M. Louisa Locke's Blog, page 18
March 1, 2011
Numbers, Numbers, Numbers: To an Indie Author, what do they mean?
9,093; 2.99; 2,049; 99; 15,570; 440; 7135; 4,882, 10,281; 1517; 94; 54; 18; 89; 229; 28; 18; 5; 10.264; 539; 20,505; 1577
For a writer, supposedly dominated by my right-brain, I seem to have become obsessed with a left-brained fixation on numbers. On reflection, I think this obsession with numbers may be related to the important role marketing (or selling-depending on how you define it) plays for me as an indie author. L. J. Sellers had an interesting blog post on Publetariat the other day, where she argued that one of the reasons that self-published authors seemed more motivated to get out there and sell their books than traditionally published authors is because the "…steady income and the sales data provide a great incentive to spend time everyday blogging, tweeting, posting comments, and writing press releases." I tend to agree. That daily Amazon count of books sold (and the fact that I saw a dip yesterday in blog hits and sales) probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am writing this blog post today!
So what are the numbers I am obsessed with and what do they mean? First, in the past fifteen months I have sold 9093 copies of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune , at a selling price of $2.99. I have sold 2049 copies of my short story, Dandy Detects , at the price of 99 cents. The combined income from the sales of my book and short story through January (don't have February figures yet) has been $15,570. This means that I have made as much in the past year selling my writing as I was making as a semi-retired teacher. It meant that I could retire completely in January so that I could become a full-time writer, a life-long dream.
The next set of numbers deal with trends in my book sales. The first seven months my book was on sale, I sold 440 copies. The next seven months I sold 7,135. It took me those first seven months to get reviews, get my website and blog up and running, learn how to promote the book, and get it put in the right Amazon category. Those seven months taught me patience. The next seven months showed what could happen if all the work you do to promote begins to come together and demonstrated the reality of the ebook revolution. I sold 4882 books in the months of December and January alone, and ninety-six percent of them were from the Kindle store. I was clearly one of the indie authors who benefited from all those new Kindle and iPad owners.
But December and January sales were also an aberration, and in the month of February I sold far fewer books, 1517 in all. So while I averaged 94 books sold a day during January, my average for February was down to 54. Yet, this drop did not bring me back down to pre-holiday levels. The holiday bump in sales (which ebooks in general experience) increased my sales significantly from before the holidays. In November I had average only 18 books a day, so I am now selling three times the number of books than I did before the holidays, and there is no indication that this increased average is going to disappear.
The next set of numbers reveal something about my use of social media. I have 89 facebook friends, 229 twitter followers, and I have posted 28 times on my blog, The Front Parlor (over a fifteen month period). I am clearly no social media maven. But twenty of those posts have been reposted to Publetariat (giving me a much wider audience), and while I only average 18 hits a day on my blog, this is up significantly from my average of 5 hits a day in 2010. In addition, what these numbers do not reveal is the number of times I have commented on other people's blogs, on Kindle Boards, or yahoo groups, or the number of people who have run across Maids of Misfortune on the various review sites and lists where I worked hard to get it placed.
In the end, however, I believe that the last numbers may have the greatest meaning for me. I finished teaching my last classes in December of 2010. In January, 2011, I carved out nineteen days to write and wrote 10,246 words on my next novel, Uneasy Spirits, averaging 539 words a day. In February, although I only got in 13 writing days, I wrote 20,505 words, averaging 1577 words a day. What does this mean? It means that all that left-brain number-crunching has given me the time and confidence to let my right brain loose, to fly on those wonderful flights of fancy. Those word counts are the best numbers of all.
For a writer, supposedly dominated by my right-brain, I seem to have become obsessed with a left-brained fixation on numbers. On reflection, I think this obsession with numbers may be related to the important role marketing (or selling-depending on how you define it) plays for me as an indie author. L. J. Sellers had an interesting blog post on Publetariat the other day, where she argued that one of the reasons that self-published authors seemed more motivated to get out there and sell their books than traditionally published authors is because the "…steady income and the sales data provide a great incentive to spend time everyday blogging, tweeting, posting comments, and writing press releases." I tend to agree. That daily Amazon count of books sold (and the fact that I saw a dip yesterday in blog hits and sales) probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am writing this blog post today!
So what are the numbers I am obsessed with and what do they mean? First, in the past fifteen months I have sold 9093 copies of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune , at a selling price of $2.99. I have sold 2049 copies of my short story, Dandy Detects , at the price of 99 cents. The combined income from the sales of my book and short story through January (don't have February figures yet) has been $15,570. This means that I have made as much in the past year selling my writing as I was making as a semi-retired teacher. It meant that I could retire completely in January so that I could become a full-time writer, a life-long dream.
The next set of numbers deal with trends in my book sales. The first seven months my book was on sale, I sold 440 copies. The next seven months I sold 7,135. It took me those first seven months to get reviews, get my website and blog up and running, learn how to promote the book, and get it put in the right Amazon category. Those seven months taught me patience. The next seven months showed what could happen if all the work you do to promote begins to come together and demonstrated the reality of the ebook revolution. I sold 4882 books in the months of December and January alone, and ninety-six percent of them were from the Kindle store. I was clearly one of the indie authors who benefited from all those new Kindle and iPad owners.
But December and January sales were also an aberration, and in the month of February I sold far fewer books, 1517 in all. So while I averaged 94 books sold a day during January, my average for February was down to 54. Yet, this drop did not bring me back down to pre-holiday levels. The holiday bump in sales (which ebooks in general experience) increased my sales significantly from before the holidays. In November I had average only 18 books a day, so I am now selling three times the number of books than I did before the holidays, and there is no indication that this increased average is going to disappear.
The next set of numbers reveal something about my use of social media. I have 89 facebook friends, 229 twitter followers, and I have posted 28 times on my blog, The Front Parlor (over a fifteen month period). I am clearly no social media maven. But twenty of those posts have been reposted to Publetariat (giving me a much wider audience), and while I only average 18 hits a day on my blog, this is up significantly from my average of 5 hits a day in 2010. In addition, what these numbers do not reveal is the number of times I have commented on other people's blogs, on Kindle Boards, or yahoo groups, or the number of people who have run across Maids of Misfortune on the various review sites and lists where I worked hard to get it placed.
In the end, however, I believe that the last numbers may have the greatest meaning for me. I finished teaching my last classes in December of 2010. In January, 2011, I carved out nineteen days to write and wrote 10,246 words on my next novel, Uneasy Spirits, averaging 539 words a day. In February, although I only got in 13 writing days, I wrote 20,505 words, averaging 1577 words a day. What does this mean? It means that all that left-brain number-crunching has given me the time and confidence to let my right brain loose, to fly on those wonderful flights of fancy. Those word counts are the best numbers of all.
February 14, 2011
Marketing or Selling: What's the difference and why do I like to do one and not the other?
To sell: "to influence or induce to make a purchase" Merriam-webster.com
To market: "to expose for sale in a market." Merriam-webster.com
People commenting on the new trends in publishing frequently say that for self-published authors to be successful they need to be entrepreneurs. In fact they often say any author who wants to be successful needs to participate fully in the selling of their own books. I heard stories for years from my traditionally published friends about going to conventions to network with book sellers, arranging book tours, book signings, and speaking engagements at local libraries, and how much they dreaded this aspect of being a published author. Author Forums and groups like Murder Must Advertise are still dominated by similar discussions of the ins and outs of selling books, including these traditional methods. As I prepared my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, for publication, I found myself dreading having to actually sell it. When, miracles of miracles, I found that marketing my book on the internet was much less painful than I feared. What I also discovered was how difficult I find it to "sell" my book or "my self" through the traditional routes.
I have only approached two local books stores, asking them to sell my book on consignment, and while they both said yes, I haven't followed up with other books stores in town, nor have I even used those two venues to schedule book signings, or ask if I should restock when the books I left were sold. I haven't approached any libraries, and except for a talk I gave on self-publishing in general at the college where I taught, I haven't scheduled any public appearances. I did go to the Bouchercon, and talked to two booksellers, but haven't followed up on those two contacts. Yet every day I get on my computer, and read and comment on different blogs, forums, reader sites, and Kindle boards. I blog about once or twice a month, and I constantly work on different strategies to make my book visible to the reading public. So, the question I have asked myself is: why is it so difficult for me to sell my book through traditional means, but so easy to "market" on the internet?
I think that the answer to that question lies in the difference between the two definitions above. When I ask a bookstore owner to carry my book, or think about scheduling a book signing, or write to a library asking them to carry my book, I feel like I am trying to persuade them to sell my book. I feel that if I gave a talk, or book signing, I would be saying "Buy my Book," thereby making them feel uncomfortable if they don't want to do that. And I have felt uncomfortable with the idea of persuading or influencing someone to buy something that they don't want to buy since I was a child selling girl scout cookies. Not because I think selling is bad, or sales people are bad, but because I personally feel uncomfortable doing it.
When I went to the Bouchercon, I felt like I had fallen through a time warp thirty years to when I was a graduate student going to history conventions, where I was supposed to sell myself to senior historians. You were supposed to court them, strike up conversations where you could flatter them about their work, thereby giving you the opportunity to mention your own work, in other words, "sell yourself." All of this was in the hope that someday in the future, when you submitted an article or book to an institution where they were an editor or a reviewer, or, even better, if they were on a hiring committee for a job for which you were applying, that they would remember you and accept that article, or book, or hire you. I was terrible at this. Thank goodness I had a good friend who was better at it, so I would trail along in her wake, getting introduced to all the big names, but I doubt very much if any of them remembered me for more than a second. At Bouchercon, I had no friend to trail along behind, so I did very little selling of myself, beyond leaving some sell sheets on some tables, and handing out business cards to the few people-usually fans sitting next to me at a talk-who expressed any interest in my own work.
And this isn't because I am a particularly shy person. I have taught for 30 years, standing up semester after semester in front of hundreds of students, speaking extemporaneously and with ease. I have run academic senate meetings, stood in front of Board of Trustees arguing vehemently to present the faculty's point of view, and I have been the master of ceremonies at scholarship banquets with hundreds of people present. But in all of these cases, I didn't feel like I was selling something of mine. I might have been selling an idea, or even trying to get people to fork over money to improve the educational opportunities for students, but it didn't feel like I was selling myself, or something of mine, and I didn't feel uncomfortable doing it.
My discomfort isn't because I am not proud of my book, either, because I am, just as I was proud of my scholarship, or my abilities as a teacher when I did submit work for publication or applied for jobs. But I want readers and booksellers, (as I did editors or hiring committees) to make their own independent judgment on the quality of the work, not on my ability to sell it or myself.
However, when I engage in conversations on the internet, or blog about self-publishing, and mention my book, or have the title of my book as part of my signature, or have a link back to my product page, it feels different. I feel like I am marketing not selling. I am not trying to persuade them to buy my book, I am exposing my book out there to the reading public. I don't go out and buy books from most of the people whose blogs I read or comment on, unless they happen to have written a book I would normally be interested in, and I assume the same goes for the people who are reading my comments or blogs. If they decide to take a look at my book, I then feel that the cover, and the description, and the reviews, and the excerpt will demonstrate the quality of the book (not me saying-buy this book, trust me it is good,) and I don't have to worry that they are feeling bad because they decided not to buy it, so I don't feel uncomfortable.
And, I don't have to sell myself or the quality of my book to Amazon.com or Smashwords to get them to sell my book. They just do, and again, if I have done my job right, and gotten the book into the right category, and have a good cover, good blurb, good review, and good excerpt, (in other words, if I have marketed it well) the book will sell itself. And that doesn't make me feel the least bit uncomfortable.
I am not making any judgments here, (in fact I am in awe of people who go out to those conventions, and books stores, and libraries, and book clubs, and book signings—particularly when I know for many of them they are as uncomfortable about doing it as I am.) And, I am probably making a distinction that won't hold up to very much scrutiny, but the distinction between selling and marketing, and why I feel like I am doing the latter when I use the internet, does at least explain my own odd behavior. In addition, the fact that whatever I have been doing to market on the internet has actually resulted in over eight thousand sales, doesn't hurt. But, what I am wondering is, are any of the rest of you out there finding yourselves making a similar distinction or facing a similar reluctance use the traditional methods, while enthusiastically embracing the new methods offered by the internet and ebookstores? Or is this just one of my own idiosyncracies?
To market: "to expose for sale in a market." Merriam-webster.com
People commenting on the new trends in publishing frequently say that for self-published authors to be successful they need to be entrepreneurs. In fact they often say any author who wants to be successful needs to participate fully in the selling of their own books. I heard stories for years from my traditionally published friends about going to conventions to network with book sellers, arranging book tours, book signings, and speaking engagements at local libraries, and how much they dreaded this aspect of being a published author. Author Forums and groups like Murder Must Advertise are still dominated by similar discussions of the ins and outs of selling books, including these traditional methods. As I prepared my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, for publication, I found myself dreading having to actually sell it. When, miracles of miracles, I found that marketing my book on the internet was much less painful than I feared. What I also discovered was how difficult I find it to "sell" my book or "my self" through the traditional routes.
I have only approached two local books stores, asking them to sell my book on consignment, and while they both said yes, I haven't followed up with other books stores in town, nor have I even used those two venues to schedule book signings, or ask if I should restock when the books I left were sold. I haven't approached any libraries, and except for a talk I gave on self-publishing in general at the college where I taught, I haven't scheduled any public appearances. I did go to the Bouchercon, and talked to two booksellers, but haven't followed up on those two contacts. Yet every day I get on my computer, and read and comment on different blogs, forums, reader sites, and Kindle boards. I blog about once or twice a month, and I constantly work on different strategies to make my book visible to the reading public. So, the question I have asked myself is: why is it so difficult for me to sell my book through traditional means, but so easy to "market" on the internet?
I think that the answer to that question lies in the difference between the two definitions above. When I ask a bookstore owner to carry my book, or think about scheduling a book signing, or write to a library asking them to carry my book, I feel like I am trying to persuade them to sell my book. I feel that if I gave a talk, or book signing, I would be saying "Buy my Book," thereby making them feel uncomfortable if they don't want to do that. And I have felt uncomfortable with the idea of persuading or influencing someone to buy something that they don't want to buy since I was a child selling girl scout cookies. Not because I think selling is bad, or sales people are bad, but because I personally feel uncomfortable doing it.
When I went to the Bouchercon, I felt like I had fallen through a time warp thirty years to when I was a graduate student going to history conventions, where I was supposed to sell myself to senior historians. You were supposed to court them, strike up conversations where you could flatter them about their work, thereby giving you the opportunity to mention your own work, in other words, "sell yourself." All of this was in the hope that someday in the future, when you submitted an article or book to an institution where they were an editor or a reviewer, or, even better, if they were on a hiring committee for a job for which you were applying, that they would remember you and accept that article, or book, or hire you. I was terrible at this. Thank goodness I had a good friend who was better at it, so I would trail along in her wake, getting introduced to all the big names, but I doubt very much if any of them remembered me for more than a second. At Bouchercon, I had no friend to trail along behind, so I did very little selling of myself, beyond leaving some sell sheets on some tables, and handing out business cards to the few people-usually fans sitting next to me at a talk-who expressed any interest in my own work.
And this isn't because I am a particularly shy person. I have taught for 30 years, standing up semester after semester in front of hundreds of students, speaking extemporaneously and with ease. I have run academic senate meetings, stood in front of Board of Trustees arguing vehemently to present the faculty's point of view, and I have been the master of ceremonies at scholarship banquets with hundreds of people present. But in all of these cases, I didn't feel like I was selling something of mine. I might have been selling an idea, or even trying to get people to fork over money to improve the educational opportunities for students, but it didn't feel like I was selling myself, or something of mine, and I didn't feel uncomfortable doing it.
My discomfort isn't because I am not proud of my book, either, because I am, just as I was proud of my scholarship, or my abilities as a teacher when I did submit work for publication or applied for jobs. But I want readers and booksellers, (as I did editors or hiring committees) to make their own independent judgment on the quality of the work, not on my ability to sell it or myself.
However, when I engage in conversations on the internet, or blog about self-publishing, and mention my book, or have the title of my book as part of my signature, or have a link back to my product page, it feels different. I feel like I am marketing not selling. I am not trying to persuade them to buy my book, I am exposing my book out there to the reading public. I don't go out and buy books from most of the people whose blogs I read or comment on, unless they happen to have written a book I would normally be interested in, and I assume the same goes for the people who are reading my comments or blogs. If they decide to take a look at my book, I then feel that the cover, and the description, and the reviews, and the excerpt will demonstrate the quality of the book (not me saying-buy this book, trust me it is good,) and I don't have to worry that they are feeling bad because they decided not to buy it, so I don't feel uncomfortable.
And, I don't have to sell myself or the quality of my book to Amazon.com or Smashwords to get them to sell my book. They just do, and again, if I have done my job right, and gotten the book into the right category, and have a good cover, good blurb, good review, and good excerpt, (in other words, if I have marketed it well) the book will sell itself. And that doesn't make me feel the least bit uncomfortable.
I am not making any judgments here, (in fact I am in awe of people who go out to those conventions, and books stores, and libraries, and book clubs, and book signings—particularly when I know for many of them they are as uncomfortable about doing it as I am.) And, I am probably making a distinction that won't hold up to very much scrutiny, but the distinction between selling and marketing, and why I feel like I am doing the latter when I use the internet, does at least explain my own odd behavior. In addition, the fact that whatever I have been doing to market on the internet has actually resulted in over eight thousand sales, doesn't hurt. But, what I am wondering is, are any of the rest of you out there finding yourselves making a similar distinction or facing a similar reluctance use the traditional methods, while enthusiastically embracing the new methods offered by the internet and ebookstores? Or is this just one of my own idiosyncracies?
February 7, 2011
Write, write, write…
I just added a 1000wordsaday badge onto this site, because I have finally begun to stop putting marketing before writing. I know that for months I have said that I would do this, but in January I finally did. I averaged between 500-900 words a day for the month of January, but in the first week of February I averaged 1400, so I felt I could safely enter this challenge set up by Debbie Ohi on Inkygirl.com.
For those of you who have been following my blog, you may remember that I wrote the first draft of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, over twenty years ago, which means most of my fiction writing experience in those past twenty years has been rewriting. I am very good a rewriting, but I wasn't so sure about my ability to write fresh material. I forgot how much fun it is to get up everyday and tell myself a story. I think that one of the reason my word count has begun to rise is my growing investment in that story and the characters. This is a good thing.
I have noticed that quite a number of my fellow bloggers have commented on the difficulty of maintaining a balance between their social networking and blogging presence and writing the work that all the networking and blogging is supposed to support. I am hoping that now that I am 30,000 words into the book that the balance will come more naturally, because I will be less likely to use marketing as a form of procrastination.
While I know I will never be one of those persons who write 2-4 books a year (I need too much sleep, and the hours it takes to keep my body from freezing up seem to be growing exponentially), I would like to believe, if only for the sake of the gratifying number of readers who have expressed a desire for the next book in the series, that I can start to develop a schedule where I can put out one book a year.
So, back I go, to write, write, write…
For those of you who have been following my blog, you may remember that I wrote the first draft of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, over twenty years ago, which means most of my fiction writing experience in those past twenty years has been rewriting. I am very good a rewriting, but I wasn't so sure about my ability to write fresh material. I forgot how much fun it is to get up everyday and tell myself a story. I think that one of the reason my word count has begun to rise is my growing investment in that story and the characters. This is a good thing.
I have noticed that quite a number of my fellow bloggers have commented on the difficulty of maintaining a balance between their social networking and blogging presence and writing the work that all the networking and blogging is supposed to support. I am hoping that now that I am 30,000 words into the book that the balance will come more naturally, because I will be less likely to use marketing as a form of procrastination.
While I know I will never be one of those persons who write 2-4 books a year (I need too much sleep, and the hours it takes to keep my body from freezing up seem to be growing exponentially), I would like to believe, if only for the sake of the gratifying number of readers who have expressed a desire for the next book in the series, that I can start to develop a schedule where I can put out one book a year.
So, back I go, to write, write, write…
January 24, 2011
Thanks for all the nice support
Hi,
I wanted to thank everyone who has commented on my blog in response to the last few posts I have made. I felt sort of odd about mentioning my sales so frequently, but everyone has taken this information in the spirit in which it was offered, as information for and encouragement to those authors who are taking the indie route to publish. I love to think of all of you as a growing and supportive community, and I have enjoyed checking out your websites and blogs in return.
I would answer you all separately, but I am really trying to be good about carving out more time to write (something you all are familiar with), so I thought I would just try to give a general shout out. However, if you ever have a specific question, do feel free to email me directly.
M. Louisa Locke
I wanted to thank everyone who has commented on my blog in response to the last few posts I have made. I felt sort of odd about mentioning my sales so frequently, but everyone has taken this information in the spirit in which it was offered, as information for and encouragement to those authors who are taking the indie route to publish. I love to think of all of you as a growing and supportive community, and I have enjoyed checking out your websites and blogs in return.
I would answer you all separately, but I am really trying to be good about carving out more time to write (something you all are familiar with), so I thought I would just try to give a general shout out. However, if you ever have a specific question, do feel free to email me directly.
M. Louisa Locke
January 17, 2011
Self-Publishing Success? Yes! Self-Publishing Exception: No!: Why the charges of exceptionalism are just part of the old debate
In April 2009, after my historical mystery, the Maids of Misfortune, had been out for 4 months and I had sold 158 books, I asked on this blog whether I could call myself a "real author." This was in response to the frequently stated opinion of those against self-publishing that people who took that route were only going to sell to family and friends and weren't real authors. In fact, a year ago almost all of the blog posts on self-publishing revolved around the debate (and they were definitely heated debates) about whether or not self-publishing was good (because the traditional industry sucked) or was bad (because all self-published books sucked).
However, as the year progressed, I began to notice a shift in the tenor of the debate, as the majority of blog posts about self-publishing began to be devoted to what authors should do if they wanted to successfully self-publish. This was a healthy shift, not only for champions of the indie movement (since indie authors like Zoe Winters could get back to writing) but for authors who were contemplating self-publishing as an option (either as newbie's or traditionally published authors) because they were getting concrete information that would 1) help them make the decision about which route to follow and 2) be successful if they decided to self-publish. The sharing of actual sales numbers has been part of that shift, and I particularly appreciated a recent post by Ian Edward where he pointed out how extensive this willingness to share information about self-publishing has been.
Yet, I was disappointed recently to see a version of the old self-publishing debate rear its head in response to recent posts by Konrath about the healthy sales numbers he and other self-published authors have been getting. See for example, the post by Richard Curtis and some of the comments to Konrath's reply to that post.
What I saw happening is now that there is irrefutable evidence that self-published books actually sell, the anti-self-publishing argument has shifted from "all self-publishing books are badly written and none of them will make a dime" to "those successful self-published authors are an exception" and they are only successful because 1) they were already successful through the traditional route and therefore have a fan base in place or 2) they sell their books at such a low price (99 cents or less) they are really just giving them away or 3) they are genre writers and their readers have never been very discriminating and therefore will buy any old trash.
This irritated me. It irritated me because this argument seems to be designed to discourage writers from considering the path of self-publishing (based on inaccurate information) and it demeans writers who have been successful by suggesting that their success doesn't have anything to do with the quality of their work.
Yet, based on my own experience, self-publishing is a viable route to success, and you don't have to be exceptional to achieve that success.
First to the question of success. When I consider that April post and those 158 books sold, I have to marvel at how low my expectations were. I would have been delighted at that point if I had continued to average 1-2 books a day for the rest of the year, reaching perhaps a total of 500 books sold in 12 months. According to "accepted wisdom" at that time, this is what the average title sold in America in a year. But at the end of 12 months (November 30, 2009) I had sold 2693 books and made over $5,000 (which meant that I had averaged over 7 copies of my book a day-a tremendous increase.) As I have previously posted, this success was enough to convince me to retire completely from my teaching job to devote myself to writing. But I had no idea of how much the next two months would be a game changer, for me and many other self-published authors. Here the fact that 80% of that first year's sales were on Kindle becomes important, because one of the key strategies of this generation of indie authors like myself has been to focus on ebook sales, where there is the greatest rate of growth and the highest rate of profit. I hoped that the rumors of Kindle sales would result in increased sales of my book, but I had absolutely no idea of how true this would be.
From what I have read, my experience was rather typical, in that sales began to rise over the Thanksgiving holiday and continued to rise throughout December, peaking in the week after Christmas. But while my day-to-day sales have varied, what has not changed is the overall trend. In December alone I sold 1932 copies of Maids of Misfortune, 94% on Kindle, and as of January 16, my average sales per day for January is 106 books a day. I have no doubt I will sell over 3000 books in January alone.
The point isn't the numbers, but that in anybody's estimation, Maids of Misfortune, a self-published book, has been a success. But I am not an exception and my success can be duplicated.
First, I have never published through the traditional route, and I have only one book out (and a short story), so my success cannot be explained by my publishing world contacts, extensive back-list, or already established fan base.
Second, I sell my ebook for $2.99, which seems a perfectly reasonable price for a book that is by a complete unknown and cost me only $250 to get a cover designed. (I did not pay a professional editor, interior designer, formatter, marketing publicist—so why should I charge the reader as if I was a big publisher who paid people to do this?) I do give my short story away through Smashwords (or charge 99 cents on Kindle)-but hey, it's a short story!
Third, it is true that my book is a genre book, a historical mystery. But as a person with a PhD and a 35 year career as a history professor, whose favorite books to read are mystery and science fiction genre books, I resent the idea that I and the other people who read genre fiction are not discriminating readers.
One of the complaints lodged against Konrath and others has been on their focus on the number of sales. Yet it was Konrath's honest discussion of those numbers over a year ago that helped me decide to take the self-published route, and every time I have reported my numbers, I have that in mind. I see it as paying forward the gift Konrath gave me.
Like Edward, I have felt that one of the great things about being an indie author has been being part of a community of people who are extremely willing to help each other, rather than being a competitor for the few precious agents, publishing contracts, or marketing dollars that are available to the author who goes the traditional route. Sharing numbers-good or bad-is one of the ways I help that community.
It is time for everyone to accept that self-publishing does offer a viable option for authors (not the only one, just a viable one), and to concentrate on making sure that those books that are self-published are the best they can be, and have the greatest chance of success they deserve. And I hope that sharing my unexceptional success will help that happen.
However, as the year progressed, I began to notice a shift in the tenor of the debate, as the majority of blog posts about self-publishing began to be devoted to what authors should do if they wanted to successfully self-publish. This was a healthy shift, not only for champions of the indie movement (since indie authors like Zoe Winters could get back to writing) but for authors who were contemplating self-publishing as an option (either as newbie's or traditionally published authors) because they were getting concrete information that would 1) help them make the decision about which route to follow and 2) be successful if they decided to self-publish. The sharing of actual sales numbers has been part of that shift, and I particularly appreciated a recent post by Ian Edward where he pointed out how extensive this willingness to share information about self-publishing has been.
Yet, I was disappointed recently to see a version of the old self-publishing debate rear its head in response to recent posts by Konrath about the healthy sales numbers he and other self-published authors have been getting. See for example, the post by Richard Curtis and some of the comments to Konrath's reply to that post.
What I saw happening is now that there is irrefutable evidence that self-published books actually sell, the anti-self-publishing argument has shifted from "all self-publishing books are badly written and none of them will make a dime" to "those successful self-published authors are an exception" and they are only successful because 1) they were already successful through the traditional route and therefore have a fan base in place or 2) they sell their books at such a low price (99 cents or less) they are really just giving them away or 3) they are genre writers and their readers have never been very discriminating and therefore will buy any old trash.
This irritated me. It irritated me because this argument seems to be designed to discourage writers from considering the path of self-publishing (based on inaccurate information) and it demeans writers who have been successful by suggesting that their success doesn't have anything to do with the quality of their work.
Yet, based on my own experience, self-publishing is a viable route to success, and you don't have to be exceptional to achieve that success.
First to the question of success. When I consider that April post and those 158 books sold, I have to marvel at how low my expectations were. I would have been delighted at that point if I had continued to average 1-2 books a day for the rest of the year, reaching perhaps a total of 500 books sold in 12 months. According to "accepted wisdom" at that time, this is what the average title sold in America in a year. But at the end of 12 months (November 30, 2009) I had sold 2693 books and made over $5,000 (which meant that I had averaged over 7 copies of my book a day-a tremendous increase.) As I have previously posted, this success was enough to convince me to retire completely from my teaching job to devote myself to writing. But I had no idea of how much the next two months would be a game changer, for me and many other self-published authors. Here the fact that 80% of that first year's sales were on Kindle becomes important, because one of the key strategies of this generation of indie authors like myself has been to focus on ebook sales, where there is the greatest rate of growth and the highest rate of profit. I hoped that the rumors of Kindle sales would result in increased sales of my book, but I had absolutely no idea of how true this would be.
From what I have read, my experience was rather typical, in that sales began to rise over the Thanksgiving holiday and continued to rise throughout December, peaking in the week after Christmas. But while my day-to-day sales have varied, what has not changed is the overall trend. In December alone I sold 1932 copies of Maids of Misfortune, 94% on Kindle, and as of January 16, my average sales per day for January is 106 books a day. I have no doubt I will sell over 3000 books in January alone.
The point isn't the numbers, but that in anybody's estimation, Maids of Misfortune, a self-published book, has been a success. But I am not an exception and my success can be duplicated.
First, I have never published through the traditional route, and I have only one book out (and a short story), so my success cannot be explained by my publishing world contacts, extensive back-list, or already established fan base.
Second, I sell my ebook for $2.99, which seems a perfectly reasonable price for a book that is by a complete unknown and cost me only $250 to get a cover designed. (I did not pay a professional editor, interior designer, formatter, marketing publicist—so why should I charge the reader as if I was a big publisher who paid people to do this?) I do give my short story away through Smashwords (or charge 99 cents on Kindle)-but hey, it's a short story!
Third, it is true that my book is a genre book, a historical mystery. But as a person with a PhD and a 35 year career as a history professor, whose favorite books to read are mystery and science fiction genre books, I resent the idea that I and the other people who read genre fiction are not discriminating readers.
One of the complaints lodged against Konrath and others has been on their focus on the number of sales. Yet it was Konrath's honest discussion of those numbers over a year ago that helped me decide to take the self-published route, and every time I have reported my numbers, I have that in mind. I see it as paying forward the gift Konrath gave me.
Like Edward, I have felt that one of the great things about being an indie author has been being part of a community of people who are extremely willing to help each other, rather than being a competitor for the few precious agents, publishing contracts, or marketing dollars that are available to the author who goes the traditional route. Sharing numbers-good or bad-is one of the ways I help that community.
It is time for everyone to accept that self-publishing does offer a viable option for authors (not the only one, just a viable one), and to concentrate on making sure that those books that are self-published are the best they can be, and have the greatest chance of success they deserve. And I hope that sharing my unexceptional success will help that happen.
January 1, 2011
The First Year of a New Born and a Newbie Published Author
Last year I rang in the New Year with my daughter, who had just had her first baby. I was exhausted (she had had a difficult delivery) and elated at being a grandmother. This New Year's day, as I look back at the wonderful year of watching that sweet grandson grow and develop, I can't help but notice some of the parallels between my experiences as a newly published independent author and that of my grandson.
Last New Year as my grandson was trying to figure out how to nurse, when I added up my first month of sales of Maids of Misfortune , the historical mystery I had self-published in both ebook and print form, I discovered I had sold only 47 books, mostly to friends and family. I had a author website (but no reviews), and a blog (where I hadn't posted anything yet), and I had read enough advice on self-publishing to know that I had a lot of work to do if I wanted anyone else to even discover my book existed.
In the first six months of 2010, as my grandson learned to hold his head up, blow bubbles, babble, and sit up, I learned how to market my book. I found out who would review a self-published mystery and garnered a solid number of positive reviews; I began to chronicle my journey as an indie author on my blog, posting about twice a month, and had the good fortune to become a regular contributor to Publetariat , expanding my audience considerably; I lowered my price down to $2.99 for the ebook and wrote a short story that I offered for free on Smashwords and 99 cents on Kindle, and between April (when I sold 46 books-the same amount as I had the first month of sales) and May (when I sold 80 book)s I saw the beginning of a steady monthly increase in sales.
In June of 2010, when the book had been out for seven months, my grandson now had his first teeth, and I had succeeded in getting Maids of Misfortune properly included in the Amazon browsing category of historical mysteries. This was just in time to take advantage of the bump in sales caused when Steven Windwalker featured my short story, Dandy Detects, as one of his Kindle shorts on the Kindle Nation Daily . I became a mover and shaker for a day on Amazon and the two day spike in sales pushed Maids of Misfortune to a top spot in the historical mystery category in July, where it has steadily remained ever since. Fortuitously this was the same month that Amazon began to offer a 70% royalty for book on Kindle.
In the Fall of 2010, as my grandson learned to crawl and pull himself up to a standing position, I continued to publish blog posts, join in conversations about self-publishing on different blogs and writer's and fan sites, seek out additional reviews, answer my first fan emails, and began to work on the creation of a Historical Fiction eBooks Coop that will curate and market epublished historical fiction. Each month saw a tiny increase in the books I sold. In August I sold on average 11 books a day, in September and October, 14-15 books a day, and November, 17-18 books a day.
And then came the Christmas holidays. While we sat around and watched our grandson practice his first words, "back pack" and "map" (he is a fan of Dora the Explorer), and try desperately to take his first steps, I watched my sales climb day-by day. I had already noticed a distinct increase starting with the Thanksgiving holiday, as I began to sell often as many as 25 or 30 books a day. I figured that since most of my sales were on Kindle, this reflected people downloading books to take on their travels. But even in the beginning of December, my print books began to sell at a faster clip, and this surely meant gift sales. Then the day before Christmas my grandson took four steps all by himself, and two days after Christmas, as all those new Kindle owners began to download books, I had my best day ever, selling over 262 copies of Maids of Misfortune. I couldn't have been more proud of both of us.
So it is now January 1, 2011. My grandson has weathered his first birthday party and birthday cake, and I have added up my sales to discover that in the past year I sold an astonishing 4,625 books, 1932 of them in December alone. I can be pretty sure what this next year will bring for my grandson: more firsts. First skinned knee, first full sentence, the first, but not the last, use of the word no. For me, I hope the future holds seconds: second novel written, second novel published, and second novel selling as well as the first. But whatever happens in 2011, I will never forget how extraordinarily special 2010 was, as the grandmother of a newborn, and a newbie indie author.
Last New Year as my grandson was trying to figure out how to nurse, when I added up my first month of sales of Maids of Misfortune , the historical mystery I had self-published in both ebook and print form, I discovered I had sold only 47 books, mostly to friends and family. I had a author website (but no reviews), and a blog (where I hadn't posted anything yet), and I had read enough advice on self-publishing to know that I had a lot of work to do if I wanted anyone else to even discover my book existed.
In the first six months of 2010, as my grandson learned to hold his head up, blow bubbles, babble, and sit up, I learned how to market my book. I found out who would review a self-published mystery and garnered a solid number of positive reviews; I began to chronicle my journey as an indie author on my blog, posting about twice a month, and had the good fortune to become a regular contributor to Publetariat , expanding my audience considerably; I lowered my price down to $2.99 for the ebook and wrote a short story that I offered for free on Smashwords and 99 cents on Kindle, and between April (when I sold 46 books-the same amount as I had the first month of sales) and May (when I sold 80 book)s I saw the beginning of a steady monthly increase in sales.
In June of 2010, when the book had been out for seven months, my grandson now had his first teeth, and I had succeeded in getting Maids of Misfortune properly included in the Amazon browsing category of historical mysteries. This was just in time to take advantage of the bump in sales caused when Steven Windwalker featured my short story, Dandy Detects, as one of his Kindle shorts on the Kindle Nation Daily . I became a mover and shaker for a day on Amazon and the two day spike in sales pushed Maids of Misfortune to a top spot in the historical mystery category in July, where it has steadily remained ever since. Fortuitously this was the same month that Amazon began to offer a 70% royalty for book on Kindle.
In the Fall of 2010, as my grandson learned to crawl and pull himself up to a standing position, I continued to publish blog posts, join in conversations about self-publishing on different blogs and writer's and fan sites, seek out additional reviews, answer my first fan emails, and began to work on the creation of a Historical Fiction eBooks Coop that will curate and market epublished historical fiction. Each month saw a tiny increase in the books I sold. In August I sold on average 11 books a day, in September and October, 14-15 books a day, and November, 17-18 books a day.
And then came the Christmas holidays. While we sat around and watched our grandson practice his first words, "back pack" and "map" (he is a fan of Dora the Explorer), and try desperately to take his first steps, I watched my sales climb day-by day. I had already noticed a distinct increase starting with the Thanksgiving holiday, as I began to sell often as many as 25 or 30 books a day. I figured that since most of my sales were on Kindle, this reflected people downloading books to take on their travels. But even in the beginning of December, my print books began to sell at a faster clip, and this surely meant gift sales. Then the day before Christmas my grandson took four steps all by himself, and two days after Christmas, as all those new Kindle owners began to download books, I had my best day ever, selling over 262 copies of Maids of Misfortune. I couldn't have been more proud of both of us.
So it is now January 1, 2011. My grandson has weathered his first birthday party and birthday cake, and I have added up my sales to discover that in the past year I sold an astonishing 4,625 books, 1932 of them in December alone. I can be pretty sure what this next year will bring for my grandson: more firsts. First skinned knee, first full sentence, the first, but not the last, use of the word no. For me, I hope the future holds seconds: second novel written, second novel published, and second novel selling as well as the first. But whatever happens in 2011, I will never forget how extraordinarily special 2010 was, as the grandmother of a newborn, and a newbie indie author.
December 18, 2010
The Streets of San Francisco: Detoured, diverted, and derailed by historical research
Several weeks ago I had carved out a few days for uninterrupted writing, and I was firmly committed to making significant progress on my new book. I already had the first five chapters written (about 10,000 words) of Uneasy Spirits, the sequel to my historical mystery,
Maids of Misfortune
, and my goal was to get another 4-5 chapters done. I started out well, briefly reviewing my outline, and then I began writing the chapter where my protagonist, Annie Fuller, was to travel from the O'Farrell Street boarding house she owned to the residence of Simon and Arabella Frampton, spiritualists she is investigating. This would require her to take a horse car from her neighborhood north of Market Street to the Rincon Hill neighborhood, south of Market, where the Framptons were renting a house. I started on the first paragraph, and two days later, I only had about 600 words written.
You see, I got lost in the streets of San Francisco, doing research.
The first detour away from writing started innocently enough. I wanted to find the name of the horse car company Annie would have been riding in 1879. First I did a google search, looking for sites on early San Francisco transportation. I eventually found out that there were two routes that went near her house and would take her within a few blocks of her destination, the Central Railroad Company (horse cars ran on rails), and the South Park and North Beach Company. Of course I also read about the history of horse cars in general, learned about when horse cars began to replace omnibuses in San Francisco, located a lovely picture of a horse car from the South Park Company, and read about the history of Rincon Hill/South Park district. One morning of writing gone.
After lunch I pulled out my book of historical San Francisco maps, and, with a magnifying glass, began to go through the maps for the 1860s and 1870s. Uneasy Spirits opens in October of 1879, just a few months after the events of Maids of Misfortune, therefore I needed to know what routes existed in that year. Of course there wasn't an 1879 map, that would be too easy, but two maps did have streetcar routes marked on them. One was from 1864, which actually had the title "The Railroad Map of the City of San Francisco," the other was dated 1873. What I discovered was that the Central Railroad went right past Annie Fullers' boarding house and would pass just two blocks from the Frampton house, so the Central Rail it was. Now that I was sure of the route, I pulled out pictures I had taken the month before when I last visited San Francisco to attend the Bouchercon mystery conference. I had walked between Annie's house and the Frampton's place, providentially taking the same route that the horse car would take, and I had snapped a number of pictures on my husband's iPhone so I would have a sense of the terrain.
Unfortunately, I am not a native San Franciscan. While I visit the city as frequently as I can and have read numerous books on the city, I don't know the streets the way a native would. I don't have childhood memories of which section of California Street is the steepest, I haven't had to calculate whether it is closer to go straight down O'Farrell to Market or turn at Taylor, I don't have a sense of how long it would take me to get from Kearney to the Embarcadero. I have to look up this kind of detail on a map, or research them in person. In addition, reconciling the streets in 2010 with the streets of 1879 (particularly when most of places where people lived and worked in 1879 were destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire) is not easy. Flipping back and forth between my pictures, the printed historical maps, and google street map, I pictured riding a horse car down Taylor, across Market, down Sixth, and getting off at Folsom.
But then I had to hit the pause button on my imagination. I had taken the photos in the morning, but Annie and Kathleen would be traveling in the late afternoon, so I had to look up to see approximately when the sun would be setting in San Francisco mid October and what the weather was probably like (again thanks to google). I then rewound my imagination and took the trip again with the sun low in the sky. Suddenly my first day of writing was over and I had written only 135 words.
The next day. after actually writing a few paragraphs of dialog between Annie and her maid as they traveled to the Framptons, what diverted me was not the horse car route or the terrain, but the look and feel of Folsom Street in 1879. I did more research on the neighborhoods of Rincon Hill and South Park, whose character as the wealthy part of town had been undermined by a bad municipal decision to cut through Second Street. I had noticed when I walked between Annie's place and the Framptons that the 700 and 800 blocks of Folsom had seemed so much longer than the block on O'Farrell where Annie lived. I needed to know why, and if this was a modern configuration or one that would have existed in 1879. It took me hours, but I finally found out that difference in length was due to the original city land surveys, which made the blocks south of Market Street 4 times the size of those north of this main thorough fare. However, I also discovered that the city then divided those blocks into 6 lots each, which were then subdivided in a variety of patterns by subsequent real estate speculators. Phifft, there went the second morning.
After lunch, I wrote a few more paragraphs getting Annie and Kathleen down Folsom to the Frampton's house, but then I was completely derailed as I threw caution to the wind and dove into the research necessary to determine what style this house would look like, given that it would have been built in the mid1850s (which is when this neighborhood flourished). Between a number of books written on the history of San Francisco architecture, a historical picture of a mansion on Folsom, and several sites on the internet, I finally decided on the Italianate style and determined the architectural details and the proper color scheme for the period. Day two of writing was gone, my nice window of writing opportunity had ended, and I had managed to write only 620 words.
So, was all this research necessary, and was it necessary that I do the research right then?
Yes and No.
I certainly could have done the research later, concentrating on the dialog in the scene and filling in any details later about the name of the horse car, the route they took, and so forth. One downside of having learned so much detail about San Francisco transportation is that I might have been tempted to do an information dump, the bête noir of historical fiction. Even more likely, I might never even use this chapter, deciding later that it will speed up the pace of the book to start right out at the Framptons, skipping how Annie got there.
Yet, I would argue that I needed to do that research, and I needed to do it then, even if the whole chapter disappears and much of the detail I learned never makes it on the page. Even if the reader doesn't need to know that someone who got off at Folsom would be able to see the Twin Peaks if they looked west up that street, or that Italianate houses had sturdy decorative brackets along their roof lines, I needed to know. Because it is details like this that fuel my creative imagination.
When I can picture the horse car Annie would ride or what Folsom Street would look like, then what I write will ring true, even if every detail I end up writing is a complete fabrication. Because ultimately what I write is just that—fiction. I don't really know what the 800 block of Folsom looked like in 1879, and even if I did (say for example I found a picture), I might describe it differently to make it fit into my plot. And I don't really know how it feels like to ride on a horse car, and even if I got to ride in one today, I wouldn't experience it the same way someone of that time period would.
With a pinch of an old picture, a dollop of a nineteenth century newspaper story, mixed in with four years researching and writing a dissertation on women who worked in San Francisco in 1880, added to a very large portion of having lived for sixty years and the important ingredient of an active imagination, I can make the reader believe they are truly experiencing the past. That is the alchemy of creative writing, and doing research as I write, not in some fill-in-the-blank manner later on, is one of the ways I do my job well.
What about you? How do you use research when you write, whether you are writing historical, contemporary, or science fiction? And, how much detail do you as a reader want when reading about a time and place that is not your own?
You see, I got lost in the streets of San Francisco, doing research.
The first detour away from writing started innocently enough. I wanted to find the name of the horse car company Annie would have been riding in 1879. First I did a google search, looking for sites on early San Francisco transportation. I eventually found out that there were two routes that went near her house and would take her within a few blocks of her destination, the Central Railroad Company (horse cars ran on rails), and the South Park and North Beach Company. Of course I also read about the history of horse cars in general, learned about when horse cars began to replace omnibuses in San Francisco, located a lovely picture of a horse car from the South Park Company, and read about the history of Rincon Hill/South Park district. One morning of writing gone.
After lunch I pulled out my book of historical San Francisco maps, and, with a magnifying glass, began to go through the maps for the 1860s and 1870s. Uneasy Spirits opens in October of 1879, just a few months after the events of Maids of Misfortune, therefore I needed to know what routes existed in that year. Of course there wasn't an 1879 map, that would be too easy, but two maps did have streetcar routes marked on them. One was from 1864, which actually had the title "The Railroad Map of the City of San Francisco," the other was dated 1873. What I discovered was that the Central Railroad went right past Annie Fullers' boarding house and would pass just two blocks from the Frampton house, so the Central Rail it was. Now that I was sure of the route, I pulled out pictures I had taken the month before when I last visited San Francisco to attend the Bouchercon mystery conference. I had walked between Annie's house and the Frampton's place, providentially taking the same route that the horse car would take, and I had snapped a number of pictures on my husband's iPhone so I would have a sense of the terrain.
Unfortunately, I am not a native San Franciscan. While I visit the city as frequently as I can and have read numerous books on the city, I don't know the streets the way a native would. I don't have childhood memories of which section of California Street is the steepest, I haven't had to calculate whether it is closer to go straight down O'Farrell to Market or turn at Taylor, I don't have a sense of how long it would take me to get from Kearney to the Embarcadero. I have to look up this kind of detail on a map, or research them in person. In addition, reconciling the streets in 2010 with the streets of 1879 (particularly when most of places where people lived and worked in 1879 were destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire) is not easy. Flipping back and forth between my pictures, the printed historical maps, and google street map, I pictured riding a horse car down Taylor, across Market, down Sixth, and getting off at Folsom.
But then I had to hit the pause button on my imagination. I had taken the photos in the morning, but Annie and Kathleen would be traveling in the late afternoon, so I had to look up to see approximately when the sun would be setting in San Francisco mid October and what the weather was probably like (again thanks to google). I then rewound my imagination and took the trip again with the sun low in the sky. Suddenly my first day of writing was over and I had written only 135 words.
The next day. after actually writing a few paragraphs of dialog between Annie and her maid as they traveled to the Framptons, what diverted me was not the horse car route or the terrain, but the look and feel of Folsom Street in 1879. I did more research on the neighborhoods of Rincon Hill and South Park, whose character as the wealthy part of town had been undermined by a bad municipal decision to cut through Second Street. I had noticed when I walked between Annie's place and the Framptons that the 700 and 800 blocks of Folsom had seemed so much longer than the block on O'Farrell where Annie lived. I needed to know why, and if this was a modern configuration or one that would have existed in 1879. It took me hours, but I finally found out that difference in length was due to the original city land surveys, which made the blocks south of Market Street 4 times the size of those north of this main thorough fare. However, I also discovered that the city then divided those blocks into 6 lots each, which were then subdivided in a variety of patterns by subsequent real estate speculators. Phifft, there went the second morning.
After lunch, I wrote a few more paragraphs getting Annie and Kathleen down Folsom to the Frampton's house, but then I was completely derailed as I threw caution to the wind and dove into the research necessary to determine what style this house would look like, given that it would have been built in the mid1850s (which is when this neighborhood flourished). Between a number of books written on the history of San Francisco architecture, a historical picture of a mansion on Folsom, and several sites on the internet, I finally decided on the Italianate style and determined the architectural details and the proper color scheme for the period. Day two of writing was gone, my nice window of writing opportunity had ended, and I had managed to write only 620 words.
So, was all this research necessary, and was it necessary that I do the research right then?
Yes and No.
I certainly could have done the research later, concentrating on the dialog in the scene and filling in any details later about the name of the horse car, the route they took, and so forth. One downside of having learned so much detail about San Francisco transportation is that I might have been tempted to do an information dump, the bête noir of historical fiction. Even more likely, I might never even use this chapter, deciding later that it will speed up the pace of the book to start right out at the Framptons, skipping how Annie got there.
Yet, I would argue that I needed to do that research, and I needed to do it then, even if the whole chapter disappears and much of the detail I learned never makes it on the page. Even if the reader doesn't need to know that someone who got off at Folsom would be able to see the Twin Peaks if they looked west up that street, or that Italianate houses had sturdy decorative brackets along their roof lines, I needed to know. Because it is details like this that fuel my creative imagination.
When I can picture the horse car Annie would ride or what Folsom Street would look like, then what I write will ring true, even if every detail I end up writing is a complete fabrication. Because ultimately what I write is just that—fiction. I don't really know what the 800 block of Folsom looked like in 1879, and even if I did (say for example I found a picture), I might describe it differently to make it fit into my plot. And I don't really know how it feels like to ride on a horse car, and even if I got to ride in one today, I wouldn't experience it the same way someone of that time period would.
With a pinch of an old picture, a dollop of a nineteenth century newspaper story, mixed in with four years researching and writing a dissertation on women who worked in San Francisco in 1880, added to a very large portion of having lived for sixty years and the important ingredient of an active imagination, I can make the reader believe they are truly experiencing the past. That is the alchemy of creative writing, and doing research as I write, not in some fill-in-the-blank manner later on, is one of the ways I do my job well.
What about you? How do you use research when you write, whether you are writing historical, contemporary, or science fiction? And, how much detail do you as a reader want when reading about a time and place that is not your own?
December 5, 2010
The First Year as an Indie Author in Review: Sweet Success
A year ago, during the last week in November and the first weeks of December, I self-published my first book,
Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery
, as an ebook on Smashwords and Kindle, and as a POD book through CreateSpace. I had no history as a published author, no contacts in the publishing world, and no marketing plan. I had a self-created author web-site and blog site, a facebook friends list of about 40, a lovely cover for the book (shout out to my cover designer Michelle Huffaker), and the confidence that I had done everything possible to make my book worthy of being published. I also had hope that if people found my book that they would buy it and like it enough to recommend it to others.
In addition I had discovered a vibrant community of indie authors and ebook experimenters who were blogging away about their own journeys into the world of self-publishing; and what I appreciated was their willingness to provide the details about their experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so people like me could learn as we went along. In that spirit I would like to provide a year-end assessment of my own experience, in the expectation this will help encourage other authors who are just starting out on this journey.
First the numbers:
In the first 4 months (December 2009-March 2010) I sold 158 books. 54% were ebooks-the vast majority through Kindle, and 46% print editions, slightly over half through Amazon.com. I made just short of $350—covering my costs–which were $250 for the cover design and $100 for proof copies of the print book and author's copies to send to reviewers. I was cautiously optimistic, writing in a blog post subtitled "Can I call myself a real published author yet?" that 158 sold books had put me well on the way to the average number of books sold by self-published authors (200), and that I no longer worried that only people I knew would buy the book.
In the second 4 months (April 2010-July 2010) I sold an additional 772 books (making my total 930). 79% were ebooks (again primarily Kindle), and 21% were POD (but now 99% were directly through Amazon.com). I was ecstatic. If the 2006 Chris Anderson "Long Tail" analysis still holds true (and there is little evidence to the contrary), the average number of books per title sold in a year is 500, and 96% of all titles sell less than a 1000 copies. Based on this, my 722 books put me well above average, with an excellent chance to reach that 1000 goal before the end of the year.
In the final 4 months (August 2010-November 2010) I sold 1761 more books, 88 % of these were ebooks (primarily Kindle-which was now paying a 70% royalty) and only 12% were POD books. This meant that in the first year I sold 2691 copies of Maids of Misfortune, garnering me over $5000. (Note, none of this includes the books I have probably sold through Smashword affiliates in the past 2 months, since these balances haven't come through yet; none reflect the few books I have sold on consignment in local book stores. It also doesn't include the $300 a made from selling 629 copies at 99 cents of Dandy Detects, the short story I wrote to promote my full-length novel.)
What has this all meant to me?
First, I am just plain flabbergasted. I really didn't expect to have sold these many books in the first year. While I know that this is a paltry amount for people who have gotten large advances and print runs in the hundred's of thousands, I also know enough published authors in the midlist book category to know that this is pretty darn impressive for a first time author.
Second, it has completely justified my decision a year ago to self-publish. If in November of last year, I had decided to try the traditional route one more time, the story would have turned out very differently. If I had been lucky enough to get an agent and sell the book to one of the appropriate mystery imprints in this past year, I would have probably gotten an advance of under $3-4,000 (and if I had gone with a small press I might not have gotten any advance.) In either case, the book would not even be out yet, so no one would have read it, and the most I would have earned would have been about $1000 since advances are paid in 2-3 stages. So for 2010, no books sold versus 2600 books and $1,000 versus $5,000.
In case you were wondering, my expenses this year have continued to be low–and pretty much the same marketing costs I would have to incur if I had been traditionally published (business cards, attendance at a mystery convention, cost of entering 2 book contests)–so my net for this past year is definitely better than I would have had publishing through the traditional route.
But what about once the book came out through the traditional route? For 2011, even if the traditional publisher was inordinately speedy and got the book out in 12 instead of the 18 months that is average, and even if it sold a lot more print books than I have been selling, Maids of Misfortune, as a first time genre book, would be unlikely to sell enough copies at the much lower royalty rates of traditional publishers to pay out it's advance in its first year. This would mean I could not expect to get any additional money, besides the rest of the advance ($2,000 to 3,000) in 2011.
However, there is every reason for me to think that I will do even better next year than I did this year with Maids of Misfortune because my sales rose steadily during the past year, and 65% of my book sales came within the last four months. The first 4 months I sold on average 1.3 books a day. The second 4 months I sold on average 6.3 books a day. The last 4 months of the year I sold on averaged 14.4 books a day, and in the first 4 days of this month (December) I have sold on average 26 books a day. I don't know if this means that more and more people are hearing about my book and buying it, or that the number of people buying ebooks (the majority of my sales) is rising so sharply that, even if I am not attracting an increasing share of the market for historical mysteries, my total number of books sold will steadily rise. Either way, there is a very good chance that I will sell least 5,000, and maybe as many as 10,000, copies of Maids of Misfortune in 2011, and make at least an additional $10,000-$20,000 in sales. So going through the traditional route, I would have made at most $3,000 in two years; having self-published, I will make at least $8000 and maybe over $20,000 in two years.
Third, this level of success permitted me to make the changes necessary to write full time. As I discussed in my last post, two weeks from now I will retire completely from college teaching (I had been working part time to supplement my retirement income.) This in turn will help me accomplish my goal finishing Uneasy Spirits, the sequel of Maids of Misfortune, and publishing it before the end of next year. If I had published traditionally, with either no advance (small press) or a small advance (as first time author), and the book wasn't even out yet, I wouldn't have felt confident enough about the future earning power of Maids of Misfortune to have made this decision at this point.
Conclusion:
I have had a very successful first year as an indie author; however, there is no particular secret to my success. While I have spent most of the past year on this blog talking about why I made the decision to self-publish, what strategies I used, what has worked and what hasn't, if you read these posts, you will discover that nothing I have done has been particularly brilliant or unique. In most part I have simply followed the advice given out by a number of wonderful experts on their blogs and in their how to guides. See, for example, April Hamilton's Indie Author Guide , or Zoe Winter's Becoming an Indie Author , or Joe Konrath's Newbie's Guide to Publishing .
What I think an aspiring indie author can learn from my story is that, if you have a book that is well-written and meets professional editing and design standards, and you publish it as an ebook (particularly on Kindle), and you follow the advice of the experts (develop a consistent brand, get the book reviewed, make sure it can be found under the right categories in ebookstores, and participate in the various conversations on the web that will get you and your book noticed), this sort of success is very achievable, even for a newbie. And it can be a lot of fun.
In addition I had discovered a vibrant community of indie authors and ebook experimenters who were blogging away about their own journeys into the world of self-publishing; and what I appreciated was their willingness to provide the details about their experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so people like me could learn as we went along. In that spirit I would like to provide a year-end assessment of my own experience, in the expectation this will help encourage other authors who are just starting out on this journey.
First the numbers:
In the first 4 months (December 2009-March 2010) I sold 158 books. 54% were ebooks-the vast majority through Kindle, and 46% print editions, slightly over half through Amazon.com. I made just short of $350—covering my costs–which were $250 for the cover design and $100 for proof copies of the print book and author's copies to send to reviewers. I was cautiously optimistic, writing in a blog post subtitled "Can I call myself a real published author yet?" that 158 sold books had put me well on the way to the average number of books sold by self-published authors (200), and that I no longer worried that only people I knew would buy the book.
In the second 4 months (April 2010-July 2010) I sold an additional 772 books (making my total 930). 79% were ebooks (again primarily Kindle), and 21% were POD (but now 99% were directly through Amazon.com). I was ecstatic. If the 2006 Chris Anderson "Long Tail" analysis still holds true (and there is little evidence to the contrary), the average number of books per title sold in a year is 500, and 96% of all titles sell less than a 1000 copies. Based on this, my 722 books put me well above average, with an excellent chance to reach that 1000 goal before the end of the year.
In the final 4 months (August 2010-November 2010) I sold 1761 more books, 88 % of these were ebooks (primarily Kindle-which was now paying a 70% royalty) and only 12% were POD books. This meant that in the first year I sold 2691 copies of Maids of Misfortune, garnering me over $5000. (Note, none of this includes the books I have probably sold through Smashword affiliates in the past 2 months, since these balances haven't come through yet; none reflect the few books I have sold on consignment in local book stores. It also doesn't include the $300 a made from selling 629 copies at 99 cents of Dandy Detects, the short story I wrote to promote my full-length novel.)
What has this all meant to me?
First, I am just plain flabbergasted. I really didn't expect to have sold these many books in the first year. While I know that this is a paltry amount for people who have gotten large advances and print runs in the hundred's of thousands, I also know enough published authors in the midlist book category to know that this is pretty darn impressive for a first time author.
Second, it has completely justified my decision a year ago to self-publish. If in November of last year, I had decided to try the traditional route one more time, the story would have turned out very differently. If I had been lucky enough to get an agent and sell the book to one of the appropriate mystery imprints in this past year, I would have probably gotten an advance of under $3-4,000 (and if I had gone with a small press I might not have gotten any advance.) In either case, the book would not even be out yet, so no one would have read it, and the most I would have earned would have been about $1000 since advances are paid in 2-3 stages. So for 2010, no books sold versus 2600 books and $1,000 versus $5,000.
In case you were wondering, my expenses this year have continued to be low–and pretty much the same marketing costs I would have to incur if I had been traditionally published (business cards, attendance at a mystery convention, cost of entering 2 book contests)–so my net for this past year is definitely better than I would have had publishing through the traditional route.
But what about once the book came out through the traditional route? For 2011, even if the traditional publisher was inordinately speedy and got the book out in 12 instead of the 18 months that is average, and even if it sold a lot more print books than I have been selling, Maids of Misfortune, as a first time genre book, would be unlikely to sell enough copies at the much lower royalty rates of traditional publishers to pay out it's advance in its first year. This would mean I could not expect to get any additional money, besides the rest of the advance ($2,000 to 3,000) in 2011.
However, there is every reason for me to think that I will do even better next year than I did this year with Maids of Misfortune because my sales rose steadily during the past year, and 65% of my book sales came within the last four months. The first 4 months I sold on average 1.3 books a day. The second 4 months I sold on average 6.3 books a day. The last 4 months of the year I sold on averaged 14.4 books a day, and in the first 4 days of this month (December) I have sold on average 26 books a day. I don't know if this means that more and more people are hearing about my book and buying it, or that the number of people buying ebooks (the majority of my sales) is rising so sharply that, even if I am not attracting an increasing share of the market for historical mysteries, my total number of books sold will steadily rise. Either way, there is a very good chance that I will sell least 5,000, and maybe as many as 10,000, copies of Maids of Misfortune in 2011, and make at least an additional $10,000-$20,000 in sales. So going through the traditional route, I would have made at most $3,000 in two years; having self-published, I will make at least $8000 and maybe over $20,000 in two years.
Third, this level of success permitted me to make the changes necessary to write full time. As I discussed in my last post, two weeks from now I will retire completely from college teaching (I had been working part time to supplement my retirement income.) This in turn will help me accomplish my goal finishing Uneasy Spirits, the sequel of Maids of Misfortune, and publishing it before the end of next year. If I had published traditionally, with either no advance (small press) or a small advance (as first time author), and the book wasn't even out yet, I wouldn't have felt confident enough about the future earning power of Maids of Misfortune to have made this decision at this point.
Conclusion:
I have had a very successful first year as an indie author; however, there is no particular secret to my success. While I have spent most of the past year on this blog talking about why I made the decision to self-publish, what strategies I used, what has worked and what hasn't, if you read these posts, you will discover that nothing I have done has been particularly brilliant or unique. In most part I have simply followed the advice given out by a number of wonderful experts on their blogs and in their how to guides. See, for example, April Hamilton's Indie Author Guide , or Zoe Winter's Becoming an Indie Author , or Joe Konrath's Newbie's Guide to Publishing .
What I think an aspiring indie author can learn from my story is that, if you have a book that is well-written and meets professional editing and design standards, and you publish it as an ebook (particularly on Kindle), and you follow the advice of the experts (develop a consistent brand, get the book reviewed, make sure it can be found under the right categories in ebookstores, and participate in the various conversations on the web that will get you and your book noticed), this sort of success is very achievable, even for a newbie. And it can be a lot of fun.
November 21, 2010
I am a Writer: A Needed Shift in Perspective
I started writing short stories and poetry in high school, then shifted to non-fiction throughout college and graduate school, culminating in a doctoral dissertation and several published academic articles. Throughout my career as a history professor I wrote lectures, reports, memo's, meeting minutes, letters of recommendation and evaluation, and I wrote, and rewrote a historical mystery. But for most of my adult life I have referred to myself as a historian who wanted to write fiction. Then a year ago I rewrote
Maids of Misfortune
for the last time and finally published it. Yet if you read my bio on my blog and social media profile pages, I keep describing my self as a "semi-retired history professor," who has just published a book. While this is strictly true, since I have been teaching one class a semester since I retired three and a half years ago, I can't help but notice I kept putting the teaching first, the writing second, even when I was primarily writing about my experiences as an author, not as a teacher.
Then, when I was having lunch this week with a recently retired colleague who is also a writer, I realized that in life I was doing the same thing. I was putting my teaching before my writing. There I was complaining to him about how hard it was for me to find the time to do sustained writing, how slowly my second novel is coming, how difficult it was for me to figure out how to balance marketing my first book and writing the second. And he asked a simple question. How long was I planning to continue to teach?
Epiphany time. Because I realized my answer was all about why I thought I ought to continue teaching (until a friend retired, until this batch of students had completed my 2 semester course, until I was making enough money with my writing to replace the money I would lose if I stopped teaching, blah, blah, blah) not about wanting to teach. My entire teaching career I have prided myself in my love of teaching. I am good at it, I have made a difference with students; and, except for the grading, I have always enjoyed it. But I now admitted to myself that I am enjoying the writing more than I was enjoying teaching. I had even just given a talk entitled "My Second Career," but I wasn't letting the first one go!
If I was really committed to the idea that my second career was to be a writer, why wasn't I putting the writing first? I had already figured out that if I finished my second book and published it by next fall, and it sold as much as my first, that I would now be making as much as I would teaching. But of course I wasn't going to get that second book out by next fall if I spent the rest of the winter and spring teaching. The answer was so simple. I marched into work the next day (albeit after a sleepless night) and submitted my letter of resignation. After thirty-four years teaching in some capacity, at the end of this semester, I will be done.
With a very deep breath and an enormous feeling of glee, I announced to the world and to myself that I am a writer. Period.
Then, when I was having lunch this week with a recently retired colleague who is also a writer, I realized that in life I was doing the same thing. I was putting my teaching before my writing. There I was complaining to him about how hard it was for me to find the time to do sustained writing, how slowly my second novel is coming, how difficult it was for me to figure out how to balance marketing my first book and writing the second. And he asked a simple question. How long was I planning to continue to teach?
Epiphany time. Because I realized my answer was all about why I thought I ought to continue teaching (until a friend retired, until this batch of students had completed my 2 semester course, until I was making enough money with my writing to replace the money I would lose if I stopped teaching, blah, blah, blah) not about wanting to teach. My entire teaching career I have prided myself in my love of teaching. I am good at it, I have made a difference with students; and, except for the grading, I have always enjoyed it. But I now admitted to myself that I am enjoying the writing more than I was enjoying teaching. I had even just given a talk entitled "My Second Career," but I wasn't letting the first one go!
If I was really committed to the idea that my second career was to be a writer, why wasn't I putting the writing first? I had already figured out that if I finished my second book and published it by next fall, and it sold as much as my first, that I would now be making as much as I would teaching. But of course I wasn't going to get that second book out by next fall if I spent the rest of the winter and spring teaching. The answer was so simple. I marched into work the next day (albeit after a sleepless night) and submitted my letter of resignation. After thirty-four years teaching in some capacity, at the end of this semester, I will be done.
With a very deep breath and an enormous feeling of glee, I announced to the world and to myself that I am a writer. Period.
October 10, 2010
Outlining: Straight-jacket or Lifeline?
One of the arguments I had with my father when I was in grade-school was over the necessity of outlining when writing. He was for it, I didn't see the need. By college I had a better understanding of the importance of having a clear organization for essays. However, what I tended to do was sketch out a very short outline, then write a quick rough draft–getting all my ideas down, then I would go back and write a new outline (now that I knew what I really wanted to say), and finally I cut and pasted the material into the right sections of this new outline.
By the time I was working on my doctorate, I had become committed to outlining, and my first outlines became more and more detailed. The work I was doing was simply too complicated–particularly once I was writing my dissertation–to wing it. This was long enough ago to be pre-desktop computer, which meant any changes required retyping the whole document, so it paid to be organized from the get go. I spent the next thirty or so years teaching, where I had the same conversations with my students that I had had with my father about the virtues of the outline-only now I was the one for it.
Needless to say, when I sat down to write the draft of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune , I outlined the plot. I literally outlined the whole story, chapter by chapter, listing under each chapter the scenes, characters involved, and the information that needed to be conveyed (clues, motivations, red-herrings, etc.) I remember being very puzzled by several members of my writing critique group, who were also writing mysteries at the time, who did not do outlines. In fact, they weren't even sure who the murderer was, if there were going to be more than one murder, or how the murderer was going to be discovered. This seemed terribly disorganized, necessitating a good deal of rewriting once the plot elements were finally determined.
However, now that I look back at the path that first draft took before it ended up in the version that I published (with it's new plot twists, new characters, new scenes, and deleted scenes), I am not sure I didn't end up doing as much rewriting as the non-outliners did.
So now I have started writing Uneasy Spirits, the sequel to my first mystery, and I am confronted with the question, is an outline necessary? Can it become an obstacle to creativity or does it ensure a well-paced plot?
On the anti-outline side of the argument, having an outline can cause tunnel vision. In Maids of Misfortune, I originally had my protagonist, Annie Fuller, go undercover as a maid in the murdered man's house about half-way through the book. My outline said I had to have all sorts of establishing scenes between Annie and the second protagonist, Nate Dawson, before she could disappear into her role as a servant. It took a number of beta readers to point out to me that this made the plot way too slow, and that I could actually rearrange my outline!
Another anti-outline argument I have heard numerous times (from non-outliner writers) is that once the whole story is plotted out in an outline, they lose interest in telling it. They get bored. They know "who done it," so they don't have the motivation to spend the months it will take to flesh out the story. For them, one of the prime motivations in writing is to "see what comes next," something they feel they have lost when they have the whole novel plotted out. I confess that since I have lectured on the American Civil War about 10 times a year for 30 years (300 times!), always knowing "how it turned out," but always trying to find new and better ways to describe what happened and why it happened, this argument has never held much weight.
Yet in favor of the anti-outlining argument, I do think that outlines have caused me to overwrite. I spent a good deal of time cutting in the last revision I did before publishing Maids of Misfortune, and a lot of it was because I had been so busy writing scenes in order to introduce the "clues" I had seeded throughout the plot outline that I lost touch with how to keep up the pacing.
On the other hand, having an outline ensures that the main plot points don't get lost when there is a long time between the conception of the book and its actual completion. For example, I came up with the plot for Uneasy Spirits years ago (when I became discouraged by my inability to sell the first manuscript, and I thought I should move on, hoping editors might be more impressed if I had two books in hand.) I spent several weeks doing some background research for the book, developed character sketches for the main characters (victims, murderer, red herrings), and finally outlined the plot. Then I put this work away (summer was over and I was back to full time teaching). Fast forward more than five years and the stuff that life throws at you, and I was finally ready to start on this manuscript. Without that typed outline and character sketches I would have been at square one.
A second pro-outline argument is that it helps you develop the story arc. One of the most difficult tasks for the college students I teach is to develop a thesis for their essays. They know what a topic is, and can write about a topic, but they have trouble developing an opinion about that topic. They write, "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." But they can't tell you why something happened, or why it was important. The books that I enjoy the most–even within the narrow confines of genre writing–are the ones that tell the story about how events changed characters-for better or worse. Writing an outline that not only introduces clues and red herrings throughout the story, but also includes scenes designed to change the main characters by challenging their beliefs and patterns of behavior, ensures that my stories will have that arc (or thesis) and that it is organic to the story itself, not grafted on after the fact.
For a final pro-outline argument, it can guard against writer's block. I read about writers block, how people stare at a blank page for hours, days, weeks, and this just has never happened to me. While I can procrastinate with the best of them, once I sit down to write, I have always had that outline in front of me, and I have always been able to write something. I know what the next scene is supposed to be about, who is in the room, what they are supposed to be talking about, and this makes it easy to start writing.
This doesn't always mean the scene comes out the way I planned it. As most writers will tell you, writing can be a magical experience where the characters have a decided mind of their own. For example, according to my outline for Uneasy Spirits, the first chapter was supposed to be set in Annie Fuller's boarding house (Annie is my protagonist), and it was supposed to be a scene between Annie and Miss Pinehurst (who somehow mutated from a Miss Pringle in the outline). Instead as I sat down to write, while it was set in the boarding house, a completely new character, Mrs. Crenshaw, started talking to Annie. Instead Annie and Miss Pinehurst had their meeting in the next chapter, but in a cemetery rather than in the boardinghouse. So, whether I follow my outline, or rebel against it, I seem to have something to write–hence–no writer's block.
I guess my conclusion is that I will continue to use outlines for my novels, but try to remain flexible, so that they will carry me along, not hem me in. But I would love to hear from all of you.
Do you outline your plot before writing, or do you just wing it? And what are your reasons for outlining or not.
By the time I was working on my doctorate, I had become committed to outlining, and my first outlines became more and more detailed. The work I was doing was simply too complicated–particularly once I was writing my dissertation–to wing it. This was long enough ago to be pre-desktop computer, which meant any changes required retyping the whole document, so it paid to be organized from the get go. I spent the next thirty or so years teaching, where I had the same conversations with my students that I had had with my father about the virtues of the outline-only now I was the one for it.
Needless to say, when I sat down to write the draft of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune , I outlined the plot. I literally outlined the whole story, chapter by chapter, listing under each chapter the scenes, characters involved, and the information that needed to be conveyed (clues, motivations, red-herrings, etc.) I remember being very puzzled by several members of my writing critique group, who were also writing mysteries at the time, who did not do outlines. In fact, they weren't even sure who the murderer was, if there were going to be more than one murder, or how the murderer was going to be discovered. This seemed terribly disorganized, necessitating a good deal of rewriting once the plot elements were finally determined.
However, now that I look back at the path that first draft took before it ended up in the version that I published (with it's new plot twists, new characters, new scenes, and deleted scenes), I am not sure I didn't end up doing as much rewriting as the non-outliners did.
So now I have started writing Uneasy Spirits, the sequel to my first mystery, and I am confronted with the question, is an outline necessary? Can it become an obstacle to creativity or does it ensure a well-paced plot?
On the anti-outline side of the argument, having an outline can cause tunnel vision. In Maids of Misfortune, I originally had my protagonist, Annie Fuller, go undercover as a maid in the murdered man's house about half-way through the book. My outline said I had to have all sorts of establishing scenes between Annie and the second protagonist, Nate Dawson, before she could disappear into her role as a servant. It took a number of beta readers to point out to me that this made the plot way too slow, and that I could actually rearrange my outline!
Another anti-outline argument I have heard numerous times (from non-outliner writers) is that once the whole story is plotted out in an outline, they lose interest in telling it. They get bored. They know "who done it," so they don't have the motivation to spend the months it will take to flesh out the story. For them, one of the prime motivations in writing is to "see what comes next," something they feel they have lost when they have the whole novel plotted out. I confess that since I have lectured on the American Civil War about 10 times a year for 30 years (300 times!), always knowing "how it turned out," but always trying to find new and better ways to describe what happened and why it happened, this argument has never held much weight.
Yet in favor of the anti-outlining argument, I do think that outlines have caused me to overwrite. I spent a good deal of time cutting in the last revision I did before publishing Maids of Misfortune, and a lot of it was because I had been so busy writing scenes in order to introduce the "clues" I had seeded throughout the plot outline that I lost touch with how to keep up the pacing.
On the other hand, having an outline ensures that the main plot points don't get lost when there is a long time between the conception of the book and its actual completion. For example, I came up with the plot for Uneasy Spirits years ago (when I became discouraged by my inability to sell the first manuscript, and I thought I should move on, hoping editors might be more impressed if I had two books in hand.) I spent several weeks doing some background research for the book, developed character sketches for the main characters (victims, murderer, red herrings), and finally outlined the plot. Then I put this work away (summer was over and I was back to full time teaching). Fast forward more than five years and the stuff that life throws at you, and I was finally ready to start on this manuscript. Without that typed outline and character sketches I would have been at square one.
A second pro-outline argument is that it helps you develop the story arc. One of the most difficult tasks for the college students I teach is to develop a thesis for their essays. They know what a topic is, and can write about a topic, but they have trouble developing an opinion about that topic. They write, "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." But they can't tell you why something happened, or why it was important. The books that I enjoy the most–even within the narrow confines of genre writing–are the ones that tell the story about how events changed characters-for better or worse. Writing an outline that not only introduces clues and red herrings throughout the story, but also includes scenes designed to change the main characters by challenging their beliefs and patterns of behavior, ensures that my stories will have that arc (or thesis) and that it is organic to the story itself, not grafted on after the fact.
For a final pro-outline argument, it can guard against writer's block. I read about writers block, how people stare at a blank page for hours, days, weeks, and this just has never happened to me. While I can procrastinate with the best of them, once I sit down to write, I have always had that outline in front of me, and I have always been able to write something. I know what the next scene is supposed to be about, who is in the room, what they are supposed to be talking about, and this makes it easy to start writing.
This doesn't always mean the scene comes out the way I planned it. As most writers will tell you, writing can be a magical experience where the characters have a decided mind of their own. For example, according to my outline for Uneasy Spirits, the first chapter was supposed to be set in Annie Fuller's boarding house (Annie is my protagonist), and it was supposed to be a scene between Annie and Miss Pinehurst (who somehow mutated from a Miss Pringle in the outline). Instead as I sat down to write, while it was set in the boarding house, a completely new character, Mrs. Crenshaw, started talking to Annie. Instead Annie and Miss Pinehurst had their meeting in the next chapter, but in a cemetery rather than in the boardinghouse. So, whether I follow my outline, or rebel against it, I seem to have something to write–hence–no writer's block.
I guess my conclusion is that I will continue to use outlines for my novels, but try to remain flexible, so that they will carry me along, not hem me in. But I would love to hear from all of you.
Do you outline your plot before writing, or do you just wing it? And what are your reasons for outlining or not.
