Peter W. Dawes's Blog: The Man Behind the Curtain, page 8

It's October…

Do we need any better reason to put Eyes of the Seer on sale?

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99 cents on Kindle all this month

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99 cents on Smashwords

use coupon code TA63K

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$2.99 in all other formats

 

 

Don't forget to check out our short-stories!

We've got 3 Free and 1 at 99cents!

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October News and Updates

I've always enjoyed October. The weather is usually a little haywire (I've lived in the Philly sub-urbs my entire life so I can say that with some authority for this area) but the sun is almost always warm and inviting. This year in particular I can vouch that its still pretty powerful – Jules and I took our respective munchkins on a hayride and ended up with a very light sun-burn. We've also both been fighting a bit of hay-fever and sinus problems (is it just us, or has this year really been bad for that sort of thing?) but we're trudging through with copious amounts of coffee, sometimes tea, and taking it easy.

But that hardly means we're sitting back and letting our goals pass us by.

Right now, I can turn around and see that Jules is on chapter 30/32 (32 now with how long it's taken me to write this post) of the line edits for the print version of Eyes of the Seer that will be out by the end of the month (by early November at the latest, if the proof copy isn't to our liking – to those we owe copies, you'll be getting a PDF version in anticipation of the final product). Don't worry, we'll be updating the various Ebook versions too so that everything stays consistent, but it's the final editing sweep we'll ever need to do. Thank bloody heavens.

Some of you know this, but we've been working on Eyes of the Seer since September of 2009. A very rough [print] ARC copy was released in June of 2010, which we tore apart entirely throughout the fall into spring of 2010-2011. The E-versions were released in June, 2011, but due to it being my first attempt at formatting it took until August to finally have the book pristine enough to make it through Smashwords's evaluation process and into their premium catalog, the gateway to distribution to other sites like Apple and B&N. Eyes of the Seer was first listed on B&N on September 3 and on Apple on September 14. It's been on Amazon since August as well, seeing that was just a matter of uploading the acceptably formatted version through KDP. But in total, it's been two years since we started editing the manuscript that Jules / Peter originally penned in 2006.

And we're looking forward to moving on.

To keep ourselves busy, and our muses happy, in the meantime we've been putting out short stories once a month since June. There are currently four in our library, some listed solely on Smashwords but some on Kindle, Nook and iBookstore as well. Three are free and one is 99-cents.

In the back of the E-versions of EotS we've added a sample of the next novel of the series, Rebirth of the Seer. In between line-edits, writing short-stories, and corralling our (between the two of us) five kids (don't talk to us about coordinating doctor appointments unless you want to spend a few hours hearing about the juggling we have to do for Jules's two disabled kidlets) she's also been making headway into the initial edits and prose conversion (all five novels were originally written in the present-tense and are being changed to past-tense) of the second book of The Vampire Flynn Trilogy.

And we both plan to put a solid effort into NaNoWriMo this year. Jules, for the sixth book (the third installment of The Immortal Seer Trilogy) and me, for a [I feel like I should be whispering this] PNR story that has been sitting on a shelf for the better part of two years that I plan to completely rewrite to fit into Peter's World.

They say you can have it all, and we're big fans of reaping what you sow.

To that end, we're also bouncing around the idea of putting together a different kind of publication, of the quarterly or monthly and definitely collaborative variety, in the future (probably after the new year, though preliminary work will be done during our free time from now until then) and experimenting with how else to promote our work.

At the same time, we're both really proud of what we have to show for the last three months of work. For those curious, we don't mind sharing (and this will be updated when Smashwords finalizes it's sales reports)-

Through KDP [two months of data]-

2 copies of A Vampire's Game (99-cents)

7 copies of  Eyes of the Seer ($2.99)

(free) 2500-and-counting downloads of  To Sir, With Love

Through Smashwords [lifetime data since June]-

3 copies of A Vampire's Game (99-cents)

8 copies of Eyes of the Seer ($2.99)

(free) 803 downloads of To Sir, With Love

Through B&N (via Smashwords) [one month data]-

The report hasn't been updated yet, but as of today Smashwords seems to be showing that we've sold 22 books through B&N. We won't know until they officially release their sales reports what sold, nor how many people downloaded To Sir, With Love.

Of all that, we've also gotten 2 reviews of TSwL on Smashwords, (3) on Amazon (two of which don't really count since they were posted mostly to counteract two one-star reviews that Amazon ended up removing due to the fact that they were only criticism over the choice of title, not the story itself), and 4 reviews on Goodreads. Eyes of the Seer has received no reviews on Amazon or Smashwords, but it did get a new review on Goodreads in the last three months. We've submitted it to one review site so far, and should be seeing that review any day now.

Like I said, we're pretty proud of those numbers. We've also gotten 8 new subscribers to the blog, are up to 39 'Likes' on Facebook for CrimsonMelodies and 45 'Likes' for EyesOfTheSeer. Our twitter followers keep going up as well, and I know that 350ish of those are from June onward – that's when we began our social marketing campaign. This blog has also gone from only having spammer traffic, to having between 300-500 monthly visitors (June thus far has the highest, with 530 visitors, because that was when we were most aggressive with social marketing and link spamming on Twitter and Facebook. However, it didn't net us sales numbers, which is why we abandoned our initial approach – also because it didn't really feel like 'us'.)

Clearly we're doing something right in the exposure sense, we just need to figure out where else to reach out so our feedback continues to grow. Projects for the future.

As always, thanks for reading,

Jesi

aka Victor Mason

So your book is about vampires… (highlighting 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer')

A friend of mine is getting married next month and had her bachelorette party this past weekend. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of drinking, but it was also a great time to catch up with people I haven't seen in (some cases) years.

And I made a very awesome discovery. Catching up on each other's lives, loves, and current fascinations, I was able to tell them that aside from working part time as a local IT guru I was also working on a book. "Oh, what about?" "Vampires."

The next moment after that is always the telltale moment, be they friend, family, or person in line with you at the supermarket. If someone's expression falls, or turns into that plastic-tightness, you know that they think you're another victim of today's vampire obsession or that they're just not into vampires themselves for one reason or another. Either way, they won't be interested in the rest of the book's description. There's two other possibilities – the skeptically interested, or the eagerly interested. For the skeptical ones, you've got a chance to pitch the rest of the synopsis. And the eager ones just need a book pressed into their hands.

As it turns out, the two gals I had a chance to get to the book mention part of catching upwere the eagerly interested. They're the type that still prefers reading physical books and thought it was cool that paperback version would be released sometime in October after the wedding, so we've all got added incentive not to let ourselves lose touch this time around. (These are High School friends, which was *cough* ten *cough* years ago.)

*NEWS FLASH* Line edits are done up through chapter 24/32, so we're pretty on track for getting the new paperback out in late October. (Saying 'new' because the version that can currently be found on Lulu is essentially our ARC copy. It's not nearly as polished, and is missing a couple scenes that got added into the newest version.) We'll keep you posted!

The entire experience, both of telling them about the book and their level of interest in reading it, brought about this realization – there are vampire fans out there eagerly looking for their next fix and there's every reason they should pick up Eyes of the Seer.

I first read Eyes of the Seer in 2009, as a PDF version of the book that Jules (aka, Peter Dawes) had put out back in 2006. It was no longer available for sale at the time because she'd chosen to pull it down for various reasons, and didn't want to rush putting it back out until it had been revised to the best of her ability.

As it turned out, I ended up loving the book. Loving it. The story was gritty and felt real. The plot is smart without being complicated, and twists around itself while leaving plenty of breadcrumbs so you know the author intended to get where they ended up. It wasn't a revolutionary piece of literature, but even Jules will be up front and tell you that wasn't her goal. What Eyes of the Seer does is bring you along the journey Peter takes after he's turned into a vampire. He finds the darkest parts of himself to wrestle with, and there's a while that he loses himself to overindulgence and violence. The bigger picture includes being sweet-talked by his maker so he becomes everything she wants him to be while there's hints about secrets being kept from Peter. And in the end, because you've seen the best and worst parts of him, you don't know what side Peter will choose – his maker, his witch, or himself.

Jules and I have both read Interview with a Vampire, but nothing else of Anne Rice's. I've read Stoker, and consider it more of a confirmation of influence regarding vampires being detached from humans more than anything else. Both Jules and I are familiar with Sookie Stackhouse and the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris (which many of you may know better as True Blood from HBO), but those are recent acquisitions. No, it wasn't vampire literature that played a huge part into the development of Jules's vampires.

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Enter the key point of connect between Jules's approach and my approach to vampires.

If there are vampires, there has to be vampire hunters. Van Hellsing, Buffy, Blade, you name it, I think that if the supernatural powers that be really did put vampires in the world, there would be supernatural forces at work to keep them looking over their shoulder at least a little – otherwise they'd just be demi-gods, and wouldn't even have half a point of connect with humans, which is the element that makes all these vampire stories so interesting.

*WARNING Small EotS spoiler that is hinted at in the book description* The absolutely brilliant thing about Jules's stories is this – there are vampires, and vampire hunters. What happens when a person fated to be a vampire hunter, before he gets his powers, is turned into a vampire instead?

The other influences from Buffy into Eyes of the Seer amount to personality of the vampires. We're not a fan of dry, stuck in the mud vampires any more than the overly angsty, emotionally immature kind.  The vamps you meet in Jules's books are lively, exciting, and sometimes plotting to take over the world. There's magic in the world too, among other things that will be revealed in later books. But if you want a good read of how Flynn is (the name Peter goes by as a vampire) think Spike from BtVS, minus being "love's bitch".

As an aside, the most exciting moment in our EotS promotional efforts thus far was being able to hand a copy of the book to James Marsters at the Wizard World Comic Con last year. The sad thing is that we don't have a picture of it, because Jules had to do it by herself while I manned our table. She even got to tell him that it was his portrayal of Spike that influenced her vampire writing.

I considered Buffy brilliant for its introduction of the idea that a vampire hunter can fall in love with a vampire, albeit one with his soul. That was the foundation all of us were introduced to in the first seasons and affected how Buffy herself ended up viewing vampires, and her calling, by the end of the series. It might sound noble, but there's a lot of sacrifice involved with being a vampire hunter. The major difference between EotS and BtVS is this – in Jules's world there are more than one "slayer". That, and they don't get their powers when another slayer dies, although there is a quirk to how, and more specifically when, they get them.

But I think that's a topic for another post.

This week's recommended blog post is to craft an exceptional elevator pitch. I read it a few weeks ago and was completely stumped on how to put EotS into such a short pitch until this blog post – see above: "what happens when a vampire hunter becomes a vampire first"

As always, thanks for reading,

Jesi

aka Victor Mason

Why YA (highlighting 'Wicked Lovely')

YA is a huge deal right now in publishing, especially traditional publishing. Purely speculating, I think this is because publishing companies know that the number of kids who own e-readers is exponentially smaller than adults who own e-readers, so YA books will sell more paper copies than any mid-list book they put out for adults.

But it's not just the target audience reading YA, it's also a lot of adults. And I've been really curious why.

I expect one reason is because of the first issue: More publishers are approaching authors to write YA which is why there are so many more YA books in the here and now than a few years ago. Part of that is probably due to the popularity of things like Harry Potter, and even Twilight. But it's not just J. K. and Stephanie with their names printed on YA these days. It's some really stellar authors who might have had a new niche opened up for them that can build a fan base who enters adulthood seeking out their other offerings. What it really means is that there are so many more YA books, specifically series (which I'm sure publishers prefer when they get the chance, because marketing a series means the marketing investment isn't just for one book – also good for the author), that are more than worth the read.

So, on a lark, and because I'd been wanting to look into more current YA to get a better sense for the market, I picked up a copy of Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely. Why her and not any other YA books? One, faeries, which very distinctly aren't vampires or weres (I don't know how other authors handle things, but I prefer not reading too much other writer's lore for creatures I intend to make up my own lore for). And two, I noticed her name on the cover of a short-story collection called Naked City which features Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs – heavy-hitters of Urban Fantasy.

I was pretty happy with the purchase. Marr's take on the fae is a lot like how I would write them if I ever set foot into those waters – they're definitely not human both in motivations and in appearance (some breeds more so than others), aren't really "good" or "evil" because the concepts are a bit foreign to them (ie they are what they are and don't apologize for it), and end up creating as much mischief as offering once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The main character, Aislinn (ash-lin – which I knew how to pronounce ahead of time thanks to an RolePlayer from twitter who uses a variation of the name for an original character), is a girl who has been able to see faeries her entire life and is a bit of a social outcast because of it – I considered that a very brilliant character fault that both made Aislinn's quirks entirely believable and ended up directly contributing to the plot.

The story itself was a page turner, building to a crescendo that made me insanely curious about how it would end and yet trusting that the characters in question would get to their various decisions in their own time after the right amount of personal growth took place. I will say that I was disappointed by one twist of the plot because I felt like it stole away from the otherwise stellar job Marr did in showing all that personal growth – it took away some of the thunder from the finale, which wasn't a let down of any sort except for being bogged down by that one, I thought unnecessary, twist.

Reading Wicked Lovely, and Harry Potter and even Twilight brought me to this realization of the draw of YA fiction to adults: all of us remember the time in our lives where the world was our playground, when we had our entire life ahead of us and we had so many possibilities in reach. Being a 'young adult' is that time when you can choose the course of your life from any number of paths that will bring you some sort of fulfillment. Some choices/paths will bring you more fulfillment than others, but that's still the beauty of that time in our lives – we're free to switch paths whenever we please because there's nothing holding us back. And reading YA as an adult allows us to recapture that sense of the world in a way that we weren't able to appreciate when we were that age.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes on YA more in the future. The current YA, while accused of being dark, is definitely more adult than a lot of adult fiction these days – not because of their content, but because of the emphasis given to responsibility and consequences, two things that a lot of adults still have trouble with.

If I start a list of recommended YA reads, Wicked Lovely and Harry Potter will definitely make the cut.

Why was I curious about reading YA? Because of this very important question: I've got a book that I'm proud to have my name on, but who else is going to like reading it and where do I find them? (IE, who do I market to and how) There will definitely be more posts on that topic as we here at Crimson Melodies keep on keeping with our publishing journey.

Did you know Eyes of the Seer is now available in all the popular ebook formats?

And if you haven't read it, go check out Russell Blakes blog post "In Defense of Writing" – it's what put the question above more concretely in my head. (For the record, we're Camp B all the way.)

As always, thanks for reading,

Jesi

(aka Victor Mason)

Labor Day Weekend

Special offers now through Labor Day

-Do you like vampires?

-Do you miss the days when they didn't sparkle?

-Would a description that included "blood-thirsty", "sexy", and "capricious" be appealing?

You really should check out Eyes of the Seer. But if you're still not sure, you're invited to get to know Flynn – the main character of Eyes of the Seer – at one of his most decadent moments in A Vampire's Game, for free all weekend (with Smashwords coupon below).

Humans don't stand a chance. And his assassin training means his fellow vampire's don't either.

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$0.99 on Amazon

Eyes of the Seer (Kindle)

or

$0.99 on Smashwords with the coupon code SG98X

Eyes of the Seer (Smashwords)

 

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free on Smashwords with coupon code YX84J

A Vampire's Game (Smashwords)

 

 

 

Check out our other short-story publications, available on Smashwords, Kindle, and Nook.

Crimson Melodies – Short Stories

 

 

EotS Cover and General Updates

The official new cover. Thank you to all 21 people who helped us decide on the placement of the text! (We didn't count our own votes, but set up a poll on DeviantArt) A lot of people liked the third option that was dA only, with the "a vampire flynn" banner across the top and the title and author at the bottom, because it "balanced" the image. But it really was an even split in the end (or close enough, 8 vs 9, in favor of the banner up top) and this is what we decided to do as a good compromise of sticking with our original design as well as keeping a balance for the image.

So, without further ado…

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Expect to see this image replace the old one over the next week or so. It's already been updated on Smashwords and Amazon, and should be updated soon on Goodreads. It's now much more thumb-nail friendly (important for e-books).

 

GENERAL UPDATE on life, books, and Crimson Melodies…

Progress on editing Rebirth of the Seer is, at least, progress. This last month has been taxing in ways completely unrelated to writing for both Jules (Peter) and I (Jesi/Victor) mostly relating to children and summer vacation and cabin fever. With summer vacation drawing to a close, we'll finally be able to get this machine oiled and running the way it should be.

You can expect to see more announcement / updates like this over the next few weeks about our WIP projects and our once-a-month short story publications. The next one will be out on or by September 23, and it's another Victor piece (if you haven't read the first one, check out Urchin of Atoranaon – it's free) about his turning. No dates for any of our bigger projects. Rebirth of the Seer should be available in ARC form by December, barring anything unforseen. We'll keep you all updated!

Our goal is to have one of Peter's novels published every year, ARC copies in December and official release in June of the next year. So, if everything really does go according to plan, we'll have one short story every month, plus a short-story collection for Valentine's Day (with all the smut we love to bring you), and another novel out by this time next year.

And if the blog-deities are smiling on us too, we'll actually start updating this thing on some sort of schedule…

#pubtip (from #crimsonmelodies) set goals w/ dates for all story projects, complete 1 thing from writing To-Do(s) every day, & feed the cat

Pricing Ebooks

There are quite a few schools of thought regarding Ebook pricing when it comes to being an indie or self-pubbed author, and most of it still boils down to uncertainty – Ebooks are relatively new.

But when you publish an ebook, you still need to pick a price. So what's the safe bet?

It depends what you want from your readers.

Everyone knows what the big publishing companies are doing with their ebooks – pricing them at about 70% of the list price for their print counterparts, if not closer to 100%. Their argument is that the same amount of work goes into a book, regardless of what format you consume it. It still requires editing, formatting (twice the amount of formatting, actually, since you can't convert straight from print format to ebook format), cover art, and marketing. So why should they charge less just because they aren't having to shell out money for physical copies, warehouse storage, and book store shelf space?

I think they're missing the boat, but a lot of that has to do with the lessons learned (or not) from what happened to the music industry when MP3s became popular. The music industry fought against digital formats because they feared easy pirating – which drove people to pirating because they still wanted to consume their music digitally and stopped caring about the legality until the industry started making concessions. You can look at how Apple is doing today for confirmation of that – they found a niche to sell some very revolutionary devices to facilitate consumption of digital music, as well as the means to buy digital music legally and cost effectively. and now they're more than secure in their market. Today in the book world, instead of iPods, we have Kindles, Nooks and other devices which are spread across quite a few companies. Industry books are indeed available for digital consumption and pirating is minimal compared to what the music industry endured, but what hasn't been conceded to yet is price.

That has more to do with how publishing companies make their money – they have cash-cow authors and mid-list authors, and, unfortunately for the mid-listers, use the same pricing strategy for both because it isn't hurting them (it isn't helping them either, though). People will still buy the digital edition of the next Stephen King book for 70-100% of the paperback cost because they're more concerned with how they consume it than the price (Stephen King is a guaranteed good read). Mid-list authors, however, are where price becomes a concern vs how the story is consumed. (And there is no such thing as a digital bargain-bin for taking a chance on an author you're unfamiliar yet to make you look forward to their next release – at least not yet.) We won't start seeing more changes in the way the industry treats ebooks until their big-name authors start retiring, or passing on from this life, and they suddenly realize there's no one waiting in line to take their place because all their mid-list authors have defected to being indies.

It's likely that we've got a decade or two before the industry is forced to shift. It might happen on its own in the meanwhile, but that's far from a sure thing. So what's an indie or self-pub to do without anyone setting realistic standards for little known or unknown authors?

Two choices: 99 cents or not 99 cents. Anything from 2.99 to 4.99, to me, is an acceptable price of an ebook (depending on quality of the book sample and the respectability of the author's backlist). I'm not going to qualify "not 99 cents" more precisely because, if you're not going the 99 cent route, it means you're pricing your book at 2.99 or higher. Amazon (being on the Kindle is a must) starts giving 70% royalty at 2.99 – if your book is less than 2.99 it shouldn't be anything but 99 cents (or you lose any advantage in the lower price tag for very minimal profit gains).

What's the magic of the 99 cent ebook? For one, your sales will be higher. Your refunded units will be higher too, but they'll be at acceptable levels. People will buy a 99 cent book and let it sit on their hard-drive just as readily as they'll buy a 99 cent book and read it. Why is that true? We're all consumers trained to look for a deal, and if we spot a 99 cent book that has a decent blurb and a fairly intriguing cover, we'll consider it a good value and buy it (oftentimes in one click) to save for a rainy day. Some of those people will read it. Others won't. Most of the time you'll get to keep your royalty because few will ask for a refund (it was only a dollar, after all) so all in all you'll have higher sales (and potentially, but not guaranteed, higher profits) – but it won't guaranty more readers.

At 2.99 and higher you start weeding out the deal shoppers from the genuinely interested readers. And since you get to keep almost $2 of every sale (you would have to sell 6 books at 99 cents to match profits) this is the sweet spot best of both worlds, provided your book is of high quality. People who spend 2.99 on a book are going to be much more apt to ask for a refund if they aren't satisfied once they get past the sample chapters, so if you do convince they to buy it you better be certain they're going to keep it. And if you price it higher than 2.99, the best methods of convincing potential readers your book is worth that kind of money is to have a solid backlist with lots of good reviews as well as sparkling reviews for the book in question.

There's a school of thought that offering your first novel at 99 cents is a smart move to make way for future, higher priced novels. This is true ONLY if your novel is still the quality of a book that could be priced at $2.99 or higher. If it isn't, you'll be stuck watching your future sales go nowhere.

Remember – a 5 star review for a 99 cent book is not the same as a 5 star review for a $9.99 book. People are much more forgiving if they only spent a dollar, and it will show. You might be able to convince a 99 cent 5 star reviewer to buy your next book for $2.99, but if they discover that it doesn't show the consistency, or improvement, to warrant the higher price tag, you'll start seeing the worst thing an indie / self-pubbed author can see – a negative review.

The moral of the story is to keep your readers happy. If that means sitting on a bunch of 99 cent books, go for it. It's still entirely possible to make a living. But if you've spent the time, energy, and money to make your book worth more then don't sell yourself short. Start at 99 cents if you want to, but make sure you keep an eye out for when you can step into the $2.99+ world.

There is something to how the leaders of the book industry are handling things, even if they're mishandling their mid-listers. You won't ever see a big-six book on the Kindle store for 99 cents. Ever. Even a decade or two from now. Why?

Because it doesn't matter how we consume them – books are worth more than that, and always will be.

99 cent novels are a gateway at best and a fad at worst. They might be popular today, but I doubt they're around to last. Take advantage while you can, but be careful about boxing yourself in. Selling your book is about business, and you have to keep an eye on the future if you're going to make it.

As always, thanks for reading

-Jesi

aka Victor Mason

EotS Cover Facelift

Eyes of the Seer has a redesigned cover. We wanted something that was a little more interesting, but our main focus was on a design that could be replicated across all the books of the trilogy in a very distinct and defining way. It's still something of a WIP, but we couldn't resist sharing.

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Tomorrow's blog post: The Pricing of Ebooks

 

ISBNs and CoverArt

I owe someone a thank you for giving me the motivation to write a blog this week. We've been getting a lot of traffic on our self-publishing topics, but one future author took the time to ask for a bit of extra information. Since I always end up being wordy, and the topic was apropos, I can finally present this week's self-publishing blog post.

Apologies for it being so late in the week. We all at Crimson Melodies were at a convention over the weekend, for both work and fun, that threw us off our typical schedule. Noting to self: write blog posts before going on trips.

Hi [xyz].

It sounds like you're in a place I'm familiar with, having a book that is going to need more than just an editor to get it ready for the world. I'm still learning about the "best" way to do things, but I can definitely point you in the right direction based on my experiences.

The short, direct answer to your question about buying an ISBN yourself, and not needing any agreed upon contracts or other preparations, is yes. https://www.myidentifiers.com/index.php?ci_id=1479 Most publishing houses buy their ISBNs in bulk, 1000s at a time, without any more information than the simple statement that they are the publisher of record for those ISBNs. You can assign all the other information, like title, author, etc, at a later date, when you're actually ready to publish. If you want a bar code as well, it's a small extra charge, but it means that you could one day see your book on a book store shelf (most, if not all, stores require a bar code to offer a book for sale).

http://www.bowker.com/index.php/component/content/article/34/264

ISBNs are not limitations on your copyrights, by the way. No matter who owns the ISBN that becomes associated with your book, you will always retain all the rights to your content as an indie or self-published author – it's not like signing a contract with a big publishing firm where, typically, they keep exclusive rights to your content for X number of years after you sign. An ISBN that isn't self-purchased directly from Bowker only has stipulations about how your book will be distributed, depending on where you get the ISBN.

(Bowker is the ISBN authority in the US. Any ISBN, no matter who else attaches their name to it, at some point came from Bowker if the book is going to be printed in the US.)

Regarding covers and design: CreateSpace, and "publishers" like them (Lulu, for instance) will charge you a fair amount of money for their book design services. I've never used them so I can't speak for their quality of service, but if they don't fit your budget there are a few other options you can look into – mainly hiring people individually. It took time and a little bit of luck to find the wonderful artist who did the cover art for Eyes of the Seer back in 2006, but there are a lot of options in more recent days as indie and self-published becomes more popular. I didn't write this article myself, but it has a few links that might be a good place for you to start shopping around for cover art - http://www.katiesalidas.com/2011/05/self-publishing-cover-art-part-one.html

Unfortunately, I don't have any good suggestions for where to start looking for an editor or interior designer since I had the help of a few close friends for my book, and they aren't up to hiring themselves out. Depending on your level of comfort, you can always do your interior design yourself. CreateSpace has layout templates and helpful instructions on how to format a book for print in an editor like Microsoft Word, and you can use lots of other books as examples for how to do page numbers, footnotes, or whatever your book might need. If you plan on having interior images, though, that can get complicated very quick. Straight text, however, isn't much more complicated than a college term paper.

Some further disambiguation: The reason I have "publishers" in quotes up above is because that's how they (CreateSpace, Lulu, etc) would be listed, in relation to your book, if you use their free ISBN options. With your own, pre-purchased ISBN you have the most control over your book because the ISBN is non-exclusive – that means as long as the book's type of binding remains the same (IE softcover/perfect-bound or hardcover), you can always use that same ISBN regardless of who is printing / distributing your book. But, it may not be necessary, especially depending on where and how you plan to market. Amazon goes hand in hand with CreateSpace, and CreateSpace does allow you to distribute on Barnes & Noble as well just at a lower royalty return – the lower return, however, is comparable to the average royalty you would receive with any other "publisher", so it's not something to loose sleep over if you do choose CreateSpace.

Hardly anyone digs into an ISBN to see who is officially listed as the publisher, and if you are at all concerned about how it will be listed online or in the inside cover you can always use CreateSpace's vanity ISBN for $10 which allows you to list yourself. CreateSpace will still be listed as the publisher of record with Bowker, but that's not something the average book buyer will ever see. However, you can never use that ISBN anywhere BUT on CreateSpace, so the important decision is actually about how happy you think you'll be with your book in the long run through CreateSpace. (I've held more than one book printed through them, and can vouch for their quality. The bindings are sturdy and the covers are fairly durable, IE don't show wear any faster than most books published by a major publisher.)

If I could offer just one piece of advice, it would be this: Take your time. There are a lot of right ways to do things, and I actually think it's very difficult to do anything "wrong" when it comes to publishing a book since "wrong" is mostly a matter of opinion. But finding the best way, for you, is something that will keep you happy in the long run both in regard to how others will think of you and your book, and how you'll feel about it in the future. Little known secret: I know of a book, published under my associate's real name, that had ISBN purchased for it back in 2004, that no matter how hard they try they can't seem to get pulled from Amazon. It's mostly a communication issue, and they haven't figured out who to email or call to get results, but the reality is that there is a poor showing of a first book still out there for the world to see because it was published without knowing there could be complications in the future.

~Jesi

aka – Victor Mason of Crimson Melodies

POD vs Ebook: The Dilemma

As an author, especially those striking out on their own as self-pubbed or indie, the most important thing to keep in mind is time: your time, the life-time of your book, and the availability of your book over time. Your time is the most important of the three because, lets face it, no story is ever a guaranteed smash-hit. That means you need to have the time to write your next story, because writing one book and making it is just not an option.

So how do you manage your time? Where is it best spent? And what is the deal with POD books these days?

*POD = print on demand

I'd like to begin answering that question by saying that Ebooks are 100% necessary to the viability of a non-traditionally published book. There are lots of ways to approach it, and a lot of the decision making is limited by the technical savvy required.

Smashwords.com is my number one recommendation. It's completely free, very straightforward, and you get to keep a large percentage of your much deserved royalties. They also allow you to list your book for free with no charge to you. You can use Smashwords as a distribution site, if you want, for reaching into the Barnes & Noble, Sony, and Apple markets. If you do so, however, be aware that some people have encountered trouble obtaining real-time data regarding their sales on other other platforms through Smashwords, which brings up the next two contenders.

PubIt and KDP, Barnes & Noble and Amazon, respectively. As a note, you cannot list your work with them for free. (We attempted, as an experiment, to circumvent the system on Amazon by reporting a cheaper price elsewhere – on Smashwords – but after a month the title in question is still listed at $0.99. We will most likely be pulling it down.) However, you can list your work for $0.99 and higher. Both have their own royalty policies, and they are not nearly as generous as Smashwords. However, they obviously have a wider market, and the more markets you have your titles in the better.

Don't favor one e-reader over another. Just because the software and companies behind them keep their technology proprietary doesn't mean you need to keep your book proprietary. You don't have to choose one over the other when it comes to e-publishing, you just have to make a note of the edition at the beginning of each version (Smashwords Edition vs Kindle Edition, etc) because the important thing is being able to know where someone bought your work.

Smashwords does not require an ISBN for distribution on their site, and neither does KDP or PubIt (with the latter two, they use their own ISBN system for their electronically published offerings). If you want to distribute on Sony or Apple, however, you need an ISBN – Smashwords can provide you one for free, so long as your formatting qualified your book for being listed in their premium catalog.

*needed note: KDP requires 24-72 hours to approve your book before listing it on Amazon's Kindle store. Smashwords requires about a week to approve your book for premium status*

What we intend to do with Eyes of the Seer is list it for $2.99 across the board. (Pricing your book is slated as a future post and won't be covered here, but it is coming!) We'll have it up on Smashwords, and publish it with KDP and PubIt, and have direct lines into accurate sales info. It's a little more work ahead of time, but we think it's worth it.

Now, how much will this cost, you're wondering.

The answer is… $0.00. I stumbled across a blog that suggested using the Smashwords Style Guide to format ebooks as an overarching set of guidelines because you can use the same techniques and rules for both clearing Smashword's meatgrinder as the KDP evaluation process (we haven't tried PubIt yet, but will amend this post and make note of any future findings). The suggestion proved true, although you have to remember to upload the Word .doc to Smashwords but save it as a bare-bones HTML file to upload to KDP in order to preserve your formatting. But it WORKS. And better yet, we did it ourselves.

I think that alone is the only point I need to make regarding why ebooks are 100% necessary – because they're free to make, free to sell, and you can sit back and watch your money come in. (Provided you've done all the work to edit, acquire good cover art, and market – more future posts.)

So, if that's free, and simple, why bother with print?

Some hard numbers for you to consider. We put out an ARC copy of Eyes of the Seer in June of 2010 and took it to the Philadelphia Comic Con. It was three days (total con hours across the days: 24) of attracting people over to our table, competing with the authors of another book who (by poor luck) had the table next to us, and then hooking potential readers live and in person by being engaging and passionate about the book we wanted them to buy. The guys next to us? They walked in with 30 books priced at $10 and walked out with only 2 of them unsold. (Admittedly, they had a better hook than we did, but they were more power-selling than reaching out to potential fans – big no-no in the long run, but again, future post.) Us? We walked in with 24 books priced at $15 a pop and walked away with 17 unsold. The price made a huge difference in buyer willingness, but so did the fact that anyone who was interested in books hit our competitor's table before they got to ours. It was an extremely poor showing.

An extremely poor showing that still sold 7 books in three days. Real, printed books, priced at $15 each.

Over the next year, we sold an additional 34 books on Lulu (where we'd published the ARC) with zero marketing. Yes, you read that right, zero marketing and 34 book sales. $15 a pop. That's, counting the 7 books we sold at the con, was 41 books in a year or 3.4 books a month. Which is about the indie average (which I've seen mentioned multiple places as 4 books a month).

I'm going to point back to the beginning of this post and say that, as far as our time goes, the print version of the book was success. And that was our ARC copy. (What we received in feedback was priceless.)

How does that compare to our ebook sales?

More numbers to consider: Eyes of the Seer was released, on Smashwords, June 1, 2011. In that time, we spent at least an hour a day marketing it online on Twitter, Facebook, and to a small extent on Goodreads (by an hour, I mean we were using Hootsuite to pre-program tweets and wall-posts for each day), plus an additional hour or two following or friending people were wanted to attract toward looking at our book. 30 days in June puts that roughly between 60 and 90 hours of marketing. (Reference back to the 24 hours at the convention.) We sold 5 books.

Print, at a convention: 24 hours of marketing yielded 7 sales if a $15 book

Ebook, online: 60-90 hours of marketing yielded 5 sales of a $0.99 ebook

The only disclaimer I can state is that conventions cost money to attend (the table itself, potential hotel and travel costs, as well as food) so there is a difference in profitability between the two. However, in raw numbers, print is even more viable than ebooks.

It boils down to this: Your potential readers don't care about how they came across you, whether it be a table at a con, a link online, or sitting on a bookstore shelf – what matters is what they do after they encounter you.

If you're now asking yourself, "so how difficult is it to format a book for print?" the answer is easier than you might think. Most POD sites (and POD is where you want to be) simply require a PDF file, and most word-processor programs these days can handle the "mirror margins" a print book requires. Everything else, just like an ebook, is in your hands. And you'll always have a proof copy to approve before anyone buys it for real, just in case something did end up not-quite-right.

Next week: more info on POD. CreateSpace, Lulu, and what else? What should an author choose? What should a publisher choose? Is there really a difference? (Yes, there really is.)

The Crimson Melodies Team

Victor Mason

Peter Dawes