Lindsay Buroker's Blog: Lindsay Buroker, page 31

Self-Publishing 101: 3 Traits of Successful Indie Authors

When I published my first ebook, there were already lots of indie authors doing well, as evinced by their rankings at Amazon and their I’m-selling-XXXX-books-a-month posts in various self-publishing forums. I was a little worried that I was coming to the party late, and that the increasing number of ebooks in the Kindle store (and elsewhere) would make it hard to stand out. I was determined to do so anyway, though, and set myself the goal of selling 1,000 ebooks a month by the end of my first year (yes, I made it).

The thousand-ebooks-a-month-goal seemed to be a popular one at the time and something of an indicator of success (though now I suppose you’re not anybody until you’ve sold at least 50,000 ebooks total). Granted, there lots of other ways to measure success (I get my biggest warm, fuzzy grins from seeing readers interacting with each other and chatting about my characters on Facebook, Twitter, and the fan forum), but numbers are quantifiable. So, I put this list together based on my own experiences and from observations of other successful indie authors, some of them far more successful than I (at least in terms of sales numbers… I know nobody has cooler fans ).

1. Successful indie authors don’t wait for others to pick them; they pick themselves.

The world has changed. The slush pile is out. The route to Big 6 publication and a large advance (if you crave such things) now goes like this:

Get your work out there
Establish a fan base
Get noticed and bask in offers of representation

It’s happened to me (I turned my offer down in favor of staying indie), and it’s happening left and right to a lot of self-published authors out there. Hitting bestseller lists at Amazon isn’t the only way to “get noticed” either:

Jordan Stratford attracted agent and Big 6 notice after rocking Kickstarter with a $90,000 campaign.
Nathan Lowell, Scott Sigler, and Tee Morris were all picked up by publishers after building up fan bases by giving away serialized podcast (audio) versions of their books.
Sylvain Reynard just got a 7-figure deal after establishing a rabid reader base on a fan-fiction site.

These people put their money (time) where their mouths were and picked themselves instead of waiting to be plucked from some agent’s slush pile. Now they’re reaping the rewards.

2. Successful indie authors don’t envy or belittle the success of others; they learn from it.

I have to remind myself of this all the time. It’s so easy to read the sample chapters of a book by an author who’s made it big and sneer at the person’s work. You think, “My writing is so much better than this. I guess she just got lucky. Or she got in at the right time. Or she sold her books dirt cheap. Or she writes for the undiscerning masses. Or she’s in a more popular genre than I am.”

This is useless thinking that won’t help us. It may even hurt us. Not many people luck into success. Those who have found it did something right (probably a lot of somethings right) to get there. And there are lessons to be learned from studying their roads to success.

3: Successful indie authors don’t talk about writing; they write.

As we’ve discussed before, most successful indie authors have multiple books out across multiple series. Self-promotion is good, and “building a platform” is good, but nothing will help your career more than getting more books out there. Momentum builds with each new release in a series, and each new series (or stand-alone novel) is a doorway through which people can find and enter your world.

Finishing a book is an accomplishment, but it’s the beginning of the journey, not the end, and successful authors write lots of books.

What are your thoughts? Are there any traits you’d add to this list?

Related Posts:

Writers’ Conferences–Valuable for an Indie Author?
Serial Books Selling Like Hotcakes for Indie Author Brondt Kamffer
Indie Writing and Traditional Storytelling with Alan Dean

Shadows over Innocence — a Sicarius & Sespian Background Story (Emperor’s Edge World)

I happened to mention to a reader that I had some old short stories featuring some of the heroes from the Emperor’s Edge gang. I let myself be talked into going back through my files to find said stories. Most of them are awful, and this one has its flaws (oh, really, you’re not supposed to wait until you’re 2/3rds of the way into a story to introduce some conflict? huh), but I’ve been told that it’s worth the read (possibly just because fans are curious as to Sicarius’s background.)

I penned “Shadows over Innocence” back in 2003 or so, long before I wrote what eventually became EE1. I don’t think Amaranthe was even a glimmer in my thoughts back then, but I’d known Sicarius’s backstory since Day 1. I’ve updated the tale to fit in with events mentioned in the novels, though I left the details of a key relationship unsaid, in case someone stumbles across this page who hasn’t read the first book yet.

Without further introduction…

SHADOWS OVER INNOCENCE

by Lindsay Buroker

Sicarius slipped into an expansive room in the Imperial Barracks, the rambling old building that held offices and residences for the emperor and those who assisted him in his rule. As the throne’s assassin, Sicarius counted as one of those men. He set down a large, blood-stained sack and leaned against a pillar in the shadows.

On the far end of the rectangular space, sunlight streamed through the spotless panes of tall windows, warming  the marble floor and the back of the room’s single occupant. The small boy pushed a tangled thatch of pale brown hair out of his eyes and hunkered over a gleaming, white floor tile, a charcoal stick grasped between his fingers. Heedless of the sanctity of the palatial décor, he squiggled lines onto the floor with precise squeaks. Sicarius cocked his head, surprised at the intricacy of the pattern forming.

Footsteps echoed from the corridor. Two men, one grayer than the other but both past middle age, strode into the bright chamber. The child bolted upright. He clutched the charcoal stick behind his back and shrank into himself.

“Sespian!” Raumesys Savarsin, the younger of the two men and the twenty-seventh emperor of Turgonia, curled his fingers into a fist and glared at the boy. “What are you doing?”

Eyes downcast, Sespian whispered, “Drawing, Father.”

Unnoticed by anyone, Sicarius clenched his jaw as he watched from the shadows.

“Drawing.” Raumesys turned to the willowy, gray-haired man next to him, Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest. “My son, the future emperor and leader of our armies, is drawing on the floor of the solarium.” He turned back to the boy. “Come here!”

For a moment, Sespian hesitated, eyes darting, as if he might flee into the shadows, but Raumesys growled, and the boy plodded forward. Chin drooped to his chest, he halted before the men. The emperor bent and grabbed his arm, knuckles whitening. The boy flinched, but he did not cry out when the charcoal stick was ripped from his grasp. Raumesys snapped it in half, the crack echoing through the silent room like a bone breaking.

“Father!” Anguish flashed across the boy’s face as the splintered halves clacked to the floor and rolled across the marble. “That was my only–”

“And you’ll get no more.” The emperor dropped to one knee and grabbed Sespian by the front of his shirt. “You’re five years old now. It’s time you stopped playing and started learning how to lead a nation. No more foolish scribbling on the floor, do you understand?”

“Mother always lets me…”

“Your mother’s too soft with you. You will rule a nation of warriors one day. You must be strong.”

Knowing the shadows hid him, Sicarius let his fingers curl into fists. Not for the first time, he was tempted to intervene, to protect the boy from such abuse, but he did not move. Speaking against the emperor — thinking against the emperor — was not permitted. He had learned that lesson well as a boy.

“No more drawing,” Raumesys repeated. He pulled Sespian close, twisting his arm. “Do you understand?”

The boy winced. “Yes, Father.”

Cold and distant, Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest watched impassively. A familiar sight, Sicarius thought, as he remembered Hollowcrest’s presence during his childhood training sessions. Steal sixteen years, and this moment might have been with him. No, he reminded himself; this cruelty was mild compared to what he’d endured. Sespian was Raumesys’s heir, not some future assassin they were training. The boy would learn resilience and survive. Despite the thoughts, it took some effort to force his fists to unclench.

“Such frivolity should be punished, Sire,” Hollowcrest said.

To deter that punishment, Sicarius picked up the sack and strode into the center of the chamber. The emperor, reminded of work matters, ought to send the boy away.

Sespian’s eyes bulged at Sicarius’s approach. He tried to squirm away from his father’s grip.

Sicarius knew that, dressed all in black accented with throwing knives and daggers, he wasn’t the friendliest looking man. He wished he could soften his face for the boy’s sake, but that wasn’t permitted either. As they’d long ago drilled into his head, the face must be kept devoid of thought and emotion, lest an enemy gather information from one’s eyes. He’d been punished relentlessly until he’d mastered a facade that they deemed acceptable.

Raumesys noticed Sicarius’s approach first and twitched in surprise before recovering a more regal bearing.

Hollowcrest did not twitch. He said, “Sicarius,” by way of greeting and eyed the sack. “Were you successful? Did you get them all?”

“Yes,” Sicarius said.

“Let’s see,” Raumesys said.

Sicarius glanced at Sespian.

Hollowcrest raised an eyebrow. Though thin, wire-framed spectacles perched upon his hawkish nose, his dark brown eyes remained sharp, and he missed little. “Concerned for the boy?”

Sicarius knew the words were a test. Everything was always a test. “No,” he said, giving the expected response. “Concern is a feeling, and feelings interfere with duty.”

Hollowcrest nodded his approval.

“Sespian will stay,” Raumesys said. “Time he learns what comes with the position.”

Anger simmered behind Sicarius’s carefully constructed mask. The boy was too young; he shouldn’t have to witness such atrocities. “Understood, Sire,” was all he said.

Hollowcrest twitched his fingers in a get-on-with-it motion.

Sicarius untied the bag and upended it. Four severed heads rolled out and bounced on the white marble. Though desiccated and distorted after weeks of travel, they were still identifiable: man, woman, and children.

Sespian screamed and jerked away from his father. He stumbled, recovered, and fled the room. Sicarius was the only one to watch him go.

Raumesys slapped a palm on his thigh. “Excellent.”

“Yes,” Hollowcrest said. “There’ll be no more talk of uniting the tribes in Mangdoria with their most prominent chief dead, along with any hope of worthy scions.” He nodded to Sicarius. “Go relax. We’ll have something new for you in a day or two.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sicarius padded toward the exit, his soft black boots silent on the tile floor. He paused in the doorway and glanced at the backs of the two older men.

The emperor emitted a nervous chuckle. “You trained him too well, Hollow. The man bothers me.”

“He is loyal.”

“I know. You did a good job. I ought to give you Sespian to work with. The boy is disappointing.”

“He does seem soft,” Hollowcrest said.

“Did you hear that scream? I would’ve been fascinated by severed heads at that age.”

“You’re fascinated with them now, Sire.”

“True enough.”

They shared a laugh and headed for the door. Sicarius slipped away before they noticed him.

* * *Darkness pressed against the windows overlooking the large gymnasium in the rear of the Imperial Barracks. Sicarius grabbed a towel and wiped sweat from his face and bare torso. He’d warmed up with a couple of hours running sprints, scaling the climbing wall, and strengthening his muscles with sand-filled bags of various weights. Then he’d talked quasi-worthy, off-duty soldiers into wrestling and boxing with him. More precisely, he’d stared at them and pointed to the rings painted on the wooden floor until they’d joined him. Some of them knew who he was, and others did not, but nobody had disobeyed.

The bouts had been short and not particularly satisfying. For years, Hollowcrest had brought in tutors from all over the world to instruct Sicarius on different combat styles, and, even though the best soldiers in the army were chosen to work at the Barracks, it’d been some time since any had challenged him. Honing a blade on a dull stone was difficult, but better than letting it rust. Hollowcrest, Sicarius reminded himself, would send him to the Global Grappling Tournament in the summer, an event where the best warriors in the world competed for honor and, more important for Sicarius, could learn from those better than themselves.

“Men, attention!” someone called from a ring near the doorway.

Everyone stopped in place and stood straight, heels smacking together as Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest strode into the gymnasium.

“At ease,” he said.

As soon as Hollowcrest wasn’t looking in their direction, the soldiers snatched their gear and disappeared.  Sicarius, doubting the Commander of the Armies had come to throw sandbags around, folded his towel, set it on a bench beside his shirt, which was also folded, and clasped his hands behind his back to wait.

Hollowcrest stopped before Sicarius. “I told you to relax.”

“Yes, sir.”

A tight smile of approval creased Hollowcrest’s face. They both knew this was what he’d meant by the order. He would not have been pleased if he’d found Sicarius anywhere else.

“There’s a new adjudicator in the northeastern city-state,” Hollowcrest said. “He’s trying to start a desert-wide trade embargo against us. The emperor wants him eliminated. You’ll leave in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.” Sicarius picked up his shirt. “And this evening?”

“Do a round of the Barracks. Colonel Bratnuvic took over security last month. His work seems adequate.” Hollowcrest lifted a shoulder. “But I suspect your experience has given you expertise in such matters. Let me know if you find any weaknesses.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sicarius ghosted through the corridors of the Barracks, questioning guards and noting the state of each entrance. He entered the extensive dungeons, and memories of childhood training sessions flitted through his mind as he passed walls full of torture implements. Prisoners strung from shackles cringed when they noticed him, but he did nothing more than register their presence as he checked hidden exits, ensuring they were not accessible from the outside.

Before going outdoors to continue his inspection, Sicarius stopped in the kitchen. Spoons scraped and pans clattered as two dozen men and women prepared the evening meal. A few noticed him as he entered, and they quickly looked away. Scents of complex, spiced dishes brushed his nose, but he chose unseasoned fish and roasted vegetables, then retreated to a remote table. He put his back to the corner and watched the busy area while he ate.

Halfway through his meal, a familiar figure scampered into the kitchen. The boy darted behind the apron of a heavyset woman and peered back the way he had come.

“Prince Sespian.” The woman put down a spoon and planted her hands on her hips. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your tutor?”

The boy offered her a shy smile. “I’m hiding from him.”

“But why?”

He looked up her with imploring brown eyes. “He’s boring. I don’t care about armies and history and war and all that stuff.”

The woman’s eyebrows drew down, but the corners of her mouth twitched.

“Can I stay here?” Sespian asked. “Please?”

She picked him up and plopped him onto a nearby table. “Do you want old Dana to get in trouble for hiding a fugitive?”

The boy’s gentle eyes widened, and he shook his head.

She clucked her tongue. “You can stay there while we work, but when your tutor finds you in here, no more running, yes?”

After a pause, Sespian nodded. As soon as the cook turned her back, he plucked two spoons out of a ceramic utensil holder, flipped them around, and began tapping out a rhythm on the tabletop. The boy had dexterous fingers. He’d do well at blade lessons when he grew older. Or perhaps not. His list of “boring” suggested he had little interest in martial matters. Sicarius sometimes wondered what he might have found interesting as a boy, if he’d been allowed the freedom to choose his areas of study.

“Where’d you learn that?” Dana asked him, gesturing toward the tapping spoons.

Sespian shrugged. “Just did.”

“Ah? You should have a tutor who can give you some music lessons.”

A smile started to form on the boy’s lips, but it quickly faded. “Father wouldn’t let me. Father says things like that are worthless.” He set down the spoons and dropped his gaze. “He took away my pens and paper. He says I can’t draw any more.”

“Well, you must do as he says.”

“He hates me,” Sespian whispered too softly for Sicarius to hear, but he read the words on the boy’s lips.

The cook frowned and patted him on the shoulder. A reedy gray-haired man came in, eyes narrowing as he focused on Sespian. He stalked across the room and grabbed his wayward student by the arm.

“You’ve wasted our time tonight, Prince Sespian.” He pulled the boy off the table. “Now it’s bedtime, and you’ve learned nothing. Surely, the citizens of Turgonia would tremble if they knew a boy such as you was being raised to lead them.”

Without thinking, Sicarius left his meal and set a path to intersect boy and tutor. He stopped in front of them, blocking their route. The tutor’s mouth dropped, and he fell back a step. Sicarius stared at him, but realized he had nothing to say. The boy had nothing to do with his duty — what was he doing?

Sespian’s head lolled back, and his eyes widened. When Sicarius looked down at him, the boy pulled his arm out of his tutor’s grasp. He stumbled back a few steps, then turned and sprinted toward the nearest exit.

“Pardon me,” the tutor mumbled and darted after Sespian.

Sicarius sighed softly. Meal forgotten, he resumed his inspection. He left the kitchen, then the Barracks. Dusk had fallen. He ignored the caress of crisp air on his cheeks, noting instead tactical strengths and weaknesses in the structures and walls. By habit, he studied each guard, servant, and hired hand he passed, marking walk, build, and weapons carried.

A corporal and a private were stationed at the front gate. When he approached, the corporal straightened and clicked his heels together. The private, a younger man, eyed Sicarius’s plain black clothes with furrowed brow. Sicarius wasn’t in the Barracks much, so there were many people who didn’t recognize him, but something about this private made him pause. Like his comrade, he wore a gold-piped blue uniform, but unlike his comrade, he had Turgonia’s insignia, crossed swords over a craggy mountain, pinned to his right breast instead of his left. Sicarius stared him in the eye. The private cleared his throat and glanced at his superior.

“Help you, sir?” the corporal asked.

Sicarius kept his gaze on the younger man. “For a soldier, there is supposed to be no greater honor than serving on the emperor’s estate.”

“Yes, sir,” the private whispered, eyes darting.

“Such an honor that you didn’t bother to dress correctly?”

“I…” The private looked down, studying his uniform. After a furtive glance at the corporal, realization came, and he touched his chest. “Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. It was an accident.”

Sicarius listened, placing the man’s accent as northeastern Turgonia, the area closest to Mangdorian borders. That in itself was not suspect — soldiers were moved around the empire often during the course of their careers — but coupled with the misplaced insignia…

“New man, corporal?” Sicarius asked.

“Yes, sir. Came up from the garrison just today.”

The private shifted his weight.

“Anyone come through the gates while you’ve been on shift?” Sicarius asked.

“Some folks left,” the corporal said, “but none have come in since I got on. Except… I got sick for a bit and the private was alone.”

“Sick?”

“Had to run to the latrine. Something I ate…” The corporal squinted at his younger comrade. “He brought pastries at the start of–”

The private shoved the corporal into Sicarius and bolted. He fled out the gate, skidded on the flagstones, and disappeared around the corner. Sicarius pushed the soldier aside and raced after the man. His prey sprinted down the street, running in and out of the influence of gas lanterns burning on the Imperial Barracks’ outer wall, and toward the trolley tracks and roadways of the city. He must have hoped to evade pursuit amongst the buildings and dark alleys. On the parapet above, guards patrolled, guards with access to muskets and cannons, but no one fired at the fleeing man. Of course not. He wore an army uniform. Sicarius might have yelled up and explained the situation, but it’d be more efficient to simply handle the spy himself.

He increased his speed, arms pumping as hard as his legs. The spy’s boots thudded on roads slick with frost, and crystallized puffs of air drifted behind as he ran, his ragged breaths audible in the still evening. As he’d been so trained, Sicarius made not a sound. He closed the distance. Ten meters. Five.

The man sprinted through a square at the base of the hill and glanced back, perhaps believing he’d outrun his pursuit. His eyes bulged when he spotted Sicarius just behind. The spy’s jaw firmed, and he whipped his sword from its sheath, turning around as he did so, holding it out, perhaps hoping Sicarius might impale himself.

Sicarius shifted his weight and, between one step and the next, halted out of blade reach. A few passersby paused, heads cocked.

“Criminal!” the soldier shouted, pointing at Sicarius with his sword.

At the private’s proclamation, citizens opened their doors and came outside. Pedestrians murmured to each other. More than one person touched a sword or dagger. Without rank or uniform, Sicarius did not bother arguing. He kept the encroaching citizens in mind, but focused on his opponent.

Falling into a ready crouch, the spy brandished his blade. A smug smile creased his face. Sicarius had no sword with him, and he had not drawn a knife.

Certainly believing his opponent helpless, the spy lifted an arm to strike. Sicarius stepped aside, dodging the blow easily, then lunged in behind the attack. He grasped the man’s wrist and twisted it against the joint, catching the sword when it dropped. The man squawked in pain and tried to pull away. Sicarius snaked his leg behind his opponent’s knee, sweeping him off balance. Only the arm Sicarius wrapped around the man’s neck kept him from pitching to the street. The spy clawed at the grip, but Sicarius merely squeezed harder. Soon his opponent’s breaths came in wheezes.

The approaching citizens hesitated. Without releasing his man, Sicarius lifted the soldier’s blade and eyed them with a cool stare. Their hands dropped from their weapons, and they backed away.

“Who did you let through the gate?” Sicarius asked his prisoner.

The soldier squirmed, but did not answer. Sicarius dropped the sword and gouged his thumb into the depression at the back of the man’s jaw. He dug at the point until the man whimpered.

“Mangdorians… hired assassin… emperor.”

Bone cracked as Sicarius broke the man’s neck. He dropped the body and raced back to the Imperial Barracks. He’d made a mistake. Someone had seen him on his mission; that was the only explanation. The Mangdorians were reputed to prefer peace and negotiation to conflict and war, but Sicarius had encountered more than one warrior from that nation; not everyone believed in their god’s tenets. If someone had hired an assassin, and if the man were successful… it would be Sicarius’s fault.

The corporal at the gate had gathered more soldiers. His eyebrows rose at Sicarius’s approach.

“There’s an assassin inside,” Sicarius said. “Sweep the grounds. Tell Hollowcrest.”

Before the corporal could respond, Sicarius sped across the courtyard toward the entrance to the Barracks. He took the steps three at a time, tore open the massive doors, and ran down the gleaming marble corridors. On the third floor, he reached the emperor’s suite. Two armored men wearing the black uniforms of the emperor’s personal bodyguard stood to either side of the door.

“Sir, you can’t–”

“The emperor’s not to be–”

Sicarius ignored them and pushed through the door. Raumesys was sprawled naked on his divan with three equally naked young women draped over him. His head jerked up, face twisting with rage. When he identified Sicarius, his features grew more hesitant, but his eyes remained cold.

Schooled features neutral, Sicarius eyed the women with professional detachment. All three were familiar, which did not discount them, but made them unlikely assassins. He ignored the emperor’s sputtering protests and stalked through the suite, searching the shadows. He found nothing.

Hollowcrest burst through the door. Six armed and armored men clanked in after him.

“Yes,” Raumesys said, throwing a bare arm toward the ceiling. “Everyone come in. I’m obviously not busy!”

“There’s an assassin on the premises,” Hollowcrest said.

Instead of grabbing a weapon — or clothing — Raumesys tugged one of the girls over his chest. The guards placed themselves at strategic points around the room.

Satisfied that the emperor had enough men — and women — protecting him, Sicarius slipped into the hallway. He considered the layout of the Barracks, selecting likely hiding places and identifying other possible targets. Raumesys’s wife? Or — a sickening thought flashed through Sicarius’s mind, and his stomach lurched.

He took off again, candles blurring past. He turned a corner and stopped before an unguarded door — a door that should have been guarded. A dark smudge stained the floor. He bent and touched it. Fresh blood.

Sicarius eased the door open, afraid of what he would find inside. He pushed the thoughts aside and reached for his usual calm detachment. He had seen death in all its cruelties, delivered it in more cases than he could remember. Living or dead, one boy should not bother him.

Inside, shadows lurked. Sicarius moved away from the door, so that he wouldn’t be silhouetted against the light of the hall.

A low-burning lantern glowed on a table beside a canopied bed that dwarfed the five year old curled in the sheets. Against his instincts, Sicarius let his eyes rest on the boy for a moment. He caught the rise and fall of rhythmic breathing, and an iota of relief trickled through his mind.

A faint rustle sounded. Sicarius crouched, muscles tense. He had not moved, and neither had the boy. Anyone who had watched him come in would know precisely where he was.

Willing calm into his mind and relaxation into his muscles, he scanned the room. Curtains and furniture cast thick, irregular shadows. As his eyes drifted away from one corner, movement drew them back. Reflexively, he dropped into a roll.

Something whisked over his head, pinging off the wall.

Sicarius came up running, his soft boots soundless on the thick carpet as he cut toward the source. The intruder stepped out to meet him. With a soft rasp, a small blade appeared, light from the hall revealing a gooey dark substance on the edge.

As Sicarius closed, the dagger slashed toward him. He melted away from the strike, then darted in, catching the man’s forearm. He glided in closer, turned his hip, and hurled the would-be assassin over his shoulder. The man proved agile, though, and wriggled out of the throw before he hit the ground. Like a cat, he landed on his feet. But for a split second he was off balance, and Sicarius struck. Lightning-quick, he slammed a punch into his foe’s kidney. The force of the blow sent the man stumbling forward. Sicarius leaped after him, but, before he reached his target, the assassin whirled, slashing with the dagger. It was a desperate attack from a wounded opponent, but that didn’t make the poison on the blade any less dangerous. Forcing himself to defend with careful, mindful precision, Sicarius knocked the arm wide and stepped close, launching a punch. The man blocked it, but the attack had been meant as a distraction, and Sicarius slammed his heel into his foe’s knee at the same time.

The intruder went down, but he took another wild swipe with the dagger. Sicarius leaped backward and would have evaded the attack easily, but he’d forgotten his surroundings; he came up short, bumping into the bed’s footboard.

Sicarius chastised himself — men died for such mistakes — even as he anticipated the coming attack and twisted to the side. The poisoned blade cut through his shirt, missing flesh by a hair. Momentum carried the dagger into the footboard, the tip sinking into the wood. The other assassin wasted a split second trying to free it. Recognizing the advantage, Sicarius pounced. He spun his foe around, pinning him against the footboard, and found his neck. Perhaps trained as Sicarius had been, the man died in silence.

On the bed, Sespian mumbled something and stirred. Sicarius let out a slow breath and lifted his head. The boy did not open his eyes.

After a moment, Sicarius rose. He sheathed the man’s dagger, found and pocketed a miniature crossbow, and slung the body over his shoulder. He trod across the carpet toward the door and stopped to pick up the tiny quarrel that had started the confrontation. The tip glistened with freshly applied poison. He left the room, shifting the weight of the body so that he could softly close the door.

“Sicarius!” came Hollowcrest’s surprised voice as he rounded the corner. “I came to check on the heir…” He noticed the corpse. “I realized the boy might be a target.”

“Astute,” Sicarius murmured. “Sir.”

Hollowcrest gave him a sharp look, then nodded toward the body. “Get rid of that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Emperor’s Edge 5 (Blood and Betrayal) Teasers and Update

For those of you who follow me on my Facebook fan page, you know I’ve been posting a few teasers as I’ve been editing EE5 (now titled, with the help of beta readers and Twitter folks, Blood and Betrayal). I thought I’d collect them together and post them here for those of you who aren’t on Facebook. And, just for kicks, I’m adding a couple of new snippets at the bottom.

As far as publishing news goes, I’m still on track for an early September release. I just finished the first major editing pass, and I’m about to send the last third off to my beta readers. I’ll incorporate their comments, go through one more time to clean up the little things, and then send the manuscript off to my editor later this month.

In the meantime, EE5 teasers (don’t read if you don’t like any sort of spoilers, because who’s in which scenes gives away a little):

From the first chapter

Long before Maldynado thought crawling out of hiding would be wise, Sicarius darted past him. He leaped ten feet into the air, caught the side of a stout pine, and scrambled up the trunk. Maldynado gaped as Sicarius skimmed upward, zipping around branches like a squirrel before disappearing from view.

“That man is exceedingly odd,” Sespian observed.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Maldynado said.

 

Maldynado risks himself for the good of the team, but naturally he has to make a big deal out of it…

“I… am not certain I’d risk my life on that assumption,” Sespian said.

“That’s what I’m here for.” Maldynado flung an arm around Yara’s shoulders. “Don’t look so concerned, my lady. I’ll not die before I’ve fulfilled your most concupiscent fantasies.”

Yara shoved his arm away. “We’ve discussed you not touching me numerous times now.”

“Does this mean no good-luck kiss?” Maldynado asked.

 

Snipped from another Maldynado/Yara scene:

A few moments passed without comment, until Yara said, “That explains one thing anyway.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You see Amaranthe as a little sister. I was wondering why you didn’t leer lecherously at her like you do at every other woman.”

“My leers are not lecherous,” Maldynado said, relieved to have a lighter topic, one where he could shield himself with his usual flippancy. “I’m far too handsome and charming for anyone to consider my leers offensive or unwanted.”

“Please.”

“And I don’t leer at every woman.”

“You even leer at me. And I’m… not someone people leer at.”

 

All-team tidbit from the last few chapters

The vehicle rumbled closer until Sicarius stopped it at the base of the cliff.

“The light may simply be the sun filtering through from an opening above,” Books said.

“What sun?” Akstyr asked. “It was raining harder than a pissing donkey by the time Am’ranthe picked us up.”

“Lovely imagery,” Books murmured.

“It’s wider than it looked from back there.” Amaranthe waved toward the fissure. “Think we can drive inside?”

Sicarius slanted her one of his unreadable looks.

“What?” All right, wider wasn’t the same thing as wide, but Amaranthe didn’t think the opening looked that narrow. Just because it twisted and turned and one couldn’t see anything except darkness and rock ahead…

“I was wondering who would get blamed should the vehicle crash,” Sicarius said.

A few silent heartbeats skipped past before Akstyr whispered, “Was that a joke? Did he make a joke?”

“Nah,” Maldynado whispered back, “he doesn’t know how to do that.” He raised his voice and said, “It’s been my experience that it’s never the woman’s fault.”

“That is my concern.” Sicarius nudged the vehicle forward and gripped the control wheel.

Amaranthe smiled as they crept into the fissure, inching across a bottom that had changed from rocks to sand. “It’s good to have the team back together.”

“Says the woman who has her own seat and isn’t wearing Basilard’s elbow on her belt,” Books said.

A little Akstyr/Maldynado bonding between adventures

“I can’t wait to finish up this stuff with the emperor,” Akstyr said, apparently needing a less sentimental topic. “I really want to go study, and none of the gangs will be able to find me if I’m on the Kyatt Islands. That bounty isn’t big enough that anybody will go halfway across the world to find me.”

“Probably not,” Maldynado said.

“You should visit me on there sometime when I’m studying. All of you. Well, maybe not Sicarius, but Am’ranthe and the others for sure. It’d be like a vacation. I heard some of the women over there go topless to the beach too.”

Maldynado probably shouldn’t poke fun at Akstyr, not twice in five minutes, but this uncharacteristic rambling tickled his sense of humor. “Aw, I see what this is about. We might be on our final mission together and you’ll get to leave soon, and you’re realizing you’ll miss us.” He slung an arm around Akstyr’s shoulders.

“I will not.” Akstyr rolled his eyes and shoved the arm away. “I just thought you might like the Kyatt Islands. That’s all.”

“Topless women, you say?” Maldynado decided not to tease the boy any more, at least not for expressing his feelings. His ancestors knew that opening up and making overtures of friendship to people wasn’t Akstyr’s strength. “You reckon you’d know what to do with one?” There, normal manly teasing, that shouldn’t bother him.

Akstyr crossed his arms. “I know what all the parts are for, yes.”

Maldynado and the team in action again

Maldynado peered between the cracks in the front window, admiring the close-up view of a copse of trees, their leaves turning the rich browns and reds of autumn. “So, who was responsible for docking the boat halfway up the mountain?”

Sespian flushed, glanced at Amaranthe, and then studied the floor assiduously.

“I assumed it was you,” Amaranthe told Maldynado, “until we encountered you on the way up to the wheelhouse.”

“Me?” Maldynado flattened a hand on his chest. “I was on the hurricane deck, risking all sorts of bodily harm to keep those enforcers from boarding. I’ll have you know that the men who did get on didn’t come up on my side of the boat.” Since Basilard wasn’t there, Maldynado decided it wouldn’t hurt to leave out the fact that Yara had been helping him, and Basilard had been forced to defend his side alone.

“So… the emperor crashed it?” Amaranthe’s eyes twinkled, though Maldynado wasn’t sure if Sespian noticed that. The kid’s flush had grown deeper. Even his ears were red.

“I lost tiller control,” Sespian said. “They were shooting at the paddlewheel and the engine room. They must have smashed the rudder as well.” He looked back and forth from Amaranth to Akstyr to Maldynado and added, “It wasn’t my fault.”

Maldynado laughed. “I’ve said that many times, and it hasn’t worked to shift the blame away from me yet.”

Sespian’s shoulders slumped. “This isn’t at all how I imagined this mission going.”

Emperor or not, Maldynado patted the kid on the shoulder. “I think this means you’re officially one of us now, Sire.”

 

Related Posts:

Emperor’s Edge 5 Update
Cut Scene from Dark Currents (EE Book 2)
Deadly Games, The Emperor’s Edge Book 3, Is out!

Self-Publishing Podcasts and Interviews

As long-time readers may know, I, once upon a time, blogged and published podcasts over at Savvy Self-Publishing. The podcasts offered advice on e-publishing, book marketing, and blogging, and other author-related things. After an eight-month hiatus, I finally updated the site with a new show, and I’m going to try and add episodes more frequently. I’m toying with the idea of finding a tech savvy co-host who wouldn’t mind handling the editing, uploading, and such, as that’s the part I hate. We’ll see!

So, here are the seven shows I’ve done:

Episode #1: The Savvy Self-Publishing Podcast Introduction
Episode #2: How to E-Publish Your First Ebook
Episode #3: Setting up a Professional Website and Blog
Episode #4: How to Get People to Buy Your Books
Episode #5: Pricing Ebooks and Paperbacks When You Self-Publish
Episode #6: Amazon KDP Select, E-Publishing News, and What’s Working for Me
Episode #7: My Big Ol’ List of Promotional Activities That Helped (and some that didn’t)

There are also some more self-publishing podcasts out there that are actually being updated regularly (this wasn’t the case last year when I first looked for things to listen to in the field):

The Creative Penn — Joanna Penn has been podcasting (interview folks) for ages, and, since she self-published her first thriller last year, many of the shows have shifted to a self-publishing focus. She has lots of great interviews in the archives that you can check out.

Self-Publishing Podcast — Three guys chatting it up on a weekly basis — I’m hoping they’ll do more expert interviews, as I’ve found those most informative.

Publishing Realities Podcast — It hasn’t been updated in a while, but here’s another indie fantasy author giving advice on publishing.

If you know of any other podcasts, please let me know. I’m always looking for things to listen to while I’m walking the pooch.

 

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If Ebook Piracy Is on the Rise, What Are You Going to Do About it?

Judging by the number of recent stories out there regarding ebook piracy, illegal copies of ebooks are being shared around the internet in even greater volumes than LOL Cats pics. Even I, a lowly indie author who’s never tickled the upper reaches of the Amazon best-seller lists for long, have, in recent weeks, had a couple of folks point out that my ebooks are out there in places that I didn’t put them.

So, for those of you in the same boat (with sleek yachts bearing down on you, waving their skull-and-crossbones flags), what do you do? I figure we have two options:

Option 1

Grab your pitchfork and crossbow and hunt down those pirates. Send cease-and-desist emails to the sites housing your illegal ebooks. Climb up on the highest soapbox you can find and pontificate on the evils of fans stealing your work.

Of course, you must bow to the idea of living with your panties in a permanent twist, because none of this will change anything in the long run. You may even turn some fans into non-fans because nobody likes to be lectured to. (Yes, I believe someone can be a fan without paying for my work; I’ve enjoyed many a book from the library, and, especially when I was younger and more cash-strapped, it sometimes took a lot of good books in a series to turn an author from library-only status to buy-as-soon-as-the-book-comes-out status.)

Option 2

Realize that piracy is going to happen (the music business has been dealing with this for over a decade, and they, with a whole lot of collective power and money, haven’t put a dent in digital piracy) and either learn to embrace it (it might just help you sell more books) or to accept it as a pitfall of doing e-business, one you have to learn to work around. There are worse things to deal with as an author. Like the obscurity that plagues us all before we become popular enough to tempt pirates.

But I’m losing money!

This may or may not be true. In the above link, Neil Gaimon said that his sales increased in the countries where he was most pirated. Others have pointed out that the people downloading illegal copies of your books weren’t going to pay for them anyway.

But, let’s say, for the sake of argument that piracy is in fact costing you money and that this problem will only continue to grow in the coming years. How can you make a living, or at least a decent part-time income, as an author living in such a world?

The main thing is to establish a fan-base or, as Seth Godin calls it, a tribe of people who love your work and will pay for it. You don’t need to be a bestseller. You just need a core group of “true fans” (I’ve linked to it before, but here’s the Kevin Kelly article on 1,000 True Fans one more time).

Once you have that “tribe” established, you will always be able to monetize your work in ways that go beyond selling ebooks. Making a living shouldn’t be a problem, and piracy shouldn’t matter.

How, you ask?

Here, again, it may be worth looking to the music business for ideas, as they’ve been dealing with piracy longer than we have. A model a lot of musicians, indie and otherwise, are using goes like this:

Give away the music for free (or accept that it’s being shared up the wazoo and getting people to pay for digital copies is tough) to build a loyal following, then make money on concerts and by selling premium products to those who love the work enough to plunk down money for exclusive goodies.

Is that ideal? Probably not, but people make it work because they love to create music and they can’t imagine not finding a way to make it work.

Okay, authors, I know what you’re thinking: concerts? Lindsay, are you planning to sing your next Emperor’s Edge novel for us? Nah, someone already sang a book review for me, and I can’t possibly top that.

My point here is that most of us, like it or not, will need to not only be authors but authorpreneurs if we want to make money from our work in the years ahead. Marketing and being creative about how we sell our stories is going to have to be a part of the plan.

Ways to make money that go beyond ebook sales

Even if you’re doing well right now, it’s worth thinking about the what-ifs. What if piracy becomes so popular that fewer and fewer people are actually buying ebooks from the stores? What if those same stores react by dropping royalty rates (I know I wouldn’t be making a living on ebook sales alone if Amazon suddenly decided to give indie authors 20% instead of 70%)? We hope these things won’t pass any time soon, but let’s think ahead in case ebooks go the way of digital music.

Here are a few ways I’ve seen authors making money that go beyond ebook sales (note: this all requires having at least a small tribe out there — I’ve covered the how-to on finding/keeping fans in a few previous posts so please surf through old entries for ideas):

Kickstarter

I recently interviewed an up-and-coming steampunk author who raised over $90,000 to fund the production costs of his book (his original goal was $4,000, so, even after he produces and ships all those books, he ought to have come out of the deal with a year’s salary in addition to whatever he makes on sales once the book goes live). While Kickstarter is traditionally used to fund start-up costs, I’ve seen a few authors make enough to pay the bills while they’re writing the book as well.

The Freemium Model

Game designers have been using “freemium” for a while. Offer a free version of your work (maybe your ebook?) and then have a premium version with more features (interviews, bonus extras, commentary?) that’s not free. Maybe make it a hard-copy so the e-pirates can’t go after it.

Another option is to do some sort of membership site where die-hard fans can pay to get early access to your work. Bestselling fantasy author Tracy Hickman has done an “exclusive subscription novel series” where fans get to come into a special membership area and see the chapters as they’re written, and even offer feedback along the way.

Advertising / Affiliate sales

While I’ve seen a few authors kick around the idea of selling advertising in their ebooks, I’m thinking more about making money from one’s blog here. You’re blogging anyway, as you “build your platform.” There’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t earn money from the content you’re putting up on the web every day (that was my day job — with a home improvement blog — before I quit to write fantasy full time).

I don’t sell any advertising here right now because I don’t need to, but I’ve had a couple of people ask about it, so I know it’d be a possibility. I do make an extra $100 or so a month as an Amazon affiliate (I link to my own books and other people’s books with affiliate links). If I wanted to, I could also become an affiliate for various businesses offering self-publishing services (since I talk about that sort of thing here).

I also have 1,000-odd fantasy fans as newsletter subscribers and, if I needed to, I could do some discreet advertising there (i.e. promote another fantasy author’s work for $XX) in addition to providing updates about my own work.

Merchandising

I’ll admit that this would be unlikely to account for more than take-the-family-out-to-dinner earnings, but there’s no reason you can’t put together some t-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars, or other goodies once you have a series that people enjoy. I know I’m thinking of running a contest to see if I can get some of the awesome folks drawing fan art to come up with a cool design that I could use. I just have to decide on some prizes.

Sites like CafePress take most of the hassle out of creating and selling merchandise, and, at the very least, these goodies can be used for giveaways. Every t-shirt someone wears is a little bit of free advertising for you.

Final thoughts

If you read through this list and thought, “Are you freaking kidding me? I just want to write books and have people go to Amazon and buy them,” I won’t tell you that’s not going to happen. It’s absolutely doable as I write this in the summer of 2012.

I’d guess that ebook piracy is a much smaller issue than people make it out to be right now. (Finding your tribe is a much bigger challenge.) But, if we do end up going the way of the music industry, that might not always be the case. I offer these ideas for authors who want to plan for the what-ifs or who are looking for ways to make more than they’re currently earning from book sales alone.

Thoughts?

Related Posts:

Does Facebook Advertising Work? (One Author’s Experience)
Is It Harder Today for Self-Published Authors to “Break in” at Amazon?
How to Upload Ebooks Directly to Apple/iTunes with Danielle Bourdon

Does Facebook Advertising Work? (One Author’s Experience)

Last week, I wrote a post on how Facebook advertising works, but what you’re all wondering is if Facebook advertising works. For example, if you’re a self-published author, can you a) use Facebook to sell more copies of your books and b) actually earn more in book royalties than you spend on advertising costs?

My short answer is that you can make more people aware of your work and sell more books, but it’s hard to break even, especially if you’re selling a single paperback or ebook where you’re only making $2-$3 (or less) per copy. The numbers grow more promising if you’re promoting the first book in a series and you’ve already seen, through previous months’ sales stats, that a good number of people who read Book 1 go on to purchase the others.

I’ve tried the two types of advertising Facebook currently offers (more details in the post I mentioned), general “pay-per-click ads” that are displayed to a demographic you target and “promoted posts” that are shown to people who’ve previously liked your author page. I’ll go over my experiences with both here.

My Experience with Facebook’s Pay-Per-Click Ads

I played with a couple of ad campaigns last year, and, since it’s on my mind here again, I’m trying another one now.

Last year, when I tried this, I was selling my first ebook for 99 cents and my second for $2.99. That’s all I had out at the time. A sale of Book 1 would earn me a 35-cent royalty, and, considering you have to bid close to that for a Facebook ad click, it definitely would have been a losing proposition if that were the only thing I had out. (Facebook suggested I bid close to a dollar per click — yeah, right. I tried bidding the minimum of 10 cents, but the ads didn’t get displayed much, so I bumped things up to 15 and eventually 20 cents, which resulted in a more reasonable number of displays and clicks). With two books out, advertising held more promise, but because of my low prices, I’d still only earn $2.40 per reader, if said reader liked the first book enough to buy the second. I definitely had to keep advertising costs low!

So, did I actually sell any books?

The answer is… it’s hard to tell.

Here’s the main problem:

I can see how many people click on the ads, through my Facebook advertising dashboard, but if I’m sending them to my book’s page on Amazon (or elsewhere), there’s no way for me to tell which purchases come via the ad and which come via another source. When I tried advertising on Goodreads, less than a month after I published my first ebook, I was selling so few copies a day, that it was easy to see how the advertising increased sales. By the time I tried Facebook, this wasn’t the case. I was averaging maybe 20 sales of EE1 a day back then, with daily variations, so it was hard to tell if Facebook accounted for any of those sales or not. Also, with ebooks, people can download a sample and come back to make the purchase days or weeks later, so that makes it doubly hard to gauge ad effectiveness.

Are there workarounds?

Yes, there are a couple, and, though they’re not ideal, they may help you more effectively monitor your costs vs. earnings.

First off, you can send people to a tab on your Facebook author page (here’s the lowdown on how I did my first Facebook fan page, in case you haven’t set one up yet) instead directly to the bookstore. On this tab, you could have a big picture of your cool cover art, an excerpt from a scintillating chapter, and a link to your ebook at Smashwords, along with a coupon code offering the person a discount (Smashwords offers file formats for all e-readers, so Nook, iPad, and Kindle users can all shop there). You can see how often (and when) your coupon is redeemed, and if you’re not using that same coupon code anywhere else, you’ll know for certain that those sales came from Facebook.

The problem? The main one is that not everyone has a Smashwords account or wants to make one. Also, by sending people to your fan page first, you’re making extra steps for your potential reader. You can test, but it’s likely you’ll have a higher buy-in rate if you send people directly to Amazon (target Kindle people) or Barnes & Noble (nook), etc. where they can quickly skim the reviews and download a sample.

The second workaround is one I haven’t tried, but which I hope to implement some day, and that’s to sell ebooks directly from your site. Using a tracking program such as Google Analytics, you can see exactly how people get to your e-store, how long they spend on your site, and whether they eventually make a purchase.

Again, you put an additional barrier in the road, though, because people have to be willing to make a purchase from an unfamiliar site and to go through the additional step of manually loading the ebook onto their devices instead of enjoying wireless delivery from Amazon, Apple, etc.

*For those thinking that they might use affiliate links to monitor sales (this is how I know that people actually buy my books after visiting my blog), I’m sorry to say that Facebook won’t approve ads with affiliate links in the URL.

Why I Abandoned My Facebook Ad Campaigns (but am thinking of coming back)

At the end of the day (at the end of a couple of weeks actually), I hadn’t spent much (I targeted my ads to a very precise fantasy-loving ebook-reading group, so there weren’t a ton of displays or clicks each day), but I hadn’t had a very noticeable increase in sales either. At the time, I decided to discontinue the campaign.

Fast forward a year, and I’m tinkering again. As some of you know, I now give my first ebook, The Emperor’s Edge, away for free. Books 2, 3, and 4 (with 5 coming soon) are currently $4.95 (meaning I make about $3.30 for each ebook sale), and I have related ebooks (short stories and novellas) that fans often go on to purchase as well. Though not everyone who downloads the freebie goes on to buy any other books, I stand to make much more from those who do. Some of those people also sign up for my newsletter, like my Facebook page, and essentially become long-term (dare I hope “lifetime”?) fans, meaning they’ll be there to grab new books when they come out. Suddenly it makes sense to spend a dollar or two to get people to try the first ebook.

Also, because the ebook is free, there are no barriers for the readers. People no longer have to go through the shopping-cart process or risk buying from an unfamiliar store. They can simply download the book without hassle.

When I had a daily sponsorship at Pixel of Ink in May, it resulted in lots of free downloads, which caused an increase in all of my other ebook sales for that month too. Unfortunately, I can’t advertise at Pixel of Ink that often, as there’s quite a waiting list. I can, however, keep ongoing advertising campaigns running at Facebook (and Goodreads as well — another place that allows you to target a specific audience), which can help keep a trickle of new readers coming in.

I’ll point out here, too, that once you’re making a part- to full-time income from your books, you’ll be looking for business expenses to write off when tax time comes around. I can’t speak to other countries’ tax codes, but, if you’re in the U.S., any money you spend on ads for your business is money you don’t have to pay taxes on later. (Of course, this is still your money, and I’d run the numbers to make sure it ends up being worth it, taxes notwithstanding.)

Warnings: AKA What Might Cause Your Ads to Perform Poorly

Poor targeting — Facebook lets you get very specific with targeting, so make sure you use the feature. This will keep down clicks from uninterested parties. As you can see, I targeted female steampunk and fantasy fans (I have male readers, but, because the heroine and I are female, the books tend to have more female readers). If you’re sending people to Amazon and only sell ebooks, you may want to target only kindle folks. You don’t want to waste money trying to sell your ebook to someone who only buys paperbacks.

Bad cover art/blurb/sample/etc. — It should go without saying, but the more professional your cover art and blurb are, the more likely people will take the book seriously. Ditto for your sample pages — make sure something happens in those opening pages and grabs the reader (personal mistake: I didn’t really do that with my first book because I didn’t know how to “think like a publisher” back then).

No reviews — Wait until you have a few reviews before giving advertising a try. I’ve talked about social proof on here before, but essentially, it’s tough to get people to try a book that (it seems like) nobody else is reading. I’ll argue that sales ranking matters less than reviews, as the average reader doesn’t really know what those numbers mean, but it might also look bad if the most recent reviews are two years old — go out and give away some review copies to see if you can drum up some new ones.

All right, as is so often the case with my posts, this has turned into a long one, so I’ll talk about how the “promoted posts” advertising went next time. I just did that a couple of weeks ago, so it’s fresh in my head. Short teaser: I thought the experience was promising enough to try again.

In the meantime, if you’re an author, have you tried advertising on Facebook? What were your results? Readers, have you ever purchased a book after clicking an ad on Facebook?

Related Posts:

Does Advertising Work for Authors? (AKA We Wanna Sell More Books, Dagnabit)
How Facebook Advertising Works for Authors
How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 1

How Facebook Advertising Works for Authors

You spend years writing, editing, and polishing your first book, and when it’s finally published, all you’re worried about is whether people will like it. You don’t worry about whether people will buy it or even know it exists. But (and this realization comes more quickly if you self-publish and you can check your sales statistics in real time), you soon realize that obscurity is the biggest concern. Before people can decided they love the book (and leave all sorts of warm, fuzzy reviews), they have to find it and give it a chance.

Online advertising is one way that authors are trying to “be found,” especially authors who have a few extra pennies to spend on book promotion.

As we’ve talked about before, there are a few types of online advertising that authors might use: pay-per-impression (you buy ad space by thousands of “views”), flat-rate (you pay a set amount to have your book featured for a day, week, etc. on a blog, forum, or other website), and pay-per-click (your ad is displayed to a large viewership, but you only pay if someone clicks on it).

I’m going to blather impart important information on the pay-per-click model today, specifically Facebook’s version.

How Facebook Advertising Works

With Facebook, you create a short text-based ad that will run only on Facebook, being shown only to people in the demographic you target. You don’t pay to create the campaign; you only get charged when people click. How much you pay per click depends on what you “bid” for clicks. A higher bid will get you more prominent positioning.

For authors, you don’t generally have to bid much (perhaps 10 or 20 cents), as we’re not in a terribly competitive market space. That’s good, because we don’t stand to make much per sale either, not when we’re selling our ebooks for $1-$5. (Naturally, the numbers get better if you have a series with a good buy-through ratio, meaning you can count on a large number of the people who grab the first book to go on to purchase the other four or six or whatever it is.)

One thing I like about Facebook advertising over, say, Google Adwords, is that you can target a very precise viewership. Thanks to the “like” system, and many other factors, Facebook knows a ton about its users. Let’s say you’re a science fiction author. It’s possible to only display your ads to men between the ages of 18 and 29 who are fans of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, or Orson Scott Card. This serves to keep costs down (no drive-by clicks from parties who aren’t likely to be interested in your work) while potentially connecting you with your ideal audience.

Speaking of costs, I’ve heard (and I haven’t tested this to back it up) that ads cost less over time if your destination URL (the place people go after clicking an ad) is a Facebook page (i.e. your author fan page) instead of an external site (i.e. your blog or your book’s page at Amazon). You also get more than a click if you’re sending folks to an internal page–a “like” option shows up on the ad. If you’ve just built your author fan page, and you’re hoping to get a few starter likes (social proof and what not), this can be an added perk.

If you decide on an internal destination, you can link to your wall or any tab on your author fan page (i.e. a book page you’ve created that includes an excerpt). As of a couple of months ago, you can even promote specific posts on your news wall.

How Facebook’s Promoted Posts Work

Facebook now lets you promote specific posts that you’ve made to your new feed (wall). The video in that link explains how everything works, but basically it’s a way to get people who have already liked your page to come back and see what’s new (it also reaches friends of those who have liked your page).

Some people get cranky about this concept (why pay to advertise to people who are already your fans?), but, if you spend any time on Facebook, you already know that a “like” doesn’t count for much. You’ve probably liked hundreds, maybe thousands of pages, and have noticed that none of the updates for those pages appear on your personal news feed. The exceptions are those pages with which you interact regularly. That makes sense — think how cluttered your feed would be if every news story from Star Wars, Eddie Bauer, REI, Whole Foods, and The Big Bang Theory showed up on your home page. You’d never see the updates from your flesh-and-blood friends.

Though that might make sense, the downside is that a “like” doesn’t get you much as an author. As I write this post, I have 1200-odd likes, and I’d say that maybe 100 people interact with my fan page regularly (leaving comments or likes on my posts). Advertising a specific post (maybe one that lets people know you have a new book out or offers a coupon/free-download on an existing book) is a way to bring back those folks who were interested enough to like your site once but haven’t been back in a while.

Costs are low for promoting specific page posts, too, as the only spending options are $5 and $10. You can select how long the promotion will run (from 1-3 days), and Facebook will spread your funds out over that time, charging you only when someone clicks.

So, does any of this stuff work to sell books? Are Facebook ads worth the money? As of last week, I’ve tried both types of ads (the sponsored links that go out to a targeted audience and the promoted posts that go out to people who’ve liked your page). Later this week, I’ll give you the lowdown. Stay tuned!

 

Related Posts:

Facebook or Twitter, Which Is Better for Book Promotion?
Does Advertising Work for Authors? (AKA We Wanna Sell More Books, Dagnabit)
Self-publishing Adventures: 9 Months and 10,000 Ebooks Later…

Emperor’s Edge Fan Art? Oh, Yes…

As I’ve mentioned before, the awesome Amanda Findley started a forum for Emperor’s Edge fans, and there’s a thread on there where people are posting fan art. I’ve been told, though, that you have to be registered for the forum to see the pictures, so I thought I’d share a few of them here. I’ve already posted some of these on my Facebook page, but these may be new for some of you. I get a huge kick out of them. If you’re a reader, I hope you enjoy them!

Amaranthe scheming something new… by Alex Baird

Sergeant Yara by Rebekah Kjos

Sicarius by Heather

Amaranthe and Sicarius by Catherine

Maldynado and Yara by Alex Baird

The team survives another explosion… by Cam

Amaranthe by SketchingBarefoot

Sicarius by Alex Baird

Related Posts:

Emperor’s Edge 5 Update
Cut Scene from Dark Currents (EE Book 2)
Emperor’s Edge Forum and Looking for Contest Ideas

How Jordan Stratford Raised $91,751 for His Steampunk Novel and Earned Offers from Every Big 6 Publisher

As many of you know, I ran a Kickstarter campaign a few months ago, hoping to raise the funds to pay for the creation of the third Emperor’s Edge audiobook. With the help of many generous folks, I raised about $6,000, enough to pay for EE3 (in production now) and EE4, as well as covering the costs of creating a paperback version of Encrypted. Not too shabby, but not quite as mind-blowing as the $90,000+ that Jordan Stratford raised for his steampunk novel. Not only did he gather all the start-up money he needed and more, but his success earned him a contract with a major literary agency and brought in offers from every one of the Big 6 publishers.

Jordan agreed to an interview today, to share some of his Kickstarter success tips, so without further introduction…

Interview with Steampunk author, Jordan Stratford

LB: Would you like to start out telling us a bit about your project and why you looked to Kickstarter?

JS: I’m a screenwriter by trade, and I originally conceived of the project as an animated television series.  After I’d written my first novel (“Mechanicals”, an occult steampunk version of the Crimean War), I was looking for the next long-fiction project and settled on a novelization of my Wollstonecraft concept: in a nutshell, it’s Ada Lovelace (the first computer programmer) and Mary Shelley (the first science fiction writer) as 11 and 14 year old girls in 1826 London who open a detective agency, solving crimes from 19th century fiction.  I hadn’t done much with it as a TV treatment, so I thought I’d do it as a book series.

My business model was to self-publish and generate steady but modest revenue from the series for the next 3-5 years.  I thought of kickstarter as a way of proving the concept, building the audience, and offsetting a portion of the start-up costs; editing, illustration, website, and publicity.  But mostly it was about connecting with potential fans.

The project raised $91,751 in 27 days, landed me a contract with a major literary agency, and yielded offers from every one of the Big 6.

LB: I’ve seen some insanely successful Kickstarter campaigns, but they’re usually from artists/authors who have built up a huge fan-base beforehand. You don’t seem to have that huge of an online following (at least from what I see on your blog and Twitter). What was the key to your success?

JS: My follower/friend numbers weren’t huge, but because my wife and I produced the first steampunk show in Canada, we had a terrific network of influencers.  We’d invested in these relationships over the years, supporting artists and promoting friends, so it was quite organic.  While not blatantly steampunk, Wollstonecraft has enough steampunk elements in it to appeal to that audience, and that was really the stone in the water.  We had a defined genre and significant relationships in that genre.  The first step in crowd-funding is to start with a great crowd.

I’d like to add that as a Canadian, I can’t produce my own kickstarter campaign.  So I turned to my American friend Kevin of Airship Ambassador, a steampunk blog, for assistance.  It was the only way to get the project off the ground.  But that’s step one, isn’t it?  Find out where your gaps are, and ask for help.

LB: I know your project hit the Kickstarter front page and was covered by many big blogs (io9, wired, boingboing, etc.), but how did you gather that initial momentum that convinced the various media outlets that your project was newsworthy?

JS: An artist friend of mine had had some previous coverage in boingboing, and he mentioned me to Cory Doctorow, who gave the project a plug.  After that I became nerd-famous pretty much by accident.  The biggest difference financially was the kickstarter newsletter, and that was simply because they liked the idea.

LB: In your Tips for a Successful Kickstarter Campaign article (great post!), you mentioned people should “Position the goal of the campaign as ‘funding for the OTHER people needed to make it happen’, not funding for you personally. Campaigns which do very well are those which seek to pay for printing, or a film crew, etc. Backers understand this kind of financial reality, but are less willing to let you quit your day job with the proceeds of the campaign.” 

Do you think that’s set in stone? The first hundred people who donated to your campaign knew they were paying for your editor, illustrator, etc., but after you smashed your initial goal, folks had to be donating for other reasons. I ask because I’m curious about the viability of using a donation model to put one’s work out for free. Could Kickstarter be an alternative to the traditional publishing paradigm?

JS: No, I don’t think it’s set in stone, it’s just an observation from looking at literally hundreds of campaigns.  It’s a generalization.  Nobody expects Pebble to build all those watches in their spare time.  Shadowrun is obviously a full-time gig for a whole lot of people.

Once we had exceeded ten times our initial goal, it was obvious that the world we were creating together was growing well beyond the original scope, and that entailed infrastructure – more people, more partners, more planning time.  And of course smart acquisitions editors are looking at kickstarter, and I was approached mid-campaign by every major publisher, film studios, merchandising license firms.  It was obvious that the characters and scenario were resonating with the audience, and solving a problem: the lack of pro-science role models for middle grade girls.  I got an amazing letter from an engineering student who said she wanted a copy of the book and a time machine so she could give it to her ten-year-old self.

Kickstarter isn’t just about the money: it’s about the community and their ideas, and it’s about market-testing.  I essentially pre-sold close to 10,000 books in the series, which proves a market.  As the campaign continued to grow, I reached out to my supporters and said “what would you like to see?” and the answer was more books, free short stories, resources for teachers and home-schoolers, interactive fiction, translation… all kinds of fun stuff.  But those stretch-goals came from the community.

As for publishing: I think the “traditional paradigm” is a myth.  Each book has always needed its own plan, its own team, its own audience.  Publishers – Big 6 or indie – aren’t sausage factories.  We just have more options now, more tools in the drawer.  Kickstarter is one of those tools – for covering start-up cost as well as sending the canary down the coal-mine, so to speak.

What has changed is the sequence: build a product on spec, submit to a hundred agents and wait, submit to a hundred publishers and wait, then hope to find an audience.  That’s over.  It’s not the creator’s job to ask the distributors for permission anymore.  The creator connects to the audience, and the distributors now have to sell the creator on the benefits of a partnership.  And the benefits are significant.  But agents and publishers hunt for authors now, not the other way ’round.

LB: Such awesome advice, Jordan!

Okay, last question: would you tell us how crucial the video was to your success? You talked about the book, but you also talked about your daughter and how you wanted to give her (and other girls) adventures featuring smart female role models that might impart a love of science and math to kids. I can see where this would appeal to folks much more than simply talking about the project. Thoughts?

I think it was just about being honest.  I love these characters.  I’m inspired by my daughter and her friends, I’m in awe of how curious and connected they are.  They’re unapologetically scientists, creators, explorers, inventors, pokers-of-dead-things-with-sticks.  It’s crucial to me that we retain that curiosity and engagement.  Girl-brain is probably the most under-utilized resource on the planet, and it can change the world – just like Ada and Mary did.  So I just spelled that out: This matters to me, and I’m doing it.  If it matters to you too, let’s do it together.  It’s that simple.

~

Thanks, Jordan. This is such an inspiring interview! Readers, for more information on Jordan’s projects, you can check out his blog. The site devoted to his book http://worldofwollstonecraft.com will have (at least) a placeholder and mailing-list sign-up by mid-July.

 

Related Posts:

Why One New Author Chose a Small Press over Self-Publishing
Must-Read Steampunk Books (Want to Add Yours?)
Is a Kickstarter Campaign a Consideration for You?

Tips for Dealing with Bad Book Reviews (have any to add?)

I’ve come across a lot of interviews where authors say variations of, “You need to develop a tough skin to survive this business,” and “If you have to write, write, but if you can… quit.”

Fortunately, the e-publishing (and self-publishing) boom of late has made things a little easier, at least insofar as getting your work out into the marketplace (no more submitting to agents for years and years and handling rejection after rejection.) Unfortunately, as authors, we still have to deal with the unpleasant fact that not everyone will love our work. Inconceivable, I know!

The bad reviews can be tough, especially when you’ve just published your first book. Here are a few suggestions on handling bad reviews, from someone who is (trust me) as sensitive as anyone and has a hard time letting things go. (For the record, I think it’s less about developing a tough skin — callouses, ewww — and more about keeping things in perspective. At the worst, people are rejecting our ideas and our way of sharing them; they’re not rejecting us.)

How to deal with bad reviews

Realize that everybody gets bad reviews

Misery loves company, right? Some of your favorite books probably have oodles of bad reviews. The final book in the insanely popular Hunger Games Trilogy has almost 500 1-star reviews. John Locke, the indie author famous for his How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! has a 3-star average on his popular Saving Rachel (a Donovan Creed Crime Novel) and almost as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews.

You can’t please everybody, but, as these successful authors prove, it’s not required. All you need to do is figure out how to please a small group of people (if you haven’t read Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans post yet, it’s a must).

Don’t let the bad comments outweigh the good ones

We can get 99 good reviews and 1 bad one, and it’s the bad one that sticks with us. For me, the ones that sting most are the ones that I know are right. It’s easy to dismiss the brief, are-you-sure-this-guy-even-read-the-book reviews, but the analytical ones that make a point-by-point list of the story’s flaws are tougher to let go.

I try to remember that just as you’ll never please everyone, you’ll never obtain perfection. With art, perfection is an elusive target anyway. All we can do is try to write good stories.

Instead of focusing on the occasional harsh reviews, take a look at the trend. Are four out of five people enjoying the story? Are the sales good? If you have a few books out in a series, are a lot of people buying the subsequent books after trying the first? (That’s a telling statistic and worth paying attention to.)

If you’re getting more positive reviews than bad, then you’re doing better than most!

Save your fan mail

The other day, I saw someone on the Kindleboards ask, “How do you know if you have fans?” My first (admittedly snarky) thought was that if you have to ask, you probably don’t. But that’s not necessarily true. A lot of people who read and enjoy books never leave a review or say anything to the author.

What you can do is make it easy for readers to contact you (i.e. put your email address or your blog/social media links at the end of the book), and encourage them to do so. When someone takes the time to write and say they enjoyed the book, that’s the all-time greatest compliment. When you start getting emails like that, put them in a special folder and save them (heck, print them out and stick them on the fridge). Then you can read through them again later when you’re feeling a down after being slammed somewhere.

Think of bad reviews as an opportunity to learn and grow

As I mentioned, some reviews are just odd (the ones where it seems like the person didn’t read the book), but the critical reviews that strike a chord can be a learning experience. Maybe your next protagonist should drive the action more, or perhaps you need to trim more words so that the story doesn’t get bogged down in the details. Maybe your witty banter isn’t as witty as you thought and needs to be toned. Or maybe the novel just wasn’t ready to be published.

Don’t do anything drastic based on one review, but if you get more bad reviews than good, and lots of  different people are picking on the same things, then it may be a sign that it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

A lot of people talk about how great self-publishing is because there are no gatekeepers; true, but there’s also nobody to tell you when you’re ready.

I’m glad e-publishing hadn’t taken off yet when I first “got serious” about writing. Because of that, I submitted quite a few short stories to magazines and earned a lot of rejections while I continued to learn the craft. I reached the point where I was making some sales before I turned my focus to novels and eventually self-publishing. Ideas are subjective, and you never know if a particular story is going to resonate with people, but if you’ve gotten thumbs-ups from some of the gatekeepers (whether they be magazine editors, contest judges, or agents), you can be reasonably confident that your writing itself has reached a professional level.

But if you’ve never dealt with rejection before, these early reviews may be all you have to go on. If the book wasn’t ready to publish, the readers will let you know. And it’s okay if it wasn’t. In every industry, 99.9% of the successful people out there failed a lot before hitting it big. It’s how we learn.

Don’t look at the reviews

Some people can’t help themselves. They have Google Alerts set up to email them whenever their name or their book titles are mentioned on the web. They want to read everything that’s said about them. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you know you’re a sensitive sort (especially if you’re someone who will over-analyze things and find cause for disgruntlement even in a four-star review), it might be better to simply stay away from the review sites.

In the end, reviews are largely meant to help other readers anyway. Yes, it’s sometimes possible to learn from them, but there’s a point of diminishing returns (i.e. you’ll probably learn everything you need to know after reading the first ten or fifteen reviews). Time spent zipping around the web, skimming every blog post or review that mentions you is time that could be spent working on the next book.

What do you think? Do you have any tips of your own for dealing with bad reviews?

Related Posts:

Indie Writing and Traditional Storytelling with Alan Dean
Is Self-Publishing Right for You?
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