) I am advocating strongly that as an indie author you look at your books individually, compare them to other books that are similar, analyze what seems to be working and what doesn’t, make sure you know your potential market, and evaluate the relative effectiveness of the different ebookstores in terms of reaching that potential market. If you have done this, not only should you see ways where you might improve your sales, but the decision on whether or not to enroll in KDP Select for this holiday season should also become crystal clear.

I would love to know if any of you have found these clues useful, or have additional clues to recommend, so we can all learn from each other.

And, may your holiday sales be excellent no matter where you sell your books!

M. Louisa Locke

Tools to use to Recreate the Past: Annie Fuller’s Boarding House

I am working on Bloody Lessons, the third book of my historical mystery series, which means I am wrestling once again with how adequately and accurately to portray the past, in this case 1880 San Francisco. This led me to the idea of describing some of the tools I used in creating the historical background for my protagonist’s home, which appeared first in Maids of Misfortune and will continue to play a role in all of my books, a boarding house in the 400 block of O’Farrell Street of San Francisco, between Jones and Taylor.

First of all, as Susanne Alleyn points out in her clever and very readable book, Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer’s (and Editor’s) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, and Myth, an author of historical fiction needs to recognize that the city of today can be vastly different from the city of whatever time period you are writing about, and this is true even when you are talking about a relatively young city like San Francisco and a time period that is only 132 years in the past.

Sometimes cities change for man-made reasons. Street names are changed, new streets laid out, hills graded, wetlands filled in, residential areas become commercial and commercial areas become residential, and railroads, subways, and freeways are built, destroying existing property. Neighborhoods change, expand and contract, and sometimes disappear.

And then there are natural disasters. Hurricane’s Katrina and now Sandy have demonstrated the ability of natural forces literally to obliterate areas, wiping the structures, even the ground the structures are on, off the face of maps. Sometimes these streets and blocks are rebuilt, sometimes they are not, but a good historical fiction writer of the future, setting their stories in New Orleans or New Jersey shore towns anytime after these disasters, will have to take the impact of these disasters into consideration. In short, I needed to take both man-made and natural disasters into account when I set Annie Fuller’s boarding house in the 400 block of O’Farrell Street to make sure that the street existed in 1880, that it was an area of the city that would have had a boarding house, and that the physical environment would be the same (grade of the hill, etc).

So, how did I determine this was an appropriate place to put the house, particularly since I wanted the house to have been built in the 1850s when Annie Fuller’s aunt and uncle first settled in San Francisco? As Alleyn recommends, I started with historical maps. Sally Woodbridge’s San Francisco in Maps and Views, was most useful. O’Farrell Street did not exist in 1847, but it existed by 1852, as determined by a series of surveyor maps of the city streets, and it was named for the first surveyor and map-maker for the city, Jasper O’Farrell. In 1852, however, there were no buildings past the 100 block of O’Farrell.

Yet, by 1859, another map shows at least three structures existed on the south side of the 400 block, making it historically accurate for me to write that my protagonist’s house was built in the mid 1850s. In addition, since the block was so sparsely built up at the time the house would have been built, I was able to a create a house that was a little wider and in a different style than the narrow Italianate houses that would come to predominate in the 1870s and 1880. I used this fact to help me determine that the house would be constructed in the Greek revival style, which was briefly popular in the 1850s, and in my second book in the series, Uneasy Spirits, I used that fact to support the rather large back yard to the boarding house where a Halloween Party was held.

According to historical maps and histories of San Francisco, by 1879, when my first book opens, the streets north of Market and between Van Ness and the financial district to the east were built up with a variety of residential and commercial buildings representing a variety of architectural styles. For example, see Burchell’s The San Francisco Irish, 1848-1880. O’Farrell Street was no exception. Obviously one of the ways I could try to get a feel for what the block was like in 1880 would be to go look at it today,  hoping that some of the buildings are still standing.

However, this isn’t possible because in 1906, between the earthquake and the fires that came after, the 400 block of O’Farrell, along with most of the buildings east of Van Ness, were destroyed. After reading a detailed account of these fires, it looks like the 400 block may have been spared the first day after the earthquake, but the afternoon of the second day, April 19th, it was engulfed by blazes coming from all directions.  If I wanted to get a feel for what Annie’s boarding house would have looked like in 1879-1880, I was going to have to do more research.

Census records (which I had analyzed for my dissertation) gave me information about the size of homes and boarding houses in this part of the city in 1880, and newspaper classified ads not only confirmed that there were boarding houses in this residential area (including on O’Farrell Street), but also gave me a range of prices people were paying for room and board. This all helped me plan the size and number of servants and boarders that would be found in her house. Architectural histories of the city told me what styles predominated in the 1850s, when the boarding house on O’Farrell was supposedly built.  See for example, Kenneth Naverson’s West coast Victorians: A Nineteenth-Century Legacy. In addition, photographs of the city in the 1870s and early 1880s were another enormously helpful source, confirming what I had been reading about. For example, this picture shows how residential and commercial buildings of every shape and style could be found in houses in the same neighborhood in the 1870s. One of the most useful historical sites on the internet links historical photographs by time and place on a map of the city, so you can begin to see what the neighborhood looked like over time.

Since Annie Fuller’s Uncle Timothy, the man who built the house she inherited, was a successful businessman, he would have made improvements in the original 1850s house, including the installation of a bathroom on the second floor, upgrading the woodwork, and putting in new wallpaper and furnishings. I consulted books such as Victorian Interior Decoration: American Interiors 1830-1900,  In the Victorian Style, and a wonderfully illuminating book, Death in the Dining Room: And other Tales of Victorian Culture, to help me determine what Annie Fuller’s boarding house would have looked like by the time she inherited it in 1878.

While Susanne Alleyn cautions historical fiction authors about depending on historical movies as sources, a well-researched movie can provide a useful visual impression. For example, the 1993 movie based on Edith Warton’s Age of Innocence, and the companion book that compares stills from the movie to paintings of the period, were wonderful sources, although the movie portrayed much wealthier interiors than would have characterized Annie Fuller’s boarding house.

While houses from O’Farrell neighborhood don’t still exist, there are examples of Victorian architecture that did survive west of Van Ness that also helped. The Hass-Lilienthal House in San Francisco, built in 1886 and open for tours, has been a wonderful place to visit to for this purpose.

Finally there is simply the tool of my imagination. As I have written elsewhere, forty years ago I lived in a house built in the 1870s or 80s in Ohio, and I used my memories from that house and my own imagination to picture and then describe the interior layout of Annie Fuller’s boarding house.

Are my descriptions of the O’Farrell Street boarding house a hundred percent accurate Who knows. But if I have done my historical research sufficiently and used my imagination and writing skills effectively, I will make my readers believe in this house, picture it in their own imaginations, and want to revisit it, book after book.

Happy Thanksgiving. As a little gift of thanks for the joy I get from writing about Victorian San Francisco and Annie Fuller and Nate Dawson, Maids of Misfortune will be Free on Kindle today and tomorrow, November 22-23, 2012.

M. Louisa Locke

 

Uneasy Spirits Excerpt: In Celebration of Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching, and I thought it might be fun to put up an excerpt from Uneasy Spirits, the second book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. This is a chapter near the end of the book where the main protagonist, Annie Fuller (a boarding house owner who supplements her income as a clairvoyant, Madam Sibyl), is taking a walk with two of her boarders (Barbara Hewitt and her son Jamie) and one of my favorite characters, their Boston Terrier, Dandy.

Chapter Thirty-five

Tuesday evening, October 28, 1879

“No Fun for the rats. A ratting match for $200 took place the other evening in a well-known sporting resort…The dogs were the imported bull-terriers ‘Crib’…and ‘Flow.’”

—San Francisco Chronicle, 1879

“Jamie, hold tight to Dandy’s leash. I don’t want any rat-catching tonight,” said his mother, Barbara Hewitt, who then glanced over the boy’s head at Annie and smiled.

Jamie’s mother, a tall, statuesque brunette who taught English literature at Girls High, had moved into Annie’s boarding house with her young son last January. Most evenings and weekends, she was either working on grading the mountains of papers her students seemed to produce or supervising Jamie in his own homework. She did try, however, to spend a little time each evening with her son, walking Dandy. Tonight, when Annie ran into them coming down the stairs to the kitchen, Barbara had asked Annie if she would join them on their walk.

Annie had been very pleased. A brisk walk was precisely what she needed. Today had been a difficult one for Madam Sibyl. Not only had she seen seven of her regular Tuesday clients, but two others who had canceled last week had asked her to fit them in today at lunch time. Since they were two of her favorite clients, Annie had obliged. This had meant she had skipped lunch and had only time for a hasty dinner on a tray in Sibyl’s parlor, so that she wouldn’t have to take off the wig before the first evening client came.

In addition, the time she had been spending investigating the Framptons had been cutting into her ability to get through all the local and national newspapers, which is where she garnered most of her financial information. Thank goodness her clients themselves provided a good deal of expert opinion on San Francisco business trends, so that she had been able to do an adequate job. In her opinion, however, adequate wasn’t good enough. She found herself resenting the time it took to cast horoscopes for those clients who insisted her advice be presented in this form. Faking the use of palmistry was easier, but still increasingly distasteful. She just didn’t know what to do since she had no reason to expect that most of her clients would stay with her if she suddenly forswore Madam Sibyl.

“How are your students progressing?” Annie asked, trying to distract herself from that gloomy thought. The warmth of the sunny day had begun to drain away with the setting of the sun, and they had decided to head down Taylor to Turk, then west to Leavenworth, and back up to O’Farrell, an easy ten-block circuit.

“They are quite excited because we are having a contest for the best poem written on the theme of All Hallow’s Eve. We have been studying Robert Burns’ poem, do you know it?”

“My, that brings back my days at the academy,” said Annie, who began to disclaim in her best Scottish brogue, “‘Amang the bonie winding banks, where Doon rins, wimplin, clear; where Bruce ance ruled the martial ranks, an’ shook his Carrick spear; some merry, friendly, country-folks together did convene, to burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks, an’ haud their Hallowe’en fu’ blythe that night.’”

“That was splendidly done, Mrs. Fuller,” exclaimed Barbara.

Annie laughed. “I guess I’ve always had a theatrical streak. The drama club was my favorite extracurricular activity in school. But, please, I asked you to call me Annie.”

 “Yes, I’m sorry,” replied Jamie’s mother softly, “there is such formality among the teachers at Girls High that I have quite gotten out of the habit of using someone’s given name. Of course, I would be so pleased if you would call me . . . Barbara.”

Annie, struck by the way Barbara had paused before giving her first name, wondered if this had any significance. Since she and Jamie’s mother were both widowed, of a similar age, and both working to support themselves, there should be a natural affinity between them, but Annie really knew very little about Barbara Hewitt’s past. She never spoke about where she grew up, if she had any living relatives, or where she had taught before coming to San Francisco.

She certainly never mentioned her marriage, or what had happened to her husband. This reticence was so familiar to Annie that she couldn’t help speculating that the deceased Mr. Hewitt, like her own husband, hadn’t been the best of helpmeets. A distressing incident with a neighbor last month had finally forced Jamie’s mother to reach out to Annie. Since then, Annie had welcomed any opportunity, like the offer tonight, to become better acquainted.

They had just turned into Turk Street, which was lined with a variety of small businesses, when Jamie ran up to them and said with excitement, “Mother, look at that pile of pumpkins! Can we buy one? Mr. Chapman said he would help me carve a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween. Mrs. O’Rourke said there’s going to be a party!”

Barbara looked a question at Annie, who said, “I think that is an excellent idea. In fact, get two smaller ones as well; we can put them on the front porch for decoration. I forgot that the two of you weren’t here last year when we had our first ever All Hallow’s Eve party at the boarding house. Mrs. O’Rourke invited a number of her young relatives, and Kathleen’s brothers all came, in addition to a couple of her friends. And of course the boarders were welcome.”

Annie realized that she had been so preoccupied with her investigation of the Framptons she had neglected to discuss the upcoming festivities with Beatrice, and she was glad to hear that plans were moving forward anyway. When she was young, she had been fascinated by the ranch hands’ celebration of the Day of the Dead. And the girls at the female academy she had attended in New York had duly memorized Burns’ poem and giggled about the ghosts who rose from their graves on the last night of October.

But it wasn’t until last year’s party that she realized how many of the rituals associated with that night came from Ireland. No wonder Beatrice had been so pleased when she dropped off the walnuts they had bought at Hapgood’s yesterday. Annie’s mouth began to water when she thought of some of the tasty treats Beatrice had produced last year. She would have to think about whether she would still go to the séance on Friday since it would interfere with the party and Kathleen would be too busy to come with her that night. Perhaps, if she asked Nate to accompany her in Kathleen’s place, he would be less likely to object to her making one last attempt to conclude her investigation.

Annie noticed that Barbara was taking money from her purse to pay for the pumpkins Jamie had picked out, and she moved forward, saying, “Let me at least pay for the two smaller ones. Jamie, can you manage Dandy and carry this very impressive specimen you have chosen? We still have several blocks to go.” The boy had picked out a plump pumpkin, twice the size of his own head, and Dandy was twisting around his ankles, threatening to up-end him.

After making her contribution to the purchases, Barbara took the large pumpkin from her son and asked Annie if she would mind taking Dandy for the rest of the walk while Jamie carried the two smaller, future jack-o’-lanterns.

Taking the leash, Annie said, “I would be delighted. Dandy always makes me feel quite the lady when I walk with him.” The small black and white dog cocked his head and looked up at her, as if he understood every word, and then trotted smartly beside her as they continued on Turk towards Leavenworth.

This early in the evening, all the shops were still open. There was a good deal of foot traffic and delivery carts, whose ends jutted over the wooden sidewalk while their goods were off-loaded. As a result, their conversation halted as Annie carefully monitored Dandy, impressed by the way the diminutive dog wove neatly around every obstacle, his white front feet flashing in the light from the gas lamps. When they were almost to Leavenworth, Jamie again ran back to his mother, asking her if they could step into a used clothing shop.

“I thought if I could use some of my spending money I’d get an old hat to put on my pumpkin. Mr. Jack would look more true-to-life and scary and all,” he said, pointing at the stack of hats piled up on a cart outside the store.

Annie smiled at his enthusiasm. When his mother agreed to his request, she said to her, “Barbara, you go ahead with him. Put that big old pumpkin down, and Dandy and I will guard it with our lives while you help him pick out a suitable hat.”

Dandy seemed very interested in the large pumpkin that was now at her feet, snuffling lustily at it with his squashed-in nose. Annie had a sudden vision of him deciding to anoint it, so she bent over and scooped him up. He delightedly started licking her face.

“Oh, Dandy, that is quite enough. You are no gentleman, to give a lady such kisses on the public street,” Annie scolded and tried to hold him away from her. Although he didn’t weigh more than ten or twelve pounds, she feared his excited wiggling could cause her to drop him, so she bent over and placed him on the ground again, tightening her hold on the leash and hoping he had lost interest in the pumpkin.

He sat down and looked up at her, as if to say, now what game are we to play? Then, without warning, he began to bark frantically and pull her down the sidewalk. Despite his bantam size, she had no choice but to follow him because it was either that or jerk the poor fellow off his feet. After about a yard or so, she dug in her heels and successfully stopped him by scooping him back into her arms. Then a noise like rolling claps of thunder caused her to whip around, just in time to see the large wooden barrels piled high on a cart tumble down, crashing onto the sidewalk where she had just been standing. Crushing the pumpkin to smithereens.

If you want to learn more about Annie Fuller, and who is trying to kill her, do go buy Uneasy Spirits, and if you enjoyed Dandy, the Boston Terrier, you can read more about him in the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, and in the free short story Dandy Detects. I also wrote a blog piece last year about Halloween as it was celebrated in the late 19th century that you might be interested in called Uneasy Spirits and Halloween: Using Fact in support of Fiction.

M. Louisa Locke, October 23, 2012

Update on Categories and Keywords: Why authors should still care

A year ago (October 2011), I wrote a piece entitled Categories, Key words, and Tags, Oh My!: Why Should an Author Care?, which has become the most frequently viewed post on my blog. It has been reposted numerous times, and I still get comments on it weekly. There is a reason for this. The subject is complicated, confusing, and yet crucial to selling a book successfully online. While most of the original post is still relevant, it seemed time to update it, with the special addition of a section on how categories play a role in KDP Select promotions. For those of you who never read the original, I hope this helps. For those of you who did, I hope I have clarified a few sections and added some useful information.

This post focuses on ebooks on Amazon (although the main points work for print books as well) because that is where I have the most experience and because Amazon is definitely (still) ahead of the other ebook stores in its sophisticated approaches to helping readers find books. As with much of the publishing process, there is a lot of conflicting information about how Amazon’s categories, keywords, and tags work, so some of what I say is more of an educated guess than documented fact, but I will link back to Amazon’s information pages whenever possible.

First some definitions:

Categories:

When a book is uploaded into KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), an author (or traditional publisher) has the opportunity to choose two categories for that book. It used to be that Amazon allowed you to choose five categories, which is why some books, like my first historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, have more Kindle Store categories listed at the bottom of their product page. (If you want to know what a book’s categories are­­––look under Look for Similar Items by Category) When you, as author, choose a category for your book, you are actually choosing a browsing path for customers. That browsing path consists of a hierarchy of categories and sub-categories and your book is available for readers to discover under each of the parts of that hierarchy. For example, in the case of my most recent book, Uneasy Spirits, one of the two browsing path/categories I chose was:   Fiction—Mystery&Thriller—Mystery—Historical 

If you browse for Uneasy Spirits in the Kindle store, you will find it under all four parts of the hierarchy. Note that each time a reader goes one step further down the hierarchical browsing path there are fewer books to browse. For example, as I write this, here are the numbers of books in each of these four areas:

Fiction [570,230]; Fiction––Mystery&Thriller [74,482]; Fiction—Mystery&Thriller—Mystery [15,240]; Fiction—Mystery&Thriller—Mystery—Historical [2,587]

The “categories” Amazon offers when you upload your book to KDP are based on BISAC categories, a book industry standard for subject headings. What authors find confusing is that Amazon converts the BISAC categories into the Amazon browsing-path categories and subcategories that show up in the Kindle store––and the two are not always identical.

To complicate issues further, the browsing categories for print books and ebooks are not identical, and Amazon creates additional browsing categories like “newly released” and “best sellers” and “editors’ pick”––some of which are separate from the browsing-path/categories and some of which are available as additional qualifiers to the browsing-paths. Are you lost yet?

Finally, to make matters even more difficult, this conversion process does not always work accurately (for a long time the historical mystery category had less than 100 books in it because of a computer glitch). However, the KDP Support system has improved in the past year in helping authors resolve these problems. If you click on the Contact Us link at the bottom of the KDP page, the menu leads to an option to email the support staff to change your categories, and if you use the Author Central Contact Us link, you can even ask for a telephone consultation.

Keywords:

When you publish your book with KDP, you can choose seven keywords in addition to the two categories. These are really key phrases since they can be more than one word. For example I used terms like “Victorian Mystery” and “cozy mystery.” These keywords are used by Amazon in its own search engine––along with words in your title and subtitle and product description. Because I used those keywords and also have Victorian and Mystery in my subtitle, when Maids of Misfortune was first published, it immediately showed up near the top of the list of book when a customer put in the key search words “Victorian Mystery.”

Tags:

These are another kind of keyword or key phrase, but many authors get confused and think that they also help a book get found using the search box at the top of the Amazon page or on their Kindle device, but they don’t work this way. Tags are listed on a book’s product page under the heading Tag this product and were designed by Amazon to help customers describe and find products using key words called “tags.” Because this is so confusing, I am going to address the question of tags in a separate post.

Why Should an Author Care?

Categories, keywords, and (to a much more limited degree) tags can be used to help readers find your books, and these are methods that are generally not available to authors of print books that are sold in brick and mortar stores. As authors of ebooks, we need to learn how readers find books in estores like the Kindle store and use the tools that are available to us to maximize our sales.

When you sell a book to a traditional publisher, who then distributes that book to bookstores, you, as author, really don’t have much to say about how readers find your books. You hope that the bookstores will shelve your book on the right shelf (and that they have separate shelves for your genre) and you hope your publisher can convince the seller (or pay them) to put your book in special places like “newly released” tables, or “best seller” tables, or under “staff recommendations.” Beyond that, there isn’t much authors can do besides cultivating booksellers at conventions and through book signings, hoping this will convince them to feature their books––a time consuming and expensive proposition.

However, authors, by their choice of categories, keywords, and tags, can increase the chances that a reader will find their books in an ebook store. I am going to discuss two strategies an author can use to achieve that end.

The first strategy is to choose, at least for one of your two categories, a browsing path that ends up with a relatively small number of books at the end of the path.

For example, when I first published my second historical mystery, Uneasy Spirits, I could have chosen as one of its two categories, the browsing path of Fiction—Historical Fiction. However, this would have placed this book in a final pool of over 24,000 books in the Kindle store. As an indie author without a big promotional campaign behind me, it would be easy for this new book to get lost in that pool. Few people are going to scroll down through hundreds if not thousands of books of historical fiction books to find mine.

Instead, I chose to put Uneasy Spirits into the Romance–Suspense category [8,000 books] and, more importantly, I chose to place both of my books, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits in the Fiction—Mystery&Thrillers—Mystery—Historical category/browsing path. There are only 2600 books in the historical mystery category, and with a category this size I have been able to keep my books continuously on the list of top 100 bestselling books. This means both books are always visible when someone browses, which means both books sell well day-after-day. To date, I have sold 35,000 copies of Maids of Misfortune and 10,000 copies of Uneasy Spirits.

Obviously you don’t want to put your book in a list just because it is small. It has to make sense to the reader.  My books are cozy mysteries, and if I chose the hardboiled mystery sub-category just because of its size, I would end up with either few sales or nasty reviews. However, you should take the time to learn what categories are available that might fit your book. For example, look at the categories successful books like yours are found in, and then think about how to use your 2 category choices wisely.

The second strategy is to use keywords in combination with categories to help when the category is too large to be effective under the first strategy.

Take, for example, that large category, Fiction––Historical Fiction. Since this is really a more accurate description of both of my books than Romantic Suspense, once Uneasy Spirits got enough sales to be more competitive (helped along by its placement in the Historical Mystery category) I changed its second category to Historical Fiction. However, on a day-to-day basis, neither Uneasy Spirits or Maids of Misfortune show up high enough in this large category to be visible. This is where your choice of keywords can help.

When I was coming up with keywords for Maids of Misfortune and then later for Uneasy Spirits, I could have used the term Gilded Age as one of my 7 choices. It is actually a very precise definition of the time (1877-1880) and place (U.S) where my series of books are set. However, if someone was in the Historical Fiction category and put in the term Gilded Age, only 28 books come up. While I am sure if I had used this as a keyword, that my books would have been near the top of this category and search list, how often would a customer bother to check a list so small? But if you put in the term Victorian (which is used for the entire 19th century in England, Europe, and the U. S.) you get 367 books. This is a list of books that is large enough for a customer to find it a useful place to browse, but small enough for my books to do well in. Therefore, I chose the term Victorian and made sure I put this keyword in my subtitle as well. Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits are at the top of that list of 367 books.

A third strategy for using categories includes considering what category you want your books to be in if you do a KDP Select free promotion (something that didn’t exist when I wrote my original piece.) While it is good to have your book listed in at least one relatively small category, where it is visible to the casual browser, if the category is too small, or has no sub-categories, it can limit your exposure when you make the book temporarily free.

Let’s take, for example, Of Moths and Butterflies, a book by a V. R. Christensen, a fellow member of the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative.

Of Moths and Butterflies is currently in the two categories, Fiction­­––Historical Fiction [24,000 books] and Fiction––Drama––British & Irish [2500 books]. The choice of the second category makes a good deal of sense since it is a much smaller category. As a result, the book is currently listed as #21 in the bestseller list for this category and is much more visible to browsers.

However, when Christensen does a KDP Select promotion, I would recommend that she try shifting the book temporarily from British & Irish Drama to Historical Romance. The reason for this is that the British & Irish Drama free list is filled with public domain books that are always free, and this means it isn’t a list where people would regularly go to find free books. Historical Romance, on the other hand, both because of its subject matter and robust free list, will be a place that people routinely look for free books to download. In addition, the book would show up on the Romance Free list as well (since a book shows up on all the stages of a browsing path), which is an even more robust free list.

This means Of Moths and Butterflies would be seen, and possibly chosen, by a much broader pool of potential customers. More downloads means a better ranking when the book comes off of the free promotion. Christensen could then keep Moths and Butterflies in this category if her sales are strong enough to keep her in the top 100 Historical Romance bestseller list, or she could shift it back to British & Irish Drama. I have followed this pattern with Uneasy Spirits, shifting it between Historical Romance, Romantic Suspense, and Historical Fiction, to good effect.

In Summary:

As an author, you need to choose categories and keywords carefully when you publish or promote. Social media and traditional marketing can only do so much to drive potential customers to find your book. You need to make sure that the person who is just browsing in the Amazon or Kindle store has a good chance of finding your book (and then your cover, description, reviews, and excerpt will hopefully do the rest). You need to take into consideration not only what best categories describe your books, but also what will maximize the chances that a reader who is browsing will find your books. You also want to make sure that readers who find your book are the ones who would be most likely to buy it and enjoy it. Careful uses of categories and keywords can also increase your chance of having a successful free promotion, which in turn will help boost your sales. Carelessness in using these strategies can condemn even the best work to the backwaters of the Kindle store––undiscovered, unbought, and unread––and that would be a shame.

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