Mary Sisson's Blog, page 102

Way to screw up, guys

M. Louisa Locke has a devastating post on how freaking impossible it is to get visibility on Barnes & Noble or Kobo. Anyone running or launching an e-book retail site needs to take that post and have it printed everywhere, including their own skin.

It's been said many times, but the devil is in the details: You can't just compete with Amazon by having a "me-too" site up; if you want your retail site to rack up Amazon-style numbers of indie book sales, you need to compete on author service. No one seems to be doing that.

Progress report

1630 words, whoo!

Trolls, drama queens, and your time

April Hamilton had a recent post about getting into a fight on-line and feeling like she was finally being herself! And it turns out that crazy Ewan Morrison (brace yourself--this is a shocker) likes to fight people on Twitter! And they like to fight him back!

Le sigh.

I know some writers are fairly new to on-line socializing (or on-line socializing outside their real-life social circles), which means that they are new to on-line fights. I was an early Browncoat; back in the Days of Yore when Firefly was just a show that had been cancelled after half a season and had no geek cred whatsoever, we were actively and repeatedly targeted for on-line harassment by variety of groups (fans of other shows, random assholes who thought we should just shut up and go home, etc.). So I know quite a bit about on-line fights.

I'll tell you something about on-line fights: They are almost never undertaken in good faith.

What do I mean by that? Well, let's say I honestly think X and you honestly think Y, and we disagree. We could debate why I think X is right and why you think Y is right. Maybe one of us would change the other's mind, maybe that wouldn't happen, but that would be the end of it.

But that's boring!!! Neither of us is going to be an Internet fuckwad if we stick to a civilized discussion of the issues!

What usually happens is more like this: You honestly think Y. I don't actually care (the vast majority of Firefly trolls back then had never seen the show and had absolutely no opinion about it), but I feel like having a fight--maybe my boss treated me badly earlier today, maybe I'm 12, maybe I'm an undiagnosed and unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic. So I say, "Y? What kind of fuckwit likes Y!?! X is the only way to go!!!!! Anyone who doesn't like X should be shot and their body used as a latrine!"

Now, that's much more exciting! We could go for hours...days...even (and I've seen this happen) YEARS!!!! You could get a posse together, I could get a posse together, and we could avoid the painful business growing up and moving forward with our lives indefinitely!

And we could even brand ourselves this way, which is what Morrison is in all likelihood doing. Joe Konrath gleefully cops to being combative for his own purposes. It works for political pundits: Every time I read someone who writes "I can't believe what Rush Limbaugh/Ted Rall just said!!!" I roll my eyes--being an outrageous asshole is their job.

If it's not your job, and if you're not really getting anything out of it (and I mean really getting something out of it, not just an adrenaline surge), you're better off just moving on. You have better things to do with your time--or at least I hope you do.

I'm not saying that you can't be yourself or that you shouldn't stand up for yourself or that you should condone harassment (most sites have "report abuse" buttons, and you should use them). But the best way to do these things is usually not by engaging in endless rounds of argument with someone who will say quite literally anything to keep the fight going. (This is called "feeding trolls"--they just get more obnoxious because you're giving them what they want.) I thnk that's what people new to on-line socializing don't understand: Ninety-nine percent of the time, the fight itself is the point for these people--they don't want it ever to end, and they certainly are NEVER going to say, "Gee, yeah! Come to think of it, you're right!"

More on B&N's retail setup; making semi-decent advice suck

Edward Robertson is looking at Barnes & Noble now and deciding that it's going to be really hard to build an audience there because it's set up so that people who aren't already looking for your book are unlikely to come across it. Yup. Not that I've had huge sales anywhere, but I've had some sales everywhere except B&N.

And Passive Voice linked to an interview with Sue Grafton, in which she takes a kernel of semi-decent advice (don't publish before something is ready, which--hm, I could debate that one, actually, since as much as I love polish I think that as a practical matter you're better off erring on the side of getting it out there) and buries it in a truckload of horseshit about how self-publishing is lazy and stupid, and how you're better off spending six years being told that your stuff is great but they can't publish it anyway, because that is the sort of useful, high-quality, craft-honing feedback you can only get from traditional publishing.

If you're wondering why writing professionals need to stay on top of their industry, this is why--so you can give advice to young writers that won't harm them. Grafton's advice reminds me of when I was graduating from college and wondering how to start a career, and my mother suggested that I should move back home (to a place with truly epic rates of unemployment) and do charity work (until I got married, of course, at which point all of my problems would be magically solved forever). She gave me this advice in 1992, not 1962, if you're wondering. Anyway, it wasn't just quaint and old-fashioned--it was truly terrible career advice, and had I followed it, I simply would have never had a professional career. Grafton's advice is equally out of date and equally pernicious.

Progress report

1260 words, whoo! I was actually totally not going to write today--it's been a blah sort of day--but once again, the timer saved me. I had fun, and the computer is set up so that I like it. Yay!

Uf!

Another day lost to the new computer--it will be worth it in the end to get rid of all the 10-to-15-year-old tech I have cluttering my office, but man, the clearing out is a major undertaking, especially if you're not content to just chuck it all in the trash. I'm gonna swing by FedEx and the thrift shop, and then I will be ALMOST done.

How to kill sales

Dean Wesley Smith has a great post on the importance of cover design and description in selling your book. I have to agree that it's surprisingly difficult when you're in the midst of writing a book to figure out the kind of book you wrote--it's just a major shifting of mental gears.

Ergonomics

So, part of the reason getting a new computer is such a pain for me is that I have to worry about stuff like the exact height of my monitor and how wide my keyboard is. (The old keyboard works with the new computer, BTW. The box for the "MADE IN THE USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!" shelving unit, which was supposed to contain two shelves and two end units, actually contained one shelf and four end units ("USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! We've got the best weed!!!"), but with the help of my trusty screw gun/drill, I was able to turn it into something even better suited to the task than the original.)

Anyway, you might think that stuff like that isn't worth it to worry about. I had a boss like that once, about 10 years ago. That's why I have to wear wrist braces while I type.

Actually, that's both too mean and far too kind. Said boss wanted to help. Everybody who heard about how my workstation was hurting my wrists (it was set up so that my wrists were bent as far back as they could go, and there was no apparent way to adjust it) thought that was really bad and really wanted to help fix it.

Unfortunately, it was a completely dysfunctional office, so of course my wrist pain (like everything else) had to spark a major turf war that took SIX MONTHS to resolve.

You heard me: SIX MONTHS.

Of course, by the end of it, my wrists were permanently damaged. And I took shit for wearing wrist wraps, despite the fact that at least two-thirds of the staff wore wrist braces of some sort, a level of RSI that I have never seen in any other workplace.

That, by the way, was the very last full-time job I ever worked.

I've been my own boss since then. I wear braces when I type, I'm careful about my set up, and as a result I no longer have constant wrist pain.

When we talk about writing--how to write, writing habits--we often don't talk about the fact that we're as dependent on our hands and wrists as any athlete. Don't assume, like I did, that the soreness will go away--stop it from happening to begin with. However much control you have, exercise it so that work doesn't hurt you. Don't try to tough it out or assume it's nothing worth worrying about. I wish I had started wearing stiff wrist braces the very first day, when I looked at that keyboard setup, thought, "Jesus! This is a mess!" and could not fix it. It would have cost me less than $30, and it would have saved me a world of pain and worry.

Progress report

With computer stuff, I wrote a mere 300 words today, but I also outlined the next chapter, which performs the rather important task of getting me out of Exposition Land and into A Plotville, so I'm glad to get that straightened out. As in Trust, handling the exposition is kind of a challenge--right now I'm sort of just roughing it in, you know, "Philippe goes here DESCRIBE STATION." (I'm a big fan of PRIMITIVE ALL CAPS in early drafts.) My hope is that this will help me dole out the exposition in reasonable dollops later--for example, if I see "He walked into the room and saw DESCRIBE PATCH DESCRIBE GEORGE DESCRIBE SHANTI" maybe I can split those things up a bit, especially if there's another DESCRIBE PATCH later on.

"There’s a chance for authors to charge more"

I'm still dealing with moving to a new computer, but this (via Edward Robertson) is another Forbes interview with Mark Coker that specifically focuses on indie book pricing. (The first two interviews are here and here.)

Of course, it's important to remember that Coker has access only to Smashwords' data, which is not necessarily applicable to anyone else. But Amazon appears to be pushing authors to raise prices.

And I think that's a good thing. I don't think self-published authors should raise e-book prices to $14 a copy or anything, but I think some writers get very hung up on differences in prices that really don't mean much to readers. Trang sells more now than it did when it was 99 cents, Trust didn't sell more at $3 than it does at $5, and people will even pay for a book when I'm trying to give it to them for free.

I once read a post by Dean Wesley Smith where he pegged $5-and-under as "the impulse buy range." And I thought, Oh, there he goes again, Smith always overstates things, how could he possibly know what "the impulse buy range" is?

Of course, a few days later I was in a store and I saw something cute that I didn't really need, and I looked at the price and thought, "Hot damn! That's not even $5!" and I dashed over to the cashier and bought it. Then I realized what I had just done....

So my feeling is that once you get below a certain number--$5, $10--the actual price doesn't matter so much. You might as well charge $3 as charge $1, or $5 as $3. It's kind of all the same to readers.

And there's good reason not to price extremely low. Obviously, with Amazon you make significantly more money above $3. The problem with making 35 cents a copy (aside from the fact that you may be training yourself to devalue your work) is that you're making so little that it's extremely hard to turn a profit on marketing costs.

Another thing to think about is promotions. If your normal price is super-low, you won't be able to afford to run promotions--but that's not all. Retailers routinely inflate the "normal" price of something so that they can post an attractive markdown. (Anchoring!) If you really feel like it's unfair to charge $5 for your book, price it at $5 and constantly offer coupons or put it on sale. People will be even happier to buy it because they're getting a deal.

Plus, you may surprise yourself and sell more at the higher price--it happens. Remember, the market decides what price is "fair." You really have surprisingly little control over it (You'd really rather pay for it? I've got a free coupon right here!), so go with the flow.